Author's note: I have not posted chapters 28-31 because they do not contain any Exhibitionist elements and so would not fit with the category here on Literotica that I am posting under. I don't believe it affects the overall story to skip it. All you need to know is that Lisa has a discussion and an experience with a friend from University that helps her make her peace with her love for her best friend Becky and accept her sexuality, and with it her own appreciation of Becky's "naked side"...
Chapter 32 -- Christmas at Home
The Lisa who boarded the train home a week before Christmas was a different girl to the one who had left for university in September.
The term, and all its experiences, had changed her. She felt, for perhaps the first time, like her head was clear. At last, she knew who she was.
She was no longer consumed with angst about her feelings for Becky, and no longer troubled by her role in her friend's exhibitionist escapades. Where once she had been sick with jealousy and insecurity, dwelling on the meaning of her strange and unwelcome feelings towards her friend and her ability to manage them in the face of Becky's own constant confidence, now she felt calm and happy, and excited for the prospect of reunion with Becky and all it may bring.
She loved Becky, she knew that now. She was attracted to her physically, and emotionally. She adored her friend, she thought she was the most beautiful girl she had ever laid eyes on, and the thought of them being together, even just as friends, filled her with nothing but happiness.
She understood that loving Becky, that loving another woman, did not mean her life needed to be complicated, awkward, full of troubling self-analysis. She knew now that it didn't matter what her sexuality had been, or may be in future; that she didn't need to always define herself by terms that didn't fit. All that mattered was what she thought would make her happy at the time.
She no longer felt awkward or embarrassed by Becky's constant need for nakedness, her obsession with exhibitionism. In fact, she loved that her friend was an exhibitionist, she realized now. She thrilled to remember Becky's adventures and her role in them, and felt privileged that her friend was so comfortable around her that she felt no need for clothes, that the two of them had shared and bonded over so many unimaginable activities so far removed from what it was normal for two teenage best friends to get up to together.
She no longer feared or worried about sex, about being seen as a woman with her own sexuality. She no longer felt like the back of the class, the last to learn, destined only for disappointment. Sex with a man, or a woman, was no longer something that only other people did. She was not an unattractive lump but a desirable woman in her own right, more than worthy of the love and affection of the person she chose to be with.
Still, though, she wondered. What would the immediate future hold? She wanted now so badly to tell Becky all of this, to tell her exactly who Lisa was, who she wanted to be, and who she wanted to be it with. And for the first time she felt that such confession may bear fruit, rather than be rejected. But how to tell her? And when? The act of telling had to mean something, had to be right -- choose the wrong moment, and she might still risk losing Becky forever.
--
The last few weeks of term had been frantic, with an array of coursework to be prepared for. All the students were going home with multiple essays that needed to be handed back once they returned, and so the giant suitcase Lisa lugged to the railway station was as much stuffed with books as it was the clothes and other sundries she needed for Christmas at home with her family.
She'd made brief visits home once or twice during the previous term and her mum, dad and brothers had called on her at university once or twice for a day out and dinner. But this was really her first true visit home since leaving for uni in the summer -- the first time she would be expected so slot back into her old home life, and the first time she would be around long enough to reunite not just with Becky, but with other friends as well.
--
It was also, both for Becky and herself, the first proper trip home since the local paper had published the scandalous story that sightings had happened all over town of the "mystery nudist" -- and since most people who knew Becky had put two and two together and figured out that the girl who had been going naked in public and her clothed accomplice were Becky and Lisa respectively.
Lisa's parents had asked her about it before, of course. They weren't as in-tune to the town gossip as many others, but it had eventually reached them that their daughter's best friend since childhood, a young woman they treated as very much their own daughter, had been publically misbehaving over the previous summer, exposing herself with little regard for who saw -- and that their first-born child had somehow been an accomplice to this.
Lisa had played down any concerns that her mother and father had brought up, when they finally asked her about it. She'd passed Becky's behavior off as isolated incidents of high spirits; simply a young woman letting loose in the period between school ending and university. And she'd reassured her parents that at no point had she and Becky been in any danger, and that while Becky was liberal about stripping off, Lisa's clothing had remained 100% on.
None of that was true, of course. Becky's serial exhibitionism and growing passion for nudism was certainly not limited to one or two isolated incidents but many escapades, sometimes with an element of risk far greater than should be reasonably acceptable. And even though Lisa had no interest in exhibiting herself in the same way, her experiences on holiday over the summer with her friend had left her without her own clothes on one or two occasions (even if they weren't experiences she was in a hurry to repeat).
