Odalisque
Twenty-one
KATE DIDN’T WANT TO STAY ALONE in the house on Saturday night, so I took her back to the dorm and told her I’d meet her for brunch Sunday morning. I started my shift at the security desk promptly at ten.
“Watch the thermometer,” Andy said while I was getting signed in. “Last night it dropped to thirty about four o’clock in the morning and we opened the doors so people could get warm.”
“I’m glad they can come in and warm up,” I said. “I’d hate to be in a tent in this weather.”
“There are a hundred people in there and only four came in,” Andy responded. “They don’t want to take hand-outs, even if it’s warmth.”
“Gotcha,” I said. “So, if I open the doors, do I tell anyone?”
“Yeah. Tell Zack. He’s in charge of internal security tonight.”
Andy left and I settled back to wait for Bree. What I saw, instead, was a woman taller than Bree by several inches.
“Amanda?” I said, puzzled. “What brings you here tonight?”
“Study,” she said simply. “Anatomy exam is Monday.”
“I wish you’d called me. I didn’t bring my notes or my book.”
“It was kind of last minute. Bree told me and then made a call and I had to pass like an oral exam in order to have access to you. Then she had the gall to tell me we couldn’t make out—like that’s what I was interested in,” Amanda said. I could see she was a little tense. She spread some notes out on the table.
“Who did you talk to?”
“Your keeper. Melody. Apparently, Bree is her sergeant-at-arms or something,” Amanda groused. “What is it about you that makes all these women so protective of you?”
“Damned if I know. But Melody is my first and there are times I find it best to just do what she says. It has its rewards.”
“Well, I’m not one of them. Let’s just go over the lymphatic system. That one just drives me crazy.”
We studied, quietly quizzing each other on the terms and the names of the parts of the system. This part of human anatomy is really memorization and there’s nothing to help memory like repetition. I wasn’t that sure why Amanda was so worried. She was nearly letter perfect. We’d been studying about half an hour when she stood up and started flapping her arms.
“Damn! It’s colder than a witch’s left tit out here,” Amanda said.
“Shh,” I said. “It’s quiet time. It’s supposed to get below freezing and I’ll open the doors to let anyone who wants to warm up inside.”
“At least I understand now,” she said. She motioned toward the chair. “Go on. We can quiz each other and still stay warm. Or warmer.”
I plopped down in the chair. I was relieved. If it hadn’t been for studying, I’d have been in the chair wrapped in a blanket long ago. Amanda brought a handful of notes and crawled into my lap. I flipped the blanket over us and then wrapped my right arm around her putting my hand on—bare skin! I jerked away.
“I’m sorry, Amanda!” I said. “I didn’t mean to… I mean… your sweatshirt rode up a little, I think.”
“Yeah. That’s fine. Don’t panic. It’s just epidermis. Your hand is warmer than my hoodie anyway,” she said. She was rustling the notes, but she couldn’t get them outside without pulling the blanket down and she wasn’t apparently willing to do that. I took the notes from her and brought my left arm outside the blanket to hold them. My hand was going to get cold out here, but I’d worry about that later.
She pulled my right hand back around her and put it on her stomach before pulling her sweatshirt back down.
“It’s fine to touch my skin,” she said, “but don’t go exploring. I’m not ready for you to hold my bare boob.” I started to pull my hand away again, but she caught it and held it to her.
“Aren’t you like wearing…?”
“Long gone. Do you know how uncomfortable those damn things are? Imagine always having a form-fitting padded cup holding your cock and balls in exactly the same position all day long with a cutting elastic band around your waist and two straps that are always too short,” she said. “I take it off as soon as I get back to my room.”
“Why wear it at all then?” I asked. Kate never wore a bra.
“I don’t like guys looking at me all the time. As soon as one does, sure enough, my nipple is going to get hard and poke right through my shirt. It’s just security,” she said. “Besides, they sag enough as it is.”
“Well, you’d never prove it by me. Here are the notes.” We went through the first page and I tried to turn the page one-handed.
“Oh, screw this,” Amanda said. “We’re not accomplishing anything.” She took the notes and tossed them down beside the chair before pulling my hand under the blanket with her. She smashed it against her stomach next to the other.
“Shit!” she tried to keep her voice down. “That hand’s freezing.” She pulled it up and wrapped it further around her underneath her right armpit. She shivered a bit, but clamped her arm down on it firmly. “That should warm it up. Soon, I hope.”
