She’s probably not dreaming about a land where you can’t turn around without having an ass in your face, though, Thad thought. Not that Quasar dreamt about that – it was more of a “Thad fantasy” than anything.
Mmmm…excuse me, Ms. Lopez, didn’t mean to run into you ther…oh, hi, Julissa! Pancakes for breakfast again, I see…
Although hazy flesh peaches began to form a circle around him in his mental paradise, the still-a-little-drunk kid from the sticks was hit with a novelty-sized boxing glove loaded with self-actualization.
“No fucking way,” he whispered, as his jaw sunk slowly down to his dick that poked through the hole in his flannel pajama pants. It couldn’t be, he pondered, turning over onto his stomach and burying his face into the pillow. Under no circumstances could he place how this had come to pass: awake to find this woman, naked…
Wait, is she naked? A little hesitant, Thad shrugged as if he were playing to an invisible camera, gathering the courage to poke his head under the covers.
Jackpot.
Under no circumstances could he place how this had come to pass: awake to find her naked and sleeping next to him in room 545 of the Edmonton Westin, where the television projected Maury Povich addressing “Bad Teens and the Parents That Should Have Located the Nearest Stairwell.” Rolling back over and slowly sitting up, Thad scanned the room for anything that might trigger his memory of six hours ago.
An empty fifth of Tanqueray tipped to the side on the little coffee table was a good indicator of how, but not so much as to seriously, did that happen? Thad glanced down to his right on the floor – no condoms or condom wrappers for evidence – then chuckled to himself, as he was definitely still drunk…
“Condoms. HA!” He bellowed, doing a half-assed ALF impression.
Not exactly in the best state of mind to continue his detective work, the nut who portrayed Spacely splashed down to a fully-relaxed position and exhaled with defeat.
If I did fuck her, I hope I seriously didn’t do it with my pajamas on, he thought. What a dork move that would be. How in the hell did I even think to put these on, anyway?
Suddenly, it came to him. Cooler heads must have prevailed in the situation, Thad reasoned. Even drunk as shit, maybe it was a mutual decision to “just snuggle,” so things wouldn’t get all complicated. God forbid their relationship jump that quickly in just one night of good clean fun – they were adults; sexy, voluptuous and incredibly delicious adults, but adults nonetheless.
Two seconds later, Thad stopped kidding himself that it would have been a “mutual” decision to not dance the butt-hole tango. However, he refused to let go of the possible scenarios. Maybe there was a way to jog his memory – perhaps if he just retraced his steps from the day before…
Perfect, he thought! Never mind the fact that he could have just asked her when she woke up, or the obvious evidence that she was naked…BUTT NAKED….reliving yesterday’s events was the only logical thing to do.
He had to know if he’d had sex with Mackenzie Malone.
“Take me ice skating.”
Jared Sykes, not really known for scouting his opponents, made a mental note to never offer a favor to Thad Denver in exchange for borrowing a shirt ever again. Never mind the fact that the shirt he let him wear was one of his SCCW “Black Sheep” (this, but with “Jared Sykes” replacing “Minor Threat”) tees, but Thad had drawn a cloud coming out of the woolly mammal’s butt and written “TOOT!” in white fabric marker, too.
Confused by the odd request, Jared asked Thad to repeat himself by simply staring at him.
“I’ve never been ice skating, and I want someone to teach me,” Thad grinned as he stood in the doorway of Jared’s suite. He was so full of excitement; with his little red Georgia Bulldogs stocking cap (complete with fuzzy ball on top) pulled down to just above his eyes. How could Jared say no to him?
“No,” Jared said, answering the request fairly clearly.
The blond counterpart continued to beam, completely no-selling his denial-of-service. What Sykes didn’t realize is that while he might have been younger, Mr. Denver had his number when it came to convincing him to do something he didn’t want to do.
“I’ll let you touch my peter!”
Jared blinked at wrestling’s freshman, a little half-smirk forming at the corner of his mouth. He probably should’ve expected a homoerotic offering – it was long enough into their friendship to see that coming – but it caught the former Gateway champion nonetheless off-guard.
“No, but seriously,” Thad piped up, back to a more convincing tone, “I’m not asking for you to hold my god-damned hand on the rink or nothin’.”
“Yes you are,” Jared spat back, letting his wrist go limp and waving it flirtatiously at him.
