I Am Jacks Life Ch 02

Author's note and acknowledgements

This story has sat on my hard drive for four years now.

I wrote it, all twenty chapters and 95,000 words of it in eight days of a frenzied, near trance-like state, sitting on my couch with my wife's laptop. She would occasionally have to remind me to eat.

When the dust settled, and I looked up, I realized a couple of things: one, I had just written a fucking novel in a week, whoa. Two, it seemed to be pretty damn good, double whoa. And three, what the hell was I going to do with it?

I tried editing it, I even enlisted the help of a Lit-Editor, who was invaluable for early editing, and confirming it was in fact, pretty good, or readable at least. I spent several months then, editing, unashamedly forcing it on writer friends to read, regular friends to read, and total strangers on writer boards. Everyone had different opinions of course, as people do, but all of them seemed to think it was pretty good, and I should probably try to do something with it.

So I spent another year trying to sell it.

Well nothing happened.

And I can't blame them, agents and publishers. It's kind of a niche story, hard to market. It's got too much sex for a coming age story, too much teenage drama for adult fiction, and not a single word about vampires or bondage to make it work as erotic fiction.

So it's sat on my hard drive for four years. I'll occasionally open it up, tinker with a line, or try to figure out how to re-work it into something more marketable. I always end up wasting a weekend trying to figure out how to change it, without losing the essence of the thing which I, and several others, feel is, "pretty good."

So fuck it. Here you go Literotica. I just want people to read it. I want people to get to know Jack the way I did. Writing his life made me feel like I was a part of it. He's a pretty good guy, I wish I knew him in real life.

So NEXT, some disclaimers.

This is a coming of age story. Which means first it starts out when the characters are too young to have sex (on literotica.) So there's no sex for a couple chapters. I hope that's okay. Second, this is a novel length story, including the prologue and epilogue, there are twenty-one chapters in all. Some are longer than others, and there is not a sex scene in every one. (Though some have more than one.) More importantly, sex is a thing that happens, it's not written to be titillating, but rather just as events in Jack's life.

So there you go. It's a story with sex in it, not a story about sex. I think it's pretty good anyway.

If you have not read the first chapter, please click on my profile and pick the story up at the beginning, its better that way, trust me.

*****

True to her word, Beth did not stop talking to me when the school year started. In fact, she talked to me every day.

After a couple of days, I even started talking back. Truth be told, we were better friends at school than we had been over the summer. After a week, I started sitting with her and her friends at lunch.

Beth was very popular and had a lot of people she called her friends. Most of the cheer squad, pretty much every athletic jock at school, and she'd hug all of her friends when she met them in the halls or for lunch. (Me included. I never got tired of that. Especially the first time she did it in front of my friends, but that's a different story for the moment.) But there were really only three girls that Beth really thought of as her friends. Two of them were cheerleaders; the other was a girl Beth had been friends with since kindergarten. They were all mind-bogglingly hot too. Maybe not, to my secret comparison, as hot as Beth, but still plenty hot enough for masturbatory fantasies at sixteen.

Kim was another cheerleader. Blonde in every sense of the word; she was not the smartest of the group, but she wasn't stupid. She was taller than Beth, taller than all of us really. She had a slim figure that made her a little too skinny, but she had a gorgeous face and lips, and loved to make these pouty little faces with them. Really, I can't think of any guy that wouldn't have dreamed about those lips wrapped around his thing. Maybe gay ones. Maybe.

Annabeth, who we just called Anna to avoid confusion with Beth, was the other cheerleader, and she was the jock of the group. She was also in soccer and track, and she had the longest legs ever. She was pretty smart and didn't struggle too much to keep her high C average. She could easily have been an A student, but like I said earlier, attitude was as important as smarts when it came to school, and Anna just didn't have an academic attitude. She was also easily the most outgoing of any of them. She would cheer loudly for the least things. She also liked to party and was usually the source of most party invitations.

Then there was Abby. She was the least outgoing of the four of them, which is to say she was ten times more outgoing than I, but compared to the three cheerleaders, she was practically shy. Her parents were also like super lawyers or something, and she always had money to burn. With auburn hair that she'd keep just above her shoulders, she also was the most practical and down-to-earth of the girls. Not that she wasn't a little spoiled by her seemingly unending wealth, but she didn't flaunt it too much. At least around us.

