Chapter 7

"What should we do now?" asked Jack.

They were both sated, in the way young people can be satisfied with less than some adults require.

"I should probably go home," said Mandy. "But I don't want to. I like being with you, like we were tonight."

"Yeah," he said. "We won't get to do that again for a long time, I bet."

"You're right. Unless they go out on more dates. The problem is you never know how long they'll be gone."

"I'll walk you home," said Jack.

"I don't mind the dark," she said.

"That's not why I said I'd walk you home. I just want to be with you a little longer."

"Okay. I'd like that. I'll just walk my bike," she said.

They got dressed and went outside, where they found the night to be balmy and warm, with a little breeze.

She only needed one hand to steer the bike, so they walked down the street with an arm around each other's waist. Very few houses had lights on. It was surprisingly quiet. A dog barked in the distance.

They found themselves by the Elm Street Park, and went into it. They sat side by side on the swings, scraping the toes of their shoes in the gravel.

"Bet I can go higher than you," said Jack.

"You're on!"

Soon, they added to the noises of the night as the rusty bearings at the top of the chains squeaked in time with their swings.

Twenty minutes later they were front to front, kissing in the dark. Her hand went to the front of his pants.

"You've got another boner," she whispered.

"I get them because of you," he accused.

"I have an idea," she said.

A few minutes later she was on her knees, her hand in the same orientation as that his mother used, as she moved the loose skin on his penis back and forth.

"Yeah!" he groaned. "Just a little faster and I'll shoot!"

She leaned back when it went off, amazed as his silvery semen shot three feet out onto the grass.

She had no idea that, at that very second, Jack's mother was lying on her back, one knee bent.

In the moonlight that illuminated her, what looked like the same silvery liquid lay filling the opening of her vagina.

"This seems so unreal," murmured Karen, as the lay in each other's arms, recuperating.

"Like a really nice dream," he agreed.

"I never expected this to happen."

"With me?"

"With anybody!"

"I snuck in under your radar," he said.

"You sure did."

"We have our children to thank for this," he said.

"I know. And all because we were nervous about them starting to date."

"I really didn't intend for Mandy to ask Jack out on a date," he said. "I just told her I'd think about it to put her off for a while."

"You want to know what I think is the strangest part of all?"

"Sure."

"I watched them when we went bowling. They reacted to each other like you and I did. There was an instant attraction. Isn't it weird that they got interested in each other just as fast as we did?"

"It's genetic," he said. "Our genes are attracted to your genes."

She laughed. Then she frowned.

"That could be a problem, though."

"You mean because if they're attracted like we're attracted, they're going to want to do what we just did?"

"Of course they will," she said. "What are we going to do?"

"About all we can do is keep an eye on them," he said. "Keep chaperoning them like we have been."

"Yes, but where does that put us?"

"When we tell them we're engaged, that's going to change the whole dynamic of things," said Bob. "Engaged people want to spend time together alone. Everybody knows that. They'll understand that too."

"How do you think they'll react to us getting married?" he asked.

"I hope they'll be happy for us."

"Yeah. Me, too."

"That still doesn't answer the question about what to do with them while we're being alone together," she said.

"When you were their age, didn't your parents go off to the bedroom sometimes to 'talk' about something?"

"Yes."

"And didn't you know what they were really doing?"

"Yes, but I couldn't imagine it."

And what did you do while they were having private time in their bedroom?"

"I tried to find something to do that would distract me from thinking about what they were doing."

"I think they'll react the same way. So we have some alone time at either your house or mine, and give them something to do while we're in the bedroom."

"What if they get frisky?"

"With us right there in the house? I don't think so. They'd be too afraid of getting caught."

They waited until they could all be together at Bob's house to break the big news.

The children were not elated when Bob and Karen announced their engagement.

"You can't get married!" squeaked Amanda.

"Why not?" asked Bob.

"Because if you get married, Jack will be my brother. I can't have my brother as my boyfriend!"

"He'll only be your step-brother," said Bob.

"Yeah, like that's going to make all the difference to the whole wide world," she said, angrily. "No! We forbid it!" she shouted.

"Mandy!" said Bob, sharply. "That's not the way things work."

"Well if you have your way, things won't work at all!" she screamed. "Jack and I were going to get married some day!""

Both adults were speechless. So was Jack, who had that deer in the headlights look on his face.

"Jack?" said his mother. "A moment in private?"

"Sure," he said. "Okay."

"You're ruining everything!" stormed Amanda to her father.

Bob waited until Karen had taken her son into the hallway. He wondered if she was going to take him to Amanda's bedroom ... or his. He dismissed that from his mind and concentrated on his rebellious daughter.

"Calm down," he said.

"I will not calm down!" she raged. "You can't do this to us."

"Do I need to spank you?" he warned.

"You wouldn't dare!" she gasped.

"Try me," he said. "Calm down so we can discuss this like the adult you want so desperately to be."

Her mood changed mercurially.

"Daddy, pleeease," she begged. "Jack and I love each other. But nobody will let us if you get married. We'll have to act like brother and sister. We'll both be miserable."

