If I'm Honest - Chapter 10 (Patreon)

Chapter Ten – Madison (Revisited) & Vitamin K (Pt. 1)

The next few days, I found myself worrying a bit about whatever craziness the bracelet had planned for me, but time and time again, its voice would drift across the back of my skull, saying one thing and one thing only.

Don't worry about it.

Around Wednesday, it decided to actually talk to me a little bit about what was going on. It was remarkably straight forward, most of the time, and maybe I needed that kind of honesty in my life at that point. It was just a sentence or two here and there, reaffirming to me that it wanted to help me, not hurt me.

I was driving home Friday night when the bracelet and I had our first real conversation since the concert, the long haul of fighting my way through rush hour traffic not exactly taxing my brain, people looking over to admire the Bugatti that Larry had given me a couple of months ago. I still didn't feel entirely comfortable driving the thing around town.

So, what is it you want out of a partner, Deke?

“Aren't you supposed to know that?”

Let's just talk it out. The more you work with me on this, the easier it'll go.

I didn't have much else to do while stuck in bumper-to-bumper gridlock, so I figured why not? “Well, I want someone who's attentive to my needs without being overly clingy. Someone who's actually interested in me and what I have to say, instead of simply waiting for their turn to speak.”

That's... remarkably insightful of you.

“What do I even call you? I feel like if we're going to have conversations, I need to give you some kind of a name.”

Call me Harvey. I'm not a rabbit, but I'm sort of your imaginary friend, so it'll do.

I chuckled at that. “Alright, Harvey it is then. So, Harvey, in a lot of my past relationships, I've tried to be a good and supportive boyfriend, but I've always felt like I gave way more than I got, like I seemed to attract women who only wanted me around to listen to their problems, to help them out of whatever jam they're in. They didn't really give much of a shit about me, other than how could I help solve their problems for them.”

Have you tried talking to them about this?

“C'mon, Harvey, I'm not an idiot,” I sighed. “When something's bothering me, I'll talk about it for a few minutes, but given the first pause or lull in the conversation, my partners always seem to want to divert back onto themselves, like they've hit their quota for listening and now it's time to talk about them again. Even if I try to circle back to what's bothering me a few minutes later, it's almost like whatever I wanted to talk about is a closed subject now, and my partners don't want to hear any more about it. They have to get on with the important business of talking about themselves even more, usually to retell the same story they've told me four or five times again, or to complain about their problems haven't mystically fixed themselves.”

This happens a lot?

“It's sort of my M.O. for what I get stuck with in relationships. I mean, I get it, dudes aren't supposed to be open books. We're assumed to be these closed vaults where we bury all our emotions, but that ain't me. I'm more than willing to talk through what's bugging me, but it takes two people to hold a conversation.”

Didn't you also say you have a problem with infidelity in your partners?

I laughed bitterly. “Well, my last real relationship ended because she was cheating on me with at least four different guys, probably more. Two of which were coworkers. One of whom I'd thought was at least a little bit my friend. That's enough to feel justified in ending it, right?”

I'd say so, but that's just me, and I'm just jewelry.

“You asked me to trust you, so that's what I'm doing, Harvey, so if I'm doing something wrong, you gotta help me out.”

I'm gonna help you out, Deke, I promise. I'm still just working through the best way to do that, you know? I'm magic, not a miracle worker. And figuring out how to get you the perfect match is a learning process, one that I get a little bit better at each time I try.

“So, wait, you don't know who my perfect match is going to be before you try?”

Do I look like Karnak the Magnificent? I'm making educated guesses and refining what I know about you each time I do. But I'll know when I get it right, don't you worry about that. I have a 100% success rate, and let's see you name anything else with that level of guarantee.

“Everyone you've ever paired up lasted forever?”

Well, within reason.

“That sounds suspiciously like an evasion.”

Of my 200+ matches, a few of them have had the unfortunate luck for their partner to die not long after the match was made. I'm not all powerful and I can't control those kinds of things. It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

“You know who says that?” I said to it. “People who've never lost anything. The pain of loss is brutal, agonizing. And losing the love of your life can turn you into a wreck.”

You mean like your father.

I tensed up reflexively, grinding my teeth together firmly. “What the fuck do you know about that?”

Not much, Harvey admitted, but I know that whenever you think about your father, there's this weird mix of rage and depression that crosses your brain. You want to tell me about it?

