Chapter 134: Encores and Arrangements

Saturday, May 3, 1986

The morning — not at all surprisingly, in retrospect — wound up being an encore, both of me having my way with Darla and of Jas enjoying Darla’s mouth. Just the once, but all three of us enjoyed it very much.

That necessitated another shower before breakfast. As late as we’d gotten up, no one else seemed to be up, either. Maybe Candice and Sherry were, but they weren’t upstairs. It probably would have been awkward if they had been, but Jas had checked before Darla and I came out.

And ... well. For all I knew, they were completely in the loop on all of the girl talk and knew most of what went on with Darla and me. All? All wasn’t impossible, but I doubted they even wanted to know all of it. Who knows, though? It would certainly present a very different version of me than Candice had known. Wolf Steve would have been horribly wrong for Candice, back then, but he would never have appeared.

Or ... maybe he would have been right. Maybe a wolfish version of me would have pressed the right buttons to make Candice repudiate her abuser, albeit at the cost of making me a less abusive, dominating presence in her life. But that, too, could have gone very wrong, and very easily so. It might have just slapped a band-aid on something that had taken Candice months of therapy to begin recovering from. And she was still ‘recovering.’ She wouldn’t ever be fully free of it, as I understood things. It was just far in the past, and she had a number of techniques to keep it there.

We made enough breakfast and coffee for Angie, Paige, Cammie, and Mel. They joined us about half an hour later.

“How busy was it?” Jas said.

“Um...” Angie said.

“Busy!” Paige said. “You spotted me taking a break...”

“Us!” Mel said, grinning.

“But we headed right back down to the phones,” Paige finished.

“It was more than I expected,” Angie said.

“It was crazy at times,” Cammie added.

“We don’t have the overall numbers. Between the four of us, we talked to eight couples, four principals, two school board presidents, and nine reporters,” Mel said.

“That sounds crazy!” Jas said.

“Very!” I added.

“Five of the couples danced, I’m pretty sure,” Mel said. “Three said they weren’t going to. They weren’t really thinking about being ‘out’ for the rest of the semester. Once we mentioned that, it turned into a no-go.”

“You have to be ready for that,” Cammie said. “Mel and I couldn’t. Angie and Paige could. There’s nothing wrong with not dancing if it’ll make something suck.”

“Though we’re planning on going to Ring Dance,” Mel said, grinning.

Ring Dance was A&M’s equivalent of a prom. The name came from A&M’s class rings, which were unlike those at most universities and an Aggie tradition unto themselves. They were far less customizable — you could have a diamond, or not, pick from a light or dark finish, and had two choices for the carat weight of the gold, but that was it — and far more students bought them than bought class rings at most universities. Your class year went on the ring, and your name went on the inside. No colleges, majors, or anything like that.

There were all sorts of traditions connected to the rings as well. You could only buy one if you were a senior, and that meant a formal transcript check. Anyone finding an A&M class ring anywhere but with its owner (including at a pawn shop, for instance) was strongly encouraged to send it to the Association of Former Students. There were endless stories of rings being reunited with their proper owners that way.

It was at least possible that Angie, Paige, Cammie, and Mel would be the first gay couples to attend Ring Dance. As far as we knew, no one had done so this year or in previous years, not even Marco.

It was possible the university wouldn’t sell them tickets, but — if not — they had a tentative agreement with several gay guys in GSS to pair up, then switch dance partners. That could turn into a mess, but a mess might be interesting as well.

I took Darla home after breakfast, including walking her to her room. We sparred playfully over my carrying her bag, as we had months ago, and she again allowed me to do so.

Our parting kiss was very enthusiastic. She was already planning our next date, I thought. I was planning something, too, but it likely involved the library. Or ... maybe somewhere else. There were a number of options, and she’d hinted at other ones several times.

We would see.

Louise waved to me and grinned. I still knew her much less than I knew Kay, but more than I knew Meg. She undoubtedly knew more about me than I did about her. In any case, Louise was a good friend to Darla, and that was what mattered.

On the drive back, my thoughts wandered off to the relationship between Wolves and prey. Or, rather, the rewards girls get that guys don’t, whether or not Wolves are involved. It occurred to me that sometimes that’s not so. And, when it’s not, that means there’s almost certainly something wrong.

I had, perhaps, a unique perspective on that, one I couldn’t share with Darla but Jas knew. I’d been in the sort of relationship where there was no sex. If asked — if allowed! — I would have moved heaven and earth to give the woman I loved that sort of reward. Whatever worked for her, I would have done it. And ... perhaps I had. Perhaps the only thing that worked for her was no reward at all.

But it had harmed us. I was certain of that. The lack of so much intimacy, so much closeness, so much bonding had stolen much of our liking for each other. Not the love — at least, not on my side — but the liking.

It might have been worse if we had been having sex but only I had been enjoying myself. That’s wrong, too, and it’s almost certainly a bigger wrong. But not having it hurt us, and that had been, and always was, her choice. It was, I thought, a terribly foolish choice, but it was hers to make and hers alone. There is never a commitment to have sex, including in a marriage. And she had never promised to do so, either.

I might — would, honestly — say she broke many of the promises she did make, but I doubted she had ever truly been capable of honoring them. Asking someone who was probably incapable of real love to honor their promise to love someone else is a fool’s errand, and I hadn’t been a fool even then.

Well ... not most of the time, anyway.

As always, I wished her well. Both the version I’d known, decades in the future in a universe that was no longer my home, and the version here. Perhaps, in this world, she would meet someone who truly made her happy and assuaged the anger in her soul. I very much hoped she would. She — both of them, in their way, even though I didn’t even know if there was one in this universe — still had a place in my heart, and I was incapable of not loving her.

This universe seemed to be better for many people. Perhaps she would be included. It was, most likely, not better for everyone, but I had only occasionally crossed paths with such people.