>>
From then on, I started wearing boxers when I went to take a shower. I ran into Sara a couple more times, usually on the weekends, but it wasn't a problem since I wasn't exposing my crotch to some kid.
No, what happened was probably worse. One Saturday, I got back from jogging and saw Bill sitting at the table working on a paper, said hi and got a grunt in return, then went to my room and stripped down to my boxers so I could take a shower.
Preoccupied with the thought that I should probably be studying too since I had an exam on Monday, I didn't notice the bathroom door was latched and the light was on and just waltzed on in.
Sara there, dripping wet from the shower and reaching for the towel on the rack, frozen in surprise as I walked in. Following the natural male instinct, I glanced at her chest (flat, mosquito-bite nipples) and crotch (hairless and smooth), immediately felt dirty, and backed out of the bathroom and shut the door all in one motion.
I must have slammed the door hard enough to get Bill's attention, because he looked up from his laptop and asked what was up. Dammit.
"I, uh, just walked in on your sister."
"Ha! Serves her right for taking so long in there. I think she used up all the hot water. Don't worry about it, she walked to the shower naked all the time at home. She'll be fine."
He dismissed it with a wave and went back to writing his paper.
Huh. Well, that went better than expected. And I guess their family was as relaxed about clothing as mine was. Hell, I still showered with my sister until I was 10 and she was 16; she'd finally convinced both my parents that I was old enough I wouldn't slip and drown if I showered on my own, and I'd learned that puberty did interesting things to a girl's body.
I guess Bill and I were more alike than either of us had realized when we met at orientation and decided to room together.
I waited around in the living room until Sara had finished drying off and then went into her room and shut the door. Since she was wrapped in a towel, and she always left her towel in the bathroom like I did, I guess she still did walk to the shower naked.
It was a couple days later that I made my first step in the wrong direction. Well, no, that's not quite true. Everything could have gone just fine from that point on, if I hadn't been such an idiot. But that was the first step down a long road to... well, I won't skip ahead.
I'd already passed the first exam for both of my Tuesday-Thursday classes and this was the first day of class afterward; we wouldn't be getting our exams back yet, but we wouldn't be covering much in the way of new material either. Besides, I was already one chapter ahead in both classes.
So, naturally, I decided to skip class. I don't want to give the impression that this was a regular thing for me, it wasn't. But that day I decided I was going to stay home and reward myself for all the hard work I'd put into passing both exams; I was pretty sure I'd made at least a 90 on both.
By the time I rolled out of bed, Bill was already gone and his dishes in the sink. I didn't bother getting dressed, just a t-shirt and boxers, poured a bowl of cereal, and sat down on the couch to play some video games.
Not two minutes later, Sara wandered out of her room, hair a tangled mess and a sleepy expression on her face. Her panties were green and covered in cartoon frogs; did she only have the one nightshirt though?
"Could you turn it down? I'm trying to sleep."
"What are you doing home? Aren't you supposed to be in school?"
She paused and glanced to the left, then mumbled something about school being canceled today. Having been her age and having had younger siblings, I knew immediately she was lying, but it wasn't any of my business so I didn't call her on it. Still...
"Well, good. I'd hate it if you were skipping school so much. It's not good for you."
She shrugged and turned to go back to her room. I felt kind of sorry for her, since she always shut herself up in there, she didn't seem to have any friends at her new school, and her brother barely acknowledged her existence. Hell, he barely acknowledged my existence. I guess it was his way of coping with the loss of his parents. But still, I felt bad for her. So...
"You shouldn't sleep all day. It's not healthy. Why don't you join me? I've got plenty of two-player games. I'll even let you pick something."
There. Right there. That was it. Harmless on its own, but if I hadn't made that decision, if I hadn't acted on that emotion, none of this would have happened.
Who am I kidding.
She scratched her head, which left some of her hair standing up ridiculously, and glanced at the game consoles. Most of them were mine, and I'm proud to say it was a decent collection, but two were Bill's.
"Do you have Mario Kart?"
"Which one?"
"There's more than one?"
Ah. She was probably only familiar with the newest one.
"Have a seat. I'll set it up."
After I got the Wii set up and grabbed a pair of controllers, I turned and saw her sitting in the middle of the couch indian-style, rubbing her eyes with both hands and trying to wake up. The little frog directly over her crotch seemed to be staring at me accusingly, and I quickly averted my eyes and sat down next to her.
"You know how to play this one?"
She nodded and we started playing.
She kicked my ass, eight to three. By the last race, she was actually cackling triumphantly. Fucking blue shell. She wasn't just good at playing the game, it was obvious she actually had a talent for strategy, from the way she played. Bill seemed like a pretty intelligent guy; I guess his sister got the good genes too.
After that last humiliating defeat, Sara announced she was hungry and I remembered she hadn't eaten breakfast. Come to think of it, that bowl of cereal wasn't going to tide me over until lunch. So, I cooked us both some bacon, eggs, and fried toast, and we sat at the table eating. Sara seemed a little more animated than she usually was at breakfast; either she took a while to wake up in the morning, or she simply needed some human interaction. She hummed to herself as she ate, and I could feel the vibration as she rhythmically kicked the table leg with her bare feet.
"You wanna play something else?"
"Like what," she said, perking up as I broke the silence.
Yes, interaction was definitely what she needed. It wasn't healthy being secluded. For me or for her. So...
"I dunno. We got a lot of games. You pick."
She wandered over to the entertainment center and bent over to look at the stacks of games on the shelf. I stared at her butt, with the green panties conforming to it rather nicely. Another cartoon frog glared at me with condemnation.
Yeah. What the hell am I doing staring at an 11 year old's ass? It's completely inappropriate. She hasn't even hit puberty yet. But even if she had, it still wouldn't be appropriate. Hell, WHY am I staring at some kid's ass like that? Why do I care about what kind of panties she has on in the morning? What the hell is wrong with me? Am I that hard up, just because I've never had a girlfriend?
