Charlie and Mindy Bk. 04 Ch. 04

I held her against me, and she wriggled in close. She emitted a gentle sigh of love and comfort as she relaxed against me.

And, softly, gently, she whispered, "Big Brother and Little Sister."

As softly, as gently, I whispered back, "Best friends and lovers."

Together, still softly, still gently, but with firm conviction, we said together, "Now and always."

She turned, forcing my arm down onto the mattress, reached out, and turned off the light. Then she came back to my embrace and she whispered, "I love you so much." All of her love and her remarkable determination underlay those words

I tried to put every bit of my own love and determination into it as I whispered back the reply, "I love you even more."

She felt my head move as I bent to kiss her again, and her lips came to meet mine. Our arms tightened about each other as we kissed each other goodnight.

Our heads returned to their resting places. Her soft feminine body relaxed against me, and again I felt her breathing and her heartbeat against me. And then, I was asleep.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was a little after three that morning when I woke up needing to unload the two-thirds of a bottle of wine I'd drunk. That was a Good Thing, because we'd forgotten to set the clock—which had wound down shortly after we'd left. I slipped out of bed without disturbing Mindy, pulled on my pants, and took the clock with me into the bathroom. There, one eye closed to retain some night vision, I turned on the light, peed, and wound and set both the clock and its alarm.

Then I turned off the bathroom light and tiptoed back to the bedroom. I put the now-set alarm clock on the night table near my side of the bed and crept back in. As I slid under the covers, Mindy awoke just enough to moan and back up to spoon against me. Arm under her pillow, I cradled her head. I reached around her with my other arm, and I found her boob—which I cupped and squeezed gently. Meanwhile, my cock, now half hard, slid between the cheeks of her ass to fit up against her groin between her thighs. She was still asleep, but she wiggled back against me and moaned lightly again. I kissed the back of her neck gently, and her hips rocked a bit. I squeezed her tit lightly again, and her hips rocked a bit more. But her breathing remained the slow steady breathing of someone fast asleep. What, I wondered, do women have in place of wet dreams? I pondered that question a bit while I enjoyed the feel of Mindy's soft, warm, naked little body against me.

When I fell asleep, I'd just about decided that, whatever they had, those things were probably more convenient, being less messy, than wet dreams.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The clock went off at seven. I woke up on my side, facing it. It was an easy reach, and it took little motion or effort to turn it off. And then I realized that Mindy was behind me, spooning up against me. As my head returned to the pillow so that I could gather my tattered consciousness, I felt her little arm around my waist, squeezing me.

She hummed a little waking-up-and-not-very-happy-about-it moan. The moan ended, and her grip tightened a bit. I wiggled back against her, and I felt the hot moisture of her mouth on my spine between my shoulder blades. My body responded with an involuntary quiver.

"I'm still in love," came a whisper from behind me.

"Me, too," I responded as I reached back and stroked the naked hip I found behind me.

She loosened her grip and reached down across my belly to grasp the morning wood I hadn't yet realized I had. A giggle came from behind me. At least, I think it was a giggle. It sounded more like a half-awake snort.

"Another boner!" she said. "I can't imagine what it's like to have one of these every morning." She stroked it slowly two or three times.

"Just keep that up," I said—a little muzzily, "and you're going to find out what it's like to be given one this morning."

Noises were coming from the bathroom and the kitchen; the twins were up.

"Mmmm," she mumbled. "I think I'd like that. But I have to pee, and Buck and Steph are up and about. We'd better get up, too, or we'll be late for class."

She gave three quick pumps, and then let my shaft go. I turned back to face her, and I put my arm around her. My hard-on slid between her thighs and came to rest against her cleft. I looked into her sleepy eyes. "You shouldn't ask for things you don't want," I said.

"Oh, but I do want it!" she smiled at me. "Later."

She ran her hand ran lightly up and down my back, giving me goose bumps. I quivered again, and kissed her. She held me close and kissed me back.

When the kiss ended, she wiggled out of my grasp and out of the bed. She stood there beside the bed, naked, smiling at me, and she whispered, "I'm so in love with my Charlie."

