My First Valentine

by Lubrican

Chapters : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Chapter Two

I was pretty miserable that night, because I was pretty sure I'd screwed up a good thing. Valerie really was my best friend, and the thought that I'd driven her away by being a pervert really tore me up.

The next morning, as I approached the bus stop, and saw she was already there, I slowed down. I was afraid to go up next to her. I was afraid that she'd tell me our friendship was over, and suggest that perverts should stand at least ten feet away from decent girls, or something like that.

So I stopped, ten feet away.

She looked at me for a minute, and then said, "What's wrong with you?"

"What?"

"Why are you standing way over there?"

I was confused.

"I didn't think you wanted me too close," I said.

"What? Why not? Are you sick?"

"No. Last night." It was all I could think to say.

She actually smiled. "Oh, you mean because you're a pervert?"

I was getting mixed signals. Her smile looked genuine. But she was still calling me a pervert.

"Yeah," I said, carefully.

"You know, Bobby, for somebody who is so smart, sometimes you can be so dumb," she said.

I would have loved to ask her about that, but the bus got there, and once we were on board, sitting in the same seat we always sat in, she turned to talk to Judy Timmerlake and ignored me.


The wall between us was not insurmountable. What I just described is an example of a bump that made us aware of that wall, but we could still see over it most of the time. We still thought of each other as best friends, and we still hung out almost all of the time when we didn't have family duties or school or whatever.

Our parents were still friends too, and we still had Bar-B-Qs and card parties. Now that we were older, Valerie and I got to play cards with the grownups. Before this, if they were playing spades, it was the men against the women. They played hearts, too. The men usually suggested Hearts when they'd been thoroughly trounced by the women in Spades.

But when Valerie and I joined in, the teams had to change. Now, for some reason, my dad and Valerie's mom were always a team, and my mom and Valerie's dad were a team. Valerie and I were a team, of course. That was just a given. I later found out that our parents split up during card parties because that made for fewer arguments later about who had caused who to lose.

Anyway, the bond between me and Valerie took on a different kind of feeling. Now we were teamed up against others, who were older and had more experience than we did. They taught us the tactics of the games, but at the same time I think they just assumed we would be easy marks.

But we weren't. We were incredibly competitive. We didn't win all the hands, of course, but the games were always close. And when we played Hearts, it was as cut throat as you can imagine. It was exhilarating. We worked together sometimes, like a mated pair, but at other times we tried to cut each other off at the knees, and crowed when we did it.

As odd as it may sound, I think that drew us even closer together than we had been. It was a little thing, but working together like that, and feeling confident enough in our relationship to have fun trashing each other too, just stepped things up somehow.

And so our fifteenth year passed as our relationship matured as well. It was almost like old times, but better somehow.

For instance, on the 4th of July, after the daytime fireworks were all shot up, and there was nothing to do until it got dark, Valerie said, "You know, we haven't explored in the woods for a long time."

Her inference was obvious, so I said, "I'm game. Let's go."

We raced through the woods, towards the place we had gathered odds and ends into, and built a sort of fort with. But that had been ages ago, and it had been at least two years since we'd been there, and we were both curious as to what the place looked like. As it happened, she was ahead of me and, as she ran, I realized she was shaped like a woman. Her hips were wider than her waist, which looked smaller than it had, somehow. She was wearing a halter top, which left her midriff bare, so I could see her skin. It looked like her upper body was being poured into her shorts or something. The strap across her back pressed into her skin. It looked very tight, and I wondered if she was wearing the halter top because she still hated her bras like she had back when she first had to wear them.

Of course that led me to think about what was making that strap so tight.

I knew I wasn't supposed to be thinking about her breasts, so when we got to our fort I tried to think about that instead. It had been so long since we'd been there that everything was covered with a layer of dead leaves. Nothing had been disturbed in our absence. We were the only kids in our neighborhood, which was made up mostly of people who were about ready to retire. All their kids had already grown up and left home.

