Chapter 3

At eight PM I let Nina go. My hands had wandered over her back and shoulders and arms and her hands had done the same to me. Neither of us had teased or attempted to touch skin that was covered by clothing. Chaste. It was little wonder that after seeing her out the front door, I was in the shower easing the pressures that had built all evening.

I wasn't a constant masturbator. I wasn't asexual, it's just that I didn't do fantasies very well. I didn't have a fantasy in mind on this night. I saw blue eyes and almost ebony brown hair and that outrageous blonde fringe and laughter and I squirted for relief, not lust.

At twenty minutes after noon the next day I was at the local high school, in the office, asking for Miss Nina Sayers. The middle-aged lady at the office counter sent a student assistant away to get the guidance counselor. I met him in a couple of minutes, a balding, fifty-ish man of husky build.

"Hi! I'm Jim Simpson. Guidance counselor. You're getting one of my prize students."

"I'm Dan Gleason. Electrical Engineer. I promised her a plant tour."

"Ah," he grinned. "Electrical engineer. So THAT'S the connection."

"Yessir," I said. "She indicated an interest, and I let her talk me into an afternoon of wandering around a smelly old chemical plant."

He laughed. "She's a joy. A student who wants to get it. Who works to get it. Gosh, I wish I saw more of 'em."

"Hi, Mister Dan," came a chirpy voice.

I looked to the door and saw Nina, jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt, sensible leather shoes, her backpack slung over her left shoulder.

"You ready to go?" I asked her.

"Yessir. Sign me out!"

"Mister Jim, here's my card. Maybe we can get together a program for other interested students."

"Thanks," he said. "I'll call you."

"Okay, do that. We'll see you later." I signed the proper forms and walked out with Nina at my side. We got in my SUV.

She poked me. "Just remember, mister, that this "interested student" LOVES you."

"I will not forget that, baby. This old engineer loves you too."

The ride to the plant was twenty minutes, followed by signing her in the security gate, giving her a visitor's hard hat and safety glasses, and then hopping in the golf cart that was my personal in-plant transport. Somehow, the idea that I had a golf-cart to run around in all day was impressive.

"My time's a bit too important to waste walking back and forth," I said. We did the grand circle around the place as I showed her the production units and the shops and my pet, the powerhouse where two big generators converted steam to electricity. "Wanna see my office?"

"Sure," she beamed.

I pulled up and parked.

"You have your own parking spot."

"Yep. And my own office." We walked in the door and I started introducing her to my co-workers.

Old guy, Harvey. "So this is the one you've been telling us about? Nina, is it?"

"Yessir," Nina said.

"And you're wanting to be an electrical engineer?"

"Yessir."

He laughed. "I wish my daughter'd want to be an engineer. I'm paying out the nose so she can go into marketing. Hah! Miss Nina, you're too pretty to be an ELECTRICAL engineer. You ought to do mechanical."

Nina laughed. "Oh, no sir! Mister Dan says they're all knuckle-draggers!"

Harvey guffawed. "That's what I expected him to say."

I showed Nina my office, the piles of books and prints, the big monitor for the computer, and the unit clerk, thirtyish, plump, smiling Jannie.

"Jannie," I said, "This is Nina Sayers. Soon to be an engineering student."

"Hi, Mizz Jannie," said Nina.

"Hi, Nina," said Jannie. "Don't let him fill your head with ideas. I run this place."

"She's right, you know," I laughed. I guided her to my office.

"Hmph! The one at your house is neater," she observed.

I showed her some artifacts of some notorious equipment failures, a few pictures, a few examples of our drawings, and then we went back out into the loud, smelly world I worked in. The tour took us in the noise and heat and humidity of steam powerhouses and clean, cool, high-tech of modern control facilities. We peeked at the maze of wires that did the control, and at the arm-thick cables that moved huge amounts of electrical power, and the odd-looking apparatus of high voltage substations, and she drank it in.

We caught a crew of electricians at work pulling in a new set of cables and she pretty much shut the job down by showing up. Pretty young girls with striking hair showing underneath their hard hats can do that. And I really flustered the crew leader by asking HIM to explain a bit about what they were doing. And she smiled and thanked him.

We toured a couple of production units and I took her to the quality control lab so she could see chemists testing the final products. And I introduced her to the plant's engineering manager and told him that Nina would be lining up for a summer internship a year hence.

Four o'clock saw us pulling my golf cart into its slot so we could walk together to the parking lot. I signed my fledgling out of the plant and then scanned my own badge to end my day, and we got in my car to head home. As soon as we cleared the boundary fence she grabbed my free hand, hauled it to her lips and kissed it.

