Chapter 11: Emily

I was in bed, under the covers, and pretending to be asleep when Dave finally came into the darkened room and joined me in the bed. It was a full-sized bed and I was lying on the right side -- the side next to Dave's alarm clock and his portable radio and a Sound Machine with the sounds of ocean waves and the clickity-clack of a train rolling over the rails.

Sleeping aids.

Dave, apparently, didn't need any sleeping aids that night. He quickly took his place on the other side of the bed, lying on his right side, back-to-back with me. It was only a regular-sized bed, and neither of us was a particularly small person, but there was lots of room between us. Eddie could have come in, and slept comfortably in the space between us.

I'd really meant it, when I'd told Dave that we weren't going to have sex. I knew he really meant it, too. He'd said he didn't even have a condom in the house. Well, I didn't tell him, but unless one of us had a social disease, he wouldn't have needed a condom. I was on the Pill, and had been for a long time.

I was, after all, a 22-year-old college senior. My virginity was a long-ago not-so-fond memory, and nothing more.

I really meant it, when I told Dave no sex, but I hadn't intended that we'd sleep two feet apart, bottom-to-bottom. I wanted his arms around me. I wanted his hand on by breast, making like a truly living bra. I wanted to be cuddled. I wanted Dave to reach down and confirm that, no, this was not his 16-year-old male cousin he was groping. It was a real, live, very warm grown-up woman. He might find something wet down there, but he wouldn't find anything hard.

I was feigning sleep, but Davey Hooks, ten minutes into our first night in bed together, was sleeping for real. He wasn't snoring, but he wasn't faking it, either. He was dead to the world.

It was hard not to take it personally. I mean, being a little chaste, yes, that was fine. I really didn't think it was right, for us to have sex, that night, after we'd known each other for five days and had spent, together, a total of ten hours. It was too soon for sex.

But not too soon for a cuddle, for God's sake!

Eventually, I, too, drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up, the room was still very dark, and the digital clock next to me said, in big red letters, "4:07". We'd been asleep for around three hours. I had to pee. I got out of the bed and groped my way across the dark room to the memory of where the door was. There was a night light in the hallway, and I found my way to the bathroom easily enough.

I peed -- the last, I hoped, of the two beers we'd shared after dinner. I briefly brushed at my teeth again, on the off-chance that I'd be kissing David Hooks when I got back into the bed.

Now back into the darkened bedroom, carefully crossing the unfamiliar space between door and the red letters on Dave's bedside clock -- my guide to the waiting bed. It was 4:16 now. It seemed as if most of the past nine minutes had been spent peeing.

Ahh, beer!

But when I touched the bed, preparatory to rejoining Dave there, I didn't touch the bed, I touched David Hooks. I didn't touch anything embarrassing -- just his arm, near the elbow. But his arm, and his elbow, and the rest of David Hooks' bulky athlete's body was now comfortably sprawled on "my" side of the bed.

Well, that shouldn't have surprised me much. I had known, when I got into this bed, that I was sleeping on David's favored side. I'd done it on purpose. Now, my choice was clear: walk around the bed and take my newly assigned place on the far side... Where I was supposed to have been in the first place.

That was, obviously, my best choice. But I didn't make that choice. Instead, I seated myself in the tiny space remaining between the edge of the bed and Dave's sleeping form, and I laid myself back down in that bed, barely avoiding falling off onto the floor; and then I pushed, with my bottom, until Dave's sleeping form gave way -- just a little bit -- and made a little space for me to rejoin him.

But this time, we weren't bottom-to-bottom, and we weren't two feet apart. My butt was forcing its way into Dave's middle, making room for the rest of me, atop the mattress. I wasn't shoving him away! Far from it. But I needed to avoid falling out of his bed. Dave's right arm, seeking balance as I pushed at him, finally fell across the middle of my body and, harmlessly, his hand found the edge of the mattress, holding me safe like the seatbelt of a car.

It was a chaste hug. Dave was, and had been, asleep through it all. His body was very warm and completely bare except for his briefs. His penis was growing hard against my bottom. Surely he was awake?

Right? Wasn't he?

Maybe not. I knew that, sometimes, penises got hard all by themselves.

It felt nice. It wasn't poking me, or trying to find its way anywhere. It was just big and hard and nestled nicely in the crack of my butt. Dave was breathing through his mouth, and I could feel the gentle heat of his breath on the back of my neck. It felt nice. Probably, he had bad breath. He was breathing through his mouth, and he'd been in bed for more than three hours. Hell, under those conditions, anybody would have bad breath!