Frankie
Frankie’s family feasted during the Holidays. They went all out, even adding in some of his grandmother’s traditional Puerto Rican specialties, pasteles, mofongo, plus all your average American fare. Gloria was coming home but only for a day. How generous of her to leave Silicon Valley to convene with the mere humans for a minute.
“If you don’t bring Peebo, I’m not coming,” she’d told him over the phone the night before. He’d put it on speaker and Peebo was doing laps around the kitchen island yapping his ass off, ears flying out behind him. Frankie was afraid the poor little guy would have a heart attack before Gloria finished berating him.
“Bring something home for Grandma, something with California or Google on it. She loves that stuff and talks about how much she misses you every Sunday when I’m over there.”
“Stop guilt tripping me Frankie! I’ll grab her something at the airport. Don’t forget Peebs or I won’t even let you through the door.” He sighed and she hung up. He scooped up the little whack job of a dog and petted his head to help him calm down.
Gloria insisted on face-timing with the pooch, but half the time she’d miss their set appointments so Frankie wouldn’t even get the phone ready because he’d witnessed the damn dog go into a depression when his absentee mother disappointed him by not showing up for a scheduled phone visit. He’d keep the phone on the counter and only pick it up and yell for Peebo when it was already ringing. Gloria talked to the dog in baby talk and Peebo would bark back and scratch the hell out of the couch with his tiny paws. Frankie didn’t think it was healthy for the little dog’s heart, but he was good-natured and put up with it because Gloria supposedly loved the damn dog. Only now he did too and was feeling quite protective. But he also loved his sister, albeit reluctantly on some days.
Lou met him early to get in a workout on Thursday before he left for Jersey with Peebo in his carrier and the dozen bagels his father had requested from the city. They did Lou’s special fat burner regimen in anticipation of the calories he’d pack on.
“I’ve gotten a really good response from the agencies we’ve sent out to. No bites yet, but they’re coming. I can feel it,” Lou said as he spotted him on his bench press.
Frankie’s mother and grandmother did almost all of the cooking. He drank beer with his dad and ate nutted cheese roll with water crackers while the house heated to ninety degrees easily, and the windows fogged up from all of the cooking. Gloria barged in the door, a mess of jackets bags and scarves, and greeted her dog before even saying hello to anyone else.
“Oh my baby wooby, did you miss mommy? Did little Peeby miss his momma? Is Frankie a terrible daddy?” She dropped her suitcase in the hallway and his father stood to take it up to her room.
“I thought she was gonna fly out tonight?”
“No flights. Earliest she could get was Friday afternoon. Plus, your mother guilt tripped her because Granny’s so old. Told Gloria it might be her last Thanksgiving and she agreed to hang out for a day.”
“I take excellent care of that dog, for your information,” Frankie told his father walking into the kitchen.
“I can hear you and Hummus gives him gas,” Gloria said. When he walked into the brightly lit room Gloria was already hand feeding the dog shreds of dark meat from the turkey. “You spoil him,” Gloria said and laid a kiss on Frankie’s cheek. He pulled her in for a bear hug even though she was annoying, demanding, and made ten times what he did, she was still his only sibling.
“Frankie, Honey, can you set the table? Do the red glasses and the plates that are already out on the buffet.”
“Sure.” He rubbed his mother’s shoulders from behind as she whipped the potatoes.
Frankie literally had to push his chair away from the table and undo the button on his jeans as he sunk his fork into warm pumpkin pie covered in fresh whipped cream.
“The two best cooks in Bergen County, maybe the whole state,” he told his mother and grandmother between bites of desert. His grandmother was in the kitchen preparing Café con leche the old fashioned way. She kissed his head when she set it down in front of him.
“Francisco, you look so handsome, m’ijo. I’m serious, even better than all those boys in the magazines or on my novelas. You’re going to be a star someday, Frankie. I can feel it.”
