Photographs Ch. 12

Danny's jaw dropped so far, he could have caught dragonflies. She'd uttered the most coldly logical reason he had ever heard for having sex. To his surprise, all he could think of to say was, "I have no condoms."

She dropped her hand, an impatient gesture. "A good-looking, single college student who doesn't have condoms?"

"I just had a break up from a long-term relationship. We had birth control."

"You're really not in the market," she said, softening a little.

"Nope."

She held out her hand again. "Let's go to your room and see what happens."

"But--"

"I have some."

He stared at the hand for a few more seconds. She had cheap silver rings on almost every finger, a look that he really did not like, but he took her hand. He weighed twice what she did, and ended up accidentally pulling her into his lap.

"Sorry."

"I'm not," she said and kissed him.

Kissing a woman without any real excitement was a new experience for Danny. It felt clinical and strange, his focus dwelling on trivial things like the taste of vodka on her tongue and the texture of her lips, rather than how it felt. It reminded him of when he was fourteen and his fifteen-year-old -- and much more worldly -- cousin Teresa had kissed him to show him what it was like. He remembered feeling much more aroused back then than he did now.

Jennifer was clearly getting into it, pressing into him and sliding her fingers into his hair. Danny had just realized he should maybe touch her, and put a hand on her waist, when Pedro and Carla walked in. Jennifer didn't even pause, but Danny managed to break away from her insistent lips.

"Uh..." he said.

"Carry on," Pedro said, clearly pleased.

Jennifer stood. The kissing must have broken the ice for her, because she was much more relaxed and playful, and said, "I'm not holding out my hand again, you big lug. You'll have to get yourself out of that chair."

For some reason, everyone thought this was funny but him. He stood and said, "This way," and led her to his room.

Once his bedroom door was closed, Jennifer began to quickly and methodically strip out of her clothes and put them in a neat pile on his desk chair. Danny sat on the bed and watched this with no little apprehension. What kind of woman was this?

"Well," she said when finished, standing naked with her hands on her hips.

"Were you expecting a medical exam?"

"What?"

"You're all business."

"I don't see any point in pretending romance." She stalked forward until one of her nipples was even with his mouth. They were very pale nipples on smallish breasts. He leaned forward to suck one into his mouth. Out of curiosity, he tried to suck the whole tit in his mouth. It almost fit.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"Satisfying my curiosity."

"You know, you could have just said no."

"I don't remember saying anything, actually."

"You brought up condoms. I took that as a yes."

He decided then just to fuck her. There was nothing else for her to do, and keeping her occupied would make him a good host. That's what he told himself.

Having made the decision, things suddenly became much easier. He placed his hands on her hips and drew her closer between his knees. While they kissed, he felt this unfamiliar body in his hands and decided it wasn't all bad. He couldn't help comparing her to his mother -- and would continue to do so -- and found her smaller everywhere and less curvy. Where Jennifer was muscled and hard, Christie was shapely and toned, with just enough padding to make her soft and comfortable to touch. His hands continued to roam, eventually settling one hand on her ass and the other on her breast. During this Jennifer went to work on the buttons of his shirt. After enduring her fumbling for a few minutes, he finally released her and tugged his shirt over his head, kicked off his shoes, and tugged down his jeans.

"Oh my," Jennifer said on seeing his cock.

"It's not that big," Danny said.

"Should I be scared?"

"Naw. I'm careful."

She crawled onto the bed, ending up sitting on the far side of it. He crawled next to her and pulled her down to lie beside him. If she were Christie, she'd be nibbling on his ear. "Nibble my ear," he said. "I like that." Thinking about his mother doing it didn't help, only making him a little depressed. He reached for her shaved pussy to slip a finger between her folds. Jennifer sighed in pleasure and asked for more. She was already a little wet, so he dove one finger inside her while rubbing her clit with the palm of his hand.

Danny still wasn't fully hard, and had that disconnected feeling of watching himself from the outside. How to handle the situation finally came to him. He would go down on her, never really fucking her at all. That's what he did. It took a while for her to come, and when she finally climaxed he collapsed beside her on his side, his eyes closed. He wiped her juices from his face onto his forearm.

