Aces Pt. 05 - Brian and Lisa Ch. 02

Lisa wouldn't expose him, but he felt like he could not leave her like that. He didn't care any more who knew. He needed to be exposed, he needed to take all the hate they would throw at him. He was logged in with his real name, as had always been his habit. He thought about creating an anonymous account. She would know it was him, but nobody else would.

No. The only thing he had left was the refusal to be a coward. He couldn't let someone else be convicted for his crime, even someone unnamed and unidentified. He reached out and typed.

She'd moved to reading selected comments, answering some, merely a polite acknowledgment for others.

Brian Abernathy: --You didn't deserve it, Lisa. Not one bit of it. You deserve so much more. I'm so sorry--

He saw his name flash past on the screen as Lisa was reading other comments. She read another. Her voice caught, then after finishing her brief answer to the other commenter, she went silent.

Dead air for what had to be a full 30 seconds. "I am too." she said finally, without reading the comment or saying who it was from. It was a public message made private by the mere fact that it's target was already lost in the flood. Her answer was not in the tone of an apology.

She went on for the remainder of the hour. She read more than one question asking her who it was, when it happened, even if it was Brian, aka, the local Ace. She read them because her income depended on donations, and she promised to read comments that had cash attached to them. But she refused to answer them, neither to confirm nor deny. The comments were coming so fast and furious that nobody had noticed his, nobody had made the connection.

Aside from that, she didn't address him or yesterday morning again. After her moment of silence and her three words to him, she moved on to talking about what was coming to be known as the "Great Unwinding". What was unwinding was human civilization, in agonizing slow motion. The Aces, and some few lucky women, were pushing back on it, but they could not prevent it. They could only soften the blow.

After the podcast ended, Abby texted him.

Abby: --did you hear that?--

Brian: --I did--

Abby: --I think she was saying that you're not a monster--

Brian: --Maybe--

Brian: --I'm not sure it matters--

Brian: --I hurt her, Abby. You could hear it in her voice--

Brian: --I can never take it back--

Brian: --Abby?--

Abby: --I'm here, Brian--

His phone chimed, and a little red dot alerted him to a new conversation

Lisa: --thank you--

Brian: --thank you, Lisa. I meant what I wrote. You didn't deserve to be treated the way I did--

Brian: --I'm more sorry than I've ever been.--

There was silence for a couple of minutes. He didn't want to push it, to press her, but he was dying to find out why she contacted him.

Lisa: --can I ask you what it was that set you off?--

Brian: --yes....--

He had to stop and think about what to say next. Explaining it over text wasn't a good idea.

Brian: --can I call you? Text is bad for this--

Lisa: --no...--

Brian's stomach dropped. He should have known better than to expect her to ever talk to him again.

Lisa: --do you hate me?--

Brian: --What? No.--

Brain: --no, god no. You didn't do anything wrong. Just the opposite.

Brian: --The only person I hate is me--

He didn't dare ask if she hated him. She had every right to. But she didn't reply for some time.

Lisa: --can Bethany and I come over?--

Brian: --of course--

Brian: --Is she mad at Ivan?--

Lisa: --for what?--

Brian: --for being my friend. For inviting all of you over, then... that happened...--

Lisa: --No. It wasn't his fault. Everybody's just mad at you--

Brian: --Good--

Brian: --when do you want to come over?--

The arrived a half hour later. It was getting late, but his first class tomorrow wasn't until mid morning. Bethany was clearly pissed at him and made no effort to hide it. Lisa looked scared and hurt. She looked older than she had been the day before. Her normally expressive face looked dead, her bright, knowing smile was nowhere to be seen.

He would do anything so that she could smile like that again, even if it was never again directed at him.

He invited them to sit on the couch. He pulled the easy chair opposite them, with the table between them. They hadn't taken off their jackets, and Lisa clutched her purse on her lap like she was ready to run out the door at an instant's notice. He suspected that her coming over was Bethany's idea.

He spoke to Bethany first, and repeated his apology and the part about Lisa not deserving any of it, then added an apology for putting her in the middle of it.

He turned to Lisa, giving her a chance to say something or ask a question. She didn't.

