. 02

Author's note:

This is, in all its seven parts and their many chapters, one very,

very

long story. If long stories bother you, I suggest you read something else.

No part of this story is written so as to stand on its own. I strongly suggest that you start with

the beginning of Part 1

and read sequentially—giving up at any point you choose, of course.

All sexual activity portrayed anywhere in this story involves only people at least eighteen years old.

This entire story is posted only on literotica.com. Any other public posting without my permission in writing is a violation of my copyright.

We weren't sitting with Pete and Tammy, but we all got off the plane together. Their parents had come to meet us all. Pete's mother, Mia, was petite and beautiful. I could only imagine what a heart-stopper she must have been when she was Tammy's age! She was also always on the move, full of energy, gesturing, talking as much as everyone else put together. Her husband, Tom, was almost her polar opposite in these things—tall, solid, and usually quiet. I thought I saw why Pete often let Tammy do the talking. Tammy's parents, Paul and Mary, seemed generally average. Their welcome to us lacked the sheer energy of Mia's, but was clearly as heartfelt.

Mia and Tom took Ellen and me, and Paul and Mary took Pete and Tammy. We took our things out to the tiny house in the back yard, which was quite a bit smaller than our apartment but very snug and nice. Mia left us to 'freshen up,' telling us to come into the house for dinner when we were ready.

It was late for dinner, so we hurried in without unpacking much. I was amused, because the entree was one of the things I had taught Tammy. Mia and Tammy both caught my amusement, and Tammy said, "I fixed this at spring break, and Mamma Mia and Mom both made me give them the recipe."

Mary said, "I'm really impressed with you. I tried and tried to teach Tammy to cook, and she could get by, but never more than that. Then, in a few months, she's suddenly a better cook than I am."

Tammy said, "Mom, that's not true! I know a lot of recipes now, and that's a start, but I'm just beginning to learn the real stuff. You can take a recipe and read it and see what you want to do to make it better, or at least more to your taste. Phil's just amazing at that, and he's trying to teach me, but that's not as easy as learning recipes, I can tell you.

"Although, I can taste that you did something different with this, and I like Phil's recipe a little better."

I said, "She left out the curry powder, I think, and she may have added something in its place."

Mia said, "That's right. Tammy showed us a lot of recipes, and it's clear you like curry powder more than I do. Though in this case I think Tammy is right, it was better when she fixed it."

"You didn't substitute anything else? Depending on just what you don't like about curry powder, you might check on line or in your cookbook for what's in it, and add some things but not others. If what you don't like is the turmeric—though that's pretty mild—or the peppers, say, you could try adding a little nutmeg and cinnamon, and maybe ginger. But you're right, I like curry powder in lots of things. You'd have to experiment—which is what I keep telling Tammy."

We all ate for a moment, and then Mia said, "Well, we are grateful for Tammy's improvements in the kitchen, not to mention the recipes she's passing on, but that really isn't the big thing. We all thought Pete and Tammy were perfect for each other, and we were glad they were together, but we could all see that something was missing, and we worried about it. But none of us had the faintest idea of what was up. And if we got it right, you came in and in just a couple of days you spotted it and helped them straighten it out! Seeing them so happy with each other puts us in your debt, more than we can ever repay. We really want you to know that."

I said, "That's not quite right. I'd been seeing them together since the beginning of the term, and was wondering what there was about them. But what made me get it a little was seeing Tammy dancing, and it was something really small, because she enjoys dancing with anyone. There was just a little something there sometimes, when her partner was another woman. And I would have hesitated to bring up our friend, but Ellen did that. I'm glad, since it really did help.

"Tammy, I don't mean to sit here talking about you over your head, like you're not here."

"Phil, you know Pete and I are even more grateful to you, and they need their chance to thank you now."

Mary said, "Well, Paul and I feel the same, and we're glad to get to meet you. It was kind of a shock to hear what it was, but it was a lot easier to take in the context of hearing that it wasn't a problem any more, at least between her and Pete. Tammy said she had been afraid to tell us, afraid I would have a heart attack or something. I hope that's a just figure of speech, but she's right that it would have been a really bad shock otherwise. And actually, when they said it was something we'd probably rather not know, that left me imagining much worse things, weird ones, so in a way it was a relief—since it was settled, anyway.

