Running the shower with nothing but the cold water on cooled Scott off in more ways than one, which was a relief. As hot and sweaty as he was, he was soon on the verge of getting chilled, so he called it good enough. He wasted little time putting on shorts and a T-shirt, then getting back downstairs to Sonja. He still couldn’t believe she’d made the teasing remark she had before he’d gone upstairs, but he hoped there was something behind it.

He’d barely made it back down the stairs to the living room where Sonja was waiting for him before his mother asked, “Scott, have you had lunch yet?”

“Afraid not,” he said. “No time for it. I got hung up in the personnel office and that took a while. I guess I can raid the refrigerator.”

“I haven’t eaten either,” Sonja put in. “I was waiting for you to get home.”

“There are leftovers from last night’s dinner,” his mother suggested. “Nothing fancy, I’m afraid, but I could throw them in the microwave for you.”

“That’s probably as good as anything,” Scott told her. “I still haven’t recovered from running the heat gun all morning. At least I won’t have to be doing that again.” He went on to explain to his mom about getting laid off.

“That’s a shame,” his mother said after a quick explanation. “You were managing to save a little money.”

“It may be for the best, at least with Sonja here for what could be a while,” he replied. “If it works out that she’s going to be able to go home pretty soon, I’ll look around for something else. It may only be a day or two at a time, but a buck is a buck, after all.”

“Any progress on that situation?”

“No way of telling,” Sonja said. “I’m not about to call home, at least not just now. There’s too big a chance my mother could be hanging around. I’ll wait till Monday, then I can call Dad at work. You’re stuck with me at least till then.”

“‘Stuck’ is hardly the word,” Scott’s mother smiled. “We’re glad to have you here, and you’re welcome to stay as long as you need to. It’s nice to have a girl around the house again, especially one as nice as you.” She shook her head and sighed, “I guess I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that Abby probably won’t be living with us again.”

“Thanks,” Sonja replied politely. “I know I’m probably putting you out, but it’s nice to be able to spend some time with Scott.” She flashed him a smile that told him a lot.

Scott and Sonja followed Barbara out to the kitchen, where she started pulling plastic dishes from the refrigerator and putting them in the microwave; it looked like meat loaf to Scott, something he knew he could enjoy. “So,” his mother asked, “how was your little get-together last night?”

“Better than I expected,” Scott said. “I think we both had a real good time. There were kids there I haven’t seen in a while and probably won’t see much of in the future. I’m really going to miss some of them.”

“It happens,” Barbara sighed. “As far as I know there are only a handful of Abby’s classmates still in town. Everybody else has taken the on-ramp, and when you get down to it, I guess I can’t blame them.”

“A lot of our class has, too,” Scott told her while the microwave started buzzing. “In fact, there were a lot of people I would have expected to see there who didn’t make it, and I can’t believe it’s not going to be worse in the future. I could name off a dozen people real quickly I would have liked to have seen, but there wasn’t any chance of it, since they’re all working or out of town. In another couple years, it wouldn’t surprise me if only Emily and Dean and maybe a couple others are left here in Bradford.”

“You’re probably right,” Barbara sighed. “That’s the way it works, I guess. We don’t have to like it, but it happens. I just hope you wind up someplace close enough that you’ll be able to make it home once in a while.”

“Well, I hope so, too,” Scott replied. “But there’s no way of telling. I mean, Abby is down in Indianapolis, and she doesn’t make it home once a month.”

“I know, but she’s getting to the point where she has other things in her life, too,” Barbara shook her head as the telephone rang. It was only a short reach to pick it up. It was probably one of her friends who wanted to gossip, Scott thought but no. “Scott, it’s for you,” she said.

That was something of a surprise; he hadn’t had a dozen phone calls for him, except from Sonja, since he’d come back from State in May, although he and Sonja had talked on the phone enough to make up for it. His mother handed him the phone and he said, “Hey, it’s Scott.”

“Hey, Scott, it’s Andy,” he heard. “You doing anything this afternoon?”

“Just got home from work and hanging out with Sonja,” he said. “We haven’t made any plans yet, though I thought maybe I’d see if she’d like to go out to the track tonight. You have something in mind?”

“Well, yeah,” Andy said. “Diane and I were just kicking around what we wanted to do this afternoon, and we had the idea of heading out to the swimming hole out back. She said maybe you and your girl would like to come along.”

“Might be a possibility,” Scott replied. “I’ll have to ask. Back with you in a minute.” He put the phone on his shoulder and turned to Sonja. “This is Andy Baker. You remember him from last night?” She nodded, and he went on. “They’ve got a swimming hole out in back of their place, just a spot in the creek. Some of us guys used to hang out back there some when we were in school. He and Diane are thinking about heading out there and thought we might like to come along.”

