Training Harry

by Meghan Namaste

  I lifted the tailgate, slammed it shut and shook it to make sure it was actually shut. Amber came down from the porch. Her mangy khakis bagged around and under her heels. I could sense an excited energy coming from her, but she kept her eyes low. She wasn’t celebrating with me right there.

  Amber walked up to the Harley and started working on the door. I watched her battle it for a while. Finally she body slammed it with her hip and it popped open.

  Slightly sweaty, Amber turned to me. “Well, I guess I’m ready.”

  I nodded. I felt myself retreating from the situation. “Okay.”

  Amber took a large step toward me. “Thanks for everything,” she said.

  I ducked away from her gaze. “Amber. No problem.”

  Amber watched me for a moment, and then she turned around. I looked up as she climbed into the cab. It only took a second. Amber was moving quickly.

  She had a job waiting for her, and that suited Amber. She wasn’t really built to sit around. Amber had a life to go to now. A life that hadn’t been there before. All of a sudden, it had just happened for her.

  I stood there, and I didn’t hear the Harley start up. Amber’s door was still open. After a moment she jumped down from her seat and turned to me. She faced me.

  “You better find a way to tell her,” Amber said. “You better not let her go.”

  Lawrence again

  It was quiet. It was really quiet, all the time.

  I was trying to adapt to this new sensation. It wasn’t really new. I’d lived alone for much of my life. Sure, there had been visitors, and women in my bed, but much of the time I’d been alone. That was normal, until Amber came to live with me. Now it felt different.

  I missed Amber. I missed her a lot. I never thought I would, but I really did. Living with Amber had been difficult, torturous at times, and even the good days had an edge to them. But I hadn’t realized how nice it was to have someone in my house. Someone who wasn’t there just for one thing, with plans to leave before they even took off their clothes.

  Amber had been constant. It’d seemed like she was constantly driving me nuts at the time, but now my house was just empty. I wanted to call Amber, but she was getting started with her new job. She didn’t need to deal with my voice mails.

  I looked out the window. Mandy was gardening at the edge of her property, digging up a perfectly good square of lawn. She was on her hands and knees in denim short shorts and a tube top. Mandy hadn’t said a word to me since I ended things, but I knew if I even looked at her the right way she would be right on top of me.

  Mandy looked up from her patch of dirt. She found me, looked right into my eyes and held my gaze.

  I looked away.

  Erica

  When I left my room and came down for dinner my mother was engaged in a lengthy retelling of some mundane event. I sat down at the table and listened halfheartedly.

  “And I had to wait at least forty-five minutes before this nice man pulled over and helped me with the tire,” my mother was saying. “And then of course I was late to lunch with Marjorie. So embarrassing.”

  I looked up from my fork, which I’d been turning over in my hand. “You waited around for some random guy to change your tire?”

  “Well, of course,” she replied. “There are so many nice people in this world. When you need assistance, one usually comes along in time.”

  I just stared at her. “You don’t know how to change a tire?”

  My mother actually snorted. “You say that like you’re surprised.”

  I shook my head. “Tomorrow we’re going to go outside, and I’m going to teach you how to change a tire. It’ll be a good mother-daughter activity,” I threw in snippily.

  “Oh, that’s all right, dear. I’d much rather stay in than get all sweaty for no reason.”

  “But you should know how to do this,” I insisted. “Do you really want to be at the mercy of strange men every time you have a flat tire?” I looked right at her. I implored her.

  My mother smiled cheerfully. “That’s why I never leave the house without makeup, she chirped, like it was obvious. Then she went back to her Mediterranean salad.

  I stood up and left the table. I had tried, and now I was done.

  I went out onto the lawn and leaned against the side of the house. I looked out at the dim skyline and the featureless buildings and trees. I let myself think about things. I thought about the year, more than halfway gone now. And I thought about how, in my present situation, I was as helpless as my mother on the side of the road.

  That didn’t work for me.