Now, in this position, my left arm was pulled across her body and the hand trapped under her pit. That meant my wrist could easily verify the fact that there was no bra covering her tits. And that her right nipple was hard and pressing into my radial artery. She settled into my arms and leaned back with the blanket drawn up to our chins.
“Your pulse is slightly elevated,” she said.
“Yeah. It could be a side-effect of the method you’re using to take it.”
“Things are warming up though.”
“Yes, they certainly are.”
“We’ll get through the exam on Monday, won’t we?” she asked.
“We’ll review everything tomorrow afternoon. I don’t think you’ll have a problem with it.”
“Good. Then I think I’ll take a nap now.” Inside of a minute she was sleeping on my shoulder with both my hands up inside her shirt. I didn’t dare sleep for fear that natural impulses would take over.
Rio showed up at midnight, Whitney at two, and Bree at four. All anyone wanted to do was curl up and go to sleep. That was fine.
I stumbled over to the dorm and up to Kate’s room after the shift ended. She’d given me her dorm key before I went to work so I wouldn’t disturb her slumber. Amber was asleep as well. I stripped off my clothes and crawled into Kate’s bed with her. We slept until almost nine.
“Mmm,” Kate said as she turned in my arms and buried her nose against my chest. “Better and better.”
“What’s that?” I whispered.
“My dreams. They keep getting better and better.”
Amber was still asleep in the bed across the room, so Kate and I quietly dressed and left to go find Sunday brunch.
“I found this two-for-one coupon for a place called Salty’s in West Seattle,” Kate said. “Want to try it?”
“Sounds good to me. As long as I’m back for my one o’clock study group. I invited my team over. I should pick up some snacks for people.”
We had a great brunch with a buffet that stretched the length of the pier the restaurant was built on. We got so messy eating Alaska King Crab legs that we could hardly eat for giggling. It was really good.
Study with Amanda, Bree, and Justin went for four hours before we all just threw up our hands and gave up.
“We are going to ace this exam!” I said with conviction. “There is absolutely no sense in studying any more. Put something new in my head now and something important is going to slip out.”
“I agree,” Bree said. “We need to relax for a while.”
“No way. I relaxed with Tony last night. No repeats.”
I reached for my drum and started tapping out a rhythm. Bree looked at me curiously. The last time she’d been here with me playing the drum, we’d received the call that Harold was dead. I wasn’t about to let drumming mean bad news to me, though. Justin saw the conga drum and grabbed it right away.
“Oh yeah!” he said. He started matching my rhythm with a counterpoint. It was obvious that he wasn’t a novice at drumming.
“You’ve got a choice,” Bree said to Amanda. “Drum or dance.” Amanda grabbed the bongos and started in. She had a good sense of rhythm. Bree grabbed a tambourine and started tapping it as she moved around the living room, almost dancing, but really just walking with rhythm.
We’d only been at it for a few minutes when I heard the finger cymbals start. I smiled as Kate came dancing into the living room. She went immediately to Bree and the two started playing off each other.
“God! She was serious,” Amanda said. She put down the bongos and grabbed a small Ute drum that I’d found in a second-hand shop a couple weeks ago. It was small enough that she could tap on it as she joined Kate and Bree in their dance. I could tell that Justin was torn between keeping drumming and getting up to dance, but he was really into the conga and just doubled down on his playing.
We beat those drums for about forty minutes before I planted four long hard strokes on the big drum and we went silent.
“Oh god! That was just what I needed,” Amanda said.
“No kidding.”
“I’d do this anytime,” Justin said as he slumped back. Sweat was dripping off his forehead.
“You’d all be welcome,” Kate said. “We drum and dance almost every Sunday. I was just waiting.”
“You were awesome. I’d love to learn to dance like that,” Amanda said. “Do you give lessons?”
“I just try to do what she does, but she’s so improvisational,” Bree said. “In cheerleading, everything was choreographed.”
“Kate’s my muse,” I smiled. “I wouldn’t know what I was doing if I wasn’t watching her.”
Kate came over and planted herself in my lap, giving me a big, sloppy kiss.
“Mmm. I think that’s our cue to leave, guys,” Bree said. Amanda and Justin were just staring at us. “Oh. Don’t ask,” Bree said. “It’s too long a story for today. After finals, okay?”
Kate and I didn’t really notice them leave.
