Lost and Found Ch. 02

I stopped by Steve’s garage the next day; Kasey’s car was sitting out back.

I walked in, saw his rolling tool box and walked over to him. He looked up and straightened as I clapped him on the back.

“Had a chance to look at it yet?” I asked.

He nodded, grabbing a rag for his hands.

“Come here,” he said, nodding toward the parking lot. “I want to show you something.”

I followed him out to her car and watched as he popped the hood.

“So what was the problem?” I asked.

“This.” Steve leaned forward and grabbed hold of a wire, following it down past the block to where it disappeared from sight. “It was loose.”

“But I checked all the connections.”

He leaned against the front bumper.

“I’ll bet you didn’t check that. Nobody checks that for being loose. Because it never is. It’s always something up here. That…” he pointed back under the hood, “was intentional.”

“You think so?”

He nodded. “Granted, it was somebody who knew what they were doing. You don’t just loosen that randomly. But there were tool marks. Fresh ones. Probably loosened it… I dunno… half hour, hour before you called me. Based on where we towed it from.”

“Hmmm. So, what do I owe you?”

“Naaah. Don’t worry about it,” he said, shutting the hood. “I was impressed with how clean the engine is. So, this car belongs to a girl at the school here?”

I nodded.

“Friend of yours?”

“I met her last night coming out of the bookstore. She needed help, so I helped her.”

Steve nodded. “Well, tell her to be careful and keep an eye out for anybody messing with her car.”

He handed me the key and I waited for time to come to call Kasey.

I waited until a few minutes after four-thirty before calling Kasey. We arranged for me to pick her up around five-thirty. She told me she’d meet me out front.

When I got there, she wasn’t downstairs yet, so I parked across the street and waited for her.

A couple of minutes later, a girl came down the steps, tossed her brunette hair side to side looking both ways, and then she crossed the street headed right for me.

“You’re the guy that gave Kasey a ride back to the dorm last night.”

I nodded and stuck out my hand. “Bruce. And you’re…”

“I’m Stacy,” she said, shaking my hand. “Her roommate.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Right. Listen, if you do anything to hurt her…”

“I’m taking her to pick up her car.”

Stacy narrowed her eyes to glare at me.

“That’s it?”

I nodded and held up three fingers pressed together. “Scout’s honor.”

“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes.

Stacy followed my gaze as I watched Kasey descend the steps. Yesterday, shorts and t-shirt. Today, short skirt and a short sleeve blouse.

Stacy looked back at me, glared and pointed a finger at me. I understood. She had her eye on me.

“What are you doing?” Kasey asked as she brushed up against her roommate. Her words were just loud enough for me to hear, though I don’t think she intended for me to.

“Nothing.” Stacy looked her roommate up and down, biting her lip to keep from smiling. “You are such a slut.”

Kasey looked at me nervously and turned red as she looked back at her roommate. “I am not.”

“Right. See you later.”

I opened the door for Kasey to get in. My eyes followed her every movement as she sat down, her skirt slid up high enough to bare her thighs. I closed the door and walked around. Stacy watched as I got in. She waved to Kasey and watched us drive away.

“So, what was that all about?” I asked.

Kasey turned her head to look at me. “Oh, nothing. My roommate and I pick at each other a fair bit. What did she say to you?”

“She was just introducing herself. I think she wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

Kasey nodded. “She’s not my mother.”

“I know. I’m pretty sure she does, too.”

A few moments of silence passed between us.

“Why did you open my door for me?”

“What? When you got in?”

Kasey nodded.

“That’s what a gentleman does for a lady.” I felt a sudden twinge of guilt about looking at her legs as she crawled in.

“Do you do that all the time? Or is it something you just did for me?”

“I try to make it habit to do it all the time,” I said.

Kasey just looked at me as we continued to drive.

“Steve said the only thing wrong with your car was a loose battery connection.”

Kasey wrinkled her forehead. “I thought you checked all the connections.”

“I didn’t check down lower on the block. It was loose there.”

“How did that happen?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. Steve said it looked like someone deliberately loosened the bolt, though. He said there were tool marks from a wrench.”

We pulled into the auto shop parking lot and parked next to Kasey’s car.

I handed her the key, she got in and cranked it on the first try. Her car door was still open, and Kasey swung her left leg out as she turned off the engine and fought with the key pulling it out of the ignition. I looked down; her skirt was high erzincan escort on her legs again. She pushed her body with her right leg as she started to climb out, and for a brief moment, I saw a flash of soft, brilliant pink between her legs. I could live with the guilt.

