My What If
by
warkat747
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Authors Note: This is a work of fiction. All the characters are fictitious figments of the author's imagination and are old enough to be doing what they do. All the places are fictitious fragments of the author's geography. And all the fictitious things that the fictitious people get up to in the fictitious places are most certainly nothing more than consenting fictitious filaments between the fictitious adults derived from the authors', probably non-fictitiously, disturbed mind. Enjoy.
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I noticed her immediately on the first day of the spring semester as I walked into the music room where students of all grades commingled. I didn't know who she was and wondered how I had never seen her before. She could best be described as petite. Short, thin, with a smooth curve at the hips, small breasts, straight ginger red hair down to just below her shoulders, freckles on her pale skin, and a little snub nose. Breathtaking.
I paid attention at roll call to find out who she was. Surprisingly, I recognized the very Irish last name and suspected I had known a younger sister of hers, who was in my grade, for years. They looked nothing alike. I went home and looked her up in the old yearbooks. She had been there the entire time. Ashleigh. How had our paths never crossed before?
I had no great interest in this music class, having only signed up for it as a girl I had known and fancied for ages was taking it. As it turns out, she and Ashleigh sat beside each other. That was convenient in a slightly awkward way, the girl I had been pining after for years and the one who had, at first sight, stolen my attention away from her within the same furtive glance. Not that either of them knew any of this.
The girl I had been after and I had met way back in Kindergarten, and I knew my chances of romantic interaction with her were zero. Fantasies aside, this lengthy association also meant I had no nervous hang-ups with her. We could converse at ease with none of the debilitating social stigmas that often exist in the hyper-gossipy blown out of all-proportion world that is a high school. And so it was easy to innocently ask her how music class was? Hey, who's that girl sitting next to you? Is she new? Oh, that's so-and-so's sister? I didn't know she had a sister. Gleaning whatever pathetic little bits of information I could from her without giving away that I was smitten by this redhead I had never met.
I continued to admire Ashleigh from afar, as was my way. I was much too shy to go and talk to her. Perhaps a month into the semester, I had just finished lunch and was leaning against a wall near the trash cans in the cafeteria, waiting to be released from the tyranny of the lunchroom back into the tyranny of the classroom, when the object of my desire suddenly appeared at my side.
"I think you're cute," she said.
"Excuse me?" I said like an idiot.
Two other girls, whom I had come to recognize as her friends, showed up, and Ashleigh walked off with them. I hurried to the music room to process what had just happened. People began to filter in, she among them. Instead of taking her seat, she walked over to where I was sitting and sat down on my left leg, her legs between my left and right legs, her right arm over my left shoulder, and her hand on the back of my chair. She was rocking her butt back and forth on my leg; whether this was for balance or if she was grinding against me, I wasn't sure. But I was hyper-aware of it.
"I think you're cute," she said again. She was looking right at me as she said it. She had grey eyes. I didn't know what to do. I noticed the girl I used to fancy looking at us through the corner of my eye.
"Did she put you up to this?" I nodded in her direction and expected to see her bust out laughing any second.
"No," she said, much to my surprise. "She told me all about you when I asked her who you were."
"You asked her about me?"
"Yep, MARCUS." She used my actual name, something I tried to avoid people knowing altogether, much preferring to go by Marc, proving that she had indeed talked about me with one of my oldest friends. She got up and walked back to her seat as class began. The next day, she sat on my legs again after lunch, but this time, she straddled them both, her legs outside mine. I was instantly hard as a rock. The stiffness of my denim jeans was the only thing keeping me from pitching an obvious tent in my pants. How I wished she would slide a little bit closer and grind her jean-clad pussy over my cock. I probably would have cum right there in the music room and not cared a bit.
As the weeks and months went on, we flirted back and forth in our pathetic, okay, in MY pathetic manner. We would end up standing next to each other in line, or if we had to take a bus someplace to perform, we might end up in the same seat. Wow, this bus is sure a bumpy ride, so it's not our fault we slid into each other around that corner. But really, nothing was happening outside of my fantasies and, with some luck, hers as well.
One day in early May, she asked me if I ever went to the stockcar races on Friday nights at the local fairgrounds. I told her I didn't. Only after I answered did I realize she might have been asking me to go with her. What an idiot I was. When Friday came around, all I wanted to do was go to the fairgrounds and try to spot her. I had access to a car but would have had to pay to drive it into the fairgrounds, and funds were scant at best. So it was onto my trusty bike, and then naturally, peddling my ass over to the fairgrounds at full speed.
The fairgrounds were at the eastern edge of town. The western perimeter was composed of half a dozen large buildings, massive industrial barns that housed various types of livestock, and displays from local vendors when the county fair was taking place. The racetrack, a clay oval, pit area, and the big grandstand were off on the north end. The southern and eastern part of the fairgrounds was a large 'L' shaped hill, its flanks wooded except for a large clear area used for sledding in winter. The town's water tower was perched at the hill's highest point, and the top and back sides were grassy and sloped down into farm fields. This left the center of the fairgrounds relatively flat and wide open to be used for carnival rides during the county fair and parking for the races.
I pedaled my sorry ass past the main gate and into the fairgrounds and, avoiding the endless stream of cars, maneuvered my way over towards the grandstand, desperately searching for a glimpse of ginger red hair. The grandstand was just a monolithic metal wall from the outside. The racetrack was hidden by a tall fence of corrugated steel plastered in advertisements. The crowd around the ticket booth and food vendor stalls made spotting a specific person almost impossible. I rode my bike back a fourth past all this a few times and didn't spot a trace of Ashleigh. It finally occurred to me that maybe she didn't even go to the races. If she was asking me out, a big if, perhaps this was just what she had thought of doing with me. After all, it's a big public event, relatively safe. She could even have her friends hidden around the grandstand to keep an eye on us, to make sure I didn't turn out to be a complete jerk.
But, all for naught. Dejected, I rode over to the base of the sledding hill, walked my bike up it, and sat in the grass where I could see over the fence as the races started. I had never seen the races before; I had only heard them from my house. To say they were loud from home took on new meaning as the first race commenced; the noise here was deafening. I got lost in the spectacle of the races until she emerged from the sea of parked cars at the bottom of the hill and headed toward me. Play it cool, man, play it cool. Wipe that massive smile off your face. Of course, I couldn't.
"I thought you didn't go to the races?" she said as she walked up and sat beside me on the grass.
"I don't."
"Oh, what are you doing here then?"
"Well, uh, just a coincidence."
"Not because I mentioned them?"
"That might have something to do with it. I, didn't catch on at the time."