Shooting in Hannah - Version Bravo

by Lubrican

Chapters : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

Chapter Eleven

Again, the next morning I got up and went to school. This particular Friday was different because there was only a half day of classes scheduled. The second half of the day was a work day in preparation for Parent/Teacher conferences that were slated for that evening. I'd have stayed there all day, except Hannah called the school and asked them to have me call her back. I got that message and went to the office to make the call. Our school district had a "no cell phone" policy and the only way the students would stand for it was if it applied to the teachers as well. Admin could have them, but not us lowly instructors.

Which is why as the kids were streaming out, happy about an afternoon off, Madeline, one of the secretaries, overheard me say, "Okay. I can be home in ten minutes. Can you make it until then?"

This, of course, was in response to her asking me to come home at lunch and make another deposit in her 'sperm bank'. Normally teachers stayed at school to eat lunch and then get ready for parent/teacher conferences, but it wasn't required.

The problem was that I left to get home to my hot-bodied lover without telling Phoebe I wasn't going to be there for lunch, which we usually ate together in the teacher's lounge. When I wasn't there and she inquired if anybody knew where I was, Madeline said, "Oh, he had to go home. It sounded like there was some problem."

Which is why Phoebe, knowing my sister was there, got worried something had happened to Hannah and decided to come see if I needed help.

Phoebe cannot be blamed for her desire to help, nor for misinterpreting the moans she heard when she came in the unlocked front door after tapping and getting no answer. Those moans must have sounded like moans of pain to her inexperienced ears.

She appeared in the doorway to the bedroom and was greeted with the sight of my very naked sister riding me, groaning, and saying, "Shoot in me, baby brother. Get me pregnant. Make twins in me!" I was in the process of waxing on and off with her breasts. Mr. Miagi would have been proud of me.

Phoebe, however, was not.

I caught movement in my peripheral vision and looked at Phoebe. Hannah had been watching my face, waiting to see the signs that I was about to spurt. When she saw that she'd start milking me and then roll us over as I fired off in her pussy. She liked being on top, but didn't want to waste any sperm due to gravity. When she saw my head turn and my eyes widen, she looked too.

Phoebe was already frozen, and the chill extended to Hannah, who suddenly sat stock still, impaled on my bone.

Phoebe turned and Hannah yelled, "Wait! Don't leave! Please, I can explain!"

She leapt off of me with the agility of a woman ten years younger than she was, and dashed naked out of the door after Phoebe.

I lay there in a daze. I suspect my reaction was like that of a person buried under a collapsed building during an earthquake, and who regains consciousness not quite understanding what happened, but knowing he is in deep, deep trouble.

I honestly don't remember much about the first five minutes after my naked sister scrambled to stop my maybe-could be-sort of girlfriend from storming out after what she saw. What I remember most vividly was that, after Hannah did not come back, I got up, put on a pair of shorts, and went out into the living room, where I saw Hannah and Phoebe sitting on the couch.

Hannah was still naked, though she had a pillow in her lap. Phoebe was sitting very erect, half sideways, and they were ... talking.

Hannah saw me and said, "Go back to the bedroom. We're busy right now."

So I did that. I mean that was easy, right? All I had to do was go away from danger. Flight is much easier than fight, at least for a man like me. I'm not a violent person, remember?

Of course that didn't mean I felt relieved. Not at all. Imagine some justice system where, when you're put on trial, you're not allowed to be there, or offer anything towards your defense. Everything is settled by others, but you have to live with the verdict. The verdict in this case would be GUILTY! How could it be anything other? Talk about getting caught red-handed.

The trial went on for long enough that I couldn't stand it any longer. I put on a shirt for some odd reason and then went out there again.

This time it was Phoebe who told me to go back into the bedroom. The only shred of comfort I got, other than the fact that she was still there at all, was that she wasn't sitting so erectly anymore. She was leaning on the back of the couch with one arm extended along the back.

I can't convey with words what it was like as another hour passed. I could hear them talking, but not what they were saying. I couldn't imagine what they were saying to each other, what kind of conversation could take that long, under the circumstances. Voices were raised on both sides, but it wasn't a shouting match. What perplexed me the most was why Phoebe was even still there. I could invent no scenario in my mind where Phoebe would be willing to stay, much less have some kind of discussion about what she'd discovered.

