AAA+ Everything Box

Going back to my room, I got back to my math review and since I had done okay the first time, mostly, I plowed through a bunch more chapters before falling asleep.

== Chapter: Sunday Adventures ==

Sundays were for church, and despite my mom not going all the time, we sometimes went to mass on Sundays. I woke with an interest, so I went without her. It was only a couple of blocks over, so I just walked. Our congregation wasn't that big, maybe 75 people or so. In previous years I'd gotten my cheeks pinched on occasion (metaphorically more than physically), but I'd known most of the ladies my whole life so it kind of went with the territory.

During Mass, I noticed a woman sitting next to me who kept looking at me for some reason. I'd showered and shaved, so I wondered if my clothes were stained, but she wasn't looking at anything specific. I didn't know her too well, only that she worked as a cashier at the diner.

After the service, she came up to tell me I had a beautiful singing voice, which I hear a lot because I kind of do. Facts are not bragging, as Mom said, you only get to be proud of stuff you work on. What God gives you, that's facts, not bragging rights.

So this lady kept rubbing her upper arms as she talked, though, and glancing away, and back, and at my lips, and looking away, and looking back. It was like she was nervous or something. I was about to break away -- for all her odd behavior, I decided for some reason that she was ... horny? It was a strange thought because she was quite a bit older than me, but the more I considered it, the more I realized that HAD to be it.

So... what to do about that?

Nothing, with her, I decided. She was older than me, and what with her nervousness making me nervous, I didn't know how to keep the conversation going. I excused myself and got a banana and a cookie from the coffee-hour table then started walking home.

The woman who had talked to me did present a ... challenge? Opportunity? Definitely food for thought...

I was still a virgin - a frustrated, 19-year-old virgin. I'd dated Anne, briefly, freshman year, but she was only marginally attractive to me anyway (even then). We'd only gone out a couple of times, but after that we just hung out as a group with some other people.

My real interest was Carol, a fellow sophomore and cross country runner. She was really hot. Small chested, of course (female runners don't tend to have big boobs) but fun and sexy and really pretty to look at. I'd gotten nowhere with that, though. She had said she wanted to be a lawyer after she graduated, maybe going to law school at UM in Winnipeg, an hour away, or even to Dalhousie, a top-flight school in Nova Scotia.

I would miss her. She was super-smart, and despite being pre-law, was already taking linear algebra and statistics. I think she'd mentioned doing insurance law, actuarial stuff.

That was my opportunity, I realized.

On a whim, walking down the street, I got out my phone and called her. I had everyone's number because of cross country, and frankly, because it was a small school and we traded numbers around a lot. She answered, "Uh... Kevin? Yeah?"

"Hi." I hesitated a little. "Uh... I'm ... I'm going to be studying for calc, and..." I was trying to ask if she wanted to study together, but she beat me to the punch.

"...and you want my help because you never do your homework."

I didn't know what to say. "Uh..."

She laughed, "Yeah, I know. I helped out Dawn, and Jake, too, last week. Don't tell me, you talked to them and they told you I was a miracle worker."

Her confidence was fun, but I wasn't going to tell her I didn't need her help. "Something like that. Maybe we could barter subjects -- what are you taking?"

I knew already, but it was creepy to know her schedule so I feigned ignorance.

"Chemistry, English tragedy, and..."

"I took both of those, last year."

"No you haven't."

"Okay, so ... maybe not tragedy. But I did have chemistry last year."

"Where?"

We agreed to meet at the town library mid-afternoon. At least it was off-campus for a change.

== ==

I was late to the library -- Mom had wanted me to do the dishes, plus then I had to do laundry or I wouldn't have workout clothes for the next day.

College means being self-sufficient, and there were some ups and downs involved.

Carol looked at me sternly as I got there and plopped down. I tried to explain my sudden housework, plus not feeling well the previous day.

"I noticed. Everyone noticed. I think coach Kilearny will be giving you a what-for when you get there tomorrow."

"Probably." I shrugged, "Can't be helped. I didn't miss on purpose. She'll understand."

"Oh, she'll understand you're a fuck-up, all right." Carol's frown was different, considering me, "Not that it matters. Not many runners to choose from."

"Granted." I got my books out, including my old textbook I'd been going through. I was pretty comfortable with the stuff I'd reviewed, though it'd taken me most of the day Saturday to get through it.

