Chapter 123: Chloe's Topless Proof of Trust

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 (Continued)

Soon after the next class started I was called to the Principal's office. That earned me the usual "You're in trouble" taunts as I left my class, but I knew it was the school buying its way out of trouble with Mom.

As Mom had said it would be, it was mostly a waste of time. The Principal and a woman from the Corvallis Board of Education were there for their side. Mom, me and our lawyer on our side. I'd never met him before, but he apparently thought I was shortly going to be rich enough to merit his giving me his business card.

There were handshakes all around, smiling all around, and polite chit-chat. Then we did the signing, exchanged more smiles, more handshakes, more saying nice things, the check was passed to me (I enjoyed that part), more nice words, then we left after more handshakes. Fortunately there were no real speeches, and the boringly predictable things that were said were brief.

Outside our lawyer shook our hands, said some nice words, and left to, as he put it, "Go back to my office and send them my bill."

Which made me wonder something. I asked Mom, "Don't lawyers get a cut of checks like ours?"

"Only if they were retained on a contingency basis. He was employed on an hourly rate, and part of the deal was that your school picks up his tab. Legally he bills us, and we pass it on to the school, and they pass his payment back through us, but in practice they're going to deal directly. As far as we're concerned it's all over with now."

I'd already asked Mom to bank the $2,800 from Donna. Theoretically it would've been safe for me to carry in my wallet, if it'd been converted to $100 notes so it fit, because it was literally impossible for anyone to pick-pocket me as my proximity sense would detect the thief even thinking about doing it. Violent robbery wasn't a major worry for me either, as I could burst the robber's eyeballs in a fraction of a second. The main problem with putting $2,800 in my wallet was that I couldn't fit my wallet in my pants. Almost all the pants Julia had bought for me were too tight. I left my wallet at home these days, just taking my billfold. That had four or five bills in it, my license, and a rubber because Julia had told me to carry condoms. Although - now I think about it - she never got around to explaining why. Even with that meager load I could barely force the billfold into some of my pants' pockets.

When I'd given Mom Donna's $2,800, Mom had said she'd bank it when we got the check from the school. So I now gave Mom the check, after a last look. "Pay Mark Anderson the sum of forty five thousand dollars only" had a nice ring to it. It was also - BY FAR - the largest deposit I had EVER put into my bank account.

Mom said, "I'll bank this and Donna's gift on the way back to work. You'll have almost $50,000 in your account; you're a wealthy young man now."

"Not really, as I'm not really going to spend any of it. But it does look good, I'll agree with that."

Just after Mom left I thought of a joke I could have said about the speed at which my wife#1 can spend wealth on clothes, but I was way too late. I walked back to class happily, theoretically wealthy, even if all the money was already allocated.

^

In my penultimate class, just before it started, Julia said to me, "Mark, at the end of this class I've got to run, but can you please WALK to C4, and meet me outside the girls' bathroom there?" (C4 was a room in classroom block C. That block was only one level and used for the science labs. It was relatively quiet when there were no science classes on.)

Pretending to have no idea, I said, "Sure. That sounds mysterious though. What's it for?"

"You'll see."

"Okay."

Some of the girls around us had been to the spa party on Sunday and were listening carefully. I pretended not to notice that either. I'd been doing a lot of pretending today, with quite a lot more to come shortly.

At the end of class Julia was off like a shot, very quickly followed by several other girls. I slowly packed up and ambled toward C4.

When I got to the girls' bathroom, there were several of the spa party veterans hanging around outside. As I approached I looked at them with apparent confusion, and asked, "I was supposed to meet Julia here. Have any of you seen her?"

"She's in the bathroom. She told us to tell you to go in." She'd also told them not to mention Chloe, for a reason that'll be apparent soon.

"What! Go into a girls' bathroom? I couldn't do that. There might be someone in there!"

"It's safe. Julia wants you go in. We're going to stand out here to stop anyone else from going in."

