Two Hundred Dollars Ch. 04

177 Dollars

Try as she might, Bailey couldn't get herself into Kent's room for the first two days of the long weekend.

The urge from underneath came forward, pressing at her, a nearly physical pressure twisting at her lower abdomen, pushing her hips in his direction. But every time she stood up, preparing to walk over to his room and make a mark on the board, she got one step and stopped. She tried not to think about the thing that stopped her.

On Saturday night, she told herself she'd sleep on it and she'd feel better in the morning. Maybe she'd creep in on him in the wee hours. Bailey tried to force the belief into her mind that she really just wanted to double it up on Sunday.

The whole day of Sunday went by, too, and every time she thought she'd take a break from her homework and take a couple bucks off her tally, she froze up the exact same way.

As much as she'd gotten herself past it once, just long enough to blank out the stupid image in her brain and reach orgasm, Bailey still found herself stuck.

Worse yet, she'd almost recovered. She'd thought she could take Kent back as her own and write Laura out of the picture. That's why she'd proposed the whole "show and tell" thing, to bring something new into it, something she owned.

That hadn't gone as planned. She'd offered to pose for him, and how did he want her to pose?

In Laura's position.

She'd skated past that once, but as soon as she'd finished her orgasm, it had come back to haunt her.

Christ, why does this even bother me? She did me a god damned favour, after all. Why does it feel like my best friend ate my dessert, finished my jigsaw puzzle and... and... what?

What did she do that was so wrong?

Bailey couldn't put her finger on it, but as the sun set on Sunday evening, she knew the image of her friend, her skirt pulled up while Kent spanked her, would block her forever if she didn't find a way to do something about it.

She picked up her phone and opened the texting app. It took her about ten tries to compose the right message to Laura.

"Java Cafe? Ten minutes. You good?"

Of all the messages she'd considered, that one seemed simplest.

Only seconds passed before the reply came back.

"Sure!"

Bailey stepped forward and, this time, didn't freeze after the first step. She called that a good sign, slipped on her fall jacket, her boots and hit the door.

=============================

She arrived at the cafe ahead of Laura and pulled out her e-reader from the inside pocket of her jacket. She always kept something in there from the school's library, rotating fictional novels as fast as she could. When Bailey entered a cafe like this, she automatically took the nearest bar stool at the nearest table and started reading. The staff never bothered her, as long as she didn't clog things up at peak times, and she occasionally purchased something anyway.

Her mind refused to stay on the plot of the book, however, instead focusing on what she planned to say to Laura when she arrived. She needed to explain to her friend that she'd overstepped her bounds, that she had to leave the Kent-and-Bailey issue to Kent-and-Bailey and never get involved-

"Hey!" a joyful voice proclaimed from behind her.

As she sat on a high bar stool made, Laura easily wrapped her arms around Bailey's waist and gave her a giant hug.

"Hey," Bailey kept her tone much more conservative, carefully sliding the e-reader back into her pocket.

"Ha," Laura exclaimed, coming around to sit next to Bailey, "you could start with 'thank you'?"

"Thank you?"

"You must have noticed by now," Laura held up two fingers. "It wasn't the Great Pumpkin that took it for you."

Laura's enthusiasm bubbled over in a way that stifled the serious matter Bailey wanted to discuss.

"Yeah," Bailey stomped on her emotions and managed a smile, "Thanks."

"So?", Laura doffed her gloves and beret to sit next to Bailey. "Have we been keeping up?"

"Oh, sort of, yeah."

"Sort of?"

"Look," Bailey said. "About that. I really don't-"

Laura held up her hand and Bailey, already feeling awkward about even broaching the subject, stopped talking.

"You want my help again," Laura's tone made it a statement instead of a question.

"No!" Bailey said instantly before she calmed down. "No, it's not that."

Laura waited patiently, her eyebrows sinking in confusion as she stared at Bailey, watching her friend collect her thoughts through several deep breaths.

"What's wrong?" Laura asked.

Yeah, idiot, the voice in her head prodded at the deeper recesses of her mind, What. Is. Wrong. With. You?

Bailey couldn't find her words for a solid minute as the feelings inside her head chased each other around. Part of her wanted to lash out in a rage at her friend, but the earnest, almost lovingly concerned look in Laura's eyes made her feel absolutely idiotic about even entertaining the faintest hint of anger. Laura honestly didn't understand, and you couldn't rage at your friend merely because of her ignorance.

