What Makes Her Tick? Tara Alton

I had been trying to figure out what makes this girl tick for weeks. Everyone at work says she is stuck-up because she is so beautiful, but I'm starting to think it's not true. It's not her fault she's in the small percentage of truly attractive people in the world. You know how beauty weaves itself through the population, leaving some women gorgeous or cute as button or like the girl next door, and the rest of us get one or two good parts, like me.

Then there was Maxine, the jaw-dropping girl at work who seems to have everything from looks to grace to self-confidence. I always thought people would flock to someone like her, that she would have loads of fans, friends, and admirers, but I am starting to think quite a few people secretly resent her. People will say hardly a word to her. That was why I volunteered to sit at the desk opposite her, because I knew what it was like to be singled out, mostly because everyone thinks I'm shy.

For the first few days, I tried not to study her face when I thought she wasn't looking, but it was hard. Mostly it was the space between her eyes that drew me in. She reminded me of Marilyn Monroe, and she had full lips like her, too. Her creamy skin always seemed perfect. Her eyelashes were long and curled. She knew how to dress as well, choosing tailored silk blouses that she tucked neatly into skirts or slacks, emphasizing her full breasts and tiny waist.

To be honest, she fascinated me. I hung on her every word, watched her every move, and wondered what she looked like naked when she took a shower. This wasn't the first time I had been attracted to a woman, but it was the first time it was a real, live person. Before it had been crushes on women like Bettie Page and Jayne Mansfield, in which

I would spend hours looking at their pictures online, not sure what to do with my feelings. Now with Maxine, I wanted to know everything about her, from what went on in her head to what her pinkie toes looked like when they were bare.

Gradually, we started talking more as we worked. Our conversations were a little guarded at first, mine from my shyness, hers no doubt from being snubbed all the time, but soon we were sharing jokes and gossip from around the office.

As the workdays passed, I began to sense she was beginning to let her guard down around me, because I noticed that she wasn't exactly working all the time. She was doing things like calling psychic hotlines and asking about her future. And two or three times a day she was calling someone and asking them if they were dead yet before she hung up the phone.

One day, she asked me to dial her pagers number. I asked her why. She said to just do it. Unbuttoning the top button on her slacks, she slid the pager down inside them and motioned for me to start dialing.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Having some fun," she said.

I looked around the office to see if anyone was watching. I wasn't the best-behaved employee, but I still didn't want to get in trouble.

"Can't you do this yourself?" I asked.

"It's sexier when someone else does it."

My mouth opened in surprise. She thought it would be sexy for me to vibrate her. Trying not to blush, I took a deep breath and let it out before I dialed the number. She closed her eyes as the pager vibrated.

"You're insane," I said, watching her remove her impromptu sex toy.

After that, she must have asked me to vibrate her a couple times a day. No one ever caught on, and I had to admit it was getting me aroused. My panties were feeling as if they were caught in a permanent knot between my legs, and things were always a little moist down there after a pager session.

I wanted to ask her to vibrate me, but I didn't have the balls to ask nor could I afford my own pager. Borrowing hers seemed a little too personal for work friends.

A week later, she asked me out to lunch. Imagine my elation. I felt so cool leaving the office with her as everyone else looked on. I thought we would hit a fast-food place and eat in the car, but she announced we were going to the Mushroom, the fanciest restaurant in town. Of course, I panicked. I hadn't worn the most stylish of clothes, only a sweater over khakis with loafers, and I confessed to her that I only had five dollars in my wallet. She told me not to worry. We were meeting a friend of hers.

All the cars in the parking lot were extremely classy, and my knees were actually shaking as we stepped inside. I had never seen a place this elegant, with its expensive linens and gleaming china. I was relieved when we were swept down one flight to the cellar where there was a less formal tavern atmosphere.

I was expecting to meet another beautiful girl like her, so I was more than a little freaked out when I saw it was a classy but ancient old man. It turns out he was Greek and owned a few restaurants in Greek Town. There was a wedding ring on his finger, but he was looking at Maxine as if she were the angel of his life.

My heart sank a little as I considered the possibility that she was having an affair with him. As I ordered the roasted polenta with vegetables, I noticed how he kept trying to put his arm around her and she kept shrugging him off. The lunch conversation consisted of him telling me all the rotten things she had done to him, like stealing his credit cards and charging up a storm, and how he kept forgiving her.

As he spoke, I felt my food sticking in my throat. She had to be sleeping with him, I thought, and it chilled my soul. With a pang, I realized I wanted to be the only one sleeping with her.

There was no time for dessert. She gave him a peck on the cheek, and I noticed that he slipped her some money.

Holy cow, she was a prostitute! The moment we got back into her car, I gave her a quizzical look.

She held up the money.

"He paid me fifty dollars just for having lunch with him," she said. "You can't beat that."

"Are you sleeping with him?"

She shook her head. "No. Just torturing him. He's the one I call all the time and ask if he's dead yet."

There was a pause. I wasn't sure what to say.

"I really enjoyed watching your face during lunch though," she said. "You're so easy to surprise."

It became a sort of game between us after that lunch. She would tell me something shocking, like how she would buy Coach handbags on sale at one department store and then return them for full price at another store, making herself a nice little cash bonus in the transaction. Or how she once got into a threesome at a house party in the upstairs bedroom that was being used as a coatroom, and how she enjoyed the sex with the woman more than the man because she was better. Even though he was the one who picked her up in the first place, she let him know the truth.

