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

[Eva]

Yeah, it's true. The world changed in your story and Isabel & Michael completely switched places. Not completely though but just the way they both stand in their lifes, the way they talk to people, behave,... The way they see themselves. In that way, Tess is right. Isabel is spiraling her way down, just like Michael had been doing his whole life. Maria and Dylan made him see there was another way. Would Isabel find that light too or will she be doomed to go down? And will she take others with her in her fall?

[keepsmiling7]

end of school.......always interesting.

[sarammlover]

I think Michael has made a lot of positive changes but sex still rules his world. Maria said she didn't want to have sex. Instead of pressuring her into anal maybe he could have just said, ok. I get it. Im rolling my eyes at him.

Isabel, self centered class A bitch....see every week I think you will give me adjectives to describe her. She gets more and more deplorable. And I do feel bad for Tess. Isabel was her best friend and now Isabel is too in to herself. Too bad.

Great update!

[April]

Rod:

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.

I never really thought about it, but you're right, she has kind of undergone that transformation!

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.

I don't know if I'd go so far as psychopath, but she definitely has a lot of issues and instability hidden beneath the surface.

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.

Yeah, Tess has tried to be loyal and supportive for as long as she can be, but at some point it's just like, okay, you can't blame the girl for branching out and making some new friends when her old one continues being such a bitch.

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

That's okay.


Eva:

Isabel is spiraling her way down, just like Michael had been doing his whole life. Maria and Dylan made him see there was another way.

He's sooo unbelievably fortunate that they came into his life when they did, because if they hadn't . . . it's kind of scary and sad to think of what might have become of Michael. But even with them in his life, there are still a lot of questions about what kind of man he'll be someday.

Would Isabel find that light too or will she be doomed to go down? And will she take others with her in her fall?

Those are big questions right now. It seems to early to tell. Is Jesse that light for her? Was Alex?


Carolyn:

end of school.......always interesting.

Always exciting! I love that feeling of being done with the school year.


Sara:

I think Michael has made a lot of positive changes but sex still rules his world. Maria said she didn't want to have sex. Instead of pressuring her into anal maybe he could have just said, ok. I get it. Im rolling my eyes at him.

Michael is definitely still . . . Michael. And he walked that fine line between pressuring and encouraging in the last part. In fairness, once he brought it up, Maria was asking a lot of questions about it. But yeah, sometimes he just needs to stop thinking with the lower brain.

And I do feel bad for Tess. Isabel was her best friend and now Isabel is too in to herself. Too bad.

Yeah, it sucks for Tess to just have to stand by and watch her best friend . . . disintegrate. But there's nothing she can really do. She tried to help her over and over again.


Thanks for the feedback!

Okay, so . . . obviously this part contains THE sex scene that was built-up in the last part. It's quite long and pretty detailed, and I realize that this type of sex is still considered very taboo for some reason. But I wrote this with the intention of it being a passionate and new way that a couple makes love to each other, and shows how much they trust each other. But if it's not your cup of tea, then just skip through it and know that it happens: Michael and Maria have anal sex.








Part 63








Sometimes, Michael really felt like he was a sex god. Like the fucking god of fucking. Like he was so good in bed that it transcended anything a normal human could do. Sure, he wasn’t modest about it, but when you were as skilled as he was, you didn’t have to be. Whether it was because of his depth of experience or just raw natural talent, he wasn’t sure, but he suspected it was probably a combination of the two.

His sex life with Maria was a total rush, not only because it felt amazing to him, but because he was teaching her what felt amazing to her, getting her to try things that had probably only existed in her wildest imagination before. As she lay on their bed that afternoon, completely naked, on her stomach with a pillow under her pelvis, she didn’t seem quite sure how to respond to the things he was doing with his tongue. She kept her head up but her eyes focused on the window near his desk, never daring to look back at him and watch what he was doing. Maria laughed a lot when she was nervous, so it wasn’t a surprise to hear her giggle now and then.

Down where he was, at his target destination, he just hoped this was one of those new experiences she would revel in, where she would discover that she liked things she hadn’t even contemplated before. “How’s it feelin’ so far?” he asked, pillowing his head against her butt cheeks.

She smiled and replied, “Very strange.”

“Strange in a good way, though, right?”

Again came the nervous laughter. “Strange in a strange way.”

He a few sucking kisses to the smooth flesh of her rump. “You wanna keep goin’?”

Finally, she looked back at him with a flirty look on her face. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” One more kiss, and then he sat up. “Good, ‘cause I just spent ten minutes with my tongue up your ass, so we’re doin’ this.”

Another giggle.

He hadn’t meant to sound so . . . definite. “I mean . . . if you still want to,” he added.

“I do,” she assured him.

“Good.” Because right now, there was nothing more he wanted in the world. He squeezed her buns with both hands, watching in wonder as her gorgeous flesh rolled beneath her fingertips. The female body was simply a work of art, and that was how he intended to treat her body today.

It had worked out perfectly. She didn’t have to work this afternoon, and he had no desire to go back to class. So while Dylan was at daycare and Tina and his parents were out of the house, they could steal this moment together and not have to worry about being quiet or getting caught.

“What’re you gonna do now?” she asked him.

He stopped squeezing and responded, “Break you open.”

“What?” she yelped, giving him a look of disbelief.

“No, I’m kidding.”

“I thought you said you didn’t kid about anal sex.”

“Turns out I do.” He crawled up her body, reached over into his nightstand drawer, and took out a tube of lube. He’d checked in the morning to make sure that there was enough left, and there was plenty. Slithering back down her body he felt the need to keep reassuring her of what he was doing. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re ready.”

“Mmm,” she moaned, resting her head on her arms. “So far you seem to be doing a good job of taking care of me.”

Somehow, that felt like an even bigger compliment than a compliment about his size or the way he could move his tongue. Ravishing her was one thing, but being able to make her feel cared for in the process . . . that was something else entirely.

He squirted out an ample supply of lube onto her backside and into his left hand, then tossed the tube aside and rubbed both his hands together. He started massaging the two round globes, spreading it all over, trying to make not only her entrance but also the surrounding area as slick and smooth as possible. He didn’t want her to feel like he was forcing his way in, even though, to an extent, that was inevitable; he wanted her to feel as comfortable as possible and for the pain to be the smallest amount that it could be.

“That feels good,” she cooed appreciatively.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I love it when you touch me.”

He loved it when she told him what she loved. Hopefully she would love a new kind of touch.

With his left hand, he moved one cheek aside as far as he could, getting a better view of that tight little hole. He stroked his fingers over it a few times, just lightly so he could gauge her reaction. Her eyes were still closed, and she had a look of concentration on her face now, as if she were trying to classify what type of feeling this was. When he removed his hand altogether, she frowned, as if she’d expected more.

“Hold on,” he said, picking up the lube again. He squirted more into his hand, right onto his fingers, and then once again tossed it aside. When he resumed touching her, he let his fingers be a little more daring, a little more insistent as he spread the clear gel around her entrance. When he slipped his index finger inside, her eyes shot open, and she gasped.

“Just relax,” he told her, because her whole body had instinctively tensed and moved forward a bit on the bed.

She lifted her head again and commented, “This feels way different.”

“Different than what?” he asked.

“Than when you usually finger me.”

“Well, yeah, it’s a completely different hole.” He started twisting his finger from side to side a bit, working it deeper, and then experimented with moving it in and out.

She still looked like she wasn’t sure what to make of the sensation, but she was doing her best to keep her body relaxed for him and wasn’t laughing so much anymore.

“See? That doesn’t feel so bad, does it?” he said.

“No,” she agreed. “The lube helps.”

“Hey, my saliva’s up in there, too,” he reminded her.

“Oh, god.” She suddenly grew immensely red with embarrassment. “We are so dirty.”

“Hey, it’s only dirty if it’s done right.”

She peeked over her shoulder at him, and her eyes were that darker shade of green they tended to be when they got extremely passionate with each other. Maria could act as nervous about this as she wanted to, but when it came right down to it, she liked being dirty with him, and they both knew it.

Trying to test her current limits, he started pressing his middle finger against her tight passage, seeking entry.

“Michael,” she said, clamping down around the finger that was already inside.

“Don’t tense up,” he told her, smoothing his free hand up her back. He rubbed it up and down her spine until she started to relax again, and when she did, he was able to squeeze his middle finger in.

“Oh my god,” she gasped, her eyes falling closed again, her breathing suddenly coming a little heavier.

He kept moving his fingers, mainly his middle one now, reveling in the knowledge that, already, he was going where no man had gone before with her. This was an incredibly private part of her body, but she was letting him claim it.

He pressed his fingers in further, getting them about halfway inside before he started moving them in a scissor motion, trying to see how far he could stretch her. This caused her to whimper. “Are you okay?” he asked, stopping what he was doing.

“I think so,” she replied.

“You think so or you know so?” Because if she didn’t yet know so, he wasn’t going any further until she did.

“I know so,” she said.

Oh, thank God. He would have had such a hard time stopping now. “You ready?” he asked.

“I don’t know. You’re the expert. You tell me.”

He gazed at his fingers inside her, getting worked up at the thought of it soon being his cock. “You’re ready.” He slid them out of her and took a moment to appreciate how nice her ass looked all lubed up and shiny like this. Hell yeah, she was ready.

He bent forward and kissed the tattoo of his initials, then trailed a line of kisses up her spine, all the way up to her neck so that he was lying flat on top of her. He pulled her hair over to one side and heatedly kissed the back of her neck, knowing that was an extremely erogenous area for her, and slipped his hands underneath her to cup her breasts.

“Oh god,” she moaned breathily. “Michael . . .”

Oh, he loved the way she said his name. At all times, really, but especially when they were getting it on. He pinched both her nipples between his fingers, then pressed one stray kiss to her left shoulder before sitting up and sliding back down on the bed again.

“How turned on are you?” he asked as she spread her legs a bit farther apart. But seeing that little wet spot on the mattress, right beneath her pussy, was all the answer he needed.

“I’m pretty turned on,” she admitted. “I’m still kinda nervous, though.”

“You’ll be fine,” he assured her, massaging her thighs gently. “Just stay relaxed. I got you.”

“Okay.”

There was so much trust in that single word: Okay. He had her permission to do what he wanted to do. And that was remarkable, because they both knew that, even though he would do his best to make this enjoyable for her, he would ultimately get more pleasure out of it than she would. In a way, it was like . . . like she was doing this for him.

“You sure?” he asked one last time, just to double-check.

