Discovering Paige

Many thanks once again to fluttertongue for editing my many errors.

This story is a prequel, of sorts, to my previous story Getting Through to Paige. Feel free to read that as well if you feel the need.

Both Hailey and Paige are of legal age.

Any and all feedback is more than welcome. Enjoy.

Before Ally there was Hailey. Before Hailey there was nothing much for Paige. Just a couple of boys who had been willing to try, and who gave Paige the chance to see if this sex thing was all it was cracked up to be. If her experience up to point where Hailey changed everything were the only evidence she were to ever collect on the subject of sex, Paige would've had only one possible conclusion to offer: not really. Not even close to satisfying.

It wasn't that she wasn't into sex with boys. She was definitely into that, but her boyfriends had not really been into it quite as much as she was. She would eventually learn that this was more their problem than hers, but at the time she had absolutely no way of knowing that.

And it wasn't that they didn't try. It was more because they had no idea what it took to make a girl happy in bed. To be fair, both of her boyfriends were about as experienced as she was up to that point. Well, almost. Her second boyfriend technically had even less considering he was still a virgin when Paige was going out with him.

She could've had much more experience Paige was definitely not a late bloomer. From middle school she was considered one of the cutest girls in her class and, consequently, a constant target of offers for everything from simple dates to the more crass and obscene from boys often too old and always far too low brow to arouse her interests.

In a lot of ways, those types and their abundance at her high school were a major factor in her shyness towards the idea of intimacy. The other factor was an restrictive home environment that would've stifled just about any normal person with its wonderful mix of extreme religious sentiment, anti-sexual fervor, and a ban on anything deemed offensive.

The restrictiveness came from her mother, a woman who was very serious about her interpretation of the Holy Bible much to the frustration of Paige's father who was religious in his own way. But he thought he'd married a woman who believed in a loving, kind god who taught peace, love and forgiveness. Instead, she turned out to be a psycho conservative who believed a vengeful god. She was pro-censorship, commanded his children to go to church whenever it's doors were unlocked, believed in sex for procreation only, and thought that everything from MTV to football on Sundays was an unforgivable sin.

Actually, he had married the first woman and not the second but, after Paige's older brother had died of a rare genetic condition only a year after Paige was born, his wife had changed and it was not for the better. Paige had been too young to remember what that woman whom she called her mother was like before, but she could attest to the fact that the woman who raised her until she entered middle school was a psychotic, paranoid mess of repression who did a great job of instilling her repressed attitudes in her daughter.

When her parents got divorced she went through the usual painful emotions. Many were caused by her mother's wholesale rejection of the idea of joint custody. She forced Paige's Dad to seek full custody and prolonged the divorce proceedings for far too long out of spite and very unchristian-like vengeance. The pain faded quite rapidly when her father remarried a nice, kind, and understanding woman. It may have taken Paige awhile to call Cindy Mom, but she still loved her and learned that it was normal to do so. This was much better than walking on eggshells to avoid causing a meltdown of biblical proportions, which was the relationship she had with her real mother.

She may have not have been all that motherly, but Cindy was Paige's first real friend at a time when she really needed one. It was thanks to Cindy, though somewhat indirectly, that Paige ended up having sex at all and (much more directly) that Paige ended up joining the cheerleading squad.

It was cheerleading that changed so much for Paige in ways she couldn't have possibly imagined, as well as in more simple ways. It gave Paige the necessary boost in confidence to actual step out of the shell she'd developed with the help of her mother and actually try some things she'd been dying to try. Some of those things Cindy wouldn't have been too proud to be connected with, but given the likely alternative she probably would've thought the way it turned out was much better.

Not that Paige would know or ever think to tell Cindy so she could know. She may have considered Cindy a friend, but she was smart enough to realize there was a natural limit to their friendship; a place where the friendship ended and Stepmother began. Smoking pot, having sex, and getting drunk at weekend sleepovers were not Cindy conversation material. Dating boys, having fun at weekend sleepovers, the finer points of buying cute clothes, applying makeup so it straddled the fine line between conservatively tasteful and daringly slutty, and the less specific aspects of sex were Cindy's area of expertise.

