Tales of an Empty Cabin

Chloe pushed the door to the cabin open, looking around as she stepped inside. The living area was empty, and the silence was unnerving. She called out, a solitary greeting as she cautiously proceeded through the room, glancing at corners and behind the sofas, almost as if expecting all of her friends to jump out from some small, impossible space. She crossed the room and peered into the kitchen, but there was no one there either, and through the sliding glass doors she could see that the back deck was vacant also. She bit her lip and creased her forehead, returning to the living area and looking down either corridor to the bedrooms.

If they were doing some group activity, it would make sense that the four teens left behind would have communed in a central location. The fact that they hadn’t led Chloe’s mind to run wild. Three guys along with a girl, a girl Ashley and Hannah had told her was dressing and behaving seductively. If Victoria Walker, beautiful as she was, threw herself at three, young, virile men, would they ever have stood a hope of resisting? She stood, rooted to the spot, imagining what might he happening behind one of those doors.

Taking a deep breath and shaking her head at herself, she quickly attempted to rein in her thoughts. There were four rooms and two bathrooms and four teens. There were any number of possibilities why they wouldn’t all be sitting in the living area when she arrived back. Perhaps they weren’t even in the cabin. Zack’s car was in the yard, but they still might have gone down to the lake or for a hike. Maybe Ashley and Heather might even run into them. She felt her heart beat return to normal, her body cooling and finding herself able to move again when she realised how presumptuous she was being.

She decided not to worry about the others. They’d show up when they showed up, and she had enough going on in her mind with reconciling the Hannah who took her on a date yesterday with the same one who would frame Lisa. She had felt herself falling for Hannah and it scared her a little that she could fall so easily for a girl who could be so reckless. She just wanted to change. Her clothes, the peplum top with leggings and borrowed blue underwear only served as a reminder of the night she spent with the older Woodsen.

It was as she was walking down the hall to the bedroom she shared with Kurt Johnson when she first heard a sound that broke the silence. As she passed Zack and Gavin’s room, she heard a grunt, a male, masculine grunt of someone exerting effort or ****. Chloe paused, remembering yesterday, when she’d checked on Gavin after his conversation with Victoria. She’d found him naked and tugging on his cock, an action he failed to stop even when Chloe intruded. Immediately she began to imagine Gavin, still in that bedroom, jerking off and wondered if he’d ever left. Surely, he’d have stopped within the interim hours. Someone would have gotten him to stop.

She reached out for the door knob, intending on checking on him when she heard another grunt. The sound made her hesitate, pausing as she considered whether she really wanted to subject herself to the sight of Gavin, jacking off again and ignoring her. Not that it was a bad sight to look at. But there was just something disturbing and perverse about his pursuit of sexual gratification to the point where he would actively shun social companionship. But, Gavin was still her friend, and if there were any hope of getting through to him, she had to try.

Knocking while at the same time turning the handle, she eased the door open and gazed inside. Gavin was indeed in the room, lying on his bed rather than sitting this time, with his phone in his hands. He lay stretched out long the bed, prompted up slightly against his pillows and the back board, completely and fully clothed. Looking over the top of his phone, he answered the knock with a paltry “yeah?”

Upon seeing it was the red-head who had entered, Gavin leapt to his feet, tossing his phone aside as he rushed forward and drew her into a tight embrace. Chloe laughed, both at the fact he wasn’t masturbating at all and at his overjoyed reaction to seeing her, a complete reversal of their last interaction. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him back, nestling her nose against his neck, feeling snug and warm and safe. After everything, the night spent at Hannah’s, second guessing her own sexual identity, Robert’s innocence and the revelation of the true culprit, this was exactly what the flame haired teen needed.

“Chloe!” Gavin exclaimed as they separated, still holding her arms as if she might fade away if he let go. “Did you just get back?”

“Yuh-huh,” Chloe nodded, beaming. “Hannah and Ashley dropped me off. There’s some…thing they need to pick up in the woods and then they’re heading back into town.”

“Something in the woods?” Gavin furrowed his brow, unaware of anything in the woods that they might need. Unless Chloe meant they’d gone looking for the Park Rangers. “Did you find out who set up Lisa and got Carlos arrested?”

“We did, but I’d really rather tell everyone all together,” Chloe replied, stepping away from Gavin and into the hallway. “Where are the others?”

“Zack went down to the lake with Kurt and Victoria,” Gavin revealed, a sad frustration sneaking into his voice as he followed her out of the bedroom. “Vicky wanted to do some sunbathing. Kurt and Vicky have been…I guess, together since last night so he went with her. And Zack is pissed at Ashley, and maybe me, so he seems to have gone with them.”

