Alistaire Ch. 06: Bridget

Since I had known her, I had never once gotten a good idea of what they looked like, even this year, when they had clearly grown a bit more. Bridget always wore sturdy, full-coverage sports bras when running, like any intelligent girl. But when she wasn't running, her favorite item of clothing was a hoodie. And when that was not on the table, she wore loose, flowy stuff, and I don't think I had ever once seen her sporting a low neckline. I had no clear idea of how her boobs looked.

But I damned sure always knew that they were there. And that all the sparsely available evidence was that they were considerable.

And all I needed was a brief, fairly minimal, though committed effort, and I would finally get to see them. She was already totally pissed off at me, she couldn't get any more mad.

Right?

Right?

I waited until she reached the end of that long, straight, flat stretch of road and disappeared around a curve. I picked up my pace as soon as she could not see me, and right when I knew for certain she that she had to be letting hers slack. I didn't press, I simply kept going along at just short of my old, mid-race, Cross-Country pace. For four kilometers, every time I temporarily came into view behind her as the road wound, I had closed the distance—sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Every time, she could see I was closing, too.

I finally caught her at about the eight kilometer mark, just before the direct, hilly, final stretch back to campus. We said not a word as I pulled up beside her. We ran easily beside each other for almost half a kilometer, until the big hill just beyond Elm Street. It was time for Bridget's nightmare. I clearly was going to win. But beyond that, I was mad at Bridget for making me bust my hump on a Sunday morning where I had just wanted to lay around and feel guilty. She was going to pay.

And there was the little matter of the bet, the mental image of which had kept me company on the long, deliberately drawn-out road to catching her.

At my school, the Cross-Country program dictates that hills are everything. If you treat hills aggressively, both up and down, they are where you can break your opponent. We hit the hill together, and both answered our training, leaning in to accelerate together.

But Bridget had let her anger get her early in the course, and had pushed too hard for miles two through five. She is a great runner, so she still kept her form beautifully, eating up the road with each long stride, and quit was as always a foreign concept for her. She had taught me about that. But she had only been ahead of me for so long before by pushing herself too fast for what she could sustain over so long a distance.

And I was still on my natural distance race pace. I was definitely hurting, don't get me wrong, but I could keep it up.

I had put fifty yards between us in that near sprint up the long hill, and I just kept pushing on down the back side. The race was truly over already, and she knew it now. She had to have known it when I caught up to her where I did. My anger at her had long ago burnt off over the last few miles, and especially up that last big hill just now, but by God, I still wanted to make my point. I pushed through until I looked up and saw the bridge that was the finish line. I ran past it with a final sprint, holding my form to the end. I pushed my timer on my watch absently as I stepped onto the bridge, then collapsed onto the ground so I could get that out of the way before Bridget showed up and saw me committing the ultimate sin of lying down after a race.

When she did round the last curve, I was back up on my feet and watching from the big oak against the back of the ice rink, right before the bridge. She sailed across the imaginary line and stopped her timer, form perfect to the end, beaten, but unbowed.

Blowing hard, she walked back to me, hand planed on her hip to help keep herself upright.

"Any chance... you are just chilling... there, and forgot to... finish the race?" she smiled through heaving breaths.

"You are no tortoise," I smiled. "And I damned sure aren't that hare-brained."

"I thought..." Bridget went on, still sucking air, but recovering, "I thought it would be closer... at the end... and I could psyche you out."

"And that," I replied, "is why I didn't let it be close at the end. Come on," I added, jerking my thumb back towards campus down the hill on the other side of the ice rink. "Let's go have omelets!"

Yes, I was still very aware of the bet. The thought of it had given succor to my soul on a few difficult stretches of the race when Bridget was not getting closer as fast as I had planned. I had let the image float in front of me like a carrot on a stick during that last, agonizing push once I had passed her for good, when I was piling it on for ignoble reasons.

But come on. It had been a skeezy bet. And even if it had not been, it wasn't a fair one. Even had she run smart, she was not going to win that race. And as I said, my anger at her had burnt off. I just hoped hers at me had too.

"Wait, asshole" Bridget said, as I turned toward the path. Uh oh.

