We stayed that way for a moment and then finally I looked up at her. She was smiling. "That was interesting, wasn't it?" She asked me playfully.
"You never fail to amaze me Nina." I told her. "Tell me about this book you read this in."
A giggle. "Let's just say that you'd be surprised at what kind of things you could find at the public library."
I reached down and pulled my shorts back up, tucking myself inside and fastening them. I suggested we move a few feet from where we were.
"How come?" She wanted to know.
"Because the evidence of our indiscretion is floating all around us in the water." I said. "A lot of it is stuck to your swimsuit."
She looked around and saw the little stringy globules floating everywhere. The sight gave her the giggles, especially when she saw it sticking to her suit in various places. "What would my mother think about that?" She asked, moving with me out of the danger zone.
I spent a few minutes splashing water over her to get rid of the residue and then dropped my hand down between her legs.
"What are you doing?" She asked, making no move to stop me.
"Just making sure you're clear down there." I said.
She was, but I made extra sure, running my hand all over her thighs and the crotch of her suit. One of my fingers slid deftly inside, touching hair and the swell of her vaginal lip. She jumped a little at the contact.
"You know." I told her. "It seems the least I could do is return the favor you just did for me." I slid my finger between her lips, pushing the crotch of the suit further aside. Despite the fact that she was under water her passage was slick with her juices.
"If you insist." She breathed.
It didn't take long. She held tightly to me as my fingers moved in and out and my hand made circular motions across her clit. When she came her pelvis humped up and down on me and her teeth bit lightly into my shoulder.
We spent a few more minutes kissing and holding each other, just enjoying the touch of our bodies together. Finally we decided we should start working our way back. She went and retrieved her shorts from the shore, washed the dirt off of them and then put them back.
We made sure to make enough noise as we headed back to the boat so that Maggie and Mike would not be caught in an embarrassing situation. Our ploy worked. When we trodded ashore we found them lying on their stomachs, very close together. Their eyes were shining with the glow of new discovery.
We spent the rest of the day at the lake, either lounging on our island or going out for skiing runs. We had to refill the gas tank on the boat once, it really was a gas-guzzler, but otherwise it ran perfectly. By the time the sun started to set we piled in the boat once more and began heading at a sedate pace towards the launch ramp. As we idled along slowly, watching the sun sink towards the mountains, watching the light fade from the sky, feeling the warm summer breeze caress our exposed skin, Nina cuddled up beside me. Behind us Mike and Maggie were also pretty chummy. He had his arm around her shoulders and they kissed frequently. You could almost taste the romance in the air.
There was of course a considerable line of boats waiting when we reached our destination and we had to wait until well after full dark before we could pull up to the ramp and put the boat back on the trailer. We didn't mind. We sat with our arms around our respective companions and watched the brilliance of the stars as they came out, even seeing the occasional satellite as it passed overhead.
Knowing that I would have to drive home I'd quit drinking beer a few hours before. I was the only one. Though no one was roaring drunk they were all quite asleep long before we reached I-90. I drove in solitude, with Nina curled up on my shoulder, with Mike and Maggie cuddled together in the back, their soft snores echoing in the car.
I wondered about Mike and Maggie as I drove. What would happen with them? Some sort of chemistry had obviously occurred between them, a powerful chemistry judging by the rapidity by which they'd connected. Was it doomed to be short lived? In my first life Mike and Maggie had never met each other except for brief glimpses in school before Mike dropped out. He'd probably whacked off a time or two thinking about her but I don't believe he ever even talked to her. Did this mean the relationship was shot before it could begin? Were they just two ships passing in the night? I didn't know, couldn't predict what would happen. All I knew was that it hadn't happened before. Did that automatically preclude it from happening now? Just how powerful was fate anyway?
I couldn't have known of course, that I was only a few minutes away from getting a very dramatic answer to that question.
My passengers were still asleep when I pulled onto my street. I turned the car and prepared to back the trailer into the driveway so it could then be backed into the garage. The lights on in the house were a little unusual; after all it was approaching ten o'clock and my parents were usually in bed by then. I didn't think much of it however until Dad came rushing out. I knew by his face that something was wrong.
He came up to my window and I rolled it quickly down, the car still blocking the street.
"What's wrong?" I asked, feeling adrenaline starting to pump through me, bracing myself for horrible news. Beside me Nina began to stir from her slumber.
"It's Tracy." Dad said hollowly. "There's been an accident."
Chapter 14
Those four words: "there's been an accident" brought the blackest dread to my heart in that instant. Just four little words, a simple arrangement of syllables rolling off my father's tongue and I felt that my whole world had just collapsed around me. I felt fate at work, felt it's presence as I had in the garage when Mike had said he was thinking about joining the Air Force, only stronger, in lethal proportion. Had I really thought that I could thwart fate in the matter of a life? Had I really thought I'd won? Why hadn't I foreseen this? Especially after Mike.
"Is she…" I asked my Dad slowly, fighting to maintain control of myself. Fighting and losing. I couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't speak the word.
"She's alive right now." Dad told me, knowing exactly what I was thinking, what I was dreading. "We don't know a lot about how she's doing."
By now Nina was fully awake and following the conversation. Her face was troubled, worried, but she kept silent. Behind us Mike and Maggie still slept, oblivious.
"What do you know?" I asked him. "What happened?"
"We got a call from the South Lake Tahoe Police," Dad said.
"South Lake Tahoe?" I asked. That was a considerable distance from Berkeley, about four hours by car.
He nodded. "Tracy was up there and was riding in a taxi cab. They don't know what happened yet, or at least they're not telling us, but the cab somehow crashed into the lake and landed upside down."
"Jesus," I muttered. "And Tracy?"
"She didn't drown," Dad told me. "She got out of the car somehow but she was hurt. The cops didn't know how badly, all they know is that she was airlifted to a hospital in Reno. The cab driver is in a hospital in South Lake Tahoe. He wasn't hurt too bad they said."
"They don't know anything about her injuries?" I asked.
"Nothing," Dad said. "I tried calling the hospital she's in but they couldn't or wouldn't tell me anything."
"What time did all of this happen?" I asked him, feeling guilt that I'd been out playing on the lake while in another part of the country my sister was having a horrible car accident. A possibly lethal car accident.