The homey peacefulness of a quiet December evening filled the air inside the McPherson home in the early Thursday evening hours, a comfortable 70 degrees indoors in contrast to the darkness and chill of a Minnesota winter only a few feet away on the other side of the front window. With the backdrop of a lit-up Christmas tree, the local evening news on the television, and a haze of cigarette smoke, a group of four sat in a circle on the living room furniture with a Monopoly board on top of the coffee table. Mid-40s matriarch Becky McPherson was on one side of the board, adeptly juggling the game and incessant drags from her Marlboro Red cigarette as she did pretty much every waking minute of her home life, with 2 1/2-year-old Joshua Wagner to her side serving as a clueless, half- interested partner in the board game. Across the table was Joshua’s five-year-old brother Jarrod, the only of the four players who seemed genuinely captivated by the game, as well as his Monopoly partner for the evening, the young boys’ 14- year-old babysitter and Becky’s daughter Haylee McPherson.
Decked out in one of her many pink tops and a pair of black leggings, Haylee sat on the couch with her legs folded, allowing Jarrod to roll the dice, move their racecar board piece, and keep track of all the cash and transactions while she texted away on her phone, a relatively endless chain of Camel Pink No. 9’s dangling from her young lips as she texted away. She tightened her lips around the filter of her dangling cigarette and ingested a significant snootful of cigarette smoke, and then lazily let that smoke spill out of her mouth and nose producing wave upon wave of air pollution that somehow fit right in visually with the relaxed atmosphere of this winter evening board game.
After rolling a seven, Jarrod landed on Boardwalk.
“We got it!” Jarrod exclaimed passionately, tugging on the arm of the distracted Haylee to notify her that he was in a position to buy the property he had been hoping for.
Haylee smiled at him through the cigarette between her lips and then affectionately put her hand on his back to congratulate him on the purchase. It was obvious through Jarrod’s body language that he quickly lost focus on the game and was reveling in being touched by this beautiful babysitter. As the moment passed, Jarrod began counting the money and realized he was in over his head in being
able to count the bills in front of him to get to the $400 he needed to buy the property. He looked to Haylee and asked “Can you help me count?”
Haylee put her phone down briefly and leaned towards both Jarrod and the edge of the table, her cigarette still dangling from her lips with a lengthening granny ash. Jarrod couldn’t keep his eyes off of Haylee as she encroached upon his space, the intense tobacco odor clinging to her light brown hair and clothes becoming even more overwhelming at this proximity. Haylee was gathering together 100 and 20-dollar bills to be able to put together the money needed to purchase Boardwalk, taking a very intense dangling drag while doing so. Jarrod watched intensely as Haylee’s oral suction caused the white paper on the cigarette to burn and the already-long ash to expand right in front of his face, seconds before his visual became clouded as Haylee’s follow-up exhale produced a haze of blinding smoke right in front of his face.
Haylee gathered the bundle of bills in her hands and pulled towards Becky, the “banker” for this evening’s game. “I think this is the right amount,” Haylee muttered through a talking dangle while handing the bills to her mother, a long gray ash dropping from her cigarette onto the Monopoly board. Jarrod’s distraction from the game intensified further as he watched Haylee pull back, casually scooping up the fallen ash into her hand and dropping it into her butt bucket in a single reflexive move. Even coming of age amidst this environment, Jarrod still felt there was something surreal about witnessing this young girl spilling ashes all over a board game and having nobody at the table bat an eyelash about it. He had seen the ashes fall from Haylee’s cigarettes as she dangled quite a few times over the year or so she’d been babysitting him, but for some reason the visual of this one really stuck with him. Even as he was resuming with the board game that he was so excited about only 60 seconds ago, he was now distracted and smitten with Haylee.
Haylee quickly returned to texting, the giddy smile on her face only slightly obstructed by the dangling cigarette as she exchanged sweet-nothings with her secret boyfriend Grant. Jarrod was unable to control himself from staring with awe at Haylee, and when Haylee noticed and returned eye contact, she quickly bounced her eyes towards her mother to see she wasn’t looking their way and then looked back to Jarrod, giving him an aggressive nod as if to say “now is the time”.
Jarrod had forgotten about the nonverbal cue Haylee had warned him to expect before they started playing the game, and briefly scanned his brain as if hoping to remember everything Haylee had told him to say. After a few seconds of
recollection, he broke the silence with an excited invitation, “Hey Haylee, my dad got me a train set just like the one Trevor has. He’s putting it up for me this weekend. Can you babysit us at our place next time so you can see?”
Haylee was fairly new to the game of parental deception and her verbal timing wasn’t as perfect as it needed to be to fully sell her response, but she fired back with “Yeah, I think I can do that if it’s okay with your folks that I come over.”
“They’ll be good with it!” Jarrod assured her.
“Sunday night it is then!” Haylee responded, wrapping up the exchange with an unnaturally exuberant tone for her.
Becky was watching from across the couch and briefly scanned back and forth between the two of them. Something felt off to her about the exchange but not far enough off to question it. Haylee had babysat for the Wagner boys at their home a couple other times, also at Jarrod’s request, so it wasn’t as though this was uncharted territory, but the tone of the conversation still left a funny taste in her mouth. Becky was distracted herself seconds later when she saw the weather forecast was coming on the local news broadcast on TV and turned the volume up to hear the meteorologist.
“And on Sunday night, starting around 8 p.m., a cold front will roll through and is expected to bring a healthy clip of snow. Our computer models are suggesting this could be a pretty big snow event and could lead to some icy roads to start your workweek on Monday morning so stay tuned to Channel 5 for updates as the time gets closer….”
Becky wasn’t pleased to hear about a big snow event on the horizon but since it was three days away, she let her mind drift from it and returned her focus to the Monopoly game, taking a final drag from her Marlboro Red, crushing it out in the butt bucket next to her, and then reaching to her pack of Marlboro Reds and lighter in a single reflexive motion. In seconds, she was lighting up another cigarette, a smoker’s cough bursting from her black lungs as the first wave of smoke from the new cigarette swirled around inside her upper body. In nearly perfect synchronization, Becky’s smoker’s cough was followed by a smoker’s cough from her teenage daughter across the table as Haylee finally got around to taking a cigarette out of her mouth that had been dangling through about five drags and for about 90 seconds, her lungs expelling a troubling bronchial discharge just as she removed the cigarette. A blackened lugie was now at the front of Haylee’s throat and she picked up her butt bucket to release that lugie inside of it before putting the cigarette back into her mouth and carrying on with business as usual. The
tranquil living room scene carried on another hour or so, interrupted primarily by the cheers and groans of Jarrod based on the developments of the game, the semi-regular smoker’s coughs coming from the two female smokers, and bursts of toxic secondhand smoke erupting from their respiratory systems every few seconds.
***
Three days later in the early afternoon hours of Sunday, Trevor McPherson was sitting behind the wheel of one of his family’s cars with 15-year-old girlfriend Lauren Nelson in the passenger seat. Trevor knew he should be focused entirely on the road in front of him, particularly since he was a fairly rookie driver navigating the uncomfortable freeway traffic on a holiday shopping weekend, but he just couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to sneak a few stares in at the adorable blond-haired Lauren, as she sat lost in one of her trademark daydreams staring out the window and taking in the world. With her black leather jacket on top and matching black leggings below the waist coupled with her tender and wholesome facial features, Lauren struck such a perfect pose drifting off in her daydream and holding her elbow on the car door, a freshly lit Marlboro Light 100 daintily held between her fingers. Lauren pulled the cigarette to her lips and dragged for a good six seconds, the longest drag Trevor had ever recalled seeing from Lauren, her smoking habit continuing to intensify to the point that Lauren was fast catching up to Trevor’s long-time heavy-smoking sisters on style points. Lauren pursed her lips and released the inhaled smoke, the motion and bodily pleasure awakening her from her daydream and immediately leading her to notice the smirking Trevor staring at her from the driver’s seat.
