Chapter 83

“There might have been a little crying. But mostly ... she danced.”
—Cora Carmack, Losing It

“AMO, AMAS, AMAT. I love, you love, he, she, or it loves.” I figured that if I didn’t retain anything else from my Latin class, I’d remember that for as long as I live. I love. Rachel amo. Beca amo. Joan amo. Desi amo. Livy amo. Em amo. Brittany amo. Et diligere caritatem. I love to love. Amo amari. I love to be loved. Ego sum plena stercore. I am full of shit.

No matter how I cut it, I was daydreaming through my classes thinking of my girlfriends and impatient for Saturday afternoon when we’d all be together for our study group. It was nice that Livy had no basketball games the first week of the semester. Of course, her team was practicing every afternoon, but so was I. In fact, Thursday, she called dibs for taking me home after our practices and drove me straight to her house. It was really getting too cold to park—especially in the Wrangler.

“Taking a shower!” she called to her brother and sister in the living room. They watched us disappear down the hall giggling.

“Are you saying you want me to scrub your back?”

“Yeah. And every other part of my body you can reach. You can reach my body, can’t you, Jacob?”

“Every part, Livy, my love.” I proceeded to wash her back and her pretty tits and under her arms and between her legs. The whole time, we stayed connected lip-to-lip and tongue-to-tongue. Eventually, we connected cock to pussy. Once in the shower and again on her bed. When we finally came out of her room, her mother met us in the hallway.

“You’ll have dinner here, Jacob,” Eva said. “Livy can take you home after we have a nice family meal.”

“Um ... family meal,” I repeated blankly. With Livy and her parents, Eva and Randall. And with Donnie and Barb, her younger siblings. I wondered if I was going to be the main course or just an appetizer.

It turned out to be just fine, though Barb and Donnie periodically looked at the two of us across the table and snickered. Just wait, brats. Your time will come. Before Livy took me home, Randall called me aside.

“It’s getting cold out here,” he said. “Are you managing to keep running every day?” We stood on the deck and he lit one of those propane heat lamps. A few snow flurries melted in the heat. That’s all we’d had so far this season. Nothing was stuck to the ground.

“Yes, sir. Nanette, my running partner, picks me up each morning and we usually go over to The Plex to run on the track,” I said. In fact, running with Nanette every morning was one of the great parts about having the holiday behind us and returning to some sense of ‘normal.’ We’d been working intensely on interval training and she was trying to get my mile time down under six minutes. This morning I was only a second off.

“I suppose it seems a little strange that we’re so accepting of you and Livy,” Randall said. “Or of Rachel and Livy. Or ... any of the others. I can imagine what would have happened if I’d gone to Eva’s house and was having sex when her parents got home. Eva and I might have stayed together, but we wouldn’t have children.”

“Why is it, sir? Not that I don’t appreciate it. It’s difficult for us to get together even under the best of circumstances.”

“You probably don’t realize it, but not all of us are equally in favor of the 28th amendment. Basically, it changed everything that everyone in our generation grew up believing. Our parents and grandparents fought in wars and some of them were drafted right out of high school. But it wasn’t the norm. And no matter what you hear about soldiers getting ‘Dear John’ letters, they were rare. Most of the men came home to their high school sweethearts, got married, and lived miserably ever after. I’m kidding about that.”

“I have an uncle who...” I started. What had Uncle Dave fought in? It wasn’t World War II in this timeline. But was it Vietnam? Or Afghanistan? Why hadn’t anyone mentioned him since I woke up? “He never could stay married,” I finished lamely.

“Well, it’s worse now. The amendment was sold to us under false pretenses, which should be a lesson to your generation about how things are worded. The amendment just dictates that every American Citizen upon reaching the age of eighteen will serve two years of civilian or military service prior to his or her twenty-first birthday. It was the incoming congress that fixed the laws about how that would be implemented. No one anticipated how existing relationships would be affected. No one saw the intentional prevention of unions being formed. Or the poor wage that would be paid. Or the low level of post-secondary education that would be offered. Or the loss of jobs in the open market.”

“We’re supposed to be trained in skills we can use when we get out of Service,” I said.

