The Humper Game Pt 07 Ch 07

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.

Early in the fall after our first anniversary, we decided it was time to start our family. Well, of course we'd started it by getting married—I mean, to start having children.

Ellen felt especially urgent about this. Her big vision hadn't given any explicit time frame, but she had seen herself and me and children, and from this she was sure we needed to get going. I didn't ask for more information. I had to trust her. She went off contraceptives, and in due course she was pregnant.

A couple of weeks after we knew this for sure, we had a Sunday dinner with my parents. One advantage of being where we were was that we saw them fairly often. They had been surprised, and Mom at least was overjoyed, to hear our news, almost as soon as we knew. And so over dinner Mom asked whether we had discussed names for the baby.

We looked at each other. I said, somewhat hesitantly, "Actually, we haven't. I'm afraid this relates to something Ellen says she has seen, part of the big, important vision that frightened her so much. I've assumed that she was given names for the children, but I haven't asked. Neither of us is happy with the knowledge we have, and I've hesitated to bring anything up."

Ellen said, "That's right. And yes, I do have names. I don't know whether they're important, the way other details are, assuming this vision really means anything—and I don't see much room for doubt on the basis of what's already happened. But Phil, let me write down the names I have, without showing them to anyone, and then let's see what you would have to suggest. Please." She looked, well, uncertain and maybe woebegone, but I thought hugging her wouldn't help this time around. I took her hand and gave it a squeeze, then sat back to give her room, as she took a pen and a piece of paper out of her purse.

She wrote for a moment, then folded the paper over and set it down, and put the pen away.

I said, "If I recall, you said two boys and a girl, so I'll assume that. If it were all up to me, I would name the first boy after Granddad. Abraham." I thought for a moment. "I'm a little tempted to say Jenny for the girl—or I guess Jennifer but probably call her Jenny—but what I really would like is to name her after Nonna. And I just realized I don't know what her name was."

Ellen looked very surprised. "Phil, you were right there with me listening when Mom said what her name was!"

Mom laughed, and said something in Italian—way too fast for me to even hear separate words—and Ellen looked surprised again and then laughed herself. "

Grazie

!" she said. She said to me, "She told me I speak Italian very well, but that you don't understand it. And she's right, they were speaking in Italian! Bella introduced herself, and Mom said, 'What a beautiful name! My mother's name was Bella, too,' or something very close to that. It's kind of a pun, because '

bella

' means beautiful in the feminine, but 'name'—'

nome

'—is masculine, so that was just '

bel

.' But anyway, your nonna's given name was Bella."

I said, "As long as we make sure Bella Lanigan understands why I chose that, then. For a second boy, well, I feel we ought to bring your father into it, but I hesitate to use a name I can't even pronounce, that would cause him trouble his whole life. Would Father feel pleased if we used Peter?" That was the name he used in our English-speaking country.

Ellen said, "He would be very pleased and honored. We'll need to make sure Pete understands, though." She was teasing me, I could see. She picked up the paper and handed it to Mom, who glanced at it and handed it to Dad, who looked and handed it to me. It said, "Abraham," "Bella," and "Peter."

Dad said, "I'm trusting you when you say you didn't set this up. I haven't known Phil to lie about anything at all, since he was pretty small. You have to admit it's little hard to believe."

Ellen said, "Fortunately, it doesn't happen often at all. Anyway, we hadn't discussed names, ever. By now, I do have some idea how Phil's mind works, of course, but I knew the names back when—well, when I was almost determined that I would never marry him because I felt like I was being ordered to do it.

"Phil, I'm curious. I also heard some nicknames. For sure those aren't something we have to decide on in advance, but for those three names, what nicknames would you use? If any?"