“Yes.”

He positioned himself right on top of her backside, and utilized the lube once more, drizzling it directly onto his dick. He coated himself completely, stroking himself just a little longer than necessary when she looked back at him and started to watch. She’d never said it out loud, but he knew . . . she liked to watch him touch himself.

Instead of penetrating right away once he was lubed, he started by placing the length of his erection right between her cheeks, squeezing them around it as he slid it up and down her crack.

“Oh, that feels good,” she moaned, smiling dazedly.

Yeah, a little more foreplay couldn’t hurt. And this felt damn good for him, too. If he hadn’t been holding out for the real deal, he could have cum by doing this alone.

“Michael . . .”

God, he couldn’t hold out any longer. He had to know what it felt like, because he’d only done this a few times, and it had been a while ago. But he knew, with certainty, that fucking Maria like this was going to put the other experiences to shame.

He held her cheeks apart, spreading her open to him, and touched the tip of his cock to the little hole. Her body quivered in response, but she didn’t tense up.

“I’m just gonna take it slow,” he said. Gripping the base of his erection with one hand, he started to push in, just a little bit. It was so tight, he honestly wasn’t sure how much he would be able to fit in there.

“Oh my god,” she cried.

“It’s just me,” he reminded her. “I’m right here.” He could feel her tensing again, so he soothed, “Shh,” and started rubbing her back again. “You okay?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, nodding frantically, and he took that as an indicator that he could slide in a bit deeper. He got the whole head of his cock in her, then pushed forward a little bit more. “Just relax.”

“I’m trying,” she breathed.

“You’re doin’ so good, baby.” He pushed a bit more in, watching in amazement as her body stretched to accommodate him. It was unreal, and it looked so good, he couldn’t look away. “How does it feel?” he asked.

“Um . . . like, really big,” she responded laughingly.

He smiled at that.

“How’s it look?” she asked.

“Uh, like, the sexiest thing ever.” And it really wasn’t an understatement. “You still alright?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So can I start moving now?”

She nodded wordlessly, then added, “Just go slow.”

This first time doing this with her . . . he wouldn’t have dreamed of going any other way.

He started his movement with small, harmless thrusts, the kind that would just allow her to further get used to the full sensation. He held onto her ass and watched his cock’s subtle movements, absolutely entranced, but still managed to glance up at her face every now and then. She was licking her lips a lot, breathing hard but steadily, and clenching her eyes shut. He could see a single tear rolling down her cheek, so he bent forward, covering her body with his, and wiped it away with his thumb.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized.

What was she sorry for? This felt amazing for him, but of course there was still some pain for her. She wasn’t doing anything wrong by letting that tear fall.

Still rolling his hips against her ass, he kissed her cheek lovingly, then held her head with one hand and urged her to turn to him so he could kiss her lips. Her mouth was trembling as she kissed him back.

“I got you,” he reminded her, planting one more kiss on her lips before he sat back again. He couldn’t help but pick up the pace a little bit. It felt so damn good, feeling her surrounding him, that he just wanted to feel more.

“Oh god,” she cried. “Oh!”

His own thrusts allowed him to move deeper, and he started to get so lost in the feeling that he could no longer watch, because if he did, it would be over way too soon. He closed this eyes and continued riding her, zoning in on how it was making him feel, trying to remember if he’d ever felt anything like it before. Being inside her here . . . it was just so tight, and so snug, and with every movement, it was like her body was squeezing him, whether she was clenching or not.

“Uh . . . uh . . . oh . . .” He surprised even himself when he started to moan. He wasn’t a much of a noise-maker as some guys were. He tended to grunt and groan a lot, just the low, animalistic sounds, but when he was really feeling it, like he was right now . . . even he could get loud.

“Are you okay?” she asked teasingly.

Now it was his turn to laugh a little. “Yeah,” he said, opening his eyes again. “Oh, it just feels so fuckin’ good.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Michael, I . . . I kinda like it.”

Oh, she did, did she? It didn’t seem like she was just saying it to stroke his ego. The things Maria said in bed were things she usually meant, sometimes things she didn’t even remember saying when they were done.

He slid out of her so far that only the tip of his cock was still inside, and then he pushed back in, hard, letting himself be a little rough with her now. Not too much, but just enough to give her a hint at what it could be like next time, next time when she knew what to expect and wasn’t as nervous.

“Ohmygod,” she moaned, the words coming out in one rush of breath.

“Again?” he asked.

She nodded.

He repeated the motion a few more times, and each time he slammed back in, she gasped louder and louder.

“Oh, fuck,” he swore, determined not to let this end just yet. Even though it killed him to pull out of her, he did so he could readjust their position. He lay down beside her and instructed, “On your side.”

She moved obediently, arching her back so she could press her ass back against him wantonly. He wriggled against her and lifted one arm so she could rest her head against it. With his free hand, he pulled her left leg up, spreading her more fully. He teased her slickened entrance with the head of his cock, then advanced back inside.

Though she cried out again, it was more in pleasure this time. It was already easier to move now, and he worried less about being gentle. He thrust up into her eagerly, feeling so intoxicated by all the little things in the moment: the thin sheen of sweat on her skin, the panting sound she was making, the way she was digging her head back into his arm, elongating her neck and saying his name more passionately than he could ever remember.

“Michael . . .”

Oh god, he wanted to reach around and touch her clit, finger the hell out of her, make her get off right along with him. But he was too close to the edge already, and he came hard and fast right after she whispered for him to fuck her harder.

“Oh, fuck!” he shouted as he thrashed about inside her. He could feel his cock spasm with its own release. The knowledge that he was shooting his cum into her exhilarated him, even though this wasn’t the way to . . . even though this wasn’t the way they could . . .

“Shit,” he swore as he came back down from it. He felt completely wasted, spent, and he’d worked up quite a sweat doing all of it. Damn, it’d been so good, though. And she’d ended up taking it so well.

He knew he should move, at least take himself out of her, but every single muscle of his felt completely exhausted. Besides, he loved to stay inside her for a little bit after sex. It was nice, keeping that connection longer than was necessary.

She was the first one to formulate an actual thought. “Wow,” she said. “That was . . . that was really something.”

“Was it good?” he asked.

“Surprisingly.”

He smiled proudly. His only regret was that he hadn’t made her cum, too, but he’d warned her that it wasn’t likely this time. But luckily, this was only the first time. “Next time,” he told her, resting his head against her shoulders and draping his arm across her stomach. “Next time, I’ll get you off, too.”

She put her hand on top of his, linking her fingers together with his, and said, “I’m gonna hold you to that.”

“Next time,” he vowed again, reluctantly moving his hips back so he could slide out of her. “I promise.” For now, though, he just wanted to hold on tight to her and fall asleep, knowing he was sleeping next to a person who loved and trusted him enough to let him do that to her. With her.

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

Strolling out of the movie theater, hand-in-hand with Jesse, Isabel felt . . . pretty damn perfect. It had been a long time since any guy had given her butterflies, but this guy did. He’d sat through the whole thing with his arm around her, never minding when she became a total girl and cried at the end. He even wiped away her tears.

Tess was wrong about Jesse Ramirez. He was a gentleman.

“That was a good movie,” he said as they walked down the sidewalk.

“It was,” she agreed. “God, I can’t even remember the last time a guy took me to a movie.”

“Oh, as if they’re not linin’ up to take you out on dates,” Jesse said skeptically.

“Well, most of the guys at my school don’t wanna date me; they just wanna . . .” She trailed off, shuddering as she thought of Ryan. “You know.”

He just squeezed her hand.

“Thank you, Jesse,” she told him, gazing at him gratefully.

“Isabel, it was just a movie.”

“No, I mean . . . thank you,” she repeated.

He stopped, standing in front of her, still holding her hand. “For what?”

“Just . . . for existing.” She laughed, embarrassed by how cheesy that sounded. “I don’t know how, but it seems like you just came into my life right at the perfect time, right when I needed someone the most. I didn’t even know I needed you, but then all of a sudden, there you were.”

“Things weren’t so good, were they?” he guessed.

“No, they weren’t.”

“Courtney told me you and your boyfriend broke up.”

“No, breaking up would’ve been easy,” she said. “He cheated on me. Again.”

Jesse shook his head in dismay. “Then he must be blind or stupid or something. Look at you.”

She blushed. “Well . . . he did it. And you know what the worst part is? He fell in love with her, with the other girl. The first time, the first girl . . . that was more like a conquest. He just wanted to deflower her and be immature. But this time . . . he really fell in love. And I hated that it wasn’t with me. I started making some really bad choices.”

He grazed his thumb over her knuckles. “That’s all over now,” he assured her. “You got me.”

Her heart skipped a beat. How nice. It was starting to seem more and more like Michael Guerin and Maria DeLuca weren’t the only ones who were going to get a love story out of this whole ordeal.

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

When Isabel woke up the next morning, she felt very much like she still wanted to sleep. But she could tell from the feel of the sheets and the pillows that the bed she was in wasn’t her own, and that got her to open her eyes very quickly.

She recognized the room immediately. Jesse’s bedroom. There was no need to panic. She was perfectly fine here.

She looked over to the other side, and he was still in bed, his bare back to her view. She wanted to reach over and touch him, but she didn’t want to wake him up, so she sat up instead. As she did so, her head started to throb.

“Oh . . .” she groaned, pressing her hand to her forehead. This definitely wasn’t a normal morning. Now that she’d sat up, her stomach was doing backflips. This was a full-fledged hangover, which was weird, because she didn’t remember drinking a lot last night.

Actually . . . come to think of it, she didn’t remember a whole lot of last night at all. She remembered coming back here after the movie, hanging out with Jesse, Eric, and Courtney for a while, playing a game of I Never.

Oh. Of course. I Never. The granddaddy of let’s-get-drunk games. Apparently she’d done too many things and therefore had too many drinks.

Beside her, Jesse started to stir, and she felt bad for waking him up. “Morning,” he said.

“Hey.” She hoped she didn’t look as bad as she felt.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Yeah, just kinda . . . ugh.”

“I’ll bet. You had a lot to drink last night. We all did. Pretty wild time.”

“Wild?”

“Yeah. Don’t you remember?”

She thought hard, really trying to. The last thing she remembered was . . . well, to be honest, she really wasn’t sure if it was the last thing or not, but she did remember making out with Jesse after the I Never game. And then . . .

She blinked as more of the fuzzy memories came into focus.