As I stood there, I had what my Language Arts teacher would have said was an epiphany. That sad pile of bits and pieces, odds and ends, which had meant so much to us in years gone by, now looked like a pile of junk. What in our imaginations had been the furnishings of our make believe castle was, in reality, just trash that belonged in a landfill. It was just like our lives. In years gone by, there was nobody I was closer to than Valerie, but in the cold light of modernity, there was a chasm between us that made my heart ache. Just as the things lying around our fort had, somehow, become worthless, I felt like our relationship had somehow become strained and difficult.

Oh, we were still friends. And she was still my best friend. But it just wasn't the same as it had been when we built this fort, and danced around, yelling at imaginary foes, warning them not attack, lest they be vanquished. Back then we could have talked about anything. I could have looked at any part of her body. I could have touched her.

But now there were private things, that she would not share with me.

I'm not saying I broke down and cried like a girl or anything. But I was kind of sad.

I looked at her. She was bent over, pulling things out of a pile, separating junk from leaves. Her butt looked round and firm inside her jeans shorts.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Looking for something," she replied.

"What?"

She looked over her shoulder at me. Part of her hair had fallen forward, having escaped her pony tail. It hit me like a ton of bricks that my best friend was also ... cute!

"Remember that butcher knife?"

"The one you stole and your mother searched for for months?"

"Yes, only it was my dad who kept looking for it. He said it was the best knife we'd ever owned."

"Okay."

"I thought it would be fun to put it back and see what happens."

"You're kidding."

She stood up.

"No I'm not. Why would I kid you about something like that? Just think about it. It will drive him crazy! It will be so much fun!"

"You think the strangest things are fun," I said, thinking idly about how much fun it might be to uncover those breasts and see how much they had changed, over the years.

"Help me find it," she ordered. She'd always ordered me around when we were at the fort. She had decided she was the queen of the castle.

So I went over, as she bent over, to help her. But as she bent forward, her halter top presented me with a view that stopped me like I'd been hit by a linebacker. It had been a while since I'd stared at her breasts, because I knew she didn't like that, so I had sort of trained myself not to look there. I snuck peeks, now and then, but not like this. The inner slopes of her breasts looked smooth and rounded, and the cleft between them looked big enough that my whole hand would fit in there.

And, just like that, I got a boner.

I know that doesn't sound like such a big deal. Teenage boys get boners all the time. I was normal. I got them pretty much every day.

But I'd never gotten a boner for Valerie. Not for my best friend.

And, for the first time in my life, I actually felt like a pervert.

Except I felt guilty, and I kind of doubt that real perverts feel guilty. I mean that's what makes them perverts, right?

Anyway, there I was, with what, under different circumstances, would have been a magnificent hard on. It was one of those kind that make you proud when you wrap your hand around it and it feels like iron. It was the kind that you know will only have to be stroked a few dozen times and it will erupt like Mount Vesuvius.

And wouldn't you know it, that's when she looked up, to see what was taking me so long.

It was right in front of her face. I looked down at the bulge that was making my zipper show, and at her face, which were only inches apart. She couldn't miss it. In fact, I saw her eyes go past it, and then stop, and go back. But it was only for a second, and then she was looking up at my face, which had to look like I had a sun burn, because I could feel the heat in my cheeks.

My mind warred between telling her I was sorry, and thinking that Valerie wasn't the kind of girl who knew about boners, or at least the kind of girl who would recognize one in a guy's pants. Not that I knew any of those kind of girls, but I knew they existed.

"Are you going to help me or not?" she asked.

"Uh ... yeah ... sure," I stammered.

"You think it might be today?" Her eyes went back down my body and, just in case, I tried to make it look normal that both of my hands came to cover my crotch at the same time.

So I bent over, which was interesting. I don't think I ever tried to bend over with a full born boner in my pants before. If you're going to do that, don't wear tight jeans, because it fucking hurts!