“There's not a ton to tell, Harvey,” I said, my fingers relaxing a little from the death grip I'd had on the steering wheel just a moment ago. “My mom died when I was two. Cancer. Came at her quick, so there wasn't even time for Dad to build hope that she was going to get better. She was in the hospital and three weeks later she was gone. Dad never remarried and had to raise me and my sister on his own, but the house was like a goddamn shrine to my mother, so that probably didn't help Dad move on either. When I went off to college, I was worried about leaving him alone, since my older sister had left for college across the country a few years earlier. Jillian, my sister, said he'd be fine.”

You're tensing up again, Derrick.

“Yeah, well, Jill was wrong, and I never saw Dad alive again. Neither of us did. She was in her junior year at Cal Poly and I was in my first semester of freshman year at Seattle University when we both got a call from La Jolla PD telling us our dad had committed suicide.”

Oh shit, Deke, I'm so fucking sorry.

“Me too, but life fucking sucks, so sometimes you have to learn what it's like to get pissed on by life all the time. Dad left a note saying he'd wanted to make sure me and Jill were up and running as adults, and that he'd originally wanted to wait until we were both out of college, but that the grief of constantly missing mom was too much for him, and that he just had to go now. He'd done it to make sure that the neighbors found him, so that me and Jill wouldn't have to see his body. And his note said again and again how sorry he was, but that he just couldn't take it anymore. So yeah, that's why I say the pain of loss can be all consuming, because it can.”

Just because it happened to your father doesn't mean it'll happen to you, Deke. Is that what all the walls are about? Are you trying to compartmentalize your heart, thinking that if you keep it walled off, you're never going to get hurt?

“I think you know me better than that, Harvey,” I chuckled bitterly. “I'm just being cautious with my heart, because while I don't want to go through the loss that Dad did, I also don't want to go through what Jill did either.”

What happened with your sister? Every time you've talked to her on the phone, she seems incredibly upbeat and happy.

“Well, sure. Now. Her third husband, Damon, he's a great guy. But her first two marriages lasted less than a year, and I can't say that either of them were real peaches.”

You want to talk about it?

“It's more of her story than mine, but the first guy cheated on her the entire time they were dating and the entire time they were married, I guess, although she didn't find that out until after they'd been married six months.”

Ouch. And the second guy?

“He got drunk and beat her up pretty bad one night.”

Damn. But she got out of it?

“Oh yeah, Jill's quick on her feet. After he was done beating her, he crawled into his bed and passed out. Then Jill handcuffed his unconscious body, shackled him to the bed with a second set of handcuffs and then called the cops.”

She kept handcuffs around the house?

“The guy was a cop.”

She got out okay, though?

I smirked, grimly. “There's this expectation that cops always cover for their own, I guess, but Jill knew her husband's watch commander, and called her personally. When she saw what he'd done to Jill, she arrested him and threw the literal book at him. She decided they needed to make an example of what happened to cops who beat their partners, and the guy's doing a dime in prison, he'd hurt Jill so bad. Broken nose, broken ribs, broken collarbone, broken leg. If he could break it, I think he tried. Trial didn't even take a week to convict the prick, the hospital photos were so grotesque.”

Maybe you should give me to her after you're done with me.

“Nah,” I said. “When she was in physical therapy for all the injuries her second ex had caused her, she met up with a very nice pediatric surgeon named Damon who had the PT session right after hers, having broken his leg skiing. One day, she asked him out, he said yes, six months later they were engaged, and they've been married for five years and change, with two kids. Damon's a great guy, and Jill's very happy. I just don't want to go through the two exes, like she did.”

Haven't you already sort of done that, though?

“I mean, I had the ex who cheated on me a bunch, sure, but we weren't married. And I haven't gone through the physical assault, and I'm totally cool with skipping past that one.”

So what you're saying is I should've let the guy in the hotel room beat you up and stab you a couple of times?

Somehow I know Harvey was kidding, although it's hard to read tone from a voice inside of your head. “Let's not and say we did,” I said, as traffic inched ever forward, ever slowly.

Okay, so let's talk about all the options I've given you so far. Who's been your favorite and your least favorite? What's worked and what hasn't?

“I'd definitely put Colleen at the top of my list,” I said to Harvey. “You sure that's not going to work out?”

I know what I'm doing, Deke. What did you like about her?

