Chapter 6: Hard Taps

Chapter Cast:

Darren, Male, 53
- Narrator, retired, father of Gwen and Victoria (Vic)
- 5’11, beige skin, 195lbs, cropped greying brown hair
Audrey, Female, 15
- High school student, daughter of Duncan and Theresa
- 5’9, pale skin, 135lbs, light-green eyes, straight auburn hair over her shoulders
Joyce, Female, early-80s
- Wife of Herman, grandmother of Audrey, mother of Theresa
- 5’6, beige skin, 115lbs, bobbed salt-and-pepper hair
Herman, Male, early-80s
- Husband of Joyce, grandfather of Audrey, father of Theresa
- 6’0, beige-olive skin, 180lbs, thin short gray hair
Duncan, Male, late-60s
- Father of Audrey, husband of Theresa
- 5’7, pale skin, 175lbs, dark-brown cropped hair
Theresa, Female, mid-50s
- Mother of Audrey, wife of Duncan
- 5’7, pale skin, 150lbs, shoulder-length auburn hair
Gwen, Female, 15
- High school student, daughter of Darren, sister of Victoria
- 5’5, beige skin, 130lbs, shoulder-length wavy black hair
Victoria (Vic), Female, 14
- Eighth-grade student, daughter of Darren, sister of Gwen
- 5’3, beige skin, 115lbs, wavy neck-length light-brown hair

We were up again around ten-thirty that evening. It was an odd schedule for me. I never much napped, and to sleep during daylight hours felt wrong. But it had been a very stressful few days, for many reasons, and I’d wanted to do nothing more than hold my young lover in her bed and bring her whatever comfort I could as she went through the difficult period following the announcement that her father was terminally ill and wouldn’t live much longer.

We crept out of the bedroom together, clothed again, and nothing stirred. I didn’t really know what we should do. It was too late to go anywhere, yet the claustrophobia that such sadness and distress could cause was sinking into both of us. Getting out of the house seemed to be something we each needed, if only to put some distance from those anguish-filled moments with her mom and dad and from the knowledge that cancer would take Duncan from Audrey long before his life should have ended.

Audrey grabbed us each a bottle of soda from the fridge and we left the house. I stood in the driveway a moment, uncertain where we were going.

“Want to just drive?” Audrey suggested.

“Yeah,” I replied, “good idea.”

It was chilly out, and I let us warm up in the rental a moment before I put the car in drive and backed out into the road. The navigation in the dash kept up with our location, but since I’d never been to Buffalo before, it was mostly meaningless to me. I just pointed us in a new direction from time to time and kept us moving.

Audrey was quiet. I took her hand in mine and held it tight. She started to cry. I pulled off of a main road into the parking lot beside a closed-down bakery, the sign in the window offering a number to call to buy or lease the building. The car still running, I pulled Audrey to me and held her while she sobbed.

It was only a few minutes later that a series of heavy taps on the window made me jump with fright. My eyes wide, I looked out the steamed-up window and could just make out a police officer standing in a cautious pose, one hand resting just above his holstered pistol.

I slowly rolled down the window.

His eyes cast inside, quickly scanning us, then he said, “Everything alright, folks?”

Audrey was still crying, but looking frightened, too. The sudden, unexpected appearance of the cop and his heavy tapping on the glass was quite unsettling. She looked both sad and scared at the same time. I suppose we looked like something awful might have been happening. In many ways, that was true, but not in the ways the officer probably suspected.

“Not really,” I said, trying to steady my voice. “She just found out her father is terminally ill ... we needed to get out of the house for a bit ... Not a fun day...”

The officer steadied his gaze at me. “License and registration.”

I slowly pulled out my wallet and handed my Texas license to him, then said, “This is a rental, not sure where the registration would be.”

He eyed my license a moment, then said without looking up, “Hand me your rental agreement.”

I found it in the glove box and passed it through the window.

The officer glanced up and looked at Audrey. “She have any id?”

The teen shook her head, “I don’t have anything with me.”

“Step out of the car and come follow me,” he told Audrey, then said to me, “you wait right here.”

Audrey looked frightened, not moving, then I said, “It’s okay. He’s just making sure you’re alright. I’ll be right here.”

She nodded and finally got out of the passenger’s side, closing the door softly behind her. The officer disappeared behind my car.

I waited, nervously. It wasn’t that I thought the cop would get Audrey to tell all about us. But I’d never much enjoyed being detained by anyone. I’d never been arrested, but it still made me wonder what might happen.

A tap on the window a moment later was immediately followed by the passenger side door opening. I rolled my window down as Audrey got into the car and closed the door.

The cop pushed my license and the rental agreement through and I took them with slightly-twitching fingers. “Sorry for disturbing you, folks,” the man said, much more softly than before, “I hope things work out for the best.”

I nodded and he walked back to his car while I closed us back in the heated compartment.

“Did he ask you what was going on?” I said to Audrey.

She nodded, replying, “He wanted to know why I was crying, and who you were. I told him about Dad, but all I said about you was that you were a friend from Texas who had come to help us.”

