Predominantly Concerned with Sex

"Yes Dad."

"Oh, and take a bottle of Fucking Good Port. You 'WILL' accept that as thanks, please Bobby."

"Yes Sir."

"Janey, love."

"Yes Mum."

"Take your swag. It's a beautiful night for lying out under the stars."

She sat behind me on the quad bike and hugged me tightly. "See, I told you I wouldn't throw myself at you. My own parents practically catapulted me. Even gave me a bottle of leg opener."

"You're a shocker Jane Bowen."

"It's Heather Jane Bowen, if you're going to try using my full name."

"Well, Heather Jane Bowen. It is a great night for lying out under the stars. But no expectations, okay."

"Same Robert. I've had a lovely day. It was so nice to see Mum relaxed. And fishing was perfect. You're a good kisser, too."

"Not so bad yourself, miss. I could probably use a bit of practice though. It's been a long while."

"Ooh! Well, look out then, mister."

We rolled our swags beside each other in the back of the old clunker Ford and told the stars all our stories. The port was actually labelled, "Fucking Good Port" and lived up to its name. It was from the local Riversands winery. I learned that she had one semester left of Uni and that her reticence while initially getting to know me was due to being aware she was going away again in late January.

I walked her through my adventures picking cotton, even including my mixed feelings about sharing Isa's body.

"If some poor girl ever marries me, I won't share her. I couldn't."

"Hell nope. That was part of what Kerry wanted me to do. How can you love someone and let them fuck other people? Maybe it works for some people, but sex is 'way' too intimate for me to... Just no... Hell no."

"So, a girl?"

"Mum thought it was just a phase. Some kind of rebellion cause of how religious they are. But it was more than that for me. In the beginning she was so attentive and it didn't really matter to me about body parts... I had no idea what to do with them, but you know... when you love someone you learn about them. I can't believe I'm telling you this stuff. Not even Mum or Bernie gets this much out of me."

"Bernie is?"

"Big sister. Bernadette. You'll meet her next week. She's my favourite. Has two little girls and her husband is a big softy. Tom is the oldest. It will be nice to all be home for a while. Tom can be a bit of a jerk when he drinks, but he's okay. They'll like you."

"Well, I hope so."

"Hey, we were supposed to practice kissing."

So, we did some of that too. We got so damn good at it that she put a hand between us and pushed on my chest until she was sitting up looking at me with wild doe eyes and a heaving chest. I'd hardened as she lay on me kissing and she was hotly snugged against it. I could feel the mound of her pressing down on me and swallowed hard.

"Oh god, Robert." She ground on me a little and closed her eyes. "Not tonight. This is all too perfect to change."

Then she lay down on my chest and snuggled her head in under my neck. I pulled a blanket over us and she was still lying there in the morning when the sunrise woke us.

"Yurk... I think a fox pooped in my mouth." She grumbled against my chest.

"This will help." Startled us from the tailgate.

"Fucking hell, Mum. Creeper much?"

"Breaky and coffee. Morning Bobby."

"Morning Mary."

"Take your time, but Glen asked if you'd come up to the house. He's got a bit of an idea floating around annoying him."

"Mum, seriously! We could have been naked!"

"I was kind of hoping so, but didn't think you'd be that brazen in the workers camp."

"God, Robert... I'm so sorry for her. She's right though, it's shift change we should probably-"

"Morning Bobby, Morning Jane, Mrs Bowen."

"Hi Charley."

Mary laughs at Jane and I chorusing, "Fuck off Charlie."

"I was gonna throw a fucking tarp over them if they got their gear off, Missus."

"Oh, hell with it." Jane laughed and kissed me hard for the whole camp to witness.

We sat on the tail gate and ate our bacon and eggs, drank our coffee and greeted the amused men as they came in from night shift. I found clothes and a toothbrush for her while she slipped through my shower, then followed suit myself.

Mary sent me into their office and fussed over a blushing Janey.

"So, tell me to fuck right off if you want, but I have an idea that sort of... Well, like this. The same as we do the earthworks, situation first. Situation is that you are a qualified accountant and, that town only has one office and they charge like a wounded bull. You have to take your books to them and they're too busy to really get into the nitty gritty of things like you did for us. Now Objectives. To use your skills to help my friends and neighbours in a way that makes you more money than I'm paying you. I can't believe you haven't... Well, yes I can. You're like me, you like to keep busy."

I just nod.

