Fully Automatic (Bullet) (5 page)

Chapter Five

UNBELIVABLE.  BULLET ALREADY had thirteen solid songs by mid-July, and they’d played a couple of shows in small venues.  They hadn’t played to huge crowds, but they were already gaining a bit of a fan base.

Okay, so about ten people had told Brad they loved the band.  It still did his heart good to know he was moving people with his music.

He hadn’t dated since Leah.  She’d come by his house the day her family had moved in June and kissed him on the cheek.  It felt like she was branding him, the kiss hurt so much.  If he hadn’t loved her as much as he did, he’d have been pissed at her.

He knew he should be going
wild now, fucking everything he could find, but he couldn’t.  He needed to let her go first before he could see someone else.

Still, he tried.  He and the band went to a party one night after a show.  They’d been drinking and a girl had cornered him.  The beer made it a little easier to allow himself to be kissed and groped.  But then he found out
the girl’s boyfriend was on vacation.  He wouldn’t have minded a little one-night stand, but no way was he going to help a girl cheat on her boyfriend.  No way.  Not after he’d seen what it had done to Ethan—another excuse to get drunk and high, but even more because of what it had done to his dad before that.

Brad loved his mom, but it had taken him a long time to forgive her for that.  He’d never asked, and neither of
his parents had ever outright told him, but he knew.  His dad had left his mom because she’d been fooling around on him.  Brad’s older brother had already moved out of the house.  Brad had been eight at the time, his brother twenty.  Brad had wanted to stay with his dad after the divorce but had never asked outright.  His mom kept the house and his dad found a little apartment to start out with, so he’d never even asked for custody.  By the time Brad started high school, though, he’d managed to forgive his mother her indiscretion and his dad his failure to ask for his son.  His dad had been an active participant in his life, so he couldn’t hold anything against the man.  He’d been a great dad.  And his mother had been a good parent as well, tending to his every need, including helping him through biology, a subject he’d grown to detest.  Once she and his dad split, she’d gone back into nursing, something she hadn’t done for years, getting a job at the hospital.  Once Brad was in middle school, she began working mostly nights because of the shift differential.  She earned significantly more working crappy night shifts than she had working day shifts.  It was around that time that Brad had started finding forgiveness for her, because she was willing to work her ass off to keep him fed and clothed, and she trusted him alone by himself.  That said a lot.

Of course, over the years, Brad had done a lot to earn that trust.  He did plenty of chores around the house, had never hosted a party there in his mother’s absence (even though it would have been so easy to), and stayed out of trouble at school.
  Sometimes, he felt like he was the parent and his mother the child.

So when his mom called to ask if Brad could pick up her and one of her friends from the bar because they’d had too much to drink, he wanted to tell her to call a cab.  But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.  It was a Thursday night and he and Bullet had already finished their rehearsal.  He’d sat down on the couch, ready to veg to whatever he could find on the television, when she’d called and asked.  There wasn’t anything on he was dying to see anyway, so he got in the car and drove to the bar where his mom said they’d be.

She was standing out on the sidewalk in front of the bar, smoking a cigarette and chatting with some guy.  She didn’t see him, so he pulled into a parking space.  He walked half a block and then had to tap on his mom’s shoulder to get her attention.  “Oh, hey, son.  What are you doing here?”

He didn’t roll his eyes, though he’d wanted to.  “You called me and asked me to pick you up.”

She smiled at the man across from her.  “Just a second.”  She led Brad a few steps away by his elbow.  Her voice was low.  “Actually, son, I’m going to stick around.  I’ll find a ride.  But Misti still needs one.  Could you please give her a ride?”

“I might as well.  I’m here.”

His mother looked behind him and then raised her voice.  “Misti!”

