Chapter 12

The next morning when I woke up, dawn’s light was just filtering through the pines. I rolled over onto my stomach, my morning erection pressing against me. I lay there drowsily for several minutes, then decided to see if Mom or Erin were up.

When I raised my head to look, I saw that Mom was still in bed. She had the sheets pulled over her, but as I watched, I could tell that she was slowly caressing herself. As she lay on her back, I saw her move her right hand lower, until it was over her pussy.

Unfortunately, she raised her left knee, lifting the sheet and holding it off her hand. I could no longer see her movements, but I knew she was pleasuring herself. I watched the motion of her right arm, and in my imagination, I saw her moving her fingertips in small circles over her clit.

With a start, I realized that I now knew what she was doing. Before, I had always watched and vaguely known that what she was doing felt good, but now I knew why. With renewed interest, I discreetly watched her masturbate.

All of a sudden, a huge yawn interrupted the quiet of the cabin. Erin had woken up. Mom quietly moved her hand away from her pussy and lowered her knee. I pulled back from the edge of the bed, but I could clearly hear Erin yawn again and sit up. I watched from the top bunk as she stood up and wordlessly padded across the cabin to the bathroom.

When she came out, she saw that Mom and I were still in bed. In silence, she stood in front of the mirror on top of the dresser, brushing her hair. Mom rolled over and propped herself up on one elbow.

“Good morning, honey,” she said.

“Morning Mom,” Erin said distractedly.

“You know what you want for breakfast?”

Erin shrugged and continued brushing.

“How about french toast?”

Erin shrugged again.

“You go on down to the clubhouse and I’ll be down in a few minutes to fix breakfast,” Mom said.

Erin finished brushing and headed for the door. She saw that I was still in bed, went out the screen door, and slammed it behind her.

I stuck my head over the side of the bed as Mom looked in my direction.

“Time to get up, sleepyhead.”

I nodded silently and she headed for the bathroom. I still had my morning erection, but I decided to throw modesty to the wind and climbed down the ladder. When Mom came out of the bathroom, she looked at me and her eyes widened as she saw my hard-on. When she arched her eyebrow, I merely shrugged and stepped past her into the bathroom.

After I came out of the bathroom, Mom and I walked down to the clubhouse together.

“What’re your plans for the day?” she asked.

“I gotta help Dwight put up the panels that Susan and I picked up yesterday. He says it’ll only take a couple of hours. After that, pretty much nothing.”

“So you can relax this afternoon?”

“Yeah. I thought I’d find Manfred and see if he wanted to do something.”

“And Gina and Jenny?” Mom asked, looking sidelong at me.

“I guess ... I mean, if they wanna do something, that’s cool.”

We reached the clubhouse and Mom headed for the kitchen area to fix breakfast. Erin was playing pool with her friends and, seeing no one else that I knew, I stood in the doorway for a few minutes, simply watching the younger girls play pool, badly.

I heard the screen door open behind me and had just turned to see who had come in when I felt an enormous hand clap me on the shoulder almost painfully.

“Good morning, boyo!” boomed Dwight.

“Morning Dwight,” I said as he walked me further into the clubhouse.

“You ready for some honest work this morning?”

“Yep.”

“It’s not as fun as makin’ barbecue sauce,” he said with a wink, “but it’s a living!” His laughter seemed to fill the large building. “I want to get started right after breakfast, get the job done before the heat of the day. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Good man, good man.” He clapped me on the shoulder again, this time painfully, and headed off toward the kitchen area, to where Karen was fixing his breakfast. I followed Dwight, deciding to help Mom with the french toast.

When we were finished, Mom called to Erin and we sat down to eat.

“What’re you up to today, Erin?” Mom asked.

“Not much, I guess. Trish wants to lie out today, so I guess we’ll be down by the lake.”

“Ah.”

“What’re you doing today, Mom?” I asked.

“After breakfast, I want to go take a long, hot bath before it gets too hot out.”

“Mmmmm, a hot bath,” Erin said dreamily. “Oh yeah! Mom, Jill wanted to know if Trish, Leah and I could spend the night with her. Their cabin has this big, screened-in porch, and we were gonna sorta camp out on the porch tonight. Is that okay?”

“Is it okay with Jill’s Mom?”

“It was her idea, so yeah, I guess it’s okay with her.”

“Well then, it’s okay with me. You girls have a good time.”

“Thanks Mom! Can I be excused?”

“Finish your french toast, dear, and then you can be excused.”

Unlike me, my skinny sister always had to be told to finish her meals. She stabbed the last few bites of toast and popped them in her mouth. She drained her milk and slid back in her chair. As she headed for the sink carrying her plate and glass, Mom silently shook her head, smiling at me. I returned her smile and shrugged. At least Erin wouldn’t pester me all day, so it didn’t really matter to me what she did.

Working with Dwight was an exercise in physics. For a big man, he moved very quickly, and I thought wryly that he must be the “unstoppable force” people talk about. I also realized with a little bit of surprise that I enjoyed watching someone who really knew what they were doing. Dwight quickly and easily did things that would’ve taken me quite a while to do, much less how long it would take me to figure out how to do them in the first place.

