"Just wondering," Mom says.
"After all the work today cleaning up from last night, I have no intention of driving around," I tell her.
"Seems kind of like a dud, this vacation of yours," Mom comments, sitting down on my chair.
I laugh. "As opposed to going out with whichever of my boys is in town, drinking and trying to pick up some girl?" I have to admit, that is the usual way my leave goes.
"Is it because of the reenlistment issue, or because you're settling down, or because you're here for the anniversary?" Mom looks at me steadily.
I have to wonder why she's so worried.
"Just don't feel like it as much this time," I say with a shrug.
"I just want to make sure you're not depressed or something," Mom explains.
That makes me laugh. "Depressed? No, Ma. There's no reason for me to be depressed." I shake my head.
"You just seem a bit different," Mom says.
"Well I'm looking at one of the most important decisions of my life," I point out.
"As long as it's just that and not something else. You know you can talk to us," Mom tells me as she stands up.
"Of course, Mom," I say. The last thing I want right now is for her to pay too much attention to what I'm doing, or even not doing, while I'm home.
I have to reassure her again before she leaves to go to bed, but then I'm by myself again, texting with my friend Ryan. Apparently the betting pool at the base puts me at sixty-percent chance that I'll reenlist.
I get a notification for another text message, and it's not from anyone on the base. It's from Harper.
Are you as bored as I am right now?
I look across the yard and see Harper in her room, in pajamas, but I can see they fit her perfectly, and all I can think about is how we had sex the night before in my parents' bathroom. We're both only in town for a couple of days more before we both have to go back to our lives.
Bored out of my mind
She looks at me and we're both grinning at each other. I have an idea. There's a bunch of leftover beer from the party the night before that my parents will never miss.
I text Harper my idea, and sneak downstairs, checking to make sure that both my parents are in bed before I head into the basement where we put the leftover beer. I know it's probably a terrible idea to meet with Harper alone after we had sex the night before, and we both agreed we should never do it again, that it's too weird, but I can't resist the thought of sitting around and having a few beers with her, talking.
I know that something's probably going to happen, but I try to tell myself that it's some harmless fun for both of us. After all, we're both in our twenties, and we're healthy and we're single. Who are we hurting with the fooling around we did? Nobody.
I grab a six-pack from the basement fridge and creep back up to the main floor of the house, making sure neither my mom nor my dad is up. Then I look outside. Harper is already waiting for me, sitting in the spot right in the middle between my parents' yard and hers, where we met up the first night we were both in town. Was that really only a couple of days before? I can't quite believe it.
I go outside with the beers, walk across the lawn, and sit down. I open up the case and hand one to Harper, and both of us sit there quietly for a minute in silence.
"We need to talk about what happened last night," Harper says.
"We probably do," I agree, and I crack open my beer.
"We're not going to, are we?"
I grin at Harper's question and she cracks her own beer, raises it to me, and we both take our first sips.
"No, I don't think we should talk about it," I tell her.
"Why not?" Harper shifts on the grass and I can't help but notice, even in the limited light from the porch lights, that her nipples are straining against the fabric of her tight pajama top. Suddenly all I can think about is finding out, if like the night before, that she wasn't wearing a bra under her dress.
"Because talking about it will make it complicated," I reply.
"Or it will make it less confusing," Harper counters. I drink down about a third of my beer, and after a moment Harper does the same with hers.
"What we're going to do is get a little bit drunk and talk about good times, and not think about what would have happened if we got caught last night," I tell her.
Harper thinks about that for a minute, and raises her beer to me again. "That sounds like a pretty decent deal," she says.
We finish our first beers and I crack open two more beers for us, and I can start feeling, just a little bit, the start of the buzz I'm trying to get. If we get through the six-pack, I can always go back inside and get another one out of the basement fridge.
"So, what else do we have to talk about?" I sip my beer and look at Harper and in spite of having only just said that we weren't going to talk about the night before, it's the only thing I can think about - her lips, her smile, the sight of her tits, the feeling of her wrapped around my cock, all of it. That and the fact that as soon as I slipped out of my parents' room last night, the only thing on my mind was how much better it would be to have Harper fully naked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HARPER POLSEN
It feels like every nerve in my body is vibrating, and I can't quite shake the little bit of tremor in my hands, the butterflies in my stomach. Why am I so nervous around Zane? He's already seen me naked at the lake the night before we had sex, and I wasn't nervous at all then, not until we heard his parents in the next room.
"When are you heading back?" I ask.
I can feel the beer starting to put a dent in my nerves, and it just makes me eager to drink more. Mom and Dad had both gone to bed by the time I texted Zane, and the idea of sitting around, drinking beers in the darkness, was certainly way more attractive than sitting in my room thinking about whether or not I should make an early trip back to New York City.
"My flight leaves Monday morning, I think," Zane says.
"Yeah, I have to drive back either late Sunday or early-early Monday," I tell him, making a face. "They want me in the office as soon as I can get there."
"Big dealings," Zane observes, drinking down a little more of his beer.
"Yeah, they actually want to get an early start on the project but … I sort of told them I couldn't leave early."
"You did?" Zane raises an eyebrow at that.
"Yeah, I'm not ready to be back to work just yet," I admit with a little grin. I take a few gulps of my second beer.
"We do have that fancy dinner your parents are supposed to host," Zane agrees.
"Wouldn't want to miss that!" I giggle, and drink down the last of my beer.
We keep talking, joking around and both of us go onto our third beer. By now I have to pee, and I tell Zane to wait for me while I go inside for a minute.
I get in and out of the house as quickly as I can, managing not to slam anything in spite of the fact that the door to the bathroom seems determined to spring right out of my hands.
"I think we need to talk about what happened last night," Zane says.
"I thought you were against talking about it," I say.
"I changed my mind," Zane tells me.
"Okay, so since it's your idea now, you tell me what you want to say about it," I settle back into my spot, and Zane hands me another beer. He's already started on his fourth, as he apparently went in to get another six-pack and get rid of the empties while I was in the house.
"We're just having fun, right? I don't think either of us really thought about anything other than what we were doing last night," Zane says.
"I definitely wasn't," I admit.
"So we're just … doing what hot people do sometimes," Zane continues. I have to snicker a bit at that.
"What hot people do sometimes?" I shake my head.
"Fooling around," Zane replies.
"And that's all there is to it? That we're fooling around?" Something about that doesn't sit right with me. It's not like I'm some prude, obviously, I'm not, if I was able to enjoy having sex with Zane the night before with no real reason for it but both of us being stressed out by the party.
"Well what do you want from it? I mean, it's not like we've got time to like, see if there's a relationship to have, and besides we're both going back to different places in a couple of days."
I have to admit that he's right. "I guess I don't want things to get weird between us," I say.
"They won't," Zane tells me.
"You're sure about that? Because I could see it getting weird as hell that we had sex." I drink a little more beer, and maybe it's from being a bit buzzed or maybe it's from being around Zane in the dark, and remembering what we did the night before, but I can feel myself tingling all over. I have to admit that even though we both said we'd never do it again, that it was too weird, there is nothing I want more than to have his hands on me.
"As long as no one else knows about it, we should be fine," Zane points out.
"So is it a secret because you'd be ashamed to be with me, or because we've … I don't know … like, known each other since we were babies and our parents are close?" I set down my beer as I ask the question. Maybe this late-night chat wasn't such a good idea.
"I would not be ashamed of that," Zane tells me, looking me directly in the eyes.
"No?" I hold his gaze for a long moment.