Always Box Set

by Ward, Susan

  I could feel my friend’s angry stare, and to make sure George was clear that kissing Patty meant nothing to me and that Patty knew she could never be anything to me except a friend, I held out my hand to Bonnie.

  “You want to go for a walk with me before I cut out for home?”

  The gang lounging around me grew alert from that one.

  Walk.

  Everyone in the circle knew that was only my code word and the translation was to go somewhere private to screw. I didn’t go on walks with girls. I didn’t hang on the phone with them. I didn’t date. I never went steady. We had a clique of beach babes and I spent time with whichever suited my taste in the moment, and more likely than not, just for sex.

  With an eager smile, Bonnie sprang to her feet and latched onto my hand. We were what would be called casual fuck-buddies today, but shit, the girls wanted me even back then, they tolerated me doing it with whoever I wanted to, and there was no reason to go home for my familial duty without first relieving some of the angst in my dick.

  As I made my way across the sand with Bonnie, both George and Patty were ticked off at me—the way I wanted it, intended it by kissing Patty and then blowing her off. My friends were unified by being annoyed with me. I wasn’t really feeling enthused about the prospect of banging Bonnie again as I took her to the little cave in the cliffs on the deserted section of the beach beyond the slew. It was understood that this was our surf club’s territory. No one outside our gang ever invaded our functionally appointed fuck space that pretty much only I ever used.

  I pulled back the blanket we’d hung as a door and lit the candle on the crate, noting that everything was exactly where it had been the last time I’d left there. Sometimes hobos invaded our turf—hobos played by their own rules, we didn’t count them as invaders, and hell, who could blame them?—but it hadn’t happened since I’d brought my last girl here. The towels were neatly folded and stacked, the transistor radio was in the sand, and the scotch bottle still sat next to the small wooden box holding the rubbers.

  Bonnie turned to face me. “What’s going on, Jack? Are we doing this because you want to or to piss off Patty?”

  I laughed. “What do you think?”

  Her eyes twinkled even though they shouldn’t have since I knew I was a prick back in those days.

  “I think a little of both,” she said, coyly staring up at me from beneath slightly lowered lids as she ran her hand down the front of me until her fingers encased the outline of my dick.

  I grinned. “Are you angry?”

  “Heck no. I like to get under Patty’s skin, too, since she thinks she’s the queen bee and deserves everything first, even you, Jack,” she murmured before she stepped in for a kiss, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck to give me a full body press, when it would have been more appropriate to slap me in the face.

  Bonnie was a free spirit before it was cool to be. What we called “far out,” a chick ahead of her time. She was built, definitely in tune with the body God gave her, a touch on the wild side, and the first girl I knew whose parents had gotten her the pill—enlightened parents, but I still used a condom with her because she was not a girl any guy should trust completely.

  No guy should ever trust a Catholic girl willing to give it up before marriage, not completely, a lesson I’d learn in spades real soon—remember, this was the day of my first unexpected road change—but I’m getting ahead of my story.

  Kissing her reminded me why I always held out my hand to her when she was in the circle in the sand. In a world of girls who held back their tongues, she was a French kissing machine. And never underestimate the power of stroking a man’s tongue in getting his dick thick. She knew how to twirl and tease, matching the moves of my mouth as she rubbed into the eager grind of my rapidly heating cock.

  I could have brought any girl in the circle here and they would have opened their legs for me. And it sure as hell didn’t matter who I was kissing. I would have been hard since it didn’t take much to give an eighteen-year-old guy an erection, but it was good that it was Bonnie because I could blow past foreplay and just put the brick to her. In fact, she liked it better that way, going straight into her hard, fast, and rough. She was far out, remember?

  My dick was straining against my snug wetsuit, begging for me to free it, and by the way she was pushing into my bulge there was no doubt she was wanting me to. As quickly as we moved through the bases—necking, feeling her up, and rubbing against each other—a little bit of precum was already making my shorts wet.

  I dragged my lips away from hers and stepped back, more than ready to be naked with her. As I shrugged out of my wetsuit, Bonnie laid out the towels into a makeshift bed. She knew the drill; she’d been here with me before.

  Wearing only my birthday suit, I crouched down to take a long pull on the scotch as I watched her slip out of her tight one-piece. No man should ever pass up the strip show of a delectable body, and damn, if Bonnie knew how to make it worth the price of admission as she slowly worked the Roxanne Black Pin-up Bombshell from her luscious frame.

  The term bombshell had definitely been invented for her, and seeing her full, curly bush exposed made my rod twitch. She was naturally beautiful in every way, and I wouldn’t have believed it if someone had told me then that men in the future would sell short what the sight of a bush can do to a guy. Sure, girls shave them away today, but back in the day a nice bush was a glorious thing. Dark black curlies to go with the short black curls on her head.

  I held out the bottle to her. “Do you want a drink?”

  Laughing, she fell back into the pillow she’d made with the extra towels. “No. You don’t have to get me drunk, Jack. I’m already naked and I’ve already decided to do the dirty with you today.”

  I set down the bottle, since the two beers and the long pull of scotch had gotten me into a revved zone more than ready to fuck her.

