Chapter 18
Then
Tammy was the only person I told that Michael and I had sex, and she was now eager to lose her virginity to Ryan.
We did take pride in still being virgins, but we always said if the right guy came along, that’s who we would lose it to.
Since mine was with Michael, I was glad that Ryan would be hers.
It had been a month since Michael and I had sex for the first time.
Now we had sex every time I came over.
I enjoyed it more each time, and he taught me things about myself I didn’t know.
For example, when I sat on him, I was in control, and my orgasms were stronger.
I hadn’t the need to masturbate because nothing compared to the real thing with Michael. He’d bought more condoms, and we used them each time until the birth control that Tammy and I got from Planned Parenthood would kick in. I hadn’t started mine yet because I was to start the last day of my next period. Tammy had started hers when she had her period.
I couldn’t wait to spend my first paycheck on Michael.
I picked out a manly necklace at the mall with a gold nugget flatted on the backside.
And I did what I had wanted to do.
I engraved: Love, Jill.
Michael was eager to get home on the days I came, and he wouldn’t work over.
He would leave me a sweet note telling me how he missed me and couldn’t wait to be together.
Michael signed all his notes—Love, Michael.
I would have dinner ready and jump into his arms when he walked through the door.
Music would be playing—love songs I picked out for us. He called me his beautiful secret, but soon I would turn eighteen. We wouldn’t have to hide our love. In some ways, hiding our secret love was exciting. But I wanted to shout it to the world when April came around. A few times, we would fight over April. But he swore nothing was happening, and I had to believe him.
Around our third or fourth time, he wanted to teach me oral sex, and I was a little reserved.
But once he showed me how it felt, I enjoyed that just as much.
I loved the way he moved his hands in my hair when I went down on him, and many times, I would look up and hope I had those blow-job eyes that April always made look so sexy.
His eyes would roll back, and I knew I was doing right, pleasing him.
He would tell me how unbelievable I was and that he loved the way I made him feel when we had sex. Michael said he was glad I was his first because he could teach me all the things he liked, and I was on a sexual journey of self-discovery with him as my teacher.
I loved to watch the necklace I bought bounce off his chest when I rode him on the couch.
The way it would hang down and bounce on my face when he made love to me on top.
Sex was amazing, and I loved it.
And I knew it was because I had such an excellent and handsome teacher.
I couldn’t get enough of Michael, and once, he told me the same in one of our passionate lovemaking.
“I can’t get enough of you, Jill.”
It was Friday night, and Tammy and I were doing one of our ‘I’m staying with her; she’s staying with me’ things.
I was going to spend my first night with Michael, and she and Ryan had arranged a place to stay—some older friend of Ryan’s with his own place.
When the door opened, I was on my highest Michael-cloud-number-nine, preparing lasagna and a Greek salad.
I was playing Lonestar on his stereo “Amazed”
because it was the song playing on the radio the first time I saw Michael.
It couldn’t have been more perfect.
I ran over and jumped into his arms.
“I couldn’t wait to get home.”
We kissed in between sentences.
“I couldn’t wait either.”
I kissed him.
“I thought about you all day.”
He kissed me.
“Really? You’re always on my mind,”
I said and gave him another kiss.
Our playful banter would continue every night.
But there was never the I love you spoken.
I wanted to say it.
I had tried to say it. And many times, it was on the tip of my tongue. But I was going to wait until after he said it first.
“It smells great.
What are we having?”
“Lasagna, minus the garlic bread.”
He questioned me with a look.
“I didn’t want to have garlic breath.”
True, I knew that the sauce had garlic in it, but it wouldn’t be as strong as what garlic bread would have been.
“And Greek salad,” I said.
He carried me across the room and said, “You’re going to make somebody a great wife someday.”
Why would he say somebody? I wanted to be his wife.
“I don’t want to be somebody’s wife,”
I said, and before I could get out ‘because I want to be your wife.’ He said….
“Smart girl.
Marriage is overrated.”
How would he know? He wasn’t married.
