Chapter 5

It was just natural for her to push him back on the bed and climb up beside him, hugging him, kissing his cheeks as he tried to wipe his eyes and face clean of tears.

"Stop," he complained.

"Why?" she asked petulantly.

"Because I'm mostly naked and I'm going to get a boner if you don't," he laughed.

"Ooooo, can I see?" she asked, looking at his shorts.

"And you say you never learned to flirt," he said.

"I think that's teasing," she said. "Teasing is different, isn't it?"

"Not the outcome," he said. "If you want me to keep being a good boy, you'd better let me get dressed again."

"Who says I want you to be a good boy?" she asked, pressing her breast against his chest.

"Your mother does," he said. "What would she say if she saw you acting like this?"

"She'd have a heart attack," said Julia.

"Well there you go."

"My mother isn't here," said Julia, and put her hand on his abdomen. She started sliding her hand towards the waistband of his shorts. He grabbed her wrist.

"You don't know what you're doing," he gasped.

"That's what you said when you were sure I'd get all grossed out by your scars," she said, pushing against his hand. She could feel his tenseness, though. She stopped teasing him and pulled her hand free. "Which, I might add, I was not."

She sat up. He lay beside her almost panting. She looked at the front of his outrageous boxer shorts.

"Oh come on. Pleeeease? Can't I see it just for a second?"

His hands covered the front of his boxers suddenly.

"I don't get this," he complained. "We hardly know each other, but I'm pretty sure you're not the kind of woman who acts like this a lot. And I'm pretty sure you're trying not to come on to me, but sometimes you act like you are. I don't want to do the wrong thing and screw things up, but I don't know what the right thing is. What I'm sure about, though, is that I don't want to hurt your feelings."

She leaned back.

"So you're not attracted to me, and you're afraid you'll hurt my feelings if you say that." Her face drooped.

He looked shocked. "Hell no!" he gasped. "I am attracted to you! I'm attracted to you like a mother fu-" He cut himself off and frowned. "Sorry. My language kind of got out of control over there. I mean I really like you and I want to..." He stopped again and his cheeks darkened. With an effort he finally got something else out. "Let's just say when I found out you weren't my sister, I was really glad, Okay?"

"You're right," she said softly. "I don't act like this." She blinked. "Except with you."

"But we just met," he said.

"No," she corrected him. "I've known you for months. I've wanted to be able to be with you and see you and touch you for months. Your letters were so warm and caring, and you were so nice to the children. It made you irresistible to me."

They stared at each other.

"So what now?" he asked.

She looked at his hands, still lying on top of his wildly colored shorts. She didn't ask him to remove them, though.

"Well, I'd really like to figure out if you have a girlfriend or not, because if you don't I want to apply for the position."

He blinked. "Wow," he said softly. "I hope I don't."

"Thank you," she said, feeling a thrill shoot through her body. "That makes me feel good." She sat down on her calves. "But the last thing I want to do is get you in trouble with the Army, so I probably should leave tomorrow, before they can find out I'm not your sister."

"But I don't want you to leave," he said mournfully.

Julia realized she was getting horny again.

"And maybe it would be best if you slept in the barracks tonight."

"So," he sighed. "You don't want me here."

"No, I do want you here," she said. "That's the problem. But if you stay I'm not at all sure I can control myself."

To get away from the bed, Bob suggested they take a walk. It was chilly, but she'd brought a jacket, so it was no problem.

They walked, hand in hand, and slowly told each other their life's story. She talked about where she'd grown up, and what school was like, and how she'd been afraid she wouldn't be a good teacher, and that the children wouldn't like her or listen to her. Student teaching had resolved most of her fears, but she described walking into her own classroom for the first time and seeing children arrive who were now her students, as one of the most difficult things she'd ever had to do.

"Now you've done something even harder," he quipped. "You've stared at an amputee's stump."

"Actually, that wasn't hard at all," she said.

"You're kidding."

"Nope. If I hadn't known you it might have been weird. But it was you, and I'm interested in everything about you.

So he told her about Army life, in much more detail than his letters had, and what he could remember that had come before that.

"I don't know how much I've forgotten," he said. "But I remember more each day, so I'm not going to worry about it. I do wish I could remember more about Claudia. I wish I could get in touch with her."

"Maybe she wrote you letters too," suggested Julia. "Did you keep your mail?"

"I think so," he said. "I don't actually remember keeping them, but almost everybody reads letters over and over again. Besides, I don't know what happened to my stuff after they put me on the evac."

"Surely you can find that out," she said.

"Probably."

