Cool Fools 4: Consequences

***There will be several chapters to come. I plan this to be a 10 chapter series, and I've already written up to Chapter 6. But I will not upload them until mid-September due to my busy college schedule. Hope you enjoy this chapter***

Ethan White gave Woody Anderson a $100 gift certificate to White Geekz a week prior to his eighteenth birthday. Not sure how to spend his money at the comic-book store, he asked his three closest friends what they wanted instead. The Welling twins still hadn’t paid Woody back for their Iron Man action figures, and so they did not dare let Woody spend his birthday gift on them. Reed was recently hired by Ethan to work at the shop and felt it was essentially stealing from the store if Woody used the certificate for him. Besides, Reed wanted only one thing, and it couldn’t be bought with the certificate…

There was only one other person to ask. Woody had hooked up with a rather hot, but eccentric girl named Kimora Gillespie five days after the State game. He had been dating her for two months now and had loved every moment of it. Woody found her interesting for she made her own clothes, cut her own hair, fashioned her own shoes, had a black belt in three different martial arts…and best of all, she was extremely kinky in bed. She also loved anything rare and collectible, so Woody knew the gift certificate would be well spent to further win the affection of his unique girlfriend. 

Woody was very excited for Kimora and Ethan to meet. For some reason, Woody felt like he needed the approval of the college senior, and he was sure Ethan would like Kimora a lot when they meet. They were in lots of ways very similar: they were hot for their respective gender; they were cool but not totally conventional cool; and most importantly, they were simply fun to hang out with.

But when the two went into the store on the mid-January afternoon, Woody and Kimora could only see Reed manning the front. “Where’s Ethan?” Woody asked.
“His grandma’s very ill.” Reed replied, “He and his parents are out of town to be with her in case…you know…it’s her last days on Earth.”

“Oh, how sad!” Kimora said, “Let’s hope she doesn’t become a butterfly in her afterlife…”
It was one of the fun things Woody liked about Kimora; he always had to ask her to explain, “Why not a butterfly?”

“It’s elementary my dear Woody. Chaos Theory: A butterfly flaps its wing in Africa, and there’s a hurricane in New England.”
“Okay…” Woody chuckled, “Let’s go look around.”

Kimora looked through all the old album records and said that she had all of them, and Woody believed it too. He had been in her room which displayed a lot of albums hanging on every inch of her wall. She looked through the action figures in the display glass, and said that her dad modeled for the G.I. Joe toy. Ethan also believed that too; her father was after all a military man and had the rugged, harden face of a solider. Then she saw a glass box on the counter in the corner of the store and gasped in delight, pointing to three objects inside: a gold crown with a red star on it, as well as two silver bracelets also marked with a red star.

“Oh, my god!” she said, “That’s Wonder Woman’s tiara and bracelets.”
Woody asked, “You want it?” 

“Hell, yeah!” she said, “But then again, I wanted to get something that we both could enjoy.”
Woody presently imagined Kimora wearing a red-white-blue-gold Wonder Woman costume. He pictured them in the bedroom, her tying him up with that magical lasso of truth to the four corners of the bed and proceeding to dominate him with her kick-ass martial arts. “Perhaps…we both can enjoy it…you know, with a little role playing.”

“Oooh,” Kimora nodded, excitedly, “I see what you’re getting at!”
“Hey, Reed,” Woody got the attention of his best friend, “how much are these?”

Reed shrugged, “I’m not sure. I think it’s for auction.”
“Do you think they’ll auction for a hundred dollars?”
“Maybe…”
“Well, we’ll take them. And however much Ethan wants for ‘em, I’ll pay later, okay?”

Reed frowned, “Um…we usually don’t sell auction materials until the auction.”
“Oh, what’s the big deal. I’ll pay whatever they’re valued.” Woody said, “If you get in trouble, I’ll cover for you.”

Reed reached in his pant pocket for the keys and went over to the glass box to open it and pulled out the crown and two bracelets. “I have a bad feeling about this…” Reed sighed, but slowly handed his best friend the items anyway.

Whatever ‘bad’ thing would happen sure didn’t occur that night for Woody on his 18th birthday. Just as he imagined, he was stripped naked, all four of his limbs were bounded to the four posts of the bed. His incredible sexy girlfriend Kimora was hovering around on the mattress; she was dressed in a golden bikini and a tight hip-bearing blue pant with white stars. She walked all over his body with her knee high red boots, leaving red shoe prints all over his chest. And soon she was striking his body with the silver bracelets. It was one of the funnest nights of Woody’s entire life, and Woody thought that whatever the bracelets and crowns cost…it was totally worth it.

