The week rolls on, and both Cruise and I are finding a rhythm in the house. He cooks breakfast, and I make lunch. Dinner is on the fly and usually sponsored by Johnny Burgers. Cruise mentioned he needed to help out his mom this afternoon, so I'm running errands.
Driving on snow-slicked roads feels a lot like falling in love. Although I'm totally not falling in love - I'm falling in lust. That's all that really exists in this world. Everything else is simply an illusion born of self-inflicted desire.
I'm dodging some serious traffic, thanks to an entire slew of after-Christmas sales as I make my way back from Garrison. I made the mistake of checking on the status of my imaginary dorm room only to be informed Pennington fabricated the fact he put me on a waiting list - turns out there isn't one.
I squeeze my hands over the steering wheel and pretend its Pennington's little, red neck. Speaking of the Alexander clan - I can't believe Aunt Jackie actually said Russell Hall was for "losers." Turns out, Aunt Jackie is nothing but a bully who kicked Cruise out of his father's life so she could slather all of the financial attention on her sweet little Penny boy. Little does she know Pen is nothing but a stoner with a man purse.
I pull into the Starbucks parking lot and speed into the cheery-looking establishment to avoid the arctic chill. Much to my surprise, none of my warm weather clothes are capable of keeping my body a toasty ninety-eight degrees. I've got some serious shopping to do and not a whole lot of cash to do it with.
"Kendall?" A friendly female calls from the corner, and I spot Lauren and Ally waving me over. I remember them from the Alpha Sigma Phi party. They're the ones I wanted to go home with, but fate stepped in and I ended up with Cruise instead. Wait, did I just say fate? I so don't believe in that. Fate is bullshit people force-feed themselves when they're too lazy to carve out a destiny of their own.
"How's it going?" Ally chirps as I take a seat.
"It's great. I meant to find you that night at the party. I guess Pennington missed the housing deadline and now I'm homeless."
"As in park bench action?" Lauren's eyes widen as if I've just introduced Small Pox to the vicinity.
"No, as in Cruise Elton action. He's letting me crash at his place, but I can't mooch off him forever."
They're quick to exchange glances.
"So you're on Cruise control." Ally sinks a knowing smile. "How's that working for you?"
"I hear he's hotter than a forest fire in bed." Lauren molests her necklace at thought of Cruise burning up the sheets.
"I hear his dick is the size of a telephone pole." Ally's eyes expand the size of dinner plates as she awaits confirmation of the supersized theory.
Lauren points at me with her banana. "Stephanie Banks slept with him a month ago and dubbed him 'king of the triple orgasm.'"
Ally sucks in a breath and her face turns colors like maybe she's experiencing one herself at the moment. "That is freaking insane. Melissa Warbeck says he can do things with his tongue that qualifies him as criminally insane."
The two of them look at me as if I were about to verify every sexual rumor Cruise Elton ever sponsored, and add a few unbelievable new ones to the mix.
"Uh..." Dear God. A triple? My entire body sighs at the thought of Cruise taking me down that unknowable path, landing me in a sexual-based euphoria with his rock-hard body pressed against mine. "Actually, we haven't done anything like that, yet." Yet? "Technically, we haven't had a first time, either," I confess.
"Really?" Ally's lips droop with disappointment. "So what's the deal?" She flicks her layered mane until it shags out around her face.
"I asked him to instruct me in his wicked ways." A devious smile plays on my lips. "I told him I wanted to be just as sleazy as he is when I grow up and asked him to teach me the tricks of the trade."
"Which consist of?" Lauren seems nonplused by my ability to enlist Cruise as my personal portal to promiscuity.
"I don't know. It's like my mouth started moving without my permission, and before I knew it, I was asking him to lead me through the deep, dark forest of debauchery. The truth is - I sort of wanted to, you know, be with him, but I was too embarrassed by the fact I've never been with anyone before." I shrug as though what just flew from my lips was morally sane. "I believe I referred to it as a social experiment."
"A what?" Ally squints into me with a level of distress, reserved for degenerate social scientists such as myself.
"Don't you get it?" Lauren knocks an elbow into her. "She's a genius." She diverts her attention back to me. "You're interested in him, aren't you?"