"What?"

"A bet's a fucking bet. You win."

The idea that this whole stupid, skeezy bet idea might make her more angry, not less, had not entered my feeble little brain. Why? Because I'm a dim-witted male.

And, because I am indeed dim-witted, and apparently very male, if recent events said much of anything, I turned around and looked on with more than a little open anticipation in my eyes. That was not well received.

Oh well, if she was going to stay angry with me, I found I had some reserves of anger that I, too, could call on.

She stood about ten feet from me, checked, as I did, for anyone in the area, then yanked her tank top over her head.

The cups of her very sturdy, boring, beige, jogging bra securely squished her boobs against her chest. Those cups had better be strong, because there was indeed plenty in them. For the first time, I saw a hint of cleavage on Bridget. Given the shape and coverage of the bra, for there to be any cleavage showing at all meant that there was a very interesting amount of flesh within...

"Wow. Um, wow," I repeated. Then I made one last chance to be gracious. "They look amazing. I didn't believe that you'd actually take off your shirt."

Nope.

"That wasn't the bet, and you know it," Bridget growled. "Quit trying to be magnanimous." She crossed her arms and grabbed the bottom of the bra, under her boobs.

Oh boy. Here we go. I had never in my life been remotely hard this soon after a difficult workout, or especially a race, but here I was, slowly filling my thankfully baggy running shorts. Praise all the powers above that the first shorts to hand when she woke me had been the baggiest I owned. And while we were at it, thank you also that I had on a long, untucked tee.

I was expecting a brief but glorious flash. I had finally let myself hope for it.

Bridget just pulled the whole goddamned bra off over her head and stood there, letting the damp fabric dangle from her hand as she held her arms down at her side.

Let's be clear--I was sure they would be pretty good. Despite the way she dressed, it was clear she wasn't under-endowed. And while there were no outright stories about Bridget going around—everyone she had dated had the good sense to not blab—the general tenet of conversation about her seemed to take a nice rack for granted. The narrative had probably come from other girls.

But I was not ready for what I saw. I mean, holy shit. Bridget's torso was amazing! She looked even more fit above the waist than she did down below with her top-of the class legs. She didn't have a six-pack or anything, but she was verging on it. And her boobs were... just unfair.

They were as big as Mary and Maddie's. At least. And they were shaped even better. They sagged a little less, almost impossibly, given their size, and they were deliciously round. Her dark aureoles were tiny—little perfect circles barely three times the diameter as her pencil eraser-sized nipples.

Nipples that were gloriously, achingly hard. The sloping curve of her breasts had those nipples canting slightly upward, jutting out as if demanding to be touched.

So, I just stood there and stared wordlessly... because I'm evidently a pig or something.

"Al?" she asked. "You alive over there?" Bridget added sarcastically. "So what now? Do I need to turn left?" She did. Oh, thank you.

"Or do I turn right?" She did that too, adding a big arch to her back. Thank you even more.

"Speak up, dude! Do I bend over?" Now she bent a fair amount at the waist, letting them dangle! Honestly, I was dying.

"Seriously, Alistaire," Bridget said with some real acid in her voice, punishing me with that name, after so recently letting me off the hook with a courtesy 'Al'. "What do you want?" she ground out acidly.

I've talked about my filters, the social interaction ones that my hormones and Male Instinct had repeatedly trashed in recent times? Letting a little slip through those filters at times had actually served me well, right up to my now evident destruction. Well, my hormones were saying that while Bridget might be sounding, she certainly not acting, like she hated me. And my Male Instinct was screaming to kiss her, or smile, or... just at least say fucking thank you.

All I knew was that she had taken that bra all the way off, and was making no move to put it back on...

So I deliberately didn't open up my filters. I didn't let them droop. I set them completely the fuck aside.

"What I want," I began, softly and deliberately, tearing my eyes off those incredible tits and staring right into her green-irised depths. "What I want is to fuck your gorgeous brains out."

Those emerald eyes widened instantly, bright as stars.

And she laughed. Not some little titter of nervous delight, either. This was a full-throated burst of outright hilarity. She laughed hard.