"Then Resources. You have qualifications and experience. I have vehicles and an office. You'd need a computer, but they aren't terribly expensive. Err... What else would you need?"

"Nothing really. An ABN, my own book-keeping software, Internet access, but I can hotlink my phone for that. Maybe secure cloud storage and insurance."

"Timeframe... Well, I'd like to see you set up by the time the boys start back second week of January. That gives me time to find another operator. But most people won't think about their books until late February as the third quarter nears. So up to you on that one, it's not like you're racing a season or crop."

"Environment. Well, what I was thinking was a mobile accounting service. What you did for Mary and I worked well because you were here in the house with everything you need and Mary to explain things to you. If you could go to people, you'd never be short of work. Snowed under more like. Insurance and computers won't pay for themselves, but Mary agrees with me that we can front capital for you and you can pay us back at bank interest rates of six percent. What else?"

"Delivery, Glen. We're in the middle of bloody nowhere. Getting it done and delivered. The last letter in your thing. S.O.R.T.E.D."

"Yeah. So, limit yourself to a only places you can service within half a day's drive. There might be some overnighters but... What do you think?"

"I'd need somewhere to live."

"Stay in the donger."

"Not if I'm not working for you."

Mary's voice rings out from the open doorway, "Then you'll stay in the big house with us if you won't accept charity. Jane says you look alright in boxer shorts. It would be nice to have that wandering around the place."

"Oh my god, mum!"

"Haha." Glen laughs at Janey's embarrassment. "So, all that needs doing is for you to think about it and make your own decisions. I'm not being pushy. You'll always have a job as an operator if you choose not to or if it doesn't take off. We'll look after you with money until you're up and running. Please just think on it, Bobby. You have a gift and you should be using it. My gift is organising dirt. Mary's is organising me. Jane's always been good at stitching up pig dogs and yours is books. You owe it to yourself and the man upstairs to use it for yourself and others."

"Oh, good one, Dad. Drop the god guilt on him." Jane laughs from the doorway.

"Damn." I rubbed my eyes. A headache was building and it was tension. It was the same tension I came home with every day when I worked in the city.

"Come with me, Robert. Please? These guys are good at putting people in a corner. We'll go for a walk. No talking even. Come on." Jane shines those brown eyes on me and it sounds like the best idea in the world.

"Just think on it, son." Glen pats my shoulder. "It's all we ask."

I nod and Jane takes my hand in hers and numbers shuffle in my head and logistics swirl around them in a tornado and suddenly we're standing in a garden I've never seen before. Roses twist into impossible shapes and the scent of their blooms surrounds me.

"This is my favourite place." Janey smiles up at me. "My grandad made it for grandma. It took all his life to make some of these roses into these shapes and it's all a bit of a mess these days. It's my favourite place in the world. So damn romantic. Look... There are even roses for each of his kids and grandkids . This is mine. Over here."

She shows me a pretty yellow bloom that has a blush of red bleeding into the petals where they meet the bud. It reminds me of her strawberry blonde curls.

"When I was young and silly, I dreamed... Don't laugh."

I make a heart crossing gesture and she blushes and lowers her voice to a whisper despite the fact that we are such a long way from the big house.

"I always wanted to have my first... you know, lose my... give my..."

"Oh."

"Well here. But, you know... backs of cars are so convenienr." She rolls her eyes and giggles.

She leads me to a little cast iron bench seat and urges me down beside her.

"I just want you to know one thing while you think about Dad's idea." Her frown is serious, but her eyes are soft.

"I don't need you to be anything other than who you are to me. I don't care if you drive a scraper or clean toilets or are the crown prince of whoop-whoop. The only thing that matters to me is that you are happy and you are you."

"Oh, I'm going to do it. I'm already working out how. I've known for a long time that I was wasting my time but it's time to stop running. I like who I am as a person now. I like who you think I am."

"Do you feel like you deserve me?"

"I feel like I'm gonna keep trying to, as long as you'll let me."

"Good cause I'm not sure if I will ever deserve the way you look at me, but take your pants off."

"Oh." Damn, she's yanking at my shorts and then I'm stiff in her hand and waving in the breeze as she fumbles under her sundress.

"Oh god." We both groan as one as she straddles me and sinks me deeply inside her.

"Finally." She giggles against my neck. "Have you ever done it in a hundred-year-old rose garden?"

"Nope." I gasp as she starts working me inside her.