Worse than that, Bailey had no way to educate her.

"This debt," she began. "It's mine, you see."

"Right..."

Bailey inhaled, trying to figure out how she could approach this in a way that didn't ruin her friendship.

"When I saw two dollars missing," she explained. "I thought Kent was pitying me."

There, she thought, that should cover it. The problem is that I don't want pity. I don't want it from Laura. I don't want it from Kent. It's a simple matter of pride, that's what this is. Kent and Laura upset my sense of pride and that explains everything.

Bailey's body flooded with a sense of relief, confident she'd finally come to terms with her emotions.

"And now that you know it was me?" Laura trailed off suggestively, turning her head slightly to peer closely at her friend.

"It's like you're pitying me," Bailey finished resolutely.

"Oh," Laura said. Her face became stone and she repeated, "Oh, I see."

I hope you see, Bailey watched the expression on Laura's face loosen again as emotions flowed over her features like the shadows of clouds sweeping across a field of wheat.

"Alright," Laura bit her lip for a moment. "Give me Kent's number and we'll straighten it out."

Bailey, feeling relieved, handed her phone over to Laura, who already knew her PIN and unlocked her phone. As she scrolled through Bailey's contacts, Bailey started wondering what she planned to do.

"Straighten what out, exactly?"

Laura waved a hand and mumbled at her as she copied the number over manually and sent a text. It took only a moment for the reply to come.

"He's on his way," Laura nodded confidently.

"Why are you-"

Laura stopped her with a hand wave again. "Talk about something else," she said.

"I-" Bailey stammered in frustration. "Alright, fine."

Kent had apparently agreed to come to them and Bailey felt helpless against the Laura's gleeful implacability.

=============================

For his part, Kent had no idea what the girls had planned. Laura's text message had said only, "We're at Java Cafe. Can you come now?"

He'd texted back "kk" and thrown his outdoor clothes on. The sun having long since set, the air had cooled and a light October wind worked away at his exposed flesh. He didn't have far to walk, with only two blocks to the cafe, but he had to wonder what Laura wanted -- and why she instead of Bailey had sent the text. Really, he only assumed the other part of the "we" in the text message referred to Bailey. That seemed reasonable, under the circumstances.

Sure enough, even before he entered the cafe, he saw Bailey and Laura sitting side by side on high bar stools at the table nearest the door, their backs to him. Both wore their fall jackets and Bailey wore her standard pair of blue jeans while Laura sported a pair of beige dress pants.

No skirt today, I suppose, he thought, cursing the weather. But she's got a pretty tall pair of boots on.

Kent pulled the door open and felt the welcome rush of warm air hitting him, warming up his face and especially his ears. He exhaled heavily to expel the coldness in his lungs before taking a long, sweet draught of the coffee and cocoa infused air of the cafe.

Laura saw him first and smiled. Bailey turned to him next and he caught a slightly pained expression hiding behind her smile. The awkwardness of the moment struck him hard and, as he didn't like coffee and rarely went to the sorts of places where you could sit around and not buy anything, the awkwardness of the empty table hit him even harder. A part of him seized on this and insisted that they ought to purchase something to deserve to sit in a restaurant and take up space.

"Hello," he said, quickly adding, "Hot chocolate? Coffee?"

"Ooh," Laura jumped on it quickly, "Hot chocolate."

"Mocha?" Bailey asked.

"Sure," Kent walked past their table, "Be just a sec."

The girls watched quietly as he went by them before returning to their conversation. Kent barely heard Laura whispering something about, "...got a good thing going here..." but lost the rest of her sentence in the general hubbub of the population.

With no one in line, he made the order for two hot chocolates and a mocha.

"Whipping cream?" the barista asked.

"Sure."

"Cinnamon on any of them?"

That seemed obvious on a hot chocolate, and Kent was pretty certain Bailey put cinnamon on her mocha when she made one at home.

"Yes."

"Do you want any of them with pumpkin spice?"

"I, uh," Kent turned around to look at the girls huddled together conspiratorially. "Do you want pumpkin -"

"No!" they chorused back in unison, Bailey adding, "Christ, no."

"Why is that even a thing?" Laura asked.

"October is stupid," Bailey put in.

This threatened to turn into a cafe-wide discussion of religious proportions, but most of the patrons participated only satirically.

