Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (24 page)

“Don’t go.”

“Why, Estefan?  Doesn’t it weird you out that I researched you?  That I just came across like some hard-up bitch in heat, who’s gotta have hers?”  She said it like she was pulling a Band-Aid from her arm, doing so as quickly as possible, so it wouldn’t hurt as much.  Her eyes were hard and icy with self-loathing.

“What the hell are you talking about?”  It was all I could say as I walked toward her.  “So what, you wanted to find out about me, big deal.  I wasn’t like you were trying to steal my underwear or something, right?”

She rolled her eyes and grinned, her white teeth flashing before me.

“I can see this whole
thing
you put together this afternoon was important to you, and if this is true, then why leave?  Because some things came out wrong, the plan didn’t go perfectly?  I don’t even really know you yet.  But you won’t give me the chance to get to know you.  You don’t think true feelings, honestly expressed, don’t make me wonder about you, at least a little?  I don’t know about these ‘powers’, but I guarantee you, I’m not a dickhead.  And I won’t let you walk away, crying - no way.”

She reached out and touched my hand with just two or three fingers inside the cup-like structure forming my palm.  Her eyes seemed to well up and became honest and real.  We locked gazes.  “Leda said I was stupid for hav
ing feelings for you when you didn’t know I even existed.  She was dead set against me telling you how I felt.  She says I’m just gonna get hurt, that you’re gonna use my feelings against me, because she believes all guys are mean and heartless.  I know she’s gone off the deep end, but, some of what she said scares me, even though I don’t know for a fact that’s not how you’d act.  But, at the same time, I couldn’t just do anything either.  I might miss out on the chance…”

It took me a while to take it all in
.  I know I stared for a while, weighing what she had said, trying my damnedest to comprehend how someone could want me like that, from afar.  It was astounding.  I glanced around the huge building surrounding us, my sight flicking from one colorful door to another.  There seemed to be a hundreds of them.  I looked down into the Quad proper, watched a Custodian sweep a pile of leaves across the concrete.  Could this really be happening?  Was my luck changing that dramatically?  Two girls had told me they liked me on the same day, in the same fucking hour, wow!  It was hard to comprehend, especially after weeks of absolutely nothing happening on that particular front.

She had turned to look out at the vista as well, though, through all of this, she was still touching me.  Even in profile, she looked sculpted, everything in place, as it should be – she was immaculate.

I blinked a few times, clearing my mind.  “Well, I would venture to guess that Leda is not a good person to take advice from when it concerns matters of the heart.”

She nodded meekly and looked adorable.  She faced me squarely once again.  “What does Sandy say?”

Her face brightened in an instant.  “She told me to go for it.”

“That’s what I thought.” 
Because Sandy would’ve done the same thing,
I didn’t say that part out loud.  “Well, I think her advice is sound, so what do you say?  You wanna forget all of this bullshit and just hang out and see how things go?”

Her eyes popped out of her head.  It must’ve been the last thing she expected me to say.  Her hand finally left mine and came to her mouth of its own volition.

“Well?” I asked her, reaching for the hand at her mouth and took it within my own.

Her eyes followed them as they came to rest in between
us.  She didn’t move or pull her hand away.

“Look, take some time, we don’t have to rush into anything.  I’m willing to get to know you.  Despite knowing you saying you liked me, I’ll make sure I don’t use it to my advantage.  I’ll try to keep it preserved by not doing anything stupid.  But,” I added, louder than before.  Her eyes met mine, a cute furl in her brow, “I will tell you, though, I like you too.  You are one heck of interesting person and… bonus for me… you’re gorgeous, girl.”

“Oh… my god…,” was all she could muster as her eyes darted from her hand to my face and back and forth a few more times.

“Is that ok with you?”  I tried again.

She chuckled nervously, almost distantly as if her mind was a million miles from her body.  She glanced back down at our hands and slowly drew hers out of mine, another shaky laugh emerging passed her lips.  She seemed to catch up with current events, taking a deep breath.  She steeled herself and then she smiled that wondrous smile of hers.  It spread across her face.  Her eyes lit up as she peered into mine once more.

I remembered thinking I could probably stand there and stare back for the rest of the day when she uttered…

“They were right.”

