Big Haired Bitches - 2. Picture Perfect

I thought about telling my dad what had actually happened to the car. Then I considered some issues. I couldn’t prove who had done it; no way would Victoria confess. Instead, I let my dad believe it was a construction accident and before I knew it, I was driving a Range Rover rental and had a spot in the faculty lot for the rest of the year.

There was still the question about what to do with the bitch who had totaled my car. To be quite honest, part of me wanted to tell my dad I knew it was her. He would have smacked her and her parents with a hell binding lawsuit that would have tied them up in court for months. It would have been great to see that ice queen eat a piece of justice pie, if even for a minute.

But I decided that she deserved more than just a legal slap on the wrist and damages totaling the cost of repairs. This is how people played in Summit Hill. I was learning the rules… it was time to jump into the game.

“So, one week down, how do you feel?” Eric asked me at lunch on Friday. I hadn’t told him that his precious sister had ruined my Lexus because I wanted a friend more than I wanted revenge.

“I feel good,” I replied. “I’m learning a whole heck of a lot.”

“Like what?” he asked, genuinely interested. He was the only person at the school who seemed to care beyond the surface level. His smile was no where near fake.

“Um, let’s see. Red soled shoes are the only ones worth having.”

“Of course.”

“If your parents work in banking you’re new money. If your parents are in oil, you’re old money. It’s the whole East Egg vs. West Egg thing, I guess.”

“Eggs?”

“Gatsby. 11th grade English? Never mind,” I replied. The library might have been filled with a million volumes, but it didn’t mean they were all read. He was dumb, but he was beautiful. “Um, anyway. The most important lesson, however, is that eating in the shade makes you one of the cool kids.”

“Really? You feel like a cool kid?”

“I do,” I said with a smirk. “By proxy, of course.”

“Of course,” he replied. I never quite knew if Eric knew I was gay. At certain times, I felt like he was flirting with me and at other times I felt like he was just another one of the lacrosse jocks. I’d run into this problem before, of hitting on straight guys and getting turned down in a vat of awkwardness, and so I had a rule to always be sure. Still, I wanted to know if Eric was on my to-do list or simply a permanent fixture on my wank bank.

“So you’ll come?” he asked again. I had been listening to his words, but not entirely paying attention. Come snapped me back to reality.

“Sorry, say again?”

“At some point you’ll have to start listening to people,” he joked. It wasn’t the first time I’d been caught daydreaming. “I told you that I’m throwing a pool party at my house tomorrow. You should come.”

“Wow, my first Summit Hill social event invite,” I mused. “I should scrap-book this moment.”

“It’s a huge moment. The guest list is… nil,” he said.

“Well then it would be rude of me not to show up,” I replied. He smiled. “Should I bring anything?”

“Just a suit and a smile,” he said, standing to throw his lunch away. It dawned on me first that in 24 hours I would be seeing my impossibly cute crush in a swimsuit. I had once tried to invent boner tape for the guys in Lucy’s dance troupe, but the idea failed miserably. As I imagined him in a Speedo, I wished I hadn’t given up on that experiment.

It dawned on me a second later that the wicked witch with the Audi would more than likely be at the party. No matter how different the two of them were, family members always got invites to the parties.

I learned from my second Summit Hill friend, a guy named Nate in my human biology class, that an invite to a Perse party was social gold.

“It’s gonna be the biggest party of the summer,” Nathan said in his slow Texas drawl. I thought for a second and realized these were the kinds of people that adhered to seasonal seasons. Summer didn’t end when school started. It ended when the Perses said so and only after they threw their own equivalent to the Hamptons White Party.

Nate went back to being weird and I went back to daydreaming about what Eric would look like, half naked and wet.

The end of class buzzer went off and I packed up slowly to allow my blood to redistribute. I forced myself to stay focused as I drove home in the Range Rover, a ride I could get used to.

Lucy called me as I was maneuvering around the neighborhood, looking for my dad’s house. I decided to wait until I got home to call her back.

“Want to go to Centennial with me and feed the ducks?” she asked.

“Luce, I just got home,” I replied. “I’m exhausted.”