“What?” she inquired playfully.
Trevor’s smirk became even more sinister before he casually responded, “Aw nothing!”
“What?!??!” Lauren fired back in an even more playful tone, comfortably bantering with Trevor with the tone of a couple at ease in each other’s presence and completely past the early awkwardness of their memories of summer.
“You’re just so peaceful to watch as you’re daydreaming,” Trevor smoothly responded and then placed his right hand on her cheek to gently caress it.
“Awww!” Lauren responded with genuine emotional conviction and a glow of happiness on her face leading her to bite her lower lip and smile suggestively at Trevor. As she looked forward to the busy traffic ahead, she decided it wasn’t the
time nor place to get frisky and directed Trevor back to the task at hand. “I appreciate it, but for now, you better keep your eyes on the road, buddy,” Lauren added with a smile pointing ahead to several cars putting their brakes on ahead near the exit for Willow Creek Mall.
Trevor quietly agreed and focused on the road, still unable to restrain eye movement to his right every time Lauren’s cigarette approached her mouth. Trevor tried to hide his nervous frustration as he struggled to find an opening to change lanes and get out of the mandatory exit lane he was in, but pulled it off. Lauren, watching the lane maneuvering in the passenger seat, seemed even more shaken than Trevor and expressed herself once Trevor was out of the bottleneck.
“Ugh, I don’t know if I’ll ever be comfortable with freeway driving”, Lauren confessed followed by a drag from her cigarette that helped put her at ease.
“It gets easier once you’re used to it,” Trevor reassured, putting on a macho display to hide his own misgivings about freeway traffic. “Before you know it, you’ll get the hang of it,” he added, appreciating that Lauren now had her driver’s permit and had just completed behind-the-wheel classes.
“I’ll take your word for it,” Lauren said with a shrug, looking past the freeway to the Willow Creek Mall. That was their destination for the day, but they were currently driving past it en route to Anoka County. The extra driving was gonna throw off their timing for the day and give them less time for Christmas shopping, but they both owed a debt to Haylee, and today was the day Haylee called in the favor.
Haylee’s boyfriend Grant lived in Anoka County and she had put together a plan to spend time with him today, but it required Trevor to pick him up and take him to the Wagner home a block away from the McPhersons where Haylee was babysitting on location today and into tonight while Joshua and Jarrod’s parents were working. Trevor knew he was risking big trouble for himself by getting involved in Haylee’s scheme, which would not be approved of by anybody and especially his parents, but after Haylee kept his secret about having sex with Lauren in his bed on Thanksgiving, he had no choice but to play along. His sister Courtney also owed Haylee a favor and she had already been forced to be a driver for the unlicensed Grant and Haylee to meet at the mall a couple of times in the two weeks since Thanksgiving, but Trevor was definitely tasked with a far riskier favor since he had a feeling he knew what Grant and Haylee would be up to during their alone time at the Wagner home with no adult supervision. Still, Trevor kind of respected this sudden display of deviousness from his kid sister. This was the first sign that she was indeed her brother’s sister, and he was intrigued with this side of her.
About 20 minutes later, Trevor stopped at the park near Grant’s home where they agreed to meet and where he was waiting for them. A visibly excited Grant climbed into the backseat knowing he was only about a half hour away from seeing Haylee, and an intense aroma of tobacco that filled the car he was climbing into served as a reminder of the olfactory assault he would soon be facing in Haylee’s presence. Grant knew Trevor was picking him up, but never considered that Trevor’s hot smoking girlfriend would be along. Grant had only met either of them the one time at the mall in October so he introduced himself again seconds after getting into the car. Lauren was not smoking at the moment they exchanged pleasantries, but hoped she would to further set the tone for his day regarding hot teen girls smoking cigarettes. Small talk ensued for a couple of minutes as Trevor began to make the long drive back to his neighborhood so Grant could be with Haylee.
“Have you been to Eden Prairie before?” Trevor inquired, to which Grant responded that his older brother lived there in an apartment. The continued friendly banter put Grant at ease some but the moment he was craving was about to come as he noticed Lauren was digging in her purse from his convenient vantage point sitting behind the driver’s seat in the back where he was able to see Lauren in full profile.
Sure enough, Lauren pulled out her pack of Marlboro Lights 100s and extracted another cigarette, but he was thrown off when instead of lighting it herself, she reflexively handed her lighter to Trevor. As Trevor approached a stop sign in the residential neighborhood, Lauren leaned in with her unlit cigarette dangling from her lips, and Grant watched in awe as Trevor flicked the lighter to the end of the all-white and brought it to life, a blast of smoke erupting out of Lauren’s nose immediately after the light-up.
“Thanks babe,” Lauren muttered sweetly in Trevor’s direction and then reached over and affectionately squeezed his upper leg. Trevor silently responded by putting his hand on Lauren’s leg, quickly and gently brushing his finger over her crotch. Grant’s sexual desire was already elevated but really hitting fever pitch watching this display, feeling as though the shyness and hesitation that slowed his game in the previous encounters with Haylee would not be an obstacle today. Grant watched lustfully as Lauren took another deep drag from her cigarette, but she caught him off-guard when she turned around to talk to him, facing him directly for the first time.
“So Grant….what do you and Haylee have planned today?” Lauren asked, a swarm of cigarette smoke flowing toward Grant from Lauren’s mouth and nose as she spoke.
Trevor interrupted before Grant had a chance to respond, “Oh don’t ask him that! I don’t want to know what he’s doing with my sister?” Trevor exclaimed with feigned conviction, pretending not to be excited about the idea of Haylee engaging sexually.
Lauren giggled and said “Oh Trevor! Just because that’s the first place your mind goes doesn’t mean Grant is just as baaad!” following up her comment with a wink at Grant.
Grant carefully articulated his response to be sure he didn’t incur the wrath of Haylee’s brother while not appearing as if he’s completely bullshitting them either, responding “I have no expectations going into the day….just looking to enjoy some time with Haylee. Whatever we do, I know we’ll enjoy it.” As Grant spoke, Lauren was taking an intense drag from her cigarette and making eye contact with him, smiling at Grant’s poise while crafting his response.
“Haha, that’s so sweet!” Lauren responded, with Grant’s words hitting the rhetorical sweet spot for her. The innocence of Lauren’s words and tone were corrupted by the wisps of smoke sputtering out of her mouth and nose in the form of a talking exhale, all of which Grant would be effectively wearing seconds later given the flow of Lauren’s smoke. “Where did you tell your parents you were going all day?” Lauren asked, the remainder of the cancerous contents of her last drag spilling out of her face with those words.
It took all of Grant’s willpower to respond with anything coherent as this unlikely smoky temptress was inadvertently blowing smoke into his face from only a few feet in front of him, but he got it together and responded “Told them I was going to the mall and then out to a movie with my friends. They should buy it as long as I get home before the storm,” he said, ominously bringing up the snowfall that had barely been even on the back of anybody’s mind yet since it wasn’t supposed to start until mid-evening.
“You’re pretty sneaky!!” Lauren said in a playfully scolding tone, her beaming smile making Grant’s heart melt. “I’m sure it’ll be worth it to spend the day with Haylee though!” Lauren followed up and then turned back into her seat to ash her cigarette out the window, disappointing Grant a bit as he was really getting off on the face- to-face exchange.
