Chapter 28: It's A Drummer Thing

A couple of weeks later, the three of us were co-existing in an unusual triangle. Alex and I slept together several times, and Erin and I found places to have sex a couple of times. I assumed Alex and Erin also got together without me. I wasn't sure I liked the arrangement, but I sure liked the variety.

Did I feel guilty about it all? Maybe just a little, but this wasn't love. This wasn't anything even remotely resembling love. This was a friendly case of college lust fulfilled. Not ideal, but not bad, either. Hey, I walked around with a smile on my face. A lot.

Soccer was over and finals were looming, but my friends and I still found some time for fun. There were a bunch of parties every weekend, frat parties and jock parties and street parties and bands playing at the bars around campus. I blew off steam by hitting some of them between periods of intense studying. I used my dorm room when Westy wasn't there, and the library or Alex's when he was around, lugging my books everywhere I went.

The apartment above Bryan and Jesse's place was being rented by a couple of graduating seniors, so Spencer and I decided to rent it together for the next year. I was a little concerned about who would be doing the cooking, but between the four of us, I was confident we would be able to work some sort of arrangement out. Jesse, Bryan, Spencer, and I figured we would open up both places and have pretty much a communal two-floor pad for the four of us. I had the feeling I would be having the time of my life my sophomore year. I just hoped I would be able to survive it.

I was also planning on flying back home after finals. I had arranged with Eunice, Pick's secretary, to have my soccer equipment shipped back. Most of my clothes, along with my books and other stuff, were going into storage. Jesse also offered to keep some of my stuff in his bedroom, since he was going to be going back home to run Porter clinics too. With only a few weeks left, things were moving fast.

Alex had an end-of-year banquet she had been helping to plan that she also was required to attend. She was going to be tied up all weekend, so on Friday Erin and I cut out from campus early and drove over to the Atlantic coast for the weekend. We found a cheap motel a block from the ocean, and we had the weekend to ourselves.

We got to the Oceanview Motel early enough in the afternoon to be able to toss our stuff in our room and dash over to the beach. The name of the motel was just barely accurate, what with the buildings almost blocking the ocean from its location, but we didn't care. We had a blanket, towels, sunscreen, and a cooler full of beer. What more did we need?

We found a spot about twenty paces from the breaking waves, and we spread out our blanket. I shucked off my t-shirt and flopped down onto the blanket, propping my head up on my hand as I lay on my side. I was looking forward to watching Erin shimmy out of her shorts and shirt, down to her bikini. I wasn't disappointed.

She was unconcernedly taking off her clothes, not paying any attention to me, until she had her shorts down around her knees. She glanced over at me and did a double-take.

"What are you looking at, Porter?" she asked, a smile on her lovely face.

"I'm just watching a little slice of heaven reveal itself," I said.

Erin laughed and kicked her shorts in my direction. "Nice," she complimented me. "That'll get you far."

"That's what I'm counting on," I said. I had to duck as one of her sandals came flying toward my head.

She finished stripping down, and she handed the bottle of sunscreen to me.

"Care to do the honors?" she asked. She put her sunglasses on and lay down on her stomach next to me on the blanket.

I squeezed a dollop of lotion out onto her shoulders. She flinched a little from the cool lotion, but then relaxed as I began rubbing it into her skin. I made sure I got lotion under the straps of her bikini top, and I worked my way down her back and along her sides. Her bikini bottoms, just barely large enough to cover her buns, became another target for me. I slid my hands beneath them, but she slapped at me.

"I'm just trying to make sure you don't burn," I complained.

"Yeah, right," she said. "Trust me, I know I won't burn."

I let her win that one. I squeezed some more lotion into the palm of my hand, and I started lotioning up her right calf. I worked my way up to just above her knee, and then began on her left leg. When she felt me leave off the backs of her thighs, she looked down at me, but she didn't say anything. I tried to be nonchalant, not wanting to give her any edge at all, and continued with my task. Once I had her left leg done to the knee, I started working lotion into her left thigh. I was carefully staying away from her inner leg, concentrating instead on the big muscles along the back and the outside of her leg. I then worked on her right leg, making sure she was well covered before running my hands along both inner thighs, going slowly up from her knee.