"'Cuz I can't crawl over the console and kiss YOU!" she cooed. "That's all so wonderful, Dan!"

I shook my head, almost disbelieving. "It's WORK, doll!"

"I know, but EVERYBODY'S got to work at something, and that's INTERESTING!"

"It is," I admitted. "It's what I like to do. Well, maybe not the paperwork, but the technology, the constant mental challenges of making things work better, helping people learn to do things, that's what I like."

"I saw that, baby," she said. "Those guys we talked to, you could see it in their faces, that they thought a lot of you."

"I don't know about all that," I said. "I've pissed 'em all off at one time or another."

"That happens between people," she said. "If you're put together, there's always going to be times when you don't necessarily want the same thing at the same time. But there's always somebody who's right, and somebody who's boss. You have to hope those two belong to the same person at the end of the day, and that everybody is mature enough to get past getting told "no" and go on."

"You're a wise young lady." I took my eyes off traffic long enough to regard her pretty face.

"You don't live with my mom without getting crash courses in human relations, Dan."

"I suppose. And you seem to apply them yourself. The right way."

"I try. But you know, I know other people who try sometimes, and things just go wrong. Like I said, one person's right, and one person's going to win, and you hope those are both the same person. Because if the one who's right, loses, well..."

"But sometimes that's the way life is, babe," I said. "sometimes being right is a matter of life or death. Sometimes being right is choosing the entertainment for the evening. One battle is worth pulling out all the stops. The other is worth a shrug and eating spaghetti because that's what your partner wanted instead of schnitzel."

"Don't sweat the small stuff, huh?" She giggled. "And most of it IS small stuff."

"Yeah, like dinner tonight. I drop you off at your house, you clean up and get a little bit dressed up while I go to MY house and do the same, and then I pick you up for dinner and I'm thinking rib-eyes and you're thinking enchiladas..."

"Actually, I was thinking of calling Grandma and seeing if she wants to go out to eat with us. She's got this friend..."

"Boyfriend?"

Giggle. "If you want to call a sixty-something guy "boy", I guess so. But we could ALL go out and eat."

"That would be nice. Makes us look respectable."

"Hah! Babe, we ARE respectable." She smiled.

"Yeah, once you get past the part where a seventeen year old girl is running the roads with a thirty-eight year old guy."

"Where the guy is an engineer who just took a high school student on a field trip. And helps her with calculus and trig and physics." She sighed, sounding a bit exasperated. "Besides, I'm a week shy of being eighteen, and at eighteen if I want to go out and get MARRIED, I can, with nobody's permission..."

"Except maybe the guy you're marrying..."

She laughed, "Yeah, there is THAT. But what I'm saying is that there's nothing illegal."

These conversations were what I liked about Nina. She let her mind roll around a subject, as much to see what SHE thought as what I thought. "Nina, punkin, " I said. "There's a huge difference between what's legal and what's considered proper."

"Believe me, babe, I know that," she continued. "And sometimes," she continued, "that's good. And sometimes it makes NO sense at all. Like, I'm seventeen. D'you KNOW how many seventeen year old girls I know of who are still VIRGINS?"

"Uh..." I had no idea.

"I'll tell you. One. ME! But I don't know everybody. But the girls I hear, they've ALL done it. Some of 'em do it a LOT. With a lot of different guys. I'm sorry. I had a mom like that. I don't EVEN want to be like Mom."

"But just because a lot of people do something doesn't make it right. Stupidity can flourish in large groups."

Giggle. "I saw that on a sign in your office!" I had a poster that said "Never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groups."

She kept on. "But what irks me, Dan Gleason, is getting lumped into the group. Like my hair. Until I did this blonde tipping thing, I looked pretty conservative. I don't do fashion trends. But do something striking to my hair, and then I was lumped in with a group. Just because of how I look." She sighed. "That was a revelation. Even some of my teachers..."

"You learned a lesson."

"Yeah. I should've gotten it trimmed off for my birthday."

"You do what you want. I have to admit, though, the first day I met you, I saw the hair and the first thought was "Goth chick". Until I looked closer and saw dark brown, not black, and the only piercings were one in each ear. And then you started talking, and that erased any preconceptions I might have entertained."

"See," she said. We turned on the street of her grandma's house. "Anyway, what I'm saying is that in some cases it's okay to go counter to the accepted norms. Sometimes the norms are good. Sometimes they're stereotypes. And eighteen and thirty-eight..."

We pulled into her driveway. This time she did climb halfway over the console and deliver a chaste kiss. "I'll call you after I talk to Grandma ... See ya, babe!"