I was pacing when Hannah walked into the room, as naked as when she'd run out of it. I turned but she held up a hand to stop my barrage of questions.

"She went home. She said she'd talk to you tomorrow. She needs time to think."

"Think about what?" I gasped.

"You. Both of you." She blinked. "And us."

I was dumbfounded.

"She's going to think about ... us?" I know my voice sounded incredulous.

"Yes. I explained everything to her. I told her about Austin and Cynthia, about why I'm here ... everything."

"You talked for over an hour!" I said. "How'd you get her to stay long enough to work around to all that?"

"Actually, I told her all that first," said Hannah. "There was no other way except to lay it all out and hope that what I'd seen in her eyes was true."

"What you'd seen," I said, dully.

"She loves you, Bobby."

"Not anymore," I said.

"Give her time. I know you're upset, but give her time. I think she understands why all this was ... necessary."

"Oh yeah," I snapped. "You really needed somebody to get you pregnant and it was necessary that it be me. I'm sure she got that right away."

"You're upset," she said again. "I understand that. But it's not as bad as you think it is."

"Yeah, right," I growled.

"Please do me a favor," she said.

"A favor? You mean another favor? What will it be this time? Oh, I know. You joined a 'My husband is sterile' club and you have half a dozen new friends who also want to get pregnant. And you volunteered me!"

"No," she said, patiently. "What I'm asking is that you don't have this attitude when Phoebe talks to you tomorrow. Your relationship with her doesn't have to be over, Bobby. She just needs to think about things. Let her do that and then listen to her when she wants to talk."

"You're insane," I sighed. "And I'm insane, too." I sat down on the bed. "And if Phoebe doesn't throw knives at me tomorrow, then she's insane right along with us."

"Insanity loves company," said my sister.

"I think that's misery," I said, tiredly.

It was misery. I still had to get ready for the conferences, and I had to do them, paying attention to each set of parents and trying to impart valuable information to them. I knew Phoebe was probably just as distracted as I was, but we had to do it. I was miserable, not the least because I knew I was responsible for her being miserable. Once again, a man had shat upon her.

Once I glanced at the door and saw her face in the window, staring at me while I talked to a set of parents, but she moved on with no attempt at non-verbal communication.

After my last conference was complete, I gathered my courage and went to her room.

It was dark and empty.

Hannah was gone when I got home. There was a note on the table.

"I know you're not in the mood. Call me after you talk to Phoebe."

She was right. I couldn't have been in the mood if I hadn't had sex in over a decade. Not only had I screwed things up with Phoebe, but now Hannah was once again denied the opportunity to get pregnant again. Three sets of lives had been damaged.

I was sitting around feeling sorry for myself when there was a tap at the door. I turned to see Phoebe open it and come in just like she always did.

"I got a sitter for Chris tonight," she said.

To say I was astonished is the understatement of the century.

"Hi," I managed to croak.

"I thought we could talk."

"Hannah's not here," I said, for some inane reason.

"I know," she said. While my mind was trying to figure out how she knew, and had finally settled on the fact that Hannah's car wasn't parked out front anymore, she said, "How did your conferences go?"

How did my conferences go? Suddenly I got calm. That question screamed that she was just as uncomfortable as I was. But she was there. She could have been anywhere, but she'd come to beard the lion in his den.

"I was distracted," I said.

"Me, too," she said.

"You want to talk?" It still seemed incomprehensible to me.

"I want to understand."

"Most women would just shoot me and get it over with," I said.

"I'm not most women."

We stood there and I was just thinking I should ask her why she wanted to understand when she answered the question before it was voiced.

"Look. Since Chris's father shit all over my life you're the first man I've met who treated me like Phoebe, instead of treating me like some opportunity to get his rocks off with a pretty girl. You've treated me with respect. I wasn't used to that, but I've gotten used to it and I'm not crazy about the idea of just kicking you to the curb. I don't think I could start over again, Bob. This one time was all I had in me. So I need to understand how this all happened. I know what Hannah was thinking. Now I need to know why you did what you did."

I was willing to tell her, but there was a lot to tell and I didn't know which parts were important, and which parts were like those Bouncing Betty mines you hear Vietnam vets talk about. Once one of those popped up ... it was pretty much over.

"It's complicated," I said.

"I'm sure it is," she replied.

"It could take a while."

