Carol Ch. 01

----

Carol heard later that Charlie had been hospitalized with a nervous breakdown. Too bad, she thought. Then her thoughts turned back to Larry.

Early that summer, Carol met Larry at her part-time job. He was ambitious where Charlie was laid-back, he was tall and athletic where Charlie was short and pudgy, and he always seemed to have money. She decided to go after him.

Carol was beautiful, and knew it; and Charlie had taught her how to flirt and tease and be seductive. She had learned well, and it wasn't long before she had Larry wrapped around her pretty finger.

True, Larry was a mediocre lover, and he was a little self-absorbed, and more than a little boring; but Carol felt sure that her future would be secure with him. It seemed like the thing to do.

It was a wonderful summer for her. The flirting, the dropped hints, the first date, the second, the kissing, more. Before the summer was out, they were engaged.

----

Not long after that, Charlie called. It had been a few months, so she listened.

Don and Lisa, some friends that they had often double-dated with, were getting married. They were still as totally committed to each other as Charlie and Carol had once been. At one time the four of them had talked about having a double wedding.

Neither Don nor Lisa had any idea what had happened between their friends that summer, and they had sent Charlie and Carol a joint invitation.

Did Carol want to go to the wedding with him?

Charlie sounded drained and a bit numb, but not particularly shaky or upset. And the bride and groom had been good friends. Carol thought.

"Sure," she finally said. "But no crying, OK?"

He promised.

It would be hard, but just to see her again.... It would be worth it.

They agreed that he would pick her up the following Sunday.

Charlie was, in fact, numb. He had only the week before found his reason not to kill himself, and now here was a chance to see her again. It would hurt, and terribly, but how could he not?

It was Carol.

That day came. It felt strange to ride in Charlie's car again--sitting by the passenger door, instead of snuggling up beside him as she used to do. They hardly spoke on their way to the ceremony.

Carol tried not to give Charlie the least opening to talk about how he felt. She didn't care, and she didn't want to know. It was his problem.

Charlie tried not to look at her too much. She looked as beautiful as he had ever seen her, but she had no smile for him. He drove in silence and tried to look at the road.

It was a predictably hippie-flavored service, in that fall of 1970. The bride and groom had written their own peculiar vows, which played more like speeches; and both were barefoot in the grass as they spoke them. After the service was completed, the newly married couple sought out their friends.

"So when are you guys doing it?" asked Don, the groom, his shoulder-length red hair billowing in the light breeze.

"There's not going to be a wedding, Don," Charlie said shortly. "We broke up."

Both Don and Lisa, his bride, were thunderstruck. "No!" "Can't be!" "Whose idea was it?"

Carol and Charlie looked at each other. He saw the plea in her eyes.

Without taking his eyes off Carol's, he said, slowly, "It was a..." He hesitated. "...a mutual decision."

No one else saw her small sigh of relief, but Charlie did. For a moment, he wondered why he had let her off the hook; but only for a moment.

He loved her. He would do anything to keep her from suffering the slightest discomfort. Even now.

She took his hand and squeezed it as they continued to talk to the happy pair. It felt like the hand of God.

On the way back, Carol found herself sliding over next to Charlie, as she always used to do. His arm went around her shoulder automatically, and then he felt his eyes filling.

That feels so right, he thought. I miss it so much.

He shook it off. He had promised; no crying. But the lump in his throat felt like a baseball. He tried to hang on.

"Thank you for what you said back there," she said quietly.

How he loved her voice. "They didn't need to know," he said. He was proud that his own voice didn't quite crack.

She rested her head on his shoulder, and once again he had to fight back the tears.

They passed a bridge abutment, then another. Carol did not notice them, but Charlie did.

Then--incredibly--her hand was in his lap. She was seeking something--and in very short order, she found it. She gave his sudden erection a squeeze through his pants, and he gasped. She kissed his cheek.

He felt fuzzy, dizzy, like reality had come unhooked.

He found his hand slipping down to her breast, and she undid a button so he could slip it inside her blouse and bra--all movements that were, to him, at once sweet, familiar, till that moment all but forgotten--and heartbreaking beyond word or thought. It had been so long.

As he touched her nipple, she nuzzled his shoulder. "Let's go to your apartment," she whispered.

----

Half an hour later:

"Oh, Chahlie, slide it in and out..."

How he loved her voice.

She was naked in his arms again, her own arms--and her legs--wrapped around him. She was moving her hips in that sweet familiar rhythm that he had taught her. His hurting-hard dick was being lovingly caressed by her warm, wet, slippery-squeezy pussy--his first, his best, and forever the only one he wanted or would ever want. Her lovely breasts were bare and pressed against his chest. Her mouth was locked to his, their tongues wrestling in ways that had no name, but that he knew like his own.