Of course, when Cindy first entered Paige and her Father's life, most of those weren't an issue. Paige's innocence remained pretty much intact until the latter half of high school. She did date boys in middle school and freshman year, but none of it really amounted to anything. Some sloppy, awkward kissing and some half hazard boob groping was about all any of it ever amounted to.

And, yes, she sipped her share of beer and even tried smoking a cigarette once, but she was far too young to really get into any of that until high school and then not until she was near the end of it. No, for the most part Paige was an innocent, suburban girl who had heard of many more things then she'd actually ever done. Some of what she'd heard scared the crap out of her or, at least, confused her more than it made her curious.

However, the confusion didn't stop Cindy from being the subject of Paige's first official girl crush. And not just a cute, innocent girly girl crush. No, Cindy was the focus of much more than that. The embarrassment of this actually helped cool their relationship for awhile during Paige's early adolescence, but Cindy's friendliness always broke through. Then Paige met her first real boyfriend and for awhile the awkwardness faded as Cindy became less and less of an obsession.

Still, the obsession with girls in general always came back when Paige wasn't involved with a boy. At that age Paige wasn't sure to make of these feelings. She was too young to quite get the concept of gay, straight or bisexual. Even if she had understood them it wouldn't have helped, because her friends at the time weren't exactly bragging about their own experimentations. She would later realize she was not the first girl to have those feelings let alone the first to be confused by them.

So she suffered in silence, secretly ashamed of her desires. Not just her desire for Cindy, which faded eventually thanks to repression, but also for several other girls and woman. Many would've been shocked to discover that innocent, little Paige, who went to church every Sunday and youth group every Tuesday and even occasionally volunteered for her church's ultra-conservative anti-Halloween house of horrors, secretly wanted nothing more than to discover what it was like to share the love that dare not speak its name with them.

Sometimes Paige honestly and truly thought she was an evil sinner who would burn in hell for all eternity for her sinful, disgusting desires. Other times she wished that once, just once she could've had the courage to find out for herself what it felt like to be with another girl in the most intimate of fashions.

Both of her high school boyfriends, though they tried their best, were never much more than a distraction at best. It wouldn't be until college before Paige came across any boys capable of performing well enough in bed to make her enjoy having sex with them entirely on its own merits, but even then it was only almost all of the time. It was a problem; one she had no idea how to go about fixing.

It wasn't that she was gay or anything. At least, she was pretty sure she wasn't. By the time she hit high school and knew what the word meant she tended to think of herself as bisexual. She liked guys. She was honestly and truly attracted to them, but they just couldn't satisfy all of her needs and could do nothing to satisfy her curiosity about what it was like to be with a girl.

Near the end of her time in high school Paige would finally find a girl who was willing to show her what she was missing and, more importantly, was willing to take command of the situation and make it happen despite Paige's innate shyness. Paige's life would be changed forever and her craving for the brand of sex and love that could only be found with another girl would become that much more potent.

The girl's name was Hailey. She and Paige had known each other ever since middle school. They hadn't exactly been friends for most of that time. In fact, they hadn't really hung out at all until their sophomore years in high school when Hailey, on a whim, joined the cheerleading team which Paige had been on her entire time in high school.

At first Hailey was just another girl on the team. All through sophomore year the two girls barely interacted. It wasn't until cheer camp during the summer between sophomore and junior years that they became friends.

Cheer camp was a mixed blessing. During the day they'd work their asses off and at night a fair number of the girls would find places to hide and pass around joints or get drunk. The others slept and the coach would be off in the neighboring town fucking her boyfriend, not making it back to camp until four in the morning. Sometimes the coach wouldn't even show up until after the team had been up for awhile. They'd all get an extra long break before they started conditioning and practicing throwing and other fun stuff they'd rather not be doing in the middle of summer out in an open field with the sun beating down like god's own wrath. That was probably the only reason why Paige hadn't partaken in the more bawdy aspects of cheer camp until she and Hailey became good friends. She was generally too beat to even consider doing anything besides take a shower and go to bed.

