A Reluctant Virgin's Road Trip

"You want to call someone to come and get you?" the kind, motherly-like nurse asked as they reached the front desk.

'Yeah,'Lily Anne thought as a rejoinder, 'Please, call Prince Albert to come back and rescue me.' Instead, she meekly replied, "No one, ma'am. I'm traveling westward-ho, alone, and traveling on a dime."

For a fleeting moment, her lips pursed at the dime thought. Roger's first utterance of 'traveling on a dime' was never one she had heard before. She took it to mean going down the Interstate like a hitchhiker thumbing her way westward. She didn't know what 'traveling on a dime' meant to truckers then. It wasn't cash; she came to realize quickly. Although most of the money she had Roger stole from her before he dumped her at the truck stop. However, it didn't take her long to figure out that Roger expected sex for payment in exchange for the mileage. She'd been so naïve then, but in two days on the road, she'd become much wiser.

The nurse nodded solemnly at her traveling-alone answer, replying, "Good luck with that, sugar. The world can be a mean place to be in if you travel all alone."

"Don't they love you at home, dear?" she asked, reaching out to hug Lily Anne, wishing her well. Even that slight hug caused Lily Anne to wince. Lily was glad she'd forgone the bra. Thoughtful though it was, that hug had exacerbated the tenderness in her abused breasts.

"Yes. Yes, they do," Lily Anne answered the nurse's question about being loved at home. Lily Anne reflected on that question for an instant.

She'd been asked that before but hadn't taken that as an option. Her grandpa's 1865 silver dollar had taken her in the opposite direction. Lily Anne stepped out into the waiting room and back into uncertainty again. On her own, she had nowhere to go and was left with another decision. She felt the hardness of her grandpa's lucky silver dollar pressed against her coin pocket and knew it would come to that again. All she had to do was ask it the right question. She knew that would take some consideration ... and intended to return to the Love Fuel Station to divine the next question. With a sigh, she let all the air out of her lungs, glancing over to see if the good-looking wounded warrior was still waiting there.

"What the hell?" she muttered, looking up and taking in the two policemen engaged in conversation with the wounded warrior. As she stared, she noted his hand had been bandaged. So, he'd seen a doctor at least. Police with notepads were becoming a common occurrence in her life. She bristled at the thoughts of law enforcement haranguing another apparent victim.

"What did you do, wounded warrior?"she wondered as her brow furled.

"Thanks again, fellow. That man owes his life to you. If you hadn't been there first to pull him out, he'd be on a slab in the morgue instead of here," the officer said, patting him on the shoulder.

Lily Anne caught that part of the conversation as the officers handed him a card. It was familiar, just like the one the Memphis detectives gave her with their phone numbers and a case number. The officers studied Lily Anne a bit as they walked past on their way out. She averted her eyes, feeling tense and harboring a degree of guilt. As they strolled past, the guilt crawled upon her shoulders, weighing her down. She had misjudged the guys in uniform. At least they didn't stop to scrutinize why she was at the hospital.

'So, you're a Good Samaritan!' she mused, 'I knew you had to be a good guy from how you smiled at me!' Freckles grinned and kept that warm thought in mind as she watched the shaggy-haired hunk from a distance.

The wounded warrior's eyes followed the police officers walking away but shifted to stare at Lily Anne's statuesque appearance as she stood by the counter. She'd changed clothes, he noted. The new look was less like a Mall Barbie in short shorts but more like a ... well, he wasn't sure what to compare her to at this point, but she was still just as cute. He saw her radiant look turn into an attractive smile as she caught him staring. It seemed to be entirely focused on him. He grinned back at her.

'Hell of a place to be flirting with a woman in the middle of a hospital waiting room,' he thought as he stood up and moved toward Lily Anne's infectious charm. He'd seen many come-on smiles at many truck stops in his long-haul runs, and eight years of studying young women on the Interstates had taught him how to read the nuances in those smiles. This smile seemed to be one of those inviting ones.

"I've got to get some meds down the hall in the pharmacy, Freckles, but after that, I'll let you buy me dinner; how about that?" he asked, teasing her.

