Beginnings (4 page)

‘You’re weird.’ He put the bottle down on the path which ran just to the left of him.

‘Don’t you like me?’ she asked, raising herself and lying on her side, propping her head up with her arm. Jason was gazing at her body. He caught her catching him and looked away.

‘I like you, but you are weird.’

‘Do you like the way I look?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, picking up his bottle again, and turning it this way then that in his hands. Relieving the bottle of its label became the one
important act of his life. His fingernails found the edge.

‘Have you thought about me?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’ His eyes lowered. He lifted the entire length of the label’s edge.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Nup,’ he said. He looked up at the eucalypt.

‘You don’t think about me?’

‘No,’ he said smiling. The label ripped.

‘I’ve thought about you,’ she said.

He went bright red. Tore shreds of the label from the bottle.

‘Look, Jason, I don’t want to frighten you …’

‘You’re not!’ he said shrilly, before taking a sip of beer to steady the scene while surreptitiously rolling the fragments of label between his thumb and forefinger.

‘Do you think I’m old?’ she asked, genuinely interested, because it occurred to her that he might think of her as she used to think of her parents’ friends when she was young.

Suddenly it was Emma’s turn to be embarrassed. She had answered her own question before he had even understood it, imagining him shaking his head condescendingly. Of course he would think she was old.

‘How old
are
you?’ he asked. This was his real reaction. He flicked the paper balls over her.

‘So you
do
think I’m old?’ she said, feeling her vanity and her surety shake.

‘You’re married. I mean. I don’t know.’

‘I’m twenty-three,’ she said, lying.

‘That’s not bad,’ he said, not knowing whether it was bad or good or what. He desperately wanted her to change the subject.

‘Do I look old to you?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, in that honesty which comes from not knowing what to say.

‘Really?’

‘You’re married! And …’

‘Is my body unattractive?’

Jason sighed in relief. He was on safe ground again.

‘Your body is very attractive,’ he said, calmly, though he had yet to look her in the eye for more than a millisecond the whole time they’d been talking. He drank some of his beer.

‘But I’m old looking?’

‘You’re older than Jess,’ he said, getting nervous again.

‘She’s sixteen, for Christ sakes. Of course I am!’

‘That’s what I meant,’ he said.

‘So I’m only old with regard to Jess but other than that I’m fine?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Tell me,’ she said, leaning across and touching his leg, again.

He shook his head.

‘Come on,’ she coaxed.

‘Well, it’s not easy to say.’ He started to peel away a large shred of label.

‘What?’

‘You really want to know?’ he said. The piece of label came away from the bottle.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s okay, you can tell me anything. I want us to be good friends. No secrets.’

‘OK.’ He rolled that piece too.

‘Well?’ she said, rubbing his leg unnecessarily.

‘Her breasts …’ He stopped, tongue tied. She waited.

‘Yes?’ she asked, realising he wouldn’t go on.

‘Hers are firm.’ He looked down.

‘Ha!’ she laughed. ‘She hasn’t got any! Ha ha! I thought …’

‘What?’

‘I thought you were going to say something about my arse or my wrinkles or fat or something,’ she said, still giggling.

‘You haven’t got any wrinkles.’

‘I know that! But I am fat and my arse wobbles though, right?’

‘I didn’t say that. Nothing is wrong with your body,’ he said, desperately trying to stop himself from sinking for good.

‘You’re so cute. I want to eat you all up!’ She squeezed his leg.

He was silent, red faced and happy. He flicked this tiny ball over her too.

‘But my tits are saggy?’ she said suddenly.

His mouth opened wide about to defend himself again when she leaped over and bit him on the thigh.

She growled. He pretended that it didn’t hurt. She shook like a crocodile and clawed him for good measure.

She pushed him over and her hand accidentally ran the full length of his erection. She growled some more and then lay on her back.

‘I’m going to BBQ you one day,’ she said casually, as though her spirited attack had never happened.