I looked back at her and whispered back, "And I'm so in love with my Mindy."

She threw on a shirt and a pair of jeans, and, as she did so, we heard someone leave the bathroom. A pair of masculine-sounding feet tromped past our bedroom door and into the twins' room. Mindy, still smiling, blew a kiss to me and vanished out into the hall, closing the door behind her.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was about a quarter to eight when the other three of us managed to drag ourselves to the breakfast Buck had fixed. After we ate, we all set off together toward the campus. We shared some of our morning classes, but we eventually all went our separate ways. And then it was late afternoon, as I was heading across the campus to return to my own house, when I saw Mindy again.

She'd known when my last class of the day was over, and where I'd be headed. I saw her coming. She had a stack of unopened mail in her hand, and I knew instantly by the way she held herself that something wasn't right. When she got closer, I could see that she'd been crying. And when she got closer still, I saw that her tears were still flowing.

There were people about; many of them must have known us. But I reckoned that there's nothing wrong with a big brother taking his crying little sister into his arms to comfort her, so that's what I did.

We stood there for a while, holding each other, without speaking. When her sobbing had subsided, she backed away and, still wordlessly, she handed me one of the envelopes she'd been carrying. She'd opened it, and I saw immediately the reason for her behavior. It had a Colombian stamp on it. The postmark date was "14.3.88," and it was addressed to both of us at Mindy's dorm, in Mom's handwriting. She must have mailed it during the last few hours of her life.

Quickly, I pulled the letter out of the envelope. That inconvenient lump grew again in my throat as I read it. Most of what Mom had written was a pretty standard tourist letter of the "Having a good time; wish you were here" variety. But the last paragraph was different.

That paragraph referred, without mentioning any content, to the conversations we'd had with her the night before we'd come back to school—the conversations that had resulted when she'd figured out that Mindy and I were lovers and confronted us about it.

Knowing that a letter could fall into the wrong hands, she hadn't been explicit about what those conversations were about—but Mindy and I both knew what she meant. A few days after meeting Dad in South America, she said, she had told him about those conversations. As she'd predicted, he wasn't happy. But, as she'd promised us, he accepted our choices and supported us in them. And, in her final sentence, she told us that he'd come to those latter decisions on his own—because of his love for us and not because of his love for her.

I'd been headed for home to get supper, and I'd thought Mindy would be headed for her dorm to get hers. But as I looked into her teary eyes, a tear escaped from one of my own eyes. And I knew neither my house—shared with three other men—nor the dorm would be the right place for us.

"Let's go to the twins' place," I suggested.

She looked up at me. The clouds on her face cleared a bit, and the sun shone through—but dimly. "Yes," she said. "I think that's what we should do."

They knew our deepest secrets, and we knew theirs. We could share anything with them. And, even when they were with us, they knew how to respect any privacy we might need. They had told us that we should think of their house as ours, and this was the moment when we realized that we really did feel at home there.

They saw when we arrived that we were in a somber mood. Steph hugged me. Buck hugged Mindy, and I could see that they were then about to give us plenty of space.

But I thought they should know about this development, so before they could leave us to ourselves, I said, "We need to tell you what's going on with us. Can we all sit down in the living room?"

They looked at each other, and I saw them nod slightly, a bit puzzled but pleased that we wanted to share our troubles with them. We all trooped into the living room, where Mindy and I took our usual seats on the couch, Buck sat in his easy chair, and Steph sat on Buck. They looked at us expectantly.

I squeezed Mindy to me, and she put her arm around me and leaned her head against me. Then I launched into the story. The twins already knew about how Mom had discovered our relationship and confronted us just before we'd returned to school. Once I'd reminded them about that confrontation and Mom's subsequent acceptance of her children's love for each other, I handed them the letter, pointing at the last paragraph.

Together, they read it. Then they looked at each other and got up from where they sat. They both came to us, and, wordlessly, we shared a four-way squeeze.

When we separated after that squeeze, Steph looked at us and said, "What loving parents they were."

Buck took Mindy into his arms and held her tightly. Steph flowed against me and held me, too. No more words were necessary.

