Memories of Emma

There's a lot of exposition in this chapter, but I hope that you will agree that knowing the characters is essential to the overall effect. Matt and Emma both turned 18 at the beginning of their senior year of high school, before either of them was sexually active; and everyone else engaged in sexual activities is likewise 18 or older.

I first met Emma on the day that I turned eleven. Her family had just moved in next door a few days prior, and my mom insisted that I invite her to my party. I resisted: a party was for playing with friends, not meeting new people. Certainly not new girls. Shows what I knew.

When my parents asked what I thought of her after the party, my honest answer was 'surprising'. In truth it was somewhere about equally between 'frustrating' and 'fascinating'. Mostly because she had blown straight past me on a deep ball for a touchdown in a backyard game of flag football. She'd loved it: my friends had loved it even more. And I was too impressed to be as embarrassed as I should have been. A girl could do that?

In those days, my dad's work was making a lot of noise about financial difficulties, and mom had picked up a part time job to help out. Most of her shifts were during the school day, so I never quite realised the extent of her commitment. As far as I could tell, it just seemed to mean that I had to stay late at school a day or two every week. One of the older teachers -- Mrs Williams -- ran an after-school club out of her classroom, and she had the sort of gentle touch with discipline that made her popular with well-meaning but occasionally rowdy schoolkids. Sometimes I look back and wonder why she did it. Unless the school had money then that it doesn't now, I can't imagine that she was paid, at least not enough for it to be worth her time. But you're not here for that sort of speculation.

Anyway: when we weren't keeping ourselves sufficiently entertained, or there was a smaller group, she would sometimes pull out puzzles or boardgames to play. A few weeks before my birthday, she had introduced us to chess, and I had taken to it as only a kid who doesn't realise how uncool it was could. My mom was very pleased on the drive home: she'd been quite good when she was young. But when we got home she couldn't find her old board. Lost in a move, or maybe still with her parents: no playing for us. My birthday list was already full, and though I didn't really understand what 'financial difficulties' meant, I knew enough not to push my luck. So I would play at school, with some other friends who were happy to be uncool, and simply accepted that it wasn't a game for at home.

My mom was, of course, much smarter than I was, though it took some time for me to realise it. Because, as I was opening gifts from friends after they'd left (good manners, I was told, so that no one who brought a small gift or couldn't afford one would be embarrassed), I opened Emma's last -- and inside the neatly-wrapped box was a plastic chess set, just like we had at school. No doubt her parents, sending their daughter to, essentially, some stranger's birthday party, had asked my mom about presents. But it would be years before I put that together: as far as I could tell, she'd simply read my mind.

It was only polite, mom insisted, to invite her over to play; and I think that I took less convincing than she had expected. I was already halfway convinced that Emma was some sort of fairy or other supernatural creature, and I had this dim notion -- I don't know where it came from -- that beating her in a game of chess would limit her power over me.

And I did beat her: the third time. She would later claim that she had felt bad for me after the first two and let me win, but nearly ten years later I can just about smell her lies, and this one doesn't quite come off. Not that anything but the first game really mattered. Armed with the delusion that no 11-year-old could possibly understand the game better than I did, I had to call my mom in after Emma declared checkmate with the smirk that I would come to know so well. When the situation was confirmed, honour demanded a rematch -- which ended with the same smirk.

I could have hated her, I suppose. Maybe I did, a bit: but really I just needed a way to beat her. We were in the same grade, though not all of the same classes; but we did have math together. And that week we had a test. Looking back, it wasn't quite a fair fight, since she'd arrived halfway through the unit, and had obviously been learning something quite different at her old school. But even if I'd thought of that, it wouldn't have changed anything. I needed a win; and I got it. My turn to smirk, as she'd turned to show me a red 92. I held up four fingers and mouthed 'ninety-four'. Her eyes held mine with what I knew was the same look I'd given her from across the chessboard. Defiance, and a conviction that she'd get the last smirk.

