caress the one
the never fading rain
in your heart
Eve knew something was different as soon as she entered Dave's apartment. It wasn't the cologne--he wore that every time--it was the tumbler of ice and rum in his hand. Every other night that she had come over to watch tv, hoping to at least cement a friendship, he had greeted her with either wine glasses or a wine bottle. Eve loved the wine. There was something about sipping the wine and watching crime dramas that relaxed her. Also, Dave was a great listener. Ocassionally she stayed late and they talked. They talked about all kind of things, and she told him all kinds of things. Things she normally didn't tell friends. Private things. Like her ex-boyfriend. Or things that she had done and later regretted; things that, if narrated, would unavoidably tarnish the type of character she was. Dave listened to all of it. He never judged. Occasionally he provided rare and valuable insight, especially into the secret mind of the male, which led to even better advice than her former girl friends could give. There was only one clue, in all of that, about his feelings, and that was the time she had told him he made a pretty good friend. His expression had darkened, and he had paused before replying with a glib remark. It seemed like she could never quite reach him. No matter how much they talked she could not get to the point where they were buddies. There was always this mystery. He hid most of his true emotions, his true passions and every time she thought she could expose it he slipped out of her grasp. Hell, there were entire chunks of his life that he never talked about. But I digress.
That night--the night he met here with a tumber, was the night things got...complicated. It started with the tv watching. He gave her a glass of wine. He drank an unusually large quantity of rum. They watched two more episodes. Eve asked if he felt like a third.
"I can't. Some friends are coming over to play poker. You're welcome to join if you like." He smiled. Eve didn't have money to spend on poker, but they were playing with pennies as the lowest chip and a five dollar buy in, so she figured, what the hell.
His friends came over. They played poker using a basketful of guitar tabs for chips, because the person that normally brought the chips was away a business trip that was really a vacation. The wine and liquor flowed, and Eve saw a side of Dave she hadn't seen before: confidence. Extreme confidence. He leaned back in his chair every hand and gave everyone the same obnoxious grin whether he had a good hand or not. Eve was infuriated when she lost to him and giddy when she beat him. The last round was the round they played where Dave looked directly at Eve and said, "I have pocket aces," just after the flop. The flop had one ace.
"Bullshit," smiled Eve.
Betting escalated, and by the time the river card was down Eve was all in. The river card was an ace. Eve still thought Dave was joking when they revealed their cards. He wasn't. His hand was four aces.
"Fatal mistake," said a friend to the right of him. "You know you got to let the lady win."
Dave just smiled, a big fat annoying grin. Eve was beside herself with anger.
"If you don't get rid of that obnoxious grin, I will," said Eve. He didn't. However, Eve managed to not to reach across the table and slap him like she wanted. Instead, she asked why he had so many guitar picks.
"Because I play," said Dave.
"Bullshit."
Dave left the room and came back with a black guitar with gold trim. He played The Gambler, by Kenny Rogers, and his drunk friends sang along. Eve didn't know it.
"Play something else," said Eve, suddenly realizing that she had had enough wine.
"Well, what do you want to hear?"
"What do you have?" she asked.
His friends left, and Dave went to get the music. Eve followed him in through his bedroom, which was completely unlike the rest of his apartment. A double bed was tucked into one corner. Surrounding it were motorcycle helmets, bicycle helmets, ski helmets, surf boards, bikes, pilot headsets, ropes, tanks, paraphenalia she didn't recognize and many boots of various kinds. Six different colored backpacks were hung along the wall like trophies. Above them was some kind of sword. On the opposing wall hung a saddle and a river kayak. In each of three of the corners of the room stood a headless mannequin supporting a suite. One was a full skiing outfit. Other was motorcycle riding gear, and the third was a wetsuit with a life jacket haning on the shoulders. The suits reminded her of scenes of the bat cave, where batman prepared himself to fight crime. She threaded through the equipment and files of clothing and followed Dave into the walk in closet. Just inside the door, there was another headless mannequin, sporting a simple suite for formal occasions, as if that set of clothing was just as unusual and sparsely used as the others.
