Chapter 2

Ryan didn’t behave in any discernibly different way when he appeared, and maintained that attitude until they were in the car, headed back home. It was he, however, who brought it up.

“Last night was interesting,” he commented. They’d been driving for twenty minutes and there had been very little said up to that point.

“Yes,” she said, unable to think of anything else to say. She’d been thinking about it, but wasn’t exactly prepared to discuss it. “I’m sorry I ambushed you like that.”

“I’m not,” he said, happily.

“What I mean is that I didn’t intend for something like that to happen,” she said. “I think the eggnog had something to do with it.”

“I figured,” he said, just as happily. “Do you have any regrets?”

“No,” she said, somewhat astonished that she was speaking the truth. She didn’t understand why she felt averse to admitting it. “I mean ... I’m not sure how to feel about it.”

“Well, I have to admit I hoped something like that would happen.”

“Yes, you said that last night.”

“Look,” he said, glancing at her before looking back at the road ahead, “neither of us is involved with anybody. I like you and I know you like me. What’s the harm?”

Mandy thought about how she felt about this man. He wasn’t like Matt. She’d loved Matt, but in a different way than she’d ever loved another man. She’d loved Steve with all her heart. Even now she felt his loss.

She didn’t feel that way about Ryan. He was more like Tony, she decided. Tony had been a flash in the pan, a brief moment where she’d felt like a normal woman with a normal man. Except she felt closer to Ryan than she had to Tony.

The problem was that she didn’t feel anything close to what Steve had generated in her.

Still, she wasn’t sorry it had happened. And she did need a man in her life.

Maybe love would come if she explored this a little farther.

“No harm,” she finally responded. She looked over at him. “I don’t normally do that, though. I mean hop into bed with a random guy.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m not exactly random, though. Like I said, we like each other a lot.”

“That’s true,” she said.

“I know you said it would only be one time but ... what now?” he asked.

She looked at him. There had been something in his voice when he asked that question ... a longing note, perhaps.

“You want to do it again,” she accused.

“Of course,” he said, grinning.

“You run with the babe on a regular basis, and now you want to bed her that way, too,” she said.

“If I wanted anything else I’d be crazy,” he said, happily.

“Men,” she snorted. “You’re all horndogs.”

“Mother Nature made us that way,” he said, as if that should absolve him from any responsibility.

His comment, though, brought something else to her mind.

“Crap!” she said. “Did you cum in me last night?”

Finally, he looked something other than carefree and happy.

“Um ... yeah,” he said, as if that, too were a foregone conclusion.

“Crap!” she said, again. “I’m not on birth control.”

“You’re not?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

“Ryan! I just told you I don’t do this kind of thing!”

“Well yeah, but ... I guess I just thought you were.”

“I’m not,” she said. “Be quiet and let me think.”

She mentally reviewed her menstrual status. She had to count backwards, arriving at the number nine as the end of her last period.

She sighed.

“I think we’re safe,” she said.

“Safe?”

“I don’t think you’re going to be a daddy,” she said, sarcastically.

“Wow,” he said. “I didn’t think about that.”

“Men never do,” she growled.

“But that’s good, right? I mean I’d like to be a father some day, but not right now.”

“Yeah,” she said, a little sarcasm still in her voice. “I’m not quite ready to be a mommy right now either.”

What evolved was something Mandy wasn’t sure she understood completely. The rest of the conversation on the trip back had resulted in a somewhat antiseptic agreement that they would continue to be study partners and “become” boyfriend and girlfriend. It felt artificial to her, somehow, and yet she really did like him a lot. She thought of all the other men she knew and none of them caused her to regret arriving at the conclusion that Ryan and she were now a couple.

She got a prescription for the pill and Ryan bought some condoms. They studied together two or three times a week, as they had before. The engineering track they were in made that work well, but now there was an added dimension to things.

The first time they had sex after Christmas was a little awkward at first. They weren’t used to being intimate with each other, and their first kisses were tentative. But Mother Nature has a way of getting past all that and soon they were snogging like old pros. Ryan proved to be a better lover than she had thought he would be. Most of her reservations about that were based on the fact that she couldn’t remember much about their first coupling. But this time she wasn’t fired up already, like she had been then, and he took his time, his hands and mouth roving around her body, until her loins arched in her need.

This time she got to see his phallus before it entered her and she was happy to confirm that her memories of that were correct. He was bigger than any man she’d been with and when he finally slid it into her she groaned with bliss as she was filled to capacity.

He came quickly, but continued to grind against her until he got her over the top.

By the time she’d caught her breath he was mostly stiff again and stayed in the saddle for another round.

This one was longer and more for her benefit and she came again before he rolled off of her and relaxed.

“That was good,” he commented.

“Yes it was,” she said, firmly.

“I think this is going to work out,” he said.

She rolled her head to face him.