A thin woman with dark hair looked up at them.  She’d been sitting on the curb next to the stop sign.  Brad figured that meant she’d been totally wasted.  But she’d been doing something on her phone.  She stood and slid her phone into the back pocket of her jeans and walked over.  Brad noticed his mom had walked back over to the guy she’d been talking to earlier, leaving Brad standing by himself as the other woman joined him.

“Brad, right?”

He nodded.  “Yep.”

“Misti.  I work with your mom.”  She held out a hand.  She didn’t seem too trashed.

“Nice to meet you.”  The woman had dark hair that ended at her shoulders, so it was longer than Brad’s but barely.  She had dark eyes to match her mane and she had prominent dimples.  She didn’t even have to smile for them to be evident.  He shook her hand and then turned to his mother.  “You sure you don’t need a ride?”

His mom threw the cigarette on the sidewalk.  “Yeah.  I’ll catch a ride later.”

He was pretty sure his mom was doing the
middle age crazy
thing.  After she’d broken up with the lover who’d destroyed her marriage, she’d been discreet.  Brad knew she’d seen guys now and then, but she’d been subtle.  The last month, though, she’d been going out a lot, and if Brad wasn’t mistaken, she was gonna get laid tonight.  He told Misti, “My car’s over here,” and started walking that way, lost in thought.  He hadn’t been with anyone since Leah, just couldn’t bring himself to, and the funniest part was that he and Leah had never fully consummated their relationship.  She was still a virgin the night she’d broken up with him, and so Brad didn’t even want to think about how long that meant he’d gone without.

So the atmosphere was ripe when the woman named Misti—who was not his mom’s age but much older than Brad (he guessed somewhere in her thirties)—got in the passenger side of his car.
  Before starting the engine, he asked her where she lived so he could head in the right direction.

He turned on the radio and a Godsmack tune was playing on the station.  He turned the volume down, knowing most people could barely tolerate hard rock and heavy metal, but she said, “Oh, I
love
these guys.”

He grinned.  “You can turn it back up if you want.”

“That’s okay.”  She leaned her head back against the seat.  “I don’t know if you remember me, but I was at that jewelry party of your mom’s in February.”

Brad shook his head.  “Sorry.  I don’t remember.  There were a lot of people there for that.”

“Yeah.”  She looked out the rolled-down window.  “You have air conditioning?”

He laughed.  “You’re lookin’ at it.”

She chuckled and they were quiet for a few moments.  “I noticed
you
, though.”

Brad wasn’t sure about the vibes he was getting from his mom’s friend, but he looked back at her.  She might have been older, but she was pretty.  He wasn’t sure how to respond, so he said, “What?”

“I noticed you, Brad.  You’re a kid, sure, but you are one good-lookin’ guy.  I think you’d just started dating that girl at the time, and your mom would come into work, saying she thought this girl was the one for you…until she told us you’d broken up with her.”

He was feeling a little pissed that his mom felt the need to chat about his love life as though she were a gossip magazine.  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s…fine.  I just don’t want to talk about it.”

She was quiet for a few minutes, and the radio station started playing a Foo Fighters song.  “I don’t want you to talk about it either.  I just wondered if you’d be interested in hearing an offer.”

“An offer?”

“Are you seeing anyone right now?”

Holy shit.  His instincts were right.  She was hitting on him.  He was torn.  Part of him wanted to continue to mope and feel sorry for himself, but the rest of him really wanted to feel a woman’s body up next to his.  It had been way too long.  No, he didn’t want anything emotional.  He wasn’t ready for that.  But if this woman was offering a no-strings-attached fuck, he thought maybe he could be on board with that.  Still, he didn’t want to seem too eager, in case he was misreading her.  “Why?”

“I think you might be a little fun, Bradley Payne.”  He took a deep breath but said nothing.  He wasn’t sure what to make of it.  She turned the radio down a little more and asked, “How old are you, Brad?”

Fuck.  She was honestly considering him, and he couldn’t believe that he was giving it serious thought as well.  He couldn’t help the smile that crossed his face.  This much older woman wanted to make sure she wouldn’t be convicted of statutory rape.  Well, he’d turned nineteen in March.  She had nothing to worry about.  “Old enough.”