“Well, maybe for the first five minutes,” Thad confessed, giving Sykes a wink. “I should get the hang of it pretty quick.”
Jared, reaching for any possible out by now, resorted to the standby argument. “Why can’t you get someone else to go with you?”
Thad scoffed. “Like who? Lance is in California, Steve is a fat cunt…”
Jared sputter-laughed for its humor and its truth.
“…Myers is probably masturbating or plotting future terrorist attacks, and Coral’s got his lady up for the day,” Thad finished, rounding out the list of the usual down-time buddies.
“What about Malik?”
He shot him a look. “Dude, don’t put me in that position. I’m not going to be ‘Southerner Makin’ Dat Dere Stereotypin’ Guy’.”
Jared gazed back at him, smiling – he knew a thing or two about ol’ Thad Denver besides how to beat him in a wrestling match. Trying as hard as possible to resist the race bait, Thad finally caved.
“You can’t dunk in ice skates,” Thad mumbled dryly, looking at the ground in shame. “Look. Just go. With me. To the ball…of skating.”
Sighing, the Black Sheep shrugged his shoulders, finally giving in to the kid’s groveling. “Fine. But you’re driving.”
Thad beamed sheepishly, like a little boy with a secret. A good secret, you sick fucks. “Um…I could…but I kinda already started drinking…”
Just stepping out of the room and shutting the door, Jared froze in place with his back still turned to Thad.
“It’s two in the afternoon, man.”
“So?” Thad asked rhetorically. “How do you expect me to do something as dumb as ice skating while I’m SOBER?”
Jared, pie-facing himself, slowly turned back around and began to walk down the hall toward the elevator. Never again, he thought, as he mentally kicked himself in the fart box for forgetting to do his laundry that one ill-fated week several months ago.
Thad, meanwhile, couldn’t have been more ecstatic. His arm, sporting a pink-and-black slap bracelet over his wrist, reached out to Jared with a metallic flask. “Want some?”
His buddy and soon-to-be designated driver/skate instructor shook his head in response.
“Great!” Thad exclaimed. “More for THIS GUY?
As Jared pulled the SUV into the snow-covered parking lot of the Castle Downs ice rink, the fuddy-duddy attitude he’d been wearing for most of the car ride over slowly started to peel itself off his skin. While he certainly wasn’t the best skater in the world, his experience on the blades was adequate enough to get him around fairly well. It’d been a while, Jared mulled. This might actually turn out to be fun.
If the dummy next to me doesn’t shatter his damn head, that is.
Said dummy in question, meanwhile, took in the surroundings as he craned his neck up to examine the small crowd of about twenty who were standing around the circumference of the artificial surface. Although his sense of location was a little off, Thad thought he had spotted the “surprise” that he had in store for the Black Sheep. Turning to Jared, he pointed quickly to an empty parking space.
“Park there!” Thad shouted, now purposefully trying to irritate the poor driver.
Jared cried out in response. “No, you ass. That’s handicapped parking.”
“What kind of handicapped person goes ICE SKATING? Park!”
The little fucker admittedly had a foolproof argument, but Jared instead pulled the car into the row across from the space. It amounted to about thirty more feet of distance from the rink’s entrance.
“GREAT,” Thad whined, almost close to blowing his cover by laughing – he could tell Jared was growing a little hot under the collar. “Now we gotta walk TEN FUCKING MILES to get there.”
“Look,” Jared lashed out sternly, his patience officially wearing thin with the rookie. “You’ve got to shut the fuck up and get straight, otherwise they’re not even going to let us in the damn place!”
“They’ll let us in,” Thad replied, opening the passenger-side door of the SUV. He’d gotten one leg out when he felt a hand suddenly jerk his shoulder back.
It was Jared in Serious Form, which was funnier to Thad at that particular moment than Jared’s comedic side. “Well, how about this? I’ll kill you if you embarrass me.”
The Zarflonian Jumping Bean pouted his lip, then grabbed Sykes’ wrist and removed his hand from his shoulder. “I will,” he sputtered, doing a scarily accurate impression of Barney’s “Baby Bop” character. To seal the promise, Thad tried to lick his hand like a dog, but only tongued air as Jared pulled away quickly.
“Let’s just go.”
