Sex Club for Nerds and Geeks Ch. 16

I've admired "Nothing Between Us," M-Y-Erotica's first-time story from 2006, ever since I encountered it. And so many other Literotica readers feel the same way that it ranks number 29 on the all-time, most-read list, with more than 1.8 million views. In fact, "Nothing Between Us" is the top first-time story on Lit and the only first time story with over 1 million views. But it seemed to me that there was some history about Thuy and Jake that was missing, so this and the next two chapters of "Sex Club for Nerds and Geeks" is my take on that backstory.

*

"GIMME THE FUCKIN' MONEY!" yelled the Lone Ranger mask as he slammed through the office door. When I froze, he grabbed the cash box and scooped up the envelopes. Then he turned to the girl.

"GIMME THE MONEY CUNT!" He grabbed at the envelope in her fist, but all he got was air as she shrank back. He waved his knife menacingly and moved in. She backed further away, past my desk's side chair to the wall. He was waving the knife at her when I hit him with the tin box.

"LEAVE HER ALONE!" It caught him on the side of his face and the blood flew.

"FUUUUUCK!" he screamed and slashed at me. My cheek burned and I staggered backwards.

When the chair hit him in the shins, he stumbled and slammed against the side wall. "FUUUUCK!"

The chair caught him just as he was regaining his balance, knocking him flat on his ass. The knife clattered across the room towards the girl.

He was up his hands and knees pretty quickly, frantically looking for the knife, when she smashed the chair into his face.

"FUCK YOU!" he cursed as she shoved the chair at him once more. When he couldn't find the knife, he gave up and sprinted out the door.

She was holding on to the chair for balance and breathing heavily. I went over and hugged her. I was shaking as much as she was. Suddenly Anna appeared and pushed us both to the floor.

"I called 911. The cops will be here in a minute. Just lay quiet," she commanded.

The cops and the medics arrived at about the same time. Anna had torn a strip from her blouse and was using it as a compress against my throbbing cheek.

"You look great, Carl, hope the other guy looks worse," said the medic as she checked my wound. I had no idea who she was, but she smiled confidently as she stung my cheek with the alcohol wipe.

"Kate," she replied to my unasked question. "You and I responded to that car wreck in town a couple of weeks ago." She grinned broadly but I still had no idea what she was talking about.

Before I knew it, she had me on a stretcher and they were wheeling me toward the elevator. I asked her to stop, I wanted to see if the girl was alright.

"She's fine," said Kate-the-medic. "Cops got a job to do. You and me, though, we need to get to the ER."

The doctor chuckled. "You're lucky, kid," she said. "You ear's just been notched. Another inch and you'd be our local Gauguin." Then someone hit me with a shot and I was gone.

When I woke up, I recognized that the guy standing over my bed was a doctor because he was in a white lab coat. He introduced himself and explained that I had a deep cut across my left cheek and had lost a small piece of my left ear, but that he had sewn everything up and had taken precautions about infection from the knife. The gash on my check was long and pretty deep at one place, so he wanted to keep me overnight for observation.

"Can I go back to work tomorrow?"

"Sure, unless something goes wrong, but I don't see why not. You're young, healthy, and we run a good ER."

He introduced the two men who were standing next to him as police detectives. They wanted me to go over what had happened. When they closed their notebooks I asked the obvious question: "Did you catch him?"

"Not yet, but we have lots to go on.

"First of all, we think you probably messed him up pretty good with that tin box, so we're expecting him to seek medical attention. Second, the surveillance tapes from the building and the elevator should give us some useful pictures. Third, the knife has prints and DNA, though they're probably only gonna be good to confirm his involvement when we find him.

"There were lots of people around when this happened, so we'll find a couple who saw a guy running from the building with blood on his shirt and holding his face. Oh, we'll get him."

As the detectives left, an older, well-dressed man stepped forward. "I'm University President Gerald Loughlin. I'm glad to see that you're okay. The University cares about making sure you get the best medical care here at the hospital. We'll take care of everything, since you're an employee as well as a student. Just rest and get better."

I hadn't noticed Anna when I first scanned around, but she came up as the University president left. "The closest I've ever seen that dude in the flesh the seven years I've been here is at commencement and football games. You get a split lip and Mr. Smooth is all over you. Probably afraid you'll sue."

