Chapter 173

“Man may have discovered fire, but women discovered how to play with it.”
—Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City

20 OCTOBER 2021

I’m ready to volunteer and go into service right now. Not because I’m looking forward to service, but because I’m so frustrated with all the crap I have to deal with. Christ, I sound like a teenager.

It’s school, mostly. I have Livy home for one week before she heads to Virginia and I’m in school all day. Then running after school. Thank God, my viol and mandolin lessons are during first period. I need more rehearsal time with Cindy and Desi if we’re going to get this program ready to perform by Christmas. And that means I need more time with Remas who is alone with Livy in the house all day while I’m at school.

Edepol nunc nos tempus est malas peioris fieri.

You see I am learning something in Latin. ‘When a woman is openly bad, she at last is good.’

I wonder what Livy and Remas get up to during the day. They are certainly up to mischief at night. Em crawled into bed last night, bit both girls and settled on top of me. Establishing her territory, I suspect.

We’ve begun an interesting unit in English. ‘What are the monsters we create?’ Featured readings are Beowulf and Frankenstein. It’s going to be slow going getting through this old English but the story is interesting.

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

That should be evidence enough that English did not originate with Latin. Fortunately, we are reading a more modern translation.

LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!

And then there’s orchestra.

“Hopkins!” My head jerked up from my music to look at LeBlanc. It was the first time he’d spoken directly to me since I fainted before the fall concert. I was beginning to think he’d really gotten in trouble.

“Yes, sir.”

“Please bring your mandolin and come to the hot seat.” Oh, shit. The hot seat was where soloists perform up next to the podium. I’d only been working on playing the mandolin for a few months and hadn’t used it in orchestra at all. “Carol, please take the second seat and David, the third. I believe you’ll recognize this piece from your lessons,” he continued. “I’ve been promising something Italian for a while. You’ll all find an arrangement of Vivaldi on your stands: Concerto in A Minor, L’Estro armónico. We will do a moderate pace run-through of this piece. Carol, you will take the lead solo part in the first movement, Allegro. Hopkins, the lead in the second movement, Largo. David, buckle up for the third movement, Presto.” He tapped his baton a couple times to make sure he had everyone’s attention, gave us the tempo, and Carol was off with the orchestra valiantly keeping up with her.

The second movement, Largo, is slow. That’s what it means. Thank God! I could never have played this instrument at the speed Carol had managed in the first movement and I knew LeBlanc was intentionally taking us through the whole piece at a slower tempo than called for. The second movement is only a minute and a half long and I didn’t hit many entirely wrong notes. Then David took off on the last movement, Presto, and even off tempo it was faster than I could imagine ever playing the mandolin. LeBlanc finally cut us off and I breathed again.

“December 7, our winter concert. Practice, people. Practice. Hopkins, I’ve given you the slow movement so you can get used to the fingering of the mandolin. I expect you to be able to do all three movements by the end of the year. People, after the winter concert, I will select viola, cello, and double bass to join these three in a chamber concert. Rose, you will accompany on piano.”

“Hey. I just wanted to wish you good luck tomorrow,” I said when Lacie answered her phone.

“You won’t be coming to the meet?”

“No. There’s no way they’ll give me the afternoon off to go with the team when I’m not running. But say, Em is driving the team bus. You know she’ll cheer you on,” I said. The semi-state 10k would be run at Purdue University. It was two and a half hours from here. The race wouldn’t start until four, but the team would leave at noon.

“Mmm. I like her, you know. I wonder if she’d join Lisa, Danielle, and me in quadruple teaming Dave. He’s been saying we need more girls in the pod. I’d love to see if he could handle more.” I cringed a little. Em with another guy? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. And we’d both been with Lacie. I put away my inner monster and told Lacie to ask her. I hung up and headed for the track to do a hard five miles while our 10k team focused on staying loose and pacing for the semi-state tomorrow.

When I got to the farm, I needed to take another shower. Donna wasn’t home from North Huntington yet, Emily was driving a school bus, and Nanette often worked late on Thursday night. I found Remas alone with a pile of music in front of her, making notes on one of the pieces we selected.

“Hey. How’s it going?” I asked as I poured a large glass of tea and took a swallow.

“Good. Good. I think I can do a transition and combine the themes of these two pieces for the love song. I like both of them and we need a longer piece for this section. Sophie has a dance concept for the young lovers about to be torn apart. It will be good.” Remas never looked up from the chart she was writing.

