CHAPTER ONE: Day 1
I asked her what the hell
had she left on my kitchen table, and she said it was an advent
calendar. Listen, if I didn't have so much wood for this girl that
I could personally re-populate the rain forest myself, I would have
tossed it out with last night's pizza boxes, believe me. The
fucking thing was huge! It covered the whole goddamned kitchen
table, but bless her heart, she had cleared the way to leave it
there, so now all our neglected Captain Crunch soggies and Mac'n
Cheese greenies had made it into the sink, believe it or not. Tyler
thought my mom had come to visit or something and cleaned
up. Fat chance.
"What in the hell is that thing?" he asked,
putting a case in the fridge. It wasn't very festive, I'll admit,
but that was Betsy's artistic style alright. Just a huge white
piece of cardboard with twenty-five black doors that had numbers
written in white letters on the front of them.
"Gift from Betsy." I shrugged.
"Jesus, you still got that one hangin' on?"
He took a swig out of the milk carton, grimaced, glanced at the
date and put it back in the fridge.
"Have you seen her?" I raised my
eyebrows.
"Yeah." He snorted. "I've seen her—and her
damned Tampax in the bathroom and her make-up and shit all over the
counter. She might as well be our extra roommate, right? What are
you gonna do—marry this chick?"
"No." I bristled. I knew
he was right. I didn't date girls like Betsy, and if I did, I
didn't date them very long. I don't know why she had me so hooked,
but she did, and I was wiggling like a damned worm and I knew it.
She was a pusher—one of those girls that took over your space an
inch at a time, and before you knew it, you were watching "Terms of
Endearment" and going to meet her parents. To hell with that. I wasn't gonna do
it. She was, admittedly, a very, very fine piece of ass, and we had
some good times together, but that was as far as it
went.
"Well, get it the hell out
of here, man, we got gaming tonight!" He reminded me. Shit. At least she'd
already cleared the table. I lugged it to my room, propping it
against the far wall. Christ, it was nearly as tall as the
dresser!
"You open one door every day until
Christmas." She’d smiled that lopsided Betsy smile over her
shoulder at me while she pulled on the panties I had thoroughly
stuffed into her mouth not twenty minutes before to keep old man
Waters upstairs from banging on the floor. They were still wet
across the ass from her saliva. My cock jumped, even after the
three hour and two spurt workout he'd just had.
Advent calendar? Like I
cared how many days 'til Christmas? "Advent is about rebirth," she
told me. "Advent calendars are countdowns to a new beginning."
Beginning of what, I wondered? It occurred to me that maybe she'd
put something hot under there. I studied it more carefully. The
doors were big enough—there could be a pair of panties or something
folded behind each one. I smiled. Nowwww
we're talking. Bad, bad, Betsy! I squatted
in front of the enormous rectangle, lifting the lower corner of
door number one to peer underneath, just to see if I could see
anything, but I couldn't. I never was very good at impulse control.
In that moment, I had a flash of memory—me trying to peek under the
tiny little flaps on my mom's advent calendar when I was a kid.
Funny how I always hoped it would be a picture of something really
magical, but it was just a star or a snowman or some such shit. Not
even space rangers or rockets or anything. Why the hell you'd have
those on a Christmas calendar was beyond my seven-year-old
comprehension, obviously, but angels and Christmas trees just
weren't cool.
"Fuck it." I grinned a
little sheepishly. I could open it whenever I wanted. In fact, I
could open every goddamned door today if I wanted, right? Besides,
it was December first. The door was rectangular, like the calendar
itself, and tabbed, you know, those slip tab A into slot B kind. I
popped it open, noting that the white, scripted