The Rock
15 Proxy
JEN, COURT, AND SAM stayed with Hannah Friday evening when I went off to see my teammates play against Valparaiso. Whitney and Liz rode with me and we were picking up Rose at the game to bring her home. The girls had decided it was casa night. Cassie, Nikki, Mary, Sora, and Elaine were planning to get to the house sometime during the evening. We’d all be together except Sarah who was already in her Winter Flex term. Well, I suppose Hannah wouldn’t come upstairs with us either. But I was determined not to let that keep the rest of us apart like it had on New Year’s Eve.
The guys had to fight for every point against Valparaiso. They were a good team, but they didn’t have the depth we did. Our rotation strategy left us in command in the last quarter and we pulled away from them. I was just itching to be out there on the court with them and Whitney kept grabbing my hand as I’d bring it up to mimic a shot. She laughed at me.
Rose met us after the game and the four of us left. We tried putting all four of us in the front seat, but there are only three seatbelts. Since Whitney and Liz rode out to the game with me, they yielded the front to Rose and the two of them took the second seat. In a small car, I’d feel bad about Whitney riding in back, but the Suburban had plenty of leg room. I congratulated Dad in my head on his wisdom in choosing a car for me.
When we got home, the girls were still in the family room with Moms and Dad. The rest of the casa had arrived and were dressed in their gis. The four of us ran upstairs to change. Rose and I took a quick shower. Well… she’d been working out cheering and needed to rinse off. It didn’t seem right to make her go in there alone, you know. We didn’t fool around—too much—but it was sure nice lathering my lover up and drying her off. We’d left our gis on the bed and walked out of the bathroom to find all the other girls sitting on the floor.
“You might as well just sit down and leave them off,” Nikki said. “We’re all going to take them off in a minute.” Rose and I laughed and sat down with the rest of the girls. They’d all watched us make love a couple weeks ago. There wasn’t really anything to hide.
Except Hannah. I wasn’t expecting to see her sitting on the floor next to Sam. She was wearing her fluffy white robe.
“Uh… Hannah? Are you okay with this?”
“Yeah, sure. Sam, help me, please.” Sam helped Hannah stand, not without a lot of grunts and ouches. It’s hard to get up and down off the floor with your arm in a cast and three broken ribs. When she was standing, Hannah untied her robe. That was when I noticed that she’d belted it with the red belt I gave her for Christmas. She looked at me and smiled, then dropped her robe. “Brian helps me shower every day, so there’s nothing he hasn’t seen before. He doesn’t even get excited.”
“Honey, that’s when I’m in my caretaker mode. Don’t think I won’t get excited seeing you undress in front of me.” My cock was proving my words.
“You keep your room warm enough that with all these hot girls raising the temperature it’s much more comfortable being naked,” she said with a shrug. That started things and in a few minutes thirteen of us were stark naked and carefully folding gis.
“I have a question,” Cassie said. “Just hypothetically speaking. Do you think we’d all be just as comfortable taking off our clothes if there was another boy in our casa? I’m thinking Carl and Brenda and Louise now have two more girls and two more boys in their casa. Doug, Doreen, and Rhiannon have one more boy and one more girl. There’s Lionel, Lamar, and Rich in their casa and that was established as having two males before we even made the adoptions. We’re the only casa that doesn’t have more than one male. So, I was wondering if that was because it just hasn’t worked out that way, or because it would make us too self-conscious to consider another male in our group.”
There was a bit of mumbling around and several side conversations as we considered the question. Hypothetical. Right.
“I think it’s a mix,” Elaine said. “If I didn’t know the guy really well, I don’t think I’d be comfortable just walking into the room and taking my clothes off.”
“Yeah. But if he was as nice and trustworthy as we know Brian is, I’d be okay with it,” Whitney said. “It doesn’t mean we’d be jerking him off.”
“But he’d be a boy,” Nikki announced. “And with twelve or thirteen naked girls around, you know he’d, like, be like a boy. You know?” She pointed at my cock. Yeah. I definitely responded to all my naked girlfriends.