She chuckled and he felt her fingers on his neck.  “Wrong answer.  How old are you?”

He rolled his eyes even though it was for no one’s benefit.  “Nineteen.”

“Good.”  She reached over and turned the radio back up, resting her head on the back of the seat again, and Brad figured that was that.  Maybe she’d hoped he was younger or maybe she decided she
needed
someone older.  He’d never know.  That was too bad, because he thought he might have taken her up on her offer.

When they got to her neighborhood, she told him the streets to turn down until he got to her apartment.  “You wanna come in for a little bit?”

Maybe she wanted to play after all.  “Yeah, sure.”

Her apartment was on the second floor and she tripped once, giggling, so Brad held her arm to steady her.  Maybe she was way too trashed to do anything.  But when they got to her door, she pulled out her keys and she pulled him in by the hand.  He started to look around once she had the light on so he could make conversation about something, but she opened her palm and slammed it into his chest, pushing him into the door.  Before he could even catch up, her hands were in his hair, her tongue in his mouth.  He couldn’t quite tell what she’d been drinking, but it was strong.  It wasn’t beer or wine—it was something stronger.  His cock started to perk up
, but he tried to will it down.  This woman was wasted, and he hadn’t realized it at first.  He couldn’t fuck her right now, older woman or not.

She stopped kissing him, though, and took a couple of steps back.  “Sorry, pretty aggressive.”  She grabbed his hand and led him toward the kitchen.  “Can’t help it, Bradley.  I’ve had some pretty nasty thoughts about you.”  She turned on the kitchen light.  “Want a drink?”

He was torn.  If he had a drink, he wouldn’t be able to go anywhere.  He had work in the morning too, but it was late morning—ten.  But it had been long, way too long, since he’d been inside a woman.  Actually, that wasn’t true.  He’d had sex with girls.  He’d never been with someone as old as Misti.  He didn’t think it would matter, but he was ready.  He needed to get laid in the worst way.  So he said, “Sure.  What have you got?”

She turned around and gave him a wicked grin.  “Well, if you promise not to tell your mom, I have beer and whiskey.  Take your pick.”

He could just imagine that conversation.  “Yeah, mom, I fucked your coworker and drank some beer with her too.”  He grinned.  He found it funny that she was more worried about his drinking than she was worried about having sex with her coworker’s son.  Of course, he supposed, underage drinking was illegal.  Having sex with him wasn’t.  “Why the hell would I tell my mom?”

“I was hoping you’d say that, because I think me and you can have one hell of a party.”  She opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. 
She opened another cabinet and set two glasses on the counter.  “Would you grab a couple of ice cubes out of the freezer there?”  He turned and opened the top door to the refrigerator, fetching out a handful of ice.  When he reached her, she took his hand and held it over first one glass and tilted it and then the other, making sure she’d dropped all the ice in the glasses.  Then she poured some whiskey over the ice.  She handed one to him and kept one herself.  It was merely a swallow.  Brad took the glass and poured it down.  No sense taking his time.  Whiskey wasn’t one of his favorite flavors, so getting it down was good enough.

She smiled and raised her eyebrows, then followed suit
, slamming the liquor down.

Brad had barely set his glass back on the counter before she mauled him.
  As he tried to get his bearings, his first thought was to wonder why girls—young women
his
age—had never attacked him like that, but the thought was gone as his entire body responded to her assault.  He was hard in seconds, something he might have found amusing because Misti was aggressive to the extreme.  He probably should have been scared.

It happened too fast for him to be afraid, though.  She had his cock out of his pants in short order, and before he knew it, she had him sitting in one of the chairs in the kitchen and was ready to jump on him.  “Hold on a sec.  You got a condom?”

“I’m on the pill.  I can’t get pregnant.”