"I told the sitter I'd pick Chris up by eight tomorrow morning at the latest," she said.

"Really?"

"I want to know, Bob. I wondered about some things before this. I don't want to wonder about anything else."

"What did you wonder about?"

"I've been here dozens of times. I know you only have one bedroom, and one bed. Chris has taken lots of naps on it. And I know your couch doesn't pull out to make another bed."

"Okay," I said, still dull from the shock of seeing her.

"So where does Hannah sleep when she comes to visit?"

"Oh," I said.

"And I told you I saw you together, before you asked me out that first time."

"Yes."

"The look on your face when you were with her ... I wanted some man to look at me that way some day."

"Oh."

"I know you love her. I just don't understand how that kind of love developed. It's ... unusual ... isn't it?"

"I'm sure it is," I said.

"And our relationship has been unusual. I'm fully aware of that. I know people who date as long as we've dated get much more involved ... physically ... than we have. I've thought about that a lot, and I'm not sure I understand that, either."

"You mean why I haven't put a move on you?"

"Something like that."

"I didn't sense that would be welcome."

"But you kept wanting to be with me."

"I like you," I said. "I like being with you."

"Is that all it is ... like? Are we just friends?"

I thought about how to answer. I didn't think a confession of love would be either appropriate or welcome, under the circumstances. I also didn't want to characterize this as merely a friendship.

"Hannah would say I love you," I said, softly. "She said she could see it in my face."

That seemed like a reasonable thing to say. Phoebe had just described seeing that on my face.

"I'm interested in what Hannah says, but I'm more interested in what you would say," she said.

I didn't know what to do. I knew what she was asking for. I just couldn't figure out why. I've known women who might ask a man if he loved her only to crush him after he said he did. Some women, injured women, want to do as much emotional damage to a man as she believes he caused her.

I didn't think Phoebe was that kind of woman, though. I just thought we were jumping to the last chapter of the book to find out how it ends, without getting hooked on the journey through the story first.

"It's a lot more than like, in my opinion," I said. It occurred to me I was taking something for granted. "From me to you, I mean," I added.

She looked annoyed.

"Just say it, Bob. Hannah says you love me. Do you? Yes or no!"

"Yes," I heard come out of my mouth.

"Why didn't you ever tell me that?" she asked, and then held up a hand. "No, never mind. We'll talk about that later. Now I want to know about you and Hannah. Do you still have that bottle of Moscato I saw in the cabinet last week?"

"Yes," I said. "I'll go get it."

"No. You sit there and think about what you're going to tell me. I want the whole story and I'm not leaving until I get it."

"What if you don't like the whole story?" I asked.

"Then that's the way it will be," she said. "I'm trying to keep an open mind, though. Marshal your thoughts. We'll start when I get back with the wine."

I've already mentioned more than once that parts of this story could be expanded into other books. What followed when Phoebe brought the open bottle and two glasses fits into that category as well. I'm still resisting writing something in the War and Peace category, though, and I think I can distill it to something manageable.

Basically I started at the very beginning, when Hannah blackmailed me into taking sexy pictures of her for Steve, and I got a boner in the process. I blamed that on puberty, because I got ten or fifteen erections per day back then. Phoebe rolled her eyes at me.

"It was weird," I said. "She was interested in boys and erections and she kept asking me questions about mine and what guys did when they got one. It sounds like all this happened suddenly, but it wasn't like that. It was like little baby steps where we talked about things we didn't have anybody else to talk about them with. She wanted to feel sexy so I kept taking pictures and telling her she looked sexy."

"Most girls want to feel that way," said Phoebe.

"So anyway, pretty soon she wanted to show me things she couldn't show other boys, to see how that felt. And then she wanted to see things she couldn't ask to see on dates." I stopped. "Have you ever heard that story about putting frog in a pot of water on the stove and then turning up the heat?"

She nodded. "The frog doesn't know how hot it's getting until it's too late."

"Almost," I said. "Actually, the frog never understands that it's too late."

I went on, describing all our escapades, which started because Hannah got fired up on dates but didn't want to do anything about it while she was still on the date. So she came home and did things with someone safe ... me.

"At first she just wanted to touch herself while watching me touch myself," I said. "That was all we did for months. She'd go on a date and come home and get it out of her system with me. Maybe she was fantasizing I was the guy she'd been out with. I don't know. I think it was around that time she said I had a reputation with girls in the school."

