The Hiding Game

I woke sometime later, sweating and shaking, to the sound of rain outside that had now gotten considerably softer, and to the feeling of a swelling orgasm originating between my thighs. There was not much I could do, except arch my back in pleasure and enjoy the feeling of fingers plunging inside me at a fast pace – into

both

my holes, I noticed with weak surprise - and of a tongue flicking over my clit over and over again. I groaned, hard. My hands grasped the armrest of the couch just in time as my skin flushed from the heat inside me and my body bucked in wild pleasure.

"Yes," I moaned, not just once, but over and over again, as little explosions went off inside me, building anticipation for the big one that followed them. When it finally came, I arched my back so hard I actually ended up sitting, grasping with my hands frantically for something to hold on to and found a shirt, which they clenched around. I threw my head from left to right and back, the heat in my face getting even stronger when the fiery waves radiated out from my lower body. My legs shook as they subsided slowly, and I was so weak I didn't manage to do anything but let myself sink back down onto the couch, panting.

"Damn," said Seth softly, raising himself up from his spot between my legs, and withdrawing his fingers carefully. "You can let go of my shirt now," he added, and I willed my fingers to unclench. My arms promptly fell to my sides.

"Are you okay?" he asked, coming up to lie beside me. I managed to nod weakly, and smile at him. After I had recovered for a few minutes, I was actually able to talk.

"Holy hell," I whispered, making Seth laugh.

"That good?"

"Yes. Where did you learn that? No, don't answer that," I added after a second's worth of further consideration. He only laughed some more.

"I'm sorry. It was damn tempting, with you asleep so innocently." He kissed me, sweeping his tongue into my mouth playfully for a few seconds and letting me taste myself. The he sat up. "I need to wash my hands," he explained, and vanished towards the door I was pointing to.

I lay back for a few minutes while he cleaned himself up. It had been pleasant enough to be awoken by oral sex, but it had also left me weak in the knees and with my head spinning. When Seth came back, my head still felt fuzzy, but I had recovered enough to sit up and kiss him thoroughly when he came to sit beside me. He put his arms around me, kissing the top of my head lovingly.

"We should probably leave pretty soon," he noticed, and I looked around for a clock.

"What time is it?"

"About sixth period, I think," he replied, looking at his watch.

"You let me sleep for that long?"

"You looked like you needed it, sleeping beauty," he told me and ran one hand through my hair. "I'll try my best to keep you out of trouble for skipping, I promise."

"Please do. My mom will kill me slowly and painfully if she finds out."

Seth laughed and stood up, pulling me with him from the couch. "I can't let her do that," he sighed and smiled at me rather ruefully, "I couldn't stand to see you suffer. A quick and painless death would be much easier on my psyche."

I boxed him in the ribs, but he took the blow without even changing his facial expression. When I tried again, he caught my arm and twisted away, bringing my arm behind my back in the process. I was smart enough not to try resisting his death grip, but sighed theatrically and relaxed my muscles.

"I give up, idiot," I announced, rather unimpressed by his maneuver. Seth continued to hold me tight, however, and brought his lips with a series of quick kisses from my neck to my mouth as I turned my head to meet him.

"Hmmm," I said in reaction to his soft lips, and finally he let me go and I was able to put my arms around his neck while we kissed. Playful at first, our kisses quickly grew more intense as I slid my tongue past his lips and he met it passionately with his own. His hands slid down to cup my ass, squeezing it. I did nothing but to hold on to him and grind my hips against his growing erection. The kiss was loving and intense and it lasted until I pulled away with some effort.

"No time," I reminded him. He let out an exaggerated sigh and threw his arms up in the air in exasperation.

"You know, it would make much more sense if you just stayed here and pretended to be sick for the rest of the day. If we both get back to school at the same time people might get suspicious, and they're going to ask questions."

I didn't like this at all. "You're making me miss an entire day of school, Seth! I have AP classes; I can't just skip them randomly. I'm going to have a hell of a time catching up."

"Oh, big deal." He rolled his eyes, and I almost slapped him.

"Look, I don't care what you think. I'm sure you've got your football scholarship to wherever covered already. I depend a bit more on my GPA, and in any case, you're being a jerk right now! Stop it!"

