by Dani Stowe
“Hello, baby girl.”
Sue coughs so hard, the wiener and bun in her mouth comes flying out, landing half chewed on the table. The stranger next to her grimaces as Sue blushes. Her entire face turns crimson.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she exclaims batting her eyes at the man across from her while avoiding me.
She tries to spread the crumpled napkin she had crushed in her palm. No doubt, she wants to hide her half-eaten mess. But instead, I quickly pull out my handkerchief from my breast pocket.
“Here, let me,” I say as I scoop up the pulverized meat that was in her mouth, leaving Sue to stare at the clean spot.
“Do you all know each other?” the young man with too much gel in his hair asks, pointing between us.
Sue continues to stare blankly at the table top. She’s in shock perhaps, so I answer for her, “We’ve been through some—stuff—once a upon a time. Isn’t that right, baby girl?”
Sue doesn’t say anything, only tips her chin down. It’s very odd and it makes the gentleman uncomfortable. I toss my stuffed handkerchief into the gentleman’s brown bag of fries, which puts him on edge.
“Hey, I’m just going to move over to that table,” he mumbles and gets up to leave his fries along with my empty seat.
I sit down, the corners of my mouth quirked up.
“Why haven’t you returned my calls?” Sue murmurs, looking in the opposite direction.
“I’m sure you know why,” I reply coolly, placing my forearms on the table to lean forward in an attempt to put myself in her view.
She looks into her lap. “You’ve been avoiding my calls because you knew I’d be forced to take up a meeting with you in person.”
“Bingo,” I point.
Sue rests her elbow on the table and puts her forehead in her hand. “Why are you here now?”
“Why have you been avoiding me all these years?” She’s still avoiding me. She has yet to make eye contact with me.
“Our meeting is not until later.”
“I just wanted to say hello.”
“You mean you’re trying to schmooze me, so I’ll sign off on your human test trials because you think we’re old friends.”
A pain digs its way into my chest. “We’re still friends. Aren’t we? Baby girl?”
“Don’t call me that,” she grits.
“What? Baby girl? You don’t like it? I thought you liked it when we were kids.”
I still want to make you my baby and call you my girl.
“I don’t like it and we’re not kids anymore, Jax.”
“How about I just call you, baby? My baby?”
Sue bites her bottom lip and fumbles with the napkin in her hand, keeping her eyes focused on the tiny folds. Her behavior is unlike the girl I once knew from high school. She shakes her head and turns her sights in the opposite direction again.
“Why won’t you look at me?” I’m genuinely interested. I want her to see me. I want her to look at me the way other women do nowadays. I want Ursula Chandler to see the big guy I’ve become. “Sue?”
“I can’t,” she mumbles.
I chuckle. “What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I can’t look at you.” Sue leans over to pull her purse up from the ground and places the strap over her shoulder. “I’m sorry, but it’s not my fault you wouldn’t return my calls. We could’ve easily gotten a lot of work done over the phone. In fact, I don’t even need to be here, but here I am—most likely at the request of your very powerful boss.”
Sue reaches into her purse to grab her sunglasses and then puts them on. Reaching for what’s left of her hot dog, she comes to standing.
She’s just going to leave? What the fuck?!
“Hey!” I snap, grabbing her arm and come to standing with her.
“Let me go, Jax,” she squirms.
I grab her other arm to force her to face me and she swings her head around like she genuinely wants to avoid me, avoid looking at me.
She won’t look at me!
It’s odd. Weird. Strange.
I’m dying to know why she won’t just take a look!
“Look at me for a second, will you, Sue?”
“No, I can’t,” she blurts and pushes on my chest, trying to free her arms from my grip.
“Miss, are you all right?” shouts the gentleman who sat next to her earlier.
I let go of Sue when I realize everyone is staring.
“I’m fine, thank you,” she hums and garners what’s left of her hot dog, walking it to a trash receptacle, and then sauntering towards the busy street.
I follow right behind as she skips and scurries.
