A Taste of Innocence

All characters are 18+

*****

————————Prologue————————

The five girls sat on the floor, a huge bowl of popcorn and cups of various drinks spread between them as they chatted. It was the last week of school, the last week before they graduated and became, allegedly, adults. They were separating soon.

Josie was heading to Vancouver, intent on becoming a marine biologist. She was lithe and fast, with her long, strawberry blonde hair and big brown eyes, freckles scattered across her nose. She was small, petite and limber and she loved to dance and loved to swim.

Jamie was flying away to Cambridge to study medicine. She was the smallest of the four of them and even now she looked about fourteen years old, her dark hair cut short and her crystal blue eyes filled with humour. She was the shy one of their group, but that was just accepted as a part of her.

Kelseigh, the oldest of them, was studying English in Ottawa, though all of them knew that she was also going to be a model, she was pretty and warm, genial and outgoing. She was very like a chocolate lab, with her dark brown hair and her hazel-green eyes and her happy, outgoing personality. She could make friends with anyone and usually did. The thought of telling her no on anything was unthinkable to anyone who actually met her.

Andi was headed to Ottawa as well, but on an athletic scholarship. She would study other things on the side, but she was bound to be an Olympic athlete. She was tall and fleet, with long, strong legs. Her red hair shone and her blue eyes were filled with life and humour as she talked and laughed.

Dani was bound for Yale. The tallest of the four of them, she could play more than a dozen instruments and she could sing to boot. Her long blonde hair was kept back in a messy knot and her blue eyes were filled with laughter as she leaned against Andi, the two of them laughing hysterically.

They passed around the journal that they shared, reading and writing, giggling and adding notes and little drawings to it as their turn came around. They were going to fill it up before they had to part and then hide it away and come back in twenty years and read through it again. They had all added pictures of themselves alone and as a group to the pages over the last year and it was getting close to full. They all had some pages for later, for when they took it out of it's hiding place, pages to write out their lives between now and then.

They would all see one another again before then, of course, but it could never be what it was now ever again. Families and careers would fill in the years, and laughter and tears would colour their lives, turning the five girls into women. They had been fast friends since the first day of kindergarten and they had all stayed together for more than thirteen years. Parents and boys had not driven them apart, family quarrels and different schools had not come between them and now all of Canada and the Atlantic ocean and international borders were going to separate them at last.

They talked about all sorts of things; about different boys, about their celebrity crushes and movies they wanted to see, about plans they had and dreams they were chasing. They sang songs and told off-colour jokes, tested out profanity on each other and enjoyed what might just be the last sleepover the five of them ever had together.

But, most of all, they talked about sex. Their parents might have been shocked to hear the five of them, the youngest just eighteen by a few days, talk so frankly of sex and sexuality and of their own experiences with it, but all five of them spoke of it unabashedly and they poked fun at each other with laughter and good humour. Josie, the youngest, was the only one of the four still a virgin and she bore the brunt of their ribbing.

"Are you ever going to break the seal on that thing?" Andi teaased her and she rolled her eyes, rocking a bit as she mugged being wounded by the words.

"Not all of us have thought about things that way, Andi." She said. "Besides, the horror stories from the four of you have scared me off of sex." She said and Dani snorted.

"Not all of us bleed like haemophiliacs the first time." She said and Andi threw popcorn at her with a sigh.

"I never should have told you that." The redhead said, blushing as only a redhead can.

"Hey, everyone's first time is a little shitty." Dani said with a shrug. "Hell, when I slept with Brad, I nearly took his head off when he called me a bitch and slapped my ass." She said and the other four all stared in shock. She shrugged, colouring a bit at the admission.

"Well, when I was with Holden he was so eager he popped within seconds." Andi admitted with a shrug. "Just two pumps and a grunt and a minute later he was snoring."

"Oh my god..." Jamie said and Andi shrugged.

"Worst prom ever." She said with some emphasis. "But at least he never..." She glanced at Dani and shook her head. "...never did that. I think I would have killed him."