Nay, she guffawed.

She laughed so hard that she had to bend over to remain standing. That had been awesome before, but this time she drooped her head too, and her tightly curled, blazing red hair hung low enough to obscure the final views I was ever going to get of that amazing body.

Shit.

Fuck you, hormones. Fuck you, Male Instinct. You have failed me when it mattered most. You failed me with Bridget.

You failed me with Bridget, who was a better friend than any other girl—hell, a better friend than pretty much any other guy, either. Who had practically been the foreman on building up my self-confidence from scratch to the point that the last month had even been conceivable. Bridget, who had just laughed in my face when I told her, in admittedly the most over-the-top manner imaginable, that I was attracted to her.

Sometimes, you just need to walk away from the rubble.

I managed to keep my shoulders back and my back straight as I turned away. I could hunch over and sob once I was out of sight.

"I didn't say no," I heard from behind me.

In this world, there is hope arriving unlooked for.

And then there is Gandalf showing up with Eomer and the riders of the Westfold on the third day.

And then there were those four words.

Look. It would be nice to say that this meant the beginning of the romance of my life, all glorious roads having led me to that crossroads. Cue the violins.

But no, it did not mean that. We were eighteen year-old people with less than a month left together in high school before we went off in opposite directions. And I'm not that guy. Or, at least I wasn't then. We'll see if I ever get there.

But what it did mean was pretty damned important to me. It meant I wasn't going to be murdered. It meant my friend didn't hate me. And it meant that I. Was. Going. To. Tap. That.

All of that went through my head, even the bit about not cuing the violins, in the time it took me to finish the step I was taking. I pivoted on the landing foot, and strode right back toward Bridget, at a considerably more peppy pace.

She laughed again, though with less hilarity and more affection. But she held up her hand like a traffic cop. I almost didn't register the gesture because I was too busy appreciating how this presented new and fascinating effects on how those tits hung.

"But I didn't say yes, either," she said, cutting hard through my fog of, well, my fog of lust.

I stopped abruptly.

"Okay," I said, softly. I wasn't sure what to do. I sure as hell wasn't going to be demanding. I didn't want to show any major signs of feeling denied, as if I were owed something. All I could wisely show was simple, confused, disappointment. Since I was confused, and on the verge of being disappointed, that was easy to go with.

"Sorry," Bridget said, uncharacteristically flustered. Of course, she was uncharacteristically topless, so it was suddenly par for the course... "Sorry," she said again. "I'm just... I need to decide."

Her voice had all sorts of tones I was not used to with Bridget. Uncertainty, doubt, maybe even... yeah, fear? I took a single step toward her, not hungrily this time, but instinctively, as she seemed like she needed support.

"Wait," she said, holding out both hands this time, but less assertively. Damn, every time she did anything different, those tits presented something new and crazy hot. "I've got to talk this out, out loud. Will you listen?"

"Of course," I said. Listening, I could do. I had always been good at that.

"I mean, sure," she said, as if she had she had already been talking, which she probably had, just inside her head. "I was mad—I am mad that they both knew about what was going on, and I was kept out of the loop. Serious party foul, man. I mean that. But that was not why I was so fucking mad, much as I wanted all three of you to think so."

She heaved a deep breath. "But let's face it, Alistaire, I was—I am, full-on green-eyed monster jealous. I could not believe that they got to, they both got to... take a shot at you, each more than once, I'm guessing, and I didn't."

She took a deep breath. "Dammit, I was there first!" But then she took another breath. She was not sobbing, not even on the verge of it, I didn't think. But she just needed air to get out all the feelings that even the run and the race could not. "And I could not even justify the anger. I mean, I had, in fact been there first, and done nothing. I never even thought about doing something. Not even this year, before this all happened. I just kept on treating you like..." she gasped regretfully. "I treated you like... I don't know... a super high-end flat screen TV with all the streaming services," she said at last. Honestly, one of those sounded pretty awesome to me. Then she tried to clarify, "Just a kind of thing that was always lying around to entertain me when I didn't have something else to do. God, Al, I'm so sorry for that."