Us.

Yeah, I was included. Most of Beth's other friends ignored me. Certainly all of her male friends and most of the other cheerleaders. But those three accepted my presence almost without question. They talked to me at lunch, laughed at my jokes, and took my friendship with Beth at face value. They all also needed tutoring, or at least asked for it. I was all too happy to oblige.

And this is where we came in, with me figuring out it was easier to get girls to talk to you if you did their homework for them.

That year was a pretty good one. I was part of a group. A popular one which somehow, I guess, began to include me. I was friends with four of the hottest girls in school; they gave me hugs every day, asked my advice about boys and their outfits, they laughed with me, invited me to parties with them, and just - included me. That in and of itself was a miracle. I even got better at dressing myself with a lot of help and advice from the girls, of course. I bought some nicer clothes with the money they gave me for tutoring. Even after I insisted it wasn't necessary anymore, once they learned I was spending it on clothes, they started taking me shopping with them. I guess I wasn't

completely

a nerd anymore, but they were all still way out of my league for anything but friends.

We were a clique. There were problems of course. I mean my presence in their group caused a lot of their boyfriends to become jealous, and I'm pretty sure everyone else in the school thought I was their gay mascot, but I didn't care. They were my friends, and they weren't afraid or ashamed to call me theirs. Sure, I did their homework for them sometimes, but I just as often helped them figure it out on their own. Their grades improved; my social status improved. It was win-win. I never felt used or taken advantage of.

It did of course create tensions with my other friends.

The first time Beth came up to me in the halls, I was standing around with a bunch of my buddies from the Chess club (look, I already admitted I was a nerd okay?). Beth, the sexy avatar of all that was appealing in the world, came up and wrapped her arms around my neck in a sudden hug. She even lifted up one leg. She was wearing her cheer outfit and had her hair back in a pony-tail.

"Hey Jack!" she said in her everyday bubbly charm voice.

I smiled and hugged her back briefly. I thought the guys around me were going to lose their eyeballs. Beth pulled back and smiled at the other guys, "Hey guys, I need to steal Jack a sec, okay?"

Her hands fell into mine and she pulled me a few steps away.

"What's up?" I asked, trying to force the casual. Yeah guys, beautiful girls come up to me all the time. This is no big deal. Watch and learn from the master.

"Can you be a doll and give this to Anna for me after next period?" She handed me a bunch of notes. I recognized them; they were my notes I had given her for her open-book test yesterday. (This was before I'd started tutoring all of the girls, but after I'd started eating lunch and hanging out with them.)

"Sure, she's got, who, Ms. Enverton right now?"

"You got it!" Beth smiled brightly.

I smiled back. It was infectious.

"Thanks, babe!" she said and blew me a kiss as she spun on one foot and trotted off, her pony-tail bouncing back and forth in her wake. Blowing kisses was something she did a lot, to lots of people.

I composed myself and tucked the notes in my back pocket before turning around to face my fellows. From the looks on their faces I had just done the impossible. Moon landing.

Oh yeah. Rock Star nerd status.

My best friend, Tomas, gave me a subtle "low-five" and then demanded the story, which I gave to him - minus the kiss - I didn't want that getting out.

"Dude!" after I was done, "Holy shit, dude!" he exclaimed in awe.

"Yeah," I said sagely.

"No wonder Todd has been looking like he wants to put your ass through a brick wall lately," he said.

I shrugged with feigned casualness, "Todd can suck it up. Beth and I are just friends."

Truth be told I was scared shitless of Todd. Like, seriously afraid to go into the men's room and poop. They might find me alone in there.

"Still man, watch your ass. He's the scary jealous type," my friend said.

Like I didn't know that.

I shrugged again.

So that was the first term. I was a god among the downtrodden. The miracle man who had somehow transcended his social status and been accepted into the upper echelons of popular society. I was James motherfucking Bond. And oh yeah, did it go to my head.

I took my friends- my old friends- for granted. I spent every moment I could with the girls. I hung out with them at school, and by second term, after school as well. I didn't notice that by the end of my sophomore year, only Tommy still hung out with me. I didn't notice. Not then. Not yet.

