Three Kisses, One Past

"'You're ugly'," Heather recalled. "I know, and I'm sorry, Jack. It was never true! I was jealous, just like Chris was. I can't even remember why I settled on 'you're ugly', honestly. Just another way to push you away, I guess."

"Everybody had a way to do that," I said. "But...thanks for the apology." Remembering what Christine had just revealed about our plans, I said, "Are you so sure I'm not ugly now that you're ready to...you know?"

They both laughed. "Jack," Heather said even more gently now, "Hasn't Chris told you how we all had a crush on you back then?"

"If only I'd known..." I said.

"Then you'd have known just how immature we were to act the way we did," Heather said. "Wouldn't that have made it all worse?"

"Depends on how you'd have reacted if you knew," I said before I could stop myself.

"Knew what?" they both asked in unison.

"That I -- Christine, I'm sorry -- that I..."

"Had a crush on Heather?" Christine asked.

I nodded. "Until about the nine-thousandth time she called me ugly."

Heather put her hands to her face and looked like she wanted to cry, but Christine wasn't put out that I could see. "It's fine, Jack!" she said. "We were just kids, after all. Besides, we noticed the way you looked at her in school."

Then it was my turn to laugh. "Okay, thanks. Are you sure you still want us to all go in the tub, you know...?"

"Of course," Christine said. "It was always meant as a treat for you, Jack."

"And you can wear your trunks if you want to," Heather said, I suspected reluctantly.

"Well, that wouldn't be fair, would it?" I asked.

"No indeed!" Heather said.

"She's been waiting a long time for this, you see," Christine said with an easy laugh that set me more at ease as well.

"Me too," I admitted.

"Really?" Heather looked pleased.

Seeing as it appeared to be safe, I nodded. "Sometimes at school, if we had a test or something, I used to imagine I could pause time and work longer on the test, and just because I could, I would also line up the girls and teachers I had a crush on at the front of the class, naked."

"And I was one of the lineup, was I?" Heather looked tickled rather than offended. "I guess we're both about to see how good our imaginations were, then." She turned and directed us all to the changing rooms. "Dara called, she's running a little late, so we might as well get in now. I've got the tub all filled up and everything. Jack, since we're closed, you can even join us in the women's room if you want. Nothing to hide tonight!"

And I saw no reason not to.

In the locker room, Christine and I set about undressing with no fanfare; by then we were used to it. Heather, of course, needed only to pull her robe off, and she stood naked before us nearly as soon as I had my shoes off. "So, what do you think?" she asked with a grin, hands on her bare hips. Just as I had imagined, her curvy body was delightful: heavy breasts that hung enticingly down but not too far, peaked with small perky nipples, and a robust belly that swooped gracefully down into a light sprinkling of pubes the same pale shade as her head hair; her vulva was enticingly only just visible behind them. The same face that had scowled at me so many times when we were younger now showed no sign of embarrassment, but rather welcomed me to look all I liked. And I did.

"Looks like I imagined right," I finally said, and the three of us shared a laugh.

"Me too," Christine added.

"You too?" I asked. "But hadn't you already seen her?"

"Usually we all wear swimsuits," Heather explained. "But tonight is special."

"I'll say!" Christine said. She was down to her bra and panties by then, and I turned back to see Heather admiring Christine just as intently as I had admired her. "This is a treat for me too," she told me. "When she first got back from Montana, Dara and I couldn't get over the change -- so beautiful! But I haven't seen underneath before."

"Underneath is beautiful too," I said.

"So I see," Heather concurred as Christine now slipped off her panties and set them atop her other clothes on the shelf. "He's right, Chris, you do look beautiful." The two of them giggled like their younger selves at the intimacy while I set about getting my own clothes off. Of course I was harder than a rock, and I fully expected them both to laugh at that. But -- perhaps recalling all the put-downs way back when -- they didn't. Instead, Heather only admired it as I stood up. "Wow," she finally said. "May I touch it? Just this once?"

I looked at Christine, and she nodded her consent.

