“No, that car has definitely been here all night,” a female voice was saying. “The driveway’s dry underneath. And her bedroom curtains are still closed. I’ll go up and see her. You get the boys a drink and I might need a cup of tea after this!”
Young, excited footsteps were running down the hallway towards the kitchen. The door opened and two identical fair-haired boys, about eight years old burst through.
“Who are you?” asked the first, loudly.
“What are you doing in our house?” asked the second.
A tall, thin man, in his early fifties perhaps, followed behind them. “Oh hello,” he said, startled by my presence at the kitchen table.
He ducked back out of sight into the hallway and called, “Jenny, there’s a boy in here!”
Heavy footsteps ran down the stairs and along the hallway. A woman with long blonde hair, rushed into the kitchen, breathless. The four of them stared at me in disbelief.
“I er, um, I’m er Jake,” I said, my throat dry and my hands clammy. “I’m er, a er, friend of Amy’s.”
Footsteps again on the stairs, racing downwards. Amy appeared at the kitchen door, out of breath, still in her pyjamas, her long, dark hair a tangle of curls.
“Mum, Rob, you’re back, so early. I wasn’t expecting you!”
“So I see,” her mother answered wryly. “We’ve just met Jake. I think you have some explaining to do and this needs to be a very good explanation, young lady.”
“Can we talk, just the two of us?” Amy said. She was obviously nervous, but trying hard to appear calm. She looked at the man. “Please don’t make him go, I need to talk to him too.”
The man smiled at her and made to respond, but her mother cut him off. “Jake will still be here when we’ve talked. I promise.”
The two disappeared down the hallway and I heard the sound of the sitting room door shutting.
“I’m Rob, by the way.” The man offered his hand to me, and I stood to shake it. “I’m Amy’s step-dad and these are Ben and Tom,” he said, indicating the two children, who had shrunk back away from me, a little shy.
“Boys, can you sit down at the table please, and I’ll bring you some juice?”
One of the boys (perhaps slightly taller than the other, I wasn’t sure, they looked so similar), pointed at me “But he’s sitting in my seat,” he said.
“It’s OK, I can move,” I said.
“Oh Ben,” said Rob, slightly irritated. “You can sit next to him. Sit in my place!”
The boys took their seats at the pine table, Ben next to me and the other twin, Tom, opposite him.
“What are you doing?” asked Tom.
“I’m trying to work out how the Egyptians built their pyramids,” I said.
“Are you an archaeo- archaeojologist?” he enquired.
“No,” I chuckled. “This is for my maths exam. It’s one of the questions I have to answer. I have to work out how many Egyptian slaves were needed to move a big block of stone.”
Tom looked at me and then at my maths notes spread in front of me, before deciding that my work looked too dull to be worthy of further consideration.
Rob brought over two tall glasses of juice, setting them down between the two boys.
Ben had been staring at my calculator. “We’re not allowed to use calculators at school,” he said disapprovingly. “We have to do all our sums in our heads.”
“Well I try to do my sums in my head,” I said, “but for this question I need to do some trigonometry and I need the calculator to help me.”
“Oh” said Ben, sounding distinctly unimpressed. Both boys turned their attention to their drinks, slurping noisily.
“Would you like a drink?” Rob asked. “Tea, coffee?”
“Tea would be great, thanks,” I replied.
The kettle began to boil and the two boys finished their drinks, giving theatrical, satisfied gasps.
“Can we go outside please Daddy?” Tom asked.
“Is it raining still?” Rob replied, peering out through the kitchen window. “I think you’ll need your coats and boots.”
The boys sprang to their feet and rushed out of the kitchen. They returned seconds later wearing anoraks, racing to open the patio door to the garden. They tumbled outside pulling on their boots, before slamming the door behind them.
Calm returned to the kitchen.
“Milk? Sugar?” Rob asked, breaking me out of my thoughts, as I watched the two boys scamper off down the lawn.
“Just milk please. Thanks.”
Rob brought over two steaming mugs of tea, setting one down in front of me. He sat diagonally across the table from me.
“Well” he said. “We wondered when Amy was going to bring a boy back, but we didn’t think we’d catch him doing his homework on the kitchen table!”
I attempted a chuckle, but my throat was so dry, no sound came out.
He looked at me keenly. “You were in the play, weren’t you? I remember you, you were er…”
“Tybalt,” I said. “Yes, I was the last person to die before the interval, my character that is.”
“Of course,” he said, “Yes Juliet’s cousin.” He paused. “I thought you were good actually, very good. I remember the fight scenes, definitely the best for school production I’ve ever seen. I’m a teacher, so I’ve sat through a few in my time!”
“Well, playing a hot-headed thug obviously comes naturally,” I said, giving a wry smile.
“This is A level maths?” he asked, gesturing at my book and papers scattered in front of me.
“Yeah. Not my best subject, to be honest.”
“What do you want to do at university?”
“I’ve got a place at Cambridge to study veterinary medicine,” I said, trying not to sound too smug. I stopped short. Actually, best not to mention Cambridge again. Amy had applied there for law at the same time as me, but she’d been rejected.
“Well done,” he said, looking impressed. I could feel him warming to me. “Why d’you want to be a vet?”
“My parents are farmers,” I explained, “and I want to carry on working with animals, just not in the family business!”
–
Living on a family farm, I’d been around animals all my life, but I hadn’t always wanted to be a vet. As a child, I’d always imagined carrying on the family tradition, but one incident at the start of the start of the school summer holidays a few years earlier had set me on a different path. One of our dairy cows had become bloated after the herd had been moved into a new field. It wasn’t a terribly unusual occurrence, normally one or two cows each year would suffer, but we’d need to call the vet out to insert a tube through the mouth and into the stomach to relieve the pressure of the excess gas.
Roger was our local vet. A kindly, yet business-like man in his mid-fifties, he’d looked after the animals on our farm and most of our neighbours for as long as anyone could remember. That particular day, the usual method of inserting a stomach tube hadn’t worked, so Roger had inserted a trochar directly through the cow’s hide into its rumen. It was the first time I’d seen any sort of surgery being carried out and I was fascinated, particularly by the sound of the gas rushing out through the metal tube. So, when he returned a few days later to remove the trochar and to stitch the cow back together, I asked if he’d be willing to let me shadow him over the summer holiday.
Roger took quite a shine to me. His three rather glamorous daughters, all much older than me, had firmly decided not to follow in their father’s muddy footsteps and were pursuing such worthwhile courses as theatre, fashion and design at university. In fact his offspring had such different characters to their father, we would occasionally joke behind his back that his wife had had a long-term affair with the milkman.
That summer, I spent a day or two each week with Roger as he responded to calls at farms around the county and I gained a good understanding of what the job of a vet entailed. I was hooked.
