Wherefore Art Thou, Chase?

Chapter 7: Plots and Plans


“Maria! Get back here, now!” Janelle ordered the little Hispanic girl who was trying to escape the group.

“But I wanna go back to the park!” Maria whined loudly, causing a few of the other stragglers to stare at them both.

“Maria, do you want me to get Juan over here?” The threat of her older brother usually worked on Maria, no matter how stubborn she was being with Janelle.

“No…” was Maria’s answer, her voice small and uncertain.

“Then take my hand and cross the street with me.” Grudgingly, the six-year-old held Janelle’s hand and they crossed the street, ending that struggle. As soon as their feet hit the pavement of the parking lot, though, Maria had let go and she was running off towards the backyard. The counselor watched her go, rolling her eyes fondly. No matter how frustrating some of these kids got, she could never stay mad at them.

Looking up, she saw Nik and a tall, dark-haired man walking towards her. She didn’t automatically register who the other man was, until they got closer.

“What are you doing here?” Janelle snapped at Chase, frowning and trying to hide the secret thrill that went up her spine upon looking into those chocolate brown eyes.

“Janelle! Chase is a counselor, now, and, as such, I expect you to treat him with some form of respect,” Nik chastised, frowning confusedly at Janelle. “Apparently, you two know each other, so I don’t have to introduce you, but I still expect you to treat one another with respect and dignity. Am I understood?”

Janelle nodded reluctantly, glaring at Chase, who was grinning from ear-to-ear.

**********

Janelle watched as Mr. Martinez drove away with Juan and Maria. They were usually the last ones to leave, at around half past seven in the evening. Only a half hour after the center was supposed to close.

She didn’t mind their presences, as Juan, a tall, lanky thirteen-year-old, controlled Maria into some semblance of order, making it much easier for the counselors to clean the place. Tonight, though, she didn’t want to stay at work any longer than she had to, because Chase had volunteered to help her close. Damn him, she thought, whirling on her heel and stalking back into the larger room.

He was standing by the foosball table, spinning one of the bars experimentally. Looking up when she entered, he grinned and flaunted those damned dimples of his. “Wanna play?” he offered, lifting a brow teasingly.

“Excuse me?”

“Foosball,” Chase explained hurriedly, noting the appalled tone in her voice. Watching her closely, he noticed relief and something else cross her face. Disappointment, he thought, with an inward smile. “Although, I don’t think I’d mind whatever you were going to suggest,” he teased, laughing when she blushed and stalked towards the office to get a broom to sweep up.

“Chase, why did you volunteer to close with me?” she asked annoyed as she swept up crumbs of all sizes in the kitchen area. For a long while, she didn’t hear any movement from where she’d assumed he’d stayed. When she looked up, he wasn’t anywhere to be found.

“Chase?” she called, a little freaked out. She leaned the broom against a countertop and strode confidently over to the small set of stairs that led to the “Computer Room.” She didn’t want him to think she was afraid, just in case he was watching.

The rooms beyond this point were in complete darkness, with hardly any illumination from the moon. Temperatures had already dropped and nights were coming much earlier, signaling an early winter. As she switched on the lights in the Computer Room, she recognized the sound of a door clicking. She headed for the Homework Room and wrenched open the door, her eyes needing more time than she had to adjust to the level of darkness in the other room. Stepping into the room, she said Chase’s name again, before suddenly being grabbed around the waist and pulled up against a hard chest. She made to scream, but it was cut off by her assailant’s mouth.

He plunged his tongue past Janelle’s open lips, and massaged it while he moved forward. She felt herself being pushed against a wall and would have protested, if she hadn’t recognized Chase’s calloused fingertips on her skin, just above the waistband of her jeans. She moaned instead, and he changed the angle of his head to slant his mouth over hers again.

Chase’s hands traveled north, and when he cupped her breasts through the sports bra Janelle wore for work, she sighed with pleasure. He brushed his thumbs over her stiff nipples as he slowly pulled his tongue from the cavern of her mouth and ran his tongue over the swell and curve of her lower lip. He gently bit that lip, before pulling away. She whimpered a little, but then he pressed his mouth against her ear.

“This was why,” he rasped, dragging his thumbs across her fabric-covered nipples once more. “I wanted to see if I’d dreamt up the passion you respond with.” Taking a step back, he dropped his hands. Her eyes snapped open and he could clearly feel the anger in her glare, which he was glad he couldn’t see because of the bad lighting.

“Chase Nicholson, if you ever touch me like that again, I will personally see to it that you can never, ever have children,” she told him, feeling her cheeks heat as she glowered at his half-lit expression. “What the hell do you have to be happy about?” she demanded after she realized he was smiling.

