Chapter 19: Kacey and Maggie

Mike once again wished Kacey was still with him. It wasn’t just raising the girls, although that was more than sufficient reason. It also wasn’t the sex he missed. Although Kacey had been enthusiastic and skilled at that, Mike knew that wasn’t a problem. He was decent looking enough and had never had problems finding female companionship. No, he just missed her. She understood him like no other woman ever had.

They met freshman year at Springwater State when they were paired as lab partners in a basic chemistry class. The thing that first hit him about her was that Kacey Simkins was simply an astonishingly beautiful girl. She had long honey-blonde hair, a heart-shaped face, and a centerfold’s figure, but what really caught your attention were her eyes, bright sapphire blue that looked as if they could see your soul. He understood how true that was a month later.

It was their third date, and the first that ended back at Mike’s dorm room. His roommate was gone for the evening, bought off with the promise of a six-pack. They had a quick dinner at the dining hall, hit the student union for a party, and then headed to his room. A couple of beers and a joint later, clothes began flying. Round One ended with mutual foreplay and handjobs. They were cuddling and warming up for a second round when it almost came crashing down.

‘God, you are so beautiful!” whispered Mike. Kacey smiled at him. It never hurt for a fellow to tell a girl she was good-looking. Then he said, “I don’t know what you are doing with me. I must be the luckiest guy in the world. You are so beautiful you could be a beauty queen!”

Kacey’s reaction, however, was anything but positive. She stiffened in his arms and then pushed away, rolling over to begin crying. “Kacey! Kacey! What’s wrong? What did I do? I just said you were beautiful. What did I do wrong?” It got worse when he repeated his comment about being a beauty queen. Mike was smart enough to know there was a problem, so he simply wrapped his arms around her and tried to calm her down.

Fifteen minutes later, Kacey rolled to face him and buried her face in his shoulder, still crying. “I’m sorry.”

“What’s wrong, honey? What did I do?”

It took another ten minutes before she answered, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

“What’s wrong?”

Kacey swallowed and said, “It’s what you said about being a beauty queen.” Mike nodded but otherwise stayed silent. “I used to be one.”

“Talk to me.”

Kacey nodded and sat upright. She picked up Mike’s shirt and pulled it on, and then pulled a couple of Cokes out of his minifridge. She sat back down on his bed and handed him one.

She told him about her childhood. Kacey Simkins was always a beautiful little girl. Every parent thinks that about their children, but in her case, it was the literal truth. Even before she could walk, she had been in a local television commercial. It ballooned from there. By the time she was in kindergarten her mother Beverly was taking her to auditions and beauty pageants. “It’s sick, Mike. Do you remember JonBenet Ramsey?”

“Who?”

“JonBenet Ramsey. This was like twenty, thirty years ago or so. She was a beauty queen, like me, and she was killed when she was six.”

Mike still didn’t know who she was talking about, so Kacey grabbed her phone and googled her. She brought up a picture and turned the phone to him. “Look at her. She’s six years old.”

Mike stared at the photo and then used his fingers to enlarge the picture. “Jesus! She’s six? She looks like she’s sixteen!” The child was wearing a thousand dollars’ worth of makeup and a thousand-dollar hairdo.

“For most kids they start out as Little Miss pageants, that sort of thing. They’ll pay an entry fee, maybe a hundred bucks, maybe five hundred. They are all guaranteed winners. It doesn’t matter if she looks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Everybody gets a trophy that costs maybe ten bucks. It’s held the middle of the week in an empty conference room at the local Best Western, so it might only cost the organizer a couple hundred bucks. Then the parents can buy a photo package for another few hundred bucks. You might be required to stay at the motel, which probably is giving a kickback to the organizer.”

“Sounds like a scam.”

“Totally. I wasn’t into that end of the business, though. I was in the pro circuit,” she told him.

“There’s a pro circuit?”

