Chapter 1
I was so damn tired of trying to live my life like the “good girl” all the time… It was a role I’d been playing for years on end at this point, and I felt so tired of it, so sick and fed up of trying to pretend I was innocent in pure, puritanical, almost in nature. I’d always walked the straight and narrow like I was hobbling along a damn tightrope, and it was driving me crazy – not only because I secretly felt my “pure” habits were largely at odds with human nature, but because I’d been doing what everyone had been telling me all my life was the “right thing,” and it had gotten me virtually nowhere all this time.
Take school, for instance. Since elementary school, I stressed and scrambled to get assignments done on time, and kicked my own ass if I got anything less than an A plus, certain inwardly that nothing short of that mark was good enough. Meanwhile, my classmates, beyond a certain point, seemed as though they couldn’t give any less of a damn about school. They waited until the last minute on assignments, or copied their answers off of someone else, and they almost never got caught doing it. What was more, at the end of the day, some of the most egregious offenders, the ones who were smart and savvy enough to pull it off well, specifically, saw no detriment to their grades. They scored well on tests, got the highest marks in the class, and generally succeeded without effort, whereas I, true to my “good girl” persona, worked my little tail off trying to score well, and yet ended up inevitably ranking mediocre in my class by comparison. I mean, I was hardly a dunce, but so often it made me so frustrated, and I just kept getting harder and harder on myself as years went by.
Of course, adults, both teachers and my parents, alike, tried to extoll in me the virtue of hard work. Sure, those other kids might all be having an easier time with it, but I had the moral high ground. I was the “good girl,” I was doing what I was supposed to, and sooner or later things would pay off for me in the end, once you got right down to it.
So I waited, and hoped, and believed what I was told.
In the meantime, I realized that the same principles applied to socializing and dating as they did to scoring on quizzes and tests. Surely the “good girl” should have no problem making friends – I was, by definition, the exact sort of person that my classmates should want to be around, the girl that every guy should want to date.
And I have to grant myself that, in my way, at least, I was attractive. Sometimes, I struggled with self-esteem issues, but if I could make myself look past them it wasn’t hard to see the beauty in myself. I was a curvier girl, always had been, with voluptuous features, dark ebony skin, and in my present state of adulthood, the last specks of optimism in a gaze that had largely become cynical as the years rolled along.
So, suffice it to say, had it just been appearance alone that warranted attention from the other kids, I think I would have been more than okay. I sometimes had my doubts about my size, and even my skin color, it’s sad to say, but I saw other girls who looked similar to myself, and sometimes even less attractive, who managed to find steady boyfriends and groups of friends. Surely, I should have no trouble doing the same in that case…
But, again, things didn’t exactly pan out how I’d always been told they should. I began to notice that my “good tendencies” mostly bored people, more than anything else. Any friendships I developed seemed to be brief and fleeting, and no one ever asked me out at any point prior to senior year. I did, finally, get asked to the prom then, buy a couple of guys actually, but it had taken me years to get my classmates familiar enough with me to take me seriously, and I knew that any relationships I might have harbored at that point would be over once college came.
And it all came back around, once more, to my personality. People just really didn’t want to hang around with the Plain Jane who never took risks, never got into trouble or did anything that struck them as even remotely exciting. I kept my nose clean, and to the people around me that made me dull and boring, far too mundane to interest them.
The ones who made friends were the ones who misbehaved, who did things they weren’t supposed to. And plus, if they got in trouble for those things, it was pretty much even better. A cherry on top, so to speak, and something to brag about.
It was just human nature, I started to realize, to gravitate toward that sort of rebellious behavior. But I’d simply gone too far at this point. I was too good to even know how to be bad, and I still clung to the belief that if I stayed the course long enough, karma or whatever force you want to call it might come back around and bless me for my years of loyalty, and make all that loneliness and those feelings of inferiority worthwhile.
College came around. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, but everyone said that was what I was supposed to do, so I did it. Despite my good grades, I found myself receiving very little in scholarship money, and had to take out a bunch of money in loans that would take years to pay back (and that I couldn’t hope to afford anytime soon…) I drifted around for a year as an undeclared major, studied hard, and at last settled on a major that I only half cared about, studying my ass off in the hopes of getting a decent job after school, because it was the “good” thing to do.
