Chapter 21

Cindy's turn:

Nikki sort of let me have it. I was kinda shocked. You see, ever since we became the Sisterhood, none of us had ever had any harsh words with another sister. It just never worked that way.

However, I think I touched a sore spot when I had sort of questioned her when I found her and Justin sitting on the steps on campus.

"Cynthia Susan Richards," she'd said. I should've known I was in trouble. Nobody ever called me that. Well, okay, Dan does, and when he does, it's tender and loving and I feel special. When Nikki did it, I felt a tightness in my stomach like I was in trouble.

"I can't believe you thought for a second that me an' Justin..."

"I'm sorry," I said. "You were sitting there chatting away ... You were smiling."

"And he was two feet away. And he's nice, and yes, I smile when I talk. A lot."

"You're not smiling now."

"I'm kind of disturbed right now. You and I, little sister, we've walked too many of the same paths. For the last month, we've been trading places at the university, poor Jeffrey is hallucinating, and we both married Dans and YOU. I know there's no way you'd ever hurt your Dan. No way I'd ever hurt mine. I don't care about that twenty years age difference thing. Not one bit. Just like YOU."

I cried. Been a long time since I cried. There I was though, with tears wetting my cheeks. "I'm so sorry, Nikki. I love you. You're my sister. And I don't want..."

"You don't want me to mess up."

Yeah, Nikki can finish my sentences. So can my Dan. "I ... I don't want to mess up this neat little universe we're in," I said. "And sometimes I'm not really good with reading how people interact. I mean, this last year, I've learned a lot. But every now and then I get a flashback of the way Mom did it. Scares me."

Nikki's face softened. "Oh, gosh, Cindy. I ... I can see that, Sis. I can really see that. I'm sorry." She took my hands in hers. "I know you didn't mean anything bad. I like our universe too."

"So we're okay?" I asked.

"Of course we're okay." She hugged me. I hugged back. "Come on! We got a world to beat!" And we took off to meet the rest of the gang at the pavilion.

Which got me "Cindy, I thought you were gonna bring some of that tea you make."

"Oh, I could go make some. I didn't know it was popular."

"Like, yeah!" Susan said in her best 'mall rat' voice.

"I thought y'all just wanted wet and cold..."

"No," Tina said. "It's the magic of Chandra's spice box in there."

I had to giggle. Grandma Desai had shown me how to add a pinch or two of a few of the spices to add a little exotic flavor to tea. We all loved sitting in the back corner table of the restaurant, sipping chai, delicious hot, steamy mugs of chai with real cream. My concoction, over ice, was just a little departure from the iced tea that is a southern staple. I was happy that I actually made something that people really like.

So we're all out at the pavilion. It's just a little bit shy of too hot to be comfortable. I'm wearing a loose cotton shirt that is comfortable if not fashionable, but I know that when my Dan sees me in it, he smiles. I think he likes it when I dress like this. Or dress in my green dress. Or that little black one. Or nothing at all. That's for my Dan.

Susan's wearing shorts and a T-shirt and she looks like one of those pin-up girls from the 1940's, you know, before somebody determined that models are supposed to look anorexic. She saw me looking a bit longer than normal, I guess.

"Do I have a bug on me?" she squealed.

"No, I was just having a thought, that's all," I said.

"Uh-oh," Jason said. "Cindy's having a thought!"

"Jason, don't be mean! It's a good thought."

"Tell us," Nikki said.

"I was just thinking that Susan in that outfit, she ought to be nose art on one of those World War Two bombers." I pulled up a slide show on my iPad. "See!"

"Kinda the way I feel about 'er," Jason said.

"Oooooo, you're a sexist pig," Susan squealed. "Exploiting wimmen like that!"

"Just the one, honey," he laughed, popping her on the cheek of her butt. "And who exactly exploits whom?"

"Y'all need to cool it. Terri's somewhere around. Her and Rachel..." Nikki said.

"Rachel had a butterfly net. They're going hunting," Tina replied. "I gave them a warning about dangerous things out there. You know, snakes, spiders, stinging caterpillars, bees, wasps..."

"And I imagine she soaked that up like a sponge."

"She and Rachel collaborated," Tina said. "I can't wait to hear the reports."

"Me neither," I said. "Terri's my buddy. My little sister." I'd entertained that thought a time or two in those daydream times. There was the side that had me thinking how much fun it would've been to have a little sister to share life with, but on the other hand I shudder to think of what Mom would've done with TWO kids. No, I was fortunate to have survived Mom with my sanity and virginity intact. I barely made it into Dan's arms.

Nikki was across the table pushing chips into her Dan's mouth. They embody a happy couple. I can scan around the table and see three other couples like that. Three? Yeah. Sim and Beck are here, too. And Alan has chicken on the grill, fragrant smoke rising as it's cooking.

And Tina's got her hair up. That's a giggle. Tina's like me and Nikki. We all started out with our hair short. I get mine cut before it reaches my collar. Nikki's stops at her jaw, a bit shorter than mine. Tina's is just a smidgen longer than mine. Susan's, you know, is collar-length. But Tina's got hers up in to diminutive pony-tails, one behind each ear. I'd asked about that one before and the answer makes me smile.

