Modern Day Cavegirls - Dirty Love

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This started as a chapter to take care of some loose ends - which generated a few more by the time that it was done. Ah well.

Max gets a little more comfortable around other people and strangers every day. She just doesn't expect to get as close as she does to one of them.

I reveal a little more about someone from a past chapter, a different side that Bobbi was sadly expecting but didn't think that it was her business to interfere over.

I also introduce a couple of new characters in this, one who ought to just bite the bullet and get himself a new sound system for his car, and one who shares an odd connection with Su-jin.

And then ... there's Susan. Sweet, lovely ash blonde Susan.

Ok, don't get confused by the appearance of the two guys, it's just that ... how the heck to explain this?

Let's just say that they kind of figure in with Su-jin's uh, evolutionary/anthropological theories.

Sadly, there are some tears in this, so fasten your seatbelts.

No, uh, tighter.

Sorry for the bumps in the road.

And again, this is a completely fictional piece. The people in it exist only in my little head hopefully, and no resemblance to anyone living, dead, or even slightly ill with sniffles on any part of the globe at all is intended.

0_o

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Jodi looked up in surprise as the door opened and Su-jin walked in. It was the middle of the morning.

"You take my phone again, "Su-jin said, "I said you shouldn't do it. You stealing from Bobbi."

"Fuck off," Jodi snarled, "Bobbi's loaded. She can afford it."

Su-jin shook her head and pointed through one wall, "She is not loaded. She live in smaller house than we do. She is trying to grow her business. Many people depend on her success. I depend on her success."

"I don't give a rat's ass," Jodi said.

"What the matter with you?" Su-jin asked, "You not the same anymore since you calling your mother. You go to work – sometimes, less and less. You losing customers since you never show up.

I go to work too – every day.

I come home, get Tyler, play with him and feed him. I do his washing. I do YOUR washing. I make dinner for you.

You come home, yell at me when I say hi. What I do wrong THIS time, huh? Bother you while you busy using MY phone?"

Bobbi walked in and grabbed the phone in Jodi's hand.

"HEY! I'm on the freakin' PHONE here alright??" Jodi yelled, "Let go!"

"It's not your phone," Bobbi said, "It's mine and I pay for it."

Bobbi twisted her hand and Jodi gave up with a cry. "I'll call the cops."

"Ok," Bobbi nodded, "you'll just have to use somebody else's phone to do it with, that's all.

Actually, how about I call them for you? Rose is missing a lot of her things from just about the time that you lived on their kindness. You think I let you live here out of MY kind heart?

My father and Rose asked me to so they could lock you out of the house.

I got Su-jin the phone for business purposes. You seem to think that everybody just owes you something for nothing."

She leaned down a little, "You cost me FORTY-SIX HOURS in straight long-distance charges this past month. All calls were placed to one number in Beaumont, Texas, registered to a person with your last name. And all of them were billed in daylight premium-charge time during weekdays.

Oh, you WERE going to pay me back, weren't you? I can total up the charges for you, if you'd like. So when EXACTLY can I expect to get the funds back?

Hearing no reply, but seeing one in Jodi's eyes, she pressed the disconnect button and looked up, "This was your last chance. You're out on your ass now."

Su-jin stared in shock, "You steal from everybody!

Better find way to make next payment on your truck. I gave you my first two paychecks. I give you nothing now."

"This is all YOUR fault! My son talks fucking Korean because of you!" Jodi shouted as she jumped up and stomped toward Su-jin, "I'll tear your head off, you slant-eyed bitch!"

She looked up from the floor a moment later, wondering how she'd gotten there. Her ass hurt and her arm hurt more. Su-jin's face had changed subtly and her voice was low and thick.

"Tyler knows only one word in Korean. You never talk to him anymore – like you never talk to me. You never play with him.

You want to hit me? You really are stupid. Come and do it. I let you hit me one time, Jodi.

You will only hit me once.

Then it MY turn. Is this what you want?"

Jodi didn't say a word.

"You spend Bobbi's money, talk on phone to shithead who raise you. You listen to HER now? You not worth my time.