“She was positive, she was friendly, she was genuinely interested in me for me, and wasn't shy about asking me about the little day-to-day shit. Despite the fact that my job generally bores the crap out of people, she still found new ways to ask about it each and every time. I mean, the fact that she was gorgeous didn't hurt either.”

If I'm not delivering you gorgeous people, Deke, I'm not really doing my job, so let's just take that as a given. Who else did you enjoy?

“You remember that Uber driver? Rita?”

You were with her like two hours, tops, Harvey laughed inside of my skull. What about her did you like in particular?

“She was... I dunno, she was aggressive. I guess I like aggressive women, people aren't afraid to express their affection for me, to be the one to initiate and say 'hey, let's get it on.'”

That's good to know, actually, and it helps explain how maybe I've been getting mixed signals out of you. I haven't intentionally been trying to sabotage you with any of these women, Deke.

“Really?”

Okay, that's not completely true, Harvey laughed, but almost all of them were genuine attempts. The robbers were an attempt to sort of shake you from the funk you were in, and the rockstar was your idea, I'd like to remind you, and I even warned you in advance that one was going to go south.

“Yeah, that's true, you did warn me, although you didn't really explain why I shouldn't do it before hand.”

You were hell bent on making that mistake, despite me cautioning you, so I had to let you just make it yourself. And I guess I should apologize for sort of putting pressure on you to make sure you're using me, but for a while, maybe you didn't realize it, but you were sort of cockblocking me, which isn't cool, especially when I'm just trying to help.

“Cockblocking you? What the hell does that mean?”

For a while, I tried to steer women subtly at you, but you didn't bite. Which, hey, I get it, not every piece of trim I send your way is your speed, but you weren't giving me any feedback as to why you weren't biting, and that was a BIG problem, because I couldn't get any better at what I was sending you. I can only sort of see your active thoughts, and you're pretty good at keeping emotional stuff buried, which may have been a defensive mechanism when you were younger, but all it's doing now is getting in my fucking way in trying to help you, you jerk.

“So why didn't you just talk to me then, tell me what you were doing and why?”

Eh. I don't usually like directly talking to the people I'm trying to help. It's sort of a last resort tactic, if you know what I mean. Because usually they have an actual mountain of questions, most of which I can't or won't answer, and that pisses them off.

“There's a difference between questions you can't answer and won't answer?

Sure. I'll give you an example. I won't answer if I know if someone's a perfect match for you or not; I can't answer how my abilities work, or what the goddess's endgame with all of this is.

“That's... remarkably honest.”

Hey, I'm all about honesty, Harvey joked, if I'm honest. I am going to get you your perfect match before I move on to the next wayward soul, but I have a process, and it takes as long as it takes. If it makes you feel any better, I think I'll have you squared away within the next year or two.

“How do you– Never mind. Can't or won't?”

Can't but you're learning, so good on you. We're getting more in sync with one another, and that'll make this whole process easier. You know I'm not out to hurt you, and I think at this point, I feel comfortable in saying I don't think you're going to continue to resist my help.

“Now that I know you're actually trying to help me, it's a little easier to not want to get in your way,” I said to the bracelet. “You know, you may want to start talking to people again. I mean, when you get to whoever it is you're going to after me. If you're more upfront with them at the start, they'll be more likely to get in step with what you're trying to do for them. Did you talk to Christian at all?”

The guy who gave me to you? Harvey asked. Nah, didn't have any need to. He didn't fight me in any way, letting me throw woman after woman at him, trying to figure out what the fuck it was he wanted out of a partner.

“You sound a little grumpy about it.”

Only that he was so damn indecisive. See, finding someone a perfect match, it's more art than science, and sometimes I would think I was just about ready to have him matched up with exactly what he was looking for, just to see it fall apart because there was some hidden booby trap in his past that I didn't know about.

“Okay, what do you mean by 'booby trap,' just so I can try and point out any of those in my own history for you before you stumble upon them accidentally?”

So, I knew pretty early on that 'allergic to dogs' was going to be a dealbreaker for you, because there was no way you were going to get rid of Astro.

“You best not say an unkind word about my dog,” I said sternly to Harvey.

Dude. Chill. I fucking love your dog. Shit, I've talked to your dog.

That took me more than a little by surprise. “Uh... you've what now?”

Okay, well, maybe more talked at your dog, but me and Astro, we're cool. But Christian didn't have a dog when I first met him. Now, after a while I found out that it was because his last girlfriend had taken their dog when they'd split up, but I thought I had the perfect match for Christian all lined up. It felt like I was just about ready to unlatch from his wrist, and then out of the blue he said that he wanted for them to get a dog and move into together, and she said she was allergic. A week later they were going their separate ways, and I was fucking back to square one.