Carol went back to her work, making notes and typing quotes from her book into her laptop.

I didn't have a laptop, just an old desktop my mom had gotten at a garage sale. I noticed it, and was just saying, "Nice laptop, I..."

An older lady I knew from church walked by, and I nodded at her. She looked at me with a friendly smile but an odd expression and went over to a reference shelf nearby. Slightly weirded out by that, I turned back to Carol and said, '... I wish I had a laptop, too, but ... they're expensive."

The lady could have heard us? Was she listening in on purpose?

"Yeah. My dad got my sister one when she went off to grad school. I got her old one."

The lady walked away.

While I was distracted, I was also envious. Even a secondhand laptop was better than none. I just had an old desktop my mom had gotten a long time ago. Laptops looked more handy. Not everyone had one. Some people had iPads, but those were super-pricey, and if you were going to Midvale, you weren't going there with a lot of money to your name.

She started typing again, so I had to get to work, too.

I finished the last 2 chapters of the trigonometry book and had a great sense of accomplishment, that I was pretty sure I knew everything in it.

As I was about to close the book, though, I saw the ending pages were just tables and tables of numbers, the log base 10 and natural logs. I just stared at them a while, and looked for patterns. There was an ordering to them, it seemed, like they'd go up and down by certain amounts as you went along. I liked it. I thought it might be kind of handy to remember some of them, so I tried, but it seemed kind of hard so I stopped.

"What are you doing?"

"Uh..."

She was stern. "Spacing out is not part of this deal. I'm almost done with my tragedy work, and I'm going to need chemistry help soon. You know what you want to ask me about your math?" She looked at my book and said, "I thought you were in calc 3. That's a trig book."

"Yeah, I know, I just... " I had to come clean with her, at least sort of. "I ... I felt so out of sorts yesterday, I got really down in the dumps, like I didn't know what I needed to to fix it. It's like I wondered if I'd forgotten something important? So, I just got out my old textbook and started doing problems so I could make sure I really knew it."

She liked that answer, apparently. A small smile crept over her face. "And did it help?"

"Yeah, I think it really did, actually. Like, I'm pretty sure I know everything in this book now."

Her guffaw must have been audible to the children's book section. It wasn't a big library, but there were some moms in there with small kids so making some noise wasn't the end of the world. Her eyes were dismissive. "You do not."

I was honest, thinking over it, and said, "Uh, yeah. I ... I think I do, now."

Moving her laptop aside, she grabbed my book and started quizzing me on problems. Because I'd done them just the day before, all in a rush, I had 'em in my head, so I just answered. I didn't even need paper. She was feeding me the easy ones, though. Her laptop provided answers, and I was getting them correct, so far.

After we did a bunch of those, she skipped around some more and asked me the harder ones. I still remembered the problems, so I just repeated what I'd done the day before.

She got a puzzled look on her face. Making some decision, she flipped to the back and said with an evil grin, "Okay then, Mr. Smartypants, what's the log of 5.12?"

"Natural?"

"Base-10."

The number just kind of came to me. I'd just looked at that table. "Point, 7093... to four decimals, like that, but -- thinking -- there's more decimals. Have to think, though..."

"Shut up." She asked me some more, and I answered. I wasn't quite sure on one, it didn't seem right. It occurred to me that the book was wrong in the last decimal. It had rounded to a 7 instead of a 6. I said what I thought the book said. My hesitation made her slam the book shut and plop it on the table.

"Damnit!" Her demeanor had changed from disbelief to amusement. "You don't need me. You're playing with me."

"What?"

"You've memorized entire tables of log functions, you can do even the hardest problems in your head, and you ask me for help?"

"It's last year's stuff. I did okay in that class."

"No, you didn't."

"How would you know?"

She crossed her arms over her chest (under her boobs!) and leaned back in her chair, regarding me. "I checked."

"What?"

"We're both townies, I knew you in high school. I asked Mrs. Kale - I know her really well since I used to babysit for her son Josh. When you called, I wanted to know what I was getting myself into. So, I called her up."

Her asking seemed really funny to me, so I chuckled and asked, "What?"

"I asked. She said you were an okay student but you only ever did the minimum homework so you were lucky to get up to a B."

