Anthony and Ava

It's funny, the techs often mused—being fit young men themselves and caring about their appearance—but this other doc was also a big out-of-shape guy, fat even, like Doc Michaels. What was it with cardio docs being lard buckets? How could they sit with a straight face and tell their heart failure patients to watch what they ate while they sat there gasping just to sit straight up in their chair? Do as I say, not as I do; it was the way of a lot of authority in the world, Ricardo had lectured him over lunch. Ricardo ran the show when he was in the office; an annoying jerk on his bad days, barely tolerable on the good ones. But he and Anthony managed to have a few laughs together anyway and besides Nadine and Grace, he was the closest work associate that he had.

With his eyes tightly shut on the desk, Anthony reviewed how he had gotten to this place in life. Just one of those random paths, he guessed. He worked some shit jobs after high school, then signed up to a community college where in the x-ray tech program he got a break; he must have charmed the head administrator, because afterwards—through unaccountable luck—he drew one of the rare spots to continue in the ultrasound program. Or maybe it wasn't luck. The administrator was an attractive woman in her 40's, and he'd made it a point to give her a big smile when they'd pass in the hallways. She always smiled back. Maybe that was it, his smile or his hair, because his grades weren't top notch.

That administrator wasn't the only one. Women of all ages, and the occasional gay man, would look twice at him, and start to act differently when they came near. They would get nervous and avoid his direct gaze. It happened more than once at a dinner when he happened to be seated across from an attractive woman. She'd start twisting her body this way and that in her seat, nervously, not looking at him, combing her fingers anxiously through her own hair. He was savvy enough to notice it. This reaction that he generated in people, plus his not infrequent conquests, led to his reputation as being a bit of a "bad boy," at least according to Nadine.

Grace looked up to her coworker and piped in. "Nadine—" she said to get her attention, then "Jennifer" in a hoarse whisper, mouthed in the way that is supposed to be unheard but is anyway. Through the small air gaps in his fingers he snuck a peak at Grace making a slit motion across her own throat with her hand while she whispered, a grimace on her face. There was a pause as Nadine digested this.

"Oh no, Anthony! Anthony! Not Jennifer, no . . . I liked her. Why are you such a bad boy picking up these girls and leaving them so sad?"

He wasn't really such a bad boy. His reputation got ahead of him. He did fall for the good-looking girls, though; he always had since high school, and here he was at 24 years old doing the same thing. He liked to think it was them, and not him, causing the problem, at least that's what he told himself. They'd meet, laugh, get to know each other, and then have some fun going out for a few weeks or a month; but they always became, he didn't really know how to describe it, just . . . boring, maybe.

The sex would start great—he'd been told more times than he could count that he knew how to please. That was something about Jennifer. She had the most sensitive feelings down there; she could barely stand a direct touch on her clitoris. His dick was big—not freakishly giant like a porn star's, but meaty—and it had this impressively thick head on it. He was even big when he was soft. Girls always loved to play with it, feel it against them, caress it. One impulse he didn't understand was how they loved to pillow talk him about their previous guys and how small their dicks were in comparison. As they did this, he wondered what kind of review he would get for their next guy.

With Jennifer, his favorite position was to lie naked on top of her, his dick resting on her shaved pussy, the head barely nuzzled in her soft lips, and he'd stroke her neck and breathe on her ears, pinning her arms above her head on the bed so she couldn't touch herself, driving her wild until she begged him to fuck her. Then his big head would slowly push its way in, parting her delicate pink tissue, and she would begin making those sounds. He smiled. Those were the good things to remember.

But inevitably, as good as the sex started, it would drift stale, like it had with Jennifer, and if he was honest these relationships were ignited and then held together only by the sexual attraction; so when that slid, there wasn't much left. And then before you know it, he'd get a crying woman at 4 am in his apartment, and Nadine telling him in the morning that he was a bad boy.

What the fuck was wrong with the women he dated? What the fuck was wrong with him, maybe? Why did he always lose interest? And why did they have histrionic meltdowns at the break up? He was ready to move on; they never seemed to be.

