Chapter 16

At 9:30, Mandy was sent to Karen's house, but reminded to be ready to leave and come back home with Jack when Karen called to alert them that the realtor was coming to Karen's. Karen arrived at Bob's at 9:45. The realtor showed up at 10:30.

Tiffany Gaulson was a perky woman in her forties, wearing a gold jacket and a conservative skirt and blouse. A string of pearls adorned her neck.

She toured Bob's house with a practiced eye as she listened to their plans. She opined that Bob's house was the perfect property to list in the current economy because it was the right size and would be within the means of a large swath of potential buyers. When they got to Karen's, she rendered the same opinion.

Once that was done, she said she had a couple of houses she wanted to show them. She said she was being frank when she admitted that these houses had been on the market for a while, primarily because the owners were sticking to their asking price.

The first one Karen turned thumbs down on almost immediately. She listed the things she didn't like about it. She said, "If I'm going to spend that much on a house, then I expect that house to be one I like a lot."

The second was an older two story house in the older part of town. Gentrification of a sort had been happening in the neighborhood and most of the houses in the area were in good shape. Some were landscaped and only a few were in need of paint.

This house had lots of wood inside. There were beautiful hard wood floors throughout, though thick, oriental carpets were scattered about in the high traffic areas. The kitchen had been updated several years ago and the central heating and cooling equipment was only three years old. A bay window in the front was full of plants. It was easy to imagine living comfortably here.

Tiffany confided that the asking price was high, for the neighborhood. But it seemed well within Bob and Karen's combined income, especially if they got some equity out of the sale of their own homes.

The meeting ended with Tiffany saying she'd get their houses listed that day. She also intended to tell the owners of the two story older home that there was an interested party, concerning their home. She tried to get them to make an actual offer, but neither was willing to do that until they had offers of their own.

Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, depending on how you look at it, once everybody was getting all the sex they could possibly want, emotions cooled a bit and life got back to being at least closer to normal. "Normal", in this sense, means what day to day life was like before the double dating began.

In the evenings they all gathered at either Bob's or Karen's house. Each couple spent time together, doing whatever they were drawn to do. There were some exceptions. The kids had to finish homework before they could do anything else, for example. Chores still had to be done. But if Jack helped Mandy clean up her room and, in the process ended up in bed with her, as long as the room actually got cleaned up, Bob didn't complain.

Most people don't live in a world where two members of the opposite sex sleep with them on a regular basis and coexist at the same time. Especially when those two lovers like each other and don't get jealous. So it may be difficult to wrap your own emotions around what this was like.

Bob's preferred sexual partner was Karen. She wasn't showing yet, but he still knew that new life resided in her womb and that the smallest cell from his body had mated with the largest cell in hers. And he loved being able to take her to the bedroom on this or that evening, and make love with her without having to worry about what his daughter and Karen's son were doing.

Of course what they were often doing was exactly the same thing their parents were doing.

And, in truth, Mandy and Jack preferred making love to each other. That might have been the same reason Bob and Karen wanted each other first, and their other lovers second. When you live with someone constantly, you're aware of little personality traits that can be off-putting. The parents knew their children intimately, no pun intended, and it was just more interesting to be in the presence of someone your own age, who you didn't know all those little off-putting details about.

On the other hand, the sex they had with their offspring was wild, and crazy, and taboo, which can make something really fun. It was a rush of a different kind for Bob to flush his daughter full of his potent sperm, understanding that, if her chemical barrier to impregnation failed, then her belly would swell up just like Karen's was going to very soon. And, for Karen, it was an incredible experience to feel the weight of her handsome, virile son pinning her to the bed as his penis bucked and spat what, had she not already been pregnant, could have caused life to quicken in her womb.

Neither parent wanted to make a baby with their child. But, at present, that wasn't likely, and that gave them a freedom most people simply never contemplate having.

It was the best of both worlds for this odd little family.