I thought a moment. "Well, Grandmom usually called Granddad 'Abe,' if the situation wasn't formal, and their close friends mostly did, too, I think. But I'm kind of thinking of Scott, with Hannah—'

Channah

,' you remember. And of course the Hebrew form is reasonably common these days, among Jews mostly, and I think I might be like Scott, and say 'Avraham' when I address him, at least sometimes. And there's a nickname for that, too, 'Avi.' Which in a way is actually almost comical, because it means 'my father.' But I might well use that, familiarly.

"I can't really imagine trying to cut 'Bella' down, but I suppose if I were teasing a daughter named that I might sometimes call her 'Beautiful.'—given what you said." Mom and Ellen both laughed at that. "Well, if we call her that in Italian, is it too much flattery to say it in English? I hope she will be, anyway. Like Sam Gamgee and Elanor. Very beautiful, and going to be beautifuller still. But of course I haven't seen her yet." I put a slight stress on that "I."

"For 'Peter' I just don't know. We already have a good friend named Pete, but that's not really a barrier. And 'Petey' to a small child? But things like that sometimes last longer than you expect. I don't know. The Greek form, 'Petros'? Or 'Rocky,' to tease him?

"Are you going to tell me? Or do we just see what happens?"

"Let's just wait and see. I'll only say that one of them fits very well with what I heard. I'd love to hear you use the other ones, too, though."

Mom asked a question about the Hebrew—Avraham or Avram, and Avi—and we discussed it a little. I never actually studied Hebrew, but you run across it in commentaries and things, and when I was little I actually had a friend named Avram—which she admitted she should have remembered. I did my best to explain things I only partly understood, then said, "I'm sure you know at least one observant Jew who actually knows Hebrew, or Dad does. That's whom you should ask."

Dad said, "In fact, I know an Israeli called 'Avi.' I'll ask him, if our paths cross soon. He's nice and outgoing. I'd invite him over for dinner with his wife, to meet you, except—I don't understand how this works, really. They're not really religious, but they keep kosher. If we have a meeting with a meal, he usually brings his own food, unless something's been arranged. He might accept a piece of fruit, occasionally. And he prays before he eats anything—at least, he says something in Hebrew. But he works all the time on Saturday, and doesn't ask for time off for any holidays, I think. And I don't think they're in a synagogue."

"I do know there's more than one, um, level of how seriously people keep kosher," I said. "There are those who just avoid, say, pork and shellfish, and won't have meat and dairy products together—even just as parts of the same meal. But some keep entirely separate sets of dishes for meat and dairy, things like that. I'm sure it's even more involved, but I don't know much more—beyond the original commandments the whole thing is based on."

The conversation soon turned to more mundane topics. I had really noticed one thing. Dad had expressed puzzlement over Avi's—

prima facie

—religious inconsistency, but hadn't made anything that could be construed as a snide or sneering or even negative comment. Just, "I don't really understand." That may sound perfectly natural—but if you think so, you didn't know Dad only a few years before this. I didn't think his basic opinions had changed, but from the time he agreed that what I said—and Mom had said it too, it seemed—once he agreed that I was right and that he would stop that behavior, he did stop. Completely, as far as I knew. I didn't see how it could happen that way, unless there were an attitude change, too, but I didn't really know. "I don't understand how this works, really," went for me, too, in this case.

Not much later than that, there were important changes on two other fronts.

Sam called us. "I'd like you two to pray for something," she said. "There's a guy. And I know it will amuse you, because his name is Samuel, Samuel Brandeis. I know him from church. He's a few years older than I am—well, after all, everyone in my year in school is a couple of years older, or even three or more. And Samuel's out of school five years now. But he's still involved in young adult group activities, and might well be for another year or two. More, if they ask him to help lead or oversee, and he's the kind they might.

"And of course, he's called Sam, always. For the moment, at least, I'm sticking with Samuel, and he understands why. It tickles his sense of humor—and Phil, that's one way he reminds me of you, once in a while."

I thought this was a challenge I couldn't allow to pass. "'This comes of engaging a detective with a keen sense of the ridiculous! For the future I'll employ none but Scotchmen.'"