This was supposed to be it! This was supposed to be the day. The day that I’ve been waiting for. The day that I would take the Bang and find out once and for all how Ursula Chandler feels about me. But she won’t even look at me. And why is she running? She disappeared after the night we were together, which I never understood, but I never gave her a reason to run from me.
Sue gets to the curb where the tips of her black suede pumps lean over the edge as she waves her hand furiously, attempting to flag down a taxi. I come up close behind her, being careful not to touch her. There’s something not quite right with her but her smell is almost the same as I remember—sweet but lacking the charred, smoky aroma.
I lean in even closer to take a whiff and as cars fly by her curls flick over my face and I’m reminiscing once again, recalling the night I took her home on the eve of the fire...
Once out of the taxi, Sue stepped into my laced fingers so I could hoist her into a back window of her mansion. Her hair danced over my face, which sorta smelled like s’mores—sweet chocolate marshmallows toasted by the smoke of Charlotte’s charred house. Sue’s hands gripped my shoulders and I loved the tug of them on me.
Sue didn’t have her house key—lost somewhere in the fire, so we had to break in. I felt guilty my junk got hard as her ass poked up into the air while she stumbled over the windowsill to crawl in.
“I’ll let you in the door,” she said, peeping out the windowsill with her hair tousled over the frame looking like a genuine princess.
During the fire, I had acquired an inner beastlike power, which I figured must be what the school jocks felt before a big game. Although, looking at Sue through the window, I went right back to feeling like a dumb geek unable to control his inner goof. I had to lean up against the house so she wouldn’t see how hard I was. I was bulging nearly out of my pants. I didn’t want to embarrass myself, especially since I suspected she had a better opinion of me than just being a geek or a nerd at that moment.
“Sue, I don’t think this is a good idea. You’re safe now. I’m going to head back to—”
She reached through the window and ran her fingers through my greasy hair. “Stay with me, Jax.”
“Okay,” I said. The word just popped its way out of my mouth! I had no restraint. She could’ve asked me to do the chicken dance and I would’ve jumped at the opportunity.
Relief scrolled across Sue’s face when she opened the backdoor to look down on me standing there, but I felt the opposite. My neck hurt. I recognized perhaps I had strained some muscles and looking up at the beautiful girl was increasing the ache spreading down my constricted neck.
My inner voice told me to turn away. It could foretell something major—life changing—was about to happen, something much bigger than the fire. Though my conscience could not tell me whether the outcome would lead to triumph or tragedy, I knew. I knew we had but moments ago been through some really crazy shit and I should’ve just left and let her be to resolve the inner trauma I suspected she was experiencing, but—
“I’m going to take a shower.” She tilted her head to flick her hair off her shoulder. “You wanna wait in my room?”
“Okay.” The word had slipped right out of my mouth again. I shoved my hands in my pockets. It didn’t matter that my conscious was warning me. My body wouldn’t listen.
Walki
ng through Sue’s mansion awed me. White and gray marble spanned the entire interior forcing beams of light to collect, despite the hour near midnight. There wasn’t a single dark corner in her home.
Looking at her butt as she climbed the stairs ahead of me, I got the feeling she was purposely rocking it side-to-side with emphasis to tantalize me.
The girl knew how to tease me.
At the top of the landing, Sue gripped my fingers and led me to her room. “I’m sorry, it’s a bit of a mess,” she said. “My dad won’t let the housekeepers clean it anymore.”
A mess was an understatement. I was surprised to find Sue’s room looking more like a demolition zone. There was shit everywhere! Clothes, papers, pizza boxes, half drunken soda pop bottles, and books—Sue had a lot of books, which is part of the reason I liked her the best among the Cunt Squad. All four girls were pretty, but the one thing Sue and I had in common was her fondness for both fiction and nonfiction. She didn’t know this, of course; she didn’t study me the way I studied her.
“I’ll try to be quick,” she said, pushing me into her room where I had no choice but to step on her clothes. It made me nervous, but she pushed me in further. “Just lay on my bed. You do want to get into my bed, don’t you?”
My breath hitched with a warning, but “Okay,” fell out of my mouth once more.