“Sounds like fun,” Sonja smiled. “But Scott, I don’t have a swimsuit with me, either.”

“Oh, I’m sure there’s something of Abby’s upstairs,” Barbara said. “Push comes to shove, the Mercantile ought to be open for a while yet, and they’d probably have something that would fit.”

“Thirty years out of date, but it would fit,” Scott snorted. “It’s up to you, but I can’t think of anything more fun on a hot day like today.”

“Sure, if we can find a swimsuit,” Sonja smiled. “Andy and Diane were a lot of fun last night, and it’d be nice to spend an afternoon with them.”

“Good enough,” Scott replied and took the phone off his shoulder. “OK with her,” he told Andy. “We may be a bit, we have to come up with a swimsuit for Sonja. She didn’t bring one with her.”

“Glad you can come along,” Andy said. “You know how to find the place if Diane and I aren’t still around the house.”

An hour later, Scott and Sonja were in his car, heading out to the Baker’s farm east of town. “I’m afraid this is going to be a little primitive,” Scott warned. “It’s just a nice hole in the creek, with a little bit of a sandy beach, but I’ve had some fun out there.”

Sonja grinned back at him. “Some of those country pleasures, huh?”

“Well, yeah. We don’t have a community pool here in town. Back when we were in high school, we occasionally used to have guy and girl swimming parties out at Mandy Paxton’s place. They have a pool, but with her gone that’s in the past. Some of the girls in the class used to have all-girl parties out there maybe a couple of times a week in the hot months. The story around the guys was that those were skinny-dipping parties, but the guys were never invited to one, so I don’t know how true it is. We sure talked about it enough, though.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she smiled. “I’ve never had an opportunity to do that. Some of the kids I ran around with had pools and I’d go over there once in a while, but it was never private enough to do it in the nude.”

“We occasionally used to do it out at Andy’s,” Scott explained. “Especially if his dad had some of us helping with the haying, and God, it felt good to just take off our hot, sweaty clothes and jump in the water. To be honest, while I think working with the heat gun was bad enough, it wasn’t anything like as bad as throwing hay bales around under the hot sun. I guess I was glad when his dad stopped haying himself. He farms the job out to someone else now. He’s only a part-time farmer anyway.”

“There sure seem to be a lot of farms around here.”

“There aren’t as many as it seems,” Scott told her. “Small farms aren’t very economical anymore. A lot of people live in the country and just lease out their land for farming. Andy’s dad runs some crops, but he hires a lot of the work done. It’s just an extra income; he works at some plant up in Hawthorne. Probably not one in twenty farms you see is an active farm being run by the people who live there. Andy would have liked to be a farmer, but it’s just not in the cards for him.”

“I guess I didn’t realize that,” she frowned. “I guess I don’t know much about what it’s like to be in the country.”

“I’ll tell you what, it’s a little different between me being a town kid, and Andy being a farm kid, not that he was all that much of a farm kid,” he told her. “Andy was always up to his butt in 4-H, showing animals and that kind of thing, while it was mostly Greek to us town kids. Andy’s sister used to show horses before she graduated and had to take the on-ramp. Abby hung out with her some while they were in school. Abby would have liked to have had a horse, but it just was never going to happen.”

“There was a girl back in school who used to do equestrian stuff,” Sonja said. “I never knew her very well, since she was pretty snooty. Her family had money and she wanted everyone to know it. I always thought it would be nice to ride a horse, but I’ve never had the chance.”

“There has to be someone around who still has horses,” he told her. “We can ask Andy; he probably knows someone.”

“Oh, don’t go to any trouble. It’s just something I’d like to do some time.”

“Well, maybe we’ll have to find the time someday,” he replied. “I’ve never ridden a horse, either.”

“We’ll just have to get it on our to-do list,” she smiled.

“Yeah, and maybe we ought to think about making up a real list, rather than just talking about one,” he replied thoughtfully. “I’ll bet between you and me we could come up with a pretty long list.”

“I wouldn’t mind traveling some,” she said. “I’ve hardly been out of Michigan, except for my trips to Israel, and I’d like to see some other places sometime.”

“I think I agree,” he told her. “Hell, I don’t think I’d mind going to Israel sometime, just not anytime soon.”