These stories were becoming the high points of my work days. I was getting an education I never knew I would have, and she was having me call her pager even more frequently, but now she didn't close her eyes. She looked into mine.

Winter came early this year and with it a terrible snowstorm. Our company was so worried that they might not have employees there to operate the phones the next day that they were willing to put us up at a nearby hotel, two to a room, with a dinner and a breakfast voucher.

"Do you want to stay? I'm afraid to drive home, but I don't want to room with anyone else," Maxine said.

I knew I could easily get home in this storm because I used to live up north, but I feigned being afraid of the snow as much as she was just so I could stay in a hotel room with her.

At the hotel, I was nervous, but it turned out to be just like a pajama party. We ordered room service, watched cable movies, and ate junk food we bought from the vending machine at work. Soon it was midnight. I stifled a yawn.

"Time for bed," said Maxine.

I prayed for a moment that she might suggest sharing one of the double beds, but she chose the one by the wall. I started to get undressed, opting to go the underwear-as-pajamas route, feeling a little self-conscious about my lack of curves, when to my amazement, Maxine stripped down to nothing right in front of me and strode into the bathroom.

I was stunned. Her body was as gorgeous as her face. She had full breasts, a heart-shaped ass, long, lean legs, and iridescent skin. The familiar aroused feeling I got at my desk was back in full force. My legs feeling weak, I sat on my bed.

Maxine came out of the bathroom, her face full of worry, and she stopped right in front of me. I could smell her skin.

"Do you think my right nipple points off in a weird direction?" she asked.

Was this a ploy to get me to look at her breasts? She didn't need to do that. I was already trying not to look.

"I used to work as a stripper and the men were always saying this one looked off in the wrong direction," she said.

"You were a stripper?" I asked.

She nodded and pointed at her nipple.

I stared at it. It was slightly pointing away. I nodded.

Sighing, she flicked off the lights. I heard her slide under her sheets.

The room was deathly quiet. I knew this was the time to tell her how I felt about her because there was a fluttery feeling in my stomach that wouldn't go away. I looked over at her bed. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the room and I could make out the shape of her. The sheets were draped over the curve of her hips.

"Maxine?" I asked. "Do you really like girls?"

Sitting up in bed, she looked over at me.

"There was this one girl who I thought I was in love with. I confided in her. I told her the real stuff, the stuff that really mattered, and she betrayed me. I haven't touched another girl since."

I wanted to say there was no way in hell I would ever betray her, but she let out this sigh that sounded as if she was tired of the entire world.

"How about I let you in on a little secret," she said.

I held my breath. She was going to confess she liked me too, even after that horrible experience, because I meant so much to her. She wanted to climb into my bed, slide her naked body on top of mine, and kiss me deeply where I was throbbing so painfully now.

"Everyone in the world is a shit," she said "Everyone is simply out for what he or she can get. You have to take what you can get before someone else takes it first. There is no such thing as true love or true anything. To be honest, I can't even be friends with anyone. I can barely tolerate people I hardly even know because it's all just bunch of shit."

Letting out another sigh, she lay back down and turned her back to me.

In shock, I turned away from her as well, playing her words back over in my head. What did she consider me? Certainly not a friend. Was I an acquaintance she could barely tolerate? I thought back to all the times when I thought she was confiding in me, but it wasn't true. She wasn't trusting me, I realized. She wanted the entertainment value of shocking me.

I felt so hurt and used, and yet when I slid my hand between my legs, I found I was still throbbing because she was naked in the bed next to me.

Listening to the sounds of her breath becoming even as she fell asleep, I said her name once just to be sure. She didn't stir.

I closed my eyes, imagining a different scenario with her, a simpler time and place, in which I hardly knew anything about her other than that she was pretty. I was at a strip club and we were in a private booth in the back room. All I knew was her fake stage name, and she would rub her naked body on mine because I had some money, and because she thought I was cute she might let me kiss her nipple that pointed away.

Sliding my fingers in and out of my hot wetness that had been building for months, I masturbated to a fantasy about a real woman for the first time. I could feel my clit swelling up, and I let my thumb rub it back and forth while I kept my middle finger inside me. With my other hand, I squeezed my nipple.

In my mind, she was straddling me now, her breasts in my face, and my hands were on her hips as she ground herself down on me. She let me lick and bite her delicate nipple, and I held it between my teeth as if it was a precious morsel. It was like having gourmet chocolate for the first time, and realizing what you had been missing all along.

Holding my breath, I concentrated on rubbing harder, the tingles starting around my clit, causing it to spasm, little jolts of electricity jumping through my skin. Even more frantically I rubbed, thinking about her dry-humping me with abandon. It sent the tingles into a massive eruption up my legs, up my thighs, up my torso, and throughout my upper body, even to my fingertips. This surreal feeling came over me, and for a moment I felt like I was outside myself, looking down on the hotel room from the ceiling, my body in wild sexual torment and her beautiful body asleep, lost in her dreams where everything seemed dark and bitter.

I didn't want to know what made her tick anymore, nor did I want her to know anything else about me either. I buried my face in my pillow as I came so she couldn't hear me.