He lifted his chemistry book over her head. "At least we'll be cool." "I love the rain. I love every single drop."
He felt her happiness, a radiance enveloping him. "1 love you."
"I hope so." She put her arm around his narrow waist. "I love you. I forget sometimes, I forget to tell you."
She parked at the gym. They changed in the locker room and met on the cinder track. They usually ran four laps on the track and then tackled the steps. Her energy surprised her, supercharged. She didn't feel the strain in her calves until the last set of steps.
Afterward they sat on the bottom step, both soaked. "If we could strip, we wouldn't need a shower." He tipped back his head, the water tickling his tongue. Then he kissed her, dribbling rainwater.
She laughed. "Rules. We should be able to take our clothes off and stand here in the rain. If we were home, we could."
"Let's go." He stood up, pulling her with him.
"For real?"
"Yeah, change your clothes. Let's go."
They were in her car in fifteen minutes and at Surry Crossing in another forty-five.
Piper barked in the kitchen as Vic pushed through the door. R. J.'s car wasn't there, so she must have been running errands.
"Come on." She stripped off her clothes, neatly arranging them on the kitchen chair. "I'll explain to Mom if she comes home soon." She grabbed two towels while Charly removed his T-shirt and jeans.
A thin line of blond hair ran across his pees, the bottom of the line running down to a fluff of pubic hair surrounding an impressive penis.
They'd petted and played with one another for a year, but neither had ever seen the other naked.
"God, you are beautiful. You are so beautiful." He could barely breathe. A twinge in the small of his back told him that his dick would be standing at attention soon.
"I was thinking the same about you." She put the towels on the table, reached for his hand, and they ran down to the river.
Piper, bored with the rain, remained in the kitchen.
"I love its" She laughed as they reached the dock. She dropped his hand, held out her arms, looked up at the sky. The James lapped the dock.
Charly copied her. Rivulets coursed over his body. He looked down at his stiff dick. "I can't always control this thing, you know."
She wrapped her arms around him. "Why should you? It means you're alive."
"I am when I'm with you." He kissed her. He thought if he died in that moment he'd die a happy man. Well, if he could enter her, then he'd die an ecstatic man.
Charly weighed 185 pounds, solid muscle. His bones were heavy, his jaw strong. Vic could feel the hair on his chest next to her breasts. Chris weighed maybe 135 pounds at five feet six or seven. The odor from her body was sweet.
Vic knew she didn't feel incinerating lust, but she felt a tug, a warmth. She liked feeling his penis against her stomach, the heat of it, the throb. She wanted to know what it was like to truly make love with him. If she liked it maybe she wasn't a lesbian. That seemed logical.
She reached for him, wrapping her hand around his satisfying thickness. His knees wobbled.
"Do you need to sit down?" She laughed.
"Vic, I can't breathe. I can't stand. I can't think."
"If we get into the water on the north side of the dock and Mom does come home, she won't see us before we know she's here."
"I'll do anything."
They slid into the water, which was warmer than the rain. The soft muck curled up through their toes. The rain, heavier now, tapped onto their skin. She moved her hand up and down, kissing him; then she slid over him but not onto him. He leaned back against the mossy dock timber, glad for the support. Even with the help of the water, his legs shook.
They drove one another crazy until she mounted him, a new sensation and not a bad one once she adjusted to his considerable girth.
Charly, sweating in the rain as though suffering from fever, whispered, "I don't know how long I can hold out."
She held the back of his neck with her right hand, her left hand in the small of his powerful back. "Don't—hold out."
He held her tightly, but was as gentle as he could be. He exploded in about sixty seconds.
Vic liked feeling him reach orgasm. She knew she could do it in another position. This one wasn't the easiest.
Charly had slept with two other women in his life. One was his high school girlfriend, sex snatched whenever and wherever they could get away with it. The other one was his first girlfriend at William and Mary when he was in his freshman year. He'd mastered the basics, but he knew there was a lot to learn and he couldn't wait to learn it all with Vic. But he was so respectful of her, so in awe of her, that he never pushed for it. Also, Charly possessed a wonderful sense of people. He knew without being told that Vic was not a woman who could be pushed into sex or anything else for that matter.
She hung on to him, kissing him, rubbing the small of his back until he slipped out.
"Think any of those little things are swimming in the James?" She kissed his cheek.
He sighed. "You feel so good." He paused a moment, the muscles in his back tensed. "Vic, I didn't think about—"
"Me neither. I'll bear the consequences should there be any." The unpleasant possibility of zero spontaneity in heterosexual sex had occurred to her.
There was no way in hell Vic would ever take birth control pills. Let other women screw up their hormone balance. She wasn't going to do it. This meant purchasing condoms—not in Surry County, obviously, where everybody talks to everybody else—or getting fitted with a diaphragm, which meant you had to plan sex or stop and put it in.