A couple of days later…

“It cost me my job!” Reed said as he dumped the contents of his tray in the trashcan and left the cafeteria in a huff. “Thanks Woody. Where am I gonna buy new comics now? Or worse, how am I gonna find another job? If I put Ethan down on job reference, they’ll call him and find out I let my friends steal from the store.”

“I’ll talk to him! We’ll take the items back if we have too. We’ve already had our fun with ‘em.” Woody was still smiling, thinking back to last night, “Ethan’s not that big of a jerk…Not always. He’ll understand…I think.”

Woody and Kimora used the tiara and bracelets for three more incredible hot, wild nights, so it took a little convincing to make Kimora give up the items. Finally when they were wore out its use by the end of the week, he returned it. But Ethan was still not there when Woody came back to the store. A new guy was manning the front. 

A wave of disappointment came over Woody, followed by a stream of annoyance. He had only seen Ethan three times in the last two months since the end of football season, but he hadn’t seen Ethan at all in January. “Where’s the hell is he?” 

“On campus. Doing a ton of research papers,” the new guy carefully observed the tiara and bracelet, “Why’s there so much sweat stain on these?”
Woody almost forgot his annoyance at Ethan’s disappearing act, replaced by thoughts of Kimora biting his nipples, “Oh, don’t let me go into detail.”

Woody came back every other day, and found at least two employees manning the shop. He even saw Ethan’s dad once, but he never saw Ethan. The employees continued with the story that Ethan was busy doing ‘research papers,’ but for some reason, Woody failed to believe them, thinking Ethan was hiding back there behind the shop, refusing to talk to him. Woody also went to his house after shop hours and waited at least twenty minutes on the porch, calling his name, but the door never swung open. The more days went by, the bitterer Reed was towards Woody. Knowing if he didn’t find Ethan soon and correct everything he may loose his best friend forever, so one long week later, Woody finally took the employees’ suggestion of looking for Ethan at his school.

Woody drove to the college campus and found a place to park and hoped he wouldn’t get ticketed for parking without a permit. It was a rather large campus with many places to study, but Woody was determined to find Ethan White. The best place to study was of course the libraries, but the university had three libraries and Woody went to all three and searched practically every floor including the notorious stack sections. He saw three couples making out, one couple in the state of undress, another couple in the process of having sex, a peeping tom watching the couple having sex, but unfortunately, he saw no Ethan White. 

The next best place to study, especially for research, was the museums. Woody knew of two museums on the university campus, a contemporary art museum and a natural history museum. Woody chose first to search at the art museum. He didn’t have time to look at many of the artworks, but he did stop once to look at a sculpture that resembled the face Ethan White, but he never found the real person. Concluding that Ethan Whit wasn’t in the art museum, Woody ran clear across the campus, hiked up a small hill, only to find that the natural history museum was closed for reconstruction. 

It wasn’t the coldest day in winter, but the more he spent time dashing around on campus, the more his nose was running. He stopped everyone he could find and asked if they knew Ethan White, and not surprisingly, everyone certainly knew the popular college student. But they had no idea where he was at the moment. Then Woody set out to find anyone who shared a class with Ethan and luckily found someone who knew that Ethan took a film class every Tuesday and Thursday at seven in the evening. Perfect, Woody thought…since it was Tuesday and it was six o’clock, Woody could go to the class and wait for Ethan there…

He quickly ran to the building where the class was held and trekked up the highest floor and stood by the door to the room. After waiting for thirty minutes, Woody still had not seen Ethan walk in. Actually, he did not see anybody at all. Suspicious, Woody walked into the room and saw the professor’s announcement written on the chalkboard in case any student forgot: they were meeting at the campus’s theatre to watch a movie. Cursing a bit, Woody ran all the way down to the main floor, exited the building, walked across the campus to the Union Hall and read the floor plan to find the auditorium.

Woody reached the third floor and went straight to the theatre but a man stopped him and asked if he got a ticket. The high-school student groaned with a harsh “NO!” He couldn’t believe he had traveled all this way and couldn’t go in. But the man told him to relax and said the ticket was only 2 bucks. Woody felt embarrassed for reacting too quickly and bought the ticket and went into the theatre. 

