Flower on the Hook Pt. 02

It wasn't that Bernadotte was especially keen on swimming, nor that she was good enough to compete on the team, but she had forced herself upon their practice sessions on her enthusiasm alone. Going from doggy paddling to more or less proper form over the course of several weeks, dealing with mouthfuls of chlorinated water and stinging eyes when she couldn't get the goggles to fit themselves tightly enough to her head, she pressed on until the actual members of the team showed her a little respect for keeping up with it. In fact, the purchase of a competition swimsuit had been a large part of that, no longer showing up at the university pool in the pink one-piece bought in high school and never used.

Their splashing sounds ricocheted all around the indoor pool area, falling down from the glass ceiling along with their hurried breaths. Bernadotte watched carefully from the sidelines, dreading her own turn in the lanes but enjoying the sight under the pretense of learning from their form. She had to steel her nerves, keep a pan face lest they realize she was in fact taking in the sight of their athletic curves, the way their swimsuits clung so snugly to their figures.

Better yet, one girl on the end was doing the backstroke, her suit-bound peaks bobbing invitingly in the water. It was tough to say whether that was preferable to the butt-defining wedgies some of them got, forcing them to then run their fingers under the material and snap it back into place. If only they would lose the caps and complete the undine illusion floating amid wavy hair, but most of them cut it short in the first place for the simple reason that tucking long hair away was annoying.

"Erica's looking pretty good, isn't she?" said Carla, the instructor by Bernadotte's side. The woman's maturity was tempered with activity, making the sight of her groin at a sitting person's head height as tempting as any of the younger women there. Had she more pronounced curves, bad for speed in the water as they would be, she'd be quite the toned, tanned milf.

Bernadotte shoved away prurient thoughts, keeping her head turned so the only temptation in sight was the woman's glistening, naked thigh. "Yes. More stamina, I think."

"That's why I tell all of you to jog. Remember back when you could barely go five laps before you had to stop and catch your breath?"

It had been more because the effort of looking to the side at her neighbor had resulted in near lungfuls of water. She'd never gotten a very good look in the first place since the next girl would zoom out of sight right away. "Thanks again for letting me practice along with you all." Bernadotte said, "I do wish I had taken my chance early on to learn to swim."

Carla bent down, unknowingly giving a glimpse at her delicious, brown cleavage, and she winked. "Parents didn't like the thought of their little girl drowning, I know. Did you ever tell us how you got him to change his mind?"

"I told him I would be joining the theatre club if I weren't allowed to learn." The actual thought behind that being the opportunities presented in a pre-show changing room if swimsuits and showers were denied her. "He could not refuse me there for any safety reasons, but father does not have a high opinion of actors. Debauchery and such." She blushed only because this was something she had banked on, sharing his moral opinion of actors.

"I don't know much about those guys, but good on you anyway." Carla said, "Well, stay with us like you have and I might even see you getting onto the actual team next year."

"That doesn't seem likely." Bernadotte laughed. Father would never allow her to actually join a team that would have to travel around for competition. It had been enough of a challenge to stay out more than a minute after her last class' end. "But thank you, of course, for being patient with me."

"No worries, honey. Not everyone grew up around the water after all." The woman sat with Bernadotte in the bleachers, nearly close enough that the ripe, dark skin of her thigh might caress Bernadotte's, and cast her arms around the girl, squishing up against her arm with tempting softness.

It took a force of will to ignore it. This was only a little more familiar than women were allowed to be with one another after all... only friendly. Were Bernadotte to take it as a sign of deeper affection the way her subconscious screamed it to be and leaned in for a kiss... Maybe on the cheek would be fine? She froze instead, kept her wandering hands clasped between her knees so they couldn't get her into any trouble.

"Well, you think about it, alright?" Carla said, sliding off Bernadotte's shoulders, "So many girls think that because they aren't going to be the fastest, there's no reason to join the team. Not at all! You need to grab hold of what you want in life, especially if you know it's going to be hard. Know what I mean? Doesn't matter if you're the last one over the finish line, just that you showed up to challenge yourself."

The last group of swimmers was coming up, so Bernadotte excused herself to take her position at the pool's edge. She had no time to think, pushing herself through the water as fast as she could, visions of taut asses shooting ahead while she puttered along. It wasn't as though she never went for what she wanted, but there was a world of difference from her situation. She finished dead last, thankfully within few enough seconds that the next round of swimmers weren't waiting for her at the surface with impatient looks.

They finished up at four and within thirty minutes Bernadotte had washed and redressed. Today she couldn't spare the time to linger in the changing room with girls all around in various states of undress, she had business.

Her palms were sweaty by the time she made it out to the parking area and her stomach churned with guilt and shame. She could feel her face draining and hardened herself to stride up to the black car with its heavily tinted windows with a demure smile. It wouldn't be easy to do this again, but her plans for the day required a series of lies in the next few moments.

The driver's side window rolled down and a buzz cut over a square face leaned out to greet her. It wasn't that David had a sturdy jaw or a sturdy expression, but he had an overall squarishness that must have served him well in his time spent in the... she wanted to say, Navy. It had taken her weeks to instill in this man, servile more to her father's whims than hers, that it was inappropriate for him to be waiting in the middle of campus, glaring down every boy who passed in her general direction. The letter she'd arranged for from a "concerned professor" was the straw that broke that particular camel's back and the man was stuck waiting in a car all the while she was inside.

"Miss Shore, nice day of class I assume?" He put on a voice like he cared and that he wasn't at the tail end of his boring day. "Feeling alright? You look a touch pale."

Bernadotte approached the driver's side and ignored the man's little sigh. Were this going to be a normal drive home, she would have already taken her seat in the back. "I'm sorry to do this to you, but my anthropology class stuck me with some group work and we'll be doing that in the library for some time. It's a presentation, you see, on carbon dating, and we all promised we'd do the posterboard together so nobody is pressured to do the whole thing themselves. If you like, you could take a few hours and I'll call when I'm ready to be picked up."

Being a dinosaur, a bodyguard longer than she'd been alive, it took a few tense seconds for the concept to bridge the distance of his peanut brain and come back with a response. "Your father doesn't like you staying out too late, you know? And I'm the one who takes that lecture. Maybe I should tag along. Been a while since I learned it, but one more brain couldn't hurt."

"Too long? David, I shouldn't be here later than seven in the worst case and there are members of my group who routinely stay until just before the buses stop running. I'm sure father will understand, as it's his money that will go to waste if I fail the class and have to retake it." In point of fact, the man would likely not notice she'd been gone unless David made a point to tell on her. "I'll be totally fine, Harry will be there, you know him, dependable."

"That Australian guy?"

"No, you're thinking of his girlfriend. Seriously, I'll be fine, so go get some coffee and set up with one of your books and I'll let you know when I'm done. Alright?"

He clearly wasn't alright with letting his charge out of his sight for so long, but after a heart-paining pause, he shrugged. "Got your phone on you?"

She pulled her phone out, the one David knew about, not the prepaid one. "Go ahead and watch the GPS the entire time if that's your idea of entertainment."

Without waiting for his response, as she was now on a timer, Bernadotte rushed to the library. More accurately, she went to the personal lockers meant for bookbags and the like right inside the library's entrance and set her phone inside, retrieving the long raincoat, mask, and wide-brimmed hat she'd left for herself earlier that week. How she'd convinced herself to do this the week before without a disguise of any kind she would never understand.

She peered out to make sure she wasn't being followed and silently crossed to the student resources office right in front of the transit terminal. Her disguise was good, for things which could be purchased on the university grounds, and she'd still had to scrape off the logo from the coat, leaving its ghostly glue marks, but she wasn't at all confident to stand outside waiting for a bus to arrive. Instead, the staff in the office would simply have to gossip about the strange girl leaning against the window until a bus came into the station, but the point was that they wouldn't care enough to ask her name.

Then it did come, and Bernadotte swept inside, ticket already palmed to slip into the reader without delay, and she took the rearmost seat. None of this had done a thing to quiet her beating heart or help the feeling that she was about to throw up; her idea was that Benign Bernadotte was innocuous enough that these tired, young adults would be too busy or too disinterested to remember that she had ever been there. Still, it was only a five minute drive to her stop, perhaps close enough that she could have just walked along the side of the road into town in the same time.

Getting off by the corner store, she checked her time and dipped inside for a breather. Fifteen minutes early. Stress had rushed her the week before, but there was no good reason to arrive early and throw off miss Chris' schedule again. Once Bernadotte had made a visit to the ATM for the two hundred from her allowance account, she thought a gift wouldn't be a bad idea and pulled out another fifty.

It wasn't her first time in one of these places, rather the fourth, but it wasn't nearly as disquieting as the previous visits. After all, everything there was an attempt to provide her with convenience, a misguided attempt in the case of the slowly rotating hot dogs and pizza under the warmer, but an attempt was made. As it was only her and the pimple-scarred young man at the counter, Bernadotte breathed a sigh of relief and approached him, fifty-dollar bill tucked into her coat's sleeve as if she wasn't an idiot who would walk around with large sums.

"Excuse me, but do you sell flowers?" she asked.

The look on his face gave her the answer before he could say it. "Flowers, not really. February we will, you know, obvious reasons. But that'll be just, like, single roses. Why?"

"Ah, you know, like, a gift." She had no idea how to explain the situation in a way that would let her leave without a sideways glance.

The cashier scratched his head. "We've got chocolate bars? That's about the most romantic thing we sell here, and it's not exactly a box of chocolates either. What do you think?"

"Sorry, I don't know what I'm doing." Bernadotte bent her head, marched into the aisle of wireframe shelves, and took one of each type they had on offer, since she had no way of knowing what Chris would like. An embarrassing moment followed where more customers entered while the cashier made change for her fifty-dollar bill, leaving her with more than thirty dollars and an assortment of small change she stuffed into her coat's voluminous pockets before retreating onto the street.

This area, father would have called low-class under his breath with the understanding of anyone who heard being that it would improve the area if it burned entirely to the ground. Then, at least, it could be managed by people who knew what they were doing, instead of the riffraff that had simply remained when the city had swallowed them up in development. Two blocks away, there was a new school, and a grocery store beyond that, which heightened property values enough to shoo off some of those remaining. It had been an issue of discontentment years before that prices for rent were rising despite the accommodations remaining as they always had been; no relief for the landlords who needed to pay the increased property tax. It was sometimes said that there was a day coming where they would give up on trying to keep swimming against the tide and sell their properties, disperse the dregs to where they could settle on the outskirts.

Until, Bernadotte thought, the city grew enough to swallow that up as well.

Her sympathy for the occupants drained as she made the walk, clutching the money inside her pocket on the off chance that she would become accosted by one of the vagrants and bums that dotted the way. How she had managed the week before to make this walk without any kind of defense for her identity was flabbergasting. It had seemed like a dream the whole way, not quite coalescing into reality through the fog of stress until she was face to face with the hooker and stark naked. If Chris hadn't pushed the ticket, Bernadotte felt she might have retreated, clothes gathered against her chest in unthinking terror until she could find a dark alley, no want for options, to smooth herself out and return home with her tail between her legs.

But here she was again, under the eyes of god knew who all around, hopefully not gossips. And she rapped on the door.

"Five minutes!" a woman's voice shrieked from inside, followed by laughter and another person's moan.

Bernadotte waited against the wall, hat pulled down across her eyes and a slight bend in her knees. If anyone wanted to describe her, they would have to make do with a description of her clothing. She could hear what was going on inside: Chris had a gentleman caller, and the squeals that came out made it damn clear how she enjoyed his attentions. It was difficult to quiet the imagination, conjuring pictures of what might make Bernadotte herself make those sounds, the kinds of touch a man was capable of providing that she was not. She couldn't help putting herself in the man's place in her mind, her imagined hands filled with softness, perhaps pinching something sensitive or waggling a finger to tickle.

Those five minutes passed like a half hour, but eventually a man with a wifebeater draped over a large belly emerged, gave Bernadotte a passing look and a knowing smirk, and vanished down the stairs.

She approached the cracked-open door carefully and knocked.

"Come on in already, you're letting out the heat!" Chris yelled from inside, then threw open the door from the other side and took Bernadotte by the wrist, hauling the girl inside. The woman was naked except for the bikini top hanging from a string over her shoulder which threatened to fall off as she pinned Bernadotte against the entryway wall. "Look at you, all sneaky~ You know you stand out so much worse doin' shit like that? Nobody cares about some chick going by in normal clothes, but now you're tellin' them you've got something to hide. Betcha someone already took a picture, had you all figured out by the time you got to the stairs outside." She pulled the strap of Bernadotte's mask off her ear and licked her cheek.

It was impossible to stop the shakes. But Bernadotte promised herself she wouldn't let herself become a passive observer to her own defilement once more; she shut her eyes tight and leaned in to plant a kiss on the woman's lips.

But her own lips met a hand in the way. "Dottie, you should know that's not the way this works. C'mon, where's the cash?"

Bernadotte wormed her fingers dumbly into the pocket containing the two-hundred and came back out with the massive wad of candy she'd bought earlier. "I, um, didn't know what kind you like."

"Candy bars?" An irrepressible smile crept across Chris' face until she took the bundle and covered her mouth, bent with laughter with her head resting on Bernadotte's shoulder. "As if it weren't bad enough to come here with a gift at all! Ha! Fuck's sake, it's your money I guess." With that, she let Bernadotte off the wall and started on the way back into the dirty apartment. "I'mma get changed and grab a quick shower, 'less'n you want to suck out that guy's spunk?"

It could have been a joke, but Bernadotte took no chance considering how their last date ended. She sometimes thought she could still taste the bitter stickyness clinging to her throat. "I don't want the timer to start until you're out, though." she said.

"Sure, sure," came the reply of a woman who had almost certainly intended to start their hour right then and there, "Go ahead and take a beer or two if you wanna while you wait. I even got some of that fruity crap you might like better." The bikini top dropped to the floor amid the menagerie and Chris started up her shower without caring to close the bathroom door.

This place smelled. It wasn't so much that it smelled specifically like something found in the men's dorm during cleanup, which required Bernadotte to wash her hands under rubbing alcohol when she was told why the sock smelled that way, though that was one of the myriad odors present. No, the thing about the apartment was that it smelled a lot, enough to keep the nose busy until it thankfully deadened and repulsed her from touching anything she didn't have to. Old clothing was strewn across the floor, some of it noticeably stiff to the touch when stepped on, but treading on that was preferable to putting a foot down on the odd trash pile.

How a person chose to live in this way was beyond the imagination of a girl who hadn't been able to leave her room messy for a single day without a maid picking it all up. And one might think that such conditions would make for someone who could stand to leave their own things where they were dropped, but it had become necessary in hiding anything to keep things spotless on her own. Whether the maids even knew of the lockbox beneath the clothes in her drawers was a mystery, but the box remained, her pilfered porno mag with its dog-eared pages remained safe for the time being.

Moving things with her feet, Bernadotte was able to clear away a little island of rug where she could lay down her raincoat to sit atop without needing to touch a thing. Still, it bothered her enough to trudge into the kitchen, where there was somehow clear tile, and look in the cupboard for trash bags and gloves.

No gloves, but Chris did have a roll of black bags. Resolving to soak her hands in alcohol the second time that month, Bernadotte tore two bags from the roll and started filling them with what she found around the futon, one for clothes and the other for garbage. She thanked god not to feel any slime as she worked, but it was moreso because she would only pick things up between a pinched thumb and forefinger and only when she'd confirmed by sight the dryness of her chosen point.