–
Rob and I chatted amiably as we drank our tea. He was Amy’s step-dad and had married her mum, Jenny, when Amy was about eight years old. The twins were born a few years later and the family had lived in Hampshire, before moving across when Jenny had changed jobs. Rob taught French and German in one of the secondary schools in the neighbouring town.
There was a lull in the conversation. We’d finished our tea and it had been at least half an hour since Amy had disappeared with her mum ‘to talk’. Rob stood up and walked over to the glass patio doors, watching the two twins as they hared around the garden on their bikes.
“They have too much energy,” he sighed. “I did promise we’d go swimming before lunch, but perhaps we should wait. I’ll go and have a kick around with them.”
He opened the door, pulled on his boots and stepped out, closing the door behind him.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I was on my own again. I shuffled my maths notes, trying to make myself busy, but I couldn’t concentrate. I was in limbo, waiting presumably for Amy to come back, but as what? Were we together? Was last night just a mistake, an emotional reaction to a traumatic event? Had I exploited her when she was at her most vulnerable? Did she feel I’d exploited her? Was I, in fact, any better than Ritchie Gasson?
I picked up the two empty tea mugs and took them over to the sink, opening the dishwasher door and placing them inside. I looked out of the window, watching Rob and the twins playing football in the back garden. The life of an eight-year-old was so easy I thought.
The kitchen door opened behind me and I turned to see Amy. She had changed out of her pyjamas into jeans and a dark grey hoodie, and her hair was tied back behind her head. Her eyes were puffy and pink, and she’d clearly been crying.
“Can we talk?” she asked quietly.
“Of course,” I said, moving forward towards her and holding out my hand. She accepted it and led me down the corridor to the sitting room. I expected her mother to be waiting for us, but, as Amy closed the door behind us, I realised we were alone.
“Can we sit down?” she asked. We sat at opposite ends of the sofa, the same sofa as the previous night. I looked at her, afraid of what she might say. She swallowed nervously, looking up at me through her large, dark eyes.
“I have a lot to say to you, and I’m not sure how to say it,” she began quietly. “But please let me talk, at my own pace and in my own way and I’ll try to make sense.” She smiled weakly, and I nodded, in an attempt to reassure her.
“Last night was, was…” she struggled to continue. “I never thought Richie could do that. He, it, it was horrible.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “You don’t have to say this if you don’t want to.”
“I need to,” she said, almost defiantly. “I can, I can do this.”
“Everyone said we were so well suited to each other, that we were the golden couple, that we’d be Romeo and Juliet in real life, not just in the play. At first, I was flattered, I thought they were right and that maybe it could work. Then he started to get more..” she paused, “aggressive, but maybe that’s not the right word. The kissing for the play was horrible, awful. I used to shut my eyes and try to blank it out.”
I grimaced. I didn’t need to be reminded of the number of times that Mrs Slater had required Amy and Ritchie to kiss on stage. That had been horrible for me as well.
“I’d imagine, imagine I was kissing you instead,” she said quietly, blushing in embarrassment.
I took an intake of breath, I’d been completely oblivious all the way through.
She broke eye contact, “But I thought, I thought, you could never be mine.” She blushed, embarrassed. “I thought you were going out with Lauren.”
I smiled. So I’d been right, Amy had been confused by the husband-and-wife banter with my cousin Lauren, and had misconstrued our relationship as something else.
Amy paused again, summoning up the courage to go on. “Ritchie invited me to the party at James’, and I went. I thought maybe I’d give him another chance and that once the play was over, he’d be, he’d be nicer.
“And we were in the sitting room, at James’ last night, with lots of others. But the music was loud and no one was paying attention to us. You’d disappeared, but I was hoping you’d come back. Ritchie was drunk and he started, he started to touch me, and he tried to kiss me and his breath, his breath, he stank of alcohol. He pinched me, he hurt me. So I ran, I ran and you were there and you stopped him, you protected me,” she looked up at me, through her round dark eyes.
“Then you took me home and you made sure I was safe. You were so kind. You are so kind.
“And I was going to get up really early and talk to you and say thank you to you, but they came back – I wasn’t expecting them so soon. I screwed up,” she was beginning to cry now, a few tears rolling down her cheeks. “I screwed up,” she said again. “It’s my fault.”
There was a long pause, and I wasn’t sure what to do or say. I’d been bracing myself to hear her say that she was very grateful, but that she wasn’t ready for a relationship, or that I wasn’t the one for her. The pause got longer. She’d asked me not to say anything, just to listen, but I thought I had to say something.
“Nothing’s your fault,” I said. I reached out and took her hand again. She didn’t recoil, she just held her hand there, in mine. “You haven’t screwed up. Nothing’s your fault,” I repeated.
There was a long pause, as she took some deep breaths to steady herself again.
“And us?” I asked. “Do you want to try going out?” I continued, trying to sound casual and not too hopeful, yet sincere at the same time. “I don’t want to put you under any pressure, and if you don’t feel ready for a relationship, that’s fine. But I’d like to, if that’s what you want.” I felt my throat tightening as I finished the last sentence.
Amy looked up at me and a smile broke out across her face. “Yes,” she said, “I’d like that a lot, I really would. But can we take things slowly, really slow?”
“Yes,” I replied, smiling back at her. “We’ll take things as slowly as you like – you set the pace. We’ll do things how you want.”
“Oh Jake!” she cried, leaping forwards. “I’m so happy, thank you. You are so kind and I am so lucky.”
We embraced and held each other tightly. She kissed me a couple of times on the cheek.
“My Mum would like to talk to you,” she said nervously. “Is that OK?”
“Yes, that’s fine,” I lied.
“Can you wait here?” she asked. “I’ll go and get her.” She leapt up and scurried out of the room.
Taking a deep breath, I sank back into the sofa cushions and closed my eyes, trying to bring some order to my mind. In the hour and a half that I’d been away sorting out Danny, Ritchie had come on to Amy, and I was now acutely aware that if I’d returned five minutes earlier or later, something serious could have happened without me being there to stop it. Mind you, if Danny hadn’t reacted in the way he had to Becky and James getting together, the whole incident could have been avoided in the first place!
I stood as Amy’s mother entered the room. She was a little taller than Amy, with long blonde hair, but had a similar build to her daughter.
“Hello, I’m Jenny,” She offered her hand which I shook. Formal and business-like.
“Jake,” I said, “pleased to meet you.”
“Please sit down,” she motioned to the sofa as she down in the armchair opposite me. I sat, rubbing my hands on my jeans to dry the moisture from my palms. I swallowed nervously.
“Amy has told me about last night,” she said. “I’m still in something of a state of shock, but I must thank you for doing what you did to stop an incident which could have developed into something more serious.”
I smiled weakly and nodded. Amy shared some of her mannerisms, but there was a more clipped formality to her voice. I wasn’t sure how much Amy had told her mother, but suspected that she might have given a somewhat sanitised version of the previous evening’s events.