Kent paid for the order and came to the table to wait for it to show up.

"So... how are things?"

"Good," Bailey said. "Good. You?"

"Fine."

Laura watched this awkward back and forth between them for a moment.

"So, Kent," she said.

"Yes."

"Bailey is a little upset," Laura's voice lilted as if she didn't quite take Bailey seriously.

"I see," Kent glanced at Bailey, worried that he had perhaps gone too hard on some previous occasion, but Bailey didn't meet his eyes.

"She's worried that, when I helped her out, I was feeling sorry for her," Laura turned to look at Bailey, who twisted her lips in partial agreement.

"Ah," Kent said, looking at Bailey carefully. "Even though you let Laura, uh, 'help out' before?"

Bailey nodded, biting the left side of her lip. "She owed me, then."

The drinks showed up, interrupting their conversation. Laura remarked, "Ooh, with whipped cream and cinnamon. Thank you."

They sipped their drinks and breathed in the fresh scents to cover their clumsy conversation.

"Were you?" Kent eventually asked Laura.

"Was I what?"

"Feeling sorry for Bailey?"

Laura tilted her head back and forth.

"Well, it did seem like she bit off a lot," Laura turned to look at Bailey, "But I never thought she couldn't handle it. Really."

"So why did you help?" Kent asked.

"To be honest," Laura shrugged. "I like helping. I owed her a huge favour. Plus, it seemed kinky."

They stared at her for a moment, expecting her to say something further.

Laura shrugged again, more defensively this time. "That's all."

They sipped their drinks for a while longer, absorbing that. The sky grew dark outside and the wind bent at the floor to ceiling window panes. October had decided to come in hard.

"And how do you feel now?" Kent asked Bailey.

"Alright," Bailey's voice came on firm and confident. "I can take care of myself and pay my own debts."

Laura's hand patted Bailey's over her cup. "No one ever said you couldn't."

Kent smiled at the patronizing tone and sipped his hot chocolate.

"We should get going before it gets too cold," Bailey remarked suddenly, meeting no one's eyes.

Kent recognized that particular variety of shyness, though, and the fact their half-finished drinks had arrived in disposable containers came in handy. No way they'd leave partial beverages behind, after all -- not in their respective financial states.

Hugging their paper cups close to their bodies, they slipped out of the cafe into the cold autumn air. Kent felt a pang of envy for the girls' long, ear covering hair. He didn't grow his that long and he hadn't thought to wear a hat.

Well, good for them.

"Were you busy when I texted?" Laura asked Kent.

"Not too busy."

"I mean," she clarified. "Do you need to do anything right away?"

"Nothing left that's due Tuesday," he replied, walking between them. "But there's always some damn thing to do next."

"I'll be glad when school is done," Laura's voice turned mopey. "Years left yet, though."

Laura and Bailey turned the conversation to their classes, sipping their hot drinks down, making them last all the way back to the residential side entrance that led to Kent and Bailey's basement apartment. Bailey got to the door first and unlocked it, waving first Laura and then Kent in before she closed the door behind all three of them.

A moment of awkwardness occurred in the hallway as they stopped outside Kent's open bedroom door.

"Are we all okay now?" Laura asked, mostly talking to Bailey who had stopped to lean against the wall just past the doorway.

She turned back to look at Kent, her expression serving to repeat the question to him.

"I don't think I ever had a problem," Kent pointed out. He slipped past Laura and turned on the light in his bedroom as he entered. He kicked off his shoes and left them along the wall under the whiteboard.

Laura followed him in, Bailey immediately on her heels. The girls removed their jackets at the same time Kent did, throwing them over the back of his chair. Bailey slid out of her shoes but Laura, inconvenienced by the size of her boots, kept them on.

"So," Laura turned to the white board, "I'm not supposed to help out. But you also didn't kick me out."

"That's not why-" Bailey started, but choked when Laura took the marker up in her hand. "Hey, you shouldn't-"

Bailey stopped again as Laura did something unexpected. Instead of making a tick mark in the little box where tick marks belonged, she drew another box next to it and wrote, "$3" in it.

"What is that?" Kent's voice sounded both suspicious and upset.

"It's the price of a cup of hot chocolate," Laura announced, mostly directing the statement at Bailey rather than Kent. "That's not yours-"

"No," Kent said firmly, moving forward and interrupting the exchange between the girls.

"What?" Laura turned to him.