The conversation kept rolling and Grant just kept getting more excited watching Lauren smoke, knowing he was in for an even more intimate and up-close view of his own girlfriend smoking only moments from now. Seeing the subtle and not-so- subtle signs of affection between Lauren and Trevor as the drive proceeded was really setting the tone for his own ambitions with Haylee. It was just a matter of how long after he arrived before he’d be able to act on them, knowing Haylee would be babysitting two young boys while he was there and might not be 100% accessible. As Trevor drove past the entrance of the Willow Creek Mall, where Grant told his parents he’d be, it became even more real to Grant that the day he’d waited for since he met Haylee about six weeks earlier had likely arrived.
***
Inside the Willow Creek Mall, Trevor’s older sister Courtney was attending to a couple of customers at once at the House of Leathers store where she worked, the weekend crowd two weeks before Christmas being much larger than usual. Knowing the crowd would be large going into the day, Courtney stepped up her game and wore a sensational black leather minidress to work with the intention that it could propel sales if customers could see how good a woman could look in the outfit. Courtney’s shapely late teen form was sculpted in the leather dress, her breasts, waist, hips, and ass curving the smooth Italian leather in just perfect places to be the center of attention for everyone in the store. And “everyone in the store” also included Courtney’s boss and lover, Kurt Collins. He’d never seen her in this dress before and Courtney figured she might reignite their stagnant love affair by wearing it. Kurt had been largely avoiding her and making excuses ever since their close call on Thanksgiving day, when Courtney’s parents almost caught her in a lie that may have ultimately led to the revelation of his felonious relationship with the underage employee.
Courtney was dying for a cigarette and after sending the two customers she was attending to on their way after their respective purchases, Courtney seized the opportunity and picked up her pack of Marlboro Light Menthol 100s under the cash register, approaching Kurt to formally ask for a smoke break and get him to take full notice her sexy outfit in the process. A customer was approaching Kurt so Courtney’s window was limited as she called out to Kurt, “I’m gonna go out and have a cigarette really quick, okay?” she asked, holding up the pack in an effort to draw as much attention to herself as possible.
Kurt didn’t even make eye contact, just casually nodding and granting a quick verbal approval of her request and then asking the approaching customer what he could help her with. Courtney hung her head a bit in disappointment as she
walked towards the back of the store to go outside and smoke her cigarette. She placed the cigarette in her lips and fired it up before she even formally made it outside. It was quite an image of this beautiful teenage girl dressed in such a sexy dress standing by herself on this dreary December day in the dank alley behind the mall smoking a cigarette. Courtney stood in thought as she took a deep drag from the freshly lit cigarette, thinking about the situation with Kurt and wondering what she could do to reassure him of his understandable doubts. One of Courtney’s supersized two-foot long exhales sailed in front of her face while she pondered the situation with no obvious conclusions.
***
It was almost 3:00 at the Wagner home and Haylee was visibly anxious sitting on the couch, the curtains slightly drawn so that she’d be able to see when Trevor pulled up. With Jarrod and Joshua playing in the background, Haylee’s typically relaxed smoking pose was noticeably nervous now as her hand shook when approaching the cigarette to her mouth. She took a double-pump drag and removed the cigarette to rest on her leg, wrapping up the heavy dragging with a modest but understated smoker’s cough. Jarrod took a brief look at her as she rested her cigarette hand on her bare thigh, recognizing the apprehension on her face as she forcefully exhaled a blast of smoke following the double-pump drag and being struck that she was holding her cigarette between her fingers instead of the permanent dangle pose that he’d noticed her really settle into over the last few weeks. Jarrod had been in on Haylee’s con with having Grant over today from the beginning, and while he tried not to show it, he was a little nervous himself to see the boy who Haylee was going to such great lengths to have over.
Hearing a car drive down the street, Haylee stood up and craned her neck the direction the noise was coming from, expecting it to be Trevor’s car but lowering her face in disappointment as it was just another car driving by. She began pacing the floor for a bit nervously dragging from her cigarette with escalating anticipation, barely lowering her cigarette hand to her hip level in time for her to nervously lift her hand back up to take another drag, a trail of messy smoke hovering in her path as she continued pacing. But the screeching of car brakes from across the lawn turned Haylee’s head, and this time it was what she wanted to see…..Trevor’s car stopping in front of the house. A smile beamed across Haylee’s face as she raced to the front door and held it open. Grant stepped out of the backseat and began approaching the house, the young couple both seeing the youthful trepidation on the other’s face as Grant began approaching the front door as Haylee stood there dragging from her cigarette. Haylee was wearing the same outfit she was wearing
the day he met her, a pink top and white shorts, and Grant knew it was for his benefit since he had lamented in their text messages how it sucked that warm weather clothes were done for the season and he wouldn’t get to see Haylee in her white shorts again.
Grant extended his arms to pull in for a hug and Haylee delivered with an even greater reward as she placed the stub of her Camel Pink No. 9 in her mouth before they embraced. He held her tight for a slightly unnatural length of time, hypnotized by the feeling of her body in his arms and the stench of cigarette smoke that clung to her body that was reinforced by the fresh smoke spewing from her mouth where the final throes of her current cigarette lingered. Grant pulled away just in time to see Haylee removing the cigarette from her mouth and tossing the spent butt into the Wagner’s front yard without apparently even acknowledging the obnoxiousness of it. She turned her mouth to exhale her final burst of smoke to her side, a rare moment of manners on Haylee’s part before she pulled in for a tone-deaf kiss from Grant, a guy with a fast-developing smoking fetish, but a fetish Haylee had no way of knowing about. Grant had tasted Haylee’s ashtray mouth before, but as someone with next to no exposure to cigarette smoke at any time before he met Haylee, the intimacy of kissing a girl immediately after she finished smoking was still way outside his comfort zone and inexplicably exciting and erotic.
“You’re quite a polar bear in those shorts in December,” Grant expressed with admiration, pulling in for another quick kiss and then muttering in a whispering tone, “Thanks for wearing them for me babe!”
Haylee was visibly becoming more at ease and smiled broadly at the compliment, taking Grant by the hand and pulling him inside the house. Jarrod got his first good look at Grant and was sizing him up with a hint of resentment obvious on his face, a look that didn’t fully fade away when Haylee formally introduced Grant to the boys. Grant wasted no time putting his arm around Haylee’s waist, only intensifying Jarrod’s jealousy and leading him to an off-the-cuff request that he hoped would take the spotlight off of Grant.
“Can we play Monopoly, Haylee?!! Please??!?!”
After all this anticipation to see each other, Haylee and Grant’s body language both expressed a lack of enthusiasm about finally being together and being stuck playing a board game, but since they were stuck with the boys anyway, Haylee agreed.
“I wanna be Haylee’s partner!” Jarrod called out, staking his claim on Grant’s girl before Grant could. There wasn’t really any other workable arrangement with the two young boys unable to play together.
As Haylee and Grant set up the board, it was clear they were doing so under duress, unable to feign enthusiasm to match Jarrod’s. Haylee lit a cigarette as she got the board out, driving Grant crazy as she dangled it while organizing each side’s money and getting out all the property cards, her low-cut pink blouse revealing cleavage every time she leaned forward towards the board. This was a look Grant would be tortured with for the duration of the game, seated across the table next to Joshua while Haylee shared the couch with Jarrod. Every time he saw Haylee lean forward revealing that cleavage…every time he saw her hips shift in those tight white shorts…and every time he saw a new cigarette dangle from Haylee’s lips while she played, he wanted to lunge over there and get on with the business of getting his hands on her. The closest he would get came whenever Haylee extracted a new Camel Pink No. 9 from her pack, when he took a cue from Trevor and Lauren on the drive over and reached out for Haylee’s lighter, stepping around the coffee table with the Monopoly board to light her up. It was a new experience for Haylee to have a guy light her up. She loved that Grant was doing it, but struggled to express her appreciation given the situation.