  “You’re more in a hurry than even me.”

  “I don’t care what the nuns say at school. A girl has desires just like a guy.” She smiled up at me. “Do it, Jack. Now.”

  I leaned over her, balancing on my two arms to take in my mouth one of her ripe nipples. Groaning, she sank her fingers into my hair. By the way she moaned and arched her body up into me in concert with spreading her legs, you’d think I was the best lover ever. But I didn’t know shit about anything then. I figured if a girl let me in her—repeatedly—I was a good lover, a real ladies’ man, a fucking Casanova.

  Wrong, Sherlock.

  Girls fucked guys who were good looking.

  Girls fucked guys with money.

  Girls fucked guys who sucked at sex all the time if they conformed to some arbitrary requirement list—selfish pricks, pricks who didn’t care, pricks who took what they wanted, and that was pretty much who I was then. A rich, handsome guy who satisfied the requirement list and didn’t know shit about love or how to satisfy a woman.

  I lowered my body into her, taking her mouth with mine, shoving my tongue down her throat as I started pushing up against her cunt with my dick. I loved the feel of her juicy lower lips and coarse bush against my cock, and I wanted every drop of it until I had to slip on a rubber to go in. We were panting and rubbing pretty hard against each other, kissing and touching in a way that screamed Jack, grab a condom.

  Like I said, Bonnie didn’t need foreplay and I didn’t want any. She was dripping and wet against my throbbing erection, more the result of her being a teenage girl, but that was something else I didn’t know yet.

  She flexed her hips, running her dripping slit down the length of my cock, and I pulled back quickly, my breathing uneven as I reached for a rubber. With how wet she was, if I didn’t sheath and move to the next base soon, I’d come before I sank into her.

  “Hurry up, Jack,” she murmured as I rolled the latex down my engorged length. “I want you now.”

  “Now is what you’re getting, Bonnie,” I growled and she giggled. As I moun
ted, her mirth quieted and I bucked in her as she moaned for more.

  It didn’t take long for us to climax, and as I pounded my rod into hot and willing Bonnie, it never occurred to me that being with a girl should be any other way. Our overheated eagerness and exuberance consumed us both—well, at least I thought what my partners felt was the same as me—and there had been nothing to this point to suggest that sex should be more, a skill I needed to better cultivate.

  The way Bonnie screamed and moaned suggested I was the best lover ever. That she panted and sweated beneath me as I let go my load was the only confirmation I needed that she was enjoying this as much as I was. And make no mistake, I wasn’t looking for anything more than a willing girl to sink my cock into because—face it, it’s true—a teenage guy really wants only one thing. To get laid and to get laid often.

  I rested on top of her for a moment as we both waited for our breathing to slow. My forehead was pressed against hers and our breath mingled.

  “That was incredible,” she purred.

  I opened my eyes and eased back enough to smile into her face. “That was pretty far out for me, too.”

  “I hate that you’re leaving for Harvard next week.”

  “I doubt you hate it as much as I do.” I made what I thought was a charming and humorous expression before I rolled off her. “I’d rather stay at the beach and have fun with you.”

  She moved away from me and pulled on her suit. I was still dressing when she paused at the makeshift door. “Will I see you again before you leave next week?”

  Grinning roguishly, I taunted, “Not if I see you first, Bonnie.”

  It was an old joke, a lame one, but she laughed like it was hilarious before she darted out of the cave and hurried back to our gang on the beach. She wanted to get there before me—or I should say, without me—almost as if that kept secret that we stole away for a fast fuck. It was a pointless canard, but life was easier then. People pretended to believe things out of politeness and wanting to get along.

  The world was still civil in 1960, though some would argue I was not a good guy because I’d just banged a girl I knew I could never care for in a cave, sent her back to her girlfriends without me, and then took off with my best buddy without a second thought about her.

  George was waiting alone by my silver Porsche Roadster, our boards already tucked behind the seats.

  He opened the passenger door and his eyes locked on me as he shook his head. “Fucker. The girls just do what you want, always.”

  “What can I say? It’s a gift. Why should I waste it?” He was still shaking his head, but he was laughing as well as I dropped down onto the driver’s seat and put the key into the ignition. We were just pulling out of the lot and making the turn left into Hope Ranch for the short drive home when I said, “Patty would go to the cave if you asked her. Aren’t you tired of not getting any, Georgie? Time to grow up. Time to be a man.”

  His jaw stiffened. “I get plenty at Harvard.”

  We both knew that was a lie, but I didn’t call him on it. George was a sensitive, overly shy guy and if he needed a little canard here and there to get him through, it wasn’t anything to me. Some guys like to tell tales about their sexual exploits and other guys just had them. I fell into the latter group.

  “One of these days, Jackie-boy, all that tomcatting around is going to get you into trouble. The kind of trouble even the senator can’t get you out of.”

  “Nah. The world is changing, Georgie, and if you don’t keep up it’s going to leave you behind. Sex isn’t anything anymore. Not even to the girls. Not even to Catholic girls. If it feels right, no need to hold back. Stop holding back, George. Live a little.”