“What?” I asked frowning again and was about to ask something when she placed her hand on my
shoulder.  Her blue-gray orbs focused on me.  Whatever it was I was going to say, I suddenly couldn’t recall.  To this day, I can recall those eyes, perfectly somewhere between blue and gray; I can see each sprinkle of black interspersed with those lighter, brighter hues.  They seemed to shift and dance in the waning light.  I was so engrossed in them, I didn’t realize she was leaning closer and about to speak.

“Can I ask you a question, Mr. Track Star?”

“Sure,” I mumbled.

“Would it be too soon to ask for a kiss?”

I never answered, because our lips met and all thought was banished.  Her hand gripped the skin on the back of my head as my hand came to rest upon one of her hips, the other upon her left shoulder blade as our bodies melded together.  True to the nature of our relationship, there was no light kissing, no gentle caresses.  We attacked each other with gusto and didn’t break a part for nearly half an hour.  In fact, I don’t think we would’ve stopped if we hadn’t been interrupted.  Off in the distance, on the other side of the Quad, Sandy was whooping and hollering at us, cheering us on.  We pulled apart, sweaty and out of breath.  Ramona waved at her, laughed up at the concrete decking of the floor above us, and then gave me a ferocious hug.

That was how things began between me and her.

About two months into our relationship, she confessed that she’d been the one who had grabbed my man-junk in the hallway, on the day, I showed up late to my photography class with a donkey-sized boner in my pants.

{ ¹Vera Wang Princess: Perfume; touted as an “Oriental-floral fragrance, a modern and playful magical elixir” for young women.  It was launched in 2006.

~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Summer – 2018)

The Rouse

[He flicks back to the original train of recollection, a smile growing on his face.]

Thus, I followed Ramona into my parent’s house on the second day Katie was with us, watching her ass cheeks clench and unclench as she made her way to the TV room.  Despite the lovely view, a million things raced through my mind.  I was struggling to figure out how I was going to get out the mess I found myself mired.  It all had happened so fast.

First and foremost, was to let Katie know, through here weird ass intuition, Ramona had already discerned there was more going on between us than merely cousinly affection.  My girlfriend knew it was more than mere moral support.

As
with everything else, I guess I would just have to wait and see what the outcome of this little “talk” Ramona turned out to be.  Hopefully, she wouldn’t go off the deep end as Tirza had, hopefully…  She had talked about respect and promised there wouldn’t be a major blow-up.  At least, I had her at her word she’d refrain from taking us down that possible outcome.  It would just be a matter of whether or not she would stick to that statement when the truth started flying around.  I wasn’t sure if she’d control herself once the idea of Katie and I fucking seeped into her brain as a real possibility.  Ramona could be extremely possessive at times.

She and I walked into the TV room to find Katie and Jacob standing in front of the coffee table.  They were talking and already Katie had her hand on her hip and a
tired expression on her face, which told me Jacob was up to his old tricks.  The dickhead had totally ignored what I had told him earlier that morning.

Ramona just walked around the other side of the table and sat down on the couch, snatching up the remote
.  She changed the channel from the all-news station to another, showing re-runs of a sleazy east coast reality show that had been on air for nearly ten years.  The members of its’ cast were so worn down from all of their heavy partying, they looked more like Keith Richards or Alice cooper, though none of them could’ve been older than thirty-two years of age - the females included.  I grimaced at the flat screen.  True, I was a fan of reality TV, but jeez, that show was the absolute worst.  But knowing Ramona had all the cards this day, I sat down on the couch, my eyes automatically searching out Katie’s.  I saw her roll her own at something Jake had said a few seconds earlier.  I hadn’t heard what has passed between them.

He was wearing a typical Jacob ensemble today, consisting of beat up jeans with army fatigue print on them.  Whether they were authentic or not, I couldn’t tell, because they were so faded and torn.  He had a sleeveless
Addicts
t-shirt on, complete with holes and rents.  It was as faded as his jeans.  On his arms he wore the usual wide, leather wristbands studded with spikes three-quarters of an inch long.  On his feet, he wore his pride and joy, the only things on his person that actually appeared new and of some value, his double soled, 10-hole black and white Doc Martins, of which he kept immaculate at all times.  Although my biological father and his mother were only half-related and not full-blooded siblings, despite this he and I shared many similarities.  So it was easy to ascertain we were kin.  He was about my size in both build and weight.  If I were to let my hair grow out as long as he sported his in those days, our hair would have appeared strikingly similar – dark brown, wavy, not curly, and somewhere between course and fine.  We both shared narrow faces and triangular chins, and, for the most part, our facial features resembled one another.  Although the end of my nose is more bulbous than his and he had very deep-green eyes.  I have dark brown.

