"You fucked Hefty Hailey?!"
"Did I say I had sex with her? No! I said we... messed around some."
"Well I must say I'm certainly glad to see you seem to have retained your same basic shape," said Owen. When Conner looked at him quizzically, he explained. "You know. Because of smushing."
"I got it. Shut up."
"How much, would you say? Deuce, deuce and a half?"
"You don't... she's not... just shut up!"
Owen cackled, and went right on teasing. Conner tried turning up the radio, but he had to focus on driving so his friend had ample opportunity to shut it back off and resume the insults. It was maddening! To have gotten a blowjob from one of the hottest girls in school, only to be ridiculed! And she was smitten with him, too - she'd texted him the night before and again this morning to point out what a good time she'd had, but here was Owen yucking it up. Conner tried mounting a defense - she's a nice girl, she's cuter than you think, what difference does the body make in a blowjob - and finally distracted him with that detail.
"Wait, so she went down on you?"
"She did. She sure did," Conner said, finally allowing himself a smirk.
"They say fat girls give the best head. They need to, basically, to make up-"
"I get it. And she was definitely pretty good."
"Did she swallow?"
Conner eyed his friend askance. "That's kind of personal, don't you think?"
"I got nobody sucking my schwanz, so I gotta live through yours. At least until it goes spelunking in Mammoth Cavern. Now answer the question: did she swallow?"
"Well... no."
"Ha! I knew it. Chick who's too grossed out by a little man-spoo definitely won't be making a habit of it. Fuckin' spitters, man. Can't trust 'em."
"She didn't exactly spit, either. It was more... look, this is really personal to talk about, OK?"
"Wait, now you got me curious. She didn't swallow, she didn't spit... is it still in her mouth or something?" Owen laughed.
"Ew, Jesus man, no! Just... well, she... she sort of coughed it up. All over herself. But she meant to swallow."
"Oh man, so she was all... covered in it? That poor spunk."
"Shut up, Owen."
"So you got it out of your system? Or you gonna start maining Hefty?"
"Maining Hefty?" Conner repeated. "Is that even a thing people say?"
"People just said it, baby."
Conner rolled his eyes as he pulled into a spot in the school parking lot. "I don't know. I mean, we had a good time, she's a nice girl. I told her we'd go out again sometime. It doesn't mean we're boyfriend girlfriend."
"Yeah, but some stink doesn't wash off easy, and I'm not just talking about cankle sweat."
"OK, now that's
definitely
not a thing people say."
"I'm serious, man! You're always on about how into Heather Blake you are... it's a long shot as is, and if word gets out that you're on the level of Hailey McManus, you can bet your long shot is gonna go from miles to parsecs." He adopted a falsetto, imitating Heather's reading of the morning announcements. "This is Heather Blake, voice of the Northside Nighthawks, and these are today's announcements. First off, I'll never ever let Conner Fishers hook up with me, because if you fuck someone who's fucked a pig, you've fucked every pig he's ever fucked!"
Conner punched Owen in the arm, but it did nothing to diminish his satisfaction with his hilarity. As the two parted ways to go to their respective lockers, Conner frowned pensively. Owen was spot on about his crush on Heather. She was beautiful, and the only reason she wasn't firmly enshrined in the It Crowd was because she was too much of a brainiac. The girl had too many demands on her time to be able to devote herself to publicly wasting it. Worse, as he thought it out, he was probably right about the rest of it. Reputation was everything in high school. If people knew he and Hailey McManus were a couple, they'd assume something was wrong with him. If he were honest with himself, it was probably part of the reason he'd never given her a shot to begin with.
Of course, Hailey wasn't actually unattractive any more, unbeknownst to all but him. Maybe that was it - he could see if he could find a way to show everybody her transformation. Somehow. Only... if she knew how hot she was, why would she be any different from Hayleigh McKnight? Even if he could make her new body public information, all it would do to their blossoming romance would be to throw a hundred other guys into her list of options. She'd forget about him in an instant. Plus it could well alert Miss C about what he'd done, and what he might be able to do again. So no, finding a way to reveal things was out.
What then? Was he supposed to dump her? Try to reverse the change and let life go back to normal? That was a nonstarter. This was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and no amount of peer pressure was going to make him give up the new Hailey. Not even for a chance with Heather, unless it was a sure thing. That was almost unfathomable; Heather wasn't as popular as Hayleigh, true, but that was a matter of having deliberately opted out. Nevertheless, she was a hot commodity.
For now, it seemed there was nothing to be done but to keep things under wraps. He returned Hailey's wave when he saw her in the distance in the hallway, but didn't alter course. He wasn't done with her yet, but he wasn't off the market yet, either.
Conner received his first ever sext during lunch. Unable to decide between sitting with Hailey and jeopardizing his social standing, or sitting with Owen and jeopardizing things with Hailey, he'd simply gone to the editor's office to hide. It was set in a corner of Miss C's room, opposite the small computer lab on the far side of the room. It was his teacher's lunch period, too, but she'd given him a key (and a hell of a threat if it were abused) so he could get in to work on evenings and weekends, as needs be. He'd been just about to get back to exploring the TIOS software when his phone buzzed. When he saw Hailey's name, his reflex was to set the phone down, but when he saw the notification that she'd attached an image, he stopped himself.