by Amy Brent
Kellan had, in the meantime, lit three more of those little tabletop candles—he’d found them under the register. It was going to be a long night. He wished there was a book, or even a magazine. He envied Truman, who had one of those smartphones, although to save the battery he wasn’t using it to entertain himself. He was, instead, sitting at a booth, trying to build things from sugar packets and toothpicks. Kellan wished he’d remembered to bring the playing cards. They were usually in his back pocket but they must have fallen to the ground while they were wrestling Truman into the diner.
She took a seat in the booth and took her phone out of her pocket. “What’s the news?” asked Truman.
She shrugged, casting a suspicious look at them—Tucker had already tried his advances and gotten nowhere and now she thought they might be trying the same. When Tucker came out of the kitchen Kellan glared at him. Tucker just cast him a knowing smile.
Outside, the snow had reached the windows of the diner, but the power was still out so they still couldn’t see much past the windows. “Ain’t nothin’ out there to see,” she said, as they stared at the receding ghostly shroud.
“When do you think the snowplows will get out here?” asked Kellan, turning on his stool at the counter to face her.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Marvin says it’s usually a day or two for the usual little bits of snow, but you can drive in that as long as you have chains. This—I don’t know. Three or four days, maybe?”
“Well, at least we’re here,” Kellan said.
“Yeah, but we were supposed to get a new shipment of food tomorrow,” she said. “We got maybe enough pancake mix and hot dogs and eggs for a couple more meals, but that’s it.
“We’ll help you shovel out,” Kellan said. “How far you live?”
“Just ‘bout a mile down Route 26,” she said.
“We can give you a ride home to your place, too.”
“Thanks,” she said. “But it ain’t so bad here. I got company, at least.”
“Hey, anybody wanna try Texas hold ‘em?” asked Tucker, taking out their playing cards—so that’s where they were, Kellan thought.
“It only gets good if you have something to bet,” said Kellan.
“I ain’t playin’ no strip poker,” Shandy said.
“Well shit,” Tucker said, “you saw right through me. Seriously, though—we can bet sugar packets, and the winner gets—uh…”
“Fuckin’ shut up already,” Kellan snarled. “Leave the lady be. She don’t want your hands on her, keep your hands off her, then.”
Tucker protested, “I ain’t botherin’ her none—I may be a horndog but I ain’t a pig. Just sayin’, maybe a card game would be a nice way to pass the time. We got three days, say, b’fore the snowplows come? We’re gonna need somethin’ to do.”
“I remember weather like this in New England,” said Truman, suddenly. They all turned to him, surprised to hear him speaking. “When it gets this bad the only thing you can do is pull over to the nearest place and hope that whoever’s there lets you ride it out. All I could see as neon lights, so I got out and went in. Turned out to be a strip club.”
The other two laughed, mostly out of disbelief. “Truman, you tell a fine story but you’re shit at lyin’,” said Tucker.
“It’s true!” Truman protested.
“You expect us to believe that Mr. Virgin spent a night holed up in a club full of naked women and didn’t get any?”
“There were families there,” Truman said, smugly. “I wasn’t the only one who’d gotten stranded in that weather.”
Shandy had a strange look on her face—she was remembering her own story. “This one time I got a flat,” she began. “So I was changing it when a guy comes along. He tells me that if I let him grab my tits he’ll change it out for me.”
“I hope you kicked his ass,” said Kellan.
“I told him, ‘Okay, fair deal, but you gotta change the tire first. And clean up when you’re finished’.”
“You didn’t really—” Tucker began.
“So I’m sitting in the driver’s seat, and after about twenty minutes or so he tells me he’s done, just gotta put the jack and wrench back. I remind him what our deal is. He puts the things back in my trunk, closed it, and I started the engine and peeled out of there—but I did leave him a piece of paper, with ‘My Tits’ written on it.”
Even Tucker had to laugh. Kellan suspected that he’d had that trick pulled on him once or twice, too.
“Thank you,” she said, suddenly. “All of you.”
