Fantasy Man Pt. 03

"Fuuuu-uuuhhhhh-uck!" Brooke cried, so shrill and so sharp Corbin nearly covered his ears. She shivered and shook, one hand coming up to her lips as tears of pleasure slid down her cheeks. She took one great big shivering breath and gasped, "Can't, can't, can't..."

"She needs you to pull out," Jessica said hurriedly.

Corbin did, his cock throbbing. Jessica snatched the condom off him and jerked his prick. She came to him, kissing him hard as she held him over Brooke's belly. His first shot of come arced and hit her in the neck, the rest spraying down her tits, her stomach. She gasped at how much he came, but Corbin never heard her words. He was staring into Jessica's eyes and realizing how deeply in trouble he was.

When they all came down, Jessica and Corbin helped Brooke into the shower first. She was exhausted, and Corbin hurried downstairs to grab her a glass of ice water while Jessica helped her clean up. When he came back into the bathroom, he was treated to the sight of the two embracing, nude under the shower's flow.

"You two are really beautiful together," he said. "Thank you for letting me watch you two."

"God, thank you," Brooke said. "I'm feeling like I might collapse I'm so worn out. Can I crash here tonight?" she asked Jessica.

"Of course," Jessica murmured. "Any time. Same to you, Corbin."

"Really?" he asked, baffled and pleased.

She chuckled. "Yes, really. Just text ahead in case I have a guy over."

And like that, the tension that had been building between them all day burst, and Corbin remembered her words. No attachments. Friends with benefits.

"Yeah. Yes, of course!" he said, sounding too chipper and knowing it.

Brooke looked like she might say something, then shook her head. She turned in the shower's spray and brushed a washrag down between her thighs. "I'll order Chinese for you and me later, Corbin. Sound good?"

"Oh, I'm trying to watch what I eat," he said.

"Don't worry, I got you covered. Only question is, do you like beef or chicken with your broccoli?"

"Uh, beef, I suppose," he said, still trying to work out the sting of Jessica's words. Move past it, he told himself. You know what this is.

"Good choice," Brooke said. "Here, swap me spots. I really do need that water."

They did. Jessica gave him a dazzling smile, and he prided himself on returning it reasonably well. They washed each other with a generous amount of groping their favorite parts of each other, and eventually returned back to her bedroom.

She dressed for her babysitting job in the same jeans she wore that day and a simple tee. As she did her hair, she told the other two to make themselves at home, and she'd be back around midnight. Jessica gave them both a long kiss, then hurried out of there to grab a coffee before she had to go take care of her kids.

Brooke and Corbin headed downstairs to the living room and crashed in front of the Tv. Brooke lounged with her feet on his lap, staring more at him than the comedy they were watching. Finally, she asked, "You okay?"

"After what we just did, how could I not be?" he asked, chuckling.

"Hm," Brooke said, but let it go.

* * *

Jessica liked the Nicolier family. The father, Jacques, was a thirty-something with the best stories about his days filming as part of a crew for a ghost-hunting show set in the Canadian wilderness. His wife, Erica, had a more ordinary past as a chef, but her own stories of kitchen mishaps were just as enthusiastically told, with roars of laughter from her husband to accompany them, even if the stories must have been told dozens of times to people they knew. Every week they liked to go on a date night, and this time was a semi-formal dinner with friends.

Erica answered the door in an ankle-length red dress. She was just this side of plump, and the effect her rouge had on her cheeks really made her eyes pop. "You look incredible!" Jessica said, grinning.

"I wish," Erica said, but gave her a glowing smile anyways. "The hair's a mess. We had to hold off a storm by letting Mandolin dress up too, so I ran short on time."

Jessica chuckled. "Here, let me."

Erica stood still while Jessica mussed her reddish-brown hair, then swept it to either side of her cheeks. With a bun already held up by a hair pin, it gave her a messy chic look. "There," Jessica said, satisfied. "Run a comb through both sides and I think you're good."

Erica dashed into the bathroom to look, and Jacques said, "Wow wow wow. Yes. Go with that."

"I want my hair like that," a tiny voice grumbled.

Their daughter, Mandolin - and Jessica loved that name, as ridiculous as it might be - was cute as a button, and at four, past the worst stages of her early childhood development, though there were plenty of potty errors and fits to keep Jessica on her toes.

"I can help you do that when your mom and dad leave, honey," Jessica said.

"Really?"

