Dear Bec,

You probably are wondering why I haven’t called. I can explain. But guess what! I’m not a virgin anymore.

Pretty something, huh!? It was everything you said it would be and more. Be patient. I’ll tell you.

The guy’s name is Tom. He’s sleeping in my bed! Well, Grandma and Grandpa’s bed, really. It was so nice of them to let me use their cabin for the summer. I feel sad that they can’t come up here to Love Lake anymore. Getting old is so ... depressing, I guess. It’s not that they’re that old, but with Grandma being sick all winter. She says she’s cured, but I don’t know.

I was out on the old wooden pier yesterday afternoon thinking about them. And procrastinating. I’m supposed to be writing the great American novel, and I open up my laptop and nothing comes to me. All those ideas—drowned in the harsh sunshine. Not harsh, really. It’s beautiful up here. It hasn’t changed since I visited years ago as a kid. The lake is the same. The pine trees are the same. The cottage is the same. Except Grandma and Grandpa aren’t here. I felt so lonely. I called them up on my cell phone right away. Amazing that there’s service. I told them I was all right and everything, and that Grandpa’s instructions for opening everything up went just like clockwork. And there weren’t any wasps in the pump. I was proud of myself for getting everything squared away and fresh sheets on the bed. Well, they’re not fresh anymore. Hee hee!

So I was out on the pier with nothing to do but write, only I couldn’t see the laptop screen because of the sun. Sure, I could have angled around, but then my toes wouldn’t touch the water. The water is really cold, by the way. It never really warms up, even in mid-August. Gosh, that’s months away. I don’t want to think about time passing. I just want to enjoy the moment. Enjoy the soft buzzy way my cunt feels. Oh, Gosh, Bec, I want to fuck again! I want to fuck and get fucked! I want to spend the whole day fucking!

Tom is twenty-four. I know what you’re thinking—way too old for me. But he’s a boy, really, not so different from the silly boys in our senior class. Oh, that’s not true. He’s way, way different. He’s a man. But a boyish man. He seems like he’s my age. Or maybe just a year older. Like an older brother. Well, not a brother exactly. But he’s so easy to be with. He lives around here all year. His parents grew up in the town, and he lives in their old house. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m sure I will later today, probably. I’ll have to go into town to get groceries and stuff, and Tom said he’d show me around. He’d be my tour guide.

He’s tall, but not basketball tall. He has dark wavy hair. He has big soft eyes. He’s so strong! He can hold me up and ... Okay, I’ll tell you about that later. His beard is a little scratchy. My inner thighs are a little chafed. You can imagine, right? I suppose he’ll shave sometime today. I wanna watch him shave. Hey, I wanna watch him do everything. There’s an old big mirror somewhere here, and I wanna watch him fuck me. But he’s such a sleepy head this morning. I guess I wore him out! Hee hee.

So yesterday I was on the pier, dangling my feet and thinking about my grandma and being lonely, and he glides up in his boat. “Hey,” he says. “Hi.” He said he noticed me from across the way, where he was fishing, and he just came over to say hi. He said he knew my grandma and grandpa real well, because he’d fished out here practically forever. He said he runs the little hardware store in town that used to be his parents’, but lots of days he just takes off mid-afternoon and lets the guy who works for him take care of closing.

I thought he said “clothing” and I was a little confused.

“Not clothing, closing,” he said, and we both laughed. While we were laughing our eyes caught, and I thought—no I knew—he’s the one. I wanted to kiss him.

I asked him if he’d caught anything, and he said nope but it was early yet.

“Well, good luck,” I said, and I sort of smiled at him, hoping he would understand that I didn’t really want him to leave.

He didn’t leave. He said, “You’ve got a laptop there. Are you a writer?”

I don’t know why he’d think I was a writer, but I blushed. “I’m a wannabe writer,” I said. I write stories and things. Poems.”

“Oh,” he said. “What kind of stories? What kind of poems?”

I didn’t answer at first. I was thinking about what to say. Finally I said, “Silly stories. Silly poems.”

“Like for kids?” he said. “I might like to read one.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Now?” he said. “Can I now?”

“Sure, if you want,” I said.

