Someone, Anyone (M&M, CC/UC, AU, Adult) COMPLETE, 01/20/16

[Eva]

Whoaw, good news for all ? Are you ill, April? Anyway, I'm glad for all of them. For Maria because a new pregnancy would've complicated her life enormously. And for Is able because there's still hope for her after all. It maybe won't stay Jesse but the way she was thinking gave me and her some hope.

[keepsmiling7]

Rumors, rumors.......they spread fast.
And Isabel with Jesse......that would help Isabel get over her revenge.
Well after being nervous, discussions of names it appears that they weren't pregnant after all.
I'm sure everyone was relieved after all......the time really wasn't right.
Carolyn

[killjoy]

Huh.....I'm not quite sure how I'm feeling on Jesse here? As of right now he's looking like a good guy so far. But I know you April and don't trust any nice/happiness you throw at us this early in the story

[sarammlover]

Well well well...NOT PREGNANT! I am totally with Maria on this one. I would be completely ecstatic. Michael is clearly still not thinking straight. How does this 17 year old expect to go to college, support his girlfriend and her son and maybe another child? Does he not see that his own parents struggle? I don't know. I guess I am more mature than Michael...duh. HA!

Isabel and Jesse....ok. Is he going to be a good guy in this? I wonder where we will go with Alex....curious to see what that relationship does. maybe jesse will give Isabel the skills/tools/reasons to go after a decent guy. Here's hoping....

Great update!

[April]

Eva:

Whoaw, good news for all ? Are you ill, April?

I could be!

Anyway, I'm glad for all of them. For Maria because a new pregnancy would've complicated her life enormously.

Oh, certainly. She and Michael were just not ready for that.

And for Is able because there's still hope for her after all. It maybe won't stay Jesse but the way she was thinking gave me and her some hope.

She did once again sleep with a guy she just met. But at the very least, at least she was having some positive thoughts for a change.

Carolyn:

Rumors, rumors.......they spread fast.

Especially in a smaller school/smaller town. It's awful!

Well after being nervous, discussions of names it appears that they weren't pregnant after all.
I'm sure everyone was relieved after all......the time really wasn't right.

The timing was definitely not right, and Maria is definitely relieved. But Michael is . . . oddly disappointed.

Rod:

Huh.....I'm not quite sure how I'm feeling on Jesse here? As of right now he's looking like a good guy so far. But I know you April and don't trust any nice/happiness you throw at us this early in the story

Well, you're right to be skeptical, given my writing history! It's probably a bit too early to form a full-fledged opinion of him yet.

Sara:

Michael is clearly still not thinking straight. How does this 17 year old expect to go to college, support his girlfriend and her son and maybe another child? Does he not see that his own parents struggle? I don't know. I guess I am more mature than Michael...duh. HA!

You are certainly more mature than Michael! You're right, he's not really thinking straight about it. He kind of tossed logic out the window when he thought she might be pregnant and caught up in the idea of it all. If he really thinks about it, he'll realize this is a good thing. But on this more guttural, emotional level . . . he's strangely disappointed by the results.

Isabel and Jesse....ok. Is he going to be a good guy in this?

We'll see. I've never written Jesse in a fic before.

I wonder where we will go with Alex....curious to see what that relationship does.

You haven't seen the last of Alex in this story, but he's definitely trying to put some distance between himself and Isabel, because he doesn't want to be used by her.


Thank you for the feedback!








Part 61








School felt different the next day. It felt . . . sort of normal now that there was no pregnancy scare looming. Just another day to add to the long line of tally marks on his bedroom wall.

Coincidentally, Maria had gotten her period that morning. She looked up some stuff online and informed him that increased sexual activity could sometimes cause changes in a woman’s menstrual cycle. He wasn’t sure if he believed that or not, but . . . whatever. It was an explanation. A plausible one, too, because lately, her sexual activity had definitely been increased.

“Hey, guys,” Michael greeted his friends as he went up to the breakfast table.

“Hey, padre!” they all resounded, except for Kyle, who knew enough not to make a joke out of it.

“No, I’m not a padre,” he informed them. “It’s official, so . . .” He really didn’t want to go into any more detail than that. The whole thing was . . . kinda private. As private as it could be when everyone at school gossiped about it anyway.

“Oh, so she took the test?” Jase asked.

“Yeah.” That was all he wanted to say.

Jase grinned like an idiot. “Gnarly, man. You’re too young to have a kid.”

“Yeah, you got lucky,” Antonio agreed.

Bubba burped, and while he was chewing on his breakfast, said, “That would’ve been a bad deal, man, bein’ all tied down and shit.”

“Yeah, talk about tied down,” the others agreed.

Michael wished they would shut up. They didn’t get that nothing about being with Maria made him feel tied down. They didn’t get it because they didn’t know what it was like. They didn’t have girls they loved; they just had girls they fucked. Sort of like he used to have.

He sat down next to Kyle while Jase started to complain about his mom, and how she was begging him to stay in New Mexico for college. “And I was like, no way, Mom, I’m goin’ to Florida. Everyone knows the hottest girls go to Florida.”

Michael tuned the conversation out, still very much up in his own head, thinking about his own stuff.

Kyle was the only one who seemed to notice that he wasn’t his usual self. Leaning over, he quietly asked, “Are you okay, man?”

“Yeah,” he answered quickly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Kyle studied him intently for a moment, but then he sat back and let it go, didn’t ask any more questions. And that was good, because if Michael had to keep giving answers, it would become pretty obvious that he was lying.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Even though Isabel wasn’t usually one for PDA, it was hard not to show it with Jesse. She’d spent the whole night at his place, and she hadn’t even had to ask him to give her a ride to school that day. He’d just offered.

“Thanks for the ride,” she told him as they stood outside his car, kissing, trying to part.

“Anytime.”

She grinned, adding, “Thanks for the other ride, too.”

He chuckled. “Oh, you . . . are so clever.” He touched her smiling mouth with his index finger, then gave her another quick kiss. She wanted to keep kissing, but then the bell rang. She could hear it even from outside.

“Ugh, I have to go,” she groaned, seriously contemplating just skipping out on school today.

“Alright, I’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah.” Not soon enough, though. She was going to be thinking about him all day.

As she headed through the parking lot, she heard a familiar voice calling her name. “Isabel!” And soon, Tess caught up to her and jumped in front of her. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Isabel greeted.

“So . . . who’s that?” Tess pointed to Jesse, who was back in his car and waving at her as he backed out of the parking space.

“That’s Jesse,” she replied proudly.

“Uh-huh.” Tess nodded suspiciously. “And what’s Jesse’s last name?”

“Um . . . Ramirez? Rodriguez?”

Tess rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know. I just met him last night.”

“Oh, classy. Did you sleep with him?”

Isabel sighed, bracing herself for the inevitable onslaught of judgment. “Yes.”

“Isabel!” Tess whined. “How could you?”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

Tess rolled her eyes. “Okay, so he’s hot, but you’ve been doing this way too much lately. What are you up to now, three guys?”

“Five,” she corrected.

“What?” Tess shrieked. “There were others? What was this, like a gangbang?”

“No, there were others on . . . other nights.” Isabel cringed, hating that she’d wasted time with guys like Ryan when a guy like Jesse had existed all along. “Look, it doesn’t matter, though, because Jesse is a really nice, really smart guy. He was in law school.”

“Was?”

“Okay, he’s not anymore, but not because he flunked out. He dropped out. He’s starting his own business.”

“Doing what?”