We were about an hour into the project when Mom walked around the corner of the house.

“Hi, Dwight. Hi, Paul. Where’s Susan?”

I looked down at her from where I held a panel ready to hand up to Dwight. “I guess she’s inside. Is everything okay?”

“The water heater in our cabin is on the fritz. I went to take a bath and all I got was cold water.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“So am I,” Mom said with a note of wistfulness.

“Anyway, we haven’t seen her leave, so I guess she’s still inside.”

“Thanks, Paul.”

“No problem,” I said, returning my attention to Dwight.

We continued working, and had the rest of the patio roof finished in another hour. Mom had talked to Susan for fifteen minutes or so, and when she left, she’d headed down toward the lake.

We finished the work well before lunch and while I cleaned up our mess, Dwight gathered up his tools. As we were just about to leave, Susan stepped out of the sliding glass doors onto the patio.

“Thank you very much, Dwight. And you too, Paul.”

“No problem, Suz,” Dwight boomed. “Glad I could help you out.”

“Well, I certainly appreciate it,” she said.

“I’m glad I can help,” he said, blushing a little. “Now I am gonna go put my tools up and then jump in the lake and cool off!” He slung his tool belt over his shoulder and looked at me.

“Could you hang around for a few minutes, Paul?” Susan asked.

“Sure,” I said. Then I turned to Dwight, “I’ll take care of the ladder.”

“Good job, boyo! Thanks for your help.” He clapped me on the shoulder again and walked off toward his cabin. I was beginning to wonder how bad the bruises on my shoulder were going to be.

“You want to come in and cool off?” Susan asked.

“Sure,” I said, wondering if that were all she had in mind. I stepped into the cool of her bedroom and she slid the door shut behind me.

She closed the curtain over the sliding glass doors and looked at me with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

“I talked to Stacy this morning,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Would you like to go into town next Wednesday?”

“I guess. What’ll we tell my mom and dad?”

“We’ll think of something,” she said. “Stacy said she’d see if she could get the day off. I told her that I had a meeting that I needed to go to, for a couple of hours. You two would be alone together,” she said, grinning at me. “Stacy thought you might like to go to a double feature with her.”

I nodded.

Susan grinned wickedly. “I thought you might like that.”

I blushed and grinned like an idiot.

“I told her we’d pick her up at home around one o’clock. Okay?”

I nodded again. “Okay. So what’re we gonna tell my parents? I mean about why we’re going into town.”

Susan thought for a second. “Why don’t we tell them the truth?”

At my shocked expression, Susan burst out laughing.

“I don’t mean all the truth,” she said, grinning and shaking her head. “Tell them enough of the truth. I’ve got to pick up some building supplies for the camp, which I do, by the way, and I need you to help me. We also tell them that I’ve got a meeting with my accountant, also the truth, and that you’re going to go to a movie while I’m in my meeting. We just don’t need to tell them about Stacy,” she said with a wink. “Also, tell them we’ll probably be late getting back, so I’ll feed you dinner in town. Okay?”

I thought it through and nodded.

“Now,” she said with a devilish look in her eyes, “would you like to practice a little of what you learned yesterday?”

I looked at her, confused.

She hooked her thumbs in her bikini bottoms and slid them off with one smooth motion, kicking them into the corner. She then walked over to her bed and crawled to the center. When she rolled over on her back, she spread her legs wide, revealing her shaved slit in all its glory.

Suddenly, I understood.

I quickly nodded, feeling blood rush to my penis.

“Come here first,” she said, gesturing. “Kneel by my head.”

I did as she instructed. Susan rolled her head to the side a little and sucked my hard-on into her mouth. She couldn’t suck as much of me in this position, but what she could reach, she lavished with attention.

She was eagerly sucking my dick when a sound I hadn’t heard in several weeks interrupted her.

The phone rang.

With a look of consternation, Susan took my dick out of her mouth and rolled to the bed stand.

There were only a few phones in camp, as far as I knew. There was a phone in the clubhouse, but it was for local calls only. Old Mr. Kershaw, one of the year-round residents and a friend of Susan’s father, took care of taking reservation calls. He mostly stayed near his house, which was several hundred feet from Susan’s. He, of course, had a phone there. Several of the other year-round residents had them too. But for the most part, there was a scarcity of phones in the camp. Susan, of course, had one in her house, but it’d been so long since I’d heard a phone ring that, for a moment, I was confused.

Susan picked up the handset.

“Hello?”

She rolled back to lay on her back and her face grew worried.

“Hi, David. Is everything okay?”

She paused for a second, listening, and then her tension eased.

“No, I don’t know where she is. But Paul’s here, I could send him out to find her.”

She looked at me and shrugged in confusion.

“He’s here helping Dwight do some repairs on my back patio. Would you like to speak to him?” She paused. “Okay, hold on a second, I’ll get him.”

