A Bet To Lose, Chapter 7 free porn video

Richard was really anticipating Sunday, which is why he had stayed up late reading Niven and absolutely crushing it at Starcraft. His own worry, his own fear, had gotten in his way in previous games; that was no more. He'd never felt more confident in his life, and he looked forward to spending more time at Susie's house, this time in the company of his sister and friends. He was just surprised that Zoe had been okay with him wearing the prom dress that she'd been shoved into at his own birthday party, as he'd thought it'd be a nasty reminder, but she enjoyed the juxtaposition. They realized that they should have planned this better by taking it over there before Heather got home, and they discussed ways to get it past her, but it was Leslie who came up with the best plan: simply carry out the box and, if asked, openly admit what was in it but say that Zoe planned to ritually destroy it. (The heels in his size would be in the bottom of the box.) She'd suggested bringing it back and saying that they hadn't decided to, but Susie had something better: she'd simply leave the stuff at her house. After all, she said with an enormous smile, it was good for Richard to have a dress anywhere he spent a lot of time. "You should wear your swimming trunks here, too," Susie had told him with a grin, "but don't plan on wearing them into the pool." Richard did absolutely not ask if she was planning on skinny-dipping with him or not. Saturday morning, Heather's children had come down to breakfast with her as she'd asked, and Zoe was already wearing a dress of her own, and it was obviously very high-class. Heather wanted to talk about it - wanted to ask where she bought it, even knowing who had bought it for her - but she kept quiet. She'd already agreed to let this be Zoe's party, and one of the words that Robert and Willa had used with her was 'vicarious', briefly explaining that some parents try to regain their own childhoods through their children, which never, ever works. Her newly fourteen-year-old daughter was going to have a party at the rich girl's place (Richard's girlfriend, she had to remind herself) with the people she cared about, and that simply did not include most of her family. Heather felt like she'd pulled back from the brink, a thing she'd done once before. After a long series of failed dating experiences after her separated husband had finally overdosed, she'd found a man who seemed very nice and charming. A couple of weeks later, she'd come home one day, and her daughter, then not even eight years old, had quietly told her through tears that he had gotten drunk, slapped her, and tried to threaten her and her little brother into shutting up about it. He'd denied everything, but she'd seen the mark on her face and smelled the alcohol on him, and she'd wisely believed her sobbing children and not his 'she fell down' nonsense. That was the last potential stepfather her children had ever had. She had a union job, after all, she'd gotten her highly affordable mortgage shortly after the 2008 collapse, and she'd done 'pooled' community daycare until her children were old enough to look after themselves. No, she really did not want to make bad decisions for them or do things that they would despise her for in the long term, especially not now that Richard had apparently become a powerful internet sorcerer when she wasn't looking. She was just glad that Zoe was doing safe things with safe people and that Richard had found friends and a girlfriend, although she was disappointed that he was just wearing his casual clothes. Would it have killed him to dress up a bit for his sister's party? The plan to smuggle the dress worked, as Heather hadn't really even noticed the box, being far more worried about what was in her children's heads. Instead, her children were the ones surprised by a dress, because Caroline was wearing it. It was generally elegant and tasteful, black and coming up to her mid-thigh, but Caroline was not the sort of girl to wear heels higher than an inch. Leslie, too, was wearing a dress, a green one that went to her knees, something that she'd had for a while but never had any occasion to wear. If she wore most dresses for someone her size, she looked like a kid. If she wore a dress with a more grown-up cut, she looked like a kid trying to look grown-up. The dress she had on was somewhat in between, and she didn't care if it exposed her leg braces. "I didn't even know you owned a dress," Richard told Caroline upon getting into the passenger seat, while Zoe got into the back and tossed the box to the other side of her girlfriend and telling her how pretty she looked. "I was actually gonna wear it to a school dance before the kung flu hit," Caroline replied. Leslie broke up laughing. "Kung flu?! Where did you hear that, oh my God, Caroline," she said between giggles. "President of the United States, who else?" Caroline replied, shrugging as she drove. "He's not even close to the first person to say that," Richard said. On some parts of the internet he knew well (and didn't go to anymore; having a girlfriend made him want to stop hanging out where people called each other cucks all day), that was among the least offensive of the terms he'd heard for it. They got to