Heather stepped up and took it in both her hands. She squeezed it, gently enough to feel good, and rubbed up and down lightly. "You can touch me too," she added, "Anywhere you want." And so I finally got a feel at the first breasts I had ever taken notice of, now fully grown and pleasantly heavy in my hands, and I stroked her just as gently -- I hoped -- as she stroked me. She heaved a deep sigh of contentment while I breathed heavily at her lovely touch, and our eyes met in an intense look of mutual enjoyment.

This went on for a bit -- time stood still for me as I was aware of the wonderful awfulness of it all -- until Christine finally ran out of patience. "We don't want the water to cool off too much," she reminded us.

"True," Heather said, and she gave me a final, harder stroke on the head with her thumb. "Thank you, Jack. Chris, you're really lucky."

"I'm looking forward to finding out how lucky," Christine said as we stepped into the dimly lit room with the Jacuzzi brimming with steamy water. It was well-stocked in oils and towels and there was new-age music being piped in from somewhere -- you'd never have guessed what neighborhood we were in.

"You mean you two haven't done it yet?" Heather looked bemused.

"We're saving it for after finals," I explained.

"Sort of an early Christmas present," Christine added, as she stepped into the water. "Oooohhhh, this feels great, Heather! Thank you so much."

Soon Heather and I were settled in the deep water as well. "You're right, it feels lovely," Heather said. "We should go nude every time."

"I wonder how Dara would feel about that," Christine said, sidling up beside me and hooking her arm through mine. "You know how macho she is."

"You remember Dara, Jack?" Heather asked.

"And how," I said. "I was scared shitless of her."

"So were we!" Christine exclaimed, and they both laughed.

"All the boys and most of the girls were," Heather agreed. "But she doesn't hit anybody anymore."

"Anymore," I repeated. "Well, that's a relief, isn't it?"

"For us too," Christine said.

"What do you mean?" I asked. I'd never seen any of her gang hassle one another.

"We didn't always treat each other much better than we treated you," Heather said. "No need to go there, though. We're grown-ups now, aren't we?"

"We all certainly look like it," I said contentedly, admiring both their bodies in the shimmering water.

"What's on your mind, dear?" Christine asked.

"Just that it's hard to imagine the two of you as bullies anymore when I see you like this," I said.

Christine kissed my cheek, and Heather looked at us like she wished she could join in.

Just about then, the door to the locker room cracked open, then shut just as quickly. Heather turned to look. "Dara?" she called out.

"Be right with you!" called out a voice -- unmistakably Dara's, and hearing it for the first time in years made me want to guard my balls with both hands. Christine seemed to realize what I was thinking, and she took my hand in both of hers with a sympathetic grin. A moment later, the door opened again, and there stood Dara -- once my most-feared bully -- now all grown up just like us, and just as naked and vulnerable as we were. She also looked just as delighted to see me as Heather had been. "Jack!" she said, blossoming forth into the room. Except for her thick sandy blonde mane, which was shorter than I remembered it, her female body looked almost boyish. I know that sounds absurd, but I can think of no other way to describe her. She had the smallest breasts of the three, but the biggest nipples, looking almost like a man who'd been out in the cold too long, and her pussy was freshly shaven from the looks of it. Her arms and legs were just as muscular as ever, but following her friends' lead, I no longer found them so frightening.

She splashed a bit awkwardly into the tub, and without asking for an invitation she leaned forward and threw her arms around me. "Welcome back, kid!" she said. "Great to see you! Chris told me you were gorgeous these days."

"You're looking great, too," I said, enjoying the sense of danger that came with her strong arms hugging me instead of hitting me and not sure what to make of it.

"Thanks!" With a giddy flair, she flung herself back alongside Heather and took her turn admiring all our bodies as we had done with one another. "Wow, this is hot," she said. "Or did you two have Jack thinking we do this all the time?"

"We've already told him we don't," Christine admitted.

"But we've been thinking maybe we should," Heather added.

"I'll say you should!" I added, drawing laughs from the three of them.

