Black Friday

"Rise and shine, asshole."

The voice and even the affectionate insult were familiar, and John's subconscious subsequently identified them as belonging to Carrie before he'd even opened his eyes, but upon opening them it took a second for him to straighten out the incongruity of hearing them from the couch in the apartment she shared with Chloe. As he sat up, the blanket he did not remember acquiring for himself the night before slid down his bare chest; the sudden chill that resulted made him instinctively check if he was wearing anything at all. He found to his mild surprise that he had on a pair of boxer shorts. The remainder of his clothes lay crumpled up on the floor near the couch. As he stretched, he tried to summon the memory of how he had gotten into this state: he vividly remembered the previous night, right up until he fell asleep with Chloe on top of him.

He was about to chalk up the appearance of his undergarment to a late night trip to the toilet, which he could not be sure was not a misremembered dream, when Carrie interrupted his thoughts, "You get lost on the way home or something?" She stood at the dividing line between the kitchen and common living room area of the apartment, dressed, typically for her in late November, in a hoodie and unseasonable shorts that showed off her gorgeous legs. A puffy vest thrown over the hoodie and the presence of a small, wheeled suitcase next to her indicated that she had just gotten in.

"Give him a break," Chloe answered for John, her voice coming from an unseen location, which only added confusion to John's already foggy mind. She popped out from around the corner which led to the toilet. "He was exhausted from the drive, practically fell asleep the minute he walked in the door."

Not the exact minute, John thought as he rubbed the last of the sleep out of his eyes. Unless I dreamed that part, too. He glanced over at her to find her already fully dressed, save her bare feet, her yoga pants probably doing far more for keeping their wearer warm than Carrie's shorts, though approximately the same at hiding the form of her shapely lower half. She, like Carrie, had on a hoodie, though one that was at least a size too large for her.

"Uh huh," Carrie replied, glancing briefly at John before returning her attention to her roommate. "Now our couch is going to smell like boy for a month."

"Hey, I smell alright," John said as he grabbed his jeans from the floor. The girls' eyes remained on him while he slid them on.

"Whatever," Carrie replied, once more turning her attention to her roommate only after, John noted, he had covered his lower half. "I don't care. I was just kind of surprised. I thought you were going to be stranded out there in the sticks all weekend. Your dad kick John's ass out or something?"

Chloe smiled at this. "No," she said, moving over to the couch. "He was..." she paused to look at him for a moment as she took a seat to his left, "... the platonic ideal of a boyfriend. Nobody got kicked out. But I was not going to make him suffer through Thanksgiving and Black Friday and... Is there a name for the Saturday after Thanksgiving?"

"Platonic ideal, huh?" Carrie's tone was amused, but the look she gave John included more than a hint of curiosity. She made her way over to the couch, leaving her suitcase and taking up a position on John's right, which forced him to scooch over slightly towards Chloe. "Anyway there's cyber Monday now but I don't think there's an anything Saturday."

Chloe's mouth twisted up in a way that John had learned indicated she was considering something, then she said, "Well, then, I propose we make our own something Saturday."

"Something Saturday?" John questioned. "Nothing more specific?"

She pretended to be annoyed by his response for a moment before answering, "I don't mean we actually call it 'something Saturday'. I mean we do something. Fill-in-the-blank Saturday. I don't know, like a Friendsgiving. But, like, after Thanksgiving. Friendsgiving after party."

Carrie answered John. "Then I propose we make it Blackout Friday. My stupid ass forgot a whole box of wine before I left. We, or at least I, am definitely in need of it after enduring my bitch sister-in-law 100% sober."

"That bad, huh?" Chloe asked. John leaned back against the couch, judging from experience that the girls would soon shift into simultaneous talking mode, leaving him out of the loop in any case, and took the opportunity to consider his present state of affairs.

I have to tell Carrie about Chloe and me, right?

Yes, the little voice in his head agreed, but first you should probably figure out what exactly you mean by "Chloe and me". Are you, that is, me, getting back together with her? Or to borrow a phrase from Carrie herself, was this just "a one time thing"?

You know, at the time I thought, if nothing else, breaking up with Carrie would at least make my life simpler. What a fool I was.

"So, John takes me to the grocery store, and you catch the bus over later? Or he should pick you up?" Carrie's voice cut into John's musings.

"I could take the bus, I guess," Chloe responded hesitantly.

Carrie hesitated for a second before responding, "What am I saying? You don't want to carry mac and cheese on the bus. We can come get you when we're done."

John attempted to replay the last few minutes of girl conversation in his mind, but it was fragmentary and jumbled, the two girls speaking at the same time. "Right, mac and cheese," he said.

"You weren't listening at all, were you?" Carrie eyed him suspiciously.

"No, I was listening," John lied.

"Ok, so what's the plan, then?" she asked.

He instinctively turned to Chloe, only to find her wearing a look of amused interest.

"Uh, you know, wine and mac and cheese and, uh, my house. You know, friendsgiving." Chloe's expression remained unchanged, so he turned back to Carrie.

"Asshole," she responded immediately. "We just had a whole conversation about what to have. I said all I want is wine and NOT Thanksgiving, and Chloe agreed, so we're each going to make something, me and Chloe and you, asshole. You're making something."

"So I said I could make my mom's baked mac and cheese because that's easy," Chloe started speaking in a way that was less like cutting in than simply picking up where Carrie had left off, drawing John's attention back her way, "and because, you know, not spaghetti. So Carrie said mac and cheese is definitely Thanksgiving food, but I was like, 'no way, it's not', but I guess it's like a whole cultural thing. So like, it's not for white people, right?"

"I guess," John managed.

"Right, but whatever," Carrie said, twisting John's head back around the other way, "I don't care, my stupid bitch sister-in-law would never stoop to have anything as low-class as macaroni on her perfect Thanksgiving table, anyway."

"So anyway I am making mac and cheese but it's baked mac and cheese so I need the oven here," Chloe continued the explanation, "so I'll be here while you take Carrie to get what she needs to make cobbler for dessert, which she will need the oven at your house for."

"Since when do you know how to make cobbler?" John asked, turning back to Carrie.

"Since always, asshole, it's not hard," she answered. "But I need stuff so we need to go to the grocery store and you have a car and an oven so you're driving. Also you need to get stuff for a salad because we need something to balance out the heavy stuff and even you can cut up some vegetables or whatever."

John couldn't help smiling at Carrie. This somehow ended the ping-ponging explanation. "As I recall, I cooked..." he stopped and shook his head. "Actually, that sounds like a great plan. Can I maybe take a shower first, though?"

"You can shower at home," Carrie said. "You smell alright." After a second, she added, "And anyway we don't have time for that if we're going to start drinking by this afternoon, which is a hard deadline. Putting my foot down here."

He turned to Chloe just to receive her confirmation, which came in the form of a cute little nod. "Alright," he said, "just let me get my shirt on."

***

???? or ?????

John smiled at the text from Carrie. It would probably have been easier to have simply asked him his preference on the way over to the grocery store, but there had not been time, as it had evidently been more important for her to relay all the details of her quite trying single day of Thanksgiving activities. He had mostly followed, he thought, the various slights and indignities that her brother's "gold-digging bitch of a cunt wife" had inflicted on her in the less than 24 hours she had managed to endure before hopping an early bus while feigning an "all hands on deck emergency at work," but he was certain he'd missed some of the details. In the entire time she spent talking, he'd barely managed to get a word in edgewise, let alone bring up Chloe.

Not that the car would have been an ideal setting for such a conversation, he reasoned, but it certainly would not be helpful to put it off. In any case I should probably figure out what is going on first.

You mean figure out who you'd rather be with, that little voice in his head interrupted.

Whom, he thought back, more than a little annoyed.

Grammar Nazis are not exempt from painful introspection or difficult life decisions, the voice responded.

John picked up a head of lettuce and began examining it, hoping that scouring the details would distract him. It did not work. It's not really up to me, John thought. I don't even know if Chloe wants to get back together. And I sure as hell don't know what Carrie wants. She'd probably be happy to be rid of me.

You're really going to try to make me believe that?

"Hey, asshole, your phone broken or something?" Carrie interrupted John's inner dialogue.

"I was just about to reply," he said, placing the lettuce in the shopping cart.

She responded with a look somewhere between disbelief and annoyance. "Right, well it would be too late. You're getting peach."

"Nice," he responded.

"I know what you're thinking," she said. "Just don't." She looked into the cart to find what he had selected for ingredients, then shook her head as she added her own to the pile. "This is looking like a boring salad. Where's the fruit?"

"In the cobbler?" John answered with a smile.

"God, you're the worst," she responded. "I'm pulling out all the stops here and you're going to make the world's most boring salad."

"All the stops, huh?" he asked, to which she responded with only a glare. "Alright, we'll add some fruit, I don't know, nuts? Does that sound interesting enough to pair with mac and cheese?"

Carrie rolled her eyes. "Whatever," she said. "You know Chloe is going to work her cute little ass off to make the best mac and cheese you've ever had."

