Under the kitchen table, Claire's knee pressed up against my leg yet again. "Stop it," I whispered angrily and shifted away.
It was really annoying. I was trying to do our homework assignment, and it was getting late. Heaven knows that neither Claire, who was sitting to my right, nor Stephanie, who was around the corner of the table on my left, was going to contribute.
We were all 18 years old and going to a church-run College, but sometimes the girls acted like real children. Someone once told me that our conservative, religious upbringings made us naïve and uninformed about the ways of the world, but I preferred to think of us as uncorrupted. Although, I have to admit that there were some areas of life in which we were especially unindoctrinated, such as in ... sex. And sometimes, when we were confronted by these topics, we got giddy and childish. But on this night, I was convinced that the girls were just being a pain in the neck!
The knee returned. "Claire!" I snapped, "Stop it!" My display of annoyance caused both girls to giggle.
I have never gotten used to being in the company of these two beautiful school friends. Claire, with her high cheekbones, small sharp nose, lush shoulder-length black hair and tight little body, looked like Courtney Cox's little sister; while Stephanie, with her full lips, bouncy curly hair, ample breasts and exotic brown skin, looked like a really young Beyoncé Knowles. Sitting with them in Claire's family kitchen made me nervously distracted.
"What's wrong, Timmy?" Claire poked me in the side of the ribs with the end of her pencil. "Hmm?" Poke. "Hmm?" Poke.
"Don't!" I flinched away from her jabs.
Claire and Stephanie always chose me to be in their study groups because I was the class nerd. This meant that I would end up doing the assignments for them, resulting in high marks for all of us. But my efforts often came at the expense of considerable teasing ... and certainly not with any academic assistance from them. Actually, I preferred it that way, and I prayed that they would just gossip with each other for a while.
"Awww ... What's wrong?" Claire asked pityingly, moving her hand up under my arm. "Are you TICKLISH?!!" Suddenly, she gripped my side.
"Hey!" I cried and jerked my body away. "Stop it!"
"Shhh ...," Claire cautioned. "My mother will hear us."
Claire's mother was in the living room next door, probably reading the Bible or something. Claire, like the rest of us, had been brought up in an ultra-conservative, religiously fundamentalist family environment. A couple of years ago, her father had died, and since then, her mother had become less restrictive. She was in her mid-forties, had short hair and dressed prudishly ... or at least, she used to.
Some of the guys at school have said that Mrs. Wilmot is actually quite a fox, and I had to admit that she is pretty attractive, but I tried not to think about it. To me, she was just Claire's mother – which was a problem, because recently, she seemed to be touching me and kissing my cheek more than she had done in the past or than I thought was appropriate. ... No, she was just Claire's mother.
"Hey, Steph," Claire whispered across the table, "You know what I did after history class this morning?"
Excellent! Maybe they would talk to each other and leave me alone now. I returned my attention to the math proof in front of me and tried to recapture my train of thought.
"I'll give you one hint," Claire continued, "I was with Billy Turner." ... I could tell where this conversation was going – boys and relationships and holding hands and yuck.
"Oh my gawd," Stephanie giggled excitedly, "Tell me; tell me; tell me!"
"Well, he took me behind the bleachers," Claire explained with equal excitement, "And we ... kissed!"
My ears picked up. The three of us had had sheltered upbringings in this conservative community, what with overbearing parents and private religious schools and the like, so none of us had much experience with such promiscuous activities as kissing. And now that we were all 18 years old, we were mature enough to realize that kissing is something to be avoided until marriage ... because, of course, of the risk of pregnancy.
"No way!" Stephanie exclaimed.
"We kissed for FIVE minutes," Claire bragged, holding up five fingers to emphasize the accomplishment, "And you know what?" Claire paused for effect. "He put his tongue in my mouth."
"Ewww!" Stephanie observed. ... My thought exactly.
"No, it was exciting!"
"Really? What did you do?"
"I sucked on it a bit."
"Ewww!" Stephanie re-emphasized. ... Again, I had to agree.
Claire leaned across the table towards Stephanie and lowered her already quiet voice. "And you know what else ...?"
Both Claire and Stephanie were wearing white cotton blouses and plaid pleated skirts as required by our school, and when Claire leaned forward, her top spread open to display her cleavage in front of my face. Shocked, I wanted to look away, but I found myself mesmerized by the lace border of her bra that delicately supported her soft breasts and delineated the "shouldn't look at" from the "mustn't look at" areas of her bosom. I started to blush.
"He got a bulge in the front of his pants," she whispered.
"He what?" Stephanie asked incredulously.
"Yeah. Something was poking up down there, and he had to cover it with his books," Claire explained, "Then he had trouble walking away. He kinda limped ... you know."
"He got a boner," Stephanie explained.
"A what?" Claire asked.
"An erection," I interjected ... which was a mistake. I shouldn't have gotten involved in th conversation.
Claire sat back in her seat and looked at me. "What's that?"
Oh, jeez. Now what was I going to do? I didn't want to talk about this. "It's ... well ... It's ... uhh ..." I was getting choked up. In fact, something was beginning to happen in my pants. "Well, it's when a guy gets ... you know ... nervous or excited and stuff, and it ... he ... it gets bigger."
