The Agreement
Part II: In Season
15 Practice
IT WAS BEFORE eleven o’clock when we all left the dance. We got to Renee’s car without incident and I held the driver’s door open for her before I ran around and got in the other side. Renee had an automatic, so as soon as it was in gear she reached over and offered me her hand, which I gladly held as we drove home. When we were parked, Renee asked for a kiss and I leaned over the console to kiss her. I really liked the bench seat in the station wagon better. Kissing in bucket seats is awkward.
“Renee? It’s only eleven. Would you like to come in?”
“Would your parents be like, weird?”
“I don’t think so. It’s a pretty big house and I don’t think they’d sit there and stare at us.” We went into the house and Mom called out.
“Are you home so soon, honeybunch? Was there trouble at the dance?” She came hustling into the kitchen. “Oh, Renee. You look so pretty. What a lovely flower. Good job, Brian.”
“Um… well, I had help.”
“I know,” Renee said. “I told Brenda exactly what color and what my dress was like. I didn’t expect something so pretty, though.”
“Mom, Renee and I just wanted to sit and talk for a while and it was noisy at the dance. It’s just after eleven. Do you mind if we sit in the family room?”
“Of course not. What a lovely idea. Would you like some hot chocolate?”
“Maybe just a glass of water, please,” Renee said. “We’ve practically had to shout over the music and that’s after cheering at the game.” I rushed to pour two glasses of water and add some ice.
“Well, you two just relax in the family room. Dad and I are going to get ready for bed. Be sure you lock the door by midnight when Renee leaves,” Mom said.
“Thanks, Mom.”
I led Renee to the sofa but she saw Dad’s recliner in front of the TV.
“Can we sit there?” Renee asked.
“Both of us?”
“If you don’t mind me kind of sitting on your lap,” she smiled. Hell, I never thought of that. I knew that sometimes Mom sat on Dad’s lap, but I never considered having a girl… Wow! I removed my suit coat and laid it carefully on the sofa then led Renee to the recliner. It took a lot of wiggling for Renee to find a comfortable position in my lap. At least, I think that’s what she was doing. I don’t know how she could be comfortable with my hard cock trapped under her butt. “Can we kiss now?” she whispered.
“Yeah.” This position was perfect for kissing. I could hold her in my arms while she turned toward me and our lips met. Renee was a playful kisser. She started with little pecks, intentionally missing my mouth. A cheek. My nose. When she finally landed one on my lips, it was soft and brief. A second later she came back for more. The Renee who kissed me goodnight after the ballgame a few weeks ago was shy and demure. The Renee who kissed me tonight was a goddess of sensual lips. As much as I was just enjoying her, I was taking mental notes on the art of kissing. And getting harder all the time. I squirmed a little to try to reposition myself.
“Are you okay? Am I too heavy to be in your lap?”
“Oh hell, no. You hardly weigh anything. I was just, um… you know…”
“Does it hurt?”
“No. I just didn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
“You’re sweet.” She made no attempt to change the contact.
“Um… I’m sorry you didn’t win Homecoming Queen, Renee.” She giggled.
“It cost me two hundred bucks.”
“What? Did you bet?”
“No. I stuffed fifty in each girl’s jar and another fifty in Chad’s. Anne was likely to win anyway, but I wanted to make sure I was as far away from Chad as possible. I don’t know why I could never see how much of a jerk he was. I just thought that was the way things were. Are we done kissing?”
In answer, I put my lips back on hers and was treated to the most sensuous kiss I’d ever experienced. It was soft and hard, welcoming and insistent. I moaned.
“Don’t you like me, Brian?”
“Renee, what are you talking about? I like you and you’re the best kisser in the world.”
“You haven’t… um… made a pass at me.”
“Renee?” I leaned back and looked her in the eyes. I just waited.
“Oh! You wouldn’t… Just because… I didn’t…” and then she started crying. “You really wouldn’t make a pass at me unless I said you could. I didn’t understand.” I smiled and kissed her cheeks where her tears were making her mascara run. I grabbed a tissue from beside Dad’s chair and gently dried her eyes. “Brian, I give you explicit permission to touch me anywhere above my waist, but not inside my clothing. Is that okay?”
We kissed again. The level of passion in Renee’s kiss ramped up as I stroked her bare shoulders and let my hand float down to cup her breast. My fingers were still on her bare skin above her dress. Her breasts were full and round and apparently quite sensitive as she moaned into my mouth. I stuck to her right breast as the flowers on her left breast were already being crushed between us. With my left hand gently rubbing and squeezing her breast and my right hand caressing her bare shoulders, I lost track of how long our kiss lasted.
“Kids, it’s ten minutes till twelve,” Mom called from the bedroom. “You don’t want to cause Renee to break curfew, Brian.”
“Thanks, Mom. She was just getting ready to go.”
“God, was I!” Renee whispered. We got up from the chair and drank our water. I helped Renee on with her jacket over her dress and opened the door.