"Well, find out where your things are and see if you can get access to it," she said. "There might be a letter with a return address on it from her."

"That's a good idea," he said. "The lady at records said the same thing, but somehow it sounds more hopeful when you say it." He hugged her to him as they walked along.

"You know, if I didn't know your leg was missing I couldn't tell from the way you walk," she observed.

"I used to have to think about every step," he said. "Now it feels a little more natural I guess."

"We should do something tonight," she said, lifting up onto her toes in a little jump.

"I thought I was staying in the barracks tonight," he said, smiling.

"Not that," she said, pushing him with her hip. "Go bowling, or to a movie or something."

"I don't know if I could throw a bowling ball or not," he said.

"All right then," she said. "Dinner and a movie?"

"You're on," he said.

Movies generally appear on military installations months after they have finished their runs in civilian theaters. Of the two choices they had at the WRAMC theater, though, that didn't matter because neither of them had seen either movie. They chose The Proposal, with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds.

Both loved it, but for different reasons. Bob loved it because, for the first time since his injury, he felt relaxed and as if laughing was a normal thing to do. He also thought Sandra Bullock was hot. Julia loved it because the chaos of the relationship Margaret and Andrew were having on screen reminded her of the chaos in her relationship with Bob. It also had a happy ending, which fit with her own fantasy involving Bob.

It was dark when they left the theater, and much colder. Neither was dressed for it and, since they had walked to both the restaurant and theater, they were stuck, almost a mile from the Fisher house she was staying in.

"Too bad I didn't bring my running adaptor," he said as they hurried along. She had told him she normally ran at least two miles a day.

"Have you ever tried running on your normal leg?"

"Seems odd that it really is my normal leg now," he said.

"You didn't answer the question," she said.

"Why would they give me an adaptor for running if I could run on my walking leg?" he asked.

"You still haven't answered the question," she pointed out.

"No, I haven't tried running on this leg," he said.

"So try," she said. "What do you have to lose?"

It turned out there was something to lose, though he would never think of it as a loss.

The leg was built with an articulating ankle which, with the weight of the foot balanced properly, swiveled as he walked so that the heel of the shoe normally hit the ground first and then his weight was transferred to the sole as he leaned forward. This swivel of the ankle took time, though, and his first attempts at speeding up resulted in the foot hitting on the toe instead of the heel. That was unstable, and he would have fallen had she not been there to catch his elbow.

They tried running with her holding his arm, her right leg moving forward with his left, as a sort of living crutch, but that didn't work either, because their upper bodies pulled away from each other and then pressed into each other.

In the end he was only able to speed up his walk by hopping twice on his good foot while his left leg came forward and the ankle had time to do what it was designed to do. That gave him a lurching, hopping kind of gait. It also put a lot of pressure on his stump.

He was in pain when they got to her door, and it showed on his face.

"Come inside and rest," she said.

"Thanks," he panted.

"You should take the leg off," she said, as he sank down into a chair.

"I can't do that without taking my pants off," he said.

"So? I've seen your crazy underwear, remember?"

"I guess that's true," he admitted.

He stood, undid his pants and let them drop. She moved to pull them from his legs. He removed the prosthesis, revealing a stump that was pink and inflamed looking.

"Ohhhh," she cooed. "I have some Vaseline Intensive Care in my suitcase. Let me get it."

She got the bottle and knelt in front of him. She coated her hands with the off white fluid and gently cupped the stump. He straightened what was left of his leg as she began sliding her hands around and around the end of his leg. He groaned.

"Am I hurting you?" she asked anxiously.

"No," he said, lying his head back on the chair. "It feels wonderful. The cream is tingly."

"Good," she sighed, and continued to rub. She didn't find it distasteful at all. It was simply like rubbing a bent knee or elbow.

She saw the front of his shorts move, and watched as it began to tent. She realized he was getting an erection.

Her hands expanded their massage, taking in the entire remaining lower leg, and then the knee. He continued to moan every so often, and the tent got bigger.

"I should go now," he said, lifting his head from the back of the chair.

"You can't put pressure on it again this soon," she said, still rubbing.

"I'm going to get embarrassed here in a second," he said.

Julia had never felt the kind of wild and crazy urge that suddenly came over her at that moment. After the prom she had been scared, and excited and curious ... but mostly scared. What had happened then had been something she made herself participate in.

But this urge was different, and on impulse she just gave in to it. Her hand shot up his thigh, into the loose leg of his boxers, and gripped his mostly hard penis firmly.

"Because of this?" she asked, amazed by what she'd just done.

His eyes rolled in their sockets. "I thought you said we weren't going to do this," he croaked.

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