Deadly Chemistry
12 Commitments
I RAN DOWNSTAIRS Saturday afternoon to answer the door. Mom and Dad were out and Brenda and I had been studying in my room after our very successful taping session. Yes, I mean studying. It had been harder lately to have Saturday study sessions with taping the show in the morning and trying to make the afternoon special for my dates. At least I felt like I was spending a little time with each of the girls who were important to me now. I still wasn’t sure about this thing with Brenda. She seemed committed to Carl and Louise, but stubbornly committed to me as well.
The UPS guy had a package for me. I tried to remember if I’d ordered something, but the label set my mind at rest. It was from New York and clearly said ‘Heaven.’ I ran upstairs and quickly started to open the box.
“Ahem.”
Brenda’s voice got my attention and I looked up. She was sitting on the other side of my desk, right where I’d left her when the bell rang. Only now she was topless. Oh man, was she topless! I’d been naked with Brenda a few times and every time I was amazed at what I saw. They were big, but really not out of proportion for her body. I’d looked at ‘men’s magazines’ at different times, mostly supplied by Carl’s brother Bill. Some of the pictures are grotesque, like someone plastered huge melons on a little frame. Cartoonish. That wasn’t the case with Brenda. She was about five-four and pretty broad across the shoulders. As a cheerleader she worked out a lot and her stomach was trim. Her breasts were soft and she’d never pass a pencil test, but you’d have to invent some sort of cantilever or anti-gravity system to keep something that heavy from sagging a little. She had large, pale areolae and fat stubby nipples that were definitely asking for attention.
“Who is your package from?” she asked innocently.
“Uh…” My mouth was dry. “Heaven.”
“Oh! New pictures? Let’s see.” See what? Oh, pictures. How could she take off her shirt and present those beautiful breasts to me and talk about pictures? I fumbled with the paper. Brenda just sat there smirking at me. I carefully removed several copies of what appeared to be the same magazine. It dawned on me that they were all the same issue of Vanity Fair that I’d picked up from a magazine rack in Seattle, but each magazine was in a different language. The face on the cover, though, was unmistakably Heaven. “How cool. She sent you all the different editions! Where do you keep all her pictures, Brian?”
“Last spring, I bought a used file cabinet.” I waved vaguely at the gray box in the corner of my room. “I’ve filed them by date.” Brenda went to the cabinet and opened the middle drawer. There was nothing in it. “Only the bottom two drawers are full so far. I think these will about finish the space I’ve got in the second drawer.”
“You have them all protected in plastic bags? This is the kind of collection that will be worth a fortune someday.”
“I don’t collect them to sell,” I said. “It’s the only link I have with her.” I shuffled through the magazines and a slip of hotel letterhead fell out. I looked at it. Brian, I’m so sorry I missed you at Christmas. Got home to surprise Daddy late Christmas Eve and had to take off on Monday for a big New Year’s party in New York. Sorry we couldn’t get together. Life is exciting with one party after another, but I miss you and still regret… Know that each picture I send is sent with my love. Heaven.
Brenda was reading over my shoulder. She wrapped her arms around me and pressed her breasts against my face.
“I see. How could you ever sell them?” she sighed. “I’m not Heaven but I’m here.”
I turned in my chair, scooped Brenda up in my arms, and took her to my bed. As soon as I picked her up, she started kissing me and as soon as she was on the bed she pulled my hands to her breasts as she struggled to get my shirt unbuttoned. As soon as we had our bare chests together we were able to relax and take our time. We kissed more gently and explored each other more fully. Our hips were moving against each other, but we didn’t make any move to take our jeans off or to use our hands on each other. It was just a really heavy-duty petting session as we were stretched out on the bed half-naked.
“See? Aren’t they hot?” Carl said behind me. What the fuck? I jumped to turn and face him, but Brenda’s hand grabbed at my ear and pulled my mouth back to hers. I was about to get killed and I couldn’t even see him coming up behind me.
“I think it’s sweet. I wasn’t sure at first, but even I can see how excited Brenda is,” Louise said. She was moving as she spoke, and in a moment, she appeared on the bed over Brenda’s left shoulder. Carl sat on the edge of the bed behind her. Not behind me.
