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Blue Moon 2.4

by Donna Lamb

They decided to eat HotPockets before, or while, drinking. Joel put three of the panzerotti on a cookie sheet, one cheese-and-sun-dried tomato for her and two ham-and-turkey-club for him. Richard mixed a pitcher of weak screwdrivers while she worked at the oven.

She's a girl, he kept thinking. How could that happen? Has she always been a girl? But no, he'd seen Joel naked or nearly so often enough over the last two or three years to be certain. Plus, they'd been in college together years ago and had shared a room there after Richard got cut from the wrestling team for not having enough killer instinct. It had taken him four years of high school and two of college to find out he didn't really like hurting people. Should have gone out for baseball, he thought, trying to distract himself from thinking about Joel naked. The flash of breasts she'd shown him earlier seemed burned into his brain.

He took a drink from the pitcher then poured each of them a tall glass over ice.

Joel smiled at him when he handed the drink to her and his dick got hard immediately. Down boy, he scolded mentally, that's Joel. But his wolf-mind wasn't having any of that, it smelled girl and tried to put the charm in gear. "Here you go," he said, resisting his impulse. "Not too sweet, not too strong." Inanity might be the best defense.

Joel sipped. "Mmm. Good. I don't drink much. Well, you know that." Lame, she thought, then, Well, what do I care? She couldn't figure out why looking at Richard made her nervous now; or rather, she didn't want to figure it out. She couldn't possibly be attracted to him, she just knew that.

"How do you think this happened?" he asked at the same time that she announced, "I'm not at all attracted to you."

She took another drink.

He stared at her for a moment.

"You made a wish," she said. "It's a Blue Moon, maybe someone was listening?"

He didn't remember making a wish but he said, "That can't be it. Wishes don't get granted by magical fairies listening at the windows, not anymore. If they ever did. We are not characters in a Disney movie."

She giggled and took another sip of the juice and vodka. Did I just giggle like a girl? she wondered. She took another sip.

Richard turned away and sat at the kitchen table so Joel couldn't see the tent in his pants. She's flirting with me. No, she's not, Joel doesn't know how to flirt. I don't want Joel to be flirting with me. He took a sip. "I don't remember making a wish," he said.

She half-closed one eye, thinking. "You said, 'I wish I were going to sleep with a b-beautiful girl tonight!'" She blinked rapidly, took another drink and glared at him. "Then I turned into a girl, so it's all your fault!"

"I didn't say that!"

"Yes, you did!"

"No," said Richard. "I said, "Wouldn't you like to sleep with a beautiful girl tonight?' I think." He frowned, wondering just what he had said.

She shook her head, not looking at him, wondering if he'd somehow made her drink more potent because the world seemed to be getting that bright but fuzzy edge that goes with the first level of being drunk. If I start talking loud, I know I'm in trouble, she told herself. "Do you think I'm beautiful?" she asked, louder than she intended.

Richard knew he looked most like Charlie Sheen when he tried to keep cool after a girl made a pass at him. This had good points and bad points. At his most-Charlie, he knew it could never be wrong, no matter how outlandish the circumstances, to tell a girl that you thought her beautiful. Especially, he realized, if it were true.

"Yes," he said, with a small, confident smile. "Yes, you're beautiful."

Joel drained the rest of her drink and burst into tears.