by Lulu Pratt
I grab a six-pack from the basement fridge and creep back up to the main floor of the house, making sure neither my mom nor my dad is up. Then I look outside. Harper is already waiting for me, sitting in the spot right in the middle between my parents’ yard and hers, where we met up the first night we were both in town. Was that really only a couple of days before? I can’t quite believe it.
I go outside with the beers, walk across the lawn, and sit down. I open up the case and hand one to Harper, and both of us sit there quietly for a minute in silence.
“We need to talk about what happened last night,” Harper says.
“We probably do,” I agree, and I crack open my beer.
“We’re not going to, are we?”
I grin at Harper’s question and she cracks her own beer, raises it to me, and we both take our first sips.
“No, I don’t think we should talk about it,” I tell her.
“Why not?” Harper shifts on the grass and I can’t help but notice, even in the limited light from the porch lights, that her nipples are straining against the fabric of her tight pajama top. Suddenly all I can think about is finding out, if like the night before, that she wasn’t wearing a bra under her dress.
“Because talking about it will make it complicated,” I reply.
“Or it will make it less confusing,” Harper counters. I drink down about a third of my beer, and after a moment Harper does the same with hers.
“What we’re going to do is get a little bit drunk and talk about good times, and not think about what would have happened if we got caught last night,” I tell her.
Harper thinks about that for a minute, and raises her beer to me again. “That sounds like a pretty decent deal,” she says.
We finish our first beers and I crack open two more beers for us, and I can start feeling, just a little bit, the start of the buzz I’m trying to get. If we get through the six-pack, I can always go back inside and get another one out of the basement fridge.
“So, what else do we have to talk about?” I sip my beer and look at Harper and in spite of having only just said that we weren’t going to talk about the night before, it’s the only thing I can think about — her lips, her smile, the sight of her tits, the feeling of her wrapped around my cock, all of it. That and the fact that as soon as I slipped out of my parents’ room last night, the only thing on my mind was how much better it would be to have Harper fully naked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HARPER POLSEN
It feels like every nerve in my body is vibrating, and I can’t quite shake the little bit of tremor in my hands, the butterflies in my stomach. Why am I so nervous around Zane? He’s already seen me naked at the lake the night before we had sex, and I wasn’t nervous at all then, not until we heard his parents in the next room.
“When are you heading back?” I ask.
I can feel the beer starting to put a dent in my nerves, and it just makes me eager to drink more. Mom and Dad had both gone to bed by the time I texted Zane, and the idea of sitting around, drinking beers in the darkness, was certainly way more attractive than sitting in my room thinking about whether or not I should make an early trip back to New York City.
“My flight leaves Monday morning, I think,” Zane says.
“Yeah, I have to drive back either late Sunday or early-early Monday,” I tell him, making a face. “They want me in the office as soon as I can get there.”
“Big dealings,” Zane observes, drinking down a little more of his beer.
“Yeah, they actually want to get an early start on the project but… I sort of told them I couldn’t leave early.”
“You did?” Zane raises an eyebrow at that.
“Yeah, I’m not ready to be back to work just yet,” I admit with a little grin. I take a few gulps of my second beer.
“We do have that fancy dinner your parents are supposed to host,” Zane agrees.
“Wouldn’t want to miss that!” I giggle, and drink down the last of my beer.
We keep talking, joking around and both of us go onto our third beer. By now I have to pee, and I tell Zane to wait for me while I go inside for a minute.
I get in and out of the house as quickly as I can, managing not to slam anything in spite of the fact that the door to the bathroom seems determined to spring right out of my hands.
“I think we need to talk about what happened last night,” Zane says.
“I thought you were against talking about it,” I say.
“I changed my mind,” Zane tells me.
“Okay, so since it’s your idea now, you tell me what you want to say about it,” I settle back into my spot, and Zane hands me another beer. He’s already started on his fourth, as he apparently went in to get another six-pack and get rid of the empties while I was in the house.
“We’re just having fun, right? I don’t think either of us really thought about anything other than what we were doing last night,” Zane says.
“I definitely wasn’t,” I admit.
“So we’re just… doing what hot people do sometimes,” Zane continues. I have to snicker a bit at that.
“What hot people do sometimes?” I shake my head.
“Fooling around,” Zane replies.
“And that’s all there is to it? That we’re fooling around?” Something about that doesn’t sit right with me. It’s not like I’m some prude, obviously, I’m not, if I was able to enjoy having sex with Zane the night before with no real reason for it but both of us being stressed out by the party.
“Well what do you want from it? I mean, it’s not like we’ve got time to like, see if there’s a relationship to have, and besides we’re both going back to different places in a couple of days.”
I have to admit that he’s right. “I guess I don’t want things to get weird between us,” I say.
“They won’t,” Zane tells me.
