Chapter 5: Skeleton Bones
It was the weekend Bobbie called screaming her and Kaden had really split up for good, a week after Kaden had popped her anal cherry, and two weeks after Camille and I had our first rendezvous on her couch. Camille hadn't spoken to Bobbie much, especially after Kaden's pursuance of Bobbie's asshole had turned fruitful. I seriously believed his only real interest was in succeeding where his predecessor had failed. And it wasn't her giving into the sex that disappointed Camille, it was Bobbie going back on her stance just so Kaden could feel superior. And Camille really didn't think much of Kaden for a host of other reasons, although she encouraged me to stay friends with him. She knew I'd choose her if it came down to it, and I'm sure she fretted over putting me in that position. And I certainly would've chosen her. The more time I spent with Camille the more I found to like. Not to mention I'd lost count of the times we made love in the prior two weeks. She didn't just have the body of a fuck machine, she was a fuck machine, something you'd have never known given the way she carried herself in public.
She'd convinced me to take a yoga class with her, and afterward we took a bike ride. We ended up in a near repeat of our first time, stripping down for a hot sweaty session on her couch, again covered by the knitted blanket. I started to hate that blanket, the way the loose knit painfully rubbed against my butt. But I wasn't complaining! Not with every other nerve ending in my body going wild over the sexy goddess fucking my brains out. I truly wanted to brag to my buddies, but I could never do that to her. If I wasn't already in love with the woman I was well on my way.
Post coital I ended up in the same big shirt as last time, the one that had previously belonged to a nameless ex-lover. I followed her into the bedroom, pausing in the doorway to tug at the big shirt and say, "So did this belong to Steve?"
"
Steve
?"
"The Hooligan's guy."
She thinned her eyes. "Is this about what Kaden said? About the
Steve
who asked him to say hello?"
"Yeah, the guy who still owns a broken couch."
I climbed onto the bed as she plopped her head on her pillow and grabbed the remote. Clearly she knew my game, and shook her head dismissively, "Just for your peace of mind, that's not Steve's shirt. But I swear, we make love a couple of times and you already have it in for every guy who came before you."
"It's been more than a couple times that we..." I finished with a wink. "And I'm just looking out for my well-being, cuz this is a pretty fucking big shirt."
She laughed, clicked on the TV, and then looked at me with wide innocent eyes, "Those other guys meant nothing to me, baby." Her voice oozed with cheesy sarcasm. "You're the only one for me."
I tickled her armpit and she shrieked.
"I'll believe that when you tattoo my name on your butt."
A minute later we'd settled down beside each other and streamed a Chris Pratt movie on HBO and I ordered Pasta from the Doordash app. I couldn't follow the film, mostly because I was still hypothesizing about that stupid couch comment Kaden had made. It haunted me ever since Kaden had first mentioned it. And Camille seemed momentarily confused when I'd just brought it up, but not completely clueless either, which made me speculate that I'd gotten the "broken" part wrong. Now it really troubled meโwhat other fucking significance could there have been to someone's couch?
When the pasta came we ate in bed straight out of the round foil to-go tins. It was so comforting being there with her and I thought maybe I should just ask about the couch. Maybe she would even find it funny.
She was looking directly at me with a mouth full of pasta when I let it slip. First I explained I was in another guy's shirt, so clearly I wasn't judging, and then I put the question out there point blank, "This is really dumb, but what's the actual deal with Steve's couch?"
With food still in her mouth she tried not to laugh, and then covered her mouth to speak, "Oh my God. You are seriously asking about a couch now?"
"Yeah, I am." Now that it was out of the bag and she actually laughed, I felt more at ease being straight with her. "I don't give a shit about him, but the mystery of the couch is killing me."
She swallowed her food and then sat up so she could lean over me. She giggled, "I assume this is about Kaden's
sick burn
back at the bar?"
"Yeah, unfortunately."
"You're going to be so sorry you asked, because it's the dumbest thing you'll ever hear. And it pretty much sums up what idiot's guys can be."
I gave her a kiss. "OK, go on, debase my intelligence."
"Alright, you asked for it!" She sat up crossed-legged. "FirstโHooligan's sucked. Have you ever been there?"
I shook my head no.
"I didn't think so. It's a sports bar, mostly guys, mostly in their thirties and forties, all pretty much perverts, and Hooligans only hired girls in their early twenties. I started at nineteen, and remember a few others, but no one over twenty-four. At least not while I was there."
I pictured Camille at nineteenโher angelic face with the last ruminants of baby fat, still going home to the bedroom she grew up in, the same ribbon running across her head keeping her dark chestnut hair back behind her ears, and a head full of wishful ideals and a
go-get-em-girl
attitude. It seemed a crime to let that girl even set foot into Hooligan's.
"So Hooligan's dressed their cocktail waitresses in low cut t-shirts, belly totally exposed, and these ridiculous blue short-shorts. I could only work three nights a week with school, and you could make a ton of tips at Hooligan'sโso more money but skimpy outfits."
When she said "skimpy outfits," she squeezed her boobs together. She'd never put her shirt back on after we did it, and I got an instant erection at those c-cup globes squashing together.
"So the skimpy outfits I'd signed up for, but what I
didn't
sign up for, and
wasn't
cool, was how raunchy the staff would get. Or at least the bartenders would. All older guys. Old like in their thirties. They'd work in shifts of two, but I think there were six altogether. Yeah there were six. And everyone of them harassed the servers. No qualms whatsoever. Grabbed our asses, held us by our bare waists to talk into our ears, spanked us.... And this was all within sight of customers. A bunch of guys watching a nineteen-year-old girl get felt up. It was crazy. I can't even count the times one of them just pushed his crotch into my ass."
"You couldn't say anything? Like please don't do that?"
She took a deep breath expressing her frustration. "Yeah. But OK, so like the reason they probably hired such young girls is they don't speak up. I was an angsty but impressionable girl. It was my first job. It was my first impression of the world outside of school. And the guys were older. I spoke to some of the other girls but I'd just hear how flirting was basically Hooligan's business model. I think there was a fear of being naive and hypocritical because... well, yeah, it seemed like a policy we'd somehow agreed to by taking the job. And I can't entirely blame Hooligan's, because, stupid me, I even felt rebellious flirting back with the guys. It's just, we were at the age where you're all about tearing down boundaries, we had no idea we could set up new ones. And you hear about this stuff on the news, but at Hooligan's everything was so out in the open and acknowledged that it didn't seem like the same awful thing, and it...
it just
...."
She was speaking hurriedly and I could see she was getting upset, so I interrupted. "Hey, I get it. I hate places like Hooligan's. I didn't mean to sound judgy."
"I didn't think you were being judgy, I just.... You just needed to know about that before I get to the rest."
"It gets
worse
?"
"Not worse. But... Well we all drank."
"Wait, you were only nineteen?"
"Yup! The guys would feed the ones over twenty-one drinks, and the rest of us had a flask we'd pass around on break. Drinking just made it easier. Getting buzzed made it feel like a college party. And I admit, when I'd just shut down and go with it I had some pretty fun times. But of course everyone was sleeping together. Like I don't think there was a single girl who hadn't slept with at least one of the guys."
"And Steve was the lucky guy who ended up with the hottest waitress Hooligan's ever had?"