COVID and Love

© Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All characters depicted are 18 years and over.

For as long as I can remember I have been on a path. You know the feeling. You feel like your destinations are predetermined. The path has no exits and you just have to keep walking, forging ahead because that is the only way to go. This description is what my life feels like, only for me, I would not trade this path for anything. I guess that makes me different from most people in my situation. They would give anything to get out of the rut they are in. Me, I would not trade it for anything.

You see, I love my life. I do not walk down my path, I skip along with a huge smile on my face. That is because the companion on my journey is the person I love most in this world. She has been with me on this journey for almost as long as I can remember. I know everything about her that there is to know because we have known each other since we were six years old. We lived across the street from each other and grew up together. Our parents were best friends and were about as close as neighbors could be. When they were together, we were together.

But I guess I should start at the beginning. When I was six we moved to a new house at the end of a dead end street. We were the last house on the right. Within a day of us moving in, the new house across the street was sold and a family moved in. I was the first one to meet them from my family. They had a daughter named Val (short for Valentina) who was just one month younger than me. At the time, I did not think much about her as I was too young to know anything about girls.

Val's parents were very nice people just about the same age as my parents. About that time my mom came out and greeted them. At the time it was not obvious that the parents would become fast friends. But once everything settled down from the move it was as if they were old friends. They spent a lot of time together playing cards, games, watching movies, and making lunch or dinner for each other. Of course, when the parents were together, Val and I were sort of forced together. The word "forced" might be a little strong because after a few weeks of this I discovered that she and I actually had a lot in common. In fact, I came to look forward to when she would come over with her parents because we would play games and watch TV together.

One of the reasons we became close it that we were the only kids our age on the block. All the other kids were at least five years older and did not want much to do with us. The age difference was too much as they had different interests than we did. That changed as we got older as we adopted their interests, but they also moved on to new interests, leaving us behind again.

It was during the summer when I met Val and we started the first grade in September. We walked to and from school together (a whole three blocks), and actually we were even in the same class.

A lot of boys at that age go through a phase where they hate girls. I guess I am weird because I never went through that phase. I always liked girls. Maybe it was because my closest friend was a girl. In any case, I was never teasing girls at that age.

I don't remember too much about the first few years of school. But I do remember almost every summer in between. As time went by I found that Val and I had many interests in common. For instance, during that time I loved butterflies and used a net to catch them. Val was surprised that we had that in common. They were so beautiful and I knew the common names for most of the species that passed through our neighborhood during the spring and summer. I never was cruel to them and always let them go. Val liked that about me.

One of the things I liked about Val was she did not play with dolls. She did like stuffed animals, but then so did I at that age. Another thing I liked was that she was athletic even in those days. She could run almost as fast as me and loved climbing the trees around the neighborhood. Later on, she would continue that athletic streak, but that comes later in the story.

The years passed and when we got to be around twelve I began to notice just how pretty she was. She wore her brunette hair long and her face was almost angelic. She smiled almost all the time and was growing up just as fast as I was.

Our parents were still fast friends and we had no problem occupying ourselves when they got together. This was especially true during the summer because they always had outdoor picnics, both during the day and at night. Val and I never had trouble finding something to do. By that time we became interested in games and spent a lot of time doing that. She was always fun to be with and we never had problems finding something to talk about.

When we entered middle school puberty began to rear it's head for both of us. Our bodies began to change and the change was more dramatic in Val than me. Suddenly her boobs were getting bigger along with her hips. I was sprouting hair in a few places and was noticing her more and more. When I figured out what was going on I was afraid that our parents would separate us, but that never happened. We continued being together almost all the time, but I noticed that we were under the watchful eye of at least one parent almost all the time. I did not mind that. Val was my friend and I would never do anything to hurt her.

By this time we both felt like we were no longer children, but getting along to be young adults. We were not there yet, but it would only be a matter of time. Our conversations changed during this period to topics of a more adult nature.

As we started high school Val became more and more beautiful to me. My parents got me a game console for Christmas and Val and I played the heck out of a few games. She was not attracted to the shooting games, but WoW or FOE were her favorites. And since I liked them as well we spent a lot of time in front of the TV playing them. She was actually a little better than me with these kind of strategy games while I was better at the shooting games. We had a lot of fun with these.

I do remember a conversation we had between games when we were sixteen. We had discussed some topics around sex before but this was different.

"Jimmie, do you think I am pretty?"

I was stunned, but I answered truthfully. "Of course I do. You are one of the prettiest girls in school. Why do you ask?"

She smiled at me. "Have you ever thought about taking me out on a date?"

"Why would I need to do that? We see each other all the time."

I could see she was having a little trouble with the next question.

"Yeah, I know that. Don't you want to be with me in private?"

Now that question I was just not sure how to answer. On the one hand, I did want to be alone with her. On the other, I did not want to do anything that would come between us.

