Ofelia Ch. 01 Pt. 04-06

iv.

It was eight o'clock in the evening and Ofelia was watching television with her brother and her Mom in the living room of their apartment. Dominga, Ofelia's Mom, was standing behind the couch, running a brush through her daughter's long dark hair, half paying attention to the television, half paying attention to Ofelia's hair.

Manuel was sitting close to his sister, as he always was. He liked being beside her. He liked being able to smell her and to feel the warmth of her soft skin. Ofelia had her pajamas on, some baggy white cotton shorts with big clown dots on them, and a clingy white camisole with one of its thin straps hanging lazily down her shoulder. She sat with her long legs crossed, her feet in small, girlish slipper-socks with Sponge Bob on them. The family was watching a Spanish program called "Caliente" which featured girls in skimpy outfits and bikinis dancing to popular songs.

Finally Ofelia shoved her elbow against Manuel, "Guey!" she said softly, as a way of mildly complaining that he was too close. Manuel reluctantly shifted over.

Dominga said, "You need a novia, Manuelito. Ofelia can't be your girlfriend and your sister both!" and when she said that she and her daughter laughed out loud.

Manuel pretended to take offense, "I've had lots of girls." he said, though that was far from the truth. And he didn't mind at all that both his Mom and Ofelia knew that he had something of a crush on Ofelia. Dominga put her brush away and helped to put Ofelia's hair into a long braid in the back, though the young lady was to undo it only a short time later. Then she said she was going to bed, and bid them both goodnight. Manuel waited until her door was closed and he asked his sister,

"Is it true you showed your flower to Diablo today down at the pool? That's what he told me."

"Oh, that Diablo! What a liar!" Ofelia said, and after a brief pause she told Manuel, "All he did was try to touch me down there, like through my bikini. I didn't get mad because he's just a boy, and that's what boys do."

"You shouldn't let him do things like that." Manuel said, but she could see that he was relieved that she hadn't actually exposed herself to that criminal, Diablo. Ever since they were small Manuel called Ofelia's vagina her "flower", because it reminded him of a flower. The siblings had taken their baths together up until they were seven and eleven respectively, up until Ofelia began to develop into a young lady. And since they still shared the same room and the same bed, he had many opportunities to see it.

Ofelia said, "It's just... like a game. Like a game that kids play. It's only in fun. He didn't mean any harm." Manuel wished he had a nickel for every time Ofelia said those exact things. He was about to say something when Ofelia's cell phone chimed. She answered it.

"Hello? Oh, hello Paul, how are you?"

Manuel seethed with envy. What was that Paul Diaz doing calling Ofelia at eight o'clock in the evening? Or at anytime, for that matter? Wasn't she engaged to another man? Was it proper to call a woman who was to be married soon, as if she was just any old single girl?

Ofelia got up and walked off towards the kitchen, talking in low tones to Paul. Leonard would be getting off work in two hours and as always he would stop in before going home for the night, hoping to get a kiss from his betrothed. Ofelia always waited up for him, though sometimes she was still out when he came to their door. She went out with various cousins, aunts, uncles, and the occasional girlfriend; but there were also times when she went out with a young man who wasn't related to her. These were totally innocent evenings out, she told Leonard, at least on her part. She never went out with anyone and failed to tell Leonard. In fact, she told him everything, sparing nothing. She was a good girl and she had nothing to conceal.

Ofelia got off the phone and went into the bedroom she and Manuel shared. By the time Manuel got to the bedroom doorway he saw Ofelia at her dresser. She was just in the process of taking off her pajama shorts. She had her back to him and didn't know he was there. The panties she had on under her pee-jays were white nylon, regular cut. They were loose on her but when she bent over they pulled tight to her pert little bottom. She stood back up and had to reach back to fetch the seat of her panties out of her behind.

She turned slightly and took her camisole off. For a while she stood there playing with her hair in the mirror over her dresser, and Manuel's throat caught as he saw the profile of her little breast softly wiggling up and down, her dark nipple jutting out, large and puffy at its very tip.

"What are you doing?" Manuel asked finally, when he saw her reach into her make-up bag for her eye-liner. She gasped and made a half-hearted effort to hide her breasts with her left arm, but the upper arches of her areolae were plainly exposed.