He docked his boat and climbed up, and I brought up a poem I’d written last year, one Mr. Moke said was really good, the one about the pear.

He read it. I watched his eyes as he read my words. Suddenly I was so, I don’t know, self-conscious. I was so afraid he wouldn’t like it. Or wouldn’t understand it.

“Wow,” he said. “That’s really juicy.”

He was smiling, grinning. We were grinning at each other.

“I really like it,” he said. “It’s one of the best poems I’ve ever read. I almost want to take a bite out of it.”

I laughed.

“Definitely not for kids,” he said.

“Definitely,” I agreed.

And then we grinned at each other for a while, and I said, “So you seriously like it?”

And he said, “I seriously love it. Is it published in a book I could buy? I want to read all your poems.”

“I’m not published yet,” I said. “Except in my high school magazine.”

“You will be,” he said. “Can I read another one?”

I showed him the one about graph paper. He laughed. “Now that is silly,” he said. “I like it. You’re a great writer.”

I wrinkled my face.

“No, really. You are. And when you’re famous, I’ll be able to say...”

But then he didn’t say anything.

“What?” I finally asked.

“That I knew you,” he whispered. And then his face got all serious. “I really want to know you,” he said. “I’m sorry if that’s abrupt, but it’s the way I feel.”

He said it sincerely and naturally. It did occur to me that maybe it was a line, but I didn’t think so. And anyway, I wanted to know him, too. So I kissed him. A peck on the cheek. Well, not a peck, but a brush. “I want to know you, too,” I told him. And then we kissed for real. We kissed for, I don’t know, hours. All kinds of kisses. Soft, lips just touching. Hard, lips pressed tight. Deep, mouths open, breathing each other. Tender, tongue tips just touching. Sometimes our kisses made us laugh. Oh, Bec, the kisses I’ve had before were never like this. Because the kisses were part of us, you know what I mean? The kisses were us.

One time there was a big slurpy noise from the suction, and he said, “Juicy,” and I knew he was thinking about my poem, and I knew he was thinking about my panties, how wet they were, how juicy. Or maybe it was just me thinking of my panties. Of my juicy cunt. I smiled a naughty smile and then I swallowed his tongue. I sucked at it as if I would suck the juice out of him. And the more I sucked, the more I juiced. I was like a lake down there.

All this kissing, and we were holding each other, but mostly so we wouldn’t fall off the pier into the water. We weren’t really touching. We weren’t really caressing. All that came later. Gosh did it come, though. I can still feel his hands, his fingertips. He was so gentle. So strong. So nice.

So then ... well, then, then, then ... Oh, Bec, then we stopped kissing and just stared into each other’s eyes. I was melting, and it was twilight. We really had been kissing for hours.

Hours, I thought, and with that I realized I’d forgotten to call Grandma and Grandpa. Earlier I’d promised them I’d phone back at the end of the day.

“What is it?” Tom asked.

You know, I didn’t even know his name then. Isn’t that wild? Anyway, I explained about needing to phone, and at the same time I was trying to fish my cell phone out of my jeans’ pocket, and my sex made this slippery sound—I told you I was juicy!—and the cell phone just slipped right out of my hands and into the water. Plop! God, what a klutz! “Fuck,” I said. You know I don’t usually say swear words. I never say swear words. But it just came out. For a moment everything was quiet.

“Shit,” I said. Maybe I thought that would soften the “fuck.” I gritted my teeth.

“Here,” Tom said, holding out his phone. “Use mine.”

“You sure you trust me not to drown it?” I asked.

“Be my guest,” he said. “There’s nobody I ever really call, anyway. I don’t know why I have one.”

I called my grandparents. “If the number seems strange,” I said, “it’s cuz I just dropped my cell phone in the lake.”

My grandfather made a joke about large mouth bass on the line. And then he said, “Or are you calling from underwater?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “This phone belongs to...” and then I didn’t know what to say. Like I said, I didn’t know Tom’s name.

“Tom,” he said, obviously listening to the conversation.

“Tom,” I reported to my grandpa. “His parents used to own the hardware store in town.”

“Oh, right, I know Tom,” my grandfather said. “Isn’t he like about ten years old?” I laughed.