Chapter 9

They spent most of the morning in the water, with Caitie giving Bobby swimming lessons.

“Is there anything you don’t teach?” Bob Smith asked, shaking his head in wonder.

Caitie just grinned, shrugged, and went back to her lessons.

When she finished, she and Bobby were in deep water. She took the boy in her arms and kissed him gently. To her amazement, he began to cry. “What’s wrong, Bobby? Did I hurt you somehow?”

Still crying, the boy just shook his head.

“Well, what’s wrong, then?”

“I’ve been promoted!” the boy wailed. “Now I won’t get your kisses anymore. And they’re what we’re all after. That’s why so many of the kids will do something naughty — to get a spanking and then a kiss.”

“You’re kidding!” Caitie exclaimed while slowly treading water. “You can’t be serious.”

“But I am,” he insisted, finally getting his crying under control. “Remember when Maria Alvarado did something naughty about a month before school was over?” he asked.

Caitie nodded, while looking puzzled. She indeed remembered it vividly. Maria was one of her very best students and never misbehaved, but that day she had.

“Well,” Bobby continued, “I happen to know she wore her very best underpants to school that day because she knew what was going to happen. You really spanked her hard, too. She wasn’t sitting comfortably for weeks. But she was so happy! She did it because she thought it was the only way she could get one of your kisses. She said the spanking was worth it.” He paused and then added, “Maria says you’re an angel. She really believes you are.”

Caitie didn’t know what to say so they swam back to the wave line, then body-surfed to the beach.

After a picnic lunch, Bill, having noticed that Bob Smith had a football with him, challenged Sandy Williams and him to a touch football game. Smith agreed with alacrity and then agreed to play for dinner, with the loser buying for the winner. As they threw the ball around to warm up, Bill was again amazed at Caitie. He had decided she didn’t have a clumsy bone in her body. She moved with ease and grace; she was beauty in motion.

Although he learned she had never held a football in her hands before, it only took a matter of moments for him to show her how to hold one, how to throw a pass, and how to catch one. She instantly realized that the idea was to catch the ball in her hands, rather than in her arms or against her chest. Moreover, her long fingers made it relatively easy for her to catch the ball.

At one point, claiming to be hot, Caitie ran into the surf, disappeared under a wave, and then emerged stroking smoothly toward England. Floating far out from the shore, she finally found a swell she liked and stroked after it. Moments later she had body-surfed on the wave that had developed from the swell almost all the way to the beach. At that point, Bill’s love for her jumped. Coming over to him she asked with her eyes wide if he would dry her off. As she said it, she motioned toward her small remaining pubic patch. After first taking her into his arms, Bill kissed her gently and then carefully dried her groin.

As he gently moved her towel over her slit she winked and grinned. “Thank you, Bill,” she said. Then she added, “It doesn’t feel as good as your cock will when it’s inside me, but it does feel pretty good.”

When their football game began, it came as a shock to Bob Smith. Not only had Caitie learned to both throw a football and catch it, she was an incredibly fast runner. Because he was the professional, they had agreed that it was two-hand touch for the Smiths, but only one hand for Caitie and Bill.

The result was a foreordained nightmare. By the time the game was over, Caitie had scored in every way imaginable. She outran him and caught a beautifully-thrown pass over her shoulder for a touchdown. With Bill flanked wide to the left covered by Sandy, Caitie had eluded his rush and sped down the right sideline for another. The final blow came when Bill pitched out to Caitie going to her right. With Bob covering her, moving more carefully this time, she threw a perfect pass to Bill who caught it over his shoulder for another TD.

When the game concluded, a winded Bob Smith opened beers for the four of them and then flopped on the blanket. At that point Bobby looked at his father with an eyebrow raised and asked, “What is it you really do for a living, Daddy? I can’t believe it’s playing professional football!”

The four howled at the boy’s remark. Sandy moved to sit across Bob’s lap and kissed him passionately. When they eased apart, she breathlessly said softly, “I don’t care if you can’t cover Caitie, darling. I love you anyway.”

“Are you sure there are no more test drives, woman?” Bob asked after kissing her nose.

“I’m sure!” she replied. “Bobby is my souvenir of the last one.”

“That was your first and only, wasn’t it?” he asked.

“It was certainly the first, darling,” Sandy said softly. Then with her eyes downcast she added, “I only wish I could say it was the only, but it wasn’t.” Now she looked up at him and looked him straight in the eye.

“Darling,” she continued, “before I met Caitie Collins, I was a slob — and a prostitute. I didn’t make much money — I was over 180 pounds — but I really didn’t care. As long as the john gave me enough for more crack cocaine, I was satisfied. That was the environment in which I was trying to raise your son.

“Then the greatest thing imaginable happened: He was assigned to Caitie’s fourth grade. I said assigned. As you now know, Caitie was assigned twenty kids in the beginning. Thank God, Bobby was one of them.

“I didn’t know enough — and certainly didn’t care enough! — to have requested her, as so many of the other parents did.” She smiled weakly and continued, “And, as they say, the rest is history.

“Through Bobby — and at Caitie’s insistence — I met her. I will never forget her first question to me. She asked, ‘What did you ever do to have a boy as good as Bobby? How can he make it when his mother is a slob?’ My first reaction was to slap her face. I guess I even tried, but you saw today how elusive she can be.

“Then I started to cry. Then she slapped my face ... slapped me silly, as a matter of fact. Then she glared at me and said, ‘Miss Williams, when are you going to grow up?’ Another very good question. Anyway, through Caitie, I lost weight, got a job as an exotic — when are you going to come and see me, by the way? — and went back to school. And here I am.”

“See you?” Bob asked with his face straight. “I see you now. Do you mean you expect me to pay good money just to see you undress?”

“The word is strip, darling,” Sandy replied with her eyes now dancing. “But I’m not a stripper, I’m an exotic. For those who don’t know the vocabulary, the difference is that a stripper takes off her clothes, while an exotic starts off naked and stays that way. And I’m an exotic.”

“Oh!” Bob retorted. “Now I see why you wanted to come to the nude beach. You’re just rehearsing!”

Sandy made a production of hitting him as hard as she could on his upper arm — or at least appearing to. Then she held up her head for a kiss. When he melted his lips to hers, everyone could see the electricity flowing between them.

When they eased apart, Bob said softly, “Darling, I’ll make a deal with you. I won’t ask you about what you did when we were apart if you don’t ask me what I did, either.” He paused and added, “I really think my story is worse than yours.”

Turning to Bill and Caitie, Bob asked, “Since I’m buying tonight, where do you want to go? And since you utterly destroyed us, I’m afraid it will have to be someplace very good indeed.”

“Bill,” Caitie asked innocently, “don’t professional football players make a lot of money?” When Bill agreed that they did, she clapped her hands in glee and announced, “Robert Smith, you’re taking us to ‘21’ for dinner tonight.”

Thinking he had an out, Bob said, “Caitie, I would love to, but the only way you can get in there is if you make a reservation six months ahead. And since I wasn’t planning on being destroyed playing touch football against a girl six months ago...” He let his voice just trail off.