"Hello! I have my shirt off!" she complained.

"What are you getting dolled up for?" Manuel asked, averting his gaze and leaning with his back on the doorjamb.

Ofelia answered very flatly, as if her answer meant nothing at all, "Paul asked me to go to the late movies with him, so I said okay. I'm not very sleepy anyway."

"What will I tell Leo?" Manuel asked, his eyes occasionally darting to the side to see what he could see. Ofelia was naked at one point, and was sorting through her top drawer, her little bare bottom tense and round. A few moments later he saw her pulling up a fresh pair of underwear. Nothing fancy, just clean. They were pale blue cotton briefs, which still looked big on her slight hips.

"Guey!" Ofelia complained, and now she was slipping a top over her head, but didn't bother to put on a bra first. "Tell him I went to the movies with Paul!"

The top she put on was a pretty burgundy color, sort of like a sweater but with a thin weave, long sleeves, and a V-neck. She looked so cute, Manuel thought, as she sprayed herself with perfume, standing there with her blouse covering her panties so that only a small wedge was showing. Next she was putting on a pair of white denim jeans which she knew was very snug to her figure and made her backside look nice. When she wore a big blouse like that she would always be hoisting the bottom of it up to her waist so it wouldn't conceal her rear-end when she walked.

"You should call Leo and tell him. Why make him waste a trip here?" Manuel suggested, watching his sister turn and turn, examining herself from every angle in her mirror.

"We live in the same building, duh! And on the same floor! How stupid!" Ofelia said, laughing. There was a long pause, during which Manuel just stared at the floor and kicked his feet like a little boy.

"I'm just kidding, Papi." Ofelia told him after a few moments, seeing the anxious look on his face. Manuel was the only person with whom she used that term of affection. It always made Manuel melt when she said it. No matter what they were fighting over, he forgot it instantly when Ofelia called him by that name.

"You're already beautiful." Manuel said after a long pause, and came to sit on their bed to watch her paint herself in the mirror. "You don't need that stuff."

"Gracias, Papi." Ofelia said, giving him a sweet smile over her shoulder. "It's just a little around my eyes. I do it for me, though, not anyone else. It's not like that. It's just so I don't look tired." There was a pause, and then she said loudly, "Oh man, I bet you think I'm putting it on because of Paul!"

"Whatever." Manuel answered.

"Sheeez!" Ofelia said, "No way. He's just a friend."

"You shouldn't go out with him." Manuel said.

Ofelia turned around, "I'm not going out with him." she explained, "We're not going out. It's not like a date or anything like that. We're just going to see a movie, like at the same time. I wouldn't go out with Paul like that, on like a date. Sheeez. I like him as a friend. He aint even that handsome or nothing."

Manuel argued, "I'm just worried about your reputation. People talk. I hear a lot of bad things. You know how many fights I been in because of you? Come on, girl."

Ofelia looked hurt for a moment, then turned around. She said over her shoulder, "Don't fight because of what anybody says about me, Papi. I don't care what anybody says. People like to talk about everybody else. I don't care about that."

Most of the time Ofelia and Manuel acted and spoke as any sister and brother; but there were times, usually private times, when there was a change in Ofelia's voice, a subtle but significant change that Manuel had learned to recognize immediately. When she was speaking in that voice she completely over-powered and commanded him. Manuel was utterly defenseless during those times when Ofelia was exerting her authority over him, and this was fast approaching one of those times. He closed his mouth and let the matter drop.

At that point the doorbell rang and Ofelia went to answer it. Manuel lay back on the bed and listened for the sound of Paul's car speeding away down the street.

v.

Paul and Ofelia sat in a quiet corner of the theater, way in the back. Even as they took their seats Ofelia knew that this was nothing more than two friends doing something at the same time. It wasn't a date. She had moved his hand off of her leg several times on the drive to the movies.

Paul didn't waste very much time. When the movie started he took Ofelia's box of popcorn out of her hands and placed it in the seat beside him, which drew some faint, half-hearted protests from Ofelia. He leaned over and put his mouth to Ofelia's mouth, and after acting surprised initially, Ofelia opened her lips against his and their tongues pressed together. Ofelia liked that feeling very much: her tongue touching a boy's tongue. She kissed an awful lot of boys, too, since learning how from her older cousin Miguel when she was thirteen. She rated Paul an average kisser, though she had an above average interest in kissing him because he was very nice looking. Paul loved the way Ofelia kissed. With some girls they wouldn't open their lips; others would pull their tongues back; still others would stick it too far in and too aggressively.

