Tommy had never done well in school. It wasn't a lack of brains or a surplus of attitudes. Not at first. It was the opposite. Tommy was too smart for his teachers, his angry parents and almost every kid his own age. When he found a smart kid like himself in school, he clung to them regardless of what they were into. Even if it was stealing cigarettes he'd never smoked before, drinking piss colored liquor or vandalizing the popular kids' fancy-ass cars.
At 16, his friend José had introduced him to a 25 year old girl named Suzanne who worked at the record store. She soon became his first girlfriend, lay and housemate. She was demanding. She loved his sixteen year-old eagerness and endless erections. He hadn't even finished growing all the hair on his balls by the time he had done every position he'd ever heard his friends talk about. Even when he would get tired of the sex, constantly being asked to bone her after a hard day of work — never mind the homework for an Honors English class he'd managed to weasel his way into — she would just keep begging until he got hard out of sheer anger. Every time she would suck his cock like she'd been in prison for years without one.
By the time he managed to graduate, with a scant 2.1 GPA, he had grown disgusted with Suzanne. She'd gotten so used to the constant sex, she never took care of herself. She'd beg to get fucked and she'd smell of two day-old B.O. and pot. So he left, without a place to go home to. His mother wouldn't let him move in because of his "attitude" and his father wouldn't let him move in without the "My House — My Rules" lecture. So he slept for days in his beat-up van, taking showers at the swimming pool at the park. Each day going out to look for a job. When he finally got hired again, it was making minimum wage at a Taco Bell. He didn't even eat meat, and everyday he scooped thousands of scoops of pseudo-meat.
Less than a month at his job and he'd turned back to drugs. All his graduation got him was a job where he was one of three people with a high school diploma and that included the manager. He couldn't stand the thought of kissing ass for years to finally make assistant manager, and he couldn't get into the local community college because his parents made too much money. Never mind the fact that they wouldn't give him any for school.
Pot quickly lost it's luster because it slowed down his mind too much. So one day, he asked Mike if he could hook Tommy up with some crank. Mike gave him a strange look.
"Well, it's your body. If you wanna spend your money on that shit, I can find you somebody who'll sell it to you."
"Cool. And yah, it's my body. Don't worry about it."
"Okay." Mike said. "When do you get off?"
"Midnight." Tommy responded.
"Okay. Well, I get off at 10. Meet me outside and I'll drive you to go pick some up. But you'll have to go in and buy it and I don't want you using the shit in my car, okay?"
"All right. Don't freak out."
That night, the hours passed more slowly than when he was drunk or stoned. Each order needed something special, and every elderly person in the world wanted something that wasn't "too spicy" and they needed their discount which required a manager.
Finally, around 11:30, the traffic to the place had slowed. The bell on the drive-thru hadn't rung in 10 minutes, and Tommy was almost finished sweeping the front. Then he saw a Sport Utility vehicle drive up.
"Goddammit!" Tommy threw his broom against the trash can and walked behind the counter to take another order.
He watched as a woman got out of the car. She was dark-headed, and even through the glass he could tell she was built. For a second, he forgot about his after-work plans, and almost smiled. The lady was dressed really nicely with a suit and skirt that was slit up the thigh. As she walked in and surveyed the restaurant, he admired her toned, strong thighs and thought about burying himself between them. He stared for a long time, even as she walked up.
"You like what you see — Tommy?" She asked smiling at him.
"Uh. I don't what you mean."
He was getting red in the cheeks.
"Don't worry honey, I saw you looking and I don't mind. Makes a lady my age feel proud."
"Can I take your order?" Tommy was fidgeting and shuffling his feet audibly. He couldn't look her in the eyes.
"Sure. I like to give orders." She grinned and Tommy looked up and felt a little better.
"I'll take a number four, with no meat. And make sure you don't charge me extra for the beans." She continued.
"No, ma'am. And what would you like to drink?"
"Well, I'd like a Rum and Coke, but I know you don't have the rum, so I'll take a Coke."
"Pepsi all right, ma'am?"
"Make it a Dr. Pepper."
"Anything else?" Tommy asked, finally relaxed enough to stop shuffling his feet.
"No, that'll be it, Tommy. By the way, that's your real name isn't it?"
"Yes." He answered as the register beeped and displayed a total.
"I like it. It's cute on you."
"Thank you. Your order comes to $5.32." She paid him and watched as he walked back out from behind the counter to start sweeping. While she waited, she leaned back against the counter on her elbows and stared at his ass while he bent over to push the dust into a dustpan. Tommy noticed her staring and found himself almost becoming erect. His face turned red again. As he walked back behind the counter, he avoided looking at her, instead reading the instructions on the hand disinfectant dispenser.
"You've got a nice ass. Hope you don't mind me returning the favor of giving you a glance over."Tommy didn't say anything.