“I . . . don’t know.” The limited amount of time that they’d known each other hadn’t exactly been consumed with talking.

“Well, what do you know about him, Isabel?” Tess demanded shrilly. “His age?”

Yeah, that was going to be a fire-starter. “Twenty,” she lied.

“No way is that guy twenty.”

“Okay, fine, twenty-six,” she admitted.

“Twenty-six?!” Tess shrieked. “Isabel, that’s, like, almost a decade older than you.”

“So?”

“So? Does he know you’re only eighteen?”

“He’s fine with it.”

Tess laughed angrily. “Okay, then I don’t care how nice you say he is. Any twenty-six year old guy who willingly hooks up with a girl who’s still in high school is not Prince Charming.”

“Look . . .” Isabel ignored the tardy bell as it rang. She’d just be late. She didn’t even care anymore. “I don’t expect you to be able to understand. My love life lately . . . it’s gotten complicated.”

Tess made a face. “And why wouldn’t I understand?”

“Because.”

“Because what?” she prodded. “I’m a simpleton or something? I’m an airhead?”

“No, I didn’t say that. But . . . come on, Tess, you’ve been with the same guy all throughout high school. You have your perfect little love story, for now.”

“For now?” Tess echoed. “What’re you saying?”

“I’m saying . . . it’s bound to change.” Part of Isabel felt bad about everything she was saying, but the other part felt almost . . . liberated. She had listened to Tess ooh and aah about Kyle Valenti for so many years now, never once telling her what she really thought, never once being truly honest with her. But maybe she owed it to her to be honest, to not sugarcoat things anymore.

“It’s not gonna change,” Tess insisted. “Isabel, you’re the one who doesn’t understand. You’ve never had a relationship like mine before. You think you’ve found it with Jesse, but he’s just another guy in what’s probably gonna end up being a long chain of guys if you keep this up.”

“Tess, I’m not looking to have what you and Kyle have,” Isabel told her bluntly. “No offense. I mean, it’s obvious you love him and he loves you. But take it from me, sometimes love isn’t enough. You’re still gonna be stuck here next year, and he’s gonna go off to college and be on ESPN all the time making these amazing plays. He’s gonna be as popular on that campus as he is here, probably even more so. And he’s gonna get attention from a lot of people, a lot of girls.” She shrugged apologetically. “I just don’t think you’re gonna be able to hold his interest.”

Tess stared at her in absolute bewilderment, pure, raw hurt in her eyes. Her mouth was open in shock, and she was crying.

“I’m sorry,” Isabel said. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up, the way I did with Michael.”

“The way you’re doing with this Jesse guy.”

“I’m just trying to be honest with you.”

Tess shook her head, twin rivers of tears flowing down her cheeks. “Who are you?” she choked out, covering her face with her hands as she ran inside the school building.

I’m Isabel Evans, she thought determinedly, ignoring the instinct to chase after her friend. The same Isabel Evans I always have been.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“So what did your mom say?”

Michael swirled his fries around in the ketchup, feeling distracted. “Uh, she wasn’t thrilled that we were taking a pregnancy test, obviously. But when I told her it was negative, she was relieved like you were,” he answered, quickly correcting himself. “We were.”

“Oh, I’ll bet. Is she mad at us?”

“No. She just said we need to be really, really careful.”

Maria nodded in agreement, her alien antennae headband bobbing up and down with every movement. “We do. I just feel like this was a really close call.”

“Well . . . it worked out.” Truthfully, he was kind of tired of talking about it. So far at school today, it was all anybody wanted to ask him about. Even the teachers knew.

“God, imagine how stressed out we would be right now if we were having a baby,” she said. “I don’t even know how we would’ve afforded it, with you going to college and everything.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have gone,” he speculated with a nonchalant shrug.

“What?”

“Havin’ a kid or goin’ to college. What’s more important?”

She grunted, sounding regretful when she said, “Michael, that’s the kind of thinking that got me to drop out of high school.”

“We would’ve been fine,” he assured her.

“Yeah, but Michael, there’s more even than just money stuff,” Maria went on. “It’s really hard emotionally, too. And physically. It’s like . . . say goodbye to sleep once they’re born. For a few months at least.”

“Well . . . now I won’t have to find out how hard it is,” he mumbled.

She narrowed her eyes, looking at him intently. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

Same basic question Kyle had asked, and he still didn’t really know the answer. “It’s just been a crazy couple of days,” he dismissed.

“Yeah,” she agreed. She looked like she wanted to say more, but she couldn’t when Jeff Parker called out from the kitchen, “Maria, you’re still on the clock, right?”

She nodded sheepishly.

He gave her a non-threatening but stern look.

“I have to get back to work,” she said, leaning across the table to give him a quick kiss. “Kiss me again before you leave.”

He smiled. Didn’t she know by now that he’d kiss her every second of every day if he could?

When she was zipping through the restaurant again, waiting on her other customers, he pushed his plate away, oddly not hungry today. He watched her work for a few minutes, first gazing at her face, her beautiful smile. But eventually, he let himself look down at her stomach. That smooth, flat stomach of hers that only bulged out ever so slightly at the bottom when he was far enough inside.

God, what the hell was wrong with him? This wasn’t normal. It wasn’t normal to be feeling the way he felt after the news he’d gotten.

Snapping him out of his trance, Tess came trundling into the café, crashing into the seat across from him. “Isabel Evans is dead to me,” she declared.

“What the hell are you doin’ here?” he asked. “I thought juniors got their open lunch privileges revoked.”

“Any other day, I would’ve cared about that. Today . . . not so much. Congratulations on not being a father, by the way. I heard.”

“Uh . . . thanks?”

Her bottom lip quivered, and then, like a dam that had burst, she started crying. She reached over and grabbed a napkin, using it as a tissue, blowing into it loudly. “Oh god, she was so mean, Michael. She’s never said that stuff to me before.”

“Who, Isabel?”

“Yes!”

“What’d she say?” Good. This was good. Not good that they were fighting, obviously, but . . . hey, it gave him something else to think about.

“She basically said she thinks Kyle’s gonna, like, break up with me or cheat on me someday, because he’s gonna have all these other options in college, and I’m, like, not a good enough option or whatever.”

“Oh, Tess . . .” He never thought he’d see the day, but here it was: Instead of feeling mildly annoyed by Tess Harding, he felt sorry for her. “You can’t listen to her. She’s bein’ a bitch.”

“But what if she’s right, though?” she cried, her face reddening with every tear shed. “What if we peak in high school? And what if it’s all downhill from here? I mean, I don’t wanna ever lose him. I wanna be with him forever. And even if he doesn’t propose by the end of this year, it’s like . . . I still wanna marry him someday, and have kids with him, you know?”

He looked over to Maria again. She was standing at the order window now, laughing at something the cook said. Her laughter was even more beautiful than her signing was.

“Yeah,” he said longingly. “I know.” And just like that, he was back to thinking about the same old stuff again.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dylan would have just gone running straight into the living room, tracking mud all over the beige carpet if Maria didn’t grab hold of him right at the door and stop him. “Hello?” she called as she removed his shoes.

Krista came out from the kitchen, wearing an apron covered in flour. “Oh, looks like somebody’s got some dirty shoes,” she remarked.

“Yeah, apparently they played outside a lot today.”

“Mommy?” Dylan cooed. “Can I watch TV?” He flashed her an exaggerated, hopeful smile.

Maria rubbed his head, at how effortlessly cute he could be. “Sure. I’ll bring you a snack.”

