Chapter 43: Jackie, Elyse, Pam, and a Surprise Phone Call

February/March, 1982, Chicago, Illinois

I made good time on the drive back to Chicago despite the light drizzle that I ran into just south of Gary. I walked into the apartment to find Stephie and Elyse stretched out on the couch, each one leaning on an arm and their legs alternating so they could put them out straight.

“You two look comfortable,” I said, taking off my shoes and coat and dropping my bag.

“Hi, Steve,” Elyse said.

“Hi, Steve,” Stephie echoed.

Neither of them moved to get up. I picked up my bag, put it in my room and came back to the living room. Neither girl had moved.

“That’s the greeting I get? ‘Hi, Steve’?” I grinned.

“What did you want? Both of us naked, waiting for you to come in and service us?” Elyse teased.

“Now there’s an idea!” I declared. “Either that or maybe in little French maid outfits, without panties.”

“You got some imagination there, Yankee, and a hell of a fantasy. But that ain’t happen’ here!”

“Bummer!” I smirked. “Did you girls have a good weekend?”

“Yep, though it was a bit lonely last night because Elyse was out with Warren. But then it was a bit noisy when they came back here!” Stephie giggled. “I just turned up the radio in your room!”

I chuckled, “Sounds like a good Valentine’s Day, Elyse!”

“It was. Warren gave me a massage,” she said, winking.

That meant that she’d felt comfortable enough to introduce the first toy, and that Warren hadn’t run away screaming.

“And did you give him one?” I asked with an evil leer that Stephie couldn’t see because of where I was standing.

“No. Maybe some other time!” she said with another wink.

“I’m still waiting to be greeted properly!” I said, tapping my foot.

“Don’t hold your breath, Yankee. We’re both really comfortable here!” Stephie teased.

“Fine!” I said, sighing theatrically. “Shall I make some dinner?”

“Yeah, you’re useful that way. Let us know when it’s ready!” Elyse said with a silly smile.

I smiled and went to the kitchen to prepare dinner. I was a bit tired, so I grilled some chicken and made chicken Caesar salads for the three of us, poured glasses of white wine, and set everything on the table.

I draped a towel over my arm and walked very stiffly to where they were sitting and, with my best haughty English accent, called to them, “Your Majesties, dinner is served!”

“Oooh, royalty! Does that make you Prince Charming?”

“Yes, especially if I get to check you both for a good fit. And I’m not talking about a glass slipper!” I said, grinning widely.

“In your dreams, Steve!” Elyse replied, winking at me.

We had a good meal, and the girls continued to tease me. I still hadn’t gotten a kiss from Stephie, and when dinner finished, both girls got up and went back to the couch to lounge.

“Be a good boy and clean up the kitchen!” Elyse said primly.

“You both are going to get it, you know that, right?” I asked with faux annoyance combined with a faux threat.

“Oh? And what exactly are we going to get?” Elyse said saucily.

“More than you can handle, I guarantee it! And yes, I can handle the two of you at the same time easily!” I teased.

“There’s that active imagination again!” Stephie said.

“Careful Stephie, he’s not exaggerating,” Elyse said.

Stephie’s eyes went wide, “Wait, you’re serious, Elyse?”

“As a heart attack! Let me ask you this — have you ever managed to wear him out?”

“Come to think of it, no. Oh my God, he’s NOT exaggerating?”

“Well,” Elyse said, catching herself in time. “What I hear from Kathy is that if you want him to fuck you unconscious, all you have to do is ask him. Just plan to do nothing for the next day after that. All you’ll want to do is sleep,” Elyse said.

“I just might have to do that, but we got class tomorrow,” Stephie said.

“Not to mention the fact that even though I’ve been gone for three days, I fixed dinner, and then washed and put away the dishes, I have yet to even get a kiss!”

“What do you think, Elyse? Does he deserve a kiss?” Stephie asked playfully.

“Oh, I think he deserves more than a kiss. But if you’re too comfortable, I guess I can give him one!” Elyse smirked.

“No way, you hussy! You keep your grubby little mitts of my guy!” Stephie said with a little laugh, jumping up off the couch.

Elyse laughed as well, and Stephie hugged me and gave me a very nice, soft French kiss.

“Did you two spend all weekend working on this routine?” I smirked.

“Not all weekend! We studied, did homework, and I told you that Elyse entertained Warren!” Stephie teased, making air quotes.

“Well, I have about an hour and a half of homework to do as well,” I said, sitting down at my desk.

“Want me to start your laundry for you?” Stephie asked.

“You don’t have to, but sure, that would be nice, thanks.”