Susie's house where she opened the door for them, and Richard inhaled sharply. She was wearing a white dress, the nearly diaphanous fabric contrasting with her darker skin, and combined with the sparkling gems on her ears and neck and her very carefully applied make-up, she really did look like a princess of some ancient, far-off country. Richard had never seen her wearing jewelry before, and his reaction was better than any compliment. Susie smiled in pure, sublime regality. Her father had told her that she ought not flaunt her wealth too conspicuously, or others might want to steal it from her, so they'd never seen her looking this rich, this elegant, this totally in charge of everything around her. "Have you the box?" the princess asked with an imperious air. "The box I have," Zoe said, getting it out of the car as she helped Leslie out. "Talk like Yoda, I can as well." They all shared giggles. She handed the box to Richard. Four of them were wearing dresses, which they were complimenting each other on, and five would be soon; one of them was male, and zero of them would expect anything else from him. It was only when putting it on in the downstairs bathroom that Richard realized just how poofy the prom dress, with all its layered petticoats, really was. Like the Christmas dress, it fit around his chest differently but still fit him; unlike that dress, it ended at the upper chest but went all the way down to his ankles. If Susie wasn't there to help him, he'd have to put on his jingly pink socks and heels first, because once the petticoats were on, he wasn't touching his own feet without a lot of work. Being thirteen, nimble, and not obese meant that the zipper being on the back wouldn't have slowed him down for a second, even if she weren't there to zip him up. The one thing he couldn't do at all, still, was braid his own hair into pigtails, and he still didn't know enough about makeup to give himself the subtle girly touches Susie was giving him. They all clapped when he and Susie emerged, and he gave them a deep, slightly jingly curtsy, pinching the sides of his dress with his pink gloves. "That is definitely the dress for you, Ricky," Zoe said with authority and finality. He looked like a precious little girl attending the party of someone much older, a cute little sweetheart trying to look as pretty as she could to fit in. All the other girls, even Leslie, looked like genuine royalty next to his dress-up dress. Zoe smiled in pure, smug satisfaction, feeling like was the way things were meant to be, and the fact that he was smiling and blushing a little, nodding subtly in agreement, only cemented that idea. He felt exactly as cute and as precious as he looked. "Not all the time," Leslie pointed out. "Doesn't he have to cook sometimes, too?" There was lots of chuckling, from Richard as well. There was no way he was doing anything other than being a precious little cutie wearing that. "Not right now, he doesn't," Susie said. "Besides, I am your hostess, and the hostess provides. And, before it starts warming up outside, the hostess shall provide entertainment," she said, gesturing to the couch. Richard made sure to daintily walk on his toes rather than put any weight on his heels, as he didn't want to leave prints in the carpet again. "What movie?" "Youtube videos," Susie replied. The videos she had selected for the group to watch on the big screen were a carefully chosen list of things that Zoe was interested in, as given by what she'd shared in the chat, although a lot of them were more blurry than any of them might have liked on Susie's enormous widescreen. Most of them were of cute things, and Richard felt absolutely precious in his pretty dress while watching baby animals and snuggling with his girlfriend, feeling much the same way he had last night, only cuter, as her body pressed his petticoats against him. Zoe realized the genius of it after she'd started watching; she'd been worried about what to do all day for her birthday, and Susie had put her into a worry-free situation instead. They talked some as they watched, and she learned that the house had been fairly well occupied once, with Susie and her three older brothers along with their parents. As the youngest of the family, Susie had always been treated like a princess from the moment she was born. Eventually, it got warm enough for swimming, and the five of them disrobed and took the opportunity to go to the bathroom. Susie hadn't put Richard in diapers; this was Zoe's day, after all, and him wetting himself and needing to be changed would have been a distraction. Changing Leslie out of her diaper and into her swim diaper was quite enough. "You told me to wear my trunks but not to wear them to the pool. Why not?" Richard asked Susie in confusion as they approached Susie's moderately substantial outdoor pool. It was well maintained; she'd found time to set everything up or, more likely, she'd called someone to do it for her. (Richard suddenly felt a pang of jealousy on thinking that a 'pool boy' was coming to Susie's house.) "Because today, that's not your swimsuit," she told him, putting on her imperious air. "This is your swimsuit." She picked up a long-sleeved, iridescent, blue-green leotard with the words "Mermaid in Training" prominently