"Me too, Good Samaritan; I... have to get some prescriptions. I mean, I'm ... not, like, got much money, so ...." She stumbled over his unexpected forwardness. Lily Anne's shyness button just got pushed. She hadn't seen that coming!

The Samaritan smiled at her awkward line. The words sounded just like some high school kid's syntax. 'Perhaps,' he thought, 'she isn't a pro after all.' His rejoinder changed course in a moment of inspiration.

"Okay, how about I buy you dinner, and then we sit and talk about this serendipitous moment."

He'd been expecting an outright 'hell no' remark from her, but she didn't seem to pick up on his attempt at flirtatious humor.

The warrior waited in line, studying Lily Anne's behind as the pharmacist compared her ID and the doctor's prescription.

"So, Freckles, your name is Lily White," he said to her, finally attaching a name to that cute bubble butt he admired as he stood behind her. She turned abruptly in a spread-legged stance, allowing him a view of the wide-spaced camel-toe cleft between her legs and the perky set of melons up top as her nipples pressed into the tight tee shirt.

"Yep," she chortled, "Lily Anne to all the world — for all my eighteen years."

"Connor Adams," he announced, "And that's just Connor to all the world ...."

He left off the thirty-two years old phrase that would have parroted her words. No sense in pointing out a fourteen-year age difference, he figured. It was enough to know she freely announced she was eighteen. It had the naive sound of innocence in her giggle as she blurted that out. He picked up on her attempt to assert her adult independence. He could work with that insecurity factor.

Lily Anne was stunned by the cost of her prescriptions. It took half of what she had left of the three hundred dollars in gift cards. Roger had stolen the other four hundred dollars in cash from her backpack when he delivered her to Albert's care at the Atlanta Love's Fuel Station and Restaurant. Now it was ... not enough to even buy a ticket home. Maybe Albert, the nurse, and the Memphis police were right. Time to decide if Fate and the silver dollar made the decision or if she used her initiative to call home, begging for help from Mom and Dad for a Greyhound ticket home.

Turning away from the pharmacy window, Adams saw the subdued expression pasted across Lily Anne's usually-smiling face.

"Something wrong, Lily?" Connor inquired.

"No. No, nothing," came her exasperated reply as she hoisted the backpack.

Connor took note of her shocked look. Given her raggedy appearance when she first entered the emergency room, he suspected her answer was an attempt to cover a financial predicament. He was not buying into her 'no, nothing' whitewashed answer.

'This kid needs help,' he mused, 'how serendipitous an opportunity.'

"Then let's get dinner, Ms. White," he responded, trying to stay polite. Although, he would have liked to steer his remarks more sensually. In eight years of plying his trade, he'd learned to be patient and wait for a more appropriate moment to strike up a sexual overture.

"S'okay? Which car is yours?" she asked, not giving it a second thought that she might be going off the Interstate as they walked out the emergency room exit.

Lily intended to memorize the car's license plate ... just in case this was a situation like Roger's eighteen-wheeler nightmare. Albert, the former policeman, gave her a page from his situational awareness playbook. Lily was better prepared for a new stranger-danger, life-learning experience. Still, she wasn't paying heed to her Daddy's strict admonishment about taking rides with strangers. Conner couldn't be a troublemaker, she felt. After all, the police officers congratulated him for saving a life and let him go. Lily Anne was confident that Conner was not a stranger-danger, sinister person.

Conner smiled, then laughed aloud at her question about his ride, replying, "Lily, woman, I don't have a car. At least not here. My rig is on the other side of the Interstate."

"You drive an eighteen-wheeler?" Lily queried in surprise, noting he had called her a woman. He was the first man to recognize that she was no longer just a girl. That pleased her, making her feel more mature and confident.

"Yes, Lily. You got something against that?" he teased.

"No. No ... It's just that I didn't think of you as a trucker. That image just didn't fit my impression of you. You're so ... kind and polite. I mean that nicely, like one trucker I've met, I guess."

"Well, lady, first impressions don't always portray the entirety of a person's true nature. I'm an anomaly as mother truckers go," Conner's nebulous answer went over Lily Anne's head. She was still pondering her mistake of thinking he was just an ordinary guy that had driven by a car crash and stopped to become a hero. She never pictured the hero as a trucker, just a Good Samaritan in a car. So ... crazy.

