1.
This is a new one for her. This never happened before.
It's unfortunate, as well as unexpected. It's not convenient.
She's had a lot of boyfriends and she's had a lot of other boys in between the boyfriends. She leads an active free-spirited life and that's not something she's ever gonna apologize for. This is the fucking twenty first century. And she's always honest, as much as possible. Makes it clear to guys what she wants and what she doesn't, what can happen and what won't. She's not one of the cliché heartbreaker types, stringing along a whole collection of helpless idiots thinking they mean more to her than they do. She keeps things up front and straightforward and simple. Anyway, she tries to. Tries her best.
She has a lot of sex. She's a college girl with a good figure, and she's enjoying her youth and her freedom while it lasts. Opportunities and options are always available to her; it's not something she has to work hard at. She's lucky that way and she knows it. She's blessed, in fact. Doesn't question it or waste it. She takes what God or whoever gave her and puts it to use. Would seem ungrateful not to. So not a week goes by where she doesn't get it on with somebody, at least once. And usually, to be frank, it happens much more frequently. It's not always a different dude; they ain't all just disposable flings. Since college life started, she's had several decent steady relationships that lasted several decent months before they'd run their course and it was time to move on. Then of course there have been other periods of varying lengths where she hasn't wanted to get into anything serious, and ended up working her way through an impressively large number of individual encounters. Angel doesn't feel a preference for one lifestyle over the other; both have their pros and cons. It's nice to be able to keep switching back and forth, depending who she meets.
Currently, she's in one of the unattached phases again. And tonight she's with a guy named Johnny. She's never hooked up with a Johnny before. There have been around a half dozen Johns, and one of her longer-lasting boyfriends had the last name Johnson, but this guy tonight, if it matters (and of course it doesn't, why would it?) happens to be her first Johnny. He's your basic standard-issue frat boy type, personality-wise, but actually the best-looking guy she's picked up in a while, and not just his face. He's a real well put-together package. She made a good pick tonight, even better than she'd thought. She hadn't expected him to turn out so cut when she got his clothes off, and his equipment is what she always refers to in her own head (never out loud) as Goldilocks (not too big, not too small, just right).
She met him about an hour and a half hour ago playing pool with some of last year's dorm acquaintances in her second favorite campus bar. Zeroed in on the guy pretty much the second she saw him. It's usually like that for her, at least with casual hook-up's. She never has to waste a lot of time dithering about it like most of her close friends seem to do, male or female, in the same situation. They'll take most of the night making their minds up and building up courage. For her, it's more like a reflex. She just always somehow knows, right away, soon as the right guy pops into sight. Like: "Oh, okay. This is the guy I'm gonna fuck tonight." Hardly ever gets it wrong. Maybe twice so far—and even then, the second time, she still ended up nailing that guy eventually, just at a later date. Angel never feels like she has to worry about whether she's made the right choice, or if she's gonna get turned down. That just doesn't happen. Especially since, the world being what it is, she never has to be the one that makes the play, beyond your basic initial semi-subtle signaling-of-interest. Then the guy she's targeted always swings into line, like clockwork, to ask the obligatory questions ... Never takes long, either.
Johnny had been wearing a ballcap in a stupid angle on his head, trying to look hiphop or something. That was what first drew her eye to him—how stupid his hat looked. She wanted to go over and straighten it or slap it off his head. Then she noticed the rest of him, and how good the rest of him looked, and the realization hit her. It was almost rueful, at first. Like: "I can't believe I'm gonna fuck this guy in that stupid hat. Why can't it be one of these other dudes that learned how to dress himself right when he grew up?" But at the same time, she knew it was bound to happen, no sense fighting it. She could feel it stirring in her belly like she always did, a little squeezing fist in there, pressing downward, and her heartrate had sped up, and she felt fresh surges of sweat on her forehead and in her armpits, trying to fight its way through her deodorant. He was the one it was gonna have to be to take care of this, now that he'd set her motor running. And there was the way he wouldn't look at her for the first half hour, like he was too intensely focused on the stupid pool game to have noticed her standing there with the rest of the girls. Yeah, that kind of shit was always a dead giveaway.
Now not even two hours later, they're back at her apartment on her couch, without any clothes on, except when he took that stupid cap off he jammed it on her head in the same dumb hiphop slant, and she let him do it, and then she's let him shove his stiff penis inside her deep as he can go and he's thrusting, thrusting, thrusting and she takes it and takes it and takes all he's got, absorbing all his effort and savoring each stroke. They're exactly what she wanted from him. He keeps grunting like an ape and the feelings he's giving her make her grunt back every time the same way.
"Guhrrh." "Guhrrh." "Guhrrh." "Guhrrh."
It's a good clean honest lowdown no nonsense fucking, is what this is. Hell yeah.
He's pretty damn trashed, but thankfully at least so far it's not causing any problems. She herself is Goldilocks drunk (not too little, not too much)—this is another particular talent of hers, achieving and maintaining that ideal balance of intoxication. It lets her steer things more than she sometimes gets to, when she gets going with a brand new guy, at least not without making a fuss about it and putting her foot down, which she doesn't always like to do. So she's got him in the perfect position. She's got him fucking her in her favorite way. With both of them on their sides, him behind her, and with one hand propping her upper leg high out of their way from under her knee. He's got the right angle inside, to hit all the right places, and he's set a good firm pace but he's not rushing it, and she can rub herself while he's going, like she likes to do.
Her orgasm is close and it's gonna be real nice.