"Good. It's the perfect place... fuck... for our... oh shit... first time... the first time..."

Her eyes close and she pushes her breasts against my neck as she bounces in my lap, kissing my head and groaning closer to the same precipice that is looming suddenly on me.

"The first time." I whisper and smile as we tip closer into this crazy intimate moment. She is on me. I am in her. She wants me in her. It's good. It feels so damn close and personal. I've never felt this close to anyone. Then her lips seek mine and we speak with other voices. Voices that make no sound, but twist tongues and taste and moan.

The shriek that announces her orgasm frightens me. Surely her parents will investigate. Her insides pulse around me and tip me into a foreign moment. As I fill her and she massages me we are one thing. Our breaths mingle, our sweat wets us together and I truly have never felt this fucking soul-fucked.

Nothing matters.

Everything is nothing while we are this thing we make together.

And it all makes perfect sense and no sense at all.

"I love you." Spills from my lips and terrifies me as I listen to it from far away.

Her brown eyes find mine and she smiles as she cries gently. "I've loved you since, 'motherfucker'. That first day. Your eyes and how gently you looked at me even with your hand all fucked up. I just didn't know if I deserved you."

"And now?"

"Well now you're fucked. You're just stuck with me."

"And very well thanks. We should probably move before we are actually stuck."

"Eww... Seriously though. I felt..."

"Me too."

"Never like..."

"Nope..." I kiss her crinkled smirking lips and dimpled cheek. "I think, that was the first time I ever made love."

~* *~

Jane is graduating this Friday afternoon. Her parents will be there for her. They're flying down. I used work as an excuse not to visit the city. She let me. They'll fly back Saturday and Jane will be home the following weekend.

It's been four months now and only cost fifteen thousand to kick RR Holmes Mobile Accounting off. I paid Glen back despite his insistence that it was a gift for his favourite son in law.

Christmas went swimmingly. Her sister Bernie was just like Janey; a dynamo of empathy, beauty and grace. She welcomed me as the man who made her sister glow with happiness.

Tom was a jerk. He got really drunk while we were fishing on boxing day and tried to pick a fight with Glen. When that didn't work, he tried me and well... he went swimming. His wife and Bernie giggled and tossed him the river. Janey told him to 'cool off'. He sulked into a beer for the rest of the morning.

Sex with Janey was something that nothing had ever prepared me for. I thought I'd loved before and perhaps I had. I thought I'd had sex before and certainly I'd had quite a bit. But every damn time we fucked we went to that same place where no one else and nothing else mattered. We made love. We fucked. We did all the things that people can do with their bodies to show others they love them.

But nothing compared to sex with Janey.

And yes... I'm still predominantly concerned with sex. I think we both are. But only with each other.

The time apart was difficult. I missed our tailgaters and our friendship most. She missed that place on my chest where she liked to sleep after whatever day we'd had. But it was important.

She was finishing her degree and I was building the little business and those things would in turn help us build ourselves the future we'd spent many nights planning. We'd sit on the tailgate and count passing satellites and shooting stars and build our dreams together whenever she was home. There were only logistical questions for our relationship. Perhaps it was naïve, but it was the truth. We couldn't see past our new love.

I met her friends via video calls. She included me in lunchtimes, nights out, girls relaxed weekends in; in all sorts of moments that she wanted me there for. They were all sweet people who reinforced my belief in how lovely she was on the inside. Janey had attracted all these equally wonderful people into her circle and that just cemented my opinion of her.

Travel was a pain. She was in Toowoomba which was only five tedious hours away so we both tried when we could. I'd finish early on a Friday and make the trip and she'd include me in whatever she had going on that weekend. It was mostly making a gesture at socialising with her friends and then going back to her unit on campus as quickly as was polite to reclaim that moment where our bodies made something so much bigger out of us.

She came home a few times too. But her schedule was a lot less fluid than mine.

One time was horrible for her`.

I was sitting in the back of the ute one evening watching stars and missing her. It was probably nine o'clock at night. We had a high score of twenty-three satellites spotted in an evening and in the city, she couldn't play because of the lights so I... well, mostly I just missed her, and Charley and I would have a beer and try and spot the bloody things so I could feel connected and Charley could get free beer.

My phone rang that night and it was her number. When I answered there was loud music and yelling and someone was crying. I stood up and held it closely to my ear to try and make sense of things but all I did was recognise my Janey's sobs and that voice that she used when she was really pissed off at a pig who'd injured a dog.

