Chapter 7

"Uh oh," said Jill as we rode into their yard.

"What?" I asked. She was looking down at her saddle horn.

"You leaked out of me," she said. She scooted back, her butt riding up the cantle of the saddle, until I could see the dark wet spot at the crotch of her jeans. "Mom is going to think I peed my pants!"

This, again, was the assumption of callow youth. Lynne would have enough experience to know the difference between what Jill was talking about and the draining of two loads of Bob MacAllister's sperm deposits. Neither of which was supposed to be there to leak out, by the way.

"I'll distract her while you go change," I said.

"So how did your plan go?" asked Lynne. She was cutting up apples, getting them ready to go in pies. She planned on making a dozen and then freezing them. Well, eleven of them, anyway.

"Plan?"

"You said you had a plan before you left," she reminded me.

"Oh ... that," I said. It was obvious the plan ... if there had been one at all ... had failed miserably.

"Don't tell me..." Lynne looked at me, disgustedly.

"She's very hard to resist!" I complained.

"I TOLD you that!" snapped the woman frowning at me.

"Well I DO have a plan," I insisted.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I thought that if we spent a lot of time together before she goes to school, she'll get to know me better and see all my flaws and how old I am and all that kind of thing. Then, when she gets to school I won't be able to compete with the young guys."

"That's your plan?" She sounded disgusted. "Sounds to me like you're going to try to spend as much time in my daughter's pants as possible before you can't any more!"

"That's not it at all!" I objected.

"What happened to just saying no?" she asked acidly.

"You don't understand!" I moaned.

She reached for the top button on her blouse. Flour from her fingers left white smudges on the fabric around it. "I don't?" she warned, undoing a button. "I think I understand entirely too well, Bob!" She popped that button and reached for the next one.

I started to panic. I didn't know how long it would take Jill to change pants, and the look in Lynne's eye suggested she'd carry through with her threat. I had visions of Jill walking into the room as her mother stood, topless, shaking her breasts at me. How the heck was I going to explain that? I held up both hands, palms out.

"OK, OK, don't get mad. I'll do better. I promise."

She stopped, her fingers on button number two and I swear her eyes gleamed.

"What would she think if she came in here and you were having me on the table? Do you think she'd break up with you then?" The second button popped. "I do."

"You can't do that!" I gasped. "That's crazy! What happened to 'Let's not break her heart?'"

Jill breezed into the room. She was wearing the same jeans skirt she'd ambushed me in the very first time. She made it obvious she'd been eavesdropping.

"Nice try, Mom," she said archly. "But he's mine. I found him fair and square. You had your chance when I was younger, and you blew it. So just call up Dennis and ask him to come over or something, because you can't have Bob.

"Dennis wants to get married!" snapped Lynne. I was amazed at how she'd gotten caught trying to undermine her daughter but neither of them was screaming about it.

"Well maybe you should!" said Jill. "You're going to need somebody to take care of you after I leave, and I don't think I'm going to let Bob do that. Not after what I just heard."

"I'm not some old woman who needs to be taken care of!"

It appeared there might be some screaming after all.

I held my hands up again.

"CALM DOWN!" I yelled stridently. "BOTH OF YOU!" I added, just to make sure nobody thought I was playing favorites. They both looked at me, and both of them looked a little offended that I'd call them out in their own house. "There is a solution to this issue, and we can find it if we just discuss things calmly and rationally."

"There's a solution, all right!" snorted Jill. "My mother can butt out and keep her hands off my man!"

I put a hard edge on my voice. "You show your mother some respect, young lady!" I snapped. I'd like to say it was part of my plan to show her the side of me she might not be enthusiastic about, but it wasn't. It was just the way I thought about things. "She's worried about your future, and that's a role a mother is supposed to play."

Jill stared at me for a couple of heartbeats and then, to my astonishment, she relaxed.

"Of course," she said sounding dignified. She glanced at Lynne. "Sorry. I shouldn't have yelled."

Lynne looked at me, her eyes narrowed. "Bob, I'd like to have this calm and rational discussion with Jill alone, if you don't mind."

I knew a dismissal when I heard it. "Sure," I said.

Then I got out of there while the getting was good.

I didn't see either of them until almost four in the afternoon. I was lying in the hammock, doing a crossword puzzle when their truck pulled into the driveway. Jill was driving. She parked and got out, seeming to wander over my way.

"Mom says I can't see you any more," she said bluntly. "Thanks to you, I might add."

"Me?"

"She pointed out that you said I should respect her wishes."

"Oh." I couldn't resist. "So what are you doing here now?"

She shrugged. "I told her to pound sand."

"What?" I almost groaned.

"I told her she was being unreasonable and that I loved you, and that you loved me, and that I'm eighteen and that if I wanted to see you I was going to.

"You told her I loved you?"

"Well that's what you said while you were making love to me," she said. Her voice started to rise. "Was that a lie?"

I had the chance to fall on my sword. It would have been the right thing to do, but it would have hurt her feelings. So I told the truth instead.

"No. I do love you."