“You mean he’d get an erection?” Jen asked coming to the point. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be a little curious to see that, too. Let’s face it, we’re all comfortable being naked together, but it doesn’t mean we don’t get aroused. I mean… some of us… who are a little… uh, bi.”
“It doesn’t mean we’d do anything, though,” Courtney quickly added. “Our arousal is our own business.”
“You mean you get turned on, looking at… me?” Mary squeaked.
“It happens, but that doesn’t mean we’d disrespect your wishes. Even if you got turned on, too, it doesn’t mean we’d do anything. We have brains in addition to pussies.”
“How about you, Brian?” Rose asked. “Would it bother you to have another boy naked in the room with us?” I was hoping I wouldn’t be put on the spot, but there it was.
“Um… I don’t think so. I’m not particularly interested in looking at other guys’ erections. But we spend a lot of time naked together anyway. I mean all the guys on the team shower in open showers at the same time. We get dressed and undressed in the locker room. We always have. Nobody thinks anything about it.”
“What if he was gay?” Samantha asked. Well shit. I’d known Geoff was gay when we were playing on the team together last year. Nah. It didn’t matter.
“It’s the same thing as when one of the bi girls sees one of the rest of you. If she gets turned on, that’s her business. As long as she’s respectful of the other person, her response is hers to deal with. And yeah. It happens to me, too. I get turned on by each and every one of you, but I respect your boundaries. And that includes you, Mary.” She looked at me and grinned.
“Do you… um… fantasize about me when you… you know… masturbate?” We all laughed.
“I don’t really have much need or opportunity to masturbate these days,” I chuckled. “Would it make a difference?”
“Only that I might like to share the fantasy when I do it,” she said.
“You know how you can tell if a guy was raised in a nudist camp?” Sora asked, breaking the silence that had suddenly descended. Everyone looked at her. She shrugged. “It isn’t hard.” The laughter broke any tension that had risen in the group and we did a lot of chatting and hugging. No decision was reached in regard to Cassie’s hypothetical question, but she’d laid the groundwork.
“Brian, may I sleep in your bed?” Hannah asked. “I just can’t get comfortable here on the floor.”
“Sure, honey. Let me help you up.” She and I both winced as she struggled to her feet. Maybe I wasn’t quite ready to play ball yet.
“Maybe you should sleep up here, too,” she whispered. “Please?”
“I think you’re right if you’re sure you don’t mind.” She nodded and I eased myself into bed next to her. We were both more comfortable sleeping on our backs than on our sides. Usually with a girl in bed with me, I like to spoon.
“Can I join you?” Sora asked. We slid over a little. “I know you’re not doing anything together,” she whispered to us. “But in spite of what everyone said tonight, I know Brian gets turned on when girls sleep with him. Consider me, like, your relief valve. Okay?” She cuddled up next to me with one leg over my leg and a breast on my chest. Fortunately, Hannah had lain on the right side and she was on her back. I felt Sora’s hand slide down my stomach and across my cock to cup my balls. Hannah reached toward me and just touched my arm lightly. That was how we fell asleep.
I awoke to a mixture of sensations. I knew it had to be four-thirty. I was looking into Hannah’s intense green eyes to my right. But I was feeling the unmistakable sensation of a condom rolling onto my stiff cock. I gasped and started to say something but Hannah held her finger to my lips. After a little rubbing and positioning Sora sank onto me and I felt the delicious tightness of her pussy surrounding my cock. I hadn’t even looked at her yet, I was so caught in Hannah’s eyes. Hannah glanced up and my eyes followed hers to Sora’s face and athletic body rising and falling on my cock. Her head was thrown back and her eyes were closed as she brought both of us pleasure in her ride. My eyes came back to Hannah’s.
