After getting off the phone with Jennifer, I sit back and put my feet up on my desk. On my computer screen, the day’s news feed scrolls past. I look at it but don’t see it.

All I want to think about is her.

I lace my fingers behind my head, close my eyes and re-play the day’s events.

Poor girl! This was such a bad day for her. Being sick, and vulnerable at work…then showing me her ass by accident! I laugh out loud again. Ahh, she was so funny and cute…and she has no idea.

She doesn’t have a damn thing to be ashamed of. Her vulnerability was very touching. And her ass….spectacular!

And her sheer awkwardness was possibly the cutest––and somehow, most erotic–– thing I’ve ever seen.

What a sweetheart of a girl she is. Sweet with a streak of fire that keeps me on my toes and interested.

My cock hardens, thinking about that ass. And those kisses…the way she responded to me. Jesus Christ! I could feel her body getting warm and melty, while those delectable bullet-points on her tits poked me in the chest.

I reach down and adjust my dick, giving it a little stroke as a promise for some attention later.

Yeah, today was a memorable day. Being there for my girl today made me happier than I’ve been in a long time.

My girl? Whoa! Where’d that come from? Shit…I haven’t even tapped that ass yet and I’m already thinking of her as my girl.

Mine.

I smile, wondering what Angel would think of what happened today. Would he think I did too much for her? Went too far?

Would he think I gave her too much power over me? Yeah probably, but he thinks that about every guy who has a woman.

Bitter old bastard, I think to myself.

But I’m still smiling.

Fact is, I’d do a hell of a lot more for her. And I’m hoping to…if things go right.

Jennifer Jane Gordon. If things go right, I can easily see us together…until death do us part. My girl.

My Jenny.

The clock on my computer says ten bells. Almost time for my weekly check-in with Angel back in California. It’s seven o’clock there and he’ll be done with dinner and ready to shoot the shit for a while.

* * *

Angel is my cousin. Well, technically, my dad’s first cousin, which still makes him my first cousin, once removed. I think.

At sixty years old, he’s the same age as my dad but he’s been my best friend since I was eighteen. Given a girl’s name by his fifteen year-old mother before she sadly died in childbirth, Angel had to learn to stand up to a lot of bullying because of his name, but he always said it made a man out of him.

And it sure turned out to be an apt moniker for him, since he ended up saving my dumb ass when I left home to seek my fortune on the west coast.

* * *

From the time I was a young lad, I’d had it in my head that I’d hitchhike across the country one day. My last year of high school, I told Dad that I was planning to hitchhike to California to see the sights; be a beach bum and have a wild summer before becoming a gold prospector in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Dad, with whom I’d been butting heads for years, laughed, clapped me on the back, and wished me all the luck in the world. Then, he said, in case luck isn’t enough, I should take his cousin Angel’s number to use as an emergency contact once I got to LA.

I took Angel’s number, but only to shut Dad up. As if I’d need help from some old codger in LA!

‘Angel’…an old man with a froofy, woman’s name, to boot! Sheesh.

With savings that amounted of a couple grand, I had a dumb idea that I’d buy a board, learn to surf, become a chick magnet and save money by living on the beach.

Everybody said I was crazy but I could see it all so clearly in my mind: Gather around a camp fire on the beach at night; maybe sing Kumbaya with all the other beach bums, then I’d get a good night’s sleep all cozy in a sleeping bag under the stars. Ah, the life of a foot-loose and fancy-free young hero, who makes friends everywhere he goes.

As for meals and keeping clean, my “plan” was just as nebulous. Maybe I’d treat myself to a hotel for a shower and a good meal every weekend.

No wonder my mother was beside herself… at first. But after a talk with Dad, she seemed to magically settle down about it. The day I left she gave me a lunch bag and kissed me goodbye with a smile on her face.

She was cool with it because Dad’s cousin Angel was their ace in the hole.

The hitchhiking part was a breeze. I lucked out and got a ride to Indianapolis from Columbus. My luck held, and from there, I got a ride with a trucker taking a load of pallets all the way to Santa Monica.