Sure enough, I stayed the path, and eventually I graduated. My parents were so proud of me, their good daughter, following their instructions, and really making something of herself, setting up her bright future even as she struggled to embrace the present in any way whatsoever.
As nice as that little piece of paper was, though, as good as it made me feel as it hung on my bedroom wall, it proved a bit less than helpful when it came to actually doing me any practical good. The job market, at that particular point in time, proved to be far too competitive for a good girl like myself – and in fact, strangely, it turned out to be far more advantageous for and favorable toward those who cheated and finagled their way through life – leaving me almost completely out of the running.
And so now, these days I found myself with a college degree, having done the right thing all my life, and working ad goddamn retail job as a means of paying back the exorbitant interest rates on my student loans, the task seeming like one that spanned out ahead of me indefinitely. Every day, I came face to face with angry, irate customers, I did my job so well that I got routinely assigned to other people’s duties for no extra pay, and I worked forty plus hours on minimum wage, and still just barely made ends meet.
Was it any wonder that, on the evening in question, I felt a pressing an unavoidable craving for a drink or two or ten?
No, not ten… I was good… A good girl didn’t get drunk off her ass on a weekday, as tempting as it seemed just then.
Tipsiness would have to settle for the time being, and maybe the possibility of going home with some average looking douchebag who might be interested in screwing me.
I clearly wasn’t the one night stand type of girl, like at all, but I was so exhausted at this point that I felt I could let my guard down in terms of my attitudes about sex for the night, in hopes of scoring a bit of physical excitement in lieu of any other kind.
I peered around the top of my glass at the men sitting around the bar, trying to gauge what interest they may or may not have in me. The answer, sadly, seemed to be not much… I felt so shy about my body all of the sudden, squirming around in my seat, almost subconsciously trying to deflect attention, rather than attract it. There were so many good looking girls in this bar, thinner, made up to look like models, their features like earthbound angels, willing to do devilish things to whatever man proved lucky enough to claim them.
And what was I by comparison? Average looking, insecure, shy…
Why the hell did I even bother?
I peered back down over the lip of my glass, having taken the last sip, and the liquid now emptied out. Something about it seemed especially depressing to me, for a reason I couldn’t explain fully, and I sighed into the glass, watching it fog up under my nose.
I must have sat there for longer than I genuinely realized, because after some time the bartender sat another glass down at my nose, and I stared at it blankly for a moment, confused…
“Oh, um… I didn’t order…” I began, but the bartender brushed me off.
“From the gentleman across the bar,” he said, and I subtly tried to look over, and to see to which “gentleman” he might be referring…
I caught a glimpse of someone, partly in shadow – but no, that couldn’t be who he was referring to… Could it? Surely not… His features, although cast largely in darkness, were far too fine, far too perfect for him to be interested in me. Surely, there must be some scrawny little tit hiding behind him, a nobody who would come over and start flirting with me – and in my current mood, I might just decide to go home with him anyway…
But at any rate, now I’d gawked too long, and far too awkwardly, so I decided that if the gentleman in question wanted to make himself known, he could come over and do so himself. I gulped down the alcohol in a single swallow, shivering as it burned down my throat, and then I waited, staring at the bar, counting down the moments…
And then I heard footsteps…
Someone, with a very slow, measured gait, was walking up toward me. My chest was tightening, I was having trouble swallowing, and my head was spinning, as I tried to remember to keep my cool.
He sat down beside me.
Slowly, carefully, I looked up, afraid of what I might see regardless of the outcome – and God, was he handsome… Sexy as hell in fact, with perfect features, rugged and dark, his white skin prickled with stubble, his eyes nearly black as he peered into me, and a smile peeling flirtatiously across those sexy, kissable lips of his.
I blinked at him hard, as though certain if I stared for too long he might disappear, or his features might distort into those of a man far less appealing than himself. But when at last several seconds had passed, and he remained real and tangible, I cautiously tilted my empty glass up to him, inquisitively.
“Was this you?” I asked, straightening up a bit in my seat.
“Yeah… I just sort of thought, from your expression, that you seemed like the sort of person who could use a drink this evening.”
