Julie and Scott

It had taken less than half the movie for Scott Fester to fall asleep, which left Julie sitting on the couch next to him in a fume of aggravation. He'd been the one who picked it out, after all. Historical period pieces like this weren't a favorite for either of them, but Scott had a thing for one of the stars and pleaded with Julie until she gave in.

Damnit, Scott, she thought when she realized he was snoring.

Worse yet, as he'd nodded off, his shoulder and arm had slumped in next to hers, pressing strong, well-muscled biceps and deltoids against the skin of her much softer ones. Since the droolingly good looks of the film's leading man had been the only thing worth paying attention to, the sensation of contact with male flesh – Scott's flesh – set something simmering in her.

She sighed and looked at his face, pointing straight up as his head leaned back against the couch cushion. Wake him up, Julie. Elbow him in the ribs. Make him suffer the rest of the way through this thing with you so you can bitch at him about it once it's done.

But she really couldn't. The clean, smooth cut of his features, all so perfect, and the mischievous disarray of his sandy curls went right through her. In moments like this, she saw all the way back to her first glimpse of him in third grade, when something about his eyes and his grin as he juggled a soccer ball struck a funny feeling into her chest that she didn't understand.

Oh, no, Julie, she thought. Don't. Not this again.

Across the room, angst shivered the voice of the film's heroine as she pleaded with her man not to return to the war. "I need you! I need you here! I couldn't bear it if ..."

Julie picked up the remote with her left hand. The wise, mature eighteen-year-old inside her meant to crank the volume up and jostle Scott with her elbow. But the weak, wistful young girl dialed it down instead, to just more than a whisper.

Her gaze returned to Scott's snoring face. Her right arm stayed pressed against him. Dropping the remote, she brought her left hand over and up, just short of brushing her knuckles and the back of her hand across his cheek. She moved the hand as though caressing him, diagonally down along his face, fingers curling, passing beneath his chin, then the whole hand extending to hover at his far cheek, feeling the warmth of it radiating through the air to her palm. At no point did she make contact.

She felt herself sucking her lower lip between her teeth, though she wasn't conscious of having initiated that.

Okay, that's enough. Wake him up and watch the rest of the movie, or just send him home.

Her hand glided through the air before his Adam's apple, eased its way in a careful curve that paralleled the front of his shirt, fabric tight across those athletic pectoral slabs, looser where his rib cage gave way to abs.

She heard her own breathing, faster than it should be.

There. That was very hot. Now move the hand away ... or ... or move it back up, pretend that you're feeling that powerful chest.

But she did not. Instead, her hand continued to float an inch or so above the line between his shirt and pants, right over the belt buckle.

She'd been moving her eyes back and forth from Scott's angelic, sleeping face to the path of her hand through the air. Now she focused them lower.

He lay slouched deeply into the couch, pelvis almost flat against the seat cushion. His legs weren't closed ... plenty of room between them for her hand.

Julie ...

She eased her fingers within a half-inch of his fly, then turned her hand and moved it farther, curling the fingers down between his legs, cupping the air just over his crotch.

Oh my god, what are you doing?

She had never gone this far before. The throb of her heart drowned out what was left of the sound from the television.

A glance at his face – still serene, snoring.

She shifted her body slightly, turning just enough to let her steal her right hand into the juncture between her legs without changing the contact between her upper arm and Scott's.

The touch of her finger, feather-soft against the tight fabric of her shorts, made her close her eyes a moment. She pressed more firmly, burrowing the finger between the flesh of her thighs to reach that perfect spot, right above her clitoris.

She gasped, trembled, lost her concentration – the fingers of her left hand grazed a seam in Scott's crotch.

Her eyes popped back open in a panic, but Scott didn't stir.

I'm touching him there, she thought.

And she was. The seam ran right across a soft, smooth bulge that had to be his penis. Her fingertips remained in contact with that seam, its thick, firm weave telling her nothing about the feel of what lay beneath it, yet still electrifying to feel. Something surged within her. The flesh inside her panties inside her shorts under her hand heated and swelled.

She opened her legs a little and began to rub gently along the curve of her mound.

