And I'm Pulling Out of Here to Win

"I wasn't looking for pity, I promise," I told her, and it was true. Partying wasn't and isn't my thing. Much later, in the spring of '97 I think, I had a pretty good run clubhopping with my then-current clutch of friends for a few months. But even then I was mostly just along for the camaraderie and the beer, and the token slow dance just before the place shut down.

"I didn't say I was pitying you!" Missy exclaimed. "If anything, I envy you. Believe me, hanging out with Matt and Chris wasn't that great!"

"I'll bet it was for them," I said, knowing how I'd seen them both look at her over the years.

"You don't think I ever let them see me like this, or touch me like this?" She reached back and gently took my right arm from around her back and placed my hand between her legs. "Never, if you're wondering. I had sex before you, but not with them."

My heart was sailing again as I caressed her vulva and enjoyed her groans of approval. "You know I don't care what you did before," I whispered. "I hope you know that, anyway."

"I'm so glad I asked you for help with calculus," she said, just before kissing me. And as usual, I felt a chill despite the warm summer air. It would have been so easy to come clean back in February or March! Why would she have cared back then if Craig was helping me first before I helped her? But with her tongue in my mouth and my fingers in her pussy, I was able to stop worrying about that -- for the moment.

I could feel her response to my caresses down below as much as I could hear them. "Calculus is so sexy, you nerd!" she grunted as I worked her up towards an orgasm. "God, you're so good at that!" It took me a second to recall what she meant by "that". Before I could respond, she kissed me again and kept her mouth clamped on mine for some time, breaking it off for a deep breath only when she came. For good measure, she threw her arms around me again and we toppled over into the water.

We shared a laugh after coming up for air, but then I couldn't help myself. "Seriously, Missy, what made you bring up calculus of all things while I'm fingerfucking you?"

"Because it's why we're here!" she said. "If I hadn't noticed you always getting the answers in class and asked you for help when I was slipping, we wouldn't have gotten to be friends at just the right time -- or wrong time, I guess." That much, at least, was true.

But she wasn't done. "You just seemed like the one to ask, you always seemed to know the answers when Mrs. Goran tried to stump us. And always so willing to meet me at the library after school and take all the time I needed to work on the problem sets. Really, Joseph, ever since we were little I knew you were brilliant, even back when you were a slacker."

Well, of course I was willing to meet her and help out. Why wouldn't I be when Craig was always so happy to help me? Craig, my mother's boyfriend, was an engineer and also a guy in the worst sense of the term. So he knew math, and he knew how to manipulate women, and he was more than willing to help me with math to get on my good side and impress Mom. It had worked, and I'd sold my soul to be able to help Missy. At least that's how I saw it from my teenage angst-ridden point of view that past winter and spring.

Missy had never been the wiser, not even the one time she had met Craig, on prom night. Craig had let me have his '82 Oldsmobile for the occasion when Missy's father wouldn't let her near his BMW, and she had thanked him very politely while the bastard had shaken her hand and done his best to catch a glimpse down her dress. Mom hadn't noticed and Missy had done a great job of pretending not to, but I know what I saw. We'd paid him back by parking down behind the old abandoned textile mills downtown after the dance and christening his backseat. Some air freshener had maybe covered up the smell, maybe not, but Craig had known better than to complain.

So many times I could have confessed through the summer, but instead it had just reared its head now and then and I had always chickened out. The telltale heart? The telltale math! I could, I mused now, just tell her and get it over with. After all, my chances of changing her mind were getting more miniscule by the minute now, and what was there to lose but my guilt?

Just as I had finally resolved to come clean, Missy let out a snort of laughter. "And I suppose it's all because of how I looked at the fifties dance?"

Relieved, I let go of the calculus issue for the moment. "I guess that, plus I was hoping you might tell Jenn what a nice guy I was and what she'd thrown away."

"She knew, Joseph, I'm pretty sure she did. She just didn't care. She cares about herself and that's it."

"Did she know about Jeff and Matt and their prank, or was she just being her social butterfly self with me?"

