As with all my stories, they are mostly story with some sex, not sex with some story. Hopefully more to come.
*****
I have a love/hate relationship coming home for break. I love being home and spending time with my family, but I miss the energy and excitement of living on campus, where there are always people to hang out with. Compared to college life, my home town of Hiltown—which is an ironic name, as there isn't a hill anywhere near it—is just a little dull. (And yes, Hiltown is spelled with one "l." I don't know why.) During breaks though, there's nobody around campus since everybody goes elsewhere (either home or to some beach or something). I guess this would explain my mood as I drove out of town for spring break. I was going home mostly because I didn't have the money to go on a trip (not that any of my friends did either...I'm pretty sure most students take loans to go on those big spring break trips, which I think is kind of dumb).
When I got home and checked my phone (I never look at it while I drive) I had a number of messages. One from my parents telling me that they decided to go visit my grandma for the weekend, and I'll have the house to myself. One from my best friend Mel, wanting to hit up all the "home-town hotspots," as he calls them. The last text message was from Katie...
**
Mel and I grew up together as well as go to the same college, so we hang out on break a lot because there's not much to do in Hiltown. We had been best friends for as long as either of us could remember. Katie and I were not quite as close as Mel mostly because she moved here in middle school, but none-the-less was very much also my best friend. Mel, Katie, and I had been nigh inseparable in high school, and there was very little about any one of us that the other two didn't know. Mel had come out to Katie and me about being asexual almost a year before he told anyone else, including his parents. Katie and I had also dated in high school, though very briefly senior year, with the understanding that it was just for fun and would end when we left for college. Mel still believes that we started dating because everyone assumed we were a couple in secret (or so he says).
**
Katie...
I'm home, we should hang out
. We hang out when we're both home, but her spring break isn't the same time as mine, so I didn't expect her to be home.
I thought your spring break is two weeks from now?
Maybe she's home for the weekend, but she goes to a small private school 3 ½ hours away, whereas I go to state, barely an hour away. Why would she come home for just a weekend two weeks before her spring break? I reply to Mel and my parents and start unloading the car. As I drop my stuff by the door, my phone chimes—it's from Katie.
Home for the weekend because my parents need somebody to watch the dog while they're gone since my mom decided to go with my dad this time. Wish I was on spring break...our spring break is always too late in the semester.
Ah. So what do you have in mind?
I respond and check the kitchen for something to eat. My phone chimes again.
Well, I'm headed to Jams... don't feel like cooking. Want to meet me there?
Jams is a local diner/bar named so because they make their own jellies and jams, which they make a lot of money off of selling, as well as serving. It's got good food and doubles as a pretty popular bar after the dinner rush is over. Mel's family owns it, and it was started by his grandpa. Always a good place to hang out, so I respond and head back to the car.
When I get to Jams Katie already has a table for us, so I slide into a chair.
"Hey, how's it going?" Katie doesn't even look up from her menu.
"Did you know they changed this?" Katie can get a little over focused sometimes, and apparently tonight it's the menu, which would normally not be a big deal, since I can't remember it ever changing except once. But apparently it did recently, if Katie is that focused on it.
"You could start with 'hi James' or something," She does look up now.
"Hi. Did you know this?"
"No. That I'm aware, they haven't changed the menu since Mel's dad took over when we were in middle school. But Mel has been talking about how his prof for small business econ says that 'staying current is currency' every day in class. So maybe he talked his dad into updating the menu."
At that exact moment, Mel's dad Dan stepped up. "That is exactly what happened. We're a little busy tonight so I'm waiting tables. Water for you guys?" Dan had waited for us a few times, and as we were Mel's friends, he pretty much knew what we tended to order.
"Yeah," Katie and I both answered at the same time, but I continued, "I haven't looked at the new menu yet because Katie's hogging it-"
"Oh shut up, you could have grabbed another one."
"True, but it's a lot more fun to blame you," I turned to Mel's dad and continued, "What's new and tasty, Dan?" He always insisted that we call him Dan instead of Mr. Stalb (he considered Katie and me to be something akin to step-children since we spent so much time with Mel).
"Well, we have a new pulled pork sandwich that has a raspberry jam based sauce on it. And there is the gourmet PB & J. A few of the old favorites are still around. That's all I can list off the top of my head so far. We've only been offering the new menu items for a week or so now."
"I'll take the raspberry pulled pork. That sounds good. Katie probably wants the gourmet PB & J." Katie simply nodded to Dan and gave me a weird look.
"How did you guess that?" Katie asked as Dan walked away.
"I know that you're a sucker for anything with peanut butter. I'm just wondering why this is a new menu item. Maybe Dan didn't deem it a restaurant dish before."
"I sometimes forget that you remember, like, literally everything," Katie was talking about my near perfect eidetic memory "which is really ironic, I know."
We chatted and joked around through dinner. By the time we finished dinner, the bar area had more people in it than the dining room, and most of the people in the dining room were not dinner guests. We decided to get some drinks and hang out, since neither one of us had anything to do.
When I got up to go to the bathroom a little while later is when the night turned a little crazy. When I got back there was another guy that I had never seen before sitting in my seat, talking to Katie. As I got closer she shot me a "help me out here" look.
"Hey buddy, you're in my seat." The guy turned around and looked at me, and instantly I knew that this wouldn't end well.
"I dun seee a name tag on nit. Who're you?" The man was pretty drunk, and was slurring his speech pretty bad. Even though I'd had a couple of beers I was still much less impaired than this guy.
"I was sitting there before; I just got up to take a leak."
"Well, I'm sittin' here now, an' I'm talking to ths prettylady here, so go'way."
I took a breath before I continued. I had the feeling that I could probably find a different seat without too much trouble, but I don't think this guy was one to accept a refusal from Katie. "Here's the thing, I don't think she's interested."
That got his attention. He was quickly standing in front of me, albeit, a little wobbly. He was clearly bigger than me. "Oh, you're wrong, boy. Ev'ry woman's in-tris-tid in me," he stated boastfully, emphasizing each slurred syllable of 'interested,' "and yurr 'bout to learn why."
As he spoke he took a step forward, and despite his drunkenness, timed a solid-looking left hook to his last words.
**
During our first year of college, Mel convinced me to take Bartitsu—a rare European self-defense mixed martial art (popularized in modern times by Sherlock Holmes)—as a physical education class with him. We both really enjoyed it, and took a few more semesters of it. Several semesters of a martial art and subsequent experiences in it have taught me 5 things: (1)to keep myself fit (2)expect the unexpected (3)reactions are slower (4)defend yourself until the threat is passed, but don't harm without reason and (5) higher skill and quicker thinking beat physical size almost every time.
**
I reacted instinctively, deflecting his blow easily, which threw him off balance, and in his drunken state, resulted in him on the floor. Before he could get untangled with the chair he collided with, Dan came bustling over, not happy. He had clearly seen the whole thing and clearly was mad, but not at me. By the way he was addressing the man I guessed that he was a regular, both here and at the local police station's "drunk tank."
Roughly an hour later, after the police sergeant who responded interviewed me, Katie, and some bystanders, he left, taking the drunken man with them. He assured me that I had done nothing wrong and stated, "If he presses charges, you got nothing to worry about—it was self-defense. If you press charges, you're an asshole—and you probably won't get anything, since he didn't even land the punch."
Katie and I went back inside to pay our tab, deciding that we didn't want to stay and have people watching us. When we got to our cars, Katie's didn't start, so I offered to take her home. We didn't talk the whole way to her house, and she kept surreptitiously glancing at me. When we pulled into her driveway, she didn't move for a minute.
