Chapter 10

"Wait a minute," Sherri interrupted. "Is this a story about Sharon or Tina?"

"Both."

"Both?"

"Both. When I said I'd lost both my best friend and the only woman who could ever love me, I was referring to Sharon and Tina respectively."

"Oh..." I could see Sherri replaying our first conversation in her mind. "The way you said it implied they were the same person."

"I was drunk," I reminded her.

"So Tina..." Sherri began.

"Dumped me," I finished for her. "And Sharon won't speak to me."

"And those two things are related."

I couldn't help my low chuckle. "Oh, yes. Though a lot happened before we got to that point..."

I drove Tina back to her dorm that night since it had gotten so late. Our kiss in the lobby was short, as Tina was clearly tired and only minutes away from dreamland. We agreed to talk on the phone the next afternoon and then I headed home to find my own pillow.

My dreams were rather convoluted that night. I awoke with memories of Sharon in my arms topless and it took a few minutes to realize I was mixing New Year's Day and the previous night. I took a bleary-eyed look at the clock and realized that I'd only gotten a few hours of sleep. Unfortunately, I didn't get much more before the phone rang.

It was Sharon, of course. She wanted to know how the date with Tina went.

"Very well," I told her. "She wasn't repulsed by my food, but she says she's going to have to teach me how to cook."

Sharon laughed. "You should have mentioned something earlier. I love cooking!"

"Well, I've always just done enough to survive."

"If you're going to impress the women, you've got to be able to do more than that."

"Oh, really?" I shot back. "So, if a guy cooks a meal for you, you're more amenable to whatever comes after?"

"Hell, yes. A great seduction always starts with a great meal!"

I chuckled. "I'll remember that the next time I'm in Colorado and you want to go out fancy." Sharon snorted and I just moved on before she could interject. "In any case, it appears that my cooking was good enough last night."

"Oh? What did you do?"

"Not much," I admitted. "Tina doesn't have a lot of experience and she doesn't want to rush things, so ... mostly we just made out. I did end up playing with her breasts and sucking her nipples."

"Mmmm. I love it when a guy does that. Particularly when he sucks hard."

"Hard? It doesn't hurt?"

"Not if he keeps his teeth out of the way. But yeah, sucking hard feels really good."

"Huh."

"Give it a try with Tina," Sharon said. "Allen said that not all women are the same, but I wasn't the only one he'd encountered who loved it."

"You and Allen talked about his experiences with other women?" I asked, somewhat surprised.

"What's wrong with that?" Sharon asked. "It's not like he was seeing other women at the same time we were dating. I told him my past and he told me his."

"But in that explicit detail?"

"Well ... those kinds of details slipped out over time. Allen and I talked a lot about what we liked and what we wanted to do. In this particular case, I mentioned that I thought it was weird that I liked him to suck so hard and he reassured me that I wasn't abnormal."

"Huh."

No wonder Sharon had no trouble talking about sex with me. It was apparently common for her. It hadn't been for Alicia, when we were dating. It had been damn hard to get her to admit to anything she actually wanted to do, beyond the basics. Maybe Tina would be different.

"You can always just try different amounts and ask Tina what she likes," Sharon continued.

"I'll do that."

"Great," she said. "Then at least one of us will have a good sex life."

"I've offered to help..."

"Yeah, yeah."

"I'll get a new story package out this week," I said, before she could get too annoyed.

"That would be good," Sharon replied. "Speaking of which, what did you think of the one I sent you?"

"I liked it," I said. "Where'd you come up with the idea?"

"Oh, I was listening to the music in the bath and it came to me."

"So did you ever give Allen the equivalent of a Geisha bath?"

Sharon chuckled. "Unfortunately, no. No bathtub while we were in the dorms and we didn't get around to it when I had the apartment before we broke up."

"Just blowjobs in the shower."

"Oh, and intercourse in the shower."

"Of course," I said, smiling at the image.

"Well, I'm going to go," Sharon said. "Glad you had a good date."

"Me too."

"Can't wait to hear about the next one."

I laughed and agreed. We said our goodbyes and hung up.

I immediately felt guilty. I was with Tina now and I'd just made two semi-joking passes at Sharon. What the hell was wrong with me?

