Chapter #35The Reward for Jobs Done Well by: Seuzz   You've got nothing to say to Cindy—when have you, or Patterson, ever had anything to say to her?—so you walk right past her on your way into the building.
Brenda has got her face buried in her cell phone when you walk into English. But something about her posture suggests that she's purposefully trying to not notice you when you come in.
The fuck has she got to be mad at me about? you wonder with some slight irritation. Not until you have screwed your ass comfortably into your desk and settled back to regard her tits—and notice that she's got herself turned so you can barely make them out—do you remember that incident yesterday in last period, with Marjorie and Whatsisfuck. Probably someone told her about that.
Well, fuck.
You had a vague feeling yesterday that you'd made a bad move there. But Marjorie pissed you off. And if Brenda's not going to talk to you anymore, well fuck her. There's plenty of other girls in the school with humongous breasts.
You crane your head and look around the room, trying to spot some.
Well, you'll think about it later. At the very least you can get some satisfaction by hauling Whatsisfuck out to the portables after school. After all, he didn't show up after practice yesterday like you told him to.
* * * * *
You drag ass through your morning classes, then hang out in front of the cafeteria waiting for Javits. (You'd told Gordon that you'd spend lunch hour with him up in the loft, giving him the orientation and steeling his spine against a relapse into Cindy's clutches.) His face is tight when he appears in the noontime rush, and he doesn't look happy to see you.
Not that it matters how he feels about you.
You clap an arm around his shoulder and steer him toward the doors leading outside, toward the gym.
"How you holding up?" you ask him.
He mutters something in reply.
"Break-ups are a bitch," you tell him. "Thing to do is not dwell on them. They're in the past, and the past is dead." You squeeze his shoulder. "It's a new day, fresh horizons, whole world's out there for the taking." Once you're out on the breezeway, you add, "You need to cut out everything that connects you to the past. The girls you were hanging out with when you were hanging out with Cindy, for a start. They're not your friends, they're her friends. It'll be easy to get you some new ones, if new girlfriends are what you want."
Seth says nothing.
You let him precede you up the stairs, and when you reach the top you lean against the wall and smirk at him when he looks quizzically at you. "You open the door," you tell him. "You got a key."
The truculent expression he's been wearing softens a little, and in something like a daze he pulls his key ring out, fishes out the key, and unbolts the door. Steering him again by the shoulder, you guide him through the doorway, and push the door closed behind you. You gesture at the loft with an expansive wave of the arm, as though showing him his new empire.
The room is long and fairly narrow, with a ceiling that slopes down from one side to meet the cramped windows in the other that look out over the student parking lot. Wooden rafters, support beams, and support pillars crowd the space, and the slats that make up the wooden floor are buckled and warped. One whole back half of the loft is crowded with elbow-high wooden crates, and discarded gymnastics and weight-lifting equipment. The only "living space" is in the center of the room, where ratty gym mats are spread over the floor near the dorm fridge. The air is dank and it hangs with a sticky kind of heat—warm air welling up from the spaces below—that prickles the skin with sweat without warming it. A smell of sweat and old clothes hangs in it.
"Sit down, and I'll get you a beer," you tell him.
After getting beers for you both, you sprawl on your side and support yourself with an elbow.
"Okay, I told you the rules to this place already, but I'll tell you again, 'cos you've had some other things to think about since then. Rule one is that after school hours you check with me or Gordon before coming up here, in case we're busy. Of course, we'll also check with you in case you're busy too. Though this isn't much of a rule, 'cos usually me and Gordon come up here for a little while after practice, just to unwind, and then if one of us wants to reserve the place, he can. You can come up with us, don't be a fucking pussy and go running home soon as you're out of the shower.
"Second rule is you always reserve the place when you want it, whether nights, weekends or the middle of school, so that no one comes busting in on you when you don't want them to. Otherwise, you can come out here any time you want, whatever reason, just to chill out. Basically, tell people when you want the place for yourself, and check with them if you got reason to think they might be up here."