I looked at them suspiciously for a moment, then dropped the look, saying, "I guess it's okay, because Julia did ask me to come here, but I'm still worried about embarrassing some poor girl by walking in on her." I knew Julia and Chloe were waiting for me inside the bathroom, so I was talking complete twaddle. I was doing it to show I had no clue about what was going on, in a way that made me look good, by pretending to be selflessly worried about embarrassing a girl, rather than worried about getting myself in trouble. I opened the door a crack, and called, "Julia, are you really in there?"

"Yes. Come in."

Without moving, I called back, "Are you sure it's safe. I don't want to scare anyone?"

"It's safe, come in."

"Okay, but we can't keep meeting like this." That earned me several laughs.

I slid in. Julia was standing alone in the center of the room. One of the cubicles had its door closed, which was according to the plan. Chloe would be hiding in it, waiting to make her entrance after Julia's introduction.

I asked, "This is weird, Julia. What's going on?"

"I'm helping Chloe with something..."

I interrupted, "Good. Chloe's a lovely person." Chloe thought she was hiding in the cubicle so Julia could introduce her properly. In reality it was so she could 'catch me' making that apparently spontaneously honest statement. It was an HONEST statement, because Chloe is a nice person, unless you're a boy looking at her breasts (in other words, unless you're a boy), but it couldn't possibly be less spontaneous. Julia and I had carefully chosen every word. It was gender-neutral to de-emphasize sex, and was entirely about her personality rather than her body ("lovely" could refer to physical beauty when it preceded "girl", but didn't when it preceded "person"). The chosen statement was nice, but not over-the-top-nice. I hadn't said, "extraordinarily lovely", for example. We wanted it to be believable and for it to motivate Chloe to push herself forward, not to think she'd won the race already. We'd also discussed whether I should say, "Poor Chloe's a lovely person." Or even add a second sentence, such as, "I hope she finds a nice guy soon, because she deserves someone good." But we'd decided on a minimalist approach. If Chloe was convinced of our sincerity then we could add whatever else we wanted in normal conversation later.

Julia pretended embarrassment (but she winked at me). "Umm. Actually Chloe's in one of the cubicles now. She would've heard you say that."

"Oh! Ahh, I guess I'm not worried about her hearing my opinion of her, but I shouldn't be in here if she's going to the toilet. I'll wait outside."

"She's not going to the toilet. She's just waiting to talk with you."

"She can talk with me any time, without meeting inside a girls' bathroom. I'm confused. What's going on?"

"I'm sorry," said a very insincere looking Julia. "I'm not doing this very well. Chloe wants to apologize to you for the distrustful way she treated you in the parking lot on Sunday. She wants to prove to you that she trusts you."

"We could have discussed this at lunch. She was only sitting a few yards away."

Julia giggled, then said, "Not the way Chloe wants to do it, she couldn't, haha." After a brief, theatrical pause, Julia continued, "I can see that you're confused. I think you'll understand better when Chloe comes out."

Julia's face adopted a more serious look. I was having to keep my expression consistent with my act because I was facing the cubicle and Chloe could have popped her head over the top in an instant. Julia turned to face the cubicle, and she called, "Come out, Chloe!"

This was the part I was looking forward to, provided she didn't chicken out now.

I mentally crossed my fingers, and started the go-softs early, just to be safe.

Chloe's feet appeared on the floor, I could hear her standing up, and the cubicle door swung open. YES!

A topless Chloe walked out into the room, her arms locked determinedly to her sides, and her breasts gloriously naked and displayed. They were WONDERFUL! Even larger than I'd imagined, and I'd spent quite some time imagining them, especially once I'd heard Julia's plan. What was most wonderful about them was that they didn't droop, not even a little! Chloe's huge tits pointed upward! THANK YOU GOD! I'd been very worried about this point. Or, more accurately, about where her points pointed. Like all teenage boys I've seen pictures of girls with big hooters, and I don't like that so many of their tits point down. In my opinion they don't look attractive, and on this topic no one else's opinion matters a damn.

