Richard van der Heyden, Liz’s father, was more impressed with the young man’s prowess on the tennis courts and competitive spirit than anything else. Having been coached from a very young age by his father, Schooner Moore, a former college tennis star, Zac Moore could wield a racquet with power and ease and slam an ace serve that confounded his opponents. The tennis team coach at Bryson College had done everything in his power to persuade Zac to join the team, but to no avail. Zac Moore had no interest in playing team sports. Betting on them was another story.
Elisabeth Pierpont van der Heyden came from impeccable breeding. Her male ancestors were magnates of industry, from transportation to finance, while their female counterparts defined blue blood society. Public persona was everything in the van der Heyden’s world and Liz had a “Manners Tutor” by the time she was three years old. A resident of Darien, Connecticut, Liz’s family home was perched on a point overlooking the Long Island Sound with sweeping views not only of Long Island’s famed Gold Coast, but also the entire Manhattan skyline. What was known as a million dollar view was more like $30 million from the van der Heyden estate.
By high school, Liz’s parents thought it best that their high-spirited and rambunctious daughter be sent to an all-girls boarding school and chose the tony Emma Willard School in upstate New York. Feeling their daughter would get into the least amount of trouble on the pastoral 137 acre campus away from Connecticut’s elite and sometimes trouble prone wealthy teens, the van der Heyden’s were relieved that Liz seemed to settle down and excel academically in her new environment. Unsuspecting, what the van der Heyden’s did not know was why their darling Elisabeth was socially excelling in her new all-girls environment, living out her dream, with teacher and fellow student alike.
One of the things Elisabeth Pierpont van der Heyden and her inseparable college buddy, Zac Moore, had in common was that they both got more pussy than anyone else on campus, and in their first summer in Europe together, Liz and Zac often got to share the same European pussy. Hedonistic teens on the loose with seemingly endless financial resources, they both reveled in how far they could push things without getting caught. In a totally platonic way, Liz and Zac were soul mates.
Unfortunately for Liz, her grandfather, Richard Morgan van der Heyden III was a huge homophobe. The old man never missed an opportunity to spout off about his hatred of the perverse and sick “queers” that were ruining America. The man could go on a gay bashing tirade for hours, enraging Liz as she silently sat plotting his demise with a smile on her face. An untraceable heart-stopping drug in his bourbon was her favorite fantasy.
At family dinners in her grandparent’s home, when her grandfather went off on one of his gay bashing rants, she would excuse herself from the table and go back into the kitchen where she would find the cutest young server girl and lure her into the bathroom. It would take only seconds for Liz to have her hand up the girl’s dress, pushing her underwear aside and fingering her to an explosive orgasm, before Liz would leave the girl in the bathroom, totally spent.
Upon returning to the dinner table, Liz would pick some morsel of food up from her grandfather’s plate and pop it into the old man’s mouth with the same fingers that had just been inside the serving girl. Richard Morgan van der Heyden III thought his oldest granddaughter was adorable and loved how she kidded around with him, popping food into his mouth.
Liz knew this was a perverse fuck you to her grandfather, but it gave her a thrill. The man was in control of her trust fund until her twenty-first birthday, and Zac Moore was all too happy to provide the perfect cover until that time to insure that Liz was not disinherited and written out of the old man’s will.
Even though Liz was “using” him for this purpose, Zac felt that Liz was the first female he’d ever known who didn’t “use” him sexually. She didn’t want to use him for all the things he’d been used for from the time he was thirteen years old. She just wanted to hang out with him. She cared about his happiness and always had his back. Liz van der Heyden was the best friend Zac Moore had ever known, and he was more than happy to help her protect her secret from her uber-bigoted grandfather until her trust was fully in her control. He was always respectfully affectionate to Liz in front of the old man, solidifying the ruse.
On this warm summer’s night, as she and Zac walked the streets of Paris’ Saint-Germain-des-Prés toward her parents flat on Rue du Dragon, Liz pondered the evening they had just spent at Full Moon, a private sex club in the 1st arrondissement.
In typical fashion, women were tripping over themselves to service the tall, handsome American and Zac, while enjoying the pleasure, remained detached. The happiest she’d seen him all evening was when he’d peered behind an animal print curtain and saw a colorfully inked French girl voraciously going down on her. Catching his eye, he looked happy, but it was happy to see her enjoying herself, more than happy to watch two women together — and that was the odd thing. Most men would give up their paychecks to watch two women getting it on. Zac didn’t seem even remotely turned on.
As well as she knew him, Zac remained an enigma in personal relationships. “There is something that has been on my mind for a long time,” she began.
Zac looked down at her. Liz was nearly a foot shorter than him. “Speak, woman.” He hit her with his beautiful smile.
“You are a total douche in all your relationships with women. Do you ever feel anything towards them?”
Looking straight ahead, Zac took a deep breath, seriously considering Liz’ question before answering. Shaking his head, “No. Not really.”
“Why? Why is that Zac?” Liz sounded confused and lost.
“Because they are just using me. They’re getting what they want.”
Putting a hand on his arm, sad for her friend, Liz shook her head, “But are you getting what you want?”
“Sure. I’m getting off.”
