“No,” Celia said with bitterness. “It doesn’t sound stupid at all. Based on my own experience, I’m pretty sure Jake is better off not knowing about this ... assuming, of course, that it wasn’t repeated ... or furthered.”
“It wasn’t,” she said. “I enjoyed what we did, and I still had an attraction to Squiggle, but I also loved Jake and I still do. I didn’t want to hurt him. And I knew we could never do that again. I may be sheltered and not wise to the ways of the world when it comes to sex and all that, but I’m smart enough to know that if we kept doing that it would eventually ... quickly even ... lead to us doing other things. One of the times he reached down to touch my boobs while we were playing with ourselves ... I’d probably let him, telling myself it was only a little touch. And then that, of course, would lead to other touches, and pretty soon I would be letting him put that thing of his inside of me.”
“Yes,” Celia said blandly, thinking of that certain snowy night again. “It’s funny how one thing can lead to another like that.”
“I told Squiggle the next morning that we could never do anything like that again. He was disappointed, tried to talk me into just doing it when the pressure got to be too much. He promised that he would take responsibility and never let it go beyond just watching and touching ourselves, even if I begged him to let it go further, but I was insistent that it had to stop and I think he was picking up on how guilty I was feeling. He let the matter drop. He never brought it up again, never tried to convince me to do it again, even indirectly.”
“How was your relationship after that?” Celia asked.
“It wasn’t the same,” she said, a distinct note of sadness in her voice. “The flirtation between us stopped pretty much completely. No more innuendos, no more of the old double entendre. Those had always been kind of fun, one of the basics of our relationship with each other, and it was sad when we lost it. And he could never come to my room again to hang out while Sally was doing his thing with some groupie. Until that night, I’d never thought twice about having him in there. After that night, it seemed too ... dangerous.”
“Once you cross a certain sexual boundary, it’s hard to keep things the way they were,” Celia said. “It’s a fact of life unfortunately.”
“Yeah,” Laura said. “I guess I found that out. We stayed friends otherwise. We could still talk about non-sex things with each other, we were still close to each other throughout the rest of the tour, but it wasn’t the same. It will never be the same. I haven’t talked to him a single time since we came home, not in person, not on the phone.”
“That’s sad,” Celia said, “but maybe for the best?”
“Maybe,” she said, shrugging again. “In any case, once I told Squiggle that we couldn’t do anything like that anymore, that still left the problem of ... you know ... horniness and the pressure.”
“Yeah,” Celia said. “That would be the other trade-off, I suppose. What did you do? Just go back to she-bopping again?”
“Uh ... well ... not exactly,” Laura said.
“Not exactly? What does that mean?”
“Well ... I was kind of afraid if I didn’t find a way to relieve the desire by something other than ... you know ... touching myself, that I might be tempted to invite Squiggle back to my room some night. I didn’t want to do that.”
“So ... what did you do?”
“I found a solution,” she said simply.
“Which was?”
Laura told her. Celia could not have been more surprised by her words than if she had seen Laura rise up out of the chair and float off into the sky. “Madres de Dios,” she whispered to her. “You’re not making this up to fuck with me?”
“No,” she said. “Everything I just told you is true.”
“Madres de Dios,” she said again, making the sign of the cross. She was quite surprised to find that her panties were now soaking wet inside her new outfit.
The limo dropped Laura off in front of Jake’s house about an hour later. The two ladies chatted about neutral things on the trip home but stayed well away from what they had talked of in the restaurant, not wanting the limo driver to overhear anything. Though the limo drivers were, as a general rule, very discrete about what they saw, heard, or smelled in the backs of their conveyances, this subject was dynamite.
They shared a hug just before Laura stepped out.
“Thanks for listening to me,” Laura said. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you or shocked you.”
“Embarrassed no,” Celia told her. “Shocked, yes.”
“Mum’s the word though?” Laura asked. “Even to Greg?”
“Even to Greg,” she promised. “I will give you one piece of advice though.”
“What’s that?”
“Two pieces, really. Don’t tell Jake about the first part, the part about you and Squiggle. Take it from me, he doesn’t want to know and as long as you’re not doing it any more, he doesn’t need to know.”
“Okay,” she said. “That’s kind of how I was leaning anyway.”
“Good,” Celia said. “The second part of your story, however. I would tell him that part.”
“You would?”
“Yeah,” she said, her eyes shining a bit. “I would.”
Laura went inside. Celia sat in the back of the limo and had another glass of wine on the trip home.
After being dropped off and tipping the driver a hundred dollars, she carried all of her purchases inside of the modest, eight thousand square foot home she and Greg slummed in when they were staying in Los Angeles. She dropped her packages in the foyer and then went to the back of the house, finding Greg in the entertainment area, watching the large screen television, which was currently showing the promo for So Others May Live—the one that showed how Greg had taken flight training from an instructor to prepare for his role.
“Hey,” Celia greeted him.
“Hey,” he returned, seemingly a little surprised that she was talking to him. “How was the shopping trip?”
“Very enlightening,” she said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, walking over to him. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” he asked slowly. “For what?”
“I want you to eat my pussy out until I come all over your face, and then I want you to fuck me.”
He looked at her for a few moments, as if trying to determine whether this was some joke or not. Finally, he said: “All right. Let’s do it.”
They went upstairs. They did it.
Chapter 22: Indianapolis, Indiana
April 20, 1994
The second of two shows in Indiana’s capital city went very well, with more than sixteen thousand Matt Tisdale fans giving the band a standing ovation as they took their bows just before the house lights came back up. Only one DJ and two record store patrons had accused Matt of being a sellout prior to the show—that was a good day indeed—and, now that they were all back at the hotel for the after-gig festivities, it was April 20, or four-twenty, the unofficial National Get Stoned Day, and they had some particularly fine bud to smoke in honor of it.
The party was in Austin’s room tonight and there was a nice selection of groupies present for the band’s use and enjoyment. Matt had already staked his claim on a twenty-year-old bleach blonde slut with a fantastic body and a nineteen-year-old goth bitch with a tongue piercing. He had just smoked his tenth bong hit (in honor of the holiday) and was currently crunching up a few lines of cocaine on a mirror to wash away the road fatigue. Sitting on the end table next to him was his seventh beer of the evening.
“I like ... totally didn’t know they still made cocaine like that,” said Bleach Blonde as she watched the operation.
“Me either,” said Goth, who seemed just as fascinated. “Are you sure it’s not meth? I’m not into meth.”