Trapper and Emmeline (12 page)

Week 4: The Long Tease

Emmeline was learning to be a tease. A highly available, easily touchable, always friendly tease. I confirmed this one day when I met her after class.

I paused in the doorway to the classroom and saw her going over some notes with a friend. She stood very close to him, their bodies in contact in at least four places. The boy wasn’t looking at the notebook at al . He stared down her blouse. When Emmeline glanced up and saw me, she gave a little wave. The boy dropped his hand from her waist with a guilty start. It wasn’t long before he put it back. His fingers flexed and curled against her side as she talked.

I waited until she was done with him. She stood on her tippy-toes to give him a kiss on the lips.

She turned to me, and passed another guy sitting at the end of a row. He said “Emmeline!” and then—it jolted me to see this—he reached out and caught her leg.

There was no way on earth
I
would feel comfortable enough to grab the thigh of a passing girl in a mini-skirt, but he didn’t seem self-conscious. And Emmeline didn’t seem to think anything was amiss.

She rol ed her eyes and put a finger up. She was al good humor. She bent toward him, and though he was pointing to something on the page in front of them his eyes were down her front too. His hand slowly slid up and down the back of her leg, trying to linger, but trying not to look too sleazy either.

The first friend squeezed into their little group, half behind Emmeline, so that her ass pressed into his lap. They went over the page together, Emmeline doing most of the talking. It was maddening to see her like that. She was bent over with her knees locked, being ogled from the front and crowded from the rear. She talked natural y and freely, fil ing in the silence as they completely ignored her and tried to find new ways to casual y put their hands on her body.

When she had explained the math problem to nobody’s satisfaction, she stood and stretched. The seated student jumped to his feet, put his hands on her waist, and gave her a kiss. Then she kissed her first friend again, and final y broke free.

She shook her head with a broad smile.

“One side effect of al the rules,” she whispered, taking my hand, “is that I’m the most popular study partner in the class. Everybody but
everybody
needs my help.”

“They’re total y in love with you.”

She laughed. “I think they’re taking advantage of me.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said.

“Yeah.
No!
I mean, did you see them? According to our rules, I
have
to talk to guys, and they picked up on that rule in the first thirty seconds. They sensed that I wasn’t saying ‘no’ to anything. So they’re always talking to me about the assignments and asking for help with their essays. I should get paid as a teacher’s assistant for al the guys in class.”

“Oh. I thought they were taking advantage because they’re touching or kissing you al the time.”

“Probably that too,” she shrugged. “The kissing is easy. I’l have to take your word about the touching.”

“No kidding? You didn’t notice them taking epic feels off you?”

“Not any more than usual,” she said. “I mean, since I started wearing these little dresses, I have
no
personal space.

I’ve noticed that other girls have two or three feet between them and the guys they talk with. I have about four inches, at most. Usual y I’m skin-to-skin with everybody. It’s nothing serious, I got used to it pretty fast.”

“That’s so hot,” I said.

“But for me, it’s business as usual.”

“That’s what’s so hot about it.”

The next day, we went to the Student Union for cokes. Carol was wearing a short, flower-print dress with leather shoes, and looking quite enticing about it. As I studied her shape inside her translucent dress, a hand came sliding around her waist.

The hand, flat-palmed on my girlfriend’s body, went on a journey across her torso, catching a stupefying feel along the way. It came to rest on her stomach, a little below her bel y button.

My dick was hard enough hammer out dents in cars.

I tracked the hand back to a young, Guido-looking Jersey guy with an open col ar and gold chains around his neck. His face was mere inches away from hers, and his toothsome smile made me think of a man-eating shark.

“Emmeline,” he said, “have you given any thought about tonight? Or tomorrow night? Or the night after? Or ever?”

“I’l tel you later,” she said. “This is Trapper, my boyfriend.”

“Oh, hey,” he said, backing off. He met my eyes with a hard stare, as if I wanted to steal his food.

“Hi!” I held out my hand, and he took it, suspicious.

Emmeline said, “Trapper, this is my friend from class. He wants to take me out to dinner.”

I smiled at him. “Just make sure it’s a nice place. Emmeline deserves the best.”

He nodded uncertainly. He was, obviously and reasonably, confused by Emmeline and me.

“Sure, ‘Trapper.’” He clearly disapproved of my name.

“See you later, sweetie,” Emmeline said, and kissed him.

As he walked away, she said, “Sorry about that.”

“No big,” I said, wrapping my hands around her shoulders. A pre-Emmeline Trapper would have felt a little hurt at being dismissed; new-Trapper didn’t actual y give a shit about testosterone-ridden, social y inept Jersey kids. “Did you notice how he just grabbed your stomach, rather than saying hi?”

“He always does that. I think he has a thing for my tummy.”

