Good to Go

This is my very first attempt at writing. I've always wanted to write and after years of starts and stops I decided something short like this might be a good way to get my feet wet, so to speak. This story isn't terribly graphic. There is some sex, but it comes at the end of the tale. My goal here was to try and tell a coherent story of friendship, love, and a little sex thrown in for good measure.

I welcome constructive comments. If this is not your cup of tea, that's okay. If you enjoy it, let me know. If you have any advice, I'll be glad to hear it. If you make it all the way to the end, thanks for your time.

All characters in this story who engage in sexual situations are completely fictional and are 18 years old or older.

Special thanks to RandyD1369 for his amazing editing of not only grammar and punctuation, but also story plot, flow, and cohesion. Thanks for calling me out on parts of the story that didn't completely make sense or come full circle. You're willingness to not only "red pen" grammatical issues, but to invest in the story to the point where you're able to draw references between different parts of the timeline shows your commitment to your craft and your writers.

*****

Jake awoke from what was apparently a very good dream since he could feel his erection straining against his boxers. Laying on his side, facing the wall, he was still in that transition between sleep and wakefulness. Taking a deep breath and stretching he noticed a distinct and familiar smell. It was floral and fresh with a hint of strawberry. He started to roll over but something was pressed against his back. Craning his head around the first thing he saw were bare feet with red painted toe nails, ankles crossed with one foot lightly bouncing. Turning his head further, he saw bare legs, smooth, shapely, tan, and athletic. He next saw blue-jean shorts over narrow hips, a tucked in white tee shirt concealing firm, proud breasts, one of which was covered by a cascade of blue-black hair which came almost to the waist, a long slender neck, clean jawline, supple lips, narrow nose, and deep emerald green eyes. The eyes, and the lips, held a smile as Jake looked at his unexpected visitor.

"Morning sleepy head," Dani said pertly.

"Hey Dani," Jake said sleepily, in his deep soft voice. "What's up?"

"Uh, not you," she joked. "I was beginning to wonder if you were going to wake up today. I started to wake you once, but you sounded like you were having a really good dream so I just got comfortable and waited for you to wake up."

"What time is it? How long have you been here?" Jake asked, still keeping his back to her because his erection was still raging.

Dani looked down at her phone. "It's 9:30 in the morning and I've been here about an hour or so."

"So what are you doing here so early on a Saturday morning?"

"Will you go with me to the mall today?" Dani asked.

"Uh, yeah, sure. I just need to take a shower," Jake said.

"Okay," she said looking at him with her trademark half-smile. She waited a full five seconds to see if he would move. He didn't.

"I'm going to get some orange juice," she said getting up off the bed. "You want some?"

"Uh, sure," he said, still looking back over his shoulder.

Dani left her sandals on the floor next to his bed and padded barefoot out the door, headed to the kitchen.

Jake jumped out of bed with tented boxers. He grabbed some clean underwear, a pair of khaki shorts and a tee shirt and headed down the hall to the bathroom, but only after looking both ways at the door to make sure no one would see him.

Turning on the shower as soon as he got inside the bathroom, he stripped his boxers off and threw them in the hamper.

Feeling the water before stepping into the shower, he put both hands on the wall and let the water flow over his head and down his back. At 6'3" he had to bend slightly at the waist to get his head below the shower head. His broad back was pale compared to his face, neck and arms that were nicely tanned. Jake had the classic farmer's tan, meaning he was rarely out in the sun without a shirt on. The reason for that was evident in the raised red scars crisscrossing his back.

*****

Jake had grown up in the foster care system. His mother had abandoned him on the steps of a church in Cleveland, Ohio when he was a day old. He was handed over to social services and placed with a family that made a living out of gaming the foster care system. Child care was not on their list of priorities. He was barely fed, never loved, and when the man of the house had a little too much to drink, the boy became the target of his evil inclinations.

When he was 6 years old, and after a particularly harsh beating, he had waited until his foster parents had finally passed out from drink, took the only thing he owned, a small metal car with one wheel missing, and he left. It was raining and cold. He didn't know where he was going, but he knew he wasn't staying here anymore.