"Maybe a little." Okay, a lot.
"And you want more than a one-night stand." She asserts.
"That would be nice." True story.
"And because you're a slow learner, he'll have to do an awful lot of tutoring." She nods into the brilliance of my plan.
"I am a slow learner." I give a wicked grin. "And practice makes perfect, right?"
"Yeah, right." Ally doesn't look too convinced of said brilliance. "But Cruise is a sexpert in the field of moral depravity. You're going to have to really wow him in order for him to keep you around. Besides, do you really want him to touch you between the resident skanks he pleasures nightly?"
"He said he'd take a break for me." And, I'm not above spreading rumors of a very bad rash he might have fictitiously acquired if he doesn't stay true to his word.
They take in a simultaneous breath as if what I suggested held serious security infractions for our great nation.
"He's taking a break?" Lauren's mouth falls open at the prospect. "Does his dick know about this? Look, you need to forget this whole idea and find yourself a good guy - someone who'll bring you flowers and candy."
"And triple orgasms," Ally interjects as though this very feature should land near the top of the list.
"Not everyone has an orgasm the first time." Lauren peels her banana without taking her eyes off Ally. "It's physiologically impossible. Besides, she's not there yet. Can't you see, she's a blank slate?" She reverts to me. "God, you're not even going to know what to do with that telephone pole." She sticks her banana in her mouth and maneuvers it in and out like she's speaking some sexual Morse code.
"Would you stop?" Ally snatches it from her. "I refuse to watch you perform a lewd act with fruit in public." She looks to me and closes her eyes briefly. "You can't be that blank of a slate. I mean, you've seen one, right?"
"Seen one, what?" I ask. "Oh! That. No, actually I haven't. Although, I did walk in on my brother once while he was using the bathroom but - "
"Gross." Ally mock vomits.
"Get this straight, Kendall," Lauren snips. "Brothers never count."
Ally pulls me in by the wrist. "It looks like a Storm Trooper," she asserts.
"Crap." Lauren bats her hand away. "Don't you listen to her. She thinks everything somehow reverts back to Star Wars. It looks like this." She holds out her banana, then proceeds to take a rather deep-throat inspired bite of the phallic fruit in question.
Ally groans at the visual. "Kendall" - she scoots in - "I wouldn't worry too much about your lack of carnal knowledge. Cruise is proficient in body language. I'm sure he'll teach you everything he knows."
That's exactly what I'm afraid of and hoping for all at the same time.
A pretty blonde wrapped in a bright red coat strides in and takes a seat at the table behind us. She observes me with a cold expression, and I look away to avoid her uncomfortable gaze.
"In fact, don't worry about a thing." Ally goes on. "Cruise Elton will be a great teacher. And, when he's through with you, we'll find you the perfect boyfriend - one that speaks at least three different computer languages because God knows you don't want to get saddled with a moron."
"Three computer languages." I nod absentmindedly, but all I can think about is the fact not one part of me wants to get rid of Cruise Elton so fast. In fact, every part of me wants to keep him. "And what if it's Cruise I want as my boyfriend?"
Lauren sprays her coffee over her shoulder.
"You can't be serious." Ally scoffs. "That's like trying to tame a wild mustang. You need to be careful or you could get yourself killed."
"I don't know..." Lauren touches her finger to the rim of her cup as she considers this. "It's happened before. Cruise Elton once had very serious boyfriend potential. Is that what you're shooting for?"
"Maybe I am." I squirm in my seat at the thought of taming an apparently well-endowed mustang.
"Alrighty then" - Lauren raises her coffee and inspires Ally to do the same - "here's to playing the player!"
"To playing the player." Ally sings. "In the name of triple orgasms, may you take down Cruise Elton's heart and make it your own."
"Believe me, he'll never see it coming." Lauren takes a sip of her drink.
The thought of Cruise Elton as my own personal boyfriend stuns me.
I didn't see it coming either.
The girl in the red coat cuts me a hard look and dashes out the door.
After Starbucks, I decide to fill my afternoon with exploration.
The Happy Hair and Nail salon sits nestled in the same strip mall as Starbucks, so I head over and decide to cash in on my hair and nail jackpot sponsored by none other than Cruise's own mother.