"Two reasons," she'd told me. "First, if I'm even a little bit sweaty, I hate the feel of my hair on my neck."

"And?"

"And second, it drives Alan absolutely wild. My dear husband has a fetish already..."

"My Dan's like that about my hair."

"But yours is so much redder than mine. Alan loves mine. But if I do these little ponytails every now and then uh, wow!"

I filed that for future reference.

So today, my Dan hasn't yet shown up. He's on the road back, though, so I plop myself down next to Tina, reach in my backpack and pull out a couple of little stretch hairbands and hand them to her. "Do me up!"

"Huh?" Tina says.

"Put my hair up like yours. It's hot out here."

She let a little giggle out. "Okay." She took the comb I offered her. "How's Dan gonna like this? I've never seen your hair any way but this."

"Never has been," I said. "But doesn't hurt to try. If he doesn't like it, I can take 'em out quick." And a quick glance at Alan. I giggled. He knows I know...

Five minutes later my cellphone went off. Dan was close. "I better go meet him when he gets here," I said.

"Uh-huh," Tina grinned. Grin? Maybe just a little bit of a leer, you know.

I heard Dan's footsteps as he approached the door. I opened it. He was smiling. Did a double-take. I tossed my arms around his neck for our customary welcoming kiss, then squealed as he attacked my exposed neck.

"Now THAT'S different," he said. "Did Tina talk you into this?"

I squealed again under another nibbly kiss behind my ear. "N-no! I got her to do it, but it's my idea. You like it?"

Like he needed words to answer that. My knees were going weak fast, along with my resolve. I took an arm away from his neck and checked the obvious erection that was poking me. "If we do it now, it's gotta be a quickie," I said huskily.

Ten minutes later we were putting ourselves back together. "That's pure Cindy," he said. "God, little girl, you get me..."

"And you get me right back. And now we're going to go out there and everybody's gonna know what we've been doing."

"You could've said 'no'," he said, his hand tracing my butt.

"That option never occurred to me after you got my neck," I said. "So, the little ponytails? I assume you like them?"

"It's a cute look on you. You carry it off better than Tina does, and I know what hers do to Alan."

"You do?"

"Oh yeah. I see his eyes. Put two and two together. And so I asked."

I giggled.

"We have our fetishes," he said. "Mine happens to be you."

"Come on," I said, taking his hand. "Let us go out and face our shame."

Nobody said a word. Of course, Rachel and Terri were there and that kept the conversation pretty much G-rated, And with our husbands and with Sim and Beck, we weren't going to get too explicit anyway, but I fully expect to hear about this again. We all pitched in after eating and cleaned the place up and then I grabbed Dan by the hand. "I gotta go study some stuff. They tossed me a history course."

History. I actually enjoy history. Used to read some of those things on my own. That's how I knew about frontier marriages when Dan and I first connected. History's different than math or engineering, though. On those two, I can usually save a lot of time if I can burrow into the text and get some foundational principles and derive answers from them. With history, you have to read history. Learn history. And then the lady who's giving me that course, I don't know that she's the least bit impressed by me getting through high school at the same age as her own daughter, who's in middle school.

Plus, I think that Jeffrey might just think I'm cute. A novelty. Not that I would ever think of exploiting that. That was a conversation with Dan.

"Has he said anything? Made any sort of move?" Dan asked.

"No," I said. "And I am always very proper, you know. Nice. But proper."

"Then what makes you think..."

"He's just nicer to me. I heard him working with Justin. He just seems a bit more, I dunno, brusque."

"You're nice, sweetie," Dan said. "From Day One. And you have a way of disarming a lot of people, male and female both."

"I look harmless."

"They've never seen you with firearms," he said.

I ignored that. "Jeffrey treats me like I want to learn, though. I don't think he's sidestepping anything. He says that I have honestly earned the credits based on knowledge. And Doctor Stebbins has sat in on a couple of my oral exams, so there are checks."

"Good," Dan said. "Because when you get to the real world, a bad calculation is a bad calculation and the world is not going to care a bit about those green eyes when you overload a circuit and your scheme doesn't react correctly."

Dan is serious abut my education. He's told me several times that he would've been perfectly happy having me stepping through school like others my age, but if I'm going to get an engineering degree, it had better darned well be a real one. I'm good with that. What's more, Nikki and Tina have had similar conversations with their husbands. Susan's was a bit different because she and Jason are going to be in school together, and right now it's looking like he's getting credit for a lot of coursework from his technology degree and translating that towards engineering.

So it's after dinner and we've had showers and Dan is watching, well, half-watching something on TV with his laptop on his lap and I'm in my own recliner with a swing-over table for books and my MacBook and I'm studying pre-Columbian America. It's interesting enough, but I can read holes in just about everything they're saying. It's kind of like Terri and her discussion of anthropomorphous kiddie characters. Some of the writers of the history text are trying so hard NOT to impart Eurocentric ethos (should have heard Dan when I popped that one on him) on Pre-Columbian America that they tripped over themselves. I saw another example in the text and I heaved a sigh.