"Well, if you want to put a hit out on Brad, I can arrange something." Josie said. "Uncle Alan would do it for me, and my dad would hide the body." She said and the other girls all laughed.

"Your 'Uncle Alan' is a bit of a perv." Kelseigh said with a laugh and Josie narrowed eyes at her. "What? Every time we meet at your place he stared at us out the window for hours. You have to admit that that is a bit pervy." She said.

"Hey, he has always been nothing but cool with me." She said a bit defensively and Kelseigh snorted.

"Yeah, I'm sure he has been." She said with a smile and a moment later Josie was smiling as well.

"What about your first time?" Josie asked her and Kelseigh blushed to the roots of her hair and folded in on herself a little bit. "What, was it that bad?" She asked and Kelsigh bit her lip and shrugged a bit.

"It was... it was alright." She shrugged again, diverting, but no one pressed her, instead turning to Jamie who looked back at them flatly.

"What?" The tiny girl asked, pretending not to even notice their looks as she picked through the popcorn bowl.

"Come on... tell all." Andi goaded and Jamie raised an eyebrow.

"And why would I want to do that?" She asked. And the other four all looked at one another, knowing their friend well enough to know that some secret was in the offing.

"If you tell I will." Kelseigh offered and Jamie, ever the quiet and stoic one of the group raised her eyebrow and then sighed.

"Fine." She said resignedly. "I gave my first time to Avery Dawson last year." She said without fanfare and all of them stared at her. Avery was every bit as shy and quiet as Jamie and there had never been any indication that there was anything between the two before this moment. "We've been pretty regular lovers ever since." She shrugged and ignored the stares they had all been giving her. "But Dani is right, everyone's first time is shitty, just a right of passage." She said.

"Well, my first time will be different." Josie said, sitting up a bit more and all of the others laughed at her. They teased her a bit and then Jamie turned their attention back to Kelseigh.

"Alright, fess up." She said, smiling quietly. "You promised."

"Fine." Kelseigh said. "It was... It was David's father." She said and they all stared at her in shock. Kelseigh's boyfriend David had joined the military soon after he graduated, two years ago, and he had been killed in action a few months ago. Kelseigh had been heartbroken. That she had lost her virginity to David's father was a shock. "You can never tell." She said fervently, and all of them readily swore that they would take the secret to their graves.

"I had gone over after the funeral..." she went on. "And we were both grieving, both looking for something to hold on to, something that had been David's, and..." She shrugged and fell silent. "But it hurt, and it was kind of embarrassing. I think he was drunk at the time..." She hugged the pillow tighter and shrugged. "Nothing too special, I guess." She said and they all gathered in to comfort her.

"Well, my parents are going out to Sault Ste. Marie this weekened, and my dad is throwing a party." Josie said. "All of you are invited."

And they all agreed that they would be there. As the night went on their joviality returned and by the time they laid down to sleep they were too giggly and high-spirited to actually sleep. It was going to be a very long day for all of them the next day. But they lay in their blankets on the living room floor of Dani's parent's house and all of them turned thoughts over in their heads after what Kelseigh had confessed to them.

It had had an effect on all of them, this thought of the older men in their lives, and it was a mark of just how close they were as friends that it effected them all in nearly the same way.

————————1————————

It was summertime again and Alan was glad to get his windows open and air out the house after months of being cooped up indoors. He loved his job, and being able to work from home was a huge plus. But at thirty eight and still single his house tended to get a bit stuffy in the wintertime no matter what he did to relieve it. Part of it was his own tendency to go nose-blind after a while, but mostly it was just being a bachelor and being lazy. He enjoyed not having to clean constantly, and he had settled into a comfortable routine that produced as little mess and housework as possible.