“So, what are we going to do?” he asked looking around the room, bouncing on his heels as though he was trying to shake a turd slide down his pant leg.

Ramona shrugged, not taking her eyes from the TV, while Katie’s eyes slitted suddenly.  She hadn’t missed the chill emanating from my girlfriend.  We locked gazes.  I arched an eyebrow and sighed, chancing a quick glance at Ramona that I hoped Katie would catch.

My cousin’s stare intensified for a second, then she looked between Ramona and me a few times in rapid succession.  She had sensed something was off.

“We could have an orgy!” offered Jacob, overly speculative as if his mere mention of a group session made it possibly.

What a tool!

My girlfriend sniggered.  “Almost walked into one,” she muttered.

Katie and I glared at her, mortified.

“What?” asked Jacob.

“Nothing, Jake, nothing,” mumbled my girlfriend.  Maybe she hadn’t meant to speak as loud as she had…
yeah, right!

“Uh, ok… so what are we going to do?”  He asked again.

Katie snapped her fingers, which got our attention.  I watched as she appeared to consider something involving my cousin from the other side of the family.  At once, I knew she was up to something.

“Well?” Jake inquired again, anxious almost excited.

“Hey Eff, you think he knows where to score what we were talking about earlier?” Katie wondered aloud at me, which made my eyebrows rise.

The fucking girl was good!
 

“Score what?”  Jake was glancing back and forth between the two of us.

“You mean the bud?” I clarified with a question of my own.

Katie just nodded, but Ramona was staring intently at me, her face a mask of calm that I knew was a bullshit cover.  I could see she was raging to intercede, but held her tongue.  Maybe she was afraid if she opened it, she wouldn’t be able to close it once she got started.

“Bud?  You guys wanna smoke some
mota
?” began Jacob, his eyes lighting up.

I could read what he was thinking before he though it himself.  He was hoping we would all get high and horny, and then he could go at it with Katie. 
Motherfucker!

“We don’t have to go nowhere, though, guys, ‘cuz I already got a joint right here and that’s all we need to get this party started.”
He began to gyrate his hips, howling an annoying series of  “Oooha, Oooha, Oooha’s”, thrusting his hips this way and that.  His eyes were closed as he held the joint before him like an idol of some forgotten deity. 
Really!?!

Katie closed her eyes as if looking at him caused her pain.  Ramona’s bland mask melted into exhaustion.  Having known Jacob since grammar school, all those years of enduring his antics
, had tired her beyond measure.

“Jake!” I bellowed at him, but he didn
’t hear me as lost as he was in his own world. “Jake!  Jake, dude, cut it out and pay attention!” 

He stopped, confusion on his face.  “What?  I thought we were going to get hiiiigh?”

“Dude, she’s not talking about getting high right now.”

Beside me, the tension that made Ramona stiff, drained away.  She must’ve been worried if we’d smoked a  joint, it would be me fucking Katie and not Jacob.  That was the only thing I could think of that would make her so aggravated.

Jacob frowned, his head twisting to the side, mouthing noiseless “what’s” at me, his hands outstretched, pleading.

“What she means,” I
continued, “is that she would like to know if you could score us a decent
amount
of weed we could smoke over time.”

He squinted rat-like, crouching.  “Depends on how much money you have and how much you want,” he said of the corner of his mouth.

“What could we get for like $250 bucks?” wondered Katie both of her hands on her hips now, sensing Jacob was already going into “dick” mode.

“Depends on the potency of the shit you wanna smoke…”  He shrugged his shoulders, knowing we were in
his territory now, and he liked it.

“Jake, stop acting an ass,” I interjected, getting tired of his crap.  “Could you get us some strong to semi-strong weed that would last us for a while with $250 or not?”

He stood up straight, his eyes still like gashes on his face.  He weaved his head right than left, tucking his long hair behind each ear as he considered my question.  He sucked in his cheeks, making his lips look almost fish-like.  I glanced at Katie, who shrugged noncommittally, then I eyed Ramona, who didn’t meet my eyes.  She was watching the TV again. 
Fine act like a baby
, I thought of my girlfriend when Jacob spoke.

