Chapter 11

Bink’s turn:

So I guess this is the way it’s gonna be. I mean, the standard dream is to grow up, marry your guy, have a house and kids, et cetera.

We kinda bent that. Three of us. Me. Mandy. And our connection, Ben, who was already my ‘silly little girl’ crush before I reached puberty.

I know I was supposed to spend twelve years in school and four years in college.

School stopped a week ago. My family – me, Mandy and Ben – spent a day plotting a short cruise, another day loading out the boat, and then we left the marina for the open sea.

Well, not TOO open.

“Shakedown cruise,” Ben said. “See how we can do with an overnight on the water.”

Since you already know we’ve spent the night together on the boat, you can see that he has something else in mind. Our goal was Corpus Christi on the middle of the Texas Gulf Coast, and while we know we could get there safely just puttering right up the Gulf Coast Intracoastal Waterway, commonly called ‘The Intracoastal’ among boaters down here, Ben had a different route in mind.

“We run out into the Gulf,” he said. “About fifteen miles offshore, we turn southwest, go about a hundred eighty miles, then turn back inward and find that marina in Corpus Christi.”

“Sounds good,” Mandy concurred.

“So basically we parallel the coast, about fifteen or twenty miles out.”

“Yes,” Ben replied. “And we travel around the clock. So that means somebody’s going to be at the helm the whole time. Now, what do we expect for that stretch of the gulf?”

“Offshore platforms,” I said.

“Marine traffic. Workboats. Ships.” Mandy smiled. “All sorts of things to avoid.”

“Exactly. That means that whoever’s in the pilothouse has got to be paying attention.” Ben surveyed our faces. “Can we do this?”

Mandy nodded seriously. “Absolutely. We can start the watch at, like, nine in the evening, two get to rest while one is in the pilothouse. By about seven in the morning, we should have the two free ones back awake. So three four-hour watches is more than enough.”

“We gotta be serious about this,” Ben repeated. “There’re too many hazards. If you don’t think you’re up to it, we can try something different.”

Mandy got serious. “We HAVE to do this. We’re looking at a cruise to the Windward Islands.”

Yep. We’d all spent some time looking at the charts. The Ada Z. is just crying to carry us around the Caribbean and some of those legs, the way we wanted to do it, required a couple of nights’ cruise. We can island-hop, and we planned on that, but we wanted to go over to Key West, then do some of the Bahamas, then down to Puerto Rico, then hit the islands, probably starting after Christmas. We’re waiting on passports for that.

So all that means this: My personal fairy tale life has taken a very unusual turn. A GOOD unusual turn.

After a couple of weeks of living with my new mates, Mom asked me point blank, “Are you having second thoughts? Regrets? Because you always have a home here, baby.”

“Mom, I love you. But I haven’t had the tiniest twinge of regret besides those ‘I miss my Mom’ kind. And we see y’all all the time.” Which is the truth. We all get together at least once a week for dinner. Mandy and I even cooked the whole thing that one time, right down to home-made yeast rolls. Okay, we did use a bread machine for part of that, but hey, we got ‘em out of the oven.

I won’t go back voluntarily. Can a fourteen year old girl-child be wrapped up into forever love? With TWO people? I have an answer that works for me: Yes.

It’s family. MY family. Aside from not having legal documents (and three-way marriages don’t GET legal documents) it’s husband and wives. I’m completely safe there, as long as you consider marital relationships, COMPLETE relationships, including all the delicious sticky parts, as ‘safe’.

Believe me, we’d done just about everything I ever dreamed, and I can tell you that with me and Ben and Mandy all working together, my range of dreams expanded a bit, all sorts of interesting and wonderful tastes and textures and feelings. We’re mates. Lovers. Mandy and I both know it’s a marriage between us and Ben. It’s all very solemn and serious underneath the giggles and sighs, the pure joy of discovering your sexuality with people you love.

Mom’s asked me, and that’s what I told her. She, being all motherly, warned me that I was the result of HER having those kind of feelings, but my ‘father’, AKA ‘The Sperm Donor’ didn’t have the same feelings.

“Mom, you know Mandy and Ben. Where do you think they’d ever hurt me? Or each other? Because it’s the three of us, formed together like that over the whole time since Mandy and I stayed in the same crib.”