He walked down the dimly lit sidewalk, passed street corners where hookers and drug dealers plied their trades, past darkened alleyways where junkies snorted and injected drugs, some of them for the last time. He felt invisible, as he had so often in his home. Unseen and unheard until fate or just plain bad luck seemed to shine a spotlight upon him, making him the most visible thing in the room. A target. On this night though, thankfully, he remained invisible. Cold and wet, but invisible to those around him.

Suddenly he smelled something that smelled like heaven. Someone was cooking and his stomach was growling. Driven by hunger, he followed his nose down an alley until he found a door propped open and the smells coming out where too much to resist. He went inside and found a pan of fresh bread rolls. He grabbed one and started eating. He didn't hear the large man that walked up behind him.

"Would you like a glass of milk with that?" a voice behind him asked.

He spun around like a cornered animal, looking for an escape.

The man could see the fear in the boy's eyes. He backed up so that he wasn't too imposing and knelt down on one knee. "It's okay son, I'm not going to hurt you," he said holding his empty hands, palms out, toward him. "Would you like some eggs and bacon?" he asked.

"What's bacon?" the boy asked quietly.

"What's bacon?" the man asked stunned. "Well son, it's only the best dang breakfast food on the planet. It's practically it's own food group."

"I've never had any bacon," he said, unable to meet the man's eyes.

"What's your name son?"

The boy stood, not answering, looking down at the floor.

"It's okay son, you're not in trouble. My name's Mike." He held out his large hand.

The boy automatically flinched back, away from his hand.

"Hey, hey, hey; it's okay. No one's going to hurt you, I promise," Mike said soothingly. "You do have a name don't you?"

The boy shook his head slowly, side to side.

"Well, how about we call you, uh, Jake?"

"Jake," the boy whispered. It was the first time in memory that he had an actual name, other than kid, brat, bastard, or any of a hundred names of the type. He nodded his head and said again, "Jake."

"Okay Jake, how about those eggs and bacon?"

"Okay," Jake said, his head slowly nodded.

Scrambled eggs and bacon soon became Jake's favorite food in the world. It was so good. He had eaten two scrambled eggs and was on his 6th piece of bacon when he heard someone knocking on the back door of the diner.

"Jake, this is John." Mike said, introducing the man who came in. "John is a policeman and he helps people."

"Hey Jake," John said. Mike had already warned him about trying to touch the boy. "Like Mike said, I'm a police detective. My job is to help people. Do you need help, Jake?"

Jake sat, looking at Mike and John for a few moments before very slowly nodding his head.

"Okay, finish your breakfast, and we'll get Mike to make you a sack lunch to take with us, and we'll go for a ride in my car, okay?"

"Okay," Jake whispered.

"Hey Mike, would you have any of MJ's clothes here? He's about Jake's size isn't he?" John asked. MJ was Mike Jr., Mike's 5 year old son.

"You know, I think I do. I keep a change of clothes for him here because whenever he comes by to visit he invariably gets something on his shirt or his pants so I keep a couple sets of clothes here."

Mike left the room and soon came back with a shirt, pair of pants, and even a pair of sneakers.

"Hey Jake, would you like to change into some dry clothes?"

"Okay," Jake said.

"All right, come on back here where you can have some privacy."

Mike took Jake to his office and gave him the clothes, "Here you go bud, put these on."

Mike closed the door, but walked around the side of the office where there was a window. He just wanted to make sure Jake could get changed okay. When he looked through the window, the blood drained from his face. "John," he hissed.

John came over and looked through the window. He saw Jake gingerly removing his old, wet tee shirt. The red lashes across his back were angry, swollen, and fresh. "My God," Mike said in an emotional whisper. John simply shook his head. In his line of work, he had seen this type of thing far too often, and he never got used to it.

When he was changed, Jake was taken to the police department where he was able to give the names of his foster parents. They were arrested, charged, and would be in prison for many years to come.

John called his sister, Diane, in Texas, because he knew that she and her husband had recently found out that they would never be able to have children and had been talking about adopting. He arranged with the social services representative to meet with Diane and Bob Hardin. Within the month, Jake was getting on his first airplane, bound for Dallas, Texas.

Bob and Diane understood the uphill battle they faced with Jake. They knew that years of abuse would be hard to overcome, but they were kind, patient, supportive and now Jake was 18, having just graduated in the top five percent of his class, with academic scholarships for pretty much anywhere he wanted to go. He still had his physical scars, and his emotional scars. He still did not like to be touched. He would willingly accept physical contact from only three people. His adopted parents and Dani Flint.

