You Could Go Home Again/Part11
Larry and Bill picked me up in the early afternoon so we could get there
in time for a matinee showing. Amy was spending the day with David again;
she hadn't seen them much in the week leading up to midterms.
_Sins of the Father_ was more tightly plotted than _Carrot and Stick_, but still gave us a lot to talk about during dinner. There was a supervillain who died, sort of, in a battle with several superheroes; but he had a regeneration power, and after he got blown up, the largest pieces of him regenerated into little babies with none of his memories. Different hero couples adopted the babies; then, after the opening credits, it skipped to seventeen years later when the boys were almost adult and were starting to find out about each other and their mysterious past.
During a romantic scene about halfway through when one of the young regeneration-clones was meeting with a girl he wanted to go out with, the daughter of another hero couple and the adoptive sister of one of the other clones, Larry and I kissed, and he slid his hand under my blouse, which I'd untucked after the lights went dim. I'd been wearing pants as often as I could, resorting to skirts only when I didn't have time to wash my limited supply of pants, but tonight I'd worn a skirt so Larry could put his hand under it. There were some advantages to skirts, I decided. Of course he gave Bill a good amount of attention too; at one point when he was making out with her, I decided to rub his neck and shoulders, and he seemed to like that.
I missed a lot of the movie that way, but it was worth it.
We weren't so public in our displays of affection at dinner, but we held hands a lot when we didn't need both hands for eating. We pieced together the parts of the movie we'd missed; I filled in the bits where Larry was making out with Bill, and Bill filled in the bits where Larry was making out with me, and we decided it was a pretty good movie that we'd like to see again. After a while conversation drifted to other movies the lead actor (who'd played all the regeneration-clones) had been in, and how versatile he was, and then to other topics.
When we got done with dinner and walked out to the car, Bill stretched her arms and said: "It's early yet, and I feel like dancing. How about y'all?" Then she glanced at my cane and immediately looked contrite. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't think --"
"It's okay," I said. "I can dance a little when my hip's not too bad, and today is a good day. Where do you want to go?"
We went to a club over on the other side of Raleigh that they'd been to before. It was close to the border of the Cary change-region (which extended into the Raleigh city limits on the west side), and about a third of the patrons were Cary hyenas. The music was loud and fast, and trying to keep up with its pace wasn't good for my hip; after dancing through one song with Larry and Bill, I said I needed to sit down for a while.
"You go ahead and dance some more," I said, when they offered to join me. "I'll join you again after a couple more songs." We argued a little, but I insisted they not sit out because of me, and they gave in.
I ordered a Cherry Coke and sat down at a small table where I could see Larry and Bill dancing. They looked good together; I wondered if we'd ever get to the point where I was as close to them as they were to each other. They were spending a lot of time together without me, I knew; probably not just having sex but talking about mutual friends I didn't know, or about me, whether they wanted to keep dating me and maybe stay with me long-term, or break it off...? I tried not to speculate about that. Judging from today, I figured they wanted to keep me around. I remembered what it had felt like to have Larry's hand on my breast, on my thigh... Even my shortest skirt was too long to make that convenient, but Larry was resourceful.
I probably had a blissful smile on my face that looked like an invitation to the guy who sat down across from me, blocking my view of Larry and Bill. "Hi," he said. "Are you here by yourself?"
"No," I said. "I'm with my boyfriend and girlfriend; they're right over there," pointing past his shoulder.
"Oh," he said, "sorry," and he got up again. But the next guy who sat down wasn't as easily rebuffed.
"They left you all alone here?" he said after I told him I was there with Larry and Bill. "You look like you could use some company."
"I was tired and needed to rest, and having you around isn't restful. Please go away."
"Don't be like that," he said, but then Larry's hand was on his shoulder, and as the other guy turned around, Larry said:
"Leave my girlfriend alone."
My heart raced when I heard him call me his girlfriend. I guess in hindsight it's obvious that's what I was, after three formal dates and a bunch of holding hands in the dining hall. The other guy -- he was taller than Larry, if maybe not in as good a shape -- sneered and said: "If you go off and leave her alone while you dance, maybe you don't deserve her."
"She's still my girlfriend even if we're not glued at the hip every minute. Go away."
"I got every right to be here --"
"In the club, maybe, but not at this table. Go."
I was afraid they were going to fight, but I noticed a bouncer coming toward us, and so did the big guy. He stomped off, muttering vile insults under his breath.