Tell yourself you have sexy fantasies. You lie to me. You even lie to yourself.

Here," she said as she took the phone from Bobbi and slipped it into her pocket, "let me give you another one. This one take a lot of imagination – is TOTAL fantasy for you."

She gritted her teeth, "Pretend you have someone who loves you."

As she turned to go, she said, "I will come and go as I want until you are gone. I will not speak to you anymore. Do not try to stop me or steal any more from me. You already steal a dream from me. You are only poison."

She looked as though she'd changed her mind and stomped her foot while drawing her fist back.

Jodi almost cowered on the couch as Su-jin growled out a curt phrase in Korean and then she walked out.

Bobbi looked at Jodi and shook her head, "Where is is written, in your little world, that just because you can make Su-jin cry, she can't or won't kick your ass across the road? You just can't really be that stupid. I'll give you until 5PM on Saturday.

Be gone in that time or I'll call the Sherriff Monday morning to report Rose's missing jewellery. They'll go around to the pawn shops. What do you want to bet that after looking at a deputy who's holding YOUR picture that they might remember you?"

She pointed out through the open door, "You've just pissed on the best thing that ever happened to you in your miserable, worthless life, but you don't have the brains to see it.

You really needed help when you got here. My family reached out to you and gave it to you. We're all tired of having to wipe your spit from our hands, so get lost quick and see how long your own mother's goodwill lasts this time.

I don't even care where you go, just get off my family's land and don't come back."

Bobbi walked out and saw Su-jin standing outside looking down. She put her arm around her shoulders, "Come on, Su-jin. Sorry about the lesson, but there is such a thing as white trash and I can't wait to get it out of my house."

"I am sad for little Tyler," Su-jin said in a small voice with a hint of a sniffle, "I love him. I will worry for him."

"I know," Bobbi said with a heavy sigh, "But I doubt that there's anything that you can do but let him go. I'll miss him too. I think that he was the only reason that my folks didn't throw Jodi out on her ear after a month or two."

She smiled as she walked, "What was that you said in Korean? I have no idea, but it looked a little cool, the way that you almost spit it in her face."

Su-jin sighed, "It was me being very upset. Jodi say last thing to me that I ever expect."

She looked up at Bobbi, "If you really want to know Bobbi, please forgive me. I was angry and hurt. I say terrible thing that I never say to anyone before."

She looked down, "Was bad thing."

Bobbi walked a little more with Su-jin on the way to her truck, "Ok, I have to know now. Su-jin, I'd probably forgive you anything. What did you say?"

Su-jin looked up, "I say 'fuck off, stupid Round-eye.'"

Bobbi blinked and it fell into place, the same thing from the other side. As she opened her truck door, she was laughing.

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Patterson Dillon had a couple of things to do before heading in to work and he was also trying to get the tape player to stop fighting him for long enough to get on-side just a little.

For a change.

He was unhappy. But then, he'd pretty much always been unhappy, so that was just the status quo anyway.

He wasn't thinking about it but ...

Back when he'd been about ten, he used to spend his summers on his grandparent's farm. Nice scenery, peaceful, boring most of the time. He used to just poke around and ride his bike a lot. He'd been looking at the dilapidated farmhouse on the next farm over and wanted to check it out and explore.

He knew that he couldn't even ask to do that because it wouldn't be allowed. And anyway, the place was supposed to be haunted.

But he kept looking over there anyway.

He went over one morning when he knew that his grandparents would be busy. There was always a time like that about midmorning after breakfast. Nobody asked him where he was headed, so ...

He'd just walked over there. He didn't take his bike because that would have caused the question of where he was going. It was a bit of a walk, but it was a sunny day so off he went.

There wasn't much to see and the farmhouse was locked anyway. Patterson was just walking around the rear corner when he felt that someone was looking at him. He spun around and saw nobody. He felt a little funny and there was a touch of fear, but he told himself it was nothing.

But the feeling came back almost instantly. He forced himself not to look and continued on, the feeling still there and unchanged. But as he was passing the spot at the end of the path to the barn where he could see inside the open doorway, he snapped his head around to look that way and ...