“No fair,” she said. “Just cuz you live in candy land doesn’t mean you’re too good to feed ducks.”

I smiled. I rifled around the kitchen for peanut butter and jelly when I realized I too would be showing off my beach bod in one day. I opted for grapes instead.

“Why don’t you come over and we can watch The Talented Mr. Ripley,” I suggested. I hoisted myself up onto the counter and waved my dad’s cleaning lady goodbye as she made her exit. “I’ll make brittle.”

“My brother has a football game tonight,” she replied. I sighed. “We can hang out tomorrow.”

I thought about it. I should have made time to see Lucy this weekend. I hadn’t seen her in over a week since I transferred and that was the longest we’d ever gone. But the idea of skipping the party made that a non-possibility. And the thought of inviting her when I was sure I had barely skirted by with an invitation myself made that non-possibility number two.

“I have a science project to work on,” I said. “And I’m already behind on it. The other kids have been working since school started.”

“It’s only the third week,” she said. “How the hell do you already have a project due?”

“I know,” I said, the lump in my throat growing. She’d understand when we were older and Eric and I were married and she saw just how beautiful our offspring were. I had already decided that we would use his genetically gifted sperm in the event we had to choose. “It’s like a college prep biology class… thing, I don’t know.”

The lie got bigger and bigger until it reached the point where I was entering myself in the Nobel Prize contest for Physics and Richard Feynman was grading the project. It killed me when she said she understood and that I would see her at her recital on Tuesday. I made a mental note that missing that was not an option.

That night, my dad asked me why I was staying in on a Friday night. I crunched popcorn, paused Mr. Ripley just as Jude Law was walking the beach shirtless and explained that I was punishing myself for letting my car get ruined.

“You take yourself too seriously,” he replied. “And I want to talk to you about that. I know this transmission has been pretty hard on you, so… I’m signing the papers on the Rover for you on Monday. It’ll be yours.”

“No more rental?”

“I worked out a deal,” he said. He smiled as if he’d just bought me a puppy that would grow up to be my best friend forever. As nice as the car was, it annoyed me that my dad thought it was the cure to all of my problems.

“Wow,” I replied. “Thanks so much dad.”

He ruffled my hair like I was five. “You’ll make friends and then you’ll all ride around in a car I can’t afford, how about that?”

His confidence in me was heartwarming. This would never have flown if my mom was still in the States. She hated ostentatious displays of wealth. It was part of the reason they’d split up when I was a kid. Even me getting the Lexus on my seventeenth birthday was a problem for her, saved only by the fact that I had to pay my own insurance by working over the summer.

Like a first grader, I went to sleep early on Friday thinking that if I slept sooner, morning would come and I could get to the party sooner. It was reasonable logic for a kid, why couldn’t it work for me?

I lay in bed thinking about what I would say to that big haired cocksucker when I saw her the next day. She’d probably be standing there in the same swim suit that Tyra Banks had worn on the cover of Sports Illustrated and she’d probably look ten times better.

Then again, there was the solid chance that as a mere speck on her social radar, she wouldn’t even remember who I was. She’d done her dirty work. To her, I was probably gone. The annoying car boy is nowhere to be seen.

In my head, I dreamed up different scenarios to get her back, but none of them seemed big enough and all of them included seducing Eric.

What exactly was the key to her success? Godly features. A posse of other hot creatures. Endless amounts of money. And balls the size of Australia. All things I couldn’t compete with. I was good looking, but no head turner. I had two friends at Summit and one of them had an A in human biology, a clear indication of his place on the social ladder. I had access to money, but only at the mercy of my father, who was too smart to get swindled.

But I was ballsy. I’d ride my South Houston bull balls all the way to the bank.

I woke up early on Saturday and drove to the Summit shopping center in the middle of town. This wasn’t your average strip mall of Korean nail salons and questionable barbeque joints. It was high end boutiques and a Sunglass Hut.

First stop was a bathing suit. I figured my Quick Silver swimming trunks wouldn’t cut it in a pool that was most likely lined in diamonds and filled with Perrier. I opted for a Calvin Klein black pair of shorts that were shorter than I felt comfortable with but made my package look irresistible, according to the flamboyant sales guy.