One unintended side effect of all this was that Amanda and Jack began to view the world through much older eyes than their peers did. It wasn't that they missed out on any childhood. Rather it was that all the things they experienced began to mean more to them, and was evaluated in terms of their future, rather than just being something to experience, come what may.

One example of this was a conversation that happened at dinner one night. While they were eating, Jack said he had a question. He was urged to ask it.

"Okay, so we're going to start dating other people. I get that. It will make us look normal. But if I start taking other girls out, they're going to expect me to try to kiss them, and if I don't, they're going to think I'm gay or something," he said. "So what do I do when I get to the part where I'm supposed to make out with one of these other girls?"

"Where did that come from?" asked Mandy.

"I'm seeing things a little differently from when we went on our first date," he said.

Karen spoke.

"Mandy? How would you feel if you found out Jack kissed a girl good night after a date?"

"If that's all he did, and he didn't kiss her like he kisses me, then I wouldn't care," she said, shrugging. "Not if I know he's coming home to sleep with me."

"Wow," mouthed Bob to Karen. He looked at Jack.

"And how would you feel if Mandy let a boy kiss her good night?"

"I'd want to rip his head off," said Jack. "But I get it. I understand it has to happen because it means you and Mom can get married and be happy too."

"This is going to take a lot of trust," said Karen. "It might be hard on you sometimes."

"What we were going to have to do before this would have been even harder," said Mandy. "At least in my opinion."

"Mine too," said Jack.

"I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Once we're married, you'll be stuck with this plan," warned Bob.

"It's only three years," said Mandy. "And we'll get to sleep together every night."

"Every night you're still speaking to each other," said Karen.

"What's that mean?"

"I'm just saying that every relationship has bumps in the road. You two are all lovey dovey right now, but sooner or later you're going to have a disagreement, or even a fight, and when that happens you might feel like sleeping apart for a while."

"Well, that could have happened anyway," said Mandy.

"I guess that's true," said Karen. "But that doesn't take into account how each of you may have to act to be 'believable' on these dates with other people."

"I can't believe my mom is telling me to make out with girls on dates so I'm acting believable," said Jack.

"I bet this conversation isn't happening anywhere else in the world right now," said Mandy.

"And I never thought I'd be thinking of going out with girls and just pretending to try to get away with things," said Jack.

"I hadn't thought about having to do that," said Amanda. "But how hard could it be? I mean movie actors do it all the time. And they look like they're really into it. But all they're doing is acting."

"Are you forgetting all the musical chair marriages some of those actors get involved with?" asked Karen. "I bet the really believable love scenes almost always involve true emotions. And I bet you're going to face the same issue."

"But I only love Jack," said Mandy.

"And I only love Bob," said Karen. "But I make love with another man."

Jack grinned, perhaps at being characterized as a man.

"That's different, said Mandy. "You love him too. Just in a different way than you love Daddy."

"Let me ask you this," said Karen. "Have you thought about who are you going to ask out on one of these dates? Or who you hope asks you out?"

"I have thought about that," said Mandy. She gave two names.

"Why those boys?" asked Karen.

"Because I like them," said Mandy. "Not like them, but you know what I mean. Josh is funny and Charley is really smart. He travels with his parents every summer and he's been all over the world. He's just interesting."

"So it's sort of how you felt about Jack before you started going on dates with him."

"Yeah. Sort of like that."

"And how do you feel about Jack now?"

Mandy opened her mouth and then connected the dots.

"Oh," she said. "I forgot about the Mother Nature part. But I'm already in love with Jack. I'm not going to fall in love with Josh or Charley."

"I believe you said you weren't going to fall in love with Jack either," said Bob, getting a comment in edgewise.

"Crap!" groaned Amanda.

"All we're saying," said Bob, "is that this might get a little hairy, and you need to think about setting definite boundaries before you go out with anybody."

"I set boundaries with Jack and that didn't work," moaned Mandy.