Jared knew the second he locked the door to the Sequoia that the gin-fueled little disaster he currently babysat would embarrass him in some way. There was a good possibility that he might have to work a shoot for the fine patrons of the frozen white rink. That, or he could just “accidentally” push him a little too hard from behind while they skated.
Without too much time to plot his plan of attack, Jared dropped immediately to a squatting position as he heard a voice yell from behind.
“PIGGY-BACK RIDE!”
The Black Sheep had anticipated that the idiot would merely topple over him. Unfortunately, this is exactly what Thad anticipated that Jared would anticipate, so the pointed toe kick aimed at his heinie-hole met with authority just as Jared crouched.
The temporary pain that one normally feels when something foreign penetrates the anal cavity was a good-enough distraction for Thad to get a running start. As Sykes peered up to see fresh FILA prints in the snow in front of him, he took off from the bent-knee track stance after him.
While keeping in comfortable stride, Thad turned back to stick his tongue out at him. “Catch me, old timer!” Thad giggled, flipping him a familiar hand gesture for his troubles.
Reaching out to grab the little shit as he eventually gained pace, Jared snatched a handful of scarf, which merely unraveled loosely from around Thad rather than stopping him. Knowing he’d eventually have to stop as the entrance gate grew closer, he dug deep into his nitrous reserve for one last burst in his legs…
“Oh SHIT!”
…the sound of two cartoonish “oofs” intermingled with a dull thud onto the billowy accumulation of snow below Jared and his unintended target. Thankfully, the mound provided a somewhat softer landing for the victim – a small consolation for having 190 some-odd pounds on top of her. Immediately realizing his mistake, Jared jumped to his feet and began to stutter an apology to the girl in the puffy yellow ski coat.
“Oh my god holyshit holyshit holyshit…I am so so so so so so so sorry…let me help you…wait, Heather?”
Visibly a little dazed yet mostly coherent, the dimpled, pink-cheeked young woman with honey blond hair pulled back into a ponytail smiled dumbly at him. “And I thought you wrestler-types were supposed to be able to hurt someone.”
It was indeed Heather, or as she was known to the SCCW roster, ‘That Talent Relations Chick.’ This situation was particularly embarrassing for Jared, whose only real exchange with her was nearly two years ago during an on-show segment. Charley Crisp, intent to show him the ways of a shameless sex addict, had singled her out as Sykes’ first target for “Picking Up Bitches 101.” Quite sure that he’d burned a bridge with the radiant and petite little buttercup, Jared did what all nice guys do: avoided conversation with her…save for the occasional returned greeting at staff meetings.
Shocked at her playful exchange, Thad observed Jared’s inability to communicate and jammed an index finger into his ribcage. “Help her up, stupid!”
“Oh, sorry,” he mumbled, offering a bare hand down that was grabbed by two white gloves. Hoisting Heather to her feet, she thanked Jared…
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF!
…and instantaneously struck Thad in the testicles with an unannounced punch. “You’re an asshole, Thad.”
Jared howled in laughter and began to applaud as the kid doubled over in pain. Joining him in the pleasure of seeing him get socked in the nuts was a familiar pair of legs clad in black alpine pants and the almost-as-rewarding upper half of Mackenzie Malone. Her purple Northwestern U. sweatshirt and black thick headband was less than flattering, but the active look still suited her – like the ski instructor you always wanted to fuck in the slope shack. She rubbed the top of Thad’s head, still covered by the red stocking cap from before.
“Ow, my BALLS!” Thad squeaked, barely intelligible as he tried to regain his tone. The pain slowly began to pulse into his midsection. “How could you do that to me?”
“Because you deserved it,” Jared responded in between guffaws. “It couldn’t have hurt THAT bad, though – you’re wearing like six layers!”
“I thought you looked chubbier than usual,” Mackenzie observed. “Jesus, are you really THAT cold?”
'I have sensitive skin,' Thad stated, still with hand over his crotch. 'Can we go skate now?'
In agreement, Mackenzie and Heather followed Thad to the pavilion constructed on the near side of the rink. Jared, once again not known for his shrewd ability of perception, stalls behind with a look of thought plastered across his face.
'Wait, you KNEW they were gonna be here?'