He darted into the living room, grabbed the remote, and plopped down on the couch.

“What’s he so eager to watch?” Krista asked.

“I don’t know.” Together they stood back and observed as he pressed two numbers on the remote, apparently knowing exactly which channel to flip to. On the screen, Jeopardy suddenly popped up.

“Huh.” It was the most boring trivia game show of all time as far as Maria was concerned. Plus, she never knew any of the answers.

“Well, at least it’s educational,” Krista said.

“Yeah, I guess.” She bent down to take off her own shoes, feeling the familiar strain of being on her feet all day.

“So how are you doing?” Krista asked.

“Oh, I’m good,” she answered. “Work was not unbearable, so . . .”

“Yeah?” Krista smiled, nodding distractedly. “And everything’s . . . good? You’re . . . feeling good about everything?”

Maria tensed, sensing she knew what this was all about. “Look, Krista . . . I need to apologize. I’m really sorry you had to find out about our little . . . you know, situation . . . the way you did. I’m sorry there was even a situation to find out about.”

Krista grabbed her hand gently, ushering her into the kitchen, where Dylan wouldn’t be able to overhear. “I thought you two were being careful,” she said quietly.

“We were. We are,” Maria assured her, adding embarrassedly, “. . . most of the time.”

“Well, it needs to be all the time,” Krista declared.

“I know. We will . . . all the time. Because this was, like, a really good reminder.”

“Well, I would hope so.” Krista breathed in deeply, literally shuddering as she left it out. “I know things like this happen, but . . .”

“I’m really sorry,” Maria reiterated. She felt like she’d betrayed this woman’s trust on some level, and that had never been her intention.

“I know you are,” Krista said, “but . . . Maria, you and I both know how hard life can get sometimes. And Michael doesn’t know that. He’s never had to experience it. Not really. I mean, I know this family might not have been the ideal one for him to grow up in, but all his life, he’s had a roof over his head. He’s had . . . not a lot of money, but enough to get by. He’s had the stability of school, even if he doesn’t appreciate it. He’s never really had to deal with . . . you know, with something life-changing.”

“Yeah,” Maria agreed dazedly, not sure where Krista was going with this.

“And then you came along, and . . . you have been really good for him,” Krista acknowledged. “You have. But the things that you have had to deal with and think about are just not things he’s ever had to think about.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She’d had this conversation with herself before. She knew that, as similar as she and Michael could be, they were also very different.

“And you know I love you, and Dylan, and I think of you both as extended members of this family,” Krista continued on, “but I need you to understand that . . . there are things that I don’t want for my son at this point in his life, Maria. And a baby is one of them.”

“I’m not pregnant,” Maria reminded her.

“But you could’ve been, and that—that scares me because . . .” Krista clasped her hands together to stop them from trembling. “I don’t want him turning out like his father, Maria.”

She shifted uncomfortably, recalling an eerily similar conversation with Andy himself, one that had left her feeling . . . unsettled and upset.

“I know this is hard to believe, but even now . . . he reminds me so much of who my husband used to be,” Krista said tearfully.

“Really?” Having only known Andy Guerin as a lazy, rude alcoholic, she had a hard time picturing him ever being like Michael.

“Oh, yes. He was . . . energetic. And funny. And passionate. He was so passionate.”

All words to describe Michael. That and more.

“And he was so excited for our future. Even when he found out we were gonna be parents, he kept thinking we could do it. He said he knew we’d be fine. But then, when he started to realize all the things he was gonna have to sacrifice . . .” A tear spilled over the older woman’s eye, cascading down onto her cheek. “When he started to realize that he’d have to grow up faster than he wanted to . . . that’s when he changed. And after Michael was born, the man I knew . . . died.”

Maria felt tears stinging her own eyes, and she wasn’t even sure why. “Because he had a son?”

“No. Because he wasn’t ready.”

Maria blinked back tears, holding it together. “Yeah, but . . . neither were you.”

“But I had to get ready,” Krista remembered. “You know how it is when you’re a mother. It’s just different. There’s no escape hatch for you.”

Maria looked down her feet and nodded solemnly, remembering that feeling. Sitting in the hospital the night after giving birth, texting Max incessantly to try to get him there. Sending him photos of their newborn, wondering when he’d show . . . knowing deep down that he never would.

That had been the worst night of her life.

Michael wasn’t his father, though, and he most certainly wasn’t Max Evans. He was his own person, and despite what some people thought, he was a good person. It wasn’t fair to him to assume that he would handle the situation the same way the others had.

“I’m not trying to scare you,” Krista said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I’m just telling you this because I love my son, and I know that you love him, too. But you need to understand how serious this could have been.”

“I do.” She knew she understood it far better than Michael did, than he could.

“Because Maria . . . there were two paths in front of my husband once. And he chose the wrong one. I don’t want Michael to make that same choice. I don’t want him to have to make that choice. Someday, when he’s older and he knows who he is . . . then it’ll be fine. But not now. It’s too soon, you know?”

“Yeah.” Everything Krista was saying made total and complete sense, and Maria even agreed with it. So then why did hearing it make her feel so damn emotional?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Come on, come on,” Kyle mumbled as he and Michael came to the end of yet another football game session on the PlayStation that night. Michael mashed the buttons on the controller as fast as he could, but no matter what he did, it didn’t seem to be enough. Kyle’s player charged towards the end zone and scored. Game over.

“Crap,” he swore as Kyle shouted, “Yes!” and threw his hands in the air.

How many times had they played this game over the years? And how many times had he won? He could probably count them on one hand. “Man, you win everything.”

“Winner winner, chicken dinner,” Kyle proclaimed, setting his controller down. “Wanna play again?”

They’d decided it was boys night at Kyle’s house, which unfortunately had become a rarity these days. Tess wasn’t constantly hating on Maria anymore, but it still seemed like a bad idea to try to do things together, the four of them, until they got to know each other on their own a little better. “Yeah, sure. Why not?” Michael agreed.

Kyle picked up his controller again, navigated back to the main menu, and started to set up a new game. In the midst of doing so, though, he stopped, looked over at Michael, and said, “Can I ask you somethin’?”

“What?” Hopefully it wasn’t a school-related question, because if it was . . . he had nothing.

Kyle muted the game, set the controller back down again, and angled himself to face Michael. “How do you really feel about Maria not being pregnant?”

Oh, fuck, he thought, trying not to show much of a reaction to that question. But he should’ve known he wouldn’t be able to hide his feelings from his best friend of all people. Kyle had known him too long to fall for the same act the other guys at school did. “What do you mean?” he asked, locking his eyes onto the screen, concentrating on picking out the uniforms for his team. “I’m fine. You think I wanted to be a teenage father?”

“Did you?” Kyle challenged.

He stopped what he was doing on screen and completely froze. No one else was going to ask him this question. Not his mom. Probably not even Maria. But of course Kyle did. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“What?” Even though he’d gotten the ball rolling on this topic, Kyle sounded surprised.

“No, I mean, was I actively interested in havin’ a kid? Was that something I was tryin’ to do? No,” he acknowledged. “I’m not an idiot.”

“But if she’d taken that test and it had come back positive . . .”

Without delay, he blurted, “I would’ve been fine with it.”

Kyle stared at him with absolute astonishment in his eyes. “Man. Things sure do change, huh? At the beginning of the school year, you would’ve lost it.”

“At the beginning of the year, I didn’t know Maria,” he pointed out. Things didn’t just change, and people didn’t just change for the hell of it. They changed because they had a reason to.