"It will help if you're very up front with your dates on what you are and are not willing to do," said Karen. "You might say that you're willing to kiss them good night, but that touching is off base. There's nothing wrong with being very clear about that. Boys may not be used to that kind of forthrightness, but who cares? And if you build that kind of reputation, then other boys will already know what they can try, and what you won't permit."

"That's great for her," said Jack. "But guys are supposed to try to get away with stuff."

"Who put that nonsense in your head?" asked his mother, archly.

"You did," he said, calmly. "Remember all those lectures about nature?"

"Oh," said Karen. "I guess that could have been interpreted that way, but that wasn't my intent. All I was doing was trying to warn you."

"Well, like I said when this whole conversation started, girls are going to expect me to want to kiss them good night, and maybe even try more."

"There's nothing wrong with choosing the straight and narrow in high school relationships," said Bob. "I don't think anybody will call you gay for not wanting to be an alley cat. And you can couch that in ways that might actually get you respect."

He stood up and went to kneel beside Karen. She turned her head and let him kiss her. While he was doing that, he fondled one of her breasts. When he pulled back, he had an anxious look on his face.

"I really like you, Karen, and I want to do a lot more than that, but we're just sophomores. Maybe this is going too fast. I don't want us to do something that will be a mistake we regret for the rest of our lives."

He stood back up.

"Something like that. Was it believable? I'd have to practice it and make it sound real."

"It wasn't bad," said Mandy. "If I didn't know you like I know you, I might have bought it."

"I think his point was that, if you ask out girls you already like, that situation might become real," said Karen. "And if it does, then you might not be acting at all. That's what we want you to think about. You may actually become affected on these dates. And how you handle that will make all the difference to your relationship with each other. If you don't process all this properly, and communicate with each other, there could be some fights and unhappiness."

Both kids reflected on that.

"Do you think you two will have any fights?" asked Jack.

"It's almost guaranteed," said Bob. Karen nodded.

"And we're not dating other people. But love can get you over all those bumps," she said. "The key is to communicate, and negotiate, and be willing to make sacrifices for the good of the relationship. In a way, what we're asking you to do is find out, over the next three years if you really are in love, and still want to get married when those three years have passed. If you are, then everything works out. If you're not, then you find that out too, before you get married and life gets even more complicated."

"I still want to do it," said Mandy, firmly. In her mind the second possibility Karen had elucidated was impossible.

"Me, too," said Jack, with the same confidence callow youth imbues in a teenager.

"Me, three," said Bob, who saw this as a win-win situation, whether the kids broke up or not.

Karen smiled.

"I guess that makes it unanimous."

Mandy did some prep work almost immediately, and she started with Claudia. At lunch one day she went to the table where Claudia was sitting with two other girls Mandy knew, but didn't hang out with. She plopped down and then just stared at her meal. She had worked on her 'My world is fucked up in a major way' look for over an hour, staring into the mirror at home.

"Who peed in your Cheerios?" asked Claudia.

"Remember Jack?" said Mandy.

"Of course. I'm grounded because of him."

"Whatever," said Mandy. "He's screwed up my life too. Or his mother has."

"She find out you had sex with him?"

"No, because we didn't have sex. He chickened out. He went on and on about how I might get pregnant and then our lives would be ruined. I wanted to throw something at him."

"I wondered about that. When I found you guys sitting on the front porch the next morning it didn't seem like you'd had a night of passion."

"I didn't want to admit it to you then," sighed Mandy. "I was afraid you'd laugh at me."

"I never see you two together in school," said Claudia.

"When he wouldn't do anything I broke up with him. That's why we were sitting on the front porch. Actually, we just couldn't go home yet, or we'd both have been gone by the time you got up."

"So what's the problem?"

"His mother and my dad are in that Boggy Creek volunteer thing. They went on some dates and now they're going to get married."

