The Training of Jeff Stintum Ch. 08

Chapter 9: Lunch with Dave

'So we're dating,' Jeff thought the next day as he stared at the ceiling in his bedroom of his parents' house. Surely they were. He had wandered the streets the previous night, almost unconscious of where he was, and had somehow managed to make it back to his parents' house to collapse on his bed and fall into an uneasy sleep. He had awoken late in the morning and immediately, without even thinking, he had grabbed his cock and begun to pump it, not letting up until he had cum all over his chest. He had laid there breathless for a few minutes, his mind on nothing but the events of the previous night, on Sarah's scent, the huge presence of her body, the jingling bracelets on her wrists, her full white arms, her thighs next to his, her immense face next to his own, and what her tongue had done to the inside his mouth. Before he knew it he was at it again, jerking and wringing and wrenching his cock with a fast and feverish desperation that was previously unknown to him. Within minutes he had spewed his load again, and this time he felt the hot sticky cum spatter his neck.

He laid there gasping from exertion, unable to do anything but stare at the ceiling and think, think, think about last night. After what was actually only a few minutes, but what to Jeff seemed an eternity of turning this detail and that detail over and over in his mind, he had decided that yes, clearly Sarah had a thing for him, and that yes, their make-out session had shown that she wanted to take this relationship with him to the next level. As Jeff laid there in bed, contemplating this apparently new relationship, excitement grew in his chest. He blinked a few times at the ceiling, and a grin began to creep across his face. Sarah Helleger...and him. As a couple. An item. Him and her...the more he thought about it, the bigger his grin became.

'Finally,' he thought smugly to himself, 'I get the bombshell I deserve.' And was she ever — she as the hottest person he had ever seen. 'And of course,' he continued to himself, 'she makes out with me.' His mind skipped back to all the women who had laughed at him when he had tried to pick them up at bars, to all the girls at concerts who had tuned him down, even to Cassie's arrogant expression as she had stepped over him on her way out the door.

'Women,' he thought to himself, and then he said "Women" out loud in a bitter, jeering tone.

'All those bitches who turned me down, who thought they were better than me,' he thought, with increasing energy and mirth, 'they were all too old. Too proud. Too many years of feeling like they're worth more than they really are.' But not Sarah Helleger. She was young and gentle, and so full of life. Smart (smarter than me! he thought with a condescending laugh), funny, and drop-dead gorgeous, with huge tits and one helluva piece of ass. But most importantly, she saw him for who he was: a good guy who had big plans, a nice guy who just wanted a nice gal to understand him and give him what he needed. He thought forward to a time when they could get married, to when he would come home from work every day ("home" in Jeff's fantasy was Sarah's house) and she would be there on the sofa, a glass of wine in her hand, eagerly waiting to give him a "welcome home" hug and kiss as a pot of pasta and meatballs bubbled quietly on the stove, infusing the house with delicious aromas of tomato, basil, and garlic.

Jeff sighed in pleasure as he took his eyes from the ceiling, moving his bedsheets so that he could get out of bed to use the restroom. His eyes moved down to his body and his fantasy broke apart into a thousand pieces. He was still dressed in his clothes from the previous night, and the first thing he noticed was the dark, ugly stain on the crotch of his jeans. It looked like the evidence at some crime scene, like something bad that had happened. The second thing he noticed was that his arms looked positively shriveled; he could not remember them ever looking that small, that bony, that...childlike. He moved them up and down in front of his vision, unable to understand how this could be. His mind immediately went to Sarah's body, and her plump, full, sturdy arms — Jeff could only imagine what they looked like compared to his. Wait, he could imagine! Her arms had been next to his last night, right in front of his face. He thought of her spooning his pasta, and twisting it before him, and his dick rose yet again to attention.

He shook off these thoughts as he made his way to the bathroom. After peeing he took off all his clothes and stood in front of the mirror, unable to comprehend what he saw. He was a shrimp. His shoulders were bony knobs that connected his thin, frail arms to the rest of his body, a body that to Jeff seemed unrecognizable. All of his ribs were clearly visible; his ribcage stuck out of his abdomen like some weird sculpture. His hips seemed to poke painfully out through his skin, and his legs, like his arms, were like withered stalks. It seemed incredible that he could stand up at all. Even his face looked emaciated — the bones of his jaw and eye sockets seemed to protrude almost unnaturally. Only his penis, standing at full attention and only getting harder the more he looked at himself, seemed to have any flesh, any muscle.

