Chapter 2

Within two days of Walter's return for the Holidays, he and Carla were back together again. I got home from helping Jimmy Lakeland with raking the leaves around his house at about two thirty, and the two of them were in the living room, making out hot and heavy.

Jimmy and I had just negotiated a deal where I would pitch in, by helping with some of his chores over at his house, and, in return, he would be giving me rides to and from school for the remainder of the school year.

The kicker, really the thing that had convinced me to take the deal, was that Jimmy had a cute girlfriend, and he told me that she was always asking him to bring along one of his friends so that they could go on double dates with some of her girlfriends.

Brenda, Jimmy's girlfriend, only hung around with girls who were just as cute as she was. Jimmy told me that my name had come up, when they were discussing who would be acceptable, and Brenda had indicated that I would be okay. Jimmy and I had been friends since the sixth grade, so I knew that he wasn't just scamming me in order to get his chores cut in half.

I had thought briefly of telling Walter what Kiki had told me to tell him, but I'd concluded that telling him could only hurt my own future chances with her. Even though she hadn't done anything to indicate an interest in me, I had enjoyed our time together in the mall, and thought that she'd had some fun as well.

After New Years came, Walter would be heading off to Indiana again, and I would be seeing Kiki in school most days. If she asked me, I'd just say that I had given Walter her message.

That night Walter asked my mother if it would be all right if Carla came over on Christmas day to celebrate Christmas with us. I'm not even sure whether they had known that Walter and Carla had been split up, but my mother told him that Carla was always welcome.

For the rest of Walter's vacation, Carla spent more time at our house than she did at her own. When she wasn't at our house, she and Walter were off together doing something. Several times, when my parents were both gone from the house, I heard the two of them screwing in his bedroom.

Whatever Walter was doing with her, it was sure working, because she just couldn't seem to keep her hands off of him when they were together.

I made sure that I was out doing something on the morning that Walter drove himself back to school. I didn't want to have to endure another long, drawn out, departure scene where all of us just stood around waiting for him to finally leave.

When I got home New Year's night, Walter was gone, and we didn't expect to see him again until April. School started back the next day, and I was happy to be riding there in style with Jimmy. At our school, a lot of the kids would drive to school early, and then stay out in the parking lot, talking to friends, and trying to hook up with dates for the week ends.

It was a whole pool of social activity that I had been excluded from when I walked to school, or else had ridden my bike. Most of the kids that were popular hung out in the parking lot, the others stayed in the quad at the tables that were set up there.

That first day back at school, I noticed Carla hanging out with her circle of friends. She was wearing Walter's letterman's jacket again, so I was able to figure out what had happened to that box that she had dropped by my desk on the first day of school.

She must have come back and retrieved it after my home room was over. That told me that she had known even then that she was going to go back with Walter. I heard Carla telling everyone that she and Walter had gotten back together, and that they were almost engaged.

I wondered if Walter knew that he was almost engaged. Somehow, I doubted that a lot. I also wondered if Carla had mentioned to Walter about her brief dating flurry right after she and Walter had broken up.

At least two of the guys that she'd dated then were bragging that they had screwed her. I made a small mental note to myself to look into that, to see if I could verify at least one of their claims.

After school, Jimmy gave me a ride home. Brenda was with him, so I sat in the back seat to give them some space. Just before we got to my house, Brenda turned in her seat and asked me if I knew Audrey Draper.

Since she already knew the answer to that question, I assumed that she was asking it as a lead in to something else. Audrey was her best friend, and had recently broken up with her boyfriend, who went to a military high school some seventy miles south of our city.

I hadn't heard any details of the break up, but Audrey was extremely cute, and, if rumors were to be believed, had been sexually active with the aforementioned ex boyfriend.

"Sure, we've got a couple of classes together this year."

"I'm asking because she broke up with Richard, her boyfriend, and she needs to start going out again. Jimmy and I were thinking that you two might like each other if you went out some."

"I'm willing, but what about her? It might be awkward if she didn't really want to be going out yet, or if she didn't want to go out with me."

"I already talked to her about you, and she says she wouldn't mind going to a movie or something if we all doubled together."

"Great then. When you're ready just have Jimmy let me know where and when, and I'll be there. Audrey is really cute, and I'm looking forward to it."

They let me out of the car and I went inside the house to get started with my homework. Things were really looking up for me if I was going to get a chance at dating Audrey Draper.

Later that night, Jimmy called me and filled me in on what he knew about Audrey's breakup and the conversation that Brenda had told him about, between her and her best friend.

"She digs you man. Brenda told me that she saw you that first time when you ate it totally up on the stage. Audrey told her that she thought you were so brave to be willing to come back out there after that. I'm not supposed to tell you this, Bar, but Audrey and Ritchie were going at it like minks.

Brenda says that when he came home on weekends that the two of them spent more time in the back seat of his parent's car than they did anywhere else. She really dug it too. Brenda says that she's jealous sometimes when Audrey tells her about how many times she can cum. Girl's got one of those hair triggers, and can get off just by rubbing her legs together for ten minutes.

You're one lucky fuck, if you can just act cool and play your cards right. By the way, Ritchie dumped her because he got himself another chick who lives right by his school. Man, how cute do you figure this other chick must be for him to just up and dump Audrey?"

It was another couple of days before Jimmy brought Audrey up again with me. Apparently, Audrey was having second thoughts about starting back with dating so soon. Instead, Jimmy said, she wanted to have Brenda and her meet us at the arcade over at the miniature golf place.

That way it wouldn't be like a real date, and the two of us could find out if we wanted to take the next step and double up with Jimmy and Brenda. Jimmy said that Friday night was good for Brenda and Audrey, and asked if that would be okay with me too. I told him that it sounded good to me as well.

I was already nervous at the prospect of dating Audrey, mainly because I knew that she had been dating for awhile, and I was a rank beginner. I'd been to a few parties where there were girls, but hadn't ever actually been on a date. Nerves or not though, I was ready, in fact, anxious, to get started soon.

By Friday afternoon, I had thought of just about every possible embarrassing thing that could go wrong during the meeting at the arcade. I had fixed my hair, brushed my teeth, smelled my pits for body odor, and even twice put talc on my balls to make sure that they wouldn't be itchy while I was out and in Audrey's presence.

I thought everything went pretty well considering all of the things that I'd been afraid might happen. We spent about an hour playing in the arcade before we went over and bought individual slices of greasy pizza and soft drinks.

Audrey liked pepperoni and mushroom the same as I did, and we both drank Sprite. Audrey was pretty tall for a girl, I think she said she was five eight, but I was five eleven and she looked nearly as tall as me.

She had her hair in a pony tail, even though it was only about shoulder length. It was a reddish brown color and it went well with her dark brown eyes and dark complexion. Her boobs were pretty big, bigger than Brenda's, and hers were big as well. She had a very nice smile, and I noticed that her teeth were good except for one of her eyeteeth that stuck out just a little bit.

It wasn't like a fang or anything, but it did stick out more than you'd normally see. We were almost forced into talking with each other while we were sitting there eating because Jimmy and Brenda were lost in their own little world.