She continued, “What Amy should have done was to call me, and I would have come to pick her up and take her home. But, I’m grateful to you for bringing her back and she tells me that you had not had any alcohol before that.”
I smiled again. That part wasn’t strictly true, but with ferrying Danny back home, I hadn’t touched a drop since late afternoon.
“She also tells me that you stayed here last night, at her request,” she added, frowning a little now, “and that you slept here in this room.”
I nodded.
She paused. “Jake, I need to you to tell me what happened last night. In your own words. What you saw, what you heard and what you did as a result.”
I took a deep breath, my throat dry, unsure when to begin. “I was about to go home,” I said. I was in the bathroom downstairs at James’ house, just drying my hands and I heard shouting. So I opened the door and there was Amy running past, with Ritchie behind her. She was shouting something like “leave me alone” or “get off me”. So I stood in the hallway and blocked him so he couldn’t follow her.”
Jenny nodded, but said nothing.
“I told Ritchie to leave her alone, but he said she was just playing hard to get. But I still didn’t move.” I stopped, hoping not to have to reveal the next part.
“Go on Jake, what happened next? Did he threaten you or did you threaten him? Did you hit each other?”
“He told me to get out the way,” I continued, “but I wouldn’t. So he swung a punch at me, but I dodged. And he lunged at me and I kinda deflected him against the side of the stairs.”
“Did he hurt himself when he fell?” she asked.
“He hit his head,” I said, “but he didn’t cut himself, not that I saw anyway.”
“And then, what happened?” she asked gently.
“I told him to leave Amy alone and to go away,” I said, paraphrasing my expletive-loaded outburst.
“And other than deflecting him against the side of the stairs,” Jenny asked, “did you hit him at all?”
I shook my head. “I might have pushed him away,” I admitted, “but not hard enough to hurt him.”
“And before you confronted Ritchie,” Jenny asked gently, “did you see him and Amy together, was he bothering her, or harassing her before then?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I wasn’t there.”
“You mean you were in a different room?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I went back with my friend Danny to his house for an hour or so. I didn’t get back to the party until about half nine, which is when it happened. I was actually about to leave to go home.”
“And earlier in the day, did you see Amy and Ritchie together?” she asked.
I nodded.
“And did anything happen then that might have given you cause for concern?”
“No,” I said, “they were just talking, but they were talking to everyone. She was talking to me a fair bit.”
She paused and thought for a few moments. “Thank you, Jake,” she said. “I think I have a better understanding of what happened now.” There was a look of relief on her face, as if reassured by my words that her daughter was telling the truth.
“Will Ritchie get into trouble, because of this?” I asked, suddenly worried that I’d just given a witness statement and that Jenny was about to send the police round.
She shook her head. “Legally no,” she replied. “This is just a brief heated argument between teenagers that resolved itself quickly. There’s no criminal case here.”
I leant back in the sofa, relieved.
“The other thing I need to talk to you about is Amy herself,” Jenny said.
I swallowed nervously again.
“Jake, Amy is very vulnerable right now,” she said. “She’s been through a traumatic experience, when she was with people she knew and felt she trusted. Admittedly things could have been significantly worse, but what happened will have shaken her considerably.”
‘That was it,’ the thought raced through my head, ‘she’s going to forbid me from dating her daughter.’
“It’s been hard for Amy to move schools at the start of last year, to leave behind good friends, friends she’s had almost since birth, and to move here,” Jenny continued. “It took her a long time to settle and to find her feet. Being rejected by Cambridge after Christmas was a big blow, but we felt with this play that this was the first time that she’d been fully comfortable here.
“On top of all this, she has her exams in under two months, you both do, with places at university riding on the results.” She paused for a few seconds. “I understand you do have a place at Cambridge.” She looked at me with piercing eyes. I swallowed.
“Amy,” she said slowly, steeling herself for the most difficult part of the conversation, struggling to find the right way of voicing her thoughts. “Amy tells me that she likes you and that, and that she would, er, like to get to know you better and to have a relationship with you.”
Gosh, it sounded so clinical, so formal, so contractual.
“Almost everything I know,” she continued, “is telling me that this is not a good idea, that for Amy to run away from one boy into the arms of another is a recipe for disaster. But she has been so much happier this past term and she says that this is because of you.”
I nodded. Again, this wasn’t true; Amy had spent much of the past term scowling at me, presumably because she thought I was with Lauren. I swallowed again.
“The last thing I’d want, that any mother would want, is for harm to come to my daughter. I’ve known Amy all of her life, and sometimes she can make rash decisions that she regrets later. But I also know when she is genuinely happy, and that’s something I haven’t seen often enough since we moved here.”
She looked down, regretful, perhaps blaming herself after uprooting her family.
“What I’m trying to say is this,” she said, gathering herself again. “Amy is an adult, as are you. And I have to trust her to make the right decisions for herself, difficult though that might be for me. Just promise me that you will look after each other and that you won’t distract each other from your schoolwork.” She looked me straight in the eyes.
“I promise,” I said. “I won’t distract her. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“And if you do find yourself in a situation similar to what happened last night, you must get help as quickly as possible, not try to resolve things yourself,” she continued.
“I promise,” I said.
“Thank you Jake, and thank you again for what you did.” She paused, seemingly unsure what to say next. “Let’s go and talk to her together.”
We walked back to the kitchen. Amy was sitting at the table, a glass of water cupped between her hands. Someone had carefully stacked my maths notes into a neat pile.
She looked up anxiously, worried about what her mother might have said. I smiled gently to reassure her.
“Can Jake stay for lunch?” she asked her mother.
“Well, I think we should ask Jake,” Jenny responded. “Would you like to stay? Your parents aren’t expecting you home?”
“They aren’t expecting me back until this afternoon,” I answered. “I was going to do some revision with James from school, but yes, I’d love to stay for lunch, if that’s not too much trouble.”
“Great. I would like you to stay as well,” Jenny replied. “Is there anything that you don’t eat?” she asked.
“No, I’m easy,” I said. “I’ll eat anything, thank you.”
“OK. I am going to go into town to get some shopping and to pick Rob and the boys up from swimming,” she said. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. In the meantime, perhaps you could impart some of your work ethic to Amy,” she observed with a wry smile.
Amy rolled her eyes. “Oh Mum, stop embarrassing me,” she protested.
Jenny turned and walked out of the kitchen again and up the hallway. We heard the chink of her keys, followed by the muffled slamming of the front door.
And with that, Amy and I were alone again.
Amy came towards me and we embraced each other tightly. “Thank you,” she said, “I hope my mum wasn’t too scary!”
I shook my head.
She laid her head on my chest as I gently kissed the top of her head. “I can feel your heart beating!” she giggled, smiling up at me. I leant down and kissed her on the lips.