displayed in the chest. Surprised that this was in his size, he eagerly put it on as the girls watched, the stretchy spandex hugging his arms and chest while giving him a mild wedgie. Susie giggled. "Now sit by the pool," she instructed him, and he saw why: the next thing to be put on him was a long, body-hugging mermaid tail, and he eagerly put his legs together so she could pull it up to his waist, his feet fitting into the solid tailfin. She strapped a couple of stiff fins to his hands and gently pushed him into the cool, lightly chlorinated water. "Practice in the shallow end!" she told him, giggling. He realized very quickly that this wasn't just some outfit meant to make him look silly or girly; this was real swimming equipment, and he practiced with it as the designers had obviously intended, Susie giggling as he dolphin-kicked his way back and forth at the shallow end, Zoe and Caroline stealing looks at him as they helped Leslie undress. "Wait, you forgot something," Zoe said, and he swam up to her. She kneeled down and applied sunblock to his face and the back of his neck, pulling his wet pigtails out of the way to do so. Then, giggling, she patted her precious sissy brother on the head and he went back to having fun while she applied sunblock to herself and Leslie after getting the girl out of her leg braces. This was always tricky, but Caroline was there to help. The girls slipped in next to him, playfully splashing the mermaid boy, and that was a mistake because the hand fins also made him a much better splasher than they were, and then Susie challenged him to a race to the deep end and back. This race was much closer than the others had been, as her pool was far from Olympic in size, and he was able to kick off the wall in his mermaid tail and she won by a few feet. The second time was basically a tie, and the third one he actually won, pushing his way through the water as hard as he could. Susie gave him a kiss on the cheek as he hung by the side of the pool, panting. She hadn't let him win. They stayed in the water a while, playing together, and then Caroline decided to work on her tan and Zoe helped Leslie out of the water, and Susie went to get them banana smoothies. Zoe luxuriated, exulted, reveled, her arm around her girlfriend's too- light body and the light reflecting off a pair of sunglasses that Susie had given her. There were only two things that could make this more perfect. The first was skin that tanned; she had to wear sunblock just like Richard did, or she was going to get very fried very quickly. The second was that she wanted to be somewhere even more luxurious than this, maybe a mansion or chalet in the Carribean or Monaco, where she and Leslie, her body completely fixed by the reatment, would enjoy a long, sensuous threesome with a very rich, toned man. (She would have to inquire about Susie's three older brothers at some point. Surely they qualified.) Being able to get to a place like that was almost enough on its own, and abruptly she understood Caroline's dream of marrying a charter pilot. 'Do you love her for her personality?' was the age-old question of relationships. She was, in fact, attracted to Leslie's personality, outgoing and pleasant when she wasn't in the depths of self-doubt, because that was how she'd first known her. They'd been chatting for a week before the pandemic had really taken hold, the schools had been closed, and Caroline had found time to take up the habit of driving her friends around. In the first few days of chatting, Zoe hadn't even been aware that Leslie was disabled. They'd experimented together, furtively and awkwardly in the back seat of Caroline's car, and it wasn't until they'd given each other the first true orgasms of their entire lives that they really fell in love. (Zoe was just glad Leslie was capable of that. It wasn't apparent, looking at her.) Zoe was sure that there were depths to her, things that neither of them knew much about, buried by emotional abuse and disability. Caroline, at least, was somewhat easy to get. She was a physical sort of person, but she'd straight up said before that she couldn't stand the shallow girls that populated her school. If the only people she could deal with were a couple years younger than her, so be it. Besides, driving them around had put her at Susie's poolside too, wearing suntan lotion rather than powerful sunblock because she had the complexion for it despite her blonde hair. And then there was Richard. Zoe knew so much more about her brother than she had a week ago. If she had been asked to honestly describe him last week, she would have said something along the lines of 'He plays games a lot, he stays in his room most of the time, and he doesn't like talking to people. I think he just kinda despises everyone.' He simply hadn't trusted her or anyone with who he really was, and she didn't want to think about what would happen if one of them betrayed his trust. Giant smoking crater, indeed. Getting Leslie's birth parents put away was his crowning achievement when it came to helping Zoe, but if it weren't for that 'mermaid in training' happily splashing around the pool in his swim fins with not a care in the world, she would probably be in the middle of yet another vile non-party just like the one