"Yeah," John conceded, "she's a real sweetheart."

"When she's not using a flimsy pretense to drag you to her parents' house," Carrie said.

It was John's turn to give Carrie a look, which evidently worked, as she quickly added. "Which I'm sure was great. I mean, you were probably a stupid asshole and that's why you're home early, despite whatever she said to be nice, but I'm sure she was fine. Not like my bitch sister-in-law."

She looked just about to launch into another tirade, so John cut her off. "Oh, yeah, she was fine. Actually..." he wasn't really sure where the sentence should go or if the produce aisle was the optimal place to finish it, though, so is words hung for just long enough for Carrie to interrupt.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm a bitch, I can't shut up about it," she said. A nearby mom, otherwise busy trying to keep her toddler's hands off the grapes, shot the two of them a look which John mostly and Carrie entirely ignored. "But she is seriously such a cunt. Plus I had to take the fucking bus. Do you have any idea..."

"No," John replied, placing a hand on the small of her back and guiding her away from the small child and its visibly annoyed mother, and towards the checkout. "Why don't you tell me about it?"

***

"And that was just the fucking bus there."

Somehow the litany of grievances Carrie had against the city, public transportation and her fellow humans had managed to eat up enough time that not only had they driven home before she had finished recounting them, although this had, in fairness, involved another round of complaints about her "dumb bitch sister-in-law," most of which John had already heard, but they'd even largely finished the cooking even as Carrie ended her rant with a frustrated growl.

"Yeah, sorry," John said. He sliced an apple in half, enjoying the pleasant sound of the knife sliding through it and thudding against the cutting board. He looked over to the counter, where Carrie was searching through a drawer. "Maybe I should have pretended to be your boyfriend instead of Chloe's."

She looked up from the drawer. "Yeah?" she asked.

Her eyes seemed to be looking right through him, so he went back to the apple before responding. "I mean, less driving for me. No bus for you, you know." He chopped through the apple once, then once more while the silence hung in the air.

"So you and Chloe..." she began.

He tried to force his head back around to meet her eyes but could not.

"... didn't have a great time, I guess?" After another pause, she added. "Well, I mean, I warned your stupid ass. I told you 'you're going to get your stupid heart broken again.' That's what I said, but you just had to do it, you had to go and be the noble guy and..."

"I," John cut her off, then immediately stopped. He sighed, then turned to look at her. She was leaning against the counter. "I mean, we, Chloe and I..."

For whatever reason, as his words failed him, his eyes made their way from hers down to her hands, which were gripping the edge of the counter. The normally pleasant yellow-tan color of her skin had grown white around her knuckles as she clutched at it. "I mean, I wanted to tell you," he tried again, unable to bring his eyes away from those hands.

"You don't have to tell me anything," she cut him off, giving his eyes permission to move back up to meet hers. Her lip jittered a few times before any more words came out. "I told you, I'm not your oracle into other girls. Don't tell me if she said something, if she did something, she touched your hand or she smiled at you a little too long and you felt something, don't tell me any of that shit. I don't want to..." she swallowed, "I can't hear that shit."

He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out and she turned around, once more focusing on the drawer. There followed an increasingly loud clattering of utensils banging against one another. "Where's your fucking can opener?" she complained.

"It should be in there," John answered.

"Well it's fucking not," she snapped back at him, once more rattling the utensils.

He left the knife he had been handling on the cutting board and stepped over behind her. He placed a hand on her wrist, stopping her wild and pointless shifting of the utensils in the drawer. "Here," he said, pulling the drawer open slightly more and in the process pushing her back against himself. "It's here." He pulled the can opener out of its hiding place above the other utensils and offered it to her.

She looked into his eyes for a moment, her eyelids quivering, then snatched the can opener from his hand, pushing her ass back against him hard enough that she almost knocked him over. "Thanks," she said, "I don't know why the fuck it was back there." She grabbed the can of peaches she had left on the counter and fumblingly set the can opener into place on it. "I don't know how you find shit in this kitchen, nothing is ever where it should be."

He shook his head, chuckling to himself at this, "I know it lacks the feminine touch." He returned to finishing up the salad. "Or feminine organizational principles, I guess." He finished cutting the apple into thin slices that he guessed approximated bite-size and then began distributing them onto the salad. "But you know, it's usually just me and I know where to find everything I need."

plorp

He turned once again to find Carrie, holding a now empty can as a blob of peaches and their attendant slime oozed its way to slowly filling the crust she had earlier prepared. "Yeah?" she asked. "And what is it you need?"

"Uh..." John tried and failed to parse the question.

The empty can rattled as she chucked it into the sink. "You know," she said, staring right into his soul, "sometimes the thing you need is right under your nose the whole time."

"Like with the can opener?" he asked.

Her face curled up into its typical half-amused, half-angry-that-it-is-amused scowl. "Yeah, asshole," she said. She grabbed the now evidently ready for baking cobbler. "Like the can opener." She marched it over to the oven, almost threw it inside, and closed the oven door slightly too quickly, then moved briskly out the kitchen door to the living room.

"Where are you going?" he asked before following her out to the living room.

"To get drunk," she answered, already searching through the bottles of wine in the box she had left on his living room floor.

John leaned against the door frame that separated the kitchen from the living room. "Didn't want to wait for Chloe before we break into the wine?"

She looked up from the box to squint at him. "Are you afraid I'm going to drink it all before she gets here or something?"

"No," John answered, "I just..." he shook his head to make up for the lack of an ending to the sentence.

"Then maybe shut the fuck up," Carrie snapped at him, yanking a bottle out of the box. "There will be more than enough wine to get Chloe's lightweight ass drunk enough that even your stupid ass can get her to blow you for old times' sake if that's what you're worried about."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," John said.

"What?" she snapped as she stormed past him, brushing him aside as she made her way back to the still open drawer. She started once again banging the silverware this way and that. "That's what you wanted to tell me, right? That you fucked Chloe? That you did such a good job of playing the boyfriend that she let you put your dick into her as a reward? God fucking damn it, where is that fucking corkscrew?"

"It should be in there," John responded.

"It should be, it should be," she repeated, "Well it's fucking not! All I want is a fucking corkscrew so I can open my fucking wine and all you can do is stand there and say 'it should be in there'. You're just so fucking... ah! Why do I even..." She looked up toward the ceiling as if it held the answer to whatever question she had been unable to finish, sucking on her lips as tears pooled in her eyes.

He ran to her and took her in his arms, lifting her slightly off the floor in the process. Her arms held him fast and she buried her face into his neck. "God I'm such a stupid bitch," she said.

"No, you're not," he replied. "I'm the one who..."

She pulled back from the hug to look into his eyes, tears having left tracks running down from her own.

"Oh, hey, here's the corkscrew," he said. "It's that thing you said about right under your nose. You should take your own advice. You're pretty smart, actually."

And then she started to laugh. He had to take a step back to see it with his own eyes but she was, in fact, laughing, as she wiped away a tear. He was fairly certain, even, that it was genuine and not maniacal laughter, although a part of him was bit worried he had just told her where to find a very sharp implement. "Damn it, John," she said.

"Sorry, I know I'm kind of an asshole, but..." he started before she cut him off with a simple shake of her head.

"You are an asshole," she said. "Not just 'kind of'."

"Ok," he said, "I'm an asshole. Honestly I don't know why you put up with me at all. Me and my improperly organized drawers and my emotional..."

"Shut up," she said shaking her head even as she smiled. She took the corkscrew in one hand and the bottle in the other and pushed past him and back out to the living room.

"Where are you going now?" he called after her.

"I'm putting on a show while the cobbler bakes," the answer came back from the other room, followed by the faint sound of the tv turning on. "Bring me a wine glass."

There's the Carrie I know. He grabbed a wine glass from out of the cabinet, and by the time he had brought it to her in the living room, she was already sprawled out across the couch, the bottle of wine unopened next to the corkscrew on the coffee table. She paused her flipping through streaming options to flick her eyes over to him. "You're not joining me?"

"Somebody's gotta drive over to get Chloe," he said as he set the glass down next to the corkscrew and took his position on the chair near the couch. "What are we watching, by the way?"

She answered with a shrug, already, much to John's unexpressed dismay, flipping through the titles of various Korean dramas. "I'll figure it out while you open the wine."

He sighed, not entirely unamused, and got up once again to open the wine, moving over between the coffee table and the couch to do so. Carrie sat up, watching him out of the corner of her eye as she selected one of the dramas, no doubt based on some inscrutable value system. He was just about to return to the chair when she indicated with a hand that he was instead expected to function once more as her pillow. He sat and she placed her head on his thigh while the, in John's opinion, fairly impressive credit sequence played.

"Have I seen this one?" he asked.

"No," she responded without looking. "Pour me a glass?"

"You don't want to let it breathe for a bit?" he asked, watching her more than the screen.

"No," she responded. "That's all horseshit, anyway. Let it breathe, my ass."