There was a lot of pain and angst last spring when Carl and Brenda broke up and he started seeing Louise. Brenda came running to me and established herself as one of my special girls, even after she and Carl got back together. With Louise, too. Louise was different than the rest of us in some ways. Her mother was from India and her father was English. Her mother was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. She was from Northern India and had comparatively fair skin. With an English father, Louise was only slightly darker than most of the rest of us and was sometimes thought to be Hispanic. She’d gotten quite a reputation for playing around when we were in junior high and freshmen, but that had all died once she started dating Carl. This fall, while I was so absorbed in my misery with Hannah, she’d quietly joined our table. In November, she was voted in as a member of our agreement along with Nicolette, even though it was obvious that Louise was only interested in Carl and Brenda and Nikki was only interested in me—and maybe not very interested at that.
The sum was that Louise was more exotic than pretty. Taller than me, her slightly darker complexion, modest breasts, and black hair were in high contrast with Carl’s red hair and Brenda’s blonde. To see her stretch out next to Brenda and put her hand over mine on Brenda’s breast started short-circuiting my brain.
“Carl, I’m sorry…” I started. Louise reached over and lightly slapped my face. Carl grinned.
“If you say you are sorry to be giving my girlfriend pleasure, I’ll murder you,” she said. “He’s giving you pleasure, isn’t he, babe?” she whispered to Brenda.
“Oh yeah,” Brenda sighed. “I’m so glad you two came to join us. It took a while to get him started, but he’s a really dreamy kisser.” Talk about dreamy kissing, Brenda turned her body slightly toward Louise and they shared an incredible kiss, right in front of my face, as Louise continued to hold my hand to Brenda’s breast and interlace her fingers with mine. Carl shuffled closer to Louise and petted her hair, putting little kisses along her neck as she and Brenda kissed.
“Guys, I really don’t understand what the fuck is going on. I like you all and I don’t want to get in the middle of your relationship.”
“Kind of more like on one side of it,” Carl laughed. “I think Brenda’s in the middle. Let me tell you that even though you and Doug are my best friends, I’ve got no interest in either of you sexually. These two are almost more than I can handle.”
“That’s why we all wanted to be here this afternoon, Brian,” Brenda said, kissing me again. “It’s not to trap you, but to talk in our natural environment. We want to be part of your life.”
“You guys are a part of my life. Carl, you and Doug have been my best friends since fifth grade. I just don’t want to screw that up,” I said.
“Here’s the thing, Brian,” Carl said. “Ever since this babe invited us smelly guys to join her table at lunch in fifth grade, you’ve been the glue that held us together. Hell, Brenda and I broke up so loudly and completely so many times that some teachers demanded that we sit on opposite sides of the room. But each time it was you that brought us back together. It was because neither of us wanted to let go of our friendship with you.”
“She might not have told you,” Louise added, “but it was true even when Carl and I got together. You’re like a magnet of some sort. Somebody gets stuck to you and then somebody else gets stuck to that person. As long as you’re there, everybody else sticks together. Brenda told us when we all got together this summer and started to work out our relationship that she loved you and that you were going to be part of any relationship going forward.”
“Louise, you and I have hardly gotten to know each other this year. I can’t even contemplate having that kind of relationship with you yet.”
“That’s good. Like Carl, I like you but I don’t really have any interest in being sexual with you.” She leaned back and kissed Carl thoroughly. “Of course, if you and I happened to be going two-on-one with Brenda, you’d probably get confused at some point and feel me up. It would probably be my hand pointing your cock at her pussy. But that’s not between you and me. It’s between us and loving our girlfriend.”
“Hey man,” Carl said as he reached over and slapped my shoulder. “We’ve got a lot to work out as far as a relationship goes. We’ve got the agreement and we’ve actually been studying up on how polyamorous relationships work. We’re not going to stick around this afternoon and try to figure out everything while you’ve got Brenda’s awesome tits pressed up against you.” His hand slid up Brenda’s side and joined Louise and mine in stroking Brenda’s breast. She moaned.