"HA!" she almost shouted.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"She told me men just say that to a woman so she'll have sex with them again. She said that's probably why you said it, and that you told HER you were going to try to get me to break up with you."

Her use of the term "break up" sounded so high school that I cringed. She mistook that look for one of guilt.

"Is that why you told me you loved me like that?" she asked, her voice dangerous. "Did all that mean is that you like screwing me?"

I already knew Lynne was mad at me. The last thing I wanted was for ALL of the Simmons women to be mad at me. Not at the same time anyway. And yet, if Jill thought she wanted me, she WAS going to find out what she was getting.

"That's a more complicated question than you might think," I said. "Sit down and I'll try to answer it."

She didn't argue. She just sat down in one of the metal circa 1950 lawn chairs that was beside the hammock. She was still wearing that jeans skirt, and she didn't have on panties this time. She didn't exactly pull the skirt up, but she acted like she'd never had a single modesty lesson. I did my best to keep my eyes above her waist.

"I love you," I started out. "I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it. Now, the fact that I actually said it while we were having sex is probably no accident, but only because I didn't admit it to myself until then, and it just kind of came out."

She frowned and took a breath to say something, but I cut her off.

"Now what your mother was talking about is a little different. That really DOES happen. Guys know that those are powerful words, and some guys will use them to get something from a woman. So she wasn't just talking through her sleeve. But I'm not like that."

She relaxed a little, so I gave her the rest of it.

"Now, that said, you have to understand that I also love having sex with you. You're a delightful lover, and I'd have sex with you all day long, if I could, which I can't, and if there wasn't another problem."

"What problem?" she asked.

"One reason your mother doesn't approve of how you feel about me is because there really is a pretty big difference in our ages. You're young, and you've just discovered how much fun sex can be. You're going to college, and I'm staying here. You've never tried going without sex before. I have, and I can tell you it's not easy."

That wasn't actually true, technically speaking. After Vicky died, I sort of lost interest in sex. It stayed lost until a few years after I met Lynne and her daughter, but I figured maybe I should leave that part out.

"Now if you think of us as," I almost ground my teeth, but used her language, "going together and you're like most young women, you're going to believe you can stay faithful to me while we're apart. But your mother and I both know you're going to meet lots of handsome, interesting, very nice young men, at least one of whom is likely to get you all excited, at which point you'll feel what is now going to be a completely natural urge to have sex. And that's going to be hard on you because you have a boyfriend back home."

"You're not my boyfriend," she said instantly. "You're my man."

"Whatever," I said gently. "The point is that your mother doesn't want you to get your heart broken, and cheating on your man is a good way to put a crack in your heart. She feels you need to be able to explore all your options when you get to school, and not be worried about how that will affect things back home."

"And is that how you feel too?" Her eyes were clear.

"That's another complicated question," I admitted.

"I'm going to A&W Root Beer, to get supper," she said.

"You are?" I know I sounded puzzled, both by the abrupt change of subject, and the way she said it.

"That's where she thinks I am," she explained. "I have time for you to answer another complicated question. That's what I meant."

"Oh." I thought about how to answer her. Again, I could fall on my sword, but again, I was pretty sure she'd leave crying if I did.

"I have a mixture of feelings about that," I said. "Rationally, and based on my life experience, I agree with your mother." She slumped. "Emotionally, I don't."

She perked up. "What does that mean exactly?"

"It means I like loving you, and I love making love with you, and I wish to hell I was twenty years younger and that there was some way that it could possibly work out for us."

"Me too," she said, quite seriously. "I mean I understand that wish. I'm not stupid. I know how old you are. But I can't help how I feel about you, and I like feeling that way. I love how you look at me. I can see it in your eyes that you want me, and I love being wanted that way. By you, anyway."

"You have to go to college," I said, heading off a possible suggestion that she could just keep on keeping on like she had been the last few years, and skip college.

"I know that," she said. "I know how important that is. But that doesn't change the way I feel about you either."

"Sweetie," I pleaded. "It's too hard to leave your man at home for four years."

"I'll come back every summer," she whined.

I sat up in the hammock and faced her.

"Jill, I know this isn't what you want to hear, and I hate saying it, but I won't lie to you. I think your mother is probably right about this."

"You sure can kill a horny mood," she grumbled.

"You're supposed to be getting supper," I reminded her. "And don't run around behind your mother's back. If you're going to disobey her, just tell her that. You're a big girl now.

"I know," she said glumly. "Come over to the house in about forty-five minutes."

"Why?" I asked warily.

"Because I'm getting supper for you too, silly," she said. "I should be back by then."

She got up and, without another word, went back to the truck, started it up, and spun the tires leaving the yard.

I knew I was going to have to get along with Lynne, one way or the other, so I went over there before Jill got back. I walked in just like I had been doing for years. She was in the living room, watching the news.

"What's up?" she asked.

"Jill said I was invited to supper. She stopped by on the way to get it."

"I told her not to see you any more," she grumbled.

"She told me. Did you really think that would work?" I asked.

"No," she admitted.

"Then why did you say it? We need to try things that we think at least have a chance of working."