Shelter, Chapter 1

by Glassbottom

Almost every single thing I've done in my life has been thought over rationally and carefully planned out. This was not one of those things.

The only thing I had planned that evening was to drink and do it alone. I didn't want to go to the bar and be hit on, even by another woman. I was hot and tired and I just wanted to go home, strip down, yank off that underwire that was digging into my ribs, take a nice cool shower, fill a glass, pop in an old movie and forget everything. The main thing I wanted to forget was my office manager Dorothy, the bitch.

Mothers don't warn you to look out for other women when you grow up. They are all the time warning you about men, what they will do to you, what they will take away. Well, I am thirty-five years old and divorced and I know what a man can do to you, but it's what women do to one another, from the cradle to the grave, that's worse. Maybe my mother, the way she treated me as a child and a teenager, was a clue after all.

It's hard when they don't love you, always find fault with you, and then they go and marry that one person who decides that your misery is going to be their goal in life.

Lee's Liquors was in a strip mall near home, right off Route 43. It was popular, and it was in a busy location, especially on a Friday at rush hour. There was a Chinese food take-out around the bend, near the side entrance, an ice cream parlor on the corner, then a pizza joint with Italian everything, then a convenience store, then Lee's.

I pulled in, saw that every parking space in front of the building was taken, so I hung a right into one of the spots across the way, shut off the car, put out my cigarette in the ashtray, got out and closed the door, and turned to walk when something caught the corner of my eye.

She was ten or eleven years old, wearing a white cut-off tank top and a tight yellow skirt and pink flip-flips, her weight cocked to one hip as she leaned against a light pole. I was so glad I was wearing sunglasses as I stopped there, awkwardly pretending not to look her up and down as I admired her delicate shape and her remarkably curvaceous legs, legs I could not believe belonged to a little girl. And her hair, such a wild head of curls streaked by the sun, I just wanted to reach out and run my fingers through them.

It was when she looked up and I saw her face that I knew that all my little fantasies had been destroyed. She did not look away, not over my shoulder, but directly into my eyes, seeing through the secret veil of my sunglasses. Oh, what a face... with lips you wanted to suck on, and eyes, well... I lifted my sunglasses to see them better and got lost in their stunning, greenish-blue gaze, as deep as the ocean, and I swear I lost my breath for a couple of seconds, a couple of very long seconds. I recovered, gave her a very uncomfortable smile, and did the only thing I could do. I spoke to her.

"Hi," I said. "How are you?"

"I'm fine, ma'am," she responded, "and how are you?" she capped it off with just the sweetest little drawl.

"I'm ready for the weekend," I said. "I'm tired and I'm hot. What about you, kiddo?"

"Oh yeah, I'm hot," she said, stepping away from the light pole and looking down, tucking her chin to her chest, plucking the moist fabric away from her skin. One spaghetti strap went astray and fell down one arm. She turned profile and stretched, revealing the sweeping arch of her back, from smooth, graceful shoulders to a pronounced rear end that filled out the back of her little skirt. She threw her head back and twisted her neck this way and that, dangling her curls down her back.

"I'm very, very hot," she said.

With that slow drawl it was almost like she was singing me a sexy song. At least, that was the song I wanted to hear, and a shiver went along my spine and touched me deep down inside, right there where flesh met flesh, where lips met lips and everything became swollen and wet. It was as if everything inside me, all of the controls that had been shut off for so long were suddenly all activated at once. I felt my heart pounding.

"Well, I gotta go get my stuff," I said to her in a panic, almost as if I was making an excuse for leaving her standing there, and I turned and walked, almost stepping out in front of a car that was speeding through the lot like a maniac. "Asshole!" I shouted, my hands shaking, holding on tight to my purse. I looked back at the girl. She looked at me a moment and then shrugged. I turned and hurried across the way to Lee's.

I felt safe inside, lost in a sea of beer drinkers and alcoholics, waiting for my heart to slow down. I knew what I wanted but I took my time. I looked up into one of the anti-theft mirrors in the back of the store and saw myself. I took off the sunglasses and looked into my brown eyes and I reached into my purse and took out my hairbrush and took it to my shoulder length black hair. I wanted to feel better about what I was seeing, but the person inside wasn't doing any better.