Next up was a pair of sunglasses. I pounced over to Sunglass Hut and picked out a pair of Armani frames that my dad would kill me for purchasing when he saw the statement. I guess I was better at this rich kid thing than I thought. I would have never dared to use my emergency credit card on this shit when I lived in SoHo. Now that I was only as good as my latest label, everything felt semi-justified.

I ended my hard morning of shopping with a smoothie from Starbucks, the only chain restaurant in Summit Hill proper, I was sure. I desperately wanted to eat something hot, but I knew I would feel paunchy in my barely there trunks if I did. It wasn’t as though I was afraid I’d look paunchy. Without sounding like a total douche, I had a pretty good body and the remnants of my summer four pack still intact. It was more like I would feel like a piece of lard if I ate one, so I opted on ground frozen fruit that smelled like South American coffee.

By the time I got dressed at 4:00 and headed out, I had done everything in my power to procrastinate, including cleaning my room. I didn’t want to get there right when it started, and so I waited and waited and drove slow towards the Perse house.

Things were getting under way when I pulled my Rover up and handed the keys to someone dressed in black and white. Who the fuck hires valet for a high school party? I thought. I wasn’t in South Kansas anymore, and that was made abundantly clear when I walked in.

The house was straight out of MTV’s Cribs. The foyer was huge with four pillars erecting into a high ceiling. The three stairs that lead through the living area and straight to the backyard were marble. Everything else was just as gaudy.

She spotted me before I spotted her. I took off my glasses and stared into the eye of Satan. Instead of her head bursting into flames, though, she gave me a sweet smile and walked over.

“Hi there,” she said, extending a hand. “We met on Tuesday.”

She said it as if she hadn’t dropped a boulder onto my car, forcing me to sit in the principal’s office for an hour and listen to my dad threaten the man’s poor life.

“I didn’t get your name,” I said, returning the pleasantries.

“Victoria,” she said. Of course it was. “But you can call me Tori.”

“Nice to meet you officially, Tori,” I replied. “I’m…”

“Logan,” she cut me off. “My brother told me all about you when he said he’d invited you to the party. The more the merrier.”

“My thoughts exactly. Are you not going to…” I was baffled that this chick was talking to me like nothing had happened between us. I was even more baffled at how pretty she looked up close.

“Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot,” she said sweetly. Oh really? And what foot was that? The same foot that kicked a small mountain off a tree and onto my car?

“My brother clearly likes you, so… hopefully we can get passed the parking incident and get along.” She gave me one last smile that I couldn’t argue with and then disappeared. Wait… he likes me? Clearly? What was that? That couldn’t mean what I thought it did. I pushed the Freudian thought out of my mind.

Nicely done, I thought. She had somehow turned it around so that I felt like a jackass for dreaming up crazy ways to exact my revenge. I felt even worse when she returned with an Arnold Palmer that was loaded with vodka.

“Have fun,” she smiled. “Mi casa es su casa.”

I sipped the much needed drink and followed her lead to the back yard, where everyone was splashing around, soaking up the sun, and sipping their cocktails.

My vision of a shirtless Eric did him no justice. The man was beautiful. I’m talking precum in my black trunks gorgeous. His body was thin, but not too thin. It was the perfect surfer build. His skin actually glistened in the sun and the water from the pool seemed to just glide over him when he sprang up to greet me. I came for the smile and the eyes. I stayed for the abs.

“Hey, you came,” he said. Not yet, I thought. But if you keep looking at me like that, I might later.

“Yeah,” I stammered, blinking wildly.

“Let’s get in the water,” he said with a childish smirk on his face. Before I could, he started to pull my shirt up over my head and I felt a flash of insecurity course over my average body. He must have noticed me hesitate as I crossed my arms over my bare chest because he gave me a smile and said, reassuringly, “You look good. I like your shorts.”

A second later, he pushed me into the pool.

The party was everything you’d expect from a beach house in Malibu. I’d never seen anything like this in Houston. It was a forgone assumption that the kids would drink and everyone was.

“You can stay over if you get plastered,” Eric whispered in my ear at one point. I forced myself not to read it as a come on. I’m sure everyone else was staying over too.

