Beware the Quiet One

JULY 14, 3:45 AM

Keisha stumbled out of her bedroom for a glass of water, grateful for the moonlight and the slivers of light from the streetlamps filtering through the front windows to guide her way through the unfamiliar living room to the kitchen. It wasn't long to daylight, but it would be a long night if she didn't get more water. One of these days, she promised herself, she'd learn to say when earlier in the evening, like Sally always had. She had been a bit jealous, but not at all surprised, when she'd stumbled in twenty minutes earlier to see Sally sleeping peacefully on the couch -- no wonder their shy, retiring roommate had been the first one up for the beach that morning. No doubt she would be again in a few hours, but Keisha didn't care about that just now.

It was on that thought that Keisha chanced to look at the couch, to admire Sally's peaceful form. Only then did she notice that the couch was empty. So were the kitchen and the bathroom, and the lights were out. Keisha had just enough time to wonder just what had become of her friend before a trick of the breeze outside drew her attention to the sliding door, and the back deck and the beach beyond. There, on the empty moonlit sand, stood Sally. She was gazing serenely up at the moon, looking joyful and at complete peace with herself and the world.

She was also stark naked except for her flowered panties.

Keisha's first thought was that the poor thing must have been sleepwalking; but a moment's further observation persuaded her that Sally was very much awake and evidently enjoying her nearly-naked sojourn. That did nothing to lessen Keisha's bewilderment, and she was tempted to rush outside and throw a blanket over her friend. But she found herself unwilling to disturb the scene -- too serene and intimate and beautiful, even if she didn't understand it. Sally's dark hair tossed about gently in the sea breeze, her heavy breasts and robust belly unabashedly on display to the night, the paradoxical innocence of the flowers adorning the one scrap of clothing she wore...it was magnificent.

She was magnificent.

She was also clearly not the blushing flower Keisha, Grace and Cindy had known and loved and lived with for four years, and Keisha was nearly bursting with curiosity over just what she had stumbled upon here. But now was not the time to ask, and so she quietly drew a glass of water and retreated to her room. She vowed to ask Sally tomorrow if necessary; but she had a feeling an explanation would present itself.

TWO DAYS EARLIER

"I can't believe we've got three more hours in that boat of yours, Grace," Cindy chirped with a wry look out at the highway as she polished off the last of her salad. "It feels like we've been on the road all week."

"

Boat

?" Grace replied. "Admit it, you love that car! We've got the most stylin' ride on the freeway!" None of the others could deny it: four young women in a convertible that was nearly twice as old as they were had earned a lot of attention on their trip.

"And we've had it for three days!" Keisha reminded her. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, Grace, it was really sweet of your dad to let us have the Caddy, but I'm ready for the trip to be over too."

"Well, then what's three more hours?" Grace said. "Besides, would we even be here if my dad weren't so generous? And it's your uncle whose beach house is all the way down the Florida coast, isn't it?"

"All right, all right," Cindy said. "I'm just saying, it's a long way to go in such a big old car. Not to mention all the gas that guzzler takes! But of course I'm looking forward to you all seeing Uncle Steve's pad. Mostly I just want to stretch out on the beach. That'll be worth the trip!"

"Speaking of which, shall we get back on the road?" Keisha suggested.

At this, Sally spoke up for the first time. "Hang on, I have to pee first," she said, standing up. "I'll be right back."

As soon as the ladies' room door had swung shut behind Sally, Grace leaned in as if about to divulge a secret. "Think she's really going in there to play with herself?"

Cindy dissolved into giggles along with Grace. Keisha chuckled a bit but looked disapproving as well. "Come on, that's mean," she said.

"And yet you must have thought of it too, Keisha!" Cindy managed to say through her laughs. "I mean, come on! Four years, day after day..."

"Okay, yeah," Keisha said. "Our dear shy little friend is a champion masturbator, sure. But it's still mean. Just because she hasn't had a boyfriend...I mean, what would you do?"

"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."

"Masturbating? Is that what you call it?" Sally was never to tell anyone what she had called it up to that day.

"Yes, and there's nothing but pleasure in it, honey. In fact, at your age, it's the best way to deal with the urges you're probably feeling. Don't ever feel ashamed of enjoying your own body, okay?"

And from that day onward, Sally never had. Once the ice was broken and she understood that there was nothing to be ashamed of, she had made it as much a part of her life as any other enjoyable pastime. By the time she finished high school, she was doing it nearly every day. By college and the relative privacy of her own tiny bedroom in their quad and the stress of the much tougher courses, she went at it at least once a day.