She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and mouthed “your dad.” Then she handed me the handset.

“Hello?”

“Paul? It’s Dad. How are you, kiddo?”

“I’m fine, Dad. Are you okay?” I asked, worry creeping into my voice.

“I’m fine, son. We’re here in San Francisco, and we’ve got a broken plane.”

“Is everyone okay?”

“We’re all fine, Paul. The first stage compressor disk on one of our engines failed. We’d just started it, so there wasn’t any danger to us or the passengers, but the engine’s a total loss. The company’s bringing in a new plane and crew, but we’re stuck here with the broken plane. So I’m not going to be back tonight.”

“Okay. What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to tell your mom what happened. Make sure you tell her we’re all fine. Tell her that the company’s sending a team of mechanics and a new engine out to us, but it won’t be here for two days. They can’t dead-head us back because they need us to bring the plane and the mechanics back to Atlanta. So I won’t be able to make it home until next Tuesday. You get all that?”

“I think so.” I repeated back to him what he’d told me.

“You’ve got it, son. Tell your mom that I love her and I miss her. I’ll see you all in a few days. Hold on, kiddo.”

I heard him put his hand over the receiver and talk to someone.

“Son, I’ve got to go. The captain needs the phone, and we’ve got paperwork to fill out about the engine. I love you guys, I miss you, and I’ll see you on Tuesday.”

“Bye, Dad.”

“Goodbye, son.”

“Is everything okay?” Susan asked me as I handed her the receiver.

“Yeah, I guess. Mom’s not gonna be happy, though. Dad won’t be back until next Tuesday.”

“So I gathered. Do you want to go tell your mom?”

“I probably should,” I said. I looked down at my limp penis. Blushing, I looked back up at her.

“It’s okay,” she said, laughing. “We can finish up some other time. Go on, go!”

I grinned at her and got up to leave. Spontaneously, I bent down and kissed her quickly on the cheek. I laughed at the look of surprise on her face as I headed out to find Mom.

When I found her, she was by the lake in one of the lounge chairs. I walked up and stood so that I cast a shadow across her face. She put her sunglasses on and sat up.

“You guys all done?”

“Mmm hmm,” I said. “I just got off the phone with Dad.”

“He called? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine, Dad’s okay.”

I repeated what Dad had told me about the plane and the new engine.

“So he won’t be back until Tuesday?”

I shook my head. I could tell Mom was trying to hide her disappointment.

“Okay. I guess there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Oh yeah! He did want me to tell you that he loves you, and he misses you.”

Mom smiled up at me and stood. “Thank you, Paul. I’m glad at least you got to talk to him.”

I shrugged. “He was in a hurry. The captain had to use the phone, so he couldn’t talk long.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “C’mon up to the clubhouse and I’ll make you lunch.”

While we were eating lunch, Manfred, Jenny, and Gina came into the clubhouse.

“Thank God we found you!” Gina said, rushing over. “We’ve been looking for you all over.” And then as an afterthought, “Hi, Beth. Sorry to interrupt.”

“Hi, Gina. You’re not interrupting anything,” Mom said, then started to pick up our lunch dishes.

“Where have you been all morning?” Gina asked.

“I’ve been working with Dwight, putting up a roof over Aunt Susan’s patio.”

“Whatever,” she said. Then quietly, “You’ve got to save me from Jenny and Manfred.”

“Huh?”

“Come with us,” Gina insisted as Manfred and Jenny reached the table.

“Where?” I asked.

“We’re gonna hike along one of the streams feeding the lake, see how far it goes,” Manfred answered.

I didn’t want to go. I wanted to go back to Susan’s and finish what we’d started earlier. But Gina’s insistence won me over. I sure wouldn’t mind spending time with her, but I didn’t want Susan to think that I’d forgotten about her. Somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to go with them.

“Lemme tell Mom where I’m going,” I said quickly, and stood.

Gina hugged my arm and said quietly, “Thank you! I’ll make it up to you.”

The touch of her body against mine sent little electric shocks through me and I had to concentrate very hard on not getting an erection. Reluctantly, I pulled away and headed toward Mom. I didn’t know much, but I told her, in general terms, where we were going.

When I returned, Manfred was closing a backpack.

“I’ve got a pair of towels, an extra blanket, and some water,” he said, settling the pack on his shoulders.

“Good God, Manfred, how long are we gonna be gone?” I asked.

“A couple hours, I guess, but it’s nice to have a few things along,” he said with a shrug. “If we get wet, though, we’ll have to share the towels.”

And with that, we headed out.

We skirted the shore until we got to one of the streams that flowed into the marshy end of the natural lake that fed the swimming lake. We had all worn our sneakers, since we didn’t know what we’d be hiking over. With Manfred in the lead, we turned up the stream and set off into the pine forest.

We hiked steadily uphill for about an hour and a half, until we came to a rock outcropping that the stream had been forced to bypass. On the other side of the outcropping, the water had formed a quiet pool. The pine needles were thick on the ground around the pool and when Manfred reached the edge of the water, he stopped.