"We start out trying to protect our kids as they grow up, and then find out they're protecting us! But they're planning to get married, maybe in about a year, and that's a big deal for us all. So if we can ever help you, you don't hesitate to call us."

Conversation became more general, but we didn't really linger over dinner. It was getting late for us, by our own time, and more so by the time there, two time zones east.

Mia said, "We're expecting that you won't be over here for breakfast in the morning, though you're welcome of course. But there's some applesauce bread on the counter, which should stay fresh enough all the time you're here if you keep it wrapped, and there are cinnamon rolls in the freezer, and an egg casserole in the fridge, which you can just heat in the oven. If there's anything else you need or want, just let us know. But you two go enjoy your wedding night! Let us know if you won't want lunch tomorrow, but I'm expecting you around one unless I hear earlier."

Tammy told us, "There's no dishwasher over there, but if you like you can bring dishes over here. That's what we mostly did last summer. Pete and I will be at Mom and Dad's, and we start on our jobs Monday, so we'll probably only see you in the evenings."

I looked at both sets of parents. "You'll be going to church in the morning, won't you? What time is that?"

They looked a little surprised, and Mia said, "It's at ten, and we try to leave by around nine-thirty. Did you want to come with us?"

Ellen said, "We'd like to, if it's not a problem. Please."

"It seems there's more we need to hear about, but not tonight. Or that we'd like to hear about, anyway. I'll try to go over and check with you a few minutes before we leave, unless you come over here first."

I figured that this should be easy enough, even with a lot of the night not spent sleeping. We'd need to be ready around nine, OK, seven our usual time, but we were usually at the gym an hour and a half earlier than that. Anyway, I thought we'd manage a nap the next afternoon—well, with other activities before and after, most likely. I mentioned the possibility of the nap, and it was plain that my other intentions were understood all round.

Paul and Mary took Pete and Tammy off, and we thanked Tom and Mia, with a lot of hugs in all this, and then we went off to get to bed. Ellen gave me a little worry, though. As soon as we were inside the little house, we kissed, and it was very passionate. Then Ellen stepped back a bit—still with arms around each other—and looked at me seriously.

She said, "Phil. Dearest. Husband. You know I love you more than anything."

I said, "Ellen dear, I learned with both Jenny and Sam that any request starting off that way was something to be very wary of. Often it was fine, except that it usually needed some discussion—the time Jenny asked me to lay her down on the cafeteria table comes to mind, there. With you, it's usually just something you think I won't like. But why don't you just ask me instead of building up to it? Will you trust me to listen and consider it honestly, without all the preliminaries? Please?"

She took a deep breath and let it out. "With you, anything. It's just. Um. I know you. After six months, you're going to have trouble waiting for me. But you're going to think you need to, because you really want our first time—this time around—to be really, really good for me. Better than the other first time.

"But I really hope you'll remember I'm about as impatient as you are, and maybe even more. And what I'm impatient for isn't an orgasm, much less two or three or four. I'm confident I'll get plenty of those, probably even later on tonight. But right now, what I want is you on top of me—or under me if you'd rather!—anyway against me and inside me. What you do with your mouth and your hands is heavenly, and you know I think so! But for now, as soon as we get our teeth brushed and get undressed, just come in, with very little foreplay, or maybe none. If I seem to be close and you can hold back for me, fine, but don't hold back very long. Let me—let me just have you, and you enjoy yourself. Please?"

I looked at her. "All right. I'll give you first crack at the bathroom, right now. If you're not out in five minutes—no, better say ten—I'll come in and drag you out, ready or not. And you be ready and in bed before I'm out, or you'll get a lot more foreplay than you want. OK?"