She remembered giving him a blow-job right there on the bed, and someone—Courtney—had been sitting behind her, holding her hair back for her, encouraging her, saying things like, “Look at her go,” and “She’s dirty.”

“Jesse, what all happened last night?” she asked, sort of perturbed at the thought that Courtney had been invited to participate.

“We made love,” he said, reaching out to tickle her back.

She tried to clear her head again, and when she concentrated, she did recall having sex with Jesse after the blow-job. Doggy-style, so whether or not that could be classified as making love was all a matter of opinion. But while that was happening, she remembered seeing Eric and Courtney going at it on the floor, and Eric had been filming his girlfriend from behind.

What the hell? she thought. Just how wild had things gotten? Because what she was remembering made it seem like an orgy.

“Jesse . . .” She twisted towards him, worried that he was going to have the wrong impression of her now and think that she was just some wasted slut. “Did I have sex with Eric?”

He laughed as though the idea were silly. “No.”

Oh, thank God, she thought. But then why had they even been here? “Did you have sex with Courtney?”

“No.”

“Oh.” That was . . . good. Good to know. “Have you ever?”

Jesse didn’t answer this time. And that was really all the answer she needed.

Oh, well, she thought, telling herself it was no big deal. Jesse and Eric were best friends, and Courtney seemed to have pretty much had sex with everyone in this town, so . . . if they’d had a thing once, so be it. And if they hadn’t been alone last night . . . it didn’t really matter, as long as they’d only done it with each other.

Suddenly, the door opened, and in came Eric. As always, it seemed, he had his camera in his hand.

Isabel covered her torso up, and Jesse shouted, “What the hell, man?”

“Relax,” Eric said, playing around with the zoom. “This is one of those embarrassing videos you can show your grandkids someday.”

Isabel lifted the sheet up over her head. Maybe Eric’s girlfriend didn’t mind being filmed in all her trashy naked glory, but she still had some semblance of dignity to maintain.

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

“God, I fuckin’ hate math,” Kyle griped as he stood at his locker, desperately trying to finish last night’s homework assignment before the bell rang.

“That’s why I don’t even bother doin’ it,” Michael said. He hadn’t finished his assignment, nor was he going to. His mind, at this point, was still barely functional, consumed by the memories of his and Maria’s latest . . . connection.

“Sometimes I wish I could be like you,” Kyle admitted, “not give a damn about school and stuff.”

Michael gave him a look. “Really? ‘cause every guy in this school, myself included, wishes he could be more like you sometimes.”

“Not everyone,” Kyle denied, but even had to know . . . it was everyone.

Michael continued to stand at his friend’s locker, letting himself drift off into fantasy land again. This whole backdoor love thing wasn’t something he was going to pressure Maria for on a nightly basis or anything—in fact, it would be all the more special if it was maybe just a once-a-month thing. But good lord, he was going to be thinking about it all damn day. Already, he knew that he and his good friend Rosy Palm were going to be having a rendezvous in the bathroom at lunchtime.

He wondered if Maria really truly understood how much of an effect she had on him, how much of his time was occupied thinking about her. He suspected she didn’t, because if she did, she would never have been so freaked out about potentially having a kid with him.

“Dude, what’s with you today?” Kyle asked, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. “You’ve been doin’ that creepy smile thing all morning.”

“I can’t help it; I’m happy.”

Kyle finished his last problem and victoriously shut his textbook. “About what?”

Michael just kept grinning and wriggled his eyebrows, not needing words to communicate this to his best friend.

“Oh, god,” Kyle said laughingly. “A little rear entry, huh?”

“Oh, fuck, man, it was so good.”

“You’ve got such a one-track mind.”

“I know.” He had no problem owning up to the fact that he was obsessed with sex.

“Huh, she must really trust you,” Kyle remarked. “Took Tess years to agree to do that.”

“Well, don’t let her fool you; Maria’s pretty wild.”

“She’s definitely the girl for you then.” Kyle reached back into his locker, saying, “Not that you need anything to boost your mood today, but . . . I got a little somethin’ here that’s gonna make you even happier.”

“Not possible,” Michael proclaimed, but he immediately changed his tune when Kyle whipped out some football tickets. “Okay, possible. What’re those for?”

“Alabama spring game.” Kyle fanned them out for him to see all three of them. “My dad did some finagling, got ‘em for free. So here you go. One for you, Maria, even the little guy.”

Michael gratefully took them. They weren’t bad seats by the looks of it. “Dude, this is awesome,” he said, already picturing how excited Dylan would be when he found out he was going to a big-time college football game. Sure, the spring game was basically just a glorified scrimmage, so it wasn’t like anything big would be on the line. But still, Dylan would love every second of it, and it would be cool for Maria and him to be there, get a feel for the town they would be living in next year.

“The coaching staff wants me down on the sidelines, kinda start gettin’ a feel for how they run things,” Kyle said, “but I’m gonna make sure you get an introduction. So no backdooring Maria the night before, okay? I want you to smile like a normal person when you meet them.”

“Huh.” The mere mention of it was enough to bring that goofy grin back to his face.

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

Isabel didn’t worry about being quiet when she walked into her house. She’d assumed that her mother would be at work, but when she heard “Izzy? Is that you?” ring out from upstairs, she braced herself.

Her mom came scampering down the stairs, looking perplexed. “Sweetie, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you at school?”

She wasn’t used to having to lie to her mom, so she couldn’t even formulate a response. Which, unfortunately, gave her mom time to notice one very important detail.

“Isn’t that what you wore yesterday?”

Great. Caught.

Her mother gave her an appalled, accusatory look. “Did you not come home last night?”

“Did you?” Isabel shot back at her. If her mom hadn’t realized she was gone until now, apparently she hadn’t been there, either, and if she’d assumed she was at school, she must not have been there that morning to notice her absence.

“I was at Jim’s,” her mother admitted.

Isabel made a face of disgust, picturing all sorts of wrong things now.

“Where were you, Isabel?” her mom demanded. “I thought you were here. When we talked on the phone, you said you were having dinner.”

“I was. I just wasn’t having it here.”

“Then where were you?”

She flapped her arms against her sides. “Out.”

“With Tess?”

“No.”

“Then with who? Isabel . . .” Her mother gave her a wary look. “Oh no, it’s happening again, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“You were with him, weren’t you? You’re starting things up again with Michael.”

Isabel rolled her eyes. “Please, I’m so over him.” She knew even as she said it, though, that it was a lie.

“Then who were you with?” Her mother was nearly shouting now. “Tell me.”

She sighed, figuring she might as well. Letting your mom know about your new boyfriend was sort of like ripping off a Band-aid. You just had to do it fast, get it over with. “I was with Jesse.” She picked up her purse and moved past her mom, heading upstairs.

“Jesse?” her mother echoed, following close behind. “Who is that? Is that a boy or a girl?”

“He’s a boy, Mom.”

“Have I met him before?”

“No.”

“Am I going to?”

Isabel opened the door to her bedroom, flipped on her light, and turned around in the doorway. “Maybe.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“Look, Mom . . .” She didn’t want to argue, but that was hard when her mom seemed so upset and combative. “I really like him, okay? And he’s a nice guy and . . . he’s Latino.”

Her mother made a face. “Do you think that would matter to me?”

“No, but . . .” The age thing probably would. “Just figured I’d let you know.”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“Mom!”

“No, don’t Mom me, Isabel. I know you and Michael were sexually active, and I didn’t like it, but I accepted it. But I don’t like the thought of you sleeping with a boy I’ve never even met.”

Oh, she so didn’t get it. Jesse wasn’t a boy. He was a twenty-six year-old man. Probably best to keep that to herself for a while. Not all of the Band-aid had to be ripped off at once.

“I’m being careful,” she promised, though, to be honest, with her memory fuzzy at best, she had no idea if they’d used condoms last night. “I’m on the pill. I’m . . . look, Mom, I’m eighteen. If I wanna stay out all night . . .”

“Then you can do that in college,” her mother interrupted sternly.

“I’m practically already in college.”

“No, you are not. You’re still in high school. You still live under my roof, which means you’re my responsibility. I will not have you parading around this town at all hours of the night doing God knows what with God knows who.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t, either,” Isabel snapped.

“What’re you--”

“I’m just saying, it’s kinda hypocritical for you to lecture me about staying out all night when you did the exact same thing with your boyfriend.”

Her mother, for an instant, had no response, but she soon managed to defend her own actions. “I’m an adult, Isabel.”

“So am I.”

“Well, lately you haven’t been acting like it.”

“Whatever.” Isabel slammed her bedroom door shut, determined not to give a damn about anyone else’s opinion anymore. She was going to do what she wanted to do with Jesse, no matter what her mother, Tess, or anyone else thought about it. Because she needed him. He was going to save her from herself.

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

Kyle settled into his computer chair and unzipped his pants as his slow computer buffered the video. Normally, wanking to porn wasn’t his thing, but once in a while . . . why not? Michael hadn’t stopped talking about sex that day, and that had dragged his mind into the gutter. There was nothing wrong with indulging in a skin flick or two.

Just as the video was about to start going and he was about to start . . . starting, the door to his bedroom flew open, and in came Tess. “Boyfriend!” she exclaimed.

“Oh, shit.” Self-consciously, he minimized the webpage and tried to subtly zip up his pants again.

Tess shut the door, staring at him suspiciously. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he spit out, his voice unusually high-pitched.

“What were you gonna do?” she rephrased.

Hell, what was the point of trying to hide it? “Something.”

Luckily Tess wasn’t the type of girlfriend to nag or be uptight about this. “It’s okay, Kyle,” she said. “It’s natural, even when you have a hot girlfriend like me.”

“You are the hottest,” he proclaimed. “These girls in these videos . . . they don’t even compare to you.”

“Well, thank you.” She sat down on his lap, excruciatingly close to his crotch, and urged, “You can go ahead and watch. I’ll watch with you.”

“What? Really?” That came as a surprise.

“Yeah. Maybe we could get some new ideas.”

He stared at her dazedly. This was . . . freakin’ great. “Oh-okay. Yeah, let’s do it.”

“Or . . . watch other people do it, and then we do it,” she corrected.

“Yeah.” He brought the webpage up again. The video seemed to have stopped buffering, so he pressed the refresh button. “This is kinda kinky,” he said as the page reloaded. “I like it.”

“I know!” she giggled, and it was the most innocent, not-kinky sound ever. Her adorable girly-ness made it even hotter.

“Oh, this website,” she said. “It’s a good one.”

He shot her a surprised look as the video began to play. “You’ve been on it?”

