The story so far: exhibitionist Becky shocked not just her guests but best friend Lisa when she attended her own birthday party with nothing on – but bigger shocks were in store after she and Lisa fought, and later that evening Lisa secretly witnessed Becky having a threesome with a couple of the girls' friends, forcing her to confront her own attraction to Becky...
Chapter 22 – Growing Up
This time, it did make the papers, locally at least.
"MYSTERY NUDIST SEEN AROUND TOWN"
After the photographs of Becky nude at the cinema had been a minor viral sensation a couple of weeks before, the same light-hearted news website reported that the unknown naked woman had been seen again in the same area, this time caught on CCTV undressing and parading around a corner shop in the nude. They had that CCTV footage, supplied to them by a clerk at the shop, who had been working when the girl came in and stripped.
A random naked girl in one location was one thing, but two events made for a serial streaker in the town, and this was much more exciting news. Some town journalist, eager for content to pad out the local newspaper's print and online editions, picked it up from social media and began to put it together.
The local news article wasn't exactly front page news but it caused a minor stir online. The piece described how a mystery young brunette had been seen in two locations around the town over the past couple of months, walking completely naked in a public place, seemingly without a care. It included an account from Hamed, the shop worker who had witnessed the girl's striptease in his store.
"I didn't mind at all," the young man said. "She was very pretty and looked to be having a good time. There was no sign she was drunk or in trouble. She just wanted to take off her clothes."
A spokesperson for the cinema chain stated that patrons were expected to dress appropriately and anyone who did not do so would be asked to leave. They could not explain why that had not happened in the case of the mystery naked girl, saying only that this was an employee matter and they were currently investigating.
The reporter even made enquiries with the local police, who replied only that they were aware of the incidents, that no complaint had been made to the police about them either at the time the occurred or since, and they were not currently undertaking any investigation into the activities of the 'nudist'.
In the aftermath, after the story was published, further details emerged. In amongst the many amused (and lewd) comments on the local newspaper's Facebook page about the story were a number of people speculating about the girl's identity – and one poster, who wondered if they might have seen the same young woman, as they had been riding on a train to London in late July and had observed two girls sitting on a bank by the railway track – one of whom had been a pretty brunette with no clothes on...
–
It was inevitable, then, that they would be found out.
Word of Becky's behavior at the party had gotten out. There had even been mobile phone photos from the night shared in which it was pretty clear that Becky had not been wearing clothes during the evening.
When the story of the town's mystery nudist broke, it didn't take long for Becky and Lisa's friends to put two and two together. Becky O'Neill had attended her birthday party completely nude, and now there were stories of a girl appearing naked in public around town? It was too much in common to just be a coincidence – how many young, buxom brunettes with a penchant for unashamed nudity – and a blonde friend – were there in the town? Plus, those who had been to the party could attest to a definite physical similarity between the girl in the cinema photos and what they had seen of Becky. When they looked at the uploads from the CCTV footage, it became almost certain, the girl in that was unmistakably Becky.
Gossip spread wildly. Soon, everybody knew that Becky was not just a nudist who had shown up at her birthday party in the buff, but that she was someone who just loved to parade around nude in full public view to boot. Not just her friends, but their younger siblings still at school, their parents, Becky's former teachers – anyone who knew her got to hear at least something of the titillating details.
And it wasn't just Becky, either. Because Lisa was the number one candidate for the other (clothed) girl who had been seen in the company of the naked Becky on these occasions, there were suddenly a lot of people contacting Lisa with a lot of questions they thought she might be able to answer.
It was not, she thought, what she needed during her first week at university. While physically she was removed from it all because she was no longer in the same town, she couldn't escape the messages on Facebook, the texts and calls. Everyone had heard the story, sometimes with lurid exaggerations, and as the only person they knew who had actually been there, they wanted Lisa to tell them if it was true.
It didn't help that Becky had pretty much gone to ground. As soon as she'd realized what was happening, she'd deleted all her profiles from social media, and wasn't answering the telephone or responding to texts.
It was shaping up to be a minor disaster, and not for the first time, Lisa wondered if getting involved with Becky's naked escapades over the previous summer had maybe not been the most sensible thing she could have done.
–
Two months had passed.
As quickly as it had grown up, the initial fuss around the appearance of a naked Becky in the local news media had died down. There were no new developments, her name had never been published and, of course, there had been no more sightings of naked girl walking around in public places in the town.
That, Lisa knew, was because Becky wasn't living there anymore, but the strangers who only knew of Becky from the news stories thankfully had no idea of her whereabouts and her identity.