Jessica grinned. "Yes, really." Her phone buzzed and she glanced at it.

Billy Calcagni, the wrestler who helped protect Corbin, sent her a text.

-Call when u r not busy

She typed a quick response.

-At job. Will be late.

-ok

She stuffed the phone away just in time for Mandolin to streak out of the bathroom, a blur in a frilly blouse, big poofy skirt, and adorable white shoes.

"Hello, Mandolin," Jessica called after her disappearing ward for the night.

"Hi, Jessica," Mandolin hollered back as she ran for her bedroom.

Erica stepped back out and gave Jessica a hug. "Oh, that looks fantastic. I swear, I should pay you extra to come half an hour early just for makeup and hair."

"Hey, as long as I don't have class, we can figure something out," Jessica said.

Erica raised her eyebrows. "An extra twenty?" she asked cautiously.

"That sounds like a deal to me."

Jacques stepped out, putting on a steel watch. "I hope she's not too off the walls. She wormed her way into a couple extra cookies."

"There are vegetables and dip in the fridge," Erica said, "and she didn't eat much for dinner so if you can get her to nibble on anything not loaded with sugar, please."

"I'll definitely try," Jessica said. It went unspoken that she could help herself too. The Nicoliers had always been pleasant like that. Not everyone was. Jessica found that the people she loved working for the most were the ones who weren't shy about telling her to make herself at home.

"Mandy, come out and give us a kiss goodbye," Erica called.

"I'm playing!"

"Mandy..." her father said reproachfully.

Mandolin gave a very audible huff even several rooms away and stormed back out. Some attempt had been made to braid her hair but it was haphazard and already tugged mostly free. She ran to her mom, gave her the requisite brush of her lips against her cheek, then her dad got a much bigger kiss. Jessica saw the hurt in Erica's eyes and could commiserate. She had been a holy terror to her own mom most her life and favored her own dad until college.

Why had that changed? Jessica wondered as she saw the Nicoliers out the door. Becoming responsible for herself when she was a sophomore and out of the dorms certainly didn't hurt. Her mother had always been so strict and Jessica rebelled against it. Now she realized with a certain degree of forlornness her mother had been trying to prevent the very situations Jessica kept finding herself lost in, like with Lionel and his girlfriends.

Early in the evening, and already she was feeling like she needed a good cry. Jessica smiled to herself, and sought out Mandolin, already back in her room, seated on the floor and playing hair stylist with one of her own dolls. Jessica sat too, watching the child play. The ironic thing about having spent so long rebelling against her mother was that she herself turned out to be a pretty good disciplinarian when it came to kids. She didn't let her mother's iron rule turn her into someone who would let her kids get away with murder, but Jessica thought she didn't run too hard in the opposite direction, either. Or she'd like to think so, anyways. Some of the kids would have said otherwise, of course, but they believed any enforcement of the rules was a personal attack.

What kind of mother would she make? Would she be as good with her own children as she was the kids she babysat? Jessica didn't know, but she wanted to find out. She knew she wanted to be a mother someday. The need beat in her very core ever since she was sixteen and holding a sleeping baby she'd just changed five minutes ago, the first time on her own. It was that realization, Jessica thought, that made her start to realize the depth to which her own mother loved her and why she felt the need to protect her daughter so stringently.

Like a rocket, Mandolin was up and tugging Jessica out to the backyard to run around and play airplanes, one of her favorites. As they ran and swooped with their arms outstretched, Jessica thought the child looked remarkably like a fairy out of an old fantasy cartoon with her poofy skirt fluttering in the breeze. She laughed with the little girl, and played, and carefully, somberly cleaned up her knee when she tripped over a rock and banged it on the ground. And as Mandolin was showing her a new game they were playing in preschool, Jessica caught herself crying a little bit, not because of any of her own pain, but for being so hurtful to her mother. For never pulling her in like this, to trust her to be the one to clean up her scrapes, to eat her meals without sniffing at it to see if her mom snuck in corn or black pepper, Jessica's two childhood hated foods.

Later, as Jessica grated carrots for Mandolin, the child came in from watching a cartoon and asked, "Are you okay, Jessica/"

"Yes, sweetie," Jessica said, sniffing and dabbing at the corner of her eyes. "I'm okay."

"Are you crying because you're hungry too?"

Jessica laughed. A mother someday. She hoped if she had one, her daughter would love her sometimes.