She just looked at me. Stared into my soul as I lost myself in her depths. Sora’s little whimpers as she continued to work herself on me were reflected in my own shortened breath. Of its own volition, my left hand rose to her breast and her intensity increased as I drew circles around her nipple with my thumb. There was mist in Hannah’s eyes and her breathing seemed a little labored, too. I hoped she wasn’t experiencing any pain, but I couldn’t do anything. Not with the sensation building behind my balls and up in my gut as my body prepared to do what it was meant to do and fill Sora with my spend. She was a few seconds ahead of me as she tried unsuccessfully to silence her orgasm with her hand. The spasms of her pussy were too much for me and I let out a long low moan as I pumped out my pleasure. All the time, I stared into Hannah’s eyes.
“Proxy,” she whispered. She lay back with a sigh and closed her eyes.
Sora collapsed forward and I caught her before she could put too much pressure on my rib. We kissed and she poured herself out to me in the touch of our lips and our tongues. I heard a collective sigh from the mattresses on the floor. Sora disposed of the condom and lay her head back on my shoulder before we all fell back to sleep.
I went to the studio on Saturday and both Miss Polly and Harvey were shocked at what I looked like. I gave them the brief version of the story. My girlfriend had been beaten and when I picked her up at the hospital the mugger decided to take a swing at me, too. I told them not to worry because he was in jail.
Of course, Harvey went to the news desk and went through a bunch of reports and said he didn’t see anything about it. I just told him it was out of town over the holiday. They finally got the message that I didn’t want to talk about it after I assured them that I was in no kind of trouble with the law. Then they started in on makeup. There was still a little orange under my eye and it was obvious that I had a bandage over my stitches. Harvey reset the cameras, working with my friend and videographer, Jess. Jess adjusted lights so I didn’t have as much on that side of my face.
My ‘girlfriend’ of the day was a little freaked out, but we managed to get her calmed down to do the filming of three different quiches that Anna had taught me. Jane, the girlfriend, wasn’t worried about being on air with me, but wanted to baby me and take care of me right there on the set. She was ecstatic to have won the opportunity to be on the show and was seriously infatuated. This, in spite of the fact that she was at least twice my age. She was sweet, though, and when Jennifer, Courtney, and Samantha came to pick me up after shopping downtown for the morning, Jane was just as enamored with them as with me, mentioning the exact recipe I’d demonstrated with each of them. She wanted to know all about really being one of Brian’s girlfriends and if I was really as nice as I was on television. The girls laid it on pretty thick and Jane nearly swooned. I gave her a very soft and gentle kiss goodbye after the show.
My casa decided to make a weekend of it and though we dressed on Saturday and I had to go in to do my filming, we still managed to have a great and relaxed time. We all had to study for finals when I got home from filming, most of the rest of the clan had come to join us. I guess I had it easiest since I only had three classes. When the girls all decided to stay over Saturday night, it was just about like it had been on Friday night. This time, however, when we settled down to sleep, Hannah was on my right and Samantha was draped far enough over me to be able to touch Hannah as well. The two girls held hands against my arm. I felt like progress was being made.
When Samantha moved on top of me early in the morning, Hannah continued to hold her hand as I slid up into Sam’s silky sheath. I held their joined hands as I stroked in and out of Sam, my other hand gently massaging her breast as her excitement mounted. Sam and Hannah locked eyes and I could see the same intensity between the two of them as when I looked at Hannah while I made love to Sora. Sam pulled our joined hands against her stomach as she whined out her orgasm and I filled her.
Instead of going back to sleep after our release, I slipped out of bed and Samantha scooted over to be next to Hannah. I took a quick shower, dressed, and went down to make the cinnamon rolls. As usual, I was carrying on my conversation with Hannah out loud. Sometimes I knew she was sitting there listening. Sometimes I couldn’t tell or knew she hadn’t gotten up. I wasn’t sure this morning.