“Uh, yeah. Kyle, just ‘cause I’m a girl, that doesn’t mean I haven’t watched porn. When you went to all those football camps over the summer, how do you think I passed the time?”

He grinned, soaking in the delicious knowledge that his girlfriend had a definite perverted side. It was a huge turn-on.

The video itself was pretty dark and grainy at the beginning. From what he could make out, it was standard blow-job stuff.

“Looks kinda amateur,” Tess remarked.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Jase sent me the link, though. Said I just had to watch it.”

They continued to stare at the screen together. Tess didn’t look particularly impressed, but when the cameraman zoomed out to reveal that there was another girl on the scene, guiding the first girl’s blowjob, holding her hair . . . damn, it was kind of hot. It was all about the girls. The guy’s face wasn’t even visible.

Suddenly, as the video brightened up a bit, Tess leaned forward, her mouth dropping open. “Kyle.”

“What?” Had she changed her mind? Was she not into this now?

She reached for the mouse and paused the video. Her mouth opened further in shock. “Oh my god.”

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

“Oh my god.”

Michael couldn’t tell whether Maria was surprised or just confused when she came outside and saw the new red car in the driveway. “I know, right?”

“You bought a car.”

“I bought a car. For us. We bought a car. It’s our car.” He got a kick out of the fact that Dylan was already looking it over, inspecting it, feeling it like it was a new toy or something.

Maria, on the other hand, looked a little speechless. “Wow.”

“Yeah, you know, I figured we’d need one when we move. Can’t rely on my parents’ cars and Kyle for the rest of our lives. So I just went out and got one.”

“Oh, so it was a spontaneous purchase?”

“Well . . . sort of.” Most of the greatest things he’d ever done had been spontaneous, on-the-spot decisions, just like this car.

“How much did it cost?” she asked.

“Two-thousand bucks. The guy who was sellin’ it wanted three-thousand, but I haggled, got him to come down.” He was pretty proud of his shrewd negotiating.

“Where did you get two-thousand dollars?” she asked.

“Well, I had a thousand in this savings account that I’ve been steadily draining this year. So I just used that, so it’s already halfway paid.”

“So we have to come up with another thousand dollars?”

“Yeah. But it’s worth it. We needed a car.”

She sighed, seeming much less excited about it than he was. “I guess . . .”

Dylan ran into him while he was looking at the car, so Michael picked him up and asked, “What do you think, kiddo? You like it?”

Dylan nodded his head in approval.

“You wanna get in?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright.” Dylan was small enough that he could put him in through the window. “Honk the horn, buddy,” he urged.

Dylan pressed down hard on the horn, and it blared.

“Yeah, pretty nice, huh?”

“I wanna dwive,” Dylan declared.

“No, no driving for you yet, my man. You can’t even see over the steering wheel.” He was about to offer to hop in and take his family for a drive when his phone rang.

“I can’t believe you got a car,” Maria was mumbling as he took it out of his pocket to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Dude,” was all Kyle said at first.

“Yeah?”

“Okay, you have to see something.”

“So do you, man. I bought a car.”

“No, I’m serious, Michael, there’s something you need to see.”

Michael frowned, not sure what that would be.

Kyle ended up texting him a video link, but told him to watch it on his computer so he could get the clearer image. Michael recognized the website address before even typing it in. It had been one of his bookmarked sites before he’d started hooking up with Maria. Nowadays, since getting it on with her was just so damn good, porn was kind of underwhelming.

“So this is the thing you just had to see?” Maria said as she peered over his shoulder.

“Apparently.” He clicked on the thumbnail, which looked generic enough to him.

“Turn it down,” Maria said when it started to play.

Blowjob vid, Michael registered as he pressed a button his keyboard to reduce the volume. What the hell, Kyle? Was this gonna end up being the world’s most epic deep-throat or something? At its start, at least, it didn’t look like anything he hadn’t seen before.

“Why’s he having you watch this?” Maria asked. “Did he and Tess, like, make a porno or something?”

“I doubt it.” He switched the video to full-screen mode, not quite sure what he was supposed to be looking for here, or if he was supposed to be looking for anything at all. Maybe Kyle just thought it was a decent video. There was another girl involved now, after all. A threesome with two girls was inevitably almost every man’s fantasy.

“Ugh,” Maria said, looking away. “I can’t watch this stuff.”

But Michael leaned closer, struck by the familiarity of the girl giving head. Actually, both of them. The video was too dark to see a whole lot of detail, but as it lightened up . . .

“Holy crap.” He recognized that hair, those closed eyes, that mouth.

“What?” Maria asked.

He paused the video, in disbelief. “Do you know who that is?”

Maria, too, took a closer look, but she didn’t seem to recognize her as quickly as he had.

So he clued her in. “Maria, that’s Isabel.”








TBC . . .

-April

[keepsmiling7]

Looks like Isabel and Jesse are getting along.....
And Maria and Michael are really getting along fine.......
Thanks,
Carolyn

[Eva]

What was it thinking again? That Jesse could be Isabel hope? Yeah, right! He's somehow putting her deeper in. How will she ever be able to put something like that behind her? It could jeopardise her whole future and even beyond that!

M&M are really in love, that the least you can say

[April]

Carolyn:

Looks like Isabel and Jesse are getting along.....

Well, they were . . .

And Maria and Michael are really getting along fine.......

Oh yeah, they are!


Eva:

What was it thinking again? That Jesse could be Isabel hope? Yeah, right! He's somehow putting her deeper in. How will she ever be able to put something like that behind her? It could jeopardise her whole future and even beyond that!

This is devastating, because Isabel really needed Jesse to be a great guy, and it's become pretty apparent that he's just not going to be that.

M&M are really in love, that the least you can say

They're in love and in lust and all sorts of great things!


Thanks for reading! This part is a little longer than normal. I couldn't find the right place to end it.








Part 64








Isabel rolled over onto her stomach, wishing she could be with Jesse right now instead of just talking to him on the phone. But this was better than nothing. This and a few naughty texts.

“So I’m not gonna see you tonight, huh?” he said, sounding sorely disappointed.

“No. I’m sorry. My mom’s camped out at the bottom of the stairs like a guard dog. She grounded me. It’s so embarrassing.”

“So just run right past her,” he suggested.

“She said she’d call the cops if I tried to leave. And her boyfriend’s the sheriff, so I believe her.”

“Hmm. That’s too bad then. You gotta go to school tomorrow, though, right?”

“Right.”

“So maybe you could skip, spend the day with me instead.”

Even though there had been a time when the mere suggestion of skipping school would have made her feel sick to her stomach, now, she could handle it. “Plan on it,” she said.

“Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“See you.” She ended the call and set her phone aside on the bed, sighing contentedly at the thought of spending all day with him tomorrow. While everyone else was sitting in class, learning about things she’d known since middle school, they could just . . .

Suddenly, from downstairs, her mother screamed. Literally screamed. “ISABEL!”

She shot straight up in bed, alarmed. She started to get up and out of bed, because she was worried her mom needed help. But her mom was pounding on the door a moment later.

“Isabel, open this door, right now!”

Oh god. Whatever was going on, that tone made her want to keep that door firmly shut. “What’s the matter?” she called out into the hallway.

“Open the door!” her mother yelled.

Logically, Isabel knew her mom wasn’t going to go away until she did as she asked. She’d probably overheard her talking to Jesse or something, and now she was pissed. Whatever. She could deal with that.

Reluctantly, she unlocked the door and opened it just a crack, and her mom barged in. She was literally shaking, and crying hysterically, too.

“What’s wrong?” Isabel asked her. Maybe it was something worse. Maybe something had happened to Jim and that’s why her mom looked like such a mess.

“Oh god!” she wailed, covering her face with one hand. She stood in the corner of the room, just wheezing for a minute, clutching her iPhone tightly in her other hand. “Oh, Isabel!”

“What?” she asked again. This was starting to . . . really freak her out.

“Oh, honey, what happened to you?” Her mother marched toward her and grabbed her by her shoulders, literally shaking her as she growled, “What happened to you?”

“What do you mean? I’m fine.”

“Oh, Izzy . . .” There was more crying then as her mom handed her the phone. “The boys in your class . . . they’re sending it out to everyone. One of their parents sent it to me.”

Isabel looked down at the screen, her stomach knotting up. Oh, no, she thought, putting the pieces together. A link. A video. Gone viral.

Oh god.

Even though she had a feeling she knew what it was, she pressed play anyway. It was her fuzzy memories of last night brought to life. Her with Jesse’s cock in her mouth, Courtney sitting behind her, saying all sorts of disgusting stuff.

“Oh god, Isabel!” her mom cried, sinking to her knees. “Oh my god!”

Hands shaking, Isabel dropped the phone. It couldn’t have made a sound as it landed on the carpet, but in her ears, in her mind, it landed with a resounding thud.

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

Michael wasn’t sure how to act at school. He knew it wasn’t going to be a normal day—couldn’t be in light of Isabel’s little . . . filmed adventure. Just as he had expected, the guys swarmed him from the moment he walked in the building. Kyle made a beeline for the weight room, and nobody followed him. For once.

They congregated at his locker, where, for the first time ever, he actually was trying to focus on getting some homework done. But the guys made it impossible. It was mostly Jase who was leading the perv brigade, because it was public knowledge that he hadn’t gotten laid in months and lived his life vicariously through porn. Bubba was playing a big part in it, too, showing the video to anyone who by some chance hadn’t seen it yet. Antonio watched for a minute or two, then declined to watch the rest because he felt like he was being unfaithful to his own girl. But very few others had any such restraint.

“Dude, she just goes after it,” Jase exclaimed as he played the video on his phone. “She’s hungry!”

“Anyone find the full thing?” a kid Michael didn’t even recognize asked. Probably a freshman they never would have associated with had it not been for their shared interest in naked Isabel.

“Yeah, there’s a link in the description,” Jase said. “Brings you to another site, but you gotta pay to enter.”

“Did you?” Bubba asked.

“Hell, yeah.”

“So what happens in the rest of it?”

“Dude, she takes it from behind.”

“Up her ass?”

“No, but straight-up doggy. It’s good, man. I’ll show you.”

Michael tensed, hating that he was just standing there, listening to all of this. But he had no idea what to say. Even if he did say something . . . they wouldn’t stop. They wouldn’t stop watching, forwarding it to others, talking about it. This video was the single biggest hot topic to hit Roswell in a long time. And the fact that it starred a straight-A, Princeton-bound student . . . people were going to be talking about this for years to come.

