Chapter 8

"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.

"While you guys were out to dinner and the movie, we kind of got together."

Bob looked at Karen. They had discussed this very possibility, but hadn't thought it would happen this quickly.

"We didn't intend to do anything. We just wanted to hang out," said Mandy.

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

"In the meantime, you're both grounded. You are to stay in your own home while we're at work. You are not to talk to each other about this. Is that clear?" He looked at Karen. "Is that okay with you?"

"I agree two hundred percent," she snapped.

Bob made a call the next afternoon, and told Amanda to get dressed to go out.

"Where are we going?" she asked. 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. The afternoon passed slowly for her, as she sat alone. Her father had gone out, reminding her she was grounded.

As soon as Bob got home he verified his daughter was still there, and then called Karen, to say they were ready.

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 wanting to regulate your dating. 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 thought you knew it all. You were different. You weren't going to take no for an answer. 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. 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."

"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."

"I remember that," said Karen. "We talked about it."

"You did?" asked Bob, his jaw sagging.

"I just told him it was a normal reaction and not to worry about it," she said. "And I told him that's why we wanted to chaperone his dates," she added.

"But that's the first time I wanted to more than kiss," said Jack.

"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.

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

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

"And 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.

"Go ahead," said Bob, rolling his eyes at Karen.

"So, I had a boner that night, and the only way I could calm down was by ... um..."

"Masturbating," said Mandy, saying what he was too embarrassed to say.

"Mandy!" snapped Bob.

"Well, it's true, isn't it?" she said. "And he's too embarrassed to say it, so I just helped him. What's the big deal?"

"Go on," said Bob, looking at Jack and ignoring his daughter.

"What she said," said Jack. "I had to do that. So my question is ... what did you do?"

"That's not an appropriate question," said Karen.