“I believe you, honey,” she replied. “You just need to be really careful. Your age ... And your pills...”

“Got it, Mom. I don’t want to even think about kids right now.”

“You’re still one yourself.”

“I know, Mom. In some ways, yeah. But others, well, we’ve made a lifetime decision.”

I recounted the gist of the conversation later with Ben and Mandy. We do that. No secrets. Open. I mentioned the comment about babies. We’ve talked. My opinion is that this family NEEDS to replicate in the interests of staving off societal decline.

“You sound like me!” Mandy chirped. “And yes, after you’re officially married, and like, eighteen or something...” she giggled. “You get pregnant, then about seven months later I get pregnant.”

Ben was watching our faces. “That’s a plan.”

“We’ll be good parents,” Mandy said. “We learned, right?”

“Yes,” Ben answered.

After that, things got serious. I love being loved.

So, boat trip! Very well planned out. Lists of necessities collected. Packing. Careful inventory of the boat and its equipment and supplies, including replacing a set of expired flares for the flare gun.

The Coast Guard has a list of things a boat’s supposed to have. Some of them, like signal flares, a horn, life preservers, make perfect sense. Some, like a required placard about discharging waste overboard, smack of bureaucracy at its worst. But since the Coast Guard can board you at any time and inspect for those things, we make sure our boat is properly equipped.

And we’re off. A month into this thing, I wish I could say I am as familiar with our boat as I am with Mandy and Ben, but then I don’t sleep in the same bed with the boat. Still, I can handle docklines and engine starting and motoring out of the marina and into the ship channel and what I should do about traffic and buoys and things.

And this time I’m in the pilothouse while Ben and Mandy take care of stowing the docklines and fenders. We won’t be needing them again until we get to Corpus Christi. It’s a pleasant autumn day, headed for maybe eighty on the thermometer, the air dry from a recent frontal passage.

Yes, responsible boaters know about weather and pay attention to forecasts, especially in the Gulf of Mexico in hurricane season. We should be safe, though, although we might see some weather from that cold front that passed through. It stalled in the Gulf. It may or may not back up. It may hang around and dissipate.

It’s mid-afternoon when we get far enough out in the Gulf to make our westward turn.

Once we’re out of sight of land, clothes come off. They don’t HAVE to, really. We’re finding our way through this happy sexual freedom with each other, and clothes aren’t that much of an obstacle at all, but there’s this feeling of tantalizingly taboo nudity. At least that’s how I see my enjoyment of it.

‘See’ is quite a big part of it. I see my mates. Well, right now Ben’s sitting in the captain’s chair, at the helm, so I can’t see much more than his dark pubic hair. I could get him to turn, but no...

I can see my Mandy, my first lover, too, her body smoothly white, beautiful conical smallish breasts, those nipples, her own tuft of hair at the beginning of that delicious slit.

“Come kiss me, Mandy.”

Funny how a simple kiss can get my juices flowing.

Ben turned, saw us in each other’s arms. “So it’s gonna be like that,” he sighed.

Turned. I can see ALL of him now and he’s hard. One of his hands...

We made him show us how a guy masturbates once. It’s interesting. Of course we helped get him to a point where little effort was needed and then we helped clean up the mess afterward.

He strokes that wonderful thing and suddenly me and Mandy tighten our hug, my hand slipping down to her center, probing. She whimpers.

Ben’s stroking.

“Baby, don’t you dare get yourself off like that!” I demand.

“The two of you ... too much. You’re the most exciting thing I can imagine.”

“He’s juicing,” Mandy observed. “I got the last one.”

Fair’s fair. It’s MY turn. Mandy pushes his hand aside, strikes with hers. “Go sit over there. I’ll take the helm.”

He sits on the pilothouse settee. “Kiss me like you were kissing Mandy.”

If I do THAT, then naturally I spread my legs, a knee on either side of him and ... That’s where THAT goes.

We already know to fold a towel to fit the captain’s chair. Good thing. Mandy’s watching us, her hand between her legs, and she’s biting her bottom lip.

I giggle, kissing Ben. “D’ya know how much I love you?”

“Like forever, right?”

I wiggle, causing him to shake. “Yeah. Us. Forever. Me, you, Mandy.” Another deep kiss and he’s seriously into me and I’m bouncing and writhing, held in place by six inches of hot male.