"Okay, I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" He took a deep breath and sat down on the couch. I didn't join him, but looked down on him menacingly. The look in my eyes actually seemed to have some effect, because he ducked his head and looked up at me like a little boy who had just been caught trying to steal cookies. I stayed cold, however.

"I'd appreciate it if you stopped thinking about only yourself once in a while."

"I said I'm sorry!" Seth replied aggressively, losing the little boy look. I opened my mouth to answer, but promptly sneezed.

"Damn. Don't get sick on me." Seth stood up and put the blanket from the couch around my shoulders, while I simply stood there, glowering at him. I sneezed again.

"This. Is all. Your fault." I told him through clenched teeth, while he pressed the box of Kleenex into my hands.

"I'm sorry. For the tenth time. Now lie down and rest, I'll get your car and your books."

"Whatever." I was pissed off now and ready to let him feel it. He only sighed though, and pushed me down onto the couch. He hesitated for a moment, maybe considering if he should kiss me goodbye, but then left the room without another word. I could hear the door shut a few moments later, and lay back onto the couch with a frown. My head did hurt, and Seth was probably right about me staying in bed. I just couldn't get over my annoyance with him, and I didn't plan on being any nicer to him when he got back.

***

As a matter of fact, Seth never did come back to see me. I waited for a while, finally fell asleep again on the couch, and awoke to the sound of the doorbell ringing up a storm. I wrapped myself in the blanket, cursing because my head spun as I sat up, and went to answer it.

It was Marisol, soaked from head to toe. She squeezed past me, trying to get inside as fast as possible, and I stepped aside a full three seconds too late.

"Is it still raining?" I asked stupidly. She gave me a look that made me shrink several inches while she removed her wet shoes. I helped her, holding her steady when she almost lost her balance.

When I noticed how badly she was shaking, I ran to get another blanket from the hallway closet and came back to find her wrapped in the one that Seth had left on a chair. I put the second blanket around her as well, and we went to sit down on the couch in the living room, where the scolding started.

"I'm really mad at you, you know!" Marisol's eyes were dangerously narrowed, her lips shaking from the cold. "What the hell were you thinking, Jenna? You just vanish from school and leave all your things there, and you don't even sign out so I couldn't ask the office staff where you had gone without probably getting you in even more trouble than you're already in!"

"I'm sorry!" Now it was my turn to apologize, I thought bitterly, and even this was something Seth should be responsible for. "I... I got sick, okay."

"So sick you couldn't even sign out or tell anyone? And so sick you just

forgot

your car in the parking lot? I don't think so, Jenna!"

"I'm

sorry

!" I screamed it this time and Marisol was so surprised by this that her mouth hung open for a moment. I buried my face in my hands and tried my best to ignore the sudden urge to cry.

"Jenna," Marisol said suddenly very softly, putting an arm around me. "Look. I'm worried about you. You haven't been yourself lately, not going to the football games, keeping secrets from me, now skipping school. This guy you've been fooling around with really seems to wreak havoc on you."

I opened my mouth to defend myself, then closed it again when I realized something. I hadn't been about to defend my own actions, but Seth's. He

was

influencing me, maybe not meaning to, but the simple fact that I had such a crush on him made me cut him a lot of slack.

I sighed and leaned back on the couch.

"You're right," I said, defeated. "You're totally right, and I'm sorry. I suck."

"This isn't exactly the conclusion I was going for, but it's a start," Marisol told me and gave me a quick hug. "Will you tell me what happened today then?"

I nodded and gave her a quick summary of the events or the morning, once again leaving out details such as Seth's identity and what he had done to me on the very couch Marisol and me were now sitting on. I finished up by describing the disagreement we had had, and Marisol shook her head continuously during that part.

"What an ass," she commented. "Doesn't he know how important school is, especially for you?"

"Well, now he does," I shrugged, then sighed. "I don't even think he really meant to be mean about it, he just never made an effort to see things from my point of view. See, there I go defending him again." I banged the back of my head against the wall behind me in frustration.

"You're lovestruck," Marisol diagnosed.