She gave me a startled look and bolted into the bathroom. She must not have done a thorough job on her teeth, because she was out in four minutes flat. I needed twice that for everything, myself. She was under the sheet—with nothing on, not even the scanty, lacy things she'd been given at a shower—when I emerged. She had a modest enough robe within reach, I noticed. I knew that wasn't for me, it was in case someone came to the door or something. Ellen always thought ahead—one of many things about her I loved.

And no, we didn't get as much sleep as we would have liked that night, but we really couldn't complain. There were other things we hadn't gotten any of at all for a long time, and we made up for lost time. I didn't have to hold back much at all the first time, as it happened—which was a very good thing.

Sunday morning, we managed breakfast with no problem. Wow, they'd left us a lot of food! That fridge was tiny, and I wouldn't trust anything left in its freezer to keep all that long, but it was packed. And there was cereal in the cupboard, besides the breakfast things Mia had told us about. We ate, and I washed the dishes. There was enough of the egg dish left that we put it back in the fridge. I thought it would last another day.

Our specific commitment, to Pastor Mac, to attend church on Sundays had ended the day before, with the wedding. But I was finding myself where Sam had been a year earlier, spiritually, though my doubts were a little different from hers. Ellen was with me, again for reasons of her own, and in fact I thought her hesitation wasn't so much doubt as fear. Come to think of it, in a different way that had been true of Sam as well.

So a few minutes before nine, we were knocking on the back door of the main house. Mia and Tom were ready to go, except that Mia was doing something in the kitchen so that dinner would be ready when we got back.

She teased me, gently, as I kept yawning. Pete and Tammy had told them that we were living together, but had also told them that we'd been abstaining from sex for the past six months. It was plain that they understood that we'd been as eager for that wedding night as any couple could ever have been. All the teasing, from all six of them, had been gentle and affectionate and, well, proper—but they all did it. A lot of it was just knowing smiles at certain points. We took it as it was intended.

We rode to church with Mia and Tom. A little to our surprise, Tammy and Pete came with Mary and Paul. Later, Tammy told us, "They understand that we're not believers, but we usually go when we're here. We grew up in that church, and everyone knows us. And of course, they're hoping that someday we'll hear something that will change our minds. It's no hardship for us, anyway. Except for jet lag, at this point, and I'm pretty sure we got more sleep than you did." And yes, well, knowing smiles.

The music was more old-fashioned than we were used to hearing in churches. Just an organ, and the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century gospel songs these people thought of as "the old hymns." Very much what my grandparents' church had used, when I was still a child. They had added contemporary material when I was in middle school—and more as time went on.

The sermon was good, but I wasn't in the bulls-eye this time, and neither was Ellen. The pastor preached ably on David's census of Israel and what came of it. If I had been at a different point spiritually, several things he brought out might have hammered at me, I think. As we left, I spoke with him for a minute or so about what he had said. "I will not take that which is thine for the Lord, nor offer burnt offerings without cost." If I ever did become a believer, I would have to wrestle with that one, I thought. The pastor really had done a good job with the passage. He preached to the heart—just not mine, not right then anyway.

When we got home—or back to base, if you prefer—we went off to change, then went back for dinner. Mia had said, "lunch," but it was definitely dinner. Pete and Tammy were there, and Paul and Mary too. We talked about many things. One thing of interest all around was summer jobs. We had known that Pete and Tammy had jobs, but not what they were. It turned out that Paul was a bank executive, and that for the previous two summers Pete and Tammy had worked for the bank. They were temps doing whatever needed doing—at low levels, anyway. They acted as tellers when needed, covering for people's lunch breaks but also for their vacations. They did a lot of filing. I gathered they helped the cleaning people sometimes, but most of what they did was clerical.

"Next year, we're definitely going to have to look for something career oriented, something permanent," Tammy said. "Hopefully it will pay better, too. But this has been great for us for two years running, and now a third year. It's been great for all of us. Dad gets people he trusts, and who by now know the other employees and all the routines. We get jobs, not all that well paying but not exactly minimum wage, either, and we get to live at home and eat off someone else's budget. The jobs will look good on resumes, too, and we won't have to say it was nepotism. It was the first time, but if we weren't pulling our weight, one summer would have been the end."

