I didn’t want to know how she had been going to finish that...

It wasn’t a lot of blood, but we ended up stripping the bed and running cold water in the sink on the sheet to maybe prevent staining. Megan knew this trick which I had never heard of. “We don’t have any salt, but I think it will still work,” she commented.

I had no opinion. My usual participation in the laundry was tossing dirty clothes in a hamper and folding clean ones, mine and sometimes the towels or linen. I cleaned myself up with a washcloth, but I ended up feeling sticky inside, which was a very weird feeling.

“Does it still hurt?” Megan asked. “You have the oddest expression.” I could tell she was trying not to giggle.

“It didn’t actually hurt that much at all,” I said. “Sort of a pinch? But—uh—how do you clean yourself inside?”

“Oh, jeez,” she complained. She sighed. “Maybe I should let Aunt Louva give you that info….”

I glared at her. I didn’t really want to see Aunt Louva, Dr. Verre, again. “Just tell me!”

“Well, some women use douches to clean themselves, but Aunt Louva says that’s almost always unnecessary. Just clean yourself on the outside, and the inside cleans itself. You’re probably only imagining you feel sticky.” Megan looked apologetic.

“A douche? You mean like with a douchebag?”

This time she did giggle. She nodded, “A rubber one like a hot water bottle with a hose…and a, a nozzle, I guess you could call it.”

I could see my face in the bathroom mirror. I looked stricken, but Megan giggled again. “The other kind of douchebag is, you know, like a football player, and I don’t think you want one of them up there.”

I made a noise. “Don’t even joke about that, Megan!”

She laughed outright and stepped up close, putting her arms around my neck. “Is Petey a confirmed lesbian?” she asked, bumping against me.

I bent my head a bit to give her a quick peck on the lips. “Uh-huh,” I agreed. “I can’t even imagine….” I took a half-step back into the bedroom area, and Megan followed, bumping her hips against mine again. I retreated more until the bed was behind my knees. I sat, a bit awkwardly, not sure what I was doing or what Megan intended.

She pushed my legs apart, climbing me to sit in my open lap, our groins together, her arms still around my neck and now her legs wrapped around my hips. We squirmed to get a more comfortable position, then kissed forcefully, grinding together below the waist.

I held her against me with one arm while I played with a breast in my other hand. Heat seemed to radiate from both of us and all of our parts. We were sweating where our flesh touched.

“I think I love you, Petey, Petey, Pete,” she said while her teeth and tongue played with my ear lobe. “Do you love me?”

“I think so,” I agreed, grunting. “In the now, right now, I know I do.”

We ground together, her soft globe in my hand, my thumb on her nipple.

“Later is later,” she growled in my ear. “Love me now!”

* * *

We did several things we hadn’t tried before, with our hands, our faces, and the toys Megan had brought. When she used the vibrator to explore my cooch, she found a spot that made me squeal like a baby finding a puppy under the Christmas tree.

Megan laughed so hard she finally did fall off the bed, while I lay there, my fingers not quite inside me, finding that spot, again and again--and again, whistling between teeth clamped on a scream. I moaned. I thrashed around. I bumped my head on the wall. I crossed my eyes so hard, I heard roaring sounds in my ears.

Megan crawled back into bed and lay atop me, petting me, sucking on my nipples, kissing my lips, my ears, my eyes, while I rode an upside-down roller coaster until I lost my mind, hoarse from screaming. We lay tangled together, gasping, laughing, sweating, delirious with making love.

“Who knew you were a screamer, Petey, Pete, Pete?” Megan whispered.

“Oh, jeez,” I moaned. “Do you think anyone heard us?” Megan had had her own crescendo earlier, when I tried to play her like a kazoo. She had cackled like a hyena and brayed like a donkey, all while slapping and pushing on my head to get me to stop--and then she had protested when I did.

I laughed softly, remembering, she’d made me promise to start shaving my armpits, too. “If I gotta do it, you gotta do it!” she insisted.