“I think my mum likes you,” she said.
“Really?” I said. “She was a bit reluctant to let us see each other, I thought.”
“No, I think she liked you. She liked that you took control and were sensible in a crisis and she liked the fact that you slept in the sitting room and didn’t try to take advantage of me.” She flashed mischievous smile, as if she wished I had. “I think she thinks you won’t lead me astray.”
“And what did she think of me breaking into your house last night?” I asked.
“Well,” she paused, “I might have left that bit out. I’d ‘ve been in trouble for leaving the bathroom window open, and for losing my key.” Another mischievous smile.
“I can pick your key up from James’ this afternoon,” I said. “Assuming he’s found it.” I paused, “but what price should I extract from you to keep my mouth shut?” I teased, shooting back an equally mischievous grin.
“You mean, you want to reveal that you have a way of getting into my bathroom in the dead of night?” she said. “You might find my step-dad in there with his shot gun, next time you try to break in!”
I was beaten. “OK, I won’t tell,” I said, “promise!”
We kissed again, more passionately this time and her hands, which had been resting on the small of my back, slipped lower and her hands grasped my buttocks, squeezing them firmly.
“Oooh,” she squealed, delighted, “you do have a lovely bottom, so firm!”
I looked down at her, baffled. I’d certainly never thought about my butt and how it might compare to that of other guys! But I supposed that if she really liked it, that was surely a good thing!
She ran her hands up my arms, feeling my biceps with her fingertips. “Mmm,” she murmured contentedly, inspecting her goods. “Your muscles!” she gasped, her eyes dancing with excitement.
I was beginning to get hard. Her small breasts were crushed against the lower part of my rib cage. I hoped Amy couldn’t feel my stiffening cock.
I brought my hands up from her waist, cradling her face with my fingertips, stroking her cheeks with my thumbs “I love your eyes,” I said, then was suddenly worried that this was pathetically cheesy. “They’re so bright and sparkly, and such a beautiful, deep colour.” That sounded so lame, I thought.
Amy didn’t seem to notice and she smiled again, breaking eye contact as if feigning modesty. She lay her head against my chest again. She inhaled deeply through her nose, evaluating my smell.
“Oh I love your scent,” she said. “So manly, so musky!” she shook with delight.
“Oh Amy, stop it,” I said. “I stink, I haven’t had a shower today and I’m still wearing yesterday’s clothes.”
“You can have a shower now, if you like,” she said. “There should be plenty of hot water.”
“Good idea, if that’s OK,” I replied. “I can make myself look a little bit more presentable if I’m having lunch with your family!”
“OK,” she said, “on one condition.” That mischievous look back in her eyes again. “You leave the door unlocked, in case I want to inspect your goods.” She ran her hand coquettishly over the front of my hoodie.
I was sort of shocked, this wasn’t the Amy I thought I knew. The shy bookworm was suddenly a flirtatious minx. What was I unleashing? What had I unleashed?
Common sense got the better of me, and I responded, “That would be lovely, but your family will be back in less than an hour and if they caught us getting carried away, I’m sure your step-dad would chase me out of the house with that shotgun of his. Or worse,” I added.
Amy stuck out her bottom lip and feigned a dejected look. “Spoilsport,” she said.
She led me upstairs. Her bedroom was large, but not opulently furnished. On her dressing table there were a few photos of her with friends I didn’t recognise, and one of her on a family beach holiday when the twins were a few years younger. She handed me a pastel-pink towel and showed me into the same bathroom, that I’d climbed into the previous night. I realised that it adjoined both her room and that of the twins.
“You have to lock both doors, otherwise the boys can get in,” she said with a smile, “But make sure you unlock both when you’re done!”
I showered quickly, taking the opportunity to change my clothes, except for the hoodie (to avoid arousing the suspicions of Amy’s mother) and returned to the kitchen to find Amy sitting at the table, with a folder of her school work and one of her English literature texts open in front of her. I walked over and kissed her.
“I thought if it looked like you were a good influence on me, you might be allowed to visit more often during this holiday,” she said, motioning towards her papers.
“Good idea,” I responded with a smile, sitting down in front of my maths work. I hadn’t checked my phone in over an hour and a half, but wasn’t surprised to see a message from Danny.
‘Thanks for last night,’ he had written. ‘Wanna hang out later?’
‘Yeah,’ I wrote back. ‘I can come over. Are we revising or just chilling?’
‘Just chilling,’ he responded. ‘You want to go for a pizza tonight?’
‘Yeah, OK. See you at 7?’
There was another message from James sent round the group. “Did you get this?” I showed Amy. “I think James has found your keys.”
“No, I didn’t,” she responded. “I’ll find an excuse to sneak out this afternoon and pick them up.”
We worked in silence at the kitchen table, but it wasn’t one of those awkward silences. I felt strangely at ease in Amy’s company.
–
I hadn’t always been a hard worker, in fact, up to the age of fourteen I’d been distinctly below average at school. I was naturally bright but had fallen into the rut of ‘getting by’ with minimal effort.
Shadowing Roger the vet had begun to change that. He’d started giving me books to read, some fiction, some non-fiction, to fill me in on some of the more technical aspects and to give me some background on the work he was doing.
Up until that point, my typical reading material had been the usual diet of children’s adventure stories, and maybe I still saw myself as a Tom Sawyer-type character, certainly I had his attitude to academic work and study. But, with the enthusiasm that only young adolescents have, I devoured every book that Roger lent me. He was driving me back home at the end of the following Easter holiday, after spending the day with him, when I announced that I had decided to become a vet.
Roger glanced across at me. “What are your school grades like?” he asked.
“They’re OK,” I said.
“What do you think you’ll get in your GCSEs?” he asked.
“Well I should get A* grades in the sciences,” I said proudly, expecting praise from Roger.
“And maths?” he asked, not acknowledging my previous answer.
I looked down at the footwell.
“I should get at least a B”, I said.
“And your other subjects? English and so on?”
“Mostly Bs,” I said honestly, “but a few As.”
“Look Jake,” Roger said, “I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm, but Veterinary Medicine is one of the most competitive university courses there is. It doesn’t matter where you study, there are so many applicants and so few places available, you have to have only the top grades, otherwise they won’t even look at you!”
“Do you not think I’m good enough?” I asked, a little worried.
“In terms of your instinct, practical ability, problem-solving skills and enthusiasm, you’re as able as any A level student who’s ever shadowed me, if not stronger,” he said. “I think you’d make a really great vet.” He paused. “But, it wouldn’t be fair on you to say that your school grades are strong enough at the moment. I’m sure they could be, but not right now.”
