Emily glanced at the round, freckled face in the mirror. Beautiful? No way! Pretty? Nah. Cute? Yeah. Definitely cute, and that was fine with her. She could live with cute. She finished drying her legs, turned her back to the mirror, and stood on her toes flexing her young firm calves.
"Nice butt, girl," she commented to the Emily in the mirror as she looked over her shoulder.
The summer between junior and senior years had been her major development period. As little as seven months ago she was a flat chested, freckle faced, shapeless little girl. Over the summer, things started to settle in the right places. Her tits were still small, but maturity had emerged in her face, and her butt and legs took the shape of a young woman's. She was petite at 5'2" and barely 100 pounds, but six weeks after her eighteenth birthday there was no longer any doubt...she was all woman.
She wrapped herself up in the towel, and ran a comb through her long, light brown hair. It naturally fell to each side with a perfect center part. She had worn her hair that way forever, and it pretty much combed itself. Taking one last glance in the mirror, she left the bathroom and walked down the short hall to her room.
Opening the second drawer of her dresser, she thumbed through the pile until she found the pink satin bikini panties. She let the towel drop to the floor, and slid the panties on. She liked the way they felt. Besides, Sara had commented once that Emily looked sexy in them. A casual comment from Sara, but Emily remembered it.
She picked a pair of pink socks out of the drawer, closed it, and sat on the end of her bed. As she put the socks on she thought about Sara. They had become friends in third grade, nine years ago, and now were truly best friends. They did everything together. Each monthly "sleep-over" usually resulted in hours of private conversation about school, teachers, family, music, and boys. Most importantly, they confided in each other, trusted each other completely, and shared their most intimate thoughts and teenage insecurities.
Lately their conversations always seemed to work their way around to sex. They were both still virgins, and planned to stay that way for the immediate future. In the middle class suburb where they lived, good girls still didn't. Both had only been kissed, seriously kissed, by boys a few times, and their sexual experience was almost nonexistent. Jake Reid had slid his hands down to Emily's butt once during a slow dance at homecoming. She politely but firmly lifted his hands up to her back and smiled at him. Sara was much more experienced since Eric Landenberg had actually felt her tits once. He really only brushed his hand across her chest, but Sara insisted that it qualified as being felt up, so Emily didn't argue. They had sex education in grade school and high school, and Emily's mom was very open-minded about talking to her about sex. The Internet was an endless source of sexual material. Most of it was just pornographic, and a lot of it was nonsense, but if you searched long enough, as Emily had, some legitimately helpful information could be found. But all of that stuff centered on the mechanics of sex along with the dangers and appropriate safeguards. None of it could adequately describe to Emily what sex FELT like. So that is what dominated her recent intimate conversations with Sara. They spent hours speculating on what boys looked like, felt like, and tasted like. They openly admitted that they masturbated, and freely discussed what made them feel good, and what their orgasms felt like. Emily even approached the subject of girl-to-girl sex when she commented that the idea of two guys together seemed rather disgusting, but two girls together didn't really bother her. Sara steered clear of that one mumbling something under her breath that Emily thought was, "Me too," and changing the subject, but it was the look on Sara's face that struck Emily. That's why Emily had decided to go ahead with her plan tonight.
Emily had wiggled her way into a pair of tight blue jeans and pulled one of her pink sweatshirts over her head. There was no need for a bra since what she had didn't require much support, although her mother made her wear one whenever she left the house. She ran her fingers through her hair removing a few tangles, then bounded out of her room, bounced down stairs and charged into the kitchen where her mother was finishing the dinner dishes.
"Where's the rest of the herd?" quipped Mrs. Harrison in reference to Emily's grand entrance.
"Just li'l ol' me," chirped Emily, "Sara here yet?"
"Nope."