"Ooooo shit, girl," said Claudia, covering her mouth with one hand. "That's not even fair."

"Now he's going to be my brother. I think the world hates me."

"Well, look on the bright side," said Claudia.

"I didn't know there was a bright side," said Mandy, darkly.

"There are two bright sides. First, it sounds like you don't have to worry about him trying to peek at you in the shower." Claudia giggled.

"Ha, ha. Very funny."

"And second, think about how much worse this would suck if you were still going together."

Mandy let her countenance brighten just a smidgen.

"I hadn't thought about that, but you're right. That really would suck." She cocked her head. "I wonder if that's ever happened to any poor girl."

"It has to have happened to somebody," said Claudia. "So, if he wasn't trying to get in your panties ... why did he come over that night?"

"You ready for this?" said Mandy, screwing up her face to show distaste. "He said he thought I'd be good at chess."

"Oh my gosh. What a great story this is going to make," said Claudia.

"Don't do that," said Mandy. "I'm going to have to live with him and it's going to be hard enough as it is. If he gets pissed off because he thinks I spread that around my life could be even worse."

"Okay," sighed Claudia. "Man. Jack Ross as your brother. Girl, you're fucked."

"Yes ... and I don't even get to have sex in the process."

Claudia looked around. Her two friends had left during the conversation. "To be honest, you're probably not missing much."

"What?" Mandy sounded surprised because she really was surprised.

"Reggie only lasted about a minute," said Claudia. "And every time we tried it again, the same thing happened. I'd get all excited and he'd groan and say he was finished. I didn't actually have that great a time that night, but you can't tell anybody that."

"I won't," said Mandy. "You keep my secret and I'll keep yours. Deal?"

"Deal, girl. And I'll make sure Reggie doesn't say anything to anybody about that night. I'll threaten to tell everybody he has premature ejaculations."

"Thanks," said Mandy.

"No problem. You have enough trouble as it is. I can't imagine having some boy move into my house and live there. Ewwwwww!"

"And I was just starting to feel a little better," sighed Mandy.

Both Bob's and Karen's parents had passed on, and their siblings were far-flung, so all they did was simply notify their family members that they were getting remarried. Neither parent wanted a large or expensive wedding, so they threw together a small, hastily planned ceremony to which some teachers, some auto parts store employees, and some volunteers of the Boggy Creek Restoration Project were invited.

Karen and Bob settled into married life with very few bumps. One thing that worked in their favor was that Tiffany Gaulson was right. There was a lot of interest in both of their houses. An offer was made on Karen's house first. It was a few thousand dollars less than her asking price, but the buyers agreed to pay all closing costs, so she accepted it. The young couple who bought the house were willing to wait two months to move in.

Two competing offers were made on Bob's house a week and a half later. The price was actually bid up five thousand dollars before one of them dropped out. That buyer, however, wanted to move in as soon as possible.

The saving grace was that both Tiffany and the bank were eager to get them into their own new home. The two story house they'd liked was still available and, with their combined incomes, they could afford the payments. So, taking a leap of faith, they made their own offer. The only thing they asked was that the seller pay the inspection and closing costs. The owner accepted, and Tiffany said that was probably because the house had been on the market for almost a year. It was empty, so they were allowed to move in immediately when the contract was signed, paying rent until the sale was actually completed.

That gave them the relief they had needed, both in terms of space to live in a style that would benefit both the parents and their children, and to provide circumstances where Bob wasn't mounting his daughter and fucking her through two or three orgasms a night, and then spurting in her teenage belly. And, of course, it allowed Karen to sleep with Bob every night, instead of being mounted by her randy, teenage son who loved to get as deep inside her as possible before he spewed his virile spunk in her admittedly happy pussy.

Both Mandy and Jack had their own rooms and, to forward their conspiracy to fool their friends, Jack chose a room on the second floor, while Mandy picked one on the main floor. Where they actually slept depended on how they felt any given night. Another downstairs bedroom, smaller than the others, was chosen to make into a nursery.

