Getting Lucky in Kentucky Ch. 04

I woke up earlier than usual today, well before the alarm, thinking about my planned dinner date with Sharon. I'd laid out a bit better-than-usual clothes for today, and decided to trim my beard before going into school. The beard wasn't quite over-long yet, but I wanted everything to be right for Sharon today. She hadn't actually said 'yes' to the dinner date, but was going to give me a thumbs up (I hope) or a thumbs down (that part worries me) this morning at the coffee shop.

I hit the coffee shop after my 8:00 AM class was over, and saw that it was my turn - again! - to make the coffee run. Six cups, including mine this time, so there I was, in the line with the yellow fiberglass tray, to get the drink that keeps us all going. Then I felt a touch, and Sharon was there, saying, "I'm here; one more."

For some dumb reason, after getting the coffee, rather than just setting the tray on the table, I decided to serve the coffee to the gang, ladies first, of course. I got some ribbing from Ken and Randy, and Ken asked me if I was high, or was there some girl on my mind. I tried to defuse that one by asking if it couldn't be both. But when I was able to make eye contact with Sharon at the far end of the table, I saw what I wanted to see: it was subtle, like she was trying to keep anyone else from noticing, but she gave me the thumbs up sign. She had said yes to our dinner date!

I wasn't sure why that made me so happy. Other than that one let's-do-it-now fuck back stage in the ballroom, Sharon and I didn't like each other, and the only reason I had asked her out is that I had simply decided to try to like her. That thought was a lot nicer than I would have expected it to be. I'd never been 'in love' with any girl before, so I didn't know what being 'in love' felt like, but I was sure having unexpectedly strong feelings for Sharon right now.

Yeah, Sharon was cute, and seemed cuter than I had seen her as being before, but she wasn't any special beauty. And while I always knew that she was book-smart, I hadn't really seen her as being all that bright, before now; now, I was worried that she might be too smart for me. A few days ago I'd have been a wreck if Penny, a really pretty brunette, had flirted with me the way she did yesterday, but while Penny still held my attention, I kept thinking about Sharon. I didn't know if I was falling in love with Sharon - can you really just talk yourself into something like that? - but something was sure happening to my brain concerning her.

The guys kept ribbing me, and then Thea and Joely joined in as well. I admitted that yeah, I was seeing a girl, but wouldn't tell them who she was, only that she was cute and blonde. I tried to keep my eyes off Sharon during all of this, so as not to give any clues, and thought that I had done a decent job of it, when everything just blew up. Sharon excused herself from the group, just like any other time when she had to head out, but then she walked over and kissed me goodbye!

Everyone just stopped talking for a second, looking stunned, as she said, "See you tonight, sweetheart," lightly dragging her fingertips across my shoulders, from left to right, as she walked away.

Well, in about two more seconds, the whole table exploded, as everyone started peppering me with questions; everybody at the surrounding tables was staring as well. When did this happen, how did this happen, why did this happen, how long has this been going on and, of course, have I fucked her yet?

So, in completely disjointed fashion, I spilled my guts, concerning the fact that I had just started seeing Sharon in a new way - everybody knew that we didn't like each other - and had asked her out. I said that she had never called me 'sweetheart' before, that we'd never gone out before, and that I thought she was deliberately throwing gasoline on the fire with that kiss. The one thing I did not divulge was our back stage tryst. I didn't actually deny having screwed her, but said that even if I had, I sure wouldn't tell anybody, and pointing out that tonight would be our first actual date.

Believe me, I was glad when it was time for me to head for my next class!

I didn't head back to the coffee shop after my last class, the way I normally would have, but headed back to my apartment to get things ready for dinner. Our 'date' was set for 7:00 PM, so I had a few hours to make sure everything in the apartment was clean and ready. I'm not the neatest guy in the world, but I had cleaned the apartment yesterday, so there really wasn't that much to do. It had been a fairly sunny day, and the sun through the windows had the apartment a bit warmer than I'd have liked, so I opened all of the windows, and set up one of my floor fans as an exhaust fan, to draw the warm air out and get a cooler breeze through the place.

