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I was three years old when my parents died in a car crash. A subsequent investigation revealed that both of them had been drunk and that was why my father lost control and smashed into that building. As a result, I inherited a sizable amount of money and a strong aversion to alcoholic beverages. Only once in my life have I ever drank alcohol, and this is the story of that night.
Let me begin by explaining that I am going to leave some details of this story purposefully vague. Last names and locations, specifically. Although there is nothing illegal about what happened, there are those who would consider it somewhat scandalous. Since I don’t want to deal with those who would throw shade at what I did or what the reaction to it was, I’d rather leave it so that I cannot be identified.
The same goes for the Forest family. “Forest” is not their actual family name, but it is the alias I will use going forward. The family is comprised of Neil, his wife Kate and their daughter Annie. I met them after seeing a story about them on the news. Annie, then 12 years old, was suffering from lymphangioleiomyomatosis, a chronic lung infection . The medication and treatment she needed was so expensive that it was becoming difficult for the family to afford. This, despite the fact that meal was a successful real estate developer and Kate a well connected lawyer in the state prosecutor’s office.
I was in my mid 20s at the time and something about their story moved me. To this day, I couldn’t tell you exactly what. Maybe it was just fate. It’s not that I’m a heartless man, but I’d never been an overtly charitable one either. But after I saw the distraught parents being interviewed by the local TV news crew, and footage of the little girl who spent most of her days with a breathing tube down her throat, I decided to do something about it. I was not the only person to anonymously donate money to the family, but because of the size of my donation, I became the primary source of funds for Annie’s care. And despite wanting to remain anonymous, Kate was able to ferret out my identity. This led to the grateful Forests more or less adopting me as a member of the family. I accepted many an invitation to dinner and family functions. Neil and I also bonded over a shared love of old movies and I visited the Forest home for Movie Night almost every week.
Neil also help set me up in a very nice house in the suburban community the family lived in. I actually worked in the big city an hours train ride away from where I lived. Other people might have preferred to live in a large metropolitan area, but not me. It didn’t help that the particular city in question had a bad crime problem and a crumbling municipal infrastructure to boot. This was in the mid-1980s and things have gotten better since then, thank goodness. But at the time, I much preferred the quieter life of living in the suburbs. Although I owned my own car, of course, I didn’t drive to the city because the building where I ran the chain of electronics retail outlets I had inherited was only a few blocks away from the train station and the commute was a fairly pleasant one.
Eventually, Annie’s lung infection was taken care of and she was able to enter high school.. However, because of her lengthy time in the hospital, she was a full two years behind the other kids her age. Her parents decided to not send her to the local public school but instead to a prestigious private school in the same city where I worked. So Annie and I ended up taking the same commuter train into the city every day. After we would arrive in the city, I would walk her to her nearby school and then head to my office building. In the late afternoon, I would pick her up after her classes were done and we would ride the train home together. Sometimes, if her parents were otherwise engaged, I would even drive her from the train station to her house before heading to my own home.
Finally, I should explain that the commuter train we used was an old-fashioned one. The train cars were comprised of Several enclosed Compartments with 2 upolstered benches facing each other. Two people could sit very comfortably on one of the benches, or three people if they didn’t mind squeezing in a little. It was only during the holidays that the compartments were ever that crowded, though. The sliding doors to the compartments could not be locked, but there were shades upon them that you could draw down for privacy if you needed it.
Annie and I shared a compartment every morning and late afternoon for years, usually having it to ourselves. Because up the age difference between her and the other students in her grade, she had problems making friends at school. So I ended up being her best friend. I never grew tired of talking to her, despite the fact that I was almost old enough to be her father, with 14 years separating us age wise. But in some ways, she was more advanced than I was at certain things. I had had a morose, somber childhood being passed around relatives to care for me an not popular at the prep school I attended. Annie, meanwhile, was far more outgoing and friendly. And certainly smarter than I was at her age.
Even when school was out in the summer, Annie and I still went into the city together every weekday. I had given her a job in the mailroom of my company at her parents’ request. She got along well with the regular employees there, though I couldn’t help but think that, had she had a chance to run around with her vacationing peers from school, it might have improved her social life a little. But, i couldn’t deny that, on a purely selfish level, I still liked our time on the train together. We talked about anything and everything under the sun. When she would get into arguments with her mother, as all teenagers do with their parents, I was often able to act as the voice of reason to smooth over the rough waters. Both Annie and Kate appreciated this.
There was one time, however, that it was Kate who had to smooth over some ruffled feathers between Annie and I. I had come over to watch a movie with the family and, for a change, it had been a more recent film. I had noticed, at the end of the evening, that Annie had gone to her room abruptly and neglected to say goodbye to me. When I was leaving, Kate took me aside so that Neil wouldn’t hear her tell me that I should be careful What I said about other women in front of Annie. Kate told me her daughter was upset because I had said the actress we had watched that evening, Michelle Pfeiffer I think it was, was very beautiful. When I asked Kate why this would upset her daughter, she looked at me like I was the stupidest man in the world Ann informed me her daughter had a crush on me. I was very embarrassed and I think she found my reaction charmingly amusing. She advised me to be more sensitive to her daughter’s feelings in the future or else I’d have to deal with An angry mother along with a jealous daughter.
I didn’t see Annie for the next few days as it was the weekend. When we shared a compartment on the train the following Monday morning, i noticed her demeanor to me was still on the chilly side. So I apologized for my crass remark from the previous Friday and told her that she was prettier than any Hollywood bimbo anyway. Annie tried to shrug it off like the incident had been no big deal, but I could tell I’d made her feel better. And although Annie was only 16 years old at the time, I have to admit I wasn’t upset knowing the girl had a crush on me. I wasn’t planning on making any moves on her, of course. I still looked at her as a kid, even though she was starting to blossom into a very pretty young woman. I just assumed she would eventually find a boy her age to become interested in and her infatuation with me would be a thing of the past. I had assured her mother as such a few days before.
I was wrong, of course, and I’ll bet you’ve already guessed that.
