"Why do I find him so fucking hot?" I asked my best friend, Lupe, as we sat on the front porch of the house we shared. It was a hot Summer day, and we were watching Jake Turner work on his father's deathtrap of a car across the street. It was the perfect day to get drunk and gossip about the neighbors.
"Because you have a death wish?" Lupe answered sarcastically, his mocha colored skin glistening with sweat, despite his little electric hand fan's best efforts.
The two of us laughed so loud, it caught Jake's attention. He stopped what he was doing and glared at us for a brief moment before returning to his work. His tall, solid build was as imposing today as it was when we were in high school.
He wasn't the most attractive of men. His nose was twisted with all the fights he had been in during his reign as the school's bully. And his chocolate brown hair was an unruly mess that was in desperate need of a trim. But his eyes, which seemed a little too large for his face, were a dark brown that burned cold with danger. I remember being in the gaze of those eyes. They had a way of making you feel like Jake could see into your soul, revealing all of your darkest secrets.
I watched as he hunched his muscular six-foot frame over the engine of his father's car, revealing the outline of a denim clad, muscular ass I wanted desperately to dig my fingers into while he slowly, deliberately fucked my face. Yep, I had it bad for the guy.
"Seriously, though, you need to get over whatever it is about that guy that makes you wet," Lupe warned me for the thousandth time, pushing an errant dark strand of hair from his handsome face, "He was nothing but trouble when we were in school, and he's still trouble today."
It was true that Jake was the total bad ass in school, which was probably why I had the hots for him. He terrorized everyone who crossed his path- even me. It was his personal mission to make my life in high school a living hell.
Pulling a Budweiser longneck from the cooler, I popped open the bottle and started down the steps.
"What do you think you're doing?" Lupe asked in a harsh whisper, as if I were stealing the launch codes from the government.
"He looks thirsty," I said coyly.
"You're fucking insane, Eric," he hissed at me as I walked down the broken paved walkway to cross the street. The closer I got to the car, the weaker my legs felt. By the time I reached the open hood, I was transformed once again into the queer, blonde weakling that shook in his shoes at the mere sight of Jake Turner. I was sure I would collapse.
Jake looked up at me, rising from what he was doing to the engine. The stained white t-shirt was barely concealing the thick muscles beneath. Stretched and wet with sweat, he may as well have been shirtless.
"I thought you might be thirsty," I managed to say, offering him the bottle of beer.
Jake took the bottle from me and began drinking. I stood there, my jaw agape as he downed the entire bottle, belched loudly, then handed the bottle back to me before returning to his work beneath the hood.
"Okay then," I said stupidly, unable to think of anything else to say.
I walked back toward my house, realizing that I was sweating like a whore in church, and barely breathing when I heard his voice behind me.
"Hey, Eric," he started. I turned to see what he wanted. "It is Eric, isn't it?" I nodded, speechless over the knowledge that he knew my name, or remembered it. High school seemed a lifetime ago. "I noticed you have a basketball hoop above your garage." I looked back at the garage, noticing for the first time that there was one, then looked back at him. "Would it be alright if I occasionally used it?"
"Oh, yeah," I smiled at him, feeling a little embarrassed that I hadn't even noticed it before, "Anytime you feel like it... by all means, have at it."
"Cool," he said nonchalantly, then disappeared behind the hood of the car again.
I crossed the street and rejoined Lupe in the safety of our shaded porch. Lupe had his cell phone in his hand.
"What is with the phone?" I asked. Lupe suddenly remembered he was holding it and stuck it back in his pocket.
"I was ready to dial 911, if this stupid little mission of yours went south. What was he talking to you about?" he asked in a hushed way, as if Jake would overhear our conversation.
"He just wanted to know if he could use our basketball hoop sometime."
"We have a basketball hoop?"
"Yeah, it's over the garage."
"And you said yes?" Lupe panicked, "We're going to have Jake Turner coming to our house unexpected to play basketball at god only knows what time of day or night?"
"It'll be fine," I assured him.
"Uh-huh," Lupe responded disbelievingly.
"Come on," I said, looking to change the subject, "Let's get to work on dinner before we're too drunk to cook."
We went into the kitchen where boiled potatoes and eggs were waiting to be peeled for the potato salad. At least Lupe and I were smart enough to get the cooking we had to do inside the house done before it got hot. The chicken we could cook on the grill out back.
"You know, I'm glad you're thinking about another man, even if he is a potential psychopath," Lupe started. He always talked when he was working in the kitchen, even if there was no one around to listen. "Jake Turner wouldn't be my first choice for a rebound, but at least you're not still pining for that asshole, David."
David McCoy was my only real boyfriend. We were together for a year and a half before he broke up with me to marry a woman he had been seeing for six months. I still wasn't sure what pissed me off more, that he was cheating on me for six months or that he fucked me before breaking the news. I didn't even know why I dated him for so long. I was only interested in one night stands, chasing that ultimate fuck.
If I were honest with myself, I would admit that I believed such a man didn't exist, and if he did he was probably unobtainable. Jake's aggressive manliness had the promise of being fun for a night, but was he my ultimate fuck? Hooking up with the man who once bullied me was a fantasy that had me on the edge of creaming my pants just thinking about it. I definitely couldn't see myself in a relationship with him. I wasn't even sure I could see us together for a quick hook up.
As I worked on mixing the ingredients together, I heard a car's engine rev up. It was loud, the reverberation like mechanical thunder. I guessed that Jake fixed whatever was wrong with his father's car.
"What's up, bitches?" Brian, Lupe's boyfriend, asked as he entered the kitchen from the back door, "I have the charcoal, as requested. Do you want me to start up the grill?"
"That would probably be a good idea," I told him, looking at the time, "If we wait too long, we'll be grilling in the dark.
"It's Summer time, Eric," Brian laughed, "It won't start getting dark until around eight."
"Well, I'll be drunk off my ass by then, anyway," I said, defending my position.
"I'll drink to that," Lupe interjected, handing a fresh cold one to Brian, followed by a quick kiss on the lips.
Brian walked back outside, dressed for casual Friday in an office, his tie barely loosened, to get the grill ready while Lupe and I put the potato salad away to chill and cleaned the kitchen. Afterward, I brought out the chicken, which had been marinating all day in barbeque sauce.
"I'll take that," Brian told me, taking the chicken from me. I sat at the old picnic table and watched him place the chicken neatly on the grill and wondered if he even owned casual attire.
When Brian had the meat on the grill and was about to sit on the bench next to me, he stopped and looked around quizzically.
"What's that noise?" he asked.
