Bill was having a little trouble deciding between two likely prospects on this night. The first was a gorgeous redhead in a green micro-mini. The second was a natural blonde in Calvin Kleins and a yellow halter that showed off her generous breasts. Both were aristocratic looking and rich. Red was a receptionist at a local law firm. Blondie was the daughter of a real estate developer. They looked at him with rapt attention as he explained to them the best way to go about producing cold fusion and why it had not yet been done in a controlled manner under laboratory conditions.
Across the room, where a group of cocktail tables had been pushed together, Darren and Coop were working as a team, entertaining a group of eight women-three of whom had abandoned their dates in the hopes of hooking up with one or both of the musicians. They had already invited the entire group to Matt's place and would cull two out of the herd there. They had no qualms about getting it on with their chosen groupie in each other's presence and had even been known to copulate with the same girl simultaneously on occasion, performing the maneuver they had termed "the rotisserie".
Matt was over at the bar, sipping out of his sixth Jack and Coke and talking to a young brunette dressed in a simple pair of Levi's and a blue pullover. Lately he had taken to finding one of the attractive but shy girls in the crowd, one of the girls who would never have approached he or any other band member on their own. It was more challenging for him that way, more gratifying as well as he saw the adoration and disbelief in their eyes, as he fulfilled what he liked to think of as "the Cinderella Fantasy" by inviting them to The Ball-i.e. his place-and making their dreams come true-i.e. fucking the shit out of them in assorted unconventional positions in various parts of his house.
The only member of the band not working a groupie or groupies at the moment was Jake, who was currently not even in the building. So far, despite having performed live a total of 168 times before a combined total of approximately 65,000 people, 32,000 of whom were female, Jake had not bedded a single woman besides Michelle Borrows-who had finally given him her virginity at the after-gig party on the night of their first performance and had been supplying him with regular sex ever since. Not that he hadn't been tempted at times. In fact, he had found it best to stay away from the after-gig parties if Michelle was not with him, the temptation was that strong. But if there was one particular moral he had been raised with it was fidelity in love. And at some point along the way Michelle had ceased being a mere girlfriend to him and had started being the first woman he had fallen in love with.
Since that fateful day at Salinas Bend when he had lost his virginity to the jiggly and alluring Mandy, Jake had been with a respectable number of girls and women. Most of these relationships had been short and simple, based almost entirely on lust and the alleviation of horniness. Even in the longer-term relationships, those that lasted a month or more, he had never felt anything that could even remotely be termed love. With Michelle he would have sworn the same thing was taking place. He was wrong. Love had crept up on him, stealing so gradually into his mind that it had been fully entrenched before he recognized its presence. He adored her, adored everything about her. He liked the way she smiled, the cast of her eyes, the softness of her skin. He liked the sound of her voice and the conversations they had. He liked simply sitting with her on the couch in his apartment (an apartment he shared with Bill). There had been a point where he had even entertained the thought of proposing marriage to her. But that had been before her feelings towards him had started to take a turn for the worse.
The love he felt for Michelle was mutual, of that he had no doubt. He could see it in her eyes every time they were together, could hear it in her voice whenever her defenses fell long enough for it to creep out. She was in love with him but for the past two months, maybe a little more, she had been quietly starting to push him away from her, quietly hardening herself up for what seemed an inevitable parting of the ways. Jake knew it was coming and knew he was helpless to prevent it. But at the same time the irrational part of his brain, the part connected to his heart and emotions, continued to insist that she would come around, that she would be able to cast aside what her head was telling her to do and follow her own heart.
The gist of the problem she was having concerned her parents and the upbringing she had been subjected to. She was now twenty-one years old and had transferred over to California State University at Heritage where her third year of college was beginning. Her plan was to graduate next year with a degree in English and a teaching credential. Her dream was to teach at her alma mater, Holy Assumption, where she could help educate the next generation of Catholic girls. Her delayed teenage rebellion-the thing that had brought her and Jake together in the first place-was rapidly dying, allowing her upbringing and especially her faith to regain the ground it had lost.
It seemed like not a day would go by when she didn't nitpick at some aspect of his personality that didn't fit in with this upbringing. She had started to complain to him that his hair was too long, that his language was too coarse, that he drank too much, that he smoked too much. She admonished him every time he took the Lord's name in vain. She criticized his parents and their beliefs. She had even tried to get him to attend church with her (she herself had recently started going again) and to go to confession.
"We've been sinning," she told him during one argument. "Every time we make love without being married, we're sinning, Jake. Don't you see that? Don't you understand that?"
Round and round they would go on the subject of pre-marital sex, how wrong it was, how sinful, how they would burn in hell for it. But the interesting part was that despite her newly discovered views on the subject, she could not seem to get enough of it. She loved getting naked for him and rubbing her body against his. She loved bending over and lifting her skirt up so he could slide into her from behind, his hand slapping at her ass every once in a while. And she most especially loved when he put his mouth on her blonde pussy and sucked orgasm after orgasm from her.
That was in fact what he was doing to her right now, while the rest of the band was setting up their own random sex for the night. She had been there for the Wednesday night performance-something that was rare enough in its own right these days-and had seemed to be particularly hypercritical and aloof when he'd talked to her immediately after the show. When he asked her what was wrong she fell back on her favorite excuse since school had started again in late August. "I'm behind in my studies. State's a lot harder than HCC was."
He didn't believe it for a minute, of course. Studying and schoolwork came as naturally to Michelle as it had for Pauline, Jake's sister. But, like usual, he allowed the excuse to stand, knowing that if he pushed the issue she would simply storm out and refuse to talk to him for a few days. Though the relationship was fading and fading fast, he could not help but love her and strive to keep her near him.
"Why don't we go check out Willie's yacht?" he'd suggested as a way of easing the tension. Willie Bradford, the owner of Willie's Roadhouse, kept a forty-footer down in the marina. There were few he allowed to access his precious boat without his presence but Jake, the lead singer of a band that drew 450 people paying a $5 cover charge and swilling down $1 beers every Wednesday night, was among that few. He had his own passkey to the marina entrance and the combination to the door lock on the main cabin. He and Michelle had checked out the yacht on more than one occasion.