Seth has been listening carefully to all this, and he nods.
"So that's all there is to it, man." You reach across to clap him on the knee. "Welcome home."
He looks a little abashed, maybe even a little scared, but he rallies.
"And what about the team?"
"What about—? Oh, Richards and them? Like I said, you're in special charge of them, getting them up to where they need. That means you ride them during practice, maybe even organize some extra practice outside. Jesus, they need it."
"They're not that bad."
You fix him with a hard look.
"The one thing you don't want is for me to come over and start riding those guys because it looks like you're not doing the job we gave you. Okay?"
He pales a little, and nods.
"Okay. Now, let's talk about tits."
* * * * *
You spend the balance of lunch talking about girls in your classes or girls that you've known, and their various attributes and how you'd like to tangle yourself up with them. You do most of the talking at first—and you start with Brenda and her gigantic bust, emphasizing how she is next on your list, and how Javits should come around some time so he can get a look at her—but he gradually warms up to talk about some of the girls he's ogled while still dating Cindy. You're not so tactless, though, as to suggest that he start going around with any of them. It's enough for now to get him to appreciate that the end of his relationship with Cindy is not the end of the world.
Still, you make a mental note to tell Chelsea that Seth is going to need some female company real soon, and that she should get Kendra to give him some.
But on the way out, you tell him one more thing to soften his opinion of you.
"It's gonna be great having you up here, man. It was a fucking nightmare before."
"What was the problem?" he asks.
"What wasn't the problem?" you snort. "We had Lynch up there all the time. Sniggering little cunt. But he's gone now, and you're in. Too bad we can't get rid of Chelsea the same way."
He stops in the middle of the staircase to look back at you, so that you almost fall over him.
"I hate that psychotic little bitch," you tell him as you gently propel him back into motion. "The way she fucks up Gordon. I had to do what I had to do, man," you tell him, "for Gordon's sake. And him and me, nothing's getting between us."
You stop Seth and spin him around to give him a hard look.
"Nothing's getting between me and Gordon. Not Chelsea, not you, not Cindy, not the team, not no one. Remember that."
Then you put your arm back around his shoulder and pull him toward the gym door.
"But you and me are bound by a ring of iron of our own, 'cos there's one thing we got and we'll never let go of, ever. And that's that we both hate Chelsea Cooper."
* * * * *
She comes looking for you in the loft, during fifth period, where you are taking your study hall. She lets herself in, closes the door, and looks you up and down with a come-hither look.
"My God," she groans, "you did it! I've been trying to screw over that cunt and her boyfriend for the past year, but you—! You actually did it!"
"Well, you just gotta know how to handle these things," you reply.
"What did you say to Seth?" she gasps with shining eyes.
You suck in a deep breath. It's nice to be appreciated and congratulated, but you'd actually rather be getting the school work done. "Well, I—" you start.
Then you remember that you recorded it on your phone. Why? Some premonition that when things didn't work, you could at least show Chelsea you'd done your best, and it still hadn't been enough.
So you pull your phone from your pocket, bring up the sound file, and toss it to her.
"Hit 'play'," you tell her. "You can hear the whole thing yourself."
With a look of wonder, she touches the screen, puts the phone up near her ear, and listens. The voices are gravelly and grumbly, and at a distance you can't make them out. She takes the phone off to the other side of the loft to crouch with it while you return to your work.
Fifteen minutes later she comes padding back over. Her face is heavy with a look that Patterson (the bastard) has seen often enough on the faces of other girls.
Unbridled lust.
She tosses you a little packet. "Put it on," she orders you. You twist it around in your fingers, and recognize it as a condom.
You snort.
"This is nice, uh, 'Chelsea'," you say. "Even if the boss put you up to it."
"I am the boss, Will," she growls. "Put. It. On!"  You have the following choice:  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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