"Hmmmm," she murmured as she felt my hands slipping along her skin. She let her legs part just a little, and I took advantage by running my fingers up along her tender flesh, until my fingertips encountered the edge of her bikini bottoms. I let my fingers slip under the elastic, across her bare pussy lips, and along the gentle curve of her ass.

"You're asking for it," she warned.

"Hell, I'm practically begging for it," I replied.

Erin laughed and turned over. "Okay, you've earned the right to do my front now," she said. She put her arms down to rest along her side, her legs splayed out just a little.

I started at her feet again and worked my way up. When I got to the tops of her thighs I tried to be good, just letting my fingertips run beneath her suit. I did her stomach, and felt her struggling not to laugh as I spread lotion underneath the elastic waistband from hip to hip. The motion of the lotion must have been tickling her. My fingers worked lotion into her skin below her covered breasts, and then I applied more to her chest. She smiled as she felt me take small liberties, my fingers lingering in her cleavage. I made sure her arms were protected, and I dabbed just a little on her cheekbones and her nose, leaving the dollops there instead of rubbing the lotion in. It made her smile again. I decided I liked that feeling of making her smile.

I sat back and began slathering lotion on my body. Behind her sunglasses, it was hard to tell if Erin was watching or not, but I wasn't trying to tease her. I was trying to keep from being fried by the sun. The Southern sun was a whole lot stronger than the Midwestern sun, I had found to my painful surprise.

Erin sat up. "Lay down, Sean. I'll get your back for you."

I handed her the bottle and I flopped down on my stomach next to her. She squirted some lotion onto my shoulder blades. She's right, it's cold, I thought as I flinched from the contrast. She began to rub the lotion into my skin. Her hands and the sunblock were quite relaxing.

As she worked her way down my back, she said, "You could stand to eat occasionally, Sean. You're too skinny."

"Who was it who said, 'You can never be too rich or too thin?'"

"I think it was Doris Duke," she replied.

"Never heard of her."

"Really?" She sounded surprised. "But you're not from the South, so the Duke name isn't ingrained in your society like it is in ours."

"It doesn't have anything to do with the Duke brothers, from that Eddie Murphy movie, Trading Places, does it?"

She laughed. "No, I don't think so. Doris Duke is the only daughter of one of the founders of the American Tobacco Company, and the man who essentially funded the beginning of Duke University. She inherited something like eighty million dollars when she was about thirteen, and has been living kind of a rich, bohemian life ever since. I think she's worth something like a gazillion dollars now. Homes everywhere, New Jersey and the Carolinas and Hawaii and who knows where else."

She slapped me on the ass. "Done." She settled back onto the blanket on her back and readjusted her sunglasses. I propped myself up on my elbow to look over at her.

"But she's wrong, you see," Erin continued. "You can be too thin. Just ask Karen Carpenter."

"Yeah, but that was a medical problem," I pointed out. "Anorexia."

"A self-inflicted medical problem," she replied. "If she had eaten properly, and not let herself get so thin, she wouldn't have gotten so sick. She wouldn't have died."

"I think it's a drummer thing," I said. "Keith Moon, John Bonham, Karen Carpenter, all taken too soon."

Erin snorted and laughed. "I'll bet that's the first time those three names have been used in the same sentence," she said, still laughing.

"I'm sure somebody thought of it before I did," I said. "I'm just not that clever."

Erin turned her head to look at me. I couldn't decipher her expression through her sunglasses. "Don't be disingenuous, Sean," she said. She sounded serious.

I laid back down and put my hands behind my head. "I don't even know what that means."

She propped herself up on her elbow. "Bull," she said. "You know perfectly well what I mean. False modesty doesn't suit you."