“I guess,” Kyle mumbled. “Still, that’s . . .”

“It’s crazy, I know,” he confessed. “Whatever. It is what it is.”

“You’re probably better off this way.”

“Yeah.” He knew. Deep down, he knew. “Sex is like math. You add the bed, subtract the clothes, divide the legs and pray you don’t multiply. I’m on board. I got it.”

Kyle chuckled at that. “Sex is like math. That’s . . . that’s pretty funny, man.”

Michael reached over to his friend’s controller and unmuted their game. “I’m a funny guy.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Nowadays, it was hard for Maria to remember a time when she and Michael had shared a bed without lying so close to each other. It was hard for her to remember what it felt like to lie there without his arms around her, without his chest as a pillow, his heartbeat as the music that lulled her to sleep. His entire body was like a warm blanket, one that made it incredibly difficult to wake up and crawl out of bed every morning. Because all she wanted to do was stay right there next to him, always.

She sensed that he either wasn’t feeling tired or just wasn’t falling asleep that night, though, because he wasn’t snoring yet. And despite the fact that he claimed he didn’t snore, he did, just lightly. Adorably.

“Can’t sleep?” she asked, rubbing her hand over his chest.

“I guess not,” came his reply.

She kept her eyes closed, knowing that she had to sleep, because she had to get to the library early the next morning. Inventory day again. “What’re you thinking about?” she asked, always interested to know what was going on in his head.

“Oh . . . if I tell you, you’ll think I’m outta my fuckin’ mind,” he sighed.

“Oh, Michael.” She snuggled closer. “I already know you’re out of your mind.”

He laughed a little, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “You really wanna know?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, sit up then.”

As much as she hated to give up the warm blanket feel of him, she sat up and pulled the covers up more securely over her lap. It was dark in the room, but the moonlight illuminated his profile as he readjusted his posture, leaning back against the headboard. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make him out more clearly.

“You’re really gonna think I’m crazy,” he warned her again.

“That’s fine.” His craziness, his wildness . . . it was one of the things she loved most about him.

“No, but I mean, you’re really . . . “ He trailed off, grunting and shaking his head. “Alright, here goes: You know how last night, when I told you you weren’t pregnant, you were really relieved?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Well . . .” He paused for at least a few seconds before he managed to get out, “I wasn’t.”

She frowned, not sure what that meant. How could he not feel . . . why would he not feel that way? “What are you saying?” she asked. “You . . . wanted to have a baby?”

“No, I didn’t want to, but I didn’t not want to, either. It’s confusing. That’s how I felt, Maria. I felt confused.”

“Because you . . . weren’t sure what you wanted?” she gathered.

“Yeah. See, you just get me.”

She didn’t, though. Not right now. Her relief had been so consuming, so absolute, that she hadn’t even thought to ask him much about how he was feeling. She had just assumed that, however she was feeling, he had to be feeling the same way. He was a guy, and he was a young guy, and . . . well, stereotypes.

“Why weren’t you sure?” she asked. “I mean, Michael . . . it gets really hard raising a baby.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that; everyone keeps saying that, and I get it,” he insisted. “Money and time and stress and . . . that all makes sense to me. But I really think it would’ve been alright.”

“Michael . . .” He was being so sweet, but so naïve. “I know that you think that . . .”

“And why don’t you?” he cut in, sounding a little bit . . . angry now. Accusatory. “Don’t you think we would’ve made it?”

She was taken aback by the question, not expecting to be put on the spot like this. “I mean, I like to think we would’ve, but . . .”

“But what?”

“But who knows? If—if things got hard . . .”

“What?” he spat. “I would’ve bailed on you like Max? Is that what you think?”

“No, I . . .” She licked her lips, feeling frustrated, trying to sort out her thoughts before she said them. “I know you’re not him. And what we have is so much more than anything I ever had with him. But I know from experience that sometimes things don’t end up the way you think they will.” Her whole life exemplified the saying, Expect the unexpected.

“Oh, and what? So you’re automatically right because you’ve had more life experience than I have? You know more about what would’ve happened than I do?”

“No, but . . . okay, look, Michael, you said you were willing to give up college for all this.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So if I was any other girl, you wouldn’t give up college.”

He snorted. “If you were any other girl, I wouldn’t be going to college in the first place.”

“Look, I was talking to your mom about this, too, and--”

“My mom?”

“Yes, and she said some things that really make sense.”

“Like what?”

“Like . . .” Oh god, she wished she hadn’t even mentioned his mom. Now she was going to end up hurting his feelings even more, but she knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t let it go. “She pointed out that you haven’t had to deal with as many . . . difficult things in life.”

He made a face, like it infuriated him to hear what he was hearing. “What the fuck? Like I’ve got it so easy? My dad tried to kill himself this year, and I live every day knowing it’s only a matter of time until he tries it again.”

She felt her stomach clench, wanting to go back in time a few minutes and just continue lying there instead of asking him what was on his mind. But in a way, maybe it was good for him to get all this off his chest. If he couldn’t talk to her about this, then who could he talk to?

“That’s difficult; that’s not easy,” he kept on. “And it wasn’t easy growing up with him in the first place. I know the guy wishes I was Hoovered out right from the start. He blames me for every crappy thing that’s ever happened in his life. That’s not easy.”

“Michael . . .” She reached out and touched his cheek, but to her surprise, he turned away. He was really mad. Maybe not directly at her, and maybe not even at his mom, but just . . . at something. And being Michael, he wasn’t used to having to put his feelings into words.

“You think I’m gonna end up like him?” he asked tightly, his jaw clenched.

She shook her head, thinking that there was no way the guy sitting beside her could ever be Andy Guerin. Biology was just a science; the choices and the changes that Michael was making were far more than that. “No,” she whispered. “You won’t.”

“Because I don’t want to.” His voice was cloaked with emotion, and she wondered if he was on the verge of crying. He wouldn’t, though. He wouldn’t let himself cry. “Look, I’m not saying we should try to have a kid. I’m not gonna be goin’ without a condom anymore or anything. You’re not pregnant, and . . . there’s probably a reason for that, and I get why that’s good. But it pisses me off that people think it would’ve been so bad.”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, knowing she was one of those people.

“I’m tellin’ you, I would’ve proved people wrong,” he vowed. “I’m gonna be a good dad someday, ‘cause I know what it’s like to have one who sucks.”

“You’ll be a really good dad,” she agreed. “You already are.”

He smiled momentarily, but it faded soon after it appeared. “Yeah, but I’m not really his dad, you know. And I never will be.”

She frowned. “That’s not true.”

“I mean . . . I think of him like a son. And I know he sees me like a dad, and that’s cool, and . . . I like that. But . . .” He swallowed hard, looking like he was struggling to keep going. “It would’ve kinda been nice to have a child of our own and have something that was just . . . mine. Ours.”

She inhaled sharply, her eyes filling with tears. Expect the unexpected. When she’d asked Michael what was on his mind, she’d never anticipated this. But it was touching, knowing that he actually thought about these things, wanted them. And he wanted them with her. How many other guys his age were so incredibly, absolutely sure?

She felt very lucky. So Lucky probably was the perfect name after all.

“Like I said, I’m not saying we actively try or anything,” he clarified. “It’s just . . . when it does happen for us someday, don’t listen to those people who say I’m gonna screw it up. And even if your gut’s tellin’ you it’s gonna be bad . . . don’t listen, ‘cause I’m tellin’ you, it’s not.”