With Chris there wasn't a worry in the world.
"I'll marry you. I'll marry you anyway." He shivered a moment. "You have to ask first."
"I do and I will." He kissed her.
Charly came from the same kind of background as Vic did. A man didn't just ask a woman to marry him. He first spoke to her father. If she had no father, he spoke to her mother or someone in authority.
The rules for correct behavior had lasted through centuries of upheavals in Virginia. They weren't going to change. The man asked for a woman's hand, and if she accepted he'd better be able to provide for her. Fortunately, Charly could.
If two people just agreed to get married without the proper minuet it meant they were low rent, even if they were rich.
They walked out of the river and back up to the house, the hard rain washing off the river smell. Piper greeted them with a thump of her tail.
Vic wrapped a towel around Charly and one around herself. Then she rubbed him down, feeling him get hard again.
"Maybe we can get away with it."
They hurried up the steps, running into her bedroom and launching themselves on her twin bed.
She wrapped her legs around him much as Chris had around her the night before. Coming was easy. The minute she did he did, and she was thankful that he had lasted that long.
He propped himself on his elbows. "To what do I owe this momentous occasion?"
"I don't feel like waiting around anymore." She kissed him again. "Let's take a shower." As she stood up, his come ran out of her. "This stuff is amazing." She laughed.
A little was seeping out of the hole in his penis. He wiped it off with his finger. "Is there an etiquette for body fluids?"
"I think we either lick ourselves clean, wipe it up, or wash it off. They didn't tell me in cotillion. It's just a hunch "
They showered, ran back downstairs, and put their clothes on.
Vic had just opened the refrigerator when R. J. and Bunny walked in. After rapturous greetings, Bunny pulled a new pair of binoculars from a blue glossy shopping bag.
"Zeiss ten by fifty-six. I can see at night."
"That's great, Aunt Bunny."
"Don't ask what they cost." Bunny handed them to Charly. When no one did ask, she added, "A fortune."
"That's the truth." R. J. walked over to the refrigerator. "Hungry?
Oh, what a silly question. You all sit here. I'll perform a culinary miracle."
"R. J., I'll eat every morsel you put in front of me." Bunny took the binoculars back after Vic inspected them too. "Aren't they the best? I'd tell you to look through them, but the rain—" Bunny stood up, putting her binoculars to her eyes. 'Even in this weather I can see. Oh, this is just the best, best, best. Here, Charly."
He stood up to peer through the binoculars. "Wow, Mrs. McKenna, you could sign up for Special Forces with these."
While they were talking, R. J. was preparing their lunch. She adored feeding people. In no time she'd put cold roast beef on the table, a loaf of fresh whole wheat bread, potato salad, mayo, mustard, pickles, deviled eggs.
"Mom, you must have known we were coming."
"Actually, your sister had a pep club meeting here last night, officers only, and these are the leftovers. She's quite the organizer."
Bunny kept putting her fork down to pick up her new binoculars. She couldn't keep her hands off them. "Oh, I just love it. I'm not going to show Don the bill. I paid for these out of my own special account."
"Charly, we missed you last weekend, and I guess we'll miss you this weekend," R. J. said.
"It's always a pleasure to have you at the games, Mrs. Savedge."
"Maybe the weekend after that we'll all drive over for a game. Then you can come back with us and spend what's left of the weekend."
"That would be great." He smiled. He liked R. J., and Bunny, too. He'd gotten to know her a bit over the summer, playing golf with her and Frank Savedge.
"What were you two doing?" Bunny hoped she'd get a vague response, anything to fire her imagination, since Don wasn't firing it lately.
"We wanted to jump in the river in the rain," Charly said.
"Well, careful, you two—you never know what's swimming in there," Bunny warned.
"You're exactly right, Aunt Bunny," Vic agreed, smiling.
J
esus, Vic, leave it to you not to do anything halfway." Jinx sat in her living room adorned with framed posters of Impressionist paintings. Because of his curfew, Vic had dropped off Charly at his dorm.
The minute she walked through Jinx's door she called Chris, telling her she'd had to run home, she was at Jinx's, and she'd see her tomorrow after class. Then she fell into a chair, like a shot duck, and spilled everything to Jinx.
"What do I do now?"
"Enjoy it." Jinx laughed. She'd made coffee and got up to pour it, returning with two large mugs. "Here, caffeine will clarify your muddled brain."
"I think it's always muddled."
Jinx sat opposite her dearest friend. "Neither one knows about the other?"
"No. Well, obviously, Chris knows about Charly. Doesn't know I slept with him."
Homosexuality would cost Vic; it did everyone. Jinx felt no repugnance for it, but she recognized that it was a complicated life.
"Do you love Charly?"
"What's not to love?"
"Do you love Chris?"
"That's just it, Jinx. I barely know the woman. But I can't be around her without wanting to tear her clothes off. Torrential sex."
