Lucy Selfridge moved out of the house that her parents lived in as soon as she could afford to rent an apartment. She got along with her father all right, and she got along with her mother except on one subject, but that one was enough to make her want to move out: sex.
Not that Lucy was really doing anything, or anyway anything much. She was a virgin, although she had gotten into some serious tongue-kissing and she had let a couple of dates touch her breasts. But she was interested. She had read a lot about it from an early age, medical books and so on, and later from trashy best-sellers and some romances. She had even gotten hold of some hard-core pornography, and she liked it, except for the language.
Her mother got the idea that Lucy was sleeping with a couple of the fellows she dated -- especially one of them whom her mother didn't approve of, and whom Lucy only dated a second time because her mother didn't approve of him. He did pick her up several times after that, but that was because of double-dating.
But her mother would never come out and say that was what she thought, which was what bothered Lucy. She kept giving her printed booklets about contraception, and telling her to be sure she was careful, and acting disappointed when she came in late.
Lucy didn't know if her mother would have felt better or worse if she had learned that Lucy went onto birth-control pills right after moving out. Again, not because she was doing anything much; the doctor gave them to her to make her periods more regular.
There was a laundromat two blocks from her apartment, and she went there regularly about every two weeks. She had seen in going by that it was crowded on Monday, so she tried to go there on Tuesdays if she could. The first time it was also fairly full, but there was room for her and her clothes. The second time only two other people were there, a middle-aged black woman and a young man reading a magazine, whom she caught glancing at the back of her tight jeans as she bent over to take laundry from the washer. This made her a bit nervous -- she was only nineteen and not that long away from home -- but then she decided that the show was free and it was all right as long as he only looked.
The second time she went he was not there. The third time he was, and he seemed a bit more interested in her loose green shirt and tan slacks than in the blue denim of last time. And he was a little more open about glancing at her, but it bothered her less. She had been out on her own for a month longer now, which may have been a lot of the reason.
The fourth and fifth trips he was not there. But on the sixth, she got there later than before, he was the only other person there (the attendant tended to only show up again at closing time), and between those two facts she decided to strike up a conversation with him. Partly for reasons we will get to later.
This time she learned his name for the first time (Joel Kubicki) and they talked about a number of things while they waited for the machines to finish. As she had hoped, he had gotten there only shortly before she had, and as he stuffed his wash into a bag, she asked if he would be willing to walk with her two blocks to her building, since it was now dark out. He agreed, but went home with his own laundry and came back rather than carry it extra distance. So she ended up waiting a minute or so for him -- and got help with the carrying. Just as she was about to go in her door he asked her for a date.
It had been a while since she went out with a man, six weeks, but she hated to think that she would take just any offer. On the other hand, she did know a little about him -- that he washed his clothes regularly, for instance -- and she should be safe in public.
She mentally flipped a coin, and said yes.
They went to a movie and dinner a week later, and then they went places together a lot for a few months. And now they met more regularly in the laundromat (she suspected that he adjusted his schedule to hers, though she never asked) but now failed to catch up on their reading there. Somehow she saw him a lot more on the street, in the neighborhood, now, though perhaps she just noticed him where she had not earlier. They became emotionally intimate pretty quickly, and it was stronger than what she had ever known before. Being out on her own probably freed her up there.
But Lucy was brought up short on the Saturday that they spent going through a series of second-hand shops. The woman who owned one place offhandedly referred to Lucy's husband, and apologized for the error but said that the two of them seemed so natural together that they seemed married for some years.
This was getting pretty serious with Joel. While nothing permanent had happened yet, it might. She was not totally sure that she was ready to fall in love yet, she told herself -- or to go to bed! She was only 19, well, 20 in January. She had a lot of her life for such things, but then she would sort of like to have it all now too.
She decided to ride with it. This could go several places, and she was still in control of herself. Or so she thought some of the time; But over the next few weeks she wrote three times letters to Joel telling him that she did not want to see him again -- then tore them up. And another two times she was on the point of calling him to say that she was afraid that they were moving too fast. Once she made the call, but the words were forgotten when she heard his voice. And what could she say? That she was getting to like him too much?
The physical intimacy was slower in coming, and Lucy liked that fact. Though even there they went much faster than she would have thought that she ever would.
