Surprise!
Mom was listening at Erin’s bedroom door when I came out of my room.
The hall was too dark to see her expression, but somehow I knew she’d seen my hard-on. I didn’t try to hide it, either. If anything, part of me wanted her to see.
She played it cool. “Did you sleep?”
“A little. You?”
“Not really.”
“Erin…?”
“Finally asleep, I think.”
“Good.”
“Mmm. Thanks for your help earlier.”
“Any time.”
We looked at each other for a moment. She was less than ten feet away, but only a silhouette against the faint light from the master bedroom.
I could see her curves—she was nude too—but little else. I thought about her fantasies. My hard-on felt like it might explode if I didn’t give it some attention.
“Well,” Mom said after a moment, “I’m going to try again to get some sleep.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks. And watch where you point that thing,” she added playfully.
“You’ll shoot an eye out.”
“Yeah, but whose?”
“Not mine,” she said with a throaty chuckle. “I swallow.”
Part of me wondered what the hell we were doing. Another part, the honest one, knew better than to ask. I wasn’t sure I was ready to face the truth.
“Well, goodnight,” she said after a moment.
“G’night.”
I went into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. I couldn’t pee with a hard-on, and it wasn’t likely to go away by itself, especially with the fantasies running through my head at the moment. I thought about returning to bed. Gina liked a morning dose of semen as much as the next Coulter woman, but she also liked her sleep.
In the end I took care of things myself.
Gina and I spent the entire morning in bed. We slept for most of it. But she eventually wanted her taste of cream, and I had a fresh batch ready to deliver.
We dozed for a while after, since neither of us was in the mood to get up.
Sometime later I moved her hand to my resurgent hard-on. She spread her
legs, and I played with her pussy until we were ready. Then we took our time and enjoyed ourselves, without all the urgency and interruptions from the night before.
We lay together afterward and talked, mostly because we didn’t want the morning to end. Neither of us asked the question we were both thinking: did we want a relationship again or was this a one-time thing?
We eventually showered and joined my parents and Susan for lunch. We talked about the wedding and reception, of course. Dad thanked me for bringing his car home safely, and later Mom drove us to the Coulters’ to pick up mine.
Gina and I hung out with her family for a couple of hours. Most of them were hungover, but none as bad as Chris. He looked like death warmed over in the microwave.
A little before five o’clock, Gina finally admitted that she had to pack for her flight back to Los Angeles. We’d both known it was coming, but neither of us had wanted to face it head-on. I offered to drive her to the airport.
“That’s okay, we can take her,” Elizabeth said.
“Oh, get real, Mom,” Gina said. “You’re about as hungover as Dad.”
“I am not.”
“Then take off your sunglasses.”
“You’re a wicked girl. You know that?”
Elizabeth’s father laughed and patted her hand. “She’s just like you were, lal. Let her go with the young man.”
So Gina packed and said goodbye to her family. I drove her to the airport and walked her to the gate with the question hanging over us.
“I’d like to see you again,” I said at last. I chuckled at the uncertainty in my voice.
“What?”
“It’s like we’re on a first date,” I explained, “and we’re both too shy to ask about the next.”
“You weren’t shy last night. Or this morning.”
“Neither were you. But we weren’t saying goodbye then.”
“No.”
“So… what comes next?”
“I’d like to see you again too,” she said.
“When?”
“I don’t know. We both have school.”
“Yeah.”
“Christmas?”
“Or Thanksgiving,” I said.
She grimaced. “I can’t. I promised to spend it with Regan.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t say it like that, Paul. She’s my friend.”
“She’s more than that.”
“So? Besides, you have ‘friends’ too. One of them’s my sister! ”
I started to say something snarky but turned it into a deep breath instead.
“Look,” I said at last, “we both have lives. And we both have other…
friends.” I thought of Christy and felt a jolt of surprise. Where the hell did that come from? I shook it off and continued, “We also have a history together. A pretty good one, if I do say so myself.”
“True.”
“So let’s not fight, especially now. I don’t know if things’ll work out between us. I want them to, but we’ll have to see.”
“I know. Me too.”
I pulled her into my arms and kissed her forehead.
“I don’t want to go,” she said. “Not now.”
“I know. But you have to. I have to. Like you said, we both have school.”
“You can come visit. In LA”
“Or you could come to Knoxville. Isn’t Regan’s family still there?”
She nodded.
“Does she ever visit?”
“Not much. Her parents are kind of… distant.”
“Ah. That makes sense. From what I know about her.”
“We can write, though,” she said. “And talk on the phone.”
“That’d be nice. It’ll be fun to get to know you again.”
She arched a playful eyebrow. “You mean last night and this morning weren’t enough?”
“You tell me,” I said with a grin.
She grinned as well. “No.”
“So it’s settled. We’ll write and call, and see each other at Christmas.”
“Okay.” She looked up, and I wiped a tear from her cheek.
“Hey,” I said, my voice hoarse with emotion, “it’ll be all right.”
“I know.”
I was going to say something else, but the gate agent announced final
boarding. I looked around in annoyance and wondered when they’d announced the start of boarding.
“I’d better go,” Gina said.
“Unless you wanna ride with me to Knoxville.”
She smiled. Then she tilted her head up, and my lips touched hers. The kiss went from tender to hungry in two heartbeats.
When we finally separated, the gate agent was blushing and trying not to smile. She also gestured to speed things up. She looked apologetic, but she had a schedule.
I gave her a nod of thanks and turned Gina toward the entrance of the jetway. “Go,” I said softly. “I’ll write you tomorrow. I promise.”
She turned and kissed me again before she crossed the gate area. She looked back once and waved, and then she was gone.
Chapter 11
Wren was sitting on the living room couch in a warm circle of light cast by a table lamp. She was studying, but she closed her notes and textbook when I came through the front door.
I made a point of looking at my watch.
“All right, fine,” she admitted. “I was waiting up for you. Welcome home, by the way.”
“Um… thanks?”
“Why do you have to be so suspicious?”
“Gee, I dunno. Maybe because you’re usually up to something?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Wren, it’s late,” I said. “I’ve had a long day, and I just wanna go to bed.”
“Have you eaten?”
I blinked at the non sequitur.
“Did you eat dinner?” She read the answer in my expression. “Want me to fix you something?”
“Sure,” I said after a moment. And let’s get this interrogation over, I added, but kept it to myself.
I sat at the kitchen table while she toasted bread and made a roast beef and tomato sandwich. I took the first bite and looked at it in surprise.