FocusTunes Ch. 05

It didn't help that FocusTunes was burning a hole in my pocket the entire time, whispering easy solutions into my calculating mind. The easiest way to ensure she didn't share her discovery with anybody and didn't continue pressing me for information was to make her forget what she knew. I wasn't sure if FocusTunes could do that -- "You don't remember any conversations you had with Ben today?" seemed risky -- but I could at least tell her "You shouldn't talk about Ben's secrets" and put the lid back on the story.

I clicked through the link Miranda sent, landing on a sparsely populated page. The header logo was the opened eye that I had seen on the app icon itself. Below it in plain typeface was the company name: Apertus. And on the body of the page: a download link for iOS and the FocusTunes logo. Right there, boldly in blue: "FocusTunes v1.2.11"

As I tapped, I was questioned by a modal from Apple: did I know and trust this third-party developer? Was I willing to let them make changes to my device?

"No, no, and yes," I thought to myself wryly and confirmed the download.

"Let's put the phone away, shall we, Ben?" My professor's voice, weary with life, rang from the front.

"Sorry, professor."

-----

That afternoon, I parked my car in front of the Ryan household, two large Coke slushies in hand. Heidi and I had grabbed gas station slushies on a hot afternoon fuel stop a couple of years ago, and the relief was so immediate, we'd gone out of our way to buy slushies at every turn, as a supplication to the god of icy beverages. They were an ideal peace offering.

Heidi was waiting for me on her porch -- I had texted her a quick apology and asked to meet in person for a real one. She didn't look thrilled to see me, but she didn't look too pissed either.

"Hey," I said as I took the steps up, joining her on the porch swing. "I brought you a slushie."

"That you did." Her voice was guarded, but she took it from my offering hand. We both took a sip before I continued.

"So yeah, I just wanted to say I was sorry. I was a dick earlier. I guess...I don't know. What you said was true." I sighed. It actually was, even though most of the truth was still concealed from her. "Miranda doesn't actually feel the same way about me that I feel about her. I was just, you know...excited that we had hooked up."

"That's fair." She took a sip. "I get why you're excited. You've obviously liked her for a while. But I shouldn't have acted so surprised and I shouldn't have doubted. That was mean." Another sip. "So I'm sorry for that."

"I'll be honest." I smirked. "I didn't expect an apology back."

"My turn to surprise you today, I guess." She smiled wryly. "Now, will you honestly tell me what happened?"

"I don't really know." I did know, actually -- and I knew the lie I was going to tell, too. "After tutoring on Friday we ended up getting dinner and chatting for a while. It was a really good talk, we were out super late, took a drive, just, whatever. So when I took her back home, I was basically like 'Oh, that was a ton of fun, we should do that more often,' and she was like 'Yeah, that was the best date I've had in a while' -- kinda like a joke, but also not, you know?"

"A classic."

"Right. So then I woke up on Saturday and she had actually called me late on Friday night, left me this long voicemail talking about our night and how she felt like we had a great chemistry and...you know what? Honestly, it'd be easier if you just listened to it." I pulled my phone out of my jacket pocket, earphones plugged in and unwrapped, ready to go. I didn't give her a chance to disagree, thumbing open my phone and sliding over to my new app, carefully keeping the phone angled away from Heidi's gaze.

"Here." As I handed her an earbud, my leg started to bounce with nerves. I flexed my muscles and willed it steady, but still felt the energy vibrating through my toes. Heidi took another sip before grabbing the earphone, tucking a divergent strand of copper hair behind her ear as she did. I didn't hesitate, hitting play the moment the earbud was secure.

The effect was not as I expected. She didn't enter that weird zen mode at all, her brow furrowing in confusion and her head swaying in uncertainty. I froze, expecting a protestation over the odd music playing in her ears -- but even as she strained to make an expression or vocalize a concern, she seemed incapable of coalescing one coherent thought.

My panic-riddled brain quickly realized the issue: only one headphone in. The ambivalent noise in her far ear broke the magic of the song, disrupting the trance with white noise. I grabbed the second earbud and reached across her face, my heart fluttering in fear. She didn't have nearly enough wherewithal to stop me, fortunately enough -- and once I settled the earbud in, she immediately slipped all the way into the trance.

