Cabin In The Woods

by Kristine Robinson

  "I'm going to be late for my next class," she said simply, kissing them each tenderly before sneaking out of the classroom discreetly. "Thank you."

  But it was too late to be discreet.

  <>

  By the time Ava woke up the next day, her phone was already lit up by endless missed calls and messages from friends and family alike.

  Just then the phone started ringing again – one of her classmates – and she answered still half asleep.

  “Yeah?” she asked, not bothering with the formalities of a ‘proper’ greeting.

  “Ava – Jesus – finally. We’ve been trying to get hold of you all day! Are you mad?” the girl on the other end was talking way too fast.

  “What’s going on? Slow down…”

  “You really did it this time…”

  “What are you talking about?” Ava was still confused.

  “Turn on the news, damn it! Where have you been?” the girl insisted and Ava obliged, reaching over for the remote next to her bed. She didn’t even have to flip through a lot of channels to find what she is looking for – it was on every news channel. To her horror, she was met by her own face plastered all over the screen.

  “Shit,” she mumbled, ending the call and dropping the phone on her bed as she turned up the volume on the television.

  Damn the era of cellphones, she thought angrily as she watched the clip on the tv repeat endlessly on loop. Someone did see them in the classroom yesterday – even worse, they had filmed them. Without the context of what was actually being said at the time, it just looked like dodgy fooling around and the two tennis players taking advantage of her inappropriately on a teacher’s desk. The clip went on longer than she would’ve liked, cheapening the whole scene of them confessing their feelings.

  She felt sick to her stomach. She wanted to hide away from the world forever, but there was no way. Her parents aren’t home luckily. At least seven of the missed calls on her phone are from them but she ignored it. The last thing she wanted to do was deal with them right now.

  The phone began ringing again and she noticed the local number. She answered reluctantly.

  It was the school – the dean wanted to see her.

  She had no choice but to get dressed and try and brave all the accusing looks on campus as she made her way to the dean’s office. Everyone knew or at least, everyone thought they knew. She wanted to explain that they were wrong, that it was real, that it wasn’t what it looked like – but there was no point. Everyone loved a good scandal – especially if it involved anyone from the presidential family. The timing couldn’t be better (or worse in her case).

  The meeting went as expected. The dean looked at her reproachfully, judgmentally but to her credit, kept to the formalities, informing Ava that there was an investigation pending and that she had been put on probation until the school could decide what they were going to do with her.

  Ava left without saying a word, doing her walk of shame back to the car, hanging her head low as looks from all side cheapened her reality.

  For the umpteenth time that day she tried to call Leah and Haley, both phones just ringing. Her desperate messages also remained unanswered and she felt abandoned in this mess.

  She didn’t know what was worse, having to deal with the scandal or feeling so alone. They were her world but now they weren’t there when she needed them most.

  The only answer she got was a voicemail recording – aka no answer at all. She thought they would have her back but clearly, she was mistaken. It was everyone for themselves. She felt betrayed, used.

  As expected, her father was furious and he was waiting at home when she got back from her meeting with the dean. He had cut his trip short to come tell her in person how she had ruined his re-election chances.

  “Bloody hell, Ava – how could you do this to me? So close to the election. This is the last thing I needed. How could you be so selfish?” he went straight into an attack without so much as a hello. She had never seen him this angry. But she didn’t care.

  She didn’t answer. She felt terrible, but not because of ruining her father’s career – but because she felt abandoned by the people who said they cared so much about her.

  Her father only cared for himself though and showed no compassion for her situation or heartbreak. It just made her hate him even more.

  “I told you this would happen if you let yourself be led astray by those silly girls. Now you look like a cheap whore, a fool really – and my chances of being president are ruined. I hope you’re happy with yourself!” he was screaming but she wasn’t reacting.

  All she could think about was Leah and Haley, wanting to be with them more than anything else. At least wanting to hear their voices, for them to tell her that it was all going to be okay. But the WhatsApp group remained silent, her phone calls unanswered ‘missed calls’.

  The scandal raged in full force for over a week; the media was simply not letting down. It was a story too juicy to let go and every channel sensationalized it even more, adding bits and pieces of speculation. Every acquaintance was quoted as a ‘source’ and everyone claimed to have ‘inside info’ of the three-way the press called ‘the juiciest scandal ever caused by a president’s offspring’. Not the catchiest headline but nobody cared about journalistic style at this point.

  Her parents weren’t talking to her and her father placed her under unofficial house arrest. Being suspended from school, she had nowhere to go and nothing to do but watch the news, sinking further into her depression as she watched the country scandalize her romance. They had it so wrong but how could she expect anyone to understand. Right now she didn’t even understand herself. She thought she did. But that was before she was ‘abandoned’.

  She tried their numbers every day but to no avail – she had officially been kicked out of the group (or at least that is what it felt like).

