Chapter Seven:
I heard Astrid's voice from what seemed like far away. "You like that?"
I felt like I jumped, but it only my eyes, snapping away from her discarded underwear and back to the book in my hand, noticing for the first time the title. The Little Prince. I'd heard the title before, but didn't really know much about it. "I've never read it," I said, then looked in her direction, wondering. If the panties she wore are in here, could she be naked under that shirt? I kept my composure by focusing on the books, which at least distracted me. "It's supposed to be a classic, right?"
"Yeah. It's really good, actually. Sad, though."
"It's a pretty old book," I pointed out. "You seem to have a lot of older books."
"I like new stuff, I like old stuff. Age doesn't really matter," she said, oblivious to my scandalous interest, to the double-meaning those last four words made in my head, and the way that it caused my eyes to look back down in the hamper. "Sometimes I like the older ones, actually. They're more... real, sometimes. And yeah, sometimes they're harder, but... sometimes I like it hard, you know?"
God, it was like every other thing she said was the setup for a pedophilic "That's what she said" joke. "It's good to challenge yourself," I agreed. Right then I was challenging myself to find somewhere to look other than at this girl's panties or the legs that lead up to either a different pair of them, or a lewd absence of them altogether.
"Yeah. So, which'd be your favorite?"
"Excuse me?"
"Favorite book."
"Here? Or altogether?"
"Here. No, altogether. No... well, both."
"I can't really choose a favorite book." And many of my choices weren't really something I felt I could talk about with her. "Maybe Ender's Game."
"I saw the movie, it was okay. I was going to read it, but... the author's a bit of a tool, I heard."
I laughed. "Yeah, he is." She had looked anxious for a moment, but relaxed into a smile when I agreed with her, or at least didn't take offense. "But I read it before I knew that." Mom yelled at me for five minutes straight about how awful he was once when she caught me reading it, for the second time. Ever since then I kept an ebook copy. Not that I disagreed with her, just that there was a more important principle. "And just because someone's a tool doesn't mean they can't write a great book."
"I guess. So what's your favorite out of mine?"
"I don't know," I said, taking one last look around the room. "It's still hard to choose. Maybe Hunger Games... I know it's the most popular, but..." I shrugged. "I also really liked the Uglies books."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah... it's been a long time since I read them, though. I loaned my copies to someone, never got it back." At this point, I couldn't even remember who.
She made a face. "I hate when that happens."
"Nah, it's not so bad. I can always get them again, but... maybe someone else is reading them now, you know? Maybe they never would have bought it themselves, but they found it in somebody else's collection and tried it and really liked it. Probably not, but it makes me happy to imagine it."
She gave me a warm smile, and her eyes shined, and her legs parted, for a split second, as she moved to stand up, but my eyes were too late to take advantage of the opportunity. "I think your coffee's ready."
"Oh, right." I'd almost forgotten. But it was probably for the best, I could drink my coffee, say a polite goodbye, and get away from these insane temptations. She left the music on, loud, making the house feel far more alive, and as we left her room a part of me worried that somebody unexpected would appear from around a corner and get the wrong idea about this guy following a half-naked girl around. "So just you and your mom live here?"
"Yeah," she said. "We used to have a cat."
I was worried it might have been a sore spot, but I couldn't resist asking. "What happened?"
"Someone left a... window open," she said. She sounded matter-of-fact about it, but the pause made me wonder. "Haven't seen him since. I guess he found somewhere that fed him better."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay," she said. "It was a while ago. And I don't miss having to do the litter." She moved to the counter, then, on her tiptoes, reached up to one of the cupboards, where she pulled out a mug, one of those comedic ones that mark off the level of coffee in the cup with "Don't Even Talk", "Talk Slowly", and "You May Speak Now" instructions beside each of the lines. She put it on the counter, then retrieved the coffee pot and filled it up to between the first two lines, and passed it to me. "There's milk in the fridge, and sugar packets in that jar. She pointed, but I took it black anyway.
I thanked her, and she turned to the sink, fished out another mug, and started washing it. "I thought you said you didn't drink coffee."
"I said 'Sometimes' I do," she said, and did a little wiggle-dance in tune to the music. "You ever read Red Rising? It's pretty good too."
"No, but I've heard of it. I didn't see that one in your room, though?"
She finished washing her cup and poured some coffee in, then retrieved some milk and a lot of sugar. "I read it from the library. I want to try to get my own copy some time, and the sequels. You should read it." She took a big gulp of her coffee. Mine, without milk to cool it down, was still too hot to drink that fast, but I took a sip. "See, isn't that nice? Better being in here and warm than out there and wet." An stream of milky liquid trickled down her chin out of one lip.
"Yeah, I guess it is." But I'd have to go soon. I tried to say those words out loud, but somehow I couldn't find them.
"Thank you for walking me here," she said, reaching out to touch my arm. Her expression was full of such earnestness that it made me more warm inside than the coffee.
"It's nothing. I mean what kind of guy would I be if I left you there to get soaked?" A not-as-perverted one, apparently. Maybe perversion could, in certain circumstances, be a heroic trait.
"I already was soaked, kind of."
I shrugged an acknowledgement and took a sip of my coffee. My eyes wandered down to her shirt, as though expecting it might once again be transparent, but no, of course, it wasn't. "At least you're dry now, right?"
"Mmm," she said, having a thought through a mouthful of coffee, which she swallowed, then put her cup down and wiped her lips on the back of her hand. "That reminds me." She went back towards her room, and returned maybe ten seconds later, holding the hamper in front of her, with the wet clothes, panties on top. For a moment I thought she was going to confront me with them, say something about how I was enjoying looking at them, or even present them to me as a thank you, for my future masturbatory needs, but nothing like that, she walked right past me, toward the hallway we entered through, and I realized she was going down to the laundry room. When I didn't immediately follow, she stopped and called back, "You coming?"
"I didn't know you wanted me to," I said, but began to follow anyway.
"Well, it's not like it's private. Besides, we're having a nice conversation, right?"
I made my way down the stairs and around the corner into the small laundry room, where I was greeting to an unpleasantly pleasant surprise.
Astrid was bent over, head inside the open dryer, gathering up a batch of clothes that had already been there for who knows how long. But I wasn't looking at the clothes, I was looking at how, with her bent over like that, the long shirt had pulled up her legs and slid forward, exposing the mystery of what was underneath.
**
The Umbrella Hitch - English erotic story
Re: The Umbrella Hitch - English erotic story
Chapter Eight:
I no longer had to wonder, and although my curiosity was satisfied, it didn't much help.
She was wearing panties. And while they weren't anything naturally provocative like a thong, that simple white fabric, with a blue trim, triggered another shameful erection all the same. Of course, part of this was because of how she wore it. The pair seemed just a little too small, like they were for a younger girl, and yet, stretched out... sort of like she'd grown out of them while wearing them. So they didn't cover as much as they should, and yet fit her somewhat loosely, so they could shift around to awkward positions. In fact, at this moment, on one side, the underwear exposed a fair proportion of one butt cheek, as well as, where they narrowed between her legs, a tantalizing glimpse of flesh that wasn't part of the thigh, but definitely part of the crotch, maybe even enough to be considered the outskirts of one lip.