When those hugs ended, the lump in my throat had mostly receded. Mindy had mostly regained her composure. I saw the wheels turning in Steph's head, and I hastened to forestall a dinner invitation—I knew how generous the twins were. But I also knew that they were on a limited budget.

"We'd like to take the two of you out for dinner this evening," I said to them. I glanced at Mindy and saw surprised approval in her eyes. I continued, "And, don't forget, we have a car now, so we aren't limited to something within easy walking distance. How about Philippe's?"

The twins, too, were surprised—and pleased. Philippe's was the best place in town—though it was a small town and that didn't mean a whole lot. Still, it meant that we had a good, and moderately expensive, dinner that night. The main drawback was that we weren't old enough to order wine.

When we got home, we got back into the grind of studying. We spent a few hours at that. When we'd had enough of studying for one night, the four of us shared another bottle of white wine. And then, Mindy and I having consulted wordlessly with each other, the two of us retired to "our" bedroom while Buck and Steph retired to theirs.

The two of us were now pretty much back to ourselves. Once in our bedroom, we embraced and shared a lengthy, delicious kiss. My pants again began to bulge, and before long, we were naked, together, in bed—making love joyfully.

And then we lay, sated, naked in each other's arms. Mindy's love surrounded me, and I knew no more that night.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When morning arrived, I managed to haul my ass out of bed and get dressed even before Buck did. By the time he made his way into the kitchen, I had breakfast for the four of us half ready.

"What a deal!" he said, as he busied himself setting the table.

Not much later, the four of us, all now back to normal and in good spirits, sat around the table engaging in inconsequential breakfast chatter—just as we always did on the not infrequent occasions when Mindy and I spent the night there.

After breakfast, Mindy, Buck, and I went back to our bedrooms to gather the things we'd need for classes that day. Steph, who had no classes until the calculus class that Mindy and I shared with her later that morning, began puttering around the house—dusting this, polishing that, straightening the other.

Mindy and I had just come out of our room together, and we were waiting in the hall for Buck, so that the three of us could walk to the campus together, when Steph called us from the foyer.

"Mindy! Charlie!" she yelled. "Here's a stack of unopened mail addressed to Mindy."

Mindy looked at me, said, "It must be the rest of the mail that arrived while we were gone. I never got past Mom's letter yesterday, and I must have dropped it all when Buck hugged me and I hugged him back." She headed for Steph's voice. I remained in the hall, waiting for Buck.

A minute later, Mindy's joyful whoop resounded throughout the house. Screw waiting for Buck, I said to myself, and I raced toward the front door to see what was going on.

I found Mindy elated, glowing, bouncing up and down. She held a letter that she immediately thrust at me. It bore a familiar red and green logo—the Mountain Odyssey Learning School's logo. It was dated March 30, 1988, and, after the "Dear Melinda," it began,

"Thank you for your application and registration fee. This is your official acceptance for the Wind River Wilderness Course. This course will begin 6/30/88 and finish 7/30/88."

There was more. Mindy had to have a physical examination. (By a doctor—not one of the physical examinations I frequently, not to mention happily, gave her.) There were forms to be filled out, information to be submitted, and dollars to be paid. But the second sentence of that letter was the most important part. And it fully explained Mindy's emotional state.

I'd barely had time to read that first paragraph, when Mindy, who'd kept on bouncing after she'd handed me the letter, leapt at me. Her little arms went around my neck, her legs wrapped around my hips, throwing all of her weight onto me. She squeezed me with all of her strength, crowing "They accepted me! They accepted me!" repeatedly.

Meanwhile, Steph, who had been standing there bemusedly, picked up the letter Mindy had knocked out of my hand. She looked questioningly at me. Somehow, I managed to look back at her through the energy my little sister was generating. I smiled at her, and nodded. Seeing that I approved, she started reading the letter. She'd gotten through enough of it to understand Mindy's reaction when Buck arrived. She handed him the letter and looked, grinning at the two of us.