“Not soon, but someday, maybe,” she said. “At least not until I can get a few things settled, especially with my mother. But there are other places to go. I’d like to go to Japan, as far as that goes. Dad hasn’t been there since he was a baby, but he keeps talking about wanting to go back to see what the place is really like sometime. But, as far as that goes, I think I’d like to see more of America, first.”

“No reason we can’t,” he smiled. “I haven’t seen as much of it as I’d like, either.”

It only took another few minutes to get out to Andy’s. As Scott pulled into the driveway, he noticed Andy and Diane sitting on the back porch, getting up when he drove in. Both were wearing T-shirts and shorts, like Scott and Sonja. “You two are already in your car,” Andy said as he walked closer. “Diane and I can just hop in the back. You ought to know how to get there if anyone does.”

“Yeah, I’ve been out there enough,” Scott agreed.

After a couple minutes of bouncing down a narrow farm lane, Scott stopped his car by the edge of some woods. “We’re going to have to walk a hundred yards or so,” Andy said. “But it’s not a hard walk. The bugs shouldn’t be too bad, but I’ve got some bug dope if they are.”

The “swimming hole” proved to be about what Scott had told Sonja it was – just a pool in a creek that ran through the back of the property, although with a sandy bottom. It was shady, and seemed nice and cool out of the hot sun of the early afternoon. “The water is pretty calm on this side,” Andy explained. “But if you do it right, you can get a nice ride out of the current on the far side, and it’s just a couple strokes to get into the eddy that will take you back around.”

“Is it very deep?” Sonja asked. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a swimmer.”

“I don’t think it’d be over your head anywhere,” Andy told her, peeling off his T-shirt. “If there is any place deep, it’s not very big. If anything, it’s a little too shallow, but makes a nice place to hang out and be by ourselves, not like that crowd we had last night.”

“It looks like fun,” Diane grinned, peeling out of her shorts and T-shirt to reveal a tiny black string bikini. “Sonja, I’ve never been out here, either.”

By then Sonja was peeling out of her own outer clothes. It proved that she was wearing a very form-fitting white one-piece swimsuit; Scott’s mother had helped Sonja find it and try it on, so he hadn’t seen her in it before. Now, it looked spectacular on her. “Holy crap,” Scott said, taking in the sight; the white only emphasized the beauty of Sonja’s dark skin, making it seem more natural and luscious. “I never saw Abby wearing that, but you’d have to look better in it than she did.”

“Your mother said she never wore it more than once or twice,” Sonja grinned. “It’s actually a little snug on me, so it must have been really snug on her.”

“Yeah, but wow, does it ever show off how sexy you are,” Scott shook his head. It really did show off every curve she had, and the swimsuit made clear she was well equipped with them. “You really are a babe, you know that?”

“I’m glad you think so,” Sonja grinned, striking a model-like pose to show herself off to him; it made her seem even sexier, if such a thing were possible. “Let’s see what the water’s like.”

It soon proved that Andy had been right. The swimming hole was pretty shallow; much of it was barely knee deep, and some of it waist deep. It only got deeper in the faster current on the far side, and then it still wasn’t all that deep. The four of them were pretty active for half an hour or so, just wading around, sometimes “cruising the loop” of the mild current through much of the place, splashing, yelling, carrying on and generally having a good time.

Finally, the cool of the water began to get to them, and one by one they came back up on shore and plopped down on a large grassy spot overlooking the swimming hole. “That was fun,” Diane said, a little out of breath. “Andy, we’re going to have to do this again sometime.”

“No reason we can’t,” Andy smiled, sitting down on the grass next to her. “We’ve got the rest of the summer for it. We might as well have some good times while we can.”

“Yeah, it’s not going to be that long,” she agreed, leaning over and giving him a quick kiss. “Then it’s going to be back to the salt mines for you. Lift that barge, tote that bale, hit them books. We’re just going to have to get together when I’m not working, and you’re going to be gone all too soon.”

“You guys looked like you were getting pretty close last night,” Scott observed as neutrally as he could. He knew Andy and Diane had been “just friends” for a long time, but somehow it seemed a little more serious this afternoon.

“Well, sort of,” Andy replied a little sheepishly. “We left the party a little after you did last night, but well, we got to talking on the way home.”

“We’ve both known it was never going to go anywhere between us,” Diane said flatly, “but we sort of made up our minds that we ought to have some fun and games while we can, but just for the summer.”

“It’s not like either of us has anything else going on,” Andy explained. “So I guess we sort of said, ‘What the hell, why not?’”

“We were a little late getting me home, if you know what I mean,” Diane grinned, “but we had a good time while we were at it.”