"That was my treat," he reiterated, his tone lightening only a little as he faced her from inches away. "I don't take payment for gifts."

Slightly taller than she, Kent reached over her shoulder to take the brush and wipe away her hastily made box.

"Not happening," he told her and backed away.

Laura's shoulders fell and both Kent and Bailey could see her shaking with some uncontrollable emotion. She turned to face away from both of them, staring at the empty place on the board, and since neither of them could see her expression, they didn't know what emotion gripped her.

"Fine," she announced, her voice trembling. She flipped the lights down to their lowest setting and turned on Kent. "If you can give a gift, so can I. And you'd better not turn it down, because that's rude, too, isn't it?"

"I-", Kent stammered, seeing the look on her reddened face and her trembling chin. Wondering if he had somehow managed to hurt her feelings, he replied, "Alright."

"Hm," Laura emphasized as she turned back to the whiteboard and made a tick mark in the empty space where her recently drawn box should have lain.

"A gift?" Bailey asked, her mouth hanging open.

"Just so," Laura turned her nose up. "It's Thanksgiving for you Canadian people this weekend, isn't it?"

While they might have moved to Canada, Laura's family clearly hadn't adapted to the Canadian idea of celebrating Thanksgiving in October.

"Yes," Bailey replied.

"So I'm giving thanks to a Canadian," Laura intoned.

If I didn't know any better, Kent thought, I'd think Laura decided much earlier tonight that she wanted me to spank her and is getting there come hell or high water.

"Dammit," Bailey muttered under her breath.

"What?" Laura asked.

Bailey seemed to roll her eyes but managed to turn away from Kent before he could make certain of her expression. She snatched the marker from Laura and made a second mark, right next to hers, outside of the box.

"My mocha was at least as good as your hot chocolate," Bailey pointed out. "I can be as.. generous as you are."

Kent stood silent, having drifted away to lean up against his bed, watching the interplay between the two girls in disbelief. He had -- wisely by his figuring -- decided not to interfere in the slightest.

They glared at each other a moment, Laura feigning innocence and Bailey's expression so loaded with conflicting emotions Kent couldn't dare take a guess what she felt, before the two of them turned as one to face him.

"I'd say 'Merry Christmas'," Bailey put her signature snark into her voice, "But we're nowhere near."

"How do you want us?" Laura smiled.

"Oh no," Kent waved her off with a finger. "This is your gift. You decide."

Laura looked at Kent carefully, peering at him as she tried to decide what to do.

"We're doing it together," Bailey cut in and gently nudged Laura toward the bed, jerking her head to indicate Kent should move.

Obligingly, Kent shifted away to make room. Bailey pushed Laura up against the bed and, with a shove none too polite, leaned her over the bed.

"Oh!" Laura chirped in surprise, catching herself on her hands.

Bailey took a spot to her left, leaning over until her elbows touched the mattress. Laying as low as the bed did, it left her upper body horizontal, much farther than she'd bent over even by the washing machine. Laura assumed the same pose, pushing her hips right up next to Bailey's, but as she still wore her boots, bending over that far left her cheeks angled higher in the air.

"So what are we doing?" Kent asked as he stood behind them.

"Over top," Laura said. "So ten, right?"

"It's a gift," Kent pointed out. "I didn't want to assume."

"Ten each," Bailey stated, firming the matter up. "Get on it."

"Back and forth?" he asked, placing his hand on Bailey's left cheek.

"You spank," Bailey retorted swiftly, "we'll count."

With all reservations discarded by the tone of her voice, he let her have a quick shot on her left cheek, shaking the entire bed against which she'd braced herself.

"One," she said.

Kent switched immediately to Laura's slightly elevated cheeks, noting the girl was actually standing up on the toes of her boots. He gave her a shot on the right side.

"One," Laura said.

"It's two actually," Bailey said. "We count them all together."

"Oh," Laura giggled. "Two."

With the intention of keeping them guessing, Kent stayed on Laura and slapped her left cheek.

"Three!" she called out.

Feeling the thickness of her pants, he slapped her left cheek again, low and hard.

"Oh! Four!"

He switched over to Bailey, striking three times at her right cheek, the one nearest Laura.

"Five," she said placidly, "Six. Ah, seven."

Back to Laura, he gave her two shots on the left cheek.

"Eight, nine," Laura winced. "Does he just hammer the same spot like that?"