"I'm not sure how to answer that. You are very important to me and I don't want to do anything that would threaten our friendship."

"Even if I wanted to be with you in private?"

I hesitated. "Look, Val. Our friendship is the most important thing in my life. It's not that I do not want to be with you in private, because I do. I'm just not sure what your expectations are."

That seemed to relieve her somewhat. "To be honest, I'm not sure about my expectations either. But I would like to kiss you."

I looked around to see if we were alone. I did not see any eyes on us, the parents were all outside. I leaned into her a little and she willingly met me in the middle. Our lips met and we kissed like two teenagers would. We did not hold it in case someone came in.

I leaned back and looked at her. "I liked that, Jimmie." She looked around and leaned towards me again. We kissed and it was a little more intense this time and lasted a little longer. We heard some laughter outside and that broke the spell.

We leaned back and smiled at each other.

"Thanks, Jimmie. I have wanted to do that for a while now."

I did not know what to say. I was struck speechless. I could only smile at her. I finally regained my composure and said "I would like to do that again sometime."

Her smile got bigger. "I think we can manage that. We just have to find a time and place."

We returned to playing our game. When I got into bed that night I was awake for a long time. I needed to examine my feelings toward Val. Things were changing between us, but not in a bad way. In the end I had to make a decision to either keep our relationship the same, or jump off this cliff I had found not knowing how far the fall would be. What made me make up my mind was the discovery that no matter which choice I made, Val would be with me. That made up my mind and I decided to jump no matter the consequences.

I also realized that no matter the choice I made, the path had not changed. Instead, I was crossing a bridge that led to a new part of my journey through life. The other side of this bridge led to adulthood and I should remember it.

At about this same time Val and I discovered a new thing for us to do, tennis. The high school courts were not far from our houses and we could easily walk there and back. Neither of us had any formal training in the sport but we enjoyed those first steps into a new sport. When we moved on to high school we joined the tennis team and started to get some real training. Neither one of us was ever really great, but we were good enough to stay on the team. One reason for this was our mixed doubles play. The coach said he had never seen anything like it. It was as if we could read each others minds and almost no one could beat us at mixed doubles. That made it worth staying on the team for both of us.

Another thing happened when we started high school. Both of us got our first phones and laptops. The laptops were to be used mostly for school and the phones had restrictions on them from our parents. The phones were never to be used in school unless there was an emergency. But once school was done for the day we could use them as we pleased. We both felt like these were reasonable restrictions and they were never any problem for either of us. But these items gave us a new way to stay in touch with each other. We would text each other at night or have long chats via a messenger application.

One of the things I realized when using chat or messenger was that you were more likely to say things you would never say in person. You could open up without fear, and learn things about the person on the other end you might not expect or know about.

Val and I grew closer and closer as high school progressed. We still were not formally dating, but we were stealing time alone when we could. It was never for very long and nothing happened except some light petting and a lot of kissing. I guess we both knew we were falling in love, but there never seemed to be a need for either of us to say so. It was just a new step in our relationship. And neither of us ever dated anyone else. We always went to events together, had a lot of classes together, studied together, played tennis together, we were constant companions. Our high school friends never commented on this because this had been going on all through school. It was just a given that what ever was going on, we would be there together.

Our senior year was when things started to get intense between us. Val and I would tease each other during a texting session with sexual innuendos. Sometimes this happened in person as well, but only when we were assured of a little privacy. As we got closer to our birthdays, mine in January and hers in February, we began to look for more private time together. Neither of us had a car yet so finding places and times was really difficult. We were wanting more physical time with each other and that was hardest of all. There just were not that many opportunities for that kind of thing without a car.

And then, just as things were becoming desperate for us, COVID-19 hit us like a hammer in March. Suddenly every plan we had was out the window. There was now school at home, but there would be no graduation ceremony, no prom, no senior class trip, no more tennis, college was questionable, everything was in a turmoil for us. The only thing we could rely on was each other, at least that had not changed.

Both families had a conference concerning us. All the parents had the kind of jobs that were considered exempt from the stay at home order, so it looked like we would be home all day while the parents continued with their day jobs. It was decided we could be trusted during the day to do our school work and stay at home. We asked if we could be together during the day and they had no problem with that. They were putting a lot of trust in us in my opinion. Maybe too much. Both of us were good students and made good grades, but we were teenagers and temptation was always trying to lead us in the wrong direction.

I remember our first day at home alone like it was yesterday. I got up at my usual time, took a shower and shaved, and then had breakfast with my parents before they left for work that day. I volunteered to clean up after breakfast and they left after wishing me a good day. After cleaning up I went to my room and waited for Val to come over.

She rang the doorbell at eight thirty and I opened the door to let her in. She looked around to check things out.

"Are we alone?" she asked.

"They left about forty five minutes ago." She sat her laptop and books down and grabbed me in a big hug. She felt really nice.