On the first really warm day of the year he opened his garage and rolled his car out into the driveway and began his big cleaning for the year. It was nearly the end of May and as he was finishing up that afternoon the bus stopped across the street and let off the gaggle of kids from the high school. He paused to wave at them as they trailed past his house and his neighbour's daughter smiled and walked over. Josie had just turned eighteen and she was due to graduate in just a few weeks. He had worked half the night of her birthday as the gaggle of her friends had spent most of the night in the pool next door and played music all night long. Most neighbours would have complained, even if they worked from home and set their own hours. But Alan just couldn't make himself complain about a dozen high school girls in bikinis laughing and messing around next door. It had been a cool night for it, but they hadn't seemed to care and he had sat in his home office and just watched them out the window.

Josie was a bit different from her friends. He had known her since she was about six years old, when he had first bought this house. Her father, Steve, was a good friend and the two of them often sat in the back at the grill in the evenings during summer drinking beer and arguing about whatever show they were both watching. Josie's mother, Ellen was friendly enough, but more concerned with keeping things completely spotless and shined at all times than she was with bonding with Steve's friends. But he was a good one to talk to about cars and Alan could suffer through Steve's obsession with hockey and baseball with relatively little pain.

"Hey Mr. Reynolds, how have you been?" She asked and he shrugged as he tidied up a few more boxes and set the bags of trash down by the curb.

"Not too bad, Josie, how has school been? Are you eager to go off to college in the fall?" He asked and she shrugged a little, her mouth twisting in a little moue.

"I guess. I mean, it's all the way across the country in Vancouver, so I'll be leaving everyone I know behind." She said with another shrug.

"I'm sure someone you know is going to be there." He consoled.

"Most of them are happy enough to go to Ryerson or U of T, and Kelseigh and Andi are going to Ottawa for school, while Jaime is going to England for four years. I'm the only one that I know going out west." She said with another sigh. "Even Jared is going to U of T, so I'll be all alone." She said, naming her on-again-off-again boyfriend of the last two years.

"Sounds like it'll be an interesting experience." He commented as he sat down on the hood of his car and gave her his full attention.

She was just coming into the full bloom of her womanhood and she was still thin and athletic from years of running track and swimming and dance. She was petite and would likely remain tiny her whole life, but the pig-tailed girl he had met twelve years ago had grown up into a full adult and he was very aware of her at that moment. She was dressed in a thin, long-sleeved shirt with a light jacket tied around her waist and a knee-length skirt with thigh-high socks. Her long hair was pulled back in a messy tail that hung down to the middle of her back. By her own description, the colour of her hair was blondish with hints of reddish and some brownish mixed in for good measure. He thought it was a good colour of hair for her, and it went well with the big brown eyes that were almost too big for her face. She had a pretty smile and a ready laugh and he had the very strong idea that she had had a crush on him for a while now.

"Maybe." She said with another shrug, looking down at her feet and kicking idly at the driveway. "My mom and dad said they're going out to the cottage for the summer a week or so after graduation so I can have the house to myself for a few months before I go off to school, and it'll be kind of neat to live on my own all summer, but I'm still a little nervous about moving out west." She said and he nodded.

"But that's probably why my dad asked me to invite you over for dinner." She said, looking back up at him. He was struck for a moment at the maturity and intelligence in her eyes, how lovely they were with the scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks and just how clear and focused her gaze was.

"Sure, I guess. What time?" He asked as he met her gaze and once he had the time, she said goodbye and headed to her house.

He took a moment to watch her go, admiring her walk and thinking just how grown up she seemed now, how different from the girl she had been when he first moved in, even different than the teenager she had been last year really. She was grown up and he was noticing that more than he really should have. He parked his car back in the garage and went into the house to finish the last few things he had to clean up before he got in the shower. He was in fairly good shape himself, he jogged and did some basic exercises to keep himself in shape just to avoid being fat and single. And at the moment he felt the solitude of his life very acutely. He was lonely off and on, but he had little luck with women and had learned to ride out the occasional pangs that came with living alone until they had passed.