And so plastered I got. First it was the lemonade that was spiked with bourbon. Then it was the iced tea that was made with more vodka than water. Then a mixture of both. By the time the sun started to dwindle, it was tequila shots and smores.

“Are you having fun?” Eric asked, handing me a smore and a towel. I smiled up at him and took the smore first. He wrapped the towel around me. It was the hundredth thing he’d done to make me wonder if he spoke fag, and with every action, I maintained that I was reading too much into it.

No way a hottie like him was into me. But then again, I hadn’t seen him talk to any girls at the party. And his clear attention to how I was feeling had been the through line of the whole event. He was a rare gem in a sea of hair product and designer labels, but I wasn’t ready to cross that line just in case I was wrong.

“I’m having a blast,” I said with my best ‘you’re gonna have to hit on me’ smile.

“Well, I hope you’ll stick around then,” he said with a glisten. “The party’s just getting started.”

Much like these rich kids always did, he disappeared a second later, leaving me to ponder his sentence over and over.

My brother told me all about you. Clearly he likes you.

I sat there eating a smore and nodding along to a girl’s story about how she bought a Coach clutch and discovered that it was actually Dunny and Burke by accident. I turned to see Eric talking to his sister and looking right at me. He flashed me a smile and then whispered something in her ear. They looked so close and happy together.

A second later, I had my plan for revenge on Victoria. I smiled and waved back.

He came back over and I stood to follow him to a semi-private alcove seat on the other side of the pool. We could see the sun set beautifully from where we sat, sipping a freshly muddled mojito and enjoying the close proximity.

“So your sister apologized for scaring the crap out of me,” I said.

“Yeah, I told her to be nice,” he smiled.

“Any reason in particular?” I asked. I wanted him to say because he liked me, but instead, he looked down shyly and then back up at me, revealing the first morsel of insecurity I’d seen in a week.

“Listen, you are the only person that I invited to the party,” he said with a sparkle in his eye. I saw the beginning of a dimple form on his cheek and I swooned. “I mean, like actually invited. And wanted to come.”

“Like a date?” I asked, overjoyed inside, but playing it seductively cool.

“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”

With nothing to lose and a hot hookup to gain, I leaned in for a kiss. He requited it briefly and then pushed my head back, licking his lips and staring into my eyes with his deep blues.

“Let’s not do that here,” he said with a smile. He stood up and squeezed my hand for a second. I briefly thought we’d cross the deck holding hands, but that didn’t quite pan out. Instead, we skipped passed the other folks dwindling around, wondering what was next for the party now that the sun was setting.

“Let me show you my bedroom,” Eric said with a cute smile when we got inside the house.

“Okay,” I replied, forcing myself to keep my smile in check. “Um… do you mind if I charge my phone? It’s gonna die any minute?”

“Sure,” he said. “What kind is it?”

I showed him my brand new white iPhone 3GS, another love bribe from my father, and he said he had a charger upstairs. When we got to his room, I plugged my phone in on the charger nearest the bed and then stood up.

Eric’s face was right there when I turned around and he went in for the kiss with no hesitation this time. He wrapped one arm around my waist and with his other hand, he pulled my face into his. We kissed passionately for a few minutes, and I felt the distinct poking of a boner on my side.

Eric pushed me to his bed and then mounted me, grinding sexily into my already hard cock as well. I opened my legs so that he could slide right between them and we could make out and dry hump at the same time.

If I thought all that was on the agenda was a little dry humping, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Before I knew what was happening, Eric was peeling me out of my trunks and slipping my cock into his mouth. I gave my phone a quick check and then arched my back to enjoy the blow job.

He was surprisingly adept at sucking cock. I’d been with a handful of guys my age before and one guy significantly older. Not pervert old, but definitely college old. Most of the guys my age were tentative around the cock and even more tentative around the balls.

Eric, on the other hand, took me in effortlessly and swallowed the entire length of my 7.5 inch shaft… I had measured it just the other day. What made his oral technique better than average was the sheer exuberance and joy he showed in sucking my dick.

