Chapter 5

There were three weeks left before school started again, when she did me that first time. I stopped in two days later, with my six cookies, and a fluttering heart.

I tapped on the back door and stuck my head in the kitchen and she came in from the living room with a smile. She usually wore shorts and a tank top, or a halter top in the summertime, but this day she was wearing a sundress.

"Hi," she said. "I shouldn't have speeded things up last time," she said, taking a cookie. "I hope you can forgive me."

"There's nothing to forgive," I said. "It was great."

"It was too great," she said, with a small sad smile. "We're going too fast."

"Not for me," I said.

"Especially for you," she said, poking me in the chest with a stiff finger. "If I can barely control myself, how can I expect you to control yourself at all?" she asked.

"So what do we do?" I asked.

"We slow down," she said. "Can you do that?"

"Yes," I said, with the overconfidence of callow youth.

"We'll see," she said. "Now, I have a list. You want to do a good deed?"

"Sure," I said. I was a little relieved, actually. Had she met me at the door naked and panting, which is kind of what my fantasy was when I was going over there, I have no idea what I'd have done. But doing a good deed for her was as comfortable as an old shoe.

It was just like old times. She stood there, in the door, watching as I changed her furnace filter. Then she had me take down some curtains, so she could wash them. I could reach them easily.

She asked me what I was going to do after High School, and I told her I didn't know. I'd thought about going to the Junior College, in town, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. My guidance counselor at school had tried to get me to apply to colleges while I was a Junior, for pity's sake, but I didn't do it. My folks were doing OK, but my grades wouldn't get me much of a scholarship. I wasn't even sure I wanted to go to college at all, for that matter. I thought about the Army, but hadn't done anything about it.

I told her all this as I vacuumed out the condenser coils of the refrigerator, yelling over the noise of the vacuum cleaner. When I was done, and turned it off, it seemed really quiet.

"I don't see much of you during the school year," she said.

"Yeah, I get busy with homework and stuff," I said. "But I can probably come over sometimes," I added.

"That would be nice," she said.

"Can I ask you a question?" I asked.

"Of course," she said, coiling up the cord to the vacuum cleaner. She was bending over. There was no bra with the sundress, and I could see most of her breasts.

"How slow is slow?"

She looked up at me. She gave me "that look".

"I don't want you to think only of... that... when you think of me," she said.

"I don't ALWAYS think of that," I said. "Usually, but not ALWAYS."

Her laughter made me start to stiffen.

"We'll do it again. Don't you worry about that. You're not the only one in this partnership, you know. I have feelings too."

"Well, sure," I said. That seemed obvious to me.

"When we did that, the other day," she said, standing up, "I didn't want to stop."

"Oh," I said. I think my eyes might have glazed over a little.

She poked me with a finger again. "You're not ready for the full Monte."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"If we did everything, you'd think you loved me," she said.

I thought about that. The only people I'd ever told I loved them were my grandmother, my parents, and Suzy, once, in a weak moment. I didn't think about Gloria the way I thought about them at all. I liked her. I liked her more than any other adult, in some ways. But I didn't love her. Not in any way I was familiar with.

"I don't think so," I finally said.

She looked surprised, so I told her about what I'd just thought about.

"That's what I mean," she said. "When you love someone - truly love her - it's something you'll know, instinctively. You'll feel like you wont be able to live without her. You'll think about her all the time. You'll want to live with her, and be with her all the time. But sexual feelings are close to that, and they confuse people, sometimes. You like what's happening, and you don't want to live without THAT. When that happens, what you're in love with is sex... but not necessarily the woman you're having sex with."

That made sense. I nodded, and told her what I thought that meant.

"So slow is better, because that gives you time to think about things, and keep things in perspective."

"Exactly!" she said. "My ex-husband and I thought we were in love with each other, but he was in love with the sex, and I was just his chance to have it whenever he wanted it. When someone else came along, he did the same thing."

"But I don't want to do what we did with anybody else," I objected.

She frowned a little bit. "You will," she said. "You'll start dating this year, and meet girls, and you'll want to do the same things with them that you've done with me. When you're with a girl, the two of you may get all mixed up inside, and want to go farther, or faster than is wise. Just remember, Bobby... slow is good. Too fast makes it really hard to put on the brakes."

"Like you," I said, "wanting to keep going with me."