Allow me to jump forward three years after that incident. Annie was 19 now And her beauty was in full bloom. She only stood a smidge over 5 feet tall and tipped the scales at somewhere between a hundred fifteen or a hundred twenty pounds. Her figure was still on the slender side. In particular, she was disappointed that her breasts hadn’t developed past A32A bra size. I had assured her that many men prefer a smaller, firmer set of breasts and that she had the beautiful body of a ballerina. She had long curly blonde hair that came down to the midpoint of her back, past her shoulders. Her bangs framed an angelic face with clear blue eyes that looked like a pool of water a man would want to swim in forever. she had high cheekbones and a little nose, slightly upturned above a beautiful set of lips. Her hands were small, as were her feet, still size 7 1/2 and never getting any bigger.. And having seen her in a swimsuit several times during my visits over the years, I knew her behind was nice and well-rounded.
Despite my efforts to reassure her, she was still convinced that her classmates, two years younger than she was, looked more like women than she did. She was about to finish her last year of high school before going to State College in the city, which meant our daily shared commute would continue. However, she would not be working in my mailroom that summer before starting her collegiate studies. Instead, she would be working as an office clerk in her Father’s company.
She and Neil were out of town on the night that I took my first drink of alcohol. Niels mother was succumbing to a long illness and wasn’t expected to last much longer. Annie’s problematic lungs, it turned out, were a hereditary condition from Neil’s side of the family. The two had flown out of state to be with the old woman when she passed. Kate had not gone along because of some bad blood between neil’s mother and her. Even on her deathbed, neil’s mother had not wanted Kate around.
It was a Thursday night in May around 10:00. I was reading the latest in a series of mystery novels about a burglar who had once again ended up in broiled in a murder investigation. My reading was interrupted when my doorbell rang and I opened the front door to find Kate there.
“Kate?” I said in surprise. “What are you doing here so late? Has there been bad news about Harriet?” Harriet, as you might have guessed, Bing kate’s mother-in-law.
“No” she answered. “No news on that front. The doctors said it might take a few days before she finally lets go. She always was a stubborn old bitch. Are you going to invite me in? I need to talk to you.’
“Of course. Come in and make yourself at home” I told her. “can I get you something to eat or drink?”
She moved inside and stepped past me. Without taking her boots off, she went up the short stairs to the upper floor of my bi-level house and made her way into my living room. I followed along and watched her sit down on one of my brown leather couches. “Í’ve already had dinner tonight” she said as she looked over to my small bar. “Got any scotch?”
“I think so.” I said as I moved to where I kept my liquor. I don’t drink, but I sometimes have people over who do. As the only bachelor in a group of married friends, I often host poker night at my house, for example. “Alan Barstow gave me a bottle of Glenlivit last Christmas. That’s scotch, right?” I asked as I drew the bottle in question.
“Yes it is” she answered from her position on the couch behind me. Pour me a glass of that on the rocks. And make one for yourself too.”
“You know I don’t drink” I said as I took a whisky glass and turned around to ask her if this was the right size for the drink she wanted. The words died in my throat as I saw she was now holding a pistol in her hand and it was aimed right at me.
Now, while her daughter may be a small young woman, she does not get her stature from Kate’s genes. Kate stands 5’9′ with a strong yet still very feminine build. She attended college on an athletic scholarship and made the all state volleyball team. Even a few decades later, she was still in very good shape and by no means a small woman. But she seemed dwarfed buy the 9mm Beretta that she held in her hand.
It was a pistol I had seen before. In one of my visits to the Forest home, Neil had shown me his collection of firearms. Like I mentioned before, Neal and I are fans of old movies and the James Bond series in particular. Unbidden, a line from the first film in the series, “Dr. No”, entered my mind. There’s a scene early in the film when bond is taken to task by his boss for carrying a Beretta. The spy agency’s armourer describes the gun as being nice and light, dismissing it as belonging in a ladies handbag. I can certainly vouch for the latter, as it had been a warm night and Kate hadn’t worn a jacket, so she must have pulled the gun from her purse. However, it didn’t look nice or light to me. It looked like a gODDAMNcannon.
I couldn’t read her expression as she told me “You’re gonna want a drink to steady your nerves. Because you and I are going to talk about how long you’ve been fucking my daughter. So make those drinks. And then bring the bottle too.”
In old movies, or even modern ones for that matter, when characters have a gun pointed at them, they often ask what this is about or tell the person threatening them not to do anything foolish. I didn’t do any of those things. I just stared at the gun and struggled to maintain my composure. From the dozen feet that separated me from Kate, I couldn’t tell if she had disengaged the gun’s safety catch or not. But i decided to just assume she had, that i was in mortal danger, and just react with the appropriate level of pants-shitting terror. I silently turned back to the bar and made her drink as instructed. Her suggestion that I make one for myself suddenly seemed like the best idea in the history of the world and so I did that too.
I slowly turned around again with a drink and a small napkin in each hand. As ordered , I also had the bottle squeezed under my armpit. Carefully, I walked to the coffee table and put her drink down about a foot away from where she was sitting. With my one hand now free, I placed the bottle next to her drink. I stepped backwards into an easy chair, sat down and took a sip of my drink. Even with the ice cubes I’d put in the glass, the liquid burned my throat as I imbibed it. I made a face of disgust but then turned my attention back to Kate.
“How long?” she asked me pointedly. I had a passing thought that she was using a tone of voice she must save for grilling a witness in the courtroom. If I had any notions of lying to her, that voice dispelled them immediately. If I hoped to survive this interrogation, i knew my only choice was to tell her the truth.
“Since January” I answered. “That was when we first slept together.”
“Not before?” she asked
“Well,” I began before my nervousness started to rise up and I swallowed hard. I took another sip of my drink to steady my nerves, as she had suggested it might. It still tasted awful, but I was expecting it a little more this time and I managed to control my face better. I continued my explanation with “,,,before that, we did… other things.”
I listened for the sound of a gunshot but it didn’t come. She simply nodded as she took in what I had said. “Before you slept with her, you worked up to it” she said, articulating her thought. “Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me how things started getting sexual between you two.”
I winced at her use of the word “sexual” as I thought back to how to answer her question. I put my thoughts in order as best I could and looked at the ice cubes floating in my glass of Scotch whiskey.
“It was on the train” I began. “You know we ride the train together every weekday. And you’ve seen the size of the compartments in the train.”
