Traces of Desire
Copyright© 2025 by Big Ed Magusson
Chapter 12
When I got back to my dorm room, Len was out. I sank into my chair and stared at the room. I needed to do something. Anything. My eyes fell on the computer and I realized I hadn’t even turned it on yet. I could kill some time by firing up Zork, but...
I couldn’t stop thinking of Ann storming off.
Yeah, I’d screwed up.
And I didn’t even need someone else to tell me how. How would I feel if a woman had told me that I was her second choice? I’d probably be pissed off, too.
And the thing was, I liked Ann. I really hadn’t thought of her romantically because she’d always been with Kelly. But now...
I sighed. If I was honest, her being with Kelly wasn’t the only reason. I liked her, but I didn’t like her, if that made sense. I felt guilty about that, even as I second-guessed myself.
Would I have slept with her?
She had great tits, I had to give her that. Full and large with great, fat nipples.
They weren’t as perfect as Lori’s, but—
God, what was I doing?! Thinking about Lori was exactly what had led me to screw things up with Ann.
I’d screwed up with Ann. Maybe I could’ve done something different...
I never turned on my computer. My mind was still running loops when Len blew into the room. He held up a newspaper.
“Got it! 7:30 showing at the AMC on Arapahoe,” he said, “Liz and Sandy are both in.” Then he looked at me and stopped. “Oh. Hold on. Are you okay?”
“Uh ... yeah,” I lied.
I must not have been convincing because he dropped the newspaper on his desk and sank into his chair. “What happened?”
I shrugged noncommittally.
“You don’t want to go to the movie now?”
I shook my head. “Nah, it’s got nothing to do with that.”
“Oh ... wait. You were meeting your friend.”
“Yeah. Ann.”
“Ah. Is she okay?”
“She’s bitter.”
“No surprise.” He waited a bit, and when I didn’t speak, added, “Is ... there more?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about it. Except ... Len was probably the one person I could talk about it with. So I took a deep breath.
“This is confidential, okay?” I said.
“Yeah. Sure. Of course,” Len said.
I took another deep breath. “She ... she made a pass at me last night...”
“Oh, so you slept with her.”
“No! No, I ... I turned her down.”
“Ouch!”
“Yeah...”
“So ... why did you turn her down?”
He was genuinely curious, so I figured I’d give him an honest answer.
“She was drunk,” I said. “It wouldn’t’ve been right.”
“Doesn’t stop a lot of guys.”
“Stops me,” I snapped.
He held up his hands defensively. “Didn’t say you would. I know you’re a good guy.”
“Those guys disgust me.”
“Me, too, Dude. Me, too.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d never take advantage of a woman when she’s drunk.”
He nodded agreement.
“Besides, she’d just been dumped by her boyfriend.”
“Yeah. She was vulnerable.”
“Maybe if things had been different...”
“Yeah,” he said. “Once she’s recovered a bit, she’ll remember you’re a good guy.”
I snorted.
“What?”
“That’s me. The good guy. The safe guy. Good old safe Mike Mahoney.”
He tilted his head and regarded me for a moment. “Is that what she said?”
“Yeah.” I snorted.
“And you don’t want to be safe.”
I threw up my hands. “I don’t know. Yes? No?” I huffed in disgust.
“Okay...?”
“She doesn’t want safe,” I explained. “She’s mad about what I didn’t do last night.”
“Yeah ... but she was drunk, and you explained that, right?”
“Yeah,” I sighed.
“So what’s the problem?”
“Well ... then I stuck my foot in it. Bad.”
“More than you just told me.”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you do?”
I didn’t want to use Lori’s name to her brother, so I took a moment to choose my words.
“I told her I was interested in someone else and she was my second choice.”
He chuckled, he actually chuckled, deep and low. When I shot him a dirty glare, he caught himself.
“Oh, you really stepped in it,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Well ... there’s other fish in the sea.”
“You would know, wouldn’t you?” I shot him another glare, but this one lacked heat.
“Whoa, whoa!” Len recoiled. “Hold on. I’m trying to be your friend here.”
I grimaced. “Sorry. That was a low blow.”
“Yeah ... well...” He thought for a moment. “We need to cheer you up, and I know exactly how.”
“How?”
“Grab your suit,” he urged. “We’re going to the pool.”
Somehow in the next half hour, Len wrangled up a whole crew to go over to the pool. A whole crew of women. Julie came along, but so did four women I’d never met before—Robin, Kristi, Erika, and Beth. Being outnumbered five to two, it sometimes felt like Len and I were just along for the ride as they chatted and laughed among themselves. But I didn’t mind. Yeah, I might be ‘safe Mike Mahoney.’ But ‘safe Mike Mahoney’ was hanging out with five hot women.