Well over an hour passed and the game pressed forward, the eye contact between Haylee and Grant brimming with frustration. As the entire living room filled with secondhand smoke from Haylee’s relentless chain of cigarettes, Grant was struck by how much her smoking had become catnip to him, the otherwise offensive odor intoxicating Grant with jubilation every time he watched a new exhale burst from Haylee’s mouth and make the room even smokier. Grant was intentionally sabotaging his game so it could end sooner, passing up the opportunity to buy key properties and ceding them to Haylee and Jarrod, and finally the game came to an end. Jarrod was over the moon about his win and doing a disorganized victory dance. Grant was just as excited but managed to contain his body language.
Haylee had gone a few minutes without a cigarette and Grant knew another one would be coming soon. When Haylee predictably delivered and began removing another cigarette from the pack, Grant pounced and walked over to the couch where Haylee sat, lighting her up again but this time squeezing his way next to her on the sofa, putting his arm around her shoulder and pulling her tight. Haylee wasn’t quite as receptive as he hoped, clearly a little shy about PDA in front of the boys she was babysitting, but particularly as the close-up cigarette smoke began blasting out of Haylee’s mouth and nose following every drag, Grant persisted, lowering his right hand towards her waist and then stroking her thigh with his left
hand. He was disappointed but not entirely surprised when Haylee showed some resistance.
“Grant,” she opened, lowering her voice to a whisper to follow through with, “Not in front of the boys,” her whispers ultimately wasted as both Jarrod and Joshua were staring at the couple and could hear every word. A visibly frustrated Grant reverted his right arm to her shoulder, still enjoying having the incredibly stinky Haylee in his embrace but wanting so much more. He wasn’t going to get it any time soon though as the boys kept lingering, with Jarrod jabbering nonstop, sharing everything on his mind as young boys do with Grant and especially Haylee for much of the next hour. The best Grant could do was continue to light Haylee’s incessant stream of cigarettes, making occasionally satisfying eye contact while cuddling next to her, and seeing her face light up with joy, often just before or after releasing a burst of cigarette smoke into the room, upon hearing some of Jarrod and Joshua’s banter as they kept not going away. Grant knew Haylee was getting frustrated too, but she definitely didn’t seem as frustrated as he was!
***
It was 5:15, nearly a half hour after sunset and already almost pitch-black as Trevor and Lauren exited the Willow Creek Mall. Each were carrying bags from their shopping haul. As Lauren approached a bench only a few feet outside the mall, she propped up her leg atop the bench and used her knee as leverage to access her purse, struggling as both arms were bogged down with shopping bags. Trevor’s attempt to swoop in and help were insufficient to meet the needs of her nicotine craving as she had already reached into her purse and extracted her pack of Marlboro Lights 100s before he got there. She placed the cigarette into her mouth and Trevor took the lighter to spark her up.
“Thanks babe,” Lauren said warmly before proceeding into the parking lot towards Trevor’s car, her arms tied up with the bags and the cigarette dangling from her mouth. Trevor walked intentionally slowly so he could follow her, delighted at the rare opportunity to watch Lauren in a long-distance dangle. Her dangling technique was not as adept as Haylee’s, but Trevor still had a hard time containing his excitement seeing how naturally the cigarette hung from her lips as she took a couple of casual dangling drags while walking the 50 yards or so to the car.
Trevor popped open the trunk and allowed Lauren to drop her armloads of bags into it. She removed the cigarette from her mouth and playfully scolded Trevor, “No peeking!”
Trevor smiled and dropped his own bags in the trunk, then hastily proceeded to the passenger seat of his car and climbed inside. Seconds later, Lauren opened the door and grinned while looking at Trevor and wondering what he was up to.
“I believe you are in my seat,” Lauren said, continuing in her playful tone.
“How could that be true when you’re the one who’s driving home?” Trevor asked smugly, holding up the car keys for Lauren to take.
Lauren’s smile turned quickly to a nervous scowl. “Oh I wouldn’t feel comfortable driving! I can’t without my parents anyway!”
Trevor responded, “You’re fine as long as you’re with a licensed driver”, giving her bad information about state law but legitimately feeling that he was correct. “Traffic is light on Sunday night. There’s no better time than now to get some practice.”
Lauren took a drag from her cigarette and contorted her mouth as she exhaled, as if weighing the pros and cons. She still seemed reluctant but felt as though Trevor had a point, finally taking the keys and saying with obvious apprehension “Okay, you must not want to live long enough to see what I got you for Christmas!”
Lauren walked around the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. Trevor thought she looked so poised and ladylike as she started the car, put on her seat belt, and rested her left hand against the steering wheel with the burning cigarette next to it. He had never seen her drive before, but if this first impression was any indication, he expected to enjoy riding shotgun with her. Lauren began to pull out, her headlights revealing the faintest of snow flurries that had been coming down the whole time they were in the parking lot but were so sparse that they didn’t even realize it. She put the car in drive and slowly worked her way out of the parking lot with the “storm” hyped for later that evening not on either her mind or Trevor’s.
Twenty minutes later, Lauren was driving westbound toward her house and the flurries of the mall parking lot had dramatically escalated. The four-lane in front of her suddenly looked like the inside of a snow globe that had just been shaken. The “storm” was clearly ahead of schedule and was rapidly spiraling out of control. Seeing how nervous Lauren was becoming, Trevor felt guilty for suggesting she drive. But he was even more concerned that he was still expected to drive all the way back to pick up Grant, take him home to Anoka County, and then return to his own home yet that evening. Those plans were getting more complicated by the minute as the snow just kept flying with giant flakes crashing upon the windshield and beginning to accumulate on the road surfaces outside.
“Trevor!” Lauren called out with obvious distress. “I can’t drive in this snow.”
Trevor thought things over for a moment, looking ahead to see no neon lights on the horizon that would make for a good place to pull off the highway but still adding, “We’ll pull into the next gas station or parking lot we see.”
Lauren groaned, hoping she could hold out that long and clutching the wheel tightly with both hands, stressed out and making a request of Trevor. “Could you get me a cigarette?” she muttered, the apprehension in her voice dialed up to 10.
Trevor cooperated, reaching into her purse and pulling out her pack of Marlboro Lights 100s, extracting one and inserting it in the corner of her mouth. He lit her up and watched the smoke roll from her mouth and nose as she dangled off the light- up much as she did after exiting the mall. And as much as Trevor tried to concentrate on finding a good place for Lauren to pull off the road, he couldn’t help but admire how adorable she looked driving with that freshly lit cigarette dangling from her lips. It was always cute to see the rare instances where Lauren stress- smoked and he’d never really seen her perform multiple dangling drags in a row before, so it was hard to look away as her lips puckered up repeatedly around the filter of the cigarette, swirls of smoking flowing in and out of her respiratory system with every breath.
A light off the freeway could be seen ahead, but it was not the gas station or retail store they hoped to see. They were in an industrial zone and the sole light on the horizon was for a manufacturing plant that was closed on Sunday evening. Still, it would have to do as Trevor recognized the need to get Lauren out of this traffic situation immediately. Trevor pointed out the exit to Lauren and she steered slowly down the empty exit rain, a layer of fresh snow making the white lines impossible to make out. Out of the traffic and approaching the stop sign at the end of the freeway ramp, Lauren began to relax a little, albeit prematurely.