Dave's closet was otherwise filled with no clothes, but instead with guitars, pedals, amps, recording equipment, and a boom mike that jutted down from the ceiling. The walls were lined with stacks of music and soundproofing material. During all of their tv "dates" Eve would never have guessed that all this was hiding behind the closed door. When she was done taking it all in she saw him leafing through music. He had switched to an electric guitar, which was strapped onto his back with the neck pointing down. Also, the guitar was plugged into the amp, which wasn't going anywhere.
"Lifehouse?" he asked her.
Lifehouse. Her first boyfriend. High school. Teenage love. Eve hadn't thought about him in a long time. He had been a funny guy. The kind of guy that did his best to be spontaneous, and tried his hardest to act like a bad boy when she knew he really wasn't. He used to throw her down on her bed once every three weeks. Eve knew this because she saw his calendar, and he had written "badass day" on it every three weeks (though changing the day) and those were the days he acted all rough. Eve had tolerated it because she liked it.
Eve cut her reverie short when Dave looked at her. "Sure," she said.
"Hanging by a Moment, or Everything?" he asked.
"Either one."
"Thats a good choice, because I can't actually play hanging by a moment yet."
Eve laughed.
There was not enough room for Dave, a music stand and Eve in the closet, so Eve just held the music for him. The lead into the bridge of the song gave her goosebumps and she forgot all about turning the page. Dave played as much as he could from memory but he couldn't remember all the way to the end and had to stop in the middle of a phrase.
Then, suddenly, they were kissing. The songbook fell to the floor. The guitar was pressed between them.
Eve slid her hand along the guitar neck and undid one end of the strap carefully. She let go of the guitar and slid her hand with the end of the strap up his chest, slowly lowering the guitar to the ground. He stepped over it and she put her arms around his neck. Dave was an unusually good kisser. He went slow, he went fast, and he gave and took. It was like a strange kind of dance. Also, shaving regularly with a barber's straight blade had left his skin baby smooth and inviting. Eve began losing conrol. Before she knew it they were on his bed, and at second base. It felt so, so good. Eve's hormones were raging out of control and her body was responding in all of the vital areas. Her self control was under siege, but she never completely forgot her rules. Something about having to sleep at the guys place three times. No, its two hunny. Wait, thats not it. Keep your clothes on! That was the rule.
They made out for hours. She kept his hands on the outside and her clothing on. Dave was slow and patient. She completely lost track of time, drifting along the edges of her self control. Then the hand groping her ass started moving down and around between her legs. It ignited a fire that Eve could rarely put out and she pushed them apart violently, mumbling something nearly unintelligible about her rules. Even if it had been intelligible, Dave had had temporarily lost his capacity for understanding sentences of four or more words.
Eve looked at the time. Six hours had passed. Six fucking hours.
"Oh this is so not good. I have to go to work in the morning. Oh I can't believe...."
She was gone. She was gone because...? Girls don't like sex?? Who knows.
Dave was...delighted, frustrated, relived, confused, frustrated, euphoric, frustrated, and hopeful. And frustrated. He lay on the bed for a second trying to take it all in. It may be fair to say that he was in heaven, or something like it. He got off the bed and headed to the shower. His shirt was unbuttoned in random places. He ripped it off, hearing the buttons snap against the tiled floor. He didn't care. It had been years since he'd slept with someone, twice that since he'd slept with someone he'd liked. He turned on the cold water and stepped in his most of his clothes still on. He would do whatever it took. Eve was beyond anything he could have imagined--beyond worth putting a ring on.
Eve was also sexually frustrated, enough so that it was an unpleasant bus ride home, but, for inexplicable reasons that are interlinked with the mysteries of her gender, it didn't really appear to bother her as much.