And that ass looked surprisingly shapely, at least bent over in front of me, a cheerful bubble that seemed to jiggle just a bit with her movements. It may have been small, but when you're only looking at it, you lose the sense of scale... that's what I told myself, anyway, to excuse myself while I leered at a preteen ass. She spoke while she worked, seemingly unaware of my attention. "You know what you said about challenging yourself?" I didn't, not then, I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. "I just want you to know, I'm not just into kids stuff." Where was this going? "I like some adult books, too. I'm on the waiting list at the library for the first Game of Thrones book. I've never seen the series except for a few clips but I'd rather read the books anyway, you know?" I didn't, I was barely following what she was saying, the sight in front of me captured almost all of my attention.
I did manage to notice Astrid when she looked back at me, just before she pulled the remainder of the clothes, or at least all of them she could fit in her arms, out of the dryer. I noticed how she seemed to smile playfully, looking at me over her outthrust butt in a way that made me wonder if she knew I was staring, or even bent over like that intentionally so I would. She then straightened herself, allowing the shirt to fall back over her, and put the pile of clothes on the top of the dryer. It was hard to tell exactly what was in that pile, but looked mostly like colored pants and leggings. After dropping that load, she bent down again to gather those straggling things that slipped out of her grasp the first time, so I got to see her panty-covered butt bouncing a few more times, and again, I couldn't help but stare, at least for a few seconds before I finally got too embarrassed and decided I needed to get out of there. "You know, maybe I should just wait upstairs while you do this..."
"Don't be silly," she said, turning her head to look at me out of the corner of her eye, rather than head on, and I wondered if it was because of embarrassment. "This won't take long. Besides, I like the company." Now that the dryer was empty, she put her wet clothes inside, then, without closing the door, she turned to me, looking me up and down. There seemed to be a hint of nervousness in her voice as she asked, "You sure you don't want to put your clothes in?"
Was she asking me to get undressed? "I don't think that would be a good idea." Besides, the parts of me that did get wet, while not totally dry, fit more in the category of 'just a little damp.'
"Are you sure? I don't mind." She seemed to be speaking very quickly and her eyes looked my body over again. "I mean, it's not like you'd be naked or anything, it'd just be like, you know, taking your shirt off at the beach."
"Yeah, well, I don't even take my shirt off at the beach," I said with a nervous laugh in my voice.
She tilted her head like a confused puppy. "You don't? Why not?"
"I don't know," I said, not able to meet her gaze, although I did notice then that she'd taken her glasses off and put them on the lid of the washer. Maybe that was why it was hard to look at her, those big, innocent eyes were now naked, the glasses no longer making her look more mature, and, after what I'd just been staring at, I felt guilty.
"Do you, like, have scars or something?"
"No," I said, a little too fast. She waited patiently. I shrugged, figuring it couldn't really hurt by telling the truth, and said, "I don't know, I guess I'm just insecure about how I look. I get embarrassed. And I burn easily."
She once again gave me that appraising up and down look. "You look fine to me."
"Thanks, but..." I didn't know where I was going with that, and shrugged once more, and started again. "I still get uncomfortable with people looking at me. It's like... a part of me thinks I look okay, but there's a much louder part that points out any flaws." It wasn't rational, but it was true.
She was quiet for a moment, then her mouth opened slowly, worked a bit like she was trying out certain words before saying them, and finally said, "I didn't know guys got that too."
I gave her a weak reassuring smile, on more comfortable footing now. Even after making an embarrassing personal revelation, that was nothing compared to what I'd been perving on. And it was easy to convince myself I'd slipped into the "older friend teaching her important life lessons" role which was a position I wouldn't be ashamed of... at least assuming those life-lessons were rated PG and did not involve touching. "Believe me, plenty of guys are just as insecure about their looks as girls are. We're just socialized to hide it more."
"You're not hiding it with me," she pointed out.
My mom, who was the one who taught me at a young age that boys were socialized to hide our feelings more, always encouraged me to go the other way, be open about my feeling. It didn't entirely take... I've just always been a reserved, private person, but it helped, and was probably part of the reason I'd admitted that to Astrid. The other reason was Astrid herself. "Well, I guess you're easy to talk to." Which wasn't true, she was incredibly stressful to talk to, it felt like I was walking through a minefield, but at the same time... it was weirdly enjoyable, and it made me want to confess more to her.
"So..." she looked down at my chest again. "You could still take off your shirt. To dry it, I mean. It's just me. I won't make fun."
I shook my head. "No. It wouldn't be right."
She exhaled, and I thought that it could be a sigh, but it was hard to say for sure. "Fine."
Astrid turned back to her task and threw her wet clothes, now including the socks she'd thrown down the stairs earlier, in the dryer. It was a large, old model of dryer, and although she might not have had to, she stood on her tiptoes to more comfortably reach the controls on the top. "Not going to wash those first?" I asked.
"Nah, they're just wet, not really dirty." She pressed a button and the dryer started to thrum and shake, then grabbed her glasses and pushed past me. "Let's go back upstairs."
I started to follow, fully intending to stop at the landing, drain my coffee, and say that I needed to be going, but... she walked up the stairs first, which let me look up and see up that t-shirt, the very bottom of her ass and the underwear struggling to cover it all, and before I knew, I was in the kitchen. She put her glasses back on, found her cup of coffee, and turned back to me, sipping it. "So, let's say you were in the Hunger Games," she said. "How do you think you'd do?"
Turning my own conversational tricks against me. Clever girl. Still, I never could resist a good hypothetical. "Probably not well. Although, technically, I couldn't be chosen any more." I saw her confused look, and filled in the blank. "Too old. You're only eligible from twelve to eighteen."
"Oh," she said. "How old are you?"
"Nineteen."
She gave me a guilty smile, like she was both embarrassed and pleased at the same time. "I thought you were younger." I guess that was nice to hear. "So you're what, in college?"
"Yeah."
"I'm not even in high school yet."
Once again, I wondered if she was evaluating me romantically. Was that said like a question, as if she was asking me if that wasn't okay? If so, I could have told her I was too old for her and stop it in advance, but if she wasn't, that would sound creepy. I couldn't tell, so instead I just said, "You'll get there."
She shrugged, returning to the topic. "Anyway, pretend you were selected anyway," she said. "Maybe it was a Quarter Quell or something like that. How do you think you'd do?"
I thought about it. "Not well. I don't really have any skills that would be good for fighting... and I don't think I'd want to, anyway. I guess I might be good at hiding, so I'd try to hide out, hope everyone else killed each other."
"They wouldn't let you," she pointed out. "They'd make something happen."
I nodded, took another sip of my coffee. "Well, I'd try anyway. And... I don't know. I'd rather die trying to escape than trying to kill somebody else."
"Show them you won't play by their stupid rules?"
"Something like that. Fight the power, as my Mom likes to say." Also cowardice, though, since I wouldn't be trying to escape to send a message, but just to stay alive. But I did have a braver side, and if I was going to be all noble... well, what I'd probably do is try to find somebody like Rue, innocent and not likely to survive, and do my best to keep her alive as long as I could, dying to save her if necessary. If I had to die, that's the way I'd want to do it. I had a brief image of Astrid and me in the games together, and me standing between her and some well-trained tribute with a knife, ready to do anything just hold him back long enough to give her time to run away. The thought made me absurdly warm inside for a fantasy that involved my immediate bloody death. But I couldn't say that. It would give her the wrong idea, whether that wrong idea was creepy or romantic, I didn't know, but it would be the wrong idea. "How about you?"