The ash on the end of the cigarette Lauren had been dangling for a couple of minutes was getting long, and as she began applying the brakes, she took the cigarette out of her mouth to approach it to the cracked driver’s side window. The combination of the ashing distraction and underestimating the slippery pavement in advance of the stop sign led to the car sliding past the stop sign and continuing to slide into the middle of the street. Trevor watched in middling terror and listened to Lauren scream at the top of her lungs as the car slid several feet onto the thankfully empty street before the brake fully applied.
A stressed-out Lauren was hyperventilating in terror as she sat on the middle of the empty street, her foot continuing to hold the brake pad down. After a moment of silence, she approached her cigarette to her mouth with trembling hands, and Trevor delayed saying anything until he watched his distressed girlfriend ingest a
massive drag of smoke in a futile effort to settle herself down. Since they were alone with no cars in sight, Trevor thought it would be okay to give her a moment to recharge, and as he tried to settle down himself, he found it helpful to see the sweet look of vulnerability on his girl’s face.
“We’re okay Lauren,” Trevor said quietly and reassuringly. “Just drive forward slowly and pull into that plant’s lot.” Trevor pointed to the entry to the factory’s empty lot only a few yards ahead. “We will wait out the storm there.”
Lauren nodded affirmatively with an “I can do this” look on her face, and then proceeded to crawl her way forward, pulling into the lot at a snail’s pace and quickly parking the car. A look of relief emerged on her face as she put the car in park, and the look became even more relieved when she put the cigarette back in her mouth. Trevor watched the cherry glow bright red amidst the backdrop of dark sky and heavy snowfall outside the window. The white paper of the cigarette was slowly vanishing as Lauren dragged, the fiery red blob consuming it closer and closer to Lauren’s mouth. Trevor reached out his hand and Lauren happily took it, content to sit there in silence for a bit while holding each other’s hands tightly.
***
Diverging opinions about the stormy weather couldn’t have been clearer at the Wagner home, and outside of it where Jarrod and Joshua were decked out in their winter weather clothing and playing in the fresh snow in the front yard. Grant and Haylee watched the boys out the front door with a mix of annoyance and concern spread across their faces. Grant took the opportunity to blanket Haylee’s shivering body with his arms, snuggling the scantily dressed teenager towards him and providing her a small degree of warmth to counter the cold blowing in the open door. Her cigarette smoke was still like catnip to Grant even after a few hours in close company and a pretty relentless assault of secondhand smoke that he had not yet become used to being around. He brought a change of clothes and knew he’d have to change into them before heading home as his parents would immediately smell the smoke-drenched aroma of the clothes he was currently wearing.
But on the mind of both Haylee and Grant as they looked at the mounting snowfall was when and how Grant, or anybody else, would be getting home tonight. Haylee had orchestrated an elaborate plan to spend time with him that was contingent on several things coming together at once, but the storm was throwing all that into doubt.
“We need to figure out how to get some alone time, babe!” Grant whispered into her ear, a prospect that had started to fade in Haylee’s mind with the timeline falling apart and knowing there would be consequences to either her parents or Grant’s parents figuring them out. Still, she nodded affirmatively and took a final drag from her cigarette, obnoxiously tossing another butt out the door into the Wagner’s yard and then calling the boys to come back inside.
The wound-up boys were freezing as they came back inside and Haylee helped them out of their parkas, stocking caps, gloves, and boots before making a request of them. “I’m gonna give you guys your baths but then I’m gonna have you play some Play Station in your bedrooms so that Grant and I can have some time together, okay?”
Jarrod looked up to Grant with envy, noticing the gleam of victory in the older boy’s eyes upon hearing Haylee’s request. Jarrod nodded with a hint of defeat as Haylee pulled out her cigarettes. Jarrod watched as Grant leaned over to light her up yet again, leading the boys towards the bathroom for their evening baths. Grant watched her amazing ass climb the stairs with the boys in front of her, a trail of smoke in her path. With luck, his dream was about to come true in another half hour or so, the uncertainty of what happened after that with the turbulent weather and driving situation drifting to a distant second place on his list of priorities.
***
It was 10 minutes after 6:00 at the House of Leathers and Courtney and Kurt were taking care of their final register work and bookwork of the day at the store, having already shut the store’s entry gate at the top of the hour. They worked together alone in a continued awkward silence, only briefly and occasionally talking and always in a business-only context. On her last smoke break, Courtney had seen the early throes of the snowstorm but both of them were oblivious to how bad conditions had gotten in the last hour. After finishing her work, Courtney picked up her pack of Marlboro Light Menthol 100s, extracted one from the pack and dangled it from her lips as she began walking towards the back of the store.
“I’m taking off. See you Tuesday night,” Courtney called out through a talking dangle of the unlit cigarette as she approached the door.
Kurt bid her adieu for the evening, turning to get a final look at her incredible body in that sculpted black leather minidress before she disappeared. After she opened the door and walked into the break room behind the store, Kurt muttered a barely audible “Ufff!” in appreciation of how sexy she looked.
Only about 10 seconds passed before the door reopened and Courtney popped her head back in, a startled look on her face and a now-lit cigarette dangling from her mouth. She pulled the cigarette away and illegally released one of her massive smoke missiles out of her mouth and into the store, then exclaiming, “You better take a look outside! I don’t think we’re going anywhere right now!”
Kurt had been even more oblivious than Courtney about the weather conditions, having not so much as peeked outside in hours with the store being as busy as it had been on a holiday shopping weekend. He quickly wrapped up his final business of the night and then followed Courtney outside to see how bad things had gotten. Looking outside with Courtney standing in front of him, he could tell she was right. Massive flakes of snow were falling and accumulating, scattered about by a strong wind. Visibility was poor even looking out the back door of the mall and he couldn’t imagine how bad things would be on the highways. Kurt sighed and closed the door, turning the light on in the back room and saying to Courtney, “I think you’re right. Looks like we’re gonna be stuck here a while!”
Courtney smiled and forced herself into his arms, musing with a smirk on her face, “Oh, I think we can find ways to pass the time,” hoping that this logistical arrangement would alter their awkward vibe of the last couple of weeks but getting a response from Kurt every bit as cold as the blustery storm outside.
Kurt smiled awkwardly and mildly concurred, briefly embracing Courtney as she dug her head into his shoulder, but his body language was clearly giving off a disinterested and apprehensive vibe. Only seconds after their embrace, with Courtney’s hands wandering towards Kurt’s face, he recoiled more formally, beginning to break apart from her while verbalizing the excuse that “We better turn the radio on and hear how bad things are on the roads.”
Courtney stood in annoyed disbelief as Kurt turned around and flipped the switch on the break room radio, turning the dial to find weather conditions but instead finding one after another announcer going through lists of canceled evening events. The seriousness of the deteriorating road conditions was obvious just hearing about all the canceled events and even some schools delaying for Monday morning. Kurt stopped the dial when he found a station running down current conditions. He sat down on the chair nearest him and focused intently on the unsavory conditions described on the radio, trying not to make eye contact with the confused Courtney but finding that hard every time he caught her out of the corner of her eye taking an intense drag from her cigarette and then filling the room with exhaled cigarette smoke with vintage geothermal rockets propelled 18 inches in front of her face.
After a few minutes of listening to the radio, he finally turned to Courtney with a concerned face and all he could come up with to say was “Sounds bad!”
Courtney was gonna give it another shot and approached him in the chair. She still sensed an obvious standoffish vibe as she parked her body on his lap and wrapped her arm around him, pulling in for a kiss. Kurt briefly allowed himself to be taken in as he felt the buttery smooth leather of her dress against his body and tasted the mentholated tobacco on her breath, but after about 20 seconds, he formally pushed her away.