Once she started hanging out with Hailey, that changed. The clearing in the woods they went to at night was a place they'd discovered the year before with couple of their closer friends on the team and had kept secret because, as Hailey said, it was cooler if it was a secret.

It was a pretty neat little spot. It was close enough to the camp that it was impossible to get lost even when they were a little buzzed, but far enough and separated by enough trees, that they could take flashlights with them with them so they could see what they were doing without alerting everyone in the camp to where they were. That would've been bad considering why they went there in the first place: namely, to smoke weed.

Or, at least, that's why Paige thought they went there even though when they first found it she didn't smoke anything. She just hung out with Hailey and their friends and laughed at them while they got stoned. She'd only gone with them a couple of times because she was too bored to fall asleep despite how tired she was physically. She was about to find out that a whole lot more went on there the times they'd gone without her. It was going to be a very special and extremely enlightening night.

But it was already supposed to be. It was the night that Paige was going to lose her "weed cherry"as Hailey had so colorfully put it. Paige was sick of being the only sober one in the group. Well, that and it looked like fun to her. Sure, her friends were absolute morons when stoned, but they were happy morons. After breaking up with her boyfriend only a week before cheer camp, plus all the other stress in her life, she really couldn't see a downside to being a happy moron for awhile.

Besides, after a year of listening to Hailey talk about how awesome pot was, Paige's wall was finally crumbling down. She would've smoked it with Hailey earlier, but Hailey insisted that they wait for cheer camp because Paige would appreciate it more. At the time Paige had assumed she meant it in the after a hard day of getting sweaty and sore kind of way, but she eventually found out that was completely wrong.

It all started to seem a little weird to Paige. Hailey insisted that Paige not invite anyone else that night. When pressed, Hailey only said, "Because I said so. What you don't wanna hang out with me?" She was kidding, of course, but it was enough to kill any further attempts by Paige to question her. Besides, Paige really didn't mind spending time alone with Hailey. She was deep in a serious crush on Hailey and had been for awhile. She was under the delusion that Hailey had no idea.

There was also something else Paige didn't know: the feeling was mutual and had been for a very long time. In fact, that had been the reason Hailey became friends with Paige and joined the cheerleading squad. Unlike Paige, Hailey had almost always known where she fell on the sexual spectrum. She was gay. Not bi, not curious, not confused or crazy, but gay. From the moment she knew what the word meant she knew it applied to her.

And it wasn't because she hated men. She just loved women. Guys were okay as friends, but that penis thing? She had zero interest in it. In fact, she kind of found it revolting. She'd never seriously considered having sex with boys and she couldn't imagine a scenario where she would.

Women, though, were another story. Ever since she'd talked a friend into letting her go down on her at a slumber party in middle school, Hailey had known that it was meant to be and she hadn't stopped. Sadly, she'd never really had a girlfriend, but she up made for that by being a very cunning and capable seductress of innocent, curious schoolmates. She achieved this "success" by being blessed with excellent gaydar (or bi-dar or experimental-dar if you want to be ultra specific and somewhat annoying about it) and being extremely patient with her potential lovers.

Numbers wise she had a fairly substantial toll, but she didn't look at it like that. It was mainly a byproduct of her environment that she had to settle for quantity over quality. The town she and Paige lived in was a fairly conservative suburban hellhole. Coming out in high school, even as bi, which was somewhat respectable in certain circles, wasn't something a lot of girls were willing to do. At least not the girls Hailey generally found herself attracted to.

Sure, there were a few girls who were openly gay, but, they just weren't Hailey's type at all. They were all, invariably, really butch and she just wasn't into that. She liked the femmes. Most of the femmes she managed to win over turned out to be a little skittish about ruining their reps or eventually went back to guys when they'd had their fun with Hailey.