“And that is all you want?” Steering him toward a sidewalk table at a quintessential Parisian cafe, she asked, “Don’t you want to connect with someone?”
She had known Zac for close to a year, he lived directly across the hall in her dorm and they had become fast friends right from the start of freshman year. At first, she thought the handsome Californian was just a player and maybe a sex addict, but as they traveled through Europe, she was beginning to wonder if maybe he was protecting his heart. Something just wasn’t adding up with the Zac she knew and loved and his sexual proclivities.
“Now why would I want to do that?” He picked up a menu and focused on its options.
“Zac, you are such a sweetheart.”
“No, I’m not,” he cut her off, his gaze serious and suddenly cold.
“Yes, you are,” Liz protested, pushing her dirty blonde hair over one shoulder, undaunted by his cool air. “You’re a sweetheart to me. I know you would do anything for me.”
“Well, you’re my bud,” his eyes warmed, the glacial blue ice melting immediately.
“And that makes me so different than other females?” Liz looked away for a moment to order two cafe au laits and chouquettes, an irresistible, bite-sized Viennoiserie pastry. As usual, she shocked the waiter with her perfect French accent.
“Yeah, it does. Liz, you’re not using me. I’m not your boy-toy. I’m not someone you use for your pleasure regardless of what it does to me. It’s not about showing me off to gain some social standing.”
“Zac, c’mon, my family thinks you’re my boyfriend. So, in a sense, I am using you for a selfish need.”
“But that is different, Lizard. I’m happy to help you in this situation. I’m your friend - I’ve got your back. I hate that anyone would be prejudiced against you, especially your own family. No one should have an issue with you being happy. And you are not using me sexually with no regard to me.”
“But what about your happiness, Zac? Talk to me. Why are you the way you are? I used to think you were just a player. The ultimate gorgeous guy player. But I don’t think that anymore.” She tried
to read the shadows fleeting across his sky blue eyes, but they breezed by too fast.
“Maybe I am just a player.” He sat back in his chair, stretching out his long legs. Methodically, he pulled apart the chouquette, popping small pieces of the flaky pastry into his mouth. Finally, “I’ve never had a typical sex life.” It was a statement that hung in the night, suspended in the humidity rising from the Seine River. The silence afterwards was more telling than the seven words that preceded it.
Liz remained quiet, waiting for Zac to continue. Moving in his chair, in an attempt to get comfortable, or to shake off the discomfort as he formulated the follow-up to his opening statement.
“I was thirteen the first time I had sex.”
“Wow, that’s pretty young,” Liz met his eyes. Boarding school kids had ample opportunity to explore early, but sex at thirteen was still young.
Zac’s nod was almost imperceptible. “I came home from tennis camp one afternoon and headed straight into the kitchen looking to ransack the refrigerator. I heard noise out on the back deck and went outside. My mom had a few friends over, three ladies I had never met. They were drinking wine and playing cards and laughing about something. I was introduced to the women and went back into the house to go shower. As I was leaving, I heard them saying to my mom how cute I was and that I looked like a little clone of my dad,” he took a sip of his latte. “I went upstairs to my bathroom and peeled off my clothes. I was totally sweaty and gross from playing tennis on outdoor courts all day. Just as I was about to step into the shower, I heard the doorknob turn. I remember being surprised because my bathroom was upstairs. The door opened and one of the women I had just met stepped into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. I froze. The towels were on the other side of the bathroom and I was just standing there naked. I remember feeling my face get all hot and she told me not to be embarrassed, that I was bigger than many men she had been with. It took me a minute to realize she was talking about the size of my dick,” he laughed, shaking his head. “She came up close to me and I started to get hard. She took my face in both of her hands and began to kiss me. I got so turned on by what her tongue was doing in my mouth and I could feel my cock start to ache. She started stroking me and told me to try not to come. I thought I was going to explode at the first stroke. And then she bent over the bathroom counter and lifted her skirt. She wasn’t wearing any underwear and her pussy was shaved clean. She stuck her ass out and spread her legs. She told me to come close and she reached behind and guided me into her pussy. It was so warm and wet. She told me to press as deeply into her as I could and stay still. I did what she told me to, and she started squeezing me with her pussy muscles. I came right away. She asked me if I was interested in fucking her again. I couldn’t even speak. I just nodded. She told me next time to masturbate first so that I could last longer when she came to me. The following week, my mother had the ladies over for cards and I ran upstairs and rubbed one out quickly before she came up. She came into the bathroom and bent over the counter, flipping her skirt up. She didn’t say a word, just stuck her ass out and spread her legs. I rammed my cock into her and fucked her as hard as I could. After my shower, I went downstairs and looked out the glass doors. From the angle I was at, I could see up her skirt. When she saw me through the window, she spread her legs. It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. An hour later she came back upstairs and we did it again.”
“You were having unprotected sex with your mother’s friend?”
He nodded, “And I was thirteen, so the consequences never even crossed my mind. I’m sure she was on the pill, but holy crap.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, it went on for a while. It even happened at a party my parents threw, with her husband there. I was so jealous when she went back downstairs and was hanging all over her husband. I was thirteen, I had no idea how to make sense of what I was feeling or what it even was that I was doing with her. It felt good and I craved it and I wanted to fuck her all the time.”