He did as directed, pouring a glass by the usual algorithm he used for Carrie: pour a normal amount, then double it, then add just a bit more for good measure. Speaking of her ass, he thought, glancing down at it as he leaned back into the couch. Her shorts allowed for just a slight view of it, though it remained disappointingly covered in some dark-colored panties.

"Stop looking at my ass, perv," she said as she reached out for the glass of wine. How she had known what he was doing without moving her eyes from the screen remained a mystery. She tilted her head just enough not to spill and took a drink.

"Aww," he feigned disappointment before turning his attention to the screen. He managed to even sit through three scenes before getting lost. "So, wait, am I supposed to know who this guy is?"

"Yes," she answered, again without looking, between sips.

Very helpful. He let his hand move slowly down the couch and rest on her side. The hoodie she had on kept in most of her body heat, but he could at least enjoy the softness. As she did not object, he let his hand continue its cautious exploration, sliding down to her hip. His fingertips reached the bare skin of her thigh before she started wiggling in response.

"Cut it out," she said.

"Aww," he repeated.

She turned her head just enough to look up into his face. "I'm trying to watch a show," she said, then turned her attention back to the screen.

"Alright, alright," he responded, moving his hand back to her side, where he stopped it.

"I said, 'cut it out,'" she complained.

"I'm not doing anything," he objected.

"My ass," she responded.

"If you insist," he said, and immediately moved his hand to her ass, sliding his fingertips into her shorts.

She rolled her hips away, waiting for him to remove his hand before rolling them back. "Fuck off," she said, doing nothing to hide her amusement.

He tried watching the screen, immediately found it incomprehensible, and so sighed. "How was the bus back?"

"It sucked shit," she answered. "It's the fucking bus."

As she seemed content with that explanation, John was left once again alone with his thoughts and the incomprehensible plight of a Korean nobleman of some sort. "So do you think Chloe'll be ready soon?" he asked. "How long does it take to bake macaroni?"

She sat up suddenly, somehow managing not to spill the still mostly full wine glass in the process. "If you're not going to shut up and let me watch my show," she said before climbing atop him with almost alarming speed. She planted a hot, wine-infused kiss on his lips, pushing her tongue into his mouth for good measure.

He blinked in surprise as she pulled away from the kiss. "I..." he tried to formulate a sentence and failed.

Surely we have to tell her about Chloe before trying to fuck her? this little voice in his head objected.

Who's trying?

"Carrie..." he tried again, only to be silenced by her finger on his lips. She held that finger in place as she downed the entire glass of wine.

"Aah," she licked her lips, admiring the empty glass for a second before turning her full attention to him. "Shut. The. Fuck. Up."

To make her command entirely moot, she followed it by pressing her lips to his again. She pulled away from the kiss long enough to place the empty glass on the table, then twisted her torso back to facing his and kissed him again, this time taking his face in her hands. His own hands moved automatically, finding their way under her shirt and running up and down the length of her back, letting him enjoy the sensation of her smooth skin. She pulled away from the kiss, reached down, and pulled her hoodie off, revealing a navy blue bra of simple design. He pulled her to him, pressing his face between her ample breasts while his fingers worked feverishly to remove the interfering undergarment.

When he had unclasped it, she moved quickly, slipping the bra off and tossing it onto the discarded top before practically forcing her right tit into his mouth. "Mmm, yes, baby," she purred as his tongue and lips went to work on her nipple, "suck those fucking tits, baby." She had already started grinding her crotch against his as he sucked one nipple, then the other, working herself into a frenzy on his hardening bulge.

She ran her fingers through his hair, using her hands to guide his head back and forth from one breast to the other, increasing her pace as she evidently could not stimulate both quickly enough, growing more and more frantic.

Suddenly she stood and, with impressive dexterity, managed to get her shorts and panties off in an instant. "Put it in," she said plainly.

John fumbled with his fly and as soon as he had it undone, Carrie, already kneeling in front of him in anticipation, yanked his jeans down to his knees, then, without a pause in between, climbed atop him again, even as he was trying to pull his t-shirt off. She did not wait for him to finish, instead grabbing his hard cock and guiding it to her already very wet pussy. With practiced ease, she worked the head along her slit a few times, then, stopping and holding it still, sank down onto him. His cock head entered her, and then, gradually, with a few vertical movements from Carrie, his shaft, inch by inch.

Her face showed the complex contours of the pleasure she experienced as she sank lower and lower, determined to force every last inch of him inside herself, eventually settling her entire weight down atop him, burying his cock in her tight, wet pussy. "Ooh, fuck," she sighed, having finally worked him into herself. After a brief moment of savoring it, she resumed her movements, now sliding him in and out of herself with ease.

He sat back and enjoyed himself, letting her body move itself under his fingertips. She rested her arms on his shoulders, draping them around his neck as her hips did all the work: in and out, in and out, up and down. "Fuck, I love your cock," she moaned, "Fuck me harder."

He complied, moving his hands to her hips and taking a gentle hold. He bounced her on his cock, thrusting his own hips up and down in time to her movements. "Oh fuck yes," she groaned over the sound of her body slapping repeatedly down on his. She moved her left hand, taking his arm in her fingers and guiding it gently upwards. No further indication was necessary and she let her hand fall away as he ran his hand up her neck and to her face. She turned her head and took his fingers into her mouth, setting about coating them with her spit as she licked and sucked them with fervor.

She opened her mouth wide, her tongue dangling for a moment as he withdrew his fingers, then looked into his eyes. He knew what she wanted, and she knew he wanted to hear it, anyway. "Finger my ass while you fuck me, baby," she purred.

Again he complied, his hand gliding down to her perfect round ass and finding her hole with ease despite her steady, rapid gyrations atop him. His finger danced around the rim of her asshole a few times, wetting it with her spit. Even as she continued to ride, sliding him in and out of herself regularly, he could feel her shiver with anticipation. He pushed in; her ass allowed him entry with only token resistance. "Ooh, fuck, mmm..." she moaned, then sped up, slamming her pussy down on him. "Oh, fuck yes, fuck me, baby, fuck me..."

Her movements quickly became frantic, working him in and out of her holes over and over again. "Oh fuck I'm gonna cum," she groaned, "Don't stop, don't stop..."

I'm not really doing anything, he thought.

Her hand snapped around her body and clasped his wrist, holding his finger in place up her asshole while she ground on his cock. "I'm coming! Oh fuckkkkk...." Her eyes closed tight shut as a wave of pleasure rocked her body, sending her physically jerking back and forth irregularly atop him. When it had passed and her eyes opened again, a smile spreading across her face, she pulled his wrist, removing his finger slowly from her ass, then leaned down to kiss him.

Without another word, she stood up, turned 180°, and squatted back down, once more taking his cock in hand by reaching underneath her, but this time she guided it not to her creamy pussy but rather her asshole. With at least as much skill as your average porn performer, she aimed his cockhead at her hole, then impaled herself on it, the head popping inside her easily. With a few more adjustments, she had his shaft slowly disappearing up into her guts.

"Mmm," she moaned, running her hands along her own body a few times before reaching down and taking a hold of his wrists. She drew one hand up to her tits, leaving it there for John to play as he saw fit, but drew the right hand up to her mouth. Her tongue darted out and she began lapping at his fingers, paying special attention to the middle finger which had just been buried deep in her ass as she bounced that ass up and down on his throbbing dick.

"You like that, baby?" he purred.

"Mmmhmm," she answered through the licking.

"You like how your asshole tastes?"

"Mmmhmm," she answered even more enthusiastically this time, her tongue twirling around his finger. "I'm such a nasty fucking slut for you," she groaned. "Fuck my nasty little slut asshole."

He complied without doing anything, rather simply let her fuck her own ass with his cock, contenting himself with toying with her nipples and savoring the feel of her tight asshole milking him. She released his hand from her grip and he slid it, leaving a trail of her spit on her body, down to her hairless and very sloppy pussy. He found her clit and began teasing it, eliciting a short, high-pitched moan on first contact which morphed slowly into a low, constant groan of pleasure as his fingers moved in circles, matching her rhythm.

"Oh fuck," she squealed, "I'm coming..."

He felt her hand on his, stopping his motions as another wave of pleasure rocked her and she drove his cock as deep into her ass as it would go, holding it there until the orgasm, which he experienced as a rapid succession of squeezes from her ass, passed.

"Oh god," she sighed as she released his hand, "Oh holy shit I love your cock."

"Show me," he said without thinking.

Still panting, she climbed off him and half tumbled to the floor, getting back up to her knees shakily, but not hesitating even a moment before taking his cock by the base in one hand and feeding it into her mouth. Her eyes looked directly into his as she slurped it noisily. The spit overflowed her mouth, leaving sticky trails down his shaft. She took her lips from his cock just long enough to move them down to his balls, where that spit had flooded down to, and then slurped her way noisily back up to the head, sucking in her spit before loudly expelling it again. The spit flooded over his cock head and down the shaft while she sucked him again; she repeated the process over and over, slurping, spitting, and using her hand to spread the spit all over his cock and balls.