“Then you probably also want to add 'not allergic to cats' onto my list, because at some point, I'm probably going to want to get a cat again, just so that Astro has someone to play with when I'm at work, and so he's not just moping around the house.”

Okay, good to know. Anything else?

“I don't have to tell you 'can't cheat on me,' do I?”

Yeah, I think I gathered that one, from you telling me your last ex cheated on you a bunch. What's the actual definition of a bunch, anyway?

“Well, I found out initially that she was cheating on me with one of my coworkers, but after I split with her, I went on to learn it wasn't just him, but that she'd been fucking, like, seven or eight different dudes beyond me. She'd even had several of them over to the apartment we'd shared, and fucked at least three of them in the same bed that she and I slept in.”

Goddamn that sucks.

“You ain't lyin', brother,” I agreed. “After I broke it off, I loaded up everything that I wanted to keep into a truck and moved into a temporary apartment for a few months before buying my house. I loaded it up with almost entirely new furniture, because apparently she'd been boning other dudes all over everything in our old place. So I think basically everything bigger than a suitcase in my house is Post Vanessa.”

See, now I know another dealbreaker that I don't know that I would've known before.

“Which is?”

I don't think I can hook you up with any girl named Vanessa.

I grinned a bit, nodding. “Yeah, that's probably fair. I think that name's scorched earth at this point, whether I want it to be or not.”

We've all got damage, kid. No need to be ashamed of it.

“You're right, you know. We do seem to be getting much more on the same page now that we're talking about it and aren't getting in each other's way.”

Good. Good. I'll get you the girl of your dreams before we're done with one another.

“Anything I can do for you?”

… Excuse me?

“You're trying to help me, right? Is there anything you want, any way I can repay you for all this work you're putting out on my behalf?”

… Nobody's ever asked me that before.

“I'm trying to make up for having been a bit of an ass earlier, Harv. I thought you were trying to use me, not help me, so I made your job a lot more unnecessarily hard for you than I should've. So, if there's anything I can do to make your existence easier, hell, I figure it's the least I can do, right?”

Lemme think about it. But you know what? Thank you for even asking.

Traffic was finally started to ease up, and the Bugatti began to purr as it got the chance to move a little more through the streets. Of course, this was exactly the moment that my phone chose to ring. Thankfully, I've got hands free in the car, so I just answered it.

“Go for King,” I said.

“Deke!” Colleen's voice said to me on the other end of the line, sounding like she might have been in tears. “Oh, thank fuck you answered. I was so fucking scared you were going to have your phone off or something and then I would've completely been up shit's creek because I desperately needed someone to talk to right now. Can... can we talk for a little bit?”

“Sure thing, Coll,” I said to her. “What's on your mind?”

“It's Colton,” she said. “I'm starting to think this open relationship polyamory thing is just total and complete bullshit, and that maybe he's just fucking using me to try and jumpstart his career.”

“What makes you think that?”

“It's like he only wants to hang out with me if we're going to be seen in public,” she grumbled. “Like, sometimes a bitch just wants to Netflix and chill, right? Once in a while, I just want to curl up in my grodiest sweats on the couch, crawl beneath a blanket, grab a tub of ice cream and watch some utterly trash television with my man, but with Colton, it's always 'We should go out!' 'Let's go to a party!' 'Let's go to a nightclub!' 'Let's get dinner at the fanciest fucking restaurant in town!' And if I try to sort of gently suggest I just wanna have a night in, he spends like the next hour or so trying to talk me out of it, and I do go out, I feel like shit and get cranky the whole night, and if I don't go out with him, he spends hours fucking guilt tripping me later.”

“I mean, it is an open relationship, right? So if it's not working for you, you can just find another person up there to fill your needs, to be your stay-at-home buddy. Or you can try and break it off with Colton and see if someone else is more your speed.”

“You're more my speed, but you're down there and I'm up here,” she whined. “I wish you could just be up here all the time.”

“It's, like, four hours by train to get there, Coll,” I laughed. “It's not like you're right next door. I can't do that commute every day you know?”

She let out a deep sigh of frustration. “I know, I get it, you're right. It just blows, that's all.”

