Chapter 39: Decisions.

May, 1984, Chicago, Illinois

On Wednesday at work, Scott handed me a 9-track tape and a manual. My new task was to upgrade the Plexus Unix systems to the latest version of System III Unix. It took most of the day to upgrade both computers and to verify that the Universe database system as well as the Ethernet connections were working. At the end of the day, Scott let me know that he had a new project for me — optimizing some Z80 assembly code for an embedded controller. I took a quick look at the documentation and looked over the code for about five minutes, but then it was time to go.

I arrived home only a few minutes before Jackie walked into the house. She came to the kitchen, gave me a quick, chaste kiss, and asked what she could do to help. I gave her a few tasks that she completed quickly, and then asked her to set the table in the breakfast nook, because it was just the two of us. She'd just finished when I had the food ready, and she helped me bring it to the table. I opened a bottle of wine and poured some for each of us.

"Now I have to spend the night, if I follow your drinking rule," she declared with a smile.

"Rats! My evil machinations to get you into bed tonight have been found out!" I said, cackling maniacally.

"As if you needed any such evil machinations! But seriously, I agree with your drinking rules. Is it OK if I stay over? I still have stuff here to change into in the morning."

"Sure. Now, drink your wine and get drunk so I can take advantage of you later!" I chuckled.

"What about your darling Penny?" she smirked.

"Oh, her? Well, you know me!" I smirked.

"Riiiiiight! I heard you last night. I know better. Now, let's eat before she shows up."

We ate our dinner, carrying on a light conversation about the upcoming presidential election, which looked to me like it was going to be a blowout. Neither Gary Hart nor Walter Mondale seemed likely to be able to beat Reagan, and Jesse Jackson certainly was no threat. Although the contest between Hart and Mondale was far from over, I felt that Mondale had effectively scored a knockout blow with his Where's the Beef? challenge to Hart. It was a riff on the Wendy's commercial and mocked Hart for mouthing empty platitudes about 'New Ideas'. Jackie agreed with my assessment that Reagan was going to mop the floor with whichever candidate won the Democratic nomination.

When we finished eating, we quickly cleaned up and had just sat down with tea when Penny and Alice arrived. Penny had an annoyed look until she saw Jackie and then broke into a big smile.

"Mom, Jackie is here, so you can go home!" Penny said happily.

Alice laughed, "Jackie, are you going to be here the entire time?"

"Yes, I will. In fact, I'm staying the night. Even though I'm living at home for the Summer and I'm moving out in August, I still have most of my stuff here."

"Moving out?" Alice asked.

"I'm moving in with my boyfriend. He just graduated from law school. I have one more year in the Architecture program. But don't worry, the rest of the girls are coming back, along with a friend of Steve's from Sweden and a friend of his from his hometown. There will be someone to watch over Penny in the Fall."

"OK. Be home at 9:00pm, Penny. You still have school for a couple more weeks."

"Yes, Mom," she said in the standard teenager's voice when told to do something that they didn't want to do.

"Thanks, Alice," I said.

"You're welcome. And thanks, Jackie."

Jackie walked her to the door while I went into the great room with Penny. Jackie was back a few seconds later.

"Does this mean we can go upstairs?" Penny asked hopefully.

"How about we talk for a bit, Penny," Jackie said.

"Can we talk AFTER Steve makes love to me?" she begged. "Please?"

Jackie smiled and nodded, and I led Penny up to my room. About an hour later, we were back in the great room where Jackie had waited for us. She took Penny's hand, and they went to the kitchen to get soft drinks and some of the cookies that were leftover, and then went into the Indian room and shut the door. I wondered what Jackie was talking with her about, but I was sure that I'd find out later.

I went to my study to play Ultima III, which I'd yet to finish. I felt I was getting close to the end, and thought I might have enough time to finish it before Jennifer arrived, because there wasn't much to do around the house and most of my friends were elsewhere for the Summer. When I heard the girls' voices, I looked over at the clock to see that it was a couple of minutes before 9:00pm.

Penny came into the study to give me a kiss and said that she'd see me on Saturday. I walked her to the front door and when she was safely inside her house, I went back to find Jackie waiting for me in the kitchen.

"Could you handle a sauna with me?" she smirked.

"If I could do it with Kara, I'm sure I can do it with you," I teased.

"Asshole!" she said with a laugh.

We went down to the sauna, undressed, and went in. When the stones came up to proper temperature, I ladled water onto them to make steam. I sat quietly and waited for Jackie to speak. It was silent except for the hiss of the steam for about ten minutes.