This more or less set the tone for the next few years. Whatever we did together -- school, sports, video games -- our honour was at stake in every interaction. A couple of years later we went to different middle schools, which meant that she especially started making new friends, and though we went to the same high school we continued to move in slightly different circles. It feels like a cliche -- the childhood friends who drift apart in high school -- but in truth it wasn't that dramatic. We were, if anything, too similar, and both of our social lives were mostly dictated by sports. But not the same ones. I played baseball, and volleyball in the winter when I couldn't, though I topped out at 5'11 and by the end only got the playing time that I did due to certain defensive skills. But the team was full of my friends, and it was baseball that I really cared about.

Not, I suppose, that you care that much, dear reader. This isn't a story about a high school baseball player with equal talents for slap singles to right field and misreading routine flyballs. I'd more or less figured the latter out by senior year, but in the meantime I'd settled in as a catcher, with strict instructions to get out of the third baseman's way in the event of a pop-up.

Ahem.

Emma, on the other hand, was a swimmer and a handy shooting guard. She reached her full height of 5'8 early, and though eventually others had caught up, her catch-and-shoot game kept her on the court. In hindsight, it probably wasn't an accident that we had settled into different sports. Competition can be exhausting, especially when you're dealing with the other pressures of team sports. But it did mean that we never travelled to tournaments together, and often had clashing practice schedules. So we didn't quite drift apart: it was more like two magnets turned the wrong way, holding each other at a safe distance.

We both turned 18 near the beginning of our senior year, which meant lots of requests from friends to buy alcohol. Great power, great responsibility -- Emma was better at that than I was. I didn't drink much myself, but wasn't above pocketing a finder's fee from anyone in search of my services. I spread my buying out between a few shops, but even then I probably wasn't fooling anyone. Oh well. Simpler times, or something.

As I said, I never got quite as tall as I'd hoped, but at 5'11 I couldn't complain too much. At least I was taller than Emma -- the two years between her first growth spurt and mine had been rough. She could still crow that she, at least, was above average height; but any criticism coming from that close to the ground didn't couldn't leave too much of a mark. Sports kept me trim, and years of swinging a bat filled out my shoulders and forearms. I kept my dark-brown hair at a length that most would call 'shaggy', influenced by some baseball friends who were also on the hockey team. My eyes were brown, too, and my stubble grew in surprisingly fully. School dress code still meant that I had to shave once a week or so, but I could pull off the devil-may-care look pretty well.

Emma had always been thin, and when she shot up like a giraffe in ninth grade she really did look as though she'd been stretched. Her hair was sandy, with a bit of wave to it, and she kept it at about shoulder-length. Her eyes were a striking green, which made it too easy to make fun of her for getting jealous whenever I bested her. Her breasts were small, and I teased her for being flat-chested, but she could surprise in a bikini. Swimming kept her in shape, and her long legs ended in a surprisingly full bottom; for some reason I never said anything about that.

Now, look -- I'm writing this with the benefit of hindsight. And it is that kind of story. Maybe you can guess where things will end up; but you won't guess how they get there. At any rate, I certainly noticed these things at the time, ever since puberty gave my dick a say; but it was always somehow abstracted. I was never really attracted to her, in any sense beyond the academic. There may have been a wank or two, but at that age I would wank to anything that seemed to be both human and in possession of a vagina. Some men go for boobs, and I don't blame them, or butts -- a taste that I acquired later -- but for me it was the vagina that held the deepest fascination. Men had butts, and boobs if they were unlucky, but the pussy seemed somehow the quintessence of a woman's alien sexuality.

Not that you asked. Anyway, it was around that time that I started to learn something about the vagina. Not Emma's -- you had to be nice to a girl if you wanted her to take her clothes off, and that certainly wasn't going to happen. In truth, I don't think it even occurred to me that I could have dated Emma. Besides, admitting any sort of attraction would be giving her ammunition for life.

No, it was Alexis, another senior, who gave me my introduction to the female form. She was another volleyball player. One tournament she dared me to sneak away after curfew -- it wasn't just Emma who knew how to exploit my pride -- and soon enough we were on a park bench in the dark, kissing as only teenagers would dare do in public. Between our youth and the lack of privacy, we were both pretty happy with that, and when we found seats next to each other on the bus home I thought there'd be a chance for more, but my wandering hands were rebuffed at every turn. With Alexis, there was never anything more than kissing if there was any chance that someone else might see.

