The Agreement
5 Horses
WE LOST THE GAME. They outran us, out-passed us, and out-scored us. It was funny, though. Rick went the entire game and was hardly touched. We were just over-powered.
Flo, Syl, and Sharon all had dates waiting for them after the game, so the trip back was just Shelly, Bill, Renee and me. We stopped for a burger at McDonalds on the way back.
“Hey, Brian, have you heard anything from Jessica?” Bill asked.
“No. I only know that her folks went to Paris to be with her for a month. I’ve been mowing their yard. I don’t know when she’s coming back, but I don’t think it will be for school.”
“Are you a friend of Jessica’s?” Renee asked. “She would have been a great cheerleader, but I hear she got into modeling.”
“She’s my next-door neighbor. And my friend,” I said.
When we got back in the car, Renee and I got in the back seat instead of the middle. I kind of figured she must want to make out, but she just asked me to put my arm around her and hold her. I did. It was sweet and she stayed cuddled to me all the way back to my house. I think she even went to sleep. She sat up when she heard the crunching of the cinders as Shelly went up our drive. I glanced at my watch and it was only eleven o’clock.
“If you guys want to take some time back there, or go in, we’re okay for a while,” Shelly said. She crawled over the console and into the middle seat motioning Bill to follow her. “Come here, baby. The rules say no penetration, but you have permission for everything else.” Renee kind of cringed in her seat. She moved over and reached for the door.
“We’ll give you guys a few minutes,” she said. “But don’t get naked.” We got out of the car.
“Would you like to come in?” I asked. “I baked cookies yesterday. Just basic Tollhouse cookies, but they’re pretty good.”
“Really? Yes. Thank you.” We went in and Mom came out of her bedroom. She was still dressed, thank goodness.
“You’re home early. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Mom. I just asked Renee in for a cookie and milk. Is that okay.”
“Sure. Hi, Renee. I’m Brian’s mother, Marilyn. Apparently, he forgot his manners while he was out this evening.” Renee started to hold out her hand, but mom just stepped up to her and hugged her.
“Thank you, Mrs. Frost. I’m sure it was only a momentary lapse. Brian’s been very polite all evening. He’s really nice.”
“We think so. Well, I’ll leave you to your cookies and milk. Still a midnight curfew, though.”
“Thanks Mom. Sorry I didn’t make a proper introduction. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Your mom is nice.”
“Yeah. Be glad she came out and not Dad with his shotgun,” I laughed. Renee didn’t laugh until I did. “Relax, Renee. Nobody here is going to hurt you. Not in any way.” I set a plateful of cookies and two glasses of milk on the table.
“I can’t believe you’re a freshman,” she sighed. “Except I’d have had a constant battle to keep the hands of any senior boy I know off of me on the way home. You guys are all so polite.”
“It’s rule number one. Treat everyone with kindness and respect,” I said. “We’re still working out exactly what it means, but we all agreed it included being polite.”
“It’s such a relief. I didn’t want to make out or have sex. I just wanted to be held. Thank you, Brian.”
I pushed back my chair and held out my arms. Renee jumped up and sat in my lap, hugging me and rubbing her face against my chest. We sat that way for half an hour.
“It’s almost midnight,” I whispered to her. “I’m sorry you have to go.”
“Me, too. May I have a little kiss goodnight?”
“Yes,” I whispered. Just like after the ball game two weeks ago, I kissed her softly. She got off my lap and I flipped on the outdoor light. That should give Shelly and Bill enough time to get straightened up.
“Goodnight, Brian. Thank you.”
Denise and her dad pulled into my drive at noon. I had lunch ready. I was a little nervous. I was determined to have all my girlfriends and at least some of their parents over for a meal and to meet my parents. My folks were on-board and encouraged me.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea to meet your friends and their parents. Dad and I haven’t met a lot of new people since elementary school PTA meetings.”
I answered the door and Mr. Raymond stood between me and Denise. I had a feeling he was just a mite protective of her.
“Hi, Mr. Raymond. Hi, Denise. Please come in and meet my parents. I have lunch just about ready.” They followed me to the living room and I introduced them to my parents. As soon as the intros were done, Denise followed me to the kitchen.
“Scared?” she asked.
“No. Well. Maybe a little. Your dad is pretty intimidating. I’ve only met him once before.”
“Well, he was impressed that neither of you white boys flinched at riding in the back of his car.”
“Are you kidding? That’s a luxury ride. The four of us weren’t even crowded. How’s he feel about you dating one white boy one week and another the next?”
“Well, you scored points by inviting him to lunch and to meet your parents. I… uh… had to show him the agreement.”
“That’s good. Mom and Dad have read it, too. With all the signatures. What did he think?”
“He was puzzled, but he really liked the ‘no penetration’ clause.”