Imagine seeing your daughter and her boyfriend sitting on the couch, making out, and suddenly said daughter pushes away and bats the boyfriend's hand away from her breast, saying, "Jack! I told you I don't do that kind of thing! Knock it off or I'm going to tell you to take me home!"

Okay, I guess most fathers out there would like to imagine something like that. But for Bob it was comical to watch them practice what they planned to do on dates they hadn't even arranged yet.

It was after they moved into their new house that the kids were able to put the scam into high gear. They started complaining to their friends about what they now had to put up with.

Mandy delivered the news to her circle of friends that her father had "saddled her" with Jack Ross as her new step brother, and commiserated with them about her misfortune. When one of the girls said, "I think he's kind of cute," that allowed Mandy to say, "Well, you can have him. He farts and eats all our food and leaves his stinky shoes lying around."

Likewise, when Jack got back with his friends, he told them, "I thought having Mandy for a sister would be cool. You know, like I might get to see her running around in her underwear or something? But man, what a bitch she turned out to be! Everything is hers, and she thinks she can order me around."

Gradually, as a few weeks passed, and then a month, and then two months, they found it was easy to act like step-siblings at school, calling each other brother and sister and achieving a sort of public level of peaceful coexistence with each other. People expected them to learn to get along, so they gradually appeared to do that. But they showed only tolerance for each other, based on what they made clear was their forced relationship.

They also claimed to have an early curfew, enforced by their "new" parents. Because of that it seemed normal to their peers that they went on a lot of group dates. Twice they were on a group date in each other's company, though they ignored each other, unless they were arguing. In some cases they gravitated toward another member of the group, spending more time with him or her than the others. But that was the thing about group dating. Unless couples were already formally going together, the group was usually comprised of kids who just wanted to hang out and have fun together. There were a lot of kids, as it turned out, who didn't want the drama of a "real" boyfriend or girlfriend. There were some individual dates, primarily to school dances that year. Prior to going on those dates, the young couple would lie in bed, either making love or after finishing that pursuit, and talk about what was going to be okay and not allowed when they went out with other people. Both trusted each other enough to allow more latitude than their parents would ever have believed.

And then, after a date, when they got home and were behind closed doors, Jack mounted his lover and rodded her long, deep, and continuous, as they reaffirmed their undying love for each other.

Also to advance the theory that her brother was a pain in the ass, whenever Mandy had a sleepover, and there were half a dozen nubile young women cavorting about the house, Jack made a pest of himself. One time he knocked on her door and, when it was answered by a girl dressed in pajamas, Jack leered at her, before saying, "Tell Mandy she needs to do her chores, because I'm not going to do them for her." Mandy had reacted by yelling, "Go away, you dick, and leave my friends alone!" Bob showed up eventually and sternly reminded her that she would still be held accountable for her chores, before he ordered Jack to leave the girls alone.

They played their parts superbly, and no one in school believed there was any interest between them of an even faintly romantic nature.

For Jack and Amanda, the subterfuge of being lovers privately, while pretending to have no interest in each other publicly, became a game that was great fun. That first year, while they were sophomores, their dating patterns were those of kids who want to have fun, but not get tied down. Few in their peer group could drive yet, and fewer still had access to a car on a frequent basis, so they gathered in groups to just hang out, usually getting rides from their parents. Sometimes they'd go to a movie, where teens paired up to sit together. Or they might wander around in the mall, again pairing up to some degree. But there were relatively few instances where any kisses were expected.

As might be expected, though, both teens also liked spending time at home. A favorite pastime was lying on the couch, with their head on top of Karen's bulging belly, talking to the baby inside. Those conversations were intimate and sometimes happened as if Karen wasn't sitting there, listening. They talked about things they wanted to do when the baby got old enough to explore the world, and about other people in the family the baby would meet, and what they were like. One example, which astonished Karen, was when Mandy kissed the tight skin of her belly and described Jack.

