One Night

(Or Sarah Finds Her Soulmate)

[Author's Notes: This is a long story, so let me give you an outline of the kinks so you can make up your mind whether to invest time into it. Believe it or not this is a romance story, but not a typical one: it begins as a cheating girlfriend story, where she's seduced by her boyfriend's bully, but then it becomes a story about love in the most unlikely of places. If you don't want to read a story about someone cheating, falling in love and ending up with the person they cheat with, I'd suggest giving this one a skip.

The sex, as typical for my stories, is deliberately stylized: bodily fluids are plentiful, and no one needs to take a break between rounds. Cocks are way too big, but can bottom out without issue. As the story involves characters from the last year of Sixth Form in the UK I'd like to assure any readers that everyone involved in sexual activity - on-page or off - are eighteen years and older in the main bulk of the story, with the first scene (and act three) happening two years later with the characters now in their twenties.

Lastly, I'd like to shout out two great people here on Literotica:

Firstly, The_Shadow_Rising, for inspiring me with his own great stories. The first two acts of this story are a homage to yours, and I hope you enjoy it! (Act three is where things get different to a typical Shorehaven story, and I hope you enjoy that too!) Keep writing your awesome stories and I hope you don't mind the cheeky reveal in act three (you'll know it when you read it!)

Secondly, to DarkSollat, for encouraging my writing and always having great feedback to my (often) crazy ideas. You've kept Eroshire grounded, even as I've introduced magic and shit to the setting! I can't thank you enough!]

The sun reflected on the calm waters of the river, and the surface glittered orange in the light of a late afternoon. From where she sat by the bar, Sarah Ellis had a beautiful view through the wide windows of the river; the sandy banks had plenty of people enjoying the warm air drifting lazily over the city, from children splashing in the waters to couples making out on the banks.

It was peaceful. The first time she had felt that for months.

There were few people inside the bar, and the many TV screens hung around the tables played some soccer game to disinterested patrons, who were more occupied with their conversations than the men running across the pitch. Sarah, though, found herself keeping tabs on the score, if she couldn't figure out which European teams were playing. It made for something mindless to keep her attention on while nursing a drink, and despite being a lone woman at a bar, Sarah was grateful none of the other patrons had tried to chat her up. She wasn't in the mood.

She hadn't been for a long time.

Noticing a picture pinned up on the noticeboard behind the bar, between the glass shelves full of whiskies, rums and liquors, Sarah caught the attention of a pretty barmaid; her hair done up in a blonde ponytail, and dressed in a crop top and jeans that showed off plenty of infuriatingly perfect skin. Putting aside her own jealousy (Sarah's own pale skin was covered in freckles), she asked "so what is the deal with that?" Gesturing at the picture of another blonde woman, whose face had almost been obscured by a thick red pen describing the words 'DO NOT SERVE!! CALL MANAGEMENT IF YOU SEE THIS INDIVIDUAL!!'

"Long story," the barmaid replied, without looking at the picture.

"Angry drunk?" Sarah asked, happy just for a conversation. The barmaid was quite pretty, and she was making Sarah question her sexuality.

The barmaid shook her head. "No, just... she did something really messed up. Long story."

"Yeah, that makes two of us," Sarah said, staring into her drink. "I messed up pretty bad, too."

"Whatever you did, I'm quite sure it's not as bad."

"Really?" Sarah rested her chin on the back of a hand. "Oh now you HAVE to tell me what she did that's apparently this bad. You can't leave it at just that. What did she do?"

"Sure you wanna hear? I said it's a long story."

"I got time," Sarah said, partially lifting her double shot of JD (neat, no ice) to emphasise.

The barmaid shrugged, her blue eyes reflecting the lights of the bar. Giving the room a look, she sighed. "Sure," she said. "It's a quiet night, and the game's boring. Fucking Italian teams can never play decent soccer. OK, so it all began when my best friend got married..."

When the woman had finished her story, a half-hour later, Sarah realised her eyebrows were almost hiding beneath her ginger fringer. "Wow," she said. "That's fucked up."

"And that's why she's persona non grata in the city," the barmaid said. "Not that the dumbass would ever think of coming back here. Last I heard she fled to the other side of the world. Some place in England. Eroshire, I think it was called" (pronouncing it 'eh-row-shy-er')

Sarah choked on her drink.