“Man. Parents really zero in on that one, don’t they? You’d think that we are all just waiting for an opportunity to jump each other.” I laughed as I poured the soup. It was almost too cold for the gazpacho, but Denise had requested it specifically. I noticed that she wasn’t laughing with me.
“Maybe I was,” she said softly. “Until Lionel invited me to our table and I met everybody, I was playing with some pretty dangerous characters. Our neighborhood isn’t as nice as living out here in the country. It can get pretty rough and if you don’t give back as good as you get, they start thinking you are prey. It got pretty tense at the end of this summer and Dad beat the crap out of a neighborhood thug who had his hands on me. That’s why I transferred to SJV.”
“Damn, Denise. That’s a crappy thing to happen. I’m sorry. I’m glad your dad was there to help.”
“Yeah. Well, the thing was, I’d have probably gone with him just to prove I was able to play with the big guys. I’d probably be pregnant by now and just be a gang bitch.”
I didn’t know what to say. No wonder Mr. Raymond was protective. Denise was about the same height as me and had a slender build. She was definitely mature, but didn’t have the super stacks that Sugar, Brenda, and Rose had. Even in her tight blue jeans, though, she had an incredible round butt. We called everyone to the table. Because there were five of us, I served lunch at the dining room table, but just with placemats and paper napkins. We had the soup, a big chef salad, and of course, fresh bread.
“Denise told me you were an award-winning cook, Brian. I didn’t quite believe her until I tasted this. Is that your plan for the future? You’re not thinking of turning burgers for a living, are you?” He laughed, but I think he wasn’t sure that cooking was an appropriate activity for a boy.
“I love to cook, but my goal is to become a chemist.”
“Excuse my ignorance, but what does a chemist actually do?”
“Well, there are several fields that are open. The pharmaceutical industry is pretty much run by chemists. That’s drug manufacturing like aspirin and penicillin. The oil industry employs hundreds of chemists for everything from making new petroleum products to better blends of gasoline. There are even chemists working in places like cosmetics and perfume. There’s a ton of possibilities. I just know I like chemistry and want to do something in that field.” He nodded his head.
“Before you take my daughter off on a horse and into the woods, I have to ask one other question,” he said. Dad nodded to him when he looked his way. “Do you take this agreement that you all signed seriously? It’s pretty hard to believe that a bunch of kids would put this together and not be using it as a way to fool the parents or just take advantage of someone.”
“Mr. Raymond,” I said, looking him squarely in the eye, “I wrote this agreement so that my friends and I could feel safe when we were out. We’re mostly fourteen and fifteen years old and most of us are freshmen. There’s a lot of pressure to act older than we are. We’ve all got a lot of curiosity—there’s no question about that—but we also know we aren’t ready to make commitments for the rest of our lives. Having one of my girlfriends end up pregnant or feeling like I had to drop out of school to support a family would be devastating. We’re handling our raging hormones the best we can.”
He looked me in the eye for a long while.
“Well, I have an appointment in a little while and I need to get going. I expect a full report on this horse-riding thing. I don’t think there’s anyone in our family who has ever been on a horse. I’ll see you at six, is that clear?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Don’t worry, Jack,” Dad said. “We’ll have her home on time. Thanks for coming to have lunch with us.”
“Oh my God! It’s big!” She’d no more than said it than we both started giggling.
“You’re a girlfriend every guy is going to want,” I laughed. “It’s a she and she’s only about fourteen-two.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Horses are measured in hands, roughly the distance across the palm. The measurement has been standardized so that each hand is four inches. Silk stands fourteen hands plus two inches. That’s fifty-eight inches. Rika is about two inches taller at fifteen hands.”
“She looks taller than five feet.”
“That’s because you are looking up at her head and she’s a proud girl. Arabians naturally hold their heads high, unlike quarter horses or thoroughbreds. A horse’s height is measured at the withers or shoulder. Look. You can see right across her.”
“She’s such a pretty white.”
“Silk is perfect for you and me.”
“Why?”
“Well her hair is white or really kind of light gray. But look here. Her skin is black. She’s a desert horse.”
“Black and white, like you and me. Can I touch her?”
“She’s been waiting for you to. Here’s a brush. They like to go out and roll in the dust or even sometimes in the mud. It helps keep them cool in warm weather. You don’t want to toss a blanket and saddle on a dirty horse. They could get sores if it rubbed funny, so they get brushed and combed before we saddle. They love the attention. It’s pretty soothing for people, too.”
“She’s so soft.”
“Another way she’s like you,” I laughed.
“You don’t really know that yet,” Denise pouted. “I don’t know if I’ll let you find out.”
“Well, if you are okay with just sitting on her back while I lead her around, I don’t need to touch you at all today. But if you want to ride with me, we’ll have to have permission to put our arms around each other.”
“We ride hugging?”
“No. If you are behind me, you hold onto me. If I’m behind you, I have to put my arms around you in order to use the reins. Either way, we’ll be squashed right together.”
