Chapter 5

Janet waited nervously, again outside the Wagon Wheel, and again clutching her coat around her as her breath floated white from her mouth. This time, though, her nervousness was a result of her consuming curiosity. Rhonda had sounded ... different. Something had definitely happened and Janet couldn’t wait to find out what it was. Again, she saw Rhonda park on the street, and again, she yelled “Hurry up! It’s freezing!” as Rhonda walked toward her.

She didn’t look any different.

“Aren’t you freezing?” complained Janet as her friend approached.

“No,” said Rhonda, looking pink. “I feel warm all over.”

“Get inside! I can’t wait to hear about it.” Janet opened the door, and pushed Rhonda in.

In the booth, Rhonda seemed to take forever to get her coat off, and then the waitress was there. It wasn’t Jill. It was another, younger woman, with dark hair. She asked what they wanted, and finally left.

“Well?” Janet leaned forward, her eyes bright.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Rhonda softly. “I can’t just tell you what happened.”

“If you don’t I’ll have a stroke, right this minute!” moaned Janet. “Come on, we’re best friends. You can tell me.”

“It’s just that it was so ... intimate,” sighed Rhonda. By her standards, that kiss, and those roaming hands had been incredibly intimate. Up to that point, it had all turned into a game ... a delightfully fun game, where she was going to play a trick on her friend. Then his lips, and his hands, had announced that this was no game at all ... that, someday, incredibly intimate things would be shared between the two. When he’d walked out the door, waving goodbye, Rhonda had barely been able to stand. Something in her had wanted to cry out to him to stop. He wasn’t finished yet! He couldn’t leave then ... not when the seed he had planted, with those lips and those hands, had already sprouted and needed tending.

She’d managed a croaking “When will I see you again?”

His grin had hit her right in the stomach. “Whenever you call me,” was all he’d said.

The first thing she’d done was scrabble frantically through the house, trying to find the slip of paper with his phone number on it. She couldn’t remember where she’d put it when Janet had made her call him the first time. When she finally saw it, lying on the floor, next to the phone, she almost cried with relief.

“Don’t just sit there!” moaned Janet, disrupting Rhonda’s reflections.

Rhonda took a deep breath. He’d coached her on this part. She could do it.

“He did the strangest things,” she said, “He touched me all over. He threw my clothes all over my bedroom.” She sighed, and her eyes went unfocused as she remembered it again. “He kissed me, and I couldn’t make my knees work.”

“Ohhhhh,” sighed Janet, slumping a little.

“We took a shower together,” said Rhonda, feeling stronger. She was watching Janet, who seemed to be as strongly affected by this as she had been herself.

“Was he gentle?” asked Janet softly.

“I couldn’t believe how gentle he was,” said Rhonda. That part was the truth. “He made me feel so ... I don’t know ... it was like he cared about how I felt.” She suddenly remembered more of her prepared “testimony”. “But he was strong too. The bed moved, Janet! I bet it moved a whole foot! I had to remind him that Herb was sleeping, and that we couldn’t wake him up!”

“Ohhh shit, I’m so horny right now I’d do it with Petey!” Pete Gunderson was a fifty-year-old bag boy at the IGA, who was tall and lanky, with stringy hair. A lot of people thought Pete wasn’t quite all there.

“I know how you feel,” said Rhonda, suddenly realizing that that was exactly what she was feeling ... she was horny! She hadn’t felt that way for almost as long as she could remember.

“Didn’t he satisfy you?” asked Janet, suddenly sober, and much too interested in how Rhonda was feeling, as far as Rhonda was concerned.

“No man has satisfied me more,” said Rhonda carefully. She was proud that she’d thought that twisted truth up all by herself.

“Is he ... big?” asked Janet, leaning forward again.

“Big?” Rhonda wasn’t experienced enough to understand.

“You know,” said Janet. “Down there ... is he long? Thick?”

“Oh!” said Rhonda, blushing. She didn’t know what to say. She decided on the truth. “I don’t actually know. I mean it all happened so fast, and I was feeling so flustered. What I remember most is when he touched my breasts. I was almost overwhelmed by it all!”

Janet reached out and patted her hand. “It’s okay, honey,” she said. “I know I’m being too nosey. You don’t have to tell me everything.” She sat back. “Are you going to see him again?”

“Ohhh yes,” said Rhonda, telling the full and unvarnished truth, now. “I can’t wait to see him again.”

“Oooo!” squealed Janet, feeling her pussy dampen. “I’m so happy for you! I knew this would work out. Things are going to be a lot better for you now. I just know it!”

“I do too,” said Rhonda, because it was the right thing to say. Then, with a jolt, she realized that she actually believed that. From what little she knew about Bobby Dalton, if he continued to be in her life, it would be better.

They sipped coffee quietly for a few minutes.

“Oh yes!” said Rhonda suddenly. “I just remembered something.”

“What?” asked Janet, leaning forward again, all ears.

“He wanted me to remind you that you owe him ten dollars.”

The Valentines dance was a success, and a dismal failure, depending on the perspective of the students attending. For Tammy Wynn, it was a dismal failure, because she got in a fight with her boyfriend, Rick, when she caught him looking at other girls at the dance. They broke up, as a result, and she had to walk home. But for others, like Bev Dalton and Constance Harris, it was a glorious success.

Bev danced every dance with Bill, their bodies pressed together so tightly that a chaperone drifted over to remind them that they were in public. The chaperone was supposed to remind them that no close body touching was allowed, but had been young once herself.

Constance knew what a stiff prick felt like when it was pressed against her stomach. She’d felt Bobby’s on several occasions, when he hugged her, and twice when he’d kissed her. When she felt Tim’s erection pressing against her, she looked up into his eyes. She backed up, not because she was offended, but because of the danger of the feelings that coursed through her. Tim was also very aware of that stiff penis.