"Well, I COULD be chosen. If it were real, I mean. And I'm not really strong, or a good fighter. And I'd probably be younger than all of the other competitors. But I read, so... I have to rely on my wits. I think I'd lay traps."
"Traps?"
"You know, like, I don't want to kill somebody, but, if somebody starts to follow me and along the way they trip and someone gets impaled on a sharp stick..." she shrugged innocently. "Not my fault, right?"
"I guess. It's a pretty good plan. I do think people would underestimate you." If she were setting traps, I sensed I must be pretty close to the impaling part right now.
"Why's that?"
"Well, you don't really LOOK like a diabolical mastermind. You just look... cute and innocent."
She looked away, and I thought I saw her blush. "I'd have to use that to my advantage too. Play innocent and helpless."
"So people try to take advantage of you." Was she doing that right now, I wondered?
She looked back at me and smiled, a smile of someone who had a deadly secret. "They can try." Then she winked, and the smile widened.
Maybe she was just playing around... but for all that, I worried she might be overconfident, and ignorant of real dangers. After all, she had invited me here, if I was another kind of person, a villain, I could have harmed her, grabbed her, pin her to a wall and do whatever I wanted to her, and she didn't seem the least bit concerned that that was a possibility. In a Hunger Games scenario, she might not just seem innocent and helpless, she might actually be so.
My mind skittered aside and I started thinking, not about Astrid herself, but about the prevalence of rape in the Hunger Games in a more abstract sense. I mean, you've got a bunch of adolescents sure they're going to die, some are girls... you'd think, occasionally, there'd be a rape. Maybe even regularly. We live in a rape culture today, and it's hard to imagine Panem would be any better. Of course it would never be shown in a YA book... even though they did hint at forced prostitution for some of the winners, a violent rape was another matter. Would the Capitol watch the rape of a little girl? I'd assume they would, considering they watch them murder each other. But then, it is different, more taboo. The same way that an author will depict murder, but not that. Or, for that matter, what if a girl Astrid's age and an older guy were from the same District, thrown together... what if they got consensually sexual? Logically speaking, it could happen... both knowing they were probably going to die, they might do things they otherwise wouldn't. But it wouldn't be in the book, and maybe the Capitol would also find that somehow more abhorrent than gladiatorial murder.
Shit. I realized how disturbing my train of thought was, and it convinced me I needed to get out of there all the more. Out of irrational fear that she might be able to guess what I was thinking, I continued the conversation while working on my exit strategy. "It might work on the sponsors, too, get them to give their special cream or whatever." Shit, that sounded way more dirty out loud than it did in my head. "I mean the stuff that magically heals wounds."
"Maybe. I doubt they care about innocent though, if they did they wouldn't be running it, right?"
Probably a fair point. "They care about a good show. Sometimes innocence gives a good show." Like the show she unwittingly gave me. Okay, time to enact that exit strategy. "Anyway, it's been lovely talking to you, and thank you for the coffee, but..."
She didn't let me finish. "Wait, there's still some left. You can have another cup."
"No thanks. One was good en..."
Again she interrupted me. "You don't have to drink coffee. I can make you something to eat, if you want."
"I'm not really hungry. And I really have to..."
"Oh, come on... stay and watch some TV. Our Netflix subscription is temporarily out, but we can watch local stuff. Or we can just listen to music and talk more about books."
"Astrid, I really..."
"Or we can play video games. Please? It's so rare that I have somebody to play with, and I really like you."
"It's not like I don't want to play with you..." Shit, another thing that sounded bad. "But I have to go."
"We can do anything you want to," she said, the pleading tone now sounding more than a little desperate. Or maybe it was the words, which hinted at things I could not possibly believe she intended. But which caused my eyes to drop down to her legs.
And then, like I was in a dream, I watched her, with arms crossed to the opposite side grab the lower edge of her t-shirt and pull upwards, rendering first her panties visible, the ones which somehow looked both too small and in danger of falling off, but then also continued upwards. Soon, the shirt was inside out, covering her head and upthrust arms, but exposing her chest to my hungry gaze. Yes, I had seen the nipples before, through a thin, wet t-shirt, but seeing them completely bare, along with the complete contours of her upper body, that made me gulp in awe. They were far pinker than I expected, but perfect, even if the boobs were tiny it still made my cock swell and I could feel the head squeeze past the foreskin and strain against my pants.
A second later, she had the shirt off her head, and took another one to readjust her glasses which had been knocked askew by the undressing. I had that much time to not look like I was perving on a naked little girl. I wasted that time with my mouth hung open, wide, not sure what to say.
"I saw you staring before," she said. "It's okay. If you want to look, I don't mind."
"Wh... wh..." my mouth made sounds, but it was hard to form full words. What the fuck do I do now, was in my head, although it wasn't what I was trying to say.
She smiled uncertainly, seeming to take a little pride in having that affect on an adult. And my penis made another swell, like it was trying to say, "Hell, man, if she acts like this with someone she just met, she's probably already been nailed a few times... how much more harm could you do?" I knew the thought wasn't right, or fair. My mind might agree with my mom on much of feminist theory, but my penis was distinctly less evolved, and sometimes it flooded my brain with its own kind of propaganda and took over.
Not completely, though. The sentence I had been struggling with managed to get out. "Wh... what are you doing?"
"I just want you to stay," she said. "I told you, we can do anything you want." The way she stressed "anything" wasn't innocent, particularly as she took a step closer to me, her hand starting to outstretch, as though to take my hand and more directly invite a touch.
**
I no longer had to wonder, and although my curiosity was satisfied, it didn't much help.
She was wearing panties. And while they weren't anything naturally provocative like a thong, that simple white fabric, with a blue trim, triggered another shameful erection all the same. Of course, part of this was because of how she wore it. The pair seemed just a little too small, like they were for a younger girl, and yet, stretched out... sort of like she'd grown out of them while wearing them. So they didn't cover as much as they should, and yet fit her somewhat loosely, so they could shift around to awkward positions. In fact, at this moment, on one side, the underwear exposed a fair proportion of one butt cheek, as well as, where they narrowed between her legs, a tantalizing glimpse of flesh that wasn't part of the thigh, but definitely part of the crotch, maybe even enough to be considered the outskirts of one lip.
And that ass looked surprisingly shapely, at least bent over in front of me, a cheerful bubble that seemed to jiggle just a bit with her movements. It may have been small, but when you're only looking at it, you lose the sense of scale... that's what I told myself, anyway, to excuse myself while I leered at a preteen ass. She spoke while she worked, seemingly unaware of my attention. "You know what you said about challenging yourself?" I didn't, not then, I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. "I just want you to know, I'm not just into kids stuff." Where was this going? "I like some adult books, too. I'm on the waiting list at the library for the first Game of Thrones book. I've never seen the series except for a few clips but I'd rather read the books anyway, you know?" I didn't, I was barely following what she was saying, the sight in front of me captured almost all of my attention.
I did manage to notice Astrid when she looked back at me, just before she pulled the remainder of the clothes, or at least all of them she could fit in her arms, out of the dryer. I noticed how she seemed to smile playfully, looking at me over her outthrust butt in a way that made me wonder if she knew I was staring, or even bent over like that intentionally so I would. She then straightened herself, allowing the shirt to fall back over her, and put the pile of clothes on the top of the dryer. It was hard to tell exactly what was in that pile, but looked mostly like colored pants and leggings. After dropping that load, she bent down again to gather those straggling things that slipped out of her grasp the first time, so I got to see her panty-covered butt bouncing a few more times, and again, I couldn't help but stare, at least for a few seconds before I finally got too embarrassed and decided I needed to get out of there. "You know, maybe I should just wait upstairs while you do this..."