“Sounds okay. I was still afraid you wouldn’t want to actually touch me.”
“Denise,” I said, putting my brush and comb down. She turned toward me. “May I put my arms around you and kiss you? Just a little friendly kiss?” She caught her breath and dropped her hands to her side looking me in the eye. When she nodded, I put my arms around her and slowly brought our lips together. Her lips were full and soft. I kept my tongue in my mouth. This wasn’t about making out. This was about affirming that she was my girlfriend as much as any of the others. “Now are you my girlfriend?”
“That was… nice. What do we do now?”
“Now we saddle up and ride.”
I did lead Silk around while Denise rode on her. I couldn’t just let her ride because the little tennis shoes she was wearing would have slipped right through the stirrups and that could be a disaster, even with a gentle horse like Silk. After we’d ridden around the corral for a while, though, with Rika prancing around beside us, I mounted behind Denise and we headed for the woods. We rode the whole distance to the end of our country mile and then wound around through the trees coming back. I gave Silk a break when we found a particularly lush area of grass and Denise and I walked together holding hands.
We really lived in different worlds. My dad worked for an electronics company and Mom worked at the newspaper. Denise’s dad was the president of the union local at the factory and had been a laborer all his life. His only luxury was that black Cadillac and I was surprised to find it was nearly as old as Denise. Her mom disappeared when Denise was little and had never been heard from again. It was sad, but also obvious that she idolized her father.
“Daddy might have higher expectations for us than either of us do, Brian. When he sees me with a black boy, like Lionel a couple weeks ago, it’s like he has his hand on his gun the whole time. I saw how he treated you today and the way he looked at your parents. He’s probably thinking that his daughter could get a big boost in life and escape our neighborhood if she was with this nice white boy who is going to make drugs.”
“I don’t think I’m going to make drugs.”
“He’d rather I was with someone who made them than someone who used them.”
“But Denise, what are your expectations?”
“I signed the agreement. I expect that we’re probably going to go out some more this year, maybe alone and maybe with others. I plan to go out with Lionel again because I really like him, but Dougie was funny and made me laugh a lot. I might go out with Jackson, too, but only if he’ll abide by the rules. I like him, but he’s from the same neighborhood that I am and that can distort your sense of what’s real.”
“Well, don’t make plans with anyone for after the game next weekend. We all want to go to the dance.”
“Mmm. Thanks for the tip. Can we ride some more?” We mounted and Denise settled back against me and pulled my hand to her stomach where she held it with both of hers while I guided Silk with the other hand. The feel of her soft round bottom bouncing up and down in front of me had predictable results. Instead of pulling away, she wiggled up closer.
“Kiss me?”
I did and it was long and sweet and did absolutely nothing to make my cock go down.
Denise’s neighborhood was scary. It just looked crowded and poor and a little dirty. Mom and Dad pulled up in front of a little house that was only about ten feet back from the sidewalk. There were six or eight kids sitting on the hood of a car smoking in front of the next house. Most of them were black guys, but there were two white girls with them. One of them had her breast out so a baby could suck it while she took drags from a cigarette one of the guys held for her.
I got out and held the door for Denise.
“’Bye, Mr. and Mrs. Frost. ’Bye, Brian.” She turned to walk to her door and it took a second before she realized I was walking with her. “What are you doing?” she asked with a panicked tone in her voice.
“Walking my girlfriend to her door,” I said.
“What you doing here whitey?” the guy with the cigarette said. “You think you can fuck our women?” I looked at him and he’d pushed himself off the hood. He didn’t look too stable. I’ve got to learn to control my temper.
“Sorry, man. But you can’t expect to have the easy white girls and the classy black women, too.”
“The fuck you say?” He took a couple unsteady steps toward us and I could tell smoking wasn’t all he’d been doing. The door opened in front of us and Mr. Raymond stepped out. I saw there was a baseball bat in his hand where the guys couldn’t see it.
“You’ve got guts,” he said under his breath. “Sounds like he nailed it, Hawk. You made your choice; now go raise your baby.”
“Aw, fuck. Fuckers.” He turned his back on us and his whole gang moved farther down the street.
“What the hell are you doing walking around our neighborhood, kid?”
“Unwritten rule, sir,” I said. “I always walk my date to her door.”
“You better let me know if there are any other unwritten rules I should know about. Denise?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Kiss your boyfriend goodnight before his parents drive away and leave him.” She looked up at me. Mr. Raymond stepped around us to look down the street.
“Will you kiss me, Brian?”
“I’d be happy to.” I pulled her into my arms and kissed her with a little more fervor than I intended.
“You’d better let us know in advance the next time you plan to visit,” Mr. Raymond said as we broke the kiss. “Just so we know to be prepared.” I nodded to him and walked slowly and deliberately to the car. Mom rolled down her window to wave at Denise and her dad as Dad drove us away.
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