Steph and Buck had heard about MOLS, and my experience with them, when we'd explained to them how Mindy and I had fallen in love with each other when we'd hiked alone together in the wilderness of the Wind River Mountains. They knew of Mindy's desire to take one of their courses, and of the deal with Mom and Dad that required Mindy to do her best during her first year of college (as if she would do otherwise!) and required me to bring home more A's than B's, with no lower grades. So the letter was all that they needed to understand the fit of joy Mindy was having. When I finally pried her little body off of me, they took turns hugging her in congratulation.

Then Buck looked at me and said, "You're off the hook, you know. You don't have to study so hard now."

I was taken by surprise at the thought; I stared at him for a moment. "No…" I said slowly, as the realization sank in. "…I don't."

I thought about it. And I came to the only possible conclusion. I continued, "But a promise is a promise. I told Mom and Dad I would do something, and I'll do what I told them I would." I didn't say so, but it helped that I'd come to enjoy studying and learning. For one thing, the Fundamental Code of Manly Behavior prohibited me from making such an admission.

But my main consideration was that, after all, a promise is a promise. I grew up a bit more that morning: I remembered that I had told them, "I'll do it," and I knew that—even if I had found it onerous—I would have kept my given word.

Steph looked at me. "You're a good man, Charlie," she said. "A good man." And she stepped up to me, took me into her arms, and hugged me. As I hugged her back, I looked over her shoulder at Buck. He smiled and nodded his head. He approved, but he said no more. The Fundamental Code applied to him, too.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After classes, I dropped Mindy off at her dorm, where she planned to spend the night. I returned to the house I shared with George—where I planned to spend the night. For one thing, my rent was way overdue, and I needed to find out whether George had covered it or not. If he had, I would pay him back, and if he hadn't, I needed to.

Frank and Earl, who shared the first floor of the house, weren't home—but George was. He'd talked to the landlord, who had been willing to defer my share of the rent until I returned. That meant, naturally, that I needed to find Ken soon and pony up. (Not that that was a problem—I no longer had my usual worries about where the money was going to come from.)

George and I chatted a bit, and I could see that something was on his mind. At last, he asked, "Do you remember Tom Cech, the chemist who spoke here last November? I went to a reception for him that afternoon."

"I don't remember the guy's name, but I remember that you went to a reception for some famous chemist. It was earlier on the day The Doberman attacked Mindy and me." I said. I didn't add that I remembered George's absence well because Mindy and I had made good use of it to have a spectacular love-making session in my bed.

"I'm interested," George went on, "in the chemistry of RNA—which is what he works on. He's at Colorado University in Boulder, and I've been corresponding with him since he was here."

"Yes…" I said. George was chemistry major and an A student. Suddenly, I had a feeling for where this conversation was going.

He continued, "He's found some money to help me through school if I move to CU to study under him. So I'm transferring there next year. I hate to break up a partnership that's worked well, but I won't be here next fall. This is a great chance to study what I want to study under a world-class expert in the field. I'm hoping that I can do graduate work under him."

I hated to break up our partnership, too. But not as much as I liked the opportunity that George had just opened up. My new partnership with Mindy certainly took precedence over my old friendship—close as it was—with George. And Frank and Earl were to be graduated that spring, so the entire house was up for grabs for the coming fall. I was pretty sure that Mindy, Steph, Buck, and I could strike a deal with Ken Cook, the landlord, that would let Buck and me share the upper floor, while Steph and Mindy shared the lower floor. Officially, that is. If we could work out that deal our sleeping arrangements might wind up being a little different from what we would lead Ken to believe they were to be.

That possibility gave me another good reason to talk to Ken soon—before somebody else tried to make arrangements for the first floor for the next year. But first, I had talk to Buck and Steph. I didn't know what they were paying for rent, and I wanted to be sure that they'd be okay with the idea of sharing a house, in the first place, and with what the rent on Ken's house would be, in the second place.

Somehow, I concealed my delight at the possibility that George's decision to leave had opened up, and I managed to appear suitably distraught at the prospective departure of a good friend who had, after all, been a good apartment mate. But, in the end, I reluctantly admitted to him that he'd found a wonderful opportunity, and that he was right—and more than right—to take advantage of it.