I didn’t respond anymore on the subject, and we finished dancing to Lonestar.
I was still in his hold, my legs around his waist.
“I’m going to shower first before we eat, okay?”
he said as he began to unknot his tie.
“Sure.
Everything is ready.”
We kissed, and he left for the shower.
Later, he returned in jeans and a T-shirt—the Ball State T-shirt I remembered him wearing that first day.
I would always shower when I first arrived, and sometimes, we would shower together after sex.
I loved how he looked in wet hair and would run my hands through it.
I could touch him now, as much as I wanted.
Because he was mine and I was his.
I wonder if he ever got jealous of guys from school that I would sometimes talk about.
If he did, he never showed it. But the minute April’s name would come up—it took all my power not to blow our cover. Once, after our lovemaking, I asked about the girls in his box—the pictures I found. He told me they were just friends from high school, and he hadn’t seen or heard from them since. I asked him about Montauk, and when I did, he slowly turned around and asked how I knew. That’s when I confessed to reading the back of the pictures.
“Montauk,”
he said with a smile, and I could tell it was something special.
I became jealous.
I tried not to show it.
“Well? Are you going to tell me?” I asked.
We were still lying on the bed, naked, and he said, “What do you think of when I say this apartment?”
I thought of him and said: Michael.
“How about this bed?”
My answer was still: Michael. “Hmm,”
he said.
“What about me and you and this bed?”
When I thought of him and me in this bed, I thought of us—having sex.
Then it hit me.
“That’s where you lost your virginity,” I said.
“And hers, too.”
It now angered me that I didn’t have someone in my past to make him jealous.
But when he told me I was special because he was my one and only, I was glad I had never been with another.
He poured the wine, and we sat at the table.
Candles warmed and flickered with every meal, and music set the room’s cadence.
It was always romantic, whatever song was playing.
We only watched TV a few times—most of the time, we spent having sex and holding each other afterward.
I was in love. We were in love. And tonight, I was going to say it no matter what.
After dinner, we set the dishes in the sink, and he chased me to the bedroom.
“This is what I’ve been waiting for all day,”
he said, picking me up and throwing me on the bed.
I giggled and began to undress.
He pulled off his shirt; his naked chest was always more than I could take.
I sat up from the bed, crawled to him, and looked up with my blow-job eyes.
I had mastered it, and each time I did it, he said, “Oh, Baby.”
Unbuttoning his jeans, I had become less shy and felt secure in being the aggressor.
He liked it when I would take him in my mouth, and I loved giving him that look when he watched me.
His hands would squeeze in my hair, and he would moan and breathe heavily.
I liked the way I affected him.
“I want to be inside you, Jill,”
he said, pushed me down on the bed, and took off his jeans.
Before putting on the condom, he went down on me, and his tongue lapped and circled the area he called my clit.
I never heard that name before.
But when he said it, it sounded raw and dirty, and I liked it.
He could make me come several times, and he said that it was rare that I had been the only woman who had multiple orgasms with him. I tried not to think of the other women when he said that and focused on the compliment he meant for me. I gave him credit because I could never make myself come twice.
I came hard, and he began to climb me and said, “I want to fuck you.”
His voice was harsh, and I could smell my arousal on his face.
His penis, now his cock or dick, he wanted me to call it, pushed inside me.
Penis sounded too much like a health class, he once had said.
I stopped him and told him to grab a condom.
“Jill, aren’t you on the pill now?”
“No, I haven’t got my period yet,”
I said.
I had told Michael about when the nurse at Planned Parenthood said to start taking them.
And even after that, use condoms for another month.
And we had used condoms for a month.
For once, I wished my damn period would come.
He gave a disgruntled sigh and reached for the drawer, pulling out the condom.
He wasn’t happy having to stop and put it on, and I hated that it killed the excitement.
But then, seconds later, we continued as the hot lovers that we were.
In a way, I liked the fact he didn’t want to use condoms and told me he wanted me like our first time—raw, spontaneous.
He said it’s like that first high you can never get back. But for me, it was better each time because I was learning about him and sex and myself.