"There's not many places that you can park an eighteen-wheeler and eat, you know, Lily Anne White. So, maybe this date will be a disappointment for you, but we might just be eating here at Love's Fuel Station and Restaurant unless you feel like walking a few dozen miles," Conner Adams laughed as the two of them strolled along the highway back across to the westbound side of I-40W.

Lily smiled at his dry humor. 'Date' sure, like it really is a date ... one with a hunk like her BFF might suggest. It was much like her dad's bone-dry wit. Comfortable, given the tribulations she had endured during the past two days.

Over dinner, Lily grew comfortable exchanging pleasantries with Connor. She helped cut up his steak since his hand required stitches, and he looked helpless, trying to hold a knife in his bandaged hand. She even answered his probing questions about her background, goals, and lack of goals in life. He focused on her safety; it seemed to her; that seemed reassuring. Connor inquired whether her parents or friends knew where she was going. She was glad someone was paying attention to her plight — someone that appeared to give a damn.

"Connor, I didn't tell anyone where I was going, well, maybe. I did tell the Greyhound attendant I was heading west. I didn't have a direction at that point because I didn't have a city in mind. Besides, I didn't use Greyhound after all. I found myself heading west with those two mother truckers: Mandy and Roger. I've been using my grandpa's lucky silver dollar to make those traveling decisions on the fly," she quipped as she scarfed up the last bite of delicious apple pie. Dinner always tastes best when someone else is picking up the tab.

She opened up to him about her encounters during the last two days. Even from the beginning of her recounting, he could tell she had made dangerous errors in judgment. She was adrift on the Interstate highways: out of communication, a novice hitchhiker, a delightfully-naïve eighteen-year-old morsel, and was off everyone's radar. She would not even be an amber alert subject if one were issued. 'She is an easy target for people with bad intentions,' he figured, calculating her chances of encountering more danger or rescues.

"Lily Anne, that explains the hospital trip. I'm sorry it was under those circumstances that we met," he remarked after she managed to steer through Mandy and Roger's terrifying ordeal and her brief encounter with the Reverend David and Sister Samantha's love sessions — minus the porn-rated descriptors.

"I know it may not seem right to say now, Lily, but Mandy's comments about saving your virginity were incorrect," Connor ventured his opinion while taking another sip of black coffee. The waitress refilled his cup and remarked that it was a unique blend by TexRad Coffee Company out of Texas.

"Why?" she asked inquisitively, knowing Mandy's crude exhortation had worked itself out.

Lily Anne believed she'd successfully pulled off what Mandy had told her. She'd sucked off Roger based on Mandy's advice, got him off, and even swallowed his wad. Still, she was surprised he needed to cum again, though, and had face-fucked her afterward like some weird fetish thing. Twice seemed enough to keep the mother trucker out of her ... cunt, or the other place Mandy said truckers like to ... plunder.

"Lily Anne, you said Roger was too strong to fight, and there were two against you. Also, Roger gave you a Roofie."

"Yes. That's what happened. He told me it was aspirin for the pain. Of course, the asshole lied about that," Lily recalled that moment as her head lay in his slick, naked lap. She swallowed it and dozed off while sniffing the slightly acrid combination of her spittle and his ejaculate rubbed under her nose. Her last thought was that he seemed to be trying to make up for what he did.

"That must have been when Roger treated himself to a feast, biting, pinching, and squeezing my body. Probably did my mouth again," now that she thought about it.

" Maybe even fucked my titties," she blurted out at the sudden realization.

That last thought brought a rush of warmth to her face as she imagined Roger straddling her ribs, holding his cock between her titties, and using them like a pussy. No wonder her face and hair were filled with dried cum, when she looked into the mirror at that Memphis Love's Fuel Station!

Lily Anne's attention returned from her recollections as Connor finished his remarks, "If you were out like a light, that would have given him plenty of time to ... fuck you when you were under its effect. He had you available, unconscious, and without any fight. But if I may be so frank, sucking him didn't prevent his screwing you, Lily Anne. It was something else."