Before long, I couldn’t hold back any more. I wasn’t sure if he expected me to return the favor, which I would have had he asked. I also wasn’t sure if he expected me to have sex with him… that would have had to be a conversation. I looked down and realized he was stroking his cock while I was nearing the edge, so I figured it was just a friendly ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ blow job and I was off the hook.

With that in mind, I laid back, put my arms behind my head and really let him work. He edged me a couple of times, slurping in slowly and holding his throat there while his hand worked my torso and his own member.

The second time he tried to edge me out, I couldn’t be stopped. I put my hand on the back of his head, pressed down gently and let her rip, right into the back of his throat.

After one spurt, I pulled his face up and let the second shot catch him in the chin. The third shot hit his outstretched tongue and the rest of my cum just kind of dribbled out. He licked it up in a sultry, bordering on slutty, kind of way and I grinned down at him.

He came up for a kiss. “You taste great,” he smiled. I know, I thought. I’m tasting myself on you right now.

He climbed up on the bed and settled in next to me. I felt awkward and kind of cold lying on his sheets naked, but he was naked too, so I just went with it.

“So what brings you all the way to Summit Hill from SoHo,” he asked, taking advantage of my low mental capacity to pry into my past. “There has to be a story there.”

“It’s the same old tired story,” I replied. “My parents got a divorce, my mom fled the country and my dad was forced to pick up the reigns and raise me. The only perk for me is that he’s filthy rich and my mom never let him spoil me before, so…”

“If spoiled is what you’re going after, you’ve come to the right place,” Eric sighed. He stood up and slipped his shorts back on. “None of the kids here knows how good we have it. Including me sometimes. That’s why you were such a breath of fresh air.”

“I just thought that was my deodorant working,” I smiled. I pulled my own shorts on and stood next to him.

“It works,” he smiled. He gave me a last kiss. “Don’t forget your phone.”

I hated that we had to leave, but there was a party going on downstairs. I grabbed my phone off the charger and followed him out.

Everyone had moved inside and people were beginning to couple. It reminded me of the parties you see on The Hills. Loud music blaring (where were the parents?), everyone sitting around on couches and soaking up each other’s awesomeness. As things started getting into full swing, I slipped upstairs unnoticed and traced my steps back to Eric’s room.

I tested the door across from his, peaked in and saw that it was much larger and undoubtedly decorated to fit the queen bee.

She had a four-post bed in the center against the main wall. Across from her bed was Chanel inspired Tiffany blue vanity table with four mirrors and several custom accoutrements, including the vanity lights.

The décor was simple and tasteful and Nate Berkus would have had a field day dissecting the mounted landscape photography of New York and Paris and Tiffany blue accents. I was in awe, but I was also on a mission.

I knew the chances that Queen Victoria would come up to her room while I was working were much lower than the chances that Eric would search for me in his. Still, I locked the door behind me and pulled out her laptop.

Password. Shit. I hadn’t planned for that. Okay, I thought. Reason through it. I looked around and thought about the color scheme.

Tiffany’s.

Denied.

Okay. No one ever gets it on the first try. Hanging from her bed posts were strands of pearls. Pearls. I tried pearl even though I knew it was wrong. Maybe she was born in June and pearl was her gemstone. I knew I only had one shot left before her computer security locked, like mine did, and so I looked around with another critical eye.

And then it all made sense. Tiffany’s. Paris. New York City. Pearls. I typed in Hepburn and a second later, her desktop popped up.

With no time to celebrate, I pulled out my phone and plugged the memory chip directly into her laptop. My first task was to save and encrypt the photographs I had just taken.

I thought about my lie to Eric about needing a phone charge. Really, I just needed him not to notice that the red light on my phone was on and that my photo bucket app was running. While he was giving me head, my phone had taken almost a hundred photos of his face on my cock. As they pulled up one by one, saving automatically in the encrypted folder I had created, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt.

But this was how I had to fight here in Summit Hill. I wasn’t going to hurt him. I just had to show his sister I wasn’t one to be stomped all over.