"Don't be silly," she said, turning her head to look at me out of the corner of her eye, rather than head on, and I wondered if it was because of embarrassment. "This won't take long. Besides, I like the company." Now that the dryer was empty, she put her wet clothes inside, then, without closing the door, she turned to me, looking me up and down. There seemed to be a hint of nervousness in her voice as she asked, "You sure you don't want to put your clothes in?"
Was she asking me to get undressed? "I don't think that would be a good idea." Besides, the parts of me that did get wet, while not totally dry, fit more in the category of 'just a little damp.'
"Are you sure? I don't mind." She seemed to be speaking very quickly and her eyes looked my body over again. "I mean, it's not like you'd be naked or anything, it'd just be like, you know, taking your shirt off at the beach."
"Yeah, well, I don't even take my shirt off at the beach," I said with a nervous laugh in my voice.
She tilted her head like a confused puppy. "You don't? Why not?"
"I don't know," I said, not able to meet her gaze, although I did notice then that she'd taken her glasses off and put them on the lid of the washer. Maybe that was why it was hard to look at her, those big, innocent eyes were now naked, the glasses no longer making her look more mature, and, after what I'd just been staring at, I felt guilty.
"Do you, like, have scars or something?"
"No," I said, a little too fast. She waited patiently. I shrugged, figuring it couldn't really hurt by telling the truth, and said, "I don't know, I guess I'm just insecure about how I look. I get embarrassed. And I burn easily."
She once again gave me that appraising up and down look. "You look fine to me."
"Thanks, but..." I didn't know where I was going with that, and shrugged once more, and started again. "I still get uncomfortable with people looking at me. It's like... a part of me thinks I look okay, but there's a much louder part that points out any flaws." It wasn't rational, but it was true.
She was quiet for a moment, then her mouth opened slowly, worked a bit like she was trying out certain words before saying them, and finally said, "I didn't know guys got that too."
I gave her a weak reassuring smile, on more comfortable footing now. Even after making an embarrassing personal revelation, that was nothing compared to what I'd been perving on. And it was easy to convince myself I'd slipped into the "older friend teaching her important life lessons" role which was a position I wouldn't be ashamed of... at least assuming those life-lessons were rated PG and did not involve touching. "Believe me, plenty of guys are just as insecure about their looks as girls are. We're just socialized to hide it more."
"You're not hiding it with me," she pointed out.
My mom, who was the one who taught me at a young age that boys were socialized to hide our feelings more, always encouraged me to go the other way, be open about my feeling. It didn't entirely take... I've just always been a reserved, private person, but it helped, and was probably part of the reason I'd admitted that to Astrid. The other reason was Astrid herself. "Well, I guess you're easy to talk to." Which wasn't true, she was incredibly stressful to talk to, it felt like I was walking through a minefield, but at the same time... it was weirdly enjoyable, and it made me want to confess more to her.
"So..." she looked down at my chest again. "You could still take off your shirt. To dry it, I mean. It's just me. I won't make fun."
I shook my head. "No. It wouldn't be right."
She exhaled, and I thought that it could be a sigh, but it was hard to say for sure. "Fine."
Astrid turned back to her task and threw her wet clothes, now including the socks she'd thrown down the stairs earlier, in the dryer. It was a large, old model of dryer, and although she might not have had to, she stood on her tiptoes to more comfortably reach the controls on the top. "Not going to wash those first?" I asked.
"Nah, they're just wet, not really dirty." She pressed a button and the dryer started to thrum and shake, then grabbed her glasses and pushed past me. "Let's go back upstairs."
I started to follow, fully intending to stop at the landing, drain my coffee, and say that I needed to be going, but... she walked up the stairs first, which let me look up and see up that t-shirt, the very bottom of her ass and the underwear struggling to cover it all, and before I knew, I was in the kitchen. She put her glasses back on, found her cup of coffee, and turned back to me, sipping it. "So, let's say you were in the Hunger Games," she said. "How do you think you'd do?"
Turning my own conversational tricks against me. Clever girl. Still, I never could resist a good hypothetical. "Probably not well. Although, technically, I couldn't be chosen any more." I saw her confused look, and filled in the blank. "Too old. You're only eligible from twelve to eighteen."
"Oh," she said. "How old are you?"
"Nineteen."
She gave me a guilty smile, like she was both embarrassed and pleased at the same time. "I thought you were younger." I guess that was nice to hear. "So you're what, in college?"
"Yeah."
"I'm not even in high school yet."
Once again, I wondered if she was evaluating me romantically. Was that said like a question, as if she was asking me if that wasn't okay? If so, I could have told her I was too old for her and stop it in advance, but if she wasn't, that would sound creepy. I couldn't tell, so instead I just said, "You'll get there."
She shrugged, returning to the topic. "Anyway, pretend you were selected anyway," she said. "Maybe it was a Quarter Quell or something like that. How do you think you'd do?"
I thought about it. "Not well. I don't really have any skills that would be good for fighting... and I don't think I'd want to, anyway. I guess I might be good at hiding, so I'd try to hide out, hope everyone else killed each other."
"They wouldn't let you," she pointed out. "They'd make something happen."
I nodded, took another sip of my coffee. "Well, I'd try anyway. And... I don't know. I'd rather die trying to escape than trying to kill somebody else."
"Show them you won't play by their stupid rules?"
"Something like that. Fight the power, as my Mom likes to say." Also cowardice, though, since I wouldn't be trying to escape to send a message, but just to stay alive. But I did have a braver side, and if I was going to be all noble... well, what I'd probably do is try to find somebody like Rue, innocent and not likely to survive, and do my best to keep her alive as long as I could, dying to save her if necessary. If I had to die, that's the way I'd want to do it. I had a brief image of Astrid and me in the games together, and me standing between her and some well-trained tribute with a knife, ready to do anything just hold him back long enough to give her time to run away. The thought made me absurdly warm inside for a fantasy that involved my immediate bloody death. But I couldn't say that. It would give her the wrong idea, whether that wrong idea was creepy or romantic, I didn't know, but it would be the wrong idea. "How about you?"
"Well, I COULD be chosen. If it were real, I mean. And I'm not really strong, or a good fighter. And I'd probably be younger than all of the other competitors. But I read, so... I have to rely on my wits. I think I'd lay traps."
"Traps?"
"You know, like, I don't want to kill somebody, but, if somebody starts to follow me and along the way they trip and someone gets impaled on a sharp stick..." she shrugged innocently. "Not my fault, right?"
"I guess. It's a pretty good plan. I do think people would underestimate you." If she were setting traps, I sensed I must be pretty close to the impaling part right now.
"Why's that?"
"Well, you don't really LOOK like a diabolical mastermind. You just look... cute and innocent."
She looked away, and I thought I saw her blush. "I'd have to use that to my advantage too. Play innocent and helpless."
"So people try to take advantage of you." Was she doing that right now, I wondered?
She looked back at me and smiled, a smile of someone who had a deadly secret. "They can try." Then she winked, and the smile widened.
