"Jack? Jack Lane?" It was the third tentative search for confirmation he'd received since he had entered the bar at Melbourne, Florida's, Radisson Suite Oceanfront Hotel. Because of the swirl of the crowd, he'd only made it about fifteen feet into the room. The open bar was another good twenty-five feet away, and his primary mission now was to reach that bar for a beer.
He could have reacted to the repeated question with irritation. The badge hanging on a string around his neck clearly gave his name in bold red letters that could be read from six feet away—which, of course, was the idea: Jack Lane, 2005. The 2005 graduating class from the nearby Foreign Institute of Technology. The tag bore his college senior class photo as well.
But he didn't react with irritation. He was quite pleased. He now looked nothing like he had then, and that's the whole reason he had come to his tenth college reunion. Some came to such reunions to connect with old friends; some came to trumpet the success they'd become since college graduation; and some came in revenge in "hey, look at me now and suffer" mode.
Jack wasn't here to connect with old college friends. He hadn't had any, really. He'd been that pimply fat guy at the edge of the crowd, the butt of the jokes, the one who would do almost anything for a pat on the head and a bit of a smile. Some of why he'd come was his success since college in business, but most of why he came was for "just look at me now" revenge.
This, of course, was also a function of his business. He owned a string of gyms in Atlanta now and was a national spokesman for a before/after weight-loss program his gyms used. He himself was the poster child for the before/after makeover of that program.
He'd let out all stops in appearing at the first ice-breaker of the reunion. He was wearing a white silk shirt that closely followed the contours of his sculpted chest, including the pop-out of his nubs, and tight trousers tailored to highlight the bulge at the crotch. He'd always been very well endowed—nothing in the weight loss and body sculpting program had changed that—but he'd been such a blubber puss in college that few had found out how hung he was.
He also wore open-toed sandals, without socks. A lover had once told Jack that it took nothing more than looking at his bare feet in sandals to make the man hard, and having found that it seemed to have the effect on others more often than not, Jack was going with the look. And for the previous week, he had spent a great deal of time in the spa at his Atlanta flagship gym, being totally groomed. He was ready to take on the world now, and from the looks he was getting as he moved farther into the room, the world was his.
He'd been so conflicted in college on sexual preferences that he'd done what he could to try both teams—with little success. The school punch had let him fuck her—but then everyone fucked her. Her name was Linda. Jack couldn't remember her last name, but the one that had been given to her by the school crowd was Lays—Linda Lays—and that's the name that stuck in his mind. The forgiving grace was that Linda had been a bombshell. Not too bright, but a great face and figure—she had, hands down, the nicest rack in the college class.
And there had been Sara Fairchild, in much the same boat that he was weight wise, who had actually seduced him. They'd gone a few rounds for a couple of months. He didn't remember why they'd stopped, but neither one of them had gotten past the awkward stage of coupling. And then there were a couple of members of the football team, like the captain of the Panthers that year, Nathan Crosby, who had let Jack suck him off, but who had then made fun of him by gathering other guys on the team around for more of the same. What Jack had really wanted then was to experience being fucked. But it didn't happen.
When Jack had gotten into shape, though, he found he didn't want to be fucked; he wanted to be doing the fucking. And by that time, he had his pick of the young men coming to his gyms.
Jack had come to his tenth reunion to get some of his back with Nathan Crosby, who he had kept track of these past years. After blowing his knee out in tryouts with the Miami Dolphins, Nathan had sunk like a stone. He supposedly had majored in aeronautical engineering at the college, the college being a feeder school for the staff at the nearby Cape Kennedy NASA installations, but he hadn't bothered to go to many classes and never actually got a degree. His life at FIT had revolved around trying to keep the Panthers from having a losing football season. He'd never left Melbourne and now worked as an auto mechanic, not an irrelevant job for what he'd learned from the few aeronautical engineering classes he'd attended.
But Jack had also come because there was someone he really did miss—the one who had established in Jack's mind that he preferred men. Cameron had been younger than the rest of the class—by nearly three years. He was a child prodigy, sent to FIT because he was a momma's boy who his mother wouldn't let out of her sight. He could have gone to Harvard or Yale in mathematics and performed brilliantly there. Instead he stayed in Melbourne, where his mother lived, and started off in mathematics but, being practical minded, switched to computer science.