There are a few very short conversations that I’ve had in my life that have had a major impact, but none more so than this one. I suppose the obvious way for a young teenager to react would be to reluctantly accept that their dreams were out of reach, to be crushed by low expectations. But there was enough optimism in Roger’s voice to ensure that I didn’t. I had a challenge before me, a challenge that was achievable, and one that I could meet.
Maths was the main problem. I hated it. I wasn’t in the top set and our teacher was even more bored by the subject than we were. She’d virtually told us on day one that all we needed to get on in life was a grade C at GCSE and that doing any more was a waste of effort. (She didn’t actually say this verbatim, but this was how it came across.) And so, I spent almost every lesson messing around with Danny at the back of the class. To actually be on course for a B grade was a minor miracle.
After my talk with Roger, I knew what I had to do: Things had to change. I needed to get myself moved up into the top set, away from Danny and his distractions. That meant getting a good score in the exams in the middle of June. Difficult but not impossible.
Roger might have started the process of turning me from distracted teenager to hard-working student, but it was Mr Matthews who really turbocharged my development. I had asked my parents if they would be willing to pay for me to have some extra maths tuition and my Dad had immediately thought of him. He was the chairman of the local angling club, that leased the fishing rights to the river that ran along the northern boundary of our farm. He’d recently retired as the Head of Maths at the local posh girls’ private school and he readily agreed to teach me. I can honestly say he was the best teacher I ever had. In eight short weeks, working together for a couple of hours every Saturday morning, he had taught me at least twice as much maths as I’d ever learnt in school lessons. But more importantly, he showed me how to study, how to organise my time efficiently, how to prioritise and the best strategies for making progress.
The impact on my schoolwork was immediate. In the June exams, I exceeded every expectation, leaping from a projected B grade in maths to a projected A* grade, even beating Ritchie in the set above me. There were sharp improvements in my other subjects, which also benefited from my more methodical approach to revision. I wasn’t best in the school by any means, but I was edging into the top ten percent of my year group.
–
I drove away from Amy’s after lunch, grateful to briefly be on my own for a few minutes, to allow me to start to process the events of the preceding twenty-four hours. Her mum had served up a spaghetti bolognaise, which we’d eaten together in the dining room. I’d committed a bit of a faux pas by showing the twins some photos of the lambs from the farm on my phone as we were waiting, not realising that there was a family rule banning electronic devices from the lunch table.
I pulled up outside Alicja’s and texted Lauren to say that I was ready. Lauren joined me a couple of minutes later and I drove us both back to the farm.
“Exciting morning?” I asked.
“Yeah, we just chatted mostly,” she replied.
“No revision?” I asked innocently.
“We’ve got all holiday,” Lauren answered. “There’s plenty of time for that. Don’t tell me that you and James have been hard at work since nine o’clock!”
“Well, I did do about three hours in total,” I said. Obviously not at James’, but Lauren didn’t need to know that.
“You are such a boring swot,” Lauren teased. “How is Danny by the way? Did you get him home OK?” she asked.
“He was OK. It was just a bit of a shock to his system to see James and Becky together,” I explained. “I’m sure he’ll get over it soon enough.”
“And he fancied her?” Lauren asked, surprised.
“That’s a bit of an understatement. He was besotted with her. But they’d never have worked as a couple – Danny is just too chaotic for someone like her. James is a much better fit.”
“And what did his mother say when you got him home last night?” Lauren asked.
“Well, fortunately his parents had gone out, so it was only his sister at home.”
“That was a lucky escape,” Lauren agreed, “for both of you.”
I nodded. “Anyway,” I said, “I’m going for a pizza with him tonight, but I’ll try not to let him get drunk again. He can’t hold his alcohol.”
Lauren chatted away for the rest of the drive home about the various school couples and their relationships. I was grateful that she hadn’t probed any more deeply into my whereabouts, although she’d undoubtedly find out sooner rather than later that Amy was now my girlfriend.
I parked the car in the yard area between the farmhouse (where my parents and I lived) and the slightly smaller cottage, when Lauren lived with her family.
“Do you want to use the car this week?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said, “I was going to stay here to revise. Alicja’s going back to Poland to visit her grandparents, but Frankie might visit on Wednesday or Thursday.”
“OK,” I said. “I was going to take the car into town most days to work at the library, if that’s all right with you?” This was only half true – I was planning to spend the mornings with Amy and then go on to the library in the afternoon. “Oh and I need to see Danny tonight.”
“Yes, that’s fine.” Lauren replied. “I’ll let you know if my plans change.”
–
Danny set his knife and fork down and pushed his empty plate away. We’d spent the past hour or so talking about exams, revision, teachers we hated – you name it – everything except the elephant in the room.
It had occurred to me that Danny might not be able to remember much of the previous night and privately I was hoping that he’d forgotten everything, to save us both from embarrassment. Regardless of how much he recalled, his sister would have told him that I’d been the one to bring him home, and it might have been that which had prompted his message of thanks that morning. His mum had greeted me relatively warmly when I’d rung the doorbell around seven that evening and, although she hadn’t missed the opportunity to give Danny her usual lecture on the dangers that lurked in our town after nightfall, I was confident that Emma had kept her mouth shut. If she’d blabbed, there’d have been no possibility of Danny escaping for the evening.
Regardless of what he’d forgotten, he had been sober when he’d seen James and Becky making out in the garden. Perhaps it was the sterile ambience of the half-empty pizzeria that was preventing him from opening up. We paid the bill and I suggested that we walk round the corner to the town square. It was about half past eight and we crossed to one of the benches that surrounded the central flowerbed, the dusk affording us a greater degree of privacy than the brightly lit restaurant.
“How was today?” I asked – just about the most open question I could come up with.
“It’s been tough,” he said honestly. “Very tough.”
I nodded sagely.
“I tried to work all day, sitting in front of my books,” he said. “But I just couldn’t do it. Every time I’d try to concentrate, I’d start thinking about it.”
It wasn’t entirely clear to me that Danny was upset about James and Becky, or whether it was something else.
“And how do you feel now?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “obviously I’m really pleased for them both, but,” he paused for a few seconds, “why couldn’t have James just told me? After we’ve been friends for so many years, why would he hide something like that?”
I swallowed nervously. Almost any answer I gave at this stage would be hypocritical. I had no intention of telling him, or anyone else about Amy. Not just yet at least.
“I think he wanted to,” I said, “he just wasn’t ready to do it before the party. And I think they were trying to act normal, but when they thought they could do something discreet, they had no idea that you’d be looking out of the window.”
Danny was quiet for a bit and thought for a few seconds. He was blaming James for not coming clean on his new relationship with Becky, but that was just the focus for his unhappiness, which clearly ran much deeper. I suspected that Danny would have been fairly upset no matter who she’d chosen as her first boyfriend, but the fact that it was James had made the perceived betrayal ten times worse.
“She wasn’t right for you,” I said, lamely.