“For what?” asked Kellan.
“For not being grabby horndogs,” she said. “You have no idea how many guys grab my ass every day, or try to grope my tits.”
“Seems like just a courtesy to extend to the lady who’s lettin’ us weather a storm,” said Kellan.
“You ever tell the manager?” asked Truman.
She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Wanna know what he said? ‘Stop wearin’ underwear.’ That’s what he said.”
Tucker was shaking his head. “Man,” he said, “not even I’m that bad. So that’s why you don’t want to be touched.”
“That’s the thing, though,” she said. “I do want to know what it’s like. I ain’t never had no boyfriend. I ain’t never done one of those frat parties where the goal is to hook up.”
“So what’s keepin’ you?” asked Kellan. “You could have your pick of the lot. I’ll betcha that you could go to any club, walk up to a guy—married or not—and tell him to come home with you, and he would.”
She blushed, not believing it for a second. “Men ain’t never seen me for much except a nice piece of ass to grab,” she said quietly.
“Then they’re the one who’re losers,” Tucker said.
She shook her head. “I want my first time to mean something, you know? With a man that I love who understands that I’m giving him a piece of myself. Those men, though—you ain’t findin’ ‘em here.”
“What if you just ain’t lookin’?” asked Tucker.
“Tucker,” scolded Kellan.
“If you’re thinkin’ you’re it,” she began, but Truman interrupted, asking, “How would you know he was the one?”
She didn’t quite know what to say—the question had never occurred to her, and now, as she thought of her dream man—the perfect man who didn’t exist—she realized that he looked a lot like Truman, but with Tucker’s glib wit, and Kellan’s manners.
What if they’re what I’ve been looking for this whole time? Could they—she shook her head, trying to get rid of the ridiculous idea, but her flustered state wasn’t lost on Tucker. “You got the sweets for one of us,” he teased. “Which one is it?”
Damn him, she thought. How could he read her so well to know she was thinking about them? If she wasn’t careful—
“All of us?” Tucker asked, incredulous. “My, my, all you had to do was say so.”
“Tucker!” scolded Kellan. “Ain’t no way to speak to a lady!”
“A lady don’t think like that,” Tucker said.
“You callin’ me a whore?” she demanded.
Truman looked shocked, but Tucker hadn’t even flinched. “See, here’s the thing,” Tucker said. “You always been told that a lady is a good thing, that anythin’ not a lady is bad—”
“Oh God, not this shit again,” groaned Kellan, but Tucker ignored him and continued. “Ladies are this and ladies are that but one thing they almost never are is true to who they really are inside. The women that we admire—the ones that get off their asses and get shit done—we call those women lots of things: rebels, visionaries, daredevils, brave—but we don’t call ‘em ladies.”
She was sure there had to be more to this overly-simplistic explanation. He’d clearly given this speech a million times before—he knew what to say and how to say it so that she would be rethinking everything she knew about being a lady. He was obviously trying to get her to agree to doing something with them.
I
t didn’t mean that he wasn’t right.
“So, you’re saying, being a lady is a bad thing?” asked Truman.
“I ain’t sayin’ that at all,” said Tucker. “Some women are ladies, born and bred—they’re ladies inside and out. They like sittin’ with their legs crossed and drinkin’ tea with a pinky in the air. And if you like that, then that’s great-but I don’t think you are, are you, Shandy?”
“And you want me to ask you what you think I am?” she asked.
“I don’t know what you are,” Tucker said. “I do know that you ain’t a lady.”
An odd sort of silence descended upon the diner. One of the candles sputtered and died. Kellan got up to get a new one, using the other candles to light it. They’d reached a “what now?” moment in the conversation—a point where she could either choose to let them have her or else they could just sit there for three days until the snowplows came to dig them out.
Outside, the snow had finally stopped falling and the sky had that odd glow from the reflection of the snow on the ground, but that didn’t mean they could start shoveling out. A quick glance at Truman’s phone showed them that while the worst of the weather had passed, there were still patches of snow blowing in. “An additional six to eight inches,” Truman said, whistling in amazement. “I can’t even see the truck.”
