Orchard Flower (Version Charlie)
by Lubrican
Chapters : Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8-16 Available On 
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Chapter Six
In February, Jill suddenly stopped flitting around like a butterfly and
started going out exclusively with a boy named Langston
Carter. He was a senior and they went out somewhere about
every other week. The rest of the time she'd go to his house,
or he'd come to hers. If there was a dance, they went
together.
But she never talked about him. I saw him at the house
several times, and he seemed like a nice kid. He didn't paw
Jill, or act territorial around her. I asked Lynne what he
was like and she said it was hard to tell. She described him
as polite, but somewhat distant. Jill asked if they could do
homework in her room, and then didn't complain at all when Lynne said
the door had to stay open.
It looked for all the world like they were just friends.
Of course neither her mother nor I knew what she was actually doing on
the other dates she had with Langston. We would find out
about that almost a year later, too.
It was Prom that turned everything upside down. Prom was
special to Lynne. I would find out more about that while the
kids were actually at the dance. But even before then I could tell,
because I saw her going all out for Jill, taking her shopping for a new
dress and all that kind of thing. On the big day she called
me and asked me to come fix supper, because she was doing Jill's
hair. It had been a while since I'd smelled that pungent odor
that permeates the whole house when a home permanent is used.
Jill came to the table looking like some insane artist had used her
head to make a sculpture using tin foil and rollers. They ate
quickly and went back to it. Lynne said "Don't leave."
Two hours later I looked up from watching TV and my breath caught in my
chest.
They had picked a midnight blue dress that was quite simple, really,
with spaghetti straps. It fell to just above her
knees. Her hair was all up on her head, interwoven with dark
blue ribbon going in and out and some kind of silver sparkles in
it. She had on eye shadow that was the same shade as the
dress, and lipstick that was pink. She looked nervous.
"Wow," I sighed.
"Is that good?" she asked hesitantly.
"Oh yeah," I sighed again. "That's very good."
Her smile made my heart hurt. I looked over to see Lynne
leaning against the door frame. She had that look on her face
that only a parent can get when she is so proud of her child that she
can hardly bear it.
"And look!" said Jill, excitement in her voice.
She twirled quickly and the skirt flowed out and rose. I got
just a glimpse of pale blue panties.
"Stop that!" chided her mother.
Jill turned until she was facing me again and stopped. "I got
them to go with the dress," she said.
"You're not supposed to show them to anybody," said Lynne.
"Bob can see them," said Jill. "He's special."
The doorbell chimed. Lynne jumped. "He's here!" she
said in what was a whispered shout. Jill glanced over at the
door, but didn't look excited at all.
Lynne was wearing a sweatshirt with the arms cut off. It was
too big and she'd obviously put it on as something that could get wet,
or stained or whatever while she worked on Jill. It wasn't
something for public consumption. Her jeans were old and I
could see skin here and there through holes in the cloth.
They still fit her like a glove.
"I'll get it," I said.
Langston was all dolled up too, in a tux. He had a corsage in
his hands. He looked just as calm as Jill did.
I don't know why, but I watched his face as I led him in. He
looked at Jill and smiled, but his eyes didn't widen, and he didn't
react in the way I expected him to. Lynne was darting toward
her bedroom, which wasn't surprising, based on how she was dressed.
"You look good," he said.
"Thanks," said Jill, as if what he'd said was expected. "You
too."
He handed her the plastic box that held the orchid. She took
it out and tried to put it on herself, which is when I stepped in.
"Let me," I said, and took it from her.
There was then a moment where I was transported decades back to a time
when I pinned my first corsage on a girl's dress. It was a
momentous experience for me, which might seem strange to most
people. Part of that was because it was Samantha Cross I was
pinning it on, and she was three inches taller than I was. We
were both seniors and I'd worked on getting up the courage to ask her
to prom for three weeks before I finally did it. Then I was
astounded that she didn't already have a date, and almost lost my
ability to stand when she accepted. The primary reason that
was a turning point in my life, though, was that as she stood there,
waiting for me to pin it to the strap of her gown, her parents were
standing there beaming ... watching ... completely comfortable with the
fact that I was slipping my fingers under that strap, just inches from
her breast.