he'd had before, after having attended a wedding neither of them wanted to attend, and her cousins would be there and her friends would not, as she'd never want them to go to a thing like that. Either that, or she'd be in a full-on screamfest with her mother, as her mother would have bought yet another humilating, infantilizing dress for this birthday as well, and there was a good chance that she'd have finally snapped and taken a pair of scissors to it. But he'd done his thing, he'd been doing his thing, and so she was instead sitting on a comfortable pool chair with her arm lovingly draped around her to-be-healed girlfriend while he was the one in the super-childish outfit. If Heather had tried to make her wear a thing like that, tail and all, the scissors just might have gone straight to her mother's throat if not her own. Meanwhile, her brother would willingly and happily wear it until he outgrew it, and knowing Susie, she'd probably have another one made for him if she couldn't find it in his size. 'There's no explaining fetishes', someone had told her a while ago, probably Susie. (She didn't feel like checking.) This was simply pleasant for him, and she'd already resolved never to make it unpleasant for him. She wondered what his limits were, what he really did and didn't want done to him, and figured that Susie would probably find them out if she didn't already know. Susie... Susie, she thought she understood. A lot of wealthy girls did the 'oh no, I'm not that rich' thing, trying to make themselves look like proletariat rather than bourgeoisie. Susie went in entirely the other direction, obviously valuing wealth, power, and dominance with unrestrained glee, even if she did hostess stuff like serve (very delicious) smoothies herself. The only reason she had friends at all was that she was genuinely a nice person, making her the true inverse of those other wealthy girls, and Zoe wondered how someone like her would fare on social media. (The answer was poorly. Susie had never used Twitter nor Instagram, and she'd been on Facebook for all of two hours before wiping everything and deactivating her account in absolute disgust.) She'd wanted a boy she could keep to heel - Zoe had known that before she even knew Richard was into this kind of thing - and she'd decisively found the one she wanted. Zoe wondered just how far she'd take this, in every sense of the word, and wondered if Richard would wind up wearing a collar and a maid outfit while feeding Susie grapes by the pool. Yes, Zoe mused. What a terrible fate, to be kept forever as the love slave of the girl of his dreams. Oh no. Shock and horror. Clearly an awful tragedy to befall the boy. But, for the moment at least, it was Susie who was feeding Richard, holding a banana milkshake with a straw because he couldn't hold anything in his hand fins. The doorbell rang, and Susie immediately ran off to get it. "Everyone stay here, this is private," she said as she moved. At the door was a twenty-something man with messy hair and cheap clothes, carrying a cardboard box. "Oh, crap. No wonder you wanted to do it this way. You're underage!" he shouted on seeing who he was making the delivery to. "Are you leaving with the money or the box?" Susie asked in response, waving a roll of previously counted twenties that she'd stashed nearby. Making a snap decision, the man said "I don't know you and you sure as shit don't know me," tossed the box at Susie's feet, snagged the money out of her hand, briefly flipped through it to make sure it was somewhat accurate (she'd actually included a tip), and double-time hustled to his car to get the hell out of there. Despite it being on the other side of the house, they'd all heard the exchange, even Richard, who was sipping the shake by the pool where Susie had left it, keeping it steady between his hand fins. "Only one person gets to know what that was about," Susie said before anyone could ask anything, "and he gets to know tomorrow." "Enjoy your bondage gear, just hope it's not a buttplug," Caroline said, deadpan, and Leslie broke out laughing. Richard looked particularly nervous. Did he really want to have something shoved up his ass? Well, maybe if it was Susie, but even then... "Seriously, there better not be a chastity belt in there," Zoe added. "Or whatever the hell those things are called." Leslie laughed some more, holding her girlfriend close as she did. "Zoe! I am not about to put your brother in a chastity cage. And no buttplugs either. I swear." Those had actually been two of the things she could have ordered, using that poor delivery boy as an intermediary, but she'd decided against them for a great many reasons. Richard couldn't hide his relief. Having his dick locked in metal or plastic would have been a.. well, a 'boondoggle' at the least. "Please, just stop asking about it. If he wants to, he'll tell you after tomorrow. This is your party, and that little delivery wasn't part of it." "So what are you getting her, anyway?" Caroline asked. "Other than curiosity?" "Actually, now's the perfect time. I'll be right back." Richard had just finished his milkshake when Susie came back with clenched hands. "Leslie, this is your half, and Susie, this is your half." She opened her hands to reveal two half-heart pendant