Sophie held onto her older brother Matthew as she cried. She was watching her mother's coffin be lowered into the ground; with it she felt her security be lowered as well. Matt was really her step-brother, and though she loved him dearly; at twenty, he was off to college most of the time. She would be stuck at her step-father's house. He hated her and the nicest thing he had done for her since marrying her mother four years ago was ignore her.
Rarely was she lucky enough to be ignored. Normally, he was yelling at her and picking on her. She could do nothing right. He put her down because of her looks, her grades, her habits and anything else he could think of. Her mother had always stuck up for her to him, but now she was gone and there would be no one left.
Anyone would think that today was the saddest day of her life, but in reality, the saddest day of her life had been a month ago, when her mother realized that she would in fact die from the cancer ravaging her body. She had begged her husband to keep Sophie and take care of her. Sophie had listened to her mother and begged silently that her step-father would deny her mother's dying request. She prayed to God that he would turn her out into the streets, pawn her off on foster parents; anything but agree to keep her. He had of course agreed to keep her and Sophie had sat huddled outside her mother's room crying.
Sophie had never understood what had brought her mother and step-father together. They had married four years ago when Sophie was just eight. Her mother had been a single mother working as a waitress in a dive in the middle of Houston, Texas. She had worked long hours; picking up all the overtime the owners would give her. She had never told Sophie who her father was, and whenever Sophie had asked she had merely said that he was a kind and beautiful man who had died before she was born.
One day her mother had come home and announced she was getting married. She first laid eyes on her step-father the day of the wedding. It took place at the county courthouse. There was no long, white dress, no bouquet or friends, just Sophie, her mom, step-father, step-brother and two men in suits. The entire ordeal was over in fifteen minutes and proved to Sophie that the movies were wrong.
Sophie felt her step-brother pulling her away and realized that she had not been paying attention to the service. She looked up at him and cradled her head against his chest. She hugged him around his stomach and buried her face against his breastbone. She listened to the echoes through his chest as he murmured to her that everything would be ok and that he would take care of her.
She just kept her head buried and tried to stop the tears from flowing. She knew he meant well, but he was lying just as everyone else did. He was away at college half way across the country and would be for several more years while he earned his medical degree. She would be alone until she was old enough to leave her step-father's house.
As they arrived back at her step-father's house she left everyone and made her way up the stairs to her room at the end of the hall. She sat down in the chair by the window and just looked blindly into the backyard. She heard knocks on her door, but she ignored them until they went away. She didn't want to see anyone. She no longer had the only person in the entire world that she was related to by blood.
As she sat there she heard her door open. She kept her eyes focused on the window outside; hoping whoever it was would leave. Suddenly she felt arms under knees and behind her back. Before she knew it, she was being swung up out of the chair. She squeaked and looked up to see who had picked her up. It was Andy, her brother's best friend. He sat down and rested her across his knees as he pressed her head to his shoulder.
"Shhh, Smallfry, it's ok."
"No, it's not ok at all. It will never be ok. Matt says he'll still be here for me, but he won't. He's going to college and I'll never see him. I wish I'd been sent away." She ducked her head pulled her legs up to cuddle more closely in his lap.
"I know Matt is at college, and he's busy, but I'm not going away, I'm going to college right here and I'll be around all the time."
"No you won't. You're old; you won't come here to see me. Once Matt leaves again you'll be busy with your own friends."
Andy chuckled as he kissed the top of her head. "First of all, I'm twenty, I'm not OLD, and second of all, you are my friend, who do I play chess with? Who did I ask to help me fix my car last month? I bet you get tired of me hanging around here a lot more quickly than I get tired of being here."
Sophie leaned back and looked up into his face to see if he was telling the truth. "You promise?"
Andy nodded solemnly. "How about this, I'll come over Sunday night and you and I will go out to dinner, just to the two of us."
"Can we go to Carmen's?"
"We can go anywhere you like."
Sophie laid her head back down on Andy's shoulder. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as she thought. Andy wasn't Matt, but she had known them the same amount of time. He'd always been kind to her, never got impatient or said she couldn't join in whatever they were doing. He was right, it would be ok.
