Senior Year Memories Ch. 17

Looking at the goddess lying down next to me, there was nothing more I could've wanted than for it to be that easy. Unfortunately, it wasn't that easy; not when I still had to resolve my shit with Tori, and not when I had to make sure I was completely serious about making things with Josie official. I'd never asked Josie in any detail about what happened between her and her ex, Jackson, (that was for her to share when she felt comfortable) but I'd heard enough to know that it took Josie to some dark, scary fucking places, the kinds of places I wouldn't want to take her to again if I messed anything up.

"Tempting idea, but I think I'll still have awkward Thanksgiving at the McNeil house. Take some pictures of Chinese Thanksgiving for me?" I proposed.

Josie rolled her eyes at me. "Oh yeah, thanks, leave me to fend for myself."

"Sorry," I said. "But... about the other thing?"

"The boyfriend-girlfriend thing?" Josie said.

"Yeah. Can we..." I trailed off. Fuck, this was harder to say than I thought. "Can we talk about this some more after Thanksgiving? I've got a lot I need to survive tomorrow, and I want to keep my head in the game. This... this isn't a no. God no, but if I can just focus on one thing at a time-"

She rolled her eyes again and cut me off. "Fine. Fuck multitasking. Yes, take your time to think this through, but after tomorrow, we're talking this out, okay?"

"More than okay," I said, pulling her up so she could cuddle against me.

It wouldn't be long before we'd start having sex again, but in that moment, that little bit of closeness, that promise of a potential future, that was something worth holding onto. Something that might even get me through Thanksgiving, I thought.

Of course, nothing in my pornographic soap opera of a life was ever that easy.

***

"Hey, Ryan!" Lauren exclaimed as she opened the door to the McNeil house to me on Thanksgiving Day.

That she greeted me in exactly the same way and exactly the same tone of voice as she did on the afternoon we hooked up didn't escape me, nor did the awkward pause that passed between us afterward. She wasn't wearing her workout clothes today, instead wearing a fine dress in autumnal colors that couldn't hide how stunning she was. Tall and statuesque with porcelain skin, beautifully styled red hair, DDD tits and an amazingly round ass, she was as beautiful today as I'd ever seen her. That I'd fucked her mouth, tits, pussy and ass and remembered fondly how they felt made me shift uncomfortably in my formal clothes.

"Hey, Lauren," I muttered, looking around to make sure we hadn't been seen with this awkward energy between us.

We were safe, so far.

She leaned in to hug me, and I hugged her back, even though it felt strange to do something this familiar after the nasty sex we'd had.

"It's... good to see you again," she said.

"Yeah," I agreed.

"So... this is weird, right?" Lauren said nervously. "This would normally be where I said 'Happy Thanksgiving!' and went through all the usual greetings, but after last time-"

"Yeah. Weird," I said.

"I want to pretend things are normal, but they aren't, are they?" Lauren asked.

"No," I said.

"Do you... regret what we did?" she asked.

"Not really. You?" I asked.

"I've got my moments, but 'not really' seems to sum it up well. I love Don, but he's kind of got that coming," Lauren said.

"So nothing's changed there?" I asked.

"Oh no, he's still out there boffing cutesy blonde Kelly van Houten and thinking that I don't know. Trust me, I've been tempted to give you a call some of these days, but..."

"Yeah. But..." I trailed off, just like she did. It wasn't exactly the kind of topic that was fun to talk about, but I was hoping I could clear the air with a joke. "He doesn't... know what we did, does he?"

"God, no, why?" Lauren asked.

"Well, he's cooking dinner, and if he wanted to poison me this would be a really ideal opportunity for it," I said.

Lauren laughed. "Even if he knew, he'd have to grow a spine to use it. Come on, the others are out back playing football, and I'm sure you're just *dying* to meet everyone again."

Considering Tori's extended family, the sarcasm in Lauren's voice was more than earned.

I didn't need Lauren to find my way to the backyard, but I followed her anyway, as much because I wanted to be far away from the kitchen where Don was working (and where Lauren and I first hooked up), as because I enjoyed the view. It was a wonderful sight, as always, to watch as her hips swayed, the way her red hair cascaded around her beautifully pale shoulders, but a conflicting one at the same time.

