A stormy night begins

Suzie was pissed. Not only had he unintentionally led her on, he was now telling her why the thing she thought was going to happen here, wasn’t going to happen at all.

“I can’t believe you Scott, you went to all this trouble to tell me you don’t like me? You could have told me that at the house, or at a burger joint. You don’t bring a girl to a secluded spot, get her all horned up to tell her that you aren’t interested. For God’s sake, send it in a text.”

She was pacing now.

“It’s not that I don’t like you Suzie, I do. It’s just, your Doug’s little sister. I’d like us to be friends, able to hang out, go riding, do fun stuff, but we are in different places in our lives and this isn’t going to work.”

“Yeah, okay. You still see me as a little kid, I get it.” She was a mixture of sad, angry and frustrated, and Scott felt like a real jerk.

“I’m sorry Suzie.”

“Can we not talk about this anymore, I already feel like an idiot, chasing after you and you can’t see me as anything but little Suzie.” She cut off at the end, turning away from Scott and wiping her eyes.

Scott felt awful. This did not go like he had envisioned in his head.

“Can you, can you take me home now?” Suzie asked.

“Yeah.”

Clouds had covered the sky through the trees, it was a bit darker and was cooling off. Suzie had her arms wrapped around herself to keep warmer. Back at the bike Scott offered her his jacket. “Here, you can wear this.”

She looked at him, half glaring, half almost ready to cry. “Seriously?” There was a bitterness in her words.

“I’ve been enough of a jerk already; I’m not having you freeze on the way home too.”

She slipped into the jacket, pulled on her helmet and climbed on behind Scott.

“Thank you.” She said over the sound of the engine.

They couldn’t see it from the creek, but the clouds were getting darker, it was starting to look like rain. Scott opened up the throttle a bit while mentally chiding himself for taking Suzie out without even checking the weather forecast. The sky was changing fast and he was heading into it. The wind was cold against his face and arms, but he didn’t mind, it felt like a just punishment for how badly he had handled the situation with Suzie.

Suzie pressed into him, he could tell she was scared. They were less than a mile from the house when the first crack of thunder sounded. Seconds later they hit the start of the rain. Scott slowed down, got over toward the edge of the road and kept his eyes on his mirrors, hoping he didn’t get some idiot flying up behind him.

When they pulled into the driveway Suzie’s dad was out on the porch. He ran out to meet them.

“You kids okay?”

“Yeah dad, I’m fine.” Suzie answered him.

Mr. Carter led Suzie inside while Scott put his bike away.

He went straight down to the basement, peeled off his wet clothes and hopped in the shower.

He put on some sweat pants and a dry T-shirt and waited, hitting a few pool shots while he waited for the upstairs shower to turn off.

Scott grabbed a beer from the basement fridge. He was tired of hurting people he cared about, and really sick of all this drama.

“You’d think having three smoking hot women wanting to jump your dick would be a good thing.” He said to a signed poster of Joe Montana. “But this sucks, and I haven’t fucked any of them. Well. . . recently.”

He had decided Suzie was out. He liked her, wanted her, she was fun and hot and. . . “No.” He said out loud to himself, Suzie was the most drama and the least likely to work out well, it only made sense to eliminate her from the list first.

The water had turned off a few minutes ago, so Scott headed upstairs.

Mrs. Carter heard him and yelled, “Is that you Scott? Dinner in ten minutes.”

“Hey Mrs. Carter.”

“Hey Scott, sorry about the interrogation this morning, I got carried away.”

“No problem, it’s okay to get excited about Doug finding a girl. I couldn’t believe it myself last night.” Scott had been to the Carter’s for dinner so many times over the years, he just went to the dish cabinet and started setting the table.

“Yeah, Doug said you set them up.”

“It was her friend Mary, technically, I told her I was Doug’s wingman so she called her friend so I’d let her hang out.”

“That was sweet of you Scott, did you and Mary hit it off?”

“She’s really nice, but she’s wasn’t looking to date anyone, and that worked well for me too.”

Mrs. Carter looked at him, hand on her hip in that thoughtful, semi-judgmental way she had.

“I know you’ve been through a lot, Scott, it’s good that you got back out there.”

“Yeah, I just don’t want to have someone get serious about me when they are likely just a rebound girlfriend.”

“That’s a very mature way to view it.” She kissed him on the cheek as she set a plate of rolls on the table.

“Thanks Mrs. Carter.”

“I really wish you’d call me Anne, Scott.”

“Sorry Mrs. Carter, I’m going to keep things formal, I don’t need to get into a love triangle with you and Mr. Carter.”

Mrs. Carter laughed, almost a little too much. Mrs. Carter had always joked around with him, but he always got the feeling that it could move past joking if he let it.

He went and helped her carry the food into the dining room.

“Can you get Suzie, Scott? I’ll call Jim.”

Scott nodded and headed to Suzie’s room.

He knocked on her door.

“Who is it?”

“Scott.”

“Come in.”

She was sitting on her bed. Her hair wrapped up in a towel, a long sleeved comfy-looking shirt and a short pair of shorts. She was leaning forward, painting her toenails a dark pink, nearly purple color. “Damn” he said under his breath.

“What?”

“Dinner, it’s time for dinner.”

“Okay, I need to finish up, you can sit down if you want.” She said, gesturing towards her desk.

Scott sat down. He hadn’t had this good a chance to check out Suzie’s legs, and he was enjoying it.

“You like looking at little girl’s legs Scott?” She said, with all the nastiness you would expect.

“Suzie, It’s not that.”

“I’m just kidding Scott, really, it’s okay. I can understand you seeing me as Doug’s kid sister, it’s who I’ve been most of my life.”

She finished up, stretched her leg out, pointed her toes toward Scott. “You like?”

“Yeah, that’s a nice color.”

Scott didn’t have a foot fetish, but he didn’t mind feet, and they could be sexy. Suzie’s small feet with their high arches and cute toes were definitely in the sexy category, and the legs they were attached to?

She set her feet down, a vague look of disappointment on her face.

“Well, come on.” She said, then got up and walked out.

Scott wondered if Suzie knew what she was doing to him, he looked from her bare feet up her legs to her butt, which looked incredible in her shorts.

Suzie was wrong, he didn’t see her as a kid, he just didn’t want to set her up for heartache in a relationship that didn’t have much chance of working out.