What was happening? Jeff had no idea, but what he did know was that all this muscle loss, this...whatever was going on, was a recent development. Sure, he wasn't the biggest guy in the world, and sure, he also wasn't the tallest, but there was no way that he had always been like...like this. As he looked at himself, complete with his massive erection, Jeff unconsciously, uncontrollably, thought of Sarah's body, and how she was, quite unmistakably, his opposite. She was tall, very tall. And her body was big, meaty, firm, heavy, and yet soft, curvy, feminine, strong. His hand once again went to his cock and Jeff jerked himself off for a third time that morning, right at the mirror, imagining Sarah's body behind his, with her smirking as she flicked her tongue teasingly at their reflection in the mirror. After collapsing in exhaustion, Jeff crawled to the shower and turned it on, letting it run over his bony body. Eventually he fell asleep again under the hot water.

The rest of the day, Jeff did nothing but lay and sit on his bed, parsing through what had happened last night, his fantasies for the future, and occasionally masturbating whenever the memory of Sarah's body and presence became too close. He repeated, over and over, unconsciously at first, the same mental cycle he had completed that morning, going between smug self-congratulation and utter confusion and repulsion of his own body, between excitement for the future to complete bewilderment as to what had actually happened. As he thought and thought, Jeff gradually realized that whatever had happened, whatever the future held, and whatever his body happened to look like right now, one thing was certain: Sarah had kissed him, which meant that she thought he was attractive, which meant that, for all intents and purposes, they were dating, since he thought she was attractive too. 'One plus one equals two,' he said matter-of-factly in his head by the late afternoon.

As to Sarah's generally odd behavior, including her weird little flirty phrases ("little thing" for instance), and the fact that she didn't let him stay the night, Jeff became more and more inclined to chalk it up to her cute little personality. 'She's a funny young girl,' Jeff thought as he smiled to himself, the afternoon turning into evening. 'She's definitely a one-of-a-kind. She's not afraid to be herself, and sometimes that means being different.' The more he thought this way, the easier it was for Jeff to think fondly and lovingly of Sarah as an actual romantic partner. He even imagined himself explaining her little quirks to his male friends, as they gathered around him, eagerly asking questions, which he answered cooly with punctuating chuckles.

As for him not staying over, well, that was just her playing hard to get. 'And would I really expect anything less?' Jeff asked himself as the evening wore on. 'She's a girl who knows what she's worth, and I'm gonna have to work to really get her.' He blinked after this thought, and realized that it was already past eleven at night. He looked at his phone. No texts. She hadn't even texted him anything. Jeff's heart beat fast for a moment in panic, and he wondered if he had done something wrong, or if the previous night had all been a joke.

'But of course she hasn't texted me," he quickly realized. 'She's a girl. She's playing hard to get. She's expecting me to text her, to make the next move.' He smiled to himself as he selected her from his contact list and began thinking what to say. For the next two hours, Jeff crafted and re-crafted a text to Sarah, which he ended up sending at around two in the morning. It said:

"hey there girl. last night was epic. I didn't know a girl could look so sweet and be so dirty at the same time. Count me surprised. haha even I can get surprised sometimes. but seriously, let's do it more often. We can go even farther next time haha, first base second base, you know what i mean. What a lucky man I am. You can be the stars to my moon.

love yer boy, Jeff xoxxoxoxox"

'That should get the ball rolling,' Jeff thought happily, and he drifted off to sleep. But it didn't get the ball rolling. The next day came and went, and then the next day, and then the next day, and Sarah had not responded. Jeff went back and read over his original message dozens, and then hundreds of times, and he could not for the life of him see any mistake he had made. All the words were spelled right, except the ones he deliberately misspelled. The punctuation and capitalization were all correct, except in the places where they strategically weren't. There was nothing wrong with the message...so why no reply?