  Eventually, she stopped even trying. She was in this alone. It was her own stupidity, thinking that it ever meant anything; that she was more to them than just a simple conquest – corrupting the president's daughter, what a silly girl she had been. How could she have fallen for their charming advances?

  Ava just stayed in bed all day, refusing to eat or see anyone. The days dragged by slowly, blurring together in a dark cloud.

  A knock sounded on her door but she ignored it the same way she’s ignored the outside world as of late. It persisted.

  “Go away!” she shouted eventually.

  “Ava – open up, please!” a familiar voice whispered urgently and she froze, not knowing what to say. It was the last person she expected to be outside her door.

  “Let us explain, Ava,” Leah added, whispering through the door.

  Ava got up and let in the girls she had given up ever seeing again.

  She still didn’t say anything, though, just closed the door behind them.

  “Ava…” Haley started, reaching out for her but Ava pulled away. As happy as she was to see them, she couldn’t forget the abandonment of this week.

  “How did you get in here?” she finally said – bitterly.

  “Haley bribed one of the kitchen staff to let us in the back. Don’t worry – nobody saw us.”

  “I’m not worried about who saw, but you clearly are,” Ava turned around to walk back to her bed.

  “Ava, please – it’s not like that,” Leah said, grabbing her arm but Ava shook her loose.

  “Don’t touch me. I don’t know what you expect from me. You’ve had your fun; you’ve disgraced the president’s daughter. You can move on now,” she spat at them.

  “Surely you don’t believe that?” Haley said, staring at her desperately.

  "I don't know what to believe anymore quite honestly. You tell me you like me and then you just shut me out when I need you most. I thought we were more than that but clearly, I was a fool," she walked towards the window, turning her back on them, trying to hide the tears that crept down her cheeks.

  “Ava, we wante
d to call you, we really did. But the dean forbade us from making any contact. Our scholarships are on the line here. We had to break everything off immediately. Our parents were monitoring our phones… Trust me, you were all we thought about but we weren't even allowed to contact each other. We had to wait for a good time, for the storm to blow over a bit. There was nothing we could do for you or each other – we had to try and fight our own battles. I'm so sorry, Ava. Our hands were tied. This week has been so brutal," Haley carefully slipped a familiar arm around Ava, hugging her close. She didn't push her away this time.

  Ava didn’t say anything.

  “We’ve been trying to figure out how to turn this around, to make it seem less like a scandal,” Leah said, walking over to the window too and wrapping Ava in her arms. “We wanted to find a way for us to be together – for good this time.”

  “There is no way,” Ava mumbled through the tears.

  “Oh darling, don’t cry – it will be okay, I promise,” Leah kissed away her tears kindly.

  “We have a plan,” Haley said, holding her tight.

  “I missed you so much,” Ava admitted. “I thought I imagined the whole thing – that you were never coming back…”

  “Of course we were coming back! We just had to wait for the right time. We’re never giving you up,” Leah kissed her deeply, pushing a stray strand of hair from her face. “Don’t cry, dearest. Trust me.”

  <>

  The girls weren't lying just to get Ava to stop crying – they did, in fact, have a plan. Much to everyone's surprise, the trio called a press conference the following week. The president protested against it, as did all their parents (even the school), but they were determined.

  Media from all over the country were in attendance, the room bursting out of its seemed as everyone tried to get a piece of the scandal the world had been following so closely.

  But none of them could have expected what happened next.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Haley started. “We understand things have gotten a bit out of hand lately and we’d like to set the record straight.”

  She took Ava’s hand on one side and Leah’s on the other.

  "It might not be conventional, but we'd like to announce that we are officially ‘coming out' as being in a polygamous relationship with one another. I understand it's a bit different, but it is still valid and I ask you to respect our private lives.”

  “I’d like to formally apologize to the university for our misconduct in the past, and the subsequent scandal,” Ava continued. “But I’d also like to remind the public that an invasion of privacy for a good story is never in good taste. So please respect our feeling and our privacy in future.”

  “We don’t apologize for caring about each other, however. Only for the way in which we went about this relationship initially. We were just trying to figure it ourselves,” Leah added, squeezing Haley’s hand tightly. “We have hidden it from ourselves and everyone else for too long. We don’t want to hide anymore. We want to live our lives and have a chance to be happy – just like everyone else.”

  “I urge you not to let this reflect your view on my father. My actions hold no influence over him – he is his own man and his actions reflect that. Please allow me to be my own person. I’m just a normal 21-year old trying to find happiness. And I have. I ask that you allow me to be free to live my life,” Ava concluded.

  They turned to one another, smiling. Ava kissed Haley passionately before turning to Leah and kissing her too. The cameras went wild as the trio hugged one another close.

  Instead of the endless questions they expected, the crowd started cheering!

