Chapter 4: Kissing Sam in the Meadow

WE WERE OFF for our annual summer week at University Camp, not too far up in the Sierra Nevada range near Tahoe National Forest. Mom and Dad were in one cabin, really more of a large tent with a wooden floor and a couple of wooden shelves for stuff, and us kids were stuck in little tents right outside, Sam and our little sister, Debbie, in one, me and our big brother in the other. Sam and I didn’t care. As on earlier visits, we knew we had all day to do stuff together. Maybe until late at night, too.

We’d heard from friends about how some people swam in the nude and sunned naked at camp. Whole families, including teenagers! That got our attention. As long as you didn’t flaunt it, apparently no one cared.

After that awkward afternoon I wondered whether Sam and I were still friends. I hoped so, but I didn’t know what to make of what had happened. I remembered her smooth warm skin, her firm breasts, her tight little rear end, and how she felt under me. So I was thinking about how things would be different this time at camp, and I was especially wondering about the nude part.

I wasn’t going to let my dick talk me into doing anything I would be sorry for later, I mean that. Especially nothing that would hurt Sam. At least I hoped not and, if I could help it, I wasn’t going to let anyone else hurt her. I knew she felt the same way about me. But there it was, thinking about the other day I was pretty sure Sam had liked the rubbing part, all of it, maybe as much as I had.

Dust and pine trees. Hot in the sun, cool, almost cold, in the shade. I unrolled my sleeping bag, threw my stuff on it, and I was unpacked. I stepped out of the tent, and there was Sam.

“Go for a walk, Buddy?”

“Sure.”

We didn’t have to be back until late in the afternoon. Mom and Dad had told us we could go anywhere we liked as long as we didn’t bother anyone. Without saying anything, I took Sam’s hand. On the far side of the ridge above our tents a grassy meadow sloped down to a shallow lake. We went down from the ridge a little, over near some trees, where there were some rocks warm from the sun to rest against. We sat beside each other, toying with long stems of grass. After a while, Sam spoke first.

“I’m sorry about the other day.”

She studied her grass stem.

“Sorry about what?”

“Crying.”

“Sam, why?”

“Look, Buddy. I know we love each other. We’re friends, right? Except I know I love you more than that.”

“I know.”

“I know we can’t be boyfriend and girlfriend. I don’t care. I don’t want to keep you to myself. I love you, that’s all.”

Another silence.

“You’re the first person I knew. Well, except for Mom, of course. On the rug. Probably I don’t really remember this, it’s something Mom or Dad told me later, but I remember hugging you before I could walk.”

She kept looking at her grass stem.

“You’ve always been around. I think for a while I even thought somehow we were the same person. We look like each other, sort of. We had the same birthday party every year, too. Crazy, huh?”

She dropped her grass stem and picked up another.

“You taught me to ride my bike, remember? I kept falling off, and you kept catching me. Over and over.”

I remembered.

“And all those afternoons lying on the grass and looking at clouds, holding hands, sometimes.”

I remembered that, too.

“At the pool party, I watched you with Heather. Like I told you, it got me a little turned on.”

For sure I remembered Heather. My cock gave a little twitch.

“That first overnight with Ana María I was scared, but watching you and Jim got me excited. Ana María dared me to come out with her in just my panties. So I did.”

Another twitch. That overnight was a couple of weeks after Heather’s pool party. Jim and I were outside in sleeping bags. Jim’s sister and Sam were inside the house. I definitely remembered that part of the night, especially the little performance Jim and I had given in front of Ana María’s bedroom window when we’d saluted the girls in the way teenage boys do best.

“Things are changing. I know that. I like it, but I’m scared, too. Can you understand that?”

She looked at me, not blinking.

“I don’t want you for myself. I know you have your friends. I have mine. I know you sometimes do stuff with other girls and I don’t care. I just want us to be friends. I want you to be me, sort of. I want to be you.”

A pause.

“No, that’s stupid. What I mean is, I want us to be a team, like always.”

I was trying to think about this and not getting very far. Aside from that little twitch or two earlier, I wasn’t hard. Was I sick?

I know I’ve spent a lot of time talking about breasts and bottoms and smooth skin and freckles and nipples and who’s nude and who’s not, and who’s coming, and so on. That’s important stuff and I’m not going to pretend it isn’t, but I would be kidding, kidding myself, really, if I thought tits and rear ends, and where I had my cock, were the whole story.

Sam was, aside from Mom, the first person I had known, too, just the way Sam said. There was our older brother, but he was older enough that when we weren’t fighting Sam and I ignored him. Our little sister, Debbie, came along too late to matter. Once we were two or three years old and even before, maybe, to hear Mom and Dad tell it, Sam and I had been inseparable. All I knew was that wherever I was, as far back as I could remember, Sam was there, too.

Playmate, someone to nap with, take baths with. Someone to build blocks with. Someone to hit with the blocks. Later, someone to play catch with, ride bikes with, someone to lie on the lawn and watch the clouds with. Someone to talk about stuff, any kind of stuff, with. Someone I could trust. That’s who Sam was to me.