Maybe she was just playing around... but for all that, I worried she might be overconfident, and ignorant of real dangers. After all, she had invited me here, if I was another kind of person, a villain, I could have harmed her, grabbed her, pin her to a wall and do whatever I wanted to her, and she didn't seem the least bit concerned that that was a possibility. In a Hunger Games scenario, she might not just seem innocent and helpless, she might actually be so.
My mind skittered aside and I started thinking, not about Astrid herself, but about the prevalence of rape in the Hunger Games in a more abstract sense. I mean, you've got a bunch of adolescents sure they're going to die, some are girls... you'd think, occasionally, there'd be a rape. Maybe even regularly. We live in a rape culture today, and it's hard to imagine Panem would be any better. Of course it would never be shown in a YA book... even though they did hint at forced prostitution for some of the winners, a violent rape was another matter. Would the Capitol watch the rape of a little girl? I'd assume they would, considering they watch them murder each other. But then, it is different, more taboo. The same way that an author will depict murder, but not that. Or, for that matter, what if a girl Astrid's age and an older guy were from the same District, thrown together... what if they got consensually sexual? Logically speaking, it could happen... both knowing they were probably going to die, they might do things they otherwise wouldn't. But it wouldn't be in the book, and maybe the Capitol would also find that somehow more abhorrent than gladiatorial murder.
Shit. I realized how disturbing my train of thought was, and it convinced me I needed to get out of there all the more. Out of irrational fear that she might be able to guess what I was thinking, I continued the conversation while working on my exit strategy. "It might work on the sponsors, too, get them to give their special cream or whatever." Shit, that sounded way more dirty out loud than it did in my head. "I mean the stuff that magically heals wounds."
"Maybe. I doubt they care about innocent though, if they did they wouldn't be running it, right?"
Probably a fair point. "They care about a good show. Sometimes innocence gives a good show." Like the show she unwittingly gave me. Okay, time to enact that exit strategy. "Anyway, it's been lovely talking to you, and thank you for the coffee, but..."
She didn't let me finish. "Wait, there's still some left. You can have another cup."
"No thanks. One was good en..."
Again she interrupted me. "You don't have to drink coffee. I can make you something to eat, if you want."
"I'm not really hungry. And I really have to..."
"Oh, come on... stay and watch some TV. Our Netflix subscription is temporarily out, but we can watch local stuff. Or we can just listen to music and talk more about books."
"Astrid, I really..."
"Or we can play video games. Please? It's so rare that I have somebody to play with, and I really like you."
"It's not like I don't want to play with you..." Shit, another thing that sounded bad. "But I have to go."
"We can do anything you want to," she said, the pleading tone now sounding more than a little desperate. Or maybe it was the words, which hinted at things I could not possibly believe she intended. But which caused my eyes to drop down to her legs.
And then, like I was in a dream, I watched her, with arms crossed to the opposite side grab the lower edge of her t-shirt and pull upwards, rendering first her panties visible, the ones which somehow looked both too small and in danger of falling off, but then also continued upwards. Soon, the shirt was inside out, covering her head and upthrust arms, but exposing her chest to my hungry gaze. Yes, I had seen the nipples before, through a thin, wet t-shirt, but seeing them completely bare, along with the complete contours of her upper body, that made me gulp in awe. They were far pinker than I expected, but perfect, even if the boobs were tiny it still made my cock swell and I could feel the head squeeze past the foreskin and strain against my pants.
A second later, she had the shirt off her head, and took another one to readjust her glasses which had been knocked askew by the undressing. I had that much time to not look like I was perving on a naked little girl. I wasted that time with my mouth hung open, wide, not sure what to say.
"I saw you staring before," she said. "It's okay. If you want to look, I don't mind."
"Wh... wh..." my mouth made sounds, but it was hard to form full words. What the fuck do I do now, was in my head, although it wasn't what I was trying to say.
She smiled uncertainly, seeming to take a little pride in having that affect on an adult. And my penis made another swell, like it was trying to say, "Hell, man, if she acts like this with someone she just met, she's probably already been nailed a few times... how much more harm could you do?" I knew the thought wasn't right, or fair. My mind might agree with my mom on much of feminist theory, but my penis was distinctly less evolved, and sometimes it flooded my brain with its own kind of propaganda and took over.
Not completely, though. The sentence I had been struggling with managed to get out. "Wh... what are you doing?"
"I just want you to stay," she said. "I told you, we can do anything you want." The way she stressed "anything" wasn't innocent, particularly as she took a step closer to me, her hand starting to outstretch, as though to take my hand and more directly invite a touch.
**
Re: The Umbrella Hitch - English erotic story
Chapter Nine:
I backed up quickly, knowing that if I didn't, I'd do something I'd regret... enjoy, maybe, but regret. And regret lasts longer than enjoyment. "Puh... put your shirt back on, please." But it was on the floor, now, and she'd have to bend down to get it.
She didn't even try. "But you want me," she said, and then her eyes seemed to go to the bulge in the front of my pants... or maybe they just drooped uncertainly. "Don't you?"
How was I supposed to answer that? I didn't want to lie to a kid, but I didn't want the truth to be what it was. "It's not right." That seemed fair and neutral, at least.
"I won't tell." She looked from my crotch to my eyes, and back again.... and back, again, to the eyes. Her own hand drifted down to the waistband of her panties. There was a glint in her eyes, like she'd figured out that if she pulled them down, I wouldn't be able to resist, and I'd be hers. I wasn't sure she was wrong.
"No," I said firmly. "Don't." She froze, but the panties were already in the process of being pulled down, lower on one leg than the other, exposing some of the mound but not the pussy itself. I didn't notice any hair, though, in the second before I closed my eyes. "If you don't get dressed, I'm leaving right now." I don't know if it was a bluff or not.
Astrid must have believed it though, for I heard her say, "Okay," like a sad puppy, and I opened my eyes to see her turn away from me to bend down and get her shirt. And I couldn't look away again, but she put it on and turned back to me, now aware I was watching. "I'm sorry, I just thought... I guess I really am ugly, huh?"
"You're not ugly," I said automatically. ""It's just... I'm too old for you. You're smart enough to know that."
"You don't have to 'kidzone' me." Was that a term now? I'd never heard it before. "I'm very mature for my age. Everyone says so."
"I'm sure they do. But that age is... twelve."
"Age ain't nothing but a number," she said. That phrase I had heard before, but the ungrammatical expression sounded so weird coming from her, a girl who I knew was smart and who still looked like some preteen version of a sexy librarian. I could look now, because she wasn't looking at me. Her eyes were still averted, her face red. "We get along so well, and I thought..."
"We just met," I interrupted her.
"Exactly! We just met and already..." She shook her head, dismissing whatever thought was going to be completed. "And now you're going to go."
I felt like I had to say something to her, offer some kind of mature advice from an adult, even if most of the time I only felt like one technically. And if she wasn't even looking at me, that was going to be hard. Besides, I needed to stall, get my thoughts in order. So I said, "Come on, let's sit down." She did look then, like she was surprised that I didn't just make an excuse and walk out. I circled around to the front of the couch and sat. She followed slowly, mostly watching her own feet as she stepped, but she settled herself beside me.