"He's big and scary looking, but don't worry about that," she said. "He's really gentle and sweet and he'll love you so much you'll want to follow him around everywhere. He'll be the best brother you could ever ask for."

And everyone loved waiting for the baby to move, and feeling that happen, or watching as a heel or elbow traveled across its mother's tight skin.

Late May brought the end of school, which was a welcome relief for the kids.

Three weeks later, though, there was another change that would be felt for a long time. A lifetime, in fact.

On the fifteenth of June, the new baby finally arrived into the world.

Karen was one of those women who carry a baby easily, and even up into the eighth month she had relatively little discomfort. Only when her due date was two weeks away did she feel like a beached whale, who had to waddle everywhere she went.

Her due date came and passed, but only by two days, before she gave birth to her second child, another boy, who they named Jeffrey Todd. Jeffrey's presence altered things subtly, at first, primarily because of the noise he made in the middle of the night. But during the day he had lots of caregivers. Amanda in particular wanted to learn how to take care of her baby brother and then spent hours doing so, thinking of it as practice for when she would get to let Jack make one of these precious things inside her.

Jack and Bob, for reasons unknown, both had the knack of rocking little Jeffrey to sleep, even when he fought it.

Gradually, as always happens when a baby is brought home, he assumed a major role in the entire family life.

At one point, while Karen was still on maternity leave from work, Mandy sat down to watch Karen offer her nipple to the little boy. Jeffrey latched on greedily and sucked as if he was starving.

"What does that feel like?" asked Amanda, watching the baby's cheeks caving in.

"Don't Bob and Jack do that for you?" asked Karen, who knew they both loved sucking hers. They had sucked them so much, in fact, that she'd started lactating almost two weeks early.

"Well sure," said Mandy, who was so used to this kind of free and easy discussion that it didn't even seem odd anymore. "But it can't be the same."

"It's not," said Karen. "When my milk first lets down there's a kind of sweet, stinging pain, but then all I feel is pressure. The nipples toughen up considerably once they're being used for their actual purpose."

"My nipples get hard," said Mandy.

"Tough and hard are different," said Karen. "It's hard to describe. All I know is that it doesn't feel sexual when Jeffrey sucks them."

"But it still does when the boys do?" Both Karen and Mandy had taken to lumping Bob and Jack into one two-person group, identified as "the boys."

"Completely different," said Karen. "But I really think lactating changes something. You want to try, so you can see for yourself?"

"Me? Do that?" Mandy's face paled a bit, but she leaned toward mother and child.

"Why not? You're curious. He's hungry right now, so he won't just play. Sometimes he does that. Babies love to suck nipples as much as the boys do."

Five minutes later Mandy was topless and carefully cradled her baby brother, trying to figure out how to get his face next to a nipple. It seemed awkward.

"Just roll him over," said Karen, reaching to help do that.

Jeffrey wasn't happy at his meal being disturbed. No doubt Mandy smelled different too. But once a nipple grazed his nose, he did what babies do.

"Oh, wow!" gasped Amanda.

It didn't last long, because there was no milk, and soon Jeffrey fussed. In short order he was back on one of Karen's milky breasts, and happy again.

"That was so weird," said Mandy, putting her shirt back on. "But you're right. It did feel different. Not like the boys at all."

"Smaller mouth," suggested Karen.

"But he sucks just as hard," said Mandy, reaching to squeeze the nipple that Jeffrey had tried to get milk out of.

"That's the tough part I was talking about," said Karen. "My nipples have toughened up so that when he sucks like that it doesn't hurt."

Mandy got more and more involved with the day to day care of Jeffrey and, when Karen went back to work two weeks later, she volunteered to share child care duties with Bob. Nor did she tire of that after a week or two. Quite the opposite. It gave her the perfect excuse to spend more time with her father.