“You’re sure about that? Because I could see it getting weird as hell that we had sex.” I drink a little more beer, and maybe it’s from being a bit buzzed or maybe it’s from being around Zane in the dark, and remembering what we did the night before, but I can feel myself tingling all over. I have to admit that even though we both said we’d never do it again, that it was too weird, there is nothing I want more than to have his hands on me.
“As long as no one else knows about it, we should be fine,” Zane points out.
“So is it a secret because you’d be ashamed to be with me, or because we’ve… I don’t know… like, known each other since we were babies and our parents are close?” I set down my beer as I ask the question. Maybe this late-night chat wasn’t such a good idea.
“I would not be ashamed of that,” Zane tells me, looking me directly in the eyes.
“No?” I hold his gaze for a long moment.
“Please. You’re hot, you’re smart, and you’re doing really well for yourself in New York. If anything you should be ashamed of hooking up with me.” Zane takes a sip of his beer and looks up at the sky for a moment.
I think about that and shake my head.
“This is exactly why we shouldn’t have even started talking about this,” I say.
For a long moment, we just look at each other.
And then Zane does it again — he leans in and kisses me. I respond without thinking, parting my lips and running my hand through his hair. Instead of him kissing me, I’m kissing him, not even paying attention to the beer that slipped from my hands or the one that was in his hands.
“Instead of talking about it, let’s do something about it,” Zane murmurs, and I can’t possibly agree more. I slide the tip of my tongue against his lips and he opens his mouth and then he’s pinning me to the ground, kissing me hungrily while my insides burst with tingles of excitement.
I let my hands wander over him, exploring the lines of his back, sliding down his chest in the front. I can feel the ridge of his hardening cock against my hip, and the only thing I want is to get his clothes off and feel him
inside me again. But we’re in the little space between where his parents’ house meets my parents’ house and I know better than to think we can have sex there.
Even knowing that, though, I give into how hot and heavy things are between us. I let Zane pull up the front of my pajama top. When his mouth claims one of my breasts I wrap my legs around his waist and rub against that hard, hot ridge at the front of his pants. It’s almost like we’re trapped like that, like we can’t stop even if we wanted to, and I know neither of us wants to, just like the night before.
“Harper? Zane!” We fall apart all at once at the loud, sharp-sounding whisper and it takes me a moment to recognize it as my mom’s voice.
“Mom!” I pull my shirt down and try to make my poor, turned-on, kind-of-tipsy brain work.
“What are you two doing out here?”
I very nearly ask her if it isn’t obvious what we’re doing and stifle a giggle. It’s funny, but at the same time it’s terrifying that my mom found us.
“We were just talking, having a few beers,” I say quickly.
“You’re drunk,” Mom says, and I look up to see her glaring at me.
“It’s not like that’s against the law, Mom,” I tell her.
“You two were making out,” Mom continues.
“That’s not illegal either,” Zane counters, and this time I can’t suppress the snicker the forces its way through my nose and mouth.
“Look, it’s late,” I say. “Why don’t we all go back to bed?”
“You and I are going to talk about this, Harper Polsen,” my mom says, and I cringe. If she’d thrown in my middle name I would know for sure that I was in deep shit. But how can I be in trouble? I wasn’t doing anything illegal, or even immoral.
“Tomorrow, Mom,” I say.
I manage to get to my feet, and start towards the house, barely even looking at her and definitely not looking at Zane.
I have no idea if Mom is going to say anything to Bev, but I’m also not about to have a conversation about my sex life with my mom in the middle of the night. Zane is on his own.
I go into the house and up to my room as quickly as my clumsy feet will let me, and I crawl between my sheets, with the world spinning a little bit around me. I hope right up until I start to drift off to sleep that Mom won’t decide to come into my room and interrogate me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
HARPER POLSEN
I don’t have as bad a hangover the next morning as I used to get sometimes when I went out partying, but I’m definitely glad to have my own bathroom. I take a quick shower, change into some real clothes, and brush my teeth, all the normal things.
And then I can’t avoid my mother anymore and I know it. I leave my room, hoping against hope that at least I’m not going to face Mom and Bev and Nolan and Dad, all arranged in the living room or something, waiting to scold me.
Mom’s in the kitchen with Dad nowhere in sight, and she looks up when I come in. Her expression isn’t very cheerful and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to enjoy whatever it is she has to say, but I know that at this point we might as well talk about it and get it over with.
“Can I at least get some coffee before you lay into me?”
Mom points to the pot, still a little less than half full, next to the sink, and I move about the kitchen grabbing a mug, filling it with coffee, adding some sugar and milk, and stirring it more than it needs before I take my first sip.
“Your father had to run to the office, so I figured we could get this out of the way before he comes back. Clear the air, so to speak,” Mom says.
I shrug, since that was more than I’d hoped for, and take another sip of my coffee. I grab a cranberry-orange scone and a napkin, and follow her to the table.
“First of all, I’d like to point out that I’m an adult, and that I wasn’t doing anything illegal or wrong last night,” I say.