His cock, his arms, his mouth, were home. And so was he.

But it was as much hell as heaven. She had told him: "Charlie, this doesn't mean we're together again. I'm engaged to Larry, and we're getting married after we graduate. But I want you to make love to me."

He held her smooth bare ass in his hands and fucked her deep and cried into the pillow over her shoulder, praying she wouldn't feel his tears.

He didn't understand. He didn't want to. He only wanted to have this moment go on forever and ever--or die here and now, in her arms.

"Oh, Chahlie, I'm coming--I'm coming now--oh--now--"

He had taught her to say that too. She shivered in his arms, and her pussy was suddenly wetter, pulsing and fluttering around his plunging dick. She clung to him and shuddered, half a minute, maybe more, naked and beautiful and trembling under him in her creamy, cock-churning climax, still whimpering, "Now--now--oh, now... C-coming now... Oh, FUCK me, Chahlie... I'm coming all over your dick..."

Carol finally relaxed, but Charlie kept fucking her. She shivered and tensed again and moaned, "Oh, Chahlie... you're not going to stop, are you? You never do... Oh, Chahlie, you're HUGE... Oh, you're FUCKING me so GOOD--oh, Chahlie, I'm going to come AGAIN..."

He felt half insane, demented, torn between mind-breaking joy and hellish agony. She was here, he was fucking her, but she loved someone else.

He somehow remembered what to do and say. "What do you have on, Carol?" he asked breathlessly as he pumped his dick in her gushing, twitching pussy.

"Nothing," she gasped. "Nothing at all... I'm naked... All I have on is your dick... I'm naked for you to fuck..."

Another half an hour passed, the strangest and best and most painful of his life. It seemed to last forever, and at the same time to be over in seconds.

Charlie finally let it all out, sobbing and shaking, crying in her hair, inhaling its familiar, aching scent and keening in despair even as he was shooting his heart out into her wet, grasping, squeezing pussy.

She only held him after, stroking his back and saying nothing as he cried into her bare breasts. There was nothing to say.

Carol did not analyze what she had done. It felt good, and Charlie was a good fuck. She had not yet made love with Larry, and he was far away at his school anyway. She knew that Charlie would put up with anything just to be near her. If it hurt him too much, well, he didn't have to do it.

It felt good. It was fun. And Charlie was probably grateful for it anyway.

Why not?

They met every weekend to fuck, and little else. Charlie took what he could get.

When they talked, it only hurt him; Carol was transferring to another college in January, to be with Larry. When she spoke, she talked about him.

He was not allowed to speak of his pain and how he missed her love. She would frown and refuse to comment, sitting in silence and not looking at him.

There wasn't much to talk about but fucking, and that didn't require much talk.

She refused to pose for him any more, as she once had. She knew he liked that, but what of it? She wasn't there because she wanted to make him happy. That didn't matter much. He should be happy just to be with her, anyway, let alone to be allowed to fuck her.

She didn't seem to be aware of his feelings at all, or care that he had any.

Once, in the car, he said that the past one had been the worst summer of his life. In reply, she chirped happily, "It was the best summer of mine! I met Larry!"

He could only look at her. She looked back, utterly oblivious. "What?" she said. "It was!"

Another time, he was standing in her apartment near their college, where she had returned till January. He had just driven her back after two days of nonstop fucking. They were chatting for a moment before he drove home, talking of friends still at the college that he had not seen since May.

And the phone rang. It was Larry.

"Hello, love!" she said, in the sweet and intimate tone she had once used when speaking to him. She had called him that, once, too--"love."

He was standing right in front of her, and she spoke words of love and passion to another as if he were not even there.

He tried to wave at her as he left, but she did not even acknowledge his leaving. She giggled and whispered "Ooo, love, I can't wait!" into the phone.

As far as Carol was concerned, Charlie did not exist. He left with another halfhearted, unacknowledged wave.

He often drove home crying. That day, he did not cry; but his face was that of a man long dead.

He understood the gift, if gift it was, that he had been given him. They would make love till January came; then he would go back into the cold and the dark, and she would be with Larry.

The last day finally came. A week before Christmas, it was; the next day, Carol would go home for the holidays, and from there to her new school and into Larry's arms.

Charlie fucked her like a man eats his last meal. He savored every sigh, every whimper, every touch of his tongue on her nipple or her clit, every kiss and touch and caress. He tried, so hard, to fix every detail in his mind; but afterward, he could hardly remember anything.

He thought later, and for a very, very long time, that it was the last hour that he had really been alive.

He drove home, thinking:

I'll never make love to her again.

He was wrong; but it would be twenty-seven years before it happened.

(To be continued)