That had changed for awhile when she became a cheerleader. The girl she was chasing when she became a cheerleader was actually, for once, gay. Of course, she was also deep in the closet and therefore while they were going out no one was allowed to know. But for a few months it was absolute bliss. To the outside world it appeared that they were just really close friends who happened to spend a lot of time having sleepovers and hanging out by themselves. However, there was a lot more going on behind closed doors.

At least there was until one night at her girlfriend's house they'd forgotten to lock the door and were caught in a precarious position (commonly known as a sixty nine) by her girlfriends stepmother. It was all over a month later when her girlfriend transferred to a school halfway across the state and went to live with her mother. It had been an incredibly tough time for Hailey. Especially since her girlfriend, Emma, had sworn her to secrecy over the phone the last time they talked. She spent her nights crying herself to sleep while trying hard to appear no sadder than anyone else that Emma had left so abruptly.

The only good thing to come out of it was the realization that her mother was not the homophobe Hailey thought she was. Her dad, however, was a different story. Luckily, he'd been out of town on business when Emma's parents freaked and made their phone calls, so he never found out. Well, not until after she went to college and came back with a girlfriend, but that was still a long way off at that point. Still, it was good to know that at least one of her parents didn't hate her for something that was beyond her control.

After that Hailey went back to her old ways with a vengeance, but she found those ways less appealing then she remembered. Sex for fun just couldn't hold a candle to making love. Still, she did it—partially to hide her pain and partially because of the secret hope that she'd find Miss Right somehow in a sea of straight girls. So far, she hadn't had much luck. Sure, she'd found some fun playmates, but that was it and it was no longer enough.

Then she noticed Paige. There was something about her that drew her attention. In fact, there had always been something about Paige that called to her. Exactly what she had no idea, but it was there and felt oh so familiar. It took her awhile to figure it out, but once she did it amazed her that it had eluded her for so long, but there it was: Paige was into girls.

Hailey had no idea how she knew, but she was absolutely sure. Having good gaydar doesn't mean you always understand how it works. Maybe it was the way Paige's eyes seemed to linger just a wee bit longer than most straight girls would when she was scanning a female friend or a stranger with an attractive physique. Maybe it was a slight hint of flirtation that escaped Paige at times that maybe even Paige wasn't aware of. Seriously, Hailey had no idea, but there was something there. She was absolutely sure of it.

Hailey had noticed it about the same time she and Emma had started their clandestine affair, but as that got serious in a rapid fashion she'd kind of let it go. She did start to initiate a friendly relationship with Paige after that, just in case the usual happened with Emma. When it didn't, she didn't abandon her friendly overtures just because she was longer interested in trying to get Paige in bed. No, she kept it up and quickly discovered Paige, while a bit closed off in odd ways that made sense once you knew her background, was actually a pretty fun person to be around.

Hailey actually allowed herself to become such a close friend that for awhile, even after Emma left and it had stopped hurting as much as it had and she'd learned to repress it as much as possible, she couldn't bring herself to making a move on Paige for fear of ruining a good friendship. Beside, in the meantime Paige had found herself a boyfriend and seemed pretty happy with the bastard. Hailey was gay. She wasn't a bitch.

Then Paige became single again. Also, there was the little fact that Hailey had become aware that Paige was attracted to her. Not just curious in a general sense, but attracted in a very specific way to Hailey herself.

Hailey had realized this slowly and gathered her evidence before deciding whether or not she was willing to risk their friendship to find out if she was wrong or not. By the time she'd finished analyzing the signals she was absolutely certain she was correct and that it was totally worth the risk.

What were the signals? Well, some were rather subtle, but others were quite obvious, so obvious that Hailey began to wonder how she missed them. The less subtle ones were enough, but it was the blatant one that was damning, but, honestly, she was a bit ashamed of it. With all the subtle signs and suspicious little idiosyncrasies Hailey simply had to do it no matter how wrong and evil it may have been.