Quicker than she could think, he was standing so close that she could feel every inch of him flush against her. Every. Glorious. Inch. “This,” he teased, ducking down for a brief kiss that sent her careening into some made-up fantasy land where she could end the havoc he was wreaking on her senses and just take him right there. Pulling away from the kiss, he cupped her cheek and skimmed his thumb over her lower lip, making her quiver with need. They were silent for a long time, while he caressed his hand down the side of her neck and pressed his fingers against her pulse. It was faint and fluttery, as opposed to his heart, which was pounding so loudly, it rang in his ears.

“So…” she finally broke the silence, swallowing tightly before she did so in order to try and gain some control over herself. She failed miserably. “Let me get this straight…you volunteered to close with me because you wanted to sexually assault me?”

He laughed aloud at that and she could feel the rumble make its way from his diaphragm, all the way through his chest, and out into the quiet, loaded air. “No, no, Janelle,” he told her, running his fingers through her hair–which was in a ponytail, today– idly. “Sexual assault means that one of us didn’t want it…and I doubt very much that you didn’t want it.”

**********

“Can you believe the audacity?!” Janelle demanded of Erin and Lily, who were listening with only half an ear while they shopped. The brunette normally hated all types of shopping, but the blonde and the redhead usually dragged her along, anyways. Thus, they had to put up with her complaints. “I mean, he just says that to me, then he leaves! Like we’d been having a normal conversation!” she hissed to them.

Finally, Lily fixed her cousin with a withering look. “What would you have done if he hadn’t left?” she asked, lifting a brow pointedly before turning back to the rack she was looking at when Janelle hesitated.

I don’t know what I would’ve done…she admitted to herself, biting her lower lip and furrowing her forehead as she thought about that and followed her roommates around the store. When they eventually left, the only thing that distracted Janelle from her thoughts was the bitter October wind blowing right at her.

“I can’t believe its already October. Halloween’s coming up,” Erin remarked quietly when they had packed into her car.

“Yeah, I know…Its nearly my birthday,” Lily teased, meeting the redhead’s gaze in the rearview mirror.

“Which means its almost my birthday!” Janelle exclaimed suddenly, making Lily make a face at her in the mirror. Their birthdays were separated by only one week, or, as Janelle liked to refer to it, 358 days.

“You know, Erin, I think you should tell Chase that Janelle’s birthday is coming soon. I’m sure he’d be able to think of a good present for her,” the blonde joked, making Erin laugh and Janelle blush.

“That…brute…is not coming anywhere near me…Ever,” the brunette sputtered angrily, knowing that no one in the car, including herself, believed her.

**********

She speared her fingers through his hair, moaning loudly as their tongues mated wildly. He cupped her ass through the denim of her jeans, suddenly lifting her and wrapping her legs around his waist, where she could feel his erection thickening against her crotch.

She moaned again as he rubbed his own denim-clad hips against hers and suddenly, she felt the floor against her back and his body flush against hers. Breaking away, he lifted his head and stared into her mysterious brown eyes. She whispered something that he couldn’t hear and he leaned forward in order to hear her better.

She pulled his head down and pressed her mouth to his ear. “Chase?” Her voice was strangely echo-y, but he wasn’t about to let that bother him.

“Chase!”

Chase was suddenly jerked back into reality, to find Janelle staring at him, irritated, and waving her hand in front of his face to get his attention.

“Huh? What?” he asked, blinking and shaking his head, trying to dispel the sensual fog that had settled over his mind when she had kissed him. Professor Curtis had told them to rehearse Act 2, Scene 2 right before she left the theatre to take a phone call on her cell. Because Curtis had decided that certain rehearsals would be reserved for the leads, her leaving meant it was only them left all alone. He frowned as she stormed past him and jumped off the stage, going towards her stuff in the audience.

“What are you doing?” he asked, striding towards the edge of the stage hesitantly.

“If you aren’t going to take this seriously, I’m going to find Professor Curtis and tell her I quit because you’re being an Grade-A jackass,” Janelle answered him tersely, stuffing her script into her canvas bag, before slinging it over her shoulder. Before she could actually go anywhere, though, she felt Chase’s hand on her arm and he was spinning her around.

“You’d give up playing Juliet because of me?” he asked incredulously, and when she nodded, he grinned. “Wow…You must really like me,” he teased, right before Janelle made a sound of disgust and pulled out of his hold. As she stormed up the aisle, Chase called after her, “C’mon, Janelle! You know Curtis won’t let you quit unless she can replace both of us and I don’t think either of us can afford to not put this on our resumes!”

