Seduction and Snacks (11 page)

***

Fifteen minutes later I was walking up to Liz and Jim’s house and letting myself in. Liz flew around the corner into the foyer with a panicked look on her face.

"Elizabeth Marie Gates, you owe me big time. That was the single most horrific experience of my life," I yelled at her while I unbuttoned my coat.

"Claire, I have to tell you…"

"When I invited Jenny over for dinner, she decided to tell me she was going to pencil in some alone time with her vibrator before coming here,” I said in horror, interrupting her. “I'm not going to be able to look her in the eye at all tonight."

"Claire, there's something…"

"You could have warned me that these women would be asking me a thousand questions about lube and g-spots that I wouldn't have a fucking clue how to answer. ‘Oh, all you need to do is stand there and take everyone’s orders,’" I complained in my best Liz voice as I yanked my jacket off.

"You need to…"

"I lost my shit after the question on cock rings getting stuck in vaginas and told them all about my stellar sexual history. Jesus H. Christ, Liz, a woman who has had one point five lays and didn't even come close to getting off during them should NOT be selling sex toys!" I screeched, throwing my coat on the hook next to the door and turning back to face her.

"Claire, you might want to keep it…"

"I told them about Max, Liz. MAX! The thing we swore to never speak of again. I told them all about him getting two thrusts in before his dad walked in on us," I said as I started walking backwards out of the foyer. "I can tell by that horrified look on your face that you realize how awesome this evening was for me."

"Don't say any…"

"Why in the hell did you ever think I would be good at this?" I asked as I came to a stop in the living room. "By the end of the night, every woman in that room was giving my vagina sad looks. My vagina is going to get a complex Liz. It's already judging me because it's only gotten off with my hand. And I don't count dry humping your leg that one time we were really drunk after finals freshman year," I argued as Jim came up next to me with a bottle of Grape Three Olive vodka in his hand.

I glanced at him and then back to Liz.

"Why the hell are you staring at me like that?" I asked her. Her mouth was open and she kept looking behind me over my shoulder.

Oh fuck.

I looked at Jim and he gave me a reassuring smile and held the bottle of vodka out to me.

Oh fucking fuck.

"There's someone behind me, isn't there?" I whispered.

Liz just nodded her head. I swallowed thickly and blindly reached to my side to grab the bottle out of Jim’s hand. He already took the cap off for me so I brought it up to my lips and took and huge swig of it, my eyes watering as the burn of the alcohol slid down my throat and warmed my stomach. I slowly turned to face the music and die of humiliation. When I finally made it all the way around, the bottle of vodka slipped out of my grasp. Thank God for Jim’s quick reflexes. His hand shot out and grabbed the bottle before it crashed to the floor.

"So, who wants another drink?" Liz asked cheerily from behind me.

Orientation took a few hours. When we were done, Jim, Drew and I decided to stop for a drink before heading over to Jim’s house. We were sitting by the window at a tall table in a sports bar in the next town over. I really liked Jim. He was down-to-earth and friendly. He gave us a bunch of tips on places to go and things to do in this area. The conversation flowed easily and it felt like we had known this guy for years.

"I think I need to hear some more about Miss Cocoa Puffs," Jim said after he took a drink of his beer. I closed my eyes, wishing he forgot all about that comment Drew made back at the plant.

"I thought you'd never ask," Drew said with a smile as he leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.

"Oh, you are so not telling this story, asshole," I said.

"Carter, I am the best possible person TO tell this story. I have an outside perspective on the situation and can give a better recollection of the events that took place that night. Plus, I've had to deal with your whiny ass for the past five years and your constant need to stop in chick stores and smell girly lotions. Maybe Jim can talk some sense into that brain of yours."

I could feel my face turning red and it wasn't because it was stuffy in here. I could not believe Drew was saying this shit. I would really need to evaluate his best friend status when this night was over. His membership card to the Carter Ellis Friendship Club was getting revoked. And yes, I realized I sounded like a complete douche just by thinking that.

"So, it goes like this," Drew began, completely ignoring the pissed-off looks I was throwing in his direction. "Five years ago, we crashed a frat party at your alma matter."

"Wait, so neither one of you went to school there?" Jim interrupted excitedly.

Try to contain your excitement at my humiliation, dick.

"Nope," Drew said, popping the 'p'. "Heard about it from a friend of a friend…you know how it goes. Anywho, we get to this party and little Carter here sees this girl across the room right when we get there. I swear to fuck you could almost hear "Dream Weaver" start playing and see stars circling his head. He stares at her for like a half hour before I finally tell him to quit being a pussy and to go talk with her. She's got a hot friend so I'm all over that shit."

I rolled my eyes at his retelling of the story. As I recall, Drew made me take him to see a voodoo priestess he found in the yellow pages that week because he said the friend put a hex on his penis. For two weeks he slept with a two-pound package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts on his junk since he refused to sacrifice a live chicken.

"So, he starts talking to her. They're doing some stupid movie-quoting shit that bored the fuck out of me, and I turned my charms onto her friend to pass the time. We totally hit it off and left those two losers to their geekiness. This girl was smokin' hot and had an ass that wouldn't quit. We found the closest empty bedroom and fucked like rabbits all night."

Drew had a faraway look in his eyes like he was remembering every detail.

"That's funny, because you couldn't remember shit about her the next day except for the fact that she put a curse on your twigs and berries so they would shrivel up and fall off. All of a sudden you have perfect clarity? You woke up in the bathtub alone, dip shit," I said with a laugh.

