"I'd find a boyfriend!" Grace said. "Like I always say -- especially to Sally, and it's for her own good -- that's what guys are for!"
"Yeah, with those boobs, she could've landed all sorts of guys if she'd tried," Cindy added. With her plumpish figure, frizzy brown hair and slight overbite, Sally was no conventional beauty, particularly not compared to her three leggy roommates. But she sported the only D-cup breasts among the four, and she could fill out a sweater like none of her friends. Those curves and her welcoming, pleasantly imperfect smile could easily have landed her far more dates than she'd had through the four years, if only the poor thing hadn't been so timid and shy.
Keisha finally joined in on the laughs at the expense of their introverted, taciturn, yet evidently very horny roommate, as she always had sooner or later over the four years they had been roommates at their elite women's college in the New England woods. They all loved Sally dearly, always had and always would, like a favorite kid sister. They loved her in part because her quiet, conservative lifestyle was so endearing in contrast to the wild existence they had enjoyed throughout their four years; in part because her working-class sensibility was always good for keeping their heads on straight when they needed advice; in part because she'd been so implacably loyal to them all through the years of ups and downs as they had come up together in their quad...and in part out of fascination with the poorly kept secret of her voracious appetite for masturbating.
Although -- or perhaps because -- the four were the best of friends, none of the others had ever confronted Sally about her favorite pastime. But it had always been just as much an element of their time together as late night bonding sessions or cramming for finals together or recycling the wine bottles after a weekend DVD marathon. In four years, scarcely a day had gone by without one or more of the three hearing a rhythmic creaking from behind Sally's closed door, which could only mean one thing. Sometimes Keisha, Grace or Cindy would arrive home and hear the unmistakable noise in progress; other times it would begin while they were in their common room, studying. There was no pattern of what time of day it occurred, and sometimes it happened more than once a day. None of the others had ever confronted her on the matter, but many an amused and superior look had been exchanged at Sally's expense when she emerged satiated and fully clothed from her bedroom.
There had been numerous times over the years when Grace or Cindy had nearly let the behind-the-back teasing get out of hand and spilled the beans to Sally; but they always managed to keep things under wraps. This time was no exception, and when Sally returned from the ladies' room, she was none the wiser. "Everyone ready to go?" she asked.
"I think so," Grace said, ignoring Keisha's knowing look to the effect that Sally hadn't been gone long enough for her theory to be correct. She collected everyone's share of the bill and went to the cash register to pay it, and the others sauntered out into the afternoon sunshine. They had taken the risk of leaving the top down on Grace's father's black 1972 Cadillac, the use of which he had given Grace and her three former roommates for the summer as a college graduation gift. (The destination was a gift from Cindy's uncle: two weeks at his Florida beach house while he was overseas.) With no sign of rain and a clear view of the parking lot from the restaurant, it had seemed safe enough to do so. Their gamble had paid off: though the upholstery was hot with the bright sunshine, they were spared the usual stuffy air as they climbed in and waited for Grace to follow.
It was Sally's turn to drive, and she had the old engine up and running by the time Grace arrived and joined her in front. "Okay, let's go!" Grace encouraged her as she shut the huge door and locked it. "I'm ready for the beach!"
"Aren't we all?" Keisha piped up from behind her.
"We certainly earned it," Sally said, checking the rearview mirror as she pulled out onto the frontage road. "Three days on the road...that water is sure going to feel refreshing!" Always with a positive thought, that was Sally.
"Are we finally going to get you into a bikini for the occasion, dear?" Grace teased her. "It's not like you've got anything to be shy about with the three of us after all these years!"
"Yeah, and any guys we invite won't ever see you again," Cindy pointed out.
"Oh, we'll see," Sally told them with a coy smile. She'd been listening to such comments since before graduation, when she'd let it slip that she didn't even own a bikini. If only her friends knew what she really did have planned...
Cindy let out a whoop of surprise. "We'll see?! Sally, is that really you?!"
"Girl, she didn't say yes," Keisha pointed out.
"I'm with you, Keisha," Grace said. "I'll believe it when I see it."
Within another minute or two, they were back on the freeway and the wind was much too noisy for casual conversation. Sally was grateful for the deterrent to further comment on her likelihood to wear a bikini, both because she found the speculation in her presence rather condescending and because it increased the temptation to spill the beans about her real plans. After four years of mild teasing over her shy demeanor and conservative style -- she was wearing a sundress that very afternoon while her three friends were all in t-shirts and shorts -- she could have done without such things on what was likely to be the last occasion the four of them were ever going to be together for more than a stolen afternoon here and there. They all loved her dearly, that Sally knew, and she had discovered years before that they could all be counted on to come down like a ton of bricks on anyone else who harassed Sally for being who she was. But for all that, their friendship had always been infused with an element of mild condescension on Cindy and Grace's part, and to a lesser extent from Keisha as well.
But Sally knew, if she didn't chicken out on her plans for Tuesday on the beach, she would shut them all up but good about being the shrinking violet of the gang, once and for all!
Cindy and Grace had never meant any harm to their friend, whom they truly adored. Indeed, nearly everyone who was able to get past Sally's shyness adored her. Handsome rather than pretty with her generous build and strong features, she had always presented a demure girl-next-door aura compared to her three tall and outgoing roommates. Cindy and Grace were blonde cheerleader types -- both had in fact been cheerleaders in high school, though they were loath to admit as much after their first semester at their very progressive women's college -- with bubbly, extroverted personalities to match. Keisha was a star athlete on the soccer and track teams for all four years, with all the confidence such success tended to provide off the field. Being African-American on the mostly white campus, she knew what it was like to be different, so she and Sally had bonded a bit more quickly with one another than they had with Cindy and Grace.
But for all that, Sally had always been the square peg, or at least the not-quite-round one. Whereas the matter of their college being female only was an inconvenience for the other three, mostly mitigated by the presence of a men's college just across the pond on the edge of campus, for Sally it was a net positive and the pond a barely acceptable boundary. Having grown up with her divorced mother in a working class New England burg (and having endured twelve years of the not-at-all mild teasing every introverted child endures at school), she hadn't seen much to like about the boys she'd grown up with. Though she was attracted to men, she mostly preferred the more mature variety who weren't likely to be found on their campus anyway.
Had she ever learned that Cindy, Grace and Keisha knew what she was up to in her bed all those times, Sally's mortification would likely have been fleeting at worst. Her mother had seen to that, years before. While Cindy and Grace and Keisha were growing up in a suburban wonderland of distracted parents and barely-chaperoned beer blasts and precocious sex, Sally's formative years had been spent with her artistically inclined mother in their walkup apartment in a funky, not-yet-gentrified neighborhood. The close living quarters had made secrets difficult to keep, and so Sally had had only just enough time to grow angst-ridden about her growing fondness for what she called "doing a vagina tickle" before the afternoon when her mother had walked in on her. "I'm so sorry, Mom!" she had blubbered through tears of humiliation just afterward. "I've been praying to God to help me stop this, I know it's so dirty! But I just can't stop!"
"Sweetie, you don't need to stop!" her mother had reassured her, taking her in a warm hug and rubbing her back gently until she calmed down. "There's nothing dirty about masturbating. It's natural and beautiful, and I do it too, you know."
