[The Shifters Committee 05.0] Sensual Hero

by Rebecca Foxx

  At first, Blake couldn’t believe his ears. He was seen as one of the popular guys, especially because of the amount of wealth and status he had. This was precisely why he wanted to date Lisa. She seemed to be living on the outskirts of high school life. Lisa always had her nose in a book, and she wore faded black converse sneakers to class.

  Blake would occasionally catch her writing Nirvana lyrics on the souls of her shoes. When he confronted her about it, asking why she didn’t monopolize on the clean white part of the shoe, she said it was her way of “stomping out her demons.”

  Then senior year rolled around, and Lisa came to school with a completely different look. She was still just as curvy as ever, and perhaps even more so. But there was something about her demeanor and choice of clothing that made her stand out from the other girls.

  She’d cut her long brown hair into a short bob with a side sweep and she began lining her eyes in shades of grey and blue. She wore more dresses but kept the converse, wore more colors and wrapped her wrists in golden bangles.

  It was a Tuesday when Blake and Lisa lost their virginities to each other. The school was empty, as it was the evening, but there was a theater production going on in the auditorium. Blake had snuck away to sneak a drag of a blunt he’d found in his brother’s room.

  Lisa saw him leaving and followed him. It wasn’t until he was on the fourth floor of the science building that he noticed someone was following him. When he turned around, he yelped.

  “What are you doing up here?” he’d asked her.

  “I could ask you the same question,” she’d responded.

  They’d shared the joint, and all of their secrets with each other. Lisa talked about how she’d always had a crush on Blake but had turned him down because she thought it was a joke.

  She said she’d always loved her body, but people made fun of her and called her names both behind her back and to her face. She told Blake she’d almost asked him out sophomore year, but one of the popular girls started a nasty rumor about her shortly after.

  Blake told Lisa he found her irresistible, rumors be damned. After they were done talking, Lisa lifted her dress over her head and leaned back on one of the science tables. Blake walked over to her and planted warm kisses all over her body. They had sex, and dated until the end of senior year when Blake went off to Yale and Lisa stayed in California.

  When he returned to continue his father’s legacy, he couldn’t get a hold of Lisa. She’d moved on with her life, and he figured she’d forgotten their past love. That was all about to change.

  As Blake drove towards the vineyard, he thought about everything he would say when he reached Lisa. Perhaps they’d instantly start making out, and he’d drive her back to his place for a sleepover. Or maybe they’d have sex right in the car, in front of the firemen and everything.

  When he finally reached the vineyard, he found it mostly engulfed in flame and fire. Fearing for his life, and also for Lisa’s, he took a surgical mask out of his car and headed towards the winery.

  There was a secret tunnel that led inside the building, one that was almost a mile long. It had clean air coursing through it, and was so far underground that it was unaffected by the fire. After sneaking past a group of firefighters, Blake held his breath and dove into the tunnel.

  Chapter 2

  As Blake headed towards the inside of the building, he became distracted with the lights that lined the hallway. They were a mixture of bright gold and faded orange. He could smell hints of smoke, but they weren’t too bad.

  As he neared the end of the hallway, he saw the light becoming brighter. It reminded him of when he was younger, and his mother would talk about the light at the end of the tunnel. Instead of talking about it’s true meaning—that it had to do with death—she spoke about how it had to do with finally reaching success after an intensely stressful situation. In Blake’s mind, Lisa was that light.

  The minute he opened the door and found her in the cellar, he knew he was still in love with her.

  He found her leaning against the back wall, her head resting on a thick leather armchair. Though the wine cellar was off limits to customers, the owners enjoyed eating dinner down there.

  They had brought down tables, chairs, and even a bed covered by a thick red curtain. Blake wondered briefly why she was down here. At first he thought it might be because there was another man down there, maybe someone she was seeing. But when he walked through the isles, he didn’t find anyone.

  Blake walked over to Lisa and touched her cheek softly. He noticed that she’d let her hair grow long again, but she’d kept her side sweep.

  When Lisa opened her eyes, she couldn’t believe that Blake was standing in front of her. She rubbed her eyes a few times to make sure he wasn’t an apparition.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I, uh, I came as soon as I could,” he said. “I saw the fire. It’s all over the news. How long have you been trapped down here for?”

  “Forever is what it feels like. I came down here to grab an extra bottle of wine for one of the servers upstairs. It took me forever to find the right bottle and when I finally did I reached for the doorknob and found it was warm.

  I checked the door, and it was also warm. When I opened it, I could see smoke seeping down the hall.”

  She went on to explain that the door was airtight in order to keep the wine fresh. She had no idea there was a secret underground hallway that led to the outside.