“Yes” she agreed. “When all of us went to that Hitchcock film festival last year. We all sat in that compartment. Cozy way to travel. Me, I like to drive, but I can see the appeal.”
“Right” I said before continuing. “Well, most of the time she and I had a compartment to ourselves. When it would get crowded, she would sit on the bench with me and we could talk in a lower voice without really disturbing the other passengers sitting with us. If anyone was there with us, it was only usually one person on the other bench anyway. And a lot of the time, they’d be listening to a Walkman or reading a paper or otherwise not paying attention to us. But when someone else was there with us, she always sat next to me and snuggled up. It was a totally innocent thing, not sexual at all. She does the same thing when I come over for movie night.”
“I know” Kate said to encourage me to keep going.
“Well,” I continued, “she took to snuggling up even when it was just the two of us. It didn’t bother me, and even after you told me she had a crush on me, I didn’t try to stop her. I just thought it was cute. And, well, you know how lonely I was when I was growing up. We’ve talked about that. Annie’s kind of comfortable affection just isn’t something I got a lot of growing up.”
“I noticed” Kate acknowledged. “I remember when you first started coming over and I would give you a welcoming hug. You always stiffened up. Didn’t take me long to figure out you were just not used to being touched like that. But you eventually loosened up a little.”
“Thanks to you and your family” I agreed. “So part of that is why I never told Annie not too get so close. I figured it was good for me to let people get close. And since she did it in front of you and Neil when we got together and you never mentioned it, I figured you were OK with it as well.”
“And so you figured it would be OK to fuck her too?” Kate suggested with her voice starting to rise in anger.
“Jesus Kate!” I said and took another sip of my drink. “I’m just trying to say that it didn’t start off like that at all. We were just… comfortable with each other. We would cuddle up on the train and talk and there was nothing bad about what was happening. Even when someone was in the compartment with us, we’d still be as close and nobody ever raised an eyebrow at us. She was just a young girl talking to her older buddy.”
“Yes, you were always close” Kate agreed. “Ann I thought you were a good man. How can you take advantage of her affection like that then? When did you decide you wanted to fuck her.?”
“Kate” I said as I took a breath. I chose my next words very carefully as I knew the wrong ones were going to get me shot. “If you want me to tell this story, let me tell it. And let me tell it my way. If you think I’m lying, you can shoot me then. But if you want to understand what happened, please sit and listen. And if it’s possible, try to keep an open mind.”
“An open mind?” she asked in disbelief. “I’m supposed to keep an open mind about you fucking Annie?
“it’s not fucking” I blurted out. “I mean, not always. If you mean fucking in the sense that I use her and then ignore her and don’t think about her until I get horny again, then you’ve got it all wrong. Yes, she and I have had sex. I won’t deny that. I don’t know how you figured it out, but you did and you’re right about it. And I won’t insult your intelligence by trying to deny something that you already know is true. But please don’t call it fucking. It’s an insult to what Annie and I have between us.”
“Oh dear Lord, Stanley” she exclaimed. “What you have between you? You’re 33 for God’s sakes! You expect me to believe that this is a grand romance between you and my teenage daughter?”
I wasn’t particularly fond of her tone, midway between mocking and angry. But it was still better than getting shot. So I answered with “I know how that sounds Kate. Ever since she first kissed me, I’ve been fighting with my feelings of guilt about it. I must have decided a thousand times to end it. But every time I try to tell her we can’t be together, I take one look at her and I forget all about it. Because when I’m with her, all I feel is love. Look at me Kate. Look at my face. I’m telling you I am in love with your daughter. Do I look like I’m lying to you? You’ve broken down criminals in court for years now. You know what a liar looks like. When I tell you I’m in love with Annie, can’t you see that I’m telling the truth?”
I could tell she wasn’t expecting me to say what I just had. For the first time, her icy facade broke and I could see her thinking about what I’d just said. She opened her mouth to say something, closed it, opened it again, hesitated but finally said “No. You’re not lying. I almost wish you were, but you’re not. You’re in love with Annie. And I know she’s in love with you. This… complicates things.”
She sat there musing for a moment. I didn’t know if she was going to say anything else. I broke the silence to ask her “How did you find out about us?”
“Let’s table that for now” Kate said as she topped up her drink with her free hand while the other continued to point the pistol at me. Her upper arm was lying on the couch’s armrest so there was no chance it would be tiring anytime soon. She looked at my glass and notest I had drunk most of my liquor “I think you need a refill” she declared as she motioned for me to put my glass on the table.
“I’d rather not” I said sheepishly.
“I think I’m going to insist” she said sarcastically. Somehow, her voice was enough to remind me of the Beretta’s presence. Not that i had really forgotten about it, to be honest. So I put my glass on the coffee table and she refilled it just as she had Her own. That done, she leaned back on the couch and stated “You said she kissed you. Tell me about that.”
I took a deep breath and decided another sip of the scotch was needed before I could comply with her request. Once I’d swallowed it, I began speaking again.
“All I can tell you is that I didn’t see it coming. One day, last October it was, something happened. We were on our way into the city, cuddled up as normal, and we were talking about her future. It was still pretty early in her last year at the Academy, and she was already thinking beyond it to college and all that. She wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to make friends because she’d had so much trouble with that before. And I was telling her that she was too wonderful a person not to have friends. You know, like a good supportive pal does. She told me that I was bias because I loved her so much. And then I told her that I was guilty as charged. And then she gave me a kiss on the lips, an innocent one, like she’d done a lot over the years. And then she pulled her head back a few inches, looked me over and a strange look came over her face. And then, she kissed me again. And it was different this time.”
“More serious?” Kate asked.
“Definitely more serious” I agreed. “More intense. I don’t know if I’d call it passionate, ’cause that sounds like something out of a romance novel. But it was like, i don’t know, like regular kisses weren’t enough for her to show how she felt anymore. She pressed her lips into me more forcefully then before. It wasn’t a French kiss or anything like that. But certainly a more serious kiss, yes.”
“What did you do?” Kate asked me.
