Acting 101 Ch. 09: Christmas Break

"Yeah," I said again, with a sigh. "Look, I have known from minute one that I am performing the greatest balancing act in male-female relationship history. I'm terrified all the fucking time."

"Good," said my father. "You might get it to last for a while that way." He shut up for a bit. But I felt him fidgeting. "Look," he burst out at last. "This is so fucking wrong, but I'm just dying of curiosity. I am hereby not your father for the rest of this trip. I need to ask questions."

"Dad!"

"My name is Scott, Scott."

"I'm sorry, Scott," I said sweetly. "Have you lost your God-damned fucking mind?" I added at the top of my lungs.

My father just looked at me blandly, then 'Scott' asked calmly, "Are they hot? Is at least one of them hot? In fact... I would imagine they have to both be fairly equally attractive, or it would never even start. Am I right?" Christ, was my father babbling? Did I babble because of genetics?

To shut 'Scott' up, I simply said, "They are both out of my league."

"Really?" My father asked skeptically. "Your mother and I produced a couple of very good-looking kids, you know."

"I never knew awesome could come in such different forms," I sighed, before I could help myself.

My father chortled to himself with unseemly glee. Then he sobered. "Damn! Now I am the one in trouble."

"Huh?" I asked.

"I have an assignment, Scott! I am to return with the straight poop on this girl of yours. I cannot come back with a story that you are having three-way sex with supermodels!"

"I should fucking hope not!" I said swiftly. But I was secretly thrilled at the turn this conversation had just taken. Dad was bad enough, but I supposed that I could deal with him, especially if he was going to be so surprisingly enthusiastic. Mom would be Hell on Earth.

But since I was safe, I might as well tease the old man a little.

"To be fair," I drawled. "It is mostly not threesomes. Usually it is just the night with one or the other."

We ended up catching just one fish during the whole day. One. True, it was a beaut, but dinner would still have too much packaged ingredients for a proper camping trip. Oh well.

When we did straggle back into camp, scratched up and happy, though mostly fishless, I set to my usual task of making the fire. Dad cleaned the fish, a task that was unfairly easy that night. He finished quickly, then walked over to me.

"Here," he said, snapping his fingers. "Let me finish getting the fire started. You go drag your phone out of the truck and show me some pictures."

Whoa.

Phones were never opened on camping trips. This was an historical moment.

And no.

No way was he getting pictures. I was not letting him see either one of them. Especially Meredith. For a twenty-three year-old, it would require some epic preparation to ready your parents for the reveal of your thirty-five year-old smoke-show of a girlfriend. I was not good enough at CPR to let my father in on that secret, not out here in the wilderness.

Besides, neither of them were any of my parent's God-damned business.

"Sorry Dad," I said with elaborately insincere anguish in my voice. "I've told you too damned much already. Your son is keeping the actual details of his goddesses to himself."

The sonofabitch actually dropped the subject. I love my father.

The rest of the trip was routine. We caught so many fish the next day, we tossed most back, keeping just enough to eat for that night and the next.

The day we finally left, we did not get on the road home until very late. On our last full day in the woods, we had set aside our rods for rifles, and we had each gotten a boar. That meant that we had had to take a long break while we waited for the local game processor to butcher the kill and pack our coolers. I may feel obligated to eat what I kill (boar are pretty tasty, if you know how to cook them), but I don't feel obligated to clean and dress them. We let a pro do that. That's what money is for. But two pigs took them while, and we should have already been home by the time we got out of the backwoods and close enough to civilization for me to feel right about pulling out my phone.

There was a raft of texts from Steff.

The first were from the day before.

Steff: Hey! Welcome back to civilization!

Steff: Slay any war pigs?

Steff: Wait, are you still in the woods? Sorry

Then, from earlier that day:

Steff: Back in cell range yet?

Steff: You are late. All OK?

I snorted and typed a reply.

Me: Two war pigs slain for the good of the environment + dinner table.

Steff: Yummy, I guess....

Me: Heavy, too.

Steff: So, big news!

Steff: Got invited to tag along with a crowd to Miami Beach over New Year's

Steff: I fly back just in time for first class

Me: I will pray for your liver.

Steff: TY

My father just drove quietly while I went through all the texts. When I set down my phone, he drawled, "Catching up with all your women?"

"Just the one," I said carefully.

"Is she holding up without your masculine presence?"

"She's fine," I said firmly, eager to assert that I was not tangled in an ever-constricting tangle. "In fact, she is going to Miami Beach at the end of Christmas break."

"Really?" my father said. "And how are you feeling about that?" he asked. "Or are you now going to leave us early to go keep an eye on her?"

"No, Dad." I pondered my relationship with Steff for the umpteenth time. "Steff and I aren't possessive."

"Really," said my father, voice driving with sarcasm. "So if she hooks up with some drunken, muscle-bound Cubano in a hotel, you won't be, um, put out?"

"No."

"Sure."

"Look," I said, "that just isn't her M.O. And if she did choose to, who would I be to complain? I'm also with her... her best friend." That was close to a disastrous slip of the tongue.

