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Chapter Seven: Blow Out


Nick

And was it ever yet to come.

We drove out of Los Angeles right from the IHOP parking lot without another stop, the radio playing but neither of us listening to it. Instead, we reminisced. The Valentine had made a lot of stuff come to mind for both of us - just general stuff that we'd done together over the years of being a set, Nick and Dogface, like salt and pepper. We'd spent long afternoons held back at school for detentions that we never told either of our parents about, and we'd one so many firsts together, taken so many trips, seen so many monumental life moments from graduations to finding biological parents to world fame to the moon and back again. Because me and Dogface, we go way back.

"You ever wonder how it is you got stuck with my stupid ass?" I asked her, looking over as the car sailed along the interstate toward Vegas. "Like what'd you do in your prior lives to deserve to this?"

Ashley laughed, "Everyday, Nick, everyday."

I grinned.

And then all hell broke loose. The car swerved as the front tire blew out and we crisscrossed the mostly deserted road a couple times before finally scraping the guardrail, royally fucking up my paint job, and coming to a stop a couple feet later. Ashley was clutching her stomach with one hand, and the handle over the door with the other, her eyes wide, while both my hands were wrapped tight around the steering wheel. I'm pretty sure I left dents where my fingers had been.

"Fuck," I gasped.

Ashley looked over at me.

"Fuck," I muttered again.

She raised an eyebrow. "Fluff," I corrected myself.

We were both panting, gasping loudly. I took a deep breath, trying to slow my heart rate. Slowly, I loosened my grip on the steering wheel, peeling my fingers back like they were a banana skin. I turned to Ashley. "Are you okay?" I asked, getting my first fear out of the way.

She nodded.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she replied.

"Baby okay?"

Ashley nodded again.

That settled, I moved on to the next issue. I zoomed the GPS out to see where the fuck we were. Ashley stared at the screen as I zoomed out further. We weren't in the middle of no where, but we were pretty damn close. We were sorta lucky, though, I guess, in a way, because the gas station - the historical gas station where Ashley had found out she was pregnant with Zoey - was only four miles from us. This is a small miracle because behind us was about three hours worth of sand and exit-less highway void.

Ashley stared at the GPS, then her eyes swiveled to look at me.

"Now what?" she asked.

"Lemme see if I can fix it," I replied, and I pushed the door open and stepped out onto the empty road. Ashley looked out at me with worry in her eyes.

"How are you gonna fix it?" she asked, nerves in her voice.

I shrugged, "I think there's a spare in the trunk, I dunno." I closed the door and walked around the nose of the car to see the damage on the front passanger wheel. Flatter than a 12 year old girl. Flatter than Ashley had been when she showed me her boobs the first time in the cement pipe we always sat in. I leaned against the guard rail that lined the road. The entire side of the car was all scratched up and looking like shit. I sighed and rubbed my hand across my face. "Jesus," I muttered.

Ashley pushed her door open and got out, slamming it shut, and sitting beside me. She looked at the car, then looked at the wheel. "Poor car," she muttered.

"I'm sorry," I said, because I wasn't sure what else to say. I started mentally calculating what all this was gonna do to fuck up our festivities. If we somehow managed to get moving again within the next hour, and drove straight to Vegas - another hour and a half from where we were, not counting traffic or stopping at the gas station for history's sake - we'd have only a couple hours before we had to head home to collect Zoey from AJ by the next morning at our agreed upon time.

And I'd have to have the tire changed somewhere while we were at the hotel, I thought.

"We could call Triple A," Ashley suggested. "They can change the tire."

Something prideful and mannish possessed me. I looked at her. I hated that she just assumed I couldn't change a tire myself. Of course I could change a tire myself, how the fuck hard could it be? I mean in the NASCAR stuff they switch tires out in like a second. I'm a man, men do things like change tires.

I got up and went to the trunk and pulled it open and dug around in all the shit I had back there - a basket ball, a blanket, random CDs here and there, a old stereo subwoofer I'd replaced forever ago, a bag of clothes I'd meant to bring to the Goodwill - and found the hatch that hid the donut tire and the tools to change it out. I yanked until I got the hit out of the guts of the car and dragged it over to the wheel that needed changing.

"You aren't seriously gonna do this?" Ashley asked.