“Besides,” Louise said, “I’m good with the way this is going but you’re right. We haven’t spent much time together and I’m not ready to get naked with you all yet. I think, though, that I might go get naked with Carl while you two continue what you were doing when we interrupted.” She raised her hand from Brenda’s breast to grab my cheek and shake it gently. “And you’d better be good to my babe.”
Brenda rolled more fully toward Louise and they shared a deep kiss. Louise stood and Carl took her place. Brenda kissed him as thoroughly. He stood and put an arm around Louise.
“See you guys later,” he said and they left. I heard the downstairs door close.
“Wow!”
That’s all I could say. I lay on my back next to Brenda on my bed. We were both naked and had come a bucketload in each other’s mouths. Now she was draped over me and continued to give little nibbles and kisses on my chest. She hadn’t given me time to process what Carl and Louise had said when they left but went pretty damned wild on me. I found that she was dripping wet when she put her pussy on my mouth and swallowed my cock. And I mean swallowed it. She must have been working out with Carl because she took me right down her throat and licked the base of my cock with her tongue and lips.
“Feeling overwhelmed, lover?” Brenda asked.
“Um… yeah. A little.”
“Don’t worry. It will work out. I know that it’s harder to work out a relationship where there are multiple men than it is to work out one with multiple women. I think it’s the way we’re wired, for the most part. And it’s not unusual for there to be a chain relationship where there is one group and within that group one person has a relationship with someone outside that group. Right now, that’s where we are. Believe me when I say I’ve always loved Carl and I’ve fallen ass-over-teacup for Louise. When you actually see her, you’ll discover how incredibly beautiful she is. But the thing is that this isn’t where it’s likely to end. You know from being with both of us that Rose and me like sharing you together. I think she’s turned me on a little ever since I met her and we started cheering. That’s when I first discovered that I might like girls a little, too.”
“So, you think Rose will want to be part of this thing?”
“I don’t think Rose has any interest in either Carl or Louise at all. She might be okay if they were in the same room making love while the three of us were making love, but she’d never go with them any more than they’d welcome you to be with them without me. It’s a weird dynamic.”
“Yeah. It sure is.”
“Don’t think it’s over. We really opened Pandora’s box when we made that agreement as freshmen.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that both Doreen and Rhiannon want to be with you.”
“But they’ve been with Doug forever. I mean, Doreen’s his fucking sister!”
“That’s just it. They’re not fucking. No matter how much they love each other, I don’t think they’ll ever cross that last line. They fool around. They get naked together. They even get each other off. But I don’t think Doug’s cock will ever get in that pussy again.”
“Again?”
“Said too much.”
“But Doug’s not seventeen yet.”
“Long before the agreement.”
“Oh.”
“All I can say is to try to be open with your lovers and let it flow. You know Liz is crazy about you and has no desire to be with any woman at all. I mean, not even in the same bed with a guy. On the other hand, she daydreams about Dougie. I’m not saying there will ever be anything between them, but there could be. And believe me, she’d pass up that opportunity if it meant she couldn’t be with you.”
“Wow!”
“You know you’re committed now and I won’t let you out of it?” Nicolette said as we sat together on Monday. She’d been out of school for over a week, but somehow, she’d managed to complete and pass all her finals. I’d welcomed her back to school and she actually gave me a hug after class as we walked to the cafeteria.
“What did I commit to, Nikki?” I was a little wary. Did she think that because I rode to the hospital and stayed with her until she was settled meant I was committed? She pushed a folded piece of paper at me. I looked at it and peeked inside. It was a solid black and white rendition of a rose.
“When we’re eighteen and can legally get a tattoo, we’re going to hold each other’s hand while some strange dude with a ponytail and a missing tooth makes me bare my tits so he can tattoo a black rose on them.”
“Um…”
“It’s what saved me when I went whacko. You told me we still hadn’t done that. It brought me back from that drug-induced hysteria and gave me a reason to be here. Thank you, Brian.”
“Nikki, I’m not sure what to say.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to make you get one. You are just going to have to hold my hand and stare at my tits while the tattoo guy feels me up in the name of putting the tattoo on. Then you’ll probably have to take me somewhere and fuck me to settle me down. I promise it won’t be too bad.”
“Nicolette…” Christ! What am I supposed to say?