Annoyed by the initial flurry of calls and messages from friends unable to reach Becky or simply hungry for gossip about her friend's unusual and titillating behaviour, Lisa decided to follow what seemed to her the healthiest course of action, and threw herself into socializing and studying in the new environment of university, with barely a thought toward things that had happened back home. Now, at times it seemed as though her life before this belonged to some dim and distant past, not just several weeks before.
She had to laugh. She and all the other freshers were strutting around campus like they were experts, proper grown-ups – a far cry from the shy, awestruck and confused mob who had arrived during freshers week.
She'd had some chance, after the first flurry of activity, for some introspection.
Her relationship with Becky had ended in a fractured state and since then, with the sudden reveal to all who knew her that she'd been at least somewhat of an exhibitionist during the previous summer, with Becky going to ground, there had been no real chance to repair it. She was coming now to realise that their friendship that past summer had taken on an intensity, an almost possessive strangeness , born largely from the closeness Becky's proclivity for nudity had caused. But Lisa, looking at it now with more detached, had come to the conclusion that there had been an unhealthy side to it all.
She hadn't wanted to share Becky with anyone. She'd wanted her all for herself, and the shared secret of Becky's nudism and exhibitionism had been the means by which she'd managed this. So, when Becky had 'come out' as a nudist – in such a spectacular public way – to their other friends, sharing with them something that had previously made Lisa feel privileged and special, it had wounded her. The icing on the angst cake for Lisa had been that after that she had been immediately reminded that her friend, who had been single for the whole of that more intensified phase of their relationship, did have a sex life of her own that was completely removed from Lisa and may involve other people Lisa knew, but was not going to involve Lisa herself.
It had been harder to take than she had imagined. She hadn't really understood the depth and strength of her attraction to Becky until it had been challenged in that way.
But part of the growing up process she had been through since coming to university had been to come to accept that no matter how strong her attraction to Becky was, she couldn't make her friend feel the same way, and it wasn't right to take such a possessive approach to her friend and her friend's behaviour.
So when Becky had made the news, Lisa had used it as an opportunity to distance herself from her friend's actions. She'd been honest when friends and (especially) her family had asked about it, but had also downplayed it. It was something Becky did from time to time, that was all – something she, Lisa, did not fully understand but had accepted as harmless and tried to be supportive over, but there wasn't anything like the exciting undercurrent to it people might have thought.
Now, after almost two months, she felt finally that she had established herself as her own person, independent of Becky and her strange ways.
So that was, of course, exactly when Becky managed to come back into her life.
Chapter 23 – Reconnecting
It was a Skype call, in the end, that brought the two back together.
Lisa was working late on an assignment. She often stayed logged into Skype when she was on her laptop, but she was still surprised when the call came through from Becky.
She considered ignoring it. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to Becky. But the two, who had previously barely gone a few hours without a text, call or message of some kind, hadn't spoken since Lisa left for university. Any conversation with her friend now was going to be a little more difficult as a result, and she genuinely was busy with other things.
On the other hand, Becky was still her friend. When news of Becky's naked adventures around town had broken, Lisa had tried to reach out to Becky and support her. She had been rebuffed then but still wanted to be there for her friend when she needed her – and a late-night Skype call may be just that.
Before Becky could give up and hang up, Lisa clicked to answer, and her friend appeared on-screen. Becky looked tired but otherwise unchanged. She was in what was almost certainly her bedroom at university, but – unusually for Becky – appeared to be fully clothed. Perhaps she was cold, Lisa thought to herself - it was almost November.
Becky still had her brunette curls, her full lips and wide eyes. Lisa's heart skipped as she found herself recalling her friend's unique beauty for the first time in a while.
"Hi!" she squealed to Lisa. "Oh my God, hi!" She was still as excitable as ever. "How are you doing?"
"I'm... I'm good, yeah," Lisa said, still surprised by Becky's call. "How're you?"
"I'm... okay, " Becky replied. "I'm good."
The next few minutes was filled with slightly awkward small talk, until Becky finally broke the ice.
"So, you saw I got in the paper..."
Lisa nodded. "Yeah. A little more than that. I had a whole bunch of people messaging me and calling me asking what it was all about and what was going on with you because nobody could reach you."
"Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I didn't mean for you to get caught up in all that. I just... I didn't want to talk to anyone about it, not like that. I thought if I just disappeared for a while it would all go away.
"Plus I was getting this reported from the paper messaging me on Facebook all the time, wanting to interview me and publish my name, because someone had told them it was me, so in the end I just deleted all that stuff."
"Oh, wow, I didn't know that Beck, that's awful."