"Course I am," I replied, "I'm a man. I can do things like this."

"In your suit?"

I hadn't really thought about the fact that I was wearing the suit. I mean, in an attempt to keep up the recreation, I'd dressed up in a suit as similar to the one I'd worn that night as I could find. That was probably going to make this a little harder, I had to admit, but hell if I wasn't gonna prove to her that I was manly and could do things like change tires. So, I loosed the necktie and gave it to her.

"Nick, just call Triple A."

"I can do this," I replied.

She sighed, "Okay fine, he-man." She moved and set herself on the guard rail a couple feet away so she wasn't in the working space, holding my tie in her lap, watching as I upended the foam thingy the donut tire rested in. There was a bunch of tools that I had no idea what they were for and I stood over the pieces laying on the cement, analyzing them. I wanted to know what I was doing when I started in on this project, wanted her to be impressed I knew what I was doing. I took a deep breath. Even though I didn't.

Well, I thought. Here goes nothing.




Ashley

Nick descended on the spattered tools with an air of faked confidence. He didn't want me to know he had never done this before. Like I didn't already know that. I knew everything there was to know about Nick and I happen to know for a fact that this was the first time anything like this had ever happened to him when he wasn't on a tour bus, where other people were responsible for fixing it.

I kind of wished I had popcorn.

It was his own fault. I'd offered him not once but twice an option to get out of looking like an idiot trying to do this. Offered him a perfectly manly excuse, like preservation of the suit he had on, that would've kept him from feeling like he was a total loser. Yet there he was, picking up the wrench and staring at the wheel. He reached for the hubcap and pulled it off with little trouble, and put it on the ground. Then he stared at the lugnuts underneath like they were foreign objects.

"You gotta jack the car up first," I said.

He looked up at me, "I know. I'm just... lookin'." He didn't know, but that's okay. He took the little jack thing and shoved it under the car. I leaned forward, trying to see that he had it placed right and wouldn't fuck up the car even worse. He looked over at me. "What?"

"Make sure it's on the frame," I said, "Or you'll crack the body."

"I know," he said again. He still didn't know. He felt under the car and moved the jack. His hand came back out from under all greasy and dirty, his finger tips blackened. He caught himself just before he swiped his palm across his pants, and squatted there all helplessly with his dirty hand, like he didn't know what to do now that his hand had dirt on it. I refrained from saying anything as he struggled to move back and get the wrench into the jack with his non-dirty hand.

While he worked on jacking the car up - which he kept knocking the jack over and cursing - I used the opportunity to adjust the bra strap from hell. Since he was distracted and all. I reached behind me, bending my elbows to pull down the back of my dress enough to get access to the bra, and tugged, trying to get it to stop riding up. My boobs hurt. They felt like they were being tortured by some 16th century device.

I wanted to get rid of the bra so bad. But it was gonna be worth it when Nick pulled it off. The look on his face was gonna be worth it, I told myself. That hungry, mouth-watery kind of look he'd get. And then he'd unsnap it and he'd lift it away and my boobs would feel sweet freedom and then he'd kiss them and rub them and...

"Success!"

I snapped out of my reverie to look down at Nick, who'd managed to get the car up on the jack right finally. He looked extremely proud of himself. Both hands were messy now, and his hair was getting a little limp in the front from sweat and stress. He looked insanely hot. Being all manly. Or psuedo manly at least. My mind was now on the idea of him massaging my breasts, my poor tired achey breasts that just needed a break from the prison they were in. So even though he was all sweaty from working on a car, I was picturing him sweaty from working on me.

I wanted to jump him.

"Now I gotta get the thingies off..." he pulled the wrench out of the slot on the jack and eyed the lugnuts. He didn't know what they were called. "First I gotta take this off." He stood up and shrugged off his jacket.

Mama mia.

I licked my lips as he tossed the jacket into the car, his body now glad in a cobalt blue button-down shirt and the black suitpants. He unbuttoned the wrist of the shirt and rolled the sleeves up, revealing his sexy forearms.

Hormones. So. Many. Hormones.

He crouched again and affixed the wrench to the first lugnut and started trying to move it. My voice shook, "You're screwing it the wrong way."

Nick looked up. "What?"