“I’m really sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t help it.”

“I forgive you,” she whispered back. His grin made her press against him again, and they finished the dance. They seemed to bump loins a lot.

At the end of the dance, the two couples, who had doubled in Tim’s car, drove all the way to Wichita, just to get milk shakes. Bill and Bev sat in the back and necked the whole way, while Constance slid over to lean against Tim. She laid her hand on the inside of his right thigh, as they talked and listened to the radio, to drown out the liquid sound of long, wet kisses coming from the back seat.

“I should have Bill drive on the way back,” said Tim.

“Why?” Constance teased.

“I want to kiss you,” he said softly.

“You can kiss me when you take me home,” she said.

“Why can’t I kiss you in the back seat?” he moaned.

“Because I know what else you’ll want to do in the back seat,” she said.

“I’m not like that,” he said, defending himself.

She shocked both herself and him, when her hand slid up his thigh, to rest on the lump in his pants.

“Yes you are,” she said. She slid her hand back down.

“Ohhhh Connie,” he moaned.

“I, however, am not that kind of girl,” she sighed.

“I know,” he wispered. “That’s one reason I like you so much.”

They took Constance home first, and Bill and Bev waited in the car while Tim took Constance to her front door. It seemed to take an awfully long time for Tim to kiss Constance good night, so Bill and Bev kissed in the car too.

Bill’s hand strayed to her breast again, and she let him squeeze her for a while.

“You know I like that,” she panted into his mouth. “But it’s dangerous.”

“I’m dying here,” he moaned.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not sorry at all. When he was like this it made her feel powerful and loved, all at the same time.

“I can’t stand this,” he whined. “You have to marry me.”

“I do?”

In the past, they had beaten around the bush about the idea of getting married. It was things like, “Have you ever thought about getting married?” and, “I see married people, and wonder what that would be like.” He had always maintained that, if he ever decided to ask “a girl”, it wouldn’t be until very close to graduation. She had played along, by saying that, if “a boy” asked her to get married before she was sure she’d graduate, she’d have to say “no”. This was the first time it was really out in the open.

“I’ll just die if I don’t know that, some day, I’ll get to touch you,” he moaned.

“I don’t want you to die,” she said, her hand going very close to his throbbing penis.

He sat back, looking at her in the dark.

“Bev, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, almost immediately.

He didn’t take his lips off hers, or his hand off her breast, until Tim opened the door, and the interior light went on.

Bobby was actually asleep when Bev came into his room. She felt no guilt about waking him up.

“I need you bad, tonight,” she whispered, kissing him awake. “I have news, and I need you really bad.”

Prudence was making breakfast when Constance shuffled into the kitchen. The twins were, thankfully, still sleeping.

“Did you have fun last night?” she asked her daughter.

“I had too much fun,” said Constance, yawning.

“Too much fun?”

Constance brightened, coming fully awake as if by magic.

“Tim asked me to go steady with him!” she squealed.

“Awwww, how sweet,” said Prudence.

“He kissed me too,” said the girl.

“Do I need to put you on birth control?” asked Prudence, joking.

There was a long pause, long enough for Prudence to turn and look at Constance, who seemed to be thinking seriously about that.

“I think that might be a good idea,” said Constance.

Rhonda sat in front of her vanity, and looked into the mirror. Her mind was telling her that he would come. Her eyes were telling her he would not be interested. At first, as she played the part of a woman, satisfied by her extramarital lover, it had been fun. Janet was obviously a little jealous. Maybe because of that, Rhonda admitted to herself that she’d gone a bit overboard in her references to what Bobby had done to her. She knew, from what really had happened, that he was whimsical, and funny, and a bit mischievous. He had been very kind to her, recognizing her terror, and letting her off the hook. Janet had, after all, hired him to make love to her best friend. Her best friend had been immobilized with fear. He could have just taken her and collected his money. He had not done so.

That was part of the problem. Janet had left them alone, and he really could have just taken her. She wouldn’t have been able to stop him, either physically, or emotionally. He wouldn’t even have had to use force. True, she would have bawled her eyes out, while it was happening ... but he could have done it. The fact that he had not, began to work against her as days passed. What if he hadn’t, because he found her repulsive?

Oh sure, he had said she was pretty, and paid her other compliments, but, he was a gigolo of sorts ... wasn’t he? He had professional skills ... tricks of the trade ... that he used on his “clients” ... didn’t he? He’d told her to remind Janet she owed him the money, after all.

But he hadn’t taken her to bed.

Now, as she looked in the mirror, she thought that, if she were him, she wouldn’t take her to bed either. She looked at the extra twenty pounds she carried. She saw bits and pieces of it ... under her chin ... between her breasts and her shoulders ... on an abdomen that, if it were Janet’s, would be flat, but which, on her, was rounded. She couldn’t see her thighs in the mirror, but didn’t need to. She knew there was some there too.

Her hair looked limp and dull. Her lips looked colorless.

When she had called him, she’d still been high on the fun of it all. She had chosen February twenty-ninth, the extra day in this leap year, as the day she would welcome him, to get more than a kiss she could still feel resonating through her mind and a few strokes on the outsides of her breasts. She could still feel her hand in his, as they went into the shower water, part of their game to fool Janet. When she called him, and asked him to come back, she’d been horny.

Now, on the day she had looked forward to so much, just a couple of weeks ago, she just felt hopeless. She didn’t know how to use makeup, to put color in her pale face. She’d tried lipstick, but it smudged past her lips, and she’d wiped it off.