Aces Pt. 05 - Brian and Lisa Ch. 02

She gripped his head more tightly, pressing his face into her chest. Her hips moved forward again and discovered his growing excitement. It was trapped at a bad angle by his pants and he flinched. He looked into her eyes, then reached his hand down and worked it under his belt to adjust himself.

She pressed against him, more comfortably this time, and more firmly. They shared a wordless smile and he moved his lips back to her chest. She sighed and pressed firmly against his hardness. He moved the hand on her back down to her jeans and squeezed her butt, pressing it to him. She went with it and ground against him.

His tongue found her soft cleavage and he kissed the shallow curve of the insides of her breasts while running his fingers over her stiff nipple. He heard her breath change, become shallower and faster. She pressed her hips down against him, then eased off and shifted her position ever so subtly.

Her hands moved off the back of his head and rested on his shoulders, nudging him gently back. He reluctantly broke contact and looked up at her. Her eyes were wide and she was staring into his eyes. She pressed hard against him and her eyes closed. She didn't move, just pressed as hard as her body could force herself down on him.

She sucked in a breath and her mouth went slack. She froze. Her eyes squeezed shut and her head tilted gently back. She stayed like that for a hearbeat, her body rigid and pressing against him with all the strength she had. Another beat, then another.

A small wave of released tension shuddered through her body and she went limp in his arms.

She wrapped her arms around him and put her head on his shoulder. Her hair smelled faintly of peaches and clean soap. He said softly in her ear. "Did you just...?"

He felt her head nod against his, then she backed off him. She held two fingers up in front of her face, very close together. A small one, the gesture said. She was blushing and biting her lip, her head downcast but her eyes looking tentatively at him.

"You're beautiful." Brian said. "It was beautiful."

She looked in his eyes. "I didn't expect that to happen today." She leaned in to kiss him, a sincere, passionate kiss without any hunger. A thank you kiss, maybe an 'I love you kiss', Brian thought. Maybe.

Then she backed away again and studied his face. After a long silence, Brian said, "I guess we should get you home."

She nodded, almost apologetically, and slid off his lap to sit against him, her arms encircling his chest. They kissed tenderly. Abby looked at him and moved her hand to his upper thigh. "Do you..."

He silenced her with a finger to her lips. "Ssshhh. We don't need to force anything." he said.

She beamed a smile at him. Brian signaled Archie and he took them to Abby's dorm. At the door, they shared another kiss. There was so much Brian wanted to say, but he didn't say any of it. He was afraid of spoiling the moment. After they kissed, she turned and opened the door, pausing to look back and give him a sweet smile before going through it.

===

"Sometimes you touch someone's raw wound." Lisa began her Thursday podcast. "Maybe you don't even know it's there. There's no mark, no scab or scar, no open sore, but it is there. Somehow, you manage to touch it.

"When it happens, the pain might be blinding. The pain might be too much for a person not quite used to feeling it. They might react very badly, and now there are three wounds.

"It may not be their fault, or it may be. Maybe they didn't do enough to treat the wound, or maybe it is just too deep to have healed yet. But it doesn't matter, the damage is done. The original wound sears with pain, and two new wounds appear. One on each person. The reaction causes pain, seeing the pain wounds the one who inflicted it."

"Those wounds are part of you now, forever. Sure, they'll scab over, they'll heal, eventually, but the scar will always be there. It doesn't matter if it is anybody's fault, they're there. They're part of who you are now. That's what life is, the accumulation of joys, achievements, and scars.

"You may have been close before - that's the only way you could have reached that open wound - but now you're bound forever, bound by your wounds and your scars. For better or worse. Maybe that bond can be more than that again, maybe not. Only time will tell."

Brian sat stunned at the desk in his bedroom. He just stared at the laptop, at the picture of Lisa tastefully nude on the screen. At her face, as it was in better times. She wasn't smiling exactly, she had a plain business-like expression, but she didn't look wounded.

She looks very different now, he thought. Knowing that he'd done it, that he was the cause of the wounds she spoke of, it devastated him. It was a wound, alright, and one he would carry with him forever. As would Lisa.