I had this old, falling-apart Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook - you know, the one with the red plaid cover - that my mother had given me, and that was a lifesaver. I sure don't recall mom ever doing all of this for spaghetti sauce, but tomatoes, tomato paste and sauce, a bit of garlic powder, oregano, basil and thyme all went in, to simmer and thicken. The meatballs were easy enough, adding an egg, some uncooked Quaker oats - the recipe said bread crumbs, but mom always used the oats - a chopped onion and some salt to the ground chuck, and then cooking the meatballs in the skillet. I had never noticed mom adding salt to the cooking water for the spaghetti, but the cookbook said that it came out a lot better if that was how it was prepared, so I did that.

The apartment was starting to get too warm again, from my pitiful excuse for cooking, so I moved the exhaust fan from the living room to the small kitchen window, to pull the heat out.

I tried to time everything just right, using the cookbook's estimated cooking time, and figured planned on starting the spaghetti itself at around 6:50, so it would be getting done just as Sharon arrived . . . but she showed up half an hour early! I said 'Oh, crap!' to myself when I heard her knock at the door, but I couldn't really be mad; not only was I even happier than I thought I'd be when she showed up, but the fact that she showed up early made me think that she was actually eager to see me.

I might have been overthinking that last part.

"Hi, there," I greeted her, and then she gave me one heck of a greeting, putting her arms around my neck and pulling me down into a kiss. Not just any kiss, either, not a friendly greeting kiss, but a long, deep, passionate kiss. I was more than surprised, I was stunned.

"Oh, my God, Sharon, that was wonderful!" I couldn't let go of her just yet. I was hoping that things would go really well tonight, but she had turned up the heat several notches right from the start. Finally, we had to break apart, because we couldn't both get through the short hall and into the apartment like that. I kind of mumbled something about having to start the spaghetti itself cooking.

"So, how did things go at the table after I left?" she asked me, in more of a sweet girly voice than I was used to hearing from her. She had a huge smile on her face, knowing that she'd caused a ruckus.

"Uhhh, you sure left me in a mess!" I was putting on the spaghetti to cook while talking to Sharon. "Everyone was asking questions on how this happened. But no, I did not spill the beans about a couple of weeks ago. I told them that this was our first date, and I guess that they would just assume that nothing serious had happened before."

"You know," Sharon said, "I wasn't going to do that, but Dianne guessed. I mean, everyone else was ragging on you, and then she just looked at me and said, kind of whispered, 'It's you, isn't it?' and I couldn't say anything, and couldn't deny it. I just asked her not to tell anyone else, and then I just knew, I wanted to tell everyone else.

"I mean, I don't know if this is going to work out, and I still can't see how this has gotten here from where we were before. Tell me the truth: what did you think of me before we did it?"

"You sure you want me to tell you?"

"Yes, I want you to tell me."

"OK, well, I thought that you were a stuck up little bitch. We got off on the wrong foot somehow, and I just didn't like you very much."

"Well, my opinion of you was just as glowing. I thought that you were just full of yourself, and a total asshole. And after you dragged me upstairs and fucked me, I thought that you were even more of an asshole than before."

"I thought that you enjoyed what we did."

"I did, I loved it, it was just so fucking awesome," she said, "and my best time ever." Well, that certainly puffed up my ego! "And I was thoroughly pissed off that someone I hated so much turned me on so much."

"I think that was when things started to change for me. Yeah, I still didn't like you then, but I started asking myself a question: why didn't I like you? And then I realized: I didn't have any reason for not liking you that wasn't centered around my first impressions, that I didn't like you simply because I didn't like you, and I thought that maybe I could change that, that maybe I could just decide to like you. And it looks like the spaghetti is ready."

I really needed the dinner to be ready, because this conversation had gotten way too heavy, really early.