That made Janelle stop, right before she hit the door. He was right, but she didn’t want to recognize that he was right. Sighing, she turned around and faced him.

“If you can’t take this seriously–” she began, walking back down the aisle towards him.

“I’ll take it seriously, I promise,” he told her hurriedly, getting a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach as he watched her walk back to him. His gaze tripped over her slowly, pausing once at her breasts and admiring how the thin cotton of her long-sleeved shirt clung to them just right, then continuing on his way. Her hips swayed seductively, made even more so because she was completely unaware of it. Those maple syrup-colored tresses of hers were once again tumbling down around her shoulder blades, but they were kept from her face by a sky blue headband.

If only she weren’t looking at him so coolly and unnervingly, he was sure he‘d know where he’d seen her before. She put her things down in the same place they’d been, grabbed her script, and then turned to him. “Let’s get started,” she said, brushing past him and clambering onto the stage. Chase followed her, shaking his head ruefully.

**********

“Toby’s having a costume party on Halloween. Everyone in the cast and crew is invited,” Erin informed her as soon as Janelle had walked through the door to their apartment.

“We’re actors…Dressing in costumes is our job,” Janelle muttered darkly, feeling cranky because of the way Chase played with her feelings without realizing it. She was sure he was just messing with her head and stringing her along, but it was working and that irked the hell out of her. “Why would we wanna dress up again for one night, when we aren’t even getting paid for it?”

Both of the other women looked at her strangely, before Lily chuckled and returned to her homework. She had always been a straight-A student for a reason, and Erin could probably handle her cousin’s grumpy mood.

“Chase make a move on you today?” Erin asked knowingly as she cracked open a bottled water from the fridge and handed it to Janelle. She accepted it and took a long gulp before shaking her head.

“No…He’s just…irritating.”

“In a good way?” Janelle looked blankly at her red-haired friend for a minute, then nodded.

“In a too good way,” she whispered miserably, before her head thudded against the table none-too-gently.

**********

“Dude, if she’s hot, then just screw her already.”

“Seamus, could you possibly be cruder?”

“Yeah, I could be talking with my mouth full and using worse words.”

Chase laughed heartily at his roommates’ bickering, reaching for another slice of pizza. They were in the living room of their house, eating pizza and watching TV. Huey had mentioned Erin, and then Seamus had asked Chase if he’d found a girl, yet. He’d explained his situation, not telling the more intimate details, but just enough for his roommates to get the gist.

“Its not that I don’t want to, I just…This girl confuses the hell out of me. One minute, I’m pretty sure she hates me, the next, she might as well be unzipping my pants. And then, I back up for about two nanoseconds, and she hates me again.” Chase sighed and took a large bite of the slice of pepperoni he had in his hands.

“Maybe, you should talk to her about it?” Huey suggested, and Seamus looked at him like he had three heads.

“Did talking help you out with Erin?” the older man demanded, and Huey shook his head slowly. “Than talking ain’t gonna help, boyo.” While he and his sister had been raised in America, Seamus had, over the years, picked up some of his parent’s idioms; “boyo” was one of those terms. “What you really need to do, Chase, is just screw her outta your system.”

Chase chewed on the rest of his pizza as he mulled it over in his head. Suddenly, an idea popped into his head. Leaping up, he wiped the grease from the pizza off into his napkin and made a grab for the phone in the kitchen. He dialed the number quickly, holding it up to his ear and taking deep, calming breaths, so as not to freak out the other person.

“Please be home. Please be home,” he began chanting under his breath after the second ring.

“Hello?” came a voice from the other end.

“Uh, hi…Is Toby Schmidt there?” Chase asked, not recognizing the other voice.

“Sure, one sec, I’ll get ‘im for you,” the voice said, and, after a quick scuffle on the other line, Chase finally heard Toby’s voice.

“Hey, Toby. Uh, I was just wondering, can we bring dates to that Halloween party you’re having?…We can?…But they have to be couples costumes?…Okay, thanks,” Chase was about to hang up when Toby said something else. He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “No, I don’t need you to set me up with your cousin Joseph…I don’t care how cute he is, Toby, I’m straight…Yeah, well, maybe you should listen to Joseph and start setting him up with female dates, like it sounds like he wants…Yeah, that’s great, Toby, but, unless you stop trying to convince me–and Joseph–that we’re gay, I’m going to start calling you Schmidtty, and we both know how much you hate that, so–…Toby?…Toby?” Chase pressed the off button to the phone with a chuckle, already formulating a plan about the party in his head.

Quickly, he began to dial another number, hoping that she would go along with this…