“What about the other girl?” Bubba asked. “I feel like I seen her around.”

“Yeah, me, too. She takes it, too, from a different guy,” Jase explained. “Hey, Guerin, didn’t you do her once, too?”

“I’ve done half the girls in this town,” he muttered, closing his locker.

“Man, why did you ever break up with Isabel?” the wide-eyed freshman asked. “She’s, like, so hot. Especially now.”

“Yeah, Guerin.” Jase slugged him in the shoulder. “Was she givin’ you head like that? ‘cause I don’t think you should’ve dumped her if she was.”

No, he wasn’t going to do this. He wasn’t going to give these idiots the satisfaction of hearing all about his and Isabel’s sex life. It wasn’t any of their business. They didn’t need to know. “Back the hell off, guys,” he told them, pushing through their little crowd so he could make his way down the hallway alone.

Everyone was talking about it. Not just some people. Not just every other person, even. Everyone. It didn’t matter if they were guys or girls, didn’t matter what grade they were in. Everyone had heard that the most popular girl in school had made a sex tape, and most of them had probably already seen it. Inevitably, that meant that he got a lot of strange looks, too. Since the guy in the video was rarely shown from the waist up, a lot of people probably thought it was him.

A few people asked him if he knew who the guy was, if it was anyone from another school. He just ignored them. Why would he know? He and Isabel weren’t even friends anymore. But he still felt bad for her.

He couldn’t very well go sit out at the breakfast tables, so he ducked into Mr. Frost’s room. The teacher wasn’t there, so it was perfect. Just an empty classroom, all to himself. He sat down at his table and raked one hand through his hair, trying to put the pieces of this whole thing together himself. Here people were asking him all about it, wanting to know what he thought, and he didn’t even know what he thought, because it didn’t make sense to him. The Isabel Evans he knew never would have willingly done this. It was pretty clear, to him, at least, from the bit of the video he had seen that she’d been intoxicated. Honestly, when she was sober, her blow-jobs were a lot better. But he wasn’t about to tell anyone that.

The door opened, and he didn’t even look back, thinking that it was Mr. Frost. But Tess came and sat down beside him, looking as ragged and worn for wear that morning as he was. “This is bad,” she said.

“Yep.” Isabel’s reputation would never recover from this. It was a good thing she was going to college across the country, because she was going to want a fresh start.

“I can’t even believe it,” she said morosely. “Everyone’s talking about it. Everyone’s gonna keep talking about it. It’s so bad. I don’t know how she’s gonna come back to school.”

“She’s not here today, right?”

“No,” Tess replied emphatically. “I don’t even know when she’ll come back. I don’t know . . . I just don’t even know what’s wrong with her, Michael.”

He didn’t like to think about it. Because it seemed like the changes in Isabel’s personality could be traced back to their breakup. And this . . . this was the most drastic change. He knew he wasn’t technically responsible, that he couldn’t control her actions. But it was hard not to feel somewhat at fault.

“Who’s the guy she’s with?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Cut the crap, Tess.” They were best friends. Of course she knew.

“Well . . . it’s probably Jesse, her new boyfriend.”

Isabel had a new boyfriend? Since when?

“He’s, like, twenty-six.”

“What the fuck?”

“I know, it’s gross, right?”

Maybe it wasn’t illegal, but it was still pretty weird. Sure, Isabel looked older than she was, but still . . . what kind of guy that age did a high school girl, filmed it, and put it online? And how the hell had Isabel gotten involved with him and Courtney in the first place? Isabel was nothing like Courtney.

Although . . . maybe now she was. Maybe he really didn’t know her anymore.

“When I was with her, she’d never even slept with anyone else,” he said, wishing for her sake that that was still the case. “Now she’s doin’ it on camera.”

Tess sighed. “Confidentially . . . I think Isabel’s been sleeping with a lot of guys lately.”

“You serious?”

“Yeah. Now Ryan’s going around claiming they hooked up at prom.”

Michael dismissed that claim right away. “You can’t believe anything that guy says.”

“No, I believe it, though,” Tess said. “And I don’t know if that makes me a bad friend to say that, but . . . I do. She’s really been struggling, Michael.”

He didn’t know why he asked his next question, especially since he already knew the answer. “Since when?”

Tess looked him right in the eye, but she was surprisingly not accusatorily when she replied, “Since you guys broke up.”

He nodded, expecting as much. He knew it. He’d known it all along. The girl had loved him, honestly and truly. And it had broken her heart that he hadn’t really loved her back.

He did still care about her, though, and probably always would. And it was because he cared that he hated that she was going to have to deal with this, not just for today, not just for the rest of the school year, but for the rest of her life.

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

Isabel’s first reaction to the sex tape was to assume that her life was over. That nothing would ever be the same, and no one would ever be able to look at her without thinking of it again. But then, once she calmed herself down and thought about it, she decided maybe she was just being overdramatic. Roxie had already made three sex tapes before her seventeenth birthday, and people still apparently liked her well enough to vote her prom queen.

But people liked Roxie because she didn’t have an original thought in her head, nor an untouched crevice on her body. She was a joke to them, a punch line. And she didn’t even realize it.

Isabel didn’t want to be a punch line.

More than anything, she just had questions. Why was there a video? Why had it been posted? What was she supposed to do now? Even if her life wasn’t over, it was still irrevocably altered, and that was . . . sort of scary.

She spent the majority of the day curled up on her bed, unable to turn her phone on because of the mass amount of texts she knew she would have. Most of them would say hurtful things. Only a few would ask if she was okay. Tess’s would ask that. There would be a few of them. But there was something very telling about the fact that her supposed best friend hadn’t come over to talk to her about it yet. Maybe that meant she was really done with her, fed up. Maybe she and Maria were best friends now.

It was probably stupid and petty to even be thinking about that with so much else going on. But still . . .

Her mother had only come up in the morning to get her to eat some breakfast. Other than that, it was complete isolation. Until shortly after noon, when the knob on her bedroom door twisted. But it was locked.

“Mom, I don’t wanna talk,” she grumbled.

“Isabel!” she heard a familiar voice say on the other side. “It’s me.”

She sat up, intrigued. “Jesse?” How had he gotten in?

Springing from the bed, she bounded to the door and unlocked it eagerly. “Oh, Jesse!” She threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly, so glad to see him. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“I had to wait until your mom fell asleep. Then I just snuck in.” He carefully, quietly shut the door and then gave her a kiss. “How are you doing? I heard everyone’s been talking about . . .”

“Yeah. I’ve kinda just been hiding out here all day.”

“Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t wanna go to school.”

“No.” At this point, she was just ready to graduate. What was the point in going back? There was nothing her teachers could teach her, nothing for her to learn that she couldn’t learn on her own. The end of the school year for seniors was notoriously pointless. They were reading The Kite Runner in English, and rumor had it that they would actually be making and flying kites. For what purpose? What were they supposed to learn by making kites? Nobody seemed to have any idea.

“So how are you doing?” he asked her again.

She shrugged. “I guess I’m okay.”

“Really?”

“I’m just confused. I mean, I saw the video, but I barely even remember it happening. So I don’t know why Eric would film it—I mean, I know he always has his camera and it’s his hobby or whatever—but why would he post it?”

Jesse sighed, looking down at the floor. “Isabel . . . there’s something I have to tell you,” he said slowly. “See, Eric and that camera . . . it’s not just a hobby. And he wasn’t the one who posted it.”

She frowned, trying to figure it out before he told her. Courtney? Had she gotten a hold of it and posted it, thinking it would be funny or something?

What he revealed surprised her. “I did.”

For a second, she thought she wasn’t hearing him correctly. How could that be? That just . . . wasn’t him. That wasn’t a Jesse thing to do. Jesse Ramirez was sweet and considerate and . . . he didn’t post sex tapes of the women he slept with.

Did he?

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I know you’re probably pissed at me.”

“Jesse, why would you do that?”

“Well, when we started goin’ at it and Eric started filming, you didn’t seem like you minded. And after we were done, I asked you what you thought of putting it online, and you said I should go ahead and do it.”

“Jesse . . .” She threw her hands up in the air, exasperated. “I was a drunk! I probably didn’t even know what I was saying.”

“I know. But I’d been drinking, too, and . . . I guess I just wasn’t thinking that you weren’t in your right mind to answer that question, you know? So the next day, I just went ahead and did it.”

“Why?” she pressed. “What exactly were you hoping to gain by it? A bad reputation? Because you know people are gonna make a big deal about our age difference once they find out more about you. You know that.”

“I know,” he acknowledged. “But we didn’t break any laws. We made an amateur tape and put it out online.”

But there was one huge question she still didn’t understand, one he just kept avoiding answering. “Why?”

Again, Jesse exhaled heavily. “Alright, that’s the other thing: See, remember how I told you Eric and I were starting up our own business?”

Realization hit her like a freight train. Their business . . . it definitely wasn’t something wholesome like dog-walking. Not that she’d expected them to be dog-walkers or anything lame like that. “Porn?” she deduced. “You guys makes pornos?”

“Adult films.”

“Jesse, it’s the same thing!”

“Alright, alright,” he conceded. “You’re right. We make porn. Eric’s the videographer, I’m the guy who handles the website.”

“The website?” she echoed.

“Yeah, we got our own site going now, just started uploading videos a few months ago.”

Inwardly, she shivered. What the hell had she walked into here? This was more perverted than she’d ever thought it was.

“We had to figure out something to do after we left college,” Jesse continued on. “So we meet Courtney, she pitches this idea, and we just took it and ran with it. Up until now, she’s been the girl in all our videos. But from the second I saw you, I thought you’d make a great addition.”

She swallowed hard, starting to feel used. “So . . . so that’s all I am to you? A casting choice?”

“No,” he assured her, reaching out to touch her cheek. “Isabel, I wanted to get to know you just to get to know you. I thought you were so beautiful. And now that we’ve spent some time together and I’m getting to know you . . . you’re beautiful on the inside, too. You’re a hell of a woman.”

“I’m Internet porn.” That was nothing to be proud of.

“You’re my girl,” he insisted. “Oh, Isabel, when we make love . . .”

“We weren’t making love in that video, Jesse,” she pointed out. “We were fucking. We weren’t even alone. It was kinda trashy.”

“No,” he argued. “Wild isn’t the same thing as trashy, Isabel. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

She wanted to believe him. She really, really did.