————————2————————

Once he finished dressing he had an hour or so before he had to leave so he went to his office and sat down amid the clutter and tapped disconsolately at his keyboard as he worked at balancing columns and shifting decimals to make a certain piece of software work properly. There were times that he hated his job immensely but others that the hours just flew past, and he focused more on those times than these. He enjoyed writing code, tapping out long lines that would make something come to life, and designing websites for people and companies was both interesting and lucrative. But bug-fixes were a pain in his ass, and he would leave them to other people if they didn't pay ninety percent of his bills. It was just boring and some of it was pretty stupid; obvious mistakes that never should have been allowed past quality control.

The hour passed like a full day for him and when he left to go next door, walking out the back door of his house and through the gate in the fence, he was glad to be quit of the work for the day. He didn't bother to lock his back door, he was just going into the next yard over and he could already smell the barbecue cooking and Steve handed Alan a beer as soon as he walked up.

"How goes the programming business, buddy?" Steve asked and Alan shrugged.

"Same ol' same ol'." He said. "I have two more weeks of debugging sitting on my drive and Manchester Limited almost begging me for a new website." He said as he nursed his beer. Steve had a lot of odd hobbies and the micro-brewery in his garage was just one of them. But the man made some good beer, he had perfected his recipe a few years before and now he kept a stock of it on hand all the time.

"Yeah, Frank was saying how their business was picking up." Steve said in reference to the owner of Manchester Ltd. "It's a good year to be in logistics."

"Yeah, must be a good year for contracting too. I hear you're going to summer at the cottage this year." He said and Steve glanced at him.

"Josie blabbed, huh?" Steve asked.

"Yeah, it seemed like she was sort of looking forward to having the place to herself for a while." Alan said.

"Well, she's a woman now, apparently." Steve said, poking at the meat on the grill with the spatula. "I was against that, by the way. I wanted her to stay thirteen forever, but Ellen said she'd have to kill me as she was the one home with a pubescent teenage girl all day." Steve shared with a wry smile. "But she grew up right, I think, smart and sensible and reliable. So we're going to take the summer out at Sault Ste Marie and let her have some time to be a grown up with a safety net before she has to move out west. Hell, we might not see her again except for holidays for a couple of years."

Steve seemed alright with it, but Alan knew him well enough to know just how much his only child meant to him. He and Josie had always been close and he tended to pamper his daughter whenever he could get away with it. She had her own car and a fair bit of autonomy that other girls her age never got. She was very much a daddy's girl, but it didn't seem to make her any less mature.

"Must be hard watching her get ready to leave." Alan said and Steve shrugged.

"Yeah, I'm gonna miss having that kid around the house." He said as he poked at the burgers. "But she'll do fine, I think. I just worry about my kid."

"Understandable." Alan returned.

"That's part of why I wanted you to come over tonight." Steve said as he turned to Alan a bit more, offering another beer. "Would you mind keeping an eye on the house while we're away this summer? I trust Josie, but I'd still sleep better at night knowing someone else I trust was keeping an eye on things."

"Yeah, that's no problem man." Alan said with a nod. It wasn't the first time he had been asked to keep an eye on their house. There had been weekends that Josie was trusted home alone, and even a few weeks the previous summer that she had had the house to herself. And it was the most natural, logical choice to make as they shared a fence and Alan was home most of the time for his work.

The two of them chatted for a little while before Ellen and Josie came out of the house to join them in the yard. Josie smiled and waved as she discarded her towel, her body clad in a one-piece bathing suit and her hair still in the tail it had been in earlier. She stepped to the edge of the pool and dove in, knifing into the water smoothly and swimming almost all the way across the pool before surfacing again. Alan watched her for a few moments before turning back to the conversation with her father.

————————3————————

At the end of the evening after Josie had gone off to bed and Ellen had retreated to her own room, Alan sat with Steve out by the pool, nursing a final beer and enjoying the early summer weather of southern Ontario as they looked up at the cloud streaked sky. It was a pleasant evening and the two were comfortable with one another, but Alan was still surprised when his friend started to speak.

"So just between you and I, Josie doesn't even know yet, Ellen and I have decided to separate." He said in a low voice and Alan looked at him.