Chapter 8

Thanksgiving dinner went splendidly. Muriel French was shy, initially, but after Julie heaped praises on Paul, including how smart he was and how well-behaved and polite he was, Muriel thawed and smiled. Paul’s younger brother, Danny, rolled his eyes and then ogled the twins, who had dressed up for dinner. They had a wonderful, comfortable meal.

Paul was back the next night.

“So, did you go Black Friday shopping?” he asked.

“We didn’t need anything,” said Emma, shaking her head. “You?”

“No. I stayed home and slept.”

“Ohhh, is poor baby all tired and stuff?” teased Beth.

“Poor baby works hard and is always tired. He has to teach two unruly girls about chemistry, for example. That takes all his energy.”

This banter was the result of how the twins affected Paul. Their tutoring sessions had been taken seriously, but there were moments of levity, too. The girls treated him like anybody else, which took him a while to get used to. Eventually he loosened up and began to have conversations with them about things that weren’t part of his tutoring agenda.

A week before midterms, when he got to their house, he tapped and opened the door to go in. He had been told this was fine and he announced himself to the house. Bob’s voice came from the living room.

“They’re upstairs, probably plotting your downfall,” he called out. Bob thought it was a joke. So did Paul. Ask any comedian, though, and he’ll tell you his set has a germ of truth in it; something the audience can identify with.

When he got to the girls’ room the door was closed and he did the same thing. He tapped, opened the door, and said, “I’m here.”

His eyes caught a view of one of the girls, standing by their dresser, with her arms up over her head, in the act of putting on a T shirt. He got a glimpse of creamy skin exposed from the waistline of her pajama bottoms all the way up to the lower swells of her breasts. Then the shirt dropped as she lowered her arms and pushed her head through the neck opening of the garment. When he saw her face it turned out to be Beth. By now he could tell them apart as easily as Bob or Julie did. Kids at school still called them by the wrong names in the hallways, but Paul knew it was Beth.

She didn’t say anything and acted like nothing had happened while Emma spoke getting straight to business.

“I have a question about the bonds going on when you mix charcoal, Sulphur, and potassium nitrate.”

“Black powder? What’s your question?”

“Neither the sulfur nor potassium nitrate burn, and the charcoal is already burned, so how does that reaction work?”

“The charcoal looks burned, but there is still a lot of fuel present in it,” said Paul. “The niter is an oxidizer and the reaction is stabilized by the sulfur. If you didn’t have the oxidizer then it would burn like a regular wood fire, but the potassium nitrate speeds the reaction up and the fuel is consumed almost instantly. It’s that rapid reaction that creates both heat and a pressure wave.”

“Got it,” said Emma. “That makes sense.”

“I have a question, too,” said Beth.

“Shoot,” Paul replied.

“Why don’t you go on dates?”

Paul blinked.

“I’m kind of busy doing this, with you,” he said.

“We don’t mind giving up dates because you’re really helping us,” said Beth. “But don’t you get tired of doing this and never getting to go on a date?”

“I wouldn’t know how to ask a girl out,” he said, feeling like he was no longer in control. “And, as I already told you, I need to save money for college.”

“Well you should go out. All work and no play makes Paul a dull boy.”

“You think I’m dull?” He felt that familiar feeling of being judged as a loser.

“Not at all!” said Beth. “You’re nothing even like dull. You make learning fun. We could go on dates and even if you tutored us during the date it would still be a fun date.”

“You mean take both of you on a date at the same time?”

“Sure! Why not? We’ve gone out with boys together, before.”

“How does that work, exactly?” he asked. He felt like he was going down a rabbit hole, but the conversation was so interesting he didn’t care.

“It depends on how much we like the guy,” said Beth. “I mean there are classes of guys, sort of. There are guys you want to have fun with and guys you want to make out with and sometimes guys you decide it was a mistake to go out with at all.”

“You wouldn’t be one of those,” said Emma. “You’re too cool to be a jerk.”

“Nobody ever called me cool before,” sighed Paul.

“How many girls have you dated?” asked Beth.

“One,” said Paul. “It was a disaster.”

“You can’t let one boo boo make you give up,” said Emma. “Look at us. We were totally stupid about chemistry until you started tutoring us. Now we’re just kind of stupid, not totally stupid. You didn’t let us give up.”

“And we’re not going to let you give up!” said Beth.

“What does that mean?” asked a thoroughly confused teenage boy. Genius isn’t always helpful when it comes to teenage relationships.

“You’re tutoring us in chemistry,” said Beth. “So, we’ll tutor you in dating.”

“Yes!” said Emma. “You know about chemistry and we know about dating. We’ll help each other!”