She hadn’t even realized she was crying, but now, it felt like she couldn’t stop. Hearing him say this was like coalescing every I love you that had ever crossed his lips into one gigantic declaration of love. And from a guy like Michael, who made it clear he felt more natural saying dirty, perverted things than he did meaningful, romantic things . . . it was all the more special.

“Don’t cry,” he said, reaching over to wipe her tears away with his thumb. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“No, it’s okay.” Really, they were happy, grateful tears. The good kind.

He started playing with her hair then, absentmindedly, the way he often did, and then he sat up straighter and suddenly blurted out something that, had she been standing, would have knocked her over. “Maria, I’m gonna ask you to marry me.”

Everything about her froze, except her mouth, which was only able to produce one shell-shocked word. “What?”

“No, not like right now,” he clarified, “or right here.”

“Oh.” Well, that was . . . a relief. Right?

“But someday. I’m gonna do it the right way,” he promised. “I’m gonna get down on one knee and have the ring and . . .” He took both her hands in his, holding tightly, looking her in the eyes with complete sincerity and certainty. “I’m gonna ask you. And hopefully you’ll say yes.”

Yes, she wanted to say. Right here. Right now. She wanted to not think about the consequences, abandon the logic and all the thoughts to take into consideration. She wanted to at least promise him that she would say yes someday, because at this point, it seemed like nothing could change her mind.

“And then maybe . . . I mean, who knows? It’s down the line, but . . . maybe I could, like . . . I don’t know, adopt Dylan or something.”

“Oh my god.” Her entire heart was racing inside her chest, knowing he was willing to do all these things for her, for them.

“Not today,” he repeated, “but someday, Maria . . . that’s what I’m gonna do, if you want me to. Because I think . . . when I can say I’m your husband and Dylan’s dad . . .” He smiled fondly at the mere thought. “That’s when I’ll know I really am someone.”

You already are, she thought, still crying. You’re the most surprisingly amazing person I’ve ever met, and I am so in love with you. But she was beyond words at that point, so instead of telling him that, she moved in, kissed him once, and then hugged him, held on as if he were a piece of driftwood in a vast, dangerous ocean. Because, to her, that was exactly what he was, and she never wanted to let him go.








TBC . . .

-April

[keepsmiling7]

Wow......Michael was disappointed they weren't having "ours".
Still laughing over "sex is like math"......that's really good!
Iz and Jesse and the other five guys, she really gets around.
Great part,
Carolyn

[inesdiangello]

Another great part April! If there's one thing I love about all your fics, it's the dialogue. It's not cheesy or completely unrelated to the written characters compared to the on screen characters. Very sweet last part but I'm still waiting for the angst to kick in and have it all go downhill any day now haha. Still waiting for max to appear and sweep Maria off her feet or try to take Dylan away, or something. We will see!

[sarammlover]

I am so glad Krista is the voice of reason and sanity in this house. She has a HUGE heart and a sane brain and its great to see her using it for the good. I think Maria and Michael think along the same lines sometimes and yes young love is sweet and all but reality is tough. It's good to have Krista....I really like her character.

Isabel is a class A bitch right now. I don't think I can give her anymore than that.

[April]

Carolyn:

Still laughing over "sex is like math"......that's really good!

I wish I could take credit for coming up with that joke, but I found it online and thought it was hilarious!

Iz and Jesse and the other five guys, she really gets around.

Yeah. Unfortunately, at this point, she's no longer really just acting like a slut; she really has kind of become one.


Ines:

If there's one thing I love about all your fics, it's the dialogue. It's not cheesy or completely unrelated to the written characters compared to the on screen characters.

Thank you! I pride myself on my dialogue, as it's my favorite thing to write and the thing that comes most naturally to me as a writer.

Very sweet last part but I'm still waiting for the angst to kick in and have it all go downhill any day now haha.

Well, you have read my other fics, so you know that when the angst hits, it tends to hit hard.

Still waiting for max to appear and sweep Maria off her feet or try to take Dylan away, or something. We will see!

Yes, we will see! Do you really think Max could sweep Maria off her feet, though?


Sara:

I am so glad Krista is the voice of reason and sanity in this house. She has a HUGE heart and a sane brain and its great to see her using it for the good. I think Maria and Michael think along the same lines sometimes and yes young love is sweet and all but reality is tough. It's good to have Krista....I really like her character.

Thanks, I've really enjoyed writing Krista, too. She's a good woman who has it tough considering who her husband is. And Michael isn't exactly an easy son to raise. But she loves both her kids, and she loves Maria and Dylan, but she's realistic enough to offer up her words of wisdom and to caution the two of them on what they're getting themselves caught up in.

Isabel is a class A bitch right now.

She is. What she said to Tess was so unnecessarily harsh.



Thank you for the feedback! I appreciate it a lot!








Part 62








Letters of recommendation were a peculiar thing. Teachers, coaches, and employers wrote them, but really . . . how much did they know about the person they were recommending?

Isabel strode through school with a half dozen of them in her hands. Some of the teachers had just written one voluntarily; she hadn’t even asked them directly. But she wondered, if they knew about the kinds of things she had been doing lately, would they still recommend her? More importantly . . . did she care?

At this point, most of the best scholarships were off the market, but there were still some leadership ones up for grabs, of the local and national variety. Anything was worth a shot, and these letters, regardless of how oblivious and inaccurate they might be, would certainly help.

As she was heading out, she spotted Alex coming out of the library. It wasn’t Study Buddies day, but he was walking with a young freshman boy. Apparently he’d come by, just out of the goodness of his heart, to give the kid extra tutoring.

Isabel’s heart warmed, watching as they did their own special handshake, and the boy thanked Alex and waved goodbye to him. When he was gone, she called out to him. “Alex!”

He took one look at her, then rolled his eyes. And then he started walking away.

She huffed, following him. “Aren’t you even gonna say hi?”

“Any reason why I should?” he grumbled.

“I’m trying to be friendly.”

He grunted. “Friendly.”

“Sorry, wrong choice of words.” Maybe if she and Alex had had that date of theirs a couple weeks later than they did . . . maybe things would have been different. A few weeks ago, she’d been on the prowl, needing that experience of sleeping with somebody random, meaningless. But not now. Not because of Jesse.

She smiled at the mere thought of him. Jesse.

She couldn’t think about him, though, not when she was trying to patch things up with Alex. “Look, I’m really sorry about the way we left things,” she said, quickening her pace as he hastened his. “We haven’t really gotten to talk since--”

He whirled around and cut in, “Since you tried to use me to get over your loser ex? Hmm, imagine that.” He pushed open the door, but she scampered out along with him, jumping in front of him to halt his progress.

“I feel really bad about that,” she insisted. “I was just . . . going through something.”

He smirked angrily. “Yeah, well, lots of people go through something, Isabel. I went through a breakup with Liz this year. But you didn’t see me trying to sleep with you to make myself feel better, did you?”

“Alex . . .” How could she get him to understand? This wasn’t the same. She didn’t doubt that he’d had some very strong feelings for Liz at one point, but it couldn’t compare to what she felt for Michael; because if it did, he would have been devastated, not just a little sad.

“Listen, I can accept your apology, for whatever it’s worth,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean we’re gonna be friends again.”

“Alex . . .” She tilted her head to the side, smiling innocently. “That’s what I want, though.”

“Yeah, and that’s all you want. To be friends,” he ground out bitterly. “But that’s not all I want, and we both know it.”

“So we can’t be friends because you have feelings for me?”

“No, we can’t be friends because I don’t trust you,” he corrected. “Our relationship, whatever it was or could’ve been . . . it might not have meant that much to you, but it meant something to me.”