Across the rink, the sound of children laughing bounced around the ice and carried over to where Mackenzie and Thad glided close to the outer edge. Both turned their attention to where they were gathered, neither too surprised to see that Jared was in the midst of them putting on a show for the youngsters. Exaggerating a lack of balance and flailing his arms everywhere, he took numerous bumps on his ass for the sake of entertainment, much to the delight of his audience. Heather was engaged in his antics as well, joining the kids in pointing and giggling at the SCCW's spectacle.
'You were right,' Mackenzie admitted, pushing off of her left skate lightly, making sure to go slow for the sake of the novice next to her. 'He never would have agreed to come unless you tricked him.'
'I know,' Thad agreed, putting his hands on his knees and lowering his body to help maintain his balance on the ice.
'You think he's even remotely interested? I mean, he seems more into those kids than her right now,' she posed.
'Don't see why he wouldn't be. Guy's single, Heather's a knockout in those jeans,' Thad replied. 'It's hard to tell either way since he isn't exactly Mr. Confidence when it comes to women that might actually like like him, so he's probably reverting to being goofy since he doesn't know what to say to her.'
Mackenzie shot Thad a playful, engaging stare. 'So you're saying you'd know how to capitalize if you were in his shoes?'
Thad nodded as he straightened his legs, grabbing the sleeve of his manager's sweatshirt to maintain his balance until he was at a fully upright position. 'I could have her tonight if I were him, no problem.'
'Well then, stud,' Mackenzie joked, pressing him further. 'How'd you go about that? Woo her with guitar licks? Sing her a song? Hope that she's dumb and a sucker for that kind of thing?'
'Nope,' he shot back, shaking his head. 'Wouldn't need it. Want me to break it down for you?'
'Sure.'
'Well, first off, I wouldn't have vocally agreed with her decision to punch me in the junk,' Thad stated sternly. 'Big mistake there.'
Mackenzie laughed, more of a 'HA' than a belly-up, but a chuckle nonetheless. 'Of course you wouldn't have, since it was you're...'
'Not talking about that part,' Thad interrupted, waving his hand in the air. 'Just agreeing with her, period. You NEVER give the girl the upper hand, especially when you've just started being friendly. As far as what's going on now, it's a pretty good move...showing her a playful side by pandering to some kids, but he's obviously focusing too much attention on it instead of engaging her. Heather wants to get to know him, but if he keeps that up, the puppy-dog crush is going to lose its appeal.'
Drawing closer to Jared and the crowd of kids, Mack and Thad watched as Sykes attempted a figure skating pirouette. The form resembled that of Nancy Pelosi rather than Nancy Kerrigan, whom he was obviously trying to imitate.
'You are so full of shit sometimes,' Mackenzie finally interjected, looking over at him.
'Yep,' he agreed, staring directly ahead of him. 'All I know is that we did our part, so now it's up to them to make the magic happen.'
'They really would make a cute couple though,' she mused, pulling out a stereotypical girl line. 'I still can't believe you faked being drunk just to get him to drive out here, though.'
'Wasn't too hard,' Thad smiled, glancing over at her. 'I just did what I do best...act like an eight-year old.'
Mackenzie, glowing back at him, winked and watched the velocity of the wind blow the furry ball on top of his cap as he glided. Left foot out, right foot out, left foot out, slight stumble, right foot out. In her mind, she was right: he was full of shit...but there was no doubt an attraction there to his relatively nonchalant attitude. It bothered her, someone who considered herself much wiser than he, that she couldn't figure out whether his distancing was intentional or not.
Thad had the balance in his favor.
'So, ice skating kinda sucks,' he proclaimed. They had made their way around the rink about twenty times (twenty-two if you count his snail-paced learning laps) and the novelty had worn out its welcome for the frosty twenty-something. As far as he was concerned, their first mission had been accomplished: get Jared and Heather initial contact. The second mission? A plan had been developed for that, too.
'You ready to go?' Mackenzie asked, fairly tired of the activity herself. 'Think you can sell it?'
'Child, please. I'm a professional.'
Shifting his weight forward, Thad breathed lightly as he prepared to take a spill. He hoped that he wouldn't actually injure himself in the process of making the incident look convincing, and he also prayed silently that this wouldn't become the next humiliating backstage story that ol' high-flying Spacely had hurt himself by falling one foot off the ground. However, he did need to make it believable: how else would they be able to leave Heather needing a ride home from Jared?
'Whooa...whoooooooooooaaaaa....WHOAAAAAAAAAA!'
Tha-DONK.
To be continued...