Only there's a catch. She finds she keeps thinking about another guy. She keeps thinking about the things that happened to her the night before. She can't stop replaying the experience in her head.
The whole point of fucking this new guy Johnny tonight was to cleanse all that other stuff from her mind. It doesn't seem to be working like it was supposed to.
This isn't something that's ever happened to her before. Probably it's a pretty common problem for other people. Not for her. Angel doesn't lead the kind of life where she ends up fucking somebody she doesn't want as much as some other guy, trying to make do. It's not a position her life puts her in. When she wants a guy, she gets him. Like, pretty much always. Every time. There's never any need for compromise or equivocation. And if say she's been dating a guy and gets tired of him and suddenly starts wanting somebody else that she's met, all she has to do is dump the first guy and go get the other one. Simple as that.
Except not this time. Not, it seems, after what happened to her yesterday.
This isn't going to prevent her from coming—that's the weirdest part, and also the most disturbing. But she knows—she can tell—that when she reaches that orgasm, when she screams it out, it's not gonna be because of Johnny and his dick inside her, or from her hand rubbing her box as he's fucking it. Or not completely because of those things—they are only helping the process along. What's really getting her off is her memory. Thinking of the other guy, thinking of his face, the last time she saw it.
The hatred and the disgust on it when he looked down on her.
2.
Ran across Phil by chance in the fucking grocery store, of all places. It had been a fairly long time since the whole mess went down. Nearly half a year. Still didn't feel any better about it. Just glimpsing him across the produce section brought it all back in a rush. Put a horrible taste in her mouth, and made her face all hot and itchy.
He didn't know she was there. She'd ended up following him around the place for a while. Stalking him, basically. Feeling like a moron and hating herself the whole time, but not able to stop. Trying to decide what to do. What to say when she went up to him, if she did. If she should. If at this point it would make any difference.
Which was doubtful.
But she wanted to fix things if she could. At least make a last effort, for the sake of her own conscience. Whether or not he accepted her apologies, that wasn't the point—she would at least be able to say she had tried.
The whole thing with him, it was one of the few times she'd seriously screwed up a relationship. She'd been wishy-washy about her feelings, and then outright dishonest, and screwed the guy over pretty bad by the time it was finally all done with. Almost cost him his job. And he hadn't deserved it. She could recognize that now. He hadn't done anything wrong.
This is why you should never get involved like that with people at your work, if you can help it.
Phil had been her manager at a pretty cool video production facility, and for a good while she thought he was the best boss she'd ever had. Looking back, she could admit it was 'cause he'd let her get away with stuff that he shouldn't have. And she'd taken advantage of that, shamelessly, until it got too far out of hand. Eventually he couldn't cover for her bullshit anymore. She got demoted to the reception office, answering the phones and doing mindless data-entry.
So she talked a lot of shit after that happened. Spread around a lot of poison about him, with the rest of the staff. Like the demotion only happened 'cause she wouldn't date him.
Actually it wasn't him that demoted her. She found that out later. Made her feel pretty shitty about herself. It had been his boss that made the call. That explained why her stories hadn't got him shitcanned like they were intended to. The top guy knew better.
There had been a connection between them, while Phil and her worked together. He was a good mentor, and she had really looked up to him. Started as an older brother kind of feeling, and then gradually shifted ... Nothing had ever happened, though. Nothing ever would have. Probably. They had a few longish cards-on-the-table talks about it. Neither one of them wanted to risk fucking up things at their job. It was agreed they wouldn't cross that line. Plus, at the time, she had a steady boyfriend. Though it was one of her less successful, less stable relationships, one of those lingering on-and-off things, really good when it was good but really crappy when it went wrong. So there were numerous occasions she toyed with the notion of what it would be like if/when she dropped that other guy for good and replaced him with Phil. Maybe eventually if things had gone on as they were going, she would have put it to the test. Phil would have still put up a token resistance, but she was confident she could have broken through that without much difficulty. The guy didn't have a lot of luck with ladies, with the kind of quiet nerdy nightowl life he lived. And she was hot. Certainly the hottest chick to give him any attention in ages. Let's not kid ourselves. She could have bagged him any time she wanted, if she hadn't held off.
Then when she lost her position, she used the best ammunition available. It was better than facing up to her own shortcomings. All the important projects she'd delayed or screwed up in umpteen ways, little things and big things, from just not paying enough attention to her tasks, not putting in enough time. 'Cause she'd known she could count on good ol' Phil to catch and clean up her goofs without too many other people noticing. Until suddenly that was no longer the case.
She'd been furious. Felt so betrayed. So she betrayed him right back. Did her best to turn him into the villain. Didn't work. Didn't get her position back, didn't get him fired. Finally she gave up and quit that place altogether. Now she works in a sandwich shop with a bunch of potheads. Hardly a step up, huh?
3.
That night, pretty late, she got a little tipsy or maybe a bit more than that, and she finally walked/stumbled over to his apartment—took like half an hour to get over there—and knocked on his door. She'd never been over there before, at least not inside. But she knew where it was—neither of them had cars, and a couple times this other guy at the production office had given them both rides home at the end of their shifts, and Phil had got dropped off first both times 'cause he lived closer, so that was how she still remembered the spot—and he hadn't moved, like she was afraid might have happened.
And he opened the door and looked at her like she was a crazy person. Or like he was expecting her to pull out a hatchet and attack him. But could she blame him?
"Please," she said, "I just wanna talk. I wanna straighten things out. I know I fucked up. I know it's been forever. Still. Will you let me in and let me try to explain?"
So he had.