Mandolin changed into her pajamas and crashed an hour later, a hard stop that left her in a pile beside a heap of toys. Jessica lifted her up, and the child wrapped her arms around her neck and tucked in. Jessica walked her to her bed and tucked the little one in. She picked up the toys, tidied up, and quietly shut the door on Mandolin curling up into a ball, dreaming the kinds of wild adventures only the littles could dream.

Jessica headed for the living room and pulled out her phone. She still needed to call Billy back, but first came a call to her mom. Kimberley picked up on the third ring. "Hello?" her mom asked. "No, it doesn't need green chiles. Leave it, honey."

Jessica laughed and sniffed all at once. "Dad helping cook again?"

"Oh yes. He thinks the turkey pot pie needs something more exciting."

"Well, it couldn't hurt to try," Jessica's dad Ollie huffed in the background.

"And if you want soup for dinner, go ahead, because that's how it will turn out. Soupy," Kimberley said pleasantly. Jessica knew that voice. That was the "this mess is your fault if you go through with it" voice. It was usually followed an hour or two later by the "now you clean it up," harsher tone. "Sorry, honey. Are you okay?"

"No," Jessica murmured. "I'm missing you."

Immediately, her mom's good humor disappeared. "Is something the matter?"

"Is she okay?" Ollie asked.

"That's what I'm asking her."

Jessica smiled to herself. "Do you remember when I was, mm, fourteen or fifteen, and I wanted to go to that party? Dad was gone for the week, you had to work, and you begged me not to go?"

"Yes," her mother said. "Of course. Jessica, you're scaring me."

"I'm okay. I really am. I just..." Jessica sighed. "You told me not to go, and I went anyways. That was the first time I ever tried beer and I got so sick. You didn't say anything to me back home. You just held my hair and put me in bed. Remember?"

"I do," Kimberley said, sniffing. "Well... I probably said a few things under my breath, but yes."

Jessica laughed and wiped away another tear. "I was thinking about that tonight, and a million other things I'm sorry for. I guess it's just a night to reminisce. That guy I was dating, the older one you thought was really creepy, we broke up. A week or so ago."

"Ohhh, honey, I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay, it's really okay. I was hurting for a while but I feel all right. I was thinking tonight about how hard I fought with you when I was younger, and then again last year when I started dating him, and... I don't know. You were right about so much. I love you, Mom. Hey, um, instead of coming home Thanksgiving morning and driving home the next day, could I maybe stay the whole weekend?"

Kimberley was silent a moment, the only sound her quiet sniffing. She always cried very softly, and sometimes without tears at all, just wracks of her body. "I love you too, sweetheart, and of course we want you home. As long as you want to be here."

"Thank you."

"Promise me you're okay, sweetheart. You're not... depressed, are you?"

"No. Just emotionally drained. That's not the only thing that happened this week." She filled her mother in on everything. She hadn't meant to ever talk about Ken Kilton with them or talk about the Men Are Assholes party, but she did, mentioning everything but hooking up with Corbin in the days since.

"Oh my God, Jessica," Kimberley breathed. "He didn't... he didn't rape you, did he?"

"No. No, thank God. Corbin stopped him before he could do anything more than, um, touch me. And my friends London and Dakota kept me safe after that."

"I'm so glad that young man didn't take advantage of you."

"He's a really great guy. I've been hanging out with him some the last few days since the footballers trashed his car." Not exactly a lie, and enough of a truth that Jessica didn't feel too bad about it. "You'd like him."

"Well, you give him a hug from me. I'm so sorry that happened."

"Me too," Jessica said. She sighed. "Anyways. I love you. I just had to get that off my chest. You're the best mom in the world and I never told you that enough."

Her mother clicked her tongue. "Of course I am. You got lucky." They both laughed, though there wasn't much humor to it. "Text me the next few nights before you go to bed. Just... humor me. To let me know you're okay."

"I will. Bye, Mom."

"Goodbye, honey."

* * *

After a few minutes to check on Mandolin and clean up the house, Jessica sacked back out on the couch and called Billy.

"Hey, Jessica!" he said cheerfully.

"Hi Jess!" his girlfriend Bethani chimed in.

"Hey, you two!" Jessica said, feeling much more herself. "Billy, I didn't get much of a chance to say thank you the other day. You looking out for Corbin means a lot."

"Aw, hey, he's a good dude. And he's why I texted you. We're going to get the car back soon. I was thinking about surprising him with it and doing a fundraiser at the same time."