Since Grace, Cindy and Keisha were all sexually active to varying degrees, Sally had always assumed they had similar private habits -- at least between boyfriends. But in this she had been mistaken, for while her three friends led much wilder lives, their upbringing had been rather more conservative. None of them had yet worked past the sense of shame through which Sally's mother had helped her that day. Grace, for one, had always been quick to assert that she had never done it and never would. "I mean, that's such a guy thing!" she had remarked on one of several occasions that the topic of Sally's pastime had arisen in her absence. "I mean, I know she's not a beauty or anything, but surely there's a guy or two across the pond who would sleep with her!"

"Girl, give her some credit," Keisha had replied, a bit more sympathetic to Sally as always. "She's staying true to herself, and don't you ever get yourself off?"

"I don't," Grace had proclaimed. "That's what guys are for."

"I do now and then when I haven't been with a guy in a while," Cindy had admitted. "But not like she does!"

"Me neither," Keisha had admitted. "But so what?"

"I guess I just find it sad that she feels like she has to act like a man at this Most Feminist College of ours, you know?" Grace had said.

"Eh, so she's not like us," Cindy had conceded. "I feel kind of sorry for her, but I don't hate her for it or anything like that."

"I don't mind either, I just think it's pathetic," Grace had said.

The others had always managed to keep their low opinions of the matter to themselves. And so Sally was never to know that she masturbated more often than all three of her friends combined.

It was all too appropriate that her friends had been snickering behind her back on that topic that beautiful afternoon, for as they approached the beach house at last, Sally was feeling horny as ever. After three days on the road with her friends and no privacy, saddled also with the anticipation of her big plans for Monday, she was dying for "a vagina tickle" (as she still sometimes called it to amuse herself) as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Given that the others had been in the same situation and there were no boyfriends waiting for them at the beach house, she couldn't help wondering if they were thinking like she was. It seemed more than likely to her. And so, with the wind too loud to carry on a conversation and a few more hours on the road, Sally let her imagination run wild and savored the sweet torture of having to keep both her hands on the wheel. A slightly older guy or maybe two of them even, shy and demure like herself but they all knew how to work past that when they needed to...maybe they talked her into joining them for a shower in the men's locker room...two stiff cocks, one for each eager hand as she held them both as if on a leash and let them drink in the beauty of her naked body, and then their own fingers exploring gently through her lush dark pubic hair...kissing her breasts...

"Next exit, Sally!" Cindy called from the back seat. Sally snapped back to reality and put the blinker on, and was grateful that duty called. Much more imagining and she might well have left a stain on the old Cadillac's driver's seat!

Ten minutes off the freeway, wheeling the old car through an endless maze of well-kept houses and expensive sports cars, found the friends at the gate to Uncle Steve's exclusive beachside community. As Sally drew the car to a stop, Cindy hopped out from the backseat and drew the carefully-guarded cheat sheet out of her pocket, and entered the security code. The heavy gate swung open, and Sally gunned the car slowly inside with Cindy strolling in alongside. "Over there!" she pointed to the third house on the right. "I'll go unlock the garage door for you." She ran ahead, and Sally followed at a crawl while Grace and Keisha marveled over the lush surroundings and the smell of the ocean just behind the houses.

"Welcome home!" Cindy proclaimed a few minutes later when they had the old car parked in the garage. She stood aside and let her tired friends drag their suitcases into the lovely, expensively decorated interior. "Your humble abode for the next two weeks. There are two bedrooms, one with a double bed and one with a single, and that couch is more than comfy enough for the fourth one!" She pointed to the cozy looking living room, which was dominated by a long sofa.

There was no haggling over who would sleep where: the usual pecking order among the friends emerged automatically. Cindy and Grace would share the master bedroom, Keisha got the single bed, and of course Sally would be on the couch. She had no complaints about this, and simply set her suitcase behind the couch without comment.

"Do we really want to bother with the beach right away?" Cindy asked. She looked out the dining room window at the small but private strip of sand that was all theirs for the taking. It was tempting, but she was awfully tired after the drive.

"I'm thinking like you, Cindy," Keisha said. "Why don't we all just shower and then go into town for dinner, and take it easy tonight?

"You ladies are no fun!" Grace protested. "How often are we going to have a beach to ourselves?!"

"Every day for the next two weeks," Keisha reminded her. "I'd rather be wide awake to enjoy it."

"Sally?" Grace asked. "You get the tiebreaking vote!"

"I'm with Cindy and Keisha," Sally said, having already sprawled out on the couch. "I'm wiped out."