“Okay,” I said. “Scared?”

“A little.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, taking her hand, “me too. Never fun to be have a cop asking you questions.”

She nodded, then said, “I suppose that’s okay. He’s just making sure nothing bad was going on.”

“You’re right,” I replied. “Listen, why don’t we go find something to eat.”

“Okay.”

I checked my map app to see what might still be open. Mostly, it was just sports bars, so I picked one nearby and drove there in silence. We pulled into a place called The Red Zone and went inside.

The place was half full, a few seats available at the bar along one wall, several tables empty on the floor in the main restaurant. Multiple televisions on each wall showed a variety of sports programs, including professional basketball and hockey as well as collegiate softball, a couple of others showing highlights shows.

The hostess settled us at a small table near the back of the place and Audrey and I sat down, ordering ginger ale and a scotch, respectively. I could see that Audrey’s eyes were stuck on one of the screens and I looked up. The television showed North Carolina State batting against UCLA in the bottom of the seventeenth inning. I remembered that Audrey played high school softball.

“Gonna try out when you get to college?”

“Maybe,” she replied, “but I would rather play baseball.”

“Will they let you?”

“The school didn’t here. But I practice with the boys sometimes, I know I can play.”

“What position are you?” I asked.

“In softball, I pitch and play shortstop. Just shortstop for baseball. I don’t want to pitch.”

“I bet you’re a good shortstop.”

“Why do you say that?”

I shrugged. “You’re good at anything you set your shoulders behind.”

Audrey gave me a tired smile. “Yeah. I’m all-state the last two seasons. Might be Player of the year when this season ends.”

“I figured. I’d love to watch you play sometime.”

She stared at me. “My last game in May, if we make it far in the playoffs ... maybe you can come up and visit?”

“I’d like that, but...”

Audrey frowned, “But you can’t promise me.”

“Yeah...”

She grew silent a moment, then said, “They’re recruiting me, you know.” When it was clear to her I didn’t know what she meant, she added, “UCLA. They want me to come play softball for them. They offered a scholarship, but I don’t need it. A bunch of others have given me offers, too.”

“Eyeing any?”

“Just one.”

“Which?” I asked.

“University of Houston.”

I watched her face, then had to ask, “Audrey ... is that just because of me?”

She shook her head. “No, no ... I’ve been thinking about it a few months. Before you. I like their biotech program, and their coach is pretty cool. He visited me a couple of months ago. I told him I wanted to play baseball, not softball, but she didn’t take me seriously. I sent the baseball coach an email, but he hasn’t responded.”

“I know a couple of people who work for UoH’s athletics department,” I told her, “maybe I can ask around, see what they could do.”

“That would be so great,” Audrey said, looking slightly less sad. “I’m really good. I can hit a fastball. And the curve.”

“They’d be crazy not to want you.”

After our drinks and some sweet potato fries, I drove us home. We were both pretty weary. Inside, Theresa was sitting in the living room and sipping hot tea. She eyed us as we came in. “Aury, you okay?” she asked when she saw her daughter’s face.

Audrey told her what had happened with the cop.

“She was crying. I was just holding her,” I assured the woman when she questioned whether we doing something worthy of being busted.

“Okay,” Theresa told us. “Give me a hug. Both of you. I’m about to head to bed again.”

We hugged her and then Audrey kissed her goodnight before we went back to the teen’s bedroom. We stripped to nothing and got under the covers. Against me, her back to my chest, Audrey was asleep in minutes, and I wasn’t far behind.

I woke from one of those dreams where things felt chaotic, disorganized, like I was behind schedule and failing to meet expectations. I didn’t recall the details, but it shook me awake in the darkness. I could hear Audrey breathing evenly. We hadn’t moved since we’d gotten into bed.

I started to stretch my legs and realized Audrey’s nether down was tickling my penis. I wrapped my arm around her body and hugged her to me tight. She sighed and turned her head halfway back to me, “Darren...” she said quietly. Her hips shifted and I knew she felt the contact below. It made me pulse and begin to grow hard.

I humped against Audrey’s butt very slowly, gently, kissing her shoulder, her arm, whispering my love for her in her ear. She started to stir and move with me. Moments later, her hand moved between us and her fingers guided my hard cock into her tight, little vagina.

Warm, wet velvet slid down my length, and I surged, stretching all my muscles at the amazing sensation. Audrey moaned as I sank into her, and her body yielded enough to let me fully inside. We began to rut gently, more kisses of her flesh, more sweet words. My fingers caressed her young breasts, the teen’s nipples hardening and so warm against my palms. I slid a hand down between her legs and touched her sensitive clit. Audrey moaned, and for long moments she slowly built to orgasm as we mated with no rush.

Audrey started to cum, soft and sweet, not crying out or thrashing. She was quivering, “Ohhh,” and a high, loose moan escaped her lips, “oooohhhmmmmmoooohhmmmmm...”

I felt her vagina tighten around me. I’d been edging inside her for many minutes, and as the teen’s creamy wetness spread over my length, I throbbed my semen into the girl’s pussy, long, powerful streams of cum filling her small channel. I kissed her shoulder, holding there as I finished ejaculating, my pleasure tightly wrapped up in the heat of Audrey’s vagina and her flesh and her soft, sweet moans.