I still have to laugh when I look back at what happened next. I got there on a Sunday night and that’s when reality introduced itself. My fantasy of becoming a laid-back, tanned, hobo-slash-surfer-dude turned into five sleepless nights of being chased off the beach and threatened by gang-bangers; propositioned by random, middle-aged men and rousted by cops.

Somehow, I hung on to my dream, and my wallet, for almost a week.

Finally, the following Saturday, just before dawn, I crawled under a wooden stoop behind a head shop and curled up among used condoms, candy wrappers, drink cups and trash. I was spent, and in an exhausted sleep, when some tweakers dragged me out, beat the shit out of me and stole my wallet and backpack.

All I had left were the grimy clothes on my back. I still had money in the bank, but no way to get at it, with no bank card and no ID.

I didn’t even have Angel’s number anymore.

I had to swallow my pride. I begged to use a restaurant’s phone and called my Dad collect.

When I told him what happened, he actually laughed!

At the time I was pissed but I understand now.

Dad told me to sit tight while he called Angel on my behalf.

And lo, Angel came and took my bedraggled ass to his place in Venice.

Turned out, he was no old codger.

Tall, built, tanned and a favorite with the ladies, he was, at the age of forty, twice-divorced and living paycheck-to-paycheck.

But he had his own ace in the hole, and that was a patent he was developing for a simple piece of fall protection equipment. Called a rope descender, it’s a strong but simple spiral-shaped piece of steel, designed to provide friction for slowing or stopping movement down a rope, so that someone working at heights could use it to safely control their descent to the ground. There were many types of these already on the market, but Angel designed his with a braking arm that gave his product a distinctive wing-like shape.

He named his rope descender Angel Wing and marketed it for use in industrial and recreational fall protection.

It was about to become a hit, sell wildly to the global market and make us both a lot of fucking money.

But first, before any of that happened, he became my friend and mentor.

He invited me to stay, on the condition that I got a job, paid rent and enrolled in college.

It was a solid plan––plus, and more importantly to my wounded pride––it kept me from having to go home with my tail between my legs.

And along with rent, I paid Angel a stipend every month to help him develop his product. In return, I got stock in his company.

I decided to follow Angel into the safety business so I picked UCLA’s Environmental Health Sciences program and started school the following autumn.

I graduated with my Master’s and got my first job. After a while, I began making a name for myself in the industry and made steady money in salaried jobs. Slowly, Angel Wing went global and and started paying dividends. Not crazy, billionaire-type wealth, but very good money indeed. The kind of money you need to live well. Very well. Even in California.

And I never looked back, until a few months ago, when Delcroft came calling with an offer I couldn’t refuse.

* * *

I call Angel’s number and he picks up right away. “If you’re still in Ohio and not on your way home, fuck you.”

“Angel! I miss you too buddy.” Right away I notice it. His voice sounds different tonight. More clear, less slurred.

“Yeah, no doubt. You miss pushing me in the goddamn chair and slinging my saggy ass in and out of bed every day.”

“And feeding you. And wiping your ass. Don’t forget that.”

“Eee hee hee,” he lets out his signature laugh, the one that sounds like a rusty hinge on a gate. Only a guy as good-looking as Angel could get away with a laugh like that. “Well, you’ll be saddened to hear that I’ve been out of the damn wheelchair since Wednesday. Apparently, you and all those doctors were right. Seems like therapy’s finally starting to work ”

“Get the fuck outta town!” I yell, delighted. “You can walk now? I mean, without holding on, without help?”

“Yeah! Seems to be just like all those saw-bones keep saying. The part of my brain that the stroke damaged is either coming back or some other part is taking over. I can almost feel it happening!”

“That’s great news. And to think, I only had to threaten to throw your carcass into an old-folk’s home so you wouldn’t give up on therapy.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’d say I owe you one, except we both know you can never pay me back for all I’ve done for your sorry ass.”

We both laugh. “Ain’t that the truth,” I say. “So tell me, if it’s working for your leg…what about the rest of you? You getting any use in the arm yet?”

“Fucking right,” he says. “It’s all coming back, Blakey. That whole side is waking back up again. My smile even looks better. It really was just a matter of time and not giving up. And it’s coming back fast. It’s like all the circuits are firing again, re-connecting and sending signals all the way down the line.”