I found it strange Sue did not turn the light on and I recall lying down among her massive mountain of piled skinny jeans, silk shirts, and lingerie to become overwhelmed by her smell—sweet and intoxicating. It relaxed and thrilled me at the same time but there was a terrible odor underneath it all.
I panicked when I realized the sour stench of bad body odor was coming from me!
Chapter 3
Ursula
“I really wish you’d go away.” I wave my hand higher but the taxi streams by.
There’s not even anyone inside! Ugh.
“I really wish you’d turn around.” Jaxon’s hot breath blows through my hair and across my ear.
I keep my gaze towards the oncoming traffic. “I thought I could do this, Jax, but I can’t.”
“Can’t do what? I don’t understand. Will you fucking turn around and face me?”
Jaxon’s voice is most certainly deeper than it was when we spent the night together, which was—oh God—so long ago and the fact he just cussed at me is evidence he’s matured... or maybe not. Just changed.
“We have a past, Sue. The least you could do is turn around and say hello.”
I shake my head. “I can’t. What happened between us was a long time ago and it’s taken a long time for me to—”
Oh crap! I almost gave myself away.
Jaxon leans in on me now, his chest at my back. “It’s taken you a long time to do what?”
I scoot forward, creating a gap. “You saved my life, Jax, and you got laid, I’m sure I’ve thanked you enough.”
“Sue, you know it meant more to me than that. Why didn’t you return any of my calls afterward?”
Jaxon lifts my hair away from my shoulder and I feel a surge in my gut telling me to move forward.
“What’s happened to you?” he asks, leaning right up on my back again. “I heard you broke up with your boyfriend afterward and I tried calling you. Why didn’t you ever call me back?”
Oh my God! This man! I wish I could just tell him and make him understand!
“Why do you care?” I raise my hand at the taxi coming. “Don’t you have a wife and kids or something? How would they feel if they knew you were trying to hook up with an old fling?”
“You’re an auditor. You work for the FDA. With all of those government resources at your fingertips, I have no doubt you’ve done your research on me so you know damned well I don’t have a wife and kids.” He puts his hot mouth to my ear. “And I know you don’t have anyone either. Baby. Girl.”
Ugh, this man’s been spying on me. I always got the feeling he was spying.
A taxi comes to a screeching halt and I leap towards the door, but Jaxon intercepts the handle before I can get to it. Then, as if on autopilot and against my better judgement, I look him in the eyes.
My core is both thrilled and chilled. I’ve been staring at Jaxon’s face for years—in my dreams. I’d heard he’d grown to become quite a handsome specimen of a man and I had my own idea about how he might look, but up close and in person, he’s so much more delicious than any idea could render.
An itch in my core pesters from within. I find myself trying my damnedest to resist our memories. I’m struggling to keep my eyes from ogling downward.
But I can’t help myself!
My head tilts south and my gaze follows the length of Jaxon’s tie to jump across the buttons of his jacket going lower and lower until...
I stare at his groin.
I take a step back and my right heel slips under me, causing an electric shock to shoot from my ankle, painfully up through my calf, and into my thigh.
Oh fuck, it hurts! I feel faint.
“Whoa, girl!” Jaxon calls out and catches me. My sight goes dark but I stay semi-conscious as his hands pull at my waist then fold around my back to pull me to his chest.
Jaxon’s arms, the same skinny arms that once pulled me from a fire, feel so much different than they did—fuller, bigger, stronger. He lifts me easily into the backseat of the taxi and gets in with me.
I hear Jaxon speaking to the cab driver. He mentions something about NIM, the Neuro Institute of Medicine, and as my vision grapples with a few sparks of light, I feel Jaxon wrap one arm around my shoulders, pulling me to sit next to him.
He grabs my face, his strong fingers spread across my jaw, my eyelids are heavy. “Ursula Chandler,” he huffs in my mouth. “Baby girl, tell me what the hell is going on with you. You nearly passed out. What if I had not been there to catch you?”