necklaces, one with Leslie's name on it and the other with Zoe's, diamonds around the outer curves of each one. The two matched up perfectly, like puzzle pieces, and Zoe got the one with Leslie's name and vice versa. "Are those real gold and diamonds?" Leslie asked softly, and it wasn't clear whether or not her voice choking up was because of her disability or because she was that touched by the gift. She felt the 'you don't deserve anything good' part of herself well up again, as it so often did, and she forced it back down as her adoptive parents had taught her. "That's 14 karat gold and real lab-created diamonds because I know the jeweler and Dad thinks De Beers can go fuck itself. Rule. One," Susie replied. "You're all done swimming?" They were. "All right, merboy, time to come on land." She pulled up a wide seat and pulled off his hand fins, helping him wiggle out of the pool and onto the chair, still in his restrictive tail. He made no effort to take it off, and Susie sat beside him, running her hands over his wet pigtails as he held her warmth against him. "Hey, Susie, what were you talking about with the lab-created diamonds thing?" he asked, enjoying her touch. "They're the same thing as mined diamonds, only without the African child slaves." "Yes, she prefers her slaves closer," Caroline replied, and everyone except Susie laughed. "Caroline, you're terrible!" Susie tried to sound indignant, but she was giggling instead. "I'm not going to do any Fifty Shades crap to him!" She held a protective arm around her boyfriend. "Wasn't that originally a Twilight fanfic?" Richard asked, hugging her back. "Ricky, how the hell do you know this shit?" Caroline sharply asked in response. "I went looking for it," he replied. "That's actually one of the most vanilla things out there. Actually, can we just stop with this? We'll ruin Zoe's party if we keep talking about it." He was fairly sure that some of the things he'd read, let alone seen, would make them lose their appetites for days and might even discourage Susie from playing with him. "Well, then, I have a question," Leslie said. "Ricky, would you rather wear your mermaid outfit to the YMCA pool or your prom dress to the mall?" "Both sound pretty good," Richard replied to giggles and laughter, "but I think I'd go with the mermaid suit, just to see how I'd do there." He abruptly realized that Leslie was expecting a question in return and that this was a party game. He visibly thought of something. "Would you rather soar like an eagle or fly like a hummingbird?" "Hummingbird," Leslie replied immediately. "They can fly upside down." The only one in the group who was not of the same opinion there was Caroline, who would use the eagle's flight to go places, as she'd always wanted to do. They kept playing Would You Rather for a solid two hours, discussing things like growing extra fingers and which of the Willy Wonka fates they'd rather suffer, prompting questions about which movie and comparisons between Susie and Veruca Salt. Leslie was, by far, the best at the game, immediately coming up with questions in different contexts and answering pretty much everything immediately as well. Caroline had to go inside, as she'd get fried rather than tanned if she didn't, and after Susie had pulled the mermaid tail off Richard and Zoe had put Leslie back into her leg braces, they went downstairs to play pool of a different sort, still in their swimsuits. They agreed on fair rules. The order would be Zoe first, because this was her party, then Leslie, then Richard, then Caroline, then Susie. The goal was simply to sink balls with the cue ball, regardless of number, and sinking a ball would not let you go twice in a row. (It would have been boring without that rule. It was Susie's table, and Caroline also knew what she was doing.) Zoe imitated what she'd seen on TV, her pendant hanging down on the mat, and Caroline helped her adjust her arms for a good hit. She made a solid break that didn't sink anything but lined Leslie up for a good shot. Leslie needed assistance just to get into position, and both Zoe and Caroline held her steady. All she had to do was a tap, a tap she made easily. (Zoe swore that she didn't set her up intentionally, but of course she didn't have the skill to do that.) Then it was Richard's turn. Bent over in his mermaid leotard, his butt stuck out as he imitated what Zoe had done, and it made a wonderfully tempting target. Susie was not mean enough to spank it before he made his shot; besides, that might have made him scrape the cue against the mat. She waited until after he made it - a solid but slightly off- target hit that made the target ball fly to the other side of the table and stay there - to moderately whap him with her hand, and he shouted not in surprise but in smugness. "I knew it! I knew you were going to do that!" Richard suddenly realized that, if any other group of people had done that to him, he would have (at the very least) immediately ran out of the house and never talked to any of them again, possibly even his sister. But she was his girlfriend and these were his friends, and they had no malice towards him, and it was all okay. "That was for leaving heel prints on my carpet the other day," Susie said with her imperious tone, sparking some