Chapter 220

“I don’t think there’s too much normal out there anymore. Though there’s still plenty of average to go around.”
—John David Anderson, Standard Hero Behavior

EVERYTHING RETURNED TO NORMAL. Except I had no fucking idea what that meant. I’d been caught up in politics and service reform for the past year and a half, ever since the president quoted my meme and I became an expert witness to the National Service Reform Commission. Maybe we’d been campaigning even before that—back when Cindy and I auditioned for the National School of the Arts. Or maybe before President di Marco took office when we did our rendition of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Maybe campaigning for change was my new normal.

That would suck.

We took Wednesday off and just quietly went about trying to piece together life in the huge house with our mates.

“It’s November,” Emily said.

“Yeah. And after that is December,” Desi said. “Do we get winter here in DC?”

“This is it,” Remas said. “Cold and wet with several inches of snow that can’t decide if it will stay or go.”

“Holidays,” Emily continued. “We need a plan for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And that means coordinating time off, as well. Are we going back to Indiana? Inviting parents here? Staying together? Splitting up? Or can we simplify things and just go on the road to tour again?”

“I never thought I’d hear that called simplifying things,” I said. “I’m pretty ambivalent about the date we celebrate things. I mean we were all here in town this weekend and together. We could have celebrated Christmas then. We all need to take care of family, though.”

“I think Jacob has the right idea,” Nanette said. “We can celebrate as a pod on any day we set aside as special. We need to take care of parents and siblings, though. I’m good with people staying here or going home, whichever suits your family best.”

“What about you, Nan?” I asked. “Do you have family to celebrate with?”

“I figure I’ll get an invite to be with one or two of my mates. My brother is in Alaska. I don’t think I want to try that trip.”

“You can come with me,” Brittany said brightly.

“I do hope so,” Nan answered with a twinkle in her eye.

We debriefed with Simon and Jo on Thursday. That amounted to Rachel, Em, Donna, Desi, Remas, Cindy, and me sitting around a table talking about the tour venues and what we liked or didn’t like about them. Mostly, I felt our style was better suited to the smaller venues. Playing in arenas and amphitheaters just strained the sound too much. We were primarily acoustic and adding pickups to the instruments was fine for recording but I didn’t like what it did to the music when pumped through an amp adequate to let 7,000 people hear.

The strange thing was that even in the wake of our election victory, no one said word one about anything I said during the concerts, starting the party, or campaigning for reform.

Jo had a list of dates for half a dozen performances before the end of the year—all local DC venues—and told us that aside from those, we were to take care of our responsibilities at the National School. I had expected her to be a lot more aggressive about booking us and she laughed at me.

“Don’t worry. There will be another tour. It’s just too hard to book it during the end of year holidays,” she said. “And your work at the National School is part of your service duty. Don’t think you can just goof off.”

So, we headed for the school after our meeting at the OCS.

“Cindy, your schedule will be the most rigid,” Dr. D said. “We need to get you to high school graduation by spring. We’ll pull out all the stops to help you get there, but you need to complete your senior English, Science, and Math requirements. That means classes and homework, in addition to lessons and practice on your instrument.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“To help you along, we’ve assigned Jacob to be your tutor and make sure you are caught up in all subjects.”

“Me?” I squeaked.

“Not only you. We’ve a couple of others to help, but you can make sure Cindy passes her exams and is ready to graduate. Of course, that’s not your only assignment. We’re auditioning two groups and two individuals in the next month for admission in January. We’ll want your input. I’ve also slated you for an actual class on arranging with Mr. Ferraro. And your lessons on guitar, mandolin, and viola da gamba. I think you’ll be plenty busy.”

No kidding. Desi already had her class schedule and went straight to it. Brittany and Sophie were focused on forming a new Young America Dance Company. Beca’s classes in marketing and web development were held at the University rather than the National School.

There was no time to sit around wondering what was normal.

Friday night, Cindy and I did a practice session broadcast to our patrons. Not to practice broadcasting, but broadcasting our practice. We’d been streaming all our performances over the past two months, but we hadn’t had an exclusive broadcast for patrons where we talked to them afterward. We discovered they really liked watching us practice and work together on new material. We did the stream right from our practice room in the house and had about 500 people tuned in. That’s nothing like the thousands we’d had before we started service, but at least we hadn’t significantly lost subscribers. After the practice we sat and chatted with patrons. Joan continued to do a great job of selecting and highlighting questions for us to answer.