I started draining the spaghetti, after throwing one piece against the wall, to make sure that it was done. Hey, that was how my mother tested it! Even though I was supposed to be the host, Sharon moved right in to help get dinner served, setting the table, and getting the salad and oil and vinegar onto the table. It took me a few minutes to realized how strange this was: the kitchen was tiny, and the 'dining room,' if you could call it that, was small as well. It had a small table, and two bench seats. Yet, being cramped like that, and with Sharon never having been in my apartment before, we moved around each other effortlessly, and we got dinner served just as efficiently as if Sharon already knew where everything was. Somehow, we just worked together.

Our over-dinner talk was mostly small talk, laughing about how we had roiled up our friends, and what would be said tomorrow. We were both smiling and laughing about that, and I knew: I wanted to walk up to see our friends while holding hands with Sharon.

Then, after dinner, I got up to clear away the dishes and stuff, and Sharon just stepped right in, helping to clear the table, and she even started washing the dishes. "You don't have to do that," I protested, but she replied, "I want to help, it just feels right to help," and she was smiling through the whole thing. She washed, and I dried and put away the dishes, and it just struck me how very normal that was.

After dinner, we went into the living room, and Sharon started looking at my record collection. I had a fair, not great, stereo, and I wish that I could say that I had an awesome record collection, but I didn't. She looked at Jerry Lee Lewis' Greatest Hits album, and I was thinking how his Great Balls of Fire kind of described how I was feeling right now. Of course, every college student in the early seventies had Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida album, just for the seventeen-minute version. I had Cream's Wheels of Fire album, and several albums by the Rolling Stones, but Sharon pulled out a couple of my classical albums, and put on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

That meant that she wanted to talk; people could have a conversation with that music in the background. It also meant that she wanted to cuddle, because when we sat down on my cheap, black vinyl couch, she leaned over onto my shoulder, idly playing with my hand.

"You know," Sharon began, "I was going to give this date the thumbs down. I was trying to decide between getting dressed up and giving this the thumbs down, to crush you, and just dressing I-don't-care, and turning you down. I had every intention of rejecting this date, I kept thinking 'that asshole is just trying to prove my you-wouldn't-know-how-to-romance-a-woman statement wrong,' and even as you were looking at me, waiting for my answer, I was going to give it the thumbs down, and then it's like my hand, and maybe my heart, had other plans."

"I'm pretty glad that your hand had other plans. Are you happy that your heart overruled your head?" That was a damned dangerous question to ask!

"Yeah, I'm glad it turned out this way, and I'm pretty happy right now. It feels good here in your arms." She kept playing with my hand, not really massaging it, but just sort of idly caressing it. From this position, I could give her an occasional kiss on the top of her head, which was nice, but I couldn't see her face, couldn't see her expression.

"You know, Dianne somehow saw through me," she continued, "and she even said that she thought that we hated each other. I said that yeah, I hated your guts, when suddenly it hit me: I didn't hate you, I didn't dislike you, that, all of a sudden, I wanted to be with you. I could hear you, trying to protect me, trying to keep the others from knowing that we had a date. You were being protective of my feelings, and showing respect for me, and that was when I knew, I wanted to kiss you, had to kiss you as I was walking out the door."

Then she sat up a bit more, looked into my eyes, and reached up to kiss me again. This wasn't a passionate kiss like before, but a soft kiss, one which just barely grazed my lips.

Oh, my God, this was amazing, it was stunning, it was everything I wanted and never knew I needed. Sharon had these amazing eyes, a light brown, almost hazel, and looking into her eyes was like looking into her soul. She wasn't saying anything, and I wasn't saying anything, but it was as though she knew what I was feeling, better than I knew myself. She kissed me again, the same barely there kiss, and then again, and again. I wanted to make love with Sharon, and I knew she wanted to make love with me, but it was as though we were just plain scared, as though making love meant crossing the threshold into something new, something different, something wonderful, and terrifying at the same time.

And then I knew: if I stopped now, if we stopped now, we'd be safe and we'd be secure. It was all rushing through my head, in a second: what we had done before was just playing around, hot and passionate and great, but still already over and done with and mostly meaningless. If we kept going, things could never be the same, that we would be moving into a real relationship, that we'd he headed to the altar.

The choice was before me. I could take the safe way out, or I could be a man, and I chose being a man.

