Rosie O'Dell (20 page)

Jumping off the sofa and giggling as she caught my eye, she tucked in her shirt
and headed out to the washroom off the hall. Meanwhile, feeling as if my
underwear was sloshing in my pants, I ran up over the stairs to the bathroom. On
the way I caught an odour, imaginary or real, of semen, and every time a
particular finger on one hand approached my face as I climbed, it gave off a
light musky fragrance, which, in the few seconds before I washed my hands, I
grew to utterly love.

Coming back down, I heard quiet voices which sounded a lot like querulous “what
the hell was going on here” talk between Mom and Dad. Would Dad smell anything?
He had phenomenal sniffers when it came to a whiff of anything he deemed
negative. Would Mom wonder what was so urgent that Rosie and I both had to rush
off to bathrooms at precisely the same moment just as they had come in? I went
in the living room prepared to brazen it out. Rosie was already in there
chatting with them. She looked completely normal, possibly a slight blush left
over from the deep pink, but with her fair skin she often looked as if she was
modestly blushing a little. It was one of her traits that people found charming.
Now she looked at
me and smiled elegantly. God knows, however,
what I looked like—goofy, guilty, possibly cross-eyed, judging by the long
once-over my mother was giving me—but Rosie was as calm and poised as if she had
practised for such moments. “I was just telling your parents I think I will stay
for the TV show,” she said, and the four of us settled down to watch an episode
of Monty Python.

The next night was the best time of my life up to then. We did our schoolwork
in her bedroom until about eight-thirty. There was no restriction on our using
her bedroom. There didn’t seem to be any restrictions in her house on anything
Rosie did. She did what she felt like doing and came and went as she wanted.
Half the time, I noticed, she didn’t bother telling her mother or her stepfather
where she was going or even that she was going out. When I mentioned how lenient
they were with her, she replied that she’d had that battle with each of them,
her clinching argument having been that she was at least as responsible in her
conduct as they were in theirs. I asked her what she meant and she said, “The
secret to doing anything you want to is not give anyone who thinks they have
authority over you any excuse to exercise it.” We were sitting in chairs in her
bedroom with her door wide open. I was going to ask how she thought her parents
were irresponsible, but Rosie glanced out into the hallway, got up and came over
to me, and pressed her breasts against my face, squeezing them together with her
upper arms. I had whispered to her earlier how good she looked not wearing a
brassiere under her shirt and she’d said it felt good too, because that new
sports bra she’d worn today at basketball had nearly killed her. She jerked her
thumb towards the door: “At least, that’s the story I’m giving her.”

Now I lifted my face above her breasts and said, “And your story is absolutely
true. It does feel good without that sports bra in the way.”

She smiled down and pulled my head back in and kissed my hair. “So we can do
exactly what we want,” she said, “and everything we want, as long as we don’t
get caught and force any busybodies to feel they have to act. Which reminds me.
Want to go downstairs…” She gave a couple of exaggerated winks, “and watch some
television?”

On the way down, we met Rosie’s mother coming up. She was in a dressing gown
and walking slowly. She seemed to function all right during the day, if a little
spacy-looking, but by mid-evening like this she always looked dazed. She managed
a slurred good night. Rosie had told me there were no complaints regarding her
job as librarian, but because she couldn’t
sleep very well at
night “she might be overdoing it a little after supper with her nighty-night
dope.” When I wondered if having a doctor as a husband meant someone might have
too easy an access to drugs or, in fact, better control over what might
otherwise be abuse, Rosie stopped and looked at me and said, “You know
something, Tommy, that’s a darn good question.”

We passed Rothesay in his den as we headed for the entertainment room stairs.
He looked out and waved: “About to watch a spot of telly after our scholastic
toils, are we? Enjoy.” Rosie kept on going downstairs without answering while I
stopped for a minute to say good evening. He was well back in his recliner
listening to opera and reading
The Princess Bride
by William Goldman. A
tall glass, half full of amber liquid, rested by his arm.