“You should wear a crop-top for him, or a half-shirt. So that next time, he wil get a hand ful of skin.” She looked thoughtful at that, and didn’t answer. I realized why:
she liked him!
Him! There was no accounting for taste. “Are you planning to go out with him?”

She looked uncomfortable. The Guido was the first of her potential dates that I’d actual y met.

“It’s stil early in the week, Trap. For my first date, I want something… less
unambiguous
than a dinner date. Like an innocent study session. With him, it would not be innocent at al . He would jump me like a turnstile.” Her eyes fluttered to mine, shy. “Stil , I’m curious about him. He wears more jewelry than I do. We would make one blinged-out pair.”

“Keep me informed,” I said. “I like how guys are just grabbing you before they say hel o.”

She laughed. “I think they do that if they can’t remember my name in time.”

“We are one weird couple.”

In our own way, we were being methodical about Emmeline’s wardrobe. It was a little like she was in training—she gave reports on
how rarely
she noticed what she was wearing, and I cheered her on. After several weeks, she reported that she didn’t care about her hemlines anymore. She was taking stairs, sitting down and even bending over without rearranging her clothes. There was an element of the absurd, and we both knew it:
Could she really be that precise about
something she wasn’t supposed to be noticing?

But there was truth to it also. She was pul ing down her skirts less often. When getting out of a chair, less and less often would she primly keep her knees together. She no longer groaned when men stopped and stared up her legs in front of our park bench. She no longer anxiously squeezed my hand when we walked over a vent in the sidewalk. Wind on the streets no longer made her clench her teeth or giggle, depending on her mood.

After four weeks as boyfriend and girlfriend, we even started talking about the skirts less. This made me happy, not because I didn’t like talking about how the skirts made her feel—I
lived
for those reports! She gave fewer details, and dwel ed more on other topics, because we no longer had the sense that the Great Experiment would be over in a few days.

Emmeline’s rules felt permanent.

One of our rules was no underwear at the library. Consequently, we spent a lot of time at the library, where we teased each other and got riled up for sex at my apartment later. Being so diligent about studying helped our grades, and it distracted everybody else around us.

That morning I found Emmeline horsing around in the library foyer with our friend Mike and another guy I didn’t know.

She was pressed against Mike tighter than a tattoo. Their arms hooked behind each other’s backs, each hand grasping the other’s neck. They were trying to trip each other by wrapping their legs together. The friend was smiling at them with jealous interest from the side.

“Trapper!” she said, when I walked up.

“Hi, honey!” I gave her a kiss and then pul ed back. I didn’t want her leaving Mike’s grip.

She was wearing a wraparound jeans skirt, low on her hips, which was closed with two buttons. She was more than wearing it, she
owned it.
It rocked on her hips as she moved, with the split showing most of her thigh. And I loved her top, a shiny black silk number with straps over her shoulders. It looked like lingerie and she later confirmed it was; regular blouses weren’t doing it for her anymore. The front of the shirt veered down to her sternum, and then exposed her even further with strategic patches of sheer, open lace. The firm orbs of her breasts were covered only by modest little lace-trimmed triangles of silk. As she tussled with Mike, her breasts shimmied back and forth entrancingly. They surged out of her top when she pressed against his chest.

“This is Tim,” Emmeline said. “He’s in our Poli Sci class too.”

I shook Tim’s hand.

He said, “We were having a political discussion. Emmeline said she’d trip Mike up.”

“Literal y!” she laughed.

Mike tried to leverage her around again. He looked down her front without any attempt to disguise it. He had an incredibly open and unobstructed view into her blouse. To distract her, he moved his leg in front of hers and twisted her back.

Mike was wearing shorts, so the skin of his leg connected with the skin of her thighs. When their legs crossed, she scissored him, her skirt splitting up her leg. She squeezed his neck in the crook of her elbow, which mashed her chest under his chin and his face against her shoulder. If Emmeline cared that she and Mike were in a ful -body clinch, skin-to-skin wherever it mattered, she didn’t show it. These days it never occurred to her to be self-conscious until someone asked why she wasn’t.

She was a big contrast with Mike, who was clearly at war with himself. To her it was a flirty game with a buddy from class. To him it was open license to bend her across his body, twist her torso, and try to pop her breasts out of her top.

She laughed, while he breathed in gasps.

I remembered our first make-out session, in the elevator of my apartment building, then in the hal way, and then on Facebook. That was when I learned she liked to splay her body across mine, and let me move her. She liked being control ed with my hand on her crotch, like a deluxe hand puppet.

Now here she was, doing it again—she had somehow maneuvered Mike into the same situation. She was at his mercy, muscle paired against muscle, and she was indicating submission to whomever could interpret her body correctly.