. “Nothing” I told her. “I just let it happen. It never even occured to me to stop her. She was kissing me and it seemed like I should just let her do it. I put my arms around her to hold her close to me and I just let her put pressure on my lips. I didn’t think it was a good thing or a bad thing or anything at all. Because I wasn’t thinking. Not a thought was crossing my mind. I was just experiencing this and, at that moment, nothing else was happening. An atomic bomb could have gone off next to us or an elephant Stampede or an earthquake and I don’t think I would have noticed. Annie was kissing me and that’s all that mattered.”
“So how long did this last?” asked Kate.
“I have no idea” I told her truthfully. “All I know is at some point one of us parted our lips. I don’t even know if it was me or her who started it, but it happened. And then it finally did turn into a French kiss. That shook me out of my trance. I realized I was French kissing her and I had to decide if I wanted this to happen or not. I was kissing her and holding her an all I could think about was how good it felt. I’ve had, like, a half-dozen girlfriends or so over the years. I’ve cared a lot about all of ’em, but I’d never been in love. I thought I had, but when Annie kissed me like that, I knew I’d been fooling myself. I realized at that moment that I was in love with Annie. I don’t know that that was the moment I fell in love with her, but it was certainly the moment I realized I was in love with her.”
Kate nodded as what I told her just sunk in. I was still looking at the pistol and wondering if it was going to go off while still aimed at me. I really wished she would put it away but there was still a lot to describe about my relationship with Annie and I guess Kate still wanted more answers.
She asked me “Did it ever occur to you to talk to her about what was happening between you two.?”
“Not that morning” I said and then took another sip of the scotch. While I wouldn’t say I liked the taste, it wasn’t bothering me so much anymore. “The rest of the train ride, we just kissed. Held each other and kissed, came up for air, then started all over again. Not a word spoken between us. Even after we stopped kissing when we started pulling into the station. She had a sweet smile on her face as she got up, smoothed out her school uniform and took my hand. We held hands and I walked her to school and neither one of us said anything. Except when we got there. She gave me a quick kiss, told me she’d see me soon, squeezed my hand and then she was gone.”
I paused my story, so Kate prompted me with “And after that?”
“After that ,” I started again, “I went to work and proceeded to not accomplish much for the rest of the day. I was too distracted. At first it was just an unbearably stupid good mood. But then reality set in and I realized what had happened. She hadn’t turned 19 yet. She was still of legal age to be kissed, of course, but I was still way too old for her. Like I said, I’ve been feeling guilty about it ever since it started, and it didn’t take long for those feelings to show up that day. By the end of the day, I decided that after I’d picked her up from school, on the train ride back, we’d have a long talk about how what had happened couldn’t happen ever again. So at the end of the day, I went to her school to pick her up. On the way to the station, she told me about how her day had gone and everything was normal.
“And when you got to the train?” Kate prompted me again.
We got on” I continued. “Went to an empty compartment, she drew the shades down and jumped into my arms. And the second her lips touched mine again, all my resolve was gone. All I could do was kiss her all over again.”
“That’s a very convenient excuse” Kate observed. “You didn’t mean to kiss her, it was all her fault. ”
“It’s not an excuse I clarified. “Like I said before, I could have stopped her but I didn’t. There’s as much blame on me as there is on her. It’s just that that’s the way our relationship developed. She was always the one instigating things. Every time things got… more evolved, it was because she took the initiative.”
“Right” said Kate. “You said that before you two slept together, you did other things. I guess those train compartments became your little love shacks. Did it ever occur to you that you might be interrupted?”
“Well, about that…” I said and hesitated. I took in another breath and then decided that another sip of scotch was going to be a good idea for what I was about to say. After I took it, I cautioned her “What I’m about to tell you is going to sound really bad. But before you get so angry that your trigger finger makes an unfortunate decision, I just wanted to tell you that I’m not the one you’re going to be angry at. So try to keep that in mind, OK?”
“Oh this sounds interesting” Kate said as she arched an eyebrow. “Go on.”
“When we kissed after that first time,” I began to explain, “it was always with the shades of the compartment drawn down. But that first morning, they weren’t drawn, so anyone passing by could have seen us. An i think someone did. Because the Monday after this had all started, the conductor was showing us to a compartment and Annie went off to use the bathroom. I was kind of surprised when the conductor started chatting me up. He didn’t come right out and say it, but he insinuated he knew something was up. Started talking about being in a good mood and pretty girls and how privacy was such a nice thing. Yeah, I figured out that either he’d seen us or someone else had and reported it to him. And then he said something about how President Grant had always respected peoples privacy so I took the hint and gave him fifty bucks. He told me to have a nice week, which I took to mean I just bought myself 5 days of privacy with Annie.”
“Oh my God!” Kate exclaimed. “What a slimy little shit! I can’t believe you went along with that. No, scratch that. I guess fifty bucks must have seemed like a bargain. It’s better than whatever they charge for hotel rooms, isn’t it?”
I winced again at the suggestion but couldn’t think of any good comeback.
“He must have thought you two were banging each others brains out in there.” She paused for a moment as a thought formed in her mind. “Did you tell Annie about this? Was that what made her instigate these other things you said the two of you did? That she knew it was safe because nobody would interrupt you?”
“No, I never told her” I stated unequivocally. “I got real good at doing the old fold-a-bill-and-slip-it-to-someone-while-you-shake-their-hand trick. I didn’t want Annie to know that he knew. Or that he thought he knew whatever he thought he knew. I guess I just didn’t want her to feel… sleazy.
“Fooling around in a train compartment” Kate summarized. “With a much older man. Nothing sleazy about that, no. So these other things you say Annie instigated. What were they?”
“I warned her “Kate, I don’t think you wanna hear this.”
“No” she disagreed. “I do. I’m a grown woman Stan. I know what people in love do when they’re alone together. But I have to know what you two did. Because… I have my reasons. When you’re through with your story, I might tell you mine. But right now, I want you to tell me what you and Annie did in that train compartment.”
“Are you sure?” I asked her.
“indulge me” she said through gritted teeth with emphasis on each syllable. As much as I had been scared before, my fear went up a few notches. I resolved to cool it with the questions to her and just answer whatever she asked me. If she had asked me for my Social Security number and my bank account information at that moment, i would have been glad to tell her everything about that, too.