She got up and went to my room to get my bag and the rest of my dirty clothes and headed for the laundry room while I pulled out my calculus book and went to work on the problems that were due on Wednesday. When I finished those, I wrote my two page paper on the problems with feudalism and then decided that given it was before 10:00pm to read a chapter in my English book on the ‘Great Vowel Shift’.

About 10:30am I finished and put everything away. Stephie had finished my laundry, including folding everything and putting it all away. We said goodnight to Elyse and headed to bed. We made love and, as usual, fell asleep spooned together. As I was in that zone between sleep and being awake, I realized that as much as I liked cuddling Stephie, it just wasn’t the same as cuddling Kara. And that was a good thing.

It made me think about what cuddling and sleeping with Birgit would have been like. I could finally think of that kind of thing without becoming teary-eyed or getting depressed. It would have been nothing short of glorious to sleep in the same bed with her for a year in Stockholm, but the parting to come home would have been heartbreaking. At that point, I probably would have tried to go to college in Sweden just to have been with her. But none of that happened. Perhaps if time travel ever was invented, I could go back and prevent the tragedy that had overtaken her. But that was a pipe dream.

Tuesday began a new school week. Stephie didn’t bother taking her bag with her because she’d be coming back home with me due to our karate class. I realized that as things looked now, Stephie would be staying with me every night except Monday and Wednesday. It was almost like she was moving in.

“Stephie, do you just want to bring stuff to my place? There’s plenty of room because I have the dresser, wardrobe, and closet.”

I had bought the furniture with Kara in mind because we’d be sharing a room, so there really was plenty of space.

“You mean like move in? Well, kind of, I guess.”

“It’ll just be easier. I’m not expecting you to stay every night, but you are pretty much staying every night except Mondays and Wednesdays.”

“You’re asking me to move in with you! Cool!” she gushed.

“I’m just acknowledging reality. We really only have three more months together like this.”

She sighed, “I know.” Then she smiled, “I’ll just have to get as much lovin’ in as possible in those three months!”

When we got to school, Stephie headed for her room to pack some things and I went to have coffee with Jackie as I usually did on Tuesday mornings. We never had gotten together to do anything outside of school because of our schedules and the amount of time I was spending with Stephie. She reminded me of that this morning.

“When can we get together? You seem busy all the time,” Jackie lamented.

“I guess it depends what you want to do, but Monday or Wednesday evenings are the best for me. I’m usually busy on weekends, and on Tuesday and Thursday, I have karate classes.”

“You won’t do what I want to do!” she declared with a soft smile. “But how about we get a bite to eat in Bridgeport? As friends,” she quickly added.

I chuckled, “You’re still riding that little hobby horse of yours. Sure. Let’s go to David’s in Bridgeport.”

“I’d ride you if you let me!” she teased. “Sorry, I had to make the joke.”

“It’s OK. A bit of teasing here and there is fine.”

I headed off to my English class, handing in the paper that I’d written the night before. I had found that I was able to simply sit down and write papers quite easily, so long as I had thought about them in advance. The text editor on the computer made it easy to write things, even out of order, and then edit or move text around. It beat the heck out of writing things out longhand and then typing them on a typewriter. The only problem was that Elyse and Stephie were competing for time on the computer because they had discovered the same thing!

Earlier in the semester, my professor had commented about my paper looking strange and I explained it had been printed on a dot-matrix printer using a text editor, rather than a typewriter. She found that interesting, though she did point out that the type was harder to read than if it had been done on a standard typewriter. Fortunately, she didn’t object to me continuing to use the printer.

At the end of the day Tuesday, after spending four hours in the computer lab basically banging my head into the table trying to solve a problem with my assembly language program, I walked over to meet Stephie at her dorm.

“What’s wrong, Yankee. You don’t look happy,” she said.

“I just spent four hours looking for a bug in my program. I finally found it about five minutes before I had to come get you. I didn’t have time to run it again to test the fix. And you know what sucks? It was that I used a ‘BGT’ instruction instead of ‘BGE’ instruction in one part of the code. The first one does a jump if the value is greater than, the other if the value is greater than or equal. I looked at it at least a dozen times before I noticed it.”

“Do you need to run the program again?”

“No, I can do it on Thursday morning. It’s not due until Friday and I’m sure this is the problem. Even if it’s not, I have all day Thursday to torture myself again.”

“Wow. I’ve never seen you this frustrated before,” Stephie said.

“Only with myself. I looked at that code until I was cross-eyed and couldn’t see my own dumb mistake. Let’s go have dinner and then I can take my frustration out on the bag at karate class.”