I started lifting things off of the pile, and she found the knife. It was in surprisingly good shape, considering how long it had been there, and how many times it had rained and all that. But I guess some of that other stuff protected it, because the handle looked fine. The blade was rusty, but not too bad. I knew it could be cleaned up with steel wool, which we had in our garage.

Happily, examining the knife distracted me enough that my boner softened.

And I made sure I took the lead on the way back home.

We cleaned up the knife in my garage. She wanted to sharpen it, but I told her not to, because if the edge was shiny, her dad would know it had been done recently, and would know something was up. My eyes kept darting to that awesome cleavage, but I made them look somewhere else as much as possible.

"My parents are in your back yard," she said, taking the knife from me. "I'm going to go put it back right now. This will be so cool!"

She jumped up and down, like a little girl. Her halter top bounced. Not like a little girl at all. By the time she turned and dashed out of the garage, my cock was more hard than soft.

I went up to my room. I had to jerk off. It was the only way to take the stiff out of my cock and keep it soft. I didn't foresee any difficulties with that. I was an expert at jerking off, having done it daily for a long time. I could probably figure out how long, but it's not important.

The problem was that what I normally did was sit at the computer in my room, and open the folder that had my special photographs in it, that I had gleaned from the web. I usually did this at night, after my parents were in bed. I'd done it in the daytime a few times, usually after a run, while I was taking a shower. Anytime I was taking a shower, for that matter. But what I liked the most was sitting there, staring at a slide show, until just the right picture came up, and I could imagine that woman and me in a fantasy, where I got to do what I'd never done in real life.

And I didn't have time right now. Nor could I take a shower for no reason. So I shoved my shorts to my knees and fell on my bed and reached for my cock.

It wasn't really completely hard. I could stroke it, but it was too spongy.

So I thought about Valerie's cleavage, and how, in my imagination she had actually looked at the front of my shorts in the woods. For some reason my mind came up with her saying, "Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" I know, it was stupid, but I've always thought that was funny.

And it worked, because within thirty seconds, my penis was nice and hard, and my hand could slide the foreskin back and forth with quick strokes.

Which was what I was doing when Valerie burst through my unlocked door, panting, and gasped, "I stuck it deep in the back of the drawer!"


Sometimes life is simple. Sometimes it's complicated. I can give you examples.

It turns out there is more than one way to get a boner to go away. There's the usual way, as I referred to already, and then there's embarrassment and shame. In fact, embarrassment and shame are the fastest way to dispose of an erection. In the situation I suddenly found myself in, I was half soft within the space of eight or ten of my pretty rapid heartbeats. I was probably up to 125 beats per minute when Valerie entered my room.

But what made it complicated was that she was excited, and had been running, so she was panting, and her face was flushed, and she was happy and excited. So just picture in your mind, a cute, buxom, almost-sixteen-year-old girl, whose chest is heaving and who just looks healthy and happy and sexy.

I didn't have to imagine it, because that girl was right in front of me. The only thing that was odd was that her eyes were huge, like those Japanese cartoons, where the girls eyes are half the size of their whole face. And her mouth made a shape like she was trying to whistle, except it was way too open for that.

My mind warred. Part of it wanted to just stare at her and keep on stroking. That part even suggested that, now that she'd seen my equipment, she'd be overcome with desire and show me those breasts again.

The actual intelligent part of my mind, however, was a lot stronger, thank goodness. It was the part that caused me to arch my back so hard that my butt came off the bed, and then slam it back down so that I literally bounced out of bed, turning to land on my feet. If I could do that on command, it would be awesome. But it was only panic that coordinated my body.

I bent over and jerked my pants and underwear up at the same time, hard enough that they scraped my balls painfully. I had to stuff my junk off to the left side inside them before I could zip up and fasten my belt, because it was still pretty firm.