I was getting invited to parties. I was accepted by high society. Part of it at least. Beth had ditched Todd, and that had been a month of running scared for me. Word was he blamed me and thought I was hooking up with Beth in his place (I wish.). I had to duck the entire wrestling team in the halls. No easy feat; let me assure you. Soon though, she was dating Jeff Olsen, the junior starting varsity half-back, and the pressure came off me.

Pretty soon, the year had come to a close.

Then another, much like the previous.

By then I was a permanent part of the gang. By the end of our junior year I had out-lasted dozens of boyfriends, break ups, tearful phone calls, and shared the misadventures of adolescence. I only barely talked with Tommy anymore; I'd even heard he'd gotten a girl-friend. One of the Asian girls in the 4.0 club. Good for him.

I was still in the 4.0 club too. Only four of us remained. Tommy, his girlfriend, her brother, and myself. When the end of junior year rolled around I was in a four-way tie for the best GPA for our school. But I still didn't care, not yet. I was Beth's friend. That was all that really mattered to me.

As it turned out, Beth and I had the same birthday: August twenty-ninth. This year we'd both be turning eighteen. All of the other girls had already turned eighteen, so we were the last. They- the girls I mean- were planning quite the bash.

It was simultaneously to celebrate Beth and I "getting legal" as they joked and start our senior year off with a bang. Abby's parents had a huge beach house, and they had given permission for the place to be used for the party in question. I have no idea why, or how she'd managed it, but we were going to have a three story house right on the beach for what the girls called "The Party of the Century".

A bit cliché I know, but hey, it wasn't my idea.

A couple days before the party, we were at the house putting up decorations, and as usual, the girls were teasing me.

I don't mean verbally, though that too. I mean

teasing

me. Flirting. Flashes of skin, pouting to get me to do stuff with implied promises everyone knew would never happen. I was the token guy. I was so firmly friend-zoned by these hotties I wasn't even in the same country as the boyfriend field. I think Kim even thought I was gay. In other words, I was totally safe for them to be flirty, teasing, and even a little bit mean to. I didn't mind, most of the time. Really I was still crushing on Beth hard enough to make diamonds out of carbon, and who minds a bit of flirting with four of the hottest girls in school?

The only time I did mind really was when they brought up my single status.

See, they all had boyfriends. Most of them had had more than one during the course of our friendship. Anna had had close to half a dozen, maybe more. She was pretty outgoing and not afraid to bring the flirt to the guy she had her eye on. Also crazy hot, but whatever. Point is, I was the only one in the gang who hadn't had so much as a movie date, ever.

Beth remained the farthest I'd ever gotten with a girl. That one kiss, and countless "friend hugs". The girls constantly pushed me to ask girls out.

Look, it's not like I hadn't tried. Sure I had an undying flame for Beth, but I had actually been interested in other girls, if only to get some kind of experience. The problem though, was complicated. Four-fold really. Yeah. The problem was Beth, Anna, Kim, and Abby.

You can't be friends with four examples of divine hotness on earth and then ask out a girl of lesser mortal status. She says no. She's either afraid it's a trick, or that you're settling, or that she's going to be a beard for your rumored homosexuality. I'd tried, a few times. Okay, three.

First was right before the end of my sophomore year. Julie Perkons. She was cute, in a sophomore girl kind of way. She was smart; I'd met her in my Advanced English class actually. And she was single. I guess when you're half-way cute and spend your days surrounded by guys that aren't sure which end of a girl is up, but they're threatened by your intelligence to the point where they have to compete more fiercely with you than each other, you don't get asked out a lot. At least that was the impression I'd gotten by her startled expression when I asked her, stammering, if she'd like to get coffee sometime.

"Er... I thought you were going out with Beth Jenkins?" she said.

I blushed. "Ah, no, Beth and I are just friends." Despite whatever else I might wish. Hell it was Beth who'd urged me to ask Julie for coffee in the first place.

"Ah," was all she said, probably able to figure out the rest on her own. Settling then. "No thanks Jack; see you in class tomorrow."

Strike One.

Next had been Felicia Jones from my AP U.S. History course. She was a grade higher than I. I'd made the mistake of not noticing she was not, in fact, single. Strike Two.