“Grandma, quit spiking the coffee,” Frankie said, color rising to his face. “Dad and I are on dish duty so you ladies are free to relax or do whatever you want. Right, Dad?”
“Don’t you get sick of cleaning?” Gloria piped in.
Frankie wanted to shoot back a snappy retort about the rent she’d ditched him with. But he bit his tongue instead. What he did for a living was honest and decent. His priorities lay in fitness but there just wasn’t any money in it, at least, not yet. He gritted his teeth and shot Gloria a fake smile. He too, could be condescending if that’s how she wanted to play.
“Be kind to your brother, Gloria. Frankie works hard and not everyone can work at Google.”
“Ladies out of the kitchen,” his father bellowed to put the kibosh on the sibling rivalry.
Up to their elbows in a sink full of suds, his father started in on the third degree. Who was he dating, anyone special he was interested in, was he at least trying to go out?
“Training schedule is tight, dad. Plus work full time. Then there’s Peebo who is high maintenance too and believe me, he doesn’t take no for an answer.”
“Zip? Zero? Not even somebody cute at the gym?”
Frankie immediately thought of the Phoenix whose name he was now pretty sure was Amber after their run-in last week. Just thinking about her made him feel dizzy and giddy and all sorts of stupid things that only served as a warning she was way out of his league.
“There is this one stone cold fox, dad. Works in the building. Ad exec or some high powered position like that. Gorgeous, smart, confident and hella sexy...but way out of my league. Maybe if I met her at the gym, but this girl is the like the top dog in one of those trading companies.”
His father looked at him and dried his hands on a dish towel.
“Have you tried to speak to her, son? Sometimes what a woman wants is someone she can depend on. Someone loyal and caring, not just some hotshot lawyer or broker with money to burn. Maybe she wants a family like you do. You’ll never know unless you give it a shot.”
He nodded. His dad was right but the situation was intimidating. Amber, he guessed, would want to continue her lifestyle and he wasn’t quite up to the standard of wealthy superstar. Like his trainer Lou sometimes said, “you can’t afford a woman like that.”
“I guess I could try asking her out.” He scooped up Peebo who was whining at his feet. “What, your mom already find someone better to play with?”
“Your mother was the star journalist when we first started dating at school. She had all the credentials and the international experience. I was just a greenhorn with a pipe dream and a resume that boasted editor of my high school year book and internship at the Star Ledger.”
“But you were so passionate and had a real knack for chasing down a story,” Frankie’s mother interrupted as she swept into the room and put on the tea kettle. His father pulled her into a hug and they stood in a sweet embrace smiling at their son. He wanted what they had. He always had. Frankie wanted to grow up and be just like his parents.
They watched a movie and by ten o’clock he was done. The food coma had set in and he needed to crash.
“I’ll take the couch in the basement,” he said. Frankie stood and stretched. He’d have to put in a good two hours at the gym tomorrow, sweat out the carbs.
“Honey, I can make up the daybed upstairs if you’d like?” Frankie’s mother had turned his once bedroom into her sewing room and he didn’t mind, he was perfectly happy in the basement.
“Ma, don’t sweat it. That pull out is comfortable.”
He made his way downstairs after everyone said goodnight. Gloria’s room had survived the empty nest and she still had her pink canopy atrocity at her disposal. Frankie brushed his teeth in the downstairs bathroom and took a quick shower. He walked out the bathroom in a cloud of steam with a towel wrapped around his waist and burst out laughing.
“Traitor,” he said to Peebo who was curled up in a blanket cocoon at the bottom of the pull out. “You’d better haul-ass upstairs at the crack of dawn or else she’s going to have a fit. I knew you loved me more. Just don’t let Gloria find out, I assure you, she will spin it so that your loyalty to me will be my fault.”
Peebo yawned with his tongue out, stretched his toes and went back to contentedly sleeping in a ball.