Noticing, the barmaid grinned. "Ah... familiar with the place? Which reminds me... someone's got a story to tell. I told you mine..."

Nodding, Sarah swallowed before replying. "Yeah, I know Eroshire," she said (pronouncing it 'eh-ro-shear') "Used to live there."

"What happened?"

"Long story," Sarah said. "Sure you wanna hear?"

"I got time," the barmaid replied, nodding at the mostly empty bar.

With a sigh, Sarah gulped down the last of her JD and shook the glass. After it had been refilled, she sat up straight, looked at the barmaid, and said, "it starts with a guy."

"It always does," the barmaid said.

*****

On the other side of the world, some two years earlier, Sarah walked out of the main hall with a sense of exhaustion. Flexing away the cramp from her fingers, which had spent the last two or so hours gripping the pen, Sarah wondered how she would score on that test, or any of the other ones! She felt she had done well, but there was still that bundle of nerves in her stomach.

Settling on the wall outside the main hall, Sarah watched fellow students of Coytoss County as the majority of them made their way to the school gates; it was lunchtime now, and it looked like most people were eager to calm their post-exam nerves with food from the town centre. Coytoss County High School was nestled deep in the heart of the coastal city, with a plethora of eateries barely ten minutes walk from the school gates.

Despite craving a Greggs sausage roll, Sarah was eager to take a moment to calm her stomach first before following the others. Sitting on the wall, holding a hand over her stomach, she gave her boyfriend a smile when he sat beside her.

"Well, that wasn't too bad," Clyde Hydestein said. Leaning back on the wall, he stretched his legs out right in front of him, observing the slow departure of Sixth Form students from the school grounds as he squinted; the midday sun was strangely unobscured by any passing cloud, and the rare day of bright sunlight was being enjoyed by other students from the lower years in the playgrounds between where they sat and the school gates. "I'm sure we've done well."

"Thanks babe," Sarah said. She was glad to hear his words, even if she was not sure herself. It had been a difficult test: psychics was not her strong point, but she needed at least a B if she was to attend the course she wanted at the University of Eroshire.

Sarah wanted to study game design. An avid coder, Sarah had been designing basic programs and mods for her favourite games since she was ten. Clyde often remarked that she didn't seem comfortable unless she was squatting on a gaming chair, shoulders hunched and neck forward, with her eyes glued to the PC screen; her fingers flying across the keyboard, composing lines of code that meant nothing to Clyde, who preferred to enjoy a good book rather than fix his eyes to a screen for hours.

At five feet ten, Clyde was a couple inches taller than Sarah, but was still self-conscious about his height, especially when compared to some of the taller guys in class, and despite how often Sarah told him that wasn't anything to worry about, and that she loved him regardless, and that she adored him as her 'short king', Clyde still felt it necessary to sit straight whenever he felt that someone was watching them, and so Sarah immediately began scanning the area when she saw that Clyde had straightened his back.

She saw him immediately: it was difficult not to see the curly blonde hair of Kyle Matthews, as the man was just over six feet in height and built like he'd walked off a Californian beach. Even through his Coytoss County uniform it wasn't hard to see that the guy had muscles for days, and Sarah knew this was something Clyde also felt self-conscious about. Her boyfriend wasn't large - he had a bit of chub, but Sarah always told him she loved having something to squeeze when she hugged him (and when they had sex).

Sarah wished Clyde would understand that she loved him the way he was. She wouldn't change anything about him for the world. He was her (slightly) chubby, dark haired, bespectacled man, with the occasional bout of acne, but then Sarah's face was a freckled forest that she was only too self-conscious about. Although it suited her ginger locks, which curled down to her waist when let loose (she had tied it all back into a ponytail for the exam).

Clyde was also the only other American at school.

They had grown up together attending Boston Elementary; their parents were friends, having met at work (Clyde's father, and Sarah's mother), and the two would often spend hours around each other's houses, while the parents gathered downstairs and enjoyed a drink or two.

He had been her closest friend during her formative years, so it was perhaps inevitable that the friendship would blossom into romance, and they would become childhood sweethearts, much to the joy of their parents, who, Sarah suspected, had probably been cheering for their kids from the sidelines. Certainly the day her mother had burst into her room when she (Sarah) and Clyde had been making out hadn't led to a shocked parent, but, much to Sarah's embarrassment, one who fist-pumped while closing the door.