He wanted more. He wanted someone who understood him and was interested in him and who wanted him to be interested in her, to share her own struggles. So that they could find some meaning in this life together. He never thought he would say it, but he was starting to realize that he wanted a woman who wanted him for more than his hair and smile and to get him into bed and fuck him as fast as possible. He laughed at himself and wondered why, and how, it took so long to come to this conclusion. Was it time at 24 years old to stop being driven by the impulses of a horny teenager brain?

He pulled his head up from the desk. The nurses had both gone to their duties. On the wall the master schedule was written in grease pencil and a glance at the clock showed he had ten more minutes before his next echo. He leaned back in his chair and stared down the beige-carpeted hallway. Maybe he still hadn't recovered the thing with Nick and Laura.

Since Christmas, before Jennifer, his life had pretty much turned to shit. He had this huge fight with his cousin Nick who had been his best friend since, well, since grade school, even. Over the years, Anthony hadn't opened up to many guys, or girls for that matter, about the most important things in his life. But somehow with Nick it was different. He could talk about things that mattered: his fears, irrational worries, insecurities, dreamy goals, and other things that let him get vulnerable and that he would never mention to other guys. Without it being too mushy. But that was all before Laura. Or Loura, or Lawra, or some shit; however she spelled it. He never imagined that it would be a girl that would come between him and Nick.

Nick had been dating her for a couple of months before the holidays and he seemed genuinely head over heels. Nick was happy for him, but all he knew about this girl was what his cousin raved about: she was beautiful and loved him with devotion, and kept him feeling on top of the world, is what he said. Anthony was looking forward to meeting her at year end; she needed to move out of her second story apartment in downtown Baltimore and Nick wanted some help dealing with the shit ton of things she had to move. How the fuck some girls accumulate all this stuff he had no idea but he had seen it more than once. She was only a year out of college, for Christ's sake. Anthony himself could fit all his possessions into a few suitcases.

So he showed up for the big move and the happy couple were both struggling to haul this big ass couch down the front stairs, leading to the street. It was stuck at a right-angle corner at the top landing, and Nick was sweating like crazy on the lower portion of the stairs holding up the heavy end. Anthony ran up to help him. Laura was at the top, not doing much useful, but she didn't seem concerned. He could tell right away that both of them had taken in a few drinks already, Laura more than Nick, who was on call and wouldn't get sloshed.

They managed to work together to start the thing down the stairs, one at a time, during which time Anthony got more than a few good looks at Laura who was dressed in a sharp black tank top cut low over a great figure. The top said, "University of Maryland." She was a flirty, sorority type. Pretty enough, but Anthony judged at a first impression that she was too shallow even for his reputed taste. He tried to reconcile the praise Nick had dished out about a loving woman with this sorority girl he saw now in person above him on the stairs, but couldn't really make it work. He filed his judgment away for the time being.

As she leaned over to guide her end, it was hard for Anthony not to see down her shirt to her low-cut bra where the generous curves of her breasts swayed as she moved. He was fascinated by a beautiful woman's body; that was a weakness that he didn't think he would ever grow out of, and his gaze probably lingered longer than it should have. Nick was struggling with the heavier side, looking down to secure his footing on the lower step. Anthony looked from Nick back up to her; fully aware of his attention, she flashed a devilish smile and raised her eyebrows. Oh fuck, he thought, this has trouble written all over it. Big time.

After they got the couch down and loaded in the U-Haul van, Anthony turned to get a formal introduction. She skipped the handshake and went straight to the hug, hanging on too long and too closely with her arms clasped around the back of his neck.

"Anthony, it's so nice to MEET you. Nick has told me ALL ABOUT YOU," she gushed, and then giggled. It was unexpected, her eagerness to be so familiar. It might not have all been due to the alcohol. Anthony was getting mega-flirt signals. He had to balance keeping it friendly with her while not pissing off his cousin, whose girl was rubbing her front side against him. Nick watched the two of them carefully with the edges of a jealous concern creeping into his face.

They walked back up and loaded a few more things: two big dressers, a headboard, kitchen table with four chairs, and some other crap Anthony didn't remember. Up and down those stairs. They were almost done when Nick got the page from the station that Anthony was dreading, because he, Anthony, didn't want to spend time alone babysitting the giggling and semi-drunk Laura. Nick left in a hurry and asked his cousin to stay so that Laura could make her 5 pm move deadline.