Never once did she break eye contact as the spit grew stickier and stickier, more and more mixed with his pre-cum; it dangled from her lips and chin and still she persisted.

"Good little slut," he commended her, eliciting a smile and then a gentle, very wet kiss to the tip of his dick.

"Put it back in?" she asked, not waiting for his answer before turning around on her knees, offering him his choice of juicy hole by spreading her ass with her hands.

He took the opportunity to finally rid himself of his jeans and took a position behind her, cock in hand. How beautiful she looked, perfect little holes gaping open slightly for him, her juices glimmering all down her thigh. Her fingers, the nails painted, dug into her smooth skin, eagerly opening herself for him.

He pressed his cock to her pussy lips, almost but not quite letting the head slip in, only part the lips, then ran it up and down a few times. "Where do you want it?" he teased.

"You know where I want it," she laughed without taking her head from the floor where it rested.

"Tell me," he insisted.

"I want your big fat cock up my tight little asshole," she answered, wiggling her ass for him.

"Mmm," he said, "not yet." He pressed forward and his cock slipped into her warm pussy with a juicy squishing sound.

"Oh fuck," she groaned as his cock stabbed deep into her.

"Oh yeah..." he sighed. She gripped him tightly, pushing her ample ass back into him. It took little time before the both of them were moving at full speed, filling the house with the sounds of skin slapping against skin

"Ooh!" she squealed when he slapped her ass, making the soft flesh jiggle even more. "Mmm, oh fuck yes..." she strained, "Fuck me like a little fucking whore! Fuck that cunt, baby, fuck it!"

He pursed his lips and let a glob of spit fall between then and down to her ass. It landed in her crack, sliding down and down to her hole. With one hand on her hip, he moved the other to her spit-coated hole and pressed his thumb inside.

"Oh!" she let out a little sound of pleasure at the sudden intrusion, her hole happily accepting it. "Oh god yes," her voice had been gradually rising in pitch to an excited whine, "use my fucking holes, baby. Fuck me like a little fucking slut!"

He did, slamming into her over and over again while toying with her tight asshole. It gripped his thumb, squeezing over and over again as she came closer and closer to another orgasm.

He pushed deep inside her, pulling her towards him and holding it there. "Oh god, oh fuck," she grunted, sounding almost sick with pleasure.

"Cum," he commanded simply. "Cum on my cock."

She complied, her body starting to quake around him even as he held her in place, his balls pressed up against her sopping wet pussy. "Oh shit, oh shit, fuuuuck..." Her head moved rapidly one way and then another as a wave of pleasure worked its way through her. Her arms gave way under her and she collapsed onto the floor; he let his cock fall out of her now very open twat and admired her beautiful, still twitching form for a moment.

"Now," he said, only just then realizing how heavily he was breathing, "where did you want it?"

"My ass," she groaned, her voice weak. Even as she spoke she pushed her ass up into the air, offering it to him.

He placed his cock head gently on her asshole, then with his hand, slapped his cock on that hole a few times.

"Please..." she moaned.

His lips curled into a smile and he pushed his way inside her. Her spit-coated and already well-fucked asshole accepted him gladly and in no time he was thrusting away, his balls slapping repeatedly against her pussy, each thrust eliciting another incoherent moan from Carrie, who remained pressed against the floor, her arms uselessly splayed.

He could not hold back much longer; the load of cum that had built up inside him was demanding to be let out and his best efforts to suppress it were failing. "Fuck I love this ass," he said as he drove into it again. "I'm gonna fucking cum, baby."

She surprised him by rolling onto her side suddenly, letting his cock fall out of her and, despite the obvious effort it took, turning around and rising up on her knees. "Let me taste it," she panted. "I want it in my mouth."

He was in no position to object, and he doubted that even if he had it would have mattered. She grabbed his cock with both hands and pulled the head into her mouth. The magic that her tongue did on the tip of his cock was the last straw and before he could even warn her, the cum was already flooding out of him and shooting into her throat.

The warning proved fully unnecessary, as she didn't flinch a bit, despite the surprisingly large load of hot, sticky cum that he sent shooting directly into her throat. She jerked him furiously even as he came, squeezing him and forcing the cum into her own mouth. She dutifully showed him the load, or at least the portion of it that hadn't already made its way into her belly, pooled on her tongue before she swallowed it with a smile.

"Fuck," he said, lowering himself to the floor to prevent his legs giving out from under him. He lay back, catching his breath. While he lay there, blinking as he looked through the ceiling, she crawled over to him.

"That was..." John said, still blinking, as if it would make the previous flurry of activity any more comprehensible.

"That was nothing," Carrie cut him off, placing a hand on his bare chest as she rolled onto her side. Her eyes were fixed on his and her mouth made almost imperceptibly small motions before she spoke again. "It was just sex."

"Just sex?" the question formed on its own.

"Yeah," she answered, withdrawing her hand as if it had been burnt by his chest. "Just meaningless sex, like I said before. I'll be your casual fuck if that's what you want. It's fine."

"Alright..." he answered. Her face was a puzzle he couldn't have solved even before she turned it away from him.

"Yeah, aren't you the master of casual fucks?" she asked, pretending to look around the room she had almost certainly memorized the details of already. She turned her attention back to him.

Is she expecting an answer to that?

"It doesn't mean..." her eyes darted around as if she was trying to spot the answer she'd lost somewhere in her skull. "You can have sex with an ex and it doesn't mean you're going to get back together with her, right? I mean, like, with me. Like you and me aren't getting back together just because you got horny during my show."

He chuckled instinctively, which seemed to make her melt on top of him. "I got horny?" he asked.

"Yeah," she answered, doing her cutest little pout. "You got horny and I just helped alleviate your boredom." She rolled over onto her back before sitting up and grabbing her crumpled clothes from the floor. "That's all."

It took John's brain an extra moment to begin processing again, distracted as he was by her perfect ass as she made her way to the hallway, clothes in hand. "Where are you going now?" he asked.

She stopped just long enough to answer over her shoulder. "I have to pee, if that's alright. Unless you're going to take my urination as some sign of unspoken love."

He laughed and lay back down, taking a second to let his body recover more fully before grabbing his own clothes and pulling them on. He pushed himself up onto the couch and let out a deep breath.

At the risk of sounding like the stereotypically detached millenial that I am, so that just happened.

"Knock, knock."

Shit. John's first reaction was instinct, his muscles tensing at the sound of Chloe's voice while his brain tried desperately to figure out what to do with those muscles. He heard the sound of the front door close as she entered. "Oh, hey," he managed to respond as he turned to see her, beautifully awkward as ever as she struggled with what was certainly a secondhand casserole in her oven-mitted hands.

"Hey," she smiled. "I guess you guys missed my texts. Sorry if I was blowing up your phone."

John got to his feet slightly too quickly. "Oh, uh, shit, yeah, sorry. We were, uh, sorry." He pulled the phone from his pocket, pausing a second to verify in his memory that he had indeed closed the fly, and then confirming the missed texts, as if that would somehow change the situation.

"Fucking shit, Chloe!" Carrie appeared in the living room a second after her voice did, still pulling on her shorts. "You fucking distracted me with..."

She never finished the sentence, instead freezing in the middle of it as she laid eyes upon her roommate.

"Hey," Chloe greeted Carrie with a smile. "I brought macaroni."

"Oh fuck," Carrie said. "I mean, fuck, I'm sorry, you shouldn't have brought that. I mean, the bus. I mean, you shouldn't have had to take the bus. We just... totally forgot. I mean, this stupid asshole distracted me with, uh, the tv. And you know me, I can't just watch one episode."

Chloe looked to the tv for a second, finding it paused on a "still watching?" screen, then back to Carrie. "Are you ok? You sound like me." She let out a little laugh.

The laugh seemed to have the magical effect of loosening the knot in John's stomach, and if her appearance was anything to go by, the one he guessed was in Carrie's, as well. "Ha, yeah, I... yeah, sorry, we totally let you down. I can't believe you carried that all the way over here on the bus. It smells so good, though." Carrie spoke as the girls moved into the kitchen, leaving John to follow them.

"It smells burnt," Chloe said as she placed the casserole dish down. She took the lid off, revealing what indeed looked to be a slightly overcooked batch of otherwise delicious looking pasta. "See?"

"Oh, fuck, the cobbler!" Carrie cried. She rushed over to the oven and opened the door roughly. "That's the fucking burning smell. Oh fuck!" She looked left and then right, growing more agitated by the moment. "Where the fuck are your oven mitts?"

"On the oven door, like always," John answered, amused. The oven mitts were, indeed, hanging from the door that she had just opened, causing her to close it again and get them before opening it again and removing the very dark brown baked good inside with a grumble.

"God damn it," she groaned as she practically dropped it onto the stove top. "Now it's going to taste like ass."

John, smiling from the doorway, said "You say that like it's a bad thing."