I smiled. "See you in a bit, angel." I wanted, almost blurted, "I love you..." but how stupid could I be, three weeks into knowing her. But then I remembered already crossing THAT line. I drove home, silently thinking. At the house, I met the cat at the door, gave him a perfunctory scratching behind his ears, then stripped, showered, shaved, and the phone rang. Nina.

"Hello, little girl."

"Hello, old man," she giggled. "Can you come get me in forty-five minutes? Grandma's gonna ride with Ed. That's her guy. And I wanted to ride with you."

"Where are we going?"

"I hope you're up for that Italian place again..."

"Good memories there. Most wonderful first date in my whole life took place there. With a girl you'd think was a Goth until you found out different..."

Her voice was lower, almost a whisper... "Dan, you say sweet things to me..."

"You mean sweet things to me."

Her sigh was audible over the phone. "See you in forty-five minutes, okay..."

"I'll be there, babe!"

Dinner was an enjoyable time. Nina's grandmother, Helen, was an interesting person in her own right, and her "friend" Ed was a business man, semi-retired, and a funny guy, smart, acerbic wit, and Nina, was, well, in conversation, capable beyond her years. Salads came and went. Entrees. Desserts. Coffee.

In the parking lot, we split up into two couples again. I promised to have Nina home by nine, it being a school night. That gave us an hour alone together and Nina's comment: "let's go to your house."

Twenty minutes later we were there. In my recliner. With Nina in my lap, and we were kissing and caressing one another, each keeping hands strictly limited to no private areas. The only feel of her perky, smallish (now that I'd seen her in something other than over-sized shirts) breasts was the feel of them pressed against my chest or arm. The only feel of her softly curved, shapely butt was it pressed against my lap.

Her lips melted me, though. Except for one particular part, and I knew she HAD to feel it pressing against her from inside my trousers, but she never acted as though it was of concern to her.

"I know we don't have a lot of time, tonight, Dan, but I just needed you to kiss me and hold me." We kissed. I lead the way at first, but her own mouth was ranging around my neck and face now, and I said NOTHING about her use of her teeth but she had a habit of attaching herself to my neck and sucking and biting.

I loved it, although I cautioned her about visible marks. We kissed and caressed. "Dan," she said, "I ... Uh ... You make me feel ... Uh..." Her voice fell to a whisper. "I love you. You make me love you."

"I love you too, Nina..."

She turned her head. The clock was clearly visible. And our evening was almost at its end.

"Dan," she said, preparatory to dropping a bomb, "I wish I didn't have to go home..."

I took a deep breath, knowing that the response to this simple statement was of monumental importance to the future of Dan and Nina. "I think that would be wonderful. I love having you near me."

Kiss. She said, "I mean, like "together", Dan ... I've thought about it."

"I have, too, Nina..."

She burrowed into my chest. "You have? Really? Me?"

"Who else? You're my everything ... If you want to be."

"I do, you know. I've thought about it."

"And..."

And then my Nina shifted from hormonal teen to Little Miss Logical. "And I think we might ... It just could be..." She sighed. "Dan, I love you. Very much. You're the first guy I ever loved..."

"I feel quite privileged to have that distinction bestowed on me, sweetness," I said.

Kiss. "Mmmmm..." sigh. "You've been ... Uh ... Is this the way it is?"

"No," I said truthfully. "It isn't."

That answer caused her to raise herself to look into my face. "No?" Her eyes looked concerned.

"No. Never has been. This," I said, "is the way I WANTED it to be."

"Really? Because it's important to me..."

"Babe," I said, "I look at how we are, three weeks together, and I'm amazed. You walk in here, pull a CD from my collection, and it's Boccherini. We talk, and it's about science and news and philosophy. We kiss, and..."

"I know," she said," finishing my sentence for me. "I know ... You've always let me be myself." Another sigh. "I guess I need to go ... home."

We untangled, my body aching for her continued presence, and then entwined ourselves together, standing, kissing, and I felt her hand slide downward past my belt and over my butt. And then pull away. Her eyes surveyed mine but she said nothing.

A short while later we were at her house and I walked her to the door. Ah, the "door kiss". Chastely, she tiptoed and planted and kiss on my lips, short, oh so sweet. "Dan, this has been a wonderful day. We'll have more. And better."

And I went home.

Thursday. Friday. Less than a week to her birthday. A week until her high school graduation. Despite her grades, she wasn't valedictorian. She'd only maintained the high average for the past two years. The kid who got the honors had been pumping out straight A's for four. And wasn't doing four maths and four sciences and was likely headed into liberal arts instead of engineering. Nina's commentary on this fact was wry and laconic. "He played the game for points. I'm after knowledge."