The fist of her boyfriend was knocking at the front door of Elena to sound like a sledgehammer to Gezza after the climax.
"Elena! Open the damn door!" The voice was bass, aggravated, and farther than comfortable.
Gezza stood still on the couch with his sweat-slicked flesh adhering to the leather and the air still reeking of jasmine and sex.
and Elena was pressed up against him, with her warm body, her breath tickling his neck, but her eyes were narrower, as the knocking became more and more insistent.
The candlelight flickered on her face, and made her irritation in harsh lines.
"Ugh, it is only Mike", She said to Gezza, throwing her wet hair with a flick that carried a scent of coconut shampoo in the direction of Gezza.
"He's early. Always such a buzzkill." She clapped her eyes on Gezza and her nails pierced his flesh as she was asserting her possession. "Stay. He can wait."
Gezza gave a backflip in her heart, one half with panic, one half with her. Stay? With Elena Martinez? His mind run to his basement posters, those smooth goddesses he was used to worshipping.
This was good--as real, warm, and naked in his arms.
But the voice of Mike came in again, screaming of who was there, and the inner coward in Gezza roused.
"Oh, I guess I ought, y'know, bounce," he stammered, and was already getting himself off the couch.
His sweatpants were a tangled mess on the floor and he pulled them up, gritting his teeth as the material caught up on his still sensitive skin.
Her lips were full and shiny in dim light as Elena pouted. "You sure? We're not done."
She could sing honey, honey rich with promises and his knees were weak.
However, the door was rattling as though Mike would smash it open, and Gezza was not the kind of guy to engage in a fistfight.
"Backdoor, backdoor it is", mumbled him, with his hoodie on his arm, and his legs flailing toward the kitchen.
The rear door creaked and he crept out into the chilly night air where the grass was wet to his sneakers, and smelled of fresh dew and cut lawn.
The back yard of the house was a labyrinth of patio furniture and yoga mats that were hung to dry, casting their shapes in the moonlight as ghosts.
He crouched down and his heart raced as he heard the shouts of Mike on the front. "You with someone, Elena? I swear"-- This was interrupted by a sharp retort of hers, which was something about the necessity of space.
The exhilaration of his conquest drowned all sense of guilt in Gezza, who smirked. Screw you, Mike. I just banged your girl.
The idea swelled up his chest, and changed his normal stoop to a swagger which he himself was not aware of possessing.
Their drama did not matter to him. Hell, he was hardly concerned with anything other than the fact that he had just had his dirtiest fantasy.
It was all real, the moans of Elena, her oily skin, and the way in which she had gazed at him as though he were a god.
The Playbook was the genuine article. He snuck over a fence whose wood was brushing his palm, and crawled into his backyard to the feel of the home-welcoming stench of trash-filled garbage bins.
The door of the basement moaned as he tapped down the steps.
His mother was in the kitchen banging pots, as though she were trying out in a metal band. "Gerald! Where you been?" Hollered, sharp as a knife, she said. Gezza looked up, and saw her peering over a heap of soiled crockery. Her hair was grayed, and her apron was spotted with tomato sauce, and the odour of it mingled with the slight bleach aroma of the sink.
"just, uh, taking out the garbage, Ma," he told a lie, he couldn't help but smile and split my face.
It was as though he had won the lottery of hell--he still saw the curves of Elena imprinted on his mind, and felt her touch as a ghost.
The eyes of his mom were drawn up and her spoon stopped in mid-stir. "You look like you have just discovered a million dollars, boy. What's got you so smug?"
"Nothin, just... good day," said he, grabbing down the stairs before she could ride him.
Good day? Minority of the century. He had made it with the hottest girl in the block, and all that was due to the weird book.
His basement looked the same, dusty garments, nacho chip crumbs and his feet, swimsuit posters glaring down at him like a council of disillusioned queens.
The atmosphere had been cloying and heavy with the foul odour of sweaty socks and power drinks. Gezza didn't care.
He fished out the Playbook. Its leather cover was warmer than it ought to be and the runes shone on him dimly in the light of his desk lamp as they winked at him.
He opened it, the pages crackling and there it was, Elena Martinez, the ink still faintly glimmering.
He needed more. Many more names, many more women, many more of that kind of rush.
He was fantasizing--all of his crushes, all his untouchable babies that he had seen on the Internet or on the street.
He took a pen, his hands shook with excited greediness, and began to write. Mia, the high school influencer. No, no--still no page--the ink not going. Victoria, the hot CEO of the temp job. Nothing. No ink glimmering, He scowled and turned the instructions back again: Full name, or the Playbook denies you.
"Son of a--" he swore, putting down the pen. Of course. He had known the full name of Elena as he had been sneaking up to her mailbox at some time or another in one of his walks.
But the others? Fair faces, physiques, Twitter accounts.
He was waiting to get the details before his pervy dreams came true.
Gezza pulled back, and creaking in his chair, gazed at the poster of Miss July. Her smirk seemed to mock him. Work for it, loser.
Work? Gezza didn't do work. But for this? To harem goddesses on his command? He'd play detective.
He drew his laptop, the screen still aglow with the incognito tab left open last night: Busty Babes Vol. 47 stood motionless in mock.
He shut it, he was still racing with his heart after Elena, and he opened social media.
Time to stalk--er, research. The profile of Mia was not a hard find, but her last name? In her follower list or old posts, buried somewhere. Victoria? Likely on LinkedIn or in some company platform.
He would have to excavate, perhaps he would have to abandon the basement. It was something he did not want to think, yet the picture of Elena scratching his skin was worth it.
Gezza grinned and was plotting. He would smash into the coffee shop, gym, wherever hot women left their names.
He would even flatter a receptionist, hell.
The Playbook had been his ticket to paradise and he was not going one score. However, when he used his list of targets, barista, girl in gym, that one Twitch streamer, a shiver went through him.
The pages of the book rustled themselves, whispering, it seemed to him, but not much to be heard. "The Playbook takes." Too high on his win he was able to shake it off.
All the noises his mom made up the stairs were more clamorous, and the voice made it: "Gerald, you better not be about no good down there!"