The frank conversation just seemed to have hit home as Connor explained the truth of the matter to Lily Anne. Mandy had lied about being able to control a mother trucker's actions by being such a good blowjob artist that he wouldn't touch her elsewhere. Connor told her, "You never had any control over Mandy and Roger's use and abuse of your body. As far as I can determine, you didn't lose your virginity for some other reason."

That sent a tremor through Lily Anne's teenage body. For a day-and-a-half, she felt she had something that could sway a bent mother trucker from exploiting her virginity. Finding that wasn't so disturbed Lily Anne's psyche.

Another of Mandy's cruel remarks surfaced at that point. One Lily Anne had forgotten. She was left wondering if it was also a lie. The recall of what Mandy said sent another shiver through her.

Mandy had cackled, "Lily Anne, if you're not a virgin, then the easiest way to save yourself is to lay down and spread your legs. It might take a couple of times ... of fucking your cunt, but truckers will be quick, and then it's over. You have to make them think you liked it, and then if you do, maybe they will keep you around ... or let you go!"

Connor watched her face as it was held in some momentary trance until she seemed to return to the present before he continued to speak.

"Besides, Freckles," Conner said, sensing her stress, and changed his use of names to lighten the mood, "virginity is so not a thing anymore, except for parents, of course. They always want you to be one until you marry, which only applies to women — not men, by the way."

His statement was delivered with assuredness, as though the pronouncement was unequivocal. It was couched to help prod her to see the double standard and want to rectify that inequity.

"Well ..." she stammered, then stopped, trying to figure out how to respond to his declaration.

She had wanted to address the gender inequity of being okay for guys to screw around while girls were expected to be chaste and virtuous. However, her young mind wasn't fast enough to formulate an answer to a topic she'd never previously discussed.

"Think about it, for a moment," he cut in, "how many of your girlfriends are ... fucking ... and do they look or feel any differently after doing it?"

Lily Anne's thoughts refocused, mentally picturing the girls she knew for sure who did it from high school, and a few cousins, too. They had done it and are still doing it, and the only thing that seemed different was that the girls felt more confident in being around guys. Even her Best Friend Forever wanted her to move into an apartment together and do it with 'some hunks.' She wasn't talking about marriage, either! Her BFF wanted them to get drunk, grab some hunks, and enjoy — a couple of cocks.

"But guys are looking for virgins to marry, my momma says," Lily Anne countered.

Connor doubled down, saying, "Lily Anne, aren't those the same guys who return to your girlfriends time and again? Those guys are not seeking out a new virgin every time they get a ... boner and look to a girl for relief. They look for the first available and friendliest experienced resource. Think about your aunts and uncles for a minute. Bet a lot of them weren't virgins, and they still got married. You probably know one or two, right?"

'Yes,' she mused quietly to herself while picturing them.

Rather than say 'yes' aloud, Lily just nodded in affirmation. That unspoken word rolled around in her head as she recalled at least two aunts who seemed happy in marriage. One delivered her first baby 'early,' just seven months after the wedding. There was much talk about that between her mom and dad, but that was always when they thought Lily Anne wasn't within earshot. Lily Anne had heard and understood that silly joke about the first baby born could come any time during the first nine months of marriage; the next one always took nine months.

"Freckles, do you know how many young women like you are still virgins when they finally get married?" Connor prodded her into a continued discourse.

"A lot?" Lily Anne proffered. It was one of her famous-high-school-classroom answers. She hadn't a clue.

"Three percent of all American women are virgins when they get married, Lily Anne. Just three percent," he stated, letting that number sink into her thoughts just long enough before he added more rationale to break down her crumbling barriers.

"Those non-virgins get married just like the virgins that waited for an eternity to feel the power of that sexual euphoria coursing through their loins and getting overwhelmed with the sexual releases it brings. Lily Anne, the non-virgins, got the better end of the deal. They got more sexual gratification and spent less time masturbating in bed late at night," he lectured, choosing his words to evoke a stirring of emotions he was sure she had felt.

Connor reinforced his theory, nailing home how more-sexually-active people won out over those with less sex earlier in life. "When you look back at them, both pairs are usually happy today. But the pair that started having sex earlier got the better bargain regarding sexual gratification. The virgins who hung back and couldn't make a decision; suffered from that lack of pleasure — for that, there is an easy remedy," Connor opined.