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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
Chapter 24
“Lisa wasn’t very happy about being left behind,” Brittany said from the seat of my car a few minutes later as we headed up to my room at the Channel Stop.
“Tough shit,” I said, still hot under the collar. “There’s a possibility we might have been able to iron this out, Darrin or no, if she’d kept her pointy little nose out of it. She’s got a boyfriend on the boat, right? Let her work it out on him.”
“I wouldn’t say boyfriend. Fuck buddy is more like it. They sure went at it like rabbits in his room last night.”
“That’s not surprising, I guess. When she was up here last year it was with a guy named Brian, and they seemed more like fuck buddies than boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“She didn’t say much about that trip,” she said. “Just that she had a lot of fun and that I ought to come along this time. I guess she was being selective with the truth about that, too.”
“She seems to be pretty good at that,” I agreed. “She also seems to be pretty selective about realizing when something is the truth, as well. She sure has been this last year.”
“Yeah, she’s been all over my ass about how I ought to try to get back together with you,” Brittany admitted. “She’s been such a pain in the ass about it that I’ve tried to avoid her around campus. I don’t know why I let her talk me into taking this boat trip. I guess it was because I thought that she and I had been such good friends in the past that somehow we ought to be better friends again. I sure wasn’t expecting her trying to set us up, if that’s what it was.”
“If it hadn’t been this one it probably would have been something else some other time,” I told her philosophically.
“She said one time that she’d heard you had a girlfriend,” she said, changing the subject a little. “Is us talking going to get in the way of anything with you?”
“No,” I told her. “Susie and I had something going for a while, but we drifted apart when she went back to college last fall,” I replied, being a little selective with the truth myself. I guessed it must run in the family. “She’s down in Chicago looking for work. We, well, we don’t have any promises. It might still come to something, but it’s pretty unlikely. How about you and this Darrin?”
“That’s long over with,” she said bitterly. “In fact, we really did break up that weekend you saw us. He wanted, well, he wanted me to do more than I wanted to, and I especially didn’t want to do it knowing that I shouldn’t be doing it with him at all. God, Jake, I really fucked that up.”
By now we’d made it back to the Channel Stop. I parked the car in front of my room, and took our meals inside. “You live here?” she said as she followed me.
“More than a year, now,” I told her. “It’s a little small, but a hell of a lot better than a berth and a locker on some Navy ship somewhere.”
“It’s a hell of a lot better than a dorm room, and you don’t have a roomie to contend with all the time,” she said. “Edie and I . . . well, we get along, but only just get along. She’s as much responsible for my getting together with Darrin as anything else.”
“You like a beer?” I asked.
“I’d love one,” she said. “In fact, I think I need a beer more than anything else right now. This has been, well, I wasn’t expecting it.”
“Yeah, me too,” I agreed, snagging a couple from the refrigerator. “Let’s go out on the balcony to eat. I like to sit out there on evenings like this.”
We moved to the chairs on the balcony. It was in that hour just before sunset when the shadows are long and the light rich and deep. Looking out over the channel at these times was one of the things I really liked about this place. The burgers and fries were half-warm, like they always seem to be for takeouts, but they were food and I wasn’t complaining. Brittany and I didn’t say much to each other while we were eating. We had plenty to say to each other, but getting through it was going to be awkward for both of us.
When we were finished I wadded the papers up into the sack the food came in and took them inside to the trash can. While I was in there, I grabbed my pack of cigarettes and my Zippo, went back out to my chair and lit up. “God,” Brittany said in a rather snotty manner, “Don’t tell me you still do that.”
“Not much,” I said. “But usually I have one or two about this time of day. I don’t have to,” I added, then took another quick drag on the weed and flipped it over the rail.
“Thanks,” she said. “So what is it you do here, anyway? Run the fuel dock?”
“Some of the time,” I said. “I also work in the kitchen off and on, but I spend a lot of the time crewing on a charter fishing boat, and sometimes fill in as captain on it. It’s not something I ever expected to be doing, but I enjoy it.”