"...fucking cunt. I'll fucking stick you."

Then it cut out.

Charley urged me to call back and said he was going up the house to talk to "Boss Mary".

Sadie's number came up next on my phone. She's a sweet younger girl from the UK who is studying in Australia because it's cheaper for her and she has relatives in Toowoomba.

"Bobby. Relax mate. She's okay. Focking Kerry the loose tart. I'll call you when I get back from the police station. But she's fine mate. Just really angry. Please don't panic. I know what you two are like."

"What happened?"

"Oh Kerry tried pulling her off somewhere and well you know Jane. Gotta go. Taxi's here. I'll call you back."

Four hours later at one-thirteen, not that I was checking the time, Mary's phone rang and she frowned when she answered it. She took off to the kitchen and left Glen and I sitting there with our glasses of port.

Mary returned a short while later laughing to herself and that alone put me at ease. "She's okay, our girl. Big night out. Locked up for drunk after she tried to stab that horrible Kerry to death with her mobile phone."

"That sounds like my little princess." Glen laughed.

"She's just really embarrassed now and haha, you've turned her into a sappy mess, Bobby. Take the guest room tonight. She'll call in the morning."

I woke a little after eight-thirty the next morning. It was easy to sleep in after the late night. The weight of her head on my chest startled me. The smell of her... well, she'd certainly smelled better but I wasn't complaining to have her in my arms after worrying about her all night. She didn't wake when I gently wriggled out from beside her to find the much-needed toilet.

Giggles and hushed voices alerted me to guests in the kitchen, so I made my way through for coffee.

"Well hello sailor!" Sadie laughed and rose to kiss my cheek like she usually did. "Miss Jane is right, you 'do' look good in boxer shorts."

"Shit..."

"Oh sit down, Bobby." Mary laughed. "You're at home, honey. Relax."

"You remember Mel?" Sadie asked.

"Hi Melissa," I winked at the tiny pixie of a woman. These were Janey's two closest friends.

"I'm guessing one of you drove her home?"

"Me." Melissa yawned. "I was sober-sally last night. You owe me. Big time. I had to stop, what? Four times, Sades?"

"At least. None in the car though."

"Rum..." Mary patted my arm. "Janey's kryptonite, Bobby. Coffee, mate?"

"A bucket of it please." I scratch at my beard. "So, from the top, girls?"

"Oh. Not much to say really Bobby." Sadie starts. "Erm... we were out at the Uni-Club and that horrid girl wanted to talk to Jane; 'to apologise for how things went', she said. Next minute, she's grabbing Miss Jane by the fanny, pushing her into a corner. Well, Mel went for security and I tried to stay close, but erm... Jane is a bit scary when she's upset, Bobby. I got most of it on my phone. Kerry was saying some really horrible things and then Janey, well..."

"Haha. You should be proud, mate." Mel interrupted. "You don't deserve me you toxic swamp donkey. I think that's how it went. Play him the thing, Sades."

"Oh of course. Mary? Do you mind m'um?"

"I've seen her gut pigs dear. A little biff won't hurt me."

In the video I see a petite black-haired woman sneering at Jane and holding her by the hair and between the legs as she pushes her violently into a darkened area. She calls Jane grotty names and asks, "What's he got that I can't give you, my little fuck dolly? That's all you are, you know? Who do you think you are to say fucking no to me, bitch?"

"He fucking deserves me. You'll never deserve me. You'll never deserve anyone you toxic swamp donkey. And you're fucking hurting me." The 'me' turned into an angered cry as Jane tried to break free.

"You think you deserve him, bitch? I'll give you what you fucking deserve. For old times sake, hey? A fist in your-"

In the video I see Jane growl and toss Kerry like I've seen her roll pigs. I watch as she expertly drives a knee into her diaphragm, pulls her ear to stretch her neck just like the dogs would be doing and pins one arm with her other knee.

"You fucking cunt!" I laugh as Janey pats at her jeans like she's looking for her pig sticker and shouts, "I'll fucking stick you like a pig."

I can't stop laughing as I watch Jane use her phone as she would her sticking knife and bash it against Kerry's neck and collar bone. "Then I'll hang you from a doorway and fucking gut you. That's all you fucking are to me. A fucking carcass. I fucking love him and I fucking deserve him and I'm going to marry him and make a metric fuck ton of kids and have really good sex."