It was true. If by some miracle he and Becky had started going out, the whole thing would have fallen apart in weeks. At least with James she had a shared interest in sport, but what could she have seen in a pigeon-chested clown like Danny? Their senses of humour were completely incompatible.
“But I thought she was interested in me,” he moaned.
That was an understatement. Danny had thought he’d been on the verge of seducing Becky for the past year.
‘No Danny,’ I thought, ‘she was just being polite. Dealing with you in exactly the same way as she had every other male member of the school. Perhaps that was the problem; If she’d have pushed you and all the other boys away hard enough, maybe you wouldn’t have felt you were in with a chance. But maybe she just enjoyed the attention.’
“I think almost everyone hoped,” I said, “but she wasn’t right for you, she really wasn’t.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. This was encouraging, a sign that he might want to move on.
“There’s loads of girls out there who are far better,” I said. “And maybe you’ll be lucky and click with someone next term or over the summer holiday. But when you go to university in September, there’ll be so many new people to meet and Becky, James, all of us will just be a distant memory.”
“Not you Jake,” Danny shook his head emphatically. “I hope we stay friends for a long time.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I hope so too.”
–
For the next few days in the run up to Easter, Amy and I slipped into an easy routine. I’d start each day helping Dad with the milking, then after showering and getting changed, I’d reach her house at around nine. Then the two of us would then work in the dining room for the morning. As a teacher, Rob was also at home for the Easter Holidays and he’d take the twins swimming for an hour or so. Once they returned, we’d take a short tea break together, before we headed back to the books until lunchtime.
On the second morning, Amy’s mum had returned to the house about an hour after I’d arrived to “pick up some papers that she’d forgotten,” and seemed pleasantly surprised that the two of us were indeed, as we had promised, revising in the dining room and not getting up to mischief elsewhere. I thought it wise to keep my mouth shut, although the cynic in me was certain that her apparent memory lapse was in fact pre-planned. I was a little surprised that Amy seemed to take her mum’s reason for returning home entirely at face value and, if she suspected there’d been an ulterior motive, she didn’t say anything.
I sensed that Rob enjoyed my company, if only because I provided a distraction from looking after the twins – not that they were badly behaved. They were just full of enthusiasm and chatter. The mid-April heatwave had been replaced by torrential rain, which curtailed their freedom to burn off their excess energy outside.
Amy seemed to get on well with Rob and there was an affectionate bond between them, but she was particularly close to the boys. She’d break off her revision at lunchtime to make sandwiches for us all, which we’d eat around the kitchen table. Afterwards we’d play hangman or another word game together for half an hour or so.
I’d take my leave shortly afterwards and would head to the local library, where a study room was set aside for local teenagers revising for their exams. It was a light, airy room with two large tables in the centre, where about a dozen of us congregated. It was mostly the science students who worked in the town library, but the Sixth Form Centre at the school was also open for us. I had a particular dislike of going into school during the holidays and avoided doing so as much as possible. I knew that Ritchie would undoubtedly be there every day this week, holding court as Head Boy from his usual seat, ready to kiss the arse of any and every available member of staff.
Danny, James and I had spent most of the February Half Term holiday in the town library and our encampment had proved so successful that the three of us had initially agreed to do the same again this time. Danny had however changed his mind, saying that he preferred to stay at home to revise, although it was fairly obvious that he didn’t want to run the risk of seeing James. For his part, James had been as evasive, possibly for similar reasons, although I suspected that Becky was the bigger distraction.
Nevertheless, I was keen to move to the town library for the afternoons. Not only was the change of scenery good for my concentration, but I was anxious to avoid overstaying my welcome at Amy’s. I didn’t want the collection of dog-ended notes and textbooks that I brought to her house each day, to become a permanent fixture on her dining table! For her part, my girlfriend decided to stay put at home in the afternoons, although I think she moved upstairs to revise in her bedroom.
–
Both Amy and I had decided that we would have Easter Saturday and Sunday off. On the Sunday my family would go to the local village church before returning for a roast lamb lunch. We weren’t excessively religious, but my parents went to church every couple of weeks. It was there, as a choirboy, that I’d developed my love of music and singing in particular, although the repertoire could hardly have been more different to the songs the Jinjos produced!
I’d told Mum about Amy almost as soon as I’d got home on the Monday afternoon. It was only fair that if Amy’s family knew about us, then mine should as well. Although I’d sworn her to secrecy (she was only allowed to tell Dad), I’d conveniently left out any details of the circumstances and had maintained the lie that I’d slept overnight at James’ house. Further information would have led to difficult questions, I reasoned. (I’d had enough of those from Amy’s mum.)
Mum was simply over the moon that I’d got my first girlfriend and was very keen to meet Amy as soon as possible, especially as I was already spending so much time at her house. I also wanted to show Amy the farm, partly so she had a better understanding of me as a person. We agreed a ‘low-key’ lunch on Easter Saturday and I crossed my fingers that the forecast improvement in the weather would actually hold true.
I rose early on Easter Saturday morning, as I had all week, to help out with the milking. After that, it was a quick check on the sheep in the outlying fields, before returning to the lambing sheds, where Lauren was already at work.
“Hello,” she said, greeting me with a smile. “I hear you’ve got someone coming to lunch!”
Oh no, she knew! Mum was unable to keep anything like that to herself.
“How did you find out?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Your mum told my mum,” she shrugged. “I take it she’s your girlfriend? This isn’t just a date? Girls don’t go to guys’ houses for lunch with their parents, unless they’re going out.”
I nodded helplessly.
“You weren’t expecting it to remain a secret, were you?” Lauren asked.
“I’d rather it didn’t get out at school just yet,” I said. “Things are a little complicated at the moment, and we need a bit of time to work things through. There might be one or two people who don’t take the news well,” I added.
Lauren looked disappointed for a second or two, as if I had deprived her of the scoop of the decade. She smiled gently, “I won’t tell anyone, your secret’s safe with me,” she said, “at least for the moment,” she teased. “I just need to work out the price of my silence!”
“Er, thanks.”
“You know, I really didn’t see it coming,” she said, “you and Amy. I’m normally so good at spotting these things, but, but…” she trailed off. “Right under my nose as well!” She gave me a friendly punch as I sat down beside her on a straw bale.
“Took me by surprise a bit, if I’m honest,” I replied. “But she thought that I was already taken.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard,” Lauren laughed. “I’ve never seen you take an interest in any of the girls at school before! I was beginning to have my doubts about you. Did she think you and Danny were an item or something?”
“No,” I said, laughing, “but I think she thought you and I were!”
“Us?” she said incredulously, “But everyone, everyone knows we’re cousins!”
“Yeah, but don’t forget she only joined the school in the Sixth Form, what a year-and-a-half ago maybe. Everyone else has known we’re related since we started, but I suppose it might never have come up in front of her – we have different surnames. She’d ‘ve seen us acting like an old married couple, and misunderstood.”