I was really glad to see her. But I also was concerned about the girl.

"Oh yeah, Mai. She wasn't hurt or anything, just shook up. I don't think she likes the sight of blood, and she got a lot of yours on her shirt. Once the cops were done interviewing her, she called the group she's here with and they came and got her. She's in some summer studies program and they're very protective."

"I'm glad she's okay. She's tough."

"Yeah, that's what the cops said. She acted on instinct, just like you did. The cops said neither of you was particularly bright, what with the knife and all, but I've never liked the shit about how you're supposed to just let the assholes take your money, so fuck 'em, you both did the right thing."

"I hope this isn't going to mess up the interviews."

"Nope. We've got almost three extra weeks in the schedule, no problem."

"Great! The doctor said I'd be sprung in the morning, so I'll be at the lab by nine."

"Hold your horses, cowboy," she held up her hands. "You created this gruesome crime scene. The cops were just starting to take pictures when we left to come over here. They're probably finished by now, but the building staff will have to come in and wash the place down, then repaint. They've got this 'Caution Crime Scene Do Not Cross' yellow tape up on the door. We're out of business till Monday."

"Oh," I slumped. "I'm sorry." I was surprised at myself for being so interested in getting back to work.

"We're going to have to make a change in procedure, though. The university insists that we stop paying in cash. Don told them it would damage his research protocol. They told him that his research protocol had just fucked you up pretty good and besides, the University'd gotten bad press.

"So we're gonna stop paying cash and offer some sort of credit on the university bursary account. You'll have to notify the yet-to-be-interviewed subjects about the change, and we may have some dropouts. But we've got enough in the pipeline that I doubt if it'll make any difference."

"Was it a real mess? The office, I mean?"

"Oh, not so much," Anna snarked. "The kid just knocked the guy's sorry ass across the room and he bled all over everything. There were spatters and smears on the wall, puddles on the floor where she knocked him down. You contributed some on the desk, the floor, the kid's shirt and her face. I got some on my blouse and bra. No biggie.

"Hey, there's a reporter from the student newspaper who wants to interview you," she said, shifting gears. "The university's PR guy is hovering over her, says you're a hero for protecting the girl."

"That's bullshit!" I was hot. "The kid's the tough one, she went after him. If she hadn't done that, he'd have sliced me to ribbons, and probably her too. I don't think I was much use once he cut me."

"Look, let me bring in the PR guy, you can decide if you want to be interviewed."

The "PR guy" turned out to be the university vice president for public relations. "He" was a she, a diminutive, razor-thin black woman about 30 who talked a mile a minute but in a voice so soft I had to cup my un-bandaged ear to hear her.

The gist was that I didn't have to talk to the reporter if I didn't want to, but the reporter could hound me for days if she wanted a story. She suggested I give a quick interview from my hospital bed, which she could limit due to my delicate state. She would keep the reporter on a short leash and get her out of the room as fast as possible.

It lasted maybe ten minutes. The reporter had the story line about my "heroics." I said the kid and I did what we had to do to keep from being hurt. I pointed out that it was she who chased the guy away. The reporter took it all down, said she hoped I'd be better soon, and left.

The PR VP said the interview went very well and said she'd call me if the reporter wanted any more information. "Here's my card, let me know if they call you directly so we can manage this. Feel better," and she left.

So here I was, working this college summer job doing video technical work and interviewing for a psychology department research project. Anna, my graduate student boss, and I had started the morning interviews with a slightly shy Asian girl to whom I had just given the pay envelope when the door banged open.

We'd made a big splash in the student paper about how we were paying $150 cash for students who would answer questions for an hour because the study had planned it that way — it's tough to get student subjects for small amounts, and we needed to deliver 150 videoed interviews by the end of the summer term.

For the previous three weeks, everything had been routine, no hint of trouble. Actually, "routine" wasn't the best way to describe what we were doing. What started out as interesting, even intriguing work as far as I was concerned, had quickly became boring and repetitive, since the questionnaire was rigid and we had to ask the questions in a carefully neutral voice so that the camera could catch the faces of the interviewees answering the exact same questions.

I'd gotten the job accidentally but discovered that I liked the concept, if not the work, of research. As I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, I decided that I still liked research.

