The Humper Game Pt. 04 Ch. 03

Kelly took a deep breath, and let it out. "You didn't have to say all that. It is going to hurt a little, but I hope I can live with it. But I was pretty sure you were going to say no, I just, um, I want you enough that I had to ask. But if you said yes, and then slept with me once or even a few times, and then stopped, I think it would hurt a lot more.

"And yes, please keep running with me. There's lots more we can talk about. And Ellen, I want to be your friend, too. I had to ask Phil that, but I'll really try not to ask again, and I wouldn't ever want to do anything with him behind your back."

Our talk turned to the meal, briefly. Kelly told me, "Thank you for doing the asparagus, Phil. I've always just had it steamed, before. This is really good."

"A little butter and garlic and maybe a sprinkling of lemon juice can work on it after it's steamed, too."

I hadn't told her about my family, so I gave her a quick rundown on family and upbringing at that point. She needed to know my religious background, for what we were there to discuss.

In the middle of it, Kelly served dessert. Just ice cream, but my fondness for ice cream has come up before. Ellen went on to tell a little about herself, some of which was new to me. I asked her about her grandparents, saying that I didn't really know much about Chinese Christianity. I had been right that they were Pentecostals. Their church had originally been founded by missionaries sent by the Assemblies of God. No sort of affiliation with any western church had been possible for quite some time when her grandparents had fled, in fear for their lives. Her own parents had both abandoned their parents' faith, but not with the kind of violent rejection my father exhibited. Ellen's grandparents had been loving to their children and grandchildren, in a traditional Chinese kind of way, and she and Steve had very definitely been expected to show great respect to their grandparents.

"Kelly, you need to understand that, since I'm not a Christian myself, I'm a little hampered in giving you advice. I don't have my grandparents' love of the scriptures as God's word. But on the other hand, I found much in it that I think is exactly on target with what I see in myself and in the world, enough so that Sam's uncle is right, I'm trying to sit on the fence and I can't keep it up forever—even too much longer, I think.

"And my grandfather's own passion for understanding the scriptures came to me in a different form. I saw, and see, a very logically complex book, composed—whether or not under divine guidance or control—over a long period of time, in many forms, but with plenty of internal consistency to say a lot of things about what its main messages are and what follows from what it says. I find I have quite a lot of passion for logic, and so it disturbs me when people claim to believe it to be God's word and yet ignore what it says. It disturbed my grandfather even more, because he had all the scholar's concern which I have plus a concern for its ultimate truth.

"So I can talk with you about it on that level. I can't tell you whether to be a Christian. I can't really even say you're wrong, precisely, if you want to call yourself that but want to abandon both what the Bible says and what the term 'Christian' has always been understood to mean. That appears to me to be a very popular thing to do, for almost couple of centuries now, and especially for about the last century. Doing it seems to me intellectually and spiritually dishonest, and that bothers me. Certainly, the Bible condemns hypocrisy—originally, literally something like wearing a mask, as Greek actors did in the theater. Figuratively, pretending to be what you aren't. Representing something you aren't really, before the watching world.

"But I have to be very careful to be clear. I'm not guiltless, and I'm a hypocrite if I try to cover up what I am and what I do. I tried not to do that. But at the very least my behavior the past year has been inconsistent with what I believe in several areas, and we were just dealing with the one that I'm most aware of and that bothers me most. I really do believe that the biblical understanding of sexual morality is basically right, that sex should be part of, and limited to, marriage—not meaning that you've gone through a ceremony, but that you, a man and a woman together, have committed yourselves, to each other and to a lot of other people, to everyone else in effect, to be completely faithful to each other, to care for each other, permanently, not giving up when it gets difficult. And yet, once the game began, I ignored this, in the way I acted. I could have done several things, but most easily caught my assigned partner each time—or tried, anyway—and had sex with her, since I was under instruction to do so, but not gone beyond that. And I chose not to."