Courtney reached the breaking point of her sexual frustration and wore it very clearly on her face as she threw her hands up, cigarette perched between her fingers on her right hand, and exclaimed, “What the fuck, Kurt??!?!” in as furious of a tone as Kurt had ever heard from her.
Kurt took a moment to take in the sexy image of an angry Courtney with cigarette in hand but then came clean. “Courtney, we had a really close call with your parents on Thanksgiving and it was a wake-up call for me. You are underage and I am your boss. Do you have any idea how much trouble I will get into if it comes out we’re in a sexual relationship?”
“Well it’s not like I’m gonna tell!” Courtney fired back.
“I trust you and I was satisfied with that arrangement until we almost got busted by your parents. I just can’t risk it while you’re still a minor!”
“So what? You’re breaking up with me then?” Courtney asked just before taking a long drag from her cigarette, making little effort to spare Kurt from the follow- through exhale.
“Well when is your birthday? February, right?”
“Yeah. February 4th”, she responded, residual smoke still trickling out of her mouth and nose and she spoke, recognizing where this was going.
“Can you hold out for me till then? At least when you’re 18 it will no longer be a felony for us to fuck!”
“You’re serious? Almost two months without sex?”
Kurt gave a best-I-can-do shrug, seeming less than confident a girl her age would hold out this long for a 43-year-old guy of his modest pedigree, and finally adding, “I’ll try to make it worth the wait for you.”
Courtney maintained eye contact for a few moments as if pondering the pros and cons of the offer, but gave no indication of her answer before climbing off of Kurt’s lap and letting loose a fierce “Grrrrrr!” to convey her intense sexual frustration. Kurt kept his eyes on her as she stepped over to the table a few feet away where he purse sat. She placed her quarter-smoked cigarette in her mouth and dangled as she foraged through the purse. Kurt was unable to immediately see what she pulled out of the purse and got increasingly curious as she began sliding the table back a few feet.
A few seconds later, Kurt discovered what she was up to as he looked at a substantial dildo in her hand. He knew he was in for a rough night as Courtney proceeded to hike up her leather dress to above her waist and then sit down on the table. She ripped her panties off and tossed them straight at Kurt’s face with an evil smirk on her own face. In seconds, she pressed the dildo to the flesh just outside her exposed vagina and clicked the battery on, her face immediately lighting up with sexual pleasure released through an abrupt moan that came with a spurt of cigarette smoke through her lips. She continued to dangle as she outlined her private parts with the dildo, putting on a visual and aural show for Kurt to convey just exactly what he was missing.
The show got more intense and over-the-top and Kurt just couldn’t look away, touching himself through his work slacks as he got harder and harder watching Courtney pleasure herself. She plunged the dildo inside of her and with each penetration, her exaggerated moans of pleasure got louder. The cigarette remained perched in the corner of her mouth and even in mid-dangle, she still managed hurricane-force exhales out the other side of her mouth. Her moans eventually transitioned to full-on screams, ramming the dildo deeper inside of her and breathing with the cigarette, ingesting a snootful of cigarette smoke with every inhale and firing an 18-inch smoke missile out of her lips with every exhale, making sure to keep eye contact with Kurt every step of the way. Ashes were dropping left and right from the cigarette until she got down to the filter, continuing to drag from it even after there was no tobacco left. Courtney pressed on with the dildo for several more moments until the fluids starting gushing from between her legs right onto the break room table. Kurt watched the entire show until Courtney was finally winding down, breathing hard with a bit of strain he suspected was the result of her smoked-out lungs gasping for oxygen.
With an erotic look splashed across her face, Courtney set down the dildo and reached into her purse for another cigarette. She lit up and blew the smoke from the cigarette towards Kurt with a postcoital satisfaction and got a final playful but cruel verbal dagger in by saying, “Looks like you missed your chance tonight.”
Kurt could tell from her body language that despite the torture, she was probably conveying that she was agreeing to his terms to wait for her 18th birthday before indulging any further sexual activity. If this abuse of the sexual power dynamic on her part was par for course, it was gonna be a long eight weeks, but two could play at this game, Kurt thought to himself, smirking back at Courtney before turning his own chair around and making as much noise as possible unzipping his pants. He looked over his shoulder to see Courtney still smirking and recognizing what he was doing as she took another intensely pleasurable drag from her cigarette and began to hear the unmistakable sound of male masturbation without the visual. A bit of a grunt could be heard as Courtney exhaled recognizing it would be nearly two months till she had his cock inside of her again.
***
Trevor sat in the passenger seat of his parents’ car with his phone up to his ear. He looked over to a smiling Lauren and made a chatterbox motion with his hand to indicate that his mother was talking on and on. A much more relaxed Lauren burst into her trademark giggle at Trevor’s gesture. The young couple had called their respective parents to ask what they thought they should do given the continued snowfall with no end in sight. They called Lauren’s parents first and since they were only about seven miles from their place, her father offered to pick them up and have Trevor stay in their guest room overnight. Trevor was now on the phone with his mother relaying the situation and getting “permission” insofar as there were any other viable options. Trevor could tell his mom didn’t love the idea but that she found it a better option than having Trevor try to drive home with his limited driving experience. Finally, the conversation was wrapping up.
“Love you too, mom,” Trevor responded to Becky’s parting expression of love and then cut his phone off.
“Awww!” Lauren said in a genuine response to hearing Trevor tell his mother he loved her.
“So how long did your dad say it would take for him to get here?” Trevor asked. “He said an hour. He had to clear off the driveway first.”
Trevor furrowed his brow playfully. “We got some time to fool around then, huh?”
Lauren giggled. “I thought of that too but remember how much it sucks to do it in the car”, she responded, wrinkling her nose at the thought of backseat intercourse.
Trevor furrowed his brow again and said “Well with what I had in mind, we wouldn’t even have to leave the front seat”, guiding his hand down her leather jacket and onto her crotch and then giving it a soft pinch.
“Trevor! You’re so baaaad!” Lauren fired back. She sat there silently contemplating the offer, continuing to be curious about the primary oral sex act that they had not yet participated in because Lauren was very bashful about it.
“So can tonight be the night you see if I’m any good at this?” Trevor asked, continuing to rub her crotch outside of her leggings in hopes it’d be motivating.
“I don’t know!” she responded with a nervous giggle, burying her face in her hand to hide her blushing.
“Why are you so shy about letting me go down on you?” Trevor asked in as gently inquisitive of a voice as possible, hoping she’d open up if he approached the topic in good faith.
“It’s embarrassing!!” Lauren responded with a playful flourish. “I’m worried it’ll taste bad or smell bad or whatever!”
Trevor smiled and shook his head as if to convey that he couldn’t imagine that being the case, watching as Lauren reached into her purse for another cigarette. Trevor happily took the lighter from her and fired up her cigarette. They maintained continued eye contact and Trevor took the opportunity to tenderly brush her face with his hand as he had done earlier in the day when they were driving to Grant’s place. Just as before, the smile on Lauren’s face left no doubt how much she liked the gesture. She exhaled her smoke as deliberately as she could in Trevor’s direction without appearing to be too obvious, and then reflexively bit her lower lip. Trevor was once again tipped off to how much Lauren was turned on by observing her unmistakable tell, and responded with a sly “I think I just got a yes!”
Lauren giggled but nearly killed the mood with a logistical challenge Trevor had not thought of. “But this is your parents’ car. It’ll make a mess and they’ll know!”