Eve went home and went straight to bed. She did not sleep. She was riled up, and reciting the first hundred digits of pi, which she had memorized in high school, to herself, did nothing. She tried reading, but she was reading Wizard and Glass, and had apparently just reached a sex scene between Susan and the young gunslinger. Eve threw the book, glad that her roomate wasn't there to see her like this. Her pajama top was not thick enough to hide how turned on she was. Thankfully, her roomate was probably off and some anonyous boy's house, fashioning a makeshift condom out of plastic wrap again. Eve really needed to move out.
Eve got out of bed again. She stripped off her pajamas, slid into the pink jumpsuit and locked the door behind her. She was sober now, had in fact been sober for most of the bus ride home.
Carby was delighted to see her, and despite the cold air started on her second key turn. Eve was on the highway before she knew it.
She rode faster than normal. The highways had few cars at that time of night, and she passed them without realizing how quickly she was passing them. She rode a circuit and a half before she started to run out of...whatever it was that had gotten her going. Her but was getting sore from the seat and her crotch mucles were tired of hugging the gas tank and her head was finally getting sleepy. She considered cutting through central city to get back home, but wasn't sure if that was faster or not. Then she saw the black motorcycle behind her.
The rider on the black motorcycle had actually been following her for a full circuit by that point, but that rider was a true--perhaps the true--road ninja. Staying in blind spots, or on the other side of trucks, or riding so that his headlight lined up with one of the headlights on the car behind him--this was all second nature to him. In fact, he had been quite absent minded about it and had to deliberately cross directly behind Eve in order to catch her attention.
Eve was not intimidated this time. In fact, she no longer found other riders, or really most men in general, intimidating anymore. She watched the black ninja come close and pull up to her left. The rider flipped his visor up and looked at her for a second. That's a move she would try later and realize is quite difficult because of the way the wind hits a sideways-turned helmet, but that is not important. Eve recognized the blazing blue eyes of the other rider immediately. It was Biff.
Biff toyed with her, riding in circles around her, coming within half a lane of her. He seemed to instinctively know exactly when to back off to avoid putting her in and danger. Eve started getting into it and started toying back. Her bike could not keep up with his, but it was more maneuverable, and Eve was beginning to understand why that mattered.
Carby was not entirely thrilled with all of the playing around, because he couldn't quite get close enough to catch the other bikes name. It was a girl bike, though.
Playtime was suddenly over when a minivan swooped in behind them and started flashing blue and red lights from the dash. An unmarked car--van. Biff gunned his throttle and roared ahead with a quick wheelie. The front of his bike setted back to the ground like a horse rearing down into a gallop. Eve was caught up in...in something, and followed suite as best she could. She opened Carby's throttle up all the way and Carby slowly climbing through 95 and approached 100. Had they been going downhill, she could have definitely made 105 or 110.
The minivan was unfazed. Biff maximum-braked, gunning his throttlle at the last second just in time to mace pace with her precisely. The cop in the minivan did not anticipate such fine control and swerved to his right to avoid what he thought would be a collision. He was, unfortunately, already calling it in. Biff could see the radio at his mouth. Biff's license plate was untraceable, but he knew Eve's was not, and he had seconds to act, if that. He raised his right arm and swing it forward, telling Eve to keep going. She got the message and...kept her throttle completely open.
Biff hung back and started darting around the minivan, doing is best to cause a scene and endanger the other cars. A faded yellow convertible narrowly missed trading paint with a green sedan. Their average speed had dropped to sixty (fifty six if one accounted for the federally-mandated oversped speedometer on his bike); Eve was half, maybe a quarter a mile ahead.
Biff clicked (shifted) down twice, gunned his throttle and jetted back up to her, feeling like he had one the lottery: she was overtaking a tractor trailor in the right lane, and what put them in the big money was the upcoming exit. There was no time for pointing, only time for herding.