She noticed his use of the past tense. Meant something. As in . . . it didn’t anymore. For some reason, even though she had Jesse to look forward to now . . . this made her sad.

“And what does it mean now?” she asked, fearing she already knew the answer.

“Now?” He flapped his arms against his sides, looking as if . . . as if he cared a lot less than he had that night in his dorm room. “Now it means nothing.”

She stood still as he walked around her and out into the parking lot. As sad as it was to lose a friend, it was more unsettling than anything else. Because she couldn’t help but wonder . . . was she the same kind of nothing to him that she was to Michael? Or was this, in a way, worse? Because he wasn’t leaving her for someone else; he was done because he just wasn’t interested anymore.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Maria backed through the swinging door that separated the employees’ backroom from the café itself, tying her alien-head apron around her waist. That damn uniform . . . sometimes she felt like she lived in it.

“Maria DeLuca!” Jose called from the kitchen, purposefully drawing out every syllable. “The fun has arrived.”

“Well, I don’t know how fun I am at work,” she said, leaning over the order window.

“Better than Agnes,” he said. “She insults my cooking, man.”

“So insult her face,” Maria suggested.

Jose smirked. “I like that. Thanks, I will next time.”

“Just don’t tell her I told you to do it.”

“Got it. You got a customer.”

She turned around, and at the counter sat Tess Harding, looking . . . significantly less cheerful than she usually did, being the head cheerleader and all.

“Hey, Tess,” she greeted, not sure if the progress they’d made while working with the hair extensions would still last now that prom was over and done with.

“Hey,” she returned dryly. “What’s the healthiest thing you guys serve here?”

“Um . . . nothing.” Just about every day, somebody came in and asked this. Did people not know the amount of grease that went into the food here?

“Oh, well, then can I just have some pie or something?”

“Sure. Men in Blackberry?” That was the special today, so she had to promote it. It was the worst-tasting of their pies but had the catchiest name.

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

Maria opened the door to the pie case, carefully sliding out a pre-cut slice of the blackberry. She set it down in front of Tess, along with a few napkins, and asked, “Do you want some water or something?”

Tess did some sort of cross between shrugging and shaking her head, and Maria couldn’t quite decipher what the response was, so she just filled her up a glass anyway.

“Thanks,” Tess said.

Good lord, she was being . . . polite. Was this the same Tess Harding she was used to? “So what’re you doing here?” she couldn’t help but ask. “I hardly ever see you in here unless you’re with Kyle or Isabel.”

“Well, Kyle’s working out, and Isabel and I were supposed to go get manicures after school, but at this point, I’m just assuming she forgot about me. Not that I would’ve gone with her anyway today. She’s being a total bitch.”

“But aren’t you two, like, best friends?”

Tess grunted. “Supposed to be. Haven’t been lately. Anyway, I just thought I should come by and . . . you know, apologize for being a bitch to you all those times. Now that I’m on the receiving end of it, I totally regret it.”

Maria was taken aback. She’d always thought of Tess Harding as this annoying, slightly immature high school girl who would probably never be able to leave the shallowness of high school behind. But this was a welcomed change. “Well, thanks,” she said.

“So you accept my apology?”

“Yeah, sure.” The nice thing about skipping the majority of high school was that she felt absolutely no desire to get entangled in all that unnecessary high school girl drama.

“Good,” Tess said, nibbling on her pie crust, “because I don’t apologize often. I tend to think I’m usually right about stuff.”

“Hmm.” That . . . wasn’t surprising.

“But maybe I was wrong about you. You just have to understand, I was, like, fiercely loyal to Isabel, so when you and Michael started, you know, starting . . . I felt like, if I wasn’t mean to you, it was a betrayal to her.”

“And now?”

“Now?” Tess sliced her fork into the tip of her pie, scooping up a big piece. “Now I don’t really care if she feels betrayed.” She shoved the forkful into her mouth, making a face. “This is disgusting.”

“Yeah, I can give you the blueberry instead.”

“No, it’s . . .” Tess pushed the plate aside, declining. “Okay, can I ask you something? Like personal.”

Maria’s eyebrows arched, not sure if she wanted to share something personal with a girl who had only recently started being nice to her. But, she supposed, as long as it wasn’t too personal . . . “Go ahead.”

“Okay, so you once almost drove your life into the ground with drugs, right?”

“Um . . .” Maria glanced around, paranoid that someone had overheard that. But there was only one other person sitting at the counter, and he was way down on the other end. Jose was back to cooking, so surely no one had heard. “That’s the very blunt way to put it, yes.”

“Well, that’s what I’m worried Isabel’s doing. Spiraling. Not, like, with drugs or anything. Just . . . with other stuff. She’s making a lot of mistakes. And even though I’m mad at her right now, I still feel like I’m responsible for her, like I have to try to help, you know? But I don’t know what to do.”

“Well . . .” Maria sighed. “No one could help me. Except Dylan. I stopped spiraling when I got pregnant with him.”

“Yeah, but I can’t very well knock Isabel up—got a hole, not a pole—so is there perhaps a simpler solution?”

“Well, granted, my experience is only my experience,” Maria said. “But honestly? No, I don’t really think there’s a whole lot you can do. I mean, you can support her when she needs it and encourage her when she needs it, and be hard on her when she needs it. But at the end of the day, she has to make her own choices and learn from them, even if they are mistakes.”

“Huh.” Tess looked at her contemplatively, like she was buying into it. “That’s very wise,” she remarked. “Are you sure you dropped out of high school?”

Even though that wasn’t normally the thing Maria joked about, she sensed that Tess meant it in a good-natured way this time, so she allowed herself to laugh.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Isabel glanced down at her freshly-painted nails, liking them better than she’d liked her prom ones, as she crossed the street. She saw Tess’s car parked over at the Crashdown, so she wanted to confront her about why she’d bailed on their manicure appointment. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they hadn’t talked in a few days, ever since the whole your-boyfriend’s-not-gonna-stay-with-you conversation. Which, granted, might have been a little harsh. But if she had showed up, then maybe they could have talked and worked things out.

It must have been the whole Alex thing that had her even wanting to work things out. The truth was, even though she was owning up to be an ice queen lately, she didn’t want to be completely friendless.

When she looked in the Crashdown window, she saw that Tess was indeed there. But she was sitting at the counter, talking to Maria, who was apparently horrendous at doing her job, because she was just chatting away like there were no other customers to wait on.

But clearly, they were getting along. Getting along just fine. In fact, if Isabel hadn’t known any better, she would have looked in at them and assumed they were good friends. What the hell was that all about? It was like the prom thing, only amplified, because they weren’t just in the same vicinity now; they were actually interacting.

She watched enviously, angrily. She couldn’t even be that angry at Tess, not after the things she had said to her. But she could be all sorts of angry at Maria, and she was. Stupid Maria DeLuca. Did she have to take everything away from her? First her boyfriend and now her best friend? When would she be satisfied, when there was absolutely nothing left for her to take?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Michael walked into the bathroom to find Maria leaning extremely close to the mirror, taking a tweezers to her eyebrows. For a second, he just stood in the doorway and watched her, thankful he was a guy and didn’t have to do stuff like that. “That looks painful,” he remarked.

She didn’t flinch or make a face as she plucked out a few more hairs. “It’s not that bad. But if you want, I could forgo doing this and just grow a uni-brow.”

“A uni-brow?” he echoed, stepping into the bathroom. “Are you trying to turn me on?”

