Confessions of a Bad Boy (3 page)

I watch her take a slow swig of beer. It’s been a while since we really talked like this.

“It’s a step,” I say sympathetically. “You’re starting out, making connections, paying your dues. You do this for now until something better comes along. It’s just a step.”

“Is it?” Jessie asks, almost as if I can change it. “It feels more like a dead end.”

This time it’s me who picks up the shot and waits for Jessie to do the same. We clink, smile, and drink.

“Do you remember that time when we were in high school,” Jessie says, smiling from the drink hitting her, “and you and Kyle took me to see that shitty punk band I liked?”

“The night he knocked me out?”

Jessie laughs and slaps the bar.

“Yeah I remember,” I say, laughing along. “But I still don’t know what the fuck set him off like that.”

“I was hitting on the lead singer, and Kyle found out. He went for the other guy but then you tried to stop him—”

“And paid the price. Yeah, I figured it was something like that. Most stories involving Kyle start with him getting pissed.”

“And end with someone getting knocked out.”

“How the fuck did he end up a lawyer and not an MMA fighter?”

“Beats me,” Jessie says, giggling. “But he always had a strong sense of right and wrong.”

“For sure,” I say, as we clink, smile, drink again.

The barman slams a couple more shots in front of us. Then more beers. Then more shots. Soon I lose count. And in between the sound of glass slamming on woodgrain we tell more stories. The erotic story I submitted for eighth grade English homework that almost ended up getting me expelled. The time Jessie and Kyle got into a fight over who should beat up one of her ex-boyfriends. The night the three of us spent hours figuring out what to wear for a big costume party at Kyle’s college fraternity – Jessie agreed to help us if we promised to sneak her in – only to arrive and find out it wasn’t actually a costume party.

It's only when we both get up to go to the bathroom that I realize how drunk I am. Just about able to walk and barely able to keep my head from lolling around my shoulders like I’m doing yoga. We wrap our arms around each other for support as we stagger to the bathrooms, still laughing at everything and nothing.

I’m done before her (of course) and I lean up against the wall outside the women’s bathroom, breathing deeply to try and regain as much sobriety as I’ll need to get home. The rooftop party’s already dead, and the only people out on the roof are sitting and talking quietly or passed out completely. I have no idea what time it is, or how long we’ve been here.

Jessie opens the door, sees me, jumps in fright, then laughs hysterically – all in slow-motion.

“Gotta go home,” I say, struggling to wrap my tongue around the consonants. “It’s…” I look down at my watch, but with my beer-goggles I can’t make out the time on the over-designed piece of crap. “Late.”

“I can’t go home,” Jessie says, patting me on the chest as she staggers past.

“Kyle’s obviously not coming,” I slur. “And I’m done drinking. Come on.”

She turns around, her eyes half-lidded, her shoulders slumped. “No. I
can’t
.”

“You
have
to,” I say, trying to sound authoritative, and failing miserably.

“I can’t. That’s what I wanted to tell you. Kyle has the key to my apartment.”

It takes a long time for me to process this information, but Jessie seems happy to sway on her feet and gaze at me like a zombie while I do. “Why does he have your key?”

“No.” She grins. “I lost mine. Kyle has the spare one. No Kyle, no key. No key, no my apartment.”

Jessie giggles like it’s the most hilarious thing in the world. I can’t help joining in.

“Shit,” I finally say, recovering.

She nods and almost falls over. I catch her just in time and she giggles again madly, a sliver of bare skin between her waistband and her shirt directly under my hand. I feel the heat of her skin through my fingertips, like a static shock of intimacy. Even this drunk, it’s the gratifying way it feels that makes me leave my hand there a second longer than I should.

“Wait a second,” I say, managing to connect some thoughts in between the dizzy spells and complete blankness of the drink. “This is a hotel.”

Jessie pushes me.

“This is a
bar!
”

“I mean the building. This building is a hotel. Come here.”