I stood up slowly, holding Sharon's hands as I rose, and she followed me to her feet. She looked up at me, and I down on her - I'm a good eight inches taller - and kissed her gently again, and then we slowly walked to the bedroom.

There was no mystery here: she knew as well as I did that there was no turning back. I knew that I wasn't going to back off now, that I was committed to seeing just where this would take us, and I wasn't afraid of it anymore. And I could see it in her eyes: Sharon knew it just as well as I did. She was afraid, and actually trembling, but she never backed off, either physically or even just with her lips or her eyes.

We both sat down on the edge of my crappy, student-slums bed, when I reached up and undid just one button on her blouse. She watched my hands, with the slightest of smiles on her face, saying yes not with her lips but with her eyes. When that single button was undone, she leaned forward, to give me another soft kiss. I undid another button, and then a third, when Sharon reached down to start tugging my golf shirt up, to pull it off of me.

I don't know how long it took us to undress each other; it seemed so fast, and it seemed so long. I can still remember undoing each button of her shirt, unbuttoning her Levis, how she stood up to let me ease them down, and then she pulled her panties down herself, kicking everything out the bedroom door and into the living room. There she stood, wearing nothing but her bra, when she reached behind her back to unhook that, and drop it to the floor; maybe she figured that I'd fumble trying to do it myself. In the meantime, I pulled off my jeans and underwear; Sharon had already unbuttoned and unzipped my pants, but the jeans were tight and stiff, and it was easier for me to do it.

We stood there for a second or two, holding each other, with our kisses becoming more urgent, before kneeling down and then laying down on the bed. We were both so, so ready, and I entered her slowly.

This was different than when we had screwed back stage at the Student Center Ballroom. Then, it was hard and rushed, and get-it-on urgent. That had been awesome, but it just paled in comparison to this night. We had fucked before, but this time we were making love. Before, it was all centered on our genitals; this night I could see and feel all of Sharon, from the touch of her lips to her fingertips on my back to the heat within both of us. For a second I was worried about coming too fast, but that passed as I was both incredibly tense and thoroughly relaxed, at the same time, and I knew that Sharon and I could do this forever.

Not that forever was necessary: I could see Sharon peaking to a climax quickly, even though we were making love ever so slowly. When it washed over her, her eyes closed and her arms went around my neck as tightly as she had the strength to do. Our kisses became more urgent, and the lovemaking speeded up, as another climax took her, and then another. We hadn't been saying anything, but then Sharon started urging me, "Make love to me! Make love to me! Give yourself to me! Come inside me!"

And that was it: she pushed me over the edge, and I emptied myself inside her, in the most intense, most awesome climax of my life. Never, not even when I lost my virginity, had I ever felt like this before.

I was as happy, as elated, as overjoyed as I have even been in my life, and I guess that Sharon must have been feeling the same way, because she was covering my face with kisses. I was still on top of her, holding my weight on my arms, but she had hers free and was able to reach up and put her hands on the side of my head, pulling me down toward her. I felt myself starting to slip out of her anyway, so I rolled onto my side, facing her, and we just kept kissing, whispering endearments, when the words slipped out: "I love you."

Who said it? I thought that I had, and Sharon thought she had, or maybe we both said it together. For just a moment, she had a bit of a worried look on her face, but I knew that I was smiling and happy, and the worry vanished from Sharon's face as well.

We just laid there, sometimes kissing and sometimes laughing, always touching and always smiling. I had never felt anything like this, and can't describe it in the slightest, other than to say that we just knew that we belonged together, that being there, in that bed, looking into each other's eyes, was what we were meant to do.

Reality set in, as Moonlight Sonata was over, and the scratch/scratch of the stereo needle on the end track of the record kept playing, over and over. I had to get up and turn that off, or it would bug me all night. It was cool enough in the apartment that I could shut off the exhaust fan in the kitchen window, so I walked in there to turn that off . . . and gave a free show to my across-the-alley neighbor woman. I laughed about that as I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and pee before going back to bed. Having been hopeful that this date would turn out this way, I had already bought a new toothbrush for Sharon, which she appreciated.