“Groping” I quickly blurted out. “We were kissing one day and my hands were feeling up her back. As they were sliding down her back, she suddenly shifted around and the next thing I knew I was holding her ass cheek in my hand. I drew it away and mumbled something about being sorry,. She told me not to be. But still I was more careful with my hands until she grabbed my arm and pulled it down so that I was holding her ass again. She made it clear she wanted me to do that. That’s what I mean when I say she was the instigator of what we were doing. Anyway, after that, I had a green light to touch her anywhere. Her ass her legs, her face, her breasts, everything.”
I stared at the Beretta, waiting for a muzzle flash to erupt from it. But instead of making Kate angry, it seemed my admission hadn’t fazed her. “There” she said. “Was that so hard to say? I asked you a question about what you and my daughter did, and you answered it, and now you’ve gotten that off your chest. And I know what I need to know.”
“But why…” I started to ask and then clamped my mouth shut. No questions to Kate I reminded myself. Just answers to Kate.
This is probably as good a time as any to point out that I’m taking a bit of dramatic license in this story because the alcohol was really starting to hit me. I was starting to slur my words, but I’ll keep my descriptions of what I said clear. If I told Kate “But I love her”, for example, i don’t think you’re gonna wanna read “budda lovva”, which is probably closer to what came out of my mouth.
Kate continued her interrogation with “So you went from kissing her to feeling her up. Or feeling her all around, more precisely. OK, then what?”
“The next escalation,” I once again found myself explaining, “was when she straddled me. One morning, we were kissing and I forget where my hands were. I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway. The next thing I knew, she’d thrown her leg over me and was now sitting on my lap. Straddling me, like I said. We were kissing in that position and she started fidgeting a little. Then a little more. And then, she was full-on grinding against me. I don’t know if you wanna hear this or not, so if I go too far, just tell me to stop. But anyway, you know about that uniform and the pleated skirt. So it was just her panties rubbing against my pants.”
“Did you get hard?” Kate asked me.
“Like the Goddamn Rock of Gibraltar” I admitted.”Fuck, if you wanna hear this, I can’t be embarrassed about it anymore. Yeah, i got a big ol’ boner in my pants while Annie was rubbing against me. And it’s a good thing there were my dark blue pants because her panties got pretty wet and she was leaving a wet spot on my crotch. It was driving me out of my Goddamn mind. It was all I could do to hold back to let her finish first. I always believe in letting the girl finish first. And when she started shaking and burying her face in my shoulder, I knew that she was cumming and that it was OK for me to do the same. So I did. In my pants.”
After a pause, Kate asked me “And that was in the morning?”
“Yep” I confirmed. “”Felt kind of weird to be wearing those pants and undies the rest of the day, I don’t mind telling ya.”
“And did you two do it again that afternoon?” she wanted to know.
I couldn’t believe she asked me that question. I was really curious as to why she wanted all these details. So I thought back and told her ‘Not quite. Now that you mention it, I think that might have been the one time that I took the initiative instead of Annie. When we got back to the train that afternoon, she tried to straddle me again but I didn’t let her. I turned her sideways so that she was facing the window to the outside and I was spooning her. I put my hand in her panties and started rubbing her. It was the first time I touched her there either above or underneath her clothes. Of course, I done stuff like that with my girlfriends before so I knew what I was doing. Annie pulled her skirt up and and her panties down to get ’em out of my way and just let me do as I pleased. And not to brag or anything, but it pleased her too.”
“So you finger-fucked her” Kate stated.
“Not really” I clarified. “She was still a virgin so her little pussy was still very tight. I could’ve put my fingers in it, but I’d rather work her clit instead. So I mostly did that and then felt around the outside folds but didn’t penetrate her with my fingers. If she minded, she sure didn’t say so.”
“And you made her cum that way?” Kate asked me
“Yep” I confirmed with some pride. If Kate wanted all the details of my sex life with Annie, I was ready to give them to her. So i continued with “And then she undid my pants and fished out my cock. It was the first time she’d ever done anything like that. She held it in her hand and started stroking me and the next thing you know she was giving me a handjob. I asked her if she’d ever done this before and she told me no, but that the girls at school had talked about it so she had an idea what to do. And she sure did! The whole situation was turning me on something crazy. I let her stroke me and soon I knew I was gonna cum and I told her so. I wasn’t sure if she was gonna move out of the way or let me cum on her clothes but instead, she dove down and took me in her mouth just in time to start swallowing my cum.”
“Sounds pretty wild” Kate told me. I looked at the gun and realized I was getting way too carried away telling her what had happened. I suddenly calmed down and wondered if this was a prelude to her finally pulling the trigger. Surprisingly, it was not.
“I’m sorry Kate” I apologized. “The booze is making me talk too much.”
“That’s the idea” she explained. “I want to know everything about the two of you. Alcohol and fear are a wonderful pair when it comes to eliciting a confession. In Vino Veritas, as the old saying goes. I just wish I could do this at work. But here I can, because I make the rules here tonight. Now, tell me more about what happened after your shenanigans got to that level.”
I took a deep breath to try to clear my head a little before continuing. “After that, oral sex started becoming a regular part of our train trips. Some mornings, she even got on the train and then showed me she hadn’t put any panties on. It was only after I’d eaten her out and we’d be pulling into the city that she’d fish a pair out of her schoolbag and slip ’em on. We were leaving the tiny window on top of the big one to the outside open to clear the air in there. It was crazy but I loved it. I loved seeing this wild side of her. I’d had girlfriends who were on the wild side before. But with Annie it was better. Not just ’cause she could get wild, but because I loved her so much. I know I keep coming back to this, and it’s not just ’cause i don’t want you to shoot me for being a dirty pig. But it was… fun, I don’t know any other way to say it. It was just so much fun for us to be together like that.”
“And then in January,” Kate prompted me, “you slept with her. You took her virginity on the train.’
“Oh no” I said. “Not at all. A train bench is no place for a girl’s first time. No, that happened at your house.” I paused as what I had just said sunk in and I realized I could be in deep, deep trouble. “Wait, don’t shoot! Please let me explain that!”