Most recently had been at Junior Prom. I'd actually gotten Tasha Mellin to agree to go with me; we had our picture taken and everything. But once we showed up, and I was showered with hugs and cheek kisses from my friends, who were, honestly, twice as hot as Tasha could ever hope to be, and that was all she wrote. I'd ended up driving Tasha home early with her in tears and me being about the most uncomfortable I'd ever been in my young life.

Strike Three.

So they teased me. Flirting, and 'innocent' brushes against me.

"You need a date."

And again with that.

I looked up. It'd been Anna who said it. She was currently on a step-stool and was hanging banners above the Malibu style arches of Abby's family's beach house. Stretching up like that showed off her sexy midriff and belly button. I looked back down.

"Why?"

"Cause we've all got one, silly," Beth this time. She was bringing in a box of something. She had a slight sheen of sweat on her chest and forehead. "Besides, it's your eighteenth birthday party; gotta have a date to help you celebrate," she grinned mischievously. Sexy, but I also knew I was getting none of it.

"Any of you volunteer?" I said. I kept the humor in my voice. It was the only way to get the teasing to stop; roll with it. Lessons learned over two years of hanging with them.

They laughed. Not harshly; they weren't mean, not intentionally anyway. Not to me.

"We've got dates; we said that already," Kimmy said. Delectable, blonde Kimmy and her tank-tops. Her breasts were small enough she often skipped bras 'in private'. I'd been in the private club for over a year now. I never got tired of her nipples poking against the cloth of her tops.

"Well, I guess I've exhausted my options then," I said with a chuckle. I tried not to force it. Beth could tell when I was.

"Oh Pshaw. You just need to ask a girl, can't expect one to fall in your lap," Beth said, putting her box down and wiping her brow.

"But isn't that the start to every romantic comedy ever?" I asked with mock confusion in my voice.

They laughed, and for the moment, the subject was dropped.

With not unremarkable foresight, Abby's parents were having us take out a lot of the fragile lamps and stuff from the house, to replace with cheap Wal-Mart ones. Smart really.

I was loading stuff into the back of my car a couple of hours later when Beth came out.

"Hey," she said brightly, coming up out of the house with her fingers stuck in her pockets.

"Hey," I said back distractedly, as I carefully loaded what was probably a thousand-dollar lamp into my backseat. Abby's parents were, if it wasn't obvious by now, quite rich, and I guess they trusted me with their stuff. Parents read the weirdest things into a good GPA I guess.

"So, seriously, how come you aren't going to try and get a date to our party?"

With the other girls, it was "The Party." With Beth, it was "Our Party." Hers and mine. Most of the time I liked that she did that, made it feel special, and gave me another connection with her.

Now however, it just reminded me that she was so close but still so way out of my league.

"I dunno; no time I guess. It's not like I know a lot of girls besides the four of you outside of school, and it's summer, so my options are a bit limited."

Fuck me if that almost didn't sound plausible.

She bit her lip and played with her toe in the gravel on the side of the driveway. They had this super expensive white stone gravel that lined the three-car driveway. Like I said. Loaded.

"Alright, if that's what you say it is," she said, though her tone said she didn't believe me.

I sighed and backed out of the car and turned to look at her.

Sometimes her good looks still caught me off guard. There she was, standing in the driveway, her hair was up in a pony-tail, she had an old dirty tee-shirt on, ripped up jeans, and simple canvas shoes, but she still could have been a supermodel.

I had it bad. But she also was very worthy of crushing on.

I rubbed the back of my neck. "It doesn't come as easily for me as you guys; you know that."

She nodded and bit her lip. Was that pity?

I didn't want her pity.

"Hey, it's no big deal. You guys will still dance with me and stuff, right? Even with dates?"

Another thing. You do not get to stay friends with pretty and popular girls and not learn to dance. They all loved to dance, and they got invited to lots of parties. They usually invited me too, and after a couple of those I started getting dance lessons. Maybe so I'd stop embarrassing them, maybe because they just thought dancing was fun and wanted me to have fun with them. Either way, I'd gotten pretty good at it. I wasn't a stage show kind of guy - I'd never be in the middle of a ring of people showing off my moves or anything - but I could dance with any of them and not make a scene for anyone.