"Did you tell her why you wanted to know?"

"Of course. She didn't want to tell me, but I said I didn't want to waste time if you were a basket case. She laughed and told me, said it'd been long enough it couldn't be a secret."

I thought for a minute. My eyes drifted up, and around, and I realized I was staring at Carol's chest, so I had to blink and change where my eyes were pointed.

I looked up at her face. Her eyes were dawning realizations in motion. She just said, "Oh."

Not knowing what to say, I just stayed quiet for a moment or two. I went for it. "I like you."

She didn't react, just looked at me.

"I like you a lot. I think you're smart, and sexy, and interesting, and I like ... talking with you."

Her eyes were still regarding me, trying to figure this out. "You spent the entire summer doing trig and calc, because I'm into math - so you could get fabulous at it, and then ask me for help, didn't you."

I had no way of telling her the truth, but I really, really didn't want to lie. "Uh, not... quite... almost...but..."

Her head-shake of almost-no and eye-roll said she was impressed and still confused. "For.. me?"

I decided to play up the mystery. It seemed better than the truth of a silver box helping me, which I increasingly was figuring out had happened. I wasn't good enough at math to memorize log tables fast, for damn sure!

Trying to explain, though, I said, "There's other reasons, too, but, for now, yeah. I want to hang out with you? I want to be ... around you. I want to ..." I looked her in the eye, hopefully, smiling, "... to take walks with you, maybe to hold hands, or more, or, ... well, yes. I think that sums it up. I like you."

I didn't know what else to say, and she wasn't saying anything in reply, so I kept going. "You're fun to be around, and so am I? I think you might like it. I think you should give me a try."

I was pushing my luck, and I knew it.

Her reply was slower, like she was considering it, testing out an answer. "I should give you a try."

More thinking.

Her head tilted to the side and nodded slightly. "Yes. I should give you a try." She was convinced. She had decided something. "Right. Pack up."

She closed her laptop and started pushing things into her book bag. She was leaving.

I didn't want to be left alone, so I packed up, too.

Walking out of the library, book bags over our shoulders, we turned to walk down the sidewalk and I asked, "Uh..."

She stopped, turned, and looked at me, then smiled, and reached out her hand. I looked at it for a moment, then took it, and we walked. She seemed to be aiming somewhere.

"Where are we going?"

"My house."

"Oh."

I let that go for about 2 blocks. I knew where she lived.

She stopped me, pulling me up and facing me, close. She said, quietly, "This should be ... somewhere else, to do this, but... here will have to do." She leaned into me, and I knew I was going to kiss her.

I leaned in, closed my eyes, and our lips touched. A spark of connection went through me, through us, I was pretty sure, an emotional but sort-of-excitement thing? I liked it!

Breaking it after a minute or so -- a long kiss -- I cupped her face in my palm and looked her in the eye. Quietly, I said, "Thank you."

Her blush was cute, her face even more beautiful than I had thought before.

We turned and walked some more.

Getting to her house, we walked in and I was struck with a vague memory of having been there years before for a party since we both ran cross-country and track back then.

Coming in the open garage and into the kitchen, her mom was cooking some kind of soup. She introduced me again, and I got a wet handshake before having to dry it off on a dishtowel.

Her dad, too, came into the room and shook my hand, standing up briefly and nodding at the same time, man-to-man style. His words were something like, "Nice to meet you." This was immediately before he checked on when dinner would be ready and went back to some kind of football game on TV, yelling for someone to not be an effin' idiot and give it to the sweeper.

Carol and I went upstairs and she showed me the rooms. Her sister's room had her sister in it, to her surprise. "Oh! I didn't know you were home." To me she said, "Kevin, this is my older sister Kate, the pain in the butt of my family. Kate, this is Kevin."

Kate got up from the bed where she was reading something and we shook hands.

Kate was blonde, slightly taller than me (I'm slightly shorter than average) and had the look of a volleyball player - muscular but trim. She was wearing a t-shirt that didn't hide the fact that her bustline was bigger than would be handy on an athlete, I surmised in an instant. Her grip was strong, though.

As she looked at me and we said each other's names, her eyes softened a little and she acted like she was figuring something out. Looking at Carol, she said, "You're... dating, aren't you?"

Carol laughed and said, "Kate!"