When I got dad on my cell, he said that President Loughlin had called him just after he'd seen me, with assurances that I was fine and would be well taken care of, even if it involved plastic surgery to fix my ear and cheek.

He said mom was upset and worried, but that she would be glad that I'd called. Also that my sister Chrissy would probably think I was being a drama queen.

About 4 p.m., a new nurse came on duty. He pulled a mirror out of his pocket and showed me the damage as he changed the dressing.

The ear was puffy with some dried blood, but he said the swelling would go down overnight. "You'll never notice it. Your girlfriend will, when she nibbles your ear, but that's all."

The cut on my cheek, on the other hand, was about six inches long, very red and black with dried blood. There were eight stitches and I thought about Frankenstein's monster.

"When they spring you tomorrow morning, you'll probably have a long bandaid on your cheek. The guys in the ER did a great job on you.

"Anybody asks, tell 'em it's from a duel, where you were defending a girl's virtue — it's close enough to the truth, right?" We laughed and I dozed off.

*

They'd just taken dinner tray away when my cell phone erupted. The student newspaper's website and the local TV station had carried the story, and word-of-mouth had spread to Martha, Margery, Carrie, Lisa, Amanda, and Tom.

"You're famous," cracked Lisa, "they had both your and her Facebook pictures on TV."

"Is this grist for a new story?"

"Don't get cocky."

I told everyone that I'd be released after breakfast, there was no need to visit. Martha was glad that I would be at the show.

I called home at dinnertime. Mom was motherly, dad was glad to hear from me again and said grandma was worried but glad to know I was okay. Chrissy was snarky, but she'd read the website and agreed that it wasn't completely a laughing matter.

*

Breakfast was pretty good, and by 8 a.m. they'd changed the bandages again. "Ear's doing real well, and the scratch on your cheek is too," said the doctor. "Come back tomorrow and we'll change the dressing. Come back in a week, we'll look at it, but I don't foresee any problems."

It was hot outside but I was glad to be out of the hospital. I walked over to the lab and found the building crew starting to prepare for painting.

"Good job, kid," said the foreman, when he found out I worked there. "We'll get overtime for this."

I went home, showered carefully, and put on some fresh clothes.

*

"Howdy, hero," Amanda said as I sauntered across the library floor to her reference desk. I blushed.

"Thanks for calling yesterday."

"You're welcome. I emailed Ruth with the story, but she's not gonna get back to me — remember, no response unless she could actually do something. But I thought she'd want to know.

"Anyway, pretty nice scar?"

"Probably. Six stitches, it looks ugly. They'll do plastic surgery if I want it, but maybe I should to keep it and explain how I'd been in a duel over a woman."

"Well, that's very manly. Make sure your Facebook page displays it, the girls will come running." We laughed at the idea.

*

I walked into the union about ten minutes before noon. Already there were four tables filled with students eating lunch or waiting for the bluegrass show, and more were trickling in. The AV department had the stage set up but I didn't see any cameras, so I asked the tech how they were going to record.

"Oh, we have five remote cameras hung permanently on the walls and ceiling," he said as he pointed out the cameras, one of which was twenty yards away from the stage. "Real good lenses and mikes. We've been doing this for a couple of years now.

"I gotta run. The director's in Carpenter and she's busting my balls about them hitting their marks," he said, making a face as he gestured at his earpiece and then at the multi-colored pieces of tape on the floor. "The department wants this to go right, they're gonna feature the whole show on the university's YouTube channel."

I took a seat at an unoccupied table off to the side. A couple of minutes later a chair scraped and I turned to see Paul.

"Hi," I perked. "You with the band?"

"Yeah!" he giggled. "Just like last week. The Literratica show was awesome, wasn't it!"

"They should've called you up to do the encore with them. You're good."

"I love bluegrass. I wish I could play an instrument, but I can't even read music.

"Hey," he said, changing the subject. "Was that you that got robbed yesterday? Oh wow, that's where he cut you!" he said, pointing at my bandaged cheek.

"Yeah. I've got a notched ear and eight stitches."

"They catch the guy?"

"I haven't heard, so I guess not."

The show was a student program of bluegrass music put on by the summer music department. Charlie Waddington, the course's instructor and a well-known bluegrass musician, introduced each of the six students as they performed and had them sitting on stools off to one side when they weren't.