My father just drove for a minute or so. "Alright, that's some new information. One girl is named 'Steff', and the other is Steff's best friend."

"Quit digging, Dad!"

My father just laughed his ass off.

When we were less than a half hour from home, my phone rang.

Meredith.

I kept the screen turned away from Dad, but I just couldn't resist answering. I wanted to hear her voice.

"Hello," I said happily, leaning away from the driver's side and pressing the phone tight to my ear.

"Hello darling! Are you alone?" asked Meredith quietly.

"Umm, no," I said. "My father and I got hung up getting onto the road home. We are still driving."

"Would you like to call me back?"

"No, I can hear you fine, thanks," I said casually, as if to a customer service agent.

"So, you are still in the car with your father? But he can't hear me?"

"That's right, actually. It's cool."

"Tell him I said hi," Meredith laughed.

"No way, man. I'm not going there," I said firmly. She laughed again.

My father, who hadn't seemed to be paying attention, leaned over slightly and asked, sotto voce, "Which one is that? 'Steff', or the best friend?"

I glared at Dad silently.

"So I can speak freely," said Meredith slowly, "but you can only listen and not reply...."

"I don't know if we have to do that," I replied slowly.

"Did you think about me at night, in the woods?" purred Meredith.

Gulp. "I think we can agree on that. Sure."

Meredith chuckled softly. "Which did you think about more? Our night in the hotel in the sky, or the next morning?"

"I'm not sure I can say," I said neutrally, but in shallow breath.

"I bet it was the morning," she went on softly. "The morning, where I and that beautiful penis of yours both got up before you. The morning, where when you did wake up, you found me impaled upon you, rising and falling slowly... softly... so damned happily."

I gulped quietly, unable to trust myself to say anything.

"And as your eyes opened, you lifted your hands up and grasped my breasts. You did it so softly, so gentlemanly, yet so hungrily. I rose and fell atop you faster, and pressed your hands deeper into my chest. I reveled in your amazing hardness as it drilled ecstasy into my insides, over, and over, and over again. You hips rose up off the bed, pressing yourself into me even deeper, all in time with my own gentle, wonderful ride."

I had to adjust the way the seatbelt pulled across my lap. It was the last thing I wanted to do, with my freaking father driving right next to me, but it was non-optional.

"The sun peeked through the clouds, stabbing into our room and across the bed, just as I felt your steely rod inside me swell even more. I gasped as I felt you fill me in burst after burst and my own ecstasy surged around you in return. I don't remember how long my back arched, my breasts pressing forward into your grasp, but I do remember collapsing atop you, and you taking my face in your hands and kissing me so wonderfully that I almost came again."

There was silence on the line for a while.

"At least, that is what I'm betting you thought about," Meredith went on briskly, as if she had just ticked off a shopping list. "Listen, I've got to go. This legal matter still won't resolve itself. Have a Merry Christmas!"

"Yeah," I croaked. "Have a Merry Christmas. I'll, um, talk to you soon!" Meredith hung up.

My father had mercy on me and maintained a respectful silence... For about two-tenths of a mile. "Did you just have phone sex while sitting next to me in my truck?" the bastard asked, oh so fucking casually."

"Dad!" I practically shrieked. "What? What are you talking about?"

My father took his eyes off the road to stare at me for an uncomfortably long time, as if we were two characters in front of a green screen on a TV show, instead of hurtling along the real Interstate in a two-ton vehicle. When he returned his eyes to the road, he said through a shit-eating grin, "Scott, I've been on the road more than half of my entire, very happy marriage. I know phone sex."

"Jesus, fuck, Dad! Too fucking much God-damned information!" I was going to be completely unable to look my mother in the eye when we got back home. Shit.

When my father's laughter subsided, he said more soberly. "So we need to get our stories straight... in terms of what I report to your mother."

"You said you weren't going to tell her!" I protested quickly.

"I have an assignment," he sighed. "She knows you are involved with someone, and I'm supposed to give her the low-down. What can I say that won't get us both in trouble?"

I sighed, too. The man was right. He usually was. "Okay," I said. "You can tell her that I have a fairly recent new girlfriend named Steff. She is 21 and a Junior. I am of the firm opinion that she is attractive. But I am still skittish about how things are going, and don't want to jinx it by talking about her with the family. That is all. No more."

Dad nodded judiciously. "Sounds good."

"It's all true," I said, "as far as it goes. That way neither one of us gets in trouble later. And you even got all of that out of me on your own."

"Actually, I only learned the ages of them just now," added Dad triumphantly.

It was not lying to let him go on believing that 'age' was plural....

"Anyway," he went on. "I think that is enough for her to accept, at least for this visit home." He nodded to himself. "No need to add anything about the second girl who, from all available evidence, gives phone sex nearly as excellently as your mother."

"Dad! That's it. Let me out. I'll walk the last 25 miles!"

The old man laughed the rest of the way home, while I tried to convince myself that the bastard hadn't deliberately scarred me mentally for life.

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