“Look, Jake,” she said. “We could talk around this all night, but it still comes down to the fact that I had sex with Darrin, when I should have let you be first, right?”
“That about sums it up,” I agreed.
“I know I shouldn’t have done it,” she said. “I knew it at the time, but well, Darrin was sort of insistent and I let the moment overcome my better judgment. Then, the times after that, we’d already done it, and well, I guess what was done had already been done. Then you came home from the Navy, and somehow I realized I had to straighten things out. I didn’t do a very good job of it, did I?”
“You might have been able to get away with it,” I pointed out. “Especially at that time. But think how shitty you would have felt lying to me about it.”
“Pretty shitty,” she agreed. “I think that’s been, well, been part of the reason I haven’t been a little more active trying to fix things. I mean, there were things I could have done a long time ago, but I didn’t do them, since I thought you’d been hurt enough as it was.”
“Well, you had that part of it right,” I agreed. “It would have been easier if Lisa hadn’t been involved, but she really pissed me off.”
“I know she wants us to get back together,” she agreed. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea. If we do, the fact that I had sex with Darrin is still going to be lying there between us, no matter what we do. I don’t know if we can overcome that.”
“You’re right, it’s still going to be an issue, at least partly because I’ve been steamed about it for over a year now. I’ve mostly gotten over it, but it’s still a valid point.”
“God, I hate to say this, but I don’t think we can even start about talking about getting back together until we can take a little of the hurt off of the sex business. I haven’t had sex since I was with Darrin, I don’t know if it was out of loyalty to you or just the fact that I was so ashamed about what I did. But maybe we could, uh, get that out of the way a little by making it up to you the best I can.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, I’m not sure, but I don’t see any other way. Even then, I know it wouldn’t be the same as it would have been if you’d been the one to take my virginity, like I should have let you. Damn it, I should never have gone with Darrin, and instead should have hopped into bed with you the minute you got back from the Navy. But, I didn’t, and that’s that. I don’t know if you can forgive me, since I’m not sure I can forgive myself for screwing it up. But going to bed together might be a first step.”
“Or it might not be,” I pointed out. “There’s no reason to think that going inside and tearing into each other is going to solve anything, let alone get us back together.”
“I realize that,” she said, standing up and peeling off the T-shirt she was wearing, to reveal a heavy white bra. “But whatever happens, I think I owe it to you. Let’s go inside.”
I was still reluctant; I had more or less managed to put Brittany behind me, for good or bad, and going to bed with her now seemed likely to open a can of worms that I didn’t want to deal with. On the other hand, getting Brittany into bed and getting into her had been my dream and my goal for years and years. I’d put off a lot of other opportunities clear back into high school in pursuit of it, and I had realized that it was going to take a ring on her finger to make it reality. Then, it had seemed gone, and all that was left had been the memories of the dreams. Now, she was handing the opportunity to me on a silver platter. In spite of all the opportunities for trouble as a result, I couldn’t quite bring myself to let the chance go by.
“All right,” I said as I started to get up. “But before we do, we have to agree that this doesn’t necessarily mean anything beyond tonight. I mean, if it does, it does, but if it doesn’t, it doesn’t, too.”
“I understand,” she said softly. “But I think it has to be done. Now, come inside and unhook this bra for me.”
Once we were inside, she put her arms around me, and I reached around behind her to unhook the bra, which seemed as heavy and strong as something Debby would wear, even though Brittany had nowhere near as big a chest. Once I had the bra loose, I slipped it off her shoulders, revealing her breasts, the first time I’d ever seen them. They were bigger than Susie’s, which were barely there at all, but nowhere in the class of Debby’s, or even Annette’s. In fact, they were smaller than I had expected. Brittany must have always worn a lot of padding; when I put my hand out to touch them they felt different than I remembered from the odd times I’d been able to touch them through her clothes in the past. I must have been feeling cotton rather than girl.