He felt for a moment like he could not go on. It passed, but he was shaken. He didn't know if he could listen any more, but he had to. Lisa deserved it. If she wanted to twist the knife, she deserved to have that.

"Maybe it is possible to heal together. Maybe that is the best way, to wrap those wounds in the substance of their cause, the vulnerability that allowed them in the first place. To weave a strong shield from the delicate strands of shared pain.

"But that can't be forced. Trying would only mean plunging knives into the wounds over and over again. They'd never heal. Some fragile, twisted relationship would be built on them, dependent on them remaining as bright, vivid scars flashing like neon every time you looked at the other person, or at yourself in the mirror."

She stopped to address a few comments. They had gone mostly silent, though it said she had almost 12000 listeners.

"AndrewM, thank you for the five dollars. He asks, 'you're still not going to tell us who this is about?' No, Andrew, I'm not. If he wants to out himself, he will."

She paused for a long moment. "But I hope he is listening. I accept your apology. I accept, and I believe it was sincere. That doesn't stop the hurt, but understanding it as I do now is a mild salve. Thank you for that."

She stopped again, and the comments started scrolling faster. Brian didn't read them. He was focused on her face, her still face in the photograph on screen. He knew she was naked now, exposing herself to her entire audience. They didn't need to see it, they could hear it in her voice, in her words. She had more courage then he ever could.

"I understand it now. That matters. It still hurts, but at least now I know why. The reasons are understandable. That doesn't make it right, but it makes it sensible. That's a lot. And it tells me that you are not a bad person. A weak person, maybe, maybe not. I know all that you're going through. It's not the kind of problems I imagined someone in your situation would have. That's part of understanding each other.

Brian's hand hovered over the keyboard. He was still logged in with his full name. The comments were scrolling slower now, but that would not last. She deserved the same courage from him that she was showing.

"These may be small wounds in the grand scheme of things, but they're ours. Ours to live with, ours to integrate into who we are. They say that pain doesn't shrink with time, but that you grow larger. It is always part of who you are, but as you accumulate new joys, new achievements, new scars, it becomes a smaller and smaller part of who you are. It defines you less and less.

"I'm leaving the door open. Just a crack, and the chain is still on. I'm not letting you in yet, not while you are still a stranger. But it's enough to see each other's faces, to talk. The ball is in your court."

Brian Abernathy: --I'm here--

It was all he could say. It stayed on the screen longer than his comment the other day had. Long enough for anybody who looked to see it. To see his name.

The comment feed exploded. He knew what it would be filled with. He hadn't been at all anonymous since the Ace test, But now...

"Thank you, Brian." Lisa said.

Then the feed cut off. The hour was far from up.

He picked up his phone, half expecting it to blow up as the comments had.

Brian: --That took a lot of guts--

There was a long time with no response.

Lisa: --You too--

Lisa: --I appreciate that--

Brian: --Let them run me out of town, or burn me at the stake--

Lisa: --Please stop doing that--

Brian: --They're your fans. They have a connection to you.

Brian: --Even if it is mostly one way. They heard you. They felt it.--

Brian: --I'm ready to accept their judgment--

Lisa: --They don't have that right--

Brian: --???--

Another long pause. Brian could see Lisa's face while she was thinking.

Lisa: --It didn't happen to them. They just heard about it, second hand. It doesn't belong to them.--

Brian: --They probably care about you--

Lisa: --they probably do, some of them.--

Lisa: --but that doesn't give them the right to make my decisions for me--

===

They agreed to lunch on Saturday. Then he was going to go out with Abby that evening. He didn't make arrangements with anyone else, and he'd told Ivan not to either. They'd shaken hands and Ivan assured him it was all good. Brian said he was sorry it didn't work out with Bethany, but Ivan told him he'd done him a favor, bringing out her inner bitch sooner than later. Ivan said that she was a great lay while it lasted.

Brian wished his own life could be so simple. Or if not simple, that he could take it as simply as Ivan did.

It wasn't and he couldn't. He knew he ought to get back into the Ace game, for the greater good, but he just could not bring himself to do it. His dick was starting to disagree. He'd had to slap it into submission more than once in the last week.