  Harry didn’t need me anymore. He hadn’t for a while. I had served my purpose. I had made Lawrence think differently and find the cause. I was proud of that.

  But if I wasn’t sticking around for the horse, I was doing it for the wrong reason. Some ulterior motive, a stupid dream or just weakness. I kept going back, like something was going to change. But nothing was happening. The things I wanted to experience were still unreachable. I’d been waiting a long time, but Lawrence wasn’t going to be any of those things for me.

  Lawrence was too nice to tell me not to come around, and maybe he did like me. We were friends, I was pretty sure. Pretty close friends by now. But I didn’t think I could keep being his friend. It hurt too much, and for a while I thought he was worth the pain but now I was tired of feeling it all the time. I was tired.

  The porch light came on, and I moved away from it, into the darkness. I tallied everything. The beautiful moments. The work we’d done; the groove we’d fallen into. The line of his jaw, the set of his eyes, dark and kind. I swallowed hard. The time I drove home through the rain after visiting my best friend, hysterically sobbing. The nights I spent alone, which never bothered me before him. The times I couldn’t pull myself together, when I spoke to myself in a way that amounted to mental torture. When I scratched and dug at my every insecurity, my every weakness. The bad days.

  I decided. I would go there once more, mainly to say goodbye to Harry. And then I would just fade out of his life.

  Lawrence

  The green F-150 was sitting in my driveway. I stared at it, feeling my chest tighten up with excitement. I steered around it, grinning, and put my truck in park. I left the cab, tossing the keys through the open window. They landed on the seat. I left the two hundred pounds of barn lime in the truck bed.

  Erica was outside of the gelding paddock. Harry had his face close to her body and she was petting him, tracing the contours of his head and holding his muzzle. He stood quietly, happily. I watched as Erica let her head fall softly to rest between Harry’s eyes. Neither of them moved for a long moment.

  I had stopped walking. I didn’t know what their exchange meant, but I stayed back, not wanting to disturb them.

  Erica lifted her head and looked at Harry for another second. Then she scratched the little whorl under his forelock, turned and walked away, holding herself around the waist. She saw me and her eyes widened. For a moment I wasn’t sure what to do, and then the strangeness passed.

  I covered the distance between us, all but maybe ten inches. Erica’s arms fell to her sides. “I just came by to see Harry,” she said. “Just to say hi.”

  I took that final step and I reached out and kissed her.

  Part Five

  Erica

  He kissed me, and I took a step backward from the soft, sweet impact of it. I was off balance but firmly held, and my mind was arrested, in total shock. In those first moments I had no concept of reality, no realization of what was happening. I was just feeling what I was feeling. A light touch. Closeness.

  Lawrence ran his hands up my back, bunching up my T-shirt, exposing skin. They kept moving, touching more and more. I felt a rush of energy roll over me, and I shifted to be closer. My first actual thought surfaced, frayed and running in many directions. Oh my God, Lawrence Cavanaugh is kissing me. I’m being kissed by Lawrence Cavanaugh! And it’s nice. Oh God, it’s really nice. I shivered as he kept
going. I hope he doesn’t mind that I don’t know what I’m doing. I hope he thinks I know what I’m doing.

  Then his tongue was in my mouth, and I really didn’t know how to handle that, but I tried to fake my way through as well as possible. He didn’t stop or anything, so I figured I must be doing okay.

  My breathing was quick and disorganized. My hands were in his hair, stroking, closing around strands of it. I’ve wanted to do this for so long. I began to touch him, feeling his biceps under my fingers. His chest was pulsating against mine in the same rhythm I was breathing. He was all muscle and bone, full of desperate energy. I pushed against him, kissing him deeper, amazed that this was still happening.

  Lawrence lifted his head, breaking our mouths apart, finding my eyes. “Do you want to go inside?”

  Lawrence

  Once I started I couldn’t stop. It was too good, having her so close, responding to my touch. It was overwhelming, and yet easy. I felt like it could just keep going. I knew I would never get tired of this.