"Hey, we're talking about you, not me. And I thought we agreed to never ever speak of
the curse
again. Her highness, Zelda Crimson-Grass stressed how important that was," he stated seriously.

"So, anyway, where was I?” Drew asked, after looking over each of his shoulders in case the great and powerful Zelda, who charged thirty-five dollars a minute and accepted Visa, Mastercard and traveler’s checks, was standing behind him holding a voodoo doll with pins stuck between its legs. “Carter wakes up the next morning freaking the fuck out because he thinks his dick is falling off."

Jim laughed and clunked his bottle of beer down on the table to wipe off the drops that dribbled down his chin. "Okay, why the hell would you think your dick was falling off?"

I huffed. "Because…"

"Because Carter here banged a virgin whose name he never got and had a bloody one-eyed snake," he said, interrupting me with a laugh.

I thought I heard Jim growl a little under his breath and I looked his way to see what his deal was, but he brought his beer back up to his mouth right then and wasn’t looking at me. I must have just imagined it. I turned to face Drew to find him still laughing.

"Okay, seriously, you are making this whole thing sound really awful. You need to work on your storytelling skills, idiot," I complained.

"There is nothing about what I've said that isn't true. You're just pissed off after all these years of searching you have never been able to smell her again."

No, that didn’t sound weird at all.

After getting a strange, almost angry vibe from Jim the last several minutes, he finally seemed to relax.

"Wow, so you actually looked for this girl and never found out who she was?" Jim asked.

Drew started to answer him, but I punched him in the arm.

"You shut your mouth. It's my turn," I said to him.

I sighed. I hated thinking about this part. For some reason it made my chest hurt.

"Yes, I looked for her. I would have given anything just to talk to her again and I don’t care how much of a pussy that makes me sound. I asked everyone on that fucking campus and no one could tell me anything. I even went to admissions and tried to bribe the secretary into letting me look through yearbooks," I explained.

"Ha ha, she called the cops on you, remember?" Drew laughed.

"Um, yeah I remember. She called the cops because
you
told her we needed to look at pictures of all the female student body, pun intended, and see which one gave me a hard-on. She thought I was a pervert."

"So, why did you want to find her so badly? I mean, everyone has one-night-stands at some point. Most guys would consider themselves lucky they didn't have to deal with the whole morning-after bullshit," Jim stated.

I should feel embarrassed about this shit, but in all honesty, I didn't. Even though we just met him, I felt like Jim was the type of guy I could confide in and he wouldn't judge me, as opposed to my ex-best friend who was miming the act of playing a violin to go along with my sad tune.

"There was something about her," I said with a shrug. "Something that drew me in and made me want to just be near her. We talked for hours while we played beer pong. She got my sense of humor and we had the same taste in music and movies. Everything I can remember about her just makes me want to find her and see if she really existed. And it had nothing to do with the sex. Although, I would like to apologize to her for ruining her first time since I was completely trashed. It's more than that though. No woman has ever been on my mind as much as her. And it drives me fucking crazy that I can't remember her face," I said irritably as I flicked my beer bottle cap across the table.

Understanding seemed to wash over Jim’s face and he nodded his head. The anger I swore I saw flash in and out of his features during this entire exchange suddenly vanished.

"Okay, now that you got all the touchy-feely shit out of the way, tell him about the creepy stalker shit you do," Drew said pointedly.

"Fuck you. It's not stalker shit."

"Right, because dragging my ass into every single fucking girly store and making me stand there while you smell everything that's made with chocolate, made near chocolate or made by something that shits chocolate isn't weird at all. And don't think I haven't forgotten about that last time a few months ago when the clerk asked us how long we'd been dating and you put your arm around me and said, "Well, sugar plum, this big, strong, sexy beast and I have been together for ages now," he said, mimicking the high-pitched voice I used at the time.

Jim threw his head back and laughed and even I had to snicker at the memory. When Drew turned to run out of the store I smacked him on the ass. It really was priceless.

"Alright, so after five years I can't get the smell of her out of my head. Big fucking deal. And it's not like I Google every store that sells lotion and just go down the list every weekend. If I happen to be in a store that sells lotions or soap, I go and smell a few to see if by some off chance I’ll find the one that smells like she did. I just can't pass up the chance to find that smell again. It drives me God damn crazy."

Both men sat there staring at me. Fuck, I really was growing a vagina.

"You, my friend need to bang this chick out of your system once and for all. We really need to find you a nice girl that won't fuck you over and will make you forget about the Count Chocula Cooter," Drew said with a sad shake of his head.

"I may have just the girl for you," Jim said with a smirk.

"Perfect!” Drew proclaimed with a hard smack to my back. “You see, little buddy? There just might be hope for you yet. Hey, maybe we can even convince her to slather some Three Musketeers on her vagina. We'll just tell her you have a Willy Wonka fetish," Drew said with a laugh, finishing off his beer.

I kicked the leg of his chair while he leaned back on two of them. While I watched him windmill his arms to get his balance and not fall backwards onto the hardwood floor, I thought I heard Jim whisper something that sounded like, "That won't be necessary."

***

When we got to Jim’ house, his fiancé came out of the kitchen to greet us and Drew and I both stopped dead in our tracks.

"Hey, aren't you the girl from the bar last night?" I asked. It was the woman with blonde hair that hadn’t been afraid to call Drew out on his lame attempt at trying to get in her pants. "Liz, right?"

As soon as she saw us her eyes got wide and her mouth flew open. But she gained her composure quickly and smiled.