He didn’t come until I came again.
He would watch my face and tell me to come.
And I think it was in the way he commanded me to come that excited me, and then I was done.
As soon as I said, ‘I’m coming,’ he would smile big and tell me, ‘Yes.’
We both came, and he fell on top of me like he always did when he was on top.
I loved the time it gave me to pet his hair and caress his back.
He kissed me down my neck and my breasts.
Sometimes, he would fall asleep, and I would feel his heart beating as it slowed down from our passionate love.
We created this passionate cloud, and I wanted to stay—here under Michael’s embrace forever.
We fell asleep for maybe twenty minutes, and when he woke, he picked me up and carried me to the shower.
Though he showered before dinner, it had become part of our lovemaking ritual.
I wished he had a tub so I could lay against his chest.
But we would take turns washing each other.
It was the most romantic thing one could do for another after lovemaking. I was thankful he wasn’t one of those ‘wham bam, thank you ma’am’ guys. He took pleasure in touching and washing me after our hard lovemaking. I loved how the water would run down our bodies and into our mouths when we kissed. Everything with Michael was enhanced, and life was abundant with pleasure. Nothing would ever be mundane in our lives. And how true that would turn out to be.
After our shower, I would wear one of his T-shirts or sometimes wear the shirt he had just taken off from work.
It smelled like him and work, and I imagined how his office would smell.
I asked him if he would take me to his work so I could see his office and what he did.
“I’ll take you tomorrow.
No one will be around. Maybe we could have sex in my cubicle.”
“You don’t have your own office?”
“Nope.
Not yet.
Hopefully soon.
But Whirlpool is just a stepping stone for me.”
I became worried he was going to leave.
Would he take me with him? “What do you mean? Are you moving up in the company?”
“I’ll work up to as much as I can.
Until then, I’ll always be looking.”
“Where did you want to go? You just got here.”
“My sites are set on Boeing.”
“The airplane?”
“Yes.
Aviation or aerospace is my true interest.”
I couldn’t blame him.
Big jets and rockets would always be more impressive than washing machines or refrigerators.
“Where’s Boeing? Where’s it located?”
“The headquarters are in Chicago.”
Chicago wouldn’t be that far from here.
I could take the train and see him until we could be together forever.
Depending on when he left.
“But I want to work in aviation engineering, and that’s in Seattle.”
Seattle? “When would you go?”
“I need to get at least a year with Whirlpool first.”
I was then relieved.
I would be out of high school and could attend college somewhere in Seattle.
I would need to start looking at their nursing programs.
“So, you’re spending the night with me, huh?”
he said teasingly, wrapping me inside his towel.
“Want me to make you breakfast in the morning?”
“I want to fuck you in the morning,”
he said.
I didn’t always like the term he used when addressing our lovemaking, but when we were in the middle of sex, and he said it, it did turn me on.
I kissed him on the lips and pulled on his dress shirt, which he had taken off before his first shower.
“I like you in this,”
he said, kissing me tenderly.
I almost told him I loved him then.
As he was pulling on briefs and night pajama pants, he asked, “Why haven’t you started your birth control pills yet?”
“I haven’t had my period yet,”
I said, and even my periods were something I could discuss with him without embarrassment.
“When are you due to start?”
I tried to think because I had no reason to keep track of them.
I was always regular, and when it was time, I just started.
“Any day now.
But if it doesn’t start by Sunday, I’ll start taking the pills.”
He walked over, dropped to his knees, tucked his head under the shirt I was wearing, and kissed me down there.
“And please don’t make me wear a condom for another month.
I love this pussy,” he said.
I wrapped my hands around his head, entrapping him under the shirt.
“And I love you,”
I said it.
If he loved my pussy, that meant he loved me.
Right? He didn’t move from under my shirt, and I feared what that meant.
Maybe he didn’t hear me or was thinking about his answer.
But that was one thing I learned at seventeen: to tell someone you love them and waiting to hear it back is like listening for an echo that never comes.