Chapter 8

I didn't bring any flowers that night. It felt awkward, standing on Angie's porch, having nothing in my hands. But Tamara had told me that if I made a habit of bringing flowers, they would stop being special. I had offered to bring a bottle of wine, but Angie had declined. She wanted to do the whole meal for me, she said. I'd agreed, though now I was nervous. There was nothing for me to do.

I realized I was tugging on my sleeves again. I forced myself to take a deep breath and relax a little. Then I rang Angie's doorbell.

"John! Come in!" Angie motioned for me to follow her.

No welcome hug or kiss. Maybe we weren't to that level yet.

"I'm not quite done cooking," Angie called over her shoulder as we headed toward the kitchen. "Keep me company?"

"Sure," I replied, strolling after her. When I got to the kitchen, she was sliding a pan of something into the oven and then quickly moving to stir vegetables sautéing on the stove. As she stirred, she tossed various spices into the pan.

"Looks good," I said.

Angie grinned.

"Great! Ashley's turning her nose up at vegetables right now, so I don't get many chances to try new recipes for them."

I laughed. "Wait a few years, then she won't want anything but junk food."

"Oh, I hope not!" Angie joked.

"Oh yes. Just today, I watched four ten-year-old boys tear through nachos like they were greatest thing since sliced bread."

"Well, they are, at least to them."

I had to nod in agreement.

"So, how did the afternoon go?" Angie asked.

I had to pause in order to remember what I'd told her about the 'Merry Men' expedition earlier in the week. Only that I was taking Billy and some of his friends to the arcade, not why.

"It went well!" I replied. I then proceeded to tell her about the games we'd played, including Space Invaders and the multiple versions of Tokyo Wars. Angie nodded and asked short questions as she stirred and seasoned and tasted and started arranging food on plates. My admiration grew as I watched the meal come together. It was far beyond my meager skills as a chef.

"I'm really glad you took the boys out," Angie said as we got seated, a soup course in front of us. "I think it's important for boys to have a man that they can look up to." I shrugged.

"I'm not sure I'm much of a role model, but it was the least I could do," I replied.

Angie just smiled, not quite rolling her eyes in disagreement. "Well, you do have a way with kids. You'll make a good dad some day."

I tried to avoid choking on my soup. Sure, I wanted kids, but the thought that it might actually happen was as much a fantasy as having a harem of women fuck me for free. I couldn't see it ever happening.

Of course, I'd never seen myself on a third date either. Fourth, if I counted the coffee get together. Yet here we were.

The conversation turned back to more getting-to-know-you topics as we shared stories about growing up and going through school. We were both native Coloradoans, though she hailed from a small town on the Western Slope that I wasn't sure I could locate on a map. All I knew about Fruita was that it was in the general vicinity of Grand Junction. She, on the other hand, was surprisingly familiar with the suburban neighborhood I'd grown up in and still lived in. We realized that her college roommate had gone to my high school, but had been two years behind me. Angie had made more than one visit for weekends before she'd met her future husband and found her time filled with other activities.

"Do you regret getting married straight out of college?" I asked as we cleared the dishes at the end of an excellent meal.

Angie sighed and paused. I could sense her struggling for words.

"I don't regret Ashley," she finally answered. "And if I hadn't met Mike, I wouldn't have her."

I nodded.

"I just wish I hadn't been so naïve."

"Naïve?"

"Guys lie," she replied with a rueful smile.

"Not all guys lie," I responded.

That brightened her smile.

"True. Some men are gentlemen. And thank you for being such a gentleman and helping me load the dishwasher."

I gave her my best goofy 'who me?' grin and glanced around the kitchen for more dishes. There were none. Angie declared that we were done and should adjourn to the living room. She settled on the couch quite close to me.

"You look beautiful tonight," I murmured, evoking a small blush of appreciation.

"You look handsome too," Angie replied.

I wrinkled my face in disagreement, which brought a small giggle.

"I'm serious!"

"Maybe. I just don't see it. You sure you don't need glasses?"

"I'm sure," she chuckled.

With that, Angie leaned in and kissed me. I immediately dropped all protesting and pulled her into my arms.

I held her tight as we kissed. These were hotter, hungrier, than our kisses the last time we'd been on this couch. Tongues found tongues. Lips roamed and found places to nuzzle behind ears and on napes of necks. We kissed and we kissed and we kissed.