"I have a suggestion for you," Jackie said.

"Which is?"

"Well, the short version is more talking, less fucking."

"You mean with Penny?" I asked.

"Yes. How old are you?"

"Twenty-one."

"And how old is Penny?"

"Fifteen. But you know both of those things."

"Yes. I'm just making sure that you remember. She's an impressionable young girl. And she's in way over her head if you're being honest with me about your feelings for her. She's dealing with stuff a girl my age, twenty-two, would have trouble dealing with. Already you've had one big blowup because you didn't think things through. There will very likely be more. Remember when you were fifteen?"

"I do," I replied with a grin. "I was even more clueless than I am now!"

"Don't get cute on me. That's not what this is about. Is Penny really ready for the kind of heavy relationship you're moving towards? Are you? Think about what you said that you told Doctor Alborg. Don't answer yet, though. Penny is in the 'I love fucking' stage. You've tried to move her to a place she isn't ready to go — the 'I only want to make love to you for the rest of my life' stage. I wonder, though — are YOU really ready for that stage? And if you are, is it with Penny? Because if you keep going, she's going to assume it's true. She's an innocent, inexperienced young girl being buried in an avalanche of tremendous orgasms, and she's equating that with love. That's a recipe for disaster."

"I thought you were OK with this," I said defensively.

"I was when I thought you two were just going to fuck each other silly for a while. It's one thing for a girl like Penny to come to an older guy to be taught what sex is about. It's a completely different thing to be in a serious relationship where words like love, lovemaking, and marriage are tossed about. Hell, I have a problem with my relationship with you, Steve! Remember when I told you that I love you?"

"I do. It's kind of hard to forget something like that."

"I'm seven years older than Penny is!" Jackie exclaimed. "And I get confused by it. You're the problem, do you know that?"

"I'm sure I am, but I think I need you to explain what it is THIS time," I said with a wry smile.

"When you have sex with someone, you pour your heart and soul into it. I don't think you've ever fucked in your entire life. Ever. Even that night last year at the end of the school year wasn't really fucking. You devoted every fibre of your being to me, to my pleasure, and to making sure I felt loved. You want to know how bad it is? I think you sticking your dick in my ass was one of the most loving things anyone has ever done to me! And I didn't particularly like it! How's that for being messed up and conflicted? Now, think about how Penny feels."

"What are you telling me? You've always been practical and good at giving me the bottom line. Better even than Bethany or Anala."

"Wow! That's a huge compliment coming from you. I'm telling you to slow down. Talk with Penny. You have so much baggage that she has no clue about. She doesn't need to know all of it, but she needs to know some. The problem is, she's young and might not be able to deal with some of the adult stuff that you've had to deal with since you were fourteen. Look how it messed you up. This is what, your third round of counseling? Do you want Penny to go through years of therapy because you made her grow up way too fast?"

"Do you know that I hate you?" I sighed.

"You don't. You love me. But not like you love Bethany or Jennifer, or even Penny. And that's fine. You have a tremendous capacity to love. We all see that. That's why Katy was willing to make love with you. She knows that you love her and she loves you. Heck, if you do go monogamous, she's going to make a huge play for you. I hadn't even figured her into the mix. We may have to have some sort of tribunal to decide who gets you! The number of girls who would throw their hats into the ring, so to speak, seems endless!"

"Including you," I said.

"Including me. But that's not the topic for this discussion. It's your relationship with Penny. I wonder if your view is colored by the fact that she seems to have made you forget about Becky."

"No, it's deeper than that. I'm sure of it. My question for you, Jackie, is how to reconcile two things you've told me. One is to slow down with Penny and the other is that if I stop having sex with her, it would hurt her badly."

"Welcome to life, Steve! You must have run into situations where there's no clear course of action and you have to feel your way between two less than desirable options."

"Another fucking minefield," I said.

"So? That's adult life. You yourself said that you didn't know how to have a good relationship. Do you think anyone does? Do you expect Doctor Alborg to give you some magic formula? Did Doctor Mercer?"

"No," I chuckled. "All she did was ask lots of questions and make me think. Sure, she nudged my thinking, but in the end, my dad paid her to listen to me talk!"

"But it worked, didn't it? Helping you get past things that were impediments to a happy future?"

"Of course. I wouldn't be seeing Doctor Alborg if I didn't think it would help. I wouldn't have sent Kara to Doctor Mercer if I didn't think it would help."