Both the girls somehow managed the same "haha, very funny" look at the same time.

"Ah, don't worry about it," he said, moving over to take a look at the damage. "It seems edible." He poked cautiously at the crusty brown surface, which broke with the slightest of pressure, leading him to pull his finger away with a dollop of very hot peach goo and give it a taste. "Might have to kind of eat around the blacker bits."

Carrie's response was an audible growl of annoyance.

"And anyway at least I didn't incinerate anything. So we've still got that," he said, looking from Carrie to Chloe with a shrug.

"Yeah, because you didn't cook anything," Chloe responded.

"Yeah, asshole," Carrie joined in while she chucked the oven mitts onto the counter. "Low effort bullshit."

Chloe stepped over to survey the state of the dessert. "He's right, though," she said. "I mean, he is a butthole," she shot John a smile, "but he's right. We'll just put ice cream on it and it'll be fine. He did get ice cream, right?"

"Oh, yeah," Carrie answered, now fully ignoring John.

"The good kind?" Chloe asked.

"Obviously," Carrie responded. "I made sure of it. You can't leave that stuff up to him. Never gets the good kind if left to his own devices."

"I think I'm gonna open another bottle of wine," said John.

***

"Oh my god this movie sucks soooo much ass."

John had an entire explanation for why Carrie's opinion was not just misguided but flatly incorrect ready to go, but Chloe beat him to the punch, turning her head in Carrie's lap so that she could face him while doing nothing to interfere with Carrie's stroking of her roommate's hair. "She's right. It doesn't make any sense. Like, I can't even tell what's going on and Nicholas Cage is terrible. Is he a vampire or no? Why is he like that?"

"No, no," John replied from his comfortable position on the chair near the couch the girls were taking up, Carrie sitting on one end while Chloe lay across the remainder of the space, her head resting cozily on Carrie's bare thighs. "He's great. He's just not trying to give a naturalistic performance. Most actors just try to imitate a real person, or, like, their idea of what a real person would do if, say, they maybe went a little nuts and thought they were a vampire or whatever. But he's not doing that. He's doing his own thing and it's crazy and it's great."

Carrie scowled at him. "No, it just sucks shit. I get what he's doing, but it sucks. Why did we even let you choose a movie? You always choose some dogshit horror movie."

"I do not," John objected.

"You kind of do," Chloe said. "Why aren't we watching, like, a Thanksgiving movie?"

"There are no Thanksgiving movies," John answered. "There are Halloween movies, both like actual Halloween movies and just horror movies, which are often seasonally appropriate, and there are Christmas movies. There's no Thanksgiving movie."

"Nu uh," Chloe objected. She emphasized her point with a bare foot pointed in his direction. "There's that Charlie Brown... you know, Charlie Brown Thanksgiving or whatever. Right?" She craned her neck back as well as she could to confirm with Carrie.

"I don't know," Carrie said. "He might be right. He's an asshole, but he's probably right about this one." Chloe harrumphed and made a cute little pout at John while Carrie continued, "But that doesn't mean we have to watch Help, I'm a Celebrity Vampire."

"Vampire's Kiss," John corrected her, reaching for his glass of wine from the coffee table.

"Vampire's kiss my ass," Carrie grumbled. She grabbed the remote from the coffee table, forcing Chloe to sit up in the process and made a show of shutting off the tv.

Chloe giggled as she halfheartedly pushed her hair back into place. "So what are we gonna do now?"

Carrie threw back the last of the wine in her glass. "Well, first we're going to open another bottle."

John let out a sigh. "At the risk of being a buzzkill, I'm already too drunk to drive you two home tonight," he said. And I can't imagine Chloe's doing any better. Her own glass, which John estimated to be at least the third since she arrived, was mostly empty on the coffee table before she reached for it.

"Are you trying to kick us out, asshole?" Carrie asked. She was already looking through the remaining few bottles of wine as she spoke.

"No, I..." John began.

"Yeah, butthole," Chloe smiled at him. "You've got not one but two beautiful girls at your house and all you want to do is get them out so you can watch some weird bad movie?"

"Two beautiful exes," he reminded her, grabbing the corkscrew from the table to open the bottle Carrie handed him, forcing him out of the comfortable chair.

She looked about to respond when Carrie interjected. "Whatever, it's still early," she said. "We'll just get a cab or whatever and you'll still have the rest of the weekend to jerk off in peace."

"Or we could stay over," Chloe said. She looked to Carrie for a moment before turning back to John. "I mean, if that's alright."

And what exactly is the sleeping arrangement going to be?

His mouth somehow managed to convert that initial thought to "It's fine with me, but I don't know if I have enough old t-shirts and shorts for the both of you."

"We'll figure something out," Carrie responded quickly. Her look at Chloe was so brief as to be nearly imperceptible, but John did notice it. "In the meantime, why don't we find something more fun to do?"

While Carrie poured herself a fresh drink, Chloe finished hers. When the latter had emptied her glass and offered it to her roommate for refilling, she asked, "Any ideas?"

He looked at the two of them, one white, one yellow, both gorgeous. "I can think of one fun thing we could do together..." he said.

"God, you're such a pervert," Carrie fired back, immediately intuiting his idea.

"She's not wrong," Chloe echoed the sentiment before taking another drink.

He sighed, not in any way surprised by the result, and slumped back into the chair. "Well, I don't know, I think I've got monopoly somewhere. Probably in the... junk room," he rolled his eyes at his own use of Carrie's preferred nomenclature.

"Boo, monopoly sucks shit," Carrie responded. "There's no strategy, you just roll the dice and do whatever. Also it takes forever and it's boring as fuck."

Chloe bobbled her head in resigned agreement, sending the red wine in her glass sloshing from side to side, though not enough to spill it, fortunately. "I like the idea of a game, though..."

"Spin the bottle?" John suggested. "We've certainly got the equipment for it." He gestured vaguely at the empty wine bottles adorning the coffee table.

"Pervert," Carrie repeated, although not without a smile. "Not even really a game and, again, no strategy."

Chloe, whose eyes had ping-ponged from one interlocutor to the other, looked about to say something, then closed her mouth, just a moment after it had opened.

"You have an idea?" Carrie asked, having evidently clocked Chloe's almost response.

Chloe shook her head, this time suppressing the sloshing of the generous helping of wine Carrie had given her by putting the glass to her lips. When she had finished her sip, she said, eyes avoiding both of them, "No, I just... no, it was, just, when he said spin the bottle, it reminded me... but it's stupid, like we're in middle school or something." She rolled her eyes as she took another drink, her free hand waving as if to physically push the idea away.

"What?" Carrie asked. Her lips seemed not to be able to decide whether to smile or not as she watched the younger girl beside her.

Chloe let out a short little laugh. "This is so stupid, I just, the first thing that popped into my head was truth or dare. Like, so stupid, right?"

To John's surprise, Carrie seemed to be considering it, her lower lip sticking out as the wheels moved invisibly in her head.

"Yeah, kind of a dumb idea," John interjected while trying to force a smile. "Like, yeah, like you said, we're in middle school or whatever."

Chloe smiled but before she could say anything else, Carrie spoke up. "I don't know, I think it could be fun. Like, yeah, it's dumb or whatever, but why not?"

Why not? John tried to beam his incredulity to Carrie via a glare directly into her eyes.

She met his glare and shook it off, seemingly effortlessly.

"Yeah, why not?" Chloe responded. "I mean, it's just a dumb game, right? I never actually, like, actually played it back in middle school or whatever."

"Really?" Carrie asked before taking another Carrie-sized sip from her glass.

"Yeah," Chloe said as she pushed her hair behind her ear. "I mean, I guess I just, like, never got invited to those parties or whatever."

"Then we're definitely playing," Carrie said. She had directed her words to Chloe, but her eyes were on John as she spoke.

"I don't..." John began to object, but Carrie had already started pushing the coffee table from the couch, her own glass of wine rattling precariously atop it, and he rushed to save the glass from spilling.

"Do we have to play on the floor or something?" Chloe asked, already sliding off the couch instead of waiting for an answer.

"No," Carrie replied. "I mean, I guess not. It just kind of feels like a floor game, I think. That's like, the ambiance or whatever."

"Oh, right," Chloe responded, then took another drink.

This is an exceptionally bad idea, the voice in John's head warned him.

Brother, don't I know it. He settled into a spot on the floor despite himself, taking another drink in the process.

Chloe sat with her legs folded up to one side. "So, like, how exactly does it work? I just say like 'truth' or 'dare', right? And then one of you, or both of you, maybe, tells me what to do or whatever?"

"Yeah, that's pretty much the name of the game," Carrie answered with a smile. "I think we're supposed to, like, take turns coming up with the dares or the truths or whatever they're called but like, John's a dumbass, so, like, we don't have to take his stupid ideas seriously."

Chloe giggled at this and shot John an adorable smile. She turned back to Carrie. "Ok, so, um, dare, I guess?"