We spent the next few months fumbling our way towards sex. Neither of us had any experience, nor the confidence to push things, and though it was exciting at the time it's hard to look back on now. Luckily, this story isn't about her. The one thing I will always remember, though, is that she kept her pussy perfectly hairless. I don't know if she shaved, or waxed, or what, but it worked.

Our first time was memorable mostly for the wrong reasons. We'd watched a movie in the lounge, her parents had gone to bed, and something got into her. We were both, well, enthusiastic. I didn't have a condom -- it wasn't planned -- so I had to pull out, and managed to cum all over the couch cushion. It stained.

That was probably the beginning of the end. We'd both gotten what we wanted, I think, and after volleyball season ended we saw less of each other. She was the one who called it off eventually, which I thought was nice as it spared me the difficulty. We don't see each other much anymore, but we still text on our birthdays.

Emma's dating life was always a bit of a mystery to me. Probably she worried that any man attached to her would be another angle for attack. She tried the same trick with Alexis, but it wasn't her best work, and between Emma's green eyes and Alexis's rather larger boobs, I had a pretty robust counter-attack. Every once in a while I'd tease her for being unloved and unlovable, and though her denials were never empty it never occurred to me to press the issue. She was somehow sexless to me, as I suspected I was to her. I was happy enough for her to be getting some, if that was indeed what was happening, but the details didn't seem important.

More important than Alexis, though, was Jane, who was adventurous in a way that defied her name. She was hardly plain; and anything but innocent. Perhaps demonstrative is an exchange from the first time that we sexted, and I made the mistake of referring to her pussy.

'It's a cunt,' came her immediate objection. 'Some good girl, who's never really learned what her body can do, might tell her husband on her wedding night that he could finally have her pussy. Women who use it know it's a cunt.'

And Jane knew how to use it. I assume that she appreciated my enthusiasm, and perhaps a lingering air of innocence; but I was a summer project, little more. Whom she been with before me I never asked, though mentioning her name to the right people brought a far-off look to their eye. We were both in the right place at the right time; and at that age, who could ask for more?

This isn't a story about Jane, at least not directly, but she taught me so much that something needs to be said. If not for Jane's influence, maybe none of the rest would have happened. I learned a lot about various physical mechanics from her, to be sure, but more than anything I learned confidence. It was her who taught me that, if I wanted something, I should go out and grab it.

We hooked up for the first time at a pool party. The house belonged to a friend of a friend, I think, whose parents were either out of town or uncommonly liberal. We spent most of the afternoon between the pool and the deck, drinking lazily, enjoying the water, sun, and youth. Jane arrived with some friends in the early evening, as a buddy and I were trying to get the grill going for burgers.

I'd been in a room with Jane before, but this was the first time that we noticed each other. Under other circumstances, you might almost call her a tomboy. She kept her black hair short, and no one had ever seen her in a dress. But she was so comfortable in her skin that the overwhelming impression was of a kind of unfiltered femininity. The kind that didn't shave her cunt, would fuck you on her period, or sit on your face until you passed out. As I would learn.

I heard her before I saw her. 'So this is where we get the meat, is it?' We'd just put the burgers down, which I turned to tell the unseen stranger, but seeing her my words tried to go back down my throat and choke me. I was young, and she couldn't have wanted anything else, dressed as she was. Her personality belied her height, which can't have been more than 5'3. She had sharp brown eyes, and might have been cute if not for a certain swagger that pushed everything into the realm of sexy. But my troubles arose from a neon-pink bikini, which presented more than concealed breasts that I would soon learn made for a very pleasant handful. The rest of her body had a certain softness to it. It wasn't that she was overweight: more that some aspect of her feminine biology prevented the development of any straight edge. Her hips were sweet curves, shaping out to a full ass; and the pink triangle of her bottoms did not quite contain her full bush. After Alexis, this alone would have been enough to boggle the mind.