‘Your breasts aren’t saggy,’ he said, sitting back up. He watched the teeth marks she’d left on his inner thigh turn red. There was some pain but he was more aware of an impulse within him which he likened to moments he had had when fighting in the school yard. These fights were rough, very physical ordeals which erupted from petty misunderstandings or idiotic questions of pride. He found he gravitated towards them more than ever. Sometimes, in the midst of a rumble, he would face some irrational impulse to perform some greater and more satisfying act. The impulse to do this indefinite something was so strong and he felt it with his entire body. As this impulse thumped round him he looked at her face, then breasts, her naked belly, at her bikini bottoms and the mound they hid and down her smooth white legs, at her ankles and her toes.

‘I know they’re not saggy,’ she said, sitting up and crossing her legs. ‘Do you want to see them?’

He thought she was teasing so he said, ‘No.’ His body stopped thumping. He went cold. His pride pricked up its ears.

‘Oohh, why not?’ She bent her torso over her crossed legs, showing herself to be flexible, and
took his right hand in her two hands. She brought it to her lips and kissed the back of it.

‘Why do you always tease me?’ he asked. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘It’s because I like you,’ she said, kissing the tips of his fingers one by one.

SIX

Jason watched her silently and felt the warmth of her mouth on his fingers. The feeling was unlike any he had known.
Better
than anything he had known. Then she took his thumb into her mouth and sucked on it. He watched her, stunned. His erection throbbed but he was terrified.

‘Why do you lie in the sun if you wear 30+?’ he asked. The question just occurred to him.

‘I don’t like tans but I love the heat. It makes me feel completely relaxed. I love the sun,’ she answered, interrupting her play, but not raising herself.

She began to suck his thumb again. Then released it and said, ‘I’ll read you a story by D.H. Lawrence called “Sun” one day if you’d like. I don’t like his writing much but that particular story is yummy.’

He ignored these words or, more to the point, they were gibberish to him and didn’t require attention. As soon as she stopped speaking she began sucking his thumb again.

‘I like your skin,’ he said.

She kept sucking, she was heating up. She stopped and replied, ‘Thank you. Jess is very brown. Who do you like better?’

‘I like you better,’ he said.

‘Good.’ Then she turned his hand over and began to kiss his palm, letting her tongue circle around, reading it and predicting his future.

‘That feels nice,’ he said.

‘What does Jess do to you?’

‘We haven’t even kissed,’ he said.

‘Really? Why not?’

‘I think we’re only friends.’

‘You know I’m friends with her mother, don’t you? I know Jess well.’

‘No!’ he said. How could she be?

She licked his palm and then his wrist and then lifted her face from it to say, ‘We talked about you.’

‘What did she say?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Come on, please.’

‘I want you for my own,’ she said.

He was silent. He wanted so desperately to know whether she was joking or not. He hated being made fun of.

‘You want both of us, don’t you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Just you.’

She smiled brightly at him. She felt like a teenager again. She was really falling for him. He was so eager to please and eager not to offend.

‘You’re about to do your final exams, right?’ she asked, knowing that he was but she was trying to feel the full force of what she was about to propose.

‘Yep. In a few weeks. Then I’m done with school forever.’

‘You can’t let yourself be distracted then?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think it’s wrong for me to like you?’

‘Yes,’ he said. He was nothing if not guileless. Subconsciously he was readying himself for a fall. In one quick movement she could fake with her right and knock him flat with her left. He left himself open for her. It was something like
masturbating behind an unlocked door when you knew it was too risky to do so. The prospect of further pleasure can make one brave and stupid. It was unlikely that Emma would be genuinely attracted to him so as the seconds ticked by he tried to convince himself that he was reading this all wrong – she wasn’t interested in him, she couldn’t be.

‘I like that it is wrong. Do you?’

‘No,’ he said.

She reached over and stroked his cock.

‘Well I do. It
is
wrong, you know. I shouldn’t do this to you. It isn’t fair, I know. I should act responsibly. You’re young. I know your parents. If anything should happen. I mean, if anyone should find out.’

‘You’re acting all crazy!’ he said, shrilly.

‘Can I kiss you?’ she asked.

He didn’t acknowledge her.

‘Can I? Huh?’