I pulled her tight with the idea of kissing her, but she pulled her head away. “No, Jake,” she protested. “Not with that cigarette breath of yours.” I’d only had a couple puffs on a cigarette all day, and that irritated me a little. As an alternative, I let my hand go down to the button of her jeans and unfastened it, then unzipped the zipper to let the pants slide down, revealing a pair of white granny panties. I didn’t think women wore those anymore; even Barb didn’t.
I didn’t worry about it just then. The panties quickly came off, revealing a thick black bush in her crotch as she stood before me in the nude, seemingly a little embarrassed, but determined.
It didn’t take me long to get my clothes off and the covers of the bed pulled back with Brittany’s help, and then we were down on it. We cuddled a little bit, and did some hugging and caressing. My hand went down to her sex, and I fingered her lightly; she seemed dry and hot and reluctant. I could feel her hand on my penis, and she whispered, “God, that feels a lot bigger than Darrin’s. Try to not hurt me with it, Jake.”
After a bit of that I rolled her on her back, used one of my legs to encourage her to spread hers, and crawled down between them. Her bush was so thick that I wondered if I could even find her hot button in that hairy forest, but when I put my head down to look, she said, “Jake, no. Please. That’s gross.”
“You don’t like it?” I asked in amazement.
“No, it seems yucky,” she replied. “That’s what Darrin wanted me to do, and, uh, the same thing to him. That’s what led us to break up, more than anything.”
“Well, all right,” I said as I broke off to crawl back up and cuddle her some more. “But I think you’re missing out on something.”
“Then I’m going to miss out on it,” she said flatly.
I lay back down next to her and played with her nipples with my tongue – she didn’t object to that – while I felt around in all that hair down below for her hot button. I managed to find it, and got the impression she was enjoying the feeling, but she didn’t seem to be doing much to reciprocate.
An uncomfortable realization was starting to come over me as I lay there trying to warm her up enough for the main event: maybe Darrin had done me a favor after all. Any of the women I’d had in the past year had shown a whole lot more interest in the proceedings, and in fact were enthusiastic about it, while I was coming to realize that Brittany either just tolerated it, or just didn’t care. She was letting me play with her, just as it was clear that she was going to let me fuck her, but her heart was nowhere near being in it.
If Brittany had kept her legs closed with Darrin, which even she said she should have done, I might never have known how much fun I could have in bed with a woman. It seemed likely I wouldn’t have learned about the fun part from her. As it was, I’d had Debby, especially, along with the deReuyters, mother and daughters, who had given me a whole lot more appreciation for what I was doing than I’d had a year before.
An unexpected revelation came over me. Brittany really was a cold fish, just doing what she thought she had to do, and even now she just didn’t seem to care. Maybe she never had cared; maybe her insistence on keeping her virginity back in the day had been her way of saying that she wasn’t even mildly interested, and it was a way to put the day of reckoning off as long as possible. Even if we’d gotten married, which could have happened, it could have been that Brittany’s response to sex would have been, as they’d once put it, “Lie still and think of England.”
As I lay there, any interest I might have had about doing anything with Brittany in the long run just evaporated. All that was left was a cold relief that we had broken up, and this wasn’t fair to either of us. “Brittany,” I whispered, “This isn’t working.”
“It’s all right, Jake,” she said. “Please do it, so I don’t have the guilt hanging over me anymore.”
“All right,” I said reluctantly. Jesus, what a waste of a woman, I thought. Maybe a little action would loosen her up, I thought – or at least, it might show her what she’d been missing.
She was tight and dry when I penetrated her; I didn’t have any lube in the room, but I hadn’t needed it except on a few occasions when Debby wanted me to get into her south end, and then she’d brought her own. Maybe, I thought, Brittany wanted to recreate the pain of losing her virginity, but by then I didn’t care that much.