He saw a boy, about his own age but a little larger, standing just inside and looking out at him. They looked at each other for a minute and then Patterson said hi.

There was no response for a few seconds. Then the boy came running out toward him.

Patterson took off running. He didn't know who and most especially why, but he was frightened, especially after the haunted part came back to him. Every time that he looked back the kid had closed the gap more. What made it all worse was that Patterson was running away from his grandparent's farm, headed in the wrong direction.

It all ended in a small secluded hollow full of overgrown grass. Patterson was on his face and crying with the other boy kneeling over him.

He kept crying when he felt a hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him over onto his back.

That part ended several long minutes later when the boy leaned down and whispered into Patterson's ear, "Can't talk.

I can't talk.

I don't want to hurt you. I couldn't answer when you said hi.

This is as loud as I can get."

Patterson eventually got over his fright to some degree and he turned over. The boy was smiling, trying to look friendly. Patterson looked and he saw red hair, green eyes and freckles.

Not what he'd have thought were ghostly features, exactly.

The boy kept his smile on as they looked at each other for a moment and then he began to lean in, which raised some alarm in Patterson all over again.

"P-please don't hurt me," he stammered. The boy shook his head and kept coming. Patterson never would have expected it but the boy only kissed him once.

Patterson asked why and the other boy just shrugged and whispered, "I like you."

It turned out that the boy, whose name was Pete, had been very ill two winters before and his throat had begun to close from the swelling. He's been rushed to the nearest hospital, but other than his heart almost exploding, the epinephrine that they'd given him hadn't opened the still-closing airway.

They were going to open the airway by piercing his throat so that he could at least breathe, but at the instant that the incision had been begun, Pete had gone into severe convulsions.

The airway was opened, but it had been too high, going in just under his larynx when he'd convulsed the first time at just the wrong instant and the scalpel cut a vocal chord.

The incision had been closed afterward and there was a scar.

But Pete could only whisper until he was finished growing and the final surgery could be done.

So the conversation was quiet. Patterson learned that Pete had kissed him thinking that it might show that he wanted to be friendly and that Patterson's fear was over nothing. And also because he'd just wanted to.

Pete lived on the next farm over and they became friends pretty much instantly after that. They'd both been lonely and wanted a friend and after that day, they spent every day together until Patterson had to go home at the end of the summer.

They spent every summer together and in the winter, they wrote to each other. It had been Pete's mother's idea and it helped their penmanship. Everyone who saw them knew that there was an almost Huckleberry Finn sort of friendship between them.

The summer that they'd turned eighteen was bittersweet for them, since Pete had an uncle who could help him find work on the oil platforms off the Alaskan coast. In the eight years that they'd known each other, Pete had grown into a tall and muscular young man and Patterson ... hadn't. Not so much, anyway.

They still spent every minute that they could together and by then, their relationship had matured as well. Patterson was devastated by the time that September rolled around.

He held it together outwardly, but he cried quietly in his room at home for months. He missed being in Pete's arms and he missed those kisses. He ached to feel Pete inside of him just once more, and to a small degree, he was never the same. They wrote to each other, but it faded out after a time and Patterson had no idea where in the world Pete was now.

After a year of moping and working part time in pool maintenance, his mother suggested talking to someone who'd really never been in Patterson's life at all. But he made the call.

He was gone the next day, driving for the horizon, headed west. He'd called his father and though he hadn't mentioned what had happened, he did say that he was done being a layabout and wanted to know about working with him at the aircraft engine facility.

One thing led to the next and after a bit of college, he was the representative for that company in a small branch office at the Angel Fire airport. It was a position that could go nowhere, but then, with a little work and if he obtained and kept the interest of the two operators at that field, it might very well lead to something better.

It didn't pay well to start and he'd had to live on the cheap for a time, so he rented the top floor of a used car dealership for a song and saved a ton in rent. It got hot in the summer and he never got the whole thing warm in the winter, but it was home.

That was how he'd gotten here. He was twenty-five now and he lived alone.

That was why he'd lived like the only monk in the abbey ever since.