Kate laughed suddenly, "Oh... Sorry. You just... seem..." Her eyes started looking faraway and Carol shunted me out the door and into her room.

After I got the tour of the chachkies in Carol's room, she sat down on the bed, which I copied, and we commenced kissing. Her touch was delightful, and while we first just leaned back and kissed, that turned into rolling over back and forth, trading who was on top.

Maybe half an hour later, the unlatched room door pushed open and Kate came in, wrapped in a towel and running a brush through her hair. "Hey." She seemed really preoccupied.

We looked up, startled.

"Mom said dinner's in about 20 minutes." The preoccupied look turned into almost being pensive, considering, but pained, too. As she moved, I could tell her back was hurting by the way her face clouded when she got to a leaning position. She elaborated, "Damn. Pulled something."

Carol, who was on top of me, rolled off to the far side against the wall to look at her sister. "Yes?"

"My back is hurting, and my right quad, too."

Kate said, simply, "Stretch it."

"How? You're always so good at this stuff, running shit."

Carol's condescending chuckle led into, "You have to actually bend over to stretch, dude. Legs should be shoulder wide, it helps."

The eye-rolls back and forth between sisters were fun to watch. I'd never had a sibling, but it kind of reminded me of how my friend Jim and I talked.

Kate put her brush down, and to make sure she had room in the small space, backed up against the door and bent over to touch her toes, putting the brush on the floor next to her. She did pretty well, touching her toes and moving to one side. She could almost kiss her knees, which in cross country you kind of have to do every time or your hamstrings start hurting and your running form looks funny from being what we call, 'tied-up'.

Carol scoffed, "No. Well, that might be good for your back, but ... probably not. Stand up, put your hands over your head, together." As Kate did that, I noticed the towel that was around her wasn't as secure as she might want it to be. This might be interesting. "Now, lean to one _side_, silly. No! Slower!..."

Kate did as she was told, and managed to make it down and back up before the towel left her, dropping to the floor.

For some reason, Kate didn't immediately move to pick it up, she just kept stretching.

Carol said, calmly but with some humor, "Kate. Your towel's gone missing. I can see your boobies. KEVIN can see your boobies."

Kate laughed at the same time I did, but she said, "It's okay. I trust him."

Carol looked at me, I could tell, so I looked at her, briefly. My eyes were probably saucers. Kate was beautiful. Her body was in great proportion, breasts full but with nipples on the upper sides, sort of an optimistic look, I'd always thought. Her stomach had bumps that were almost a six-pack, leading flatly down to her mons, which stood prominently, crowned with a close-cropped trapezoid of blonde fur.

Below that trapezoid was her open crotch, legs spread and her cleft plainly visible. Still, she moved to the side, stretching, her muscles tensing as she leaned and sighed with the effort and I think some pain.

I was having a blast!

Kate said, calmly, obviously ignoring her sister and the fact that she was starkers in front of us, "This does seem to help." She stood up straight again and twisted her back, pulling one elbow back with the back of her other hand, pushing her breasts around in the process, and twisting at the same time. "Yeah. That's better."

What wasn't to love?

Carol, deadpan, said, "Kate."

"Oh, yeah, my leg, too. How do I do that?" She moved to the center of the space, with just enough room to sit spread-legged on the floor and start stretching out. "But... This doesn't help my quad."

Carol's patience was both bemused and watching me in glances, I could see in my peripheral vision. She said, "Kate, sit on haunches, on your heels, then lean back. That's what does it, but... not... maybe ... instead..."

Kate moved quickly to try that position, even before Carol finished her comment with, "... face away from us." (which Kate ignored).

I got an appreciation of how her nether-lips looked, then, as Kate leaned back, arching back and trying to turn to one side.

Sharp rapping on the door and a voice that said out loud, "Knock! Knock!" This was followed by the door opening and Mrs. Kinskey's smiling face appearing. "Dinner is ..."

She looked from seeing Carol and myself on the bed, and down to see Kate leaning back, buck naked, posing in front of us stretching out. No words came out for a second, but her face kept the smile -- it didn't turn angry -- she just kind of nodded and said, "Oh. Right. Yes. Sorry to interrupt. Dinner is almost ready, time to wash up... but... come down when you're ready. Kevin, you're invited, too, of course."