"Yes, well, is there a cure, Dr. Marisol?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said without humor. "First of all, don't talk to him – and don't fuck him either, for crying out loud – until he apologizes. The way he treated you today makes me want to hit him on the nose, and I would if I knew who he was."

I lowered my eyes, chewing on my lip. "Okay."

"And then," she sighed, "I assume that I won't be able to convince you to stop seeing him? I mean with all this hiding and secrecy he insists on, he seems so shifty. I don't trust him."

"I know," I said. "Believe me, I wish just as much as you that he could just be honest with me. I've asked him. He's just..." I smiled despite myself. "He can be so damn

sweet

, you know."

"And I'm recognizing the dreamy look on your face," Marisol stated and got up. "Alright, therapy session is over. I'm raiding your freezer for some ice cream, and when I get back, I want to hear details about this sex in the rain you had!"

***

When I brought Marisol to the door much later, I noticed that my car was parked on the other side of the street. My books were inside, and after some searching, I found my keys in our mailbox. Not exactly the most romantic thing Seth could have done, but at least he had returned my car like he had promised. I carried my books inside and proceeded to study, after finding a handwritten list in my notebook that detailed the homework I needed to do and what I had missed in class. Sitting on the couch once more, wrapped in my blanket and drinking more hot cocoa, I found myself forgiving him rather quickly as I relived the experiences of the day once more. Missing classes or not, it had hands down been the most exciting sex I had ever had, even considering details such as muddy, sticky clothes and the cold I had apparently caught.

***

The weather wasn't any better the next day. It had cooled down a bit, so the humidity wasn't as bothersome, but it was still raining persistently and the football game promised to be a muddy mess. Marisol said pretty much exactly that when we were on the way to our lockers just after the first bell, and I nodded in agreement.

"But we're still going," she told me, giving me a menacing look. "I will not miss another football game because you're heartbroken."

"I promise," I smiled, and turned towards my locker. Then I froze.

There was a puddle of unidentifiable colorless liquid just before my feet, whose origin appeared to be my locker. I stared at it with a feeling of dread.

"Oh, no." I said. "I think I am going to go on a killing spree if this is what I think it is."

Marisol had paled as well, and we both grimaced when the foul smell of the liquid finally entered our noses. My sense of smell wasn't at its strongest because of the cold I had caught, but even so the smell was almost too much for me to bear. I stepped forward, careful to avoid touching the stuff, and stretched out my hand to open the locker door. Next to me, Marisol retched.

"It smells like someone stuffed a dead skunk into your locker!"

I silently agreed with her, and, turning the dial, prepared myself for the worst. When the door opened, however, no animal corpse fell at my feet. In fact, nothing seemed out of place in my locker at all, despite the liquid in which my books and belongings were liberally covered. It smelled worse than ten skunks at once, and I turned my head to escape the worst of the smell. Behind me, people giggled and made disgusted noises, and many made their way past me and Marisol pressed against the opposite wall.

"Close it," Marisol instructed me, pulling at my arm. "We need to go report this."

I nodded, thankful for her taking charge, and slammed the metal door shut. Marisol led me all the way to the main office, where we explained the situation to one of the secretaries. The woman, one of the stern senior office workers, wasted no time sending Marisol to her class – the second bell had just rung. After that, she spent the next twenty minutes attempting to recruit one of the younger office aides to help clean my locker. I was sitting there the entire time, wishing futilely that this had been just a normal day and I could have sat in study hall right now, like usual. Instead I was dreading returning to my locker to clean out one of the most unpleasant smells I had ever encountered.

Finally, a blond woman in her thirties, named Carolyn, had been successfully bullied into accompanying me back to my locker, equipped with a trash bag and several cleaning supplies. She gave me a friendly smile – the first one of the day, making me like her for that alone – and let me lead the way back to the hallway where my locker was. The smell had spread quite a bit in the last twenty minutes, and we both approached the locker while covering our mouth and nose with our hands.

"Nasty!" Carolyn noted and handed me a pair of rubber gloves. "I think I know what this is. Called Skunk Juice, my dad used it going hunting when I was younger, to mask his smell."