She does.

With my arm around her waist, I manage to guide us into the elevator, down to the main desk, and achieve the monumental task of booking a single room through a drunk fog so thick I can barely remember how to spell my name. With another huge effort I get us back into the elevator, and miraculously remember what floor our room is on. Jessie mumbles something about my furniture-suit, and I laugh along this time.

When we step out of the elevator, I feel like my walk to the room is being directed by Stanley Kubrick, as the walls close in and then stretch out into space, and the pattern on the carpet hypnotizes me to the point where I have to reach out and steady myself on the wall. I thank all the gods for whoever invented key cards as I rub it in the vicinity of the lock and we both go flying through the door, collapsing in a heap on the floor.

Jessie laughs maniacally again. I scramble to my feet and step back into the doorway, putting my hand on the door handle.

“Okay. Okay, Jessie. Good night. And for the love of God, don’t touch the minibar.”

Jessie looks up confusedly at me.

“Where are you going?”

“Back. Back to my apartment,” I slur, gazing down the corridor as if I’ll see it at the end.

“No. No no no no
no
.”

Jessie pulls me by the arm into the room and kicks the door shut behind me. I try to protest, but I can’t think of the words. And anyway, the last thing I want to do is stagger down the streets of downtown L.A. at three in the morning looking for a cab.

I stand in the middle of the room, waiting for it to stop spinning before I make a move. It takes a lot of effort to keep the world from going out of focus, and I can hear blood rushing in my ears. I see a pair of elegant legs, sexy curves leading up to an ass that I want to pull onto my face – then I realize it’s Jessie and look away.
It’s fucking Jessie! My best friend’s little sister.

Then I look back. She’s leaning over the bathroom sink, drinking water from the tap. I let my eyes go back to her ass. The jean shorts she’s wearing suddenly look like the hottest fucking thing I think I’ve ever seen a girl wear. Her shirt’s slipped up a little to the arch of her back, accentuating the curve from the feminine slightness of her waist down to her hips. I can’t help imagining what it would be like to take her from behind and—
What the fuck am I thinking?
But it’s like she’s someone else. Like she’s just another hot girl with an ass that’s begging for me.
But it’s Jessie.

I move over to the armchair in the corner opposite the bed and drop down into it. I take my shoes off, then my blazer, and lean back. She comes out of the bathroom and walks over to the bed. I can’t stop looking at her legs, then feeling ashamed, and then looking even harder. She unties her plaid shirt and throws it off, leaving just the t-shirt on. It tightly hugs her breasts, and I see she’s not wearing a bra. I go dizzy from watching her tits bounce when she slumps back onto the bed.

“I’m so fucking wasted,” she says, laughing softly. She rolls her head to the side and looks at me, smiling. “What’s the matter? You look like you’re gonna hurl.”

“This is my drunk face,” is all I can manage to say. It sounds better than, ‘I’m trying to not fuck you.’

She keeps looking at me, then suddenly sits up on the edge of the bed, a mischievous grin on her face.

“You’re fucking hard!”

“What?”

She points in the general direction of my crotch. “You’re fucking hard! I can see it!”

“I’m not hard,” I say, standing up, which only makes the fact I’m about as hard as I can get even more obvious.

“Yes you are!” Jessie says, moving toward me and reaching out clumsily for my cock. She fumbles her hand over it, and my reactions are way too slow to jump back, leaving us standing there, inches apart, her hand clutching my rock-hard erection through my pants.

“Uh. Guess I am.”

I put my hand over hers, but I don’t have the willpower to pull her away. Her smile drops, she bites her lower lip, and her eyes dilate as she looks up at me. Everything comes zooming into sharp focus. I can hear her breathing and my own, feel the heat that’s radiating off her. It’s as if time stops for a few seconds. We’re thinking the same thing.