“Yes I think you should” Kate advised me. Her tone was even and that cleared up some of my panic. I finished off what was left of the scotch in my glass and Kate refilled it while still keeping the gun on me as I continued.
“You remember the night I came over and we all watched “Singing In The Rain” together? After the movie was over, I was gonna go home but the snow fall that had started when I’d walked over had gotten a lot worse. And the wind had picked up too. You and Neil told me I should sleep over instead and things were so bad out there that I figured you were right. So you set me up in the guest bedroom and we all turned in for the night.”
“Well, Neil and i fooled around when we got to our room” Kate admitted. “For some reason, Gene Kelly movies turn him on. I have the strange feeling you’re going to tell me we weren’t the only ones getting physical that night. More of Annie taking the initiative again?
“Yes” I acknowledged. “I was about to fall asleep when the door to the room opened. It was dark in my room and there was still some light coming from the hallway. Annie was standing there in her nightgown. The hallway light shone through it so I could see the silhouette of her body. She made her way in, closed the door behind her, of course, and then dropped the nightgown. It was the first time I’d ever seen her completely naked. On the train, she’d often been without her panties and sometimes she’d open up her blouse and pull her bra down so that I could get at her tits. I mean her breasts.”
I was embarrassed as I fumbled around looking for the right words. Kate let a smirk form on her lips as she told me “Tits, breasts, it’s all the same. Don’t worry about it Stan. As long as you don’t call them funbags, I won’t be offended.”
“OK” I agreed and then continued my story. “So like I said, she was naked and it was the first time I’d seen her like that. No blouse, no jacket, no skirt, no underwear and without those stockings she has to wear as part of the school uniform. Fuck I know it’s a cliché, but those stockings really do turn me on. When are private schools gonna figure out that putting those girls in stockings and making it part of the school uniform is like waving a red cape in front of a bull?”
“Bulls are colorblind” Kate informed me. “It’s not the colour of the cape, it’s the movement,. But I’m interrupting you. You were saying my naked daughter was in the room with you and…”
“And I moved to the side of the bed away from her to give her room. I held the sheets open. She jumped in with me and slipped off my boxer shorts. Again, I never even thought of stopping or telling her no. Even though we were in the house with you and Neil in the other room. I just assumed you were asleep and that as long as Annie and I were quiet, we’d be OK. So we started making out. My hands were roaming all over her body. There were no clothes at all on her or me, for once. It was great. It felt wonderful.
Another sip of scotch preceded my next words. “Then it was almost a replay of what had happened in the train when she straddled me. She threw a leg over my crotch, took my hard-on in her hand and started lowering herself down on it. I asked her in a whisper if she was sure and she told me she was. She said this was what she wanted. She took her time lowering herself, getting used to me inside her. I just put my hands on her hips and let her go at her own pace. I’m not sure who was more nervous, her or me. But eventually she bottomed out and I was all the way inside her. Then she started moving up and down a little and I started giving little thrusts into her. I asked her if she was OK and she told me that she was and that it felt good. I told her I loved her and she told me she loved me too. And we kept going like that.”
“You didn’t use a condom” Kate stated.
“No” I confirmed. “I knew Annie was a virgin so there wasn’t much chance of any diseases. I’d gone in for tests after my last girlfriend so I knew I was clean. And she had talked about being on the pill with me long before we ever started even kissing. We tell each other anything and everything. I’d even caught myself telling her some slightly dirty stories of what I’d done with my girlfriends before she and I became involved. It’s just that kind of relationship with us where we tell each other pretty much any ol’ stuff. So that night, I didn’t need to ask her if this was OK. We both wanted to take our relationship to the next level and so we did.”
“You mean you wanted to take your sex life to the next level, and so you did” Kate postulated
“Well, I can’t deny that” I admitted. “But finally consummating our relationship, it did change things. I think… Wait a second. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me get back to that night. So she rode me in the cowboy position and eventually we both came. Her first, and me right behind her. I’ve gotten good at telling when she’s close and letting myself go so that we climax close together. And that night was no exception. So afterwards, she collapsed on my chest and eventually I popped out of her and we said some sweet things to each other. She said she wished she could stay all night but I told her she had to go back to her room. I was a little sad to see her go, to be honest. And I think she was sad too. Because after that…”
“Wait a second” Kate ordered. “I’m starting to remember something else about that night. Or the day after, actually. I woke up and went to the basement and you were there with the sheets in the washer. You told me you’d had an accident in bed the night before and wanted to clean up before I found out. And you were really embarrassed. I thought you were cleaning up pee or shit maybe, but it wasn’t that at all. It was blood wasn’t it? Annie had bled on the sheets and you were washing them up before I could see it.”
“Yeah, I’m afraid you’re right” I admitted. “I’d also turned over the mattress because a little stain had soaked through the sheets. I guess you never noticed that. And Annie told me she kept to herself that weekend ’cause she was still bleeding a little for awhile. She stopped by the time we got together again on Monday on the train though.”
“You son of a bitch!” Kate exclaimed more in admiration than anger, luckily for me. “You had me completely fooled. If you’d been on the witness stand in a trial, I would have totally missed it. Oh, I knew you were embarrassed about something, but like I said, I thought you peed yourself. I did think it was a little strange, as people generally only do that when they drink too much or something, and you never did. Until tonight. Tonight, you might want to go to bed wearing diapers. Assuming I don’t kill you first, of course.”
I asked myself if she was joking or not. The comment seemed rather lighthearted, but she was still aiming the gun at me. And after all, I had just admitted to taking her daughter’s virginity. In Kate’s own home no less.
As I contemplated this, Kate pulled my attention back to my story by stating “So you said after that things changed between you, and not just in a sexual way. Tell me what you mean by that.”
“Give me a sec” I requested as I put my thoughts in order. As I did so, Kate took another sip of her drink, realized it was now half empty and then topped it off. Without any comment, she also refilled my glass. The ice cubes were now half melted so there was more scotch in my glass than there had ever been.
