Nipples that were gloriously, achingly hard. The sloping curve of her breasts had those nipples canting slightly upward, jutting out as if demanding to be touched.
So, I just stood there and stared wordlessly… because I’m evidently a pig or something.
“Al?” she asked. “You alive over there?” Bridget added sarcastically. “So what now? Do I need to turn left?” She did. Oh, thank you.
“Or do I turn right?” She did that too, adding a big arch to her back. Thank you even more.
“Speak up, dude! Do I bend over?” Now she bent a fair amount at the waist, letting them dangle! Honestly, I was dying.
“Seriously, Alistaire,” Bridget said with some real acid in her voice, punishing me with that name, after so recently letting me off the hook with a courtesy ‘Al’. “What do you want?” she ground out acidly.
I’ve talked about my filters, the social interaction ones that my hormones and Male Instinct had repeatedly trashed in recent times? Letting a little slip through those filters at times had actually served me well, right up to my now evident destruction. Well, my hormones were saying that while Bridget might be sounding, she certainly not acting, like she hated me. And my Male Instinct was screaming to kiss her, or smile, or… just at least say fucking thank you.
All I knew was that she had taken that bra all the way off, and was making no move to put it back on…
So I deliberately didn’t open up my filters. I didn’t let them droop. I set them completely the fuck aside.
“What I want,” I began, softly and deliberately, tearing my eyes off those incredible tits and staring right into her green-irised depths. “What I want is to fuck your gorgeous brains out.”
Those emerald eyes widened instantly, bright as stars.
And she laughed. Not some little titter of nervous delight, either. This was a full-throated burst of outright hilarity. She laughed hard.
Nay, she guffawed.
She laughed so hard that she had to bend over to remain standing. That had been awesome before, but this time she drooped her head too, and her tightly curled, blazing red hair hung low enough to obscure the final views I was ever going to get of that amazing body.
Shit.
Fuck you, hormones. Fuck you, Male Instinct. You have failed me when it mattered most. You failed me with Bridget.
You failed me with Bridget, who was a better friend than any other girl-hell, a better friend than pretty much any other guy, either. Who had practically been the foreman on building up my self-confidence from scratch to the point that the last month had even been conceivable. Bridget, who had just laughed in my face when I told her, in admittedly the most over-the-top manner imaginable, that I was attracted to her.
Sometimes, you just need to walk away from the rubble.
I managed to keep my shoulders back and my back straight as I turned away. I could hunch over and sob once I was out of sight.
“I didn’t say no,” I heard from behind me.
In this world, there is hope arriving unlooked for.
And then there is Gandalf showing up with Eomer and the riders of the Westfold on the third day.
And then there were those four words.
Look. It would be nice to say that this meant the beginning of the romance of my life, all glorious roads having led me to that crossroads. Cue the violins.
But no, it did not mean that. We were eighteen year-old people with less than a month left together in high school before we went off in opposite directions. And I’m not that guy. Or, at least I wasn’t then. We’ll see if I ever get there.
But what it did mean was pretty damned important to me. It meant I wasn’t going to be murdered. It meant my friend didn’t hate me. And it meant that I. Was. Going. To. Tap. That.
All of that went through my head, even the bit about not cuing the violins, in the time it took me to finish the step I was taking. I pivoted on the landing foot, and strode right back toward Bridget, at a considerably more peppy pace.
She laughed again, though with less hilarity and more affection. But she held up her hand like a traffic cop. I almost didn’t register the gesture because I was too busy appreciating how this presented new and fascinating effects on how those tits hung.
“But I didn’t say yes, either,” she said, cutting hard through my fog of, well, my fog of lust.
I stopped abruptly.
“Okay,” I said, softly. I wasn’t sure what to do. I sure as hell wasn’t going to be demanding. I didn’t want to show any major signs of feeling denied, as if I were owed something. All I could wisely show was simple, confused, disappointment. Since I was confused, and on the verge of being disappointed, that was easy to go with.
“Sorry,” Bridget said, uncharacteristically flustered. Of course, she was uncharacteristically topless, so it was suddenly par for the course… “Sorry,” she said again. “I’m just… I need to decide.”
Her voice had all sorts of tones I was not used to with Bridget. Uncertainty, doubt, maybe even… yeah, fear? I took a single step toward her, not hungrily this time, but instinctively, as she seemed like she needed support.
“Wait,” she said, holding out both hands this time, but less assertively. Damn, every time she did anything different, those tits presented something new and crazy hot. “I’ve got to talk this out, out loud. Will you listen?”
“Of course,” I said. Listening, I could do. I had always been good at that.
“I mean, sure,” she said, as if she had she had already been talking, which she probably had, just inside her head. “I was mad-I am mad that they both knew about what was going on, and I was kept out of the loop. Serious party foul, man. I mean that. But that was not why I was so fucking mad, much as I wanted all three of you to think so.”
She heaved a deep breath. “But let’s face it, Alistaire, I was-I am, full-on green-eyed monster jealous. I could not believe that they got to, they both got to… take a shot at you, each more than once, I’m guessing, and I didn’t.”
She took a deep breath. “Dammit, I was there first!” But then she took another breath. She was not sobbing, not even on the verge of it, I didn’t think. But she just needed air to get out all the feelings that even the run and the race could not. “And I could not even justify the anger. I mean, I had, in fact been there first, and done nothing. I never even thought about doing something. Not even this year, before this all happened. I just kept on treating you like…” she gasped regretfully. “I treated you like… I don’t know… a super high-end flat screen TV with all the streaming services,” she said at last. Honestly, one of those sounded pretty awesome to me. Then she tried to clarify, “Just a kind of thing that was always lying around to entertain me when I didn’t have something else to do. God, Al, I’m so sorry for that.”
I said nothing and just made sure she could see there was no resentment in my eyes. That situation pretty much described all that my shy self had ever wanted back in the day-from her, or Beth, or Carla, or even from Ben, Adam, and Tres. Just to be counted on and valued.