I mulled it over in the shower and during breakfast. My comments had been impulsive but also automatic. I didn't really think them through before I said them—they just popped out. What the hell was I doing?

It was habit because I'd been wanting to sleep with Sharon for months. Me making a semi-serious pass was almost an expected part of our banter. After all, despite the fact that the stuff we'd done together was fairly mild, it was the only sexual outlet I'd had with another person since, what, Spring Break? Yeah, Spring Break had been the last time Alicia and I had been together.

It had been even longer for Sharon, I mused.

Fine. It was a habit I needed to break. I was with Tina now and while we hadn't discussed monogamy, I didn't really expect her to want anything else.

But did I want it?

Even though Tina was comfortable waiting until I left to decide where our relationship was going, I was still leaving. It wouldn't be fair to tie her down in case she met someone she could have a longer-term relationship with.

"In case." That was a heckuva phrase to hang a relationship on. Did I really want to tell Tina that we'd be monogamous until she found someone better than me? Even I had to snort at that one. If she found someone better than me and she wanted to move on, she would. It would be stupid to bring up other possible "cases" now.

Saying what was fair for Tina was a cop-out. The real question was, did I want to be monogamous with Tina?

I enjoyed being with Tina a lot. I also liked where we were headed, as memories of her breasts in my hands flitted through my mind. I could handle being monogamous with Tina.

Except I still wanted to have sex with Sharon.

I had to put that thought out of my mind. It hadn't happened before I'd met Tina and there was no reason to believe it was going to happen in the foreseeable future. Sharon kept insisting we were only friends. Fine, we could be just friends.

Sharon was my friend. Tina was likely to be my girlfriend soon enough. That's the way it was.

Tina was likely to be my girlfriend.

That idea just stuck with me and rattled around my brain for much of the rest of the day. At times it made me giddy and uncontrollably happy. At times it terrified me. Mostly I just played with the idea that I could once again have a girlfriend after Alicia. She had been the love of my life until then, but it was clear that life went on. And that life could be good when it went on.

I was back to a giddy place when I called Tina in mid-afternoon. She seemed excited too when she answered the phone.

"I had a really great time last night," I said after the hellos had been exchanged. "I wish it hadn't had to end."

"Me too," Tina replied with a sigh. "But that just gives us something to look forward to for next Friday."

"So a standing movie night sounds good?" I asked.

"Absolutely."

"Too bad Friday's so far away."

"No kidding. But I really do have to spend a lot of time studying when I'm not at work."

"No need to explain," I replied. "I really should study more, too. What about studying together?"

"That would be great!"

"Well ... what about coming over on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening?" I suggested. "We could cook dinner, and then afterwards break out the books."

"That would be wonderful," Tina gushed, "since the semester's just started, I should be able to make it. I'll still have some homework, though."

"That's okay. Work comes before 'play, ' after all."

Tina caught my intonation and laughed good-naturedly. I smiled silently.

"Well, Tuesdays are good for me," Tina said. "Can you cover dinner this time? I'll bring over some cookbooks and we can pick recipes to try on Friday."

"Sounds great," I answered.

After hanging up, I realized that I had just put myself on the hook to cook again. Actually, I could probably order pizza, but what would Tina think? I supposed I should have asked her, but I didn't want to call her back. Instead, I pored through my two cookbooks again.

In the end, I gave up. I decided that getting a new cookbook was a worthwhile investment. Since it wasn't too late, I headed down to the biggest used bookstore in town, Bookman's. I found a decent cookbook fairly quickly. At least decent by what I could tell. It had pretty pictures and the handful of recipes I read were fairly easy to follow. It was also cheap enough to leave some money in my pocket, so I decided to browse.

The best thing about Bookman's, really, was the size. There were plenty of shelves to check out. I found a novel that looked interesting for three bucks, a useful movie guide that Tina might enjoy—or at least might be useful to us in picking out movies—and a book of erotica.

As the clerk was checking me out, I stared at the last one. Why, exactly, was I buying it?

For Sharon, of course. Another damn habit in looking for things that would turn her on. Mildly disgusted with myself, I threw the erotica book under my bed when I got home.

