A murmur of glee arose from the others as Cameron opened his jaws and leaned in to extract Olive’s July-balmy sock. Upon tugging on the slightest corner of cotton, however, he deemed it was glued too closely to the girl’s large foot; he needed more leverage. Thus, reminding himself that he was already utterly bankrupt of any dignity, Cameron wrapped his lips over several of Olive’s sock-coated toes.

            The oily, sour glazing in the fibers instantly seeped over his tongue as he pulled, slowly unpeeling the too-small footwear from the rower’s ruddy, muscular foot. The second sock came off with even greater precision and another sticky puddle of foot sweat moated behind his teeth. Predictably, the boy’s member was now rising in his jeans. How typical. This act, of course, inspired a dozen snapped pictures from Alyssa.

            “Now lie down,” Olive cooed throatily. Her freshly revealed bare feet, shapely and dotted with soft veins, rested on the carpet and still steamed with hot, soggy air. To encourage him, she pressed a hand down atop Cameron’s head and shoved him to the floor. “If you want to play with them, you’re not going to make me keep my leg held out that long. And I still want to see what I’d look like as a gladiator.”

            It was tricky work, but Cameron made do. While prone on his back, his head below Olive’s thighs, the boy did his utmost to help the girl’s dense foot and sculpted calf through the threaded golden fencing of the gladiator sandal half-leg.

            All the while, just as before, his patience and dedication were rewarded with Olive’s other foot, still naked and toying with his head. For a minute at first, she simply fondled his face with her sole, smearing plenty of perspiration and flecks of toejam into his hair. However, when it came time to test his lips with her supple, weenie-sausage-esque toes, there was no coy requesting as Hailee had done. Olive simply jammed his mouth open and stuffed in four of her mealy digits. As many as she could cram.

            The acidic, almost milky zest of Olive’s foot inflated inside Cameron’s mouth. Again unlike Hailee, who was contented to let the boy lap and pamper her bite-sized toes, the tallest of the girls was intent on fitting as much of her ped into his jowls as possible. Already Cameron’s jaw hinge was beginning to ache, the ball of Olive’s foot keeping his lips pried wide open, as he blindly felt for the straps on the gladiator sandal. The gritty, brackish texture of her skin was simultaneously overpowering and welcome to his tastebuds, scraping off any leftover sock fluff onto his palate.

            Once bored with simply keeping Cameron gagged, Olive retracted her grape-sized toe tips from over his teeth and laid her moist, cotton-flecked sole on his cheek.

            “Stick out your tongue, footboy,” she instructed.

            He didn’t need to be told twice; Cameron opened his mouth as wide he could and poked his tongue out. As he looked to the side, he became aware that a few people passing by had paused in their jaunt, with shopping bags slung over their shoulders, to watch the quietly absurd escapade taking place on the shoe store floor. However, this view was quickly covered up by the descending visage of Olive’s mighty bare foot and her sweat-sticky, wrinkled sole.

            Her loping, buttery arch rocked back and forth on the flat of Cameron’s tongue. She carried on so long and vigorously, using his mouth as a living pumice stone for her broad heel and aggressive toes, the boy felt himself losing moisture. His pants tent was embarrassingly obvious, particularly to the passerby who stopped to watch. By the time he had the gladiator boot strapped fully onto Olive’s capable calf, his tongue was bone-dry.

            Clearly comfortable in front of a crowd, Olive stood triumphantly up. With her nude foot laid on the carpet beside Cameron’s face, she planted the gladiator boot upon him as though he were a beast recently slain by metaphorical warrior. The girls cheered, and the growing string of curious strangers beyond couldn’t help but smile at the humor of the act.

            “Not bad,” Olive chimed. She slumped back in her chair and scrunched her long toes around Cameron’s nostrils. “Go give someone else a turn now, you funny little freak.”

            Gratified, and almost rigid with animal horniness now, Cameron crawled back to his knees in the center of the circle. He looked to his sister, who snapped an especially identity-confirming photo of him, and then he turned to Tess.

            “C’mere, Cameron,” she said. She combed through her dark hair as she leaned back in the chair, her expression still completely unreadable.