Downstairs, Rosie flicked the television on, turned to a show that looked like
something two fourteen-year-olds might watch, reduced the sound no further down
than medium low for realism’s sake while still allowing us to hear any sound of
descent outside. “Neither of them ever comes down here,” she said, “but you
never know with Mom.” She plopped down close to me on the sofa. Soon we were
passionately kissing and caressing our upper bodies inside our shirts. For
pants, she was wearing those loose fleecy après-workout ones with an elastic top
which made it easy for me to slip my hand inside. To my shocked delight, she was
wearing no panties. She unglued her lips from mine to say, “Clever, huh?” Over
about the next half hour, judging by the fact that the TV show changed, we
finished what we had started last night at my place, and Rosie alternately flung
her knees apart and squeezed my hand tightly between her thighs, and rubbed my
fingers hard into her crotch with her own hand as she climaxed. The physical
intensity of her fervour, completely unfamiliar to me with anyone before this,
was almost frightening—eerie too, in that not a sound came out of her. But when
it was over and she whispered, “That was
so
great; I love you
so
much,” the disquiet left me, never to come back again, and I was overcome by a
sensation of absolute love.

“You said you liked it when I touched you down there by accident that time,”
she murmured and then sat up and looked innocently into my face. “Do you think
you’d still like it if I did it on purpose?”

As my heart threatened to burst out of my chest, I put out my hand and rocked
it side to side a little to indicate maybe so, maybe not, emitted a sound of
uncertainty, and then said, “Well, no harm in finding out.”

“Yeah, might as well lay that to rest once and for all.” She cupped her hand
over the front of my pants and moved it back and forth an inch or
two. “My oh my. Note to self: preliminary indications are that he likes it.
Proceed with research.” She undid my belt, leaving it loose in the buckle, and
slid her fingers inside my underwear and under my penis. I was proud and excited
to see the top peeping out past the top of my pants. Then she placed her other
hand over the other side of my penis and held it tight between both hands. She
was looking down at it intently. Her eyes were sparkling and there was a small
smile of what looked like contentment on her lips. Moving her hands back and
forth, she glanced at me to say something, but I thwarted her by instantly
coming in her hands. She tightened her grip throughout and fell against my chest
and, not being able to reach my lips because my head was thrown back, kissed me
on the neck until it was over.

She sat up and looked at the door and listened for a second, and then smiling
at me, gingerly pulled her hands out, full of semen. “Whoops,” I said. “Sorry
about that.”

She stood and headed towards the bathroom at the end of the room, her hands
cupped in front of her. Looking down at them with a happy grin on her face as if
she was carrying gold coins, she said, “No, that was excellent.”

And so Rosie and I spent every spare hour we could steal alone together,
usually at her house, sometimes at mine, doing an “assignment,” our code word
for mutual masturbation: “Do you want to come over to my place after supper and
get that history assignment done?” “Yes, I’d better. The deadline for that is
soon.”

Only Brent and Suzy suspected the full truth. Cheerily, he complained to me and
she complained to her that we hardly did anything together anymore.
“Assignments,” Suzy laughed to Brent when the four of us were having lunch in
the cafeteria one day. “
Mission Impossible
doesn’t have as many
assignments as these two.”

My mother and father had no idea of the extent or frequency of our mischief.
They probably thought that we two smart and sensible fourteen-year-olds were
sneaking a bit of necking when we got together, yes, of course, that was only
normal and harmless, but that we were otherwise studying. We had only one big
scare with my parents, but that was enough at the time to make me consider
becoming a monk.

Rosie and I were in my living room reading our textbooks. We had picked my
house because Mom and Dad were going to a reception for an hour or so that
night. I knew about it a couple of days beforehand, having heard them saying
that neither of them wanted to go, but they had to.
Before we
started in, we waited our usual ten-minute margin in case of a quick return by
parents for something forgotten. Our danger margin had proved its worth one
night when Dad rushed back five minutes after leaving to get his wallet, and
found us at the kitchen table having an innocent pre-debauch snack.