Maybe life could be good again some day, but for now, he had to concentrate on... Damn, on the best two prospects for it that he had. On repairing the damage as best he could, at least. The thought made him realize that he had hope regarding Lisa. Hope felt like a stranger to him.

There were a lot of ways that could go to hell, and a lot of ways it could get a hell of a lot more complicated. One day at a time, he thought, then chuckled at the similarity to an AA meeting. "Hi, my name is Brian, and I'm an asshole."

====

"Hiya, Brian!"

Brian looked to his side and his face brightened. "Hiya Beth!"

It was their traditional greeting. Beth was the only girl in his M-W-F physics class of eight people, all of them, including Beth and Brian, typical geeks. He'd been able to talk to her from the start. There was none of that paralyzing awkwardness Brian had always felt around girls, the fear that he would say some innocent thing that could remotely be taken as implying he wanted to get in their pants.

She played for the wrong team, so none of that was an issue. And while she was attractive in a way, she wasn't the kind of hot that made guys drool and trip over their tongues. Not that anyone could really tell. She wore a baggy sweatshirt almost every day, and while equally baggy cargo jeans were her usual choice of pants, sometimes, like today, she wore baggy sweatpants instead.

She was the opposite of a girly girl. She was totally devoted to physics, and seemed to hardly have time for anything else. If she had a social life, Brian hadn't heard about it, nor did she ever seem to make any effort to attract one. She even carried a small duffel bag instead of a purse.

Aside from Ivan, she was pretty much his only friend on campus. They didn't really hang out outside of class, except to go to the library or the lab to work on projects for class. But regardless, it was an easy, casual friendship that Brian had felt at home in from day one.

When the world learned that they had an Ace right there on campus, Beth barely mentioned it. His first day back after finding out, she'd joked about it in the abstract, asking him if he'd heard the news that there was an Ace on campus. He went with it, and after some more joking banter about it, she rarely brought it up again. She certainly wasn't after a bonus, that big government cash and support granted to any woman who got pregnant, and so things went on as usual, neither of them treating the other any differently.

Brian was one of the smartest students on campus, but Beth left him in the dust when it came to physics, as well as all the math it required. Especially the math. She could look at an equation and just see its implications.

They worked well together, though Brian's contribution to their mutual efforts more often than not consisted of being a sounding board. She'd explain the problem as if explaining it to a smart high-schooler. Somehow, just having to lay it out that way, from the ground up, would usually make something click in her head, and she would have the solution, or the next experimental step, or whatever it was they were trying to figure out.

He learned the subject better from her, from their back and forth, from having to figure things out themselves, than he did from Professor Janis. Janis was a typical scatterbrained genius, one who seemed to forget that he was not talking to Stephen Hawking or Richard Feynman. He had to be reminded that they were students. He would then bring it down to their level, but it was still hard to follow, making the after class sessions with Beth even more of a struggle. But that struggle cemented things in their minds better than any lecture ever could.

The best moments came when they were banging their head against some problem, sometimes for hours, then it would suddenly fall into place. They'd share that moment of pure joy that comes with discovery, share the looks on their faces. Beth was the one to initiate the inevitable fist bump before they got down to the hard work of applying the new insight.

She was a great physics partner, and they had vibed on an intellectual level that he'd rarely felt with anyone else. He didn't care that she was off the table for anything more. If anything, that made their time together even better. It made it easier, more casually and unselfconsciously comfortable.

Beth plopped down in the seat next to Brian and they made some small talk, waiting for Janis to appear. Typically, he was late again.

Not typically, Beth broached a personal subject. It wasn't unheard of to talk about their personal lives, but it was usually kept superficial, just the 'how you doing', 'oh great', or 'oh bummer' level. She never asked about his Ace activities, and he never volunteered anything.

"You seem bummed all week. And you missed Monday's class." Beth said, fiddling with her physics text. Brian didn't want to think about it, let alone talk about it, but he was used to Beth being blunt and ruthlessly honest. It was part and parcel of her attitude toward physics, toward the rules of the natural world that didn't care one bit about human well-being or comfort.