In truth I was slightly terrified, not quite sure how to handle a woman who so clearly knew how to handle herself. 'Uhh, yeah,' I got out after a delay that probably wasn't as long as it felt. 'Burgers have just gone on, and we can call you over when they're ready.'

I felt transfixed, like a squirrel that has just seen a hawk circling in the distance, praying (if squirrels pray) that it would not be seen. But of course I had been. 'Good stuff, burger boy.'

She turned, sharply and deliberately, and as she walked away I noticed that her ass completely swallowed the thin line of her thong. But soon enough burgers, and a line of people to be served, drove her from my mind, until everything was cooked and I was about to turn off the grill. 'Hey burger boy, wanna toast my bun?'

Once again I met those predatory brown eyes. She wanted something from me -- not just a toasted burger bun -- but my brain couldn't move in a straight line. 'Yeah, sure,' I said lamely, when the silence had grown too long, and started to reach for the bag of buns. But she surprised me by stepping in closer and grabbing my beer. 'This is what you were supposed to do,' she said with a giggle, before raising the bottle and proclaiming in an artificially hushed tone: 'to the best ass at the pool.' Then with a swig she sauntered off, giving me ample opportunity to assess that claim.

Alexis had never drawn much attention to her ass, preferring to keep attention on her, to be fair, pretty impressive breasts. Now, watching Jane move away, I started to wonder if I hadn't been missing out on something. She flicked her head back, suddenly, and me neck snapped up to meet her stare. I turned away, blushing, but there was laughter in her eyes. The hawk had dived, and I was caught.

I wasn't sure if she actually wanted a toasted bun, but this game was starting to draw something out of me. She'd come to me twice, and somehow it seemed like it was my turn to reciprocate. Dressing a basic burger, I flicked the gas off and wandered off towards the pool. Jane was sitting with a friend, still drinking my beer, which I swiped from her hand as I walked up behind her. As she turned to object, I presented the burger. 'Your toasted bun.'

There was a curiosity in her eyes as she accepted the plate. Lifting the burger to her mouth, she took a bite and quite ostentatiously licked her lips after swallowing. 'Not bad, burger boy.'

'Matt,' I said, which was about as bold as I could be. She noticed, and straightened a bit in her seat, which pushed her boobs up in a way that made me almost pathetically desperate to grab them.

'Jane. And you owe me a beer.' I didn't, really, seeing as I'd done no more than recover my own. But it was a chance to keep things moving, and I wasn't about to complain. The next couple of hours continued in the same fashion: every once in a while I would find my way to Jane, and she would flirt lightly while I did my best to keep her interested.

A few hours, and a few beers, later, most of the party had moved inside, and I was about to join them when I heard a splash from the pool. Turning, I saw Jane's head bob above the water. 'Looks like it's just us, burger boy.' Then something wet flopped on the ground in front of me. Pink fabric, loose strings. My dick recognised it before my brain, and started to swell as I heard, 'See something you like?'

I swallowed, and tried to be quick. 'I'm not sure yet.' I wasn't, really, and my brain still hadn't figured out what was happening. But it was apparently the right answer.

'Come take a closer look, then', and she pushed herself up just high enough under the water to show the outline of soft flesh. In a strange moment of clarity (and here I credit Alexis's attention to detail), I quickly switched off the pool lights, so we couldn't be seen so easily from inside, before surrendering to my dick's judgment and diving in next to her.

She turned away from the splash and I caught her from behind, filling my hands with her boobs and squishing my rapidly hardening dick into her lower back. 'That's the way, burger boy.' Then she wriggled herself around, and my mouth dropped to hers for a kiss. We made out for a while as my hands dropped to her ass, pulling her up a little bit as she adjusted to let my dick rub against her crotch. That was fun, but were both quite aware that time was limited. The added excitement of doing something so public was also having a very real effect on my stamina. Luckily, the same was true for her, and eventually she pushed away. Light spilling from the windows caught in her eyes, revealing her arousal, as she whispered 'finger me.'