Her left hand slid off the seam, a fingertip tracing his shape under the thinner denim below it.

Oh, Scott ...

He was still snoring.

Both of her hands scaled their movements up – one braver, more raptured by curiosity in its explorations, the other more carnal, hungrily chasing the right position and the ideal amount of pressure to heighten her arousal and move forward into passionate masturbation.

The round shape beneath her left hand's gentle fingers now began to respond, first by swelling faintly, then by tensing, tightening the cloth that overlay it.

He's getting hard, she thought. I need to stop ...

Inside herself, though, she felt the harbinger warmth of her own orgasm approaching. Still at some distance, but getting closer, closer.

Her right hand intensified its desperate press of self-love. Her left eased tenderly up and down the tumescent shape in Scott's pants, no heavier than a tickle, but apparently enough to connect with something primal in him even in the midst of sleep.

She began to pant through her nose, trying to stay quiet. The rush and throb of climax called to her, very near now and being pulled steadily nearer with each stroke of her finger along the dampening crotch of her shorts.

Scott shifted, mumbled. His cock was a beam in his jeans, her hand folded around the upper curve of its length, easing up and down.

I need to stop, I need to stop –

So close ...

"Aah! Whu – " Scott's entire body suddenly stiffened harder than his dick beneath her fingers. "Julie! What the hell are you doing?"

Both her hands leapt in terror from their delightful work to her mouth.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

A sea of guilt and fear, icy, sharp, washed the orgasm far away before it could carry her off.

Scott was gaping, looking from her to his own lap and back. "Oh my god!"

She felt herself starting to cry. Reflexively, she turned away and curled herself into her corner of the couch. "I'm so sorry, Scott, I don't know ... what an idiot, I ..."

"Oh, Jules." The shock had softened out of his voice. She didn't have to turn around to know that he had his hand on his forehead and that look in his eyes. "Julie, please don't do this."

She sniffled and quaked. She felt the touch of his hand on the round curve of her shoulder.

"Honey, come on," he said. "I'm sorry I freaked. One second I was having this fantastic dream with Trent Harkness all over me and the next – I mean, you just can't do that."

"I'm such a mess, Scott."

"No," he said strongly. "No, Jules, you're not. You're the greatest person I've ever met, and I've fucked up your life for almost three years now – "

The wind went out of her self-loathing and grief. She sniffled again and turned and put her arms around him. "Don't say that. You're not – it's not – "

"It is," he said, holding her tight. "It is my fault."

"Scott, I've told you this so many times. It was my idea. You know it was."

"But I said yes, and I've let it go on way, way past the point that it was obviously hurting you."

"It's not hurting me to pretend I'm your girlfriend, Scott. It's hurting me that I can't be your girlfriend. And it's going to hurt me whether we keep pretending for everybody else or not."

None of this was new. They'd said the same things a dozen times – more and more often this past year. The only difference was that this was the first time she'd tried to hand-rape her best friend in his sleep to get herself off.

"I shouldn't have touched you," she said, still breathing hard but with fewer tears now. "It was wrong, I knew it was wrong, I should never have done it. I'm really sorry, Scott. It won't happen again. Just please don't leave me."

He sighed and kissed the top of her head. "I just don't know what good it does anymore. It's only a couple months to graduation. So what if we break up? People break up all the time. Two and a half years – I don't think anybody's going to suddenly suspect I'm gay if we break up after two and a half years."

"No," she said, keeping her arms clenched around him. "But I'll have to spend the next two months with everybody feeling sorry for poor fat Julie Plunkett, who's so sweet but gosh we never did quite understand why somebody like Scott would be dating her."

"Shit, Julie, I wish you wouldn't talk that way about yourself."

"What, the way everybody else talks about me?"

"That's right. You're better than they are."

She was quiet for a while, holding close to this person she loved – so close, but without any possibility that they would ever be closer.

"Scott," she said at last, "when you go off to State ... that's going to break my heart whether you're my pretend-boyfriend all the way to the end, or if we pretend-breakup tomorrow. Can we just not change anything? Okay?"

