The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

From Plan B to Plan C

Previously: "Poker? I Hardly Know Her!" 

Sydney doesn't sound enthusiastic about becoming Brooke Perry. "I'll keep looking," you tell her.

"Don't fuck around, Will," she says, and there's a note of warning in her voice.

* * * * *

You stay out on the patio with her, describing the other women you have eyeballed as choices: Brittney, Angela, Samantha. But her enthusiasm for them matches her enthusiasm for Brooke. Which is to say, they sound acceptable, but she's more interested in just not being Becky anymore.

Talk between you grows awkward, so that you're on the point of returning inside, when the back door opens and Paul looks out. "Hey," he calls. "I was thinking of heading out."

"I'll go with you," you say, grateful for the excuse to leave. Becky follows you in, and dawdles silently by the front door as you and Paul exchange friendly farewells with the other couples. Brooke makes a special point of grasping him by the front of his jacket, pulling him close, and giving him a wet smooch on the side of the head. "There," she declares. "Now I owe you something for letting me do that! Come around and collect sometime!"

She doesn't look at you, but you can't help glancing at Joel, who only smiles serenely at this brazen proposition of another man by his own date.

Outside, before you part for your vehicles (for you drove out separately), Paul asks, "You're not upset at the way Brooke was flirting with me, are you, boss?"

"No. I trust you." I control you, you silently add. And yet your heart chills when he asks, "Do you want me to ignore her, or follow up with her?"

"What do you mean?"

He shrugs.

"I don't know what we mean to each other, boss. You and me, I mean. Except as boss and— Well, whatever I am." His expression is gnomic. "But I could do something with her, if you that would be useful to you—" His eye flicks toward Becky. "And Beckster."

Is he really horny for Brooke? you wonder. Can things like him be horny? Or is he honestly just trying to be a good lackey?

"I'll let you know when I want something like that from you," you tell him. "Goodnight. Goodnight, Becky," you say to the girl loitering behind his elbow. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"I don't have you for class tomorrow, Ms. Johns," she replies.

"I'll be seeing you about something else, Sydney," you assure her.

* * * * *

Except you don't. You chicken out.

Oh, it's not all your fault. It is a week day, after all, and that complicates things.

Your first thought was to get Angela out to your house: she is the most unique of the women you have been toying with. But as lunchtime comes and goes, you get no reply to your text. Caution then recommends you have a backup prepared, so you text Brittney. But she says that she'll be busy all day and evening, and can she see you this weekend? You agree, even though you know that's too far off for Sydney.

Panic is beginning to set in as your last class of the day starts, so you text both Samantha and Brooke. Brooke you tempt with the prospect that Paul will be at your place this evening, and you tell Samantha that Paul would like to meet with her and Corey both about their idea of bringing him in as a partner in their personal-trainer business. Like Brittney, Samantha can't meet before the weekend; and Brooke has sent no reply before the final bell has rung.

This leaves you empty-handed, as there is no one else you have considered (at least well-considered) whom you could snatch at a pinch.

So you text Sydney to say that you can't meet her after school because something came up, but that you'll talk to her tonight. By that point, either Brooke will have come through (you hope) or you will have composed a properly groveling apology for making her wait until Saturday for a new mask.

* * * * *

So given all that, Sydney's reply—which you don't check until you're parked at your apartment—is like a brick to the face:

Thats ok those people seemed kind of old anyway.

You bang your forehead on the steering wheel. Son of a bitch!

You were knocking yourself out for the last few days to get one of Gianna's friends for Sydney, and now she tells you they were all "too old" for her? Are you now going to have to start all over?

You are fuming as you stalk down the walkway toward your apartment. Let Sydney pick a face for herself, you growl. Someone in her acting class, so I have an excuse to pull them aside after school. But let Sydney do all the work and worrying, and make the compromises, because she's the one with the hot itch to get into a new body and situation! I shouldn't have made it my problem to begin with!

So preoccupied, you are charging up to your apartment when the door opposite opens, and Jackson comes out. You're not so preoccupied, though, that you don't stop to ogle him.

