Chapter 5

There was a pause, then Chrissy yelped and jumped up, unfortunately leaving my erection utterly rampant for my mother to see through the glass shower stall door. There was an endless moment of silence, with Chrissy standing and me sitting there, my erection slowly shriveling, and Mom on the other side of the door staring uncomprehendingly. Then Mom, without a word, just backed out and closed the bathroom door.

Time finally started moving again. We turned off the water, Chrissy pointlessly wiping the down the excess that had pooled on the seat (something we were in the habit of doing to make it less obvious that we had used the shower), then got out and wordlessly pulled on my robe and her nightgown, which we had carelessly strewn on the floor. Neither of our parents had come back into the bathroom, and we couldn’t hear their voices, but I was certain they’d ambush us as soon as we stepped out. There was no way out but through the master bedroom. Finally, I gathered up my courage, stepped over to the door, and with my heart pounding, tentatively cracked it open. The bedroom, however, was empty.

Cautiously, Chrissy and I ventured out into the bedroom, and then the hall. The light was on in the foyer, a sure sign that we weren’t hallucinating and our parents had indeed returned, but no one was there. Chrissy finally croaked out a tentative “Mom?” No answer. We walked on tip-toes around the house, as if in a horror movie, expecting to be pounced upon at any moment; but our parents had evidently gone back out.

Finally, after at least half an hour, we slunk off, with barely a word, to our respective bedrooms. I locked my door, something I absolutely never, ever did. I wonder if Chrissy did too. I always slept in just underwear, but this time I tried to pull on pajamas I hadn’t worn in years, perhaps expecting my parents to burst in upon me, despite the locked door, at any moment (even though they had never done anything like that). However, I’d outgrown the pajamas, so I settled for a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. I lay in my bed, dizzy, confused, scared, unsure if I wasn’t in fact in a nightmare, and I’m deeply ashamed to admit that — when my penis inevitably hardened, reminding me that I still owed it an orgasm, and I dutifully pulled down my sweats and jerked off — at the moment of orgasm, I thought “my mom saw me and Chrissy naked, my mom saw Chrissy with her butt on my dick, my mom saw my hard dick, oh God, my mom saw my dick” and, seeing the whole scene in my mind’s eye, feeling to my core how utterly wrong it was - in a way that being with Chrissy had never felt wrong, had always felt exactly, perfectly right - I soiled my sheets with the biggest load of cum that had escaped me since that first time naked with Chrissy. Then, feeling so ashamed that I didn’t try to clean myself up, I pulled up my sweats and fell immediately into a fitful, dream-plagued sleep.

It was a Friday night, so we didn’t even have the respite of leaving the house before our parents got up. Awake at first light and unable to sleep further, I got up, took a shower (in our bathroom, locking the door to both my room and Chrissy’s), pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, and went down to the kitchen. Chrissy was already there, hunched over a cup of coffee and looking utterly miserable. “Chrissy...” I said - but she didn’t answer, just looked up at me with an indescribably forlorn expression. I stammered. “Look, we’ll just go away. We can...” I didn’t know what we could do. We were completely dependent on our parents. We didn’t have any life skills - we knew literature and books and stuff. We’d never even had summer jobs, for God’s sake - thanks to our parents taking us on vacation every summer.

Chrissy just shook her head and said nothing. I realized that I sounded like an idiot, shook my head in a futile attempt to clear it or make reality go away, then finally whispered: “What are we going to tell them?” “I don’t know,” Chrissy said. I poured myself coffee from the pot Chrissy had started and sat down at the kitchen table - and I will always regret this - as far away from Chrissy as I could. Perhaps subconsciously I imagined that keeping my distance would help me, would help us pretend to our parents that what Mom had seen was all a case of mistaken perception. Chrissy looked more miserable than ever, and I, like a complete fucking idiot, didn’t get up and sit next to her.

We sat like that for an hour or more, our coffee getting cold, barely looking at each other, lost in our own misery. Then - as if somehow we both realized at the same time that it might be better not to be confined to such a small space as the kitchen when the inevitable finally happened - we got up and wordlessly walked to the living room. Chrissy slumped down on the couch where we always sat to watch TV - not in an armchair, I thought. Not in an armchair. And, thank God, I was able to redeem myself after my shameful performance in the kitchen. I walked over to the couch and sat down, right next to her. I swear that, even though she had sat on the couch and I’d recognized the import of that, I was almost expecting her to jump up in horror and shy away from me - and that’s proof of the fucked-up state I was in, because she obviously needed me to stand (well, sit) by her as we faced our parents. Just as I needed her.

We sat there silently, next to each other and yet kind of rigidly apart, for a little while. Then Chrissy kind of sighed, laid her head on my shoulder, and slumped against me. Instinctively, I put my arm around her, and we sat there for what seemed like hours, silently awaiting our unimaginable fate.

At some point, we heard noises from the master bedroom down the hall. Morning ablutions - voices - yes, both Mom’s and Dad’s. I couldn’t tell what was being said, but at least it didn’t seem to be terribly loud or emotional. Finally, the door open and Dad strode out. He walked by the living room, saw Chrissy and me, and spoke pretty much the last words I was expecting: a perfectly normal, cheery “Hi, kids!” I simply could not comprehend his sang-froid. Neither Chrissy nor I managed to greet him back, but he didn’t seem to notice anything strange. Instead he went to the kitchen and noisily began preparing breakfast. We looked at each other in confusion and Chrissy murmured “do you think...?” I wasn’t sure what she wondered I was thinking. Did I think Dad knew? Of course. He hadn’t seen us, true, but surely he’d been close behind Mom, and surely she hadn’t been able to keep her shock and horror hidden from him.