Sarah assumed, in the years to come, that her mother was simply happy she hadn't hooked up with one of the boys at school, many of whom came from the least affluent areas of the city, and were the complete opposite of Clyde, who was his father's son through-and-through, preferring to sit indoors reading as a way to unwind and relax. The most thrilling thing her boyfriend had ever done was jaywalk (when he was absolutely certain there was no cop in sight).

So Clyde became Sarah's first (and so far only) boyfriend, following her to the UK when both of their parents, for the same company reason, were asked to pack up and move across the ocean to the other side of the world. The company paid a lot for this, of course; Sarah's parents could afford to rent a very nice two-floor apartment in the middle of the fourth largest city in the UK: Coytoss, on the northeastern coast of England. Her bedroom window overlooked the North Sea, and Sarah, despite initially suffering homesickness, as any young teenager would, soon grew to love waking up to smell of the sea, and the sounds of gulls picking fights with the magpies on the roofs of the buildings nearer the coast; the gradual decline of the land towards the ocean as the city hugged the river Eros created a gentle step approach from other buildings, meaning Sarah could look out over the rooftops of everyone on the path between her and the sea.

Coytoss wasn't as big as Boston, but it had its charms. (Although it did take her a month before she could understand what most people were saying; the Eroshire accent was bewildering when heard by someone new to the country, though it didn't take her long to be able to mimic it.)

For many years Sarah was homesick for the bustle of the city she had grown up in, yet slowly, bewilderingly, she had become charmed by this strange UK city and its strange inhabitants.

One of them joined them on the wall.

"Fucking hell, that test was a menace!" Kacey Stewart exclaimed as she leaned back and kicked her bare legs, protruding from beneath her skirt (hiked up scandalously short, even for Eroshire) like two thin pale chicken bones. With her curly blonde hair loose around her shoulders, Kacey was a golden hedge perched atop a skinny body with less bust than Sarah (who was quite flat in the boob department herself!) "What did you say for that last question?"

"Oh God!" Sarah moaned as she recalled it. "I don't know! I panicked! I just wrote some shit about thermodynamics!"

"Oh shit... I didn't think about that..." Kacey looked dejected for a moment, before sighing, and her round face blossomed into a cheeky smile once more. "Oh well! Who the fuck needs a good grade these days?"

"I need a minimum score to get into UOE, Kace," Sarah said.

"OK, YOU need a good grade. The rest of us can make do with our good looks. Eh, Clyde?"

Sarah's boyfriend regarded Kacey with that look he kept giving her: the one where Sarah was not entirely certain if he actually liked her friend, or merely tolerated Kacey's presence because she (Kacey) meant a lot to her (Sarah). To be honest he was like that with all of Sarah's friends, but then her boyfriend was just socially awkward, like Sarah, so she didn't think too much of it.

"See? Us hotties will get by, no prob!" Kacey said; Clyde's attitude flowing off her like water off a duck's back. Giving Sarah a sly look, the twig-like blonde then added "you might have some difficulty there with that smile of yours!"

"Just because I've got perfect teeth and you have an English toothy mess," Sarah retorted; the insult an old exchange that the two had well-rehearsed. Kacey's smile wasn't that bad, although one tooth near the front left was a little wonky, but Sarah had had expensive dental, courtesy of her parents, that had started back in the States and continued in the UK via private medical care way beyond the budget of the NHS. The result was a perfect row of perfectly white teeth that she felt sat at odds with her freckled skin and pale lips.

"Yeah, but I can name more than five countries."

"I can name a few! There's America! Maple Syrup America! Tacho America! And England!"

"And where's Scotland?"

"It's-" Sarah frowned when she realised where Kacey was looking: the blonde, gorgeous head of Kyle Matthews was being carried towards them by a body that had no right looking that good in the shitty uniform of CCHS.

"Too fucking close, apparently," Clyde muttered.

"Hey nerds!" Kyle said, jerking his chin upwards in that annoying way Eroshites did when they wanted to look cocky. Sarah reckoned it made them look like they were having a stroke, but what did she know about being cool? "Bet you losers aced the test?"

"And you probably failed," Clyde said. "Maybe if you spent more time studying and less time in some slut's pants you might have scraped through with a decent grade, Matthews."