“It’s something that was building for awhile, i think” I told her. “After we crossed that threshold, it was like… Like we’d reached the summit. Like there was nowhere else to go. I mean, sure, there was some other things we could try that we hadn’t yet. Anal sex or bondage or shit like that. But I was never interested in that stuff. It was kind of like, this was the end of our sexual journey. Not in the sense that we’d never sleep together again. ‘Cause we did, on the train. But that there was nothing new to do after that. After that, whatever we did was because we loved each other, not because we wanted to see what this new thing was like. Fuck, am I making any sense here? I don’t think I’m getting my point across.”
“No no” Kate assured me “I understand what you’re saying. Neil and I figured out what we liked and what worked for us a long time ago. There hasn’t been a whole lot of new things in our sex life since then. But there doesn’t need to be. We love each other, we love our sex together, and that’s fine. You’re saying you and Annie hit that point, right?”
“Exactly, yes” I concured. “I don’t know that there had been any pressure for us to hit the point we hit. I know I never wanted to pressure Annie into doing something she wasn’t ready for. But after that, we just kind of settled into some very comfortable sex together.” I paused as once again, what i just said to my lover’s mother dawned on me. My lover’s mother with a pistol trained on me. “And after that, we actually started doing it less. Because we both realized that all the sex was cutting into our time together.”
I took another drink of scotch and continued. “We didn’t fall in love by kissing each other or buy having sex with one another. We fell in love by talking and just enjoying being together. And all this fooling around was stopping us from talking as much as we used to. Now, I’m not saying we stopped making love, ’cause we didn’t. But we gradually started doing it less. By the time my birthday rolled around two months ago, we weren’t even doing it every day on the train anymore. Oh, we’d feel each other up and kiss and such. But no, by then we were back to talking more often than not on the trip.”
“Did you stop paying off the conductor?” Kate asked me.
“No” I admitted. “The son of a bitch’s getting rich off me. Whether we had all our clothes on or not, I still wanted the privacy. But lately, we’ve spent a lot of our time together trying to figure out a future for us instead of fooling around and not thinking of the consequences.”
”
Well that brings up an interesting point” Kate pointed out. “What, exactly, kind of future do you see for yourself and Annie?”
The question focused my mind past the haze all the alcohol had created. “I don’t know” I conceded. “Neither does Annie. We’re both starting to get scared about it. We don’t wanna be apart, but at the same time, we can’t be together right now. It’s gotten too hard to hide how we feel about each other the last little while. Every time I come over for movie night and she and I cuddle up, i don’t enjoy it anymore. Having to hide how I feel. It’s the same with her. It’s also why we decided she can’t come work for me this summer. Eight hours of being in the same building, even if we were separated. We’d slip up, somebody would figure out that something was going on between us and then the office would just explode with gossip.”
I paused and took yet another sip of scotch. By this point, I couldn’t taste it anymore. I told Kate “Now, you know. You haven’t shot me yet, so I guess there’s a chance you’re OK with it. Or might be OK with it in the future, maybe. Actually, can I ask you now how you figured it out?”
“A mother’s intuition” Kate said as she took a sip from her own drink. “Annie always seemed tense when the subject of dating or boys came up. Always feeling like she wasn’t pretty enough or good enough for that stuff. She was even talking about getting a boob job last summer, pestering me and Neal about it. Actually, more me because Neil was embarrassed by the discussion. But then that tapered off in the fall. If Neil or I brought up the topic of dating, she stopped being uptight about it. She’d just shrug and say something like “Maybe someday”. I started wondering if she had a boy she was secretly seeing. She normally does her own laundry, but when I did a load for her during the holidays, I found some thongs in her clothes. You don’t wear those unless you want someone to see you in them. A gift from you?”
“For me” I corrected her. “Annie bought those herself as a holiday surprise for me.”
“I see” Kate said with a nod. “And then there’s the subject of you. Lately, she hasn’t been talking about you. For years it was “Stanley this” and “Stanley that” and then it’s been tapering off more and more lately. I didn’t put two and two together for a long time. I thought she had a boyfriend she was hiding from us while she’d outgrown her crush on you. But then tonight, I suddenly realized she wasn’t talking about you on purpose. And that she had no time to have a boy on the side. If she had someone, it could only be you and she was covering it up.”
“Well, bravo counselor” I congratulated her. “You made a hypothesis and it turned out right.” Considering how drunk I was by this point, it’s a bloody miracle I was able to enunciate the word “hypothesis” correctly. At least, I think I did. Honestly, my memory of this conversation can get a little fuzzy sometimes.
“Just figured it out tonight…” I said, articulating my thoughts as they entered my mind. “You haven’t told Neal yet, have you?” It wasn’t really phrased as a question as I was pretty sure of the answer. Drunk or not, I still had some faculties left.
“No I haven’t” she confirmed. “And with his mother about to pass on, I don’t think I’ll share this with him for a little while. But you know, he’s going to find out eventually, unless you plan on breaking it off with Annie before that happens.”
“I can’t Kate” I declared. “I can’t do that. I don’t wanna do that to her. I don’t wanna break her heart. And even if I could, which i can’t, I don’t wanna break my own heart either. It took me a long time to find love Kate. A long, long time. I want Annie to be part of my life. A big part of my life. I want her to be my wife Kate. I haven’t asked her, of course. We’d have to be in a place where everybody knew about us before I’d feel comfortable doing that. And that’s the problem now. I’m tired of loving your daughter in secret. I’m tired of having to go behind everyone’s back. I don’t wanna be ashamed of this anymore. I know it’s unusual. Borderline scandalous even. But I don’t care.”
“So what’ll you do?” asked Kate.
“I don’t know Kate” I confessed. “I just know this. You know now. You know, and you’re gonna have to be the first one to decide if you can accept this or not. And if you can’t, if you’ve listened to everything I’ve said and you don’t want me to be with Annie, well then…”
I took a deep breath and one final sip of the scotch. Not to steady my nerves this time, but to bolster my courage.
“…well then you’re just gonna have to pull that trigger. I don’t wanna live without having you and Neil and Annie in my family. Yes, all three of you. I want Annie to be my wife, no, i NEED Annie to be my wife. But I also need you to accept this. I need you to be OK with this and to accept me as your daughters husband. As your son-in-law, now that I think of it. I don’t wanna take Annie away from you, and I never will. Our houses are 10 minutes away from each other and I never want that to change. I never want you to feel like you can’t come over or you can’t have me over. I want the rest of the world to accept my love for Annie too, but you and Neil are the most important ones. You’re the ones whose acceptance I can’t live without.”
