Chapter 10

"I'm sorry," said Mandy for possibly the fifth or sixth time. She wasn't talking about having just been fucked. She was referring to her yelled comment about Karen not knocking.

Jack was dressed again and sitting, head in his hands at the kitchen table. Mandy had on her robe, as did Bob, who had responded to Karen's agonized cry still naked.

"Sorry doesn't cut it," said Bob.

"We saw you," moaned Mandy. "Karen cried out and Jack thought she was hurt and the door was a little bit open and..."

"So since we were doing that, you decided you could too," said Karen.

"No! It wasn't like that. It was an accident!"

"So your clothes accidentally fell off, and he accidentally fell on top of you, and it accidentally went in you, and you accidentally didn't push him off?"

"No," said Mandy, literally. "Only the going in me part was an accident. He was only supposed to rub up against me like last time."

"Last time?" Bob perked up. "What last time?"

"Crap," said Mandy under her breath.

"Spill," he commanded.

"What last time, Jack?" asked Karen.

The two teens looked at each other.

"We may as well tell them," said Mandy, sounding disgusted.

"Yes, you may as well," said Bob.

Mandy bit the bullet.

"At Claudia's sleepover her boyfriend and Jack kind of came to visit."

"And Claudia's parents were fine with that?"

"They weren't exactly there."

"Where, exactly, were they?"

"I think it was in Colorado, but I'm not for sure."

"Stop," said Bob. He looked at Karen. "This is going to take a while, and you're right. You have work and both kids have school in the morning. Let's take this up with them after school tomorrow." He looked at the kids.

"In the meantime, you're both grounded. As soon as school is over, you are to go directly home - to your own home. You are not to talk to each other or anybody else about this. Not Claudia, and not anybody else who was involved. Is that clear?"

"Claudia already got in trouble for it," said Amanda. "You don't have to call her parents."

"What I want to know is why, if Claudia got in trouble for it, her parents haven't called me?"

"She didn't tell them we were there," said Mandy.

"That doesn't change anything," growled Bob. "My instructions stand as issued." He looked at Karen. "Is that okay with you?"

"I agree two hundred percent," she snapped.

Bob got a substitute for the next afternoon, and then took Amanda out of classes.

"I thought we were going to talk about this tonight," she said. It was the first thing she'd said to her father since the night before. That morning breakfast had been silent.

"You have a doctor's appointment," he said.

"I don't remember any doctor's appointment."

"You have to have an examination before the doctor will put you on birth control," he said.

"Oh."

"What? No argument?"

"No," she said, softly.

By the time they got home, Amanda had taken her very first BC pill. As soon as they got in, Bob called Karen and told her they were home.

She and Jack arrived ten minutes later, and they got right to it. Karen started.

"The reason I didn't want Jack to date until he was at least sixteen was because I remember what my own teen years were like," she said.

"So you did the same things?" asked Mandy.

Bob started to bark at her but Karen lifted a hand.

"Yes, Amanda. I did. And I was miserable. And that's because while sex is great fun, it won't make a relationship last. I don't think Jack is this kind of boy, but there are a whole lot of them out there who want to get into any girl's panties they can, and that means lining them up and moving from one to the next."

"You're right," said Mandy. "Jack isn't like that."

"Then there are the girls," said Karen. "Girls mature faster than boys do, which is why girls are ready to experiment with sex quite early in life. And a girl who is curious about sex will sometimes lead a boy down the primrose path by wrapping him around her little finger and getting him to satisfy her curiosity."

"I'm not like that!" objected Amanda, hotly.

"We'll see about that as this discussion goes on. My point is that I wasn't willing to expose Jack to any of those kinds of girls."

"And I wasn't willing to expose you, Amanda, to boys like the ones she mentioned," said Bob. "We had good reasons for not letting you date. And then there's the really big one. I want you to think back to the first conversation we had, after you asked me when you could start dating. Remember what I told you?"

"Yes," she said. "You went on and on about Mother Nature and procreation."

"And what did you tell me?"

"I don't remember," she groaned.

"You said you didn't want to procreate."

"I didn't!" she agreed.

"So what the hell were you doing last night when Karen found you two in bed?"

Finally, Amanda had nothing to say.

"So what changed?" asked Bob.

"I don't know," she moaned.

"Remember what else you said that night, when I suggested you should wait until you were twenty to date?"

"No," she said, darkly.