We talked about her ideas of who God was and what he was like. There were enough issues in her answer, to my mind, that I said we'd better back up for a moment, start somewhere else. So I asked her who Jesus was, and—assuming being a Christian meant something about following him—why he mattered.

To my surprise, she didn't have a ready answer at all. She finally came up with two things: He saved us from our sins, and he showed us how we should live. I told her she needed to think about both of those, what they meant and why she believed them, but that we'd better start with just one. I suggested the first one.

"So," I asked her, "what are our sins—not a list, but what kind of things are they? And if we say we need to be saved from them, what does that mean? How and why are we in trouble because of them?"

Here she was, a young woman who identified herself as a Christian, raised in a home which was nominally Christian, brought up going to church every Sunday—and she hadn't ever really thought about questions like these! We talked for a long time, and early on I seriously scared her, just by quoting a passage, half a dozen verses, from memory. It didn't help that this was the King James translation, which she hadn't personally encountered except for a few scattered verses or even phrases. The main effect of those had been to give her the idea that there was something specially religious about words like "unto" and the old verb forms and pronouns.

I was kind of afraid I would lose her completely if she got any idea at all of how much I could quote from memory. I had her find her own Bible, which was kind of buried, and thereafter I merely looked up a passage if I wanted to cite it, checking what the exact verse numbers were as I found it and then having her read it out loud, with some context. That actually seemed to calm her down.

That was a good thing, since as we read and discussed just what the Bible said about sin, and sins, she got more and more afraid of what she was reading.

I jotted down the passages we'd looked at, and gave her the list. It was getting kind of late, and I said, "In theory we don't have to get up early tomorrow, but actually Ellen and I do. Elise is expecting Ellen at the usual time, and I really need the discipline. I don't know whether you're going to be up to going, but if you do I expect to be there.

"And of course, I can tell you feel like I've been kind of raking you over the coals, and that may have an impact on whether you want to run with me. You'll have to decide. I'll miss you if you stop running with me, but if you decide you can't, tomorrow or in general, I certainly can't hold it against you.

"If you want to go on talking about these things, let me know, and we'll make time. If you do, I'd suggest either that you come with questions or thoughts prepared to ask me about, or go through what we've said tonight and think about it. I kind of guided tonight—I felt I had to—but I tried to make it be about where you are and what you need to figure out and decide. And I may be wrong on that."

We had stood up and were headed for the door, but she put a hand on my arm and stopped me. "Phil," she said, "if I feel like I've been raked over the coals, you haven't been the one doing it. You're right, I somehow never have thought about these things. Please, I really do want to go on. I hope a week will be long enough, because I do need to think. And thank you for the list! But I hope you can find time next Friday night, or maybe Saturday or Sunday sometime."

She hugged me gently from the side and kissed my cheek. It felt as though she was about to start crying, and I didn't have a clue about what I should do. So I fell back on my standard technique, and just hugged her gently, implicitly offering a shoulder if she needed it. She didn't cry, but I thought it was a near thing. She took a few deep breaths, and finally said, "Thank you, Phil. And Ellen, too."

Ellen had occasionally said things through our discussion, but mostly left it to me. She came and hugged Kelly too. I thought for a moment that Kelly would cry on her shoulder, but the moment passed.

As we were opening the door, Kelly suddenly said, "Oh! I almost forgot!" and went back to the kitchen for a brief moment. She came back carrying my small dish and its lid.

"Thank you for the potato salad, too. I knew from the picnic how good it was. I'm going to have to try making it myself sometime soon, and I'll probably have to call you for instructions. It was wonderful. Thank you for giving me some for myself."

We each hugged her again—this time a little more firmly, and it was clearly a good-night thing. We thanked Kelly for her hospitality and set out for home.

As we went, Ellen put her arm around my waist. "Phil, you've got to learn to slow down some. You want to dump everything she should know or think about on her at once. But otherwise, you did a really good job. And you were reading her mind, however you do it."