Frankie stripped down to his boxers and slid under the cool sheets. He unlocked his phone to check on his social media. Lou had made him pose in an extra uncandid shot at the gym, straddling the lifting bench and curling his bicep into his chest. His head was aimed down so you couldn’t see his face. All that was on display were his flexed abs, his chiseled bicep and his pecs. Lou insisted that he post a provocative shot for the holidays.
Damned if Lou wasn’t always right. He had fifty-six more followers from the last time he’s checked. Thousands of comments, mostly women and some men, complimenting his body. There were a couple of lifting questions which he quickly answered; how to define the V cut in your hips, how to get the rectus abdominis while eating pizza and watching television or pop the bicep with the least amount of effort.
There was one question about meal plans and he messaged the follower for his contact information so he could email him a food schedule. Frankie was tired and full so he didn’t scroll though pictures, but he did make one stop before signing off—a quick pass to see what Red_Jimmy_Shoes was up to on Thanksgiving. He searched her and pulled up her profile. An amused look of bewilderment appeared on his face while he took in her picture. Red shoes had stolen his pose; he was sure of it. She wasn’t in the gym, but instead, on a velvet upholstered bench at the foot of a four poster bed. Her face was aimed down and her hair obscured her features, she was curling a rolling pin instead of the fifty-pound weight Frankie had posed with in his picture.
She was wearing a sports bra and tight spandex shorts with her abdominis rectus on full display, exactly like Frankie’s was. Her stomach was flat and had the delicate definition of a violin. Her flexed bicep was impressive Frankie bet she could lift if she wanted to. Her thighs were pressed together and their perfectly taught shape suggested the legs of a runner. The caption underneath read: On cookie duty #thanksgiving #homefortheholiday She’d posted it in black and white just like he’d done.
It certainly didn’t seem like a coincidence, even her posture mirrored his pose. He grinned, genuinely flattered, and felt his cock grow the longer he looked at her nearly naked body, which inconsequently he would define as perfect. His groin held that heavy ache from needing a release. He hadn’t been with anyone in months and the frustration was beginning to take a toll. Red shoes was so fucking sexy, yet somehow remained classy. He liked that she didn’t show her face, it made it feel less like camera whoring. God knows he’d broken it off with multiple girls because he couldn’t take their self-absorbed pretension of posting selfies all day. He found it distasteful. Red shoes showed a lot but Frankie, even if it was slightly delusional, was convinced that those pictures were meant only for him. She was following other people, but not many, and it couldn’t just be chalked up to coincidence.
His cock was rock solid and tenting the blankets. It seemed he couldn’t even look at a picture of red shoes without getting hard. He licked his palm and stroked up and down his length imagining rubbing his long shaft between her perfect breasts. Then his mind crowded with the memory of straightening out the Phoenix’s garter belt in the bathroom. She was so sexy, inhibited and vulnerable. Frankie imagined slowly unbuttoning her shirt and unclasping her lace bra. The Phoenix—Amber—liked expensive things, he could tell. He wanted to take the bra and slide it back and forth over her raw cunt while she begged him for cock, to put it in her mouth. In his fantasy, she wasn’t wearing panties, just the garter and stockings. He tortured her with the delicate lace of her bra held between his two hands, moving it back and forth over her swollen folds, even her ass would be begging for cock. He was hard enough to fuck for days—right there in the public bathroom. He imagined Amber deep throating him on her knees, hands tied behind her back with the expensive bra cutting off her circulation. He imagined her with her shirt and skirt bunched around her waist. Naked except for the red fuck me shoes, the garter, and stockings. Afterward, she’d strut back to the conference room, lips swollen, red lipstick smeared and hair mussed, mascara stains under her eyes because he’d fucked her mouth brutally. She’d have to cough before she began because his hot jizz would be coating the back of her throat.
Frankie moaned and hot threads of semen shot out of his dick landing on the back of his gripped hand and ripped abs. The combination of Amber and the red shoes was easily the best fantasy he’d ever had.