Jake moved in with Bob and Diane, to a quiet suburb in The Colony, Texas. Soon after, he was outside, playing in their spacious back hard. Though his adoptive parents had bought him many new toys, he still played with his familiar old three wheeled car. On this day, as he played, he heard a voice call to him with a simple, "Hi."

Jake turned to see a girl about his age standing at the fence between his yard and the yard next door. She was tan with long hair that was shiny black like a crow's wing. She had green eyes that seemed to look into his soul.

"Hi," Jake said.

"What's your name?"

"Jake."

"Hi Jake, I'm Dani."

"Isn't that a boy's name?"

"Not when you spell it with an 'I'," she said pertly.

"Do you want to play?" Jake asked her.

"Sure." Dani climbed the chain link fence without a moment's hesitation.

"What are you playing?" Dani asked him.

"Cars," Jake said.

"Okay. Do you have another car?"

"No, but you can play with mine," Jake said, handing her the beat up little car.

"Thank you," Dani said.

After playing and talking for a while, they heard a voice calling. "Dani, Dani Flint!"

"Oh, there's my mom," Dani said, holding the little car out to Jake.

"You can keep it," Jake said quietly.

Dani looked at the pitiful little car and smiled a little half smile. "Thank you," she said and reached out and grabbed Jake in a big hug. Jake stood stock still for a second before slowly reaching his arms around her.

Diane Hardin, watching from the kitchen window smiled, even as a tear fell from her eye.

Dani and Jake has been inseparable best friends ever since.

*****

After taking care of his morning wood, Jake finished showering, jumped out, dried off quickly, brushed his teeth, shaved, put on after shave and deodorant, and finally put on his shorts and tee shirt. Back in his room, he found Dani, again laying back on his bed, holding her phone in one hand and a pop tart in the other. Two glasses of orange juice, one already half empty, sat on the bedside table.

He was still rubbing his head with a towel when he walked into the room. He threw the towel on the desk chair, and grabbed some socks and shoes. Putting them on, he said, "Okay, ready to go."

Dani looked over at him and shook her head while making little clucking noises with her tongue. Swinging her long legs over the side of the bed, she pointed back at the desk chair.

"Sit," she commanded.

Jake looked at Dani and sat back down in the desk chair.

Walking over to his dresser, she picked up a comb and walked around behind his chair. She ran her fingers through his wild mass of blonde hair. His hair was close cut on the sides and back, but longer on the top in what was called a side-part fade. For some reason, he always forgot to comb his hair. He was very hygienic, always clean, showered, shaved, but he never seemed to remember to comb his hair.

His first year of school after moving in with the Hardin's, he would catch the school bus in front of Dani's house. He would always be there, sitting on her steps waiting for her. Most mornings his hair would be sticking every direction at once. She started carrying a comb in her backpack. She would take it out, work her way through his blonde hair before she would finally step back, look him over and declare him, "Good to Go." What she didn't know what that Jake's mother made sure his hair was combed before he left the house, but he would intentionally mess it up on the walk over to Dani's so that he could feel her hands on his head as she combed his hair.

Today she was standing behind him, pulling the comb through his hair, setting the part, before spinning his chair around and looking down into his pale, ice-blue eyes as he looked up at her, and smiled. She looked back up to his hair, combed a few stray locks into place and declared him, "Good to go."

*****

Walking through the mall they made quite the pair. Jake at 6'3" with wide shoulders and narrow hips, wore an orange University of Texas tee shirt, khaki cargo shorts, and black Under Armor running shoes. Dani was 5'10", her dark skin and raven black hair, evidence of her Native American ancestry from her father's side, but whose emerald eyes were definitely a throw back to her mother's Icelandic family roots.

"Are we looking for anything in particular today?" Jake asked as they rode the escalator up to the second floor.

"We're meeting Kaylee and she and I have to do a little quick shopping. Then I was hoping we could go by the lake and maybe grill some burgers, and hang out. It's the beginning of summer and we've graduated high school so this is our last summer before we all scatter and go off to college."

When he didn't respond, she looked up at him and saw in his eyes a combination of fear, anxiety, and sadness.

