Alma Mater (14 page)

'Say it again." She hugged him, wanting to feel his body, needing
him to banish the sneaking suspicion in her mind about herself. She
needed his stability and his love.

He lifted his chemistry book over her head. "At least we'll be cool." "I love the rain. I love every single drop."

He felt her happiness, a radiance enveloping him. "1 love you."

"I hope so." She put her arm around his narrow waist. "I love you. I
forget sometimes, I forget to tell you."

She parked at the gym. They changed in the locker room and met
on the cinder track. They usually ran four laps on the track and then
tackled the steps. Her
energy
surprised her, supercharged. She didn't
feel the strain in her calves until the last set of steps.

Afterward they sat on the bottom step, both soaked. "If we could
strip, we wouldn't need a shower." He tipped back his head, the water
tickling his tongue. Then he kissed her, dribbling rainwater.

She laughed. "Rules. We should be able to take our clothes off and
stand here in the rain. If we were home, we could."

"Let's go." He stood up, pulling her with him.

"For real?"

"Yeah, change your clothes. Let's go."

They were in her car in fifteen minutes and at Surry Crossing in
another forty-five.

Piper barked in the kitchen as Vic pushed through the door. R. J.'s
car wasn't there, so she must have been running errands.

"Come on." She stripped off her clothes, neatly arranging them on
the kitchen chair. "I'll explain to Mom if she comes home soon." She
grabbed two towels while Charly removed his T-shirt and jeans.

A thin line of blond hair ran across his pees, the bottom of the line
running down to a fluff of pubic hair surrounding an impressive penis.

They'd petted and played with one another for a year, but neither had ever seen the other naked.

"God, you are beautiful. You are so beautiful." He could barely
breathe. A twinge in the small of his back told him that his dick would be standing at attention soon.

"I was thinking the same about you." She put the towels on the ta
ble, reached for his hand, and they ran down to the river.

Piper, bored with the rain, remained in the kitchen.

"I love its" She laughed as they reached the dock. She dropped
his hand, held out her arms, looked up at the sky. The James lapped the dock.

Charly copied her. Rivulets coursed over his body. He looked
down at his stiff dick. "I can't always control this thing, you know."

She wrapped her arms around him. "Why should you? It means
you're alive."

"I am when I'm with you." He kissed her. He thought if he died in
that moment he'd die a happy man. Well, if he could enter her, then he'd die an ecstatic man.

Charly weighed 185 pounds, solid muscle. His bones were heavy,
his jaw strong. Vic could feel the hair on his chest next to her breasts.
Chris weighed maybe
135
pounds at five feet
six
or seven. The odor
from her body was sweet.

Vic knew she didn't feel incinerating lust, but she felt a tug, a
warmth. She liked feeling his penis against her stomach, the heat of it,
the throb. She wanted to know what it was like to truly make love with
him. If she liked it maybe she wasn't a lesbian. That seemed logical.

She reached for him, wrapping her hand around his satisfying
thickness. His knees wobbled.

"Do you need to sit down?" She laughed.

"Vic, I can't breathe. I can't stand. I can't think."

"If we get into the water on the north side of the dock and Mom
does come home, she won't see us before we know she's here."

"I'll do anything."

They slid into the water, which was warmer than the rain. The soft muck curled up through their toes. The rain, heavier now, tapped onto
their skin. She moved her hand up and down, kissing him
_;
then she
slid over him but not onto him. He leaned back against the mossy
dock timber, glad for the support. Even with the help of the water, his
legs shook.

They drove one another crazy until she mounted him, a new sensation and not a bad one once she adjusted to his considerable girth.

Charly, sweating in the rain as though suffering from fever, whis
pered, "I don't know how long I can hold out."

She held the back of his neck with her right hand, her left hand in
the small of his powerful back. "Don't—hold out."

He held her tightly, but was as gentle as he could be. He exploded
in about sixty seconds.

Vic liked feeling him reach orgasm. She knew she could do it in
another position. This one wasn't the easiest.

Charly had slept with two other women in his life. One was his
high school girlfriend, sex snatched whenever and wherever they
could get away with it. The other one was his first girlfriend at William and Mary when he was in his freshman year. He'd mastered the basics, but he knew there was a lot to learn and he couldn't wait to learn it all
with Vic. But he was so respectful of her, so in awe of her, that he
never pushed for it. Also, Charly possessed a wonderful sense of peo
ple. He knew without being told that Vic was not a woman who could
be pushed into sex or anything else for that matter.

She hung on to him, kissing him, rubbing the small of his back un
til he slipped out.

"Think any of those little things are swimming in the James?" She
kissed his cheek.

He sighed. "You feel so good." He paused a moment, the muscles
in his back tensed. "Vic, I didn't think about—"

"Me neither. I'll bear the consequences should there be any." The
unpleasant possibility of zero spontaneity in heterosexual sex had oc
curred to her.