Jason Bourne had tried to herd a journalist through a crowded station in order to escape the clutches of the CIA. Biff had to herd a rider so brand new her pussy stripes (on her tires) weren't even scratched yet, through a maneuver that was would be more than dangerous to an experience rider. This is the point where the question of the physical danger versus the consequences of allowing oneself to be pulled over became relevant. Biff did not ask this question. Instead, he took Eve's life into his own hands.
Eve was in the second lane from the right. The tractor trailer was in the right most lane. The timing had to be perfect, and it was. The minivan passed the back wheels of the big rig just as Eve was fully forward of the engine, from a lateral point of view. Biff swerved towards her, dangerously close, counting on her reflexes. Eve swerved into the rightmost lane, mere feet from the giant ass grill of the big right, and screamed. The exit lane was already branching off; they were missing it, which is actually best. Biff herded her again, this time more violently. Eve swearved again, this time effectively out of control save for reflexes. She narrowly missed the yellow and black striped edge of the guardrail that divided the exit from the highway, barely counterbalancing in time to avoid hitting the other guardrail.
Biff was forced to miss the exit completely, and imediately stopped, spun his rear tire and whipped around him place and launched forward back along the shoulder, into a low speed tight corner turn around the tip of the guardrail. The minivan cop was properly trapped on the other side of the 18 wheeler, but Biff's perhipheral vision caught two black & whites with lights flashing 1.25 miles away.
Eve was at the top of the ramp, stopped, with both feet on the ground, and shaking, when Biff pulled up next to her. Eve was in shock, or something similar. Biff tapped her shoulder to get her attention, and then pointed at two large brick industrial-type buildings that looked neater and smaller than the ones around them. Then Biff was off in that direction, not waiting for her.
Eve gunned the throttle to follow and Carby screamed into the red line. She was out of gear. She jammed her foot with the extra force of adrenaline and this time got herself moving, doing her best to catch up. Right turned, forward a bit, then follow Biff off the road to the left. She had to stop again to let a car go by. She could hear sirens. She was scared out of her mind, and crying slightly.
She entered the alleyway between two brown-brick buildings with the tell-tale rows of tiny square windows of old factories, and pulled up behind Biff in time to see him perform a perfectly calculated low-speed wheelie, slamming his front tire down and forward through a pair of green doors. Eve paused, scared, and expecting the doors to fly back towards her but they didn't. Eve didn't notice this, but the alleyway and the factory floor were swept clean, providing no tracks.
Eve pushed past her fear, and with shaking arms, led her bike through the doorway. Carby was having the time of his life. Jail time and license points mean nothing to a motorcycle. Even getting impounded is fun, he would learn later, especially when he got parked next to those sexy, sexy Ducatis. MMmmm MMm momma has a fairing.
There was little light inside, and Eve had to rely on her headlight (which is always on). She had extreme difficulty navigating past the scary dark shapes and had to put her feet down, resorting to dragging them as she turned her motorcycle. She pulled up to next to Biff's bike in the far back corner. He was already off of his bike with his helmet on the floor. Eve barely came to a stop before he reached over and flipped the red kill switch on her left handlebar.
"Off!" he Barked, motioning he to her right. He held her handlebars firmly, reaching for the kick stand with his own foot and nearly shoving her onto the floor with his hand. Eve was not used to dismounting on the right--it was like writing with the wrong hand. She took her helmet off as fast and she could and hung it on Carby's right mirror. Carby once again wished he could sneeze in protest.
Biff reached above him and pulled a nylon yellow cord, hard. Something large and green that looked like a dumpster started tipping away off the wall towards them. Eve sucked in breath for a scream, but Biff grabbed her by the mouth, painfully, and yanked her to him, holding her with both hands. The giant monstrosity that feel towards them was counterbalanced, and fell lightly enough for Biff to catch with his steel tipped boot, lowering it the last few inches and onto the floor. It settled with little noise. There was some kind of window. Biff shifted moved them to the side of it but did not let go. Eve was breathing loudly and uncontrollably through her nose. There was nothing that could be done about that. The cops were there.