“I’m sorry I posted the video,” he apologized again. “I should’ve asked you about it again before I did, or just not posted it at all. Or maybe we shouldn’t have even filmed it. I don’t know. But I don’t regret what we did that night, and personally, it doesn’t bother me if other people know about it. But I know it bothers you, so for that, I apologize.”

“Will you take it down?” she asked.

He nodded. “Absolutely. But you know how it is with the Internet. Once it’s out there . . .”

“It’s out there for good,” she finished.

“But I’ll take it down anyway,” he promised.

She nodded, even though it would do no good. It would exist forever. For all time. Never going away. “Look, Jesse, I really like you,” she told him, “but I didn’t know about any of this. I thought you were just a normal guy.”

“I am normal,” he assured her. “I just like to be a little daring sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“It’s a lifestyle, okay? This whole thing, the movies, Courtney and Eric . . . it’s all just part of who I am.”

“And who are you?” she asked. Maybe part of him still was the caring gentleman who had taken her to the movie the other night. But there was clearly more to him than that, and she wanted to know how much more.

“I’m the same person who came into your life at the perfect time,” he said, “right when you needed me. Remember that, Isabel?”

She felt tears well up in her eyes. What if it hadn’t been the right time? And what if he hadn’t been the right person? She’d been hoping so badly that he was. She’d put so many of her hopes and expectations on him. She couldn’t deal with having her heart broken all over again.

“I’m just a little more unpredictable,” he said. “Have you ever been with anyone unpredictable before?”

She looked into his eyes, and for a moment, just a flash of an instant, she pictured Michael standing in that room with her instead. “Yes,” she answered.

“Well, that’s me,” he said. “I’m not a bad guy. But I’m not all about the straight and narrow, either. It bores me.”

She inhaled sharply, remembering telling Tess how bored she had been. That was why it never would have worked with Alex. They were just too good of friends. He was nice, and he would always be nice to her. He was the type of guy who, when he inevitably heard about this video, would not watch one second of it. Because that was just who he was.

But he wasn’t unpredictable.

“I know you’re upset,” he acknowledged, “and I know there’s probably some people who are upset with you. But my feelings for you haven’t changed. If yours have, I understand. But if they haven’t . . .” He leaned in, brushing a faint kiss against her cheek before whispering in her ear, “You know where to find me.”

She forced herself to look away from him as he left the room. Because if she did allow herself to look into his eyes, she wouldn’t even think about it. She’d tell him it was all okay, that it was all just a big misunderstanding, because maybe . . . maybe it really had been.

For what it was worth, Jesse did seem more sincere in what he had just said to her than Michael had in anything he had said to her in two years. He must have cared about her. Why else would he come to see her? Why else would he agree to take down the video? Maybe it wasn’t the same type of caring that she had envisioned, but maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe it could be enough. It really could be.

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

The video was such a huge deal at school that teachers had to confiscate cell phones. By third period, Principal Forrester came over the intercom and announced that any student caught with their cell phone out during the day would have to serve an hour-long detention after school. No exceptions. Of course, that didn’t stop people, though. They put them away until lunch, and then they were out again.

Oh, lunch . . . corndogs, of all possible things. One table of girls did an Isabel impersonation contest with those.

Feeling helpless, Michael sat back and watched it all. Kyle was the only one who sat with him. People seemed to realize that he wasn’t talking about it, so they gave him space and had their own fun with it instead.

Part of him felt like he should do something, say something, but . . . it wasn’t really his place anymore. Isabel wasn’t his girlfriend; and even though he felt bad for her in many ways, it was also her own decisions that had gotten her there. He knew all about decisions, especially bad ones, having made quite a few in his day.

Out of everyone, though, Ryan was the worst. He bragged all day, openly and loudly, about his own experience with Isabel. He even sat only a few tables away from Michael so he would hear every word of it.

“Oh, yeah, she was fuckin’ into it,” he was saying to his group of guys, which consisted of more than just freshmen today. “I mean, it couldn’t have been easy for her to get it all down her throat, but she did.”

Michael rolled his eyes. Whatever. Ryan couldn’t have been that big.

“And she swallowed every last drop. Willingly. It was like she was beggin’ for more.”

Pretty sure she wasn’t, Michael thought. Isabel had never enjoyed giving head. Sadly, he didn’t doubt that Ryan’s story was true, but he had a feeling he was adding some major embellishments to it.

“Isn’t that right, Guerin?” Ryan called.

“Don’t listen,” Kyle said quietly.

“Believe me, I’m tryin’ not to.”

“She begs for it,” Ryan continued on. “Or at least she did with me. How about with you? Did she lick off every fuckin’ last drop? You know, like a whore.”

She’s not a whore, she thought. But what if she was? It was a horrible thought, but what if that was the new Isabel? How was he to know? He was completely out of touch with the girl, didn’t have any clue what was going on in her mind.

“Whose suck-jobs are better?” Ryan asked. “Isabel’s or Maria’s?”

An ominous, “Ooh,” came from anyone who had overheard.

“Don’t say anything,” Kyle cautioned.

Oh, but it was so hard not to, especially now that Maria’s name was brought up.

“Ah, maybe it’s a tie,” Ryan concluded when he got no response. “Say, Guerin . . . you got any pornos of you and—I don’t know—either of those girls? ‘cause if you do, you might as well upload ‘em. Might keep you relevant around here after you’re gone.”

Actually . . . he did have one. Him and Isabel. One of their first times together. She didn’t even know about it, because he’d just set his phone out on his desk while they’d gone at it and filmed it without her consent. He’d never shown it to anyone, though, only watching it once himself. It was probably stashed in some forgotten folder in some forgotten place on his computer now. He’d go home tonight, find it, and delete it, because he wasn’t going to take any chances that Isabel’s situation could be made worse than it already was.

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

Michael hated that his dad just came home and sat down with the rest of them at the dinner table without even saying anything. His mere presence changed the entire dynamic, and suddenly, instead of talking to each other, no one was saying anything. It was eerie.

“Who’s car is that outside?” his dad finally asked as he helped himself to a generous serving of the casserole Krista had made.

“Mine,” Michael spoke up.

“You got a car now?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” His dad shrugged. “Don’t look like much.”

“It’s the same year as your car,” Michael told him. “Half as many miles.”

“You get a good deal on it?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d you spend?”

Michael grunted. “Why would I tell you? No matter what number I throw out, you’re gonna be pissed it’s not lower.”

“Fifteen-hundred? Lower? Higher?”

Michael was starting to get annoyed, but because Dylan was sitting beside him, he tried to hide it. “Dad, it doesn’t matter. I got a good deal.”

“How the hell did you pay for it?”

“Savings account.”

“That’s gotta be runnin’ on empty then.”

Tina cleared her throat suddenly and asked, “Can Dylan and I go eat in the living room?”

Sorry, Teenie, Michael thought. He shouldn’t have even bothered talking to his dad. It tended to make things uncomfortable.

“Sure,” his mom replied.

Tina took her own plate and Dylan’s and led him into the living room. Maria looked like she wanted to go with them, but she stayed, squeezing his hand underneath the table, almost like she was saying, Don’t let him get to you.

It was a lot easier to keep his cool with her around.

“If you spent over fifteen-hundred, I think you made a bad deal,” his dad kept on going. “There’s a big old dent in the side. Paint’s comin’ off. Kind of a fixer-upper.”

“Dad, it’s my money.”

“No, technically, it’s my money, ‘cause I put it in your savings.”

“Pretty sure Mom did,” he mumbled.

“Okay, would you two just stop?” his mother cut in vehemently. “I don’t know why you’re debating finances in the first place. In case you’ve forgotten, it’s the women around here who put the food on the table.”

Michael watched as his dad slammed his fist down on the table, looking like he was about to erupt upon hearing that. In all the years that he’d known him, he’d never seen him look like he was that close to socking his mom right in the face.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I just . . . I hate the constant fighting.”

“It’s fine, Dad,” Michael said calmly, trying to ease some of the tension. “I made a bad deal. You’re right.” He knew he didn’t, though, but if that was what his dad had to hear to calm the fuck down . . .

“Damn right I’m right,” he muttered. “Women puttin’ the food on the table. Just lately, Krista. But I’m gonna get another job.”

“I know you are,” she said, trying to place a supportive hand on his shoulder, but he just shrugged it away. Underneath the table, Maria squeezed Michael’s hand again.

His dad belched loudly and declared, “Speaking of women . . . I heard something interesting about Isabel today.”

“Oh, here we go.” As if he hadn’t heard enough about this at school; now he had to hear it at home, too. Perfect.

“Is she okay?” his mom asked naively.

“She’s fine,” Michael said, wishing his dad would just drop it, knowing he wouldn’t.

“Apparently she made a sex tape,” his dad announced too loudly. Tina gave him a weird look from the living room, then looked away and continued eating as if she hadn’t heard a thing.

“What?” his mom shrieked, shooting Michael a harsh look. “Are you in it?”

“No, it was some other guy.”

“This is Isabel Evans?”

Andy chuckled. “Yeah, I was surprised, too. I was almost tempted to watch it.”

“Dad, would you shut the hell up?”

“Maybe we should talk about something else,” Maria suggested quietly.

“Actually, I’m not even hungry anymore,” Michael said, getting up. There were some nights, usually following bad days, that he just couldn’t stand to be around his father. And this was definitely one of those nights.

He went outside and sat down on the porch, and Maria came out a minute later and sat down beside him. “You okay?’ she asked softly.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just can’t wait ‘til we don’t have to deal with him anymore.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder and wrapped her hands around his arm, asking, “Did you have a bad day?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Everyone was talkin’ about this Isabel thing.”

“A lot of people were talking about it in the Crashdown, too,” she said. “I feel bad for her.”

He understood that, but he didn’t want her taking more of the blame than she should have. “Maria, it’s not our fault. I mean, I know what we did to her was wrong, but she’s her own person. She makes her own decisions.”

She sat up straight and corrected him. “No, I mean . . . yeah, there is some guilt, but . . . I just feel bad for her. Like person to person, woman to woman.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I mean . . .” She lowered her head, her eyes glazing over like she was recalling some of her own more difficult times. “I know what it’s like to make a mistake you can never take back and have everyone find out about it. It’s awful.”

Shit, now he felt bad for her, too. Because when she said things like that, it reminded him that, often, she didn’t think as highly of herself as he thought of her, and maybe she didn’t believe in herself the way he believed in her, either.

He put his arm around her, squeezing her back to his side again. “You really have no idea how amazing you are, do you?”