If he asked himself out loud – in an almost-whisper in front of the mirror, Patterson would tell himself that he was gay and that he was fine with it. It felt right to him and he'd never even tried to get to know any girls. He'd always thought that to even get into a conversation with one back in school only showed him the disadvantage that he was under, not knowing what to do or say or ... think, other than feeling uncomfortable and wanting to get away.

So yeah, if he asked himself in an almost-whisper he'd admit it.

But it would have to be on a Sunday in the early morning when he knew that there was no one else in the freaking building but him. Under any other circumstances, he'd deny it.

It was quietly killing him to be lonely and one thing that he hated doing – and often did anyway – was to think that in his whole life, he'd had only one relationship with another living person.

And that person had gone away.

Patterson was unhappy.

------------------------

Max was motoring on her Harley, running a quick errand into town and back for Bobbi. It was only her second day, but she sooo loved her job.

She wasn't thinking of it, but she was changing. Jane would have praised the hell out of her if it came up between them. She couldn't think of a time in the last year and some that she hadn't ridden these streets in at least a little fear, day or night.

And there was something else. Max was feeling so much better now because of Jane and Bobbi. She felt like she belonged somewhere.

Finally.

Bobbi really was like what she imagined a much older sister to be like. She could look at you as an equal, but also, it seemed to be tinged with care. More often, she looked at you like you were her younger sibling and you could have her thoughts and guidance for nothing anytime that you asked.

And if you really needed it and there wasn't anyone else around, you could have her hugs and a few soft kisses just about any time.

Jane was someone that she needed a lot and she knew it. She always heard gentle encouragement from Jane and after a lifetime of being alone, it was so good to have that body against her even if they only slept.

There comes a time as childhood begins to fade into adolescence when everybody suddenly sticks their head up to look around. Boys look for girls that they like and girls look for boys. Kids who are still confused or think they might prefer their own gender do that too, but with less chance and hope of success. But they do it anyway.

Max had never done it, not in her life. The kids that she grew up with weren't exactly friendly to her and if they were or seemed to be, it often only meant there was some hook or trap waiting for her so that they could all laugh at her expense.

Apparently, she was a lesbian now. She liked that, since it was softer to her most times – even with Jane. She didn't really take it as lightly as that, however. It was a kind of love that she could understand and take nourishment from inside of herself.

She'd had experiences with men.

Mostly bad ones where she'd been used because she'd drawn attention to herself out of the kind of pain that hunger really is – after you've eaten only air for about a week.

She'd been gang-raped once and then thrown out with her clothes tossed out after her for asking for just a slice of bread on a cold night.

She knew that she'd been lucky. There were two of them who'd told the others that they ought to kill her so nothing would come back to them.

After some thought, it came to her that one of them was a little kinder. He was the one who reminded the others that it wasn't all that easy to make a body really disappear completely anymore.

She'd grabbed her clothes and run off into the night, leaking semen out of everywhere and wanting a place where she could get dressed again and being thankful as she ran across the snow that she still had an extra pair of workboots in the trunk of her piggy, since she was now barefoot. At least she wasn't hungry anymore that night.

All seven of them had come into her mouth at least once. Considering the circumstances ....

She'd have preferred the bread. Her jaw wouldn't have hurt so much.

Then she only had to wait and worry about being pregnant for the next three weeks until her period told her that she'd dodged the bullet.

The truth be told, she much preferred trying to buy something with the offer of a blowjob, since even if she was cheated and got nothing, she'd at least have a tablespoon of protein in her stomach.

Love?

What the fuck was that?

Though she now knew a little better.

It was what she got from Jane and Bobbi and it felt wonderful.

Bobbi knew, but Jane absolutely understood Max, allowing her to lie wrapped around her at night in any way. Jane had even told her why she understood – because she'd been a little thing without much love once and the need had never truly left her.

But with that said, it wasn't as though Max was completely blind to men or anything.

She was idling up to a red light, checking her mirrors and also looking around, since it was cheap insurance. Her Harley Servi-car was wider than a bike and so she wasn't in as much danger of being squeezed out of her lane. Still, it was worth looking around all the same.