Jeff began to worry. Clearly there was something he was not understanding in this exchange. Did she actually not like him? No, this couldn't be the case — she kissed him, for god's sake! And she said that she wanted to see him again! Was he totally out of his mind? Had all that stuff actually happened? Had he cum too quickly? What was she thinking about him? Jeff didn't know the answers to any of these questions, but unlike in times past, when uncertainty led to depression and passivity, this time it led back, over and over, to these certainties: they had actually kissed and Sarah did enjoy it and she did say that she wanted to see him again. Jeff had all that going for him, and therefore, as the days went by with no reply from Sarah, he was able to go about his life without too much trouble. After all, she was a busy scientist who probably rarely checked her phone.

To fill his time, Jeff had started reading his book on conspiracy theories again. He even did what he had planned to do for a long time and organized a meeting of two or three other friends, to talk about how they were going to solve the world's problems by breaking the system that currently existed. Jeff was happy with how the meeting went, particularly since over half of it consisted of the other guys listening intently and excitedly as Jeff calmly described how hot Sarah was, and how she kissed, and how much she liked him.

Oh, but she's in the medical field," one of his friends had cautioned. "You gotta be careful, because she's probably been brainwashed by the establishment. You probably don't want her to know we're meeting like this."

Jeff had dismissed this statement with a lazy wave of his hand. "True, true," he had laughed nonchalantly, "But I'm not worried about Sarah. She'll see the truth before too long — she's super smart."

Jeff had also been more social ever since he had decided that he and Sarah were dating: he even got in touch with his former roommate Dave to have lunch one day. Apparently Dave was really enjoying his new roommates Most of the time was spent with Jeff talking to Dave about him and Sarah, and about his plans for the future. Dave had sat there quietly, listening as he ate his sandwich. Only after Jeff had stopped talking long enough to take a bite of his own sandwich did Dave speak up.

"So...like, you're actually sure that you're dating, Jeff?"

Jeff looked up from his food, a bite of sandwich in his mouth, and smiled as he opened his eyes widely as he looked over to one side, as if Dave had asked a question with an absurdly obvious answer.

"Um...yeah Dave. She kissed me and said she wanted it again?" Jeff laughed and took another bite of his sandwich.

Dave was thoughtful. "Yeah, Jeff. I mean, she's definitely interested in...something about you, that's for sure. But when was the last time you two spoke?"

"I don't know, like two weeks ago?" Dave clearly didn't understand how their relationship worked, and Jeff was beginning to get irritated. Didn't he know that not everyone had a normal, boring, vanilla relationship?

Dave didn't reply straight away, but simply lifted up his eyebrows at Jeff slowly as he breathed in through his nose. Jeff took this reaction as a sign that Dave thought he was full of crap, and that he wasn't dating Sarah at all. He responded angrily.

"What, Dave? You think I'm full of it? You think that just because our relationship isn't boring and normal like everyone else's, it isn't real? You think —"

"—Jeff," interrupted Dave quietly, holding up one of his large hands (he was a big man), "Jeff, c'mon man. You're acting like I'm out to get you or something." Jeff stopped his outburst and took a couple of deep breaths as his look softened at Dave. After seeing that Jeff was calmer, Dave continued. "Now if you're so sure that you two are dating, then great — I won't argue with you." He paused, looking down at Jeff from his seat, clearly being careful about what he said next. "I believe you. It's just that...well, Jeff...I mean, I'm not trying to burst your bubble here, and I can tell you're really excited, but...you know, just because you two kissed and she said she wanted to see you again doesn't always translate to...um, dating."

Jeff looked at the sky and sighed. Ok, obviously Dave was just trying to look out for him here. This was just a simple, benign case of Dave not understanding what was going on. He took his eyes from the sky to focus again on Dave, and he was momentarily unsettled to see Dave looking at him stonily, with something like irritation or...something else foreign in his expression. Jeff felt anger broil once again inside of him, but he would take the high road this time. Dave just needed to understand what was up.

"Dave," began Jeff, in what he meant to be a soft tone, but that actually came out as blatant condescension, "It's the twenty first century. "Dating" doesn't mean the same thing it always used to mean. You have this idea that there has to be this...this...uh, elaborate...uh...what's the word I'm looking for..."

"Courtship?" offered Dave.