They heard the steady engine of a cruiser fly past the side of the building, continuing pursuite in case they had not stopped. They also heard doors slamming. They saw flashlights. The cop were somewhat persistent, and Biff continued clenching Eve for some time.
Eve was uncomfortable. Biff was holding her jaw to tight. She was literally pressed against his body, with him behind her, and she could feel him through his pants. That was normally enough to gross her out, but his right arm was wrapped around her, and part of his palm was sort of groping her left breast, although it was clear that Biff was not interested in coping a feel but was merely hellbent on keeping her from moving and didn't care what he touched. His hand was right were it needed to be to feel her heartbeat through her rib cage (and the leather) when she was still enough, which is not even possible with most people. Eve could feel his heart beating as well--Biff had somehow also managed to unzip his jacket.
Eve's heartbeat quickened as the persistant cops swung their lights around. Biff closed his eyes, calmed his nerves, and hope that Carby did not have any manner of oil filter leak. Eve felt Biff's heart slow down, and hers followed. The cops appeared to leave, but Biff held her there for quite a bit longer. Eve was starting to feel warm in places that were supposed to be cooling off. Biff hand left her breast--it was on your heart, sugar--and started sliding downward. Eve's pulse quickened. Tried to move. Biff arm quickly reached back to her stomach and pressed her into him even more forcefully.
"Don't!" he hissed. The movement had apparently stirred something up, because something was pushing against her through the fly of his jeans with a little more force. Biff waited a couple of seconds and relaxed. He let go with his right arm again, reaching into his pocket. Eve heard a phone flip open, although the tell-tale blue cell phone glow never appeared. Biff dialed a number by touch. A speaker, a loudspeaker, under a car parked two blocked away came to life and played the sound of a motorcycle engine starting. It was a good diversion. They were both expecting to hear car engines start up, but instead, heard nothing. Biff dark-dialed another number and held the phone up to his ear. Eve could hear the faint twitter of radio chatter and the hearty voice of a female dispatcher. Biff continued holding her and listening to his phone for what seemed like even longer than it took the cops to poke around.
Biff took his left hand off of her mouth, and it fell down to her left hip, where it stayed, his arm encircling her as she turned to face him. She had been righteously furious, as well as scared witliss, and shocked. Those emtions had faded. What was left confused her.
Biff snapped his phone shut and re-pocketed it. "We're clear." They were face to face. Her mouth was inches (actually millimeters) from his. Even though the light was dim, some of it flashed back out of his eyes, which were staring into hers. She could feel his breath on her face and he felt hers on his. Had Biff been a smoker, his breath would have separated them, but he wasn't. Instead, his breath somehow smelled faintly of strawberries.
Their lips drifted together, not like the passionate attraction of two magnates, but like two puzzle pieces falling into place. They began kissing quicker, faster, harder, then pausing for a second. The heat between them creshendoed and paused like the engine of an accellerating motorcycle. Biff, though practiced, was not a gentle kisser. His tounge did not knock before entering and hit bit anything he wanted. His scruffy five 'o clock (or five day?) shadow felt rough against her skin but strangely glorious. That her mouth would be surrounded by red welts meant nothing to her.
Their embrace shifted enough for Biff to slide his hand up her front and tease down the zipper below her collar bones. He kissed and bit around her cheek, down, and opened fire on her neck. Eve became briefly concerned about drying out certain areas of her jumpsuit, but that thought was quickly drowned by lust. Biff slid is hands all over her, teasing her, playing with her. She waited impatiently for his hands to reach her ass, being teased again and again before they finally groped it. Biff lifted her up. Eve squeaked. She was set down on top of Carby, in just the right spot as to avoid and risk of tipping him over with what they were about to do. Her left foot was on the right ped, and right right boot was on the exhaust pipe.