He's dressed in fresh, tight blue jeans and a fire-engine red polo; his brown hair gleams damply. His eyes light up when he sees you, and he grins and jerks his chin at you in greeting. "Wassup?" he says.

Then his expression falters a little. "Something wrong?" he asks.

"What?"

He jerks his chin at you again. "Something the matter? You look like you sat on a bumblebee, and the bumblebee had something to say back."

His words are like a cold slap to the face, and you realize you must have been stomping along with a scowl. You force yourself to relax.

"No," you start to say, "I just—"

Then, suddenly, something like a mathematical equation unfurls in your head.

Young plus handsome plus probably has access to lots of girls plus lives next door to Gianna minus need to please Sydney by offering him to her, all multiplied by immediate availability, equals:

Switch places with Jackson.

* * * * *

You loose a short, exasperated sigh.

"It's my wifi," you tell him. "You know anything about it?"

His expression falters. "Your wifi? Or in general?"

"In general. I can't— I've tried everything and I can't get a signal! Could you, if you've got a minute—"

"Yeah, I got a minute." He checks his watch with a thoughtful frown. "Yeah, I got—"

But you're already putting the key in your lock. "Great! Thanks! I can't tell you how much it's been aggravating me!" You push the door open, step into the foyer, drop your bag by the kitchen bar, then turn back to him expectantly.

Jackson is still loitering on the walkway, a look of slight confusion on his face. But then he shakes himself and trudges in after you. He pushes the door closed behind him—

And you are nearly overwhelmed by an ardent lust. The presence of this young man in your apartment—this attractive stranger—this invasion, this irruption into your space of a male body—ionizes the air. It's all you can do to keep from throwing your arms around him and covering his mouth with kisses.

"It's in the—" you start to say, gesturing at the bedroom, then think better of it. "Maybe I should unplug it and bring it out."

"Where's your laptop?" he calls after you. "Or your computer?"

"Laptop's in my bag!" you call back. "Can you get it out that while I get the router? Just set it on the coffee table and open it up!"

The wifi is balanced on a bookshelf in the bedroom, but you ignore it and from the closet haul out the bag of masks and gear that you took when you left Paul's the other night. From it you extract one of those metal strips. You carefully fit it into the palm of your hand.

Jackson is seated on the sofa, hunching forward to squint at the laptop he's set up on the coffee table. Even just sitting there, he conveys an air of mastery, so that when he looks up at you, and you nearly squirt. "You're gonna need to put in your password," he says as you tell yourself to keep it under control.

"Lemme come around," you say, and sweep along behind him and the sofa. As you pass, you reach around and—almost as a caress—press the metal strip to his forehead. He relaxes immediately, and you cradle his head as you help him to gently topple onto his side on the sofa.

You move around to look down at him. He is tan, fit, handsome, well-dressed, and young. Eminently desirable.

And on an impulse that hits before you can stop it, you lean over to palm his crotch, feeling for his package. But the denim is too heavy and wadded up to tell anything.

He is wearing—you notice for the first time—a choker of polished wooden beads around his throat, and on another impulse you unclasp it. The beads rattle in your grasp as, in something like a daydream, you stride into the bedroom, tear off your shirt and your bra, and put the choker around your own neck. Then you regard yourself—tits bobbing nakedly—in the mirrored closet doors.

You are Gianna Johns, and you are an attractive thirty-something woman with blonde hair, a pretty face, a toothy smile, and good knockers. The choker looks okay on you. But it will look better when—

You close your eyes and visualize a different you: a strapping, naked torso with defined abs and pecs, sun-darkened skin, a friendly smile bobbing on a handsome face under chocolate-covered hair. And the choker dangling from whence you'd taken it. With eyes closed you touch the choker, running your fingers over it.

Yeah, this'll work!

You're even more sure it will work when there's a chime from the living room, and you return to find a newly delivered text on Jackson's phone. It's from someone named Amber.

Running late don't pick me up till 530 reservs good thru 7.

So, was Jackson heading out on a date? On a Wednesday? Intriguing.

You might yet be able to score Sydney a body before midnight!

That's all for now!

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"