"And they've done a fine job," Paul put in. "Even the things we can't really let them handle, they help us by freeing up the people who can. They get a lot of government reporting figures together. Starting next year, I suspect we'll just hire another permanent, full-time person to replace them."

Of course, we had to discuss our own jobs. Several possibilities had turned up, without our having to look too hard. Dad had nudged some people in Washington, and we had seriously considered those. Ellen would have been working with a nonprofit. It would have been more like social work than the kind of individual counseling she really wanted, but it would have been good experience. I would have been collecting information and writing about what several bureaus had been accomplishing.

Uncle John had put us in contact with some people at the college where he had taught. For neither of us would these have been a great fit, but had we had nothing better we would have jumped at the openings.

We had each been offered a job at our university, from our own departments, and those were the jobs we were taking. Mine was helping a couple of history professors collect and organize their own research data, and it sounded like I might do some of the writing. I might even get a little credit. Ellen would be assisting with counseling. Some of it, again, was nearer social work than she wanted, but some looked to be exactly the experience she needed. For her, the pay was miserable and the hours were irregular. But we would be living in our own apartment, gaining contacts and experience. We too would need something better after we graduated, but this all really looked good to us.

In the course of a discussion of nothing in particular, Tammy suddenly said, "Oh!" in tones of surprise. Well, everyone stopped and looked at her, of course. She blushed, but she explained. "I suddenly thought of something. Ellen and Phil, for sure this doesn't mean I'm less grateful to you two! But something happened in high school that should have clued me in. Everyone else here knows about it, but here it is.

"A friend of mine, Mary, was in Drama Club." At this, obvious enlightenment dawned on everyone else's faces. "Well, junior year, she tried out for the lead role in a play. And she got it. Um, the female lead. The problem was that there was a male lead role, and the guy who got it was named Bill, and they'd never gotten along. I don't think it was anything like you and Sam. Mostly, they just ignored each other, but if one of them said or did something dumb, the other was sure to point it out, and keep on it for a while."

She paused. "Honestly, I think Mary was more to blame than he was. I think he'd have been happy just to ignore her and anything she said, but she needled him often enough that it kept him stirred up, too.

"So they had to play opposite each other—but it gets worse! There was a big romantic scene, in the course of which they were supposed to kiss. And the director—the student director and the teacher who sponsored the club, both—had worked it out that they were going to prolong the kiss for at least a couple of minutes. Well, the audience would mostly be high school kids, and they could be counted on to get into it and make comments, of course, and they thought that would help the audience relate.

"They both really wanted their chance to star, and neither was willing to turn down the part—each of them thought the other one should, though. So anyway, the time came for the first run-through of that scene. And it was just terrible, naturally! Not just the kiss, but the whole scene, and even some earlier interaction.

"The director took them through it a few times, getting madder and madder. Finally, she told them, 'You two get together before the next rehearsal, and get yourselves together, or neither one of you will be in this production. We'll work on other scenes tomorrow, and that will give you the weekend, too, but I mean it! You be ready by Monday afternoon, or else!' And the faculty advisor backed her up completely. She said something like, 'You're supposed to be acting. That means doing a realistic job of doing things the characters do. How you feel about it as actors doesn't come into it. You don't deserve the leads if you can't do it better than you have been tonight.'

"So they spent nearly every free minute they had, for three days and more, together. They discussed the play. They discussed all the things they hated about each other. But they also spent time trying to kiss so it looked like they were enjoying it. They were mostly at Mary's house, and her folks had a rule, no boys in her bedroom, so they were in the living room, under her parents' noses. And I think her folks might have objected to all that kissing if they hadn't known how those two felt about each other—and for that matter they could see that the kiss had to be practiced, or it would ruin the whole play. It really was that bad. I think Mary bit him on one of the early tries, Thursday night. Mary's parents went so far as to walk through the scene themselves—you know, 'Here's the way you need to kiss him.'" She grinned at Mary. "Not the way you expect your parents to behave—even though you know they must have, or you wouldn't be there!