“Where’s Livy?”

“Said she was picking up her brother and sister from school and taking them out for a sibling date.”

“Well, I need another shower. I’ll look over what you’ve got as soon as I’m out.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

It might seem strange, but that exchange was one of the reasons I liked Remas so much. I often saw it in Cindy. When the music grabbed her, whether she was playing it or studying it, the rest of the world went away and the music was all that existed. She was focused ... intense. I got that way, too. I understood what it was like to let the music take control of your mind and become lost in it.

I stripped and stepped into Donna’s shower for no reason other than it was closest and I was still drinking my tea. I let the hot water wash the stress out of my body.

Soft hands began to wash my shoulders. I turned and took Remas in my arms as her skin slid across mine.

“Are you okay to take a break?” I asked.

“Yeah. I need to let my eyes rest. I’ve been at it since nine this morning. I feel about like you look,” she giggled.

“That bad, huh?” I kissed her and filled my hands with her breasts and then her butt as I pulled her close to me and felt my cock start to rise against her tummy.

“It would be a shame to waste the only opportunity we’ve had all week to be alone together,” she whispered. “Do you like me enough to be alone with me sometimes?”

“Yes, I do. Right now, you are one of the chief motivating factors for me to move to DC,” I said.

“Let’s not tell Dr. D that. She’d figure out a way to use it as an incentive. Let’s just enjoy each other and let the fucking service handle itself.” I’d never heard Remas utter a word of negativity against the service. I kissed her again and she turned in my arms to rub her butt against my hard cock. I hugged her to me as she reached out for the grip bar in the shower, thrusting her butt back as she bent over. “Can you do it here?”

“I think so. Is this how you want me?” I asked as I found her opening.

“Leverage, lubrication, lather, and love. It’s all you need for sex in the shower. Yes. Fill me, lover.” I sank fully into her and we pushed at each other.

“You are slick down there. Have a fresh shave?”

“Your girl Cindy had to make sure I was clean and smooth last night. Didn’t you hear her?”

“I was kind of busy.”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah. I really miss this when I’m in DC now. How long before we’ll get together again?”

“Desi and I are coming out to take our NSAT in three weeks.”

“Leave things till the last minute much?”

“Desi’s birthday is Tuesday. The school play is the fourth. She can’t get away with missing rehearsals at that stage. The twelfth is the soonest we could get there.”

“I’ll be waiting for you. I hope you’ll let me celebrate with you.”

“Like this?”

“Yes. This is nice, but I’m losing lube to the running water. Let’s move to bed.” I withdrew from her, feeling the tug on her outer lips where the shower had washed away our fluids. I did a lot of kissing as I dried her with one of the dozens of fluffy towels we had invested in. We threw the covers back on the big bed and I fell between her legs. Knowing she needed to replenish her inner lubrication, I started at her feet and kissed my way up the inside of her legs until I could kiss around the damp tuft of hair Cindy had left her. Then I started licking between the open lips of her labia, swirling my tongue in her opening, tickling her asshole, and eventually finding my way to her clit to tease it from beneath its cover.

Remas was ready for my attention and I slipped a finger into her to probe for her G-spot as I brought her closer.

“Please, Jacob. We might not have this opportunity again soon. Please make love to me and let me come on your cock instead of your finger. Come to me, lover.”

We repositioned ourselves slightly and my cock slid easily into her depths. And then I saw it like I’d seen the first time we made love. The physical high and emotional rapture. A sense of bliss. A smile that completely relaxed her body. We kissed and began moving together. Her bliss seemed contagious as I felt myself smiling at her. Her eyes drifted closed and her breathing accelerated. Her vagina walls began fluttering around my cock as she sighed out a gentle but complete orgasm.

I wasn’t there yet and kept up the pace of our coupling as she dipped and rose again. This time her eyes fluttered open to look at me. I saw a slightly startled look as if she only now recognized to whom she was making love. But then the smile overwhelmed her face and she became more active in her gyrations, pulling me down against her body and wrapping her legs around my buttocks, setting the tempo for our next explosion.

And when this explosion occurred, I was with her, pumping my semen deep inside as we both moaned out our pleasure.

Friday morning, when I left for school, Livy drove Remas to the airport. Having much of their days together without the rest of the pod had cemented a bond between the two. Even more than sharing me in bed had done.