"You said all you wanted to do was go on a date and have fun with a boy you liked."

"That was true!" she yipped.

"Well, now you understand about Mother Nature and her drive to get you to procreate," he said, softly. "Karen and I knew that's what dating leads to. It's natural. It's normal. In fact, it's almost impossible to prevent."

"Then why did you let us go out?" whined Amanda.

"Because you knew it all. You were different. You knew what you wanted, and you were convinced that Mother Nature couldn't make you do anything. And you wouldn't leave it alone."

"You still could have put your foot down," she muttered.

"I'll be honest," he said. "Karen and I thought you'd go out on a couple of dates and that would be it. You'd go your separate ways because you found things out about each other you didn't like. We didn't think you two would be each other's type."

"We are," said Jack, speaking for the first time.

"Gee. We know that now," said his mother. "I look back on my life and know a lot of things now I'd give a heck of a lot of money to have known back then."

"You could have said we couldn't go out any more after a couple of dates," said Amanda, thinking literally.

"Karen and I also didn't expect that there would be any attraction between us," said Bob.

"But there is," said Jack.

"You're just a fountain of wisdom tonight, Honey," said his mom.

"So," said Bob. "What we want to hear now is how all this happened. You'd only been out on a couple of dates ... chaperoned dates, I might add ... before you conspired with each other and at least one girl who had nothing to do with you dating at all. And the next thing we know you're having sex? What happened?"

"We watched you," said Amanda.

"Don't try and blame this on us," said Bob, angrily.

"It's true!" said Mandy, not budging an inch. "From the very beginning, everything we ever did was after we saw you two doing it first."

"Let's start at the beginning," said Karen.

"The good night kiss," said Jack. "The first one. You showed us how to do it."

"That was an example of how to act, not a license to have sex," said Bob, still angry.

"Bob," said Karen, gently. "Let's hear them out and then we can discuss what they've said."

"Right," said Bob, trying to relax.

"Go on," she said to her son.

"The first one wasn't very interesting," he said. "So we talked about it and decided we were too nervous, and we remembered some stuff about how you two did it so we decided to try it again. That one was a lot better, and we decided we liked kissing."

"Mother Nature ... one," said Bob. "Kids ... zero."

Karen shot him a look and he subsided. She looked at Amanda, since Jack had been doing most of the talking.

"What happened next?" she asked.

"We went to Golf World," said Amanda, thinking literally.

"I meant what happened that advanced your intimate relationship," said Karen, patiently.

"That was at Golf World," said Amanda, being just as patient. "Dad put his arms around you and hugged you, and then later you held hands."

"He didn't hug me at Golf World," said Karen, frowning.

"I helped you learn how to putt," said Bob, who remembered it in detail. "To them that looked like a hug."

"Oh," she said. "But it was just a hug. And holding hands is not a really sexual thing to do. It's more about affection."

"Well, while we were golfing we decided that we liked each other," said Mandy.

"You just decided it?"

"Well, Jack said it looked like my dad liked you, and he asked if that was okay, and I said why not and told him I liked him, so I didn't think it was odd that my dad might like his mom. And then he said he liked me too and we kept playing golf. It was later we saw you holding hands. So we held hands too."

"Okay," said Karen. "What then?"

"We saw you kissing Bob in the car," said Jack. "That's when we decided to try it again and it was lots better."

"So up to then it was just some kissing and holding hands?"

"Well," said Jack. "When we kissed that time, I got a boner. I didn't tell Mandy about it. It was too embarrassing. But that's the first time I wanted to do more than kiss."

"What did you want to do?"

"I didn't know, exactly," he admitted. "I just liked it all and didn't want it to stop."

"Mother Nature ... two," said Bob. "Kids ... zero." He got another dark look from Karen.

"Wait!" said Karen. "I remember now. We talked about your erection that night!"

"Yeah," said Jack. "You told me that was why we had to be chaperoned on our dates."

"You got an erection that night too, Daddy," said Amanda to Bob.

"Mother Nature was working on us too," he admitted.

"I remember! I asked you if you thought Jack got that way that night."

"And I said I hoped not."

"But you were just as excited as Jack!" said Mandy, making it sound like an indictment.

"I just said that nature was working on us too," said Bob. "We knew what to expect. I believe Karen told you that a little while ago."

"Can I ask a question?" asked Jack.

"Go ahead," said his mother.

"It's for Bob," he said.