He moved things along much more smoothly than he had at Lit the previous Saturday night. Janice and her fiddle were in most of the songs. He and Martha finished up with "Tennessee Flat Top Box," which brought down the house.

As they loped off the stage to prepare for the encore, Paul leaned over to me. "I'm in love with her, you know," he whispered.

The encore lasted almost five minutes, and the applause was thunderous. The crowd was three deep around the group so I went over to the tech guy, who just grinned and gave me a thumbs-up.

"Man you guys are GOOD!" boomed Nick. He'd rushed the stage and elbowed aside a couple of guys who were hitting on Mike. They spoke briefly and Nick seemed pleased when he spotted me and came over.

He was joined by this waif-thin black girl, maybe 16 or 17.

"Have they caught the guy who slashed you yet?"

"Not that I've heard," I told him. "But they think they will, they've got a lot of evidence."

"This is my sister Laurette," Nick beamed. "I told her about the show at Lit and she wanted to see this one. I figured you'd be here and she wanted to meet the hero guy." Laurette extended her left hand and I took it. It was rough for a girl's and her grip was powerful. She noticed that I noticed.

"I get that a lot," she smiled. "Everybody in the family works on the farm, does what's needed. I drive the tractor, haul apples and corn. You get strong and your hands get rough. Or is it because I'm black?"

Gulp.

She laughed. "Adoption, Haiti hurricane. Mom and dad swooped in, took me because I was in the worst shape."

"Not true," interjected her brother. "They got an eye for talent. She works harder than any two of the regular hands." They wiggled their eyebrows at each other and laughed at what had to be an established routine.

"But seriously," Laurette said, "is it true you beat up the guy who was trying to rob you?"

"I surprised him and hurt him pretty bad, but he got me pretty good back. The girl was the tough one. She was like a lion tamer, kept hitting him with the chair until he gave up and ran away. Bottom line, he got my money but she kept hers."

Paul came over and Nick introduced his sister. "Oh, you're the emerging star," said Laurette, batting her eyelashes at him as she extended her left hand. Paul blushed as he took it.

The crowd had thinned and Martha and Charlie came over. Martha kissed Paul on the cheek, then linked her arms with him and Charlie.

"I tried to get Charlie to call you up on stage," she said to Paul, her voice pitched above conversational, "but he wouldn't. 'He's got a better voice than me, I'll be upstaged.'

"You've got such a fragile ego," Martha laughed, elbowing Charlie.

"She's right, you know," Charlie sighed in mock exasperation. "You're good. Are you in the music department?"

"No, I don't, uh, know what I'm gonna do, maybe business," Paul stammered. "Besides, I can't read music, I learn everything by ear."

"That's a real shame," clucked Charlie as he shifted into teacher mode. "It's not so tough, it's a simple foreign language. Take a class."

Then he turned to me. "Got smacked around, eh?" gesturing at my face.

"Yeah, outsized budget meets underdeveloped knife-fighting skills."

"Well, stay out of barroom fights. They bust the long necks offa beer bottles and come at you from your blind side if you even look at their girl."

Mike came over and gave Nick's ass a squeeze.

"I hear you were Mike's guardian angel on Saturday," said Charlie. Nick beamed and patted Mike's butt.

"Sweet-cakes here is worth staggering five blocks at one o'clock in the morning carrying a drunken Irishman." I'd repressed the embarrassing memory of how I was responsible for getting Mike drunk after the Lit show, and that Nick had gotten him safely back to his dorm.

Martha cut Charlie and Paul loose. Charlie wanted to talk to the tech guy, while Laurette and Paul chatted. Martha kissed my cheek, the unbandaged one.

"Have they caught the guy yet?"

"Not that I've heard of. God I hope they do," I said as a cold shudder rolled over me. "Maybe he'll come after me."

"Not likely," she said.

"What makes you think so?"

"Well, for one thing, he probably doesn't want to be seen with his face all torn up. And second, your bodyguard over there would probably beat him up." She nodded toward a stocky man in a sports jacket, who I recognized as one of the detectives from the hospital room.

He noticed me noticing him and came over.

"Hi. Carl. Can I talk to you for a moment?"