“So it’s my fault now that you two didn’t hook up earlier?” she said, feigning insult. “That’s the first time I’ve been accused of being a cockblocker!”
“Let’s just say that a lot of people learnt a lot of new things last Sunday and not all of them learnt things they wanted to.”
Lauren paused, shooing away one of the lambs that she’d already fed. “Speaking of Sunday night,” she said. “How is Danny?”
“He’s OK,” I said. “We went for a pizza on Monday evening. He’s a bit upset about James and Becky, but he’s bouncing back,” I hoped. “I haven’t seen him since though. I think he’ll be OK when we get back to school – he’ll cope.”
I handed Lauren a full bottle of milk, to replace the empty one she was holding and watched as she began to feed one of the weaker lambs.
“So what are you going to do with Amy today?” she asked.
“I’m going to drive over to hers to pick her up and bring her here for lunch,” I responded.
“She can’t drive?” Lauren interjected.
“No, she hasn’t passed her test.” I replied.
“And after that?”
“I thought I’d take her round the farm, bring her in here to let her feed a lamb or two, maybe give her a ride on a tractor?” I offered, not really sure what might interest Amy or be suitable for what was effectively our first proper ‘date’.
“What about taking the boat out?” Lauren suggested.
“I haven’t been down to the millpond since last year,” I said. “If the boat hasn’t been washed away, the inside’s probably all manky and full of water and leaves.”
“No, the boat’s OK,” Lauren replied. “I checked on it last weekend, because of the forecast. It’s upside down on the bank with the tarpaulin over it. I can get it in the water if you like.”
“Do you know where the oars and cushions are?” I asked.
“They’re in the Fishermen’s Hut,” she said. “I’ll get them de-spidered and I’ll put them in the boat too.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’ll be great. Thanks.” Why was Lauren being so helpful? What price was she planning to demand later?
“Why don’t you buy some strawberries from the supermarket when you go over to pick her up? If you leave them in the boot of the car, I can take them down for you too. I’ll put them in a cool bag with an ice block,” she offered.
“You sure?” I asked.
Lauren nodded in response.
“I can get some drink too, if you can take that down as well with some plastic cups. You sure it’s not too much trouble?” I asked.
“I just wanna make sure the two of you have a good time,” she said. “Plus, I know what you’re like – you’ll spend the entire afternoon giving her a lecture on modern farming practices or explaining in graphic detail how to inseminate a dairy cow. Besides,” she added, “with Danny out of action, I’ll be your wingman today!”
“Er thanks,” I responded, a little put out by Lauren’s lack of faith in my ability to show Amy a good time. I checked the time on my phone – nine o’clock. I was supposed to be at Amy’s at half ten. “I need to go and have a shower, before I drive over to her house. See you later.” I stood and walked towards the door of the lambing shed.
“One more thing,” Lauren called over her shoulder. “Make sure you get her some flowers on the way as an Easter present. Something brightly coloured, maybe some tulips or daffodils?”
I showered and shaved, pulling on a clean set of clothes and walked downstairs to say tell Mum that I was off to pick Amy up. As I feared, Mum was taking Amy’s visit far too seriously. She had laid out the best china and cutlery on the dining room table, and she’d put out a set of cut-glass tumblers that I swear I’d never seen before. Had we been expecting the Queen for lunch, I mused, the table would have looked no different. For heaven’s sake – Amy was only my girlfriend, it wasn’t as if we’d just announced our engagement!
—
I drove over to Amy’s, stopping at the supermarket and, as instructed by Lauren, picked up provisions for the afternoon. Never having bought flowers before, or taken any real interest in them, I felt somewhat out of my depth. Unimpressed by the daffodils and tulips, which seemed to have lost most of their petals before reaching the shop, I chose a small bunch of apricot-coloured roses, having decided that red would be a bit too much at this early stage.
And so, punctually at half-past ten, I found myself walking up the driveway, clutching the bouquet. Within a second of me ringing the bell, Amy flung the door open, dragging me inside and throwing her arms around me.
“I’m so pleased to see you,” she kissed me on the cheek, squeezing me tightly. I thrust my arm forward, proffering the flowers. “Oh roses!” she squealed with delight, “how lovely! Let me put them in water.” She skipped down the hallway and I followed after removing my shoes.
As I entered the kitchen, Amy was filling a vase with water at the sink. I stood behind her, with my hands on her hips, nuzzling the top of her head, as she trimmed the bottom inch off the stems and stripped the excess leaves. “What time do we have to be with your parents for lunch?” she asked innocently, as she placed the roses into the vase.
“We need to be there around half twelve,” I answered. “We’ve got an hour and half or so. I thought we could hang here for a bit, or we can go into town if you prefer?”
She paused, stepping sideways to admire her handiwork. “I think I’ll put these in my room,” she said. “Then I can look at them every morning when I wake up and think of you!”
She smiled at me again and stretched up to kiss me on the cheek. “I’ll take these up now,” she said, picking up the vase. “Do you want to come up too?”
“Nah, you’re all right,” I said, Amy’s invitation to go to her bedroom passing straight over my head. “I’ll fix us some drinks. What would you like?”
“Oh, I’m OK thanks,” she replied, walking past me. I thought she sounded a little disappointed.
I retrieved a glass from the cupboard next to the sink and filled it with water as she went upstairs. I looked out of the window. The garden was bathed in bright sunshine. ‘It might be nice to sit outside for a bit,’ I thought.
Fortunately, Amy had other ideas. “These look really lovely in here,” she called from the landing at the top of the stairs. “Come and have a look!”
“OK,” I called back. I left my glass of water in the kitchen and climbed the stairs, trying desperately to think of suitable adjectives to offer. ‘Honestly, how different can a bunch of flowers look in another room?’ I asked myself.
I pushed open the door to Amy’s bedroom. She was standing in front of the window, the light streaming around her, catching the thin wisps of her hair.
A vision of angelic beauty.
There was a far-away look in her eyes, that I would come to recognise as our relationship blossomed. My cock flared in my jeans and I took a step towards her. She ran at me, no, launched herself at me. Our lips crashed together as we kissed passionately. She threw two arms around the back of my neck, to pull me more tightly to her, then she was running them down my back to my butt, squeezing, kneading me, needing me. A breathless pause and then her hands slipped under my polo shirt, her fingertips running up my abdomen and over my pecs. I gently cradled her jaw in my hands as we made out with increasing passion.
We broke apart momentarily for a moment. “My big, sexy boyfriend,” she gasped, moving forward again. The shy, bookish character I’d spent the week revising alongside now completely transformed. She pressed her head against my chest and inhaled deeply. “I love your scent, your manly smell, your big shoulders and, and,” she closed her eyes, as if losing her command of language.