Carrie let out a little sigh and her eyes rolled up to the ceiling as she considered the challenge. "Alright, I dare you to do an impression of me. And you can't, like, soften it."

Chloe let out a little laugh. "Uh, ok..." She cleared her throat and bobbled her head a little bit, as if she had just prepared herself for the entrance of Carrie's essence into herself. "Uh," she began in a voice that sounded less like Carrie than it did it generic nerd voice, "Joooohn. This sucks buuuuttt. I'm such a b when I'm hungry, feed me, feed me!" She ended her impression with a little laugh, then checked Carrie's reaction while biting her lip.

Carrie let out a little laugh in response. "That was pretty good, actually. I mean, it sounded nothing like me, but I am a real bitch on an empty stomach, admittedly."

Chloe looked visibly relieved for a moment, then said, "Alright, so you're up next. Truth or dare?"

Maybe this won't be a complete train wreck after all.

Carrie's face twisted up for a second while she considered, but she quickly responded. "Alright, truth."

John opened his mouth to speak, but Chloe beat him to the punch. "Have you ever done anal?"

Carrie nearly spit out her wine, a little trail of it dripping out of her lips and down her chin. When she had gathered herself enough to wipe it away, she blinked a few times. "Uh..."

"Sorry, am I doing it wrong?" Chloe asked, appearing genuinely confused. "I thought it was, like, a sexy game. Like you ask stuff like that. Is that not right? Sorry."

John chuckled. "Nah, that's right, you got it. You're doing it right." He turned to Carrie with a smile. Or it might be a train wreck into a garbage fire.

Carrie swallowed her wine audibly, then smacked her lips, her eyes clearly avoiding her interlocutors'. "I..." she paused mid-answer, "... have."

"Oh, cool," Chloe replied with a big grin on her face. "So, John's up next."

"Truth or dare, asshole?" Carrie, evidently having recovered from the momentary embarrassment, asked.

"Uh," John rolled his eyes. Not really a good option, I guess, but what's the most embarrassing thing they can get me to do? "Dare, I guess."

"Boo," Carrie replied immediately.

"Fine, truth," he responded, shaking his head, having resigned himself to the knowledge that she would just say "Dare you to tell me..." in any case.

"Ok," Carrie said, eying him carefully, "did you ever cheat on me when we were together?"

He chuckled, "Uh, no. I don't know why you're wasting a question on something you already know."

"You know it's called 'truth or dare', right asshole? You're not allowed to lie," Carrie responded before taking another sip of wine.

"Yes, I am aware," he responded, "thanks. Not lying. Did not cheat on you." He paused to look at her smile through her wine glass. "Even though I definitely could have. If I had wanted to."

"With who?" Chloe interjected.

"This friend of hers," John responded to her before turning back to Carrie. "You know, what was her name? The one who moved to Minneapolis or whatever."

Carrie made a face, letting her wine glass hang in front of her mouth. "Michelle? Uh, no, wrong, sorry, asshole, she hated you."

It was then John's turn to make a face of disbelief. "I think she would have fucked me."

"That's because you're an idiot. She thought so, too. Her words, literally, 'That guy is an idiot. You're too good for him.'" She sighed. "God I miss her."

Chloe giggled and John was reminded that the game was supposed to keep going. "Dare," she said without prompting.

"All dares tonight?" Carrie teased, "Got something to hide?"

"No," Chloe responded, seemingly taken aback. "But fine, truth."

"Ok, uh, let's see," Carrie considered, one finger to her chin. "When did you lose your v-card?"

Chloe stifled a laugh. "Um, I would have been, eighteen... no, seven... you mean like when I actually first did it, right?"

Carrie laughed. "Uh, yeah, sorry for the millenial terminology if that's confusing, sweetie. Do you all not say 'v-card' any more?"

Chloe shook her head. "No, no, I mean, like, mouth stuff doesn't count, right? Just, like, real, actual, like, doing it, right?"

"Yes," John answered for Carrie. "Although butt stuff counts, I think." He shot a look at Carrie, who pretended to ignore it, much to Chloe's amusement.

"Well, uh, then yeah, eighteen," she said, her eyes rolling back in her head as she worked out the details of a memory. "Senior year, me and this guy Eliot, you know..." She let out a little laugh. "God I'm such a stereotype, like first time doing it on my senior prom night, right?"

"Aww," Carrie replied, her eyes soft. "That's actually kind of adorable."

"Yeah, but then he broke up with me like a week later," Chloe continued, her eyes focused on nothing in particular in front of herself. "Said there was 'someone else' but I never found out who." She shrugged. "Whatever, that's like forever ago. What about you?"

"Me?" Carrie asked.

"Does this count as a turn?" John interjected.

"Yeah," Chloe answered. "I mean, if truth is ok."

"It's fine," Carrie replied. "I'll do another one. I don't really care. The first guy I let fuck me was actually in college. Some stupid asshole at a party. Well, like, I met him at the party. He fucked me in his terrible dorm room and then I had to do the walk of shame before his roommate got back." She shook her head and smiled, her eyes rolling back a bit. "God, Gary, you fucking asshole."

Chloe giggled and Carrie continued. "But whatever, he came in like thirty seconds. So hardly a life-changing experience." She sighed. "Dare me."

"Does nobody want to hear about my first time?" John interrupted.

"No," the girls responded in chorus.

"Alright," John shrugged and took another drink. "I've got a dare for you, then."

Carrie, who had immediately turned her attention back to her roommate, rolled her eyes at him. "What?"

"I dare you to kiss her," he answered.

Carrie made a face at him. "Chloe?"

"Yeah, obviously," he answered.

"Such a pervert," she shook her head and turned back to Chloe, who just shrugged at her.

They exchanged a silent conversation for a moment before Chloe vocalized it. "That is the game, right?"

"That's the game," John said, smiling at his own words and suddenly realizing how drunk he had become over the course of the evening even as he took another drink.

"Fine," Carrie sighed. "But I'm not using tongue or anything, so you can keep your dick in your pants."

"Gotta be on the lips, at least," John added, prompting another grumble from Carrie, but to her credit, she leaned over and planted a closed-mouth kiss on Chloe's lips.

"There, satisfied, asshole?" she slumped back and downed the rest of her glass.

Carrie was already haphazardly refilling her glass when Chloe asked John "Truth or dare?"

"I'm just going to cut to the chase and say 'truth' this time," he answered, eying the overly generous portion Carrie had given herself with some anxiety.

"Ok, uh..." Carrie began, holding the glass to her lips but not drinking, "Did you ever cheat on Chloe, then?"

"No," John answered, keeping his eyes on Carrie and trying to ignore Chloe's reaction for the moment.

"Really?" Carrie asked. He half expected more but she seemed content just to examine his reaction over the rim of her wine glass.

"We were never exclusive," Chloe answered for him. "So, like, it doesn't... he couldn't have cheated on me. So it's like, whatever, anyway."

Carrie shrugged this off, so John started to get up. "Well, that was fun, huh?" He said. "Two rounds is probably enough for the night, yeah?" He stretched his arms out and found to his mild delight that he was able to force a yawn.

"Boo," responded Carrie, raising her eyebrows slightly. "You haven't even had a dare yet."

"Yeah, come on," Chloe concurred with a smile. "It's not like we have anything more fun to do."

Not true, he thought We could still jam forks into our own eyes. "Fine, but I'm going to at least get some more of that cobbler."

Before he had even made it to the kitchen, Chloe had asked for another dare. "Alright..." Carrie considered again. "Hey John," she called to him as he was plopping some of the surprising good cobbler onto a plate for himself, "do you still have any of that hot sauce?"

"You mean the tabasco?" He popped his head back out into the living room.

"No, no," she said, "Not that weak shit. That shit I brought you back from my Mexico trip. You still have that?"

He tried to stifle a laugh. "Holy shit, actually, yes, I do. But only because it's fucking inedible. And that's not even considering it's like two years old at this point."

She smiled. "Get it," she said. "And a spoon."

"No, no, no, don't do that," he responded.

"Just fucking do it," Carrie responded, then turned to Chloe. "Dare you to eat a spoonful of this stuff."

Chloe looked wary but not unamused. "Is it, like, spicy?" she asked.

"You could say that," Carrie answered.

"That shit is seriously inedible," John said. "Seriously, do not ingest it."

"How bad can it be?"

***

"Truth..." the agony in Chloe's voice had mostly disappeared, although it had left behind traces. "I can't take another dare like that one."

"That's the game..." smirked Carrie beside her. She sat on her knees, a glass of wine in one hand, even as she rubbed the leg of her now fully horizontal roommate with a genuine affection.

"You're evil," Chloe groaned.

"Aww," Carrie said. "It wouldn't be a rite of passage if you didn't regret it at least a little bit."

Wincing a little, Chloe let out a little laugh. "I love you, Carrie, but you are evil."

John could not, at that particular moment, disagree with Chloe on anything.