            It was strange for Cameron to hear himself addressed by name without a lick of sarcasm curled into the syllables. Generally his family and sister’s friends had a slew of demeaning, amused pet names for him; if his name came up, it was usually to taunt him with the juxtaposition of his self-inflicted second class citizen status.

            The young man knelt in front of the black-haired beauty he once was so close with. Reaching for her nearest Ugg boot, she slid her foot away, and instead pressed the firm, ovular sole of the footwear against his chest.

            “No,” she said quietly. The rest of the group had gone similarly near-silent, as had the softly murmuring crowd around the shoe department.

            “Okay.” Cameron decided it was perfectly natural for Tess to feel too weird about all this to want to participate in his degradation-stroke-euphoria. He couldn’t blame her at all.

            “It’s just… so crazy to me, when I think about it,” she continued. “When I… realize…”

            There were any number of things she could say, and Cameron expected he’d have to agree with all of it.

            “…how long we were together and I couldn’t see you were being wasted, when I treated you like an equal,” Tess sighed, squinching her nose with some disgust. “I mean, it makes me feel dirty, when I actually think back on it. The fact that you went… unused for so long. When your sister told me all about this, I couldn’t believe it at first, but now that I see it, and think about all those times I slept over in your dorm room at school and you just wanted to pull my socks off, well… it all seems pretty right.”

            Cameron didn’t quite know what to say. He remained still as a statue, with his ex-girlfriend’s boot pressed with increasing weight on his chest cavity.

            Tess leaned forward. Shifting the other leg, she prodded at the protrusion in his jeans with the tip of her boot. “You’re pretty pathetic, you know, Cam?”

            “Yeah,” he sighed truthfully.

            “Kiss me one more time,” Tess said. She hoisted the mud-dried Ugg bottom up to the level of Cameron’s face. “Like you mean it.”

            Hesitating only a breath’s length when he realized just how many people were watching now, Cameron swallowed the last ghostly wisp of his pride and leaned it for a passionate kiss on the dirty, terrain-ridden sole of his ex’s shoe: the last hint of her he could ever hope to have the chance of adoring by her permission. Her other boot remained arched like a vice beneath his pants tent. The kiss endured for two uninterrupted minutes.

            “That was great. I actually got that on video,” Alyssa noted cheerfully. She clicked away on her phone. “And… uploaded. I bet there’s a lot of people who will get a kick out of this. I’m just gonna go ahead and tag everybody you used to hang out with, okay, bro? Wouldn’t want anybody to miss it.”

            Three hours later, with everyone’s new shoes purchased, plus several full outfits, Cameron was guided by leash once again back to the car. While chauffeuring his sister home, in lieu of the pop tunes, Cameron was treated to a running monologue from Alyssa as she read off the various comments posted to social media, where she’d not only put up two-dozen photos of him suckling her friend’s toes on the floor of a mall, but also a three video of Tess utterly dominating him to the basin of his soul with just a single peck on her Ugg.

            There were strings of amused emojis from classmates, confusion from friends, rants of revulsion from past dates and girlfriends, and cousins who curious to try out Cameron’s willing mouth on their own overworked tootsies. All these facts made him shrivel up inside and yet, somehow, still seethe with hope, particularly for that final invitation.

            Back home, followed closely behind by the others, Cameron was led back inside and freed from his leash. Of course, he still made sure to follow closely behind Alyssa as they entered the living room, where Brianna had neatly tidied the place, turning the couches and chairs inward to facilitate conversation, and prepared lemonade and two varieties of cookie on the coffee table.

            “Come in, come in!” Brianna called out as the other girls filed in. The woman was nothing if not a life-long and earnest hostess, always looking for opportunities to entertain guests. She ushered them forward. “Get comfortable, kick off your shoes by the door, and come grab a cookie!”

            Clearly delighted, the three guests plus Alyssa and Cameron piled into the living room and took up the seats in the circle around the refreshments. Both Hailee and Olive had already happily tugged their feet out of their shoes, propping them over a knee as an early indication of what Cameron would be snacking on while they snacked on the cookies.