After a few minutes, she asked angrily, "Is that it?"

"Little Danny is telling Big Danny he needs to get some sleep because he has to work tomorrow."

She sat up. "If you never wanted to do this, you should have said so."

He opened his eyes and looked up at her. "I'm sorry. I've only slept with one woman in my entire life. I guess I'm not the casual sex type."

"So I was an experiment?"

She seemed determined to take this the wrong way, but he tried again. "No. I wanted you to be happy and not sit out there alone and bored. Do you want to go home? Pedro can drive Carla home in the morning, or I will if she's up early enough."

"We pair together to keep each other safe."

"That's not the greatest plan. Pedro and I could have both been perverts."

"It's better than nothing."

He stared at the ceiling for a moment. "This bed is too small for two. I'll take the couch, you sleep here. The sheets are fresh."

She snorted at that. "The couch isn't big enough for you. You sleep here, I'll take the couch."

Together they made up a bed on the sofa, and before he returned to his room she said, "You know, you're a decent guy underneath all that emo shit you have going on."

"I'm not emo."

"You're fucked up, though. You need to figure out what you want."

"I know what I want. That's the problem," he said and turned out the light.

#####

If the date with Ralph accomplished anything for Christie, it proved that she was unlikely to have sex for a long time. Unless she took Danny back. Whenever that thought intruded she shoved in a dark corner. Thinking that way only led to pain. He wouldn't come back after the way she hurt him, whether she allowed it or not.

Having made this realization, though, Christie decided to have her IUD removed. She'd kept it after Steve's death because the risks of pregnancy with Danny were too great, and it hadn't been time to remove it anyway. She'd had birth control continuously for twenty years. Maybe it was time to go natural.

She sat in the crowded doctors' office, surrounded by children and their parents, pregnant women, young single women probably taking care of birth control like her, older women facing menopause. The many stages of womanhood. Christie watched a toddler push a truck around on the carpeted play area and make wet raspberry noises. Looking at that sweet child, she didn't think of Danny's childhood, but of the children she never had. Christie steadfastly tried to be unemotional, but in odd moments it hit her, the enormity of what Steve had done to her life, what she'd let him do. Beating her was the very least of it. Everything she'd dreamed of had been lost.

Her wedding day had been a tense, joyless affair full of all the wrong types of emotions -- her own dread, her parents' concern, Steve's smug possessiveness. The few guests left early and didn't seem to enjoy themselves much. She went on to a college career that was nothing like she'd planned. At fifteen, Christie wanted nothing more than to be a preschool teacher. Back then she was a typical teenage girl who loved babies and kittens and thought the worst thing that could ever happen to her would be not being asked to the junior prom. She decided on the law as a way to ensure she could survive without Steve supporting her, and to also help her understand the legal quagmire of the murder Mike had committed and her complicity in covering it up.

Even their home had not been what Christie dreamed of, that monstrosity of a house that made Steve feel like he had come up in the world. She hadn't hated it, but it never felt comfortable or put her at ease. Her new, smaller house was much more to her taste, and she and Danny had had two wonderful years there.

She'd wanted a family. A large catholic family full of children. Her eyes burned, and she closed them for a moment.

Beside her sat two men, obviously a couple, with a little girl. The child smiled at her and waved a fist wet from sucking on it.

"Teething?" Christie asked.

"Yes," one of the said.

"How old is she?"

"Just turned one."

She looked at the two men. Just a few decades ago their love would have been illegal, yet for hundreds of years men and women like them had found ways to be together. They lived with it, with the secrets, the lies, and the hardships. Christie knew that her situation was different, that incest was illegal for a good reason, but birth control had eliminated much of that concern.

In that moment, Christie understood. She'd been wanting a life that could no longer happen. Not because she was too old, but because she was no longer that fifteen-year-old girl. Because she had spent twenty years mourning its loss, she never looked around and realized that there were other ways to be happy.

"I wouldn't be living with them. I'd be with you!" Danny had said. Twenty-two years old and he'd been far wiser than his mother.

Christie got up to leave. She would keep her IUD because, somehow, she was going to convince Danny to forgive her.

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