An unknown number of heartbeats later, Angie shifted into my lap, nestling tighter into me. My hand dropped to her thigh, and there seemed to be no 'safe' place to move it without throwing us off balance. Angie didn't seem uncomfortable though, so I let it sit. We kissed some more and I realized that that she really didn't seem to mind where my hand was. I started making small circles with my fingers as I kissed my way behind her ear. Angie moaned. I returned to kissing her lips and slid my fingers just barely up her thigh. She sighed and parted her legs slightly.

I caught the hint.

Still kissing hot and passionately, I slowly inched my hand up. She groaned when I slid my fingers around to her inner thigh and then kissed me harder, almost biting me in her intensity. My hand was still on top her dress and I was unsure whether I should move back down and come up underneath it. As I paused, Angie's kisses slackened as if she were catching her own breath. That seemed to decide it. I moved my hand the remaining few inches and placed it squarely on top of her mound outside of her clothes. I kissed Angie hard at the same time and she returned the heat.

As we continued to kiss, I danced my fingertips lower, wondering if I could find her clit through all the cloth. It was awkward to turn my hand, so I settled for just running my fingertips over her lower body, caressing between her thighs and wherever I could reach. Angie buried her head in my shoulder. I stroked lightly up and down, one finger and then two and then one again. I could feel her heat and wetness through the cotton.

Unfortunately, I could also feel Angie's upper body stiffen and become more awkwardly rigid. She'd stopped kissing me and while her breath was a little ragged, it didn't sound like it was due to pleasure. I yanked my hand back and placed it on her thigh again. She sighed. I decided to go the other direction this time and slid my hand down until it was below the hem of her dress, then turned and slid it up under the fabric. Angie stopped me, placing her hand on mine.

"Not tonight," she whispered.

I deflated. Then I pulled my hand away.

"I can be a gentleman," I murmured back, kissing her on the forehead.

She pulled me down for a kiss on the lips.

"Good," she replied. "Because as much as I want you, I'm not ready to go to bed with you tonight."

I pulled back and looked at her, confused. She shifted off my lap onto the couch beside me in the process. Seeing the resulting alarm on her face, I quickly forced a smile onto mine and leaned in to kiss her again.

"We can wait," I said.

"Oh good!"

With that, Angie began kissing me again. I started to return the kiss, still pondering her words. I didn't notice when her hand settled on my thigh, but I did notice when her hand slid forward. I paused a moment in the kissing and raised my eyebrows at her.

"I did say I wanted you," she murmured.

With that, Angie trailed her fingers up across my inner thighs and then over my stiff cock, the cotton between muffling out all but the basic pressure. I gasped, but Angie didn't let up kissing me or stroking me. I struggled mightily to just sit and receive and not begin running my hands over her body in return. After an agonizing forever, Angie returned her hand to a safe position on my shoulder. Slowly my breathing returned to a measured rate.

"Valentine's Day is in two weeks, and Ashley will be at her dad's," Angela told me when I'd started smiling at her again. "Would you like to spend the night?"

"I'd love to," I murmured in reply, before taking her into my arms and hotly kissing her again.

We continued kissing for a while longer. More chaste, but still warm. We kissed for the connection, making it an extension of the snuggling on the couch. We murmured sweet nothings about Valentine's Day and romance and silly little things we liked about the other. Eventually Angie yawned and then I did, so we broke our embrace and called it a night.

I called her the next day, of course, both to thank her for dinner and confirm Valentine's Day plans. We also made a lunch date for a day I knew my workload would be light. I couldn't figure out how to ask why she'd stopped my hand though. I resolved to talk to Tamara about it, after seeing how Billy was doing, of course.

When Thursday arrived, Billy was doing great.

"Any problems with Jesse?" I asked when we were sitting in his room before dinner, starting to put together some MechWarriors for a battle.

"Nope!" he proudly exclaimed. "He left me alone all week! Ralph and Ed too!"

"That's good!" I affirmed.

"Yeah! And yesterday, after school, we followed him!"

"What?" I asked, getting a little concerned.

"We followed him! We saw him going home by himself without Frank, so Ed and Ben and I followed him!"

"And why did you do that?"

"Well, uh, there were three of us, and, uh, just one of him..."

"Yes. And what were the three of you going to do to him?"

Billy caught my tone with that one and hung his head.

"I dunno," he replied.

I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder and he looked up me.

"I think it's great that you guys stuck together," I told him. "But you don't want to start a fight with Jesse just because there are more of you than him."

"I know," he moped. "Fighting is wrong."