This is wrong for so many reasons. It’s wrong because we’ve grown up together as friends. It’s wrong because her overprotective brother (who also happens to be my short-tempered best friend) would go fucking crazy. It’s wrong because she’s a sassy-mouthed costume artist who doesn’t take any shit, and I’m a smart-talking talent agent who trades in bullshit. It’s wrong because this one single act could ruin so many of the best things in both of our lives.

But the fact remains, we’re alone in a hotel, she’s wearing jean shorts that are driving me crazy, and I’ve got a hard-on that could drill granite – all the wrong in the world isn’t going to stop the inevitable from happening.

* * *

I
wake
up feeling like my head’s been dried, roasted, and half-chewed by the neighborhood dog. My tongue feels like it’s growing its own beard, and there’s an uneasy feeling I might never know which way is up again.

But at the same time, I feel pretty fucking awesome. The kind of beat-up, bruise-wearing triumph that I imagine boxers feel when they’ve taken a hell of a thrashing but still won.

It lasts about four seconds. About the time it takes me to realize that the pressure on my bicep is Jessie’s head. About the time it takes to realize I’ve just fucked my best friend’s little sister. About the time it takes to realize I’m a dead man.
If
he finds out.

Slow and tense, as if defusing a bomb, I pull my arm out from underneath Jessie’s head, and shift slowly away from her. Maybe it’s the way my ears are ringing, or the fear of what might happen if she wakes up, but everything seems as loud as if it’s amped up; the rustle of the bedsheets, the soft moans in her breathing, the brush of my stubble against the pillow.

After pulling myself out of bed like the slowest ninja in the world, I start moving around the room and picking up my discarded clothes from the night before. I find most of them, but either my left shoe decided to go for a walk on its own, or I’m going out of my mind. I decide to risk one last look under the bed before I put it down as a casualty of war, and get down on all fours on the same side as where Jessie’s sleeping.

“Shit,” she says, and I realize she’s awake, looking at me.

I swallow, and wonder if the bad taste in my mouth is the hangover, or the guilt.

“Uh…yeah,” I say, slowly getting up. “Shit.”

Jessie shifts up and back in the bed, sitting up against the headboard, the top half of her body out of the sheets – naked. Her tits are luscious and perfect, and suddenly a rush of memories from last night hit me with all the relentless power of a freight train.

I look away and clear my throat loudly until she realizes she’s exposed, quickly pulling up the sheets to cover herself.

I go to the end of the bed, as if unable to trust myself if I get any closer to her, and sit down, rubbing my forehead roughly.

“This is bad,” I say, breaking the awkward silence between us.

“Yep,” Jessie replies.

“We shouldn’t have done that.”

“Nope.”

I get up and start pacing.

“If Kyle finds out about this—”

“He
won’t
find out,” Jessie interrupts quickly.

“But if he does—”

“Why would he?”

“I’m a fucking dead man.”

“Nate!” Jessie says, making as if to get out of bed before realizing she’s still naked. “Calm down. I thought you did this kind of thing all the time?”

I turn around to glare at Jessie, pressing my hands together and pointing them at her.

“I do. When I don’t know the girl. When I’m never going to see the girl again. When I haven’t been friends with the girl’s brother since I was out of diapers.
This
is not something I do all the time.”

Jessie sighs and slumps back against the headboard as I continue to pace.

“Do you even remember anything?” she says, after a while.

I stop for a second. “No,” I lie, flashes of Jessie’s ass swaying in my hands immediately playing themselves out in my mind. “I don’t remember a thing.”

“Okay,” Jessie says, tightening the sheet around her body as she gets up out of the bed, “then maybe we can just forget this ever happened.”

I look at her as if she’s just solved the secret of life.

“You think we can do that?”

She shrugs, her bare shoulders making me immediately remember how she went down on me, my hands in her hair as she bobbed back and forth, sucking me hard into the back of her throat, her moans reverberating against the head of my cock.
Fuck, snap out of it.