  His expression altered with rebuke. “You live enough for the both of us. Mark my words. If you don’t hold back, you’re going to regret it someday.”

  “Never. You only live once. Remember what James Dean said: ‘Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.’”

  “James Dean died at twenty-four. I don’t think it’s his philosophy that you should follow. Besides, Dean never said that. It was John Derek in the movie Knock on Any Door.”

  Laughing, I pulled into his driveway and parked. I didn’t challenge him on the trivia. George was wicked smart that way, which wasn’t easy before the Internet because it required lots of reading, but he knew the right story on everything.

  Instead, I said, “If you don’t make a move on Patty fairly soon you’re going to lose her.”

  He climbed from the car and grabbed his board. “Let me worry about Patty, will you? And fuck you for kissing her today.”

  I laughed because he wasn’t really angry. “Just heating her up for you. Like I said, it’s you she’s waiting to go to the cave with. Not me.”

  He stared into my face, his hopeful eyes a painful thing to see. “Did she say that?”

  “No, she didn’t have to. She’s waiting for you, dude, not me. You’re her man. You always will be. Past time to make it official. Give her your class ring before we leave for Harvard.”

  Before he could answer that, I put the car into gear, finished the loop out of his driveway, and then did the sharp right for my house next door. It was better to leave George to debate inside his head with himself. He was going to make one hell of a lawyer after law school.

  I never could win an argument with George Thompson, but then I never tried to. I just planted seeds in his head and walked away, and his lightning intelligence would do the rest on its own.

  I wanted George and Patty together because that was the only way the three of us would stay together in the long run, and for me that was the way it should be: George married to Patty, and both of them best friends with me.

  Yep, it was time for my buddy to become a man with my favorite girl. But what I didn’t know as I trotted up the front walk into my house was that I was no more a man at this point than George was.

  Sure, I’d fucked dozens of girls by then, only it hadn’t been anything more than what animals do in the barnyard. Heated and carnal and meaningless. I’d only exercised my dick and nothing else. But I didn’t know that.

  I hadn’t taken my first real breath as a man.

  Three

  Damn, my phone starts to ring. Story interruptus. Which one of my family is bothering me this time? It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to the hospital even though every last one of them was holed up there waiting for Kaley’s baby.

  I grab my cell from atop the cooler and look at the screen. Shit, my eyes are getting bad. I can’t tell without my glasses who the hell this is. I answer anyway.

  “This is Jack,” I snap into the receiver.

  “Poppy…”

  I smile in response to the sweet voice of my granddaughter Krystal. “Hi, baby girl. What’s going on?”

  Silence through the phone and I wait patiently since I know she is pausing to organize her thoughts in that quick, smart way she has. Eleven years old and the girl could already debate circles around me. But then it would have been foolish to expect any less. She was her father’s daughter in that she possessed the razor-sharp intelligence of an MIT professor and had the artistic brilliance—Krystal was an aspiring ballerina—of Diana Vishneva. On her surface she emoted a sunny personality and internally she was as emotionally complicated as her mother, Chrissie.

  Maybe the saying is true. You often can’t see yourself in your own children even when it’s you staring right back in front of your face.

  Krystal’s inner unrest I don’t think her parents have taken note of yet. Not that I’m faulting them. Parents miss a lot—I sure as hell missed a lot with my own daughter—and Christ, Chrissie and Alan have five children. It’s good that we live close and are active in each other’s lives so I can step into the hot zones with the kids when they miss them.

  Hot zones.

  An understatement.

  Each one of the five, in their own way, is a challenge since each one, in a vary
ing mix of attributes, is a perfect hybrid of their famous and complex parents. But to be honest, I had a soft spot in my heart for Krystal, because she was the one who most reminded me of Chrissie.

  Something I feared her parents would see too late.

  Something I was definitely feeling as I wait patiently for her to say what she wants to say. “Baby girl…” I growl by way of prodding her onward. “If you need something, just ask.”

  She laughs, a trifle uneasy. “Why do you assume I’m calling to ask for something?”

  That was a no-brainer. All the kids thought I was a soft touch, but it wasn’t worth pointing that out to her. “Ah—because you are. If it’s to ask me to come down to the ’Sades, the answer is no. I’m staying out of your mom and sister’s way until the baby is born.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask you to come here.” A long pause with quick breaths which I know means she’s frustrated and rolling her eyes at me. “I was going to ask if I can go there. Stay with you in Santa Barbara.”

  The humor leaves me. “Why would you want to come here, Krystal, when all the action is down there?”

  She lets out a heavy sigh. “I just want to visit you.”

  “Nope, not buying it. What’s going on?”

  Another long pause. “Nothing. It just didn’t seem right for the family to be together and you all alone.”

  My lips move in a wistful curl. “You don’t need to worry about me, sweetheart.”

  “Well, someone should,” she says fervently. “Mom says you need someone worrying about you.”

  Thanks a lot, Chrissie. “Never, and definitely not you. That’s not how things work.”

  “Then how does it work?”

  I tense. Christ. On the surface it’s a simple question, but let’s not forget it’s Krystal, pretty much making it anything but simple, and most probably a clever ploy to lead me down a path I don’t want to go down today.