I was a VERY happy guy. I was somewhat of a silly happy guy, as I just realized that I could've asked Julia what Chloe's tits looked like as they shared the same gym classes. I'd never thought to do that, worrying in silence instead. Now I had to be happy in silence. The happy was already well taken care of, as even with the horrible impressions left by her bra, her tits still looked WONDERFUL! The silence part was going to require considerable self-control.

I had to very carefully control myself now. I was allowed to look at her body once, but not for too long, and then my eyes had to move to Chloe's face - never to return to where they most wanted to go. Yelling "Yippee!" and dancing for joy wasn't allowed either. I forced my eyes up.

I read a variety of expressions on Chloe's face: determination (her jaw was clenched and she was looking me straight in the eye), pride (head held high, shoulders back), nervousness (biting her lower lip), and others. I was very pleased to see that most of her emotions were positive ones. That implied she had a very good opinion of me.

I was also very pleased to note that she had her hair pinned behind her ears (that was important). It was one of the weaknesses of our plan that Julia wouldn't have been able to fix if Chloe had covered her ears while she was in the cubicle. We had a Plan B for that, but it wasn't nearly as good as Plan A. Happily Plan A was a goer.

Looking Chloe in the eyes, I said, "I think I can guess why you didn't want to do this at lunch, but I don't know what you are doing. You have EXCEPTIONALLY nice breasts Chloe..." Oops. I was supposed to say "very nice breasts". "EXCEPTIONALLY" was way too much emphasis. It was true, but too emphatic. Fortunately it wasn't a disaster, as the plan called for my being maturely open and honest about her breasts. It was too late to do anything about it now anyway, so I just carried on with my lines, " ... and thank you for showing them to me, but I'm sure that's not what this meeting is for. Would someone explain what's going on please?"

Just before I finished talking I looked away from Chloe and at Julia, making it easier for Julia to answer before Chloe. We didn't have a lot of time (the Principal doesn't realize how important it is to have a useful amount of time between classes), so we wanted Julia to steer the conversation, rather than let Chloe flounder around for too long.

Julia answered, "Chloe realizes that she should trust you - that she DOES trust you - and she thought this would dramatically prove that to you."

I said, "It's certainly dramatic, I'll give you that, but I'm not sure what it proves. Chloe," I looked back at her eyes, "maybe you should explain this in your own words."

Chloe was much less tense now. A long way short of relaxed, but visibly better. Good, my attitude was affecting her as Julia and I had expected.

She answered, "Like Julia said. I was wrong to be so distrustful of you on Sunday. Out of habit, I treated you the way I have to treat every other boy. I did it without thinking about you as an individual. I've thought about you since Sunday and I realize that you're much better than other boys. So I'm showing you that I understand that now, that I trust you, and the way I behaved toward you on Sunday won't ever happen again. I know you're meeting other girls so you can find which one you like, and that you have to quickly stop wasting your time on the unsuitable ones. I know my attitude on Sunday made me seem unsuitable, but my attitude toward you is completely different now. I like you very much and I know you like me, especially because I just overheard you tell Julia that you though I was a 'lovely person', haha..." Chloe's little laugh, her more casual stance, starting to give hand gestures, etc., all showed that she was almost relaxed. It was an impressive change of attitude for her, because normally she's extraordinarily uptight in any situation where a boy and her breasts are in the same room. For her to be topless and relaxed while talking to me was great. Unfortunately for her, a lot of it was because she was believing her own argument and thought I did too, but that wasn't Julia's plan for this encounter.