We sat there in silence for what felt like forever, but must have only been a few seconds, and then I took her hand, the first time I consciously touched her. Sure, there may have been brushes together before that, but that's not the same thing as a deliberate touch. There were times, in the months following, where I woke from some dream convinced that, while she was naked, she stepped towards me and I put my hand out to stop her and made contact with her immature chest, or did even worse, and sometimes in those predawn hours I would be convinced that it actually happened for a long time before my full faculties returned and I remembered, no matter how much I might have stared inappropriately, when I reached out to touch her, it was only with my hand. Maybe it doesn't make up for the staring, and certainly not for how things turned out, but it was something, a moment of being noble.
In that moment, she seemed to suck in her breath a little at the contact, but I encircled her tiny hand with mine and held it gently until she looked at me. "Look, Astrid, I like you... I do. If I were your age, I'd jump at the chance to be with you..." Wow, that sounded bad, so I backtracked. "And I mean just be your boyfriend, even without sex. Or even just a friend. Because... well, I know it might not seem that way, but sex is... well, it's complicated. A lot of bad things can happen, to your body, your heart, your reputation... and even if you're lucky enough so far that they haven't happened to you yet..." I didn't want to slut shame her, but being promiscuous wasn't the most healthy thing at her age regardless of sex.
"I've never done it before," she said. "I mean, I know guys who wanted to, even older guys your age." She looked at me out of the corner of my eye, like she was hoping that would sway me.
I was too busy being surprised by the broader implication. Wait... she offered her virginity to me? We just met! "Then... why?"
She mumbled as she spoke. "I don't know... you just seemed like... like you were special."
Is it awful that made me feel on top of the world? I hardly ever felt particularly special to anyone, other than family, and they're biased. "I'm not, though. I'm just a guy who likes a lot of the same things you do. You're going to meet tons of those. And when you do, you're better off not... rushing into anything. People always say things like... trust your instincts. But your instincts can lie to you too. Some people get very good at fooling them, and it's easy to get hurt if you trust them too much."
"I don't believe you were fooling me..."
"I just mean you don't know. You can't know. I could easily have been some kind of monster. That's why stripping down in front of someone is a really, really bad idea."
"I only did it because you were going to go..."
"So?" I asked. "What's the big deal? Is there..." I paused, suddenly worried that there was something deep going on. "Is there some reason you don't want to be alone?"
"Huh?"
"Like some kind of problem, or something."
She shook her head quickly. "No... it's just... I'm alone all the time." Her eyes snapped to mine. "Like, not ALL the time, but until my Mom gets off work, I have to stay here and there's never anyone to talk to, and I don't have a phone and right now we don't have Internet and...." Her voice filled with adolescent frustration as she finished, "I just get so bored."
"Bored," I repeated. Yeah, great, offer your virginity up to a stranger because you were bored. Again, I didn't want to slut shame, I know how the intersection of boredom, loneliness and arousal could feel... hell, when I was her age I probably would have done the same thing if an attractive woman was willing... but being a few years past that, it now just seemed crazy that it happened to someone else.
"Even with books, I just... I just wanted somebody to... I want my own adventure, you know?"
I knew that feeling as well, when you feel books are a poor substitute for something you're lacking. "You will... you'll have tons of them. There's no need to rush into..."
She must have sensed what I meant, because she interrupted me, "I wouldn't have gone all the way with just anybody," she insisted. "But I thought maybe you and I were like... meant to be. Like, we connected. I'm not, like, easy."
Seemed to me like the only thing not easy was turning her down. But I couldn't say that. And I felt much better about my decision, she seemed so much younger now, even a little lost. "Astrid... wanting sex doesn't make you easy, people want it for all sorts of reasons. Not the least because it feels good..." Why did I feel that was an important point to make? "But it doesn't mean those reasons are good reasons to jump into something you can't undo. These things... if they really were meant to happen, they'd happen. Like destiny," I said. "Things would keep pulling us together. If you offer... that because you think you're going to lose someone... well, you're probably going to lose them anyway, they'll just take whatever they can get from you first."
She looked up at me, eyes seeming to shine. "So why didn't you?"
"Like I said, I'm too old for you."
"But... you wanted to, I saw." And her eyes went down to my crotch, this time I was sure of it.
Christ. I guess my bulge was more obvious than I thought, and as my mind raced with the possibility that she was about to make another offer, I became half-terrified, half-aroused. I lifted one foot to the couch to try and disguise it, probably unsuccessfully, as I said, "That doesn't matter. That's... instinct, a reaction. And like I said... sometimes going with your instincts is a really, really, bad idea. I think you know why."
"Because it's illegal. But if you want to and I want to and I'm not going to tell..."
"Because it's illegal," I repeated firmly, cutting off her speech as it was growing excited again, before she could make an offer I wasn't sure I could refuse any longer, "but mostly because I think it would hurt you." She looked up at me, one eye more open than the other, like she didn't really believe that, so I quickly added. "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life." When did I start quoting Casablanca? I'd never even seen the movie, just clips. If the movie had a line about how to gracefully turn down a preteen girl's sexual advances, it was sadly not quotable enough for me to have heard it. Nor was there anything for what came next, so I just had to wing it. "Someday you're going to find someone who's really special, and I hope it'll be a great moment that you'll remember forever. If I were to take advantage of you, take... that moment from you.... I'd just be proving I didn't care about you."
She pulled away from me, turned her back to me, and flumphed on the opposite armrest, sulking, at least it felt like she was. I stopped paying close attention once I realized that from that position I could still see her panties under her shirt. I'm disgusting. "But you don't, do you? I'm just some stupid, embarrassing little girl to you."
"You're a great girl. You're smart, you're fun." You've got a surprisingly attractive ass. "I wish I knew a girl like you when I was your age. But even smart people make mistakes, and I'm just trying to help."
"Yeah, well, I don't need your help."
I exhaled and nodded, more to myself than anything because she was still facing away. "Okay. Then I guess I'll go."
"Yeah, way to show you care," she snapped. "Leave me here all alone. Walk away."
"You know... in a book, sometimes the hero knows that if he stays, people he cares about are going to be hurt. And that'll be his fault. So he goes, even though that hurts too." I hardly felt like a hero now, but I wanted to put a positive spin on it for her. "Sometimes... sometimes walking away is the most caring thing you can do for someone."
She didn't say anything, and so I pulled myself into a stand and moved towards the door. "Wait," she said. I stopped, looked back at her. She was sitting up, had slid over to the side of the couch closest to me. "Can I have, like, your phone number or Skype or something? So maybe we could talk sometimes?"
I pictured her calling me every day, just to talk, and there was a part of me that really craved that... but then there I pictured her maybe sending racy pics to my phone, or offering herself again, and... well, part of me really craved that, too, but I feared that part of me. I also feared what might happen if her mother discovered her communicating with an adult guy, even if I was a perfect gentleman from here on out. Or hell, if my mother did, it would be just as bad. "I can't," I said, and her face instantly fell. "Not because I don't want to."
"Sure," she said flatly.
"No, really. I'm just afraid of what might happen." I wondered, frantically, whether it was inappropriate to admit to a little girl that you were afraid that if you kept in contact, she might be able to talk you into having sex with her. It seemed like it probably was. "Besides, it's too... easy." She looked confused for a second, and I continued, "Anyone can talk to anyone these days, without even trying. It takes away a little of the magic, don't you think? You run out of things to talk about pretty quickly. But you and I? We'll probably run into each other from time to time... I mean, we live in the same neighborhood." By a very generous interpretation of the word neighborhood. "And whenever we do, we'll always have new things to talk about. And if we don't see each other again... then I guess it wasn't meant to be."
