Chapter 16

That evening at home, everyone seemed to be in a bad mood. Both Lily and I had big homework assignments due and didn’t get to spend much time talking before dinner. Then Lily got into some trivial argument with our parents at dinner - I could barely follow the topic, not dress this time, but something about whether she should be using perfume or deodorant spray or whatnot. I kind of closed my ears; it made me uncomfortable to hear my parents weighing in on anything personal concerning Lily. I liked her the way she was, no matter what she smelled or didn’t smell like, and I didn’t think it was any business of our parents’.

Worse, my dad tried to make indirect conversation about whether I was interested in anyone at school — it was painful listening to him try to get me to talk about girls without actually coming out and asking, especially in front of Lily. I suppressed a dark chuckle when he asked whether “your friend Timothy” was dating anyone; I didn’t think he’d like to know the answer to that! Then Mom, obviously following Dad’s thread, asked Lily how “Bobby” was doing and she looked momentarily confused, then mumbled something like “OK, I guess.” That sparked a pitifully obvious attempt by both parents to suss out, without actually asking, whether things had gone sour with her (imaginary) boyfriend.

It all ended with Lily stomping away to her room and slamming the door. Mom said, to no one in particular, “oh, dear, girls her age are so sensitive” and Dad looked amused and I just suddenly felt no real kinship to them. I thought again about how different dinner at Alice’s table was; sure, she asked about how Timothy (and I) were faring at school, but there was no artifice or hidden motive in it; she was actually interested in our lives, and I got the impression that Timothy spoke honestly with her, because she was honest with him.

After I excused myself from the table, I sat around in the living room reading for a seemingly interminable period, hoping Lily would come in as she had the other night, although Mom and Dad were talking in the dining room next door and we would not have been able to cuddle as closely as before. She never came, though, and I didn’t feel comfortable going to knock on her door - not because she would have minded, but because it was too reminiscent of the circumstances of the “Canal Jeans catastrophe.”

Mom and Dad would clearly know I was visiting Lily in her room and ... I just didn’t want to think about what they might think of that. The thought of Mom coming in to check on us, or worse, tell us that it was inappropriate for me to be in Lily’s room, or something ... I couldn’t face that. So, in the end, when they went to bed around 10, stopping by the living room to say goodnight, I just waved and pretended to be deeply absorbed in my book.

About half an hour later I got up, went to the bathroom, and took a quick shower before brushing my teeth. I thought I was going to masturbate and had even contemplated thinking about Alice while doing so, to “get it out of my system,” so to speak; but once I was under the hot water I didn’t really feel like it. I was aroused, to be sure, but still in too unsettled a mood to really do anything about it. I finished, dried off (thinking about how Alice had dried me that morning), and paused for a second.

I’d reverted to wearing underwear at night after Lily and I weren’t allowed to bed together anymore; there was no really good reason for this, except that getting naked with Lily every evening had been almost a ritual, a sacred thing; now that it wasn’t happening, what was the point? But I had to admit that sleeping naked was comfortable even without someone next to you, and I didn’t see any point in putting on fresh underwear until I needed to tomorrow. Finally I just shut off the light and got into bed as is, enjoying the feeling of the soft sheets on my genitals. I still didn’t feel like masturbating and instead I just let myself drift off into an uneasy sleep.

In the middle of the night — I have no idea what the actual time was — I was startled awake by the sound of my door opening. It wasn’t very loud but I was instantly on alert - my first thought was that it was perhaps Mom or Dad, although they had never just barged into my room like that. But the door closed again, softly, and soft footsteps approached the bed, and — as my eyes adjusted to the darkness — I could make out Lily’s form.

Without saying a word, she clambered into bed next to me. I whispered “Lily, what are you doing? We...” She said “shhhhhhh” and, almost aggressively, climbed on top of me. She was naked and my body responded instantly, my erection springing up against her crotch. I said, “No, no, Lily, don’t...” but she ignored me and held me tight, searching for my mouth with hers, muffling my protests. I opened my mouth and found myself unable to resist the kiss; I put my arms around her, my hands on her butt, and pulled her closer.

I could feel her tiny breasts against my chest. I sensed the odor of her sex and the slight sourness of her sweat and thanked God that she hadn’t used deodorant; I only wanted to smell her. My penis slipped between her thighs and I could feel her wetness against the shaft. I broke the kiss and managed to mumble “Lily, this isn’t a good idea,” but she ignored me and began to move back and forth on top of me, clenching and unclenching her thighs as she did.

The feeling down there was indescribable: I thought I would explode right away, but managed to hold back. I was petrified at the thought of ejaculating like this; I could tell I was not inside her, but I was close to it, and I’d learned in health class that a girl could get pregnant from semen that just found its way into the vagina from the surroundings. At the same time, of course, there was nothing I wanted more than to keep feeling this incredible sensation.

It was categorically nothing like the mutual masturbation that Lily and I were used to, or the one time I had come rubbing myself up against her butt; it felt like we had been kids before and just graduated to adulthood. In spite of myself I thought of Alice briefly; I thought that it must feel like this to have her embrace me, to have my penis in that dark, mysterious area between her legs. But Alice was just an impossible vision, whereas Lily, impossibly, was here, now.

It felt like a culmination: in years of touching each other, we had never touched each other like this, but, in a sense, it had all being building up to this moment. Had I desired her all this time? Had she desired me? Because this was not like before, this was not like sleeping gently in each other’s arms. This was not like feeling each other’s skin against each other; this was not like exploring each other’s bodies, tentatively touching breast and vulva and penis and buttocks; this was not cautious, this was not ritual, this was not carefully cleaving to the rules of the happiness game — though all that had been a necessary prelude.