The aroma of Jaxon’s clean-scented cologne mixed with his cool, minty breath invades me, stimulating me, and forces me to rouse.
His eyes pierce through me and a funny sensation—an uncomfortable edgy burn mixed with warm hope—takes over. It’s the same funny feeling I had when we were kids, when were just a couple of eighteen-year-old teenagers on the night of the fire...
I walked into my bedroom after getting out of the shower where I caught sight of Jaxon pulling his shirt up and over his head. He had turned the light on and we both stood there for a second searching each other’s faces as if we were both seeking permission to look beyond blushing cheeks.
I was dripping wet, standing in only a towel.
He was dirty and shirtless.
I was tall and slender.
He was short and scrawny.
I was popular.
He was a dork.
I was hot and he was in no way cool.
But I wanted him.
I yanked at the twist of my towel between my breasts to let the towel fall with the rest of my mess to the floor. Jaxon’s mouth dropped wide open and he scratched at his elbows before slowly raising them to point towards the ceiling so his hands could scratch the back of his head. In that moment, I was so turned on by his torso—lean and elongated by the stretch of his body, forcing his jeans to hang low below the wide elastic stretch band of his boxers revealing a trail of soft curled hair leading downward from his navel. It was evidence he was more than just a dork with a brain.
He had guy parts.
He may have been a geek, but he did not look bad underneath his clothes. The smooth skin of his belly surrounding his Happy Trail looked baby soft above the lean muscle beneath and I wanted to touch him. I wanted to rub my face in the space surrounding his navel. I unconsciously put my forefinger in my mouth, which made Jaxon pant.
He squinted. “Sue, you... you, uh... you dropped your towel,” he stuttered, also trying to get a good look while trying hard to seem not-so-obvious in looking.
I was looking. He made me hot. “Jax, I want—”
“I have to take a shower,” he interjected and stormed past
me. A chilly breeze, made by his swift getaway smelling like smoky sweat followed behind him.
It was in that moment I knew Jaxon was not like most boys. Any other boy would’ve pounced on me. Any other boy would’ve completely taken advantage of me, but Jaxon was not like most boys and deep down I always knew that.
I stood in my room looking down at my naked breasts—plump, young breasts—and flames, as if left over from the fire, began to rise within me.
I was good enough to be saved but not good enough to be loved on? How dare he!
Fuming, I marched out of my room, down the hall, and busted into the bathroom. “Jaxon!”
“Yeah,” he mumbled from under the water with a splashing.
I tore the shower curtain open.
“Whoa, what the hell Ursula?!” he shouted trying to hide his junk with one hand, while practically slamming the curtain shut with the other.
The frosted white plastic sheet sliding across the tip of my nose, stretching across my face, and blocking my view humiliated me. I felt so stupid.
What kind of guy would be so dumb as to shut the curtain on this? On me? Geeks were supposed to be smart! I was so aggravated.
“Jax, I know you guys watch us from Elliot’s room sometimes and I always thought that maybe you—”
He jerked the curtain open slightly to peep out at me. “I stink, Sue.” Water splashed from his lips onto my nose. “And I’m filthy. It’s embarrassing enough as it is to be in this body next to you.”
“Oh,” I swallowed and he shut the curtain again. The edgy burn in my chest calmed and a warm feeling took its place. “Jax, to be honest, I kinda like your stink. Can I...” I put my hand on the curtain. “Can I come in with you?”
There was no immediate response and the splashing noises Jaxon had been making ceased. The anticipation of waiting for a boy to respond to me was new. My heart felt as though it was buckling and I couldn’t believe my feelings about him—a geek!
I was crushing. I was crushing on Jaxon Underwood—hard.
My skin was itching, my blood was boiling, my sex was pulsing, and my chest! My chest felt like it was being crushed. But beyond all that I was horny, horny for a member of NIM. Somehow, I’d fallen for one of the most infamous geeks at school. He was probably the most certifiable nerd known around campus as the Lord of the Chem Lab. The idea of him and me together did not make sense but the urge to touch him, kiss him, and taste his mouth...