Ofelia didn't make any sounds while being kissed. Some girls moaned and groaned and sighed like they just got married. The worst thing was when they had bad breath. Ofelia's breath, and the flavor of her mouth, was like cinnamon and lime and salt and sugar all mixed together. He liked the way her hair smelled as he ran his hands through it. He liked how her skin smelled and tasted as he kissed her cheek, her ear, her neck, her small shoulder.

After they kissed for a while, Paul put his hand on her belly and fished around for the bottom of her blouse. When he found it he positioned his hand just underneath it, at her slight hip. Ofelia's skin was smooth and hot. Paul slid his hand up, going over her taut tummy, her knobby ribs. He paused for a moment for some comic relief,

"Aiy, mi amor, you need to eat!"

They both laughed, and Paul gobbled up her laughter by affixing his mouth back upon hers. Then with one more motion his hand found the pudgy bottom of her breast. It was cool to the touch, compared to the rest of her body. The skin of her breast was too smooth and too soft to imagine. It had to be experienced.

Paul very gently pushed up on Ofelia's breast, lifted it and gathered it into his hand. It was small but perfectly so, he thought. It felt heavy for the size of it. He let go and made his fingers glance across the front of her breast so he could feel her nipple. Her areola was so big it seemed to take up most of her breast. He moved his hand over and handled her other breast the same way. They felt more like a mature woman's breasts than a young woman's, he thought, but they were exquisite. They were exquisite because they were Ofelia's.

Finally, Ofelia broke off from Paul's kiss and said, "Stop!" softly, and pulled his hand from under her blouse. "We're just friends, Pablo." she said, using the Spanish version of his name. "Let's watch the movie."

"Aw, to hell with the movie." Paul said, and put his hand on the inside of Ofelia's leg, then moved up so his fingers were pressing against the plump zipper of her jeans.

He kissed her neck and her cheek and mouth again. He wished she had decided to wear a short skirt instead, but she was so light and slim he managed to get his hand all the way between her legs so that he was actually cupping her between the legs and on her bottom at once. Ofelia opened her legs and enjoyed the pressure on her pubic area. She relaxed and leaned back. Paul kissed her neck and found her lips again, and she opened her mouth wide, responding to his kiss in a way that she never did with Leonard, and only rarely with other boys whom she had allowed to kiss her, which were many. Paul could feel that Ofelia was very wet between her legs. He pulled his hand free and skillfully unbuttoned her slacks. He pulled the zipper down and was able to see her pale blue panties in the dim light of the theater.

"Oh, mi amor." he moaned, and got his fingers under the top of her panties. The backs of his fingers slid across the top of her pubic hair.

Excitedly, he turned his hand palm inward and slid them back down under Ofelia's panties, going as slow as he could force himself to until he reached the top of her vulva and explored the bristly hill of flesh there. It was very warm on the outside where her pubic hair grew sparsely. When he managed to get his fingers inside her outer lips and found her delicate, small inner lips, she gave a soft little cry, either of anxiety or excitement. Or probably both.

Paul used his middle finger to discover her vagina's tiny ridged opening and inserted it to the first knuckle. Ofelia was dripping wet and her rich, clean scent rose up to his nostrils, causing them to flare. Paul kissed her throat and moved his finger up and down gently, and gently in and out, going deeper and deeper but very carefully, since she was very tight and her vagina constricted almost alarmingly around his finger.

Suddenly Ofelia felt certain that what Pablo was causing inside her was meant for her husband and her husband alone. She quickly and urgently sat forward and begged him to stop. Paul took his hand away, wet and fragrant with her precious wetness, and whined as Ofelia fixed her panties and zipped up her jeans. She fastened the button and finally she said,

"Guey, Pablo. I told you we're just friends..." Even in the dim light Paul could see that her nipples were pushing thickly up against the inside of her blouse.

