Getting her parents to buy her a car had been easy for Stephanie. Having done well enough in high school to qualify for studying toward a degree in accounting she knew that if she put the idea in her father's head it would only be a matter of time before he took a liking to the idea and steamrolled her mother into going along with it. As Stephanie predicted, Jo-Ann had no enthusiasm for the idea of buying her a car. Stephanie's bursary from KPMG was only covering half of her fees and if she failed they would have to pay the bursary back in full with interest, purchasing another car was a financial obligation they couldn't afford to assume. Jo-Ann put up the strongest resistance she could, pointing out to her husband how tight their finances were and the fact that Stephanie could easily get to and from university using the bus. But Michael wouldn't be swayed, he argued that Stephanie deserved a reward for all of her hard work and if they bought her something cheap then it wouldn't be the financial burden that Jo-Ann was saying it would be. As Stephanie predicted, Jo-Ann couldn't handle the pressure of standing against Michael and Stephanie and inevitably she caved. It had always been only a matter of time before she'd gotten what she wanted, so when her parents came home with an old VW Golf that had come in as a trade-in at the dealership Stephanie had to do her best to act completely surprised.
"Is this...for me?" She asked tentatively when she went to meet her parents outside.
"Yes, that's your car," replied Michael.
Seeing the car before her, Stephanie became overwhelmed by genuine emotion and started shedding real tears, which brought Michael, who loved nothing more than seeing his daughter happy, to tears as well.
"Do you want to take it for a drive?" Michael asked his daughter.
"YES! YES! YES! GIMME THE KEYS! GIMME THE KEYS!"
Michael tossed her the keys and the two of them jumped in the car and set off. Left behind, Jo-Ann went into the house to change out of her work clothes and have a cigarette while she waited for The Bold and the Beautiful to start.
Stephanie's plan for the day when she went to take care of her enrollment was to drive to Marianridge to pick up Laurelle and their boyfriends Angel and Ricky, then go straight to Glendale to get their enrollment out of the way so they could have the rest of the day all to themselves. Stephanie and Laurelle had been best friends since they were four years old and had forged a bond that had not weakened in all the years since, not even after Michael insisted the family move from Marianridge to The Bluff for the sake of their children (Stephanie). They were friends but they weren't equals; Stephanie was the dominant one in the relationship, she was the smarter of the two by some margin and had more than established her dominance by being the one who got them out of trouble whenever they got into a scrape with their parents, the primary example of which being the time when Laurelle consumed a spiked drink in a nightclub and had to be rushed to hospital in an ambulance, where parents were contacted and anger overflowed. It took Stephanie weeks to get them out of that one, ultimately she was able to do so by locking herself up in her room and refusing to eat or go to school, which caused Michael's concern for his daughter's wellbeing to outweigh his anger over her duplicity.
After picking up Laurelle at her house, they spent the short drive to where their boyfriends were waiting for them discussing the news that Laurelle had for Stephanie, which was that Ricky and Angel had gone to their favorite nightclub Zoom the previous night without them, and that at the club one of their friends, Raydin, had walked in and seen his girlfriend Claudine kissing their other friend Bradley, the end result of which was a brawl outside in the alley where Raydin split Bradley's head wide open with a knuckle duster. Hearing what they'd missed, Stephanie became furious, so furious that when they arrived at the public housing flat where Ricky lived with his mother her enthusiasm for seeing her boyfriend was a fraction of what it had been just moments earlier. Laurelle's boyfriend Ricky emerged from the flat first and as always he was impeccably groomed and well dressed in jeans and a tight T-shirt that accentuated his gym-built body. Angel was the polar opposite. He was wearing a cap to hide the fact that he hadn't bothered to brush his hair, a pair of tattered tracksuit pants, slippers, and no shirt, proudly displaying the angel tattoo that covered his torso with its wings spread out across his chest. Seeing him looking so shabby, Stephanie's anger escalated to volcanic fury.
"Hey babe," Angel said as he got into the passenger's seat. He made himself comfortable and went in for a kiss from his girlfriend having failed to notice her displeasure.
"Hey," Stephanie said coldly, reluctantly giving him her cheek.
His breath smelled of old beer and from the moment he entered the car it was apparent that he hadn't showered. Stephanie was disgusted by the state of her boyfriend, the only reason she resisted the impulse to cringe was her remaining wish to spend the day with him. Only after pulling away from Stephanie having kissed her on the cheek did Angel notice her countenance of stone. He'd seen it many times before and knew that it meant he was in deep trouble.
"What's the matter babe?" he asked, failing miserably at sounding concerned.
"Why didn't you tell us you were going to Zoom last night?!" She turned to him and asked with feigned anger. The truth was that since he'd entered the car her fury had been rapidly dissipating, she was just picking a fight with him now to have some fun.
"Babe I didn't even know we were going to Zoom, we were just driving around and Ralph drove to Zoom without telling us and said let's go party; if I'd known in advance you know I would have called you," Angel said with limp contrition.
"I just wish you'd tell me these things," Stephanie said conciliatorily.
"I'm sorry babe; you know the last thing I want is for you to be mad with me; are you mad with me babe? Don't be mad at me, please, come here, come here," he said with the same poor affectation of contrition as before, putting his hand behind her neck and pulling her in for a kiss.
In the spirit of détente Stephanie ignored her boyfriend's malodorous breath and body odor and passionately returned his embrace, bringing an end to their little contretemps. She'd never been able to stay mad at him; he was so adorably simple-minded directing anger towards him felt like cruelty.
They arrived at the university and went straight to the administration building to finalize their enrollment. They went to the registration office where they needed to wait in line before they could be seen to. When they got to the front of the line they produced their acceptance letters and other necessary documents and filled out the forms they needed to fill out to complete their enrollment. The whole thing took less than thirty minutes.
"What took you so long?!" Stephanie was asked by Angel, who didn't see why enrolling in university needed to be such a time consuming task.
"We finished as quickly as we could babe, we had to wait for five others to finish first."
She grabbed hold of his face and gave him a big wet apologetic kiss that successfully mollified him, and with that it was time for them to leave Glendale behind them. After stopping at a burger place to get something to eat they went to the beach, the same beach where Stephanie had met Angel at a party just over a year ago, where on the same night she had given him her virginity under a wooden pier. When they first arrived at the beach they sat in the car and passed around a joint and talked for a while, after which Stephanie and Angel left the car to go to their special spot under the pier, and once they were gone, Laurelle got to work undoing Ricky's zipper so she could work on him with her mouth. Once they were under the pier, Stephanie faced the same battle she always faced of trying to get Angel to be more patient and delicate with her. Immediately he was grabbing excitedly at her breasts and cunt. Stephanie tried to subdue him, an effort that ended hopelessly in defeat; he was simply too strong and too excited. Knowing from experience that this was a battle she was doomed to lose she surrendered and left herself to be devoured. Two frantic minutes later it was all over. Angel was lying face down in the sand completely exhausted and feeling perfectly satiated, while next to him Stephanie was lying on her back thoroughly unsatisfied trying to recover from the feeling of having been violated and cheated. It was the one thing about her boyfriend Stephanie absolutely could not stand: his hopeless stamina. Not once in all the times they'd had sex had it ever lasted more than five minutes; they'd never once made love.
Later that day, after filling her father in on all the details of her enrollment and repairing to her room, she decided that she couldn't tolerate Angel's sexual immaturity any longer, and began working on a plan to teach him how she wanted to be made love to.