I watch as the artisan carefully paints my nails a candy apple red while another prods, pokes, and tickles mercilessly at my feet. Secretly, I hate getting a pedi. I hate having my toes scrubbed and molested, and every time they pull out the clippers, it feels as if I'm having my nails chewed off by a rabid school of fish. There's nothing appealing about someone playing with your feet, unless of course, it was Cruise at the helm of the foot fondling, then I wouldn't mind so much. Speaking of which, I should have asked Lauren and Ally if there was something special I should be doing to ready myself for my impending conjugal union - like give myself a bikini wax in delicate places, or soak in rose petals for thirty days straight. Not that I plan on waiting thirty days before getting down and dirty with the boy toy in question.
Am I really trying to trick him into boyfriend-hood? I'm not am I? Tricking someone into a relationship is the earmark of a despicable person. I'm simply attracted to Cruise and, it just so happens, not to anybody else. A part of me does want to be a player - the girl with a heart of steel who could care less about who I'm "playing" with at the moment, but it just so happens he's the only one I'm interested in sharing myself sexually with. Anyway, school starts in a week, and I'll probably forget all about my hormones like I have in the past. I'm studious that way, and professors and books rarely hold much sex appeal.
After an hour of listening to foreign banter that sounded like the aggressive plucking of guitar strings, I schlep myself over to a bona fide workstation near the front of the establishment.
A frail woman with burnt frizzy hair plucks at my locks while inspecting them with great interest. She wears a purple frilly smock that bears the name "Boppy" emblazoned across the front, complete with sparkly jewels bedazzled throughout. Her blue fingernail polish is badly chipped, revealing a gardener's manicure just beneath the nail beds, and she's sweating profusely even though it's a balmy two degrees in here.
"Virgin!" She whoops it out like a fire alarm.
My God, can she really tell by looking at my freaking hair? I sink in my seat as a half dozen women flock over and pull my mane as if I've suddenly morphed into a one-woman petting zoo.
"Give her a shag," one cries.
"A perm, but go spiral. She's got the length," another croaks.
I'm quick to scoff at the idea. I can attest to the fact there shall be no follicular felonies of the permanent variety committed on my person this afternoon. The women admiring my virginal tresses have obviously developed a contact high off the ammonia congesting the air. Unless this quasi-dental chair they've hiked me up in has some magical time machine properties, and we've all been transported back to 1983, there's no way in hell I'm letting a spiral perm fly.
Boppy leans in. "I'm doing highlights." The over-processed princess seizes me as if to ward off the angry villagers. "This hair is crying for some contrast, and would you look at those eyes? They're bedroom eyes for God's sake. She needs bangs." She shoos the other women away like unwanted pigeons. "Don't you worry, hon. I'll have every man from here to Canada trying to drag you off to bed." She snaps her gum to annunciate the point. "Let's get you under the faucet."
"Oh, um, I washed my hair this morning. I think all I really need is a little trim off the bottom." The thought of her digging her less than hygienic fingernails into my scalp sends a rise of vomit to the back of my throat. I lean in and whisper, "It's my first time getting my hair done." A cloud of shame settles around me for no good reason.
"Oh. My. God." She backs up clutching at her chest as if I've deliberately set out to break some indelible girl code. "You, my friend, are in need of the works. You don't worry about a thing." She slaps a pink plastic coat over my sweater and speeds me off to the sink. "This is gonna feel better than s-e-x." She belts out a laugh as the hose spits out a firm spray of heavenly warm water over my scalp, and I moan into the experience.
Oh God, it does feel good. Like triple-your-pleasure good. Not that I would know what that feels like, but still.
Boppy masticates at rocket speed while filling me in on the finer details of her boyfriend's professional cage fighting career until something wet and hard flies into my eye.
"Oh my God!" She plucks it off and pops it back into her mouth. "Please don't tell! I swear you can come in anytime you want for like a year, but if my boss finds out I dropped gum on another client, my ass is grass and so is my rent. Believe me, I'll make sure you don't leave here until you are satisfied."