Could anyone tell? Everyone went about their business. Everything was normal. Why was I worried? Hell, there were probably a couple of men in this liquor store that had much worse problems than me. Wasn't that why they drank themselves half-dead every night, so they didn't have to face themselves in the mirror?

I bought a big bottle of whiskey, a two-liter of mixer, and two packs of cigarettes. I smiled at the pretty young woman behind the counter and I did my best to feel normal. I took a breath, walked out of the store into the bright sun, and looked across to where the little girl had been standing.

She was gone.

Yes, she was gone, and as much as I had been on edge but moments before, my heart sank and I felt almost sick that she wasn't there. Or maybe the sick feeling was the struggle inside me, the part of me that wanted to be normal fighting with the part of me that wanted her to be there. Whatever it was, I had to deal with it, and I walked across the street to my car, opened my rear driver's side door, and put my stuff inside.

It was after I slammed the door shut, and opened the door to get in, that I took one last look around. I scanned the parking lot, looking for her, but I didn't come up with her. I got in the car, started it, and backed out. I started out of the crowded parking lot and went past the ice cream parlor to the exit. I stopped the car.

She was sitting on the curb facing the side street and a woman was outside raising her voice at her. Immediately, I wanted to jump in, and I turned my car, parked it in front of the Chinese take-out, and got out of the car.

"We don't want you hangin' round here, kid," the woman was saying. "Not if you don't have the cash to buy somethin'. Why don't you go back and steal some real money?"

"What's going on here?" I asked. "You're being kind of nasty."

"She shows up here with nickels and dimes and pennies and..."

"Sounds like money to me," I said.

"And if it ain't enough, she tries bumming from people in the parking lot," the woman said.

The girl looked down at the ground, hanging her head, her shoulders slumped.

"So she's trying her best," I said. "You gotta treat her like dirt by telling her to go steal?" "Well, either way, right now she is trespassing and we don't want her sitting in the window of our establishment."

"Fine," I said. "Come with me," I told the girl, not even thinking it through as I took her hand, helping her up off the curb and leading her to the passenger's side of my car. "I know a place to get you some ice cream. To hell with this uptight bitch."

The woman looked like I had just kicked her in the stomach. As for the girl, she got in my car, relaxed on the seat and looked fine. I was a stranger but I was a woman. She was safe, right? No possible harm could come from a woman, especially not a heroic one like me, the hero who had saved her from the evil ice cream parlor manager lady.

I got in the car and heaved a sigh and shook my head. I took a couple of seconds, then looked at her. Oh my God, she was next to me in my car, buckled into the passenger's seat.

"Why are you helping me?" she asked, those eyes penetrating as she looked at me

"I hate to see anybody treated like that," I said, "but especially a kid."

"I'm OK," she said. "I can take it."

"I'm sure you can," I told her. "I just... I just feel like doing this for you, OK?"

"OK," she said. "Thank you." She was quiet as I started the car and backed out and then put it in drive, trying hard not to be distracted by her lovely young body so close and inviting. I pulled out onto the side road and then to the light to get back out onto Route 43. "Can I have a cigarette, Ma'am?" the girl asked.

"No, you may not have a cigarette," I said. "You're a child."

"I'll be eleven years old in August," she said, "and I already smoke."

"Well, good for you," I said. "You won't be smoking one of mine, that's all. You shouldn't be smoking at all. You're a pretty little girl. You want to go on being pretty, you got to lay off bad habits."

"You smoke and you're pretty," she said. I looked at her like she was full of crap or trying to be nice, but her expression was dead serious.

I got her to the ice cream place of my choosing and the parking lot was not nearly as crowded as the other one. This place was called the Frosty Cone. The girl told me she wanted one scoop of chocolate on a sugar cone. I told her she could have two scoops if she wanted because I was paying and she agreed, and without me asking she told me her name was Billie.

"Georgia is my name," I said, and that is my name, and this is a confession.

"That's a pretty name," she told me, sitting at the picnic table outside the Frosty Cone with her ice cream, tilting her head and allowing her tongue to glide around the wet outer layer of the ice cream.