“There’s more to a relationship than sex,” she said.

“I know,” he said, grinning. “But if the sex is good, then the rest of it will come easy.”

He seemed to be right. As the spring semester rolled by their relationship became very comfortable. They liked enough of the same things that dating was fun for both of them. And the sex was good. By May, when most of the students were leaving for the summer, he suggested moving in together.

“It will save money,” he suggested, unaware that she had over a million dollars in the bank.

There were only two problems, from Mandy’s perspective.

One was that, while they were in a somewhat codified relationship, they did not see each other every single day. Mandy felt like she had plenty of time for herself and things that wouldn’t involve Ryan. If they moved in together, that would no longer be the case.

The other was the moral code, or what was left of it, her mother had instilled in her when Mandy was young.

Morals are interesting animals. Moral codes are like fingerprints; no two are identical. Everybody has one, but what’s in it isn’t visible from the outside. Parts of a person’s code can be inferred, based on his or her actions in a given situation, but that’s like seeing one square inch of a painting, or one piece of a puzzle. Morals aren’t required to make sense, or at least one can argue that point. Morals are what allow a prostitute to say, “No” to sex, even after she’s accepted a man as a client and it turns out he wants something she doesn’t.

It’s much more complicated than that, of course, but it’s pertinent to the situation because Mandy, despite the fact that she’d had sex with Ryan a hundred times or more, felt it would be wrong to live with him outside the institution of marriage.

It wasn’t as clear-cut as that in her mind. She just wasn’t comfortable with the idea of moving in together.

It felt improper, somehow.

The way it came out of her was, “I don’t know, Ryan. I’ve never lived with any man I wasn’t married to.”

“Then marry me!” he gushed, pulling her into an embrace and whirling her around.

“I can’t marry you,” she laughed, trying to tickle him. What would have been interesting to a psychologist was that there was no conscious reason in her mind that produced that statement.

“You have to marry me!” he yelled, still whirling her around. “I can’t live without you!”

Mother Nature has imbued, in women, the drive to find a mate. Women who are “liberated” will scoff and argue about that, but they are either wrong or aberrations, in the context of evolution. Evolution demands that women mate and produce children to keep the species going. Obviously a woman wants the best mate she can find, but sometimes the drive causes her to accept less than perfect. If you look around you’ll see plenty of married people who shouldn’t have gotten married because they really aren’t “right” for each other in a social sense. That’s Mother Nature’s fault, but the individuals in that situation are the ones who have to live with the consequences. That brings morals back into the picture. A lot of people stay together because their moral code demands that of them. Others just get divorced and start looking for a better mate again.

It’s much more complex than that, of course, but it’s pertinent to the situation because Mandy’s id responded to what was happening on a more important level than her ego did.

Granted, the pressure was intense, as their physical interaction evolved into clothes coming off and Ryan picking her up and taking her to bed. His persistent, “You have to marry me,” continued as he slid into her. A couple of months after she’d gone on the pill condoms had become less important in their relationship and, eventually, they fell by the wayside altogether. She loved the feel of his naked cock inside her and he loved spurting into her hot depths, rather than a latex bag.

It was, in fact, as she heard his joyfully agonized groan and felt the hot jets of his semen soaking her, that the final barrier her exhausted ego had tried to put up fell.

“All right,” she breathed into his ear as he sagged on top of her. His weight felt wonderful pressing her into the bed. “I’ll marry you.”

Whether one considers it odd or not, the fact she’d accepted his proposal didn’t affect her decision that moving in together wasn’t the way she wanted to go. As was theorized, morals don’t have to make sense. This became important because it is likely the reason Ryan insisted they needed to get married soon ... and why Mandy didn’t have a crucial piece of information that would have altered her perspective entirely. Had she lived with him a while, she’d have known there was something about him he had neglected to tell her.

Mandy wasn’t there when Ryan called his parents and told them the good news. She didn’t hear the argument that took place or the process by which, over an hour, Ryan finally won them over. When he later told her the wedding would take place in his parents’ back yard she didn’t react like many women would have. Most women want to plan their own wedding in all aspects of it, including what the groom will do. But Mandy had planned two weddings already. Her marriage to Steve had been on the level of the classical fairy tale wedding. She’d felt like a queen, rather than a princess, but it was everything she could have hoped for. There had been no happily ever after, though, and perhaps that was why she didn’t care where this new marriage took place.

When Ryan’s mother, named Marjorie, found out Mandy’s parents were gone, she offered to help with the preparations.

Over the next two months Mandy and Marjorie spent a lot of time together, both on the phone and in person, and the preparations were all finished by the day in mid-August when Mandy, in the same room she had “seduced” her husband-to-be, slipped on the peach gown she had chosen to wear. She had only one bridesmaid, Ryan’s sister, who would wear a dress in matching material, but of a completely different design.

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The City Girl Blues

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