Page 1 of Force At Third

She’s Back

1

Gwendolyn York was the object of my teenage obsession and the cause of every hard-on that I ever got at the most inopportune moments, starting the first time I ever saw her.

It was the first day of my sophomore year at Walton High. I was in the gym when she—the new girl—brushed against me as she walked in with the girls’ soccer team, heading toward their locker room. She then turned and looked me up and down while walking backward, objectifying me in the most appreciative way.

I stood there, feeling a grin spread across my face as I looked her over the same way she was me. Thick, long, light brown hair with natural blonde highlights kissed by the sun and not by Ms. Sally down at Southern Beauty salon on Main Street, all knotted up on top of her head. She was about five-foot-six, a hundred pounds and twenty, but maybe more, and seeing her calves and arms were muscular and cut, and her ass … an onion, it literally brought tears to my eyes.

But enough about my eyes. Her eyes were stunning, a blue-gray. Her lips were so damn full, and I knew I needed to kiss them ASAP. I was utterly mesmerized.

“New bitch, that’s my boyfriend.” Shelby Shutter, my girlfriend at the time, shoved Gwendolyn on her ass.

Gwendolyn York sprang up off the ground, like the strong, beautiful little troublemaker I learned she is, before anyone could react. She then stepped at Shelby, taunting, “Not for long.” She did this all while looking thoroughly amused, and then stepped backward, smiling at me.

I’m sure I looked like one of those cartoon characters with the heart eyes, birds chirping overhead, the whole bit, and then …

“Locke,” Danny hissed.

Thinking he was struggling, I glanced down but could not see him. However, I did see my ball shorts tented up like Barnum and Bailey’s Circus had claimed ground there instead of on the edge of town, as they did annually.

“You mind getting your fucking dick out of my face?”

It wouldn’t have been so bad if Coach hadn’t also seen me.

“Kid, you want to pitch something? Grab a ball and your glove and get out on the field, for God’s sake.”

He didn’t give me a second to reply, not that I could have denied I was hard if I wanted to, as he sprinted toward the locker room when someone yelled, “Girl fight!”

Shelby and her three closest friends exited the locker room with bloody noses.

Shit, I thought as Gwen stepped through the doorway with her thick as fuck hair hanging down past her shoulders, no longer in the knot on top of her head, with a smug-ass look on her pretty face.

Ms. Toomer, the girls’ gym teacher, pulled Whitley Belington, the preacher’s granddaughter, aside as she tried to sneak out of the locker room and questioned her.

After practice, on our way home, Coach—or Dad as I call him when not at school or on the field—said to me, “We need to discuss something before we get to the house.”

“You teach health class.” I paused, unable to keep a straight face. “You, of all people, should know that young men my age sometimes have things pop up occasionally.”

“Leland,” he sighed heavily.

“One day, I’ll have better control,” I assured him, again trying not to laugh.

“I’m sure Danny Aiken would appreciate that,” he huffed. “But that’s neither here nor there, son. Your girlfriend, the shit she and her friends pulled on the new girl?—”

“Gwendolyn York,” I say her name, which I knew by the end of the first class I had after the fight, and I loved how it sounded.

“Will you focus?” He turned down our street.

“I’ll do my best, Pops.”

He rolled his eyes. “What they displayed was bully behavior. Four-on-one is not acceptable.”

“Not going to disagree at all. But I will point out that Gwendolyn York handled it?—”

“Will you quit saying her name like that before you have another situation in your shorts? We’re just about home.”

“It’s a name that deserves to be said like?—”

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