She laughed, setting the tweezers down. “No, I don’t think I’d grow one. Or if I did, it’d be very faint.”

“You’d still probably look sexy.” He shut the door, loving that faint little trace of red that spread to her cheeks when he complimented her like that.

“What’s up?” she asked, seeming to sense that something was on his mind.

“Well, I was thinkin’ . . . this menstrual cycle of yours . . . it’s pretty much run its course, right?”

“Right.” She looked at him suspiciously in the mirror. “Why are you asking?”

“Well, if it’s pretty much done with . . .” He moved in close behind her, wrapping his arms around her midsection. “We can go ahead and . . . get down anytime we want.”

She looked like she was holding in laughter. “Get down?”

“Yes. I realize when I use such cool and seductive phrases as that, it makes you wanna get down all the more.”

She let her laugh out. “You’re actually, like, kind of a big dork. You realize that?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he admitted. “But in a hot way, right?”

She turned around, looping her arms around his neck. “In a very hot way.” And then she was up on her tiptoes so she could kiss him, and he willingly kissed her back until he realized he hadn’t gotten an answer to his question.

“So are we gettin’ down?” he asked, wriggling his eyebrows eagerly.

She moved back a bit, leaning against the sink. “Like right now?”

“Well, I don’t know, is there like a timeframe, or do I need to make an appointment or what? ‘cause if so, you could just pencil me in for whenever. Wherever. I’m down to get down all the time.”

“Yeah, I know.” She slid up onto the counter, tapping her feet against the lower cabinets. “I guess this means my oral sexual efforts haven’t been satisfying you this week?”

“Oh, no, baby, don’t get me wrong, I’m beyond satisfied,” he assured her, reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Trust me, you look . . . so hot when my cock’s in your mouth.” Just thinking about it made him get a little hard.

A gleam of mischief sparkled in her eyes, and she lifted her knee to rub against his groin. “But . . .?”

“But . . . now that Aunt Flo’s come and gone, we could get back to the real deal, you know what I mean?”

Her shoulders slumped, and she looked down at her lap. “Yeah, I know.”

Wait, what was this? She didn’t looked nearly as excited as she should have at the prospect of having some actual, legitimate sex with him again. “What is it?” he asked. Had he gotten into the habit of doing something she didn’t like? Because, even though he wasn’t used to constructive criticism in the sack, he could fix whatever was bothering her.

“Well, it’s just . . . it’ll be the first time we . . . get down like that again since . . .”

“Oh.” Okay. Now he got it. Phew, he thought. Glad to know I wasn’t doin’ something wrong. “Since ‘the scare.’”

“Yes, which wouldn’t have been so scary after all, because I know it all would’ve worked out, but . . . I don’t know, I guess it just kinda makes me hesitate.”

“Uh-huh.” Well, shit, he had to admit, he hadn’t seen this coming. “So, what, are we just never gonna have sex again?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, of course we will.”

“Maria, I’ll wear two condoms,” he promised.

“No, you won’t.”

She had him there. “Okay, no, I won’t. But I’ll—I’ll pull out or somethin’.”

“Oh, because that always works out so well,” she said sarcastically.

“In addition to wearing a condom.”

“I just think I need, like, a couple more days to feel completely comfortable doing it that way again.”

“A couple more days, huh?”

“Yeah.”

It wasn’t really that long, but it was going to feel excruciating. “So in the meantime, we . . .”

“Do all those other fun things we like to do. Like sixty-nine and . . .”

“Yeah, sixty-nine’s great,” he agreed, “but . . .”

“Ugh,” she groaned. “There’s always a but.”

“Yeah.” He mulled that phrase, the particular wording of it, over and over again in his mind, and the wheels of imagination started spinning. Cranking full force actually. “Oh, that’s it,” he said. “There’s always a butt.” She totally wouldn’t get what he was talking about, though, so he was going to have to approach this suggestion . . . delicately. “Okay, Maria, bear with me.”

“I’m bearing.”

“I’m having a thought. Actually, I’m having an idea. I think I got something that could work for us.”

“A sex something?” she asked playfully.

“Hell yeah, a sex something. Not the baby-making kind, but more than oral.”

She seemed intrigued, but still not clued in to what he was proposing. “Okay, I’m listening.”

He felt his heart rate starting to speed up at the mere thought of it, the slight possibility. Oh god, being with Maria in that way would feel so primal and therefore so fucking good. “Well, as you know,” he said, approaching the subject slowly, just as he would approach the act itself, “I am a guy. I have a penis. I like to put it places. And luckily for me, and mankind everywhere, the female body has more than one place to put it.” He was really trying not to get his hopes up, but he felt like he was unable to control his excitement. It had to be written all over his face.

She, on the other hand, just stared at him cryptically, not moving. “What exactly are you suggesting?” she asked.

“You know what I’m suggesting.” He grinned, letting his eyes survey her wonderful little body. She was a petite little thing, but she always had something nice to hold onto while they were going at it. And now she had that nice tattoo to look at, too.

“No,” she said quickly.

“No, you don’t wanna do it, or no, you can’t believe I’m suggesting it?”

“No, I’m not even gonna say it,” she clarified.

“I’ll say it. Anal sex.” It wasn’t a taboo thing to him. It was a fucking erotic fantasy to him, one he’d only had the pleasure of experiencing a few times in his eighteen years.

Her mouth dropped open, but no words came out. Just a nervous—but still intrigued—smile.

“Think of the benefits, Maria,” he urged. “No chance of getting pregnant.”

“Michael . . .” She suddenly crossed her ankles, like she was locking up the fortress or something. “I’ve never done that before.”

“So? Before you hooked up with me, you’d never done sixty-nine, never even had a guy eat you out. And now you love those things.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re really good at ‘em.”

“I’m good at this, too,” he insisted.

“You’ve done it before?”

“I’ve done everything, Maria. But I’ve never done it with you, and I really want to.”

She started to squirm unsurely. “I don’t know . . .”

“Come on, you could be a free spirit, try somethin’ new. Think of all the new things you’ve tried with me. You told me our sex life’s been like a revelation, remember?” He wanted to walk that fine line between encouraging and pressuring, because on the one hand, he didn’t want her to do something she didn’t want to do; but on the other hand, he wanted to make it clear just how on-board with the idea he was.

“Michael, it’s not natural,” she said.

“What—how is it not natural?”

“Things aren’t supposed to go in there!”

He threw his hands up in the air exasperatedly. Why did girls always say that? “Maria, if things aren’t supposed to go in there, then why did God conveniently place your asshole right next to your vagina?”

“Well, that was just bad planning,” she declared. “And by the way, your logic is just horny guy logic.”

“Fine, I’m horny,” he admitted shamelessly. “I’m tempted. I swear, every time we do it doggy style, I have to, like, hold back. I mean, look at me. I’m workin’ up a sweat just thinkin’ about it.”

“But doesn’t it, like . . . hurt?” she asked hesitantly.

Ah, dammit. Why’d she have to go and ask that? “Well—okay, yeah, kinda. For the girl.”

“I hate being a girl,” she grumbled.

“I love that you’re a girl. But you gotta remember the first time you had regular sex. Didn’t that hurt, too?”

She shivered as though that were not her best memory. “Oh, yeah.”

“But after you did it that first time, then it felt better, right?”

“Right.”

“And then after you met me, it was the best feeling in the whole damn world.”

She blushed again, smiling sheepishly. “Best feeling,” she agreed.