“That’s a lot of information to process,” Chloe swallowed hard when she heard that Kurt was with Victoria. Ashley had mentioned, during her brief filling in of what she’d missed while at Hannah’s, that Victoria’s new sexual exploration had centred on Kurt, but Chloe had understood that to just be a physical fling. But Gavin’s assertion that they were ‘together’ made it sound like something even more serious. Could Kurt really be dating Victoria now? She didn’t even want to ask the question, afraid of the answer. Instead, she chose the simpler one. “Why would Zack be mad at you and Ashley?”

“It’s a long story. One that involves me accidentally having sex with her last night and ending up with us masturbating in front of each other, but it goes deeper than that,” Gavin admitted, as they walked into the living room and took a seat on the sofa, the same one in fact that he’d sat on when Chloe had offered up her asshole to him. “How much do you remember from the game of ‘Never Have I Ever’?”

“I remember losing,” Chloe said with a frown, and thinking. She’d been drinking, and nearly drunk, but mostly just tipsy, so she remembered most of what happened, if not the exact details. “Then I remember a lot of sex and you fucking my ass,” she said with a teasing smirk and at glance at her friend. “After that…I remember waking up and Heather finding us on…this couch.”

“Oh, yeah, it was this one wasn’t it?” Gavin chuckled as he looked down and around the cushion he was sitting on, mildly surprised. Bringing himself back on topic, he continued, “Well, you remember there were some questions about a threesome I’d had with Victoria and Ashley the night before.”

“Yeah, and Ashley lied to win the game…” Chloe concluded, her eyes brightening as she realised what this implied. “Oh, yeah, I see, so Zack is pissed that Ashley actually wanted to do those things with you…that it wasn’t just an accident.”

“Exactly. I tried to tell him that it was just the game, that we were all drinking and that she didn’t really mean it, but Victoria had convinced him that there was something going on between me and Ashley,” Gavin said, and then suddenly worried that Chloe might reach the same conclusion, quickly assured her that it wasn’t true. “There’s really nothing going on with us. It’s all just happenstance and lack of will power.”

Chloe smiled and dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure it’s been really tough on you, having all these women just stumbling onto you cock.” She stuck her tongue out, watching her best friend blush.

“Ashley…Ashley was a mistake though. She was with Zack and she was trying to stay faithful and I ruined that for her. But now Victoria is using it against me, telling Zack it means more what it is,” Gavin replied bitterly, his jaw set. “I understand if she doesn’t want to accept my apology or if she just wants to move on. If that’s the case, then she should just do it. I don’t see why she has to rub my face in it and try to make me feel any worse than I already do.”

“Probably because as bad as you feel, she feels a thousand times worse. I know because I felt the same way when Zack cheated on me with Ashley and it led me to do some pretty questionable things too. Normally I would have been appalled at Heather’s prank to send Zack wandering through the night, but not only did I go along with it, I even deceived Ashley. Then, even though I should have known better, I fucked you and put Victoria in the exact same position that I was in,” Chloe reached out and took Gavin’s hand in hers. “I’m really sorry for that Gavin. If it wasn’t for me, you and Victoria might still be together. I’ve been a really bad friend to you.”

“No way!” Gavin half shouted, bringing up his other hand and grasping Chloe’s hand tightly in the middle. “Through everything you’ve been the only steadfast companion I’d had. Even when I fell out with Zack, you’ve been there for me, Chloe.” He leaned his face in close to hers. “Right now, I need to rely on you more than ever. Is that okay?”

Chloe smiled contentedly, leaning in too and pressing her forehead to his while closing her eyes. “Anytime, anyplace,” she whispered, remembering Hannah’s words to her.

And when she thought of Hannah, as she sat with Gavin, hand in hand, face to face, heads softly resting against the other, she didn’t think of the woman who had planted the **** on Lisa. She thought of the Hannah who’d given her the strapless strap-on that was hidden in her handbag, of the Hannah who Chloe had fucked with said toy and the Hannah who had thought something was going on between her and Gavin.

Just a few hours ago, she’d dismissed any possibility of a relationship between her and her best friend. Gavin had Victoria and he wanted to be with her. But now that she was moving on, maybe he wanted to move on too. But she was wary of ruining another friendship. Relying on someone as a friend was different to relying on them as a boyfriend and maybe neither one needed that complication right now. She didn’t want to tarnish her friendship with Gavin the way that her friendship with Zack had been broken. Though even as she thought about it she heard Hannah’s advice echoing in her mind that ‘some mistakes are worth repeating’.

From this position it would be so easy to lower her face and lean in just a little more and press her lips to his. But was that what she wanted? Was it what Gavin wanted? Unconsciously, she wet her lips, preparing for an act she hadn’t even fully committed to, her body knowing her will better than her own brain. His head was still pressed to hers, his palms, sweaty and warm, still cupping her hand, while he breathed ragged and soft, full of apprehension. And she wondered if he was thinking the same things she was.

“Gavin,” she exhaled.

At that moment the door of the cabin swung open. The figures of Zack and Victoria stood against the bright light of sun beaming in behind them.