Scott smiled but said nothing. He doubted either one of them were going to come flat out and admit they’d screwed each other silly the night before, but Diane had given him all the hint he needed. If it hadn’t happened yet, it was clear it would pretty soon. “Well, have fun,” he smiled. “Just remember that summer is going to come to an end before we know it.”

“Well, yeah,” Diane replied, a little more soberly, “it’s not like we’re like you two lovebirds, up at the same college and all.”

“Hey,” Scott replied defensively, if a little in jest, “we do actually study once in a while, you know.”

“Yeah, we saw the two of you studying each other’s tonsils with your tongues last night,” Diane smirked. “In fact, that’s part of what gave Andy and me the idea. I’m glad you did. How long has this been going on with the two of you, anyway?”

“We started out as just casual friends a couple years ago,” Sonja replied noncommittally, although Scott could see she was enjoying it, “but it’s gotten deeper since. I can’t tell you when we went past being ‘just friends.’” Scott smiled at her, sure that Andy and Diane couldn’t see – apparently Sonja didn’t want to admit any more than he did that the moment hadn’t come until after the party the night before. He was just glad it had come at all.

“Shelly said she thought it had been going on a while,” Andy smiled. “Scott, she said she hardly ever saw you without Sonja around.”

“Well, we do hang out together a bit,” Scott replied obliquely. “We probably were ‘just friends’ when Shelly started seeing us, but like I was saying last night, I don’t see Shelly very often. We just aren’t around the same places on campus very much.”

“So,” Diane said, “do the two of you have any plans?”

Scott was dead sure he knew what Diane was talking about, and she was talking about things like engagement and weddings. Sonja picked up on it, too. “Not really,” she said. “Really, we’ve tried to keep it pretty easy-going since we don’t know what’s going to happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we firmed something up over the next year or so.”

“That’s probably the way to do it, girl,” Diane replied brashly. “We were talking about it a bit last night after the two of you left. You went about it the right way, slow and easy, so you didn’t scare Scott off before you got your hook set.”

“It’s not that bad,” Scott shook his head. “It’s just that the timing had to be right, and it wasn’t right in high school.”

“Yeah, timing, that’s how to do it,” Diane laughed. “I don’t know if Andy and I will be together after this summer. In fact, I doubt it. But it may be the only time we have so we might as well enjoy it.” She swung around, caught Andy by surprise, got him on his back and got her lips up against his. As far as Scott could tell, Andy wasn’t putting up much protest either.

Scott turned to Sonja and shook his head with a smile. In the softest words possible that Sonja might hear, he said, “My God, it looks like we’ve created a monster.”

Sonja smiled at him, then reached out and pulled him close. Somehow, Scott wasn’t quite sure how, the two of them wound up lying on the grass nose to nose with each other. “A two-backed beast, anyway,” she grinned, in a whisper so low he could barely hear it. “Or at least it would be if we weren’t here.”

“No fooling,” he replied as he looked into her beautiful, exotic dark eyes, “and I wouldn’t want to take many bets about what happens when we leave. On the other hand, they wouldn’t have invited us if they’d wanted to be alone.”

“I wouldn’t mind some of that,” she smiled. “I guess I need to do a little more roping in, you flighty, hard-to-catch boyfriend of mine. And this is as good a time as any.”

“Like Diane said, you have to take the opportunity when you can get it,” he smiled, and pulled her closer.

They really didn’t get much further than they had the night before, although it was a little more sensual, laying on the grass, neither of them wearing more than their swimsuits. There was no telling how long it went on, except that it wasn’t long enough. Sometimes they just kissed and touched, and sometimes they just lay there talking in little more than a whisper. “Scott,” she said at one point, “I’m so ready I could just about scream, but I don’t think the timing is quite right.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Maybe if we were alone.”

“A bed would be nice, too,” she smiled. “At least for the first time. I guess that means Monday, probably.”

“Well, we’re just going to have to wait then,” he smiled, scarcely able to believe the two of them were saying such things. This, after all, was Sonja, who he’d known had been as close as possible to his ideal woman from shortly after he’d met her – but one who awed him so much it had been hard to believe he could get anywhere with her. There was a piece of his mind still telling him this couldn’t be real, that it couldn’t be happening.

But it was – the feel of her firm breast encased in the damp cloth of the swimsuit told him that. If it hadn’t been for the swimsuit – and Andy and Diane making out a few feet away – it could have been her bare breast . . . and more. All of that seemed within reach, now, when only shortly before it had been a long ways away. Things had changed in his life, and though he wasn’t sure how he was going to handle them, he was looking forward to what would happen next . . . and soon . . . and for a long time in the future.

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