“That’s Oklahoma for you, kid,” said Tucker.
“I’m from New England,” Truman said. “I know what real snow is.”
“So,” Tucker said, turning to Shandy, “Which one of us do you want to see naked first?”
Shandy felt her mouth fall open. Kellan scowled and protested, “Tucker!” Truman giggled nervously.
“What?” Tucker said. “She’s already thinking of sex with the three of us—you got anything better to do? We ain't leavin' 'til the weather clears up. So the way I see it, we can have ourselves a good time while there's nobody around who knows or cares, or we can sit around like a bunch of boring people until we get plowed out."”
“He does have a point,” Truman said to Kellan.
“Only if she wants to,” Kellan said, grumbling. By now he’d figured out that it wasn’t going to get any better if he kept whining about it.
“Do you?” Tucker asked.
She shrugged shyly. “Like I said, I don’t know,” she said. “I ain’t never done this before.”
“What’re you afraid of?” Tucker asked.
Pain? Humiliation? There were those, too—but after some thought she realized that what had kept her back was, “What if it’s not as good as people say it is?”
“Well, with the three of us, I don’t think that’s very likely,” Tucker said mildly. “I am, after all, the one they call Ten-Foot-Tucker because—”
“She don’t need all the details,” Kellan said.
“Do you trust me?” he asked. “Do you trust me to make your first sexual experience so wonderful you’ll be walkin’ on sunshine, singin’ in the rain, dancin’ on the clouds, and all that good stuff for the next ten days?”
Moment of truth. Leap of faith. She took a deep breath, and whispered, “Yes.”
"Well, that's a start," said Tucker, looking over at Kellan. The man looked incredulous, as if he couldn't believe that Shandy had just admitted that she could be interested. It annoyed her a bit, truth be told: she'd never had anyone--that didn't mean that she didn't want anyone. She was only human. And she wanted another chance to explore the side of her that got excited by the thought of being touched by another person. Was it so wrong to be curious? Was it so wrong to want contact?
Kellan coughed and said, "Tucker, the lady is doing us a favor--"
"And we're doing one right back at her," Tucker returned, grinning. "Come on, man--you know you've been wanting to tap that ever since she opened the door."
"No, I haven't," growled Kellan, but there wasn't any conviction in his voice. He didn’t seem to be one of those missionary types who preached abstinence at every turn, but at the same time he seemed uncommonly uncomfortable with the idea that Shandy was just starting to warm up to. "I just don't want to be a party to the heartbreak that follows after. You know what he does, Shandy?" he asked, turning to her. "He charms ladies into bed with him, fucks 'em senseless until they can't hardly tell left from right, and then right when she thinks he's in love with her, he leaves 'em--"
"Be fair, Kellan," protested Tucker. "I told 'em b'fore I fucked 'em that I wasn't the marryin' type. They said they could live with that. And it was a damn good time for us all, wouldn't you say?"
"You've done it on one woman together?" Shandy asked. She wondered what it felt like, having two men on her body at the same time--how did that work? Would it hurt? She'd once chanced upon three men and a girl doing an amateur porn shoot behind a restaurant, where she'd spent a day washing dishes in exchange for gas money. She had been too startled to turn away, and when they realized that she was watching they actually invited her to join them. The girl was naked already, her pussy pink and shining and the word “taut” for some reason came to mind, her breasts red and swollen from being squeezed. She didn’t seem the least bit fazed by Shandy coming around the corner, and for just a moment Shandy wondered what it was like, being so comfortable with being naked that she didn’t even try to cover up when a stranger walked by. “Hey, miss,” said the cameraman. “If you want in on this—” he said, groping the girl’s breast—and even through her surprise Shandy could tell how soft it was. “If you want a piece of this you gotta tell us now. Light won’t last forever.”
“Ah, just let her watch,” said one of the men. “It’s probably her first time seeing porn.”