She looked startled. Then she frowned again. "Yes," she said, but she said it with some hesitancy. "Yes." She said it more forcefully then.

She looked uncomfortable, and the frown deepened. Then she said she was going shopping, and I left.

I went back home and shot some hoops. Suzy came out and began pestering me to teach her to shoot hoops too. I looked at her and thought about her not being there... like she was in a car crash, or something, and had died. I got this huge lump in my throat, and it felt awful.

I spent the next two hours playing basketball with a twelve-year-old girl. It was great.

One of the things I learned about women that summer, or at least about Gloria, was that, while good intentions make the rules, they don't necessarily stand up to really strong emotions. She had said that, when I dated, and began fooling around with girls, I would be all mixed up inside. I found out that she knew this from experience.

Though she didn't figure it out, or tell me about it, until much later, Gloria got the most horny when she ovulated. That first day, when she wore the bikini for me, and showed me her breasts, and jerked me off, she was ovulating. That's why she got so wild, and did all that, or at least that's what she claimed later.

She ovulated two more times before I went back to school, and neither of us knew why, both times, she went a little wild.

Normally, when I went over, there was a casual atmosphere that was flirty, and light and fun. We didn't ignore each other sexually, but we didn't push things either.

Then one day, when I tapped on the back door and stepped in - I didn't have to wait for her to open the door any more - she yelled that she was in the living room. She was putting a picture puzzle together, on a card table. Normally, that's kind of a sedentary sort of thing. You sit there, staring at puzzle pieces, trying one here or there, every once in a while.

But she was acting all hyped up... almost nervous. She had "that look" on her face when I walked into the room.

"Did you go?" she asked.

She was talking about my first official date. I had finally gotten up the nerve to ask Charity Nelson to go to a movie with me, and had told Gloria about it.

"Of course I went," I said. "Did you think I'd chicken out?"

"Maybe," she said, drawing it out. "Tell me all about it!"

So I told her how I'd picked Charity up, going in to meet her parents, like I had been taught to do by my mother. I hadn't been able to think of anything to say to them. They'd wanted to know what movie we were going to, and I told them I was going to let Charity pick one.

We went to the theater, and she picked a movie, and we watched it. Afterwards she wanted to go to the mall. When we got there, instead of looking at things in the windows, she looked for her friends, and we spent the next hour standing around while she talked to her friends.

"Then I took her home, because she had to be back by ten," I finished.

She'd kept trying pieces of the puzzle while I told the story.

"Did she kiss you good night?" asked Gloria, fidgeting in her chair.

"I didn't try to kiss her," I said.

"Why not?"

"I thought about it, but it felt funny," I said. "I hardly know her. We didn't actually talk all that much."

"Not even about the movie?" she asked.

"It was an animated thing about a bunch of animals. What was there to talk about?" I asked.

"Did she wait a few seconds, at the front door, before she opened it?" asked Gloria. "Did she look at you for a few seconds?"

"Well... yeah, I guess so. I couldn't think of anything to say, though, and she went on in. She said she had a good time." I added hopefully.

"You dope," she said mildly. "She was waiting for you to kiss her good night."

"I don't know how to kiss," I objected. "The only people I've ever kissed are my mom and grandmother. I don't think you're supposed to kiss a girl good night on the cheek."

She finally stopped looking at the puzzle and looked up at me. She had "that look" on her face. She stood up.

"I'm going to teach you how to kiss a girl good night," she said.

Now, I have to tell you, the thought of trying to kiss Charity Nelson good night left me weak in the knees, because it scared me to death. But the thought of kissing Gloria, just made my prick start to get hard. How funny is that?

She came and stood right in front of me. She was wearing a tank top, and terrycloth shorts, like she did a lot. I had grown some, and she only came to my chin, these days, so she had to look up, and I had to look down. Her cleavage was right there to look at, so I looked.

She put her hands on my shoulders, just laying them there lightly.

"Put your hands on my waist," she said.

I did.

Then she instructed me on tilting my head, so our noses wouldn't bump.

"OK," she said. "Now, kiss my lips just like you'd kiss your mother on her cheek."

I leaned down and did it. It took all of about one second.

She looked startled. Then she took one of my hands from her waist and told me to hold up one finger. Then she told me to watch her lips as she kissed my fingertip. She held it there for a few seconds. I was amazed at how soft and warm her lips felt.

"See how your fingertip was able to dent my lips?" she asked, when she had done it.

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