"What kind of reputation?" asked Phoebe, pouring another glass of wine.

"It was crazy. She said lots of girls were attracted to me because they believed I would do what they wanted and then stop whenever they wanted me to. Like heavy petting on a date, with no pressure to do anything more. Except part of this whole crazy thing was that it made the girls like me too much so they always broke up with me. According to Hannah."

"And was it like that?"

"I guess so. I didn't really have anything to compare myself to. A lot of the girls I asked out wanted to do things, make out, I mean, and some of them wanted to be touched. And they did all break up with me. I thought we were doing fine and then, suddenly it was over, except they still smiled at me in the halls. It was confusing."

"How did you decide how far to go with a girl?" she asked.

I thought that was an odd question, but I answered it.

"It's not hard to tell. I mean if you try to touch her breast and she pulls away or moves your hand, it's pretty clear she doesn't want that. And if she lets you, then you know that's okay."

"Except most guys would keep trying," said Phoebe.

"I guess. But why do that? I mean why would any guy think that was smart? I never pushed it with any girl I went out with because I usually wanted her to go out with me again. It was just a feeling, I guess. I knew guys who pushed it, but I thought they were jerks. Some of them went out with my sister."

"That's how you've been with me, Bob."

"With you?"

"You've never tried to push me, maneuver me into doing something I didn't want to do."

"Of course not," I said.

"Hannah is right. That is a very attractive quality in a man," said Phoebe.

"I think the reason it didn't drive me crazy was because there was a girl I could do things with. I mean eventually Steve begged her to jerk him off and of course she wouldn't do that, but then she came home and wanted to find out what would have been like. It happened like that, in little steps. She wanted to touch me and then she wanted to know what it would feel like if a guy touched her. And it was a chance for me to touch a girl without having to worry about her getting weird or nervous or whatever. The heat kept getting turned up and we just swam around in the pot, all fat, dumb, and happy."

"Hannah is neither fat nor dumb," said Phoebe. "She's one of the most beautiful women I've seen."

"I think that was part of the problem," I said.

"I can understand that. I'm not a lesbian, but if Hannah asked me to be it would be tempting."

I stared at her, dumbstruck.

"Go on," she said.

"She liked it," I said. I looked away. "I did, too."

"That's not surprising," said Phoebe.

"And then one night she got so excited that she used a ... dildo." I blinked. "She got it out of her nightstand. I still remember how shocked I was. She obviously loved that thing."

"That's not surprising, either," said Phoebe. "I love mine, too."

I stared at her.

"See?" I said, my voice a little cracky. "That's what I mean. I never thought about you doing that. It's like I've been hit in the stomach. It doesn't hurt or anything. It's just a surprise."

"Why would you be surprised? I'm a normal woman. There hasn't been a man in my life for five years. I certainly wasn't going to go without anything all that time."

"Of course," I said. "I get that. It's just that I don't normally think about the women I know that way. I don't look at every woman I meet and wonder what she does to take care of that need."

"That's kind of reassuring," said Phoebe. I couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not. "If you did wonder about that with every woman you meet, that would make you some kind of sex addict."

"I guess," I said, uncomfortably. At that moment I was imagining Phoebe using "hers".

"Go on," she said again.

"I think the problem with exploring things like that ... with trying to satisfy your curiosity ... is that there's always another step you can take. That's what happened to us. First she wanted to see me, and let me look at her, and then she wanted to touch me, and have me touch her. And then she wanted to be with me like that, but have something inside her. But not my ... um ..."

"Penis," said Phoebe. "It's called a penis, Bob."

"This is hard," I groaned.

"It's hard for me, too," she said. "I really like you. Since I've been spending time with you I've felt things I haven't felt since before I had Chris, things I didn't expect to feel ever again. I need to understand this."

"Okay," I said. My mind was spinning because of what she'd just said. I knew I either was in love with or was falling in love with Phoebe. The only thing I had to compare it to was how I felt about Hannah, but whatever it was, it was strong. The idea that she might return that feeling left me almost dizzy. But dizzy was okay, because I wasn't able to concentrate on the shame I felt.

"And Bob," said Phoebe, softly, "don't leave anything out. I know this could make things ... difficult ... for us, but I want to hear it all."

<< Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >>