Absolute Devotion Ch 07

The next morning at work I was not functioning correctly. I had managed to sleep for about an hour before my alarm went off. I considered calling out sick, but I was worried that someone would think I was faking it and I didn't want to deal with accusatory stares from the bosses or my co-workers.

I worked as a paper shredder at a loan company. What I did all day was put documents in a shredder and then double check to make sure that they had, in fact, been shredded. It wasn't a very exciting job, but it paid exceptionally well so I was happy to have it.

Jimmy was a very important man at work. He was one of the people who actually talked on the phone to people about loans. It was a job I knew I couldn't do, because I was afraid to talk to people on the phone, so I respected him for being able to do it.

"Hi Jimmy," I said when he brought me some documents that needed to be shredded.

"You look like hell," he told me. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I think I might have a stomach bug. Thanks for agreeing to have a drink with Erica. She really needed to get out and I like to make sure I get at least eight hours of sleep every night."

"Oh, yeah, sure," he said. "Did you sleep okay?"

"Yeah, I slept like a baby. I like to sleep."

"Look, can you do me a big favor?"

"Sure."

"I think I offended Erica last night, you know, when we were having that drink. Can you tell her I'm really sorry?"

"Okay. I'll tell her."

"You're not going to ask me what I did to offend her?"

"That's between you and her. It's none of my business."

"Well, I figured, since she's your girlfriend and everything you might be curious."

"I'll tell her you're really sorry. Maybe you should come over for dinner sometime. You could apologize in person. You're my best friend and I'd hate for the two of you to not get along."

"Well, I'm not sure she'd want me over for dinner, but if you want me to and she's cool with it, then sure."

"Just remember though, if it is a work night, I am in bed by nine and asleep by ten."

"Yeah, I'll remember," Jimmy chuckled.

Even though Jimmy and I were best friends, his friend Ray, who worked in collections, didn't like me at all. He called me names like "nebbish" and "wussy." He once tripped me in the employee cafeteria when I was walking with my milk and then made me apologize for getting milk on his shoes.

Just before my lunch break Ray brought me some documents that needed to be shredded. I put them on the stack I was getting ready to shred, but he picked them up off the stack and pushed them in my face. I just looked at him without taking the documents. I was taking a break to drink a juice box when he stopped by.

"I need these shredded immediately," he said, sounding angry and annoyed.

"I'll make it my first order of business after I finish my juice box," I told him.

"Look, doofus, those documents need to be shredded immediately and I need to see you actually shred them so that I can confirm they were shredded."

"Are you saying you can't wait until I finish my juice box? There isn't all that much juice in here. It is a very small amount of juice and I will be finished drinking it very soon. I'd probably already be finished if you hadn't interrupted me."

"What kind of grown man drinks a juice box? What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I like the way it tastes and the fun packaging."

"No wonder your girlfriend fucks other guys," he snapped. "Put down your fucking juice box and shred my goddamned documents."

I ignored the first comment as I drank the last of the juice box, making sure I made a loud slurping sound to indicate I had hit the bottom of the juice box and had finished the juice. I was enjoying my newfound assertiveness and defiance. No one was ever again going to make me shred documents before I finished my juice box.

I took the documents from him and very slowly put each page through the shredder individually. He glared at me, seething with anger, unable to handle my newfound confidence.

"You realize your girlfriend fucked your buddy Jimmy last night, don't you?" he said in such a way that I knew he was now trying to do anything to upset me and cause me to regret having stood up to him.

"I'll be done with your documents in just a few minutes, Ray," I replied, refusing to acknowledge what he had said. "To make very certain these important documents are correctly destroyed I must put each page through the shredder individually."

"You are a fucking nutcase."

"We used to shred documents in small stacks, but by that method there is no way to be certain that each document has been properly shredded. It may take longer by this method, that is to say shredding one page at a time, but it is far more effective and you can rest easier knowing that your documents have been properly shredded," I told him as I continued to feed each page individually into the shredder.

"How is this a job, anyway?" Ray demanded to know.

"It is a very important job," I told him. "We deal with a great deal of sensitive information regarding loans and so forth."

"Yeah, no shit, but why the fuck can't people just shred their own documents when they need to? Why do we have a dipshit like you doing it for us? I don't get it."

"Ask yourself this, why do we have an asshole like you doing collections for us? Why can't people just pay their loans by the terms originally agreed to when the loan was made?"

"Go fuck yourself."

"Okay, all done," I said as I finished feeding the last page of Ray's documents into the shredder. "Have a nice day."

When I got home that night I told Erica about what Jimmy had said and how I wanted to have him over for dinner. She looked at me curiously and asked why I still wanted to be friends with Jimmy after what had happened the previous night.

"Do you want me to stop being friends with him because he called his friend Ray to tell him that he was having sex with you?" I asked.

"He lied to me. He made a promise that he wasn't going to let you find out that we fucked and then he called his buddy to tell him all about it."

"Okay, well, look at it this way. You also told him you weren't going to let me find out about it. You actually told me about it ahead of time and asked me to stay up all night so I could hear the two of you fucking. You both made a promise to each other and you both broke that promise."

"Seriously?"

"You used my friend and lied to him about why you wanted to fuck him. You told him it would be a secret between just the two of you and that I would never find out, when all along you had every intention of me not only finding out, but witnessing it. All he did was call one guy and tell him about his good fortune. Yeah, it wasn't really cool, but under the circumstances you can't really crucify him for it."

"Jimmy betrayed me, and he betrayed you when he agreed to fuck me, and you want to have him over for dinner?"

"He's my best friend."

"You don't think there's anything wrong with your best friend fucking your girlfriend behind your back?"

"I think you went out with every intention of fucking him. You dressed real sexy, told him what you wanted, and how was he supposed to resist? You're the most beautiful, sexiest woman on the planet. How is any man supposed to resist you when you throw yourself at him?"

"I would have been pissed if he turned me down," Erica admitted.

"Call him," I told her. "Tell him you accept his apology and invite him over for dinner. Do it for me."

"You're sure this is what you want?" she asked.

"Yes, I do."

Erica got her cell phone and called Jimmy. I could hear it ring three times before he answered.

"Hi, Jimmy? This is Erica. Hi, how are you doing? Great, look, Keith told me you asked him to apologize to me for what happened last night... no, no, the sex was great, you know what I mean... yeah, I think I overreacted just a little. We'd both really like it if you came over for dinner sometime... well, you know, Keith goes to bed early whenever it is a work night... oh, really? Hold on, let me go in the other room and ask Keith if that's okay with him..."

Erica put her hand over the phone and asked me, "He says he was on his way to get pizza with his buddy Ray and they were wondering if we wanted them to pick up an extra pie and come over here with it."

"I haven't had pizza in a long time," I told her. "It has been ages. That sounds great!"

Erica stopped covering the phone with her hand and told Jimmy, "Yeah, he says that's cool with him... what do I want on it? I really like sausage... yes, I know you know that... do I like extra sausage? Most definitely, make it double sausage... what does Keith want? He eats whatever I tell him to... okay, we'll see you in a while, bye."

Erica was dressed in her work clothes and told me she needed to take a shower. I busied myself straightening up the living room so it would look nice when Jimmy and Ray arrived.

Erica emerged from the bathroom wearing only a towel. She came down the hallway and smiled at me. "Thanks," she said. "I feel better after working things out with Jimmy."

"Good, I'm glad," I told her before she went into her bedroom to get dressed.

I decided I would change my clothes as well. I went into my bedroom and found a nice pair of slacks and a white dress shirt. I had a bow tie I was aching to wear but hadn't found the right occasion. This probably wasn't the right occasion either, but since I probably was never going to find the right occasion, this one would have to do.

I went back out to the living room. Erica was still getting dressed, so I set up plates and napkins on the coffee table for the pizza. I figured since it was pizza we could eat in the living room instead of the dining room or kitchen. It would be a bit wild and crazy, but I figured it would help everyone relax and have fun together.

Erica emerged from her bedroom wearing very short cut-offs, daisy dukes she called them, but I was unable to grasp the reference as I had grown up without a television. She was also wearing a white t-shirt, which would have been very nondescript except that she wasn't wearing a bra and the t-shirt was sheer enough that her nipples were clearly visible. She was also wearing flip flops, showing off her beautiful feet and her now brilliant red toenail polish.

I had gotten her an ankle bracelet as a present. It was a very cheap one that I'd gotten at the dollar store, but when she saw how much I wanted to see her wear it she rushed out to a jewelry store and bought herself a more appropriate one. She was wearing it now and I loved the way it looked on her, accenting her ankles and the dividing line between the parts of her I was allowed to have and the parts of her that I wasn't.

"I just threw something on," Erica told me. "I wasn't going to get dressed up for pizza. I hope you don't mind."

"You look absolutely gorgeous," I told her.

"You'd think that if I were wearing a burlap bag and galoshes."

"Yes. Yes, I would, but I very much prefer this look to that one."

The doorbell rang and Erica kissed me on the cheek, causing me to blush. She went to the door and opened it.

"Hey, pizza delivery, what do you know," she laughed. "Come on in."

Jimmy and Ray walked in with three pizzas and a couple of 2-liter bottles of Coke. There was the usual banter with jokey remarks and bullshit like "Did you find the place okay?" It was the sort of scene that played out millions of times across the planet every day. Friends come by, everyone acts like it is a big deal, they talk about how they survived the drive to the house, or the airplane fight, and how there was traffic at one point or another. It is the kind of crap that doesn't bear repeating.

"Erica, this is my friend Ray," Jimmy said as Ray reached out and gently shook her hand.

"Great to meet you, Ray," Erica said. "Let's get these pizzas inside. Keith set up plates and everything in the living room. I hope that is cool with you guys."

"Yeah, that's great. It isn't like we're having Peking duck or anything. It's just pizza."

Jimmy and Ray put the boxes down on the coffee table. I had considered making placards and assigning seats, but I wanted to keep it informal so I just spread out each of four plates, with accompanying napkins and hoped for the best.

"Sweetie, you forgot the glasses for the soda," Erica said to me. "And be a good boy and put some ice in them, will you?"

Her remark, especially the "good boy" part, and how quickly I jumped to do as she asked, made Ray chuckle in a way that was clearly meant to be laughing at me rather than with me. Given our history and the way he treated me at work, I had expected such behavior from him and kept my cool. It was better not to let him upset me. It would ruin the ambience of the pizza dinner.

When I got back from the kitchen with four glasses on a tray, each filled with ice, Ray had sat down in the recliner Erica had recently bought and Jimmy was sitting next to her on the couch, running his hand up and down her beautiful thigh.

Doctor Love's procedure, whatever it consisted of, had me constantly hard, but seeing the way Jimmy just put his hands on my girl's leg and helped himself to it, not caring that I was there, and probably showing off for Ray, got my cock so hard I felt like I was going to burst through my pants.

I put the glasses down on the table, placing one in front of Erica and each of our guests. Then I opened one of the two-liter bottles of soda and began pouring it into each glass. There was a lot of fizz, and Ray's glass seemed to fill with nothing but fizz as I poured the soda, so I stepped back and stared at it with an inquisitive expression.

"You need to tilt the fucking glass when you pour soda in it," Ray barked at me. "Here, give me that shit."

I handed Ray the two-liter bottle and let him fill the glasses, pleased that I had tricked him into doing a chore and knowing he had no idea how I had just manipulated him.

"I like your bowtie," Jimmy said after I took a slice of pizza and sat down on the easy chair at the other end of the couch from where my nemesis Ray was sitting.

"Thanks, I never get a chance to wear it, so I figured I would roll it out tonight."

"You look like a professor of medieval literature or something," Jimmy told me.

"Gee, thanks," I told him.

"Which one is the double sausage," Erica asked after seeing I had taken a slice of the extra cheese.

"Heh, heh," muttered Ray before finishing pouring Erica's soda and putting it in front of her. "The one on the bottom, I think."

Jimmy's hand had slid up Erica's thigh and was under her extremely short cut-offs. I could see him reach under her panties with his fingers.

He was acting completely casual, telling a story about a pizza place near his grandmother's house that made really terrible pizza. His grandmother apparently knew he liked pizza and it was the only pizza place near her, so whenever he visited she would take him there to get pizza and he would have to choke back his displeasure in order to avoid letting his grandmother know how disgusting the pizza was.

As he went on with the inane story about his grandmother and the nasty pizza place, I could see his fingers moving up and down under Erica's panties. She was smiling and acting like she was very amused by the story, but I knew she was smiling because she was enjoying what Jimmy was doing with his fingers.

The extra cheese slid off my slice of pizza as I lifted it towards my mouth, sliding right down onto the front of my shirt and making a really big mess.

"Oh damn," I said as I looked down at the cheese and sauce on my shirt.

"You need to fold the fucking slice before you try to eat it, dumbass," Ray said. "This is New York style pizza, not little baby slices."

I could hear Erica making little sounds as I tried to lift what was a solid mass of cheese with sauce that was sliding down my shirt. I pretended to be fixated on getting the cheese off me in one piece, but I could not help seeing, out of the corner of my eye, Erica's head tilted back on the couch as Jimmy continued to move his fingers under her shorts and panties.

Erica began moaning so quietly that if I had really been paying complete attention to the cheese and sauce on my white dress shirt I would never have heard it.

"Oooooooh... mmmmm..." she moaned in barely a whisper with her head tilted back and her back just slightly arched forward.

"You better go change that shirt before you get that shit everywhere," Ray snapped at me as his attention went back and forth between my little mishap and what was going on over on the couch.

I pulled the solid mass of cheese off me and managed to land it successful on a plate. Then I stood up and looked at the sauce all over my shirt and told Ray, "I think you're right."

"Put some Spray 'n Wash on that shit," he told me. "If you don't do something right away, that shit will stain like a motherfucker."

"I think we have Shout or something like that," I said, not intending to give any kind of product endorsement. "I heard in the commercial that you can use that on a stain to 'shout it out,' although I'm not sure what that means."

"Yeah, you can use that," Ray told me. "I've used that shit before on a coffee stain. It got it right out. I figured that shirt was a goner. The trick is to spray it with that shit and get it in the wash right away."

"Yeah, I'm going to do that right now, thanks," I told him.

"Good luck with that, I always hate ruining a good shirt," Jimmy said as he continued fingering my girlfriend.

"Thanks," I told Jimmy just as Erica let out a very audible moan. Her voice was so delicate and sweet, especially when she was feeling pleasure.

Our apartment's little laundry room was at the end of the hall next to the bathroom. I opened the door and looked for the spray bottle of Shout I had bought on one of my trips to do the weekly grocery shopping. I managed to find it and pulled off my stained shirt and got to work on spraying half the bottle of Shout on my mishap.

Then I realized I was shirtless. While I may not have ever been fat like Erica had been as a child, I was definitely a very pasty adult. I needed to find something to put on to cover my upper body, as I didn't want Jimmy or Ray, especially Ray, to see how I completely lacked anything resembling muscles anywhere on my body.

I could hear Erica's moans getting louder and more intense in the other room. I smiled, glad she was having a good time, and continued shouting out my stain while looking for a clean shirt to wear in the laundry room. All I saw was Erica's very short pink terrycloth bathrobe hanging up at the far end of the room and decided that would be enough to cover my pale and scrawny torso.

I put my shirt in the washer and set the temperature to "Hot." Then I put on Erica's little bathrobe to cover my upper body and slinked quietly down the hallway. Erica's moans sounded muffled now, but they were still coming very regularly.

When I got down the hall far enough to be able to see what was going on in the living room, I could see the scene had quickly escalated. Erica's daisy dukes and panties were off and Ray was sitting on the couch with Erica sandwiched between him and Jimmy.

Jimmy was continuing to massage Erica between her legs with his fingers. They were kissing very passionately. Ray had his hand on Erica's thigh and had skillfully managed to open her legs so Jimmy could have better access to her.

Erica broke away from kissing Jimmy and tilted her head back so she could kiss Ray on the lips.

"Why don't you go get Keith and bring him back to the party?" she asked him. "He's probably too scared to come back on his own."

"You want him to join in?" Ray asked her, looking irritated.

"No, baby, I want to force him to watch."