"You're just a little upset because you suck at this game," Carrie replied. "Which makes sense, it's your first time, but, come on, last round you asked me if I ever cheated on John which, duh, obviously no, and then thought that making him do a ding-dong-dash was a sufficient dare. Seriously amateur. Now let's come up with a good truth. Unless you're sure you don't want to try another dare...?" She smiled at John and the smile made the jump to his own face.

"No, no, no..." Chloe groaned through a smile, "Truth, truth, please."

"Let's see," John started thinking.

Carrie shushed him with a shake of her head and a raised finger. "What's the weirdest place you ever did it?"

Chloe's face, pointed at the ceiling, twisted up as she considered the question. "You mean like in the butt?"

This time Carrie was unable to fully stop the wine from escaping her mouth, though she did manage to catch most of what exploded from between her lips using a raised hand. After a few moments of John-assisted cleanup with the nearby tissues, she responded. "That's not what I meant, but I think we'll take it as an answer. Is that your answer, then? In the butt?"

"Yeah, I mean, I guess," she said. "Does that count as weird?"

"I think you might not be asking the right audience here," John piped up before savoring the last of the wine in his glass.

Carrie scowled at him, though not without a degree of playfulness. "Ok, dare me."

John looked to Chloe, who was still rubbing her taught little tummy, having pushed her hoodie up slightly to expose the skin. "Looking for some revenge?" he asked.

"No, no," Carrie answered for her, "same dare is bullshit."

"I wouldn't be so evil, anyway," Chloe replied. "Let me think..."

"Well, if not painful, then it should be at least a little embarrassing, right?" John offered.

"Yeah," Chloe agreed, "I mean, like, what about like, she has to like, flash the neighbors or something?"

John winced a little at this. "I think you've got something with the nudity, but can we maybe not involve any of my neighbors in this any more than we already have? I'm still getting dirty looks over that Halloween party, and it wasn't even that loud."

Chloe's face wrinkled up at this and she let out a sigh. "Fine," she pushed herself up onto her elbows, "private nudity, then. So, like, dare her to play the game topless?"

"Bottomless?" John offered.

"I heard 'topless'," Carrie interrupted their deliberations. "But dares can only be for one round, max."

"Are those the rules?" Chloe asked. She appeared to be asking genuinely, waiting for Carrie's answer while taking another sip.

"Yes," Carrie answered, shushing John with a motion of her hand. "Max one round of my boobs, pervs. Is that the dare?"

"Yes," answered John.

"I'm asking Chloe, asshole," Carrie replied before taking another generous and slightly noisy sip of wine.

"Yes," Chloe agreed. "Show me those boobies!"

Carrie rolled her eyes and peeled off her hoodie, placing it gently beside herself. "There," she said, "wasted dare." Her ample breasts jiggled in her navy blue bra.

"Nuh uh uh," John said, wagging a finger at her. "The dare was topless."

"I took off my top," she scowled back at him. "A bra is not a top. Nobody said anything about a bra."

"Chloe?" John's eyes flicked over to Chloe, who proceeded to feign careful consideration.

"No bra," she said after a moment. "Topless means show us your boobs."

"Grrr," Carrie grumbled. "Fine, but you're getting it next round, little miss perv." She reached behind herself and quickly popped off the bra. Unfortunately this only resulted in the briefest flash of nipple imaginable, as she quickly covered up with her hands. "What?" she asked after reading their looks. "You said topless and I even took off my bra even though that's bullshit. You didn't say anything about hands."

"Fine," Chloe short-circuited John's inevitable question.

Carrie, carefully cupping her breasts, turned her attention to John. "Ok, asshole, you're up. And no bullshit easy dares this round, you're getting a truth."

"Ask away," John answered automatically. Wine drunk is different from beer drunk somehow. I can't explain it, but it's different. "If you want to know who else I didn't cheat on..."

"Nah," she said. "That's too easy. Who do you regret the most?" Beside her, Chloe's eyes grew wide, looking first to Carrie and then, finding no response, over to John.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Carrie shrugged. "It's an open question. Interpret it how you like. Who do you regret the most?"

"Come on, Carrie," Chloe said, "that's not, like, a fun question."

"The rules don't say it has to be fun. It's supposed to be a little hard."

"Take those hands away if you want to make it hard," he answered.

"Ha ha, dickhead," she responded, her eyes fixed on him. "Answer the question."

"You don't have to," Chloe interrupted sheepishly. "You can have a dare instead if you want."

"Nah, it's fine," he waved Chloe off eliciting a look of barely concealed worry from her. "I'm just not sure... how to answer, you know? Who do I regret, huh? That's tough. Who do I regret losing? Who do I regret being with?"

He looked up from the swirling wine in the glass and met Carrie's eyes. "You know what, never mind," she said. "Dumb question. I don't need to hear your stupid ass pontificate. What's, like, uh..." She searched the ceiling for a question.

"What was the last time you whacked off?" Chloe interjected.

"Whacked off?" Carrie responded before John had a chance to.

"Yeah, you know," Chloe said. She pantomimed the action with, in John's opinion, comically oversized motions. "I bet he does it like all the time."

John scratched the back of his head as he rolled back the clock mentally. "Uh... Tuesday?" he answered, "Tuesday night, I want to say."

Carrie shot him a look. He could almost hear her words in his head: I slept over Tuesday night.

He tried to send her a mental message Yeah, you slept over. As in, you were asleep. The continued look on her face told him his ESP had not succeeded.

Chloe raised her eyebrows and smiled, "Ok, me next," she said. "Truth."

"Alright," John replied, "Well, then, turnabout is fair play, so when's the last time you..."

"Sunday," Carrie answered for her before John could even finish the question, prompting them both to turn towards her. She wrapped her arms even more tightly around herself, pushing her breasts up slightly. "Don't waste a turn on something I can tell you just by sitting around the apartment."

Chloe blushed a little. "Hey!"

"What? Thin walls, remember?" Carrie stuck her tongue out. "But anyway," she continued as Chloe continued to pout, "New truth."

"Hardly seems fair," John interjected.

Carrie just rolled her eyes at him and then turned back to her roommate. "So... did you and John hook up over Thanksgiving?"

Chloe looked away, but her smile was still visible as she pushed some hair behind her ear. "Yeah..." she said. It took another second before she looked up, meeting John's eyes for only a brief moment before turning to Carrie.

"Oh," said Carrie. Her fingers kneaded the flesh of her arms. "I kind of thought so." The smile that followed was fleeting, the muscles around her mouth moving only briefly. "You know, when I came in this morning and found him on the couch, I kind of suspected, but..."

"Yeah," Chloe let out a little laugh. "I kind of just jumped him. I don't think he even knew what hit him, but you know how he is. He doesn't exactly put up a fight, right?"

"Yeah, right," Carrie gave a perfunctory little nod-smile. "Well, uh, I guess I can put these away," she said. She managed to remain mostly covered with one arm while she grabbed her clothes. With only a brief flash of nipples she had them back on. "So, um, I don't know, dare, I guess."

"Can we dare you to take your boobs out again?" Chloe asked. From her tone, John guessed she was just teasing, but he was not entirely sure.

"No, pervo," Carrie answered, wrapping her arms around her chest again despite her wearing clothes. "You have to come up with something new."

"Ok, butt it is," John declared.

Carrie glared at him, leading to a laugh from Chloe, which in turn led Carrie to turn her glare in Chloe's direction.

"Sometimes it's like you two never stopped dating," she said. At a continued glare from Carrie, she shrugged. "Why did you two ever break up, anyway?" She followed her question with a long drink of wine.

"I said 'dare'," Carrie answered, failing to keep the irritation out of her voice entirely.

"Ok, well..." Chloe considered her options, her eyes rolling around as she spoke, "since nudity is off the table..."

"Not off the table," John said, "that butt is still very much a possibility."

The girls both looked at him, Chloe smiling, Carrie scowling.

"Since nudity is off the table," Chloe repeated, "how about you do an impression of me this time? Dare you."

"Um, ok," Carrie replied. She seemed somehow confused by the dare, but shook it off, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes for a moment, before opening them while a big smile spread across her face. "Uh, well, um, like..." Carrie's supposed impression sounded more like a generic Valley Girl than Chloe's soft-spoken Midwesterner. "So, I'm, uh, I mean, my name is Chloe and, like, I'm just like so cute and just like shy and all and sorry if you fall in love with me..."

Chloe smiled, her tongue making a brief appearance on her lips as she shot a look at John while Carrie continued.

"Oh, John, do you like, uh, maybe want to, like, I don't know, like, do sex with me?" Carrie did a little shrug to add to the effect. Beside her, Chloe's smile seemed to be wavering, but Carrie pressed on. "Oh, no, that's like, the wrong hole, I think? Oh but oh it feels kind of good! Oh John do me! Do me in my perfect, cute little butthole!"

Chloe blinked a few times, then let out a little laugh. "That was... funny," she said. "I do sound like that."

"Right, yeah," John said, happy to get the game moving again, "my turn, I guess. Um, how about a dare?"

