Anise the Snowboarder Read online

  Miss Baxter’s Girls: Anise the Snowboarder

  By Davina Lee

  Published by JMS Books LLC

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2019 Davina Lee

  ISBN 9781634869966

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image by Exey Panteleev | License by CC BY 2.0

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  * * * *

  Miss Baxter’s Girls: Anise the Snowboarder

  By Davina Lee

  I am kneeling on the seat of an antique Victorian arm chair that’s probably worth more than I have in my bank account at the moment. That’s okay though, Miss Baxter’s covered it with a bed sheet in case I start to leak. I grip the back of the chair—because I’m facing the wrong way—and spread my thighs. My jeans are a puddle on the floor.

  “Are you ready, Anise?”

  “Yes, Miss Baxter.”

  “What words are you going to remember if things get too intense?”

  “Red and yellow, Miss Baxter.”

  “Good girl. Ten was the number we agreed upon, correct?”

  “Yes, Miss Baxter.”

  Crack!

  The sound of the leather riding crop striking my bare buttocks fills my ears. I shudder and relish the warmth spreading over my skin. As usual, she is going easy on me at the start.

  “One, Miss Baxter.”

  I knew that by the time we got to ten, I would be fighting back the tears, and squeezing the back of the chair in an effort to quell my shuddering. But I also knew that when we were done, Miss Baxter would take me in her arms and hold me until the shaking stopped and I was whole again.

  And at the end of it all, I would thank her. This was my idea after all, our weekly therapy appointment, and I was determined to have it continue.

  Crack!

  “Two, Miss Baxter.”

  * * * *

  “You must be my snowboarder.” Those were the first words Hilary Baxter spoke to me when she opened the door to her boarding house. On that gray day when she found me leaning on a pair of crutches on her front porch—back when I thought of her only as my landlady.

  “Not anymore,” I said.

  She said nothing, but looked me up and down, her gaze starting at the top of my head and ending at my foot—the one foot I still I had. To my surprise, she didn’t linger at the place where my other leg stopped abruptly, not like most people do when they first see me. Nor did she want to know what happened to cause that abrupt stop, like most people do.

  “You’re awfully tall for a snowboarder,” was all she said. “I guess I was expecting someone more like five-two or five-three. You must be at least five-eight.”

  “Five-nine.”

  “Mmm, not when you’re slouching, my dear.” The corners of her mouth took a slight downward turn, but quickly straightened out again. She touched her finger to my cheek. “You’re a beautiful girl, show a little pride.”

  “Hmph,” was all I offered in response. She stood there in her perfectly pressed suit, with her immaculately styled hair—judging me. My landlady was judging me. As if she knew the road that led me to her door.

  “Well then, come in and I’ll show you to your room.” She reached down to pluck up my bag of meager belongings before quickly leading me through a high-ceilinged entry and past a grand curving stairway.

  “I thought I’d put you on the main floor,” she said as we passed the parlor with its opulent Victorian-style furnishings and highly polished baby grand piano. We sailed past a dining room with a table long enough to seat a dozen, maybe more, as hardwood floors creaked here and there under her determined stride.

  “It’s a beautiful old mansion, but I’m afraid it was never designed to be very accessible,” she said as we wound our way deeper into the home’s interior. “There is a side entrance that might be easier for you, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide.” She stopped to open the door in front of us and then turned her gaze back to me. “I don’t want you to feel as though you’re the hired help.”

  She opened the door onto a narrow room that looked like it may have started its life with another purpose, but had later been converted into a modest bedroom. She set my bag on the floor.

  “I’ll leave you to unpack,” she said as she turned. “There’s a bathroom two doors down. We’ll have to share, but I trust I can depend on you not to leave your dirty laundry lying on the floor.”

  Uggh. I wasn’t really looking forward to sharing a bathroom with my landlady. I must have grunted or something, because she looked at me with a slight downturn of the corners of her mouth.

  “You’re also welcome to take one of the upstairs rooms. But as I said, the house was not built with accessibility in mind.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, and turned to face the window. As uptight as she was, staying here was preferable to begging my parents to let me move in again. If they’d even let me this time. And with the current state of my bank account, that was my only other choice.

  I stared out the window for a while after she left. The dingy gray light of afternoon was already beginning to fade as the calendar marched steadily on toward winter. I flopped onto the bed and sighed.

  “Anise,” she called out. “I’ll be having dinner in an hour. Nothing fancy, just soup, but I’m happy to share if you’d care to join me in the dining room.”

  “Sure,” I hollered, but I didn’t really know if I’d venture out to the dining room or not. It didn’t take long to unpack, and when I was done, I leaned my crutches against the wall and flopped my butt back down on the mattress. With my face in my hands I began to replay the events that led me here.

  * * * *

  Waking up in a hospital bed to find your right leg is shorter than you remember is not a good way to start your day, believe me. Nor was having people tell you how it wasn’t so bad, and that lots of people still live full lives after such a procedure.