“I don’t think I’m amazing,” she said modestly.

“Well, I do.”

“And see, that’s what Isabel’s gonna need. Someone who thinks she’s amazing.”

He sighed, not sure if there was anyone who would fit that role right now. “We’re not even friends anymore,” he said. “I can’t be that guy.”

“I know,” she said. “But hopefully there’s someone out there who can be.”

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

It wasn’t easy to go out in public. It wasn’t even easy to step foot outside her bedroom door. But Isabel left the house that day, knowing that she eventually had to, that she couldn’t hide away forever. She braced herself for the stares, though, the finger-pointing and the hushed gossip. It was inevitable.

Her first instinct was to be incognito. Dark sunglasses, baggy clothes, maybe even a hat. That way, people were less likely to recognize her. But Roswell wasn’t a super big town. Not everyone who lived there knew her, but a lot of people did. They would know it was her, even if she tried her best to disguise herself. So then she changed her mind, figuring that, if people were going to notice her, she might as well give them something to notice.

She put on her sexiest jean cutoff shorts and a dark pink fitted tee, doing her best to model the Jessica Simpson Dukes of Hazzard look. She curled her hair, put on some heels, and walked outside with confidence. Because she had to look and act confident, like nothing was wrong, like nothing had happened, otherwise the people in this town were going to eat her alive.

She drove with the top of her Corvette down, music blasting, not caring whose attention it attracted. When she stopped at a red light on the main drag, a few guys who had graduated from West last year pulled up beside her, noticed her, and started making blowjob motions. She ignored them.

She found a parking spot near the Crashdown and got out, listening closely to people who weren’t talking as quietly as they should have been. “Look at her,” they were saying. “Look at what she’s wearing.”

I’m not embarrassed, she thought. I’m not ashamed. Of anything. I’m fine.

As she headed into the Crashdown, two little boys ran into her on their way out. They stared at her as though they were looking at a life-sized Barbie doll. “That’s her,” one said.

“You’re too young to be watching that stuff,” she informed them. But that just made them laugh and congratulate each other as they left.

“She talked to us! Yeah!”

Isabel rolled her eyes and scanned the restaurant. It wasn’t very busy, and . . . oh, perfect. Maria was working. It was like she was deliberately trying to not look at her, though, focusing on fixing the ice cream machine as it malfunctioned.

Yeah, right, like you don’t notice me, Isabel thought. She was going to sit somewhere where she didn’t have a choice but to notice.

She walked over to the section that she was pretty sure was Maria’s, taking a seat in the booth Michael always used to like to sit at, waiting impatiently for Maria to give in and come over, thereby fulfilling her waitress duty.

While she waited, her phone buzzed. She took it out of her purse and saw that she had a text message. From Alex, of all people. He must have somehow received word of the video, because all the message said was, are you ok?

He had no reason to even ask. Not after what she’d done to him. He’d been so hurt by that, but still . . . it seemed that he cared.

Her thumb hovered above the N for several seconds before she typed yes in response. She sent that message, then worried that it sounded too ungrateful. So she typed out thanks and sent that to him, too.

Maria unenthusiastically approached the table a moment later, looking for a second like she didn’t even know what to say. So eventually, she just asked, “Do you want something to drink?”

“That’s it? No ‘Welcome to the Crashdown’?”

“Welcome to the Crashdown,” Maria droned. “Do you want something to drink?”

Of course, she thought. You’ve seen the video. You should know how thirsty I am. “Maria, can I ask you something?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. How much money would you estimate you make in tips per day?”

“Um . . .” Maria gave her a confused look. “I don’t know. It varies, I guess.”

“Because I find that your customer service varies, depending on who the customer is. For example, when it’s just me, like it is now . . . your customer service isn’t so great. But when it’s, I don’t know, Michael . . .” She glared at the girl enviously. “I’m sure you service him to the best of your ability.”

Maria looked a bit flabbergasted, like she was unable to even formulate a response. But when she did, it was a pretty good comeback. “Well, at least I don’t let my services be filmed.”

“Huh, so you think you’re so much better than me now, is that it?”

“Isabel, I was feeling really sorry for you,” she said.

“I don’t need your pity.”

“Good, because . . . I don’t really feel that sorry anymore.” Maria spun around and started to walk away.

“Water!” Isabel called after her. “Four waters, actually. I’m meeting some people.”

Maria didn’t respond, but she did go behind the counter and start filling up the glasses.

A minute or so later, the very people Isabel was meeting came in like a stampede of wild buffalo. They were loud, but she was getting used to their loudness.

“There she is! Miss Isabel Evans!” Courtney exclaimed as she practically fell into the booth.

“Isabel!” Eric whooped, crashing down beside her.

“Hey, baby,” Jesse said, immediately giving her a kiss.

“Hey.” She tried not to tense as he put his arm around her. This was still Jesse. Just . . . Jesse with a twist now. She could handle that.

“Hey, Isabel, listen, I’m so sorry about the whole video thing,” Eric apologized. “Big misunderstanding. I thought you were down.”

“I talked to her, Eric,” Jesse said. “She’s okay.”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” she said. “I mean . . . I’m glad you took it down, though. And I don’t wanna be in another one.”

“And I respect that,” Eric said. “Good thing I got Whoretney here.”

“Shut up!” Courtney yelped, feigning offense. “I’m not a whore.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Well . . .” She shrugged in admittance. “Okay, I’m a whore, and I love it.” She threw her hands up in the air and said it louder. “I love being a whore!”

The guys laughed, and Isabel laughed a little along with them. Her gut instinct was to be embarrassed by all this, but . . . why should she be? Courtney had been nothing but nice to her, and if she was comfortable with her reputation, then why not shout it out? It must have been nice not to care about what people thought. Isabel actually wished she had some of Courtney’s courage and self-confidence. Maybe today’s outfit was a step in that direction.

“Hey, speaking of whores . . .” Isabel segued, pointing out Maria, who had forgotten about the waters and was back to work on the ice cream machine now.

“Who’s that?” Eric asked. “She’s cute.”

“That’s her,” Isabel growled. “The girl my ex-boyfriend dumped me for.”

“Oh.” Eric cringed. “Never mind then.”

“Her?” Courtney made a face. “But she’s just the waitress.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Isabel remembered sitting in that same booth with Michael months ago, and when she’d asked him if he’d known Maria, all he’d said was, ‘She’s the waitress.’ But maybe she’d always been more than that to him. Maybe he hadn’t even realized it at the time.

“Girl’s got nothing on you, Isabel,” Jesse assured her.

She’s got Michael, she thought. And I have . . . this. Whatever this is. Maybe it would end up being something great, but what Michael and Maria had was already great, and knowing that was so frustrating.

“Let’s have some fun,” Courtney said, grinning wickedly as she called Maria over. “Um, hello, waitress? Can we get some service at some point here?”

Isabel couldn’t help but smile a bit. She had a feeling she was going to enjoy this.

Maria came back to the table reluctantly, carefully carrying all four waters in both hands. She set one down in front of each of them and, without making eye contact, asked, “Do you guys know what you want?”

“Yeah, actually, I just wanna ask you a question,” Courtney said. “Do you think your boyfriend ever misses fucking Isabel’s tits? Because, let’s face it, he really can’t do that with you.”

Eric and Jesse tried to stifle their laughter, and Isabel just grinned at the creative insult.

Maria, forced to make eye contact with Courtney now, looked taken back. “What?”

“Do you think he’s always comparing you to her?” Courtney went on. “Because if I were a guy, I would be.”

“You guys need to order something or just leave,” Maria said sternly.

“I’m just asking you some questions . . . Maria,” Courtney said, eyeing her nametag. “Don’t be offended. I’m just curious. I once slept with Michael, too. For all we know, he’s probably comparing the rest of you to me.”

“Damn straight,” Eric growled, putting his arm around her.

“Hey!” Courtney burst out excitedly. “I’ve got an idea! Since all us girls here have taken his cum, it only seems natural: We should all have an orgy. Guys, you can be in on it, too. The six of us. Three guys, three girls.” She wriggled her eyebrows at Isabel. “We could wear strap-ons. Maria here could be the girl who gets gangbanged and cries.”

“Sounds like a movie-in-the-making,” Eric declared. “What do you say, Maria? Wanna be a three-hole wonder?”

Courtney and Jesse erupted in howling laughter at that, and Isabel laughed right along with them. Maria looked so completely offended, and that expression on her face was priceless. She scurried off from the table and into the backroom, probably to get her manager.

“Ugh, we’re gonna get kicked out,” Courtney groaned, sounding accustomed to it, as if it happened all the time.

“Let’s just go then,” Jesse said, already standing up.

As they started to leave, Maria came out of the backroom with her manager in tow. He didn’t have to say anything to them, though, since they were already on their way out.

“Hey!” Courtney shouted to the other customers. “See that girl right there? Don’t leave her any tips. She stole my friend’s man. She’s a fucking bitch.”

So are you, Courtney, Isabel thought. And right now, by association, so am I. There was a difference, though, between someone like Courtney and someone like Maria. Because Maria tried to act all nice and innocent, like she was a good person or something. Courtney just owned up to who she really was, and that was refreshing.

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

Maria sat on the couch with Michael that evening while Tess and Kyle lounged on the floor. They were watching Wipeout on TV, which Kyle revealed he and Michael had been obsessed with when it first came out. Maria wasn’t doing much watching, though, because she was too busy looking down at her chest worriedly. She tried lifting her boobs up and pressing them closer together to give them a little more oomph, but it was no use. She was just not a chesty girl.

“What’re you doin’?” Michael finally asked her.

“Oh, just wishing my boobs were bigger.” As stupid as it was to still be thinking about the things Isabel’s friends had said to her at the café today, she was.

“Are you kidding? I love your boobs,” he told her.

“You’re, like, required to say that.”

“No, I’m not.” He leaned over and placed one hand on her chest as he kissed her, and then he just kept kissing her. She totally wanted to just cuddle up with him and make-out on the couch, but she was quickly reminded that they weren’t alone when Kyle cleared his throat.

“Hey, keep it down,” he said. “I can’t hear the show over all the smacking.”

“Sorry,” Maria apologized.

“I’m not,” Michael whispered, sneaking another quick kiss.

“God, this show’s so stupid,” Tess complained. She’d been complaining since the start of it, yet her eyes rarely left the screen.

“It’s epic,” Kyle argued.

“You know, I should go on it,” Michael proclaimed. “I should go and win, and then, hey, that’s an easy fifty-thousand bucks.”