We didn’t move much, then, just small kisses and touches, her little hole tightly cradling my half-hard cock and letting it feel perfectly content inside her body as occasional drops of my cum drooled out and down between us.

We fell asleep at some point, and I awoke again to find myself alone in bed. It was after dawn based on the low light already glowing beyond the curtains. I stretched and stood slowly, feeling my age a bit that morning. The house was cool, so I dressed quickly and slipped out of the room to find Audrey.

The smells from the kitchen drew me quickly. Long before I stepped close enough to see what was being made, I could tell there was coffee and bacon, fresh baked goods of some kind, and a citrus as well. I stepped in to see Duncan wheeled up to the table, sipping coffee. He nodded at me quietly, then turned back to reading a newspaper. Theresa was pressing orange-halves into a juicer while Audrey pulled a hot metal container out of the oven.

My lover saw me and smiled. I dared to walk to her after she sat the pan aside and I gave her a quick kiss on the lips. It felt odd to do so with the teen’s mother and father there, but it felt like the right thing to do. “Anything I can help with?”

“Nope,” Audrey told me, “It’s about ready. This is one of Dad’s favorites.”

Theresa put her hand on my arm and smiled, offering me a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. I took it and sat at the table. Soon, a plate with bacon, blueberries, and a thick slice of steaming cinnamon-raisin bread was in front of each of us. We dug into the delicious breakfast heartily, even Duncan. The man ate everything before him and even accepted an offer of another slice of the sweet, warm bread.

“So the plan today is to forget the bad,” Duncan told us after we’d finished the meal, “and have some fun together. How’s that sound?”

Audrey replied, “Okay. What will we do?”

“Do you know Euchre, Darren?”

“Vaguely,” I replied, “I know Spades.”

“Similar,” Duncan said, nodding, “why don’t we play a few hands to get you up to speed, then let’s play for real.” The man had a smile on his face.

“Sounds great.”

We spent the next few hours playing Euchre, then had fruit, granola, yogurt, and more of the cinnamon-raisin bread for lunch. Audrey broke out Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit when the snow started falling out of nowhere early in the afternoon. Long into the day, the four of us enjoyed each other’s company and let the simmering sadness hang back, not wholly forgotten, but not pressing and insistent, either.

The night brought us a round of hugs and an early bedtime.

“Hi, Daddy,” Victoria’s voice said into my ear from my cell. I was pacing slowly on the porch after breakfast on Saturday. The snow had stopped in the night and the day was warm enough to have it almost melted in mid-morning.

“How you doing, kiddo?”

“Alright. It still hurts, but it’s better, I guess. Sucks, though.”

“Yeah, I know it sucks. Anything I can do for you?” I asked my daughter.

“Nope, just wanted to say hi. Aunt Viv got us tickets on a Monday flight.”

“Wonderful,” I replied, “I can’t wait to see you girls. I miss you.”

“How is Audrey’s dad?”

“Not well,” I told my daughter. I briefly explained things but tried not to give away how much sadness had been felt in the past few days. “I don’t know what might happen, but for now, he’s okay.”

“When are you going home?”

“Um,” I said. I’d been trying to deny that I’d have to leave soon. I felt a raw burn in my gut to think I’d have to leave Audrey to go back to Texas. “Not sure. I’ll ... What time is your flight getting into Houston? I’ll try to be home by the time you get in.”

“Uh, around noon, I think,” Vic told me.

“Okay. I should probably see about getting me a ticket, too, then. Love you, Vicky.”

“You too, Dad.”

It was with numb fingers that I punched the purchase button on the travel site’s checkout page. I’d booked the only flight which would give me as much time as possible in Buffalo and still get me home before the girls. It meant leaving for the airport around six in the evening on Sunday, getting me into Houston around eleven that night.

Audrey was sitting next to me in the living room while her parents napped. The teen’s eyes were trembling, and her lips quivered. She knew it meant I was going home in about a day. As soon as I finished my purchase, I closed the laptop and wrapped Audrey in my arms. “Shhh,” I said, trying to keep her tears from flowing, “I promise we’ll see each other soon, and we’ll talk every day.”

“Twice a day,” she demanded, clenching her teeth to keep her composure, “and I’ll send you twenty texts a day and a Facetime and if you have Skype, I’ll—”

“I promise,” I cut her off. “You’ll get sick of me we’ll talk so much.”

“No I won’t. I will never get sick of you.”

“You should talk to my daughters. They have lots of practice getting sick of me.”

That made her laugh, then we kissed before she replied, “So what do we do until then?”

My eyes met hers and it took no explanation for the teen to rise and lead me to her bedroom. In moments, our clothes were off and her mouth was sliding, gently, down over my shaft. Her soft lips felt amazing and I groaned in pleasure, giving myself permission to not think about the looming departure the following day. Audrey’s head bobbed slowly and she seemed to be focused on every throb, every pulse which came from her attention.