giggles. Caroline simply sunk the next ball, and Susie was able to pop one in as well (Richard considered doing the same thing to her, but decided against it), and the other three mostly fumbled around. Richard sunk one that he wasn't even aiming for in a stroke of beginner's luck, Zoe sunk one in while scratching the cue ball ("Don't worry, it still counts," Susie said), and Leslie wasn't able to do much more that game. Caroline had actually outscored Susie, but she was insistent that if it were a real game, Susie would have smoked her. The other three played Smash Brothers - Caroline's misgivings about video games did not pertain to in-person multiplayer - while Susie and Richard made a specific variant of lubia polo. They put their dresses back on to have a formal meal, and the sight of Richard happily jingling up to her while obediently serving her in his pretty prom dress was a thing that Zoe would cherish forever. "I have never tasted this spice before," Richard said on his first bite. "It's like licorice, I think?" It was blended with a great many other spices. Susie watched him carefully and then decided that he liked it. "Star anise," Caroline said immediately. "Yeah, my dad gets this stuff by the ton. All of us could eat it at every meal and have enough for fifty years," Susie replied, taking another bite. "Can we ask the question now?" Caroline asked in response. "Do you want to tell us just what it is your dad does?" Richard was actually half- expecting 'mob boss'. Susie's dad being a member of the Iranian mafia would explain many things. "He's an importer," Susie replied, which made Richard suspect 'mob boss' even more. "The whole Middle East, Pakistan, even India, basically anywhere he can really. The pandemic really didn't hurt his business, it's just that he has trouble flying home. So he's on one of his own cargo ships right now. He'll be back Wednesday for like... a week. Then he has to take another slow boat." Something in her voice clued Leslie in. "Is he avoiding you?" she asked. Susie sighed a bit. "You've told your big secrets. This one is mine. You never fucking repeat this to anyone." They all agreed, particularly since Susie so rarely swore. "A couple years ago, Dad said that the more I grew up, the more I looked like Mom, and so he said that he was thinking about me like Mom." There was general revulsion. "He hates himself for it! He really does, he's never touched me or anything, and I really don't think he will. That's why he mostly stays away from me, because he's kinda trying to protect me from himself. And he needs to visit my brothers, and they're all over the world, to make sure they're doing their jobs right. They're getting the business, I'm getting the house and a trust fund," she explained. "I know, it's pure patriarchy, he seems to think that I'll have a man to take care of me." She looked over at Richard and fluttered her eyelashes. "You will take care of me, won't you Ricky?" she asked in a feminine, high-pitched tone, and laughter ensued. "Of course," he immediately replied, because there was nothing else to say even if he was wearing a pink girly prom dress, and there was more laughter. "I'm actually kind of glad he's coming home," Susie explained. "He's going to teach me how to drive." The youngest a teenager could be to get a full, real driver's license in the state was 16, and Susie was going to just straight-up get a car for her birthday. (Susie had resolved to drive the same way Caroline did.) "I wonder which lucky boy is going to be in the passenger's seat once I've got my license?" There was giggling, and Richard smiled. "Just don't drive him crazy," Leslie said, and got the laughter she'd expected. The Squad talked and kept laughing about silly crap and finished their food, and of course Richard politely and daintily put the dishes away even if he didn't dare wash them in his pretty dress, and eventually it was time to go home and for Richard to reluctantly dress like an ordinary boy again. Zoe was satisfied. No, she was more than satisfied. That was what a birthday should be, she decided, and she was very, very glad that she had who she had as a sibling, a girlfriend, and friends. Richard, too, was highly satisfied, the contentment clear on his face, and as soon as Heather greeted her children, she only asked if they'd had a nice time as a formality, and barbed, spiked guilt hit her in the stomach as she realized the sort of birthday she'd have given her daughter. 'Another enjoyable day spent,' Richard thought, picking up where he'd left off with Larry Niven. 'Nothing went wrong today.' His mother, not entirely foolish, had taught her children something important a long time ago: it was never what you expected to go wrong that would go wrong. If something went wrong outside his abilities, there really wasn't anything he could do by definition, and if he ever needed to use his skills again, it probably wouldn't be when or where he'd expect to need them, because that was how these things always went. And if anything were to go wrong with Susie, he'd probably fall into depression and never wear a dress again. He had to stop thinking that way, he resolved. He had an enjoyable life and every right to enjoy it. He went to sleep, dreaming of what the next day would bring.