"...yeah! Courtship...uh, process that is like, um, the 1950's or something. It's a new time, Dave. The old rules aren't the same anymore. There aren't any rules. It's all up to us to rewrite the rulebook. We're the canaries in the coal mine, Dave. We're the —"

"Ok, ok, Jeff," Dave interrupted again with his hand. This time he was smiling. "I get it, Jeff." He put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, his lunch eaten. From his stretched, relaxed position he looked down at Jeff with a curious expression on his face: a smile and a little twinkle in his eye. Jeff had forgotten how big Dave really was; this position just made him look bigger. "And Jeff, I really couldn't agree with you more. Times have changed, and we're rewriting the old rules."

"Damn right," said Jeff. And he sat there dumbly. Well, apparently he and Dave were on the same page now. He didn't know what else to say.

"Why don't you eat that lunch you got there," said Dave kindly, gesturing to Jeff's almost-uneaten sandwich. Jeff obliged as Dave looked around at nothing in particular. As he ate his sandwich, Jeff thought happily about how awesome it was to have a friend as chill as Dave. They were so comfortable with each other — they could argue and be irritated with each other and it didn't matter. One of them could just chow down on a sandwich while the other just looked casually around, and it didn't matter. No small talk, no filler. This was what real friendship looked like.

"You know," said Dave offhandedly as he looked out at the street, "I actually saw Sarah the other day."

Jeff choked on his sandwich as his eyes snapped up to Dave, who was still studying the traffic outside. After correcting his paralyzed throat and either swallowing or spitting out what he had in his mouth, Jeff managed a word: "What?!?!"

"Yeah, Jeff," said Dave quietly. With a calm expression on his face, he turned to look at his apoplectic friend. "We actually hung out like two days ago."

"But...bbut...but," sputtered Jeff, his mind beginning to crack.

"Dude," said Dave as he smiled down at Jeff, "chill out. It doesn't mean anything. It was great to see her! Hadn't seen her in over ten years, just like you."

"But...but she's dating —"

"Jeff," said Dave with a little more weight behind his voice this time. "I didn't go on a date with her." Jeff didn't seem to be hearing these words, and Dave noticed that Jeff was beginning to hyperventilate, his face getting redder by the second. "Jeff," Dave repeated, and he reached over and grabbed his friend's hands in his own and held them. "Jeff, you're scaring me, man, chill out." Jeff looked at Dave and saw his kind expression, and felt his own hands swallowed by the mammoth hands of his friend, and began to calm down.

"But...how did you get her number?"

"I didn't," said Dave with a smile, releasing Jeff as he leaned back, "She hit me up."

This was all getting too much for Jeff. "She?? You??? But how did she get your number??"

Dave shrugged. "I assumed you gave it to her."

"No, I didn't," said Jeff, starting to get red again. "I didn't!"

"Well, I have no idea how she got it then," laughed Dave, "But anyway, like I said, it was cool to see her. Not to make you feel weird, Jeff, but man, you weren't wrong about her growing up!"

Jeff just sat there, unable to do anything else, his mouth half-open in disbelief. Dave saw his friend's expression, but he continued on. If Jeff was really as open and progressive as he said he was, then he would be able to take this.

"I mean...yeah, again, of course, I'm not competing with you, Jeff, that goes without saying, haha, but I just have to say, holy fuck, Sarah Helleger grew into an absolute goddess. Am I right?"

Jeff's mouth was dry and couldn't move. Dave nudged him playfully, repeating "Am I right?" I mean you kissed her, right? You know what I'm talkin about!" until he had elicited a smile from his friend. "Yeah," he continued, "she just hit me up out of the blue and invited me over to her place for dinner, and not to get all 1950's, like you were talking about, but boy can she cook too!"

Jeff felt like he was riding a roller coaster. "She invited you over to her place?" he asked, "And you two had dinner together?"

Dave assumed Jeff's serious tone, and said mockingly, "Yes. She invited me over to her place. And we had dinner together. And we've drawn up the marriage arrangements, and the big day's a week from tomorrow. We're honeymooning in Aruba. A child is on the way."

He laughed, and Jeff halfheartedly joined in with him. He still needed some answers, though: "Did...did you two have spaghetti and meatballs?"

"No, Jeff!" laughed Dave, "We had chicken and rice and...uh, and salad. What, did you two have spaghetti and meatballs?"

Jeff didn't answer, but he was inwardly breathing a huge sigh of relief. So she wasn't just treating him and Dave the same. Maybe this meal with Dave was just a "friend" thing.