Kasey closed the door and leaned against her car and smiled at me.

“Thank you.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t do much. But, you’re welcome.”

Kasey looked down at the ground, kicked at a loose pebble and looked back up at me.

“What do I owe you?”

I shook my head. “You don’t owe me anything, Kasey.”

“I feel like I owe you something. You got my car towed for me, they fixed it, you took me to dinner last night and back to my dorm.”

I took a deep breath and sighed. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t expect anything in return.”

She bit her lip and nodded faintly.

“Is it because of your daughter and how you’d want someone to treat her?”

“Partly.” I looked into the pale blue eyes of a young girl unsure of where she was, emotionally as much as anything else. “And because it’s just the right thing to do.”

She nodded and an awkward silence hung in the early evening air.

“You look like you were getting ready to go somewhere tonight. Do you have a date?”

Kasey’s eyes went wide and I immediately regretted the question. She shook her head vigorously, clenching her hands together.

“No. I don’t… I don’t go on a lot of dates.”

“Well, you look very nice. I can’t help but imagine there are a number of the boys who’d love to take you out on a date.”

Kasey smiled and looked down at the ground again, embarrassed. “Most of the guys I’ve gone out with… most of the guys my age that I’d even consider going out with already have a girlfriend.”

I watched as her face turned red and she squeezed her hands together again.

“So, does that mean you’re going back to the dorm and spending your evening alone?”

She looked up at me and nodded. “That’s what I usually do. Unless I’m working at the library. I work a lot of nights and weekends. It usually works out okay; I have plenty of time to study.”

Kasey could’ve cut and run as soon as she’d cranked her car, but she hadn’t. I suspected she was lonely; she acted that way. I knew that feeling all too well myself.

I decided to gamble, hoping I wouldn’t sound like a desperate, dirty old man to this precious, beautiful, young girl.

“Would you let me take you out tonight?” I asked.

Kasey’s expression seemed to light up.

“Like, on a date?”

I took a deep breath, looked away and then back at her, nodding slowly.

“I guess we could call it that. I… I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

She shook her head. “No. I’d like that. Can we drop my car off first?”

We could, and we did. Once again, we were recipients of a symphony of gawking glances as she climbed back into my car and we drove off campus.

This time, we went to an Italian restaurant. Instead of a table up front, where the lighting was good, they stuck us in a booth in the back, secluded in shadows that proffered intimacy more suited to couples and lovers, a moniker I wasn’t at all sure either of us was comfortable with.

It didn’t seem to phase either of us, though. I mentioned the bumper sticker on her car, and in short order, we lost ourselves in a discussion of our taste in music and movies. I felt more like I was speaking to a young woman and less like I was conversing with a girl who could easily be my daughter.

We liked a lot of the same music, which surprised me. What surprised me even more was the fact that her taste in music focused more heavily on artists that had been big before she was born than anyone else, and that two of her favorite movies had been made before she was even in kindergarten; ‘When Harry Met Sally’ and ‘Sleepless in Seattle.’

“Mom got me hooked on romance movies,” she said. “I think I’ve seen ‘Gone with the Wind’ about a dozen times.”

“Really?” That was my ex-wife Beth’s favorite movie.

Kasey nodded. “Mom always used to say ‘Fiddle-dee-dee.'”

I suppressed a laugh. I could remember Beth saying “Fiddle-dee-dee.” Kasey’s impression was spot on.

“What’s your favorite old movie?” Kasey asked.

“‘True Grit.'”

Kasey smiled and nodded. “John Wayne.”

I nodded. “It’s not that old, but it’s good.”

“What’s your favorite romance movie?”

“Hmmm. I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that before. ‘Shakespeare in Love’ is pretty good.”

Kasey squinted at me.

“Who’s in it?”

“Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow. He’s Shakespeare, experiencing a bit of writer’s cramp, and then he meets this beautiful woman, Gwyneth Paltrow, who inspires him to write Romeo and Juliet, only they can’t be together because she’s promised to another man. It’s a good movie.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. I’d like to watch it sometime.”

“I think that can be arranged.”