“Okay, ‘cuz, I can do that.  For you, I can do that, but I’mma have to make some calls and see what I can set up, because scoring the good stuff is usually harder to come by these days, especially with all the NIA drug crackdowns and shit.”  He was all business now, no messing around.

“You think you could get on that, while Eff and I order some food for later?” suggested Katie as nonchalantly as she could. 
No one said Katie was stupid.

“Gonna need the Mula first, luscious cheeks,” retorted Jacob, raising his brow like Groucho Mar
x¹.

“Not a prob,” I piped in, already on my feet and heading toward the kitchen where Katie had left to $380 my mother had left
for us.

When I got back, Katie was sitting on the couch with Ramona, both of them watching “the party animals from the east coast”, chuckling as one of the cast
fell down drunk at a club.  Next, she threw-up on her one thousand dollar Jimmy Choo’s².

Jacob was already on his cell phone, rummaging through his pockets for something to write with, a much wrinkled and dirty looking scrap of paper in the other hand.  He glanced at me when I handed him the money.  He quickly snatched the
bills out of my hand.  He stuffed them in one of his front pockets, then pulled forth a tiny nub of a pencil.  He walked out of the TV room, so he could hear whoever was on the other end of the phone without the impediment of the television program.  I walked over to Katie and handed her the remainder of the money.

“You’re the guest, so whenever you are ready, order whatever you want, ok.”  I smiled at her and she returned it, her eyes sparkling for me.

“Thanks, Effy,” she muttered, and scooted away from Ramona, making room for me to sit on the couch in between the two of them.

The girls, sitting silently to either side of me, seemed focused on the program as it flashed with the strobe lights from one club to another, while the aging cast members floundered, argued, and fought their way through another a
lcohol infused Saturday night.

Purposefully, I didn’t watch, not because I despised the show, which I did, but as time went on and the silence stretched.  Occasionally, the quiet was broken by Jacobs’s voice flouting into the room from the hallway beyond
.  I could feel this tugging sense of dread that either Ramona or Katie would say just one thing and the whole precarious situation was going to blow up in flames.  I could feel Katie’s bare feet against my thigh, her toes flexing now and again, which was making it hard for me to concentrate.  She was sitting with her legs tucked under her like she was wont to do.  While, on my other side, I could feel the soft flesh of Ramona’s hip against mine.  This was equally distracting for me knowing how many times I had used that particular area of her body to hold onto while I entered her from behind.  I would be centered up between her legs, giving her a nice doggy-styled pounding. 
She had the perfect hips for holding onto when in that position, perfect!

Dude, stop!

I sat there with my hands in my lap, covering a twitching cock that couldn’t make up its mind what direction it wanted to point.  My mind was racing.  I kept trying to calculate what would happen should someone say something wrong or get out of line.  If that happened, the whole situation could quickly get out of control, especially if word got out that Katie and I had more than cousinly love between us.  If our parents caught wind of it, we’d both be at the head waters of shit creek in less than a heartbeat.  It was true, I wanted to be with her more than anything, even if she was my mother’s sister’s daughter.  I really didn’t care.  That wasn’t the issue.  What bothered me deep down was what it would do to my mother.  She had always been there for me, had always supported me, in every single one of my childhood endeavors.  I didn’t care about Katie’s parents.  Yeah, they were my uncle and aunt by blood.  To me, if Katie and I did hook up, and somehow became a couple, it would still pale in comparison to what those two had done in their lifetimes.  From that perspective, what did it matter that Katie and I were first cousins and in love.  Their cocaine and heroin induced fuck frenzy’s would still be the cherry on top of the cake regardless of what we did.

No, what bothered me, was my mother, she had never been that way.  She’d never done reckless things or anything extreme.  I’m not saying she was a saint or anything.  I know once she got away from my demented biological father, she partied.  She had gone out there to “find herself” as she often told us.  But hey, I’m not stupid either.  We all know when most people come out of an abusive relationship and go in search of themselves, what that really implies.  Often there is a sexual component to that, so I know exactly what my mother was saying when she said that.  I know she had a few one night stands.  I know there was a time when she dated more than one man at a time.