“You know, I think horses talk to us,” I said as I mixed the ingredients for the cinnamon rolls. “I don’t know how they do it. Talk to us, I mean. It’s almost like a memory. You’re with them and then you suddenly remember that they really wanted oats this morning because it’s way too cold out and they want something to warm them up. It’s not like you heard them say it, but you remember it as if they did. It was like that when I went out to take care of them last night. Jen and Court and Sam all do a great job with them, but sometimes I like to go out to take care of them by myself, just so I can hug them and brush them. It’s so peaceful. So, anyway, last night while you were all running in and out of the bathroom getting ready for bed, I went out to spend some time with the kids. I’d brushed Rika and Jingo. For some reason, I saved Silk for last. She’s an old soul, you know. I was brushing away and all of a sudden it was like I remembered, ‘Hannah should be here.’ I felt sort of guilty that I was brushing Silk instead of you. She actually turned and blew in my ear. And in case you’ve forgotten, having a horse blow in your ear is not the least bit romantic. I was still wiping her snot off my face when I came in to shower. But still, I just know it was Silk who was telling me in her way that she missed you.”
I set the bread bowl back on the counter and covered it with a towel to rise for an hour before I rolled it into spirals. Hannah’s arms slipped around me from behind and hugged me lightly enough that it didn’t hurt either of us. I turned to look at her.
“Will you help me dress for outdoors, please?” she asked. Damn straight, I will.
We went to Hannah’s room and I started gathering clothes from her drawers and closet, making sure each item passed for what she wanted to wear. I turned around and she’d shed her robe and stood there naked. She was just waiting for me to dress her. Okay.
“Pick up your foot, baby,” I teased. “Let’s get your panties on.” She put her left hand on my shoulder to steady herself as she lifted first one foot and then the other. I pulled her panties up around her waist and grabbed her T-shirt. Shirts had been the most difficult for her to get on and off, but we’d figured out the technique for getting the shirt on over her cast and then her head and then her other arm. We kind of stretched them out, but so what? I pulled it into place and had her sit on the bed while I put her socks on. While she was sitting there, I got her jeans on her legs and when she stood I pulled them on up. Before I fastened them, we got a baggy flannel shirt that was way too big for her but her cast would fit into the sleeve. It was easier to put on a button up shirt than a pull-over, but they were hell for her to try and button one-handed. She needed help for that. Finally, I fastened her pants and belt and knelt to help her into her boots.
“Is that how boys dress?” she asked. “I always put my pants on first and then my socks. I never thought about it before.”
“One time, Dad told me to make sure I put both socks on and then both shoes on because that way I was more likely to at least have something on both feet if there was a fire and I had to run outside,” I laughed. We got her coat and hat on. She could put a glove on her left hand, but not the right. I was worried those fingers would get cold. But I also knew that we often took our gloves off as soon as we had our hands on the horses anyway. Well, if she got cold, I’d bring her in and make her coffee, but I made a mental note to get her mittens. “Look. I think Silk is glad to see you.” The old white horse turned away from her food to snuffle at Hannah’s pockets. “I can’t believe she’s ignoring food for you.”
“She thinks I have carrots. Oh, Brian, I didn’t bring her a carrot.” I pressed a baby carrot into her hand and she fed Silk. She got the brush. It was a little awkward. You never think about the fact that when you’re working on a horse, you hold the brush in one hand and just put the other on the horse. It keeps you stable while you are brushing and lets you know exactly where the horse is shifting. Add to that the fact that Hannah’s right arm was in a cast and she was having to brush left-handed and it made for a difficult job. I’d finished both Jingo and Rika while she was working.
“Brian, I can’t pick her hooves,” Hannah said. It wouldn’t hurt to let them go. The horses went out during the day if they wanted to but were often out only long enough for us to muck the stalls before they wanted back in the relative warmth. It was damned cold outside in January. Sometimes we found all three of them in one stall. But I went into the stall and Silk obligingly let me check each of her hooves while Hannah just stood at her neck and hugged her. We gave each of the horses another carrot and I steadied her arm as we walked through the fresh snow back to the house.
Sunday night, I slept alone. Most of the night, anyway. I was still taking a pain pill at night, and when it took effect I really went deep asleep for about six hours. I was pretty sure, though, that Hannah had crawled in bed with me sometime after I’d fallen asleep and was gone before I woke up.
I was going to make waffles Monday morning instead of bread. I’d just begun to talk when Hannah cleared her throat behind me. If she was in the room, she always listened in silence. I turned. She was dressed for the barn and stood there with her shirt open.