Sam was a 38D. She was completely ready to go out into the
world, have triplets and have plenty of warm, yummy milk left over for
somebody else's babies.
And I was sliding the back of my fingers across hot, smooth skin that
was part of one of those breasts.
And her parents didn't care!
Of course now I understand that I was virtually miles away from the
good parts of those impressive mountains Sam carried around everywhere
she went. But back then, as she stood patiently, letting me
practically feel her up, as I saw it, and her parents not only LET me
practically feel her up, they took PICTURES of me practically feeling
her up.
I got one of those instant boners that only teenage males are capable
of producing, that go from limp to full hard in ten seconds or so.
That's where that memory stopped. If I'd have tried, I'd have
easily remembered that that was as close as I got to the nirvana of
Sam's breasts that night. Other than pressing my own chest
against them, of course. Sam didn't fool around.
She was a "good girl." It was fine to slide the backs of my
fingers all over her upper breast while I was pinning her corsage on,
but I got my hand slapped when I tried to cup the same breast. I was a
very confused young man for a while after that.
Anyway, as I pinned the orchid onto Jill's dress, and looked at sweet,
dark cleavage, and slid the backs of my fingers along Jill's smooth,
warm skin, my prick took notice. She was looking down, at the
flower, until I was done, and then she looked up and her smile was so
beautific that I almost took her in my arms and kissed her.
It was a moment of deja vu, except that it hadn't happened
before. I just wished that it had happened before, and that I
HAD kissed her.
I also wished I was Langston. I looked over at him, to share
one of those man-to-man looks that says "You lucky son of a
bitch!" He was looking at his watch.
They'd have left without a picture being taken if Lynne
hadn’t run back into the room, holding a camera and yelling
at them to wait. Apparently a picture of her little girl all dolled up
took precedence over being seen dressed way down by that girl's date.
The sense that something was off continued, because those two kids
acted for all the world like prom was no big deal, even though each of
them had obviously spent a lot of time getting dolled up for it.
Lynne and I were having pie and ice cream. She'd made a pecan
pie and it was perfectly gooey and sticky. We were taking our
time. It was very relaxed. I noticed that Lynne
didn't appear to have anything on under the sweat shirt, but I wasn't
sure. I was trying not to stare too much and, at the same
time, see if I was right.
"I guess things have changed since I went to Prom," sighed Lynne.
"How so?" I asked.
"It was a huge deal for me," she said. "Of course I had decided that I
was going to let Paul ..." She stopped suddenly and her
cheeks got pink.
I figured I knew what she was talking about. Prom has been
like that for a long time. It was even like that for me,
though I didn't have sex after my prom. A lot of my friends
did, but not me. In fact, I didn't have anything even close
to sex before, during or after prom. Sam really was a good
girl.
"Ooooo. So you decided to give it up after Prom," I
crowed. "Paul was a lucky guy."
She recovered nicely. "Yes," she said almost
regally. "He was!"
"Didn't happen for me," I said, shaking my head. "I took a
girl named Sam, and when the dance was over I had to take her
home. Most of us had a curfew back then. We didn't
get to stay out all night long like the kids these days."
"Poor Bob," she said, in exaggerated sympathy. She grinned.
"Was it everything you hoped it would be?" I asked.
"You mean Prom?"
"Of course I don't mean Prom. You know what I meant," I
snorted.
"Why do we always end up talking about sex?" she asked, hedging.
"Do we?" I asked.
"Sure seems like it to me," she said.
"We're secretly hot for each other," I joked. "Our
subconscious minds are trying to get us together."
"Is that so," she said. She smiled gently.
"Absolutely," I said, pressing on. "So are you going to
answer the question?"
I didn't think she was, initially, and I wouldn't have pushed it, but
finally she took a breath and looked right at me.