"Sorry," I said, both belatedly and lamely. It was all I could think of to say.

"It's okay," she said, after a delay of maybe five seconds.

"We should go," I said, not looking at her. My face felt hot again.

"Yes!" she said, suddenly animated again.

And then, for some reason which I still don't understand, that place in my mind that was unhappy with the changes that had happened in our relationship bubbled up and caused me to say something stupid.

"Wait!"

She stopped and turned to look at me. She was blushing too.

"This is private," I said. That sounded odd, so I improved on it. "I mean you can't tell anybody."

She blinked, but then said, "Of course not," as if to say, "You think I'd actually admit that I was here while you waved your nasty, perverted penis around in front of me?"

Then we went outside, where the adults were getting the night-time fireworks ready to shoot off.

I don't remember a single one of them.


A week later, I turned sixteen.

You know how sometimes life speeds up, whether you're ready for it to speed up or not? Well that was me. I was old enough to get my license, and that was a priority for me. I had gotten a learner's permit, but I got to use it so rarely that I was nervous about taking the test. But it went fine, and when I got home, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, my mother said, "I suppose you'll want to be borrowing the car to take girls on dates, now."

I had been told lots of times I wasn't allowed to date until I was sixteen. I hadn't wanted to go on any dates, but they made sure I understood that rule. I had never engaged in the practice of "going out with" girls at school, which meant there was some amorphous connection between a boy and girl that restricted them from liking anybody else. I think my parents called it "going steady" when they were my age. I thought it was stupid to say you were "going out", because it didn't actually involve going anywhere, either out or in. I went to school dances, but it was always with Valerie, and we always sat on the chairs against the wall and just watched everybody else. I couldn't dance, and Valerie, who had some good moves in the bedroom, refused to do them in front of other people.

So I had no plans on borrowing the car to take some girl somewhere and spend money on her that I didn't have.

"Probably not," I said.

"Why not?" asked my mother, suddenly alert.

"I'm just not interested," I said, trying to end the conversation quickly.

She took me by the shoulders with both of her hands and looked in my eyes. I could tell she was concerned.

"Honey, you know your father and I love you."

"Sure," I said, uncomfortable. I was also confused. What did that have to do with anything?

"And if you're ... different ... we'll still love you," she said. "No matter what."

"Different?" I could feel my eyebrows trying to meet with the hair on my head. "What are you talking about?"

Now she looked uncomfortable, instead of concerned.

"You know ..." She swallowed. "Gay?" That word came out as a whisper.

Now I've never been struck by lightning, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what that's like. I think I even jumped like I'd been hit by a bolt.

"Mom!" I gasped. "No way! I'm not gay! Don't even say that!" I looked around, as if someone might have overheard her. You let a rumor like that get around and it will never go away.

"Honey, it's okay if you are," she said, all flustered. "You don't have to like girls."

"I like girls just fine," I groaned. "All I meant was that I'm too chicken to ask any girls out right now. I'm only sixteen. I have lots of time to go on dates. I'm not gay, Mom!"

"Are you sure?" she asked, all concerned again. "You just never seem to pay any attention to any girls other than Valerie."

"Valerie and I are just best friends," I said, not wanting to think about what my best friend had caught me doing only a week earlier. We hadn't seen much of each other since then, so hadn't had to deal with that particular issue.

"I know that, Dear," said Mom. "It's just that most boys show a lot more interest in girls than you have. Your father and I were just a little concerned, that's all."

"I thought it was okay if I was that way," I said, as anger replaced embarrassment.

She looked a little shocked.

"Well of course it is. But you're not ... right?" She sounded hopeful.

"No, Mother, I am not gay."

"Okay, that's good," she said, sounding relieved. "And you're right. There's no hurry. You can start dating whenever you feel comfortable about it."

"Gee, thanks," I said, sarcastically.

It went over her head.

"You're welcome, Dear."

