Junior Year Box Set

“You’re right. I’m sorry, David. It won’t happen again,” she offered.

Tim stepped over and gave me a bear hug.

“I was afraid you’d never talk to me again.”

My back cracked; I hoped he hadn’t done any permanent damage.

“Put him down. If you break him, the whole team will hunt you down,” Tami scolded him.

“We have to figure out how to ground them for life with them living in Chicago,” Tim’s dad said.

“I might have some ideas,” Mom offered.

Tim got worried when he saw Tami’s expression. She decided it was time to leave, and they left my parents and me in my living room.

“Once again, it wasn’t ours,” Dad said with a smile.

“You keep it up, and you might put us out of a job,” Mom said as she ruffled my hair.

“That just means that I’m due,” I said to get my digs in.

“Maybe we should ground him just on principle,” Dad suggested.

“Out! Duke needs his sleep,” I ordered.

The quote Uncle John found was going to haunt me: ‘Knowledge is knowing what to say. Wisdom is knowing when to say it, if at all.’ I had to start resisting the urge to get the last word in.

◊◊◊ Sunday July 24

Duke nudged me to let me know he needed to go out. I looked at the clock and saw I’d only gotten four hours of sleep. At least he’d let me sleep in a little. When we trudged downstairs, we found Precious had waited for him.

While the two of them ran around the backyard, I returned to my apartment and put on my running gear. When I’d come down again, Duke had found his ball and decided that it had to go with us on our run. I didn’t feel like negotiating with him and let him take it. He led the way, and when we got to the first corner, I about ran him over. Peggy had been working with him to sit at each street crossing because Mom had taken him to the hospital to work with her cancer patients. He’d apparently almost gotten himself hit, so he was relearning a useful skill. I’d become a little lax because where we ran, there was very little traffic.

Duke looked up at me and dropped his ball, which bounced out into the street. We looked both ways, and then I let him chase his ball down and continue on our run. I quickly got tired of stopping at each corner, so I took him to the park where we ran around the lake. They had a big open field, which allowed me to let him off his leash and toss his ball for him.

On the third throw, Duke decided the ducks were taunting him and made a beeline for the lake. He was running full-out when he made a spectacular jump into the water. He all but caught one of the mallards. Duke chased them across the lake to the island where he ran up the bank and through the bushes. I heard a woman shriek.

I sprinted around the end of the lake and to the bridge, then pushed through the bushes. Duke had made a new friend. It was a woman who looked like she was in college and who’d decided to catch some sun. I could see Duke had shaken himself, and she got wet, hence the shriek. The woman must have been trying to get an even tan on her back because she was topless. She heard me push through the bushes and shrieked again.

Our eyes locked, and Mr. Happy stood up. That’s never a good thing when wearing running shorts without a jock. I looked closer and could see she was quite attractive. Her hair was somewhere between blond and brown, and she’d cut it short so it was off her shoulders. Her cute nostrils flared as she bit her lip and her eyebrows rose, which were all signs that she was interested in me.

I think we both knew where this was going. There was an instant sexual attraction that was more than her having her breasts on display. I could tell she wanted this to go further when she dropped her hands from where they’d been covering herself. Mr. Happy suddenly was doing the thinking, and I pulled my shirt off and closed the distance between us.

I told Duke to park it, and he lay down under the picnic table. While I was distracted, she’d reached up, and as I turned around, she caressed my hardness through my shorts. Finding someone to have sex with was not on my mind when I left home this morning. Maybe this was the wild card Tracy had talked about.

My mystery woman brought me back to the moment when she pulled my shorts down and engulfed my growing member. I was so ready for college. I loved confident women who were comfortable in their sexuality. If they wanted you, they simply did what came naturally. I think that was why I had so much fun in LA. I felt the need to reciprocate, and we soon found ourselves in the sixty-nine position.

As much fun as this was, it was less than ideal. I suspect it was the possibility of being caught and how suddenly everything had happened that caused us to reach our satisfaction way too fast. By now, the big brain had figured out that this needed to stop. I didn’t have a condom, and while I loved Coby, he didn’t need a little brother anytime soon. There was also the minor fact that I didn’t even know this girl’s name.

As I dressed, I smiled at her.

“I’ll be here about the same time tomorrow,” I ventured.