“They win fifty-thousand for this stupid thing?” Tess shrieked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, what makes you so sure you’d win?” she challenged.

“Uh, Tess, I don’t know if you realize this, but your boyfriend’s not the only athletically-inclined person in the room, okay?”

“Well, it takes more than athleticism,” Kyle said. “You gotta strategize, too. Mind stuff.”

“Yeah.” Michael shook his head. “I’d suck at that.”

“It would be fun to try, though,” Maria agreed. “I like how they give all the contestants these little nicknames. What do you think yours would be?” Personally, she thought Sex God would be a good fit.

“Ricardo Fuego,” he declared proudly.

“What?” Tess spat.

“That’s his alias,” Kyle informed her.

“No, actually . . . scratch that,” he reconsidered. “There’s only one nickname befitting a man like myself.”

“And what’s that?” Maria prompted.

He grinned. “Doctor Love.”

Maria laughed.

“Oh, you are so full of yourself,” Tess remarked, but even she was smiling like she thought it was funny.

“If the shoe fits, Tess. If the shoe fits. Doctor Love.”

As the commercial came on, Kyle turned over onto his stomach. “Hey, paging Doctor Love. 911 emergency: You realize we graduate in five weeks, right?”

“Thank God.”

“Honey, don’t talk about that. It makes me sad,” Tess whimpered.

“Sorry, but we gotta talk about it,” Kyle said. “Bro, do you have, like, a plan set out?”

“Plan for what?” Michael asked.

“You know . . . moving to another state.”

Michael exchanged a glance with Maria and shrugged. “Kinda. We got a car.”

“A car is not a plan.”

“We haven’t even started looking at apartments,” Maria admitted. “Keep pestering us about it, Kyle. We’re dragging our feet.”

“Yeah, time flies,” Kyle said. “Football’s gonna be starting up before you know it, and he’s really gonna need to focus on that if he wants to make the team.”

Maria noticed he was pretty much just talking to her now, which made sense, because Michael had gotten distracted by a moth that was flying around up in the corner of the ceiling. Sometimes she swore he had a little ADHD, because his mind just wandered.

When Tess and Kyle left, Maria wasted no time getting online and looking up apartments for rent in Tuscaloosa. Being a college town, there were plenty, almost too many, to choose from. She had a price range in mind, but the nicer ones, of course, didn’t tend to fall within it.

“This one doesn’t look half bad,” she said, jotting down in the information on a Post-It.

“This fuckin’ bird . . .” Michael muttered, opening up the window. He leaned his head out and yelled at it, “Shut the fuck up!”

“Michael, what’re you doing?” she whined. “I’m sitting here contemplating our future and you’re yelling at a bird?”

“It’s annoying!” he said. “It’s nighttime. Why the hell’s this bird chirpin’ at night?”

“Is that really important?”

He shut the window and knelt down beside her. “Alright, I’m here. I’m focused.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. Hey, I know what we can do: When we go to the spring game on Saturday, we can drive around, check out any places that look like they might be a good fit for us.”

“That’s a good idea,” she agreed. “What do you think about this place?”

He took one look at the screen and replied, “It looks exactly like the last five places you showed me.”

“Well, what one do you like?”

He reached over to the mouse and navigated back one page. “That one,” he said, pointing to a thumbnail picture of an apartment complex that was way out of their price range. “Look, it has a pool,” he pointed out.

“And a big old rent cost to go along with it.”

“So?”

She half-cringed, half-smiled. Oh, Michael . . . Getting him to think realistically about their future living situation was going to be a lengthy process.

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

The noise Tess’s twin brothers were making as they ran around the house was audible from a block away. Isabel could hear it from the moment she turned the corner onto her friend’s street. She pulled up in the driveway and put the hood of her car up so she wouldn’t have to hear it on the way back.

She had to ring the doorbell multiple times for anyone to hear it, but finally, Tess herself came to the door, dressed in her pajamas. “Isabel,” she said. Behind her, her little brothers were wrestling on the sofa, breaking numerous vases and other ceramics as they fell onto the coffee table.

Controlled chaos. That was the motto of the Harding household. Isabel had witnessed it numerous times over the years.

“Can we talk?” she asked her friend.

“Um . . .” Tess glanced back at her brothers, told them to knock it off, and then slipped outside, gratefully shutting the door. “They’re so annoying,” she complained.

Isabel sat down with her on the front steps, shivering even though it wasn’t cold outside.

“So . . . how are you?” Tess inquired hesitantly.

“I’m fine,” she replied quickly.

“Isabel . . .” Tess gave her a knowing look. “Come on, it’s just me. You don’t have to pretend.”

“I’m not pretending,” she insisted. “I feel fine.”

“But how . . .” Tess trailed off, shaking her head in reluctant acceptance. “Okay. Whatever you say.”

“I mean, yeah, my mom’s devastated and disgusted,” Isabel admitted, feeling very bad about that, “and I know everyone’s talking about it. I was really embarrassed at first, but--”

“At first?”

“But now that I’ve had some time to think about it . . . it’s not so bad.”

“Not so bad?” Tess echoed in dismay. “Isabel . . . you’re internet porn.”

She smirked, trying to embrace it. “Just another title to add my résumé.”

“No, you don’t get it. This wipes out everything else you’ve ever done,” Tess informed her, as if she didn’t already know. “When people around here talk about you five or ten years from now, it’s not gonna be ‘Isabel Evans, valedictorian,’ or ‘Isabel Evans, student body president.’ It’s not even gonna be, ‘Isabel Evans. She was a cheerleader.’ No, it’s gonna be, ‘Oh, Isabel Evans. Yeah, she’s the one who made the sex tape.’”

Isabel swallowed hard, bitterly accepting that fact. “That’s okay,” she said. “I still have accomplishments.”

“Yeah, but you also have this. I mean, what were you thinking?”

Her mom had asked her that same question repeatedly yesterday. Today, it seemed as if she just didn’t have it in her to ask anymore. Today had been mostly silence. “I didn’t do anything wrong, Tess,” she said. “I had sex.”

“On camera. Did you know you were being filmed?”

She lowered her eyes, thinking back to that night. The memories, had it not been for the video, would have still been blurry right now. She didn’t want Tess to assume that she’d been slipped a drug or something, though, so she lied. “Yes.”

“Did you really?”

“Look, Tess, I wasn’t taken advantage of, if that’s what you’re thinking. Jesse and his friends . . . they just like to have a wild time.”

“Jesse,” Tess seethed. “I knew it. I knew it was him. What’s with this guy, Isabel? First he sleeps with high school girls, then he makes amateur pornos with them?”

“He’s a good guy,” Isabel insisted.

Tess’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Are you . . . freaking kidding me? He is not a good guy, Isabel; he’s a creep.”

“You don’t even know him.”

“He’s a bigger creep than Ryan and a bigger jerk than Michael. He is not the guy for you. Please tell me you’re never gonna see him again.”

Isabel took a deep breath, preparing herself for the backlash. “That’s actually why I came by. I wanted you to hear it from me and not someone else . . .” She swallowed hard, trying to remember the words she’d planned out to say. “Jesse and I are still gonna be together.”

“What?!” Tess shrieked. “Isabel, are you crazy?”

“I really like him.”

“Why the hell would you--” Tess shot to her feet, throwing both hands up in the air in exasperation. “He made a sex tape of you, Isabel! And he put it out there for everyone to see! He ruined your reputation around here. Now everyone’s talking about you like you’re some whore, and maybe they’re right! Maybe that’s exactly what you are if you go back to him!”

Isabel stood, trying to stay calm in the face of her friend’s boiling anger. “We talked, and it’s all okay. He still wants to be with me, and I still wanna be with him, so . . .”

“Are you stupid or something?” Tess yelled. “What’s the hell’s wrong with you? This isn’t normal to spiral this much after a breakup, Isabel. Something’s wrong with you.”

“Look, I don’t expect you to understand . . .”

“Clearly!”

“But I’m gonna be with Jesse, and nothing’s gonna stop me.”

Tess stared at her momentarily with wide eyes, then started to cry. “I don’t even know you anymore.”

“I’m sorry.” Her mom and her best friend . . . they were just casualties in this, this . . . transformation.

“I tried, Isabel. I really tried. I tried to be there for you. I tried to keep you safe; I tried to take care of you.”

“Tess, I’m fine.” She could take care of herself. She didn’t need anyone watching out for her.

“You’re not fine, Isabel. But . . .” Tess shrugged helplessly. “There’s nothing I can do about it anymore.”

“No, there’s not,” Isabel agreed. This wasn’t something she was going to change her mind about, something she was going to think through tonight and decide against. Jesse was in her life, for now at least, and she didn’t see that changing anytime soon. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow.” She stepped down off the porch, heading for her car.

Choking on her sobs, Tess warned, “Isabel, if you go back to that guy, our friendship is over.”

She stopped in her tracks, prepared for as much, expecting it, even. But still, hearing Tess say it out loud . . . it was still a knife in the heart. But what was their friendship nowadays, anyway? A series of disappointments and heated disagreements. That was all. And Tess wouldn’t be sad for long. She and Maria would probably end up being best friends now, and she’d have that perfect little group of four she’d longed for at the start of the year. People like Tess always got what they wanted.

“I guess our friendship’s over then,” Isabel conceded, not even looking back as she got in her car and took off, leaving Tess crying on her porch, hiding her face in her hands.

No turning back, Isabel thought, blinking back her own tears. There was officially nothing to turn back to.








TBC . . .

-April

[Eva]

Was Jesse sincere? And will he ever be sincere in the future? 'Cause I really don't think Isabel was just drunk. I really believe she was being drugged.

A part of me had hoped that the drama would've opened her eyes. Like walking against a wall, can open your eyes for the real thing in front of you. Apparently it made her even more blind. What a mess!

[killjoy]

Wow.....I guess Michael must be Dr Love cause I think he screwed away the last brain cell Isabel had .

Michael and Maria don't have time to be dragging their feet. Not only do they have to move across country, find a place to live and start school. ......they have to do it all with a kid!

[sarammlover]

SHAME SPIRAL ALERT!!! Wow. All I can do is shake my head at Isabel. And I think Tess did the right thing. She can't do anymore for Isabel. She did what she could do. It is really too bad at this point. Jesse is scum. Courtney and Eric are scum too and yet Isabel still hangs out with them. Good luck!

Andy.....is he dead yet? OMG I am sorry but seriously...he is such a waste of space.