I said nothing and just made sure she could see there was no resentment in my eyes. That situation pretty much described all that my shy self had ever wanted back in the day—from her, or Beth, or Carla, or even from Ben, Adam, and Tres. Just to be counted on and valued.

She fortunately took the reassurance from my eyes that I had not trusted my clumsy, treacherous mouth to provide. "But I swear, the moment I sent that text, guessing that you had actually been with a girl, the thought popped into my head, 'Huh. Al is a person who could get laid. That might be good to know.' But even then I still did nothing."

"And then, when the three of use were walking back after that first practice, when we, um, worked out what might be behind your success? Yeah, I'm telling you right now, I realized that I suddenly wanted very much to have you, even before that conversation broke up." Okay, that surprised me. I'd have liked to have known that.

"But we all traded glances while you were looking confused about fucking dick size for God's sake," she grumbled, "and I thought we three girls were all on the same page. Fooling around with you would be a party foul. We were a group of friends. It would get weird. And you needed to go on with girls who were not so... close to you as us."

"And then," she said, her voice almost sing-song now, even almost good-natured, "Those two bitches went and decided to indulge themselves anyway. Without telling me, but more importantly, without giving me the chance to make a bid too!"

Now I kind of wanted to be cranky. Had I known, a 'bid' from Bridget would have instantly gone to the top of my priorities, and that would have been before I got to see what she was hiding away in all her bulky clothes.

Why yes, if you hadn't noticed by now, I am a pig. I tried to be considerate, and giving, and caring, but at the end of the day I was deeply immersed in a full-on, big budget, top notch male fantasy. Considerate pig was the best I could manage.

I could not help but open my big mouth. "Then, um, why didn't..." I shut back up.

"Why didn't I end up making the decision they both made, and just go for it? For the same reason I'm hesitating now."

I just cocked my eyebrow in patient incomprehension.

"Ohhh, fuck this!" Bridget said to herself. "It kills me to reveal to you, especially in light of the recent hysterics on my part, that I have a secret too. Something I've kept from all three of you, and everybody else."

A secret? What?

"Wait. What secret?" I asked, stupidly. Was she was secretly twenty-five years old, or some shit? That would explain the incredible tits...

Bridget just took a huge breath and let it out. She said something so softly I couldn't hear.

"I beg your pardon?" I said, weirdly formal like I was in some damned parlor comedy.

"I'm a virgin," Bridget said flatly and out loud. Louder than necessary, in fact.

My first reaction was, quite reasonably, to utterly panic.

"Wait, what? I can't... I mean, we can't... I mean you can't... Oh man!" I babbled, holding my head.

"Yo, man! Now you calm down. I know I didn't tell you, but get over yourself," Bridget exclaimed.

"About your virginity?" I squealed, my voice shooting so high it almost cracked for the first time in two years.

"Yes, my virginity, Alistaire. Please don't get so upset you didn't know."

"Didn't know?" I gasped. "It's not that you didn't tell me! It's not that I didn't know—It's that you were thinking of throwing it away on my mangy ass!"

"Throw it away?" Bridget asked slowly.

After this entire ordeal, you would have thought that by now, I'd have learned to recognize her angry voice. But nooooo.

"It's your virginity, Bridget. That's fucking huge. I'm not that special. This isn't a fist-bump between friends! You need a guy who you... who... I don't know, who means something to you—something romantic!"

"What are you running out here, dude, the bird and bees speech my grandmother received?"

"What?" I almost screamed. "Look," I said, pausing to stare at my hands ball themselves in fist and then relax slightly, over and over. I stared up at Bridget. "I want to be more transparent than I have ever been about anything, if I may here," I said. "With every word I say after this, you need to be aware that I am a fucking horn dog who cannot, no matter how hard he is trying, shake the idea of getting into your pants. He wants to get in there and root around in every way he has learned how. But I don't want to be that guy"

"Fortunately, I am also a guy who is certain that the first guy winning out would be a bad thing for you, and is trying to get you to Think. Fucking. Clearly."

I took a deep breath. "But I don't want to be that second guy either, since I'm being super honest here."

Thank God, she actually laughed at that. "So what guy are you going to be?"