“Well, I miss you too, Coll,” I told her. “I might be able to carve out a weekend next month to try and come up there again, if that's something you w–”

“YES!” she said enthusiastically, not even letting me finish the last word. “I mean, I love spending time with you, Deke, and any time you want to come up here, I'll make the time to make it work, okay? Send me an email whenever you get a chance with the days, and I'll start managing my schedule around it.”

“I'll figure it out early next week and have something to you by Wednesday, okay?”

“Absofuckinglutely,” she said, sniffing a little bit, as if she was feeling more herself again. “Thanks for picking up, Deke. I know I'm kinda a fucking mess some days, but it's nice knowing there's somebody out there who gives a shit about me. I gotta get back to set, but I sent you a hot little picture for you to look at when you're alone and have some time. And I expect to get a spicy one back, maybe one of you and that monster inside your new car.”

I laughed, blushing a little bit. “I'll see what I can do, Coll. Take care of yourself, okay? I worry about you.”

“I'll be much better once I see you again, Deke. Cya!”

“Why can't Vancouver and Seattle be the same place?” I grumbled.

Why can't day and night be the same thing? Harvey asked me. Might as well fight against the coming of the dawn. It'll get you just as far.

“And you're sure that–?”

Deke. Man. You gotta trust me on this, okay? Besides, did she ask about you at all in that conversation?

I inhaled a deep breath and then let out a deeper sigh. “Yeah, okay. One of us is a magic talking bracelet and the other is just the schmuck carrying him around.”

You'll feel better in a little bit. It's almost time for your surprise.

“I dunno, Harv,” I said, turning the Bugatti onto the street leading down to my cul-de-sac. “After that conversation, I may not be in the mood.”

Derrick. You're gonna enjoy the shit out of this, because lemme tell ya, this is the biggest and most ridiculous thing I can throw at you. When people start figuring out they have a little bit of control over how I deploy my influence, they always want to overextend. Their eyes get way too big for their own good, and they make some mistake that's going to blow up in their face like they wouldn't believe. You, you figured out you could exert some force on how I did my thing, but you didn't pressure me to give you something absurd like most schmucks do. And since you didn't, well, I'm gonna give you the sort of thing that so many other dudes and chicks have asked me for, and that I so rarely give out, because after I do, I'm gonna black out for a bit.

“Black out?” I said, concern in my voice, although I'm still not sure quite why. “Look, Harv, it's cool that we're on the same page, but if this is going to hurt you, I don't want you to do it...”

Heh. Hurt me. You're a funny guy, Deke. Nah, it's not gonna hurt me, but I'm gonna take like several days to recharge my batteries after this, so don't think I'm gonna be around to chat. Don't you worry, though. Ol' Harv'll be back to himself before you know it. Besides, I've always wanted to try something stupid like this. Because if you had asked me for this, it would've been a blatant abuse of my powers, but since I'm giving it to you unasked, well, it's just gonna be a hell of a wild ride.

“You promise me this isn't going to break you?”

Deke, dude, chill, 'kay?

“What kind of ancient Roman bracelet says 'dude,' Harvey?”

The kind that's fucking thankful it never has to conjugate another fucking Latin verb ever ever again. What a stupid fucked up language. Anyway, I'm clocking out, so do me a favor and don't say no to anything for the rest of the night, okay? Just go with the flow.

“If that's what you want, Harvey.”

My dude, I may be an inanimate object, but for once in my existence, I think I'm actually jealous that I can't experience this. Have fun!

Strangely, I could almost feel Harvey recessing back into the bracelet and out of my mind, like I could sense him shifting into recharge mode, which made me curious about what exactly he had planned for me, as the Bugatti pulled into my driveway. I pushed the button to open my garage door, and noticed that the curtains had been drawn on all my windows in the house, something I hadn't done when I left the house in the morning.

For half a second I was worried that I had an intruder in the house, but the house had a very good security system, so the only people who could've gotten into the house were people with that code, which included a couple of neighbors and a couple of friends. Also, Astro wasn't barking up a storm, so whoever was in the house was someone he knew and was familiar with.

My two-car garage still had my old car in it on one side and had room for the Bugatti on the other. I felt a little silly driving the two-door sports car around all the time, but I knew that Larry wanted to see me driving it regularly, so on days when the weather was manageable (which was less often than not in Seattle) I drove it into the office and back.