“Brian. Lighten up. My drugs are back in balance and I have a little bit of a sense of humor. I just want you to know that… what you did… that was a lot more than a friend would do. I know you’d do it for any person sitting at this table. It’s just that even after signing the agreement, I didn’t really think of myself as one of your girlfriends. I didn’t think I’d mean that much to you. Um… thank you.” I reached out and squeezed her hand and people started filling in the spaces around us, laughing, talking, and welcoming Nicolette back to school.
Doug got my attention just before basketball practice and asked me to wait for him after and he’d give me a lift. That wasn’t particularly unusual. We hadn’t organized anything this week, but often gave each other lifts after practice. I wasn’t expecting Rhiannon to meet me when I walked out of the locker room. We laughed about strangers in strange places and pretty soon Doug came out and we headed for his car. Only it was Doreen driving tonight. Doug slid into the front seat and gave his sister a kiss. Rhiannon waited for me to hold the back door open for her and only moved half way across the seat when she got in.
“I told your mom you were being kidnapped tonight, so she isn’t waiting dinner for you,” Doreen said. We headed for Azar’s Big Boy. It struck me that we had a lot of burger joints around our town and that we sort of moved from one to another. For a while we’d all end up at the White Spot or the Diner or now at Azar’s. As weather started to get warmer, we’d hit Dairy Queen or Dog ’n Suds. On the way to the restaurant, Rhiannon reached over and took my hand. Uh-oh. Brenda warned me. We got to the restaurant and she didn’t let go as we were being led to our seats. Doreen and Doug held hands as well.
“So, what’s the occasion for kidnapping me?” I asked. “Not that I’m objecting. We don’t get to spend anywhere near as much time together as I’d like except in basketball practice.”
“Yeah. And with you and your TV show, we haven’t even gotten Saturday study sessions lately.”
“Maybe we could start getting together on Sunday afternoon if people want to,” I suggested.
“That would be fun,” Rhiannon said.
“Might as well get down to it,” Doreen said. “All he can do is run screaming out the door.” I looked at her. Rhiannon still had a near death-grip on my hand.
“Brian, we’d like to double date for the Valentine’s Day dance,” Doug said.
“That’s cool. I haven’t even thought about it yet and I suppose everyone is waiting for me to ask someone. But that’s kind of unusual, come to think of it. The girls have always done the asking for Valentine’s Day. I wonder who’s planning to go with me.” Rhiannon raised her other hand. It took me a minute. I didn’t think she was calling bullshit. “Rhiannon?”
“You’ve sort of got me for a date that day already,” she said. “I’ll be with you for your taping. I could just sort of stay with you, you know?”
“Doug?”
“Gotta take care of my very first sweetheart,” he said, giving Doreen a peck on the cheek. She grinned. “Of course, if we were doubling, it’s pretty likely that we’d get confused as to who was with whom. You’d probably have to put up with dancing with Doreen, too.”
“Face it. You might have to put up with sleeping with Doreen,” she sighed.
“Um…” Damn it! Why did this stuff always leave me so speechless? You’d think I’d figure it out by now. Brenda told me. “I might not be quite ready for that step yet,” I whispered.
“We did it before. I don’t have to violate your body,” Doreen pouted.
“I need all the cards on the table,” I said. “First, I have Sam, Liz, Whitney, Cassie, Rose, Elaine, Nicolette, and two girls in Kokomo that have first call on spending time with me.”
“And Brenda,” Rhiannon added. Oh yeah.
“And Brenda.”
“Well, as it happens, those two girls in Kokomo decided to have a party that weekend and take the other eight out of circulation. I’m surprised you haven’t figured out since no one asked you to the dance,” Rhiannon said. “Um, Doreen and I were invited, too, but it was a formality. All your girlfriends know we wanted to be with you.”
“Doug, I sort of understand why you might want me to be along to keep people from gossiping about you and Doreen, but do you really want me dating your girlfriends?” I looked at my old friend and he sighed.