During our amorous probing and pulling tonight, Rosie inquired, “Is it okay
with you if I kiss your penis?”

I was so moved by the question I couldn’t even come up with a witty reply.
“Yes,” I said.

She got off the couch and on her knees and pulled my pants and underwear
halfway down my thighs. Then, holding tight to the base with both hands, she
kissed the tip three times and then pulled the shaft towards her till it was
vertical and put the top into her mouth. We didn’t expect what happened next.
The frequency and power of my climaxes at Rosie’s hands in past weeks had given
me greater control over my ejaculations. But the look of what she was doing now,
and the feel of what she was doing now, and the thought of what she was doing
now, overcame all control.

“Watch out, watch out,” I screamed under my breath. She pulled her mouth off,
ducked her head to one side, and squeezed my penis, hanging on for dear life,
her eyes on the phenomenon. The first jet shot by her nose into the air. The
next spasms I managed to cover with the tissues I now kept in my pocket for
these occasions.

After a few seconds of total silence, Rosie giggled, “God, that was something.”
She got up and examined the couch, and the legs of my slacks and socks, the
carpet in front of the couch, and the front and back of her jeans. Then she ran
her fingers through her hair and, turning around, asked if there was anything on
the back of her shirt. There wasn’t. “What the heck happened to that first
spurt?” she asked. I couldn’t tell her. It had vanished into thin air. But then,
twenty minutes later, Mom and Dad came in the front door.

They had left the reception as soon as they decently could, it was so boring,
Mom said, strolling into the living room. Rosie and I were all reorganized by
then, sitting in separate chairs, reading textbooks. Mom stood over by the couch
and said, “Still studying? You guys are not overdoing it, are you? Want some
milk and cookies?”

As she spoke, my eyes were drawn up to the bowl around the light bulb hanging
from the ceiling. There was a movement there. At first, I thought it was a moth
or fly, but then I saw that it was a viscid, gooey substance that
was oozing from the top of the bowl, down the side and now dangling and
threatening to let go. A gob of my semen was about to drop onto Mom’s head. The
explosive ejection caused by the novel excitement of the fellatio experience,
plus Rosie’s tight grip on the gun barrel, must have combined to propel it the
eight feet to the top of the bowl. I glanced at Rosie. Her face was in the
direction of Mom, but her eyes were slued diagonally up in horrified
fascination. Simultaneously, we leapt to our feet, practically shouting our
praise for the idea of milk and cookies. Startled, Mom stepped back. The
stretching dribble looked like it would now land on her nose. “Heavens, I didn’t
realize you were that hungry,” she said, “or I would have made you a little
snack before we left.” She followed us out. Over my shoulder I saw the
stretching thread above shrink to a pearl as it fell to the carpet inches behind
Mom’s back.

“Oh, I forgot something,” I said, going back in to deftly swipe up the small
pearl, gleaming against the blue carpet, with my tissue. Little flecks of tissue
were clear in the dark spot. I rubbed the spot with my foot.

“What’s going on?” asked Dad at the door.

Managing to keep myself from soiling my underwear, I said instantly, “I killed
a spider on the carpet.”

“I hope you weren’t grinding it in with your foot. Your mother will go bananas.
Let me see.”

“Dad, for the love of God,” I barked. “I got it, okay.” I held up the tissue
with the semen inside the fold.

“All right, my son, all right. Take it easy.” He went into his den.

Out at the kitchen table, Rosie and I had to keep our eyes off each other until
Mom left to go upstairs. Then we alternated between silent laughter that shook
our bodies and stares of stark, disbelieving terror at our narrow escape.

“If we tried a million times to shoot that up there on the light bowl like
that,” I said, “we’d never be able to do it again. And then Mom coming in and
standing right under it at exactly the wrong instant. The chances of
that!”

“It was all too unlikely to be a coincidence. And then it misses her by a split
second and a couple of inches. Honest to God, Tom, the entire universe has to be
under the control of an evil jokester. The stuff that can happen would scare you
to death.”