There was no way in hell Vic would ever take birth control pills.
Let other women screw up their hormone balance. She wasn't going to
do it. This meant purchasing condoms—not in Surry County, obvi
ously, where everybody talks to everybody else—or getting fitted with
a diaphragm, which meant you had to plan sex or stop and put it in.

With Chris there wasn't a worry in the world.

"I'll marry you. I'll marry you anyway." He shivered a moment. "You have to ask first."

"I do and I will." He kissed her.

Charly came from the same kind of background as Vic did. A man
didn't just ask a woman to marry him. He first spoke to her father. If
she had no father, he spoke to her mother or someone in authority.

The rules for correct behavior had lasted through centuries of upheavals in Virginia. They weren't going to change. The man asked for
a woman's hand, and if she accepted he'd better be able to provide for
her. Fortunately, Charly could.

If two people just agreed to get married without the proper minuet it meant they were low rent, even if they were rich.

They walked out of the river and back up to the house, the hard rain washing off the river smell. Piper greeted them with a thump of her tail.

Vic wrapped a towel around Charly and one around herself. Then she rubbed him down, feeling him get hard again.

"Maybe we can get away with it."

They hurried up the steps, running into her bedroom and launch
ing themselves on her twin bed.

She wrapped her legs around him much as Chris had around her
the night before. Coming was easy. The minute she did he did, and
she was thankful that he had lasted that long.

He propped himself on his elbows. "To what do I owe this mo
mentous occasion?"

"I don't feel like waiting around anymore." She kissed him again. "Let's take a shower." As she stood up, his come ran out of her. "This stuff is amazing." She laughed.

A little was seeping out of the hole in his penis. He wiped it off with his finger. "Is there an etiquette for body fluids?"

"I think we either lick ourselves clean, wipe it up, or wash it off.
They didn't tell me in cotillion. It's just a hunch "

They showered, ran back downstairs, and put their clothes on.

Vic had just opened the refrigerator when R. J. and Bunny walked
in. After rapturous greetings, Bunny pulled a new pair of binoculars
from a blue glossy shopping bag.

"Zeiss ten by fifty-six. I can see at night."

"That's great, Aunt Bunny."

"Don't ask what they cost." Bunny handed them to Charly. When
no one did ask, she added, "A fortune."

"That's the truth." R. J. walked over to the refrigerator. "Hungry? Oh,
what a silly question. You all sit here. I'll perform a culinary miracle."

"R. J., I'll eat every morsel you put in front of me." Bunny took the
binoculars back after Vic inspected them too. "Aren't they the best? I'd
tell you to look through them, but the rain—" Bunny stood up, putting
her binoculars to her eyes. 'Even in this weather I can see. Oh, this is
just the best, best, best. Here, Charly."

He stood up to peer through the binoculars. "Wow, Mrs. McKenna,
you could sign up for Special Forces with these."

While they were talking, R. J. was preparing their lunch. She
adored feeding people. In no time she'd put cold roast beef on the table, a loaf of fresh whole wheat bread, potato salad, mayo, mustard,
pickles, deviled eggs.

"Mom, you must have known we were coming."

"Actually, your sister had a pep club meeting here last night, offi
cers only, and these are the leftovers. She's quite the organizer."

Bunny kept putting her fork down to pick up her new binoculars.
She couldn't keep her hands off them. "Oh, I just love it. I'm not going
to show Don the bill. I paid for these out of my own special account."

"Charly, we missed you last weekend, and I guess we'll miss you
this weekend," R. J. said.

"It's always a pleasure to have you at the games, Mrs. Savedge."

"Maybe the weekend after that we'll all drive over for a game. Then you can come back with us and spend what's left of the weekend."

"That would be great." He smiled. He liked R. J., and Bunny, too.
He'd gotten to know her a bit over the summer, playing golf with her and Frank Savedge.

"What were you two doing?" Bunny hoped she'd get a vague re
sponse, anything to fire her imagination, since Don wasn't firing it lately.

"We wanted to jump in the river in the rain," Charly said.

"Well, careful, you two—you never know what's swimming in
there," Bunny warned.

"You're exactly right, Aunt Bunny," Vic agreed, smiling.

_J

esus, Vic, leave it to you not to do anything halfway." Jinx sat in her living room adorned with framed posters of Impressionist
paintings.
Because of his curfew, Vic had dropped off Charly at his dorm.

The minute she walked through Jinx's door she called Chris, telling
her she'd had to run home, she was at Jinx's, and she'd see her tomor
row after class. Then she fell into
a
chair, like a shot duck, and spilled
everything to Jinx.

"What do I do now?"

"Enjoy it." Jinx laughed. She'd made coffee and got up to pour it,
returning with two large mugs. "Here, caffeine will clarify your mud
dled brain."

"I think it's always muddled."

Jinx sat opposite her dearest friend. "Neither one knows about the
other?"

"No. Well, obviously, Chris knows about Charly. Doesn't know I slept with him."

Homosexuality would cost Vic
_;
it did everyone. Jinx felt no repug
nance for it, but she recognized that it was a complicated life.

"Do you love Charly?"

"What's not to love?"

"Do you love Chris?"