“You’re dressed!”
“Almost. Will you button me?” I wiped the flour off my hands and buttoned her up. Then I helped her with her jacket. She got carrots from the refrigerator and headed out the back door without me. Now doesn’t that beat all?
I woke Jen and Courtney and told them they needed to get dressed and out with the horses before Hannah had them all done. They scrambled into their clothes and headed out the back door.
“Breakfast in forty minutes,” I said. “Whitney expects me to go through forms at school with her at six.”
I’d been stretching a lot in the past week, but forms were a real pain. Whitney led me into the workout room with tumbling mats on the floor and we went through the first set. Coach Hancock stepped in to watch us. I was panting during what wasn’t usually a tough workout.
“When are you going to be back to real workouts?” he asked me.
“I’m supposed to get the stitches out this afternoon,” I said. “If the doctor says it’s okay, I’ll start working with the team tomorrow… if it’s okay with you, Coach. Um… I’m still pretty stiff in the side, though.”
“Keep this as your morning routine,” he said. “I don’t want you lifting or climbing the rope while you could still tear something. Whitney, maybe you could teach your disciple how to get out of the way sometime.”
“Coach,” she said softly, “the guy who attacked Brian is still in the hospital—and under arrest. Brian has a cracked rib and a cut ear. The guy who tried to beat him is nearly as big as you and has three shattered ribs, a nose that will require reconstructive surgery, and an elbow that will never function again. Oh, yes. And he’ll never reproduce.” Coach looked at us and stepped back. Coach Hancock was a college basketball star, but never went pro. Instead, he joined the Marines and still wore a jarhead haircut.
“There’s a future for you,” he said and left.
“Whitney, I thought we weren’t going to say anything about the fight.”
“You aren’t going to say anything. Ever. Understand?”
I understood. At school, I was still a runt who happened to get beat up—again. Nobody paid any attention to me. All of my casa and most of the clan knew the real story and they weren’t talking.
The doctor took my stitches out and reluctantly released me to practice with the team.
“Don’t get physical,” he admonished. “You need the exercise, but you are vulnerable to contact both in your ear and your rib. Hold your finger right here.” He positioned my hand so my finger touched the vein in my temple and I felt my pulse. “I know you think you were lucky not to get the knife in your eye. I think you are, too. But if you had been a hair slower, the superficial temporal artery where you are currently holding your finger would have been severed. In that instance, it would be unlikely that we’d be having this conversation.”
Shit! The Doc just looked at me as I absorbed what he was saying. I’d been closer to getting killed than I thought. I just nodded.
“None of your exercise playing basketball would affect this. Your wound is an inch farther back and with the clean cut of the knife it was possible to repair it with minimal damage, though the cartilage will always be two pieces instead of one. The skin is holding that part of the ear in position rather than the cartilage. I’ve yet to see a case where cartilage knitted back together. There will be a scar. There is some change in the shape of your ear. Additional trauma—in other words, getting hit in the ear—increases the likelihood that you would tear things apart, increase the scar tissue, and/or deform the ear further.”
“Is there anything I can do? That sounds like I need to wear a helmet all the time.”
“There are doctors—and probably your mother—who would agree with you. Basketball is not supposed to be a contact sport. What you can do is make sure it isn’t. Keep it taped like we have it now. Keep it clean. After this has another two weeks to heal properly, it’s possible that you could tape the ear flat against your head when you play to give it extra support. You might want to cut your hair first. Set up an appointment to see me in two weeks. If everything continues to look satisfactory and you can stand the stress on your ribcage, then I’ll clear you to play. And cut the pain pills. You don’t need them anymore. If you have a couple left, save them for an emergency if you happen to get banged up. Bring any left with you to your next appointment and I’ll dispose of them.”
I went straight from the doctor’s office to practice. I gave the note to Coach. He scowled.
“Run,” he said. While the team practiced, I ran laps. When I got tired, I walked laps. When the team ran laps, I ran laps. At the end of the practice, I was sore—but it was a good sore. Yeah. Right.