  Yeah, and I bet they’re all people who don’t snowboard.

  “We were lucky that we were able to amputate below the knee rather than above,” the surgeon was saying. “It will give you better range of motion once you’re fitted with a prosthetic. You’ll be walking again before you know it.”

  I didn’t feel lucky. Not at all. And I didn’t feel much like learning to walk again, or even talking about it. I really just felt like pressing the magic button they had given me with the instructions to use it whenever the pain got bad enough. And if one more person told me how everything would be okay, I was going to press it and press it, and keep fucking pressing it until they all shut up.

  Winning the women’s slopestyle just a tenth of a point ahead of a more experienced second place finisher—that was luck. Having a drunk driver plow
head-on into my motorcycle less than twenty-four hours later, leaving the lower half of my right leg as a red stain on his front bumper, that was luck too—the bad kind.

  The surgeon was still droning on about physical therapy programs and positive outcomes. I pressed the magic button and checked out for a while. I didn’t really feel any better, but I found that I just didn’t care as much about my recent string of bad luck.

  * * * *

  Before I was discharged from the hospital, my access to the magic button disappeared, but was conveniently replaced by a plastic bottle with a prescription label. And if I whined enough to the right people, the bottle stayed topped up, and I could stay checked out.

  And that’s kind of how I’d spent my life since the accident. Today was no different. So instead of joining my dear old landlady for soup, I rummaged around in my bag until I found my magic bottle and dry swallowed a couple of pills. I wasn’t in any pain, I just wasn’t quite ready to deal with life at the moment.

  I woke up the next day still in my same clothes. Not much about my life had changed while I was out, and the sky outside my window was still gray.

  “There’s half a frittata in the refrigerator, or you’ll find toaster waffles in the freezer if you prefer. I also have Muesli.” My landlady looked me over from head to toe. “I thought you would have been up sooner. You have a physical therapy appointment in less than an hour.”

  I didn’t say anything. I might have grunted, I don’t know. I was too tired to deal with her fashionably-dressed cheeriness.

  “I’m going out for some errands. I’d be happy to drop you off.”

  “I’ll take the bus.”

  “Suit yourself. Please remember to lock up when you leave.”

  And that was it, she left me in peace. Thank God. I’d had about all I could take of miss prim and proper. I made a fucking frittata for breakfast. Why couldn’t she just make an omelet like a normal person?

  A few hours later the landlady was back and as cheerful as ever. She must have snuck in during my self-prescribed morning nap. She was sitting at that long dining room table with her tablet in her hands and a big grin on her face. She had the volume cranked loud enough that I could tell she was watching a replay of this year’s Winter X-Games as I peered around the doorway.

  “You’re really good,” she said. “Why’d you give up?”

  “I didn’t give up, I lost half of my leg.”

  “Did you go to physical therapy today?”

  I said nothing. I was not about to fall into the trap of being lectured by my landlady, of all people.

  “Then you gave up.”

  “What do you know?” I turned to go. I could still hear the X-Games blaring in the background. I knew the video was getting toward the end of my run. I didn’t want to hear it—didn’t want another reminder of what my life used to be.

  “I should really like to see you living up to your potential.”

  “What are you, my mother?” I grumbled as I made my way back to flop on my bed.

  * * * *

  “Going out again,” my landlady called out just before poking her head around the doorway to my room. “There’s a delivery coming this afternoon. Be a dear and sign for it, won’t you?”

  “Sure.” Whatever.

  She left me alone, and once again life was peaceful—until the bell rang half an hour later.

  “Coming,” I shouted as I made my way to the entryway.

  I opened the door to find a man with floppy hair and a little patch of fuzz under his lower lip. He was standing there with his arm around a snowboard, like it was his girlfriend or something. Jesus, my landlady sent a hippy with a board.

  “Hi, I’m Dave,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m a friend of Hilary Baxter’s. I’m also the owner of Sunrise Mountain Resort.”

  “Anise.”

  “Oh, I know who you are.” He grinned. “Pleasure to meet you.” He kept right on grinning and pumping my hand until I began to think he would never let go.

  “Um,” I said.

  “Right, sorry.” For a moment I think he might have blushed. “Anyway, Miss Baxter asked me to bring this by for you. It’s the new Burton Flying V Retro Extreme…”

  “Yeah, I know what it is.”

  “Right, sorry. Anyway, if I can just get your picture for the lift pass.” He leaned the snowboard against the house before pulling out his phone, aiming it in my direction, and proceeding to blind me with the flash.

  I blinked. “Um, I don’t really snowboard anymore.”

  “Well, I can’t take this back. Miss Baxter’s said you are to have it.”

  “Whatever.” I shrugged. “Leave it here, then.”

  “Great.” Dave was still smiling like a fool. “Oh man, wait ‘til I tell my kids who I met today. They’re gonna flip.”

