Author's note and acknowledgements
This story has sat on my hard drive for four years now.
I wrote it, all twenty chapters and 95,000 words of it in eight days of a frenzied, near trance-like state, sitting on my couch with my wife's laptop. She would occasionally have to remind me to eat.
When the dust settled, and I looked up, I realized a couple of things: one, I had just written a fucking novel in a week, whoa. Two, it seemed to be pretty damn good, double whoa. And three, what the hell was I going to do with it?
I tried editing it, I even enlisted the help of a Lit-Editor, who was invaluable for early editing, and confirming it was in fact, pretty good, or readable at least. I spent several months then, editing, unashamedly forcing it on writer friends to read, regular friends to read, and total strangers on writer boards. Everyone had different opinions of course, as people do, but all of them seemed to think it was pretty good, and I should probably try to do something with it.
So I spent another year trying to sell it.
Well nothing happened.
And I can't blame them, agents and publishers. It's kind of a niche story, hard to market. It's got too much sex for a coming age story, too much teenage drama for adult fiction, and not a single word about vampires or bondage to make it work as erotic fiction.
So it's sat on my hard drive for four years. I'll occasionally open it up, tinker with a line, or try to figure out how to re-work it into something more marketable. I always end up wasting a weekend trying to figure out how to change it, without losing the essence of the thing which I, and several others, feel is, "pretty good."
So fuck it. Here you go Literotica. I just want people to read it. I want people to get to know Jack the way I did. Writing his life made me feel like I was a part of it. He's a pretty good guy, I wish I knew him in real life.
So NEXT, some disclaimers.
This is a coming of age story. Which means first it starts out when the characters are too young to have sex (on literotica.) So there's no sex for a couple chapters. I hope that's okay. Second, this is a novel length story, including the prologue and epilogue, there are twenty-one chapters in all. Some are longer than others, and there is not a sex scene in every one. (Though some have more than one.) More importantly, sex is a thing that happens, it's not written to be titillating, but rather just as events in Jack's life.
So there you go. It's a story with sex in it, not a story about sex. I think it's pretty good anyway.
If you have not read the first chapter, please click on my profile and pick the story up at the beginning, its better that way, trust me.
*****
Ever since I'd started dating Kimmy, Beth had changed her behavior toward me drastically.
Before the birthday party, Beth and I had been best buds. We hung out all the time, watched movies together, studied together, and just generally spent as much time as possible in each other's company. Well, let me qualify that, I spent as much time with her as she would let me. By which I mean that I was always more eager for her company than she for mine. Sophomore year I basically hung on her every word. If she said jump, I asked if that had been high enough on the way down. Our junior year I'd relaxed a little and was much more "one of the gang" than Beth's pet. Still though, I was there mostly to be near Beth. The other three girls were nice, but I didn't mind if one of them was absent. If Beth wasn't around, then I felt a bit out of place.
After the birthday party, when Kimmy and I got together, Beth started going through these weird swings. Some days, she'd behave suspiciously like she was jealous; other days she'd gush over how cute Kimmy and I were together and practically demand we kiss for her viewing pleasure. When Todd was around, she relaxed some, or at least hide it better. If it was just the five of us, or worse, just Beth, Kimmy, and myself; things got awkward quickly. One thing definitely changed though, once I started tutoring Kimmy full time, about a month after the term started, Beth and I stopped hanging out as just the two of us.
Actually, maybe it wasn't that Beth's behavior changed about me, maybe it was that mine changed about her. Especially I think, after I started having sex with Kimmy.
Beth's projected aura of gibbering stupid lost its power over me I think. I'd had sex - I was having sex; all the time. She became not an untouchable sex goddess, but just a very cute girl, one that I'd been friends with long enough to learn her tricks and charms. She trying to manipulate me, or I stopped falling for it. I lost my crush on her.
I don't think she knew how to deal with that.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Beth mercilessly manipulated me day in and day out like some kind of puppet master, that's not it at all. But she did know that she had power over me, and would sometimes use it to her advantage. At the time, I never minded. Hell I was even aware I was being manipulated most of the time. I accepted it as the price to be around her. Kimmy stopped all that. Either Beth lost her power over me, or she stopped using it out of respect for her friend. Maybe a little of both I suppose.
Beth and I had a single class together our second semester of our senior year, Current Events.
Like the junior class version, this was a class that everyone senior was required to take, and there was no AP version, so I was taking it at the same level as all of my friends. It was not the only class I had with one of my friends, I had AP Lit. with Anna, one of her two AP classes. I was the TA for my Lit. teacher again, Kimmy, and Todd were in that one (mostly thanks to my help the previous semester they had managed to make it into a regular class, rather than the basic one, I was very proud of that); and I was the tech adviser after school for the newspaper which Abby was a photographer for.
But Beth and I, only Current Events.
Truth be told, CE was a 'skate' class for me. Our instructor had also been my instructor for AP World History my junior year and he let me get away with anything short of setting the classroom on fire. As a result, I used the class as a study hall to catch up on work for my much harder classes. The particular class I was in was also loaded with half a dozen cheerleaders, basketball and baseball players, and a couple of other people in the larger circle of friends I was part of now. Most of them were not top students, not remedial by any means, they all managed to keep up their eligibility after all. But Mr. Jefferson never, shall we say, challenged the class? He practically gave away the answers to quizzes and tests the week before. So I'd keep half an ear out, get the notes from Beth, read the material, and 'skate' through the class. Mr. Jefferson never called on me because he could see I usually had my physics book out, or my calculus homework (which was the very next period), and things worked out.
A couple of days before prom, Mr. Jefferson was going over the Tanya Harding case again, I suppose in a vain attempt to interest the athletes and cheerleaders in actual current events, but the class was having none of it. Mindy and Chelsea were discussing where they were going to get their hair and nails done for prom, a couple of basketball guys were going over the upcoming NBA playoffs wondering if the Knicks were going to sweep the series (they didn't, Houston took the title that year in game seven), and Beth was talking to me about our gang's plans for prom night and the after-party. I had about a quarter of my attention on her, a quarter on Mr. Jefferson's lecture (maybe less), but most of my attention was on finishing up differential equations before the end of the period.
"What color is Kimmy's dress, do you know?" Beth asked.
"Blue I think," I said, not looking up.
"Oh, that'll be very pretty with her eyes," she practically cooed.
I was trying to determine of the variables I was working in the current problem I was working on with were separable.
"What shade of blue? I think Mindy is wearing blue too," she continued.
"Light blue I think," I replied after a second.
No, they weren't. Were we doing homogenous equations yet? I didn't think there were supposed to be any in this set.
"So once, again, the question the prosecutors are asking, is 'Did Ms. Harding have prior knowledge of the attack?'" Mr. Jefferson was asking in the background.
I'll just rewrite it as a linear equation, I can solve it that way. That'll be fine.
"Because if it's powder blue I have this cute little hair clip I can give her to wear."
"No way man, the Knicks are gonna sweep it. Four games against Seattle for the title, boom!"
"Seriously Mindy, you should redo your highlights..."