Gah! Her gum? As in the rubber cement she's been trying to wrestle into submission with her less than hygienic sublingual juices? That gum? That's the wet glob of goo that just fell in my freaking eyeball? I'm sure there are an entire litany of diseases I'm now eligible to entertain, like mono for starters, and the mainstay of the dead and dying the world over, hepatitis. I knew I shouldn't have come to the "Happy Herpes and Molest Your Nails Salon." And now she's going to try and satisfy me, whatever the hell that means. I will so throw her and her refried tresses down if she even attempts to initiate a "happy ending."
"I'm fine." I assure for the thousandth time as she escorts me back to mission control. She pumps up the chair until my stomach bottoms out from the g-forces she's emitting.
"Don't you worry." She combs my hair down the front of my face and cuts straight across in one clean hack attack. "Walla."
Holy shit!
Did she just hack off my hair and follow it up with a walla? Why does it suddenly feel like I'm back in fifth grade at Becky Zuckerman's house and she's giving my hair a "little body" - code for a fucking mullet.
She fiddles with a rubber band, that honest to God she just plucked from the filth pit that is her mouth, and flexes it over my head. She backs up revealing my new unicorn-inspired ponytail sitting on top of my head as I struggle to catch my breath. Clearly Boppy here is freaking insane. Clearly, her not-so-cute moniker comes straight from the fact someone took her to task with a baseball bat and now my hair is reaping the grave benefits of a fractured skull trauma.
She begins mixing bottles and solutions as if they were potions while I plot my escape from this dungeon of disaster.
"We don't want to get any of this crap anywhere it's not supposed to be," she sings, ignoring the fact I now have a miniature erect penis sprouting from my forehead.
"Where it's not supposed to be? Like my hair?" I'm only half-joking.
"Just some chestnut highlights. Nothing more, I promise."
She spends the next leg of a decade basting my hair with what looks like glue then proceeds to wrap it in tinsel. Any moment now I'm expecting her to tune me like a radio and dial into the mother planet. Personally, all of this wasteful use of tinfoil is making me hungry for a Ding Dong.
She spins me into the mirror, so I can appreciate the full effect of her not-so-handy work.
"Oh my God!" It flies from my lips without meaning to. My hair has ballooned out two feet in every direction and it looks as though I've donned an aluminum afro.
"Here." She opens a jar marked "avocado" and slathers a green paste liberally over my face as her final descent toward insanity plays out right here on my person. "You'll be spit shined and ready to go. New Year's Eve, here you come baby!" She lets a couple of hearty whoops rip for added affect. "Now all you have to do is sit under these lights for a solid thirty minutes." She pulls a set of octopus tentacles off the ceiling and surrounds me with a spray of blue and red bulbs. Suddenly, it all feels a little too electric chair for my liking.
I look at myself with my muddied face, the tiny follicular penis sitting erect on the top of my head and my hair splayed out like a tinsel factory exploded. I'm betting the electric chair is a tad less humiliating.
"I'm gonna take a quick lunch break." Boppy snaps up her purse. "I'll see you in a jiff!"
She spins the chair around, presumably so I won't be moved to inflict self-harm should I gaze too long in the mirror, and I'm met with a stunningly handsome, drop dead gorgeous, very much aware of the fact I look like an ass, Cruise Elton.
Just fuck.
Cruise
Oh Shit.
I should probably busy myself pretending to look at paperwork, or answer the phone for the hell of it, or just run out the fucking door because my mother's incompetent salon has just turned one of the most beautiful women on the planet into a prime example of why other females should never set foot in the establishment.
A smile twitches on my lips as her mouth opens in horror. Great. Now she thinks I'm laughing at her. I'd better go over and say something.
"Kenny?" I ask in the off chance it's another coed who's mortified to see me.
She closes her eyes, and a tiny whimper escapes her throat.
"Have I mentioned I've never been to a salon before?" She squeaks.
I can see why, but don't say a word.
"So" - she looks around as her eyes glitter up - "tell me about school." She presses her lips together, presumably fighting off tears.
A nervous laugh beats down my chest, and it takes everything in me to suppress the crap out of it. The truth is, I'm taken by her even in the Halloween garb she's currently imprisoned in.