I’d expected Julie to wear an athletic one-piece, but she instead had on a modest bikini. It actually showed off the muscle tone of her arms and abdomen. When I looked at her, my mind called up the image of her bare breasts. I started to blush, but looked away. When I looked back, she was smirking, and then just patted the lounge chair next to her. I sat down and we chitchatted about nothing at all. Meanwhile, I watched the others behind my sunglasses.
On the other side of us, Erika and Beth sat together trading snarky comments about the other people at the pool. Both had sharp, sarcastic wits that matched the quickness of their gestures and the tightness of their bikinis. The quips and laughter flew fast and furious.
I also watched Len somehow flirt with both Robin and Kristi at the same time. Robin was slim and short with thin fingers that could’ve been wings. She liked fanning them in “jazz hands” as she talked. When she did move, it was with a dancer’s grace and I could easily imagine her in ballet slippers. Kristi moved slower, her words more measured. Her chest was heavily freckled, right to the edges of her bikini top. When she laughed, her large breasts jiggled. Len made her laugh a lot.
“Kind of impressive,” Julie murmured.
“What?”
“Len.”
I gave her a quizzical look.
“He’s a charmer.” A small smile creased her lips.
“You ... don’t mind?”
She laughed quietly. “Of course not.”
I raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t explain. Instead, Kristi laughed hard again, and her breasts caught my eye. Julie shifted in her seat and turned her head the other way. I decided to just relax and not think too hard about anything.
The afternoon flew by. I had to admit, hanging out by the pool had turned out to be just the thing I’d needed.
The theater was packed despite the fact that Aliens had been out for nearly two months. We still found decent seats. Since I’d seen it before, I watched the women as well as the screen. They were spellbound.
We waited for the credits to finish and then headed out to the lobby. The wait may have been a bad idea. We hit a huge, tightly packed crowd because another movie had gotten out at the same time. I followed Liz as we threaded our way toward the door. The excited murmur surrounding us matched my own pumped-up heart rate. Somewhere along the way, we’d lost Len and Sandy, so we pulled off to one side and waited.
“Wow,” Liz said as we reached the sidewalk. “That was intense.”
“A rollercoaster,” I agreed.
“I loved Ripley.” She chuckled. “She was such a badass.”
“Yeah, that final scene? Against the queen?”
“Yeah! Or when she rescued Newt?”
We shared a grin.
“It wasn’t at all like the first one,” she said.
“Yeah. That was a horror movie. This was action adventure.”
“I thought they were both sci-fi?”
“They were both set in space,” I explained, “but the elements are different. Like the pacing.”
She nodded in understanding. “The pacing was good.”
“Yeah. The perfect rollercoaster.”
She smiled. “With well-timed humor.”
“Yeah.” I matched the actor’s tone. “Game over, man. Game over.”
Liz laughed.
“Hey,” Len called. “There you are.”
He wormed his way through the last clumps of people, pulling Sandy behind him. He didn’t let go of her hand when the crowd thinned. I raised an eyebrow, but he ignored me.
“That was cool.” He nodded back toward the theater before turning to Sandy. “Go for a beer?” This time he gestured across the street toward the Red Robin.
Sandy nodded her head vigorously and Len smiled in reply.
We’d been at Red Robin a while when Liz realized she’d forgotten her jacket at the movie theater. She started to get anxious, which I could fully understand. We left Len and Sandy to take care of the tab and hurried back across the street. I was still slightly buzzed from the beers but Liz didn’t notice, thankfully, because I couldn’t stop thinking of what’d happened when I’d left a jacket behind.
The vision of Lori in just her green panties filled my brain. The look on her face—not shocked or embarrassed as she looked at me—while my gaze took in her bare breasts.
I shook off the memories when we arrived back at the theater. The lobby was nearly empty since the last showings had started. Lost and found didn’t have her jacket, and she wanted to go into the theater and check herself.
“Sorry,” said the pimple-faced skinny usher. “Can’t go in until the show’s over.”
“It’ll take two minutes!” she replied.
He still wouldn’t let us in.
“I can’t believe this,” Liz grumbled. We moved off to a bench on the side and sat down to wait.
I checked my watch. It wasn’t quite midnight and the last show would be out soon, thankfully.
“I can’t believe I forgot my damned jacket,” she muttered again. She sighed in frustration and leaned back against the wall.
“It happens,” I said. “I’ve done it myself.”
She gave me a sour smile. “Well, thanks for staying.”
I shrugged. “It beats having to watch Sandy and Len.”
“Oh, gawd,” Liz rolled her eyes.
“Can you believe her? She was all over him.”
They’d started sitting side by side but then his arm had ended up around her while she snuggled into his chest. Somehow they’d managed to keep drinking when she had to swivel her head to look at him. She’d been fluttering her eyelashes like a butterfly.
“Her?” Liz said. “The other way around.”
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