"Jake?" Dani asked, putting her hand on his arm.

"Yeah?" he said. The look in his eyes was gone. This worried her more than the fear, this was his mask that he had learned to put on in the years before he came to Texas. The mask that he hides behind when he feels like he needs to retreat into himself.

"Oh Jake...." Dani started, concern showing in her eyes.

"Hey guys, over here!" they heard as they reached the top of the escalator.

Coming toward them was Kaylee Anderson, her brown wavy hair bouncing as she trotted toward them. She was cute with a big smile and big chocolate brown eyes. At 5'3" she seemed tiny next to Jake and Dani. What most people noticed about her though were the 36 D breasts that seemed oddly out of place on her otherwise tiny frame.

"Kaylee!" Dani said, hugging her best girl friend.

"I'm so glad to see you guys," Kaylee said. "Hey, Jake."

"Hey, K," Jake smiled at her. Kaylee had been friends with Dani and Jake since the 9th grade, so she knew Jake's aversion to physical contact, so even though she was a "hugger," she knew not to try to hug Jake.

"Have you found anything yet?" Dani asked.

"I haven't really looked yet, I was waiting on you. This is kind of a two person job. I need your opinion."

"Well let's get to it."

The two girls headed off with Jake close behind. He wasn't paying much attention until the girls turned into a store with swim suits adorning all the mannequins in the windows.

"I think I'll wait out here in the concourse."

"But Jake, we need your opinion on our new swim suits," Kaylee said.

"Dani can give you an opinion," Jake said nervously.

"A man's opinion is always better," Kaylee insisted.

"Please," Dani said.

Jake looked over and saw exactly what he expected to see. Dani's pout face, that she knew he couldn't say no to.

"Ugh, okay, lets get this over with," Jake sighed.

Kaylee clapped her tiny hands and Dani hooked her arm in his and pulled him along.

*****

Jake was sitting in a chair close to the dressing rooms and the girls had both gone back with several suits each.

Kaylee was the first to come out. She had a bright yellow two piece bikini that looked like the structural integrity of the string holding the top up may have been at it's design limits. She spun around two times allowing him to see the front and the back. The bottoms were high cut at the hips and hugged tightly to her rounded back side.

"Well?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah, K, it looks great," Jake stammered. He could feel his ears getting red.

"Jake Hardin, are you blushing?" Kaylee trilled.

"No, er, oh come on, K, you know I'm not the right guy for this," Jake said, looking anywhere other than directly at her.

Kaylee just laughed and headed back to the dressing room. Jake leaned over, putting his head in his hands and rubbing his eyes. "How do I get myself into these situations?" he asked, to no one in particular.

"Jake?"

Jake looked up and froze. Dani stood there in a turquoise two piece. The contrast between her dark skin and the suit was amazing. The top showed off her perfect breasts. He could faintly see the outline of her nipples through the fabric of the top. The bottom of the suit was small but tasteful. Dani actually looked a little bashful as she turned slowly for his inspection. Jake could feel his temperature rising up his neck and into his face; and that wasn't all that was rising.

"Wow," Jake said, his deep voice barely audible.

"Do you like it?" Dani asked almost bashfully.

"Uh, yeah Dani, it, uh, looks great on you," he said. He was staring and he knew it, but he couldn't look away.

"You really think so?" she asked, looking down at herself.

"Yeah, Dani, I really think so; you're, I mean it's beautiful," he said, reverently.

Was he saying "I'm beautiful?" she asked herself, looking up to see him openly staring at her. She felt butterflies in her stomach and a familiar warming sensation a little further down.

"Yeah, I like this one too, I think I'll get it," she said, turning to walk back to the dressing room. Passing a full length mirror she looked and saw Jake's reflection. It appeared that his eyes were glued to her ass as she retreated. Her lips curled up in her little half smile.

*****

They made a stop at the grocery store where they picked up some premade hamburger patties, hot dogs, buns, condiments, salad fixings, drinks, paper plates, napkins, charcoal, and some ice. Most of this went into the large ice-chest in the bed of Jake's truck. With everything chilling in the ice chest, they headed for Lewisville Lake.

They found one of the public camping areas, close to the water, with picnic tables and a grill. Evidently, the girls had been on their phones during the drive because within a half hour several of their other friends showed up.