“That’s nice,” said Paul, “but that’s not why your parents hired me. I mean I appreciate the offer and all, but I’d feel bad taking money for something I wasn’t hired to do.”

“Okay, then,” said Emma. “Before you started coming here Friday night was game night at our house.” It was a tiny little lie. They hadn’t had game night for months. “So not only did we lose date nights, but we don’t get to unwind during game night, either. So let’s make a game out of learning all this stuff. You’ll teach us some stuff and then quiz us. If we get it right, then you have to let us teach you some stuff. We’ll quiz you and if you get it right, then it will be your turn to teach and test again. It will be a game to help motivate us to learn and, therefore, won’t be wrong in terms of your pay. How does that sound?”

“The concept sounds okay, but what could you teach me?”

Emma looked at Beth.

“Mister Genius, here, thinks he knows everything. He thinks we can’t teach him anything.”

“That’s not what I said at all,” said Paul. “I only asked a question.”

“We can teach you how to be with a girl and make it so both of you have a good time ... be happy ... be glad you went out together.”

Paul wasn’t used to social interaction like this, so he approached it from a scientific viewpoint.

“Are you happy I came here?” asked their tutor.

“Yes, of course,” said Emma.

“Do you have a good time learning chemistry?”

“Not at first, but now it’s not so bad.”

“So, would you say this has been like a date, kind of?”

Emma laughed.

“No way,” she said. “This has not been a series of dates.”

“Why not? It meets the criteria you set out a minute ago.”

Emma acted on pure impulse. Paul was right, in one sense. Both girls liked him. The hours and hours they’d spent together had created a comfort level that was rivaled by only one other male: their father. It didn’t matter that he was a nerd, or that he needed a haircut. He was a boy Emma liked so she kissed him. It was instinct, plain and simple.

Her kiss was approached on an instinctual level, too. She put her arms around his neck and pressed her ripe, young body against him. She didn’t eat his lips. It wasn’t that kind of kiss. But her lips made it crystal clear in Paul’s mind that she liked what she was doing; that she liked kissing ... him!

It was the shock of this that left his lips loose, and that resulted in a warm feeling as her lips moved his around. She didn’t use her tongue; that was also due to some instinct that told her subliminal mind that a French kiss (no pun intended) would be too much at this point. The kiss also went longer than she might have intended, simply because it was ... comfortable.

When she pulled her lips from his, she didn’t release his body.

“That’s what we do on dates,” she breathed.

“Emma!” Beth scolded. “Why did you do that?”

“I just felt like it,” said Emma.

Paul’s mind was unsettled, like leaves being blown around by the wind. He had never kissed a girl. Sure, his aunts had kissed him and his mother had kissed him, but not on the lips, and not when holding him so close. His subliminal mind reacted based purely on biology and he realized he was stiff in his pants. That stiffness was pressed against her loins and his rational brain told him she had to feel it, but she did not pull back or castigate him.

“So?” asked Emma. He could smell her breath, which didn’t smell bad at all. “Was that fun?”

“Um ... yes,” he responded. “I’m ... uh ... surprised.”

“Why? Did I do it wrong? Was it different than other girls you’ve kissed?”

“I never kissed a girl before,” he said.

“I don’t believe that,” said Emma, still holding onto him. “You kissed really well. I got the feeling you’ve done this before, maybe a lot.”

“No,” he said. He felt anxious, worried that his reaction to all this ... down there ... was going to make her angry.

“Well, I’d be quite happy to kiss you again,” she said.

“My turn,” said Beth.

Emma glided away and was replaced by a different girl who hugged him just as tightly and pressed her lower torso against his. He took a breath to apologize but her kiss prevented it.

As already noted, Paul was a scientific thinker. His initial surprise and shock, concerning what was going on, was supplanted by scientific curiosity and he was able to both enjoy Beth’s kiss and analyze it. His analysis was rudimentary, primarily because he had no background to compare it to, other than Emma’s kiss. But he sensed her comfort and engagement. Her body wasn’t stiff. She was obviously doing this voluntarily, and the primary question in his mind was ... why? Why did these two beautiful girls want to kiss him? What motivated them?

He was able to think all these things while still enjoying and returning, to some degree, Beth’s kiss. It felt good. It felt really good. Finally she leaned back and, like her sister, she maintained her hug. Now the question in his mind was: why did these two girls allow him to have an erection and allow him to press it against them? Or, alternatively, why did they want to press themselves against him?

“There is a shit ton of chemistry going on right now,” he sighed.

“Endorphins?” suggested Beth with a smile.

“Dopamine,” said Paul. “Lots and lots of dopamine, at least on my part.”

“I like kissing you, too,” said Beth. “I can’t wait to teach you more about dating.”