I said, "I know I dump too much on at once. And if I'm ever going to be any kind of teacher, I've got to learn better. Somehow. But thank you for pointing it out. Maybe I'm the one who needs someone to say 'Basingstoke!' Or at least 'Birmingham.' Ellen giggled and hugged me harder.

We walked on a little way, and then she said, "Sam talked to me once, about that first morning you were together at breakfast. People had complained about the noise. No, wait, first someone suggested that putting you two together was sadistic or some such. And you spoke to everyone around, explaining that she had asked you to forgive her and you had, wholeheartedly. And you explained the difficulty you'd had, and that it had been dealt with. You basically told them to try to make sure everyone in the whole class knew that, and I can tell you that what you said about that, and about getting Sam to turn the volume down, was a big topic of conversation that day everywhere I went that day. Even my instructor mentioned it, I think because I was one of your harem.

"But what Sam told me, that I don't think anyone else had noticed, was that you're, well, she said, a natural orator. They weren't uninterested anyway, between her treatment of you for three years and the, um, the disturbance of sleep in the girls' wing. But you explained well enough that even by the time it got to me it was pretty much right. I'd been in Brian's room, by the way, and the noise didn't get that far.

"And you kept their interest and, Sam said, made them sympathetic and friendly.

"But what we agreed on when we discussed it was this. You need to be aware that when you get going, you affect people powerfully. They respond, and mostly the way you want them to.

"First off, I think that's part of this pattern of girls falling in love with you. I don't know how you do it, but you communicate your own feelings, in that case tenderness and affection, so strongly that people share them and respond to them.

"But second, you've got to recognize when you're doing it, and learn to turn it down. Just like Sam and the noise when she comes.

"I bring this up because you kind of overwhelmed Kelly just now. You're absolutely right, these are things she needs to think about and decide about, but you need not to just roll over her."

She squeezed me, and said, "And I love you and I'm proud to be yours. Remember what Barbara said, when you kind of apologized that we were being called your harem? She said it was way better than being 'the ice maiden, always alone.' Even the worst sides of having you are pretty good, and the best sides are unimaginably wonderful. Phil, thank you for letting me be one of your harem. And more than that, now."

At bedtime she managed to make it very clear some of the things she meant by the best sides of my being hers. I had hoped to call Sam, but it would have to wait. Again.

Saturday morning we made it up in time to go running, without any time for sex, to my disappointment.

Kelly and I didn't talk about what we'd been discussing the night before. I thanked her for having us over, and she thanked me for coming, and helping, and talking about things. She said she was going to go through the list again, but she had homework she needed to do that day. And she was sure she would want to talk more about these things, after she'd had time to think. That was the closest we got to the subject, but I was pretty happy. I'd been afraid I'd really hurt her, enough that she would lose interest in any kind of friendship. That still might happen, but she was warmly friendly that morning.

Ellen and I kind of hurried home. I was assuming that we'd shave and shower, and hoping we could manage more sex than the shower really allowed for, probably after breakfast since we were both hungry. But Ellen pulled me off to the bedroom the minute we were home. We'd cooled down on the walk, still a little sweaty but no longer actively dripping.

She certainly didn't push me to hurry. Afterward, we lay there for a few minutes, despite being hungry, and she said, "Thank you. That was much better than rushing so we could be there on time to run. 'Phil, with you, anything'—I mean that, but you almost always let me have my way instead of insisting on what you want. I sure understand why Deedee said what she did. I know you, and so I understand why you said what you did to her, too. I'm not going to ask you to let me fulfill your fantasies, not without knowing what they might be. And I can say 'anything' to you because I know you and trust you.

"But—will you please not hold back on asking out of fear of offending me or something like that? If you ask for something that I'd resent, or find distasteful somehow, I promise to tell you, and then you can decide what to do about that. I hope it won't be, say, spreading me out on a table in the student union cafeteria. I'm pretty sure I know you well enough to know you won't want that.

"And now we do need to get a shower. Or—shall we have breakfast first? I really am pretty hungry."