On the topic of her argument, I wasn't impressed by how poorly expressed it was, not that its quality had ANY effect on my motivation to achieve our dual goals (for once that's not an innuendo. Julia and I each had a goal for Chloe). Even I could've presented Chloe's argument better than she had, just from how well Julia had explained Chloe to me. Obviously Julia hadn't given Chloe any help composing her request. Presumably because Julia hadn't thought it worth the effort, since I was going to reject Chloe shortly. On Julia's very first telling me of her plan, I thought that this would be the point where I'd accept Chloe's apology and we'd all live happily ever, especially me. Instead, Julia had told me that I'd be completely rejecting Chloe. That had horrified me when I heard it. She'd be right in front of me, offering her semi-naked self to me, so it made no sense for me to zoom directly away from the goal I was very eager to get my hands on! But Julia convinced me it was for the best, as she does from time to time. Although Chloe's inability to articulate her thinking disappointed me, I didn't really care. I figured she had never thought about a relationship with a guy in the way she was trying to describe now, so I cut her plenty of slack. Chloe wouldn't need to get any better at thinking about this type of relationship because it wasn't going to happen. Not even close! Julia and I were going to dramatically change her viewpoint over the next few days.

Chloe was still talking, " ... So because we both know that we already like each other, and because I'm proving that I trust you about my breasts more than any other boy, I hope you'll agree that we should spend a lot more time together, so we can get to know each other even better than we do now. I think we'll be very good together, don't you agree?"

Chloe had moved right past relaxed, into confident. Although she would be okay with me looking at her breasts now, probably even proud of herself for letting me, the plan still called for me not to. Instead I had to make sure she saw that I never looked, so she'd remember it later. Talk about having to make a sacrifice! It was time to start the rejection. I didn't answer her question; instead I followed Julia's plan. I replied, "I've got several opinions to express, about different aspects of what's happened here so far. Let me start with the thing that I'm the most impressed about, okay?"

With great confidence Chloe happily said, "Sure." Everything seemed to be going extremely well for Chloe, as far as she could tell, especially because of the boost given by her 'accidentally' overhearing my "Chloe's a lovely person" comment. All the other girls and Julia telling her how my parking lot effort proved I valued her more than twenty five naked girls was also very encouraging for her. She was, I was sure, also proud of herself for being topless with me, proud of me for reacting so maturely about it, and then proud of herself again for correctly judging that I was the right person to show her breasts to. Unfortunately, as she was about to find out, pride and confidence go before her fall.

"Out of everything you've said and done in here, the thing I'm most impressed by is that I can see your ears." I stopped, to let her work out how to react to that.

It took her several seconds to work out that she didn't know how to react. With a puzzled look on her face, and the beginning of a realization that all was not going as well as she thought, Chloe asked, "My ears? I don't understand?"

I explained, as scripted by Julia, "You almost never wear your hair like that. It's always forward, covering your ears. This morning and at lunch your ears were covered, and now they're not. I told you on Sunday that I've got a thing about pretty ears, and that I think your ears are very pretty. You've obviously deliberately tucked you hair behind your ears so I can see them during this talk. Physically that's a small thing, but it's a big indication about your personality. It tells me that you're thoughtful, attentive, caring, willing to please, and many more things..."

I was pleased to see the first of Chloe's panicky looks at Julia, who gave no reaction whatsoever. I had to keep praising Chloe over her attitude to her ears for as long as it took. It would have been a major strain on my creativity except that Julia and I had prepared for it. It was still good to see Chloe look at Julia though, as that hinted that this may not last much longer.

" ... I particularly like that you didn't even mention it. That means that you're not boastful, which is great because I don't like boastful people. You just let me quietly enjoy myself and that's an attitude that I very much admire. As you know there are many girls chasing me, but most of them are too strident about it. That shows they lack confidence in themselves. But not you; you are quietly confident. I can easily imagine you offering the right man your entire self - your mind, body and soul - the way you offered your ears to me just now. Quietly, confidently and with complete trust in the man who is the recipient of your gift..."

Ahh, good. I could see by the increasing look of dismay on Chloe's face - rapidly increasing dismay during my last point - that she wouldn't take much longer. Julia isn't giving her any indication what to do, but it should be over soon.

I started an improvisation off the last point, as it seemed to have hit home. " ... It is the small things that best show people's personalities for what they really are. Your generosity with showing me your ears may seem a small thing to you, but I'm sure it indicates..."

Chloe had finally had enough. She had been hanging her head, and by now it was aimed very much at her feet. She looked up briefly to beg, "Please stop, Mark."