There were a lot of small things left, but nothing big except a fish tank. It wasn't an ordinary little tank with a guppy or two; this sucker spanned an entire tabletop. Anthony didn't know much about fish tanks, but he learned quickly that the water in these things was no joke. Gallons and gallons of it; that shit is heavy. Laura was in the kitchen mixing up some more drinks, and Anthony asked her if they could empty the tank and transport the fish in little plastic sandwich bags, like he'd seen in the movies. Remember Finding Nemo? Honestly, he'd never been a fish guy so he had no fucking idea. But she didn't seem to know either, and was afraid of killing the fish or messing something up with the filters and whatnot if they emptied it. The tank wasn't hers; she was only keeping it for a friend who was still in college on her last senior semester abroad.

So he couldn't remember how they arrived at this plan of action, but after a few more drinks—and that must have been instrumental in their poor decision making—they started to move this thing down the stairs with water and fish and all intact in the tank. The two of them could barely lift it off the table to the floor, and they shuffled it onto a blanket through the apartment door and slid it in bursts over to the top of the stairs. Water was already sloshing around on every push and the bare hardwood floor got wet all the way to the door, leaving a slimy track across the apartment like a giant snail. Laura pulled out some towels from one of her boxes to try to sop it up. At least they didn't drop any fucking fish out which they would have had to catch somehow to scoop them back to the tank.

At the right angle turn of the landing—where the trouble had started with the couch—Anthony carefully navigated around the tank to the step immediately below, took a deep breath, and asked her to push it towards him. She bent down and gave a grunt. It slid towards him, the water kicking back and forth in the open top. He grabbed the underside of his end and then one by one she'd klunk her side down a step and he'd shift his grip and take a step backwards down the stairs. It was heavy, and he was starting to sweat as she made it around that corner. He was carrying most of the weight of this thing in the air while her side rested on a step.

They were only a few feet from each other, Laura standing on the higher step and bending all the way over to lift the top edge of her side of the aquarium. Her lightweight top was dangling pretty much off her body in that pose, and even her bra was gapping enough that he could see right to her dark, hard pokie nipples swinging there. It was awkward that anywhere he looked in the direction up the stairs, he was face to face with rounded and tan sorority tits. She didn't seem to mind. In fact, he wondered later if she might have engineered this situation.

She smiled and giggled, looked down at her own chest and back to this gorgeous man below her, and said something like, "Are you liking what you see there, Tony boy?"

Yeah, sure, he thought, she was a reasonably hot chick and he was a young man with healthy interests, but he had zero intention of moving in on his cousin's—his best friend's—girlfriend. It troubled him that she came onto him like this. He wanted to believe that she was good at heart; it was just the alcohol that had increased her normally flirty nature. At the moment, she seemed too girlishly silly to be attractive in any kind of real way for him, anyway. He tried to tone her down. "Laura, let's just get this thing down the stairs, okay?" But after she got the tank to the safety of the next lower step, she straightened up and stood looking at the situation.

"Let me get the door," she said and squeezed past him to make her way tipsily down the stairs. They had closed the front door after their last load. He was stuck, standing on the stairs, holding up his end of this heavy-as-shit tank in the air level with his face. If he moved it even a little up or down from the level of her step, the water threatened to slosh back and forth the full length of the tank creating a kind of mini tidal wave, splashing up and hitting him in the face on the near edge. Jesus Christ. he imagined all the fish pouring over the edge onto him and down the stairs, if his grip on the tank were to slip.

"Laura, this thing's heavy. We need to get it down!" he said urgently. There was no way he could move the tank in any direction, down, or up for that matter, without her cooperation to lift the other end.

Sounds of flip flops shuffling up the steps signalled her approach, as he felt the sweat beading on his face, but instead of squeezing past the tank to resume her position above she stopped directly behind him and reached up to play with his hair. "You know . . . Nick said you were good looking, but I had no idea!"