“You could, if the next class of NS conscriptees wasn’t moving into the jobs you vacated as soon as your service ended. Did you know the number of non-Service persons currently engaged in road repair and construction has dropped by fifty percent since National Service began its infrastructure repair mandate? And none of those young people working on roads and learning heavy equipment can get jobs in that field when they leave.”

“Crap!”

“I’d put it more strongly than that,” Randall said. “Jacob, we don’t know what will happen to your pod over the next five years. Your parents and the parents of your girlfriends have met and we’ve agreed that we will support your natural growth together in any way we can. Um ... Not every parent considers sleeping with their daughter to be natural growth. But some of us believe that the only way we’ll survive the social disruption of 28 is to support the formation of a new society. Yours.”

“Thank you, sir. I never considered that National Service could create such a social upheaval.”

“I might suggest ... Jacob, you may lose a member or more than one member of your pod. Breakups are a fact of life. Hopefully, it will be before he or she gets tattooed,” he laughed. “We’ll support you through the hard times, too. But you might consider ... Well, just a thought. There are some advantages to having a range of ages in your pod. Right now, you are all fifteen to nineteen. Closing in on sixteen to nineteen. Think about the stability a broader age range could give you. Someone who’s already past Service age. Or, in the future, someone younger. I’m not a sociologist, but I’ve been doing some reading and the prevailing thought is that a broader age base in a multiple-person household gives a sense of stability that there is always someone to come back to, someone keeping the home fires burning, so to speak. Well, just a thought. I know your parents have said this and I add my voice to theirs. Act responsibly. You do that and the parents will do what they can to help.”

10 January 2020

I guess that puts it in perspective. I couldn’t believe how accepting the girls’ parents were of us having sex. Periodically, the old man inside me gets on a soapbox and lectures me about what an immoral bastard I’d become. “I didn’t come here to fornicate my way through life!” he’d yell. Oh, come on. Isn’t that what every SOL story is about? Of course he did. And the truth was, despite his old man pedophile guilt, he was never happier than when my cock is plunging into Livy or Rachel or Joan or Desi.

That doesn’t mean I don’t still have a protective instinct for the ‘girls’—especially Beca. Even though we have made out and touched each other, it was really for Joan’s benefit, wasn’t it? Beca’s a lesbian. I’m not going to violate her. That would be like...

Well, like Cindy. She’s fourteen and almost as small as Beca. I wonder where all the air comes from that she blows into her flute. I wouldn’t think her lungs could hold that much. The thing is, I would take a bullet for her. She has a future, a talent, a place to go. All I want with Cindy is to not mess things up for her. I need to be the best I can be when we’re playing our music. But beyond that? She’ll never be a member of our pod. She’s just too young.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, I could see having an older, more stable adult in our group. As long as she was as good with the girls as with me. Like Nanette. We’ve been talking while we run. A lot. She’s been divorced three years. No children. Happy with her job and devoted to running. And a little lonely. Lately, the friendly little kiss we’ve shared when she drops me off has been getting a little longer. Not passionate, but relaxed and comfortable.

I’ll just play it by ear. All the girls like her, even though she isn’t around them as much. An older woman would be good for our pod. And the old man inside wouldn’t feel guilty about her.

Old man? I hope the girls don’t start considering adding a man to our group. I don’t think I could take it. Or Beca.

“It’s game night at your house tonight,” Rachel said as she sat next to me. I wondered how the girls decided who was going to sit next to whom at lunch. I never thought about it, but it seemed like almost every day either Rachel or Beca was beside me. Today, Rachel was on my left and Livy next to her. Brittany was on my right and pressing against me like she was glued there. Across from us, Beca was sandwiched between Joan and Desi. But every day was different.

“Um ... is that going to be our date tonight?” I asked. I’d been thinking of something a little more intimate. I hadn’t been able to make love to Rachel since she spent the night last week. I was hoping for a repeat since our parents didn’t seem to mind. Too much.

“No. That’s our parents and little brother and sister’s date tonight,” she giggled. “I’m going to go over after school and help your mom get dinner ready. It’s not fair for her to rush home from work and try to fix a meal for guests on Friday night. You’ll have to get home after rehearsal on your own. And not via Livy’s house.”

“I thought you said you didn’t cook,” I said.