"Counter clockwise," I said thickly. My voice was coming out all husky and heavy, like I was saying dirty somethings in his ear at night or something, instead of giving him instructions on how to change a car tire.

Nick pulled the wrench, but nothing happened, so he made a face and pulled harder and his cheeks turned red with the strain of pulling the wrench and still nothing happened. He stood up and put his foot on the wrench and pushed down. The nut loosened and he tripped into the car, slamming stomach-first onto the passanger door.

"Shit, are you okay?" I asked, standing up, worried.

"Yeah. Ow. God damn." Nick backed away from the car.

"Maybe we should just call Triple A," I suggested again, holding out my hands like I was trying to steady him. Mommy's instincts, I guess. He shook his head. "Nick, please, before you get hurt."

"I ain't gettin' hurt, I can do this," he whined.

"If you get hurt, you won't be able to fluff me later and -- and Nick, I - really wanna be fluffed," I stared up at him with watery eyes.

"And I really wanna fluff you," he answered, "But first I wanna change the tire."

I sighed as he gently put his hands on my sides and moved me out of his way. I watched as he attacked the next three lugnuts and struggled to dismount the tire, getting grease and dirt all up his forearms and when he swiped sweat from his brow he smeared some on his face. My loins stirred like a meterologically cataclysmic storm, hovering on the edge of horny. My boobs cried for mercy.

The underwire was severing them off, I was willing to bet.

It took him awhile, but finally Nick had fitted the donut tire onto the mount. I'm not gonna lie, I was impressed that, despite the fact he had absolutely no vehicular skills whatsoever, he had managed to fake his way through getting the tire on the car. Well. Almost anyways.

"Where the fuck is the four thingies?" he demanded, looking around for the lugnuts. They were MIA. I looked around, but I couldn't see them anywhere. "What the hell it's not like it's got feet and couldda run away," he muttered, scrambling. He dropped to his knees, his pants scraping on the tar, getting dirtier and dirtier the more he panicked. His shirt had come untucked somehow and as he leaned down to stare under the car, his asscrack peeked out of the waistband.

I stared at the little patch of skin there.

I've never been so turned on by his damn asscrack showing.

"Nick," I whined.

He looked up.

"I wish you'd just... fuck me, right here, right now, on the side of the road."

Nick blinked in surprise.

"Fuck me, please," I begged.

Nick looked up and down the road, then up at the sky, like he expected there to be choppers up there, snapping pictures of us standing on the side of the Mojave Highway as I begged for sex. "Fuck me hard and fast and rub my boobs, please rub my boobs." I grabbed his hands as he stood up and put them on my chest.

"Ashley, do you got like heatstroke or something?" he asked, staring at me with concern.

"No," I said, "I just want you. I want you so bad. And I -- I want out of this bra."

He laughed.

He wasn't taking me seriously.

"I mean it, I want this bra off my body," I said, tears in my eyes.

He leaned in, his mouth pressing against mine, and his hands slid up my back. I had a feeling I now had car grease all over my back, but I didn't give a shit. I pressed myself closer to him. "Yes," I whispered, our lips overing over one another breathing eachother's breath, as his expert fingers played with the hooks on the bra. "Yes, oh my God, yes." Any moment now... he'd unsnap them and my boobs would taste sweet freedom.

He snickered against my mouth as his fingers dropped away without unhooking me. "We can't have sex in the middle of the road," he said lowly.

"Yes we can," I said, a desperate tone in my voice, "We can. Zoey's not here. We can fluff like wild animals."

Nick laughed again.

"I can't stand another minute, Nick, please," I whispered. But he only continued chuckling lowly. "Please," I begged. "My boobs have been trapped in this God forsaken bra all day and they can't take it anymore. They. Want. You. Please. Rub them."

"In an hour and a half," he said thickly, "We will be at the hotel in Las Vegas, and I will not only rub them... I will kiss them and lick them and suck on them. But until then, I gotta get this tire fixed and that will require finding the thingy," he said thickly.

I ran my hand down the length of him until my palm cupped his crotch. "I found the thingy."

Nick groaned as I palmed him through his pants gently.

"Babe," he whispered after a couple moments of my hand working on him, "I gotta do this. For real."

I pouted as he pulled away, leaving me standing there all hot and bothered and desperate and started looking for the lugnut again.

I wondered if anyone had ever died from sexual desire.