When the files were safely tucked away in her memory, I selected three particularly juicy ones. The first had Eric’s face and inch away from my cock. He was looking up at me, and although you couldn’t see my face in the picture, the eye contact he was making with whomever was pretty intense. The second was of him molars deep into my cock, sucking me like I was a giant lollipop from the county fair. Finally, the third photo was the one taken right after I came. A dribble of white sticky had just hit his chin and another spurt was shooting right towards his mouth. The pictures were pretty hot, if I had to say so.

I searched her applications for a printer, hit send and heard the buzzing of a printer in the corner. A minute later, I had the pictures tucked away and I was back downstairs at the party.

My heart pounded as people started leave the Perse casa and heading home. Some had drivers come get them. Others, like me, had stopped drinking for long enough to make it back safely if not legally. A couple of people had already passed out and wouldn’t leave until the morning.

“I hope you had fun,” Eric said at the door when he walked me out.

“I had a blast,” I smiled at him. It took all I had not to kiss him in front of everyone. Instead, I said: “Say, is your sister around? I’d love to thank her for letting me crash her party and burying the hatchet.”

“Sure, yeah, she’s right over… there,” he pointed to her corner where she and her friends sipped more shooters and were no doubt talking about everyone. I crossed the living room with confidence.

“Um, Victoria, can I talk to you for a second?” It had just the right amount of question to make it polite, but was demanding nonetheless. She flashed me one of her evil looks and then returned the smile to her face. She was obviously caught off guard by my request.

“Of course, hon. Any topic in particular?”

“I’d rather apologize about my actions in private,” I said. “You two will understand, no?”

She looked around, taken aback by how brazenly unafraid I was of her or her little minionettes. I knew her type, and I knew people didn’t challenge her often. It was why I knew this would get her off my back and she wouldn’t underestimate me ever again.

She stood and followed me to the corridor. Instead of stopping there, I walked straight up onto the second floor and right into her bedroom.

“What the hell is this about?”

“I love how you decorated the place,” I said, crossing to her laptop. I typed her password without any hesitation and pushed play on her Pandora music player and turned the volume all the way up. Fittingly for someone so mean, I’m A Bitch came on. I couldn’t have planned it better.

“Now that I know your cohorts aren’t listening,” I said. I didn’t know who I thought she was, with cohorts and spies, but I had to protect myself. I didn’t care if I was being slightly dramatic. “I can tell you care about your brother a whole lot. Probably more than anything. So I’d hate for these to get around and destroy him.”

I showed her the three photos I’d printed. The look on her face would have made Lady de Winter proud. It was a mixture of surprise, anger and a flash of fear. Who was this guy from the south waltzing in and challenging her reign?

“What are you going to do with these?” Her face was a flush and I relished the sight.

“Absolutely nothing,” I said. “As long as you do me a favor. Never mess with me again. Leave me the fuck alone and let me survive this hellhole in peace and these pictures will be seen by no one. I just want a truce Victoria.” I paused for effect. “But if you decide to get aggressive, I’ll have to destroy your brother.”

“You’d use him to get your way?”

I told myself that I wouldn’t actually ever use the pictures. Eric seemed like a rare breed. But I would use any threat I had in my power to show this bitch I meant business. Right now, Eric was the only card I had to play. It would be a while before I could build an entire hand.

“I understand that there will be casualties. But trust me, I’m prepared to let you take the fall for this one,” I said. “I will send these out to everyone you know. Only… the file is saved on your computer, so if you try to pin it on me, it’ll look like you sent out the pictures.”

Her face got even worse. It felt good inside to see such a bitch brought down a peg. Check and mate, I thought.

I started walking away, tossed the pictures on her bed, and said: “I expect you to be nice when I see you in the hallways, Tori.” I paused for effect and turned around. “Maybe we can do lunch or something. Hon.”

She might have been the Queen Bee… but she just realized that I had a solid sting and I wasn’t going down without a fight.

There’s something about seeing the look on someone’s face when you beat them at their own game that really gets the juices flowing.

Maybe I am cut out for Summit Hill, I thought as I waltzed out of the room, breathing heavily and in desperate need of air. The thought itself that I might be cut out for this place chilled me.

I’m not one of them, I thought. I was just doing what needed to be done, even if that meant standing up to those big haired bitches.