"Both, I think," Missy said. "Really, she liked you, Joseph. As much as she liked anyone besides herself, that is. We all did, actually, all us girls. You were so polite and sweet whenever you managed to say anything. She never would have gone out with you, but she liked you as a friend."

"Good to know."

"Is it? When she could've hurt you like she hurt me, the first time you got on her bad side?"

"Good point," I said.

"Now, enough about her," Missy declared. "Let's swim!" And at long last she did kick back into the water.

I stood there for an extra moment, drinking in the beautiful sight of her body and her graceful strokes, and then followed her lead. We didn't swim long, probably because I had just whetted both her appetite and mine for more fun. But it was long enough to reflect, as I cut through the water, on all she had told me about her ex-friends and all they had done to both of us and how lucky we both were to be without them now, and those pleasant days at the library before she'd gotten sick, and the awful day the rumor had reached her ears and how quickly she'd found herself ostracized, and how I had ended up the hero without even really trying to be -- I was just the one who was there to hold her while she cried and reassure her that I believed her and didn't care even if it had been true, and how naturally one thing had led to another after that. The day at the lake on spring break, and showering together for the first time afterward but not actually sleeping together that night, and then the first time we did do it a week or two later, and all the stolen moments over the summer in my rickety little bed while Mom was out with Craig...all because I had managed to look smart in math class, when in reality I was just a little better at asking for help. And she didn't know.

Missy had actually beaten me by three points on the final, but I was perfectly fine with that. In fact, it had made me feel better about my little fraud with Craig. We'd both ended up with a B for the year. Now once again I resolved that she did not need to know -- especially now that I likely was never going to see her again anyway -- that I'd been going to Craig for help, always just one homework ahead of what we were doing in class. I couldn't help laughing a bit about that as we swam back and forth on opposite sides of the pool. But it also made me feel a little manipulative, and by the time Missy stopped in the shallow end and waved to let me know she was done, I was once again thinking maybe I ought to tell her. She had, after all, been honest with me about Jenn and the guys.

Just as I was about to do that, though, Missy steered the conversation in another direction entirely. As soon as I had set my feet on the pool floor and waded over to her, she grabbed me by my dick -- now soft as I'd been concentrating on swimming -- and whispered, "Go lie down in a deck chair." The poolside was lined with them.

"Uh, okay, Missy, but..."

"But nothing! Go dry off and lie down! Now!" She gave me a squeeze that had me getting hard again in no time, and I decided it could wait. I hoisted myself out of the pool and walked over to the table by the poolhouse where we had left our towels and clothes. I padded myself off as best I could, and almost took a seat on that side of the pool, but thought better of it and walked around to the other side. It offered a better view of the trees and the starry sky, and the knowing wink of our neighbors' lights off in the distance.

I had just enough time to settle myself on the deck chair when Missy, arrived, also dried off and with her hair already beginning to spring back into its wild natural state. Tossing her towel on the next chair, she straddled me and sat on my belly, and stretched out on top of me, clamping my hard cock between her thighs. A fleeting thought roared through my mind that we didn't want to get arrested just before we left for college, but we hadn't been caught yet, after all. With that comforting thought in mind, I put my arms around her and rubbed her back while she bobbed up and down on top of me, her breasts rubbing my chest in the most delightful way. "Oh, that's beautiful," I whispered. "Don't stop!"

"Of course not!" she cooed, and she leaned in and nibbled at my neck for a bit while I rubbed her back and behind and enjoyed the sensation of her body against mine. We fondled one another mostly in silence for a few minutes, and I had to bite my tongue a couple of times when the sensation became too much...until I noticed Missy wasn't bothering with trying to keep quiet, so I might as well not either. It was just about the time I made up my mind about that when she pushed herself back up and took me in both hands, and before I knew it I was enveloped in her warm, wet pussy. "So good inside me!" she whispered.

"Me too!" It was all I could muster as I savored the beautiful sensation.

Once she had me trapped so marvellously inside her, she leaned back down over me and we shared another kiss as she began humping me. We had both gotten a lot better at all that over the summer, and the shyness and inexperience of youth was absolutely a thing of the past as I gazed up at the stars and enjoyed the night air and exulted in every sensation her body offered.

