Chapter 10

Harper was not happy, of course. I’m a little ashamed that I wasn’t in the same mood. Part of me enjoyed painting Hannah’s breasts with my cum, even if they weren’t bare. Part of me is also ashamed that I was glad Hannah had abused her poor little girl, because part of me had really wanted to spurt way up there in Harper’s defenseless womb.

In other words, I felt like I had dodged a bullet.

Harper, on the other hand, felt like somebody had taken her to the gun range and handed her a pistol filled only with blanks. There were no holes in the target, so to speak, and the whole exercise had ended up being less than what she’d hoped for.

Of course (and I realize I’m deluging the reader with analogies) this whole thing had been a bit like deciding to drive really fast, just for the thrill of it, and then losing traction and spinning out of control. In that situation your hopes undergo a rather rapid and unstructured metamorphosis, ending up in the hope that, somehow, you’ll come out of this wild ride in one piece.

“Why’d you do that?!” howled Harper, when her tousled head appeared above the edge of the mattress.

“I’m sorry,” said Hannah, relieved that she hadn’t injured her progeny. “He was about to ejaculate.”

“That fast?” Harper’s right eyebrow rose like Spock’s might have upon perceiving something entirely illogical.

“Men can get very excited, very quickly,” explained Hannah.

“That wasn’t anything like I thought things are supposed to work out,” Harper complained, standing up and rubbing an elbow that had impacted the floor.

“It will be better next time,” said Hannah. “Actually, compared to what a lot of women go through during their first time, you were lucky.”

“Lucky!” snorted Harper.

“Let’s get cleaned up and then we can sit down and discuss all this,” suggested Hannah, looking down at the stains on her shirt.

“What happened to you?” asked Harper.

“He spurted as soon as you were off of him. I was over him when that happened.”

“Oh!” said Harper, who I think realized how close she had come to experiencing another new thing that day, principally what it felt like to be fertilized.

“I’m really sorry,” I finally got in. I was still panting gently.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” said Harper. She frowned. “Except get too excited.”

“You excite me,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. I’d probably have been better off if I hadn’t added, “You both do.”

“Men,” sighed Hannah, looking down at me.

“Well, you do,” I defended. “Am I supposed to lie?”

“Do you want me to get you a washcloth, or do you just want to take another shower?” asked Hannah.

She was referring to the portion of my ejaculate that hadn’t hit her breasts, and had landed in various places on my abdomen. Then there were the drying juices on my face. It was easier to jump in the shower, rinse off, and then get dressed, so that’s what I did.

I found mother and daughter, fully clothed, eating brownies at the kitchen table. I felt out of place, like an interloper, intruding on them, but I got a brownie and joined them anyway.

“You okay?” I asked Harper.

“I’m a little sore, but fine,” she said, shrugging off adversity with aplomb.

“You?” I asked, turning to Hannah.

“I’m trying to deal with how bizarre that all was,” she said. “I don’t feel like running from the house, screaming, so I guess I’m doing okay.”

“I wish I could tell someone about this,” said Harper. “This would make a fabulous book: ‘How I lost my virginity and broke my elbow at the same time’.”

“I tried to tell you that this kind of relationship is complex,” said Hannah.

“I get it,” said Harper.

“Are you sorry it happened?” asked Hannah, carefully.

“Not at all,” said Harper. “It was fun.”

“Fun?” I asked through a mouthful of brownie.

“I feel like I went to Disneyland and rode all the rides or something,” said Harper. “And I didn’t have to wait in line.” She grinned.

“I’m relieved you feel that way,” said Hannah.

“You said it would be better next time,” said Harper. “Did you mean it? I mean will there be a next time?”

“Of course,” said Hannah. “The time will come that you’ll meet someone and everything will click and it will be wonderful.”

“I meant with Bob, Mom,” said Harper.

“Oh.”

“I’m surprised you’d want another go-round,” I said.

“Are you kidding? Other than the fact that it went all goofy at the end, I loved it,” said Harper.

“I thought it hurt,” I reminded her.

“That? That was nothing,” said Harper. “My elbow hurts more than that did.”

“Right,” I said, thinking about what I’d heard about the hormones that make a woman forget the pain of childbirth, so she’ll be willing to go through it again.

“I don’t want there to be a problem between you two, though,” said Harper. “I was just thinking there could be one more time where things are planned a little better and nobody knocks me off the bed.”

Hannah’s response to her daughter’s stated desire to have sex with me again was met with her usual stop-gap defense: “We’ll talk about it.”

As for me, the whole situation had been very exciting and I had cum. I was sedate. Such circumstances are one of the few times a man isn’t thinking about how soon he can get a woman into bed again.