"How did the two of you fall in love so quickly?" her asked.

"The same way you and Karen did," she said.

"I'm not sure you really understand what love is yet, Baby," he said, softly. "This is your first boyfriend ever. How do you know you're in love?"

"I don't know," she moaned. "I just feel it."

"I have no doubt your feelings are genuine," he said. " Regardless of that, if you fall in love now, you're going to be miserable anyway, because it's still at least two years before you can marry anybody. And two years is a long time to wait to do the things people in love want to do."

"This isn't fair," she groaned.

"Sweetheart, that's the first lesson an adult learns. Life isn't fair."

Karen chose Amanda's bedroom to take Jack to. Perhaps that was because she already viewed Bob's bedroom as one of her own private spaces, someplace she didn't want a competing male to enter.

"You want to tell me anything?" she asked, her arms folded under her breasts.

"Honest, Mom. I didn't know anything about getting married."

"So you didn't ask her to marry you?"

"No!"

Where do you think she got this idea, then?"

"I don't know. We like each other a lot. We always have a good time when we're together and we can talk about anything. I've never met a girl like her. But getting married? That's crazy. I can't get married. I'm only sixteen."

"Well, at least one of you is thinking clearly," said Karen. "What do you want to do?"

"Do? What do you mean?"

"Well, Amanda has announced that you two are going to get married."

"She said someday, Mom," he interjected, quickly.

"Someday," said his mother. "If that makes you uncomfortable, then she needs to know that. Your relationship has barely begun, and if you don't get this straightened out it will probably kill the relationship altogether. That's too big a difference of philosophy for two people to just ignore and hope things will somehow work out."

"I don't want to break up," said Jack. "I like her too much for that."

"Well, then, maybe you need to set some boundaries."

"What do you mean?"

"Like telling her you don't think marriage should really be on the table at least until you graduate. After college would be even better."

"After college is a long time from now," he said, softly.

"So you are thinking about marriage," said his mother.

"Everybody thinks about marriage sooner or later," he said. "I never thought about it at all until I got to know Mandy. And it's not like I want to get married. It's more like the idea of marriage is not so scary to think about if it was Mandy I got married to."

"Just because the woman you like isn't scary isn't a very good reason to get married, Honey," she said.

"I know that," he said, with a hint of scorn in his voice. "What I mean is that I've never been able to talk to a girl like I can talk to her. I don't feel awkward around her. I don't feel stupid. She makes me feel good, like there's nothing wrong with me."

"There isn't anything wrong with you, Darling," said Karen.

"Mom," he said, softly. "I know a boy isn't supposed to think his mom looks sexy, and get jealous when another man pays attention to her."

She blinked, slightly stunned at his confession. Then she calmed. Literature is full of stories about boys being attracted to their mothers.

"That's not as uncommon as you might think, Honey. It's been you and me for a long time, and you've been the man of the house for all of it you can remember. Don't beat yourself up about that."

"I just feel weird when I think about that," he said.

"And that proves you're normal," she said. "And you are interested in Mandy, which also proves you're normal."

"She's right, you know. If you marry Bob, everybody will expect us to act like brother and sister."

"We didn't think of that," she admitted.

"Well think about it, because it means a lot to her. And just because I don't want to get married right away doesn't mean I don't care about that either."

"I'll talk to him about it," she said. "Maybe we can think of some way to make everybody happy."

When they all came back together again, the discussion was much calmer.

In the end, Bob and Karen decided that, if they could be together frequently, the actual fact of marriage wasn't as important as the happiness of all of them. To be honest, both Bob and Karen assumed that their children would grow tired of each other and break up, like teenagers so frequently do. And when that happened, their objection to the marriage would vanish. If the teens weren't romantically involved, it would be relatively easy to live under the same roof, assuming it wasn't a bad breakup.

It helped that Bob said when they turned 18 that might change things legally, because then the marriage might not make them step siblings under the law. He said he'd look into that.

Their parents' willingness to delay the marriage meant more to the kids than the adults could have known. Of course part of that was because the parents were in the dark about just how much their children had experienced, in terms of romantic intimacy. But even if they had known that, they still would have assumed there would be a breakup within the next year or so. A significant percentage of young people who have sex while they are boyfriend and girlfriend still break up later. There are those who hypothesize this is one reason divorce is so prevalent. Philosophically, there is very little difference between casual sexual relationships as a teen and casual sexual relationships as an adult.

As the discussion matured, other issues came up. Bob and Karen were unrepentant about wanting to be able to share sexual intimacy as an engaged couple. And that meant the children were going to have to be left unsupervised. Had they been even a year older, that wouldn't have been an issue, though that doesn't make a lot of sense on a "values" level. In a culture that has arbitrarily assigned eighteen as the age one becomes an adult, if it is inappropriate for two sixteen-year-olds to be allowed to explore intimacy unsupervised, it is also inappropriate for two seventeen-year-olds to be allowed to do that, as well. Typically, the values of the parents don't change until the child is of legal age. And in conservative families, the parents' values are expected to be held to until the child actually marries, regardless of age.