  I had never felt anything like it before. I’d never kissed a girl and been mesmerized by the taste of her mouth. I had never completely lost awareness of what I was doing, the specific movements I made. I had never been so connected to someone.

  Her hands were in my hair, and all my nerve endings shuddered. Her tongue moved slowly with mine. I felt her curves against me, her softness, her heat. I felt myself getting hard, and the pressure was unbelievable. I wanted to take her hand and put it on me. I needed to be inside her. I almost couldn’t breathe just thinking about it.

  I pulled away from her. “Do you want to go inside?” I asked. Please want this too. Oh God, Erica, just say yes.

  She looked at me from the same point of no return I had gotten myself into. “Yes.”

  Erica

  We weren’t out in the yard anymore. We were inside the house. I was unaware of how we’d gotten there. The steps I’d undoubtedly taken across the ground and onto the porch were somehow not in my muscle memory. The door swung shut.

  Lawrence kissed me again, quickly moving to my neck, then lower, his lips hovering in the vicinity of my collarbone. The air was different, indisputably changed. If I hadn’t known what I was getting myself into, I definitely knew now. I didn’t retreat.

  Lawrence stepped back. In a quick motion he stripped off his shirt and threw it aside. I took a sharp little breath and then lost the ability to move.

  His body was gorgeous, lean and wiry. My eyes followed every line of muscle, every shallow ridge. His biceps stood out the most, bulging softly below his shoulders. Down his chest and stomach, the muscle lay impossibly close to the bone. I ran my eye down the flat, rippled contours of him, until I was staring at the deep V at his hips, and the line of thick black hair that continued underneath his jeans.

  As if he was following my thoughts, Lawrence’s hand moved to his fly. Before I could collect myself I heard the sharp, quick sound of a zipper coming open. Lawrence stepped out of his jeans. He was wearing dark briefs that didn’t leave much for me to imagine, and just as quickly he was out of those too. And I could see everything.

  Lawrence stepped back into my arms. I started touching him, compelled by some deep instinct because I sure as hell wasn’t thinking anymore. I slid my hands in between us, feeling his stomach underneath my fingers, reaching into foreign territory and finding that I liked the way all of this felt.

  Lawrence’s head shot up at my touch. He groaned deeply, closing his eyes for a second. “Oh God, yes. Erica…yes.”

  A moment later his eyes opened suddenly, and he pulled back, separating us. I looked up, concerned that I hadn’t done something right. He was gripping my T-shirt, and it was halfway up my back before I realized I had been fully clothed this whole time. Well, that’s not really fair, I guessed. I raised my arms helpfully, and the shirt was gone. His hands went right to my jeans, softly grabbing my ass through the fabric. Then he had my fly open in a millisecond. My jeans were on the floor. And I realized I was not prepared for this.

  Every girl has a nice pair of underwear, or at least a nicer pair than what she usually wears. I knew exactly where mine was…in the back of my drawer at home. I had no idea what I was wearing right now, and it suddenly seemed really freaking important. I hope they’re not grey, I thought desperately. I hoped they didn’t have a hole in them, at the very least. I didn’t look. Lawrence didn’t seem at all deterred. They didn’t stay on for long.

  Now I was naked except for my bra, and I quickly began the somewhat complicated unhooking process. Lawrence was watching intently, which is kind of sexy, I guess, unless you happen to have body-image issues. I concentrated on the task in front of me, slowly but surely breaking my breasts out of confinement.

  I was a late bloomer (technically I was still a late bloomer, although I was working on it). I was fourteen when I finally got breasts, but then I overcompensated. My mother was thrilled, because I had finally “become a woman” and I was horrified, because all I cared about was riding horses and my center of gravity had gotten totally screwed up. I actually (repeatedly) begged my mother to let me get breast reduction surgery, and of course she refused. So one day I Googled “breast reduction without surgery” and found myself a $300 minimizing bra which I was now struggling out of.