The sound system of the auditorium was considerably loud for the size of the room, and in the darkness Woody was relieved to see the back of Ethan’s head. It was unmistakable; it was definitely Ethan’s head. Woody couldn’t believe how anyone could have such a gorgeous set of hair on such a perfectly formed skull. It was quite similar to the head of the statue Woody saw earlier at the art museum, but this particular head belonged to the actual Ethan White.

Woody sat in the back row, not wanting to bother Ethan while he was in ‘class.’ To Woody’s surprise, it was a French film about a painfully shy girl who seeks out to help other people and in the end learns to help herself. When the movie Amelie ended, the lights were turned on and the female professor stood in front of the screen and started a discussion about it…not about the story, but about the lighting and visuals and cinematography. Of course it was Ethan who dominated the discussion, noting the tints of the colors on screen, nothing the music style, and noting how beautiful the actress Audrey Tautou was even with her ridiculous bob haircut…everyone chuckled at the last comment. And soon the class was dismissed, but Ethan had left at the exit towards the front of the auditorium and was lost in the crowd.

“Wait! Ethan. Damn it, wait!” Woody shouted as he edged out of the exit, squeezed through the crowd down the hallway, eventually down a flight of stairs eventually to the ground floor. Even though Ethan was becoming smaller and smaller, Woody never lost sight of him. There was no way to lose sight of such a beautiful presence, even amongst the multitude.

Finally, Woody made out of the crowd and began to sprint towards the college senior, out the main door across the lawn towards he parking lot, “Wait! Ethan, please!”

Ethan stopped at an intersection and turned around, a little startled. When he recognized it was Woody, his face began to sink, “Sher—Woody? What are you doing here?”
“I came to find you!” panted Woody.
“What for?” Ethan asked cautiously. 
“You need to get Reed his job back.”

Ethan scrunched up his face with disappointment but still looked so handsome, “So that’s all? You came here to tell me that?”
“Yeah, it’s my fault. Give Reed his job back.”

“No way!” Ethan shook his head furiously, “One of the very first things I told him on his first day was to never sell the auction items…”

Woody sighed, looking deep into Ethan’s blue eyes. He licked his dry lips and gulped, “But he thought—Well, I thought…you would make an exception…you know, for me…”

Ethan scoffed, “Why would I make an exception for you?”
Woody couldn’t believe Ethan’s bitter words, “I don’t know. I thought…I really thought there was something between us that was more than just…monetary worth…”

“You know what? I thought so too,” Ethan said sadly, his voice almost cracking, “But you didn’t even consider what it would do to me or my business when you…when you stole those items from my store…and you did it all for what? For that girl?” Ethan made a particular emphasis on the word ‘girl’ and suddenly Woody knew what it was all about.

“You’re jealous?”
“No, Sherwood. I’m not jealous,” said Ethan exasperatedly, “I’m way more than just jealous. I haven’t dated anyone since Ron, you know that? Cause I’ve been waiting for the right time…for when it would be it okay for us to be together. And now it is…now, you’re old enough…But you couldn’t wait, could you? You went and got yourself a girlfriend!”

“What do you want? Do you want to fuck me?” Woody asked bitterly, “I’ll let you fuck me. If you give Reed his job back, you can fuck me as much as you want.”
“I don’t want to just have sex, okay?” Ethan said, “I want you! I want all of you.”

“Well, here I am! Take advantage. Every inch of my body for the whole night if you want to,” said Woody, “But don’t expect me to be emotionally involved with you. Two years ago, I was willing to give you everything you wanted …but you rejected me. And that’s your loss. So deal with it!”

“I love you, Sherwood.” Ethan said simply. 
The words filled Woody’s heart with something he had never felt before. He heard the first three words countless times from his parents and occasional from his sister and often as he pleasured his girlfriends, but those words coupled with his name expressed by Ethan White was like a whole other sentence to Sherwood, the most beautiful sentence he had ever heard. “What?” Woody asked, hoping the college boy would repeat them.

But Ethan never repeated his words, “I’m sorry I took this long to say it…and I’m also sorry I made Reed take the blow. Tomorrow, I’ll call him and give him the job back. So now you don’t have to feel guilty. I don’t want to have you unless I can have you completely. So you’re free to choose. Me or her. And no, you don’t have to answer right now. Give it some thought. And in the end if you do choose her instead of me, I will…as you say…deal with it,” he looked down at his shoes, wiping some tears from his face, then he looked back up at Woody, “Good night.”

Ethan turned around and crossed the street. Woody wanted to call him back, but he didn’t know what to say…so he let the college boy go, disappearing into the night.