After getting out of the car, I pushed the button to close the garage door behind me and headed into the house, running into Astro as soon as I opened the door, his fluffy tail wagging happily as he bounced up and down, not quite hopping up on me but eager to show how pleased he was that I'd come home. The fact that he was in the house was also a bit telling, because most days when I went to work, I left him out in the back yard, and I knew for a fact that I had this morning.

“Heya boy,” I said to my Husky, scratching behind the ears to make his tongue hang out and his tail thrash even more pleased. “Who's here? Should I be worried?”

“In here, Mr. King!” a familiar voice said from my living room.

I headed up the stairs and down the hall into my main living room, seeing Madison standing in the center of the room, dressed in her University of Washington cheerleading outfit that we'd had a bit of fun with five or six months ago. She had her hands folded behind her back, her stance wide, almost like she was ready to break into a cheer. She had let her coppery mane grow a little longer and it now hung down over her smallish tits, whereas before it hadn't gone down past her shoulders.

“Why don't you have a seat here in front of me, Mr. King?” she said, as Astro ran over to her, rubbing against one of her legs before he moved over towards his big cloth circle bed, hopping up onto it before shifting and settling, laying down with a soft 'woof' of resignation.

I set my briefcase down on the table in the hallway, then tossed my keys into the key bowl, set my phone down next to it, kicked off my expensive Italian leather loafers and moved into my living room. She was positioned right in front of the center of my couch, making it clear where I was supposed to be sitting, so I headed over to the couch and sat before her. “So, what do I owe the privilege of your presence to, Madi?”

“Do you remember last week when I came around and convinced you to buy some raffle tickets for my cheerleading team's fundraiser, Mr. King?”

“Sure,” I said. “You were worried your team wasn't doing that well, and you wanted me to buy a couple of the twenty-dollar raffle tickets, and I wanted to help you out, so I bought twenty tickets. Why, did I win something?”

“You actually won the grand prize, Mr. King,” Madison said to me, a beaming smile on her freckled face from ear to ear. “And since it's you, we decided to make the grand prize even... grander.”

My face scrunched up, trying desperately to remember what any of the prizes on offer had been for the raffle, completely unable to come up with anything. It also felt a little warmer than normal in my house, something I was hoping wasn't me just panicking because I was alone inside of my house with Madison once again, and I remembered exactly what she'd asked of me last time. “I'm sorry, Madi, but I've forgotten what that was.”

She rolled her eyes playfully at me, clicking her tongue chastising me. “Tsk tsk tsk, Mr. King. So the grand prize was going to be a group of the girls from the squad coming to wash your car, because what man doesn't want a bunch of cheerleaders in bikinis washing his car? But the weather's been so bad lately that it's just too cold for us to give you a bikini car wash.”

“Oh, that's okay, Madi. If you want to just wait until–”

“Also,” she said, interrupting me, “the only place we could wash your car would be out front, and well, that's just too public for what we have in mind, so we decided to do something else. Similar! But not quite the same.”

“I just–”

She was determined not to let me get a word in edgewise. “So! We decided that we would give you a full house cleaning! A cheerleader maid service, as we gave your house a complete work over from top to bottom! Dusting! Mopping! Washing clothes! Fixing meals! Doing dishes! Vacuuming! We already cleaned the backyard of doggie land mines before you got home.”

“You keep saying we, Madi...”

Madison giggled, nodding. “Sorry, I'm such a silly slut. I forgot to introduce your cheerleading housekeeping team for the next day! Girls, line up and sound off!”

From around the corner, six girls ran from my kitchen where they'd been hiding and lined up around Madison in the middle, three to the left of her and three to the right, each of them dressed in UW cheerleading outfits, standing in a pose very similar to Madison, although all of them had their eyes very clearly focused on me instead of looking straight ahead.

“Kelly!” the girl on the far left said. She was a pale skinned brunette with a slender build and perky tits beneath her top. She also had a silver ring through her right eyebrow. She'd put on a decent amount of makeup, with dark eyelashes and a deep red shade of lipstick on.

“Kennedy!” the Latina girl next to her said. Her black hair was pulled into pigtails that hung over each of her shoulders, and she was shorter than both Kelly and Madison, although also bustier. I imagined she was the one they put on top of the human pyramids.

“Kari!” the blonde on Madison's right said, easily the tallest girl in the lineup, with long powerful legs that I imagined were either the result of dancing or kickboxing, maybe both. Kari pronounced her name with a hard sound at the front, 'car' instead of 'care.' She had to be close to my height, give or take an inch on either side of 6' tall. She had sort of a hawkish nose, but it gave her face almost a warrior's look to it, like an Amazon. Her hair was braided into a tail that hung over one of her shoulders, a pink ribbon around the end of it, tying it off.