She leant further forward, uncrossing her legs and kneeling. She put her hand on his knee and leant on it, bringing her face close to his. She was about to kiss him when she came to think of his feelings. It wasn’t for the first time either. She wasn’t a monster. If he had been a young girl she would
have been far gentler. Once you get going with a boy or a man for that matter, it is easy to disregard their feelings, dumb beasts that they are.

She paused, their faces hovering an inch apart in suspended animation.

He moved forward and the soft skin of his fleshy lips brushed ever so lightly against her own.

‘I’m sorry, Jason, but I can’t do it,’ she said, making no move to end the closeness. His lips brushed hers again. ‘I mean, I
want
to do it. I so want to kiss you and do other stuff besides but …’

‘What?’ he whispered. Here comes her left hook. Duck!

‘What?’

‘Yeah, what?’ he said.

She crawled up over him and sat in his lap, wrapping her legs around his back and pressing her whole body against him. She felt his hard cock against her and the warm skin of his abdomen against her own. She squeezed him with all her might and he gasped.

‘If you say I’m old again I’ll squeeze you to death,’ she said through clenched teeth. He laughed and she brought her mouth against his, rushing when she might take it slow. The pressure of his young cock up against her like that
was making her lose her restraint. She wanted so much to have him slip into her. To fuck him as they were. She imagined squeezing herself around his cock and grinding herself against him over and over. These thoughts made her wet and she ached for his fingers or cock or, she thought with a shiver, his inexperienced tongue to penetrate her.

She kissed him with closed mouth and then gave him little kisses down his cheek until she reached the base of his neck, and she kissed his swimmer’s shoulders, biting into the salty flesh and making him moan involuntarily into her ear.

She never wanted to stop. She bit him and kissed him up and down and then returned to his mouth. She parted his lips with her tongue and his tongue hid from her. She searched for it, looking and tasting and feeling her way around his mouth. Then she found his warm tongue and coaxed it out and danced with it. She felt his strong tongue enter her mouth and she sucked on it. He began to flick it in and out and she bit down lightly on it and held it and sucked it.

His hands lay limp beside him and she picked them up in her own and brought them round to her hips. They gripped her and squeezed her and she moaned dramatically.

He started to rub his hands all over her back and she had shivers and goose bumps that ran all the way through her. He clutched the back of her neck and forced her closer to him. The dull pressure of this made their kiss insistent and teased the hunger each felt for the other. Jason’s hunger was indefinite, diffuse and this made it greater than any hunger he had ever felt. His was a crater which no sensation could fill. Hers was definite, chiselled, precise; a sharp pang that might wake you from sleep.

Emma lifted her butt so that his cock came to rest on her clitoris. Without letting on that she was being self-serving she managed to rub herself against him. The pressure was gorgeous to her, it began to feed her hunger and she kissed his mouth passionately. Her bikini bottoms were wet. He rubbed against her. She kissed his mouth and timed her movements, pressing then releasing her clitoris against his cock.

Soon, sooner than she had expected, the thrill of an orgasm overcame her and she tensed up, pushing her face against his, kissing him deeply in return for his own deep kisses. She felt the need to hide her pleasure from him. She tried to control her moans and her shakes. But she needn’t
have worried. Jason was ignorant of what had just happened. He was delirious. His dreams of Emma were realised and he was too terrified and aroused to make any judgements.

They kissed like this for near on an hour. Fumbling and rubbing and biting lips and sucking tongues and earlobes and necks. Emma had not done this for years. He made no effort to move things along. He made no effort to touch her breasts or to explore beyond the fleshy butt that he gripped and kneaded so enthusiastically through her bikini bottoms. Jason made no attempt to undress the little Emma had on. He moaned and yet never thought to thrust up.

Emma was not so restrained. She didn’t rip his shorts off and beg to be fucked, nor did she direct his hands between her legs, nor did she knock him on his back and gobble up his cock, but she did use it, still enclosed within his board shorts, to get herself off. She came, moaning into his mouth but still managing to keep him blissfully unaware about just how much his naive lovemaking was doing to her.