"Leave it up to Fate, you mean?" she asked. "Like something in a story?"
"Sure."
She said nothing for a long moment, then turned away. "Whatever."
"Okay. Well, now I really have to go." I took a breath, like I was making some big momentous decision, but really I wasn't. The decision had already been made, and I knew it was the right one. So I just continued down the hall towards where I left my shoes and bag.
At the landing, I noticed it had stopped raining, and there was even a beam of sun peeking through. If I was religious, I might think the weather itself was rewarding my decision. After slipping my shoes on and slinging my bag over a shoulder, I opened the door.
"Hey," I heard, from right behind me. I hadn't even heard Astrid get up, but she'd followed me, and when I turned back, she held my umbrella, which I'd left hanging on a hook and had neglected to grab. "Don't forget this."
"Oh, right, thanks." I reached for it, and our fingers touched briefly as she passed it over, and I realized that the gel handle now had the impressions of her fingers in it.
"Thank you," she said, seemingly composed. "For walking me home at least."
"It was my pleasure." She looked down at her feet. "Bye. Take care of yourself, Astrid."
"Until we meet again."
I turned and walked away, looking back only once, but she'd closed the door. It wasn't raining, but I still held the umbrella, closed, in my hand, feeling the indentations Astrid had left behind and imagining it was somehow me holding her hand. But the depressions were fading, as I knew they must.
I hurried to the street, and then like a machine retraced the path back to a main road, so I could rejoin my life.
Until we meet again, she'd said, because we'd left it up to Fate. But I didn't expect to see her... it was a big city, and we weren't really in the same neighborhood by any reasonable standard. The odds were low, and knowing I could make them lower loosened a knot of tension in my chest.
It wasn't that I didn't want to see her again, I just didn't think it'd be good for either of us. So maybe I'd stack the deck against Fate a little bit. I could form strategies to avoid running into her... like, I could never walk down the street where I first met her. Maybe never walk at all, and simply commit to taking the bus from then on. Or maybe, I decided, I'd even quit that job and find another, elsewhere in the city, just to be safe... sure my cousin did stick her neck out for me, but I think these concerns trumped those.
I think it's absolutely fair to say I was planning never to see Astrid again.
But sometimes, even the best plans come apart when Fate sends an unexpected Hitch your way.
The End (for now)
I backed up quickly, knowing that if I didn't, I'd do something I'd regret... enjoy, maybe, but regret. And regret lasts longer than enjoyment. "Puh... put your shirt back on, please." But it was on the floor, now, and she'd have to bend down to get it.
She didn't even try. "But you want me," she said, and then her eyes seemed to go to the bulge in the front of my pants... or maybe they just drooped uncertainly. "Don't you?"
How was I supposed to answer that? I didn't want to lie to a kid, but I didn't want the truth to be what it was. "It's not right." That seemed fair and neutral, at least.
"I won't tell." She looked from my crotch to my eyes, and back again.... and back, again, to the eyes. Her own hand drifted down to the waistband of her panties. There was a glint in her eyes, like she'd figured out that if she pulled them down, I wouldn't be able to resist, and I'd be hers. I wasn't sure she was wrong.
"No," I said firmly. "Don't." She froze, but the panties were already in the process of being pulled down, lower on one leg than the other, exposing some of the mound but not the pussy itself. I didn't notice any hair, though, in the second before I closed my eyes. "If you don't get dressed, I'm leaving right now." I don't know if it was a bluff or not.
Astrid must have believed it though, for I heard her say, "Okay," like a sad puppy, and I opened my eyes to see her turn away from me to bend down and get her shirt. And I couldn't look away again, but she put it on and turned back to me, now aware I was watching. "I'm sorry, I just thought... I guess I really am ugly, huh?"
"You're not ugly," I said automatically. ""It's just... I'm too old for you. You're smart enough to know that."
"You don't have to 'kidzone' me." Was that a term now? I'd never heard it before. "I'm very mature for my age. Everyone says so."
"I'm sure they do. But that age is... twelve."
"Age ain't nothing but a number," she said. That phrase I had heard before, but the ungrammatical expression sounded so weird coming from her, a girl who I knew was smart and who still looked like some preteen version of a sexy librarian. I could look now, because she wasn't looking at me. Her eyes were still averted, her face red. "We get along so well, and I thought..."
"We just met," I interrupted her.
"Exactly! We just met and already..." She shook her head, dismissing whatever thought was going to be completed. "And now you're going to go."
I felt like I had to say something to her, offer some kind of mature advice from an adult, even if most of the time I only felt like one technically. And if she wasn't even looking at me, that was going to be hard. Besides, I needed to stall, get my thoughts in order. So I said, "Come on, let's sit down." She did look then, like she was surprised that I didn't just make an excuse and walk out. I circled around to the front of the couch and sat. She followed slowly, mostly watching her own feet as she stepped, but she settled herself beside me.
We sat there in silence for what felt like forever, but must have only been a few seconds, and then I took her hand, the first time I consciously touched her. Sure, there may have been brushes together before that, but that's not the same thing as a deliberate touch. There were times, in the months following, where I woke from some dream convinced that, while she was naked, she stepped towards me and I put my hand out to stop her and made contact with her immature chest, or did even worse, and sometimes in those predawn hours I would be convinced that it actually happened for a long time before my full faculties returned and I remembered, no matter how much I might have stared inappropriately, when I reached out to touch her, it was only with my hand. Maybe it doesn't make up for the staring, and certainly not for how things turned out, but it was something, a moment of being noble.
In that moment, she seemed to suck in her breath a little at the contact, but I encircled her tiny hand with mine and held it gently until she looked at me. "Look, Astrid, I like you... I do. If I were your age, I'd jump at the chance to be with you..." Wow, that sounded bad, so I backtracked. "And I mean just be your boyfriend, even without sex. Or even just a friend. Because... well, I know it might not seem that way, but sex is... well, it's complicated. A lot of bad things can happen, to your body, your heart, your reputation... and even if you're lucky enough so far that they haven't happened to you yet..." I didn't want to slut shame her, but being promiscuous wasn't the most healthy thing at her age regardless of sex.
"I've never done it before," she said. "I mean, I know guys who wanted to, even older guys your age." She looked at me out of the corner of my eye, like she was hoping that would sway me.
I was too busy being surprised by the broader implication. Wait... she offered her virginity to me? We just met! "Then... why?"
She mumbled as she spoke. "I don't know... you just seemed like... like you were special."
Is it awful that made me feel on top of the world? I hardly ever felt particularly special to anyone, other than family, and they're biased. "I'm not, though. I'm just a guy who likes a lot of the same things you do. You're going to meet tons of those. And when you do, you're better off not... rushing into anything. People always say things like... trust your instincts. But your instincts can lie to you too. Some people get very good at fooling them, and it's easy to get hurt if you trust them too much."
"I don't believe you were fooling me..."
"I just mean you don't know. You can't know. I could easily have been some kind of monster. That's why stripping down in front of someone is a really, really bad idea."
"I only did it because you were going to go..."
"So?" I asked. "What's the big deal? Is there..." I paused, suddenly worried that there was something deep going on. "Is there some reason you don't want to be alone?"
"Huh?"
"Like some kind of problem, or something."
She shook her head quickly. "No... it's just... I'm alone all the time." Her eyes snapped to mine. "Like, not ALL the time, but until my Mom gets off work, I have to stay here and there's never anyone to talk to, and I don't have a phone and right now we don't have Internet and...." Her voice filled with adolescent frustration as she finished, "I just get so bored."