Fuck. He shook his head in an attempt to sober up—he'd had a few too many drinks as well. Up to this point he had been aware of the possibility of some danger with this girl, but nothing had materialized. And the situation hadn't been entirely unpleasant so far. It was kind of humorous, even. Until this. He had no desire for it to go further.

"Laura, look, I'm stuck here. Come on, you gotta grab your end and keep moving it down, one step at a time." The message didn't seem to penetrate her alcohol haze, now mixed in with her sexual attraction haze.

Because he'd been holding the tank for the past five minutes, sliding down the steps one by one, his white T-shirt was pulled up, showing the skin above his khakis. She dropped her hands to his waist and felt around his abs, then rubbed her hands up the front of his shirt. Then she leaned in, standing on the step below him, her face pressing into the curve of his lower back and her breasts pressed against his ass.

"Laura, God damn it! If I drop this thing, we get a fucking fish-pocalypse."

She just giggled and ran her fingernails up to his nipples under his shirt. He felt circles being drawn on his chest with her long nails, and blood pumped into his dick in response. She pinched his nips. Fuck, he thought, this is not good.

But it got worse. She slid around to his front, somehow jamming herself between his body and the tank at the level of his waist. Her face dropped to his groin.

"Hello," she giggled and her tongue flicked against the rising mound, licking his pants wet. Anthony could feel the sensation on the head of his dick through the thin fabric. "You want to come out and play? Let's see how big Little Tony is." Her fingers moved to the zipper.

Oh God, this is bad, he thought. This can't be happening. "Laura, please don't. We can't do this. I don't want to drop this thing."

She giggled again, burped with the alcohol, then yanked the thin khakis down over his ass. He was down to his boxers and her hands were wandering everywhere. Then she whipped off her shirt and bra in a flash—he didn't see how because his full attention was on the waves growing in size back and forth in the tank coming straight for his face. He struggled to hold the thing level.

"Oh! Little Tony isn't so little. Hello, Big Tony!" She squealed in delight as her hand slid under his boxers and made contact with the swelled shaft of his dick. She swung it out into the open air, jiggling it with her hand as if measuring its weight.

"This is so pretty, mmmm . . ." she said, dreamily—the sedative effect of the alcohol hitting her hard now—and guided his penis towards her face and her head down to meet it. Anthony watched with a combination of horror and eagerness as these two body parts followed their inevitable trajectory. There was a loud smack as she kissed the throbbing head, and began a series of wet licks. "Mmmm . . . Oh Tony . . ."

Anthony heard the door click below them. He craned his neck but couldn't see below him, down the stairs. "Laura—" he started, his panic growing. She pulled his dick into her throat, then out again to look up at his eyes.

"It's been so long since I had a real fucking dick! Fuck me here, Tony. Fuck me on the stairs!" she gushed loudly, then swooned to the side. The fuzzy image she saw below Anthony resolved and penetrated her alcohol haze.

"Oops," she uttered quietly, and burped again.

Nick was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at his friends. His mouth was wide open and his arms out at his sides, palms up in utter disbelief. "What the FUCK?"

What happened next was a blur in Anthony's memory. Somehow he yanked his pants up and Laura must have dressed, and they hauled that fucking tank down the stairs, got it loaded into the van. Nobody said anything, and Laura was worse than useless. She crawled back up the stairs to the apartment before they'd even slammed the tailgate. They stood on the street looking at each other, these two long-time friends. There was silence.

"Nick—" Anthony finally began, but Nick's anger silenced his cousin.

"The fuck, Tony. I don't even . . . you had your fucking dick. In her mouth. My girlfriend." He was in a rage.

"No, no. I was stuck on the stairs. She grabbed me."

"Your dick. Your huge dick," Nick continued.

"I tried to stop her."

"You didn't try fucking hard enough, did you?" Nick teared up with frustration. "It's always you getting the girl. Finally I get one, I have it good for once, and you come here and fuck it up. Then she said . . . that thing, damn it . . ."

Anthony knew where this was going. He never understood big dick envy. The size of his dick didn't matter to him that much. But he never saw it from the other side, how the guys in the locker room would look at him, jealous, as he slowly dressed from the top down letting his dick swing around air drying. Or how his cousin learned how he was pleasing his girls from an overheard comment.