“We’ve done a lot of double-dating with Carl, Brenda, and Louise this year,” Doug said. “What do we call that with six of us? Sextuple dating? Anyway, this has been a long time coming. Looks like you are the only one who’s been completely out of the loop. We started talking about it early last summer when Hannah left and then you went to Kokomo. Most of the rest of our group got together and said they missed being free to be with any of the guys or girls—at whatever level they wanted to be together. Thing is that most of the time we aren’t interested in flat-out orgies where everybody is jumping everybody, but almost everyone had at least two people they wanted to date and it overlapped a lot.”
“Wait. My girlfriends want to be with the other guys?” I shouldn’t be so shocked. I’m shocked.
“Here’s the thing, Brian,” Rhiannon said as she put her arm around my shoulder and turned me to face her. “We’re going to lose some girlfriends. Please let me finish. Renee paired off with Lamar and went off to IU. Sarah went to Oberlin. Hannah got dragged away to Evansville. Elaine is in Indianapolis. We all want them back and they want to be with us, but maybe they won’t come back to the group. Is Cassie going to stay with a group where the guy she’s interested in has multiple partners? Will Nicolette? And while you are off taking care of Jennifer and Courtney, who is taking care of Whitney, Liz, and Rose? They want to be with guys more often than once a month when you’re available. But they don’t trust anyone outside of Carl, Doug, Geoff, Lionel, and Josh. Would you rather that Liz got her insatiable itch scratched once in a while by Doug, or that she started looking for a boy who will be with her every night? If she does that, it won’t be you, Brian.”
Fuck! What Rhiannon was saying made sense in a bizarre way but it just gave me a punch in the gut to think of Samantha or Rose with someone else. Now that was strange. It didn’t affect me as much to think of Liz with someone else, but we’d started just being sex partners and progressed to caring about each other. And I’d always known that Elaine would eventually get involved with someone. You just can’t expect a girl to go through all her college life and not date. I knew for a fact that she’d been kind of serious about a guy at the summer stock theater. I sighed.
“Brian, our agreement has never meant that everyone is going to fuck everyone else,” Doug said. “We made that clear right at the start. But it did mean that everyone would be able to find the level of comfort they want with everyone else. We started pairing off last year when we thought we should only explore sexually with one other person, but it turned out that put a lot of pressure on all of us. Now we’re all turning seventeen. For some it’s the right time and for some it isn’t. And, I think, for some it’s the right time but the wrong person. So here it is. I want to sleep with Rhiannon—I mean make love to her. There are a couple other girls I’d like to fool around with a little, even if we didn’t go all the way. Like Doreen. I love my sister, Brian. I’m in love with her. But we’ve pushed the limit as far as either of us is willing to go. I think—I hope—we’ll always be in love. But we won’t be lovers. She loves you as much as she does me, why shouldn’t you be lovers? Rhiannon’s always loved you. She still twirls that silly fairy loop around every once in a while and says, ‘I wonder what Brian’s doing.’ I gotta tell you that I get a twitch in my gut a little when I think about you two having sex. But it’s not that big a twitch. I’m not interested in double teaming her with you, but if you make love, it’s not the end of the world for me.”
Rhiannon reached over and stroked Doug’s cheek. He kissed her fingers and smiled at her. Hell, I’d had enough fantasies about Rhiannon over the years to get a twitch when I thought of her.
“There’s going to be people that don’t share,” Doreen said. “And we might still lose people. If I got swept off my feet by some guy, I know Doug would be happy for me and I could give myself to him fully. I might not be as close to some of the girls in our group as others, but they’ve always included me in our fun stuff. I can tell you that you are the only guy for Rose. She might go two-on-one with Brenda and you, but as long as you’ll keep her fulfilled, no other guy is going to get in her pussy. Jennifer and Courtney are into girls and you. You could bring me to bed with the three of you and they’d be happy about it. They’d castrate Doug if he tried something.”
“Of course, they’re hoping that you bring Sam and Hannah to their bed most of the time,” Rhiannon laughed. “And Sam’s already sold.”
“I want to take Whitney out,” Doug said. “I’ve always been in awe of her and it made me a little squeamish when she went out with that guy from Potawatomi this weekend.”
“She did what?”
“You were so intent on your conversation with Nicolette this noon that you didn’t even hear her tell about her date. He was very nice and is three inches taller than her.”
“Shit.”
“Back to the Valentine’s Day dance,” Rhiannon said. “Will you be my—our—date?” I smiled at them.