"Humm. I have been waiting for this all morning." she said.

She was holding me tight with her head on my shoulder. We just stood there for a minute enjoying the feel of each other.

"Are you going to do this every morning?" I asked.

"Every morning I can."

"Good, I like it and look forward to it every morning. But we should get going, we both have meetings at nine and you will need some time to get ready."

We went upstairs to my bedroom. One of the reasons we were meeting at my house is that my dad had a 1Gb fiber connection to the Internet and a really nice wired network set up in the house. He also had a great laser printer that was shared on the net. So our house was the logical choice for us to network from. Over the previous weekend he had installed an extra network connection in my room for Val so that she could get the high speed provided by the fiber connection.

It took her only a few minutes to get connected and booted up. We both figured that the only thing that would happen in our classes today was to test out everyone's connectivity. If there were problems it might take the whole period to resolve them. If not, we would probably just get a reading assignment until the next day. We both had headphones so privacy between us and each others classes was not a problem.

We were both able to log into our first online meeting. As expected, there were a few problems to iron out. My class had three missing people to account for. These were probably ones that had no Internet connectivity from their homes. That was a problem everyone knew was going to happen. Our teacher gave us a reading assignment and we all logged off after 20 minutes. Val's class was about the same and they adjourned just after mine.

Val and I removed our headphones and were silent for a minute.

"This is going to be harder than anyone expected." I said.

"No kidding. What are those kids without Internet going to do?"

"Got me. It's a big problem that someone is going to have to tackle. I sure don't have a solution. I hope they can come up with one or we will have a bunch of kids not graduating this year."

"Oh God, I hadn't thought of that."

We were silent for a minute and I thought this was a good time to bring up another subject.

"Uh, Val. I think we need to talk about our situation."

She smiled at me. "What did you want to say."

"I think we need some ground rules for us. I know our parents are putting a lot of trust in us and I don't want to disappoint them."

"What kind of rules?"

"Well, it looks like we will have some free time during the day for ourselves. I know I would like to take advantage of that time with you but I think we need to put school first. Let's get our studying and homework done first and then any time left over we can do what we want."

She thought about that for a minute. "Okay, I agree. It sounds logical. But I have a question for you."

"Okay, ask me."

"How far do you want to take this? I'm speaking of the physical part of our relationship."

"How far do you want to go? I'm not saying that I don't want to be physical with you, I just want to know what your limitations are."

She thought about that for a second. "With you, I'm not sure I have any limitations. I want what you want. I want it to go as far as we both are willing to take it."

"Are you willing to be naked with me?"

She smiled. "Of course."

"Are you willing for me to do things to you?"

"As long as I can do things to you."

"How about intercourse?"

"Yes, eventually. I'm not in any rush."

"Me either. For now, just being with you and being able to touch you is enough, especially if you are naked."

She smiled at me and sort of squirmed. "That sounds nice. I can't wait."

"Patience, patience. We have to get through the school day first."

"Okay, Okay."

We had a total of three classes that morning. All of them were essentially the same. Test the connectivity, count heads, see who was missing, get an assignment, and then log off. When lunch time came around we went downstairs and fixed some sandwiches for ourselves. Then it was back at it for two more classes. We were lucky, our last class was tennis and you can't do that over a conference call so it was canceled for the rest of the year. By three we had our reading assignment done and were on our own.

We had migrated to my bed for our last reading assignment and when we were done we were sort of at a loss as to how to proceed. It is funny how you can have huge expectation for something only to be frozen when the time comes. But we eventually thawed out and moved to hold each other. It was the first time we had ever been in bed together and holding each other. We held each other for a long time, just enjoying the feeling it produced between us.

"God, Jimmie. I was beginning to think a time like this would never come. I have wanted this for what seems like forever. And now that I have it, I want it to last forever."

"Me, too. It was a long time coming but worth the wait."

"I'm so in love with you. I know we have never said that to each other but I feel now is the right time."

"And I love you just as much. It seems inevitable that we would fall in love. Like we were made for each other. I think I have loved you since almost the day I met you."

She held me even tighter. "That is why I love you. You don't avoid the inevitable. Because I know that it was inevitable that we fall in love."

We just held each other all afternoon. Nothing else happened. I think we kissed a few times, but that was it. It was almost funny, we had talked about sex earlier that day, yet when the time came, we just held each other. That is what we wanted, so that was what we did.

After an hour or so we kissed once more and got up off the bed. We had expressed our love for each other and that was a big breakthrough for both of us. And it was enough for that day. We went downstairs to the kitchen for an afternoon snack. We got soft drinks and some chips and went back to my room. As we ate and drank we kept looking at each other and smiling, no longer able to keep our true emotions to ourselves.

"You keep smiling like that our parents are going to know something is up." I said.

She giggled. "I know, I just can't help myself."

We were silent for a minute and then she got serious again.