"Okay, Jules, whatever you say." He rubbed her back with one hand. "But look, the part where you don't molest me while I'm sleeping is definitely one of the things we shouldn't change, all right?"

She laughed a little and squeezed him, though the empty and sad part of her still bobbed around inside her chest.

"Now," he said, "give me that remote so I can shut the damn TV off. Trent has let me down this time, that's all I have to say."

She gave him the remote. A little while later, he gave her a last hug and went home.

Prom was one of the biggest reasons Julie didn't want Scott to end their pretend romance. She knew it wasn't good for her to keep faking a relationship that he no longer even needed for cover – he'd been completely right about that. Football season was long over, everyone had senioritis, and Scott had never dived all the way into the social scene that the rest of the jocks carried on with. After four years on the team and two-and-a-half with a steady girlfriend, Scott Fester's sexual identity was not something anyone was going to waste their last couple of months in high school speculating about. But it was spring of senior year, and there was no way the school's most reliable fat joke would be getting a prom date if she and her boyfriend broke up, and then she'd miss out on that fabulous rite of passage that everyone spent the rest of their lives remembering. And anyway, how were she and Scott supposed to keep hanging out together if they'd publicly ditched each other as a couple?

But behind the desire to avoid embarrassment, behind the desire to not miss out on attending the prom, Julie yearned and burned to be pressed up next to Scott in a beautiful satin dress, sky blue to match her eyes and complement her long golden hair, slow-dancing body to body with this boy-turned-man that she had loved for years even though she had no business loving him.

Scott made one more attempt to convince her that they should split up, a few weeks before the dance.

"I'm just so tired of lies, Jules," he said, sitting in the car with her outside her house after a night at the movies. "I mean, I'm not going to come out with just the last few months of school left. It would freak too many people out, and what would be the point? But it's still hard. It still feels wrong. And then on top of it, to have people talking about how terrific it is that we've been together so long, asking whether we're going to try to make it work long-distance once we've gone off to different schools ... it's just ... it's like I'm being doubly dishonest."

She sat there in the dark for a moment, fighting with the lump in her throat. You know he's right. You know you should let him go.

But she couldn't.

"Scott ..." she said, and then stopped herself when she heard the tremor in her voice. But do I want to try to get rid of it, or do I want it to be more obvious? She swallowed and started again. The quaver was even worse, though she hadn't tried to make it that way. "Scott, please. Okay, you don't ... we don't have to stay together the whole rest of the year. But please, just for prom? I've already been fitted for the alterations to my dress. My parents have shelled out half the money as a deposit. And, and I've just been looking forward to it so much. Please? It can be our last big thing. The Monday after, we can tell everybody we spent the rest of the night once the dance was done talking about our futures and what it was going to be like going off to different colleges and how one of us thought it could work and the other wasn't sure and it ended up blowing up into a big argument, and ... and ..."

She squeezed her eyes closed against the tears coming out of them, and made fists of her hands.

"Nnggnnn!" With a couple of deep breaths, she got under control – sort of – and forced her eyes back open. "But Monday after. Monday after, Scott, please. It's prom. We're never going to have a chance to do it again. And I don't care that we're not really boyfriend-girlfriend. I'll be there and you'll be there and the music will be loud and people will be laughing and happy and the lights and the dance floor and the dancing and my dress and corsage and my parents smiling when you come to the door to pick me up and the pictures... please, Scott. I don't want you to be unhappy, I don't. But –"

"But prom's going to feel like the biggest lie of all, Julie," he said. His voice wasn't steady either, she heard now, and it made her feel bad. "All those people, all those couples ... all those guys, and me thinking, 'Half these jerks are going to get laid tonight, and I've never even touched anybody sexually. Never so much as had a blow-job. Never even kissed anyone I had a crush on.' And then me thinking, 'Why the hell can't we live in a world where I could go to prom with someone I'm really in love with?' And then, if Ben Wilson and his boyfriend really go like they've been saying they would, me thinking, 'Fuck, we do live in that world, it's just that I'm a bigger fucking coward than Ben Wilson.'"