“Oh, yeah! These are the pageants that work up to a bigger pageant. You don’t think they just round up fifty girls and send them to the Miss America Pageant, do you? No, you work up from a state pageant which is fed from county pageants, which come from town pageants. And believe me, there are no participation trophies. There’s real money involved, too, scholarships and stuff. They have coaches and costumes and beauticians.”

“Huh! I had no idea.”

“The girls at these things would as soon slit your throat as say hello, and the mothers, they’re the worst. There is nothing bitchier than a pageant mom. Jesus, the things I saw them do...”

“Like?”

Kacey looked away. “I learned about sex on the circuit. I was twelve when I walked in on my mother giving one of the judges a blowjob. The judge freaked out, but not my mother. She simply told me it was the price of doing business. After he left, she told me to pay attention, since they preferred it when the girls gave the blowjobs rather than the mothers, and not to say anything to my father.”

Mike stared. “You mean...”

“I gave my first blowjob when I was fourteen. By then I was working my way up the circuit. You have to compete in a certain number of pageants at certain levels. It gets complicated real fucking quick. Anyway. By the time I was fourteen I looked like I was nineteen. Mom once had me hide in a closet and watch while she worked over a judge. She sucked him and fucked him and took him up the ass, and I won second place. She told me afterwards that if I had been doing that stuff, I would have won.”

“Jesus!”

Kacey nodded and cried. “So, I gave head to the next judge, and the one after that, and the one after that. Then I graduated to screwing. I lost my cherry to be a winner. I quit when I was fifteen and my mother started coaching me on anal sex. I totally freaked out at that point. I ended up in a panic attack at the hospital, and when my father came in, Mom tried to keep him away. I ended up telling him everything. It was a total nightmare.”

“Holy Christ! So, when I said you were a beauty queen...”, he started.

Kacey finished, “It all came rushing back. I was in therapy for years. You’re the first guy I’ve been serious about since then. I’m sorry about freaking out.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“What happened?” Mike asked.

“Major fucking disaster. My dad threw mom out of the house and started divorce proceedings and mom sued him for custody of me.’ Mike’s eyes opened wide at that, and Kacey continued. “Yeah, I know, I know. Child services got involved. God it was messy! Dad got custody and mom got nothing. She went into the business full time. She’s now a pageant coach. She probably gives her girls special glittery kneepads.”

“Christ, I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s not your fault, Mike. You don’t have to say anything.”

“Kacey...”

Kacey slipped off his shirt and crawled into bed with him. “Just hold me.”

Mike could figure that out. After a bit, Kacey began moving against him, and holding became making love. That continued until the next morning, alternating with talking. The next morning, as the dawn’s light came through the window, Mike said, “Okay, so we have some ground rules. From now on I will never call you a beauty queen.”

“Thank you.”

“In fact, I will never again call you beautiful.”

“Mike!”

“I won’t even say you’re pretty. You’re not even good looking. You’re actually awful! On a scale of one to ten, we don’t have numbers that low! You...”

“Mike, you bastard!” Kacey laughed and rolled on top of him and began pinching and tickling. Mike tried to fight her off but was laughing too hard. Finally, he managed to get hold of her hands, roll on top of her, and make love to her one last time. They managed to crawl out of bed just minutes before his roommate came back.

From then on Mike and Kacey were an item. Others commented that they seemed a true match made in heaven. She was still a breathtakingly beautiful young woman, and she could dress to drive him crazy, both crazy in love and crazy in lust. He had a response, though, which was guaranteed to drive her to insane laughter. “Wow! You are so not beautiful! Negative numbers, babe, negative numbers!”

Mike Dubois left the house at about the same time his daughters did. Samantha and Razor were taking Tamara to meet her friends at the mall, and then were going on their date. The girls were dressed casually, in shorts and tank tops. Mike, on the other hand, was wearing dress slacks, a dress shirt, and a sports jacket. The two girls had teased him about playing dress-up.

Laughter aside, the girls had mixed feelings about their father dating. They knew he had loved their mother dearly, but it had been three years and their father was still young. They knew he had started looking at other women. It wouldn’t mean that he was forgetting their mother or didn’t love her any longer. It would mean they were moving forward.