After dinner, I took her to a club that had an open air live music erzurum escort venue on the weekends. As luck would have it, the group playing that night hung their collective hat on the oldies. We listened as they ran through a long list of songs recorded by a variety of artists; ‘Unchained Melody’, ‘All You Need is Love’, ‘Oh Pretty Woman’, and then they did a run on Elvis. It started with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, ran through another half dozen of his songs and concluded with ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.’

By the time they were done playing, it was dark and the night air had chilled a bit. I found myself with one arm around Kasey as she leaned against me, and as we walked back to my car, I kept my arm around her, and she put an arm around me, pulling herself tighter against me.

“This is the most fun I’ve had in ages,” she said as I unlocked the car door and opened it for her to get in.

“Really?”

Kasey nodded and smiled, and as I held the door open, she slid her arms around my neck and hugged me. It wasn’t a quick hug, either, and I found myself wrapping my arms around her, holding her to me as I breathed her in. I could remember the last time I’d been this physically close to a woman, but not emotionally, and I felt my pulse quickening. I was drawn to this young girl.

Kasey’s arms loosened and she pulled back just enough to look at me. Then, she kissed me on the cheek, and with her hands resting on my shoulders, she looked up at me. I leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. Kasey turned her head and my lips landed on hers. The contact was brief and fleeting and then I was looking at her, wide-eyes with surprise.

Sudden terror captured her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You’re okay,” I said. “You… surprised me. That’s all.”

“I thought you wanted to kiss me. I guess I was wrong.”

I shook my head. “No. You weren’t wrong.”

We stood there looking at one another.

“I don’t want to take advantage of you, Kasey.”

“You’re not.”

“You’re young enough you could be my daughter.”

“I’m a young woman. I’m old enough to vote. And I’m a lot more mature than most of the girls I’m in school with.”

“I’m sure you are, but…”

The dreamy look on Kasey’s face vanished. Her hands fell from around my neck and she folded her arms and leaned back against the car, clearly upset.

“You’re like everybody else. All you see is how young I am. You don’t take anything else into consideration.”

“Kasey, that’s not true.” I took a step closer and grabbed her arms gently, running my fingers quietly along her skin. “Not at all. You are a delightful young woman. You’re very pretty. You’re very smart. You’re charming. I had a lot of fun tonight, too. I just…”

“You just want an older woman.”

I shook my head. “That’s not it.”

“Sounds like it. I know a lot of guys that would love to have a young girl fawning over them, hair in pigtails, a school girl outfit… Roger liked that.”

“Who’s Roger? And how do you know about…”

“My step dad. And I know about a lot of things. He… he tried to get me to dress up for him a few times, but I wouldn’t.”

“Did he ever…?”

“He would hug me and kiss me a lot, but he never did anything else. But I found a bunch of his movies and magazines. A lot of them showed girls dressed up pretending to be really young and still in school.”

I shook my head.

“If that’s what you want…” Kasey laid her hands against my chest and leaned into me.

I pulled her into my arms as she clutched at me.

“No, that’s not what I want.” I kissed her on the top of her head as I held her to me. “I think you’re lonely. We all experience it. A lot of men would take advantage of that. I’m not going to.”

Kasey pushed away from me.

“It’s not taking advantage of me if I want you to kiss me, though. Is it?”

I stared into her soft blue eyes and got lost. I put a hand at the back of her head, steered my lips to hers, and a moment later, her fingers clenched at me and she gasped for breath as my mouth covered hers, my tongue seeking hers, finding it.

Our lips parted and Kasey stared at me, an amazed expression on her face.

“No one’s ever kissed me like that before. I mean, I’ve French kissed before, but… not like that.”

I kissed her again. She knew what to expect this time, and Kasey slid her arms around my neck, giving her mouth to me. Her tongue found mine, and as our kiss deepened, I felt myself begin to get hard.

Our kiss ended and we looked at one another, out of breath, mouths open, eyes glazed with lust. I pulled her to me, embracing her, reveling in the feel of her body beneath my hands. And I stood there, just holding her fingers flexed, rubbing at my back, begging me to pull her closer.

“I should take you back to the dorm,” I said.

“You don’t have to.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

It wasn’t what I wanted to do, and the disappointment was evident on her face, but I couldn’t take her home with me, regardless eskişehir escort of what either of us wanted. What the other students around her thought; what her roommate thought as she watched Kasey leave and come back with me didn’t affect me one way or the other, but I knew it could be devastating to Kasey, and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. That, and the nagging ‘what if’ still loomed in the back of my mind.