I smiled at him, embarrassed, but hopeful. “Yeah… Yeah I did, actually… Thank you…”
He smiled back at me, making me a little bit woozy, not to mention considerably wet between the legs. God, I couldn’t help myself… I was swooning big time right now, getting far, far ahead of myself, and I could feel myself losing control inwardly – something that always proved dangerous to a good girl like me…
“There’s also a chance,” he added, smirking even harder now, “that I thought you were the most beautiful woman in the bar, and I couldn’t just sit there without buying you a drink.”
I flashed him a broad, toothy smile, clearly flustered and gratified, but I just couldn’t help myself at this point. “Oh, God, thank you,” I said, heat rising up in me, clearly not actually believing what I’d just been told, or having expected to hear it. “That’s… That’s really sweet… It’s nice to hear, actually,” I laughed. “You’re not too bad looking yourself, actually…”
I wriggled my body a bit, in a way that was wholly unintentional and reflexive, yet erotic in a vaguely uncomfortable way. He didn’t seem to mind it at all, though, and I could see his eyes briefly making their way down to my cleavage, which peered subtly out over the top of my blouse. With as little obviousness as I could manage to do so, I brought my arms a bit more inward toward one another, pushing my breasts together, and deepening the cleavage. I caught him looking at this point, and smiled, pleased at myself. He seemed unbothered by it, and perhaps more aroused than anything by the little game we’d just played. At any rate, I could see he had an erection now, pushing through his jeans, putting my mind on sex to a degree that I could no longer have a hope in hell of escaping.
“My name’s Danny,” he said, grinning that cheeky grin of his, and giving off an air of unbearable sexual want in that moment.
“Heather,” I replied, flashing him my own smile, which I knew to be an innocent one, but dazzling in its own simple way.
“So, um, Heather…” he said, picking up where we’d left off before all this. “If you don’t mind me asking, is there something on your mind? Something you want to get off your chest?”
I sighed, unhappy to be brought back down from the realm of the purely carnal and physical, and back on the plane of reality where things like emotions and feelings actually mattered. “It’s nothing, really, I just…” I tried to think of how I wanted to word this, being honest without burdening Danny here with too many of my problems. I was impressed, actually, that he genuinely wanted to know about how I was feeling, instead of simply trying to get into my panties with record speed, and somewhere deep inside me, I felt a vague, probably stupid hope that this could eventually turn into something more than just a one night stand.
“I’m just sort of thinking about the past, I guess, and wishing I’d done certain things differently. That’s all, really…”
“I can understand that,” he said, looking sincerely at me, and I couldn’t help but flare my nostrils at him a bit. “I’ve had several things in my life like that, actually, truth be told… A lot of regrets… A lot of choices I’ve made that I shouldn’t have, or that I wish I would have made differently. But that’s life, I guess. You learn from your own stupidity, and hopefully you change for the better.” I smiled, and then he added, grinning, “Of course, I still haven’t done enough wising up yet to have changed all that much.”
I laughed, not really sure what he meant all the way, but maybe just nervous. There was a darkness to his aura, an intangible sense of foreboding that I couldn’t quite define or place my finger on – but this was, without a doubt, a bad boy, and the promise of being involved with him in that way got me very, very turned on.
“I guess maybe what I mean is a little bit different… Like, it’s not so much that I’ve made bad choices – it’s like I just haven’t made my own choices at all. I’ve always let other people make them for me, and my life’s just sort of been so safe and sheltered because of it. God, why am I telling you all this?” I shook my head, feeling like I was blowing it.
But he was smiling at me, reading me like a book. “So you’re a good girl, is what you’re trying to say? And you’d like to be a bad girl…”
I shrugged, not wanting to give him the wrong impression. “Well, I mean, I don’t want to go out and rob a fucking bank or anything… I just want some excitement in my life, you know? I want to feel like I’m actually living once in a while, and doing things my own way… Like, I dunno… Does that make sense…?”
He smiled at me, like of course, obviously it made perfect sense to him in every way, and then he said, “I think you’re right, about a person needing to make their own choices. But as far as looking for excitement goes, I don’t think it’s ever too late for a person to start…”
“What do you have in mind?” I asked flirtatiously, my thoughts, obviously, on the bedroom.
He smiled at me, and then caught me off-guard.
“Ever ridden on a motorcycle before?”