Sam

Sam skips up from the back, seeming unusually cheerful. She stops suddenly when she sees Vanessa leaning lewdly over the counter. "Woah," she says. "Um, hey Vanessa."

Vanessa smiles at Sam. "Hey. Gotta love the morning lull, eh?"

Sam looks at Vanessa, and at me. "Yeah, boring as hell. You two keeping it lively here?" Sam looks to me with a _What the hell is she doing _expression on her face.

"Not exactly," says Sam. "I'm just complaining to Sam about the way my shirt is..." she hesitates. She got railroaded into talking about her nipple erection with me, but talking about it in front of me with someone else around was another thing. "Um," she carried on more quietly. "The way my shirt is irritating my nipples."

Sam's eyes went wide. She looked at me with something like suspicion. "Vanessa, are you feeling okay? Feeling dizzy, woozy?" She stepped up to her to look at Vanessa's eyes and feel her forehead.

"What?" says Vanessa, surprised. "No, I feel fine. I mean, apart from my nipples rubbing up against my shirt. I mean, look!" She sits upright, and sure enough, her nipples poke very, very obviously from her shirt. "I can't move without them shifting against my shirt."

Sam looked at me very skeptically, and back to Sam. "Did you drink anything that Jacob gave you?"

Sam's brow furrowed. "What? No. Why are you asking these things?"

Sam looked at me with something like suspicion, even anger. "Sam, could you do me a favour and go get some more peppers from the freezer? I think we're running out. I need to have a quick word with Jacob."

Vanessa rolled her eyes. "The freezer?? Don't I have enough problems?"

Sam nearly barked at her. "Please. Go, now."

Vanessa climbed off her stool. "Yeeowwr," she replied, miming a cat with its claws out. "Okay, I'll go."

Sam stepped up to me and got in my face. "What have you given her??" she growled in a whisper.

I looked at her with surprise and alarm. "What do you mean??"

Sam looked insulted. "Jacob, really. Vanessa showing you her boobs? Vanessa talking to anyone about her nipples? Let alone with you around. You've **** her."

Well, this is what I get for turning on 'Awareness' I guess. Fortunately for me, the truth was technically on my side. "What the hell could I give her that would have her behave like that?"

Sam was still angry, but hesitated. "I don't know, a low dose of ecstacy?"

Great, time to self-deprecate. "Did it look like she was on E to you? Besides... I'm not exactly in touch with anyone who would sell it to me." It was true: I wasn't the clubbing type. Maybe if I were to ask my roommate, she could put me in touch with someone who knew someone, but that's as close as I got.

Sam paused. Her pre-existing middling opinion of me was actually working in my favour here. "Okay, fine. ****?"

I rolled my eyes. "I never gave her anything to drink, remember? Besides, how many bottles of vodka do you think she'd need to show herself off like that? Did she smell like a distillery to you?"

Sam shut her mouth. "But why the hell else would she act that way?"

I was beginning to enjoy this game of not technically lying. "I doubt if it is anything known to modern science," I told her. Then it clicked. "Wait, this isn't actually about Vanessa, is it?"

Sam fumed. "Jacob, you have to admit you're not my usual type. Isn't it a bit strange that right around the same time I decide to start fooling around with you, Vanessa decides to start letting you look down her top and talk openly about her nipples?"

Oooookay. Maybe I have to be more careful. But right now I have to get myself out of this mess. I have to break my record of not technically lying. "Sam, I don't know. Look, maybe we're all a bit stressed out by work. But I swear that I haven't been giving you anything to make you flirt with me."

Sam looked at me dubiously. "The coffee."

I tilted my head at her. "Really? You think that I gave you something that, ten seconds after you took one sip, you'd decide you'd like to cop a feel?"

This brings the conversation to an abrupt stop. And so it is now, that we both come to realise that she is copping a feel, now. She has been for several seconds, but we were caught up in our battle of words.

Sam blushes a deep blush and pulls her hand away. "sorry," she mumbles.

"Sam," I tell her. "I'm enjoying playing around with you," I say, resuming my scheduled program of technically telling the truth. It isn't even a lie when I say to her: "I hope that you've been enjoying it too. But I'm absolutely not drugging you or Vanessa. Maybe," I say, -- and I don't even think I'm stretching the truth at this bit -- "some part of you just wants to have a bit of fun."

Sam looks down at the floor. She seems a bit ashamed. I let it sit for just a second or two: I didn't like the upper-hand that she seemed to be going for earlier. But I don't want any hurt feelings -- at all -- to ruin my fun. So I step up to her gently, and cup her butt.

She looks up to me with something like surprise. Not much surprise, but some. "Friends?" I ask her.

She evaluates my face, and smiles a small smile. She cups the front of my jeans "Friends," she replies.

Vanessa returns. Both Sam and I quickly take our hands away from each other's bodies. Vanessa doesn't seem to notice, though that may be because she doesn't register the significance of Sam touching my groin or me touching her butt.

Or, it could be that she's even more frustrated with her rock-hard nipples. I'm disappointed to see that she's buttoned up her shirt back all the way. It could reasonably be, that she found it a bit cold in the freezer. With no-one to show her cleavage to, it would have been less important for her to leave it open.

"I don't know why it was so important for me to stock up the peppers, but that's done," she says.

Neither Sam nor I can help but look at the very prominent peaks in her shirt. She notices both of us looking. "I know, right?" she says. She moves to unbutton the top three buttons of her shirt. "Seriously Sam, I did not need that trip to the freezer right now. If you wanted a bit of time alone with Jacob, you two could have gone there yourself."

Sam is still a bit shocked at Vanessa's new habit of showing off her cleavage, so it takes a moment for what she said to register. "What do you mean? We're not together."

Vanessa raises her eyebrows. "So Jacob says. But you seemed pretty keen to have a chat with him alone."

Sam frowns. "Vanessa... are you jealous?"

Hmm, I think -- this is an interesting opportunity to mess with Sam's head a bit. I hatch a plan.