He had been small and nerdy but was a strikingly good looking blond, with a twinky, but pleasingly muscled torso and a face that was more beautiful than handsome behind those owlish glasses that seemed to accentuate the intense, yet "deer-in-the-headlights" look he had. He dressed half Goth and half beach bum, but neither of those elements in the college accepted him. They were afraid of his brilliance and his propensity to zip any conversation up into the stratosphere where none of those students would have an inkling what the hell he was saying.
Jack had known what he was saying, though. Their friendship had started slowly, building from being the two guys at the edge of the crowd who everyone else was ignoring. And their relationship had almost "gotten there." By graduation they had gotten beyond kissing and into mutual masturbation. But Cameron had made the mistake of inviting Jack home the night of graduation for supper, and the first thing Jack knew, Cameron's mother had gotten her son into Cal Tech for graduate school and whisked him off to California. Jack, after a lot of effort, had found an address for the mother's home on the West Coast, and he wrote a couple of letters. But if they got to the right address, the mother intercepted and pitched them, because Jack never received a letter in turn.
When Jack saw Cameron's name on the "coming to reunion" list, he signed up as well. Jack had never forgotten the man he had thought of as his first love.
"Jack? Is it Jack Lane?" the trim middle-aged man said as the two came face to face while Jack was trying to reach the bar.
"Yes. Hello, Professor Hollings," Jack answered. He was standing nearly nose to nose with the college's drama teacher who had been head of the Communications Studies Department when Jack had attended the college, majoring in marketing. Cliff Hollings had been the one person at the school other than Cameron who had paid any attention to Jack. And he'd paid considerable attention to him. Jack had only been brave and forward enough to start down the road with Cameron and give those blow jobs to the football team because Cliff Hollings had taught him how to beat off and suck off another man.
"My god, Jack, you are gorgeous now," Hollings prissed. "You have transformed yourself. Why, I think I might come in my pants just looking at you."
"Yes, life has been good to me, professor," Jack answered in a low-key voice. He was so past the likes of Cliff Hollings in his sexual development. But, yet, he didn't want to embarrass the man. College had taught Jack a hard lesson in rejection, and Hollings hadn't rejected him in college. He was owed some regard, if not a great deal of respect. Jack had been so vulnerable in those years, and the drama professor had been predatory. There was no doubt in that.
"Are you staying at the hotel? Perhaps later we could get together for a chat."
"Yes, I'd like that," Jack answered, carefully not mentioning that he was staying—alone—at the hotel. "We'll have to chat later. Right now I'd kill for a glass of beer, though."
Jack was helped by the appearance of the class starlet, Lisa Enders, at Hollings' elbow, intent on dredging up memories of the senior class play. Jack took Hollings' momentarily redirected attention as the chance he needed to nudge closer to the open bar—and farther away from Hollings.
He was running up against a barrier, but a very nice barrier. The woman, turned away from him, was wearing a cocktail dress with little or no back to it. Her auburn hair shone, the golden strands running in it picking up and reflecting the recessed lighting in the room. Her figure was perfect from the back. Linda Lay had been a blonde in college, but that was Jack's guess who this was. He wasn't all that excited to talk with Linda at the moment, but he had to get past her somehow to get to the Holy Grail of the bar and the beer he needed.
He wouldn't be ashamed to talk to Linda. She had been half decent to him in college. Half, he thought, because she'd given him the runaround when he wanted to take her for a ride for the experience—because she was training half the male students of the college. But she'd walked into the male locker room of the gym one day, looking for Nathan Crosby—which was why Jack had been in the locker room that day too, naked. And when she'd seen what Jack was packing, she suddenly became quite friendly. They had only fucked twice, but she had come for him both times, which was more than he could say for some of his efforts later with Sara. And she had given him a short course on what to do to please a woman. Those two half-hour sessions had been more valuable information than he had gathered from half of a semester of courses at the college.
But no doubt Linda was here for the same reason he was—for revenge for how cavalierly she had been treated in college. She no doubt would be tracking down all of the men who had fucked her who brought wives and would tease them until the wife had apoplexy. Jack wished her good hunting, but he had his own fish to fry.