“I’d be honored.”
“So, these are the famous horses,” Sora said as she reached out to pet Rika. Rika sleepily looked at her out one eye and nodded. It was nearly the end of January, but the horses usually wandered back into the barn by mid-afternoon because of the cold. They would walk in from the paddock through the open barn door and meander directly to their stalls. Sometimes I’d find two or even all three of them in one stall. We always kept the front door of the barn closed so they couldn’t wander out into the yard. Knowing Silk, she’d have come right up to the back door.
“Are they famous?” I asked. Silk had her head over the stall door as soon as I entered the barn and was looking for a carrot. Jingo was already dozing. He knew it wasn’t dinner time yet. Sora put a hand on my arm.
“Brian, could you give me a little kiss before Geoff gets here?” Geoff? He’s coming here? What’s this meeting with guys and their girlfriends? Sora was waiting expectantly. I bent to kiss her. She reminded me of those Olympic gymnasts you see on TV. She might be the strongest girl on the varsity cheer team.
“Are you and Geoff going to declare your desire for an open shared relationship, too?” I sighed.
“Not exactly,” she said. “I told you I don’t like to be shared.”
“But…” The door to the barn slid open and Geoff walked in. He stood there staring at us for a minute and, at first, I thought he was going to turn and run. Something was really wrong. “Hey, Geoff.”
“Hey, Brian. Sora, I don’t think…” Sora went to him and wrapped him in her arms. She didn’t kiss him or anything. She just held him. They were the most reserved couple in our entire group, usually together but never openly demonstrative.
“We’ve got to, Geoff. We need help and I can’t do this alone anymore.”
“They’ll hate me.”
“Trust him.”
“Guys?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“Brian,” Geoff started. He pulled away from Sora and walked over to face me. I thought maybe he was going to hit me at first. It was worse. “I’m gay.”
“Naw.” I shook my head. “What’s really going on?” Geoff gay? No way. We’ve been friends since second grade. He was my friend before Doug and Carl came to my defense; before all the girls invited us to join their table. He’d been going out with Sora for over a year. He was on the basketball team. We showered together. Shit! I looked at him and shook my head again. This was my friend. Get a grip.
“I told you,” Geoff said, turning to Sora. “He’s already thinking about whether I’ve seen him naked. I’m just going to… take care of it.” He started for the door and I grabbed his shoulder.
“Talk to me, Geoff,” I said. “I’m your friend. When did you decide you were gay?”
“You ass. When did you decide you were straight?”
“I didn’t decide. I’ve just always… I get it. Let me change the question. None of us knew we were straight or gay or transvestite or whatever. But gradually realized it. So, when did you discover you were… gay.” I didn’t want my friend to go away thinking I didn’t care about him.
“About the same time most guys start becoming aware of their sexuality. Twelve, I guess. I kept denying it. Experimenting. Fantasizing.” I took a deep breath and put an arm around his shoulders. He looked at me.
“Are you planning to tell everyone?”
“I didn’t want to tell you. You’re the most liberal and thoughtful person I know and look at how you reacted.”
“God, Geoff, it must be terrible for you. I’m sorry I came off as an ass. I never thought I’d react that way if one of my friends told me that. I feel like a shit.”
“Why do you have your arm on my shoulders?”
“We’ve been doing that for years. We did it after the game last night. Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.” I pulled my arm back and plopped down on a hay bale. “Tell me what you want, Geoff.”
“I’d like to still be your friend. I know you’re straight. I won’t try to put the make on you. I won’t look at you in the shower. I just need a friend.”
“Sometimes I’m a crappy friend,” I said. “But for what it’s worth, you’ve got me. What about you and Sora?”
“That’s part of what we wanted to talk about,” Sora said. She sat next to Geoff and put an arm around him. He leaned against her. “I’ve known for a long time, but it’s hard just pretending to have a boyfriend who isn’t… interested in me. It was great for a while because I kind of got abused as a freshman. I was one of Chad’s conquests the week I found out I was going to be a JV cheerleader.”
“Crap. Did Renee know?”