A couple of minutes into the short drive back to campus, I had an idea.

“They don’t serve dinner on Sunday nights, do they? In the dorm cafeteria, I mean…”

Kasey looked at me and shook her head.

“Would you let me take you to dinner on Sunday?”

“This coming Sunday?”

I nodded. “If you’ll let me. And if your mother doesn’t mind.”

“Mom won’t care because I’m not going to tell her. She doesn’t need to know. But, yeah. I’d like that.”

We were almost to the campus.

“Is Sunday the only time I can see you?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I just thought that between your job and studying you stayed pretty busy.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes not so much. You can call me, and if I’m not busy…”

I nodded as we pulled up in front of the dorm. A steady stream of couples and other students flowed up and down the stairs and sidewalk.

“Probably better if I just get out,” she said.

“Okay. Listen, you’ve got my number. If you need anything… anything at all, call me.”

Kasey smiled. “Okay. I will.”

She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

“Goodnight, Bruce.”

“Goodnight, Kasey.”

I watched her get out and head up the stairs. So did a fair number of the students. I drove away slowly; there was a lot of pedestrian traffic.

Kasey all but bounded upstairs. If she’d been one to keep a diary, the entry for tonight would have been sordid and tawdry. Bruce was unlike any of the guys she’d gone out with before. Sure, he was older, but did that really matter? He was good looking; that was always a plus. But more important was the way he made her feel. He was kind. And gentle. Clearly, he wasn’t trying to manipulate or steer her, and he wasn’t making ridiculous overtures trying to impress her.

And he’d kissed her. For a moment, she’d thought her heart had stopped. Her whole body had tingled in ways she’d never imagined. She felt like she’d never felt before, and soon as she closed the door to her room behind her, she began shedding her clothes.

She looked at the clock. Please, oh please, oh please, she said to herself. Her roommate should be gone for at least another hour. That would give her enough time, wouldn’t it?

One quick tug at the zipper and her skirt fell to the floor; fingers danced down the front of her blouse making quick work of the buttons, and in seconds, Kasey stood in front of her mirror wearing only her bra and panties.

She closed her eyes as she slowly ran a hand across her breasts. How would she react when Bruce touched her? She felt her nipples harden and she breathed in deeply. He would touch her; he wanted to, didn’t he? Kasey reached behind her back, fingers fumbling with the clasp, and then the straps slackened against her shoulders. Bruce would gently sweep the straps from her body, peeling the cups from her breasts… Kasey let her bra fall to the floor.

She looked again into the mirror. Her skin tingled, covered with goose bumps, and her nipples were hard now. Kasey slowly traced a finger around one of her nipples and closed her eyes. How would he touch her? Would he pinch her nipple? Tug on it? Roll it against his fingers? He would kiss her and suck her nipple in, wouldn’t he? Kasey gasped as her hand cupped her breast, fingers pinching her nipple. She would offer her breast to him; she wanted him to swallow her firm, young tit.

Kasey grabbed at the doorframe of her closet and looked into the mirror. She was breathing hard.

A couple of minutes later, lights out, Kasey crawled into bed wearing her panties and a wife beater tank top. The shirt was nothing more than a thin layer of cloth covering most of her upper body; it did not conceal the fact her nipples were hard, and when she got up to go to the bathroom, she’d have to slip on a pair of shorts; any boys in the hall would get a bit of a thrill.

For now, though, in her dorm room, in her bed, she was alone. And as she pulled the sheet up, a light single layer of cloth to shield herself from any sudden prying eyes that might appear, in her mind, she was in bed with Bruce. She ran a hand down her body, over her breasts, her nipples straining against the thin cloth of the shirt. She grabbed the shirt and tugged it up over her breasts; she wanted Bruce to feel her tits, and as the fingers of one hand began to stimulate her nipples, the other hand made its way down between her legs.

Fingers extended, Kasey ran her hand over her panties, feeling the swell of her mound beneath the thin cloth. She’d climbed into bed with the slim glass rod she’d bought a few weeks back. She’d been so embarrassed when she first bought it; it had been recommended by her best friend’s older sister. Small round knobs at either end, one a little larger than the other; what a great suggestion it had been.

And now, fingers wrapped around the rod, Kasey slid it across the top of her panties, gentle, unfamiliar pressure standing in for the sensation she really wanted.