That attitude of Beth's, which he shared, though to a less ruthless degree, made him a lot more comfortable than he would have been otherwise. Regardless, it was the elephant in the room. Word was out, and the various websites and forum boards devoted to campus life and to Aces in general were exploding with everything from sympathy to brutal, and sometimes almost violent, condemnation.

"You haven't heard?"

She looked up at him. "Heard what?"

"About Lis... the podcast last night?"

"You mean that 'Naked Philosopher chick? Yeah I heard it. Something about that Ace guy that's been running around campus. What's his name."

"Yeah, that guy." he said, playing along unenthusiastically.

"Sounds like they're having problems."

"You could say that."

"Think they can work it out?"

"No idea. It sounds pretty serious."

"Yeah, she was hurting bad last night. Still, she did say she was leaving the door open."

"Maybe there's a chance."

"She's damn fine looking." Beth said.

Brian smiled. "Yeah, she is that." Beth was smart. He would have shut her down cold if she'd personalized it, if she'd tried drawing him out to talk about his problems. By keeping it abstract, keeping it third person, it felt safer to discuss it. He wanted to all of a sudden.

"Think she's just after the bonus, that big government cash?"

"Sounds like maybe she was at first." Brian affirmed.

"Yeah. But not any more, sounds like. Now she just wants his hot bod."

"He's not that hot."

"Nah, he's alright. Doable for sure."

Brian's eyes went wide. Was she getting at something? "You ever thought about that big government cash?" he asked.

She eyed him, then leaned back in her chair and stretched her legs out. Brian caught himself checking to see if the new position revealed anything about what she had under that baggy sweatshirt. It was just what guys did.

"I've thought about it. But I wouldn't have a shot. Not against girls like Lisa, and the others he's been getting lately."

He looked at her. It was all hypothetical, of course. She wasn't interested in guys, and certainly not in him. "Nah, you're alright. Doable for sure." he kidded. Prior to being an Ace, he would have never made such a joke. Now, it was less mortifying, though he decided he should tread carefully. It wouldn't be good to bring that kind of tension to their friendship.

She smiled. She knew she was not a hottie. She was, to put it nicely, very sturdily built. She wasn't fat, but she was built like a tank. She could've been a woman wrestler if she had time for sports. She was pretty, in a way, but not the kind of girl that turned heads.

"Still, he's pretty busy, and now that all this shit is going on, the line at his door is probably getting pretty backed up."

"There's no line at his door any more, I hear. Not since he put his foot down."

Beth laughed. "Yeah, he sure did. Poor Aubrey Peach. Did you know she got kicked out of her sorority?"

Brian hadn't heard, but he felt a very satisfying surge of schadenfreude at the news. He looked at Beth again. "You're pretty busy yourself. Doesn't seem like you have time to earn that bonus."

She shrugged. "I don't know. My family would help out, and we could use the money. They're setting up day care for students now that there's an Ace out their pumping out babies. But yeah, having a baby seems like a pretty drastic way to help cover tuition."

She sat up and leaned on one elbow. She distracted herself by thumbing through the physics text. "You really think I'm doable?"

Brian flinched in surprise. With anyone else, it would be obvious where this was leading. But he knew Beth, she wasn't interested, and the bonus money thing sounded like just an idle speculation. Still, he had been serious about that. Maybe because he knew her and liked her. Maybe because she was not the typical hottie, she was a real person. And maybe because the baggy sweatshirts and jeans she always wore made him curious. Yeah, she was doable.

"Definitely." he said.

She smiled. "I never have time for a boyfriend."

Brian got to be surprised again. Did she say boyfriend? She eyed him with a sly grin.

"You think I'm gay, don't you?" she asked.

His mouth worked like a fish out of water. "I... ummm...."

Beth laughed again. "Don't worry about it. I kinda intentionally leave that impression. I don't have the time or the patience for any male attention. Works out better if they think I'm playing for the wrong team."

"Wow" was all Brian could say. It put the whole conversation in a different light.

Janis short circuited the awkwardness that was about to emerge by finally showing up and beginning his lecture.

After class, he and Beth talked about meeting in the library to go over the new problems Janis had presented them with. But it was Friday afternoon, and he had a lot to think about. He put it off for an undetermined future date.