  I closed the door before he reached the bottom of the steps. Crazy fucking snowboard guy. Crazy fucking landlady.

  I blew out a long breath. Then I leaned against the door and smiled. I finally had it all figured out. My nutjob landlady wants to get in my pants. How could I not have seen that until now? Why else would she be so nice to me?

  I started formulating my plan. I’d pretend like everything was all normal, then I’d strip down and crawl in bed with her. If I was lucky, she’d feel me up and then fall asleep, but only after I got her to agree to forego my rent. A little hanky-panky for free rent—I could do that.

  I opened the front door again to collect my down payment for services not yet rendered. It was a really nice board after all, no sense in letting some punk kid steal it off the front porch. Crazy fucking landlady. Crazy fucking day.

  * * * *

  I bided my time. I sat politely through dinner—soup again—and made idle chitchat about the new snowboard, and got to hear about how she and David had known each other for ages, and how much everyone thought it was so great that I was returning to the slopes.

  I had to bite my tongue toward the end, but I managed to get by. I figured once I rocked the old lady’s world tonight, she might not feel the need to be quite so chatty. It’s not like I needed to be wined and dined first. I understood the arrangement, even if she was too ashamed to say it out loud.

  So, at nine o’clock that night, when I padded out into the hallway and saw the light spilling from the crack of her partially open door, I took a deep breath and pressed my way inside. It was so cute, she didn’t even look up from her tablet, just pretended like she was still reading. But I did notice that she pulled the comforter back on the empty side of the bed.

  Rent free living here I come, I thought as I shimmied out of my sleep shirt and laid my crutches on the floor. After I crawled in, she pulled the covers back up, but never raised her eyes from her tablet.

  I decided she must be waiting for me to make the first move, so I leaned in and started kissing her neck. She had a nice hourglass figure that looked pretty good clad in her silky black nightie, and she smelled pretty good too, so it wasn’t horrible.

  “Anise, darling,” she said, still not looking up from her tablet, “I’m old enough to be your mother.”

  “Let’s not get hung up on the details.” I extended my tongue and traced a path up to just under her ear. “We both know what you really want,” I whispered. “And while I appreciate the snowboard, I think in the future, free rent would be a teensy bit more helpful.”

  She set her tablet on the nightstand and smiled. “Young lady, I’m flattered that you find me attractive. But what I really want is for you to get out on the slopes and back on your board. You simply have too much talent to waste it moping around my house day in and day out.”

  I felt the blood rising in my cheeks. God, I’m such a fool. It really was just a snowboard, and not a prelude to an inappropriate May-December romance. I pushed the covers aside and sat up with my back to her. “Sorry.”

  I felt her fingers lightly graze my shoulder. “Simple mistake,” she said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had the pleasu
re of having a pretty young thing sneaking into my bed. Though, I have to say you are the first to come up with the idea of demanding free rent for the privilege.”

  I hung my head in my hands. “Miss Baxter…”

  “Shh,” she said, and let her fingers trail from my shoulder down my back. “Stay if you like.”

  I shivered.

  She snickered. “It’s up to you of course, but I would think it’s possibly warmer under the covers.”

  I turned to look at her, but she had already plucked up her tablet from the nightstand and gone back to reading again. I gave some serious thought to slinking away back to my own room, but then for whatever reason—maybe still holding onto the idea of free rent, I don’t know—I decided to take her up on her offer and snuggled up under the covers.

  She tucked the comforter around me and pulled me in so that my head was resting on her shoulder. She didn’t say a word, didn’t try to cop a feel, just kept right on reading. Once in a while she would reach out to stroke my hair, but that was it.

  I felt the tension draining from my body. I sighed and closed my eyes.

  When I finally woke to the gray light of dawn, Miss Baxter was missing, and in her place was a box and a business card. Printed on the box was ‘Melo Aphrodite 2—dual motors, waterproof, USB rechargeable.’

  I grinned. Oh my God, my crazy landlady bought me a sex toy. And an expensive one from the looks of it.

  I picked up the business card next and the smile on my face fell away. ‘Cedarville Recovery Center—Narcotic Addiction Specialists.’ She knows. How does she know?

  I turned the card over and written on the back was, ‘Get enrolled today and the Aphrodite is yours.’ I felt the grin crossing my face again. Oh my God, she is fucking crazy. Absolutely certifiable. But maybe in a good way.

  * * * *

  “You’re up early,” Miss Baxter said as I popped my head into the kitchen. “Want some frittata?”

  “No thanks, gotta run,” I said. “Busy day. I’ve got counseling, then physical therapy, then a fitting for a new prosthetic. Did you know they make a sports model just for snowboarders? My physical therapist told me about it. But wait ‘til you hear the best part. The company wants to give it to me free and pay me to do some promotional shots for them. Can you believe that?”