Another Thursday night, another magical date with Sara. I have always been really bad at coming up with ideas for dates - frankly, until Sara, 'Netflix and Chill' was the game to beat - but somehow she always had an innovative, fun, and surprisingly inexpensive set of activities in mind. In the past, she'd taken me hiking to a speakeasy deep in the hills, underground bowling in an abandoned warehouse run by an urban commune... Thankfully for me, though, today was pretty relaxed by comparison. Somehow she'd found someone with a canoe, and we were paddling lazily down what remained of the Monongahela, through the city.
Near the first bridge ruins, I turned, sat in the bottom of the boat leaning against the seat, and looked up at my still-new girlfriend. She smiled at me with a far away look before continuing to lazily paddle and watch the skyline.
Good lord, what had I gotten myself into. Sara was a whole new kind of girl for me, and I honestly couldn't figure out if I was in love with her or scared of what she represented. Well, it was definitely both. But I was scared because she was the first person I had ever dated that I could see myself actually 'settling down with' - hell, even marrying. She was kind, hardworking, thoughtful, adventurous... and, let's not fuck around, well out of my league. I was literally shocked someone like her was with someone like me. But that was also the problem - with someone as incredible as Sara, getting married, buying a house, hell, maybe even kids - seemed inevitable. And that scared the shit out of me.
Well, not that we'd ever be able to afford a house or kids. But you get the idea. Change is scary, mortality doubly so. Love, most of all. And I was starting to love her, I think.
Sara broke my reverie, turning to see me staring at her.
"It's too bad - next year they will start the river redirection and we won't be able to do this for a while".
Sara was an environmental engineer at a firm downtown specializing in solar panels. Her dream job, though it paid shockingly little for a gig with engineer in the title.
"Can you explain the whole thing again?" I asked. "I'm not really sure I get it". To tell the truth, I didn't really care about the Pittsburgh Watershed Redevelopment Plan, but she had this wonderful joy when describing something that always seem to infect me as well. Most of all, when she talked about stuff in her field, she really made you believe that everything was going to be OK - the droughts, the heatwaves, everything - what could stand up to this stunning genius and her boundless optimism?
Sara launched into a eulogy for the Allegheny river and an explanation of everything the city was up to. I dangled my feet in the water, my knees awkwardly over each side of the boat. It felt nice in the evening heat. I closed my eyes and relaxed, opening them to ask the occasional question or smile at her gesticulating.
"Anyway", she finished, "You're only trying to distract me from this weekend. I can't believe I'm going to miss your birthday to clean out a house with my stupid baby sister."
"That's OK! It'll let me avoid telling you how old I really am." I winked. Really, I was only four years older than her, and that didn't mean anything when you were both in your late twenties.
"Oh hush! Well, I'm sorry - and I'm really so thankful you're coming next week to help, by the way - but I was planning on throwing you a party or something. It's too bad."
"That's OK - Jokes aside, I really am too old for parties. And who would we have invited, anyway? I probably would've liked a nice night in, though."
I saw a twinkle in her eye. She knew what that was (not particularly cryptic) code for - I was constantly trying to do dates at my place, not because I'm a homebody but rather because her adventurous form of dating never seemed to leave much time for fooling around.
"I tell you what" she dropped he voice very low, glancing around as if anybody else were near us on the water. "Seeing as it is your birthday soon, and seeing as you're being so great about moving all my parent's stuff - I was wondering if you'd like to try doing a blowjob."
"Doing a...?" I grinned at her awkward turn of phrase, ecstatic but amused.
"Getting one! You know what I mean!" she laughed. "Sorry, I'm not good at talking about this stuff" She poked me with the paddle.
"I can think of no other birthday present I'd like more! Maybe after dinner we can drop by my place?"
----
The rest of the night was magical, because of course it was. There was a pop-up brewery going on the slopes of the Point State Park that gave a neat view of the dikes on the Ohio, their construction equipment and the windmills in out in Hannover silhouetted against a vivid fall sunset. A couple confused cicadas struggled out of hibernation to serenade us. We drank a little and talked - about the university where I worked as a lab tech at the school of pharmacology, (I wasn't fulfilled but I had no idea where else I'd get pay and benefits that good) about how she was going to have to put up with her sister for a week (and worse, live with her in the same city for four years), and how my government-assigned townhouse's renovation was going (slowly).
By the time we got in the car, I had almost forgotten her earlier promise out on the water. But I remembered immediately when she kissed my neck, a signature move for her. We spent the ride kissing, and upon being dropped off, hurried down to the basement where I had been sleeping during the gutting of the floors above. She giggled a bit while I fumbled with the keys, sneaking furtive glances into the neighbors windows. Only she would think that anyone cared. Frankly, when we started dating and she leveled with me about her upbringing and her inexperience in the bedroom, I had been expecting to find myself quickly annoyed. Somehow in her, though, her exuberant innocence was endearing.
Inside, she pushed me down on the bed, and shucked my pants off, and, keeping her eyes on mine, reached into my pants and fished me out.
"Mmmm, I love how big your cock is..." she purred, slowly, squeezing me loosely as I grew inside her hand.
"I'm rather a fan of it myself" I chuckled back at her. She'd clearly been trying to work on her sexy talk, which I appreciated. Truth be told, I was definitely average - but no need to tell her.
"So... how do I do this? I guess I've read stories, but they don't exactly tell you how"
I smiled and sat up. "Do you remember what I told you when you started, uh... giving me handjobs?" I asked, conscious of the fact that I sounded like a highschooler. "The principle's totally the same, even if you're using a different part of you."
She looked up at me puzzled, so I continued. "Basically, the key is pressure and movement."
"Oh... How do I do that while sucking?" Sara's face scrunched up a little more in thought.
"Don't worry too much about sucking when you start. For the life of me, I don't know why the phrase 'sucking' is used for such a nice activity" I laughed. "Linguistics aside, I had a buddy who - well, I won't go into detail, but he was with someone who thought sucking just... meant sucking really hard, and he got a burst blood vessel and had to go to the ER."
Sara stopped stroking me and I realized I was going down unhelpful tangents.