Carrie reached over and took a bottle from the table, and, finding it empty, scowled. "Dare you to text a dick pic to a random number in your phone," she said, already checking another bottle, which was similarly empty.

"Uh, pass," John replied.

"Come on, that's the game," she mocked him. "I had to show you both my fucking tits. Fair's fair."

"Yeah, but..." Chloe began.

"Fine," Carrie cut her off, rolling her eyes. "Whatever, baby," she said. "Text it to Riley, then. Or that girl from work, what was her name? The redhead with the fat knockers."

"Hard pass," John replied as she attempted to drain the few remaining drops in her wine glass, sticking her tongue into it as she threw her head back. "No neighbors, no contacts."

"Bah," she responded slightly too loudly, having given up on the glass. "Then I dare you to open another bottle of wine."

"Alright," he agreed. "But maybe we wind the game down."

"Aww, come on," Carrie scowled. "We haven't even seen Chloe's little titties yet."

"Or your weiner," Chloe said.

How am I the one who's trying to cut this game short?

"Alright, alright," he said, already getting up, "I'll get the wine. But I dare both of you to go the whole day tomorrow without complaining about a hangover."

As he reluctantly opened another bottle, the girls continued their game a few feet away.

"Truth," said Chloe. She turned her whole body, sitting up on her knees to face Carrie directly.

"Alright," said Carrie. "So, you and John fucked last night, huh?"

"Uh, yeah," Chloe responded, pushing her hair behind her ear again. "I mean..."

"Just the once, then?" Carrie asked.

Chloe let out a little laugh, "Uh, well, just after we got back, I guess? Like, I just sort of jumped him, like I said..."

"And so you just fucked that one time, then?" Carrie asked.

"Uh..." Chloe started, "I don't... are you asking how many times we did it last night?"

John stood, corkscrew in one hand, open bottle in the other, his legs entirely ignoring his pleas for them to move.

"Are you getting back together?" Chloe asked.

Chloe looked over at him, saying nothing for a few moments, then returning her attention to Carrie. "I mean, I didn't want to... I mean, it's not up to me, right? Or, not, like just up to me. But..."

"But you want to," Carrie cut her off. "You want to get back together with him."

"I mean," Chloe said, evidently not having an end to the sentence.

In the few moments that followed, John was finally able to get his legs to move. He found, strangely, that Carrie paid him no mind as he took his spot between the two girls. "So since letting the wine breathe is bullshit and all..." he forced a smile, holding the bottle as if to pour; Carrie's glass remained empty on the floor beside her.

"Truth," Carrie said, her eyes focused not on Chloe, but rather behind the girl.

"Ok..." said Chloe, "So, uh..."

"Did I invite Riley to the Halloween party?" Carrie asked nobody in particular. She paused a second and then answered her own question. "Yeah. I thought if she would come something might happen. I didn't know if it would, but she's a friend and so I could justify it. At least to myself, at least at the time. Did I think it would push you two apart? Maybe, I don't know. Probably, on some level."

"Ok, that's enough truth or dare," John said.

"Fuck off," Carrie snapped back at him. When she turned to look at him, it was with tears welling in her eyes. "It's your turn."

"Uh..." John opened his mouth but nothing came out.

"Fine, dare," she answered for him. "Do ten pushups. Go. Chloe, truth or dare?"

"Carrie?" Chloe looked absolutely terrified.

"Fine, dare, bottomless for the next round. No cheating, spread legs so we can all see that perfect little twat of yours. I'm up next. Truth."

"Carrie!" Chloe's whole face was twitching as she tried in vain to suppress her tears.

Carrie's own tears overflowed her eyes and poured down her face, but she kept those eyes focused beyond Chloe. "Truth," she repeated. "Did I tell Riley when you two broke up?" This time she didn't hesitate to answer. "Yes, I did. As soon as I heard you two through those god damn fucking thin walls I knew it, I knew you two were done; I was right all along." Her head snapped around to John. "I knew you would fuck it up, you would do something, you'd cheat on her, you'd push her to do some weird fucking pervert thing, you'd fuck her up. And I knew, I may not have been able to say it at the time, but I knew, I knew if I just innocently mentioned that you two sounded like you were 'going through a little rough patch' that's what I said, I knew if I told her that, that she'd come running right over and try to suck your fucking dick and guess what, I was right about that, too. Everything was just falling into place, just like I thought, just like I knew."

She turned back to Chloe, who was hiding her mouth behind her trembling hand. "I knew it, Chloe, I knew she would be there and I knew you'd know what that meant and that you'd make it permanent right then and there and I did it, anyway. That's why, on some level, that's why I told you to go over there, to come over here and talk it out with him. And you, you just trusted me. You sat there and you wrote down what you wanted to say on a little piece of paper so that it would come out right, and you put that note in your pocket. I watched you put it in your pocket, that little note you scribbled out for yourself and you got on the bus and you came all the way over here with that little note in your pocket and you saw her. I knew you would see her, just like I saw her, you'd see them together and you'd know that he's no good for you. And I knew the whole time. I knew you'd never even get to read that note. And I hate myself for that. Hate, hate, hate myself. Hate that I knew but that I couldn't, I just couldn't admit that, even to myself."

"Why?" the word forced its way out of John's mouth.

Her head snapped back around, her eyes burning into his. "Because I still love you, you stupid asshole!" She stared at him for what must have been only a second or two but felt like an eternity, her chest heaving. "Because I love you and I wanted you to be happy, even if that wasn't with me. I knew it, I knew it, I told myself I knew that you, you could never really be happy with her, and she damn sure couldn't be happy with you. How could she be? Look at her! She's a perfect little angel. Just so beautiful, so perfect, so sweet. And you're such, you're just such a stupid asshole. You never learned how to keep your dick in your pants, you never did. Not with me, not with her, not with anyone. You couldn't ever be happy with just one person, just one her. No, I convinced myself, you needed someone like Riley, someone as fucked up and horny as you, somebody you could never hurt because she's just like you, a serial cheater that you just can't quit no matter how bad you know they are for you. So I told myself, what the hell, if he ends up with Riley, then great, he's happy, she's happy, everyone's happy. Everyone's happy but me, but that's ok, I'll do it for you because I love you and that's enough. And if I'm wrong? Then nothing happens and you go and live with your perfect Chloe and you have your perfect little two and a half kids and everyone is happy, everyone but me, but that's ok."

"It's not ok," Chloe squeaked, immediately clamping her hand over her mouth again.

Carrie turned her attention back to her roommate. "I'm so sorry, baby. I was wrong and I'm so sorry. It wasn't Riley, how could it be Riley? She can't even..." Carrie drew in a deep breath, trying and failing to stifle her tears again. "So then, what do I do? How could I have been wrong? It couldn't be that. I couldn't have made you both so unhappy for no reason. There had to be a reason, I had to be right, he's just no good for you. But if not Riley, then who? The answer is obvious, it was right under my nose all along, I thought. It was me! I was so stupid! I actually let myself believe there for a while that it could be me. It could be me that he loves. How could I be so stupid? To think he would ever love me, ever love me again when he had you right there. Perfect little sweet little perfect Chloe, the girl you can't help, even I can't help falling in love with."

With that, Carrie collapsed face down onto the floor, knocking over her empty wine glass in the process. "Carrie..." Chloe moved to her, placing a hand on her back even as John remained frozen, unable even to put down the bottle in his hand.

"Leave me alone," Carrie said into the carpet. "Go away and take John with you. Please. Go upstairs. Go upstairs and have your perfect beautiful sex and make it so loud I can hear it down here and touch myself and pretend it's me he's making love to. Please."

"Carrie," Chloe tried again. "Carrie..." she seemed to be stuck on repeat.

"PLEASE!" Carrie screamed into the carpet; her body started heaving as she sobbed, her face still hidden, her hands on the back of her head. "Please, leave me alone. I need to be alone."

Chloe stood up and took John by the hand. He finally put the bottle down as she led him into the kitchen. He tried to formulate a coherent response, but all he could manage was "What?"

Chloe shook her head and her mouth opened but no words came out. John opened his, but the next sound either of them heard was the sound of a door opening and then quickly slamming shut. They both raced back out to the living room, pausing just long enough to verify that Carrie had gone, and then out the front door.

Brrbrr the engine of John's car turned over loudly and a fraction of a second later, the headlights flipped on, blinding them both momentarily.

"We can't let her drive," John said. He rushed to the driver's side door but found it locked. "Carrie!" he shouted into the glass of the driver's side window.

Her response was to shift into reverse. He jumped back instinctively as the car rushed back down the driveway under his fingertips. The car turned wildly as she tried to back it onto the fortunately deserted street, slamming into and flattening his mailbox in the process.

"I'm sorry!" she shouted, her voice muffled by the window. "I'm so sorry!" He ran to the street, but with a squeal of the tires, she drove off.

He gradually became aware that Chloe had joined him as the car disappeared into the night.

"What do we do?" Chloe asked.

"I don't know," he answered, shaking his head and staring down the empty, dark street. "I don't know."