"I'm a graduate student," I say, pulling up a chair. "I've got my sights set on a fellowship, next year, with hopes to teach at Garrison some day."
"Really?" Her eyes glow a beautiful iridescent and my body feels as though it's just fell through a trap door, landed in a place where it's just Kenny and me on the other side.
"Really," I say. "Either that or I'll run the bed and breakfast."
She licks her lips, inspecting me. "You don't happen to know any computer languages, do you?"
Computer languages? "I know some Java Script, C plus plus, and C, but mostly that was for programming when my solitary goal in life was to become the world's most wanted hacker. That, and trying to rob my father blind of his millions, but in my defense, I was thirteen and he said no when I asked for a new bike."
She belts out a lusty laugh, and soon, I don't see the circus around her beautiful features. All I see is Kenny and the light that shines like a beacon from inside her heart.
"So you know three." She relaxes for the first time. "I actually don't know any, so your father's millions are safe from me."
"How about you? What are you studying?" An animalistic wave overcomes me, and I have the urge to do her right here in the salon under the red-hot spot lights brewing from above, tinfoil and all.
"Well, I'm on the five year plan, plus I took a year off. Outside of striking a name for myself as campus bimbo, I'll be taking up airspace in the liberal arts department. In fact, I was supposed to have received my schedule this week, but I keep forgetting to check my emails. I'm hoping I got all the classes I wanted. Art, English 102, Finite math, and a class on gender relations."
"Study of men and women in society?" I perk to attention.
"That's the one." She darts a freshly polished fingernail in the air, and I imagine diving the digit deep in my mouth, grazing over it with my teeth.
"Bradshaw teaches it," I say, trying to drag myself out my sexual stupor before I find myself in a hard situation. "He's a good guy. He's been sick, so they've got a T.A. covering it." I don't tell her that I'm the T.A. That I'll be structuring a syllabus for the class later this afternoon because Bradshaw had a lobe of his lung removed last month.
"I just took it because it sounded like an easy A." Her eyes flicker like mirrors in the sun. "But with a T.A. holding down the fort, I'm sure I won't even have to show up."
Not show up? Sounds like she might be on the fifteen-year plan.
"Oh, I'm sure he'll make you work for your grade." I blink a quick smile. "In fact, I hear he gets inventive. He really likes to personalize the syllabus for each student's individual needs." Not really but the idea came to me, so I run with it. I think I'll get started on her syllabus right away. I might even throw in a liability waiver - a hold harmless agreement for the more acrobatic requirements she'll need to participate in if she intends on achieving that "easy A."
A half hour later the buzzer goes off, and about twenty minutes after that, Boppy drags her tail in from her break.
"Holy shit!" She snipes while scratching to remove the tin from Kenny's hair like she were stomping out a kitchen fire. She throws her under the sink with half the foil still glued to her scalp and starts sending up a string of prayers to the patron saint of fucked-up hairstyles.
After a good span of eternity, Kenny finally makes her way to the counter, or at least I think its Kenny. Her face is scrubbed raw, with her eyes pink and watery like someone poured in vinegar, but it's the hair where the real trauma lies.
"Oh shit," I whisper.
"Oh shit is right."
She's good and pissed, and well, incredibly irresistible even if she does look as if she's magically aged about fifty years. I'm pretty sure she wasn't in the market for grey streaks when she came in.
"I look like a skunk."
I make my way around the counter.
"Kenny, the city kitty." I pull her in by the fingers. "Lucky for you, I'm into older women."
Her lips quiver like she might lose it, so I do the only thing I can think of to make the two of us feel better. I cover her mouth with mine and splurge on a kiss that drives me deeper into the insanity Kenny has me wrapped in.
On New Year's Eve, Ackerman House gyrates to raucous, loud hip-hop music that manages to pulsate through every cavity in my body. Swear to God, I'm about to find the volume control and turn it down about six notches, which probably highlights the fact that at the tender age of twenty-four, I'm too old for this shit.
Mercifully, the music dies down, and the next song belts out something a little smoother that my eardrums might approve of once they stop bleeding.
"So which one?" Kenny steps in front of me while eyeing a group of football players. Two of them are engaged in a mock fistfight that has them socking one another, hard as possible.