"It's okay sugar. I won't bite you right here. But if you come home with me I'll do that and more."
Tommy thought he was about to pass out. He'd never met such a sexually aggressive woman in his life. At that point, his jockey shorts were about to burst with a full eight inches of cock. His hands began rubbing the disinfectant furiously when he heard a bell ring and a co-worker slide her order to the prep counter.
"Here's your order ma'am."
"I like the way you say, 'ma'am.' I mean it about you coming home with me. You're a sexy guy. I promise I'll be kind."
"Well ... I've got a friend ..." His gut was about to fall out of him and spill all over the counter like a busted pinata.
"This friend of mine whose gonna give me a ride after work."
"Suit yourself, but I tell you what. I'll give you a while to think about it. When do you get off work?"
"Here in about ten minutes."
"That should be enough time," she said, as she looked at her watch.
"I'll be waiting outside in my car."
The last ten minutes of work passed so fast, Tommy could hardly believe it when his boss told him to clock out. Tommy looked out the window and Mike was nowhere to be found. If he didn't want a cigarette so bad, he would've stayed inside and wasted time, but there was no where to smoke in the entire restaurant, not even in the back.
As he walked outside, the the manager locked the front doors behind him and he felt like there was no turning back.
"Hey, Tommy. You changed your mind yet?" She said as she got out of her car with a bag of trash from the meal in hand.
"Well ..."Before he could finish she brushed past him to throw her trash away in the can behind him. She felt the muscles of his arm tense as she did. She was tempted to stroke his ass, but she didn't.
Tommy almost got erect again, but he managed to stop it.
"I don't see my friend anywhere." Tommy said, never answering her question.
"No strings attached. Just come to my place and talk. You can spend the night on the couch if you like, or I could take you home tonight. I just want to get to know you, sexy."
Tommy stood there feeling her near him. She stood to the side of him almost forcing him to change his stance if he wanted to look at her. With her just in his peripheral vision, he became aroused again. He could just barely smell her cologne — like a woodsy flower smell drifting past him. Her sultry voice was deep for a woman and when she talked to him, he could feel each word she enunciated tickle a vertebra in his back. He wanted so bad to just turn towards her, but that would be some kind of admission or submission to her request.
"Mike'll show up here in a little bit, he's always late." Tommy finally uttered.
"What are you doing working at a place like this anyway?"
The question surprised him enough that his shoulders shrugged jerkily.
"What do you mean?"
"Don't play coy. I can see it in your eyes you've got a brain. How long has it been since somebody put it to the test?" She asked.
"I don't know what to say."
"That's much better than some lame, idle prattle that most people just dribble out like slobber. I bet you get a lot of that here, don't you? Mindless automatons that expect you to act like a good automaton, too." He finally turned and looked at her face. She was striking. Her cheekbones were high, but not too sharp. Her brown eyes were deep and intense as she stared at him.
"My boss is the perfect example."
"Yah." She said, smiling, inviting him with her expression to keep talking. Letting him know she was interested in listening.
"He can't help but spew the company rhetoric like a Baptist preacher at the pulpit. And no matter what kind of day you've had, he always tells you to take it any way you can get it. And I swear that the man only has one mood, which is resigned mediocre determination. I don't think the man has ever known passion in his life. Let alone the majority of the customers. Even the ones I like. The nice ones who actually remember me and listen when they ask me how I'm doing, even they are just so ... vanilla."
She looked up at him with a half-smile, half-sad look. He could tell just by her expression she knew exactly what he was talking about and that she hated it, too. She just waited for him to talk, with eyes demanding he continue.
"Do you ever feel like that? That most of the world is living on auto-pilot? Barely aware that the world is spinning?"
"All of the time. But I don't let it get to me. I make my world something they'll never have. And when I get a chance, I try and share that with people," she said.
"It's a lot easier to do that when you have money."
"Yah, it is. But I had to earn everything I have. I own my own business and got it without once getting a loan. Everything I have is mine — my life included."
"That's cool." Tommy was starting to feel like he was being lectured. As much as she made him think, it smacked a little too much of his teachers in high school lecturing him about pot when they got to go home to their own apartments and houses and lives, not his.
"Are you going to school?" She asked him.
"No. Costs too much and my parents make too much money that I'll never see for me to get financial aid."
"That sucks. That's not why I pay taxes, you know? I'd much rather smart kids like you got to go to school or got a chance to learn how to run a business."
"It'd be nice, but that's not the way it works, huh?" Tommy asked, feeling angry that he even said the words but more that he felt they were true. "You know, Tommy, it doesn't have to work like that. I mean, yes, the system works like that, but there are other ways to go. First, you should let me try and get you a better job."
"Doing what?" He smiled in disbelief.
"You could start off as an assistant for me making a lot more than minimum wage. Or I have a couple of friends who own businesses if you don't like photography."
"You're a photographer?"
