Please note that this is a long story and although the two main characters meet when they are younger, no sex, sexual activity or descriptions take place until after they are legally of age.
Thank you for taking the time to read it.
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Years ago, when I was growing up in the back waters of Louisiana my best friend was Amanda Carson. I still remember the summer she and her family moved in across the street from me. There was a lot of tension in the neighborhood at the time. My side of the street was the upper middle class brick houses that were common in that town at that time. But across the street was a rundown trailer park that Amanda's family lived in. How this configuration ever passed the zoning board is a mystery to anyone that has ever seen the setup. The people on my side of the street couldn't stand that their property values were being dragged down by these trailer park people and the people on Amanda's side believed they had every right to be there like anyone else. Which of course they did.
When Amanda moved in she was a gawky 12 year old girl. A tom boy with too many freckles and bushy red hair. She seemed to be all elbows and knock knees. She was more at home hanging out with the boys than the other girls and we all learned soon enough that she could spit, shoot, fish and fight just as good as anyone else did. It didn't take long before a lot of the boys got really scared of her. Too many of them had been whipped enough times that she carried a certain amount of grudging respect for her wherever she went. But that was never a problem for me. She and I immediately formed a bond, the way some kids do, that no one else really understood. It was all centered on the fact that neither of us could back down from anything. We were dare devils and couldn't be intimidated. The older kids wanted to fight, no problem. There was a bike ramp that needed to be jumped, she and I would race to jump it, skin our knees and do it again.
A couple of years after she moved down here I started noticing an odd phenomenon. People would make comments that they liked me, and they liked Amanda, but they HATED me and Amanda. Of course at the time I had no idea what they were talking about, but in retrospect we always seemed to be getting each other into trouble. Pushing each other too far. Taking the joke one step over the line and then further.
About the time I was 15 Amanda and I were going to separate schools. I had taken a pretty acute interest in girls and Amanda was still not what anyone would call girlish, so we spent less and less time with one another. My parents were pleased because they thought she was a bad influence and her parents were pleased, when they were sober enough to notice, because they knew I was a bad influence. The less time we spent together the less trouble we got into. My family moved away, and although we talked on the phone every couple months I think I went a few years without seeing her.
Eventually I ran into her again when we started college. I was 19 when I saw her, and she had just turned 18. There were some very serious changes that had taken place with her in that time. I would not call her womanly, nor beautiful. But she had a certain country girl, tom boy charm to her that I found amusing. We started talking that day in the Student Union, and I think I was trying to let her know I was interested. I was certainly treating her more like a cute girl than one of the boys like I used to. Either she wasn't getting the hint or she wasn't interested. Either way I wasn't really getting anywhere, nor was I trying that hard. We were leaving and in the process of exchanging phone numbers and promises to keep in touch. Then we both saw it at the same time... A bright, shiny quarter on the lawn outside the union.
Oh, this was one of our favorite games when we were growing up. One of us would see a coin on the ground and the two of us would fight over it and wrestle until one of us had it clutched in our hand in victory and the both of us were covered in grass stains and more often than not mud and blood. Surely she is too old for this now... Then I heard the familiar cry of "It's Mine!" She lunged for the quarter and on instinct alone I went after her and the two of us screamed vile disgusting names at one another and fought over that quarter until a group of people were standing around us and we were laughing so hard that tears streaked down my cheek. I had torn my shirt and she had a loose tooth from the whole thing. I lost because I was suddenly trying to hide an erection. My muddy hand had accidentally slipped down the front of her pants while we wrestled and I felt a part of her that I had never really given much thought to before. It took me off guard enough that I got distracted and took an elbow to the solar plexus hard enough to knock the wind out of me.
The campus cops were called out to the Great Quarter Battle and they kept interviewing her to find out if I was abusing her in some way. Eventually they let us both go with stern warnings that we never listened to. We left the police substation laughing and looking at the ground for another coin to fight over.
She was walking a bit funny and when I asked her what was wrong she punched me in the shoulder and said "Now I have to go home and wash dirt out of my cunt. Thanks a lot." But she was smiling enough when she said it for me to know she wasn't actually mad. She was not very lady like at that time.
Something occurred to me though. During our game I realized that she was much stronger than I remembered her to be. The last time we had wrestled I was easily stronger than she was. That was when I was 16. Three years and several farm jobs later I was a man grown with a man's muscles. But she was like a coil of bailing wire, and that grip of hers made my knees weak when she had gotten a hold of my elbow. She was stronger and faster than any other girl I had ever known and that made me a little bit wary.
But I also kept thinking about how surprised we both were when my hand slipped and went inside her jeans...
A week later I found out why she was in such good shape. I was passing by the school track and saw her running. No, not just running, running like there was a fire inside of her that would consume her if she couldn't out run it. None of the other girls could keep up. None of them even had a chance. It turned out that Amanda had a track and field scholarship and was one of the most sought after student athletes in the country. I should have known; there is no way that her parents could have afforded to send her to college otherwise. Another interesting thing happened. I saw her in her track clothes. She was so thin growing up, and always had hand-me-downs that she never looked like a girl. When I had seen her in the quad her hair was styled a bit more, and she was wearing makeup to hide some of the freckles, but she was still more of a tom boy than anything else. But on the track, in clothes that looked like they had been spray painted on, she looked like a woman. She had the flattest stomach I had ever seen, perfect six pack abs, with the muscular thighs and calves that only true runners can develop. Her running top was straining against her modest chest, making it look larger than it should with her small frame and narrow waist.
...And I must have stared a little too long, because I got a sports bottle in the face for my troubles.
"Looking that hard is going to cost you, tough guy." She yelled at me.
I took off after her, but was absolutely no match for her raw speed, especially when she was already warmed up. I can distinctly remember the sound of her friends laughing at me.
Amanda had an on again off again boyfriend at the time that I met later. They had one of those explosive, drama filled relationships. One minute they were making out in public and the next she was burning his CD collection in front of his dorm. I had a series of girls, mostly older students, that I had brief, intense relationships with. Maybe the timing was never right with us. Maybe we just had too much fun with the competitive friendship. I don't know. What I do know is that it wasn't long before I started hearing the familiar refrain again, "We like Paul, and we like Amanda, but we can't stand Paul and Amanda." With good reason I could see.
Amanda loved to get guys to fight over her, she once told me it made her incredibly wet to think of two guys beating each other over her. She even roped me into it a few times by telling some guy I was harassing her in a bar. We both drank hard and partied harder than anyone else we knew. I kept in good condition working, she did it running. We argued all the time, but the only thing we ever really disagreed about was that occasionally she would snort some coke, and I didn't like that. Other than that we were two peas in a pod.