She opened her eyes again and, taking both my hands in hers, took a few steps backwards, until she was sitting on the end of the single bed. I stood between her legs, her head level with the lower part of my chest. She ran her hands up inside my polo shirt, again that same cool touch of her fingertips.
She looked up at me again, naughty, a little slutty perhaps, “I think this has to go,” she said, lifting the hem of my polo shirt up and kissing my abs where my six pack was just showing through. I hadn’t ever thought of myself as being particularly muscular, and certainly didn’t work out, but perhaps lifting bales of straw every weekend had the same effect.
‘What the hell’, I thought, and pulled the garment over my head, and stood bare chested before her as she covered me with kisses.
“You are simply divine,” she said. “Mmm, I could get used to this, I will get used to this” she murmured, straining to kiss between my pecks. More kisses, more frantic now and her moans were becoming more guttural.
She broke off, leaning back, drinking me in, tracing across my chest with a finger. She giggled again, “You have such a farmer’s tan!”
I was hard now, rock hard, harder than I had ever been. I saw Amy look down at my crotch, she could surely see the outline of my cock, straining at my jeans. I pulled her up into a standing position, kissing her deeply, feeling her soft cashmere sweater brushing against my skin.
“If I’m topless,” I asked, teasing her, “why are you still topless?”
She pulled back from me, giving me a sideways look and a wry smile, hesitating before taking the next step. Then, she gripped the hem of her sweater, sliding it upwards, together with her white cotton t-shirt.
I stepped forward to help her pull it over her head, taking advantage of the opportunity to peek downwards at her bust. I threw her sweater behind her onto the bed and stepped back. Her hands fluttered up in front of her cotton bra as she broke eye contact again.
“This stays on,” she said quietly, nervous, modest, “for today,” she added, flashing a shy smile.
Encouraged, I stepped forward again. “You are so beautiful, Amy,” I said, gripping her sides gently. I lifted her, taking her weight completely. She came willingly, wrapping her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. I stroked her back as we made out with increasing intensity, her cloth-covered breasts pressing against my chest, the intensity of her molten core mere inches above my throbbing cock as her moans, her moans became louder and deeper.
My back was beginning to tire, so I wrenched my lips away from hers, “Amy,” I whispered in her ear, “I don’t want to drop you, hold me tight.”
She squeezed me, harder than before, and we fell together onto the bed. I held one arm out, to brace us against the impact and then rolled back on top of her. I looked down at her again, underneath me she was okay, I hadn’t hurt her.
Our lips met again and she kissed me, almost aggressively. “Jake,” she growled, “you are so hot.” She slid her hands down my back to my butt, pulling me more tightly between her legs, grinding her mound against my hardness through our jeans.
“Fuck, Amy,” I responded, “if you keep doing that I’m going to cum.” I pulled away from her, not wanting it to end too soon, kneeling up between her outspread legs, feasting my eyes on the vision of beauty below me. I drank in her soft curves, her gentle breasts that still hid from me, her delicate pale skin, her long dark eyelashes, her small mouth that I ached to fill with my cock, and the excitement in her eyes as she surveyed my body.
She reached up to pull me back down, but I evaded her grasp and instead began to kiss my way slowly from the waistband of her jeans, between her breasts to her graceful neck. She lifted my chin with delicate fingers and our mouths met again, instantly rekindling the fire with a passionate intensity.
I broke from her kiss again, whispering “I’m going to flip us over.” I lifted her so that she was on top, legs astride my waist. Amy started to rock against me again and I could feel her heat on my cock through two layers of denim. She traced her slim fingers across my chest and abs, feeling the ridges of my muscles. Then her tongue was on me, kissing a path from the little hairs at the base of my navel, across my nipples and again to my mouth.
“Ah Jake,” she exclaimed. “How did you keep this body hidden from all the girls at school?” she asked. She was grinding roughly against me now, and I was in danger of cumming in my jeans.
“Yeah, you like that,” I shot back. “You like having a big strong boyfriend?”
“Yeah Jake,” she gasped, almost breathlessly. “I can feel you, I can feel how hard you are for me. Wow you turn me on so bad!”
I pulled her down to me again, feeling her bra-covered breasts once again on my chest. She squealed with delight as I planted a hickie below her collarbone. Our mouths crashed together again, our tongues entwined.
Again I flipped us over, Amy landing on her back, a little more violently this time perhaps, but she gasped with pleasure as I moved on top of her again. I held still as we caught our breaths, cradling her face between my hands, supporting my weight on my elbows, gently caressing her. I looked deep into her eyes, which flashed brightly in front of mine, a connection between our minds and souls, if not yet our bodies.
“You are so beautiful,” I told her again. “I love your eyes and your lips and your cute little nose and your skin, you are so soft,” I marvelled. “I am so lucky, I really am.”
Amy reached forward with her eyes closed, her mouth seeking mine and we kissed again. A calmer, more measured kiss than before, somehow more tender, quieter, more gentle.
“Jake, you are so sexy,” she said, as we broke apart, holding my cheeks between her palms.
I took her wrists in my hands and pinned them gently above her head, my feral instincts taking over. I began to buck my hips, grinding against her sex. We kissed again passionately, sweat beginning to bead on our exposed skin.
“Yeah, Amy, you like that,” I almost yelled, “you like how hard I am for you?”
“Jake yeah,” she roared back as I ground against her, “yeah, I love your big hard willie!”
Then it began. Amy’s low guttural moans began to crescendo, becoming shorter, more frantic yelps. She ripped her arms from my grasp and pulled my chest downwards, her legs wrapping my waist, pressing my sex even more tightly to hers, closing vice-like around me. Then she quivered, shook, arching her body into mine, pushing back her head and neck, expelling a soundless scream of silent ecstasy as her orgasm enveloped her, her eyes sightless, a primeval spirit unleashed within her.
I held her tight as the wave crashed over her and as the aftershocks coursed through her light frame. Then she was still.
I made to move off her, but she clung to me.
“Hold me,” she said quietly, almost imperceptibly. “Just hold me.”
We lay like that for several minutes, until Amy released me. I lay on my back and she placed her head on my chest, making gentle, contented murmurs. I pulled the duvet over us and stroked her shoulders lightly.
“That was amazing,” she said, “I’ve never, never cum like that before. That was incredible.” She paused. “Did you, did you cum?” she asked, concerned.
“No,” I replied, smiling back at her gently. “But that’s OK.”
“Oh, we must do something about that,” she said, snaking her hand down towards my crotch.
I stopped her, placing my hand over hers. “Amy, we have to get ready to go now. My Mum is expecting us for lunch soon!”
“Spoilsport,” she pouted at me, before placing a kiss on my deflating bulge. We rose and embraced. “That was amazing” she said, “really amazing. Thank you!”