"OK" He paused and bowed his head. Then he looked up at Lisa. There was no choice but to lay it all out. To be the Naked Penitent. "You were right, on your show. I was protecting something, something you could not have known you got too close to."

"I wanted, desperately to save what you were about to do for someone special." he saw her face drop at the implication. "Along with everything else going on in my head, I was afraid that you were becoming someone special to me." He saw thinly veiled surprise on her face, then she was thinking, trying to process it.

"When I said what I said, I didn't understand why, I just said it. What you said on the show, about it telling you that I thought nothing of you, that you were just another party slut. I had to believe that was true, to convince myself. It was horrible of me to say it, to think it, even for a moment.

"Lisa, you do mean something to me. The evening before meant a lot to me, and the morning was wonderful. But then... I needed to convince myself otherwise. That I didn't have any feelings for you, that the night before..." His voice hitched and he felt his eyes sting. "That it hadn't mattered. I was too afraid to admit the truth."

"Why?" Lisa asked.

"Isn't it obvious?" Bethany cut in. "He's one of those guys. Now that he's getting all the girls he wants, he doesn't want to be tied down. He's afraid of commitment, but he doesn't need to make any commitments, he just wants to be free to get his dick wet anywhere and everywhere he wants to."

Brian glared at her. He never expected that. He was about to correct her, but Ivan walked in with a sandwich in his hand, with an expression that told Brian that he'd heard everything from the kitchen. Brian hadn't even known he was home. He didn't go to Bethany, he just leaned against the frame of the cutout between the kitchen and the living room.

Brian turned to Lisa. He told her about the nurse, and how he'd been a virgin. About how his first time had been so unsatisfying, about how she'd taken that experience from him.

"And, there's a girl..."

Bethany interrupted again. "Yeah, her name's Abby. You've got her suckered into thinking you'll settle down with her."

Brian chose to just let that one go. "We're not serious yet, but it was starting to look like it might be going that way. Now, I don't know. I don't know if we'll work it out. We might not, but she's been the one girl I thought I could have something special with. It's what I want, what I've always wanted.

"I'd trade all this Ace bullshit for that," he said with a pointed look toward Bethany,"for just one girl, if I could. But I can't. She won't let me, for one. It's too important. Like it or not, I've been put out to stud. That's why you and Claudia and Sandra came over the other night.

"I didn't expect it to turn into something else. Yesterday morning, all that came together when I least expected it. And, in the moment, I didn't have any time to think about it rationally."

"Lisa, what you did, what you tried to do, it was wonderful. It was even more so because you are someone special. I was caught off guard, and all I could think was about what it would mean for me and Abby, and what the nurse had taken from me. I didn't want to lose the last thing I could save for when it counted. I panicked, and I had to push you away, I had to convince myself that you meant nothing to me. To make it all go away."

Bethany snorted. "Oh, sure, you're saving yourself for that one special girl that is just dying to swallow your load."

Lisa looked at her. "Shut the fuck up, Bethany."

Bethany's eyes went wide, and she looked at Ivan. "What she said." Ivan said, pointing at Lisa while his eyes fixed on Bethany. He bit into his sandwich with a measured and deliberate aloofness.

Bethany looked shocked, her face went white. "Babe, c'mon. You don't buy this bullshit, do you?"

"I do." Ivan said.

"No, you're just covering for him, so he can get another shot at Lisa."

Lisa looked at her. "Please leave, Bethany." she said calmly.

Bethany's head was on a swivel, looking from one of them to another. Her eyes landed on Ivan.

"And don't come back." Ivan said, then finished his sandwich, making a show of wiping his hands clean of crumbs, he walked out of the room.

Bethany looked at Brian.

"Don't look at me." he said. "If you were using him to get to me, the jig is up. If you weren't, it looks like the jig is still up."

"Fuck you!" she yelled. Then, loud enough to carry through the house. "And Fuck you, Ivan." she looked back at Brian. "I don't need you." She stood up and looked at Lisa, expecting them to both leave.

"I'll talk to you back at the house." Lisa said, her voice hard, her words terse. Bethany stormed out.

"I have a lot to think about." Lisa told Brian.

Brian nodded. "I know. I don't expect you'll ever want to see me again, but now you know, you know all of it. 'Sorry' seems so inadequate, but I am, I'm so sorry."

Lisa just nodded. Her face looked less drawn, but she still looked shaken. She was still not smiling.

"I have a lot to think about." she repeated. Brian walked her to the gate, then watched her walk out of his life.

===

He felt better in the morning. He'd gotten it all off his chest, with everybody that mattered. Abby accepted it. Lisa seemed to accept it. Maybe she could forget how badly he'd hurt her. Now he could just feel sad. It wasn't a good ending, but it was probably the best he could hope for.

He spent the rest of the week getting his shit together at school. He got his studying and projects and essays caught up. He didn't have sex with anyone but his right hand.

Though if you went by strict definitions, that was not entirely true. He had lunch with Abby on Thursday. It was tense. They talked about everything that wasn't them, Lisa or his Ace activities, but those subjects loomed over them the whole time.

It wasn't till they were in the car on the way to drop Abby at her dorm that she broached the subject. "It will be alright." she said. She sat close to him and he put his arm around her. He didn't do any more, he was afraid she would say no, and say it in a way that was final.

"I hope so." Brian said.

Abby called to the front of the car. "Archie, can you give us a moment?"

Archie nodded in the rearview mirror, and in a couple of minutes they were parked in a quiet spot and Archie was standing outside the car, his back to them, smoking a cigarette.

"Every time I think I know you, you do something that just doesn't fit with the mental model I've built up of you." Abby said.

"I guess being such an asshole wasn't in your model."

"No. I mean, it was a little bit. I had to add that after that speech at the pizza place."

"That doesn't even compare."

"No, but I saw the potential of it. Honestly, I didn't think you had that kind of courage, that you could put your foot down so firmly. And so eloquently, by the way."

Brian cracked a smile.

"When I heard there was an Ace on campus, I pictured some alpha male frat boy. Then I looked at the information about you that was quickly being compiled, and I thought you were some kind of loser nerd who had just won the teenage fantasy lottery."

"I was."

"Yeah, kinda. I saw the video of that nurse."

Brian pursed his lips and gave her a curt nod of acknowledgment.

"I know that is a sore spot" Lisa said. "But I didn't expect you to do what you did."

"I didn't do anything. That's the problem."

Abby grinned. "Yes you did. I know she blindsided you, that she made it happen, without your consent, really."

"But?"

"But when it came time to get down to business, well, to put it bluntly, you fucked the hell out of her."

"I did?" He honestly didn't remember it that way.

Abby nodded. "Hard to say if she got anything out of it, but you spun her around, bent her over, grabbed her hips and went to town. You weren't the meek virgin all of a sudden."

"Abby, don't. It wasn't like that. I was scared shitless, then I was too far gone to even think. I just... I didn't want to."

"I know. And I'm sorry. You've said how much you wish it hadn't happened, and I'm not making light of it. My point is, I would have expected you to just be passive, that she would have had to throw you on your back and ride you. But you weren't. It was a shitty situation, and she's a goddamn nasty bitch for what she did. But seeing it, I had to adjust my expectations again."

Brian looked at her, not sure what to think.

"Then you went dark for a few days."

"I was too scared."

"OK, but you weren't scared of what anybody else would have been afraid of, were you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, the shrinking violet loser who the nurse would have had to throw down on the ground, he would have been afraid of his own shadow, afraid of coming face to face with real pussy."

"I suppose."

"But that wasn't you. You weren't the BMOC frat boy either. He would have cut a swath from Tate to Sheridan the first day, and never looked back. Then he would have headed for town."

Brian laughed. He could picture it, picture some of the guys around campus, and what they would have done with the news.

Abby smiled. "That isn't what you wanted to be, was it? Is it? That's what you were afraid of."

Brian looked at her. She was right, close enough. He'd suddenly gone from a guy wishing he could find one nice girl, sometimes fantasizing about more, to a guy who could get laid snap of his fingers. It would mean giving up the one nice girl, whoever she was. It would be too easy to let it go to his head.

"I couldn't reconcile them." he said out loud.

"What?" Abby asked.

Brian snapped out of his thoughts. "Oh, nothing. Just, you're pretty close there."

"Right, OK. So now I have to add some depth to my mental model. Some character, some concern for things more than skin deep."

"I guess."

"Then when we had our first date, and you were the one that wanted to take things slow. Another refinement of the model."