In the meantime, Mom had taken the afternoon off and took Hannah to school to get enrolled. There had been a lot of phone conversations the previous week, records transferred from Evansville, and basic negotiating. Hannah looked as tired at dinner as I felt. After dinner, Jen, Court, and I went into Hannah’s room to talk.
“You’re in school now?”
“Sort of,” Hannah said. “Principal Darnell approved home schooling as long as I have a certified teacher to administer the tests. If I complete the courses they prescribed, I can graduate.”
“That’s wonderful,” Jen said. “We need to find you a certified teacher.”
“I have one.”
“That’s great news! Who?” I asked.
“Ms. Hammer has agreed to monitor my progress and administer my tests.”
“Wow! She’s… really strict.”
“And scary,” Hannah said. “The last thing she said to me when I left was ‘no re-admittance.’ Like this is my chance and if I fuck up again I’m out.”
“Hannah, we’re all going to make sure you make it,” Courtney said. “But are you sure you want to do this at home instead of actually going to school? It seems like it could get awfully lonely.”
“The courses I need to graduate aren’t all even offered second semester. And… I’m just too ashamed to face everyone.”
“We’ll help get you through it, get you tested, graduated, and then you can join us at IU,” I said, brightly. Hannah scowled at me.
“Brian, you’ve got a good optimistic attitude and I appreciate the support. But you don’t know how badly I messed my life up. I can fulfill the terms of the contract with my parents and graduate, but no college is going to accept me with my grades the way they are. I don’t know what I’ll do after high school, but I won’t be at IU.”
My rib hurt. It felt like she’d just punched me in the gut. I needed to breathe. It sounded like she was telling us goodbye on her eighteenth birthday and I couldn’t stand that thought.
“Come on, you two. Nurse Jennifer and Doctor Courtney are going to clean your cuts that need it and re-bandage what needs to be done. Then we all need to help Brian study for his Foods final. Let’s go,” Jen said pulling us out of the room.
The Foods final was a joke. I was seriously disappointed in that class. Calculus was hard. But there’s a great thing about math that’s different from almost anything else: there’s only one right answer. You just work the problem and you come up with the answer. Just the opposite of Senior English. Ms. Hammer handed out blue books. Each one had a blue cover and eight pages of lined paper.
“You may make notes to organize your thoughts on your own paper,” she announced. “You may want to write down the question. Yes. There is only one question. It is an essay. Write it in the book and be sure your name is on the cover. I shouldn’t have to say that. Your essay question is ‘What is the most important thing I have learned in this class this semester?’ Your essay should be well constructed, your points defended appropriately, your writing legible, and your composition should show that you are intelligent enough to be a senior in high school preparing for a college education. That is all. You may begin.”
Fuck! I spent ten minutes jotting down notes, trying to figure out what it was she was getting at. I finally wrote my topic sentence out and then a first paragraph. “What I’ve learned in this class so far is not specific to what we’ve read; it is what literature can show me about myself.” Once I started, it was difficult to contain myself within the eight pages provided and I wanted to go on when we were given the five-minute warning to wrap it up. “I’ve really learned about how to think. Sadly, it was something I was never taught before this class.”
I passed my finals. I ran laps. Coach finally started me on shooting drills. You never realize how tight muscles around your ribcage will affect your ability to raise your arms. Half the time my shots weren’t making it to the rim. I hadn’t felt this bad about my shooting since junior high—before my growth spurt. Coach started requiring twenty pushups every morning and told me that next week it was thirty. I used a bar to start pull-ups, too. That stretched the muscles along my ribcage and even though they hurt like the blazes, I could feel my strength and conditioning slowly returning.
“I’m really feeling better this week,” I told Dr. McCall on Friday afternoon. “I mean, I’ve been sore all week, but I feel more alive and not so dead at night. I’m glad I’m not taking the painkillers any longer, but they are really tempting.”
“Exercise,” she said. “The more a person exercises, the better his circulation, respiration, and general physical well-being. It is more than the release of endorphins, though that certainly improves a person’s attitude. There is a psychological sense of well-being that comes from exercise.”