“Thank you for a wonderful date tonight, Renee. I hope we can go out again.”
“This might have been the best date of my life,” she said. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry you have to drive home alone.”
“Somehow, I think I’ll just keep this warm feeling wrapped around me.” She gave me another little kiss and I watched her as she drove off.
“Way to go, teammates!” Carl said at lunch on Monday. He slapped hands with Derek, Doug, and Whitney then turned to me.
“What? Congratulations,” I said, slapping his hand.
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“You made the team. Sure better have your gear with you. We’ve got practice after school.”
I had basketball practice after school? I had to stop in the principal’s office and explain so I could call my Mom and let her know I wouldn’t be home on the bus.
Coach Hancock got us together and started us with warm ups. Mostly, that means stretching and running. Then he ran us through a lot of the drills that we’d been through during tryouts last week. Finally, he had us sit down and he talked training and plays. There were four of us that were designated as guards, including Josh, Whitney, a guy named Bert, and me. I was the shortest. At six-one, Whitney was the tallest. Coach said he’d play her at forward but she didn’t have the bulk to keep from being pushed around under the basket. Doug and Carl were forwards along with Sean Wright and another sophomore that didn’t make the varsity cut. Ty, a junior, was happy to be on the JV team since with both the Trane brothers on varsity he figured he’d never get to start at center. At six-three he was the tallest on our team. The other guys—there were a total of fifteen of us—were undesignated and told they needed to learn all the positions because he’d be feeding them into games at random to keep the other teams off guard.
We hit the showers at five.
“Hey! Where’s our other teammate?” Josh shouted. “Why does our so-called teammate have a separate locker room? The whole team should shower together.” I turned around to blast the sucker, but Carl was ahead of me.
“Shut-up, shit-face. You’re talking about my girlfriend.”
“How can you claim that freak as a girlfriend? She’s taller than you are.”
“Shut-up, asshole,” Doug said stepping up beside Carl. “You’re talking about my girlfriend.”
“You, too? Hell, why not. She’s big enough to take you both on. Who gets pussy and who gets ass? Or can you tell the difference. She’s so damn flat I hear she’s got ‘this side up’ tattooed on her chest.” I’d had it.
“You’re talking about my girlfriend, slimeball,” I said. “It looks like you aren’t going to learn to keep your mouth shut unless it gets washed out with soap.” Carl and Doug grabbed Josh’s arms and pinned them behind his back before he could react.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Derek, Ty, and Sean had stepped between us and the other guys and just shook their heads. Everybody was leaving the shower. I grabbed the soap dispenser off the wall and held it over Josh’s mouth. He started kicking and screaming which just made it easier to get a mouthful. I grabbed his jaw as he started sputtering and spitting soap. “You flap your stupid jaw about our girlfriend again and I’ll fill you with enough soap it runs out your asshole. Understand?” Doug and Carl stood him up and shoved him under a cold shower when he nodded his head. Either he didn’t think we’d stand up to him or he thought his cronies would jump in. We left the shower with him washing his mouth out.
“Okay, who wants to tell me what happened in the shower last night?” Coach Hancock said as we sat in the bleachers in front of him.
“Those guys grabbed me and poured soap in my mouth,” Josh jumped in immediately.
“Anybody see that?” Everybody shook their heads. Whitney just looked at the three of us with her mouth open. “Ty, you’re team captain. What happened?”
“Uh… Coach, I think Josh was having some kind of a fit. When he started trashing our teammate Whitney and calling her names, we all left the shower. I think he must have knocked the soap dispenser off the wall and it fell in his mouth. Just lucky I guess. It kinda needed to be cleaned out.” Coach looked at us one at a time and everybody just nodded. Except Whitney. She just shrugged.
“Thirty laps. Everybody. Go-go-go. I don’t want to hear about any more soap dispensers falling off the wall. Go! GO!” We went. Ty and Sean took the lead and set the pace and the rest of us stayed right on their heels. Ty wasn’t going easy on us. Josh sped up and passed us and took off on a faster pace. Nobody else moved the pace past what Ty held. Josh was nearly a lap ahead of us when he realized no one was following him. He tried to fall into the pace behind the rest of us but a lap ahead. On the twenty-fifth lap, we passed him. He was a full lap behind by the time the rest of us finished. As we came past the Coach on the last lap he tossed a ball to every other player. “Pairs! End-to-end. Dribbler forward, defender backward. Pass the ball at the end and head the other way. Ten times each way.” There was no one to pair up when Josh got there. Coach handed him a ball. “Dribble down, run backwards back. Stay crouched.”
Basketball was going to be freakin’ hard.
Our dating life slowed almost to a halt. Four out of five of us guys and one of the girls were on basketball teams. Three of the girls were cheerleaders. That was nearly half our dating group and the others felt obligated to come and cheer us on. Then we all had to study like crazy on the weekend to catch up. I didn’t even get to see everyone over our long Thanksgiving weekend because we had to go to this cousin-I’d-never-heard-of’s wedding. Betts wasn’t any happier than I was since she was supposed to be home for the weekend from college and got dragged all the way to Louisville instead of getting to spend the time with her friends.