“Bet you ain’t never seen one this big before,” laughed the other, whose pants were down around his ankles. He waved his enormous, meaty cock at her, and then it was huge—Shandy couldn’t help but stare, bug-eyed, at it. “Should we show her where we’re going to put it?” he asked the girl. Before she could say anything the man pushed the girl in front of him and bent her over—and that was when Shandy’s legs came back, but not before she saw the look of agony on the woman's face. They were hurting her, get help, she thought, but that was countered by the shuddering sigh floating down the alley after her. To this day Shandy still felt a little guilty about it. Shandy wasn't naive--she knew what porn was (she even knew a few girls who did it to pay the bills) but it was astounding how many people were involved in it, and how many people were willing to expose themselves to the world.
"Actually," said Tucker, "it was his idea. Something about her not being able to come with just one cock inside her or something."
"We were both drunk--tipsy, at the very least," Kellan grumbled, his face turning red. "And then she broke up with me to be with him, except that he'd already moved on to another girl, but I’m the one left looking like a dick."
"Don't you ever feel like you lost something when you have sex like that?" she asked. "I mean doesn't it lose its specialness after a while?"
"Oh honey," Tucker said. "Sex isn’t losin’ anythin’. It opens you up, pushes your limits, makes you feel like a new person."
"And then after?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, after you either keep on havin’ fun or you stop. Women all want to get serious, want a relationship, that sort of thing. Ain’t never met a girl who wasn’t afraid to say, ‘That’s bullshit, it ain’t for me’,” he said.
And she felt his hand holding on to her knee. And that feeling, when she saw all those naked girls dancing in the club, came back to her. Except that this time, running wasn’t an option. She was sitting in at a booth, with Tucker next to her and the other two across from her—they’d let her go if she told them to stop, but what he was doing, the soft touch of his hand on her thigh, the slow, rhythmic pushing and pulling of her leg, just a few inches, felt good enough that she didn’t completely want it to stop. Yet.
She turned to look at him, a little frightened, a little nervous. Tucker was smiling at her. “Why don’t you sit up he
re,” he said, patting the table.
She couldn’t hide her quivering body as she obeyed him. The dress she wore was very short, whenever she bent over (and she did, frequently, because the horny men who grabbed her ass liked to thrown things on the floor for her to pick up) it would ride up so that it would just reveal the edges of her underwear, so getting on the table no doubt gave all the guys a nice good view. But in a strange way, the thought of them seeing her excited her—finally, someone who appreciates me, her body seemed to be telling her, and what a fine-lookin’ bunch they are.
In the back of her mind, she kept going over what a terrible idea this was: whatever happened to that special someone? Waiting to get married? If this guy ain’t special, then none of them are. He’d promised a good time, hadn’t he? He’d promised that they’d show her what it was about.
“Truman,” Tucker said. “Why don’t you get off your lazy ass and give the girl a neck rub?” he asked, as he guided her knees apart. Tucker reached up and began to unbutton her dress, exposing her shoulders and the straps of her bra.
“Let’s help her lose this, Kellan,” Tucker said.
She heard Kellan sigh and mutter, “I have no idea how you do this,” and she turned to him and said, “It’s all right.”
He nodded and smiled—so he had been thinking about this ever since they came in. “Kellan,” Tucker whispered, “is the best knot-tier in the world. He’s got fingers and hands so dextrous he can take off your panties without you even feelin’ that he’s been there.”
Shandy gasped in alarm and wanted to look to see if her underwear was still there, but then she realized that they would also be watching her, and for a split second the shame overrode her desire—but only for an instant, because Tucker still had her chin in his hand and he wasn’t letting her look down. She could only see into his eyes. Trust me.
“Just relax,” Tucker repeated. “We won’t hurt you none. Come on, now, lean back—easy does it.”
Behind her, Truman stood up on the seats and began pressing his hands into her neck. She could feel her muscles relaxing under his touch, and the first sigh—more contentedness than pleasure at this point—escaped her.