I was very happy to stop, as it was a VERY stupid topic to have to pour out so much bullshit about.

Chloe told her feet, "I didn't put my hair back. Julia did it just before you came in. She said you liked my ears, and gave me two pins out of her hair to hold mine back. None of those nice things you said about me are true."

As per the script, I said, with a very upbeat, happy tone of voice, "Boy oh boy! I made a complete fool of myself there didn't I? What a dummy I am. Oh well, just as well it doesn't matter at all to me." I waited for Chloe to question why "it" didn't matter. The "it" was deliberately ambiguous - as "it" could refer to my making a fool of myself or her ears - making it more likely that Chloe would ask a question. If she doesn't, Julia will.

After a brief delay, Chloe asked, "It doesn't?"

"Not at all. Julia already knows, values and loves me for who I am, so I couldn't care less about making a fool of myself in front of her. Love means that I SHOULD be fully myself and fully open whenever I'm with her. That's far more important to my life than any momentary embarrassment I might cause myself. Once you truly understand that, it stops being embarrassing anyway. As you can see, I'm not the least bit embarrassed. I'm just amused and happy that Julia saw me be so open and giving. I also couldn't care less that I made a fool of myself in front of you. In my life I am going to meet countless people. They'll come and they'll go, and their opinions of me matters not the tiniest fraction compared to those of the people I care about. If you leave my life, my embarrassment won't have mattered. If you stay in my life, it'll be because we come to care for each other, and then my embarrassment won't have mattered either. Remember when my sister Carol came out as a lesbian and was terribly hassled because of it? You heard me give a speech in some classes asking people to please stop being cruel to her, and asking them to be kind. You've seen me in classes all year, and I've never given a speech before. But for Carol I jumped up and gave a highly emotional speech. I fully expected to make a complete fool of myself because I have zero experience at public speaking, but I didn't care, because I love Carol. The core point is that when you love someone - the way I do Julia and Carol - then it's truly liberating. Not only do you discover how totally unimportant the opinions of people temporary to your life are, but love gives you the strength to open up and blossom from within yourself. It's obvious that you've never found the right guy to love yet, Chloe, but when you do, it will change your life totally. It's incredibly liberating and strengthening."

I could see that the speech had pushed Chloe's buttons nicely, as predicted, as Julia knows what sort of person Chloe is. It probably would've worked on most girls anyway, as they love hearing about love. Even I knew this, after seeing Mom and my sisters watch far too many schmaltzy movies. We were short of time, so I had to press on. "Chloe, my rambling about your ears wasted a lot of time, so I have to be quicker now. I originally said that my seeing your ears was the most impressive thing. That's gone now, but I will quickly mention two things. First, that you demonstrated your honesty. You 'fessed up. I noticed that Julia didn't make you confess, it was entirely your choice, so good for you. Honesty is very important to me." By the way, we had several minor reasons for Julia keeping a blank face when Chloe looked at her in panic during my ear-praising nonsense, but the main two were that there was no reason not to, and it made Julia seem more on Chloe's side. Hopefully that would encourage Chloe to go to Julia for advice in the future, especially over the next few days. That's Julia's usual trick, and it works extremely well.

^-- "Second, the hair pinning idea not being yours doesn't make all the nice things I said about you untrue. They might still be true, but for other reasons. I said you were "thoughtful, attentive, caring, and willing to please." I still think all of those things are true. I also said I could imagine you quietly and confidently offering your entire self to the right man. I can still imagine you doing that." All of those are how I want her to think about herself, how she probably wants to think about herself, and especially how I want her to behave toward me in the near future. I was - admittedly weakly - programming her behavior.

