These characters don't suffer repercussions, because their story ends. They can have casual sex without using condoms. You aren't as lucky.
---
"And that is so not going to happen!" finished Tori.
They were lying by the poolside, and as it often did, the topic had come around to boys and girls.
Emily made a sound of acknowledgment, not looking at her friend. Tori was a 22-year-old natural blonde. She was lying on her belly, stretched out on a towel, sweating in the hot sun. Her tanned, bare skin bore only a calf tattoo and a cheerful red bikini.
And it wasn't a big one. The scarlet triangle decorating her butt was more of a patch.
Emily reclined on the beach chair next to her. Her pine-green bikini, more modest, was the only one she'd ever owned. This was the third time she'd ever worn it.
Emily was twenty-one, with straight dark brown hair. People who looked into her huge dark eyes thought of a waif, or an owl. When her hair fell across her face, when she looked at you up through her lashes: mischievous. Perhaps a sensuous, thick-lipped Gypsy had snuck into her dull British family line. But most of the time, she told her reflection, her features were just plain. A plain, simple girl.
She wore sunscreen. A lot of it. Emily didn't tan. Her pale skin pinked or burned. Sometimes a smattering of freckles would kiss her cheeks for a few days, if she'd been lucky and caught just the right heat of the sun. She didn't really do poolsides. She was here because Tori was her friend and this was a typical Tori afternoon.
Tori had just given her the update on the crazy boy who last week had spotted her across the bar and just wouldn't stop trying to buy her drinks. One drink was nice. In the telling, it had earned him a smile, and that, Tori explained, was her first mistake.
The rest was a grueling story of rolled eyes, texts, friends and ex-girlfriends that Emily couldn't relate to. Boys didn't buy Emily drinks. That was largely because Emily didn't go to bars. But if she did, she told herself, boys wouldn't buy her drinks.
Sometime around when he'd sent his friend over to Tori's table, which was right around the time that Emily's polite interest was growing into unhappy irritation, her attention had wandered. She'd watched the gardener.
The gardener was a large, quiet fellow, tanned and bulky. He was pushing a wheelbarrow back and forth from house to yard. Buckets of tools, then bags of something, and then he was working the earth.
While Tori talked, Emily had watched him, the tall golem of a man, stabbing the dirt with his shovel, over and over, wrestling his tool out and stamping it back in. This fascinated her, for some reason. He'd lifted the rosebush from the ground into his wheelbarrow, resting it gently on its side, babying the flowers, uncaring of the thorns.
In Tori's story, she'd just given the cold shoulder to the boy's friends as the gardener slapped the dirt off his gloves. In the story, she walked out of the bar as the wheelbarrow toted its rosebush behind the corner of the house.
A metaphor? thought Emily. She was an English major. Where did the roses go? Out of sight. Out of mind.
Tori stretched, adjusted her straps, and started a new story. Emily closed her eyes for some peace, but she still saw the sun in dazzling dark reds, while she heard her friend's very different life unfold. How long do I have out here before I burn, she wondered.
The gardener was Nick. Groundskeeper, as he said. Nick was the groundskeeper.
Nick left his muddy shoes in the garage. He stripped off his sweaty socks and his overalls. He'd been working hard on the garden since the morning, and had earned his shower and his break.
His little brother Jack had taken his wife out of the country for most of the summer. Their daughter Tori, Nick's niece, chose to stay home her first college summer.
Jack had hired his older brother to keep the place up.
Nick didn't mind. He wasn't really close with any of them, but he liked the three of them well enough. Jack and everyone else in Nick's family had had big dreams. But strangely, Nick, the first-born, had always known the unassuming life that was right for him. At 45, he was content. He didn't live in a fancy house like this one, no. When he wanted, he had a little room downstairs, but most nights he spent in his trailer.
Last night, he'd stayed out late with the guys, a good bunch of guys, and now he was out in the sun, plotting yard arrangements. It was relaxing. It paid the bills.
The hot shower left him tired. He'd just had the energy to pull on a bathrobe and collapse on his bed in his quiet downstairs room. The door hadn't been pulled all the way closed.
Emily and Tori had agreed they'd break out the beers when the sun started to go down. But that was some hours away and, Emily had explained, she burned too easily to stay out.
She slid open the downstairs patio door and padded inside. Her bare feet were cold on the stone floor, her eyes wide in the gloomy dark. Her heated flesh felt like it was steaming in the cool air.
She nosed around the downstairs bar, more out of curiosity than actual interest. She thought she might make a phone call.
Then a shape in the other room caught her eye. She laid a pink-nailed hand on the door and quietly pushed it open.
Nick lay on the bed, sound asleep. The bathrobe, untied, lay parted at his sides. He was completely naked.
His knees were at the bed's edge, his feet on the floor. His knees, comfortably apart, framed the college girl who was staring from the doorway.
Some part of Emily's mind thought fast: Tori would stay out for hours; she could hear this guy's faint snoring; she could always say she was just looking for a bottle of booze.
Her gaze held steady on Nick's soft, uncircumcised penis.
It lay to its side, across his hip. His long, hairy ball sack -- all of him was pretty hairy, it seemed -- hung low in the dark between his thighs.