Abby was on a roll, and Brian sensed she was making some point. He couldn't fathom what it was.

"Then the pizza place. Add courage, assertiveness, eloquence to the model.

"Then all this. What I get to add to that model now is some immaturity, some weakness when things get tough. A really fucking dark dark side that is, frankly, both scary as hell and a bit of a turn-on."

Brian's head fell. "I know. It's all true."

"But they came from a good place. I get to add those places to the model too. And you're a very smart guy, one of the smartest at the entire school. You can figure out that maturity thing, and the rest will follow.

"Brian, I can't tell you it's all right. It's not."

His head snapped up at her. "You just literally told me it was."

"No, I told you it is going to be all right, not that it is. I believe it, but I can't make it all right for you. That nurse took something precious from you. Deal with it. Yes, it's lost, and you can never get it back. Grieve for it. But then deal with it. I know you can.

"I can't deal with it for you. But let me tell you something, that storybook first time you imagined, it happens sometimes, but not for most people. For most people, they just get too horny to wait. That moment of decision in the back seat or out behind the tool shed, it comes, and they make the wrong choice, the choice they didn't want to make.

"It ends up rushed, it ends up happening in less than ideal circumstances. With a less than ideal person. Or It ends up going by too fast, the fireworks fizzled, and afterward, there's just awkwardness and avoidance.

"Not for everyone, a few people get the dream. But for a lot of people, that's how it goes, if not much, much worse. And for years after, they think they can get it back, but they're too scared to try. They back off, afraid to take the plunge again. They don't realize that the special thing about that fairy tale first time isn't it being the first, but what it takes to get there. That it comes after all the things they wanted it to be, that it was the consequence, not the cause.

"And they don't realize that it is all still possible, that popping a cherry is just a detail, that what matters is the look in each other's eyes when it happens."

Brian looked at her, shocked at the speech. It wasn't like her. But he was shocked too at the realization that she wasn't speaking entirely in the abstract. She'd let him see something, something private, something she'd pushed deep down.

"Abby." he said. He pulled her closer.

"You're not the only one that wanted better." she said, and kissed him.

They sat there for a few minutes in silence. Then Abby pressed harder against him, and pressed her lips to his, harder this time.

They both turned part way to face each other and Brian's hand went to Abby's waist while hers were on his chest. He nibbled her upper lip and she let her mouth open. Brian felt her tongue push against his lower lip and he met it with his.

They parted for a moment to look in each others' eyes.

"I need to sit on your lap." Abby said.

Brian nodded, not sure what she meant by 'need', and she climbed up, straddling his thighs, her hips back. Her arms went over his shoulders. His went to her waist. She pressed her mouth to his again.

Brian moved his hand up Abby's side until it pushed against the underside of her breast. Abby pulled away and looked down, then at Brian with a shy smile. He didn't need any more encouragement. He kissed her again and moved his hand fully over her tit.

It was the first time he'd felt her, and he found a small but substantial orb tightly encased in a bra. Abby moving forward and faced him more closely. As they kissed again, she inched forward on his lap. The feel of her soft breast in his hand, the faint stiffness of a nipple through her shirt and bra, was working it's magic on him.

His other hand moved to the small gap between the waistband of her jeans and her top. He rubbed the small of her back under her shirt. "Mmmm" she hummed against his mouth. He moved his lips off her mouth to her cheek, then her jaw. She cradled his head as he kissed along her jaw to the hollow behind her ear.

He felt her hips inch forward. He kept one hand on her back while he moved his other hand up from her waist, under her shirt. Her skin was so smooth, so warm.

He nibbled her ear, her neck. His hand moved up further, but she stopped him gently. He moved his hand over her shirt and moved it up again. She allowed him to cup her breast again while he nibbled her neck. Her hips moved forward again.

He rubbed her breast through her blouse and bra. He focused his fingers on her nipple. She sighed and moved her hips forward again. He was getting very hard now. Another inch and she would feel it, if she couldn't already tell.

He kissed her throat, nibbling with his lips, then further down. He took the first button of her top in his fingers and looked at her. She bit her lip and nodded, a shy smile on her face. A second button, and he could see the beginning of cleavage. He moved his mouth back to her throat.