I went straight from the anatomy final to the club. At ten o’clock on Monday, hardly anyone was there. Too early for the business guys to come in for lunch-time workouts. Too late for the before-work crowd. At this hour, it was mostly tennis moms. I know. That’s really a sexist thing to say, but I swear there were only half a dozen men in the club and fifty women. It was a great time to work out.
I got an empty court for a couple of hours and did my own dance, winding down from the exam and the stress of studying. I was pretty sure I’d done well. It was possible that I’d aced it, depending on how he graded the one section. I thought the question was a little ambiguous. But it really felt good to powder that little blue ball.
John Gilbert stopped by as I finished and we chatted for a bit. On top of finals, we had a tournament in Mountlake Terrace coming up over the weekend. Whitney was heading back to Louisiana right after the tournament Saturday. Racquetball isn’t a varsity sport. Nobody’s going to get a letter for it and missing a tournament was no big deal.
I took a long soak—longer than usual and had a leisurely shower and shave. It was still only half past twelve and I had plenty of time to make it to my study session with Rio for tomorrow’s Critical Reading exam. That one had me a little more freaked out than anatomy.
“I heard it’s all essays and we won’t hear about grades until after Christmas,” Rio said as we sat in the cafeteria with notes, books, and lunch spread out in front of us.
“Why would any professor want that many essays to grade right before the holiday?” I asked. “Strait never struck me as masochistic.”
“I am,” Rio said matter-of-factly. “A little pain puts me on edge.”
“What?”
“You know. A little too much pressure on my nipples. A good spanking. I’m not overboard on it like the kinks are. I just think that the difference between pleasure and pain is a fine line. We have to play to our sweet spots,” Rio said.
“What does that have to do with Critical Reading?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing. I just wanted you to know that if I don’t help you ace this you are free to give me—let’s say—ten swats on my bare butt with the palm of your hand.”
“Uh… I’m not really into pain,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. But wouldn’t you like to have my bare ass bent over your knee for just a few minutes?” she asked. Shit! I was getting hard.
“So, what’s going to be on the test?” I asked.
“Sadist,” she muttered.
We figured there would be at least one standard “compare and contrast” essay on two schools of criticism. We’d nail that. We studied them up one side and down the other this term. I was sure I could tell the difference between post-modernism and post-colonialism. Then there’d be an analysis. Two short pieces on the same topic that we’d have to analyze and determine the factual information apart from the slant. Finally, there’d be a piece that we’d have to write a critique of, justify the method we used, and list the weaknesses of our own arguments. Professor Strait was really into that. It wasn’t enough to argue effectively, we always had to identify the weaknesses and bias in our own arguments.
It was dinnertime when we finally decided we’d had enough. I didn’t have any wind-down activity with Rio, though she suggested that I could have. I swung by PCAD and picked up Kate and we went home to a quiet meal and a long telephone chat with Melody and Lissa. It was only nine o’clock when we went to bed, but we went to sleep almost immediately.
Well, we’d correctly identified the questions that Strait asked on the exam, but that really didn’t make writing it any easier. It took the full two hours, and I could have used another fifteen minutes on my analysis. But it was over.
I met the guys for practice after Doc Henredon’s 2D class and we played doubles with Whitney and me against Brent and Franklin. The guys are really getting on top of their game. They were solidly Division B players now and I was sure that we’d get evaluated and they’d be rated at this tournament.
And then it was over.
I had two more classes with Doc, but there was really nothing else for SCU. It was the end of term.
I breathed a sigh of relief and then got to thinking about something else. I called Jack and asked him if I could have the boys for a couple of days. He’d jumped in and told Lissa that he would take the boys while she joined Melody in Boston, and we’d have them for two weeks as Kate and I took them to Boston and then on to Nebraska for Christmas. But damn, I missed them. They still had school for another week, but Jack agreed that they could “sleep over” at our house Wednesday and Thursday nights, but that Molly would bring them back to Jack on Friday night so I could go to the tournament on Saturday morning.
Man was it great to have the guys back home!
They understood about Melody and that Lissa had gone to help her, but they’d been cut off from everyone since Lissa left and I felt bad.
I picked them up from school Wednesday and we went downtown. Kate met us when she got out of class and we rode the carousel and looked at the train setup at Carson’s and the mechanical toys at Nordstrom. We took the boys to see Santa and got their picture. I ordered half a dozen of them because I figured there were grandparents who would want pictures, too. We’re a big family.
Then Kate and I sat on Santa’s lap, much to the boys’ delight. We asked him to please bring all our family together. Damn, we had such a good time.
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