“I have questions,” he said.

“Okay,” said Beth, finally letting him go and stepping back.

Paul caught himself looking the girls up and down as they stood, side by side, facing him. He took in the swells of their breasts, under their shirts, and the widening below their waistlines, where their hips were. He pulled his eyes back up to their faces and realized they had just seen him ogle them. He had never ogled a girl before.

“A shit ton of chemistry,” he said. “I’m sorry I just objectified you.”

“Objectified?” Beth said.

“He means he checked us out,” said Emma.

“Yes. I apologize,” said Paul. “It was rude. The chemistry in my brain is making me do things I’ve never done before.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” said Emma. “You’re only acting like every other boy in the world. Our parents say that’s normal and that the only real issue is whether the boy can control his base urges or not. You apologized and were really polite, so we are not offended. It’s kind of a compliment.”

“Wow,” said Paul. “I’m really out of my depth, here.”

“Don’t worry. We have lots of experience and we’ll help you learn how to swim. You’re too interesting a guy to stay at home and not date. I bet lots of girls would enjoy being around you, especially if they kissed you. You’re a good kisser.”

“I have so many questions,” he sighed.

“You can ask them later. Right now, based on the game, it’s your turn. We did a pop quiz on kissing and you passed. Now you have to teach us something and test us. Midterms are in a week. I’m not really worried about them, but I want to be super ready for the one in Chem.”

“Yes,” said Beth. “Teach us something so we can teach you something else.”

Paul wasn’t like other teenage boys in terms of the way he assessed his new situation. A lot of other guys, especially virgins, would have suspected they were being pranked, or that the twins had some ulterior motive for their sudden intimate actions. As a not-quite-man of science, though, he evaluated things differently. It had happened. There was clear evidence that ‘ more’ (as yet undefined) could happen. He had the same biological urges as any other young men his age but had not, up ‘til now, been able to explore those urges. His assessment was that he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. If their interest wasn’t genuine, then things would simply go back to where they had been before. If their interest was not feigned, then he would just see what happened.

“Okay, then, let’s review,” he said.

Within ten minutes the girls figured it out.

“You’re asking us easy stuff,” said Emma. “Why?”

“To see if you’ve retained it,” he said with a straight face.

“Paul, you know we know this stuff,” she went on. “Are you just trying to get us to teach you more?”

“That side effect did cross my mind,” he admitted.

“You don’t have to make it easy,” said Emma. “We’ll be happy to teach you more. I’d suggest we even skip one half of the game, except I know your sense of ethics would make you object.”

“Ask us something hard,” said Beth.

“Okay, give me six examples of covalent bonds,” he said.

“Also easy,” droned Beth, who rattled off hydrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen, and ammonia before stopping.

“And water,” Emma added. “You must be horny.”

“I am not horny!” Paul objected, as his face turned red.

“There are ways a girl can tell,” said Emma.

“How?”

His attention was on Emma but it was Beth who reached for the front of his pants and squeezed.

“What are you doing?” he yelped, moving back and covering his groin with both hands.

“He’s not horny,” said Beth, calmly.

“You can’t just grab a guy like that!” Paul complained. “That’s a private place!”

“Guys grab girls in private places all the time,” said Beth.

“That’s another way a girl can tell if a guy is heated up,” said Emma.

“Well, I’m not heated up, as you call it.”

“You were when I kissed you,” said Emma.

“When I kissed you, too,” said Beth.

“We felt it,” said the girls in that eerie tandem twin speak.

“I couldn’t help that,” he groaned. “I mean it just happened.”

“Of course it did. It’s normal. It happens to most guys. We know that. When that happens, a girl has to decide what to do about it.”

“Do about it?” he whispered.

“Sure. She can push him away if she doesn’t want that kind of intimacy. Or, if she likes him, she can let it go and keep kissing him, or talking to him or whatever. If he gets even more excited then she has to decide if she’s going to touch it and give him some relief, or push him away and give him blue balls.”

“I’ve never had this kind of conversation with a girl,” he sighed.

“We might be different than other girls you know,” said Emma. “We’ve been taught a lot of things about relationships and sex, to make sure we didn’t get surprised or in over our heads or in danger.”

“Who teaches that kind of thing?” he asked out of genuine curiosity.

“Our parents,” said Emma. “They want us to survive high school and wait to have babies until after we’re married.”

“Don’t all parents want that?” he asked.

“Sure, but most parents, based on what our friends say and do, don’t give their kids the tools they need to navigate puberty. Ours did. We know what we want and don’t want, and we know how to steer a date in the direction we want it to go. The boys we like being with the most listen to us and cooperate with our wishes. We have fun with those guys and everybody goes home happy.”