It wasn't fair. The day you get your license is supposed to be a great day in your life.

And in my life, it was the day my mother accused me of being gay.


That was one of the first "major life events" that I didn't share with Valerie. I think I was too embarrassed about it. And, what with extracurricular events and stuff like that, we didn't see each other all that often any more. We'd drifted farther apart.

She was off visiting her aunt on my birthday, but she'd left a present with my mother. My "birthday party" was simply a quiet, family dinner, with a cake and ice cream afterwards. And presents, of course. When I opened Valerie's, it was a Winchester lock-blade pocket knife, which my father almost instantly said I was not allowed to take to school. It was beautiful, and had this little knob on it that let you open it one-handed.

A week later her mother called mine and invited me to her birthday party.

It was the first time I couldn't think of anything to get her for her birthday.

In the past, we had always talked. Sometimes we even negotiated what to get each other. For example, when I wanted Call of Duty for my X Box, but my parents wouldn't get it for me because it was too expensive, she got it for me for my birthday. And I remember, one year, that she wanted a Mickey Mouse wrist watch, and so that's what I got her.

Anyway, this time I had no idea what to do. We hadn't talked in what seemed like forever. The rift between us was even bigger. So, in the end, I got her a pair of Converse All Stars. The tag said they were "fuchsia" but they looked pink to me. The tongue was striped pink and white and the sides were pink with lots of little white stars on them. I knew she liked Converse All Stars, so I hoped she liked these. I mean girls like pink, right?

Valerie was a lot more social than I was. I'm talking about school. She had tons of friends. I had a few, but nobody I wanted to hang out with all the time. It's not that I'm anti-social or anything. In the past, when I had free time, I spent it with Valerie. I had hung out with a few kids other than her since then, but usually all that ended up being was sitting around saying things like, "I'm bored," or "So, what do you want to do?" where you never could seem to figure out what to do. That wasn't fun for me.

But she had lots of friends and most of them were at her birthday party. In fact, I was the only guy there, which made me feel uncomfortable right away.

This was the first time I had spent any time at all in a room full of girls. I knew most of them, at least by name, but I hadn't talked to very many of them for more than to get or give a homework assignment or whatever. I tried not to blush as I came in, and a dozen girls all turned to stare at me.

"It's just Bobby," said Valerie. "He lives next door and I have to invite him to my party every year."

Now I knew this was a load of hooey. She didn't have to do anything of the sort. And her tone of voice had been entirely out of character for her. She sounded like all those other girls sounded when they said hurtful things like that.

But she stared straight at me when she said it, and her eyes said something different. We may not have been as close as we'd been in the past, but I knew her well enough to know that look. It was her "Don't say anything and let me do all the talking" look.

It occurred to me that she was "performing" for all those other girls. And that was fine. I had no problem with that. I knew all about girl politics at school. Or at least that there was girl politics in school.

What I couldn't figure out, though, was why she felt it was necessary to relegate me to the status of, "That boy my parents make me invite to my parties."

But suddenly, the girls quit looking at me, which made me feel a lot more comfortable. Val kept looking at me for a few seconds longer and if I hadn't known better I'd have thought she winked, but she turned her head at the same time.

So I put my present on the table with the rest of them, and, since I knew the house as well as my own, left the girls to their chatter and went to find Mrs. Carter and say "Hi." She was one "girl" I could talk to without feeling self-conscious.

I found her in the kitchen, cutting up the pizza that she was going to serve. She drafted me immediately, and offered me an apron.

"I'm not wearing an apron around all those girls," I scoffed.

She looked at me and smiled.

"I suppose not."

I ended up being the one who took the pizza out to the family room, where it sounded like there were fifty girls talking instead of only eight or ten.

A lot more happened, but all that isn't important. What's important is that, when she opened my present, she was delighted. She put them on and wore them the rest of the day.

We still didn't have a chance to be alone, or do any talking.

But, that was fine with me.

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