He was staring at her, pleading with his eyes, but also burning with anger and frustration and a whole lifetime of not being able to just be himself in front of everyone else. She felt cheap and guilty for trying to make him do something he didn't want to.

But she also felt hurt.

Quietly, she said, "You wouldn't have to be thinking those things, Scott. You could be thinking something else instead. Like, 'I'm here at prom with this special person, and no one really knows how special we are.' You could be thinking, 'These kids all imagine we're spinning around in the same hormone haze they are, teenage fantasy – pure love, true romance. Only by this time next year, they'll pretty much all be broken up, seeing other people, not even remembering how they felt tonight, how real they thought it was.' You could be thinking, 'A year from now, they'll all be done. But Julie and I will still be what we are. I'm here in this place where everyone else is hitting the romantic peak of high school, nowhere else to go, but that's not me. I'm here, celebrating this ... this terrific secret nobody's got a clue about – this friendship that's not going to fizzle and disappear just because we can't see each other every day, just because we're not touching and kissing and holding hands constantly. I'm here because I have something wonderful that's going to last and I'm not going to feel bad just because it's a different kind of wonderful than what they think they have.'"

He was crying by the time she finished, and they sat there for a moment watching the tears roll down each others' faces. Then he leaned over and hugged her tight.

"Oh, Jules. You're so smart. How can you be so smart and me so dumb?"

She put her hands on his back, forcing herself not to hold him as strongly as he was holding her.

"You're not dumb, Scott. But you're a boy, even if you're a gay boy. And boys spend a lot of time thinking about what they don't have instead of what they do have."

He moved back and looked at her, an eyebrow up, trying to let the wry, sarcastic Scott surface again, saying, "Oh, and girls don't?"

"Girls think about what we don't have and what we do have. It's why we win more arguments. We see the whole picture."

He laughed and leaned into his seat, closing his eyes. "If you say so, Jules." He sighed, then said, "Okay, so you've managed to make prom sound a lot better than I was imagining it."

"Then we can go? And I'm not forcing you into it?"

He opened his eyes to look at her, smiling but a little wistful. "No, you're not forcing me." He reached over and squeezed her hand. It made her heart jump inside her. "You're right. This is something worth celebrating. I can do that. I want to do that."

She smiled, weakly.

"Thank you."

He squeezed her fingers again, then let go and put his fist in front of a large yawn. "Uah. Sorry. It's late I guess."

"Yeah," she said. I guess we should say goodnight. Say it, Julie: 'I guess we should say goodnight.' "Scott?"

"Uh-huh?"

"You said something in there ..."

When she didn't go on, he said, "I said a lot of things. More specific?"

Never mind. You're right, it's late, I should go in to bed. Somehow the words wouldn't come out.

"Well?" he sounded both curious and amused.

Julie, what is wrong with you?

"'Never even had a blow-job.'"

"Whoa," he said, putting both hands up. "Just ... whoa. You're not even going to go there."

"And I've never given one, either," she said, ignoring him. "But if you wanted to – sometime – you could close your eyes and pretend it was someone else. Then we'd both know what it was like."

"Julie, that is so unattractive. I don't mean you, I mean that. You're beautiful, and I know you don't believe it, but you are. If I liked girls, I'd be all over you. But, I mean, just ... ew."

"Oh, come on, it wouldn't be that bad, would it? Why would it feel any different than if it was a guy? With your eyes closed, thinking about whoever it is you think about when you're wanking off – Trent Harkness? Ben Wilson? – you don't think it would be at least a little good?"

"Girl, you are past your bedtime and not thinking straight." He shook his head. "You should take your prom win and call it a night – count yourself lucky at one-for-two."

"But you could get lucky and make it two-for-two."

His eyes rolled. "Julie, why are you doing this?"

She looked at him firmly. "Because I deserve to know what it's like to give someone a blow-job, Scott. And you deserve to know what it's like to get one. And all it would take is a little pretending."

"That's not why. I mean, maybe you really mean that, but there's something else, too, and we both know it. There's a little part of you that's hoping and hoping, if you could just find the right thing to do for me –"