While it was clear now that Brittany had only had sex a few times, and maybe never quality sex, I was not a nervous virgin any longer – Debby had taken care of that and Susie, Annette, and Barb had cleared up any rough edges I may have had. In the beginning I’d thought to only do it enough to get on the scoreboard like Brittany wanted, but as I pushed into her with long, slow, steady strokes, somehow I changed my mind. I don’t know if it was because I was still angry with her for cheating on me or what, but I made up my mind that this was going to be a night she was not going to forget.
When I’d first been in bed with Debby, I’d tended to go off pretty quickly. She hadn’t liked that, for obvious reasons, and over time we’d worked out some mental and physical tricks that would allow me to keep going for a long time. I used them now to drag things out as long as I could, which was pretty long. Somewhere along in there I could feel Brittany tense up, give a little shiver, and whisper, “Oh, God, Jake, I love that.”
I don’t think she faked it. I don’t think her faking it could have been that subtle, but it was all I needed to finalize my decision to give her all she could handle and then some. I just kept on going and she mostly just lay there, hopefully not thinking of England but not exactly asking me to stop, either.
It went on for a long time. A couple times I got out of her to take a brief break, but soon was back in her again. She wasn’t begging for mercy or asking me to stop, but she wasn’t exactly screaming for more, either. The last time she was pretty tired, almost out of it, and when I finally pulled out of her she fell asleep almost instantly. I did, too; I’d given it my best shot. That didn’t keep me from rolling her over and doing it again in the middle of the night, or getting into her while she was still asleep in the morning. While she didn’t say anything, I could just about hear her think, “Oh, no, not again!” I let it go fairly quickly that last time, and left her lying there half awake while I went to take a shower and get ready for another long day on the fuel dock.
When I got out of the shower she was half dressed, and obviously not in the mood to say anything much. “Jake,” she said finally, “if we were to get together again, would it be like that all the time?”
“Not necessarily,” I told her, knowing now beyond the shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t going to happen. “But pretty much.”
“Oh, God! Maybe it’d be better if we didn’t get back together. A couple times there I thought you were going to kill me, and I’m so sore that the last time might have actually done it.”
“Well, that was what you wanted,” I told her. “Maybe it’s just as well that you found out what you missed.”
“It could be,” she said, pulling on the T-shirt she’d worn the night before. “I never quite thought it could be like that. I guess you like it a little more than I do.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “Maybe it’s just as well that we found out now.”
“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “There were times there that it was all right, though. Thank you, Jake. I’ll tell Lisa that it just isn’t going to work, and to keep off your ass about it.”
“It would be appreciated,” I said as I pulled on my shoes. In a couple minutes we were headed out to the car, and I could see she was walking a little tenderly. I glanced at John’s truck sitting outside Debby’s room, and wondered how much they’d heard. Probably not much, I thought; we’d been pretty quiet.
I drove down to the slips in the harbor, and parked as close as I could to the boat Brittany had come in on. I walked her up to it, but before she got aboard she turned and took me in her arms. “Jake,” she said, “I’m a little sorry it’s not going to work out, but I guess in some ways I’m not sorry, either. I don’t think I could live like that.”
“I suspect so,” I told her. “Maybe it’s just as good that we found out now.”
“Yeah, it is,” she said. “But I’m not going to forget it, either. Have a good life, Jake, and thanks.” She kissed me quickly, then turned away.
I stood by as she got on the boat, then went back up to my car and drove back to the Channel Stop. I spent my time on the way thinking that it might have worked if Brittany had been willing to unbend enough to meet me halfway, or even a quarter of the way, but apparently she didn’t have it in her. As we’d both said, it was just as well that we’d found out now.
An hour or two later I was working on the fuel dock with Wayne when Greg’s boat came by. Lisa was on the bridge steering, with Greg standing close behind her, showing her how to do it. I didn’t know if she was concentrating so much on the task, or whether Greg’s hand on her bikini-covered breast had something to do with it, but either way she didn’t appear to notice me. Most likely she didn’t want to notice me, anyway. There was no sign of Brittany on the boat at all.