"I noticed something in your journal, at least as far as I read it. You've always had a close confidant and a main girl. Melanie was like that, so was Bethany, and so was Sofia, and when they were your confidants, you weren't sleeping with them. That is me, isn't it?"

"You're certainly vying for the position, if you don't already have it."

"Though you did occasionally sleep with Bethany and Sofia..." she said with a smirk.

"Are you asking me to go to bed with you, Miss Phelan?" I asked.

"Only if you can do so without it making a mess of things. And my gut says that you can't. Not right now. But you better be able to when Jennifer gets here."

"I know. I know," I sighed.

"Come on! This isn't a death sentence! If you love Penny as much as you say you do, then talk with her. Have fun with her. Maybe spend time playing, you know, having fun sex without focusing on it being perfect lovemaking. Sure, make love once in a while, but explore and have fun. And when Jennifer comes here, you better put your usual 'heart and soul' into your physical relationship with her. You're not ready to do otherwise."

"I officially nominate you as my confidante. But that means you have to spend time alone with me, even after you and Jamie are together. Will that be OK with him?"

"It'll have to be. I'll talk to him."

"Jackie, will you sleep in my bed with me tonight?" I asked.

"I thought you'd never ask!" she grinned, leaning over to kiss my cheek.

When we got out of the sauna, we went up to my room and each took a quick shower. I changed the sheets, put on my silk pyjama bottoms and Jackie borrowed one of my flannel shirts and put that on, along with her panties, and we climbed into bed together. She snuggled close, and I put my arm around her.

"Thanks for being here for me," I said. "Why don't you plan to come the next two Wednesdays?"

"And cover for your shenanigans?" she giggled. "I should make you pay up for that!"

"I'll put that in your hands. Ask me and I'll say yes."

"No way. There is no chance I'm contributing to anything like the drama you had in High School. As much as I want to fool around with you, I'll settle for cuddling."

"Thanks," I said.

We slept cuddled together and the next morning, she left to go home when I left for work. I spent the day at Nuvatec rewriting several routines, improving the performance of the code. I lost track of time, as I often did when I was coding, and was startled by Scott putting his hand on my shoulder at about 5:15pm.

"You were in that zone Dave talks about. I said your name twice, and you didn't even twitch."

"My mind is just so focused on the problem at hand, I just tune everything out. It's kind of like all my senses shut down so that the only inputs are the code I'm reviewing and my ideas on how to improve it, or if I'm writing new code, on how to do that."

"Well, whatever it is, you're a better programmer than anyone else here. I really do hope you'll give our offer a fair shake when you graduate."

"I will, Scott. I promise you that."

"Good. Now, head on home so that you're fresh tomorrow."

I had a nice relaxing evening at home, playing Ultima and drinking bourbon. Before I went to bed, I wrote in my journal, working through the things Jackie had said to me. I went to bed at 10:30pm, heeding Scott's advice to be fresh for work the next day.

On Friday, after another day of optimizing code, I picked up Anala on the way home and we worked together to prepare our meal. As usual, we had chicken, because beef was out of the question for her. After dinner, we went to the sauna to relax. I let Anala know about my conversations with Jackie, and Jackie's concerns about Penny, as well as my feeling that I had slain the final demon.

"Perhaps. But keep your guard up, Steve. Jackie might be right that your infatuation with Penny has simply masked the problem. You won't know until you're tested."

"I don't intend to see her, so I'm not sure what that test might be."

"The desire could rear its ugly head. But that's an issue for the future. Tell me about this newfound monogamy."

"Right now, it just seems right to me to not be with anyone but Penny. Jennifer will be here a week from Monday and I'm pretty sure Jackie's right about that situation. I just need to make sure my attitude is properly adjusted before Jennifer gets here."

"Of all the girls that you could talk to about how you feel, I think Jennifer's the best. Your relationship seems clear, and the future seems set. Of course, you could change that, but talking to her seems to be low risk."

"She and I, and Josie, have to talk. Even though you say things are clear, they aren't just yet. Not entirely."

"I suppose that's true. And when you are in Ohio, you'll be with Bethany. What about Sweden?"

"Sofia, for sure. She may be the only one. I ended things amicably with Tina the other day, and of course you know what my plans are with Karin."

"Yes, but if I understand correctly, you've had those plans with Karin before and each time something has changed your course and you've come back to trying. What makes you think this time is different?"