“I guess I can see that.” I remembered how I started running the morning Hannah moved to Evansville.
“How much exercise is Hannah getting?” Shit! Hannah spent most of her days sitting at home reading. She was going out to brush Silk every morning now, but we’d practically kept her in a wheelchair the first two weeks she was with us.
“Not much.”
“You can help her by encouraging her to be active. Just like you, she needs to get past the physical pain and needs to feel her body returning to the condition it was once in. Not just the condition it was in before she was beaten up, but the condition it was in before she moved. As soon as she starts exercising, we can start moderating the psychotropic drugs she is on.”
Friday night, the team beat Wakarusa. Hannah declined to go to the game. She didn’t want former classmates to see her with her nose still bandaged and her arm in a cast. I spent most of the game trying to figure out how I was going to get Hannah to start exercising—and when I was going to do it.
The casa gathered at the house for a sleepover and we were soon all naked. Hannah went to the bed and I figured I’d join her there. Instead, Sam scooted in on one side of her and Courtney on the other. Jen squeezed in next to Court. There was a whispered conversation and a few giggles. Well, I guess I was sleeping on the floor with the rest of the ladies.
Indeed, all my other girls surrounded me, but it was clear that the night belonged to Elaine and Sora. Both were leaving Saturday to start school and both wanted some special cuddling. Well, it seemed that they wanted my dick in their pussies. All night. We made love. We slept. We awoke to make love again. By time for me to make breakfast, I was pretty exhausted.
“I’m so tired,” I moaned to my invisible audience as I made up pie crust for a quiche. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through taping this morning. Believe me when I say I love my girlfriends and I love making love to them—in any way we can devise. But I started the night sore and exhausted and I woke up sorer and more exhausted. But you know what? I’m going to miss them so much when they leave today. You might think you are the only one who gets depressed but there’s an overwhelming sadness that hits me whenever one of you leaves for any reason. I felt it when Sarah left for Oberlin. I feel it now, just thinking of Sora and Elaine leaving today. I felt it for the entire 542 days you were gone and wouldn’t talk to us. I’m not saying that to make you sad, too. I know you are still hurting and we’re just so happy you are back. But I am always afraid that in some way you’ll go again and the sadness will be there waiting for me. Sometimes my principles get in the way of what I want to do, you know? One of those is that I’ll never put pressure on you. I’ll never try to make you do what you really don’t want to. Help me be strong on that. Please?” I filled the pie shells and bent to put them in the oven.
“Help me button my shirt and put my jacket on, please,” Hannah said from the doorway. Well, maybe it was just as well that she didn’t hear that one.
Things were going to get tough this week. Not only were Elaine and Sora back at school, but Jennifer, Courtney, and I had to get back to classes at the extension. I had the same professors and class schedule, but the girls had picked up an additional class and were going in earlier. I had just enough time to run home after high school classes and check on Hannah. She still wanted me to wash her hair, but generally she was more able to manage getting undressed and washing herself nearly a month after her injury. I made sure she was set up with whatever she’d need for the afternoon and then take off for class. Anna would get back within an hour after I left and start making dinner. The girls would get home about three-thirty and I would be back after basketball practice at six.
The only other new thing that I added was inviting Hannah to go for a walk after dinner. It wasn’t long and it wasn’t far, but we’d walk out the drive and down Woodrow Way for a hundred yards or so and then circle back. Liz had knitted mittens that would fit over Hannah’s cast. I didn’t even know Liz could knit. Hannah was happy with them and had hugged Liz.
“Why did you decide we should go for a walk? You think I’m fat, don’t you?” she demanded when we were out on the third night.
“Stop it! I’m not going there. You once told me that one of the things you loved was the sound of the snow crunching under your boots when you delivered your papers in the morning. I thought maybe you’d like to hear it some more. You are pretty anxious to get to the barn in the morning, so there’s no time to walk then,” I said. And our therapist said exercise would be good for you.
“Thank you,” she said in a small voice. On our next walk, she held my hand.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