An “oh shit!” look splashed across Trevor’s face followed by a few moments of contemplation before his face lit up brighter than the cherry on Lauren’s cigarette as she took another drag. “Pop the trunk,” Trevor requested.
“Huh??!?!” Lauren responded with a confused wince. “Just pop it!” Trevor fired back mysteriously.
“Okay, boss!” Lauren said, popping the trunk open and watching Trevor open the car door and step outside into the miserable winter storm for a brief moment. She waited about 30 seconds eager to see what Trevor would return to the car with. He ultimately returned with a roll of Christmas wrapping paper and again fluttered his eyebrows at Lauren as he began to open the plastic encasing the wrapping paper. Lauren still seemed a bit confused until Trevor began to unroll the paper and asked her to take it, at which point she recognized Trevor was gonna have her sit atop the paper to capture her fluids during the cunnilingus. She laughed and said again “You’re so, so baaad!” as she took the roll and climbed on top of it as Trevor kept unspooling it his direction.
The playfulness was about to get very real very quickly though as Lauren was now sitting atop the paper and moving her legs over the console on both sides of Trevor, a nervous energy filling her face that was becoming contagious to Trevor who recognized this was finally gonna happen. Trevor moved towards Lauren and the two of them worked together to slide Lauren’s leggings and panties off of her waist and down past her knees, exposing her moistening genitals to Trevor. He looked at her face one last time as he took his position, watching as she took a nervous drag from her cigarette and reminding Trevor how beautiful she was. Lauren smiled as she exhaled a blast of smoke, giving Trevor his final motivation to start munching the muffin.
Not knowing fully what to do or expect, Trevor’s tongue touched the flesh just outside Lauren’s vagina, and she immediately made a pleasured moan. He moved his tongue slowly around the circumference of her vulva and the moans continued. Even while immersed in the odors of her feminine fluids from close range, Trevor could still smell the cigarette smoke lurking above him, particularly whenever Lauren exhaled. After a few laps around the track, Trevor plunged his tongue into the orifice, accompanied by a squeaking pleasure from Lauren. The enjoyment on Lauren’s part was only beginning and Trevor was getting great motivation to press on as she moaned with pleasure and then coached him which direction to proceed.
The oral copulation was a workout for Trevor, particularly with the limiting logistics of the bucket seats, but he soldiered through his exhaustion minute after minute, pressing much of his chin inside of her to gain full access to her sweet spot with his tongue. Lauren’s moans escalated to screams as his tongue started feverishly working her clitoris. Trevor briefly raised his eyes to check out Lauren’s pleasured expressions, holding her cigarette to her lips and dragging furiously from it, conflating her genital pleasure with another form of pleasure inside her lungs. Lauren was having none of Trevor’s distraction though, grabbing the back on his
head and pressing it down into her vagina and breathlessly pleading, “Don’t stop!!!” Trevor was back on task with the help of Lauren’s physical force, continuing to straddle her clit with his rapid-motion tongue lashings, giving her every morsel of energy he could muster and continuing to be motivated by her increasingly loud exclamations of pleasure.
“I’m gonna cum,” Lauren shouted breathlessly, recognizing that her female plumbing was finally about to burst. Seconds later, the warning materialized as fluids poured out of her and into Trevor’s face, her legs uncontrollably kicking over his shoulders and occasionally landing hard on his back.. He struggled to keep his breath and still give Lauren a few more finishing licks, her bodily reward being a greater expression of satisfaction than Lauren would ever be able to verbalize, try as she likely might. The extended oral offering finally wound down and Trevor pulled his strained face and tongue out of the promised land, resting his head on Lauren’s thigh and catching his breath.
“Thank you so much, baby. I love you,” Lauren whispered through her hyperventilation as she continued to come down off of her sexual high. She extracted another cigarette from her purse but held Trevor’s head softly down so he could rest, lighting herself up and giving him a break.
After a few quiet and tender moments touching each other with Trevor’s head still resting on her bare thigh, Trevor finally broke the silence by saying, “Well this Christmas shopping trip sure turned out different than I expected. How about you?”
Lauren briefly giggled but then startled Trevor as her tone got quickly serious. “Oh my gosh, Haylee! You were supposed to pick Grant up!”
Trevor quickly picked his wet face off of Lauren’s body, having completely forgotten the original plan of picking up Grant and taking him home. He knew Haylee had to be freaking out now about what would become of Grant, who was still at Jarrod and Joshua’s parents’ place. Trevor composed himself and prepared to send a text to Haylee that he knew would be very bad news for her.
***
Haylee and Grant were wrapped in each other’s bodies on the Wagner family couch, their tongues pressed into each other’s mouths in an extended makeout session, with Grant always aware that Haylee was holding a smoldering cigarette over his shoulder as they kissed. His hand was up her shirt and stroking her left breast, his crotch beginning to bulge having gone as far with Haylee as he did that
first day at the movie theater in October, and fully expecting to go further tonight. Haylee was trying to get into the moment as much as possible, but couldn’t help but look towards the giant clock hanging over the hallway leading to the kitchen and seeing it was 7:30. Trevor was supposed to have picked Grant up by now but she hadn’t even heard from her brother. She was becoming concerned about his safety having not yet even gotten a text yet, but even more concerned about the prospect of Jarrod and Joshua’s parents getting off work at 9 and being home a half hour later to find Grant at their home.
Grant broke apart for the kiss allowing a distracted Haylee to take a drag from her cigarette. Grant had a vague sense of Haylee’s distraction but tried to ignore it, making eye contact for visual confirmation to proceed, which Haylee halfheartedly granted. He reached for her white shorts, unbuttoned them and then unzipped the fly. Grant wasted no time reaching his fingers where they’d never been before, on Haylee or any other girl. He navigated his forefinger and middle finger into Haylee’s panties and quickly found their way inside of her. Haylee was in mid-drag and was startled by the sensation. Grant rubbed around and continued his eye contact with Haylee, who for the first time in quite a while now seemed fully engaged, exhaling a blast of cigarette smoke out of her mouth and nose and beaming with an erotic pleasure at the feeling of Grant’s fingers arousing her genitals that had never been touched by anyone but herself.
Grant’s fingers found his way to her sweet spot and Haylee moaned again in a startled pleasure, eventually tilting her head back and breathing heavier as the intensity of the fondling grew stronger. Grant lifted her hand and placed it on his own crotch, and Haylee smiled as she felt how hard it was outside his jeans. But just as she was in the process of unzipping Grant’s jeans to score access to his parts, her phone buzzed for the first time in a couple of hours with the name “Trevor” lit up. She could sense Grant’s frustration as she reached for her phone and checked the message, reading it as Grant continued to finger her. Grant could tell by the look on her face that it was bad news but Haylee confirmed it verbally with a loud and distressed “Shit!”
“What’s wrong?” Grant asked halfheartedly while continuing to work his hand on her pussy and approached his free hand to the waistline of her shorts as if preparing to pull them off.
“Trevor and Lauren are stuck in a parking lot in the snow and Lauren’s dad is picking them up to stay at her place overnight,” she said nervously, broken up to a limited degree by Grant’s continued finger motions. “There’s nobody coming here to pick you up tonight, Grant.”
Grant stopped for a couple of seconds and realized this situation was gonna become a big problem in a couple of hours, but as he looked at Haylee’s beautiful and terrified face as she took a stressed-out drag from her cigarette, he quickly came to the conclusion that that was a problem he’d have to deal with some other time and tried to lighten the mood with his rejoinder. “Perfect. Another couple of hours of privacy for us!!!”