  Blake couldn’t stop staring at her mouth when she spoke. He knew they were in danger, but all he could think about was how attractive Lisa still was. She’d grown up even more beautiful than when he’d last seen her. He had to keep his hands planted firmly behind his back so he wouldn’t reach out and touch her involuntarily.

  “We should, uh, we should check the tunnel,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she breathed. “I’m a bit worried about the oxygen levels going down around here.”

  He smiled and led her towards the door. When they opened the door, a cloud of smoke billowed in. Blake shut the door quickly, coughing. He was thankful that both doors were fire doors; that at least bought them some time. Unfortunately, they couldn’t stay there for the rest of their lives.

  “What do we do now?” she asked, a desperate look in her eyes.

  “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” he said, grabbing her shoulders. “I saw the footage on live TV—they know you’re down here. Someone will come and save us as soon as they put out the fire in the vineyard.”

  “How long do you think that’s going to take?” she asked breathlessly.

  “They’re not going to let some innocent girl perish in here; the company will go bankrupt if something like that happens. Don’t worry; you need to keep up your strength. Why don’t we just sit down and have some conversation until the rescue team comes? How does that sound?”

  She nodded her head and told him it sounded fine. It was strange, but Lisa didn’t really mind being stuck down there with Blake. She knew there was the potential that they wouldn’t make it out of there alive, but as long as they were together she didn’t much care.

  She’d been thinking about Blake for the past few months and now they were together again. It was a trick of fate, and a good one at that. Danger had brought them together once more.

  Lisa thought back on a time during senior year when she and Blake had taken a break in the relationship. They’d been having arguments back and forth about college applications, and who would go where.

  During said break, he ended up dating a girl named Rachel for over a month. Lisa had been devastated at first until she realized Blake wasn’t serious about Rachel. One day, when they were at a New Year’s Eve party thrown by one of their friends, Lisa dragged Blake upstairs.

  The rest of the guests were drunk on their parent’s wine and they didn’t notice either of them were missing. Rachel herself was quite tipsy, and was too busy hanging out on the balcony with the quarterback to notice her
boyfriend was missing.

  Lisa pushed Blake into one of the rooms and pinned him to the bed. She bit his neck, letting her teeth do all the talking, and rode him hard.

  “What are we doing?” he whispered, tearing off his clothing.

  “Does it matter?” she asked. She finally felt alive after so many months of dating, breaking up, and now making up.

  When she looked at Blake in that wine cellar, part of her still saw the little boy in him. Perhaps it was his dimples, or the fact that he smirked when he was thinking about something naughty.

  Either way, she felt that familiar tug of attraction towards him. Something was going to happen in that cellar and she wasn’t going to do a thing to stop it.

  Chapter 3

  “What should we drink?” Lisa asked as she walked between the shelves of wine. The lighting was dim, and she could barely make out some of the labels on the older bottles.

  “Let’s pick something random and see what it tastes like,” he said.

  “I found the mini fridge!” she called out to him.

  “There’s seriously a mini fridge in here? What kind of place is this?”

  “The owners live in here majority of the time. Sometimes when I come down to grab wine, I’ll find them screwing in the bed over there. They’re complete live wires, and don’t care if anyone’s watching.”

  “That’s hot,” Blake said. Lisa gave him a look. “What? It is.”

  She rolled her eyes; so he hadn’t changed much since high school. She had hoped seeing him again might mean things were different, though they seemed to be more of the same.

  After they’d slept together at the New Years Eve party, they’d proceeded to get back together. It didn’t last long, and they were once again in the midst of a messy breakup. Though Lisa was happy to see him, she still hadn’t forgiven him for everything that had happened senior year.

  “What about this Pinot Noir? It says it’s from the early 1930s,” he said.

  “Holy hell, that’s probably so expensive,” Lisa said. “What do you think it’s worth?”

  “I don’t know, probably a few dozen a glass. Let’s uncork it and find out how it really tastes.”

  They walked over to the armchair and Lisa sat down. Blake made a face so she got up and offered the chair to him. To her surprise, he tugged her back down on top of him. She sat in his lap, uncomfortably shifting around until she fit properly.

  It was as if they were right back where they started, all those years ago.

  ~

  Outside, the firemen were dousing the field with thick walls of water. If they kept this up for the next few hours, then the vineyard would be mostly saved and they could start making their way into the basement.

  The girl had been trapped in there for over an hour, and the tunnel had collapsed. Most of the firemen were worried she wouldn’t survive. They had no idea that while she was down there, she was having the time of her life with her ex boyfriend.