She laughed. "Phil, behave yourself! But yes, like that. I don't know if he knows

The Grand Duke

, though.

"Anyway, we kind of got to be good friends even my first year at the university, always just part of a group. You know, we'd sit around talking, and more often than not he and I and another person or two would be in the same conversation. And we liked each other pretty much right off, but I just mean we hit it off as friends. I wasn't thinking of any more, for sure, and if he was, he gave no signs of it. We didn't even sit together in church—well, I told you I was doing music, and he's an usher, so we were both doing things and sitting conveniently for those, up front for me and in back for him. But I wasn't even thinking about sitting with him, anyway.

"But the, oh, the last three or four months of the next school year, my senior year, maybe, or even a little longer, it was more like we were pairing off. Still usually in the group, but we went to some things together, too. And he took me out to eat beforehand, and all that, sometimes. More often toward the end of the year.

"So when I was graduating, we agreed to keep in touch." Sam was at home with Uncle John and Aunt Sally, working on art but making more of her living with music. Reading between the lines just a little, I thought Aunt Sally wanted her to take over for her at church, too, but Sam felt her future was too uncertain to do that. But she sang and sometimes played piano, and occasionally other instruments as well.

"So we've been talking, and also doing a lot of email too. I think it's pretty plain that he's interested in me beyond just friendship, and at this point I sure am, too, in him. But I haven't told him about my awful past, or nothing much. And I don't mean being your partner, Phil! That too, but I mean how terrible I was before that.

"When you two got married, I did tell him some about our school, since that's where I knew you from, but nothing about sex ed or anything. And if things are going to develop, I've got to, really soon, so he can back out if it's too much for him.

"Anyway, I'm going to go visit him for a whole week, in two weeks. He's arranged with another woman for me to stay with her, someone I know—a friend, but not really a close friend. And I'll be going in to talk with professors and maybe some students, whoever is there. I even have some people wanting me to play with them, for a little of what they're getting paid. That will mean some rehearsal time. And I may be able to find a dealer for some artwork, there, more easily than I can here. I'll actually be pretty busy, a bunch of it when Samuel would be available for talking.

"I'm expecting that we're going to talk about us, whether we should be trying to be in the same place so we can consider getting married. I'm afraid I've already pretty much made up my mind, that's what I want unless we turn up something. We really need to go over some stuff like what Pastor Mac had you go through. By what I've seen, Samuel doesn't waste money, he's not extravagant, but he's no miser, either, for example, but we need to talk about things like that. As well as, well, does he have his heart set on marrying a virgin? He knows I wasn't a Christian when he first met me, so maybe he's already decided I'm probably not, or that it doesn't matter to him.

"That's my agenda, anyway. I hope it's his, and I think it must be, more or less. So can you pray for all this? Really, for the Lord's will to be done, but for it all to become clear? Of course, at this point I want that to mean for it to become clear that we should get married, but much as I want that, I really want us to make the right decisions, either way. I need him to understand how awful I was, and how I escaped from that, but also about all the guys in gym, and about sex ed, and most of all what you meant to me. It's not just my body that's not virginal, Phil! I'm glad more than I can tell you that you two are together, that you're both believers, and so I know that we'll never be together that way again. But you still have a big piece of my heart, I think forever. If I get married, that's not going to be a secret.

"I can't tell you, though, how happy I am that I gave you to Ellen willingly and with no real reservations. What I don't have is what I see in so many girls. They had a guy, they loved him or thought they did, but then things didn't work out and they broke up, usually with a lot of anger and pain. They may have mostly gotten over it and be friends again, sometimes, but, um. It's like that song you played for Jenny and me. 'Gone with the memories of those before, and every time I know there'll be one more.'" Sam didn't say that line, she sang it. "Phil, you're special to me, you'll always be, you never stopped. Thank you that all my memories of you, from that second day of sex ed on—the first night!—they're all happy ones. Not to mention when you forgave me in the first place!

