The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5 (8 page)

“Nor do I,” Michael said.

“I never want to see either of you again, as long as I live,” she shouted.

In a torrent of tears, she ran from the kitchen. A moment later, we heard the front door slam.

Michael leveled his gaze on me. It was so cold it gave me a chill.

“I got an invitation to go out tonight with the guys, and I wasn’t going to go because I wanted to spend time with you,” he said. “But I think I’m going now.”

Once he was gone, I sat there fuming, desperately needing a bowl of my no name sugar pops to calm myself down, but since I didn’t have them, I ate two Snickers Bars and drank two cans of Coke. Then I left Jen a message, thanking her for destroying my relationship with Constance and maybe my relationship with Michael as well. I finished with “Don’t bother calling me again.”

Michael had never been this mad at me before. There had been no cuddles, kisses, or jokes all week. That weekend, we were invited to a barbecue at Josh’s house. He was Michael’s best friend. I wasn’t sure if I should go or not.

“Do you still want me to go?” I asked, the day of the party.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked.

I was a little worried about how he would act, but as soon as we got there, he started acting like himself again. I started to relax for the first time in days.

All the other girls went into the kitchen to check on the food, but I stayed by Michael. He was in such a good mood I didn’t want to leave him. Besides, I didn’t click with these girls. All they talked about what was an acceptable carat size for an engagement ring. After listening to them for the past half hour, I actually missed Jen and Constance.

We were in Josh’s sports room, or what I liked to call the Male Bonding Room. There were a lot of sports memorabilia, an actual bar and a huge sectional sofa. Plus, Josh collected celebrity autographs.

The guys started talking about all the stupid stunts they’ve pulled over the years. Then the conversation led to the times when they used to visit strip clubs. I didn’t mind. They’ve talked about stuff like this before in front of me because they know I write porn.

Suddenly, I realized they weren’t talking about the far away past. They were talking about the other night, and how this stripper sucked this gum out of one their mouths, chewed it and spit it back in. Michael was cracking up and blushing, saying how after it happened he’d accidentally swallowed the gum.

I got a chill. That’s where he went the other night when he was mad at me. My boyfriend was sharing gum with a half-naked girl. I felt nauseous.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” I asked.

I tried to control the tone of voice, but it came out like cold water on barking dogs. Everyone froze. His smile faded.

“I told you I went out,” he said.

“You didn’t tell me this,” I shrieked.

Immediately, everyone filed out of the room but us.

“I would never cheat on you,” I said. “How would you like it if I got it on with Josh?”

He looked pale.

“Well, you stop writing porn, and I’ll stop the strippers,” he said.

“Michael, you knew I wrote porn when you met me. You’re like a girl who hooks up with a guy who races bikes and yet the moment they are together, she wants him to get rid of the bikes.”

“But I’m so sick of your exploiting our personal business,” he said. “Sometimes you just don’t think.”

I hesitated.

“Think about it, Penny,” he said. “A lot of this shit happens because you don’t use your head.”

I opened my mouth to say something more, but he interrupted me.

“Think,” he said.

So, I thought about it. Could I avoid some of these perils of writing porn if I used my head? My sister probably wouldn’t be mad at me if she hadn’t opened my Christmas cards. Michael would have gotten his baklava if I had monitored my conversation with Jen in front of those kids at La Shish Kabob. Constance wouldn’t have wanted to do a three way if I hadn’t sent her the link to that story.

“I think you might be right,” I said. “I do need to start using my head when I write porn.”

As soon as I said it, all this fog in my brain started to clear. It was like all the porn neurons were confusing my common sense neurons.

Michael looked relieved.

“I’m sorry, too, for everything,” he said.

To show me he meant it, he gave me a sweet, tender, probing kiss like he had the first time he kissed me, the kind that took my breath away and made me fall in love with him, but immediately I started categorizing the details. This kiss would be perfect for this new story idea. The way his mouth was pressed against mine, the way his tongue traced my teeth.

Stop it, Penny, I told myself. If Michael didn’t want me to use our personal details in stories than I wouldn’t.

Breaking the kiss, I let him lift me up in his arms to give me a big squeeze. That’s when I saw it. Over his shoulder. A newly framed autographed photo on the wall. The picture was from a strip club with all the guys, including Michael, and sitting on his lap was the headliner.

And guess who she was? Camel Toe Girl.

I was definitely putting this kiss in a story.

Sitting in a high-back chair in the lobby of the Klamath Hotel, Sam Hyde waited for a woman he hadn’t seen in seventeen years. His eyes were focused on the front door, so he could see her the moment she arrived. He crossed his left leg and involuntarily ran his fingers down the crease of his gray dress pants. He fidgeted with the knot of the wide flowered tie he’d picked up in New Orleans a month ago, in anticipation of this very moment, or was it Hong Kong? For some reason he couldn’t remember.

He glanced at the Rolex on his right wrist. It was four minutes until six. Looking back at the front door, he noticed how dark it was outside. Beyond the door, a man in a gray sweat suit was scraping snow off the sidewalk, piling it on the curb. Although it seemed cool in the quiet lobby, Sam felt perspiration working its way down his back. Tiny beads of sweat also collected along his forehead. He wiped his brow with his fingers and let out a nervous sigh.

He promised himself he wouldn’t be nervous. He’d planned on being in control, being cool when she stepped in and their eyes met. He wanted to be the successful man he’d become since leaving Grayville seventeen years ago. He reminded himself of his successes in business and with women, but it was no use. This was the woman he’d never forgotten. In fact, he had trouble thinking of any of the other women.