"Bored," I repeated. Yeah, great, offer your virginity up to a stranger because you were bored. Again, I didn't want to slut shame, I know how the intersection of boredom, loneliness and arousal could feel... hell, when I was her age I probably would have done the same thing if an attractive woman was willing... but being a few years past that, it now just seemed crazy that it happened to someone else.
"Even with books, I just... I just wanted somebody to... I want my own adventure, you know?"
I knew that feeling as well, when you feel books are a poor substitute for something you're lacking. "You will... you'll have tons of them. There's no need to rush into..."
She must have sensed what I meant, because she interrupted me, "I wouldn't have gone all the way with just anybody," she insisted. "But I thought maybe you and I were like... meant to be. Like, we connected. I'm not, like, easy."
Seemed to me like the only thing not easy was turning her down. But I couldn't say that. And I felt much better about my decision, she seemed so much younger now, even a little lost. "Astrid... wanting sex doesn't make you easy, people want it for all sorts of reasons. Not the least because it feels good..." Why did I feel that was an important point to make? "But it doesn't mean those reasons are good reasons to jump into something you can't undo. These things... if they really were meant to happen, they'd happen. Like destiny," I said. "Things would keep pulling us together. If you offer... that because you think you're going to lose someone... well, you're probably going to lose them anyway, they'll just take whatever they can get from you first."
She looked up at me, eyes seeming to shine. "So why didn't you?"
"Like I said, I'm too old for you."
"But... you wanted to, I saw." And her eyes went down to my crotch, this time I was sure of it.
Christ. I guess my bulge was more obvious than I thought, and as my mind raced with the possibility that she was about to make another offer, I became half-terrified, half-aroused. I lifted one foot to the couch to try and disguise it, probably unsuccessfully, as I said, "That doesn't matter. That's... instinct, a reaction. And like I said... sometimes going with your instincts is a really, really, bad idea. I think you know why."
"Because it's illegal. But if you want to and I want to and I'm not going to tell..."
"Because it's illegal," I repeated firmly, cutting off her speech as it was growing excited again, before she could make an offer I wasn't sure I could refuse any longer, "but mostly because I think it would hurt you." She looked up at me, one eye more open than the other, like she didn't really believe that, so I quickly added. "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life." When did I start quoting Casablanca? I'd never even seen the movie, just clips. If the movie had a line about how to gracefully turn down a preteen girl's sexual advances, it was sadly not quotable enough for me to have heard it. Nor was there anything for what came next, so I just had to wing it. "Someday you're going to find someone who's really special, and I hope it'll be a great moment that you'll remember forever. If I were to take advantage of you, take... that moment from you.... I'd just be proving I didn't care about you."
She pulled away from me, turned her back to me, and flumphed on the opposite armrest, sulking, at least it felt like she was. I stopped paying close attention once I realized that from that position I could still see her panties under her shirt. I'm disgusting. "But you don't, do you? I'm just some stupid, embarrassing little girl to you."
"You're a great girl. You're smart, you're fun." You've got a surprisingly attractive ass. "I wish I knew a girl like you when I was your age. But even smart people make mistakes, and I'm just trying to help."
"Yeah, well, I don't need your help."
I exhaled and nodded, more to myself than anything because she was still facing away. "Okay. Then I guess I'll go."
"Yeah, way to show you care," she snapped. "Leave me here all alone. Walk away."
"You know... in a book, sometimes the hero knows that if he stays, people he cares about are going to be hurt. And that'll be his fault. So he goes, even though that hurts too." I hardly felt like a hero now, but I wanted to put a positive spin on it for her. "Sometimes... sometimes walking away is the most caring thing you can do for someone."
She didn't say anything, and so I pulled myself into a stand and moved towards the door. "Wait," she said. I stopped, looked back at her. She was sitting up, had slid over to the side of the couch closest to me. "Can I have, like, your phone number or Skype or something? So maybe we could talk sometimes?"
I pictured her calling me every day, just to talk, and there was a part of me that really craved that... but then there I pictured her maybe sending racy pics to my phone, or offering herself again, and... well, part of me really craved that, too, but I feared that part of me. I also feared what might happen if her mother discovered her communicating with an adult guy, even if I was a perfect gentleman from here on out. Or hell, if my mother did, it would be just as bad. "I can't," I said, and her face instantly fell. "Not because I don't want to."
"Sure," she said flatly.
"No, really. I'm just afraid of what might happen." I wondered, frantically, whether it was inappropriate to admit to a little girl that you were afraid that if you kept in contact, she might be able to talk you into having sex with her. It seemed like it probably was. "Besides, it's too... easy." She looked confused for a second, and I continued, "Anyone can talk to anyone these days, without even trying. It takes away a little of the magic, don't you think? You run out of things to talk about pretty quickly. But you and I? We'll probably run into each other from time to time... I mean, we live in the same neighborhood." By a very generous interpretation of the word neighborhood. "And whenever we do, we'll always have new things to talk about. And if we don't see each other again... then I guess it wasn't meant to be."
"Leave it up to Fate, you mean?" she asked. "Like something in a story?"
"Sure."
She said nothing for a long moment, then turned away. "Whatever."
"Okay. Well, now I really have to go." I took a breath, like I was making some big momentous decision, but really I wasn't. The decision had already been made, and I knew it was the right one. So I just continued down the hall towards where I left my shoes and bag.
At the landing, I noticed it had stopped raining, and there was even a beam of sun peeking through. If I was religious, I might think the weather itself was rewarding my decision. After slipping my shoes on and slinging my bag over a shoulder, I opened the door.
"Hey," I heard, from right behind me. I hadn't even heard Astrid get up, but she'd followed me, and when I turned back, she held my umbrella, which I'd left hanging on a hook and had neglected to grab. "Don't forget this."
"Oh, right, thanks." I reached for it, and our fingers touched briefly as she passed it over, and I realized that the gel handle now had the impressions of her fingers in it.
"Thank you," she said, seemingly composed. "For walking me home at least."
"It was my pleasure." She looked down at her feet. "Bye. Take care of yourself, Astrid."
"Until we meet again."
I turned and walked away, looking back only once, but she'd closed the door. It wasn't raining, but I still held the umbrella, closed, in my hand, feeling the indentations Astrid had left behind and imagining it was somehow me holding her hand. But the depressions were fading, as I knew they must.
I hurried to the street, and then like a machine retraced the path back to a main road, so I could rejoin my life.
Until we meet again, she'd said, because we'd left it up to Fate. But I didn't expect to see her... it was a big city, and we weren't really in the same neighborhood by any reasonable standard. The odds were low, and knowing I could make them lower loosened a knot of tension in my chest.
It wasn't that I didn't want to see her again, I just didn't think it'd be good for either of us. So maybe I'd stack the deck against Fate a little bit. I could form strategies to avoid running into her... like, I could never walk down the street where I first met her. Maybe never walk at all, and simply commit to taking the bus from then on. Or maybe, I decided, I'd even quit that job and find another, elsewhere in the city, just to be safe... sure my cousin did stick her neck out for me, but I think these concerns trumped those.
I think it's absolutely fair to say I was planning never to see Astrid again.
But sometimes, even the best plans come apart when Fate sends an unexpected Hitch your way.
The End (for now)