  “More wine, darling?” Blake asked.

  Lisa grinned and offered him her empty glass. They’d already consumed an entire bag of green grapes and were now lying in the enormous bed, half-clothed.

  They hadn’t touched each other yet, and were just getting started with the temptations and the flirting. Blake couldn’t believe the entertaining time he was having with Lisa. She was unlike any women he’d been with previously.

  “How have we stayed away from each other all these years? I feel as though I’ve been missing out on the best years of my life.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Lisa replied. “We’ve needed some time apart to grow and get to know each other better.”

  “But what happens when we get out of here?” he asked, staring at the ceiling. “Will you want to be with me, even after all these years?”

  Lisa felt her voice catching in her throat. Blake was really thinking about what would happen to them after they got out of there? But why did he care? It had been so long since they’d last seen each other.

  Lisa had changed into a completely different kind of person. She didn’t need anyone to stick around if they didn’t care about her. Part of her wanted to tell that to Blake, to tell him to screw off.

  It had been a long time since she’d felt that way about another man, and it would be embarrassing to admit it to Blake.

  It’s just the fire, she tried convincing herself. As soon as you two are out of here, his eyes will wander, as they normally do. And you’ll never see him again. You can both move on. From tragedy comes new life, right? You don’t still have feelings for him. Right?

  “I found something else we can eat!” Blake called out suddenly.

  “What?” she answered. “Where? And what about that question you were asking?”

  “Oh I was just being silly. We’re never getting out of here alive,” he said.

  “What?!” she exclaimed.

  “Calm down blondie, I’m just joking.”

  He flashed her one of his gorgeous smiles before grabbing a sleeve of crackers and a rectangle of cheese.

  “We don’t have any knives,” she said.

  “That’s fine, we’ll just use our fingers. I’m pretty strong, remember?”

  Lisa did remember. She remembered Blake pinning her to the bed and the wall, bending her over the piano to make love to her. Even when they weren’t dating, and he was seeing someone else, they were still stealing away into the abandon art classroom to make out, or ducking behind dumpsters to exchange notes.

  When Lisa thought back on it, she realized that might have been kind of crappy of her to allow Blake to cheat on his girlfriend like that. But he didn’t seem to mind, and when they broke up, no one was surprised. That was the kind of person he was; wild and unpredictable, always up for any challenge involving the opposite sex.

  Back in high school, the other kids wouldn’t let Lisa live that down. Those that weren’t her friends berated her, calling her a slut for constantly going back to Blake.

  She kept the relationship a secret from her parents, preferring to meet him up in the middle of the night after sneaking out her bedroom window. It had been hard at first to convince her parents that she preferred sleeping downstairs.

  When they asked her why, she explained that it was much cooler down there and she didn’t feel like she was overheating. Assuming this had something to do with her weight gain, her parents obliged.

  Though she never said anything about it, Lisa was always overly conscious of her weight. She personally had no problem with her body, and found it to be flawless and beautiful. What angered her were the foolish opinions of her peers and family members.

  They were always asking her why she wasn’t eating better, and it took her countless hours to explain to them that she was strong and confident and unchanging.

  “You would just be so much prettier if you shed some of that excess weight gain,” her mother had said once.

  “Do you hear yourself right now?” she’d spat back.

  “Because you sound ridiculous and horrible. I already told you once and I’m going to tell you again—I love my body and there’s nothing you can do to change that.”

  She started wearing low-cut shirts that emphasized her breasts and short cut dresses that accentuated her curves and butt. It felt good to be noticed, to be looked at.

  She’d taken a job at the Vineyard just to pay for her apartment bills but it had turned into something more when she realized the amount of attention people gave her. Her waitress uniform was basically to wear all black; either low-cut or conservative it didn’t matter.

  She made lots of tips based on her bubbly personality and curvy body. Lisa was friendly and kind towards the other servers, even though they were constantly talking behind each other’s backs.

  She found it an easy place to work with, and it was even easier for her to get along with everyone. Everything had been going fine until the fire hit. She’d heard the alarm earlier, but figured it was false.

  People were alway
s starting fires in the kitchen, or leaving their menus on top of candles by accident. They would burn holes in the cloth napkins, tricking the smoke alarm for faulty situations.

  But this time it had been a real fire. It had started in the vineyard, that Lisa was sure of. The inside of the building was relatively safe, even though it was several stories tall and incredibly old.

  The vineyard was old and filled with hundreds of fruit trees that bent their leaves towards the ground. When she was younger, she enjoyed running amongst the groves, stealing fruit that she would later eat in her bedroom. It was the act of sneaking food that caused her to fall in love with consumption.