That lasted about half an hour, though, which is probably also normal. Harper had gone off to her studio, leaving Hannah and me alone in the kitchen. There was what they call “a pregnant silence” between us. Maybe that’s because both of us realized how close things had come to “pregnant” being employed in a different manner. Or maybe we were just reacting to the oddity of the whole situation. Hannah and I had both been raised in a culture that frowned on what had just taken place ... in more than one way.

Eventually, though, we were able to let our eyes meet without looking away immediately.

“Tell me how you feel?” I finally asked.

“I have no idea,” she said.

“Understandable,” I said.

“How about you?” she asked.

“I could tell you, but I don’t think you’d appreciate it,” I said, truthfully.

“You enjoyed it,” she said.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Maybe I’m not normal.”

“Not being a man, I wouldn’t know about that,” she said. “Something jaded in me suspects, though, that any other man would have done the same thing.”

“This still feels surreal,” I said. “It’s hard to believe things got to this point. I sure didn’t expect anything like this to happen, if that helps.”

“I am conflicted,” she said, getting up to go to the Keurig machine.

“Go on,” I said.

“I want to be happy because you and I are finally on what I feel is the right path,” she said, turning around to lean against the counter as the machine hissed and whirred. “But ... when it comes to Harper, I feel like things are out of control.”

“I think that’s valid,” I said.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said.

“I hope that doesn’t mean you’re having second thoughts about marrying me.”

“No!” she said, pushing off of the counter. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

“Good,” I said, meaning it on a visceral level.

She came over to me, abandoning her freshly brewed cup of coffee and moved me back until she could straddle me and sit down. Her weight felt good on my thighs and my hands went to her waist, wanting to touch her. It was just like when Harper had done it ... except it was totally different. I loved them both, but in very different ways.

“I love you,” she said. “I want to be with you for as long as we can.”

“It is impossible for me to communicate how good that makes me feel,” I said.

“But what do we do about Harper?”

“Beats me,” I admitted. “I don’t have a lot of experience being a parent.”

“She doesn’t want you to be a parent,” said Hannah. “She wants you to be ... something else.”

“Maybe for a little while,” I said. “She’ll grow out of it.”

“Maybe,” said Hannah, putting her hands on my shoulders. “But what if she doesn’t?”

“Doesn’t?”

“What if she wants you like I want you?”

“She already said it would be ridiculous for me to show up with her at prom,” I said.

“Bob, I know how I feel when you’re on top of me,” said Hannah. “That’s not just because I haven’t been laid for half a decade. I love it because it’s you doing it. And you mean as much to her as you do to me. If we let her keep going, she’s going to love doing that with you for the same reasons I do.” She frowned. “I don’t think she’s going to want to give that up once she’s found out how beautiful it can be.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Then again, maybe she’ll start looking at boys her own age through different eyes. And in a couple of years she’ll go off to college and a whole new world will open up for her. You said I mean as much to her as I do to you, but the relationship I’ve had with you and her was different on lots of levels. I’ve always been her pal, her buddy. With you, we’ve been closer to partners. Even if she wants to keep exploring, maybe it will just be a friends-with-benefits kind of thing.”

Hannah closed her eyes for a few seconds and then opened them.

“I was just envisioning you sleeping in my bed one night, and hers the next.”

“Not at all,” I said. “It would be more like you and me sleeping in our bed twenty-nine nights a month and Harper getting to romp and play on the others.”

“You’re loving this,” accused Hannah.

“Look,” I said. “Like I said, I won’t lie. I love both of you - in different ways, but I still love you both. Does the idea of being able to interact with both of you ... like that ... appeal to me? Sure. But that’s just the male in me. Harper is going to grow up and have a life and give you grandchildren with a great guy we haven’t met yet. She’s going to leave the nest and that part of her life with me will become what I hope will be a happy memory. Then it will be just you and me and that will exceed my wildest dreams.”

“Just you and me,” she said. The look on her face revealed the complexity of her thought process. I had just referenced her little girl leaving the nest, something that causes angst in any parent. The other side of that coin, though, was being in a relationship again, one that offered to fill the holes in her life.

“Unless you continue to resist going on the pill,” I said, suddenly thinking about sex again.

Her eyes focused on me and she sat there, just looking at me.

“I don’t think I want to do that,” she said.

“Continue to resist?”

“No, go on the pill.”

“That makes me feel ... trepidation,” I said.

“Why? You don’t want children?”

“I love children,” I said. “I guess I just never thought any of them would be mine.”

“You’re worried about being a parent.”

“I guess.”

“Don’t,” she said with finality. “You have more experience at that than you think.”

“Harper?” I smiled. “I got to do the fun part of helping someone be a parent. I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more to it than that.”

“Of course there is, but you’ll be good at it. And it’s easier when there are two parents there all the time.”

I thought about it for a little bit.

“Why the urgency?” I asked.

She thought about that for a little bit.

“It’s hard to explain,” she said. “When we finally ... came together ... I felt all sorts of things. Joy ... relief that you weren’t gay ... hope?”