Tonight's lesson involves approaching potential hookups. Not that Kenny will be hooking up with the goofs running around this place. My lesson is specifically designed to keep her integrity intact.
Kenny went all out in the looks department tonight with her sky-high heels and a black miniskirt that shows off her luscious limbs. I don't think I can take much more of her walking around the house half-dressed, her wet hair, her braless mornings. If she doesn't give in soon, I'll fall on my knees and beg her to have her way with me. She's got me shaking just walking past her in the hall. We've done the movie and the dinner thing, twice. I think it's time to up the ante, lie down and see if she bites. God, I hope she bites.
"Okay, see those two guys?" I point just past the jocks.
"The cute one with the football, and the buffed-out guy in a wife beater?" She licks her well-glossed lips.
"Nope." I redirect her to the lanky pair with their pants riding high on their waists. "We're going to start with those two. I want you to get at least six different numbers tonight. That should help you break out of your shell." And keep her woman parts safe from assholes that have an unnatural obsession with pigskin and wife beaters.
She struts around to my other side, and her hourglass figure weakens my defenses. Her hair still holds the strong scent of solution from Mom trying to correct the blunder her former employee proliferated. Gone is the grey. Kenny's hair sort of morphed to a dark chestnut with highlights. Mom is damn lucky Kenny doesn't sue for emotional damages. She wore a hoodie three days straight.
"Those two?" She balks. "Are you sure?"
"I'm positive," I whisper. "Now, get a move on, young grasshopper. I'll watch from the sidelines." I nod over to the super geeks in the corner until she ventures off in that direction.
A tangle of bodies filter between us, and I can't help but notice Kenny is turning heads. Before I know it, an entire herd of vulture-like, horny-as-hell, jocks surround her. Great.
"How's the virgin?" Cal shoulders up to me and hands me a beer.
"She's in the room ass-wipe," I reprimand, cracking it open and taking a sip. "And things are progressing slowly. I haven't scared her off yet, if that's what you mean."
"That's not what has me worried. It's the fact she hasn't scared you off yet. What's going on? It's New Year's fucking Eve, and you're overseeing a vestal of innocence while other guys hit on her? I'm beginning to think you've lost your touch. Take her to task in the bedroom or boot her out the door. If you don't do her, I might just have to intervene and do her for you."
"Right. I'm leaving you now." I head toward Kenny to help her navigate the sheer number of drooling idiots who have amassed around her like zombies in some B-rated horror flick.
"Hey!" A pair of familiar arms wraps themselves around me. I glance down to find a brunette with her eyes half-closed, already wasted into tomorrow.
"Donna." I think.
"Amber." She flashes a toothy grin.
Or that. "Look, I'm..." I glance over at Kenny and her band of aspiring bedmates, as she waves from across the room. She glances at the pale limb secured around my waist, and a hurt look flashes across her face. Kenny flips her hair and pretends not to notice as she turns her attention back to the "cute" jock.
Shit. They're flocking to her, smiling like idiots, wearing their hard-ons right on their sleeves.
"Listen, Linda, I gotta go." I pluck her arm off and head into the crowd.
"It's Amber!"
I dig through a swell of bodies and every time I think I'm getting closer to Kenny, she and her throng of boy toys drift a little farther out of reach.
"Cruise!" Lauren, Cal's questionable other half, steps up, and I lose sight of Kenny altogether. "So are the rumors true? Cruise Elton has finally settled down? I hear you're trying out a live-in girlfriend for size." She gives her signature smirk.
"Nope, just a friend."
She mouths out an O. "Look" - she glances into the throng of bodies - "I'd hate to see anybody get hurt. Why don't you do everyone involved a favor and grow a pair - either commit or cut her loose. She's not at Garrison looking for heartbreak. I know what Blair did sucked, and I totally get why you took it out on the next five hundred vaginas that were at the ready, but Kendall..." - she shakes her head - "she's not the same. Go easy on her, would you?" She melts back into the crowd like an apparition.
She's right. Kendall is different.
I pan the vicinity and find Kenny perched on top of the couch while six different guys vie for her attention.
Maybe I'm the one who should be vying for her attention.