"I'll be there." He said.
As I headed to my first class of the day I had a careful smile on my face. At least I'd steered Mike back to where he'd been. The rest would be up to him and if he blew it again I would be forced to concede the inevitability of his loser status. But for now he was back on track. Or back off track if you prefer.
When my alarm clock woke me up the next morning the first sound I heard upon shutting it off was the patter of rain against my window. I sighed as I pondered walking to school in a downpour again. As I listened to the precipitation against the glass I came to a decision on a matter I'd been mulling over for some time.
After showering I went down to breakfast and picked up the business section as usual.
"How are the stocks doing today?" Dad asked from behind the sports page.
"Up a little again." I told him, doing some quick calculations in my head based on some figures I'd added up a few days before. The latex industry was slowly climbing at this point but had yet to do anything dramatic. It would before too much longer went by. But in the meantime I was funneling all of my spare income into those stocks. The added capital plus the gains in the price added up to more than two thousand dollars of available income.
Not a fortune, but not bad either.
I flipped through the business section and found the classified ads. After five minutes of perusal I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking at.
"Dad," I said. "Can you cash out six hundred dollars worth of my stocks today? Three hundred from each company?"
He slid his paper down and looked at me. "What for?" He asked.
"I need to buy a car." I told him. "I refuse to walk to school in the rain anymore."
We talked that matter over for a few minutes, as fathers like to do with their sons. He agreed to cash out the stock but made me promise to take him with me when I went out looking. He would keep me from being screwed he told me. Knowing that I didn't really need his help to keep from getting screwed but also knowing that buying the first car was one of those things that father's lived for, I agreed.
I was very excited about the prospect of going out car shopping on Saturday.
Excited enough to dampen the depression the rain had brought. But my mood was changed in an instant when Mom came into the living room.
Casually, she said to me, "Oh Billy, Anita called last night."
"Anita?" I said as tonelessly as I could manage.
"Yes." She nodded. "She wanted to know if you could swing by after school today and help her change the oil on her car before you go to work. I told her you probably wouldn't mind doing that."
"You did?" I said.
Mom gave me a strange look. "That's okay, isn't it?" She asked. "You're usually able to help her out when she asks."
"Uh…" I stammered, my mind whirring. "Well actually I have a lot of homework to catch up on today."
"Bill, its Friday." She told me. "Can't it wait?"
"No." I shook my head. "It's chemistry. If I don't do it right after school I, uh, forget all of the formulas and stuff."
Mom looked at me for a minute, her mother instinct probably being jigged by my words. But finally she shrugged. "Okay." She said. "But will you try to do it this weekend sometime?"
"I'll uh, see what I can do Mom." I said carefully.
"Thank you Billy." She answered, looking at me with a troubled expression.
Had I really believed that Anita was going to fade away that easily? I guess I had.
That night when I went to bed my testosterone got the better of me. There was only one way to relieve it and manage some sleep. I took myself in hand and began stroking, an action I'd performed thousands upon thousands of times before in my two lives. I thought of Nina as I did it, almost against my will. Never had a fantasy been so vivid, so real to me. It only took a minute or so before my fantasy Nina's job was complete and I was drifting off into a troubled slumber.
The next day, Saturday, Dad and I spent the late morning and early afternoon driving from place to place and looking at used cars. Dad showed me how to negotiate and how to check out a vehicle that you might buy. To my surprise he actually taught me a few things that I didn't already know. I was pleased with the vehicle we eventually settled upon. It was a 1976 Datsun B-210 with seventy thousand miles on it. The engine was in reasonably good shape although the paint job and the interior were in bad need of an overhaul. I paid five hundred cash for it and drove it home that day. That evening I took it to work with me. No matter what else happened, there would be no more walking to school in the rain or the snow.
A week went by and then another. Nothing changed between Nina and I. She continued to ignore me in class and to eat lunch by herself. I tried to talk to her a few times without any measure of success. I tried to tell her I missed her but she didn't listen. My hope for any future relationship began to dwindle. During this period I maintained my habit of jacking off once a day on average. I simply couldn't help it. Nina was always featured in these fantasies and most of them were not even about sex. Most of them just involved being in an intimate place with her, being together with her.
Anita continued to be a problem. She continually called my mother asking if I could come over to do little chores for her. I was fast running out of excuses for why I couldn't do what she asked and my mother, now quite plainly sensing that something was wrong, was running out of look-the-other-way-so-you-don't-have-to-address-an-unpleasant-truth. I knew that I was going to have to have another talk with Anita but I wasn't up for it yet. The memory of our first talk was still too fresh in my mind. I'd experienced emotions during that talk that I'd never felt before, not even during the divorce with my wife in my previous life.
On the following Friday night, while I was adding up my stock holdings after receiving my latest paycheck from the pizza joint, the phone rang. Dad answered it, listened for a minute, and then yelled my name. I walked into the kitchen and took it from him, figuring it was probably Mike.
"Hey Billy-Boy!" A familiar female voice haled. "How you been?"
Cindy! In all of the turmoil of the recent past Cindy had completely slipped my mind. Our album sessions had dwindled once she'd started college and had all but disappeared in the last two months. I hadn't seen or heard from her since then.
"Hi Cindy." I said carefully. If I'd learned nothing else over the past few weeks I'd learned that females that you thought you were having a casual relationship with were often not under the same impression. Was another bomb about to drop on me? Had I screwed up Cindy's life as I had Anita's? I honestly didn't know. In my previous life I'd lost track of Cindy after her and Tracy had stopped hanging out together. The last time I'd seen her had been at Tracy's funeral where she'd given me a sympathetic hug and had disappeared from my life forever.
"What's up?" She asked me.
We chatted for a few minutes. She apologized for not having contacted me lately and I assured her it was okay. She told me she had a new love interest and I was very glad to hear that. Even when she mentioned that he was a professor at her college who was 'kind of married', I maintained my delight.
"That's just great Cindy." I told her. "I hope things work out for you."
"Oh they will." She assured me. "They will. I'll see to it."
"I'm sure you will."
"Listen," She said. "The reason I called is that Maggie and I are moving into an apartment together. You remember Maggie, don't you?"
How could I forget her? She was Cindy's brunette friend that used to come over to 'study' with me on days that Cindy could not. Like with Cindy, I hadn't seen Maggie in quite a while. Was Maggie going to be the latest bomb?
"Yes." I said. "I'm familiar with Maggie."
Cindy giggled. "I'm sure you are." She said. "Maggie knows your album collection almost as good as I do. Anyway, we really need someone to help us move tomorrow. We have a truck but we need help getting our shit out of our parent's house and into ours. Could you be a sweetheart and give us a hand?"