Since the first crush he’d felt for her in junior high, she’d never left his mind for more than a few days. No matter where he’d traveled, his mind always returned to the flatland of his youth, to the small Kansas town nestled between the Big Blue and Little Blue Rivers just south of the Nebraska border, to stuffy classrooms and the memory of her skirt bouncing against the back of her thighs as she walked down the hall in front of him.

Checking the time again, he saw it was one minute until six now. He focused on the door and tried to swallow, only his throat was desert dry. He readjusted himself in his seat and had to pull his feet quickly out of the way of an elderly man in a large bear overcoat who almost stepped on Sam. The old man didn’t even seem to see him, as he shuffled across the lobby.

“Old age is hell,” Sam thought.

Tyler Sproul rounded the corner at that very moment and walked around the man shoveling snow off the sidewalk. Moving purposefully in her high heels over the slick sidewalk, she sucked in a deep breath of brisk air as she approached the front door of the old Klamath Hotel. She wondered what Sam would look like at thirty-five. She wondered what he’d think of her now.

Entering through the revolving door, Tyler stopped just inside the doorway and looked around. The old hotel smelled musty, stuffy from forced-air heat. Tyler felt her face flush in the sudden warmth just as she saw Sam. He smiled at her as he rose from his chair. She felt her breath catch as she recognized that same smile from high school, the smile he’d flashed her way after winning the state swimming title, all those years ago.

She noticed a streak of silver along the temples of Sam’s dark hair, and a deep tan on his exquisite face, and those light blue eyes that looked like the morning sky on a bright summer day. He still had his swimmer’s physique, tall and lean. He also had a moustache now.

Sam studied her as he crossed the lobby on legs that felt suddenly weak. Her hair was shorter but still reddish brown, parted down the center now. She was still slender, with her legs still long and shapely. She was wearing a burgundy dress and a gold topcoat that she removed as he arrived.

Stopping in front of her, Sam looked into her green eyes. He saw something in them that made him smile even wider. His most vivid memory of Tyler was the liveliness of her green eyes, the youthful sparkle in them. He realized he had been most worried about her eyes, rather than what she looked like now as a woman. He wanted her eyes to be lively, more than anything.

Tyler felt a swell of emotion crawling up her throat, felt a stiffness in her back, a salty wetness in her eyes. She blinked. She thought he was about to say something, but when he opened his mouth his lips began to shake, so he closed it and just stared at her with those warm blue eyes.

He found himself studying every detail of her face. It was still the face from his dreams; only there were lines now, on her cheeks where she smiled and smaller lines next to her eyes. She still had that triangular face, the pointy chin, the nearly perfect nose, those well-formed lips he’d never tasted. He found himself staring at her lower lip, which was fuller than her upper lip.

Tyler always loved the small cleft in the center of Sam’s chin. She found herself looking at his moustache, his wide dark mustache that looked so soft. And when she looked up at his eyes, she saw they were now damp.

No longer a girl, Tyler had become a truly beautiful woman. And when she smiled it was the same smile of that young girl from the halls of his dreams. Tyler had the warmest, nicest, most beautiful smile Sam had ever seen . . . ever. He could see the wetness in
her
eyes now. She blinked again at him.

They both let out a nervous sigh. Sam reached his hand out, and she took it and squeezed it.

The palm of his hand felt moist.

“How about that steak I promised?” His voice was scratchy and he cleared his throat immediately and smiled again.

She nodded, biting her lower lip, blinking her eyes once more to keep the wetness from rolling down her cheeks.

She ached for him to touch her. All evening she wanted to feel his touch on her skin. Now, in his hotel room, on the second floor of the old Klamath, two days before Christmas of her thirty-fifth year, with the plates from their steak dinner still sitting on the small table against the window, Tyler felt Sam’s arms wrapping around her. She pulled herself to him. She let out an involuntary sigh and tightly shut her eyes.

Sam felt all the evening’s tension slip away as he hugged her, as she snuggled her cheek against his, as she pressed her breasts against his chest, her legs against his legs. She was finally in his arms. This girl he had dreamed of since junior high was there with him, holding him, and this was no dream. He kissed her gently on her cheek.

Tyler brushed her lips across Sam’s face until her lips found his. He kissed her back, softly at first, his lips parting until their tongues found each other. His kiss remained soft as his hands moved from the small of her back down to her rear. He squeezed her ass, pressing her against him, his crotch digging into hers.

Still kissing, Sam worked her dress up with his fingers until his hands were on her panties, rubbing across the cool slickness of her silky panties. The fingers of his right hand slipped under the elastic, and he felt the naked flesh of her ass.

Tyler’s hands rose to his head to run her fingers through his hair. Lifting her right knee, she wrapped her leg around his waist, feeling his crotch moving slowly against hers, feeling a flush of dampness growing between her legs. The stiffness of his erection pushed against her.

Sam moved a hand up and unzipped her dress down to her waist. He sank his hand down into her panties from the top this time. He squeezed her ass.

Tyler pulled her right leg down. Breathing heavily, she pushed his jacket off, loosened his tie, pulled it off, and unbuttoned his shirt. She unbuckled his belt and opened his pants.

Their lips parted momentarily when Sam pulled her dress off. He took a second to look at her as she stood in front of him, running her hands through her short hair. Her chest rose with her heavy breathing. He watched her bare breasts rise, their delicate roundness, the pointy nipples. She was wearing white panties, thin enough for him to see the dark hair between her legs. Her stockings were held up by lacy elastic bands at the top, an inch or so from her crotch. He bent over and removed her heels and began pulling her stockings down.

He kissed his way up her legs, alternating from one to the other as his hands returned to kneading her ass. He traced his tongue up her thighs. He lightly kissed the front of her panties and moved up to her navel. He tongued her navel and stood, moving his hands to her breasts now to squeeze them softly, to run his finger over her nipples.