"What are you planning?"

"The Bends," Bethani shouted gleefully.

"Ohhhh no," Jessica said. "Oh God no."

The Bends was a legendary annual tradition on campus. It was thrown each fall by the Representatives, nine seniors who were hand-picked by the nine previous seniors to unofficially run and oversee all the campus's biggest parties. The Bends itself was one of the group's most popular outings.

It was, at its core, a scavenger hunt. Teams of four registered with the Representatives and the people helping them, and then were given a list of items to procure or tasks to complete around campus. Pictures were required, with bonus points awarded for video footage. The fastest to the finish line was generally the winner, but there had been a few years when additional bonuses eked out a victory for someone else.

Years before Jessica came to school there, the Bends was known for its depravity and insanity. Alcohol poisonings happened every year, and some dumbasses always wound up disqualifying themselves for drunk driving. There were now rules in place to offset the dangers, but it was still a crazy experience, one Jessica vowed never again to rejoin.

"Now why would you say no?" Billy asked.

"You know damn well," Jessica said.

He snickered, and Bethani attempted a terrible evil laugh. The one and only time Jessica tried the Bends, one of the tasks was to bounce on a trampoline topless (or bottomless for the guys) and take a selfie. Under the influence of her archnemesis Jose Cuervo, Jessica volunteered and promptly bounced herself right into a broken arm.

She did get the selfie, though.

"Anyways, we're going to charge a hundred bucks a team," Billy said. "If we get twenty teams, that's everything replaced and a little extra cash for the kid. And two hundred fifty for the winners."

Kid? Jessica flashed back on Corbin steadily fucking Brooke, holding out forever with that intense look to his eyes. He seemed so sleepy outside of bed, but when he was in the middle of it, it was like a switch was flipped and he came alive.

Jessica shivered pleasantly and said, "Twenty teams? That's a lot to hope for."

"It's really not," Bethani said. "We had eighteen last year and there wasn't a cause. I've been talking with the sororities and they're all in to either help or sign up. Then you get the frat boys and the freshmen and sophomores, and there's your twenty easy."

"Just in case, if there's any costs left when it's done, let me know," Jessica aid, standing up and stretching.

"We will," Bethani said.

"What can I help with?"

"We'll need some help decorating and setting some stuff up around campus the day of," Billy said. "Besides that, well, here's the thing. We want you and Corbin to be the guests of honor. And our guests, they need a couple escorts. Because you're going to be a part of the scavenger hunts."

"How so?" Jessica asked, grinning.

"You'll see. But who would you think would be a good fit for Corbin? Two women to keep him company all evening?"

Jessica thought about saying she'd do it, but she remembered her words to Corbin earlier. No attachments. She was already deeply invested in the guy and had to get her feelings in check. No falling in love. Not this fast after Lionel. Corbin was a project, a rebound. A friend, yes, and... well, the second-best lover of her life and in serious contention for taking over the number one spot, but still.

No falling for him.

Right.

"Sasha," Jessica said. "Windsor. I want to introduce the two of them anyways, and this is a good reason to."

"Oh yeahhh, they would make a cute couple," Bethani said thoughtfully. Why did that make Jessica want to grind her teeth? "I can see that."

"Brooke Wallace for the other one. She's-" in bed with him right now and I'm not, Jessica thought. "-hit it off with him pretty well too."

"Brooke and Corbin?" Billy asked. "Huh. Wouldn't have thought."

"Why not?" Jessica asked. "I mean besides their connection to Kenny, they're really great. He's cleaned up a lot and she... she's beautiful and kind and funny, and everything a guy could really fall for."

"Okay," Billy said. "I really didn't mean anything by it."

"How about you?" Bethani asked. "Who do you want for an escort?"

"Um." She settled on the first name and face that came to mind. "Shea, maybe, if he's around. Besides that, surprise me. You know my type. Lots of muscles, lots of inches."

"Sure," Bethani said. "Listen, Jessica, if you and Corbin are a thing, we can back off. This is just for fun. We have other ideas or you two can go together or..."

"No," Jessica said firmly. "It's not like that. It's really not. I just... think he's a great guy. He's good in bed, so whoever you send with him, make sure they drink lots of water beforehand."

Bethani giggled. "And how would you know?"

"Oh, I think you can imagine," Jessica said. "Let me know the details and how I can help. I should go check on the girl I'm babysitting. Talk soon?"