Summer. I was home again, so I called Laura. She picked me up in her old beat up volvo station wagon. In high school we spent our free time together. Best friends, each having stupid high school summer jobs, and lots of free time. She was old and had the car. She went to college first, a girls college in california called Mills. Summers she'd return and we'd pick up where we'd left off, two high school friends packing towels to the river.
To sit on the river back, to soak up the sun, our skin glimmering and warm. Bring a bag of chips, sun screen, and a flask she'd brought back from college. These were slow honey golden afternoons, with dragon flies hanging in the air, sweat salty on our upper lips. Wear cut-offs and bikini tops. Boys with coolers of beer willing to share. And always, always cheap sunglasses from whatever gas station along the way.
We loved to lay out in the buff. Sometimes boys would drift past on rafts holding beers aloft, and cheer and hoot. Or sometimes it was two hippie boys in a canoe with a guitar, puffing reefer, and giving us a slow nod. This was the late 70s, and people spent a lot more time nude, and no one seemed to care.
When we'd get hot, we'd scramble to the rock outcropping and dive into the swimming hole. The current spun a slow back turn eddie here, but if you swam out into the middle of the river, the current would pull you downstream and then spit you back out on the sandy beach where our towels awaited.
The first summer back from college, I called her, and so we returned to the river. Everything happened as usual, and we worked up a good buzz from her flask of gin. But this afternoon seemed sexually charged. I thought I caught her staring at my breasts, or making a point to bed over and linger as she unstrapped her sandals. She talked of a new love in her life, a girlfriend she'd met at school and how she was technically a virgin still, because she'd never been with a man. But I'm not a virgin in my heart, she said.
We were pretty drunk by the time we scampered up the rocks to jump. She climbed in front of me, seemingly offering a good view of her thatch of dark curls.
We jumped and treaded water in the swimming hole. We moved, circling around each other, closer and closer. And then, touching, naked in the water, bumping knees and elbows as we slowly churned our arms and kicked. We kissed. I long, wet, passionate kiss. All the years of high school we had developed a friendship, all the care we had for each other, but no way to express it. It all happened, suddenly, and even though unexpectedly, it was completely unavoidable. It had to happen. we kissed and the river current pulled us downstream, and when we broke our lip embrace, we were back at the towels.
We climbed out, dripping, shivering, and weak in the knees. I looked at Laura with eyes that asked, is it over? She looked back with a sparkle in her eyes that said, do you want it to be over?
I nodded. She took my hand and we sang onto the towels. Our lips met again, and then her hands began to move over my body, and without thinking, my hands began to explore her body. Her lips caressed my neck, my breasts, and gentle blew her warm breath on my river-pinched nipples. Then I felt her finger wiggle into me. I gasped, shocked. My breath escaped me. I looked around nervously, what if boys came in a raft, or a fisherman? She pushed deeper. I was wet and reeling from her touch. I didn't want her to stop. Then her lips moved down my belly. And down. More nervous, I tensed. "Wait..." I said, "not here..."
"Relax," she said. "Let me."
So I did. And her mouth moved to my curls, parted them with her fingers, and her warm wet tongue touched my skin. It was the softest sensation I'd ever felt. I melted. I closed my eyes, and the sun on my eyelids made everything orange. I could her the river lapping at the bank, and her low grunts and she licked and slurped my juices from my inner folds. And then it began, the low, slow orgasm. Lifting like water, making me weightless and buoyant. And I came. And came and came.
When it was over, Laura looked at me and winked as she wiped her mouth. "Yummy, you taste like a river."
Afterwards, I tried on her. I don't know what I was doing, and I don't think I gave her an orgasm. But she told me it felt wonderful, and that it gets better with practice and time. "You still have three years of college," she said.
At school, I met boys, and had boyfriends, some serious, some not. It's been decades now, and I'm married. I never got together with Laura again. She got a summer job, or internship, or something the next year and didn't come back home. We didn't have email or facebook then, and it was easy to just fall out of touch. I think Laura wanted it that way. She just stopped calling, stopped answering letters. I don't know why. I was my first broken heart. And my first sexual experience. I know what she meant by losing her virginity in her heart.
That afternoon was when I lost mine.
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