I spent the next half hour or more shamelessly enjoying the view as much as the water, and the three of them admiring me as well. It was lovely, of course, but soon enough I saw warning signs of the old Chris once again coming to the surface. Christine had promised they wouldn't be anything like their younger selves. And they weren't -- with me. Dara and especially Heather seemed interested in hearing all I'd been up to and how I was getting on at my snobby college and what it was like going from this neighborhood to that, and I was more than happy to talk about it all. But although Heather never aimed her cattiness at me, it was still there: she went on at length at one point about a nasty older woman she'd met at the hairdresser whose only apparent crime was being ahead of her in line for a trim. The woman was fat, a cow, thoughtless, a bitch, and -- yes -- ugly. Dara was unfailingly polite with me, but she did seem to drop a lot of by-the-by comments about how she'd like to slug various coworkers at the grocery store where she worked. Usually these were accompanied by punches in the air. Christine thought all this was hilarious, and as time went by her laughs sounded less refined and more like the old neighborhood all the time.

And there were the fond memories of their good old days when they were the terror of the school. "Remember Michelle Jorgensen?" Christine said with a throaty laugh? "That bitch always hung her coat where I wanted to hang mine, so finally I had to start tossing it up on top of the cubbies where she couldn't reach it 'cause she was so short!"

"And remember that time in the bathroom?" Dara chimed in.

"God, yes, I do!" Heather commented. To me she explained, "We ambushed her coming out of a stall once, 'cause she'd annoyed us in class or something, and we yanked her dress up where the other girls could see when they were washing their hands for lunch. And Chris told her..."

"You do that again, we'll do it in front of the boys," Chris -- not Christine but Chris -- said with a grin.

"And now Chris here wears dresses all the time," Dara said. "Can you believe that, Jack? You can tell she hasn't learned anything from herself, huh?"

I had to agree, for different reasons. And I remembered Michelle Jorgensen too. By eighth grade she'd been so fed up with the bullying that she'd swallowed a bottle of her mother's sleeping pills. She'd been found just in time and survived -- maybe that was why Christine and her friends did not appear to remember that part of the story.

Still and all, sharing a hot tub with three naked women can never be completely unpleasant, and it wasn't. So I once again swallowed my reservations about Christine, and rationalized it away -- of course she'd be like that occasionally with her oldest friends, I told myself. Nevertheless, I was somewhat relieved when it was time to get dressed and leave. Finals were coming up, I had brought studying home to do, and my mother wouldn't be happy with my being out too late. And so I begged off on joining the three for dinner after the soak, and thanked Christine for the surprise and the others for their numerous apologies, and then I was off to Mom's.

The lovely sight of Heather and Christine putting their bras on at the same time in the locker room (Dara didn't have one, and clearly didn't need one) would serve as a final prurient moment for the weekend, and I made good use of it on my studybreaks through the weekend. To Mom's delight, Christine came over for lunch on Saturday afternoon and we studied together for a few hours afterward, neither of us letting on that we'd spent the previous evening or the weekend before that together.

She did let it slip that we had plans for the following weekend, but not so that Mom would notice. "One more week," she enthused as we both packed up our books at the end of the afternoon. Giving me a sultry look, she added "I can hardly wait!" There was more she wanted to say, I could tell, but she remembered just in time that my mother was nearby.

"I'm sure it'll be worth the wait, Christine," Mom said. "You're welcome to come join us for dinner next Saturday when Jack gets home."

"Sounds great," Christine said, and I could see she'd gotten an idea from the near miss. "I might have to be away on Friday night, but then I should be back by Saturday."

"Traveling right before Christmas?" Mom asked. "That's a shame."

"It's a marketing study on hotel rooms in town," Christine said, looking me in the eye as she did. "So I'll be spending the night in a hotel. But like I said, I'll be back Saturday."

"That's lucky," Mom said. "I can't imagine a more depressing place to spend Christmas than in a hotel."

"Oh, I've heard it's not so bad," Christine told her. "The staff is so busy with holiday events and stuff, you can steal all the towels you want and no one ever notices."

She had the smarts to start laughing when Mom and I looked at her. Mom was persuaded that she was joking. I knew all too well that she wasn't.

The glimpses of Christine's true colors -- the towels, Michelle, the nasty comment in the park -- stuck with me all through finals week. Maybe that's why it finally sunk in for me that my new love was who and what she'd always been. I think it was halfway through the week -- German and history down, chemistry and comparative lit left -- when I came to peace with myself about what would have to happen next. The last couple of finals, though not easy, offered me a certain peace that comes with the holidays. Once again in my mind I was on that beautiful night train off into the heartland somewhere, and the hot apple cider at the studybreaks tasted all the sweeter.