Lying to her mum and dad hadn't been easy for Lisa, who had always been a truthful child. But she told herself it was for their own good -- if they knew the truth, they would worry more than they needed to about her and her friendship with Becky. It may even colour their opinion of Becky much more negatively for them to know exactly what she had been doing -- and Lisa wanted to protect her friend from the judgement of people who had previously loved her and might, if they learned about the true nature of her predilection for nudity, think less of her for it.
But she was still aware, coming home for Christmas, that it wasn't necessarily a closed issue, and indeed it came up the first evening she was back home for dinner, when her father asked her what her plans for the holiday would be.
"Will you be seeing Becky, at all?" her father had asked.
Lisa nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, of course!"
"Oh..." her mother said, managing in one syllable to convey a wealth of implication that she did not necessarily feel this would be a good idea.
Lisa raised an eyebrow, but before she could say anything, her father continued: "That business over the summer. Becky... exposing herself. Getting in the paper and on the internet. It worried us."
Lisa tried to be concillatory. "I know, dad," she said. "It's okay though. It wasn't a big thing, no matter how it looked online. It's all fine now."
Her dad didn't appear to be listening. "We didn't know what to make of it," he continued.
"We talked to Denise," Lisa's mum interjected. Denise was Becky's mother. "She didn't know what to make of it, either."
"What do you mean, mum?" Lisa asked.
"Well," her father continued. "Running about in the altogether. In front of those boys at the cinema, and the young man in the shop..."
"You'd tell us if something was going on?" her mum said. "If Becky was... if you were... getting into trouble with boys."
Not for the first time, Lisa cursed the euphemistic language her parents used when discussing anything to do with her and the opposite sex. They were both doctors, they knew all about human anatomy, yet when it came to their daughter and the notion that she might have, or one day have, a sex life of some sort, they became increasingly tongue-tied.
"You think those guys made her take her clothes off?" she hazarded.
"No, well, not exactly... Becky's always been so confident, she's never been the easily-led type, we know that about her. But we just don't understand why she was doing those things."
Lisa leaned back in her chair, taking a deep breath.
"It's not like that, mum. Becky, well, she just sort of prefers having no clothes on. She's kind of a nudist."
Her mum actually laughed, somewhat derisively.
"What, Health & Efficiency, all that sort of thing?" said her dad, drawing a blank from Lisa.
"I've no idea what that is, dad! But yeah, Becky just likes being naked. It's just that... sometimes, she does it in places she shouldn't."
"Well," her mother said, "I never would have put it down to that."
"Isn't that a bit... well, odd?" her dad asked.
Lisa laughed. "Yeah, I guess it is. But, well, she's fine. She just likes being in her natural state."
Her mum frowned. "Natural state? That's all well and good I suppose but I draw the line at running round in public with everything out. Whatever happened to modesty?"
Lisa turned to her mum. "There's nothing bad about what Becky does, mum. There's nothing shameful about her body. She's not ashamed of it, why should she be?"
"I'm not saying she should be ashamed," her mother countered. "But we have modesty for a reason."
"It isn't safe," her father added. "If she's out and about like that and something were to happen to her... to you..."
"What?" Lisa exclaimed. "What do you mean by that?"
"Well," her dad spluttered, "you know... girls out wearing scanty clothes -- or nothing at all in this case. It's inviting... attention..."
Lisa's eyes narrowed. "You mean if Becky does things like this she's more likely to get raped?" she said in a level tone.
Almost relieved, her father nodded. He obviously hadn't been comfortable with saying the words in connection to his daughter's best friend, but he clearly felt the sentiment.
"So what you're saying is, if a girl goes out with very little on, or if she takes off her clothes the way Becky does, that she's inviting attention from the sort of men who would... attack her like that?" Lisa said icily. "What you're saying is, if a girl goes out and doesn't cover up, she can expect to be raped?"
"Don't put words in your father's mouth!" her mother warned, but Lisa pressed on.
"You're saying a girl who isn't careful, isn't modest, should accept being raped as inevitable?" she asked, her voice rising in anger. "What about the men doing the raping? Can't we expect them to control themselves if they see a naked girl? Can't we teach them that skimpy clothes and exposed skin aren't an invitation to rape? Can't we respect women whether they're dressed modestly or not?
"What about a woman's right to wear what she wants without being afraid?" she demanded. Her parents looked awkwardly stunned. "What about Becky's right to be herself?"