"OK, I've run on and on and on. I'm sorry. I hope you don't really have questions or anything, but you've probably got things to say. So I'll try to shut up."

I was trying to learn to do what I had seen in Pastor Mac, to listen and absorb, and then to think, before I talked. But Ellen jumped in right off, with excited questions and comments. So Sam had to tell us some about what Samuel looked like, what he did for a living, what kind of common interests they had—lots of things. And I thought that the gushing Ellen was doing really was something Sam needed, and that I couldn't really give her—even though I was curious about those things too. Finally, though, the two of them ran down some, so I got a chance.

"Sam, for sure we'll pray. Every day. I wish I could know him first hand, now, so I could form my own opinion about whether or not he's good enough for you—but he probably is, assuming you're right that he's as interested in you as you are in him. It's plain enough that he's been patient, and willing to go slow, but I'm sure you would know if he were still keeping his eye on other possibilities.

"I'm really sure that going to see him is the right next step for you. I hope the woman who is putting you up won't see you as an imposition. And you know, I'm pretty sure that moving back there will be a good career choice, with more opportunities—and more challenges and competition, too. If it comes to that.

"If you do move back up there, we'll have to visit you sometime, and get to meet Samuel. Sam. But really, everything you said sounds good, to me. You've certainly got my blessing.

"I've got one question, though. Did you really remember that line of that song from hearing it one time, more than two years ago? I know you're good, but that seems really exceptional."

"Oh, no. I liked those songs enough that I found the whole album on youtube. And I see what you meant, about what Scott said, three tracks are awful and a couple more pretty blah. But 'Walk On the Sand' was beautiful, too, and a couple of others were really good. It's a pity the best ones are all about broken relationships and alienation and heartache. Well, that's why they hit you so hard—and me, too, some. If I ever move to doing a lot of solo playing and singing, I may work some of them up. Have to flip the genders—'He Promises Everything', say—and that won't work quite as well, but, well, I have to be careful not to sing them too often, anyway. I pick up the mood. But I really thank you for bringing them to my attention."

She paused a moment, and then said, "Yep. 'His perfume on the collar of my shirt he wore' just doesn't work, does it? But 'Walk On the Sand' would adapt fine, and 'Please Don't Go Now,' too. It's good Scott didn't play that one for you too, right then, isn't it?"

"Right. You know, it's really good that I hadn't heard that one even earlier, when Ellen and I quarreled. I'd have fallen apart even worse. 'You've already made up your mind,' and 'I helplessly watch you pack your things.'" Of course, unlike Sam I just recited the words.

We talked about some other things, too. One thing that Sam mentioned was that she had gotten together two or three times with Autumn.

"And thank you for introducing me to her, even at a distance," she said. "She's really nice, and she thinks I have a big future, and if I do she'll help it by building my reputation. My first fan. She told me to be sure and say hi to you two for her, too."

Actually, of course, it would be fairer to say that Ellen was Sam's first fan, and Steve with her. I had thought that first drawing was outstanding, but my artistic judgment wasn't all that discriminating, and the drawing was far too personal for me to be objective. OK, it had personal meaning for Ellen, too, but she could put that aside enough to judge it as art, and she knew what she was talking about, far more than I did. Still, Autumn was knowledgeable beyond either Ellen or me, and had been impressed right off. She had assumed the artist was someone she should have heard of, someone who would already have a reputation in the art world.

We eventually ended the call, and Ellen and I took a minute right away to pray for Sam and Samuel. Just before we really said goodbye, though, Ellen gave me a look, and said, "Sam, if you do keep moving ahead, everyone who knew him before is going to say Sam for both of you. You might as well get used to the idea."

And I took great pleasure in pointing out to Sam that she wouldn't even have to change her artistic monogram or logo—whatever those things are called!—since her initials would be the same.

Revision: 8/14/2019