We played two basketball games each weekend, usually before the varsity played. That meant I was riding the team bus from school to wherever the game was if it was away. JV and Varsity traveled on the same bus and it was just like riding to school with the younger team in the front of the bus and the older guys in the back. As the only freshman on the varsity squad, Lionel got stuck kind of in the middle and he and I rode with Ty and Sean. That divided the back from the front. Whitney, Doug, Carl, and Derek rode in the next row forward. The coaches rode in the front and there was plenty of room for the cheerleaders if they weren’t going in a separate van.
I was worried about Whitney being on a bus of all boys and apparently the school administration was, too. Ms. Hammer wanted her to ride in the cheerleader vans, but Coach put the brakes on that. Instead, Ms. Abernathy, the JV cheer coach, rode the bus with the team. She wanted Whitney to sit in the front seat with her, but Whitney flat out refused to ride with the coaches unless there was a problem. With Carl and Doug beside her and Lionel and me behind her, there was never a problem and Ms. Abernathy sat with Coach Mitchell, Coach Hancock, and Coach Washburn who assisted both teams.
Josh learned pretty quickly that he wouldn’t play if he tried his tricks of keeping the ball away from Whitney and me. Coach would just bench him and rotate the other guard, Bert, with Whitney and me and sometimes one of the all-purpose players. I started getting more play time and became a play-maker. Coach would yell to me what he wanted to happen when I brought the ball down-court and I’d give the signal to my team. We actually started to click and won some games.
Irma la Douce was a riot. Rhiannon held my hand all the way through the performance, even with her parents sitting right beside us. I guess they actually bought the ticket. That’s a wild play. A guy falls in love with a prostitute and to keep her from seeing other guys, he spends all day working in order to hire her all night. She can’t understand why they aren’t saving more money toward getting married because he works all the time and is exhausted, but never seems to save any money. She’s distraught when she discovers her lover is spending time with ‘another’ prostitute while she’s falling in love with the mysterious man—the lover in disguise—who sees her every night. I was kind of amazed that Rhiannon’s parents took their daughter to the musical, let alone her date.
We sat in the back seat of their car on the way home and Rhiannon made no secret about sitting in the center so I could put my arm around her. We didn’t make out, but we whispered a lot. The theater was about thirty miles away, so we had time. Rhiannon also made sure that my arm was wrapped around her shoulders and held my hand just above her right breast, but not touching.
“Did you like the show?” she asked.
“Yeah. It was funny and the music was good.”
“What was your favorite part?”
“The pretty girl sitting next to me and holding my hand.”
“You think that’s going to get you kissed?”
“No. I think that’s the way I feel. How come we’ve never gone out before, Rhiannon? You were the second girl to claim me back in fifth grade.”
“Yeah. Then the next year I kind of grew up… er out… and Doug got interested. There just never seemed to be an appropriate time in junior high.”
“How are you and Doug getting along?”
“Oh, fine. But, Brian, I’m one of his girlfriends and he’s one of my boyfriends. I love not being tied to only talking to one boy, even as much as I like Doug. Believe me; he’s having a good time, too.”
“I just didn’t want it to feel weird.”
“You haven’t felt it at all, yet.” I turned toward her and she held her lips close to mine. “Yes, you may,” she whispered. I glanced at the front of the car to see if her parents were noticing. I couldn’t see her father’s eyes in the rearview mirror, so I kissed Rhiannon. It was just a soft kiss and not a passionate kiss. We held our lips together for a minute and then she laid her head on my shoulder. She let go of my hand and put her arm around me.
“Brian, thank you.”
“It’s me who should be thanking you for this wonderful date,” I said.
“Maybe, but thank you for writing the rules so we can all date each other. I hope this won’t be the last date we have.”
“Not if I can help it. It’s just so crazy now with basketball. I never expected this.”
“Well, my unwritten rule is that what I do with a boy is based on how much I like him and how well I know him. I want to know you better.”
“Rhiannon, I’d like that.”
We pulled onto the gravel of my driveway and we straightened ourselves up. I got out of the car and Rhiannon got out right behind me. We held hands as we walked up to my door.
“May I kiss you, Brian? I don’t mean like that little kiss in the car, but like a real kiss I’d like to give my loving boyfriend because I had such a good time tonight and I like him and I think I know him well enough to want a real kiss?”
“Rhiannon, you kinda took my breath away with that little one. I’d love to kiss you, girlfriend.” It was still gentle and a little tentative as we each figured out which way our heads were going to turn and how we matched up. In a moment I was feasting on Rhiannon’s lips and tongue and she squeezed me tight.
“You sure know how to kiss a girl, Brian. You must get a lot of practice. Goodnight, boyfriend.”
“Goodnight, girlfriend,” I whispered as she got back in her car and her father drove away.
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