Chapter 15

He described things he’d done with Barbie, first. He took a little license with the truth, so that he could describe things realistically.

“We were hanging out at my house,” he said, “and one of my sisters was hanging out with a guy she’d been out on some dates with. They were in the living room and ... um ... Sheryl and I were in the kitchen, making popcorn.”

“Sheryl? That’s her name?”

“Uh, yeah. And Sheryl whispered at me to come look, and when I did, Danny had my sister’s shirt up and was kissing her ... um ... chest.”

“You saw your sister’s breasts?“ gasped Monica.

“Yeah,” he said, wondering if it had been wise to use his sister in this story. But it was too late, now. “We’d seen each other naked lots of times, growing up,” he said.

“Of course,” said Monica, who had no idea what “normal” was for siblings growing up.

“So anyway, I was behind Sheryl and she kind of pulled my hands to her boobs, because she got excited watching them.”

“Which sister?” asked Monica.

“Julie,” said Bobby, who couldn’t think of any reason to lie about that.

“Julie,” said Monica, softly. “Okay, so Julie was getting her breasts kissed and Sheryl let you feel her breasts. Go on.”

“We just watched them, from the darkness,” said Bobby. “And whatever Danny did to Julie, Sheryl let me do to her.”

“And they had sex?! Right there in the living room?!“

“Not exactly,” said Bobby, who felt like things were going off the rails. “I mean they didn’t do it right then, in front of us. But we sort of kept an eye on them ... I guess.”

“But they did it? Danny and Julie?”

“Well, yeah, eventually,” said Bobby, who felt a little trapped. “She took him to her bedroom.”

“And you guys kept peeking?” Monica didn’t think it was odd that a teenager would peek at someone having sex, even if it was his own sister. She’d have peeked in a heartbeat if she’d ever had a chance, and it wouldn’t have mattered who it was she was peeking at.

“Sheryl wanted to,” he said, his voice nervous.

“I get that,” said Monica, who heard some reluctance creeping into his voice and wanted to banish that immediately. “I would have, too.”

“Really?” Suddenly, he felt better.

“Of course! How often do you get to see something like that?“

Bobby thought about porn, but then dismissed that idea. He hadn’t looked at porn since he started making love with his sisters.

“It was pretty exciting,” he admitted.

“I can imagine!” she gushed. “What then?”

“Well, we peeked until they got naked and then Sheryl wanted to go to my bedroom.”

“Where was everybody else? Your mom and dad? Your other sister?”

“Dad had been drinking,” said Bobby, trying to get back to a more factual plot for the story he was concocting. “He went to bed early. Barbie was out somewhere on a date of her own. Our mom died when we were little.”

“Ohhh, I’m so sorry,” said Monica, who felt a rush of sympathy for this boy she barely knew. She’d be completely lost without her mother, and couldn’t imagine having to grow up without her.

“We don’t really remember her, other than in pictures,” he said.

“Oh.” Suddenly, Monica didn’t want to prod him for more details. It felt unseemly, now that his loss had been brought up. She let him off the hook, by saying, “You don’t have to go on. I’m so sorry about your mom.”

“It’s okay,” he said, shrugging. “We have a great dad, and we sort of learned to take care of each other.”

“Oh,” said Monica. She was tongue-tied, suddenly.

Bobby, however, wasn’t, and he didn’t feel the loss Monica was feeling vicariously for him.

“So anyway, when we got to my bedroom, Sheryl said she was turned on, and we started making out. And I’d already been feeling her up, so I kept doing that.”

“Yes?” Monica’s heart rate increased, and she felt some excitement herself.

“And in a little while, she said she was hot, and took off her shirt.”

“And you could see her bra?”

“She wasn’t wearing one,” said Bobby.

Monica stopped her hands before they lifted to cover her own breasts. She saw Bobby’s eyes go to her T shirt and suddenly, she was more than excited. She was alone with a boy who was talking about his sort-of girlfriend’s naked breasts, and he was staring at hers, which were only covered by a thin layer of cloth.

“Did you ... kiss them?” she whispered.