“I’m aware that you didn’t break any laws last night. You’re over twenty-one. Both of you are single. Technically what you were up to wasn’t even immoral,” Mom says.
“Here’s where the ‘but’ comes in,” I say, breaking off a piece of the scone and putting it in my mouth.
“I want you to really think about what you were up to, and what you’re trying to accomplish,” Mom says.
“What I was up to was fooling around with a hot guy, and as for what I was trying to accomplish…” I have another bite of my scone and chase it with a big gulp of coffee. “I mean, I would think that’s obvious.”
“You’re not in college anymore,” Mom says.
“I think that’s apparent,” I tell her.
“You’re not in college anymore. You’re an adult, and you need to start looking for someone to settle down with,” she continues, as if I didn’t interrupt her.
I don’t really say anything to that, instead just continuing to eat my scone and drink my coffee. I’ve gotten these lectures before, and I know there’s not a whole lot of point in arguing with Mom until she’s said her piece.
“I want to see you in a stable relationship with someone who can give you, and your career, the kind of support you need. I want to see you with someone who’s serious the way you are and who you can count on to be there for you,” she says.
I can’t keep letting her talk. I finish the scone and drink a sip of coffee to clear my mouth and set the mug down. “But what if that isn’t what I want right now?”
I look around the house. My parents got married right out of college, and Mom already had me by the time she was the age I am now.
“Zane is practically a sibling to you,” Mom says, sighing. I cringe at the way she put it.
“Well, if he’s practically a sibling to me, he’s practically a son to you, however, that didn’t stop you ogling him and commenting on how hot he is a few days ago,” I point out. The words are out of me before I can even decide whether they’re a good idea or not.
“You grew up with him. He’s like a brother to you,” Mom continues.
“But we’re not related,” I insist.
“Even if that weren’t an issue, there’s the fact that he’s due to reenlist in a couple of months once his tour of duty is over,” Mom says.
I almost wish I’d chosen water instead of coffee. The caffeine is starting to kick in, at least a little bit, and my stomach is not all that happy with just a scone and some caffeine in it.
“What does that have to do with anything? And anyway, he doesn’t even know whether or not he’s going to reenlist.” I stop short, I was going to tell her that her point was moot, since I wasn’t even really looking for a relationship with Zane. Why didn’t I just say that then?
“There’s no future in any kind of relationship with Zane, and fooling around with him like this is going to put a strain on everyone,” Mom says.
“How is it going to put a strain on anyone?” I stare at her in amazement. She was somehow making Zane and me doing something together into a whole-family situation?
“Things are inevitably going to get awkward between you and him if you don’t nip it in the bud. Then once it becomes clear that there’s something going on between the two of you, something that went bad, there’s going to be all the awkwardness between his parents and your dad and me,” Mom says.
For a few moments all I can do is stare at her. I’m so taken aback by what she’s saying that it’s hard to even process what it was that she said.
“First of all, I never said that I’m even interested in a relationship with him,” I say. I try to get my wheeling and spinning thoughts to focus.
“Look, sweetie, you and Zane are just different kinds of people,” Mom says. That comment stirs something in me and suddenly instead of feeling anxious, or annoyed, I’m feeling hurt and angry.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s still in that ‘rack ‘em up’ phase of his life where his only goal is how many girls he can get with, and all you’ll be to him is another notch on his belt,” she pauses. “But yo
u’re the smart girl, the career-minded girl, the one who’s going to really make something of herself. You need to be smart enough not to get all wrapped up in some guy who’s just going to forget about you as soon as you’re gone again,” Mom’s voice is consoling, but the words she’s saying are just like throwing kerosene on a fire that I’m starting to feel.
“I can’t believe this. I really can’t. You’re basically saying that because Zane is some kind of man-slut, I need to be the sensible one and not do anything with him or… I don’t even know what you think the downside of this is for me, other than that apparently I’m some lonely-heart virgin or something,” I say, shaking my head.
“Sweetie, it’s just that I know both of you. You’re not, either of you, made for a long-distance relationship,” Mom insists.
Before I even really know what I’m doing, I’m on my feet.
“I’m done talking about this,” I say. “I really don’t want to hear another word out of you about Zane, or me, or… or how Zane and me having a little fun is going to somehow ruin your friendship with Bev and Nolan.”
I hurry to my room, not even listening for Mom to call me back, not paying any attention to anything other than the need to get my purse and get the hell out of the house, as far away as I can go.
Mom tries to catch me at the front door, but I bark something about how if she tries to keep me from leaving the house I will absolutely call the police and have them be the reason the family is scandalized. It’s a stupid threat and I know it, but it gets me through the door.
Then I’m in my car, pulling out of the driveway, and turning onto the street to get as far away as I can as quickly as I can.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ZANE LEWIS
I see Harper bolt out of her house, and guess that she and Nadine have been talking about what her mom saw the night before.