In my heart of hearts I knew I shouldn't have kissed Lauren, and that I shouldn't have pushed it any further beyond that. This is something I knew and understood clearly because you don't go around fucking your best friend's mom like that. Even so, I still had a hard time regretting it, even if I probably should've. When Lauren and I got together, we were both feeling lonely and betrayed by people we loved. We were both vulnerable, and we fell in together because of it, and we had a good time. A great time, really, if I'm going to be honest, but that didn't mean there weren't consequences.

No, we hadn't been caught, and god-willing we never would be, but we'd always know what happened going forward, and that we'd have to live with this secret. For all that I enjoyed fucking Lauren, that weight on my shoulders was a pretty fucking heavy one.

The autumn air was crisp and welcoming as we exited out onto the backyard. Lauren walked to talk to her parents and Don's father, sitting at a table and nursing a few drinks, leaving me on the back porch to watch the "football" game as it developed, though calling it a football game would have been pretty charitable.

"Melee" would have been far more accurate.

One team was led by Tori's uncle, the other by her aunt, with five hulking cousins and Tori filling out their ranks. There was a ball, for all intents and purposes, but the way everyone was wrestling and yelling and cursing at each other, you'd have been hard-pressed to think they actually cared about it. I made the mistake once of joining this game one year, a mistake I never intend to make again.

While her cousins and aunt and uncle were all dressed nicely for the occasion, Tori was wearing her most formal pair of overalls and tie-dyed shirt. It left her the most ready to play this game, though whether or not she was going to change before dinner was anyone's guess. She hadn't noticed me yet, giving me ample opportunity to watch her completely in her element. She didn't have anything resembling the size or the raw strength of her family members, but what she did have was determination that none of them could match.

"You know, I've been watching this for half an hour and I still don't know what the score is?" a meek voice said from beside me.

The girl was short and pretty in a mousy sort of way, with wide eyes, pale, freckled skin and wavy blonde hair that fell to her shoulders. She wore a loose but stylish short-sleeved floral dress that went just to her knees, but carried a light parasol to keep the sun off her exposed skin.

April Martel. The girl I scared half to death on Halloween.

Tori's girlfriend.

"Sounds about right for this game," I said.

"Is it like this every year?" April asked.

"Not until someone's broken something," I say, rubbing my jaw instinctively and glad that the teeth I'd lost to this game during my one time playing were baby teeth.

April chuckled, awkwardly. I'd have joined her if I felt like chuckling.

It's not every day you meet the new girlfriend of someone you'd once professed your love to.

"So, you and Tori?" I asked.

"Yeah," April nodded. "It, uh, came as kind of a surprise, I think."

"To a lot of us," I said, more venom in my voice than I meant.

April must've heard that, because her meekness faded slightly, replaced by steely determination. "Don't blame her, okay? I know... I know that things haven't been square between you two for a while. I know you told her you loved her and she said she didn't want to be in a relationship before we got together."

"You know a lot," I interjected.

"We talk, okay? That's what people do when..." April trailed off. "She doesn't tell me everything. There's still a lot I don't know, a lot she won't tell me, but we're figuring it out. Figuring us out. I'm not... I'm not out, so I asked her to keep this quiet until it got sorted. I'm sorry that it got as bad as it did, but if you're going to blame anyone, don't blame her. Blame me, okay?"

This wasn't how I wanted to start things with April, nor was it how I saw this going.

"Do you like her?" I asked.

"Very much," April said, her voice soft but no less steely in her determination.

"And you're happy together?"

"Yeah," April responded. "I've never been in anything to compare it to, and I'm still figuring a lot of this out, but... yeah, I think we're happy."

"Good," I said. "Good."

"She talks about you a lot," April admitted. "There's times I think I know you better than I know her."

"She doesn't talk about you much, but I guess that goes under her following your request," I said.

April smiled, slightly. "That, and there's not a lot to know about me."

"I doubt that. Tori wouldn't be with you if there was nothing there," I said.

If I wasn't mistaken, that made April blush. "I'm a closeted band geek who can kick butt playing the trombone but otherwise has the kind of shitty friends who'll force me into a haunted house knowing I'll have a panic attack."

Now it was my turn to chuckle. "I've heard stories about marching band. You guys are supposed to be pretty wild."

April's blush didn't go away. "Well, you know that they say what happens in the band room, stays in the band room..."