With that Emily went into the family room, flopped down on the futon, tucked her legs under her, clicked the T.V. on, and pressed 70. CMTV was playing the country top 20. She looked up at the clock to see that it was almost 7:00. Sara would be here any minute. A sudden wave of panic came over her. What if Sara thought she was a freaky lesbian dyke? Emily knew she wasn't a lesbian. There was no denying her interest in boys. At most, maybe she was bisexual, but she really doubted that. She just wanted to experience some things, but she wasn't ready to do it with boys just yet. So who better to experiment with than her best friend? Emily took a deep breath and told herself to calm down. This is Sara. She can trust Sara. Besides, she told herself, if Sara freaks at the suggestion, Emily could just laugh it off and say she was only kidding. Sara would know the truth, but Emily felt she could avoid any permanent damage to their friendship.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Sara walking up the driveway. As Sara got to the door, Emily took another deep breath, and motioned for Sara to come in. Sara was truly a pretty girl. She had turned eighteen a month before Emily, but unlike Emily there was no metamorphosis in Sara. She had always been pretty. She was 5'6" and about 120 pounds, and every ounce was properly placed. Emily knew that Sara's chest was 34, not especially huge, but she was already a C-cup, and not done yet. Her shoulder length, naturally blonde, naturally wavy hair framed what Emily's mom called Sara's "angel face." Her complexion was unblemished, her nose slightly turned up, her lips formed the classic "kiss" shape, and her eyes were a shade of deep blue that Emily had never seen anywhere else. As if that weren't enough, Sara topped it all off with that smile of hers. That dimpled, irresistible smile. Sara was a legitimate head-turner. Emily often joked that the nurse's office at school was barraged with a rash of whiplash injuries whenever Sara walked down the hall. Sara would respond that maybe the guys were watching Emily. "Yeah, right," Emily would answer sarcastically, although she knew that her new shapeliness had not gone unnoticed among the guys at school. She could feel their eyes on her backside occasionally, and she was flattered.
Sara closed the door behind her, set her small overnight bag down, tossed her coat into a chair, and kicked her shoes off. Emily noticed immediately that something was different. Her hair. Sara had obviously spent a little extra time with the waves in her hair. Her eyes. Emily never wore makeup since her face broke out in little white zits whenever she did, and Sara rarely wore makeup because she just didn't need it, but today she had given her eyes a little depth and added some length to her lashes, making her even more striking. As Sara approached the futon, Emily detected another difference. The faint, unmistakable scent of Sara's White Roses, which was normally reserved for special occasions. Emily doubted that anyone else would have noticed the subtleties, but they were obvious to her. She thought it a little odd that Sara would make the extra effort with her appearance just to spend the night at Emily's house. Odd and encouraging.
"Do you believe Courtney?" gushed Sara before her rear end even hit the futon. Sara definitely had the gift of gab. Conversation flowed much easier for her than for Emily. "Good thing Jackie pulled her off or she woulda kicked Derek's ass," she continued.
"Just who would have done what to whom?" asked Emily's mother in her best "I'm angry" voice as she delivered Coke's and a bowl of popcorn for the girls.
"Sorry Mrs. Harrison," Sara blushed at getting caught.
"What's this all about?" Mrs. Harrison persisted.
Emily knew her mother was more curious than angry. She sat back and relaxed, certain that Sara would take advantage of the opportunity to provide a detailed and in-depth explanation of the incident.
"Courtney Miller, this girl in our school, well, she was wearing this sweater all day today but on the bus ride home, she pulled the sweater off. She had this really low cut t-shirt on underneath and she's...well...y'know...a pretty healthy girl.," Sara began.
Emily thought she detected a hint of redness in her mom's face as she responded, "I understand, Sara."
"Anyway, Derek Anderson started givin' Courtney a hard time about being loose and easy and stuff. They went back and forth for a while until Derek started callin Courtney a sleazy slut. He just kept sayin' it over and over until she jumped on him and started punchin' him. The bus driver had to pull over and drag Courtney off him or she really woulda beat his...butt."
"Well, I certainly hope you girls stay away from that sort of thing," Mrs. Harrison warned as she turned to leave the room.
"We know," choired Emily and Sara to Mrs. Harrison's back.
Mrs. Harrison just waved a hand as she left the room. Emily and Sara were never a problem, and she realized that her admonition was unnecessary.
For the next three hours Emily and Sara chatted about the week's events at school, got a little misty-eyed over a Lifetime movie about a woman with breast cancer, joined in a teen chat room on the Internet where the discussion centered around whether or not parents had the right to ground teenagers over sixteen, reviewed and revised their mental list of "hot hunks" at school, and finally settled down to a Brady Bunch rerun. It was corny, but they enjoyed it.
A little after 10:00, Emily's eleven-year-old brother, Ben, came in and announced that he was going to bed. He walked over and gave Emily a hug and she kissed him on the cheek.
"Good night Ben."
"Night Emmie"
Ben was the only one allowed to call her Emmie. In fact she didn't even like it very much when people called her Em. She would usually politely request that they please call her Emily. But when Ben was first learning to talk, "Emmie" was the closest he could come to saying "Emily," and it had stuck as his special name for her. He usually only used it when he wanted to let her know that he loved her.