He swallowed, and nodded.

“What did she do?” Monica was wondering what she would do, herself, if a man was kissing her naked breasts.

“Umm ... she liked it.”

Monica felt a shudder trip through her body, and was unable to stop her right hand from moving to the tip of her right breast. With horror, she watched his eyes follow her hand. She wanted to squeeze her suddenly itchy nipple, but managed to force her hand further, to scratch at her shoulder. She stood, and picked up her empty plate.

“Go on,” she mumbled, moving past him until her back was to him. Finally, she could reach to squeeze that itchy nipple. She almost moaned with relief as it was satisfied.

“Well, we kept making out and kind of got naked, somehow.”

Monica turned to reach for his plate, and he looked up, his eyes level with her breasts. Now the other nipple crinkled. She’d been worried about being able to force herself to let this boy do things to her, but that fear was gone. She was definitely turned on, and letting Bobby touch her was no longer something with disagreeable overtones.

“Was it fun?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” he sighed. His mind took him back to that night, and the truth bubbled out of him. “And then, all of a sudden, she got on top of me and just put it in her and sat down.”

“No!” gasped Monica.

“For real,” he said. “I didn’t even know she was going to do it!”

“What did it feel like?” Monica needed to squeeze her nipples again, and since he was still staring at her empty chair, she did so, feeling almost weak with the joy of it.

“Actually, it hurt, at first,” said Bobby.

“Wait. It hurt you? I thought it was only supposed to hurt the girl.”

“It hurt her, too. She was really tight, and it stretched things.”

“Stretched things? What does that mean?”

Bobby suddenly felt awkward. They were moving now from a description of lust into a more biological lesson. Talking about body parts in America is never easy, for some reason.

“It stretched the ... um ... skin on my ... um...” he trailed off.

“The skin on your what?” she asked. Monica had never studied the male organ. Sex education in Wide Ford was minimal and very birds and bees oriented.

“This is weird,” he sighed.

“No it’s not,” she said. “We’re friends. You’re helping me understand things. I don’t feel weird and you don’t need to feel weird, either.”

“I guess I’m just not used to talking about my penis with a girl,” he said, his voice cracking a bit.

“Your penis? Is that what got stretched? I don’t understand. Wasn’t it hard?”

“Yes,” gasped Bobby. “Okay, gimme a second. I need to think.”

She gave him time by washing the dishes, neither of which was really very dirty. The lima bean juice washed right off. She cleaned the plates and silverware with her hands and the soap Mildred had in a container on the sink. Once they were all in the drainer, she returned to her seat.

“Please don’t feel like this is weird,” she said. “I’m really having a good time, learning about this. I never got to talk like this before, and like you said, we’re both adults. We should be able to talk like this with no problem.”

He stared at her. She was cute, in a tomboy sort of way. She was closer to being like Julie than Barbie, but that was no problem. He loved being with both his sisters. He jerked as he realized he was thinking about Monica “that” way, and stopped his eyes from going where they wanted to ... to her shirt. He decided that maybe a biology lesson might calm him down.

“Do you know what a foreskin is?” he asked.

“I’ve heard of it,” she said.

“It, um, covers the tip of the penis. I don’t know what it’s for, biologically speaking. Maybe it’s because the tip is really sensitive, and if it was uncovered, then the guy would be ... um ... exposed to it being rubbed a lot. By his clothes, I mean.”

She stared, and waited.

“Okay, so anyway, the foreskin is real stretchy, and it moves, so that the head is uncovered.”

“During sex?” said Monica.

“Yeah,” said Bobby, deciding not to complicate things by bringing up masturbation.

“So that’s what got stretched?”

“Yeah,” sighed Bobby. “Barbie sat down on me too quick, and she was so tight that it felt like the skin there was being ripped.”

“Barbie?” Monica’s radar lit up.

“I mean Sheryl,” he groaned. “I don’t know why I said Barbie.”

“Okay,” said Monica, whose Spidey senses were still flaring. What an odd mistake to make. But she didn’t want to interrupt the flow of this stop-and-go story. “So how did you fix it?”