  Through the years, my mother (and my friends) never understood why I wore the thing all the time, even when I wasn’t riding or showing. To their minds, I was essentially negating my best feature. Covering it up. And I had never been able to explain it to them and have them understand.

  I didn’t want guys to like me just because of my “best feature”, because that kind of attention, that kind of acceptance made me feel like I was nothing. Just pretty eyes and big boobs. So I covered up, and I waited for someone to like me. To just like me.

  I took a deep breath and I undid the final clasp.

  Lawrence

  She slid her hand down around me, and I just about lost consciousness. Then in another second, my whole body snapped awake. I had never been so alert. I could think of nothing but what I was feeling. I had wanted this so many times, imagined it so many times, that I should have dulled the actual event, but it was…oh God, there aren’t any fucking words.

  I stood there unsteadily, unmoving, softly leaning on her. I felt my control start to give way. I was fighting it, and losing. I wanted this to just keep going, but if I didn’t stop her in the next ten seconds I was going to come right here and now. And that would look really bad.

  That realization gave me a bit more strength, and I pulled away. It wasn’t pleasant. It was a special kind of painful. I stared at her. I needed to see her naked.

  I tore at her clothes, hastily taking off her shirt. The bra she had on was one I’d never seen before, which was a lot more than surprising. I kind of sidestepped it, avoiding the burning humiliation of having to fumble unsuccessfully with it. I took off everything else she had on and saw her reach up to her chest. I watched her. Closely.

  As she was working on it, I noticed something. Her breasts seemed to be expanding. Another first. I was more used to breasts getting smaller when the girl took off her bra, which was always vaguely disappointing but not a huge deal at that point. This, however, was riveting.

  Just when the anticipation was reaching the point where it was inhumane, Erica pulled her bra away and let it fall to the floor, where it landed with a rather loud thud. Or maybe that noise was my head exploding.

  Her breasts were large, bigger than I’d ever seen. They were full and beautifully, exquisitely shaped. My breath caught, and after what was probably quite a while of just staring at them, I became hesitant, almost afraid that they weren’t real, that this girl I loved for being honest and real had done something so out of character and wrong.

  I moved to where she stood, waiting for me, and I touched her breasts, lightly at first, then firmer, feeling them all over. Softness. No hard, foreign objects, no scars. “You’re perfect,” I whispered against her neck, a
nd I lowered my head. There was no rush. There was still urgency, but I could get past it. I was happy here.

  Erica

  “You’re perfect,” Lawrence said softly.

  He said “You’re perfect”. He really did. I didn’t know how it could get better than this.

  Then his mouth was on my nipple, and he was sucking it, tonguing it, and I gasped out loud. My whole body was tensing, arching. I started to whimper slightly, involuntarily.

  Lawrence stopped and took my hand, taking me somewhere. Once again I didn’t register the steps I took. We got to another room, a small room with many windows and several bridles lying about. And then we fell on the bed. I was on my knees and Lawrence was behind me. He kissed my shoulders, my spine and lingered at my lower back. Then he reached between my legs, touching me everywhere. He slid a finger inside me, stroking purposefully. I was helpless, writhing against his hand.

  Soon I was on my back and he was on top of me, all his weight sinking into me. His hard-on dug into my inner thigh. “Tell me what you like,” he breathed into my ear.

  Oh, shit. I stared at him blankly. “I don’t know what I like.”

  He stared back. I saw the realization hit. “You mean you’re…”

  “Yeah.” I couldn’t bear to let him say the word.

  Lawrence eased off me, supporting his weight with his own arms. I frowned slightly. I didn’t want him here, hovering at a semi-respectful distance. I wanted him where he had been a moment ago.

  Lawrence studied me, and I couldn’t quite read his face. “We don’t have to do this, if you’re not ready,” he said.

  When I’d had The Talk, whenever that was, the main point or lesson of it seemed to be that guys will try to pressure you into having sex, and that it is perfectly acceptable (and often necessary) to tell them to go fuck themselves. No one had ever told me anything about how to handle this, or what it meant.