There was one line we had never crossed, and I didn't even realize I was about to do it until it was too late and the words were already out of my mouth. "I love you, Missy!"

"Love you too!" she said between heavy breaths.

Once we'd both said it, our eyes met in surprise and we both knew we'd have to talk about that later. But now wasn't the time, not as Missy pushed me into an absolutely delightful orgasm that had me terrified for a moment that we'd be discovered. I could see in her eyes that she was spooked as well, but it was too late for her to hold back and she came roaring just after me.

We couldn't resist a moment of afterglow, which was just enough time for my conscience to catch up with me again. "Listen, Missy," I said...but before I could finish, a car door slammed somewhere nearby.

Missy pulled herself off me and stood up. "We'd better get inside!" she said. I responded only with a quick nod, and jumped up to follow her back around the pool to our clothes. We pulled them back on hurriedly, Missy not bothering with her bra, and then scurried back around the poolhouse to the far-side entryway by the basketball court.

There was, sure enough, a man walking back to the building next to mine from where he'd parked his car. But he took no notice of us as we walked breathlessly hand in hand back to my building. We both said nothing until we were safely back inside Mom's condo. After confirming that she wasn't home, we both dissolved into relieved laughter and clung to one another for a good five minutes in the kitchen.

"I can't believe we got away with that!" I said.

"It'll always be a great memory, won't it!" Missy said.

"Sure will. Want to shower?"

"Yes," she said. "But...Joseph, what you said out there?"

"You said it too!"

"Yes, and it's true. But we shouldn't have said it, should we?"

"What's done is done."

"I guess so. But..."

"I know, Missy, you still don't want to keep in touch after tomorrow."

"It's not that I don't want to, Joseph, it's..."

"I get it. No need to explain." With that, I was off to the bathroom. I didn't need to hear it yet again, after all. And she didn't need to know my secret either.

Missy followed me to the shower. Knowing this truly was the last time, I treated the opportunity like the treasured memory-in-the-making that it was. I washed her legs up and down, a few times, enjoying the sight of her bush at my eye level as I did, and then I shampooed that with a gentle flair that we both enjoyed. I gave her back a quick wash, then reached around front and made sure not one inch of her breasts went without a nice soft scrub of my soapy hands. Once I'd rinsed them off, I kissed both her nipples until they were hard again, perhaps to her frustration since we were too tired to make love again, but she showed every sign of enjoying it.

"My sister said she'd be by around nine," Missy told me as I patted her dry after the shower. "That'll give us time to get our story straight about what I was up to with her friends. I owe her a big favor, don't I?"

"We both do," I agreed.

"Her and calculus," Missy said with a laugh, now taking the towel to dry me off. With that reminder, I figured this was my last chance to do the honest thing. But before I could find the words to explain, she added, "Let's get up early so we can make love one more time before I leave, okay?"

"Well, if you insist," I joked. She punched me playfully on the arm, and once again I lost my resolve to share my little secret.

We were both out cold nearly as soon as our heads hit the pillow, with visions of one last encounter tantalizing me as I drifted off.

"Joseph! Joseph, you get up right now!"

I rolled over and told myself it was just a nightmare, not really my mother standing over my bed and hollering at me, and waited for that moment of bliss when you realize it was only a dream. But Mom's angry voice and her jostling my shoulder didn't vanish into the mist like a nightmare does, and Missy wasn't lying there at my side to comfort me. Rather, she was standing behind Mom, swathed in my bathrobe and looking equal parts guilty and humiliated. Worst of all, she was clutching Craig's calculus book.

On seeing I was awake, Mom dug her nails into my bare shoulder hard enough to draw blood, and yanked me upward. "Get out of bed, you, right this instant!" she growled, tearing back the sheets and not seeming to notice or care that I was naked. I hurriedly gathered the discarded sheet around me like a loincloth, and backed as far as I could into the corner. "I come in to offer to make you French toast for your going-away breakfast, and this is what I find?! Just how long have the two of you been up to this, anyway?!"