As soon as he was gone, Bill and Larry sat down on either side of me; Bill hugged me and Larry stroked the fur between my ears. I realized I was trembling.
"Are you okay, sweetie?" Bill asked.
"Yeah, I think so. I was scared for a minute there, though."
"Is this the first time anybody's hit on you like that?"
"Kind of. It's not the first time somebody was attracted to me and I wasn't attracted to them, but he's the first guy who was mean and condescending about it." Gradually I stopped trembling; I leaned over against Larry, feeling the fur of his neck against the back of my head. He put his arm around me, not on my breasts or thighs but just around my shoulder.
"We can go now if you want," Larry said.
"No... I don't want to let that bastard scare me off. Let's dance some more."
A slow song had just come on, and we danced in a semicircle, with my left arm linked with Larry's right, and his left arm linked with Bill's right. I had my cane with me, but I didn't need it while I could lean on Larry. It was fun and romantic, after a few tense moments early on when my feet got tangled with Larry's and I almost fell, but after several minutes of that my hip was aching again, and we left. In the car on the way back, we all squeezed into the back seat so we could cuddle.
Bill and Larry walked with me to my dorm, and then Larry walked Bill back to her dorm.
I'd been asleep when Amy came back from her date or visit or whatever with David. The next morning, while I was getting dressed for chapel and Amy was just waking up, she asked me: "So how was your date?"
I eventually told her all about the creepy guy who hit on me and wouldn't go away until the bouncer was heading toward us, but when she asked that, the first thing that came to mind was: "Larry called me his girlfriend!"
"Oh. I guess that might be a big step. This was your third date, right?"
"Yes... not counting the times we just ate together in the dining hall." I finished putting on my shoes and said: "I've got to go; I'll see you later."
I told Radhika and Paul some of what had happened after chapel, as we walked together to breakfast. He said, as we were looking for an empty table: "That kind of thing has happened to me, too. A couple of times in high school, and once here, before I started dating Radhika... a girl hit on me and wouldn't take no for an answer, until I asked an adult for help or some other girl intervened."
"Huh, I never realized that happens to Cary hyena guys. There's no average height difference in male and female Raleigh rabbits, but this guy happened to be taller and heavier than me or Larry either one." We found a table and sat down.
"You're probably not in much danger in a situation like that," Radhika said, "even if it's uncomfortable. If Larry weren't there, you could have yelled for help and the bouncer would have come even if he hadn't already noticed what was going on. But if you were alone somewhere... even here on the campus after dark... you should probably learn to defend yourself. I don't know if you could learn a martial art with your bad hip, but you could carry pepper spray or something."
"I guess I could hit someone with my cane," I said, lifting it a bit above the level of the table. "But I don't really know how to use it effectively."
"Yeah," Paul said, "but pepper spray might work better. I started carrying some after this one time in high school --" He stopped abruptly and looked thoughtful.
"I'm trying not to be alone after dark if I can help it."
"Good plan," Paul said.
Amy came in and joined us then, and I told her what I'd told Paul and Radhika. She exclaimed over it, and we talked about methods of self-defense, and then about romance. Paul and Radhika had some advice about taking things slow with Larry, and told us some funny stories about their first few dates; Amy was quiet until I asked her, "So how was *your* date with David?"
"It wasn't a date," she said hastily. "Not exactly."
"Not *exactly*?" Radhika teased, and I added:
"You were out even later than I was."
"It's a long ride back from Chapel Hill, and the buses don't run all that often after ten," she protested with a slight smile. "Okay, I guess it was sort of a date. Not like the things you guys do on dates, all touching each other in your erogenous zones and stuff --"
Now it was our turn. Dark-skinned Cary hyenas like Radhika don't show embarrassment as obviously as Raleigh rabbits, but my ears were twitching and Paul was turning red.
"-- but, I don't know, maybe I'm falling for them. With us it's kind of hard to tell where friendship leaves off and love begins; you can't tell from physical cues, because we also hug and kiss people we're just friends with and it doesn't get any more physically exciting when we're in love. Last time --" But then she shut up, looked away for a moment, and changed the subject.
It was Spring break, and I couldn't really afford to go much of anywhere on my own, but after going home to visit her family Sunday, Radhika suggested we go down to the coast, just for the day Monday. We couldn't afford to stay overnight in a hotel, but sharing the cost of gas for Radhika's car was manageable. Amy and I rode in back, Radhika and Paul up front. I had plans with Larry and Bill again later in the week, but David had gone to visit friends in Atlanta for Spring break.