Jinx put her feet up on the crate serving as a coffee table. "Before this—did you ever think you'd sleep with a woman?" Vic shook her head. Jinx continued, "I always thought Teeney Rendell had a crush on you."
Teeny Rendell, a pretty girl, a year younger, had followed Vic around like a puppy during high school.
"So?"
"Didn't give you a flicker?"
"Jinx, get real. Not in the program."
"She's hot—good-looking. Wish I had her legs."
"I never thought of it. Come on, you've known me forever, since we were born. If I were a lesbian, don't you think you'd know? Or sense it? Or something?"
Jinx shrugged. "How could I know if you didn't know?"
"People feel those things about other people."
"Only if it's in the computer." Jinx tapped her head. "Why would I look for it? But now that you've so spectacularly launched yourself onto the bosom of another woman, how was it?"
"You pig."
Jinx raised his eyebrows. "Like you wouldn't ask me the same thing if the shoe were on the other foot."
"I told you, torrential." Vic joggled the coffee mug, caught it before spilling, and placed it on the coffee table. "I don't know if I can explain it, but she touches me and I'm incinerated, fried. No brain waves."
"Sounds pretty fabulous to me, with the exception that it's a woman. I mean for me, I'm not passing judgment. You know I don't care." She leaned forward. "What about Charly? I thought you'd been sleeping with him and just not telling me."
"Oh, come on. I'd tell you. Jinx, I tell you everything. I can't believe you'd think that." Vic grew impassioned.
"Yeah, but one still has to be, shall we say, circumspect."
Vic sighed, looking out the window—still raining. "I like whatever makes him happy. Besides, seeing him get excited makes me excited."
"So?" Jinx voice rose.
"Oh, sex with Charly?" Vic folded her hands together. "It was okay."
"Just okay?"
Now Vic leaned toward her friend, reaching across the coffee table for her hand. "What do you want me to say? After Chris, I just had to find out. Maybe it wasn't smart or right or fair, but I found out. Sex with Charly is a pleasure, not a passion."
Jinx squeezed Vic's hand and then released it. "Ah, that does change things, doesn't it?"
"Maybe I need to sleep with them both more. A lot. As much as I can." Vic's face lightened. "Keep comparing notes."
"Do you think you could love Chris?"
"I kind of hope I can and I kind of hope I can't."
"Why not be in love with two people at the same time? Makes sense to me, although it may not make sense to them," Jinx said.
"I can hide the fire, but what about the smoke? I'm a bad liar, anyway."
Jinx held up her hands to stop the questions. "Don't tell either of them anything. Yet. You don't know enough. Really. You don't want to blow your relationship with Charly, forgive the pun. And if Chris really is the one, you don't want to run her off either."
"The funny thing is, I could tell Charly. The other funny thing is, I feel so close to him not because we made love, but because of what I feel for Chris. It's like I woke up. I see the world. I see him. He's beautiful to me."
"I'll take your word for it, but I don't understand it."
"I don't either." Vic lifted the mug, draining it. "I don't understand a blessed thing. But I feel everything."
A sly smile crossed Jinx's lips. "Oh, give me more details." "Like what?"
"Tell me how they feel, since you're feeling everything and since I probably will never make love to a woman. I need a vicarious thrill."
"She smells different than he does, sweet, very sweet. He smells sharper, kind of, but maybe that's because men don't shave their armpits. Clean but sharper. Her skin is smoother. He's heavier, denser
kind of, and in a way, more defenseless. I love that about Charly and maybe it's true of all men: They're strong but fragile at the same time. I mean he's physically strong, stronger than I am, and I'm no weakling."
"Brute. Your mother calls you a brute." Jinx's eyes sparked. She was loving the details.
"His shoulders are so broad I think he could carry the world." "Vic, your shoulders are about as broad as Charly's."
"Nah. I love him, Jinx. I do. I love his mouth, his muscles—God, he has a beautiful body. I love his cock. I love his laugh. I love him. But I don't feel for him what I feel for her."
A cloud passed over Jinx's face, a recognition that things change in a split second, plans shatter, new paths emerge out of the rubble. She didn't know what any of it meant for her or for her friend. But she realized life happens, it just happens. Human attempts to control it would always be absurd.
"Vic, could you marry Charly?" She held up her right hand as Vic started to answer. "Don't interrupt me. Everyone, incl
uding Charly, expects you to marry. But could you marry him, have children, and forget what you feel with Chris? Could you live without that—torrential sex or torrid love or whatever you now know?"
Vic's hand flew to her face. She covered her eyes for a second as though shading them; then she dropped her hand. "Jinx, I don't think I could. I think sooner or later I'd find a woman or a woman would find me. Why?" She slapped her hands together. "This just fucks up everything. My parents will die. Aunt Bunny will shit a brick. We'll lose Surry Crossing."
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