Silence descended on the room. After a tense minute or so, Kate broke it with “And if I can’t accept it? Or if Neil can’t?”
“Then you’ll have to shoot me” I calmly told her. “I don’t see any other way out of this. I can’t live without Annie. Not anymore.”
Another moment of silence settled between us. I stared at Kate’s face, trying to discern what she was thinking. Her brow was furrowed. Beyond that, I couldn’t notice anything else about her. There was no trembling in her lips or her hand or anything. She wasn’t being indecisive. She was formulating some kind of response to my ultimatum. And then her features changed. Her face lost any expression at all. She took a breath and told me “I’m sorry I have to do this then.”
I knew what she was going to do so I told her “I forgive you.”
For the first time since she’d sat down on my couch, Kate’s right arm, the one with the pistol in it, rose from the armrest. The Beretta was now aimed dead centre at my heart. She held it steady as she and I both prepared ourselves for what would come next. The seconds seemed to stretch into an eternity. I waited for my life to flash in front of my eyes. They say it does that right before you die.
Except it didn’t. All I saw was.Kate changing the angle of her hand so that the pistol was now aimed away from me as her thumb flicked the safety catch back on. With her other hand, she opened her purse and then dropped the gun back into it.
All I could do was sit there and blink in disbelief. After all this time, I was delivered from the mortal peril I’d been in.
“I had to know” she explained. “When you said you’d rather I shoot you then live without Annie, I had to be sure you meant it. And you did. You really love her that much. I gotta tell you Stanley, I’m really impressed. And happy for my daughter. Oh fuck it, I’m happy for me too. You’re gonna make a great son-in-law. But not yet. We’ve still got a ways to go before we can get there.”
I tried to articulate my gratitude to her, but I was too overcome with emotion. And also plastered. I was really, really plastered at that point. I tried to get up to give her a hug but as soon as my ass left the easy chair, the room picked that exact moment to start shifting. I lost my balance and fell right back down onto the chair
‘Easy there kiddo” Kate told me with equal parts amusement and concern in her voice. “I think you’re better off not trying to walk around for a while. You hid your relationship with Annie from me and this is my revenge on you. You’re gonna be messed up for the rest of the night and tomorrow you’re going to be hungover like a motherfucker. Ann I’m going to call you to make sure you’re suffering to my satisfaction. But once you’re past that, you and I are going to be OK again. And don’t worry. I’ll talk to Neil. Not right away, but I’m going to make him understand how you and Annie feel about each other. And how he’ll have to accept it. It won’t be easy. He still sees her as his little girl. But I’m going to soften him up, and then you’re going to talk to him man-to-man and ask his permission to court his daughter. It’s a little old-fashioned, but he’s just that kind of guy.”
“Yes” I realized. “That’s the way to do things. Except I won’t mention the sex. That’s a bad idea.”
“Yes, that’s probably a bad idea” Kate agreed with a chuckle.
“But why did you need to know so much about it?” I asked her, summoning my last reserves of clear-headed thought to do so. “Did it really show that I loved her more when I talked about what we’ve been doing on that train?”
“No” Kate admitted. “That was because, well… I guess because Annie is her mother’s daughter. Because Annie fell in love with an older man and so did I, once upon a time. I was pretty much the same age as Annie when it happened too. Of course I was in college then, not high school. But I fell in love with one of my teachers. Except that in college, we call them professors.”
“Really?” I asked. “Not about the professors thing, that makes sense. No, the falling in love part. I thought you and Neal said that you’d met in college. But he’s the same age as you, more or less.”
“A couple of months younger, actually” Kate clarified. “But we met late in my time at college. Before that, I was with Professor Brian. Not openly of course. A professor sleeping with one of his students would have caused a scandal and gotten him fired. So it was all done in secret, just like with you and Annie. And it was just as complicated. Not because I knew his parents or he knew mine. Because of his wife.”
“Ah” I said.
“Ah indeed” she agreed. “He was married and he was still in love with his wife. And she seemed like a nice lady. I met her a few times and as much as I wanted to hate her, I just couldn’t bring myself to. I loved him and I didn’t want to hurt her. Meanwhile, he loved the two of us and didn’t want to hurt either one. Of course it all ended in tears. But it took a good long while to get there.”
“What happened?” I asked her.
“Nothing” she answered. “That was the problem. We carried on our affair for a year and a half. He didn’t want to leave his wife and I wasn’t asking him to. He didn’t want to break up with me and I wasn’t asking him to do that either. At some point, i realized it couldn’t go on. He wasn’t going to do anything about it so I was the one who walked away. Didn’t feel too good about it, but it had to be done. But I won’t lie. I’m glad I had the affair with him. I learned things about myself. As to why I needed to know about your sex life with Annie, it was to see if she was learning what I learned. A man with some experience can introduce a younger woman to sex far better then a boy her age who has no idea what he’s doing.”
“Oh” I said. “I think I understand now.”
She continued with “I wasn’t a virgin when I started seeing Brian the way Annie was when she started seducing you. Or at least, that’s how you seem to describe it. But all kidding aside, I’d had a few experiences with boys before college and they weren’t that great. Being with Brian, well, it really put me on the right track. Made me realize how good it can be. He encouraged me to try different things and find what I was comfortable with. That’s why, after I was alone again and then I met Neil, I had a good idea of what I wanted from him in bed and he was more than happy to oblige. He wasn’t quite as experienced as I was, or as comfortable with sex at first. But he was more than happy to learn and get to where I was. And since he has, we’ve been crazy happy together.”
“Good for you” I said. “And at the risk of you pulling that gun on me again, I guess it’s pretty damn good for Neil to. So, speaking of Neil, how do you think he’s gonna take all of this?
“Not so great at first” Kate admitted. “That’s why you’re not gonna tell him anything until I have a chance to work on him. Get him used to the idea gradually. Let him accept the fact that you and Annie are in love and want to date each other. And then, after a while, we’ll open it up so that some other people know and can get used to the idea too. After that, you’ll prove to Neil that you’re serious about Annie by going to buy an engagement ring.”