  “I suppose I wasn’t such a bad girl, after all,” Ava grinned as they walked out of the room, arm in arm.

  “We’ll have to see about that,” Haley shot Leah a knowing look, grabbing Ava’s ass.

  Two Loves

  ~ Bonus Story ~

  A New Adult Lesbian Menage

  The love of my life left me. She vanished into the world without even a whisper my way, leaving me alone, discarded and crushed. How do you cope with someone just dumping you like that? What should you do, when you love them, but hate them for what they've done?

  Not much, I can tell you. I eventually patched up the pieces of my heart and got with someone else. She's the older sister known as Jaimie Gold, and has the strut, the attitude, and a vibe about her that I love. She lights up those dark places, and I find myself growing to love her.

  I'm happy with the way things are... until Leona Gold comes back, three years later, bringing all the unanswered questions with her. Bringing back the memories I had never truly forgotten...

  * * *

  Chapter One

  Oil spits in my face, and I flinch back from the frying pan as it fizzles and crackles. The bacon cooks nicely, but I always get afraid it's going to leap out the pan and burn my arm when the meat cooks. Jaimie thinks I'm a , of course, with the way I stand at maximum distance from the hob, but it's for a good reason. I've already had my fair share of burns, which show in the raw patches of flesh on my hands. One scar came from catching the top of my skin in the grill – the moment I found out what cooked human skin smelled like.

  Never again.

  The other on my palm comes from my disastrous attempt to heat butter in a microwave. The kind of butter in metal wrapping.

  My advice: don't do that. Ever. Not unless you want to burn your house down. Thankfully, I'm a little more competent nowadays when it comes to food, enough to cook my long-term girlfriend a delicious breakfast. She's usually a nightmare to wake up in the mornings, but give her one whiff of cooked bacon and she's tumbling down the stairs like an enthusiastic puppy.

  Sure enough, Jaimie thumps to the kitchen and gives me a huge smile as I'm trying to fish out the bacon from the pan to plop it in a bowl. I take the pan off the hob, preparing to drop another round of meat inside it, when Jaimie approaches me from behind, wraps her arms around me and nuzzles into my neck, past long strands of blonde hair. When she catches me by surprise like this, it never fails to send tiny spasms in my body, which can be a little dangerous when I'm in the middle of cooking something. I need to concentrate, after all, and I'm not concentrating when there's a gorgeous woman pressed into my back.

  “Hey, Lola,” she breathes, the hot air sending shivers down my spine. I close my eyes, relaxing into her touch. “Look at you dancing around the kitchen. I love seeing you so happy... it works me up.”

  I feel her breasts rub into my shoulder blades and her hips rub against me. Her hands slide to my chest, secured in a c-cup bra, and there's the brief tang of pleasure, before I laugh and swat her off. “No, Jaimie. We've got things to do and food to eat. Wait until later.” I look into her dark blue eyes, framed by glossy dark hair. She lets out a sigh. She's beautiful, of course, built solid, with broad shoulders that hide a great strength, and she's a good soul. Her long eyelashes protrude out of hooded eyes that give her a permanently sleepy look, which I find arousing. She has luscious and edible lips, plump and big compared to mine – but the best thing has to be when she smiles, and the dimples appear in her cheeks. There's a small tattoo on her neck which depicts a raven flying – representing the dream she holds inside of flying free. She's fucking gorgeous, and she knows it. It always leaks out in her body language, drawing people to her like a magnet. Even if I never knew her, I know that if I sat in a bar and saw someone like her strut in, all my attention would be on her.

  I would be a moth to a flame.

  She kisses me on the cheek, before saying, “Fair play. There's something I need to tell you, anyway. Might put you off the mood.”

  The wavering tone of voice makes me stare at her in concern. “Is everything okay?”

  “Let's get some food down our gullets first before I tell you.”

  Curious, I hurry up with cooking the rest of the bacon, and then place our plates on the table, full with scrambled egg, buttered bread, sausages and bacon. She eats l
ike a starving man, even though the last time she ate was seven hours ago, reminding me again of the bottomless pit she resembles when it comes to good food. I pick at my food with a knife and fork, disliking getting grease on my fingers. I examine Jaimie all the while, thinking about the night we had shared, where she came onto me as I was sleeping, and I had thought, for most of the incident, that her grinding on top of me was a dream, a wonderful dream.

  A dream, of course, that brought an orgasm, and for me to wake up fully before it happened and realize my wonderful reality. It excited me to be taken in that fashion, to feel her fingers slip against me, and her silent efforts to bring me to climax. Nothing like a hot girlfriend to put every ounce of effort into eliciting the best sounds from you, to have your body toss and turn and writhe under the sheets at the tantalizing, shivering contact given. It's not often as well that she chooses to be so gentle that her hands are like feathers, tickling my skin.