Six years later
Sophie stumbled up the stairs. She was happier tonight than she had been in more years than she could count. Today was her eighteenth birthday and Matt had arranged for her step-father to be out of the house so she could have a party. He had also bought some beer and arranged for everyone to be driven home. She was so glad that he had finally moved closer to home to finish his residency. She had missed him so much that she had often cried herself to sleep wishing he was there to protect her from her step-father. But, he was home now and had given her the best party of her life.
She missed the last step and almost fell but was kept from the floor by Matt's best friend. He had also been there to chaperone and was, apparently coming back downstairs to see that everyone had either found a ride home or a place to crash in the house. Sophie stared up him, admiring the way his mouth moved. She knew he was speaking to her, but the words didn't make any sense. She just loved to watch his face as he talked. He was so animated, the way his eyes danced when he was excited and his eyebrows pulled together when he was trying to make a point. As far as Sophie was concerned Andrew Hopkins was the most handsomest man in the entire world.
Sophie grabbed him around his waist and leaned further into him. "You haven't danced with me once all night!" she pouted up at him.
Andy hung onto the banister as he felt her lean backward, making his already unsteady feet begin slip. He was supposed to have abstained from the liquor flowing freely tonight, however watching her flirt with every boy at the party had broken through his control and he had finally given in and tried to dull some of his feelings with the liquor that had been floating around.
Sophie's heel slipped off the edge of the stair and he felt her pitch backward. Andy quickly wrapped his arms around her and pulled to keep her from falling, but he lost his own balance and ended up flat on his back with Sophie sprawled across his chest.
Sophie felt her heart fall down into her stomach and burst back up into her throat before she realized that she actually safe and hadn't just tumbled down the stairs. That was scary. Maybe she shouldn't have had so much to drink after all. As she took stock of the fact that she was in one piece and hadn't broken anything she felt Andy hard beneath her stomach.
She couldn't believe it. This was the greatest dream of her life. To be lying across Andrew Hopkins and to feel him hard beneath her was more than she could have wished for. She rested her forehead against his sternum and smiled to herself. Unlike the rest of her girlfriends, she hadn't spent time looking at pictures of naked men. She hadn't 'accidentally' walked in on her brother or father while they were going to the bathroom or showering. There was only one man in the entire world that she wanted to see naked and she was now laying on top of him.
She had wanted him since she was obscenely young. She had known she was too young, yet she could not get him out of her mind. She had dreamed of him sleeping down the hall, next to her brother's room while visiting for the summer or staying over for the weekend. However, her need for him had been almost painful; she couldn't have imagined what it would have been like to actually have seen him and still not been able to do anything about it. So she had always refrained. She had always just kept her imaginings within her own head and bided her time.
Now, though, she was an Adult. With a capital A, Adult. She was eighteen now and eight years didn't seem that big of an age difference anymore. She had gotten jewelry, money, movies, cd's and books for her birthday, but she would give them all back if she could just have him.
Andy's arms were still linked behind her as she squirmed her stomach over his erection wishing she could see him for the first time ever. He grabbed her shoulders and pushed, trying to dislodge her, but she just pressed her stomach and groin down tighter against him, arching her back and letting him get a good view down the neck of her dress.
"Sophie, what are you doing?" Andy knew that if she didn't get off of him soon, there was no way he was letting her go. She had worn a floor length dress that flared at her waist. She was no stick-thin model. She had a real body. She had hips that were made for grabbing during sex; he felt jeans were designed to her ass alone. The way they hugged her curves made him hard just seeing her in them. Sometimes he wished she was older than him, so he could find a reason to rest his head on her chest. Watching her walk around on a Saturday morning in a large shirt with no bra had made him run for the bathroom more than once.
What tore at Andy the most was that he knew she was in no way trying to be enticing. She just simply was. She never wore low-cut shirts or anything that was too tight. Before low-slung jeans were in style he could see that she had to buy jeans that fit in the hips but that gapped at the waist. Even on Saturday mornings when she went without a bra she still wore long shirts and pajama pants instead of shorts or tank tops. She just exuded her own kind of sexuality in a way that irrepressible.
Andy felt Sophie twist herself around until she was straddling the tops of his legs. She lifted herself out of his arms and ran her fingertips down his stomach. He tried to reach for them, but she pulled them back too quickly. She reached down and pulled the front of her dress out from under her until is was no longer pulled tight across her front; then his eyes grew wider as he watched her start from the bottom and start unbuttoning it.