“You don’t gotta!” I told her, but she wasn’t having that.

“Oh yes, I do! Sweaty armpit hair is gross!” I laughed because it was true, of course.

We talked some more, got up and turned off all the lights., then got back in bed and made love again, our skin soft and slippery. Sometime during this part, we fell asleep, tangled together like a pile of forgotten laundry.

* * *

I woke when I felt her get up. She hurried to the bathroom and returned quickly, covered in goosebumps from the cold. The heat in the room had apparently turned off automatically. She slid back in beside me. “Brr!” she said.

“You’re like ice,” I commented.

“Warm me up,” she pleaded.

“Gotta go,” I said. I slipped out of bed and found the bathroom, doing my business sitting down, of course. It had been two weeks now, and the world had changed again. “Megan,” I called softly.

“Petey?” she answered. I heard her moving around on the bed, rearranging the sheets for some warmth, maybe.

“Can it always be like this?” I asked softly. She didn’t answer at first because we both knew it couldn’t.

“We can try,” she offered.

I nodded, then used toilet paper to make sure I was dry. A bit of moonlight from the high window in the bathroom showed the whiteness of the soiled sheet lying in the shower, the stain a blacker shadow.

“Time is it?” I asked. When I stood, I felt cramps in my thighs.

“After four,” she answered, quickly enough that I knew she had already checked.

“Wanna get cleaned up and find something to eat?” I suggested.

I heard her stretch and sigh. “Yeah,” she agreed, making it a drawling, lazy sound. “Turn the light on.”

I did and just stood there in the bright bathroom doorway, watching her watching me. She squinted a bit, then sat up to get a better view. “You don’t look like…,” she began, but she stopped herself.

I didn’t want to know how she had been going to finish that, and maybe she didn’t either.

“That shower ain’t really big enough for two, is it?”

I shook my head.

“Take yours first, then. I know you’ll be quick.”

I pulled the sheet out of the shower, leaving it in a lump under the sink. The water got hot quickly, and I was soon soapy and melancholy with water running down my back. I hurt in places I had never hurt before, mostly a sweet tiredness, but my nipples felt raw and swollen. “Yikes,” I told myself, but I didn’t examine them for fear of what I might discover.

Getting dry with the meager supply of towels while leaving enough for Megan was a challenge, but she had got the heat to come back on, and I quickly found the extra set of clothes we’d brought, and got dressed while she made herself clean and dry.

I had one moment, staring at a fresh package of panties she had brought. Four bits of lace and satin in pastel colors that were ineffably Megan and feminine. But I put on my own underwear, postponing what I somehow knew would have to happen eventually. After I won some more ball games.

* * *

We left the motel still in darkness, the sun wouldn’t be up for hours yet. It almost seemed odd to be driving my own car again, after a week behind the wheel of Jake’s leviathan.

Megan had been quiet for the most part as we had loaded the car up. I looked across at her in the dimness of the dashboard lights. “Bebo’s?” I suggested, meaning an all-night local diner on the near end of town.

She shrugged. “Better than Perky’s,” she agreed. Besides, the chain diner was at the other end of town.

Bebo’s parking lot was empty except for a semi-rig idling near the back where a few cars of employees were parked. It was cold — October at nearly four thousand feet is like that. I pulled up the cowl on my jacket to cover my ears. We hurried inside, where a sign told us to find our own seats. We moved away from the drafts around the doors and big windows and found a booth in the pleasant warmth flowing from the kitchen.

A middle-aged waitress waved at us from the back. “Coffee?” she asked. “Making a fresh pot.”

“Yes, please,” we answered, sliding across the cracked vinyl upholstery. Menus were already on the table. Raisin bread French toast with whiskey syrup was a Bebo’s specialty, and I decided I would have mine with the ham steak and scrambled eggs. Megan put her menu down, too, just as the waitress approached with a steaming glass pot and two cups.

“You girls out late or up early?” she asked cheerfully as she put down the cups in front of us.