"Well, at least all the deer won't know my locker's approaching," I said, my voice dripping with false cheerfulness. I was trying my hardest not to cry, I didn't want whoever had orchestrated this to succeed in getting me to do that. I opened the locker once more, while Carolyn liberally spread paper towels over where the liquid had dripped onto the floor. I nearly winced when the full dose of the smell slapped me in the face, and began the task of extracting book by book from the locker, wiping them off. Carolyn examined the locker door and wiped off the excess juice on it.

"It looks like whoever did this sprayed it through the air vents," she noted, pointing out that they were coated from both sides. "Got any enemies?"

"Plenty," I sighed. "But not anyone I've offended terribly lately."

"Your teachers should have leftover books you can trade in for those," Carolyn noted. "We'll have to ask someone who knows more about skunk juice if the smell evaporates away a sufficient amount of time, otherwise we might as well throw away your old books right now."

"Yes," I said. I blinked away tears once more when I got to my notebooks – those weren't easily replaceable. Carolyn put the first one I handed her in a separate bag.

"Take those home, and let them air-dry. Outside, if you can. After that you should be able to make copies of them."

I appreciated the solid grasp she had on this problem, it was rather calming. When I reached for my last notebook, which had been leaning against the wall, I noticed a green piece of paper that was stuck in there that certainly wasn't mine. Its edges were soaked, but otherwise it appeared unharmed, shielded by the notebook. I reached for it and turned it in my hand. There was no name on it.

While Carolyn used something very citrus-smelling to clean the locker door, I unfolded the paper and saw that it was a short letter addressed to me. I looked for a signature that wasn't there, then looked at the first few words and recognized the writing. Seth's. It was an apology. I stuffed the letter into my pocked, intending to read it later, and then turned back to the contents of my locker. Most of what was still in there would just have to be thrown away, such as the pictures I had taped to the back and the extra t-shirt I had kept there ever since the incident with the wet clothes at the beginning of the school year.

When the locker was completely empty, Carolyn wiped it out with the citrus cleaning spray. She used so much that I felt like I would never need vitamin C again, but at least the skunk smell was masked a little. She also sprayed some air freshener throughout the entire hallway, then encouraged me to leave my newly emptied locker open to air out while we went and stored the things of mine that we hadn't thrown away in the office.

"Take a deep breath Jenna," Carolyn advised me just as the bell rung for second period, and patted my shoulder. "You'll be fine."

It entered my mind that Carolyn was possibly the first nice person to ever have worked at Glenn Valley High's office. I thanked her for all of her help and grabbed my books – the ones that I had brought from home this morning and that were still clean – and headed off to my second class.

***

Seth's letter was probably one of the most unorthodox written apologies I had ever read.

Dear Jenna,

it read.

I'm a total idiot. Please meet me at the back door by the locker rooms an hour after the game. I'll bring ice cream.

I sighed and folded the paper back up for what was probably the one hundredth time.

I'll bring ice cream.

What the hell did that mean? Was this code for something, or was he actually serious?

"What are you reading?" Marisol asked, and I hastily stuffed the piece of paper back in my pocket, looking up to see if anyone else had noticed. Most people around me were staring at the field, however, where an exceptionally boring JV game was going on.

"Does it say 'I explode if anyone but Jenna reads me?'" Marisol asked, looking slightly hurt, and I immediately felt guilty.

"I'm sorry. It's a letter from, you know, him."

"Yes, I know." She sighed. "Has he apologized yet?"

"Technically, no, but I have a feeling he's about to."

"He better be."

I nodded. At the same moment, people started to clap, and I realized that the game was finally over.

"What's the score, zero both?" I asked. Marisol shook her head. "No, six us, zero them."

"Oh. I must have missed the single most exciting moment of the game."

"You didn't miss a thing. It was yawn-worthy."

Marisol was certainly right about that. It had been one of the most uneventful games I had ever seen, partially due to the fact that the field was muddy and slowed the players down considerably. The other reason for this was that our JV was simply not that good.

"We really need to win that state title this year," Marisol told me, expressing my thoughts. "We'll have a bunch of great players graduate, including Seth Marshall of course, and the ones that will move up from JV play like crap. And then of course, it's our last year too, so it would be great to see that happen."