^-- "I will very briefly mention I was impressed by your confidence and determination. I know it must have been extremely hard for you to appear topless in front of a boy." She nodded at that. "I was also pleased at how amazingly quickly you relaxed when you were talking to me. You came out of the cubicle stiff as a board, with your arms clamped to your side to stop them flying up to cover your breasts, but in a very short time you were relaxed and laughing. I see by your happy look that you think I'm complimenting you. Think about this, Chloe: you wouldn't have relaxed in the presence of any other boy, but I could've gotten most girls to relax. Do you get my point? I'm complimenting myself more than you, but I will acknowledge that there is some good chemistry between us. It needed good chemistry for you to go from terribly uptight to laughing so quickly, especially with your being topless the whole time. Let me ask you a question: how many times have I looked at your breasts since I first saw that you were topless?"

Chloe had no hesitation in answering, "None. You've not looked at them a single time. Even when we talked about breasts you didn't look down, and guys ALWAYS look at them then."

"I'll explain why I asked you that question later, instead I'll talk about something else now. As you know, I've found out some nice things about you today. You also overheard that I think you are a lovely person, so you know I like you, and I've just said that I believe that there's some good chemistry between us. You wanted me to come here so you could ask me to spend more time with you, to give us a second chance at a relationship. I've been thinking about that carefully, and it seems to me that nothing much has changed today, there is still one major problem which is overwhelming every good thing about you. You may think that the problem is your breasts, but that's incorrect. They're actually very nice breasts and I would never consider them to be a problem. Nor is the problem whether you trust me. I don't want to sound arrogant, but I know I'm trustworthy, and by now you know that too. Your belief that most guys can't stop thinking about your breasts is correct, so you're right to distrust most guys. In me, you've finally found a guy that you can trust, but the overwhelming problem is that now your breasts have become such a huge part of the way you think about relationships with guys that you can't see past them anymore. In the parking lot on Sunday, your being constantly distrustful and accusatory showed me that you were unable to stop thinking about your breasts. Today your entire strategy was to be topless. You didn't even have a speech properly prepared because you thought that the sight of your breasts would convince me all by themselves.

^-- "You are also making bad decisions because of them. On Sunday I told you that I would never choose to have a relationship with a girl because of her breasts, yet today you thought the way to get a second chance of a relationship with me was to show me your breasts. You chose to try the single thing I'd already told you wouldn't work. That was a bad decision. Even worse, let's pretend that I was convinced today to do what you want, and we started dating. Sooner or later, probably sooner knowing your mistrustfulness, it would occur to you that I only started dating you after you offered me your breasts. You would instantly fear I was the same as every other boy and only interested in you because of your figure. In other words, your way of trying to restart our relationship would have also destroyed your trust in me, thereby ruining our relationship. It was a fatally flawed strategy and an extremely bad decision.

^-- "I asked you a minute ago how many times I'd looked at your naked breasts, and you instantly said 'None'. Not only did you instantly know the answer, but you'd clearly been intently observing my eyes, studying the way I looked at, or did not look at, your breasts. If I asked Julia how often I'd looked at her breasts, she wouldn't have a clue. No doubt she hopes that I look occasionally, because she likes that her body arouses me, but she'd rather devote her energies to being a good girlfriend than obsessively tracking my looks at her breasts. If I asked you how many times I'd looked at your ears, you wouldn't have a clue. You don't think your ears are important. To you, your breasts are the most important part of your body. You're obsessed about them.

^-- "Chloe, I definitely like you. You overheard that I think you're a lovely person. I'm happy you overhead me say that, because you deserve to be complimented for being such a lovely person. Even though you're a lovely person, you would be a bad girlfriend because of your obsession. You think every relationship problem, and every relationship solution, involves your breasts. There's no point in our trying to have a relationship, because your breasts would destroy it within a few days. Thank you for wanting to try again with me. Coming from someone as nice as you, that's a considerable compliment to me, but I think I'd better leave you now." I turned to Julia, and said, "Julia, I'd really appreciate it if you would stay and look after Chloe. Is that okay with you?"

"Of course. I wouldn't have left her anyway, she's a lovely girl."

I quickly left, easily catching all the eavesdroppers at the outside door. I simply said, "Thanks for your help." I walked rapidly to my last class.

Julia and I hadn't needed to plan what would happen next. Julia had simply described to me what she intended to do.