"So is Billie," I said, sitting across from her, eating a small sundae with a plastic spoon as I watched her, mesmerized, fascinated by her every move.

"It sounds like a boy's name," she said.

"That doesn't matter," I told her. "It's different. It's got character."

"Well, if you like it, I guess it's OK."

"You're very pretty," I said. "You know that?"

"Yeah, I guess so," she said, her eyes dropping, looking down at the table.

"You are. You're beautiful."

"Can we talk about somethin' else?"

"Why don't I let you eat your ice cream," I smiled at her.

I sat and tried not to stare at her so much as I ate, but then when I finished with my sundae, there was nothing to do but sit and watch and wait.

"Since I gotta take you back where I picked you up anyway, how about I give you a ride home?" I finally asked her.

She nodded and a gentle pretty smile spread across her lips. We got back into the car and we were off, headed back down Route 43 toward the strip mall where I had first found my fantasy girl. And I knew from there it would probably be a very short drive to drop her off, and then she would be out of my life forever. Why was I rushing it by driving her home? Why?

It was an impulse. It hit me so quickly, and I could either give into it or not. I gave in. I turned off Route 43 and pulled into an industrial park. I drove down the street, looking all around, and looking at Billie sitting next to me. She was licking her ice cream. She seemed calm. I pulled down one of the back streets, drove past the old abandoned factories with the windows broken and hollow. I pulled over and stopped the car and I shut it off.

"Billie," I said her name, breathing heavy.

"Yeah," she said. "What are we doin' down here in the graveyard?"

"I couldn't just let this end. I couldn't just take you home and say goodbye."

"Why not?" she asked me, looking just a little bit confused.

"Because..." I closed my eyes, trying very hard to find the right words in my head. They weren't there at the moment. "Because I have to touch you."

"What do you mean, touch me?" There was no panic in her eyes, no negative sort of shock in her expression or in her voice. Curiosity? Surprise? Yes, but so far she was not scared, and I certainly did not want to scare the girl.

I unfastened my seatbelt, and I reached over with trembling hands and undid hers, I turned to her, my sunglasses removed, my eyes looking deeply into hers, and I reached over with one hand, caressing one thigh as I moved my face extremely close.

"I want to kiss you," I said, and I pressed my mouth against hers, feeling her resisting at first, then doing her best to kiss me back with a mouth that tasted like chocolate ice cream. I didn't know what to think and I didn't care. My heart was pounding. My blood was surging. I was tingling and I was wet and I knew she was the reason.

My hand groped further up her thigh and inside, gently moving her legs apart. I reached up inside, up under her skirt, and I touched her there, touched her in that most private of places. I pressed my fingers against the outline of those young pussy lips as our kiss broke apart and she looked me in the eyes, the depths of their ocean drawing me in.

God, without saying a word, what was she doing to me? It was as if she was reflecting my guilt back on me. Or was it my imagination? Her lower body was trembling and she was red in the face, so I knew she was feeling something, but she was was very rigid in the seat and she didn't make a sound.

I drove my head against the seat, smelling her hair, kissing her hair, finding her ear through the veil of curls.

"Oh yeah, Billie," I whispered, "feel me touching you sweetheart... You are so very hot..."

She did not respond. She only stiffened more. I let go of her, back off, looked at her, told her to say something, anything...

"Thanks for the ice cream," she said.

I turned back to the steering wheel, my face in my hands. I started the car and put it in gear and found my way back to Route 43. There was no way I was taking her home. I didn't want to know where she lived. I didn't want to be seen in her neighborhood.

I pulled onto the side street by the strip mall where I had found her. I turned to her, had one last look. Her head was down but she looked up to face me.

"Goodbye," she said.

"Are you going to tell?"

"I never told before," she said. "Why would I tell now? Because it was a woman that touched me? I don't know. Maybe I should tell."

I felt like I had been kicked right in the head. So that was it. I watched her get out of the car. She turned and smiled gently at me, then walked away. I watched her, watched that amazing looking little girl walk into the distance.

That was the last I would see of her, or so I thought...

I went home and stripped down and played with myself thinking about her, showered, and poured myself a stiff drink, hoping against hope that her she wouldn't tell.