Now, as for what came next, I'm really not sure what the most appropriate move was. I guess that had gone out the window already when I had let her into my room and my heart back at Thanksgiving. Too late to worry about the right thing, then, when I got on the train heading home on Friday. There was a wintry sun out, reflecting brilliantly against the snow, and the holiday spirit was thicker in the air than ever. Christine had e-mailed me with information on her hotel, and Mom need never know that I was coming back a day early. Not unless I decided to tell her, of course.

When I got on the train, I still wasn't quite certain just what I would do when I got to the hotel. It really was up in the air even at that late hour. Christine was a beautiful young woman who had overcome a great deal and who understood who I was and where I had come from. But she was also Chris, the obnoxious bully I'd grown up with, and it looked as though Chris would always be bubbling up to Christine's surface now and then. But for all that, Christine was usually worth it all -- usually -- and after all, she was ready and willing to make love in the privacy of our very own hotel room. (Don't underestimate the appeal of that kind of privacy when you're only nineteen!)

By the time the train rolled into the grungy and old, yet brilliantly decorated train station, I had my mind made up: 'twas the season of joy and love and peace and, yes, forgiveness. Seeing Christine waiting for me in the lobby, looking perfectly demure and almost shy in a crimson dress, sealed it.

Or would have, at least, had she kept Chris tamped down until we got back to the hotel.

"Jack! Merry Christmas!" We shared a delightful embrace there in the lobby. "How were finals?"

"Glad they're over, that's all I can say for sure," I said. "Let's get to the hotel!"

"I was hoping you'd say that," she said, and we turned to walk around the big Christmas tree in the center of the floor to the main door.

That's when it happened: a kid in roller-sneakers came whizzing around the tree, catching Christine's eye just in time. He looked about twelve -- a bit too old to be wearing roller sneakers, perhaps, and old enough to know not to ride them so fast indoors -- but he had seen us and no harm was done.

Christine didn't agree. As soon as he was out of earshot, she turned and gave the boy a dirty look. "What a loser, with those roller shoes. They're for girls. Think he's a fag?"

"Don't say that word!" I snapped under my breath. "Don't you know how rude that is? Besides, so what if he likes those shoes?"

She laughed it off. "Oh, grow up, Jack. You know I'm not gonna hassle you about that sort of thing anymore. What do you care if I see the humor in it with other guys."

"But he's just a kid, and again, what's wrong with -- "

Christine turned and pulled me to her just inside the sliding doors, and kissed me hard on the mouth. The third kiss. It would have been delightful at almost any other time, but her alter ego was shining through all too well.

"Now quit being such a politically correct gentleman and let's get you upstairs," she whispered.

I don't know why I let her guide me across the street to the hotel or upstairs. From the moment she'd kissed me, the spell was broken. Underneath her lovely veneer, Chris was still Chris, the one who'd nearly driven me to despair all those years before. Maybe the prospect of sleeping with the enemy appealed to me. But I knew deep down I wasn't going to be able to do it.

Chris was still Chris, but she was Christine when she opened the hotel room door and ushered me inside. "Welcome to your Christmas present," she teased as she shut the door behind her. "Ready?"

"I don't think so," I confessed.

"Aw, don't play that with me, Jack! We made a deal, didn't we? And finals are over!" By the time I turned around to address her, she had already unzipped her dress and was in the process of pulling it over her head. She tossed it across the room with devil-may-care flair and gave me a playful shove that sent me sprawling back on the bed while she reached back and undid her bra. "I know you don't want to wait until after dinner for this, Jack," she said. "Be honest!" Wiggling playfully now, she slid her panties down and kicked them off to the side. Once she had them out of the way, she stood still. "I'm yours," she said with a hungry smile.

I could feel my inhibitions growing by the second. All of a sudden I felt horrifically, perversely vulnerable, even though I was fully clothed and she was fully naked. I felt myself sliding down off the bed and my feet found the floor, and I could tell the look on my face had changed as Christine reacted. "Oh, Jack, not now! Don't tell me you've got cold feet now." She sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed and looked like she was hoping I would sit beside her. In that moment I wouldn't have done that for anything.