“Jacob, now that you’ve had a victory in getting your party elected, what comes next? Are you planning to run for office?”

“No!” I laughed. “God forbid. I never intended to get so political in our performances or to start a political party. I just wanted to get the reform bill heard in congress. Cindy and I are musicians. We aren’t politicians. Politicians are people with flexible ethics. I wouldn’t last a minute.”

“Cindy, you’re always so quiet. Do you agree with Jacob’s political stand?”

“I’m quiet because I have a tiny little voice, not because I don’t have an opinion,” Cindy said. “Believe me that Jacob knows those opinions and what he’s said comes from both of us.”

“When are you going to start writing your own music?”

I looked at Cindy and she made a funny face and shrugged.

“Things have been so busy for us, we haven’t considered writing our own. I don’t know if we have that talent or not. If we can get through our first year of service and Cindy’s senior year in high school, I’ll see if I can get her to try her hand at it. I’m kind of a hack at that sort of thing.”

“You aren’t a hack,” Cindy contradicted me. “Sometimes we just jam and try things. Something might come of that eventually.”

It seemed like everyone had something going on all the time. We were a busy pod. Lyle met me at the door Saturday morning and the two of us took a leisurely run through Rock Creek Park. He was a good running companion and didn’t interrupt my thoughts with idle chatter. When I deviated from our normal pattern and crossed the creek to run on the other side, he was right with me. We had to run all the way to the south end of the park to find another bridge, so our run was more like fifteen miles than ten.

I got my shower and sat at the table with Amanda to do some research on music for guitar and flute. She had been great at providing me with a lot of information on the political campaign but her search functions weren’t limited to that. I’d saved the parameters and Amanda had found thousands of entries, categorized them, and had them ready when I started asking questions. I was amused to find some of our own arrangements, like Mozart on Fire, were included in the results. The other thing she was good at was searching the music by similarities to other pieces. So, when I asked if there were other pieces like our Mozart that we could adapt, she found some fifty different compositions. I filed those away for consideration in my arranging class.

I was becoming so comfortable with our conversational searches that I almost missed a third voice in the mix.

“Jacob, come dance with me,” Sophie said. I could hear salsa music playing in the living room where we’d long-since pushed the furniture back so we could dance.

“Save my place, please, Amanda,” I said as I stood and went to join Sophie.

She flowed into my arms and we began with a review of the twenty-some steps before we started just moving to the music.

Let me just say that salsa dancing with Sophie is sex. Salsa dancing with Sophie naked takes it to a whole different level. I’m sure she was adding moves that enhanced the body contact when we slid across each other. I didn’t remember those little belly-thrusts from when we danced before. And the fact I was standing out like a flagpole gave her an added handhold when she spun away and back. Her shoulders were pressed back against my chest as her butt muscles worked their way up and down my cock and I caressed her breasts and spread kisses down her neck and shoulder.

I don’t suppose it is actually possible for a woman to spin under a man’s arm and then launch herself back at him with such accuracy that she impales herself on his erect cock in one leap. I think, though, that with a little more practice, Sophie could come close. It only took a little adjustment when she lifted her left leg to wrap it around my waist for me to find the entrance to heaven and accept her invitation to come in.

That changed the shape of the dance a bit as I couldn’t spin her away and back, though the motions did slide her up and down. Sophie is small, but because of the incredible muscle density the dancer has, she is not the lightest of my girlfriends. As I held her butt in one hand and her shoulders in the other, dipping forward to lift and drop her on my erection again, I reminded myself to pick up my upper body exercises a little. This was definitely an experience I wanted to repeat with my Latin lover.

The music continued, but our dance slowed as we began to focus more on the joining of our bodies than the movement of our—my—feet. Her right leg joined her left around my waist as I pressed her against a wall and focused on thrusting into her lava love box. We kissed and she put as much spice and fire into the battle of our tongues as we had in our dancing. And as I pressed my full length into her, she screamed and bit my lip. I fired into her and could feel the excess running out and down my balls as we held our position against the wall and kissed some more.