"Ofelia, you know what you are?" Paul said after a long pause during which they both had to catch their breath. "You're a tease!"

Ofelia answered, "Chale! I keep telling you to stop and you don't."

Paul said, "When some girls say no they mean it, Ofelia. When you say no you don't mean it. Everybody knows that already."

Ofelia wasn't phased by that last remark. She knew inside that she was a good girl and that she was saving herself for marriage. She had told him to stop many times. She was very sure of herself. Even when she was granting certain liberties to other boys besides her fiance, she convinced herself that it was not like cheating. Cheating would have to involve some sort of consummation, or completion. She would never allow a boy to get to his final goal. Not only that, she also convinced herself that she was merely giving in to the desires of someone else rather than her own desires. She felt bad for those boys because she had caused them to have a physical reaction to her, because she was so pretty. It was out of pity more than anything else, or so she tricked herself into believing, that she went through the motions with boys other than Leonard.

One thing was most certainly true, and wasn't a mere rationalization: Ofelia never instigated anything physical between herself and another boy. She was passive, and passive to a fault, to be sure; but she was never the aggressor. And yet it was also true that she was usually so weakly resistant to a boy's advances that she might just as well have been the aggressor, though it would have been impossible to convince Ofelia of that.

"I guess we better go home." she said, "I forgot I have to go to work in the morning."

"Yeah, whatever." Paul said. And he drove Ofelia back to her apartment and let her go without even saying goodnight.

vi.

Ofelia went to work the following morning and had practically forgotten about the night before. Paul was just an immature boy, too young to understand that she was a lady who was soon to be married and with no idea how to treat such a lady. And he obviously didn't realize that she allowed him to go so far with her only because he was going off to college and was in a state of anxiety over the prospect of being separated from everyone he knew and loved, and because he was so childishly persistent, and because he was physically stronger than her, of course. Ofelia trivialized Paul in her mind to the point that she was laughing about what had happened while she was telling Leonard about it on the phone. She decided to call him while she was on break.

Ofelia worked at a laundry mill and almost all of the employees there were Mexican. Her boss was a white man named Daniel and Ofelia thought he was quite nice looking, though very few of the other ladies at the mill agreed with her. He was nearly forty, short in stature, and had thinning black hair and a trimmed beard and mustache. Ofelia watched him through the big plexi-glass windows that divided the break room from the rest of the mill.

Ofelia sat at a table by herself in the dingy break room talking to Leo on her cell phone. There were two men in the break room, Luiz and Paco, and they were on the opposite end of the room where they could look at Ofelia and make comments about her among themselves without her hearing. Ofelia spoke to her fiance in English, but didn't go into great detail about what happened with Paul at the movies:

"He was very fresh, Oh my goodness, Querido. You should have seen him. He put his hands everywhere and I had to keep telling him to stop. And he kept getting mad. He's such a baby! And he's so jealous of you! Oh my goodness. What? Yes. I'll tell you everything later okay? Later! I can't say it here. He was very fresh. Wait till you see, Querido, he even made a mark on my neck! Yes, sheeez! He was like a little boy when I told him to take me home..."

Ofelia got up from her table and walked around it, heading for the soda machine. With her back to Luiz and Paco, they elbowed each other as they watched her walk. She had a pair of very old jeans on and they were so faded and fit her so snugly that the seasoned denim conformed perfectly to the shape of her behind, even with her panties on under them. When the can of Pepsi dropped Ofelia bent way over to get it. She bent much further than she had to and took far too much time to retrieve the soda, letting her backside stick out behind her. Luiz and Paco were afforded a long and luxurious view of Ofelia's small but shapely rear-end, and of her panties which showed through in a clearly defined outline.

Ofelia gave both men a pretty smile as she walked past them toward the door of the break room. She wore a white short-sleeved t-shirt with a picture of Ricky Martin on the front, and when she was gone Luiz and Paco agreed that Ricky Martin had never looked so good.

Ofelia was at her machine when she saw her boss Daniel coming along. He was looking at something on a clipboard and seemed very busy, as usual. She thought he looked nice in his dress slacks and white business shirt. He had a bit of a belly but Ofelia didn't mind.

It was very loud in the mill and Daniel shouted, "Morning, Ofelia!" as he approached her, and waved pleasantly.