"None of your business, Mom, I'm eighteen!" I was just as devoid of a filter at that instant as I was of clothes.

Mom slapped me across the face and I tumbled back onto the bed, where I curled up in a defensive position and braced for another blow. There wasn't one, but she wasn't done yelling. "How dare you talk to me like that, young man?! My home, my rules, and I have a right to know everything, goddammit!"

"Mrs. Chadwick, please!" Missy piped up behind her, a look of panic on her face that I had never seen before, not even back in February. Once again I was excruciatingly aware of the math book in her hands - had she opened it?

"You stay out of this, you little slut!" Mom snapped. Turning back to me, she went on, "I was ever so happy to have you help her with everything Craig taught you and -"

"Mom!" Now I was more furious than scared, and I jumped up off the bed and glared at her.

"Oh, you wanted Missy to think you were the math genius in the family? Don't worry, moron, I've told her all about Craig and how hard he worked to get everything through your thick head! I've even shown her his textbook, and I can see she enjoyed reading his notes to you about how the equations work." Turning back to Missy, she asked, "Did some of those shortcuts sound familiar, dear?!"

Missy responded only with a dejected look at me, and I knew the game was up.

Mom grabbed her arm. "You're coming to my room to get dressed, and then I'm going to drive you home and tell your parents everything."

"Mrs. Chadwick, no! Please!" Missy begged. "We're never going to see each other again anyway, we talked about it last night!"

"I'll bet you talked about plenty of things last night," Mom grumbled, pulling Missy along with her.

I got dressed in tears, but I managed to pull myself together in time to go out and at least get a last look at Missy before Mom dragged her away. I told myself at least now there was no doubt about anything - it was over for sure, and I no longer had any secrets to feel guilty about, with Missy or with Mom. I'd be gone for good in about six hours, I'd be Missy's last pleasant memory of our cruddy hometown, and I was no longer a virgin. Nevertheless, I think the look I gave the door could have curdled milk.

It opened before too long, and Missy followed Mom out, still clutching the cursed textbook in one hand. "Missy begged me to let her write her goodbye message in Craig's book," Mom declared icily. "I hope you'll learn your lesson every time you use the book from now on."

I very nearly laughed through my rage. Mom knew - or should have known - I was planning on majoring in English or French and I had no intention of ever opening a calculus book again. But there was no use in trying to explain anything now.

Mom stood back just far enough for Missy to hand me the book. "Don't look until you get to New York," she whispered in my ear as she handed it to me.

"Uh, okay!" I replied through my bewilderment, wondering why she didn't just call me a fraud and a liar and tell me to go to hell already. It wasn't as though Mom could have become even angrier than she already was, and it was Missy's last chance to say it in person. That she didn't made me that much more certain that she had written me a nasty kiss-off in the math book. Then Mom shoved her out the door and followed with a dirty look back at me, and they were gone.

I decided not to bring the book to New York at all. Who needed that when I needed to focus on my studies and we weren't going to see each other ever again anyway? I packed it away in the deepest reaches of my closet, to be dealt with some other time when I'd gotten Missy out of my system just like I had Jenn.

Just as she had predicted, we never did see each other again. Even that much-maligned chance meeting on the street at Christmas never happened, I never heard if she got to Paris or Asia, and I have no idea where she might be now. I never even heard what her parents had to say about our last night together.

I, however, did get to Asia for a stint teaching English for a few years after NYU, before coming back to the States to go back to grad school in California. I was halfway through my degree out there when my mother bought a house and, while moving out, she packed up all that was leftover in my old room and shipped it out to me. By then, about eight years after that hot August night, Missy was a pleasant but dim memory, just one of those pretty faces that floated across my mind when I'd had too much to drink, and a cautionary tale about always being upfront about everything in a relationship. Without even a single letter in all those years and no clue where she was, I was no longer afraid to see what she had scribbled down that morning. So when I unpacked the boxes Mom had sent and found Craig's calculus book, it was only with a wry sense of remember-when that I opened the cover to see what horrible things she might have jotted down when she'd discovered my terrible secret.