I'd gone to the beach on one of the barrier islands a couple of times with my parents; I remember finding a lot of seashells, and seeing sandpipers and seagulls, and digging up sand-fleas, and once a crab, which Mom shooed me away from before it could bite me. When we'd unpacked the stuff Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler had packed up for me while I was in the hospital, I found a jar full of small seashells, most of them broken; little pieces of the sea and of the past.
We parked at a public beach on a barrier island that had been hit less hard than some by the big hurricanes of recent years. Radhika and Paul went swimming, but Amy didn't like the temperature of the water, and I hadn't bothered to buy a swimsuit when I knew I would only be able to use it once before I outgrew it. Amy and I went for a long walk along the beach, then took the weight off our feet at a seafood restaurant right by a fishing pier.
While we were walking back to the car, a family of Atlantic seals came swimming in from the ocean and flopped down on the shore not far from us. They were naked, of course, but you couldn't see their genitals; I think males have them enclosed when not in use for better hydrodynamics.
"Hi," said the biggest one of the four, probably a male. "Nice day, isn't it?"
"You guys been out at sea long?" Amy asked.
"A couple of hours; we're teaching the little ones to catch fish." The children were adorable; they would have appeared to be about three or four years old if they were Lincoln bison, but I couldn't tell how old Atlantic seals that size might be. With no external genitals, I couldn't tell what sex they were.
"Did you catch lots of fish?" I asked one of the children. They nodded solemnly.
"I caught two fish," one of them said. "One of them was this big," and he spread his flippers improbably far apart. Their mother chuckled.
"We're also teaching them how to lie like fishermen," she said, and the little one indignantly spluttered.
We talked for half an hour or more -- I was glad of the rest, because my hip was starting to ache and we still had half a mile to go to the car. Then they decided the little ones had had enough rest and swam out to sea again, mother and father flanking the children in the middle.
The following Sunday, after Larry got back from a vacation with his parents and younger siblings, I went on another date with Larry and Bill; we ate lunch at a restaurant near campus, then after considering and rejecting the movies on offer at the Regal, we went back to Bill's dorm room to watch a movie on her computer and make out. Bill's roommate wasn't going to be back from vacation until pretty late, she said. Bill and I leaned up against Larry as we all sat on Bill's bed, and he stroked our thighs and leaned over and kissed us a lot during the movie. After it was over, I let him take off my blouse and bras and touch my bare breasts. That felt good, but I wasn't ready to go any further. I went back to my dorm and left Larry and Bill alone together; it was still early enough that I felt safe walking back by myself.
After that, I got busy on the term papers I'd been procrastinating about, and didn't have as much time to spend with them, or my other friends, as I would have liked. I saw Bill and Larry only at lunch or supper in the dining hall for a few weeks, and outside of our dorm room I mostly only saw Amy at breakfast, or in class. She was cracking down on homework and term papers too, and we didn't have as much time to chat as before; I don't think she spent as much time with David as she wanted to either.
I made my travel arrangements for going home after finals, and shipping most of my stuff to Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler's house. I'd try to find a summer job in Hebron, to replenish my depleted savings, and next semester, now that I'd gotten used to college and knew how much time I needed for studying, I wanted to try to get a part-time job here in Raleigh. If I earned enough that way, maybe I could share an off-campus apartment with some friends next year or the year after. I looked forward to seeing Ron and Carl again, and Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler, but I didn't want to go several months without seeing Larry and Bill, or Amy, or Radhika, or Rob. I could stand to go years without seeing Rico, though.
One Thursday in April, when I'd finished the first draft of one term paper and made good progress on the other, I decided I had enough free time to go to the science fiction and fantasy society meeting. Bill was there, but Larry was busy studying, she told me. We watched a short pre-Divergence film and then broke up into small groups to talk; I chatted with George, who'd come in late when the film was almost over, and Katie, and later on with Bill.
"I've gotten out from under the worst of the term paper craziness," I said. "If you and Larry aren't too busy we could do something this weekend, maybe?"
"I'll talk to him," she said. "But he's pretty swamped right now. Maybe weekend after next... or we might not have much time until after finals. How long are you going to be around after your last final?"
"Another couple of days," I said; "I need to pack up all my stuff to be shipped back to Hebron and get UPS to pick it up."
"We can help you with that."
"Thanks."