“Hmm. If you got that pent-up energy, I know how you can use it!” she declared invitingly. “My roommate is on a date. Let’s go work off that frustration!”

She led me back to her dorm and had me fuck her as hard and fast as I could. She threw her body at me with wild abandon, her hips slamming hard into me with her arms and legs locked tight around me. I grabbed hold of the end of the bed for leverage and really pounded in and out of her. When I came, it felt like my head was going to explode from the pleasure and I collapsed, gasping for breath on top of Stephie, our sweaty bodies sticking tightly together.

“Holy shit, Yankee. I have to get you frustrated more often,” she gasped. “I feel like somebody put a jackhammer between my legs for twenty minutes! And I had five orgasms! God damn!”

We lay there, recuperating, for about fifteen minutes, then dressed and headed to my place. We showered, changed, and I fixed dinner for Elyse, Stephie and me and we ate.

“Have a good fuck before you came home today, kids?” Elyse teased.

“The Damnyankee here was frustrated with his computer program so I helped him work it out!” Stephie declared.

“I bet!” Ellyse smirked. “You both looked worse for wear when you came in, and you went straight to the shower, so it was pretty obvious!”

We finished dinner and after doing the dishes, Stephie and I went to karate class. We showered when we arrived home, did some homework, then collapsed into bed and fell asleep. The earlier exertion, combined with karate class, had pretty much worn us both out!

Wednesday evening, after a normal day in class, Jackie and I headed to David’s Restaurant in Bridgeport and had dinner together. We had a nice meal, and it was fun hanging out with her. She asked if we could make this a regular Wednesday thing and I told her I’d think about it. I needed more time to study and do homework than I currently had because of everything else going on. Fortunately, I hadn’t needed to do anything for Frank or Theo, but I knew that wouldn’t last.

As we walked back to campus, Jackie slipped her arm around mine. I thought about gently pushing her away or saying something, but I didn’t want to be mean. I’d walked like this, or held hands, with friends before.

“Can I ask you something?” Jackie inquired.

“What is it with people asking if they can ask?” I chuckled. “I’m going to start wearing a button that says ‘Just ask!’ so they stop doing that!”

“Sorry!” she giggled, but then became serious. “What I wanted to know is what it would take to get you to take me to bed just once,” she said softly, laying her head on my shoulder.

“We’re friends, Jackie. I don’t want to mess that up. Plus, I’m dating someone.”

“I know, but you’re not steady. You told me that. Please? I promise I won’t say anything to anyone, especially not to Papiya. Will you just think about it?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I know you think I’m nice, I believe I have a great body, most guys think I’m cute, and I like doing it. I want to do it with you. And,” she paused, then dropped her voice to a whisper, “I’m horny.”

“And there are no other guys you know that can help with that?” I asked gently.

“Nobody at the moment. My High School boyfriend and I broke up last Fall. The only guy at IIT I want to date won’t date me because I messed up last Fall and because my friend was stupid. It sucks,” she sighed.

I had a couple of concerns, and what she’d just said made the concern bigger.

“Jackie, if I went to bed with you, it would just be sex. And most likely it would just be one time. Is that really what you want? I can’t make any kind of commitment to you at all. I can be your friend, but I can’t be your lover or your boyfriend. It’s not because of the stuff that happened last Fall; it’s because of Stephie and a girl back home.”

“I know,” she said wistfully, “but you could take me to bed just once and make me feel really good.”

“I could, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

“Just don’t say ‘no’ tonight. Think about it. Let’s have dinner next Wednesday and then you can answer.”

I knew what the answer was going to be, and there was no point in delaying it.

“Jackie, a week won’t change anything. I agree with you that you’re cute, you do have a nice body, and I like being with you. But let’s just stay friends.”

A tear ran down her cheek, and that told me everything I needed to know. I’d made the right decision for sure. Taking her to bed would only make the situation worse. She had a thing for me, and I couldn’t reciprocate. Even if she didn’t, I wasn’t really interesting in sex just to have sex. In fact, I was rapidly coming to a point where I’d be limited to one girl — Kara — for the rest of my life. Getting involved with anyone new didn’t make any sense.

In fact, I wondered about my trip to Sweden. I wasn’t sure what Pia’s situation would be, but if she was available, I’d probably be with her, and then with Karin. I knew that some other girls might be interested, but by that point I’d be less than a month away from Kara moving in and having sex with someone like Tina Hoff, who had hinted at being interested in that in her most recent letters, or even Sofia, with whom I had a prior relationship, just didn’t have the same appeal that it had once had.