“Kasey!” the Asian girl on Madison's left said, about the same general size and build as Kennedy, although Kasey had blonde highlights and streaks running through her jet-black hair that framed her face a bit like a lion's mane. Also, I thought I could make out the outline of a barbell through one of her nipples through the cheerleader top.

“Kendra!” the brown-haired girl next to her said. Kendra had a bob haircut with her hair a warm shade of oak brown. Her face was rounded, and while she had the thickest arms and legs of any of the girls, she also had the largest chest, massive tits straining against the top that might have been a size too small for her.

“Kayla!” the girl on the end with wavy brown hair down to the center of her back said, her face also decked in heavy makeup. She had darker skin, not quite Asian or Latina, but maybe part Mediterranean or middle eastern. She licked her pouty lips and flashed me a saucy wink, wiggling her hips from side to side.

“I like to call them Vitamin K,” Madison giggled, “because their names all start with K. For the next twenty-four hours, we're your team of cheerleader maids, and we're going to show you just how far our team spirit extends!” She was saying each word like she was trying to get an audience fired up, even though it was just me.

“So... I just stay out of your way while you're cleaning?” I chuckled. I mean, there were certainly worse ways to spend a day than watch a bunch of late teen/early twenty-something cheerleaders cleaning up the house. They all had to be somewhere between eighteen and twenty-two, considering they were all UDub students.

“Oh no, Mr. King,” Kasey said. “We're a full-service maid team, so whatever needs you have for us to fill, we are all going to be happy to fill them.”

'You have got to be kidding me, Harvey,' I thought at the bracelet.

Enjoy, Deke.

“In case she's not being clear, Mr. King,” Kayla said with a grin, “that means we're all going to suck and fuck you before we're done with your house.”

It was a Friday night that I hadn't made plans for, and now it certainly seemed like I was booked up until Saturday night, glancing at my watch, noting it was nearly 8 pm. “So, a full twenty-four hours?” I gulped. “I don't know that I can keep up with you girls that long.”

“Oh, it won't be all the time fucking and sucking,” Kennedy said. “We do have to squeeze in the cleaning and cooking sometime.”

“One more thing, Mr. King...” Madison said to me.

“One more thing?”

“The grand prize was supposed to be a car wash by cheerleaders either in bikinis or their cheerleader skirts, but since we had to change the rules a little bit because of the weather, we're changing that one as well. Girls?”

Suddenly, all seven girls reached to their waists and pulled their cheerleader tops up and over their heads, tossing them into piles on either side of me on the couch, leaving seven pairs of marvelous tits exposed to my eyes, varying sizes and shapes, although I think almost all the girls had stiff nipples.

“I heard about this naked maid service once,” Kelly said, “and I told Madi about it, and she said it would be super-hot for us to do that for you.”

“But I told her we had to leave the skirts on,” Madi giggled.

“Which we are,” Kari said, “but...”

All seven girls turned around in unison, bent over, reached behind them and lifted their skirts to show me their bare asses and exposed pussies, nothing on beneath the skirts. It was like a Rockette's flourish, all the exposed flesh before the girls stood back up and spun around to face me, each of them having a wolfish smile on their face.

“There's only one final rule, Mr. King,” Kendra said to me. “Every slut gets at least one turn with you before 7 p.m. tomorrow.”

“Nobody's gonna be mad if one of us gets more or less turns than the rest of us, as long as every single one of us gets at least a go,” Madison said.

“And by 'a go,' she means 'a load,'” Kari giggled.

“We closed all the windows, so we'll all be doing chores until you come to have your way with us, Mr. King,” Kelly said.

“Don't keep us waiting!” Kayla said.

“Okay girls, break!” Madison told them and all seven girls scattered, heading in different directions all over my house, each of them tittering with laughter and excitement.

Astro looked over at me, gave a tiny, confused howl and then slumped his head back down onto his bed, his tail giving a single thump before laying still.

“You and me both, Astro.”

I decided to walk through the house first, just to see what the girls were getting up to, as I prepared to enjoy Harvey's gift of Madison and her team of Vitamin K, knowing full well that by this time tomorrow, I was going to be utterly, deliciously fucking exhausted.

I wasn't wrong...