I let her trail off, going back to watching Tori playing out in the yard with her family. One of her cousins had finally gotten his hands on the ball, but Tori had him on the ground in a chokehold that'd see him unconscious in a few seconds if he didn't let go of the ball (this is a move I know from unfortunate experience with Tori).

It was hard watching her like this, especially with April standing right next to me. It would've been a lot easier, a lot simpler if I could just hate April as this demon seductress and blame her for stealing away any chance that I could've had with Tori, but I couldn't do that. April was just a person who wanted someone to love and was dealing with all the same shit that any of the rest of us were. No matter how much I wanted to hate her, I couldn't do that, especially if she made Tori happy.

It didn't mean I had to stay around more than I had to, though.

"I'm gonna go get something to drink. Keep an eye on that score and tell me if anything changes?" I asked. It was a lame excuse, especially since I had no intention of going anywhere near the kitchen with Don in it.

With a slew of grunts and groans coming from the game, April said, "I'll do my best."

"And, April?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm really sorry I scared you the way I did at the haunt. I should've... I was doing what I was supposed to do, but I should've known better when I heard you scream. I'm sorry," I said.

Shyly, with her voice barely above a whisper, April said, "Thank you."

I snuck back inside the house, enjoying the quiet and the solitude by comparison, the smells from the kitchen heavenly. I wondered more and more if coming here was a good idea, that maybe I should've bowed out and done Thanksgiving with Josie or maybe just bunkered down with Dad. With Lauren and Tori and April and Don and all the others here, it was too much, there were too many-

"Looks like you're having about as happy a Thanksgiving as I am."

That voice, equal parts welcoming and terrifying.

"Hello, Rachel," I said, turning to face her.

5'2" and fairly thin, 21-year-old Rachel McNeil wouldn't have been all that intimidating on her own, but she did everything possible to tell you that underestimating her was a mistake. Like her sister and mother, her skin was creamy and pale, but unlike them it was covered in a large variety of tattoos, an entire sleeve dominating her left arm. With dark lipstick and eye makeup, even behind her glasses, a gold nose ring and her red hair chopped short and spiked outward slightly, she had the well cultivated look of an animal warding off predators. I wondered if Lauren would be able to talk her into something semi-respectable for the occasion, and though she'd compromised on wearing what was technically a dress, it was a short, slinky, black number that showed a lot of leg accentuated by her matching black heels and hugged her frame nicely. Her C-cup tits, though nothing like Tori's or Lauren's, looked particularly nice, hinting at some more tattoos across her upper chest that I'd previously only imagined were there.

"Wow, uh... you look..." I trailed off.

Looking at me with only the slightest awkwardness, Rachel said. "I look like someone who wanted to do the barest minimum of dealing with a dress code. You look like a Jehovah's Witness."

"Not by choice," I admitted, tugging at my shirt collar uncomfortably.

"Have you made the circuit of the family already?" she asked.

"Yeah," I admitted.

"And Tori's girlfriend?" Rachel asked.

"Yeah," I repeated.

Rachel considered me. "You look like you're holding it together on the outside, but let's play the odds: you're a mess on the inside, aren't you?"

"That obvious?" I asked.

"A little," Rachel said. Biting her lip, she considered me as if rolling over a number of options, few of which seemed good. "Thankfully, I got something for that, courtesy of Mr. Jack Daniels. Interested?"

I thought about my conversation the night before with Josie. This was potentially the beginning of another very bad idea, but with how I was feeling after talking with April, it felt very easy to say, "God yes."

***

The whiskey burned all the way down, but once it hit my stomach it did its job.

"The problem with family, is that it's family," Rachel said. "You might want nothing to do with them, but you can't help the simple, terrible fact that their blood is your blood, and that distinction alone is enough to force you to drop everything lest you be a pariah."

We sat on the bed in her guest room, one with a window that faced away from the yard but still close enough that we could hear the football melee outside.

"I love some of the people out there, but the rest? I might as well be a stranger. The stranger they all talk shit about, the one they can tell their kids, 'Well, at least you're better than Lauren's eldest.' Maybe that's my job. Maybe that's why I'm here, to act as the example the rest of the family can look down on," Rachel said bitterly.