"Yes, let's."

I scrambled the eggs this time, adding them to some sausage, onions, mushrooms, and peppers I'd sauteed first. I also mixed in some cheese I'd shredded, and some seasonings. After a couple of bites, Ellen moved her plate and mug over by mine and then sat down in my lap.

"June is absolutely right. Um. I didn't mean it that way. There are many more important reasons—more reasons and more important—to love you and want to keep you, but your cooking adds even more." She kissed me, then moved to sit on my left leg so that my right arm was free to eat with. I occasionally put my fork down and fondled her breasts with it instead, though. I was pretty interested in seconds on Ellen by the time we finished eating.

She made slapping motions at my hands. "Phil, if you really want to now, I won't say no. I mean it. But a quickie in the shower really will be good enough for me, now. You worked to satisfy me earlier. And even your quickies sometimes, um, you don't rush as much as you could, and you know it.

"And it's been almost a week, now, and you certainly had occasion earlier to notice. Is it still OK with you that I've got a bush down there? I'm planning to let it get a little longer, but it's not scratchy any more. But tell me now, so that I can shave it now if it's not OK."

I said, "I'd better check it out with that in mind, then." I picked her up and sat her on a counter, then pulled off the panties she'd put on when we came in to get breakfast. She had put her nightgown back on at that point, too.

I bent over and licked and nuzzled and kissed and nibbled until she'd come twice. "It's fine for now," I told her. "Ask me again in a week, or whenever it's at whatever length you were going to aim for." Of course, I'd been noticing it all week as it grew, and especially that morning, but if we were aiming only for something quick in the shower I wanted to make sure she appreciated me before then.

We went in and shaved, and then took a shower. And yes, she did manage to come when I did. I'd been a little afraid that I would come just from her soapy hands, though.

Ellen insisted on doing the dishes, so I gave the floor a quick sweep. When she was done, I said, "I know we both have studying to do, but I really want to go to the resale store, if it's OK with you. I want to look at the microwaves they've got, and I think I can still use a few more clothes, and there are a couple of other things. I don't think you really need to come along."

She looked at me a bit strangely. "Yes I do!" she told me.

As we walked, she said, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that like that. But you're spending a lot of money on things for me, or—I hope!—for us. I want to be there and see what you're getting, and maybe pay for some of it. And there are probably still things I should be thinking of. Phil, I can't let you pay for everything!"

I said, "I probably have more money than you do, Ellen." She looked very surprised. "When my grandparents died, they left some money to me. Not a huge amount, but a lot from my point of view. It's in a trust, and I can spend some of it. Some is earmarked for my education, enough that I shouldn't have to go into debt for anything reasonable, and you know the school somehow manages to arrange for scholarship money for most of us. Living expenses at the university are certainly part of what the trust covers.

"And—um. It's a long way away, and we shouldn't make definite plans, but I was kind of thinking we could save money next year, when our current leases are up, if we shared an apartment. It would be more convenient than the way we are now, needing to keep some clothes and things in each other's apartments."

She stopped and put her arms around me. "Phil Morris, yes, we have leases! But we should at least ask about doing that sooner. I'm sure there would be some penalty, at least if they can't rent the vacant one out right away. And now that classes have been going for a week, that's kind of likely. But it still would probably be cheaper."

"Um. Ellen, I think before we actually do that, you'd better meet my parents, and I'd better meet yours. And probably your brother. And honestly, we should check it with Sam and Jenny. I can't really imagine that they would object, unless we spring it on them as a fait accompli." She didn't reply to that, but looked thoughtful.

At the resale shop, I first looked at the microwaves. A couple were larger and fairly high power. The rest were smaller and lower wattage. They all were clean and looked to be in good condition, and none cost anywhere near as much as an inexpensive new model. I'd done some shopping on line to make sure I had some idea about that. Both of the larger ones didn't appear to have manuals. I pulled out my phone and checked, and it looked as though the manuals were available for free download.