“This is just like that. You do it the first time, and yeah, it kinda hurts. But then you do it again, and it doesn’t hurt as much.” She still looked kind of afraid of the idea, though, so he assured her, “And I know what I’m doin’, okay? Like, I know how to do it so it doesn’t hurt as much. It just involves a lot of lube and a lot of foreplay.”

“Foreplay?” She echoed the word with interest.

“Yeah. You get the fingers up in there first, and if you want . . .” He wriggled his tongue.

Her eyes bulged. “Are you kidding me?” she shrieked.

“I don’t kid about anal sex, Maria.”

“Your . . . tongue?” she whisper-shouted. “Oh, no, that won’t make me feel self-conscious at all.”

“Baby, trust me, there is not one square inch of your body that I won’t lick.” He didn’t feel embarrassed admitting any of this, so the thought that she might feel embarrassed doing it . . . no way. He’d make sure that wasn’t an issue.

She went back to just staring at him intently, obviously still contemplating the whole thing in her mind. Well, she hadn’t just flat-out said no yet, so that was a good thing. “Is it even possible for a girl to get off doing this?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s possible,” he answered. “I’ll be honest: The first time, it’s not likely. But I’ll do my best to get you there.”

“Oh, I know you will.” She slid down off the counter, stuffing her hands in her pockets and muttering, “I can’t even believe I’m considering this.”

“Oh, I can.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. ‘cause you’re a nympho.”

She didn’t deny it, or argue it in anyway. “Shut up, it’s your fault. You made me this way.”

“I know. It’s one of my biggest accomplishments in life.” This whole conversation was starting to make him feel like a total tool, but . . . really, that was his default setting, and Maria usually responded to it pretty well. His girl was a daring little thing. She liked to walked on the wild side, which was where he thrived.

“Anal sex,” she said slowly, still mulling over the idea.

“Hey, listen . . .” He reached for her hands, picking them up out of her pockets, caressing them gently in his own. “Do you trust me?”

She gave him a curious look. “Of course.”

“Because that’s really what this is all about. Do somethin’ like this . . . you gotta trust me. Trust that I won’t go too fast, or too hard. Trust that I’ll stop if you ask me to, because you know me, Maria. You know I will.” One little no was all it would take for him to abandon the idea altogether, until she brought it up on her own again. Because she would. Her interest was piqued.

“I trust you,” she told him.

“And I love you.” This was just a new way of making love to her. It wasn’t just a fetish, or a perversion. It was him wanting to express how he felt for her in a different way. He wasn’t much of a wordsmith. Sometimes his body could communicate things his mouth couldn’t.

“Give me a day to think about it,” she said.

Not an outright refusal. Excellent. He could live with that. Now she could dream about it tonight and gradually get as turned on by the idea as he was.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The end of the school year was a joke. Especially for seniors, but really, in all the other classes, too. Most teachers got to a point where they literally just stopped teaching. Mr. Frost took his leave of absence from chemistry a bit earlier than most, though, apparently not caring that they still had nearly two months left and that the class was mostly juniors. He didn’t physically leave, of course—he just sat behind his computer, playing games after distributing packets for his students to work on during class. The packets usually took about fifteen minutes at the most, and after they were done with them, they would just sit around and talk. As long as they didn’t get too loud, he didn’t seem to mind.

“So I think I’m gonna take her out on another date,” Antonio was relaying to Michael. Out of all the friends in his ‘group’ at West Roswell, Antonio was the only one—besides Kyle, of course—who would actually end up doing something with his life instead of serving jail time for one too many attempts to solicit a prostitute. He seemed to be head over heels for this girl from another school, and everyone was starting to say that he was next in line to inherit the throne of popularity once Kyle was gone next year.

“Yeah, you should,” Michael suggested. “If you like her.”

“I really like her, man,” Antonio said. “I don’t know, do I just take her out to eat again, or what?”

“Sure. Wine, dine, sixty-nine.”

Antonio chuckled. “Yeah, that’d be great. I don’t know if she wants to go all the way, though. I’ve been tryin’ to figure that out. What do you think?”

Michael shrugged. “Vaginas are like the weather, man. If it’s wet, go inside.”

Beside him, probably hating that she was his table partner now more than ever, Tess said, “Ew.”

Antonio just held his hands out in amazement and proclaimed, “You are epic, man.”

“I’ve often thought so.” He twisted around his seat to glance back at the clock. “God, when the hell’s it gonna be lunch time?” he complained.

“You must be really hungry,” Tess remarked. “You’ve been asking that for the past twenty minutes.”

“Not hungry for food, Tess,” he said with a smirk, getting up from his seat.

“You are the biggest slut I’ve ever met,” she declared. “And that includes Roxie.”

He shrugged unabashedly and made his way up to Mr. Frost’s computer. The teacher barely even noticed him approach. “What do you want?” he asked, never taking his eyes off the screen.

“Can I go to the bathroom?”

In a near trance-like state, Mr. Frost reached into his top drawer and took out a small wooden block meant to serve as his restroom pass.

As Michael started out, he turned back around and said, “You do know I plan to go to the bathroom, leave the school, and not come back for the rest of the day, right?”

“With you, Guerin, I figured as much.”

“Alright, just checkin’.” He left the classroom, dropping the wooden block into a trashcan on his way.

Right as he was walking out the doors, the bell rang, signaling the start of lunch. So he bolted before any of the other more dutiful teachers could come out of their classrooms and see him taking off. He jogged all the way to the Crashdown before remembering that Maria wasn’t scheduled there today. She was at the library instead. So he ran there instead, taking a few short cuts but still feeling somewhat out of breath when he got there.

Even once he was there, it took him a minute to find her. She was hidden away in one of the back corners, trying to fix the binding on a book that seemed to have been checked out one too many times. “Hey,” he said, lifting her up off her feet and spinning her around as he hugged her.

“Ooh! Hey,” she squealed. “Why’re you so sweaty?”

“I ran all the way here,” he told her. “But first I went to the Crashdown, ‘cause I thought you were working there today.”

“I have a hard schedule to keep track of,” she acknowledged. “But you found me.”

“I did. So . . .” He looked her up and down, feeling all sorts of turned on. All morning, in all those pointless classes, all he’d done was sit and think about her. No, not just think. Fantasize.

“So?” she resounded questioningly.

He placed his hands on her hips, speaking quietly when he asked, “Did you think about it?”

“Michael, it hasn’t been a whole day yet.”

“Yeah, but you’ve thought about it.” Hell, she’d probably thought about it almost as much as he had.

“Maybe I have,” she confessed quietly.

“And . . . ?” His whole body was literally tingling with anticipation.

Slowly, a mischievous grin crept to her face. “I’m in.”

Even though he’d been expecting as much, it was still a fucking miraculous thing to hear her agree to it. She was going to let him do something no one had ever done to her before, hopefully something no one else would ever get to do. “Yet another reason why you are the love of my life,” he told her, picking her up again as he pressed a humungous kiss to her lips.








TBC . . .

-April

[killjoy]

You know Isabel is slowly turning into what Michael was at the start of this story.....only caring about herself and how much sex she can get.

Plus Isabel's reaction to Alex got me thinking. The way she said him being upset and his feelings over the Liz break up are not important because HER break up with Michael was just so much more important and epic. I think she's a hidden psychopath. Not dangerous mind you but the whole mindset that she, her feelings and stuff are just so much more important than others.

If I was Tess the way Isabel bails on me all the time and disrespecting my relationship I'd start being friends with Maria also.

PS....I'm reading every update. ...sometimes I forget to leave feedback