"That's shitty. You're a lot better now than you used to be, they oughta see it," I said.

"Wow, with a silver tongue for compliments like that, it's no wonder you get laid so much," Rachel said, rolling her eyes.

"Girls tend to want something else out of my tongue," I said, causing Rachel to almost choke from laughter on her whiskey.

"Just so you know, it's only the whiskey that made it that funny," Rachel said.

"I'll take what I can get," I said.

"So the pictures on your phone would indicate," Rachel said, taking another short swig from the bottle. She looked like she was drinking to forget, but couldn't allow herself to actually drink enough to forget. No doubt she wanted to keep her wits about her so she could better deal with family, but it didn't make the image any less sad.

Even in her sadness, I couldn't help but notice how good she looked. The uncomfortable glances she shot from behind her glasses didn't make things any easier, or lessen the realization that we were in dangerous territory right now, doing something we really shouldn't have been doing. We were sitting on her bed, alone, the rest of the family on the other side of the house, sharing a bottle of whiskey. This was the exact kind of setup that bad decisions were made of.

She laughed, a high sound devoid of any true joy. "God, I'm a fuck up."

"You're not a fuck up," I said.

"I'm not?" she said, setting the bottle down on her bedside table. She stood up, running a hand through her hair, her loose, sexy dress hugging her frame beautifully, looking like the slightest movement in the wrong direction would send one strap off her shoulder, the whole garment puddling to the floor.

This is what I wanted and knew I shouldn't want.

"No," I replied.

"Someone with their act together wouldn't be caught dead in a position like this after explicitly acknowledging this is a bad fucking idea, but a fuck up would. Someone with their act together wouldn't ever think about messing around with their little sister's best friend, a best friend her little sister's screwed around with more than once. If I'm not a fuck up, then what am I?" she said.

This wasn't the Rachel I'd come to know, a woman who in spite of her loneliness was one of the most self-assured people I'd ever met. This was the whiskey making self pity sound like a good idea, and as someone with a lot of experience with self-pity (if not quite as much experience with whiskey), I didn't want to let her linger on it.

I stood up, almost closing the distance between the two of us. There was a definite heat in the room, an unexpected energy that might have been lust or just the whiskey dilating my blood vessels, but in its discomfort it felt freeing. I could reach out and touch her right now, hold her face as it was meant to be held, push her hair back behind the ear and just kiss her like I'd dreamed of kissing her ever since we made out in her car.

This might've even happened, too, if Tori hadn't chosen that moment to call down the hall.

"Hey, Ryan? Where the hell are you?" she asked. Her footsteps were approaching, she'd see me through the open door soon.

Fuck.

Thinking faster than me, Rachel darted for the closet.

"I'm not here," she uttered quickly before closing the door behind her.

I stood up, wondering if I'd have enough time to get out of here before Tori rounded the corner, but no, I was stuck in Rachel's room without an excuse. At least, without a good excuse. Looking at the bedside table, I darted for the bottle of Jack and screwed the cap on right as I heard Tori coming around the bend.

"Hey, there you are!" Tori exclaimed. "What the hell are you doing in Rachel's room?"

I turned around, forcing a guilty look on my face and holding the bottle. "Raiding your sister's stash."

A broad smile broke across Tori's face. "I knew she was good for something."

She crossed the room, gave me a quick, fierce hug, and used that as an excuse to snatch the bottle from my hand. She took a swig, only a tiny one, and then handed it back.

"Oh man, that's good. I could use a little more, but, you know, can't get too blasted before we get back from halftime," Tori explained.

"Of course," I said. All told, I thought I was doing a pretty good job not looking over at the closet that Rachel was hiding in. Such a good job not looking in that direction, in fact, that I didn't even notice when Tori punched me in the shoulder.

"Ow! What the fuck was that for?" I asked.

"For showing up and not letting me know! I had to hear that you came in from April?" Tori asked.

"Yeah, well, it looked like you were trying to kill a couple of your cousins, and I didn't wanna interrupt," I said.

"Hey, I always want to kill them, so you know you can interrupt me whenever," Tori said.

"Awww, thanks for the permission," I said. I wanted it to feel easy to joke with her like it always had, but between how weird it was talking to her new and apparently steady girlfriend, and that Rachel was hiding in the closet listening in on all of this, it felt a little awkward.