"It was awful," she said. "It hurt horribly, and I
bled. We did it in the back seat of his car and I got a crick
in my neck. I wrinkled up my dress to the point that I was
sure my mother would know exactly what happened, and I had to throw my
panties away because they were stained with blood."
"Wow," I said softly. "Sorry I brought all that back up."
"It's OK," she said, smiling. "The second time was wonderful,
except that he didn't have a condom with him and I was so intent on
trying it again that I let him go without one. So I was
scared to death that I was pregnant for most of a month."
"And you married this guy?" I grinned.
"It was when I realized that if I was pregnant with his baby I wouldn't
really be all that devastated, that I knew I loved him," she
said. "Now, your turn. What was your first time
like?"
I closed my eyes, like I was trying to remember. That wasn't
the fact, actually. I'd never forget my first time.
"Her name was Phyllis, and we were in the chess club
together. She was a wallflower. Her best
friend,Samantha, was my prom date, and she made me dance with Phyllis,
who didn't have a date for prom. A week later I walked her home from
chess club and she invited me in. Her parents weren't home. I
don't even remember how it happened, but she let me kiss her, and then
she let me see her breasts. One minute I was playing with
them ... and the next thing I knew I was on top of her and it was like
riding a bull in a rodeo. She was my first girlfriend,
really. I had tried to have others, but it never worked out."
"And how old were you?" asked Lynne.
"I was a senior and she was a junior."
"And you didn't stay together?"
"I went to college and after her senior year she went to her sister's
farm in northern Missouri for the summer. There was a farm
hand there. He had all summer with her, and all I could do
was send letters. The next time we got together she confessed
to cheating on me with this guy and we broke up. She went on
to travel the world with an NGO. That's not what they called
them back then, but that's what it was.
"You loved her." Lynne said it softly.
"Yeah," I sighed. "I didn't care about the
cheating. I said it was just her curiosity. She
couldn't understand that, though, and thought I must not love her if I
didn't get raging mad.
"I'm surprised you weren't mad too," said Lynne. "Most men
would be."
"I learned a long time ago that you can be in love with more than one
person at the same time," I said. When I got engaged there
were two other women I could just as easily have married. I
mean I loved both of them enough to ask them. I guess I chose
the wrong one, though."
"How can you love more than one woman at the same time?" she asked,
sounding skeptical.
"Beats me," I said, shrugging. "I like a woman for who she
is. I don't compare her with anybody else, I guess."
"So what's the difference between that and what your fiance did? I mean
all she did was fall in love with two men ... right? Let's be
fair here."
"Her new boyfriend didn't see things that way. Most people
don't. You're a good example."
"I just don't get how anybody could have those kind of feelings for two
people at the same time," she said.
"OK, think about it like this. Right now, the only women in
my life are you and Jill. I like you both. I'd say
I love you both, except that's a sensitive word and can be
misunderstood. I don't want to choose which one of you I like
more. Why should I have to? I want to like you
both. I want you both in my life."
"OK, I get that," said Lynne. "But you're not talking about
marrying one of us." She frowned. "Even if my
daughter shows you her panties, she knows you're our boarder.
She was only teasing you."
"OK then," I said, trying to communicate what I was feeling.
"What if you had two kids. Would you love one more than the
other?"
"Of course not," she said immediately.
"Then there you go. You are capable of loving two people at
the same time, in the same way."
"That's different," she insisted.
"How?" I asked. "The love you feel for Jill is powerful, and
will last forever. If you had another child you'd feel the
same way about him or her. You CAN love more than one person
in a deep and meaningful way, at the same time."
She closed her eyes. "Talking about this makes my head
hurt." She opened them again. "Do you like brandy?"
"I don't know," I said. "I never had any that I know of."
"I have this bottle that's been sitting in the back of the pantry for
years. Somebody gave it to us before Paul died and I never
opened it. I think it's peach flavored."
"I'm game," I said.
Which is how I found out that Lynne would do well to stay away from
alcohol in the future ... FAR away.
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