I couldn't let her go far in, however -- her folks might be home. The music had only played for a few seconds before she started standing, engrossed in her surroundings -- I guided her back down with a firm hand on her thigh.

I let the music run for only a few more seconds before cutting it. Her eyes fell listless in their sockets, and quickly, I ripped through my command. "Heidi: you'll always keep Ben's secrets. Heidi: you'll always keep Ben's secrets."

Her empty eyes sat on my face, and I shuddered involuntarily. I had no reason to think it wouldn't work, but it was still equal parts encouraging and unsettling that it did. Seeing the light in her eyes dull filled me with guilt, but I pressed on, squeezing her toned leg to steel myself.

"Heidi: you trust me. Heidi: you trust me." It would just help to have that foundation of trust in place, if I needed to do more work. That simple command had made Miranda open up to me; it could certainly help me answer Heidi's probing questions into my new love life.

As she roused, I pulled the earbuds from her ears and tucked my phone back away. Awareness rose in her countenance and color to her cheeks, and she turned to me in confusion.

"...so yeah, it's a secret for now," I said easily, as if I'd been talking this whole time. "I just don't think she's ready to tell her friends about it, and I don't want to make her uncomfortable. Can I trust you to keep it secret for me?"

The combined weight of the trigger words elicited an immediate response. "Of course. I'll always keep your secrets." She nodded in solidarity. I sent her a big smile.

"Thanks Heidi. I knew I could trust you, and you can always trust me, too." She grinned at that as well, and I knew in that moment, for every problem in my life from then on, I'd try to solve it with FocusTunes. My methods needed fine-tuning, sure -- but this was the skeleton key to life. I couldn't be stopped.

"Uhh, are you..." I returned to the present. Heidi was looking down at my hand awkwardly. It was still plastered to her thigh, higher up along the limb than could be waved aside as a friendly touch.

"Oh, sorry." I pulled back. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"It didn't make me uncomfortable," Heidi said plainly. "It felt nice."

"Nice?"

"Yeah. Nobody's ever really touched me like that before."

I know that the male brain is programmed to get hard at pretty much everything -- especially through the waning stages of pubescence. With that said, it was still stunning that a naked Miranda dirty-talking her little fantastical heart out made me just as hard as a blushing, fully-clothed Heidi saying she's never really been touched before.

"Oh! Well..." I realized that this was the booster shot of trust I had given her, loosening her tongue as it had Miranda's. "I'm, uh...glad it didn't feel weird."

"Yeah, me too." A beat of silence. "I've always...liked thinking about you touching me."

My eyes flew up in surprise. Heidi's pale cheeks were a fiery red now, color filling the thin slice of chest I could see over her top. I'd given her extra trust, but no accompanying decrease in shame -- she was trusting me with a secret, but by the look on her face, just barely enduring the experience.

"I'm so sorry." She shook her head. "I don't know why I said that." More like definitely hating the experience. I could almost hear her inner voice pleading with the ground to swallow her whole.

"It's okay." I said reassuringly, reaching out to pat her leg comfortingly. Just as I made contact, I realized what I was doing, and she and I both recoiled like the other was burning hot.

Another beat of silence.

"I should--"

"Okay, so--"

And another beat of silence.

"I'm gonna go." I half-chuckled the words out, trying to nonchalance my way through the awkwardness.

"That's probably best," she said quietly, turning away from me, clearly mortified.

I was halfway to the car before I decided turning around was a good idea, for some fucking reason. "I'm glad we...talked!" I half-yelled at her retreating figure. She definitely heard me, but pretended she didn't, scrambling inside instead.

I felt an odd blend of emotions. I was embarrassed -- mostly second-hand for Heidi, but also a little for myself, for not realizing earlier that she had feelings for me. I felt guilty about that, too. She was one of my closest friends, but I took for granted that prescribed religious frigidity meant she couldn't catch feelings -- let alone succumb to bodily temptations. Her words echoed in my head: "I've always liked thinking about you touching me." Fuck.

Above all else in my emotional cocktail was horniness. I shifted uncomfortably in the driver's seat, readjusting my boner to a less obtrusive position. The demon on my shoulder whispered snidely from his perch: "You wouldn't even have to make her want you like you did to Miranda; she already wants you. 'It's okay to have sex' is all it would take. 'You aren't inhibited around me' does the job as well -- and think about how freaky she might be, finally released from those tight restraints." FUCK.

I called Miranda as I pulled out of the driveway. (Don't text and drive, kids.) She answered after several rings.

"What's up?"

"You with anybody right now?" I asked pointedly.

"Yeah, I'm still at cheer," she said vaguely.

"When can we meet today?"

"I'm pretty busy for the rest of the day...doing homework at Abby's."

"Cancel. Do it at home."

"I'm not going to...can you wait for just one second? Let me get somewhere quieter."

There had been little background noise on the call -- not enough to justify a relocation. I sat in a prolonged silence, my blood hot and thick through my veins.

Suddenly, her voice crackled back over the speakers, hushed and urgent.

"Okay Ben, I know this is probably your first ever booty call, so let me tell you how this works. You do not get to call me on short notice and start demanding time with me. I don't know what the fuck has gotten to you, but if you start treating me like some free-to-use whore, this will end pretty fucking quick. You got it?"

I was still for a moment, my heart pounding, my mind racing.

"Yes." My voice was choked, my teeth gritted. "Fine. I'm sorry. I was pissed about...it doesn't matter. Something else. Sorry."

"Good." And she hung up the phone.

"FUCK!" I slammed a fist against my steering wheel. I should have never given her any fucking autonomy. That was bullshit. She was mine, she was free for my use, she was my whore. If I were there with her in person, if I could have said the magic words that I knew stoked her flames, I could have had her. This was fucking ridiculous. Why had I given her back when I had finally FUCKING had her?!

Exactly 1.5 days it took me, to completely romanticize some contrived fucking bullshit out of a mind-controlled fuckpuppet, the actual fucking wet dream of the century. On her knees, mouth open, tits out, fucking pleading with me to give her my dick -- and I took it all away from myself. Of course she wasn't going to fuck me anymore -- why would she? Just because she wanted to fuck me? I wanted to fuck a hundred different girls in that school, but I didn't fuck a single one, because there were RULES. Societal rules and hygenic rules and actual fucking law rules that kept all of us hypercharged postpubescent bunny rabbits from romping day and night. I had given Miranda the rules back, and now she was hiding behind them.

Fuck me. I was boiling mad. I tried thinking about pitiful Miranda, the weeping girl on my bedroom floor, on whom I had shown mercy and returned autonomy -- but slap my ass if it didn't make me all the harder. I thought I had wanted functional Miranda, confident Miranda, sexy Miranda. I was wrong. I wanted the pliant bitch under my thumb and filled with my dick.

I was in the stadium parking lot before I could blink. My hands were shaking as I slammed the car door behind me -- for fear or for anger, I didn't know. A gaggle of cheerleaders loitered at the stadium entrance, some getting into their parents' cars, some working towards their own vehicles. I tried to make out Miranda, but couldn't ID her in the crowd.

For some reason, that didn't slow my pace. "'Turn the fuck around!' The angel on my shoulder was pleading with me now. 'At least stop and make a plan! You don't want to make any more mistakes!'" The devil on my other shoulder was wearing a foam finger and had a giant dick painted onto his bare chest.

"What are you doing here?" A snide voice from the side. Emily Brooks was leering at me, a hand resting lightly on a cocked hip. Her radiant hair was done up into a high, bouncing ponytail tied with a bow of our school's colors: crimson and silver. She wore a thin tank top over a sports bra, her toned belly glistening with sweat in the afternoon sun. Tight shorts hugged her firm, but still full ass. Bare legs went on for miles.

Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe it was the many fantasies I'd played out with this very woman in my head earlier that day. Maybe the devil fed me the lines. Whatever it was, I knew exactly what to say.

"Just the girl I was looking for."

"Me?"

"Yes, you." I smiled a disarming smile. "Was Miranda weird again today?"

"She was." A layer of ice melted off Emily's tone as she suspected fresh gossip was coming her way. "She got a phone call after practice and literally ran away from all of us."

"She left me the weirdest voicemail just a few minutes ago." I already had the phone out of my pocket and the earbuds half-unraveled. "I thought you should listen to it. I'm kinda worried about her."

Emily took a step closer to me. She smelled like expensive perfume and sweat, and I wanted to fuck her then and there like a fucking animal. I had one earbud in her hand before an alarm bell rang in my mind.