“Yeah. I talked to her before I asked to join the group. She said it was a great way to get your head screwed back on straight. She even pointed Geoff out as being someone I’d like. Renee is really good at reading people. I think she already had her suspicions but she’d never say anything,” Sora said.
“You guys want me to be an ambassador kind of person and help you come out?”
“No! Brian, if I come out I’ll be shunned. I won’t be able to play basketball. No one would let me in the locker room. I’d get beaten. I’ve seen it happen. Read about it in the newspapers. I don’t know if I’ll ever come out.”
“Geoff, you can’t live a lie all your life.”
“Why not? Lots of people do. I just… I don’t want Sora to suffer because of me.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Brian, I want to keep being Geoff’s girlfriend. As long as he has a hot cheerleader as his girlfriend, no one will even think he might be gay. But… Geoff’s been trying to give me the intimacy that I am craving and it’s not working. I don’t want him to try to be something he’s not just for my sake.”
“We kind of cooked up a scheme and you’re the key,” Geoff said. “It will get us through this year, anyway. Then maybe I’ll move or drop out.”
“Tell me what you want. If I can do it, I will, but Geoff, I ain’t gay. There’s no way I can understand what you want and need from me unless you just tell me.”
“It’s really what I want,” Sora said. “I saw that Brenda was making a go at being with Carl and Louise and also being with you. Then I heard that Doug and Doreen and Rhiannon were going to try to work out something that was more open and included you. I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to just be one of the crowd and have Geoff share me with you. If you like me a little.”
“Sora, I like you a lot. That’s never been an issue. But I didn’t think you were interested in… uh… intimacy with me. Of course, I thought you and Geoff were doing stuff. I feel so dense.”
“I don’t know that I want to fuck you, but we’ve both felt so isolated from the kind of contact we crave. This is only half the solution. Geoff still has to find someone who can take care of his needs, too. But even if he does, if it looks like Geoff just shares me with you, no one would ever suspect that he has a guy friend, too.”
“You got any prospects, Geoff? I like Sora and would love to be closer to her, but I can’t do anything for you.” Geoff looked at Sora and then me. He had a slight smile.
“Yeah. I think so. That’s part of what this was all about. I think there’s a guy who is interested in me. But I had to talk to Sora first and she said we had to talk to you.”
“I don’t know if any of this will work, buddy, but if it all goes to hell in a hand-basket, I’ve got your back.”
Geoff went home by way of the woods and we watched him disappear before Sora and I went into the house.
“I can’t believe you guys have been hiding this so long. Are you okay?” I asked.
“Mostly. I really got to care about him and even had fantasies about making love when he turned seventeen. Then I thought I could change him. Ha. We tried to… uh… help each other out, but we both ended up so freaked out we couldn’t do anything.”
“How do you keep from saying anything? I feel like I’m going to have to censor everything I say so I won’t blurt out something stupid.”
“You do,” Sora answered. “We try to avoid anything where we have to lie. We go out together to see movies. He’s taking me to the Valentine’s Day dance. Sometimes we hold hands, just to have a human touch.”
“Why me?” I’m not sure if I was actually asking Sora a question or if I was just commenting on my general inability to cope with the situation. She answered anyway.
“Because you are Geoff’s friend. And because I like you. I came into the group wanting to slow down so I could find my one-and-only. Or at least my one-for-now. I told you, I don’t want to be shared and that’s all that kept me from getting attached to you early on. I was afraid there wouldn’t be any way to have a relationship with you and not get… involved with the other girls. But I do really like you if you like me… a little.”
“God, Sora! I like you. There have been times when I was just a little jealous of Geoff because it seemed like the two of you had something so special. I guess you do. But I’m seventeen. I don’t know anything about this stuff. I know about basketball and chemistry. And I think about girls. Like all the time. I can’t look at you, here in my room, without thinking, ‘Damn I’d like to make love to her.’ But I think that about almost every girl I meet. Oh, it’s more enthusiastic when I’m with you or one of my other girlfriends. But I can’t help thinking that the first time I meet a girl.” Sora shut me up. She just reached up and kissed me. She didn’t ask permission, but I think in a way I’d just given it to her. She let me know in no uncertain terms that she was just as interested in me.
“It’s our date night,” she whispered as we tried to recover our breath. “Where are you taking me?”
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