The next few days passed slowly. I constantly found myself day dreaming about Tina. Sometimes the daydreams were chaste and romantic, but more often they were flights of fantasy. I kept coming back to Tina's comment that she wanted to explore. I could definitely be with a woman who liked exploring.

When Tuesday evening finally arrived, I had a small feast prepared. A pasta dish with homemade pesto, fresh bread from the supermarket bakery, homemade garlic potatoes, and some chicken breasts. Even better, it was all done at the same time. About ten minutes before Tina was due to arrive.

I did my best to keep it warm and she was amused that it was ready. After putting her books down, she looked at what I'd prepared.

"Pretty heavy on the starch, tonight," she commented. My face fell and she noticed.

"That's okay, Joe," she reassured me. "We'll work on menus as part of learning to cook. I brought a couple of cookbooks we'll leave here as well as my file of family recipes."

"You'll let me keep your family recipes?"

"Why not? It's not like I can do any cooking while living in the dorm."

I nodded in response to that and finished getting the meal ready.

Tina looked enthusiastic until she cut into the chicken.

"Uh, Joe, this is cold," she said, poking at the chicken.

I grimaced.

"So much for the seduction," I muttered as I retrieved her plate to put the chicken back on the stove.

"What?" Tina asked.

I sighed.

"My friend Sharon says that a great seduction begins with a great meal," I said with a wry grin. "I don't feel like I'm off to a good start."

Tina chuckled. "I wouldn't worry about it," she said. "We are going to work on teaching you to cook, after all."

Tina got up and watched over my shoulder as I quickly reheated the pan and returned the meat to it. I supposed I could use the microwave, I mused, but somehow this seemed more appropriate.

"So who's Sharon?" Tina asked.

My back immediately stiffened. Then I realized I had nothing to hide.

"She's my best friend," I said. "We used to live in the same dorm and she dated my roommate. When they broke up, I was there for her. When my last girlfriend dumped me, she returned the favor. Even though she's still in Boulder, we talk about once a week and we talk about everything."

"Oh," Tina said, biting her lip. "Did you ever date?"

"Uh ... we never dated," I said. "Sharon made it clear that she didn't want to risk losing the friendship by becoming romantically involved." I took a quick breath. "It looked like we might be 'friends with benefits' for a while, but that didn't go too far either."

I glanced over at Tina. Her head was tilted and her eyes questioning. She looked like she was about to say something, but then she didn't.

"Sharon actually encouraged me to ask you out," I continued, putting a wry grin on my face. "I told her about meeting you and she pushed me to go back and talk to you some more."

Tina started grinning. "I'll have to thank her then."

"Oh, I've already thanked her a lot. Meeting you has to be one of the best things that's happened since I got to Tucson."

Tina just smiled in response. The chicken was warm again, so I returned it to our plates and placed hers on the table with a flourish. I bowed deeply before returning to my seat.

"I may not get points for cooking," I joked, "but I can always make it up with style."

"And other ways," Tina said, her eyes flashing with mischief.

We chatted about cooking over the meal and afterwards, Tina did her homework while I did the dishes. Then we skimmed her recipes and made a shopping list for Friday and then studied together. When we finally closed the last book, I turned and smiled at her.

"I believe it's time for dessert?" I suggested, raising my eyebrows.

"Oh? And what did you have in mind?" Tina replied, grinning.

"I want to taste this," I said, putting one finger against her lips, "and this." My finger trailed down her neck and across one breast.

"And this." I slid my hand down past her waist until I was touching her mound through her shorts.

Tina let out a small gasp. She met my eyes and as I smiled, she relaxed. I leaned in and kissed her on the mouth.

We kissed for several minutes before easing to the floor. Lying side by side, we began running our hands over each other as we continued making out. Tina let out several low pleasurable moans as I caressed her breasts through her shirt. She ran her own fingers across my shoulders and upper arms in return.

As we continued to kiss, I dropped my hand to Tina's waist and began to slowly slide it up under her shirt. I edged higher and higher until the angle caused the fabric to get twisted. Tina pulled back from our kisses and sat back. She quickly pulled her shirt off and threw it aside. I took my own off while she unhooked her bra.