"Not necessarily," I replied. That caught Billy's attention. "There's a time and a place for it. Like in self-defense, when Jesse or someone like Jesse has started it. But it's not the time when Jesse's just walking home alone and there's three of you."

Billy looked at me, confused. I sighed.

"If you're going to start a fight with Jesse," I began, "it needs to be because he's doing something that's worth fighting over. Picking on another kid, for example. Walking home alone isn't enough."

Billy slowly nodded.

"It's like when a cop arrests a crook," I said. "He can't arrest the crook just for being a bad guy. He's got to arrest the crook because he's done something bad."

"But Jesse's done bad things!"

"True," I continued. "So that's a bad example. Think of it this way. If you guys beat Jesse up because of what he did yesterday, then he is equally justified in beating you up tomorrow for what you did to him today. It will never stop. You'll be beating each other up forever."

Billy scrunched his face up, but nodded a little.

"Instead of thinking about getting even with Jesse, you need to think of it as training Jesse."

A flash of insight hit me.

"Do you know anyone that has a big dog, Billy? In many ways, bullies are just like big bad dogs."

"My cousin in Portland has a dog. A German Shepard! I got to play with him at Christmas!"

"Well, do you know to train a dog to go to the bathroom in the right place? You rub his nose in it when he goes in the wrong place."

"Ooo! Ick!"

"Yup," I replied. "Ick. The thing is, you have to rub his nose in it right after the dog's done it. If you wait a few days to rub his nose in the poop, he doesn't understand why you're doing it. He doesn't connect the punishment of getting a nose full of poop to going to the bathroom in the wrong place."

"You gotta rub his nose in the poop right away!" Billy started giggling.

"Yes, you do," I replied. "And the same thing with Jesse. If you start a fight with him when he's just walking down the street, he won't learn anything. But if you start a fight with him when he's picking on another kid, he might learn not to pick on people."

Billy nodded at that, but then started giggling again. "Jesse's just a poopy dog!"

I winced before nodding. I hoped the name wouldn't stick for long.

Fortunately, it didn't. Tamara admonished him over dinner when he muttered "Poopy dog!" a little too loudly and that was the end of it within our hearing. He might have repeated it to himself while he did the dishes, but if so, he was making enough noise banging the dishes around that we couldn't hear.

This was fine, because it meant he also couldn't hear us. Tamara and I spent a little time chatting about her classes and about some of my efforts at work first and then I caught her up on the Merry Men expedition. She seemed pretty pleased with how that had gone and mentioned that Ralph had come over after school on Tuesday to play for a while. She said she appreciated the fact that Billy seemed to be finding friends despite his handicaps and I could do nothing but agree.

Then I started to tell her about the date. Tamara nodded, a thin smile of appreciation on her lips, as I described the dinner conversation. When I mentioned my surprise at Angie's comment about someday being a good father, Tamara just laughed.

"She's right, you know," Tamara said.

I just stared at her for a moment, speechless. Then I continued.

"We started kissing," I said, "and it got much hotter and much more passionate than before."

I broke off to check Tamara's reaction. She was grinning.

"So I started sliding my hand up her thigh," I continued. "She seemed to like it, and even didn't mind when I started rubbing her crotch."

"Below her clothing?" Tamara asked.

"Above," I answered. "The thing is, she didn't seem to like me rubbing her through her clothes. I think I was doing it wrong. And she stopped me when I tried to get under her clothes."

"There could have been a lot of reasons for that."

"Maybe. I wish I'd known what I was doing though."

"So what were you doing?" Tamara asked.

"Well, I tried running my fingers up and down where I guessed her labia would be, and then I tried moving in circles near where I guessed her clit would be. Then I started stroking..." I looked down and noticed I was trying to mime my actions with my fingers. I looked over at Tamara, who was watching intently, but still with some questions in her eyes.

"It would really be easier to show you," I stated.

"No."

"No?"

"It wouldn't be fair to Angie," Tamara replied. "You're with her now."

I bowed my head and felt my gut start to churn. My face flushed, though with shame or embarrassment, I couldn't tell. Yes, I was with Angie. Isn't that what I wanted, to be with Angie? I suspected that Angie wouldn't have been happy if she'd heard me just now. What a dumb thing to suggest!

"I'm sorry, Tamara," I said, finally looking up. "That was a stupid thing for me to say."

She nodded in agreement and then reached over and squeezed my hand. "That's okay," she reassured me. "Angie didn't hear you and I won't tell her."