"Wait, where is she?" I looked over my shoulder, selling the part. "I don't want her seeing this in case she knows what I'm doing." I looked back to my car. "Here, come this way."

I power walked to my car, urgent and unrelenting; she didn't hesitate to follow. She'd taken the bait; now it was just a matter of setting the hook. I didn't feel even a blink of hesitation, a twang of guilt. I just felt need.

"Here, put both of these in." I handed her the headphones. "It's pretty hard to hear."

The moment the second earbud hit her ear, I pressed play.

She was pliant to my touches, so I grabbed her by the forearm and hastened her toward the car even faster. She wanted to lollygag, to observe -- I pushed her on, plopping her in the passenger seat and checking back toward the mass of people frantically. Nobody was running over with handcuffs or pepper spray. God, my heartbeat was almost harder than my cock, and my cock could have cut diamonds.

By the time I made it to the driver seat, Emily was halfway out of the passenger-side door. "Fucking music," I grumbled to myself as I rushed out, replaced her in my car, and secured the seatbelt.

I sprinted to the driver's seat and held her in place as I drove away. I wasn't sure exactly what she'd do here. If I locked the doors, would she know how to unlock them? Would she know not to exit a moving car? So I kept my hand plastered to her thigh, and she took that as an insistence to stay seated.

This was how I had touched Heidi. It was now how I was touching Emily. This was how I touched my girls.

Her head towards me, her eyes studying my rearview mirror, my steering wheel, my hands, my arms, my shoulders, my face. I don't know what it showed her -- lust, fear, shock, anger -- but whatever it was, it didn't phase her.

The song ran for over four minutes -- within three, I was parked on the opposite side of campus, in a lot vacant enough to finish the job. I pulled the headphones from Emily's ears and watched her glaze over, slumping in her seat. This is what I fucking wanted.

"Emily: you will do anything I tell you to. Emily: you will do anything I tell you to. Emily: you will do anything I tell you to." I was going to pivot to some "you trust me"s, but I figured if she was following my commands without fail, trust was a non-factor. So I just repeated my refrain: "Emily: you will do anything I tell you to. Emily: you will do anything I tell you to. Emily: you will do anything I tell you to" until she finally began to rouse.

"Wh-...what am I doing here?" Emily was confused as she surfaced. Ah, dickshit. This was the first time I had ever relocated a girl while she was under; her last functional memory had us across campus, not in my car. I didn't have an explanation ready.

"Don't worry about where we are or why you're here." I told her plainly.

"Okay," she said, freakishly calm. "I still don't know what we're doing here, though. Why did I get in a car with you?" Getting less calm!

I panicked for a second. Then I remembered my phrasing. Everything had to be literal with the commands.

"You're here with me because I told you to come with me."

"Oh. Okay." She turned to the backseat. "Shit. I left all of my stuff back at the stadium. Why didn't I grab it?"

Oh my God, all of the fucking questions! The more things she wondered, the more I freaked out. She was punching holes in a story that I hadn't even spun yet, and eventually I'd paint myself into a corner. It was time to take firm control over the situation.

"Emily, we're going to spend time together this afternoon. You need t--...I'm telling you to text whomever you need to text -- your parents, friends, coach, whatever -- and make excuses they'll believe as to why you're gone, so that your next hour...your next couple hours are free. Do not tell them that you're with me. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," she nodded, reaching for the phone jammed in the waistband of her shorts. "I was gonna drive myself home but I'll just tell my parents I'll be late. I'll tell Coach Mendoza to leave my stuff in the locker room and I'll grab it later." She was already furiously typing away.

"Good." I nodded to myself shakily. "Uh...tell me. Or, wait...answer my questions truthfully: are you attracted to me at all?"

"No!" she said immediately, scorn in her voice. I didn't like that.

"Treat me with respect." I said reflexively. Immediately, her expression melted into a soft gaze of contrition, and she graced me with doe eyes.

"I'm sorry." Now her tone was sincere, almost simpering. "I didn't mean to upset you. Honestly, I just don't think you're that cute. But I'm sure there are other girls that do!"

Holy shit. That was unbelievable. Emily's eyes dropped back to her phone as she fulfilled my earlier tasks, but my eyes stayed plastered to her body as she typed.

"Emily." Eyes again, locked on to my every word. "You are attracted to me."

I saw no change in her expression, so I asked her again: "Are you attracted to me at all?"