Grant followed his comment up by going for Haylee’s shorts, pulling them down slowly with only minimal cooperation as Haylee was lightheartedly scolding Grant through a talking exhale that “it’s not funny” with smoke spraying from her mouth and nose, paying much more limited attention to stroking him outside his pants but quickly losing the mood. Grant was having none of it though and had Haylee’s shorts pulled down enough to expose her vagina and continued to work it with his fingers. Haylee was becoming a bit annoyed and finally muttered, “Grant, I’m not really feeling it anymore. We’re gonna be in a lot of trouble when they come home.”
Grant had not yet sensed Haylee’s complete disconnect even though her hand was off his crotch now. “Oh c’mon baby…it’ll be a long time till we get another chance like this.” He proceeded to plant his mouth on her neck and attempted to put her hand back on his crotch.
Haylee continued to try to express her diminished enthusiasm but it couldn’t seem to break through with Grant’s lustful passion only continuing to escalate until Haylee finally pushed him away to make eye contact and said firmly. “Grant….don’t!”
The sudden chill on her face took Grant by surprise and he immediately pulled his hand off her lower body. But a situation that was already uncomfortable grew disastrously more so with a startling shriek from the second floor.
“Stooppppp!” shouted young Jarrod, standing at the top of the stairs watching everything, and then launched into a hysterical fit of crying. The young couple scrambled to get dressed, with Haylee dangling her mostly-smoked cigarette from her mouth as she pulled up her shorts while Grant zipped himself up. Haylee and Grant’s faces turned candy apple red with embarrassment over their very private moment being witnessed by a child, and the boy’s reaction raised the awkwardness bar to unbearable.
Once fully clothed and straightening her disheveled hair some, Haylee called up to Jarrod through a talking dangle of her cigarette stub to come downstairs so she could comfort him. Grant needed no verbal cue to motivate him to step away,
walking towards the window to look outside at the snow given the limited options for escape, but wishing he could just turn invisible at this moment. Jarrod’s cries became a bit more subdued as he collapsed on the couch and wrapped his arm around Haylee. In one motion, she crushed out her existing Camel Pink No. 9 and then reached for her pack to immediately light up another one, continuing to dangle it long after lighting it while consoling the traumatized child through monosyllabic talking dangles.
Grant lingered at the window for several minutes, wishing he was still alone with Haylee but still realizing he had some major damage control to take care of and decided to get started on it as he walked back towards her. “I’m sorry Haylee.”
Haylee just shrugged and made a sympathetic face through her continued cigarette dangle.
“You know I wasn’t gonna–” Grant began, but then paused.
“I know,” interrupted Haylee softly, the cigarette bouncing up and down as she spoke. After a lengthy awkward pause, she added, “I do think you should leave though.”
Grant’s expression was aghast and he responded, “Leave where? I have nowhere to go and no way to get there,” which apparently had slipped Haylee’s mind momentarily. But Jarrod’s cries began to become more hysterical again after hearing that Grant wasn’t leaving. Grant stood in agonizing silence for a few moments as if pondering his next move, and then finally volunteered the plan he came up with. “My brother lives in this town. I’ll have to GPS it but I will try to walk to his place from here if he’s home.”
Grant briefly sat down and began texting his brother’s number, sneaking glances up at Haylee and Jarrod, his heart full of sorrow seeing the vacant look on Haylee’s face as she continued to drag and exhale from the cigarette that had been dangling from her mouth since she lit it, as if she’d forgotten about it entirely amidst the drama. The long ash dropped from the cigarette onto her white shorts, and the ongoing metaphor of innocence lost to those virginal white shorts didn’t escape Grant’s observation.
After getting a texting response from his brother and pulling up the GPS route on his phone, Grant decided he was gonna make a break for it. “2.2 miles to my brother’s. I think I’ll go.” Haylee looked up with droopy eyes, and it was hard to tell if she was expressing shame, sorrow, or vacant distress. Unable to take anymore of it, Grant just got up to leave.
Just as he was about to open the door and exit, Haylee called out “Grant….” and then paused till Grant turned around to make eye contact with a final glimmer of hope on his face. “I’ll text you again tomorrow, okay,” she followed up with, even though she didn’t know for sure whether she would.
“I’d like that Haylee. Talk to you tomorrow.” Grant responded just before opening the door to the ongoing winter storm and stepping outside. As nasty as the wind and snow were, it was still a relief to walk out of that house. Grant now had plenty of time to reflect on the disastrous timing that blew up what he had expected was gonna be the best night of his life, as well as the uncertain situation with Haylee and how complicated and ugly things can get in the world of love even with two people that went in with sincere intentions. He really hoped Haylee knew he wasn’t gonna cross the line and that he regretted letting the situation go as far as it had without taking the hint, but he also knew it would be very awkward between them in the near future. In the meantime, Grant figured he better start coming up with an alibi to his parents why he ended up staying the night at his brother’s place, and an alibi to his brother why he was walking into his apartment reeking of cigarette smoke.
***
As 8:00 approached, Courtney and Kurt reached a compromise to cuddle together non-sexually in the chilly back room of the House of Leathers store, continuing to hang tight until the radio announced the storm was moving out of the area and the plows had cleared the streets. Courtney sat on his lap in her leather dress, her head buried peacefully on his shoulder while she dragged from one of her many cigarettes of the night. Kurt looked down from his perfect vantage point to see Courtney’s beautiful smoke rockets break new distance records as they blasted past his free shoulder into the darkness of the store room, with trickles of smoke spilling from her nose and badly contaminating his airspace. This was gonna be the longest eight weeks of his life.
Meanwhile, parked in an empty and sparsely lit lot still awaiting a ride, Trevor was sprawled out as best as possible in his bucket seat, his head resting against the passenger door and window, while Lauren laid atop him. Lauren was dragging from her latest cigarette as they cuddled, using a butt bucket to ash with the window not open even a crack. Trevor’s eyes were watering from the prolonged direct exposure to Lauren’s secondhand smoke, yet still loving every second of it. Lauren took a deep drag and exhaled straight ahead, the smoke having nowhere to go but drift back towards Trevor every time he breathed. Lauren then turned up to Trevor and kissed him on the cheek, her breath reeking of fresh tobacco.
Lauren giggled and said, “Your face still smells like pussy. You better hope my dad doesn’t get too close.” Trevor just smiled and the young couple continued to lie in each other’s embrace in the cramped car interior, looking to the western horizon for the first sign of headlights at which point they’d quickly revert to their original position with Lauren behind the wheel and Trevor in the passenger seat, acting as though that had been the arrangement all night when Lauren’s dad showed up.
And at the Wagner home, Haylee still sat on the edge of the living room couch, having not moved for going on 45 minutes. Jarrod was still sitting next to her, only now the roles were reversed. Haylee sat softly sobbing as she pondered the derailed events of the evening, alternating between conventional drags and long- distance dangles/dangling drags from her latest cigarette, while a subdued Jarrod was now resting his head on her chest and holding her, returning the favor from earlier when she was consoling him. As a bonus to being able to have his body pressed up against Haylee’s, feeling her chest heave with every drag and occasionally erupt with her semiregular smokers’ coughs, Jarrod was also being treated to an endless myopic assault of her secondhand smoke, his nose burning and his eyes watering as wave upon wave of Haylee’s exhaled smoke was finding its way into Jarrod’s face.
The McPherson siblings respective days didn’t go as planned and they may not have ended up with the person they expected or under the circumstances they expected, but they were all sharing a cozy and smoky embrace with someone from the opposite sex who adored them at the peak of the first major Minnesota snowfall of the winter. And they were all content to let the consequences of their dramatic day wait until tomorrow.