Oh helllll yes, thought Carby.
Eve grabbed Biff's jawbone and held his gauze, like a cowboy staring down a bull, and continued holding his gauze while she slowly unzipped her suit as far as she could. Her white skin glowed. Having fallen behind with her laundry, and having earlier had no intentions of sleeping with Dave, Eve was not wearing a bra that matched her underwear. The bra was purple; the panties were dark green. Fortunately for Eve, since she actually cared about that kind of thing, Biff's eyes were running on rods (and not cones) and both looked the same color to him: black. That's a really important detail.
Biff's hand entered her jacket and cupped her left breast and...ok I'm going to have to abbreviate this paragraph because I don't know who all reads this and after all the clever vaugery I just slushed out I don't want to write the word nipple.
They kissed again. Eve fumbled to release his pants with one hand but didn't manage to open them. Had she managed, this story would have ended quite differently, especially since all practical thought had left Eve's mind and the nearest functioning condom was 3.2 miles away.
Eve gave up on his pants but ran her hand down along them and pushed his other hand down her chest and stomach. A detailed description of everything involved when his fingers passed the elastic of her underwear is, unfortunately, not relevant to this story. What is relevant, is that Biff stopped.
"No." Biff pulled his lips from hers.
"What?" asked Eve. This was most definitely an odd play for the trade federation.
Biff pulled his hand out of her suit. "No."
Eve did not understand. Never in her life had a boy refused sex, ever. In her life. She didn't even think of it as something that would happen. It was so much so that Eve was so accustomed to controlling the momentum of things by simply varying her own resistance. "No" was an extremely strange word to be hearing and not saying. Eve didn't like it.
Biff continued. "How many guys have you said no to?" He grabbed her hips and lifted her off of Carby, who sighed dejectedly. Eve would later realize that Biff was, with rare emotion, referring to something, or someone, in his past.
Eve stood with her mouth open. "What?" For some strange reason she felt guilt. And anger. Again.
Biff ignored her and gave the wall of their enormous green prison a good lift. It swung up and into the wall violently. Eve shrieked and bent slightly, clutching her chest as if someone might see them.
Someone did. Eight officers with their guns drawn.
Just kidding. The cops thought they had gotten away, and wouldn't even be looking for them by the time they rolled out.
Eve zipped up her suit feeling her first ever sting of rejection, save for whatever irrelevant schoolyard dramas had occured before she started wearing a bra. Eve also felt foolish. She was rejected, foolish, and angry, and not in control of what was happening.
Biff mostly ignored her as he suited back up. Then he did something unexpected, just before putting his helmet back on. Had he chosen to pucker his lips into a soundless kiss in her direction, she would have hated him and never spoken to him again. What he did instead was look at her and raise two fingers two his lips. It was an uncharacteristic motion for an uncharacteristic situation, a signal with some kind of inside meaning. It was a mystery, really, but Eve didn't really think about that much because she was pissed and she was horny and she hoped his hardon felt uncomfortable against the gas tank somehow and what is wrong with you girl you just tried to have sex with a stranger in a dirty-ass factory! Rats poop in here! And you did NOT have protection!
The process of getting Carby back out and on the road was ardurous, and the lingering sting of Biff's copulation refusal was not helping, not at all. It just lingered and lingered there, staying with her. Eve couldn't push it out of her mind. She was distracted on the way home, ever fearful that there was a cop waiting behind every corner, but the sober fact is that there had been a shift change, and the cop didn't really care that much about a couple of dumbass crotch rockets. This city, for better or worse, had real crime for them to deal with.
That night changed things. The easiest change to describe is the extra attention Eve would be getting from the city's finest. She would eventually be forced to move to a bigger bike equipped with nitrous oxide.
Precisely 18 hours after Eve bolted from his apartment, Dave sent her a calculated text: "Hey, I had a good time last night :P"
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