Kyle gave Clyde a look. "You did NOT just tell me to get less tail," he said, in a patronising tone of voice. "You're lucky this ginger goblin here has so little standards that she finds your tiny pole good to ride, otherwise I don't think a fat fuck like you would ever see a vagina."

"He's not tiny!" Sarah snapped before thinking about it. Immediately her face began to turn a deep crimson, and deeper still when Kyle turned his gorgeous blue eyes to her. Honestly! It was not fair that such an attractive face and body were being piloted by such an abhorrent man! "He has a fucking huge dick!"

Well, if she was digging a hole, she might as well keep digging...

"Like MONSTROUSLY big!" Kacey said, although the other woman was probably joining in for the love of causing chaos (and talking about dicks) than for any desire to stand up for Clyde.

"If you want to see monstrously big..." Kyle said, giving Kacey a look; Sarah was disappointed to see her friend bite her lip for a second, before realising what she was doing and composing an irate look to throw back at the tall blonde Scotsman. "But I hear you enjoyed a little eight inches the other day?"

"Eight and a half, you fuck," said the tall, brown-skinned man walking up behind Kyle. While another tall and annoyingly well-built man - white skin slightly tanned with the summer, and with a buzz cut that made Sarah remember the US Army officers who used to visit her mother - walking just behind. All three men had the shirts of their CCHS uniform rolled up, showing off arm muscles that had no place on young men their age. Seriously: did all these three do all the time was work out and fuck?

Thinking about it: probably.

"Sorry Ali, eight and a HALF," Kyle said, giving his friend a wink. "Did he fill you up darling?"

In answer Kacey stuck her tongue out at Kyle. Although Sarah caught a sly wink at Ali Khan, Kyle's friend of Pakistan descent. In contrast to Kyle, who was obnoxious, Ali and Brad Newell, the buzzcut guy, were... OK, at best. In all honesty they weren't the type of guys Sarah liked to hang out with anyway, but they left her alone (most of the time) and (more importantly) left her boyfriend alone, so Sarah didn't have any real beef with them.

It was all immaterial anyway: the guys constantly hung around Kyle Matthews like they were his bodyguards. Maybe they were all good friends, or maybe they simply orbited Kyle like small moons, hoping to get some of his grace thrown their way. Sarah didn't know, and she didn't care much either.

All she wanted was for Kyle to stop pestering Clyde and her: did this guy not have anything to do except tease her boyfriend?

"So I guess you must have something big in your trousers to enjoy the company of these two," Kyle said, giving Clyde a smirk that was way too attractive; Sarah deepend her scowl to remind herself that she had a boyfriend, and he was wonderful in all the ways a boyfriend could be. "So how about you whip it out and we'll compare sizes?"

"Fuck off, Kyle!" Clyde snapped. His face almost as red as Sarah feared hers was by now.

Kyle smirked. "Yeah, I figured. Like I said: you're lucky ginger snaps here likes charity cases."

"Fuck off! He's not a charity case!" Sarah said, and again immediately regretted snapping: her efforts to defend her boyfriend usually only made Kyle more persistent. It was often far better to just ignore him and carry on. Rising to Kyle's bait only seemed to encourage the asshole further.

"There's no need to be so humble, babe," Kyle said. "It's a mark of a truly kind soul to treat one so unfortunate as tubby here. You should take pride in your continuing efforts to rehabilitate such a lost cause as Fatstein here."

Seeing her boyfriend grow progressively more red in shade, Sarah decided that the normal way to deal with Kyle wasn't good enough today. She wanted to defend her man against this asshole, especially with all these unjustified attacks against Clyde's weight. He wasn't that fat! She loved his love rolls (even if Clyde wanted her to not call them that). Clyde was perfect as he was, and it annoyed Sarah no end when he got self-conscious that he didn't look like many of the handsome chads that were in their year at school.

Including, regrettably, this asshole.

Launching herself off the wall, Sarah strode two steps forward to stand right in front of Kyle, a furious scowl on her face, to shove her finger up towards his revoltingly handsome face. A part of her was further annoyed by the height difference between them: Kyle had a good head or two of height over her, and the way he was looking down with a bemused look on his face was pissing her off.

"You can shut the fuck up, you arrogant Scottish douchebag!" Sarah snapped. "At least Clyde can fucking talk properly! You mangle every fucking word that comes out of your foul mouth!"