“So…you saying, you can wipe your own ass again?”

“Eeee hee hee! That’s exactly right. I can do my business in private again, start to finish. I can even piss standing up and hold my own dick!”

Hearing all this makes me very, very happy. It was tough leaving Angel to come east only a month after his stroke. If it wasn’t for his insistence that he’d be okay, I probably wouldn’t have, and fuck the contract with Delcroft.

It helped that we could afford the best help and therapy for him, but it still tore my heart to leave him. If the money here wasn’t so good, I wouldn’t have come.

But then… I wouldn’t have met Jenny.

“Well I’m almost glad I decided to call you tonight. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t give a shit if you live or die,” I joke. “I’m just calling to brag about this girl I met.”

“Ohhh, you met a gurr-rulll,” he says. “Where is she now? Locked in your trunk? Eeeee hee hee!”

“Ha ha…no. I thought I’d change things up and put this one in the basement. No, seriously, listen.”

And for the first time, I fill him in about Jenny.

I feel sorry for every guy on the planet who doesn’t have their own Angel to shoot the breeze with about women. At this point, he’s been through too many to count, so I know I can tell him anything and he’ll understand.

Yet, for all his relationships, he always seem to end up alone and lonely. Hell, not that I can talk. I’m pushing forty and alone too.

Angel’s more bitter than I am but it’s forgivable since he’s been at it a lot longer.

He listens, making rude comments and laughing his rusty- hinge laugh, but when I’m done, he zeros right in on the thing that matters the most…to him:

“So I guess this means you’re not coming back now?”

“I’m playing that by ear still. You know my deal with Delcroft. And you know it’s not going well and I can’t wait to be done with them. That’s why I’m still living in this stupid trailer. But, Jenny…she’s a variable that I didn’t count on. So now, I have to see what happens.”

“I get that you’re ready to settle down, Blakey. I get that you’d like some rug rats hangin’ off your ass. But you think a girl that much younger than you is gonna wanna stick around?”

“Fucked if I know. But if she’s half the girl I think she is, then she’s worth fighting for. Damn straight. If I can make her fall for me, that’s what I intend to do.”

“Good luck with that. You got an ugly face only a mother could love and the worst halitosis east of the Rockies. Eeeee hee hee!”

I thank him sarcastically for his support and we laugh. Then I listen to him gossip about his medical staff for a bit, and he tells me––for the hundredth time––that as soon as he’s less wobbly, he wants to come out for a visit. I tell him––for the hundredth time––that as soon as his doc gives him the go-ahead, I’ll welcome him with open arms.

And we sign off for the night.

* * *

As soon as I hit the end button on my phone, my thoughts return to Jennifer. I lock up, turn everything off, strip down to my boxers and lay down on my pull-out bed.

All I have to do is think about how her ass looked in those flimsy panties and my cock practically jumps up. I grasp it and start stroking it, conjuring dirty thoughts about her.

Now, in my mind, it’s she who’s gripping my shaft and stroking it, with that little pink tongue licking the sensitive underside every few strokes.

Hnnnh…. fuck.

Now, she takes the tip into her mouth, sucks on it hard, then releases it, edging her teeth over the coronal ridge. Mmmm.

Now, she’s flat on her back, naked, holding her tits together so I can fuck them, her chin tucked downwards and her tongue greedily licking my glans on every up-stroke.

And now, I picture bending her over my desk, pushing her bountiful cheeks apart and shoving my cock into her soaked and glistening pussy.

Oh, yeah.

I fuck her hard, holding handfuls of that firm and jiggling ass, rocking her lush, curvy body with every stroke, claiming her as my own.

Tightening my hand around my cock as my pretend-Jenny comes, moaning and shaking, her pretty pussy soaking us both.

Fuck, yeah!

Stroking fast now, I come hard, a lot harder than usual. Just thinking about her is waking up a part of me that I thought might stay asleep forever.

After I clean up, I lie back and drift off, thinking about Jenny’s blue eyes and full lips smiling up at me.