“So, what happened?” Liz’s tone was a cross between, don’t tell me anymore and tell me everything.
“A few weeks later I saw her coming out of the bathroom at the tennis club with one of the pros and I knew she had fucked him. I was pissed and the next week I didn’t come home in the afternoon when I knew she was at the house,” he laughed. “I was going to show her I was not going to be there whenever she wanted me. The week after that, I got the nerve up to go back home on the day I knew she would be there and when I got there, I totally ignored her and spent time talking to another friend of my mom’s, LuAnn, who had just started to play tennis. I told her I’d be happy to hit balls with her anytime. Maddie, the woman I was fucking, was in a snit. She came up to my room and I had locked the door. The next week I hit balls with LuAnn and spent the next two years fucking her until I went to Exeter.”
“You were a victim of sexual abuse, Zac.”
“I never saw it that way, it was just the norm for me. So sex was about getting used for me. When I was seventeen, I didn’t go to Exeter for a semester, I was home going to public school in Newport Beach. My mom’s friends were all over me like flies on shit. I was sleeping with three of them. After I went back to Exeter, my dad saw one of them talking to me when I was home on spring break and figured it out.”
“What happened?” Liz’s blue were wide, alarms blaring.
Zac laughed. “You know my dad, he can be pretty intense. He went apeshit all over this woman and threatened to expose her and the others as pedophiles, totally ruin them in Orange County. He was actually pretty awesome and it wasn’t until he and his wife, Mia, and my grandparents flipped out about it that it really occurred to me how fucked up my sexual life had been and how fucked up I am because of it. I don’t know right from wrong sexually, Liz. I have no compass.”
“What about girls our age? Did you ever have a girlfriend?” Liz’s brows were knit in a hard line as she stared at her handsome friend. This was a guy who could have any girl he desired. There wasn’t a co-ed on their college campus who didn’t want to be his girlfriend.
Shaking his head, no. “They wanted to show me off. It was never about me. It was just about them being cooler or more popular because they were with me. They used me. I used them.” Zac shrugged, taking another sip of his latte.
“Have you ever been in love?”
Again, Zac shook his head, no.
“Do you want to be?” Liz was relentless in trying to understand her friend’s dysfunction.
Zac smiled. “If you had asked me this question a few years ago, I would have said no.”
“And now?” There was a sparkle in Liz’s pixie face. Maybe her friend could be fixed.
“Maybe.”
“What changed it?”
“I think seeing my dad and Mia together and the way they are with their kids. When he was married to my mom, they didn’t have that kind of relationship. They co-existed and I guess, to some degree, we all co-existed as a family. But when you are with my dad and Mia, there’s this magic around and I think it’s because they love each other and the kids so much. They are a family,” he paused and corrected himself, “we are a family. And my little brother and sister, Nathaniel and Portia, are so stinking cute.”
“You want what they have?”
This time Zac shook his head, yes. “Maybe. I want to be a part of something. I didn’t know it existed, Liz, but it does. When we’re together, I’m a part of something and Nathaniel and Portia just love me unconditionally. I can do no wrong with them. And I love them, in a way that was foreign to me when they first came into my life. I would fuck up someone who tried to hurt them.”
“You didn’t have that growing up?”
“No. I’m not saying my parents were bad parents, because they weren’t. We were just more fragmented. Like little islands. I mean I know they loved me and I’ve got a good relationship with my older sister, Holly. But there just wasn’t the right glue holding us together, if that makes se
nse.” The ancient pain of loneliness was skirting the edge of his eyes.
“Was it hard seeing your father have it with another woman and another family?”
“Understatement. I hated Mia when I met her. And I hated my dad, too. They had this thing that he never gave us when I was growing up and I really hated them for having it. I wanted to destroy them, Liz. I wanted to make him choose. But it turned out I was the only one on the outside. And I’d put myself there. Somehow, they forgave me for being the ultimate douche and they made me a part of the family, they included me. They let me in,” Zac struggled to express himself.
“Families really fuck us up,” Liz observed. “But you’re right, from the time I’ve spent with them out at the beach house on Fire Island, your dad and Mia make it seem like maybe it’s not all one big fairytale, that the whole love thing can be real. And you and Holly fit right in. It never felt like you were the ‘other’ family.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, Liz processing Zac’s secrets. Shaking her head, “Here’s what I don’t understand, Zac, how did your parents not know you were having sex with your mom’s friends?”
“I am the master of duplicity, Lizard.” Zac laughed at his own cunning. “I still am. You know me. I can con anyone out of anything.”
They fell silent for a few minutes before Liz continued, “You know you need to try a real relationship, Zac, not just this sex using shit.” When he remained silent, she went on. “You don’t want to get hurt, do you?”
“Maybe,” he shook his head, “Or maybe I don’t want to really know that I’m not capable of loving someone.”
Throwing a napkin at him, Liz laughed. “Get over that, dude. You’re really good at loving. I know how much you love me. You just admitted how much you love Nathaniel and Portia. You just need to be open to it.”
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