Still, she does have a pretty cute butt. Nice, shapely legs too. And... yeah, I'm burning in that special hell. The one they reserve for pedophiles and people who talk in the theater.
"How about this one?"
"Uh... I think that one might be a little too scary for you."
Doom 3 is definitely not for 11 year old girls.
"But it looks cool!"
Eh...
"Fine. But if you get too scared, we're playing something else."
The batteries in the other XBox controller were dead, and I couldn't find the charger, so she watched while I played. The longer I played, the closer she scooted toward me on the couch. At one point, she jumped at a surprise-scare when a zombie jumped out of a storage locker and grabbed onto me.
"Ok, I think we should play something different."
"No, it's ok! I'm not scared!"
"Yeah, but I'm tired of Doom. Why don't you pick something else out while I go pee real quick?"
She got up and began going through the stacks of games again while I went into the bathroom and tried to will my growing erection away before it became noticeable.
Trying NOT to get a hard-on never works, in case you're curious. It's natural to get a chubby when some cute girl is practically in your lap, but she's a freaking kid!
After a while, things went back to normal and I decided to put some pants on to hide anything that might... come up, in the future.
Pants freshly donned, I returned to the living room and discovered that I was apparently in for a session of Left 4 Dead. Did she genuinely like violent horror games, or was she just picking them because they were "forbidden" in her mind? Restricted only for adults, or at least for older guys and not scaredy little girls.
Whatever. I picked up the controller and she made me pick Francis because "he has a funny name". Then she urged me to shoot Bill because he had the same name as her brother.
I glanced at her, giggling and squirming around on the couch, and decided she was just being a silly kid and not... you know, someone with issues.
Issues. Heh. I'm one to talk.
Anyway, after an hour or so of zombie slaying, Bill finally came home. He looked pissed.
"Uh, hey dude. How'd your-"
I didn't even finished before he slammed his backpack full of heavy textbooks onto the table.
"Some asshole keyed my car! I saw it when I walked back from campus. And that's just the icing on the cake! The damned TA in my biology class plagiarized my paper and then when he got caught, claimed I had copied HIS paper! Took me an hour with the dean to get everything sorted out."
He unzipped his backpack and started pulling things out so he could do his homework, and then bit off another curse.
"And apparently I've just shattered my TI-83+ slamming it into the table. You know what, I'm not in the mood for this."
He then stormed off to his room and slammed the door.
I turned back to the game just in time for Zoe to startle the witch and get me killed. On the couch next to me, sitting indian-style and staring at her crossed ankles, Sara muttered, "He didn't use to be so grouchy all the time."
I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything. After a while though, I reached one around her and gave her a hug, just to be nice. After a moment's hesitation, she hugged me back, then went to her room and closed the door. I didn't see her again until dinner.
After dinner, I worked out for a few minutes, took my shower, stuck my head out to make sure Sara wasn't around, and zipped into my room, having lapsed into my habit of walking to the shower naked.
How is it that on the day I did practically nothing, I'm the most exhausted? I flopped onto the bed naked, not even bothering to pull on my boxers, pulled a sheet over me, and drifted off to sleep.
I woke up late, rolled out of bed, and got dressed. Awkwardly, because I had incredible morning wood. Bill had already left for class, but I ran into Sara as she was heading out the door.
"You're gonna be late," I told her.
"Nah, the bus has to wait for ten minutes. I'll make it- Oh!"
She yelped as she picked up her backpack and spilled the contents all over the floor, having left it unzipped and grabbed it by the bottom. As she bent over to pick her things up, her skirt hiked up and I saw that her panties were yellow with little sunflowers on them.
I am such a pervert.
I was probably blushing, feeling guilt at staring a little girl's ass, and as she put the last pencil into her backpack and stood up, she noticed me and asked, "what?"
"Nothing! Um... your skirt is hiked up."
She flushed slightly, making the light dusting of freckles on her cheeks disappear for a moment, and tugged her skirt back down.
"Thanks."
Feeling awkward, I saw her out the door, locked up, and walked off to my first class. I ended up being twenty minutes late, but I don't think anyone noticed me slip in.
Classes were boring. Professor Ben Stein kept droning the entire class (seriously, he has the same monotone and everything) and I nearly fell asleep, and my other classes were nothing spectacular either. At least my next paper wasn't due for another week, and I didn't have any other assignments for once.
I walked back to the apartment at a nice, leisurely pace, enjoying the cool weather, and noticed the bus letting the kids off. Sara was one of the last ones off the bus, spotted me, and waved, so I waved back and we walked back to the apartment together.
Without any prompting from me, she grabbed onto my hand as we strolled down the sidewalk and started telling me about how horrible her new school was, how the boys were jerks, the girls were mean and stupid, the teacher was boring, and basically how everything was the most terrible thing ever. She also had a bounce in her step, practically skipping, and was smiling the entire time, so I found the whole thing amusing and just went along with it, mmhmming and ahing and I seeing at the appropriate moments.
I didn't realize until much later that her cheerfulness was because of my company. I had a vague idea of how desperate she was for a friend, but didn't think much of it at the time.
Without even realizing it, I was hoist by my own petard. What started out innocent... Well, no single raindrop thinks it's responsible for the flood.
When we got to the apartment, Bill had already arrived, having driven his car (he was still pissed about it being keyed), and after a gruff acknowledgement of our arrival he disappeared into his room again.
The two of us settled at the table, I started reading the next assignment for my literature class: The Song of Roland. Holy shit, medieval poems are long. I was actually relieved when Sara asked for help with her math homework, and I scooted my chair to her side of the table and walked her through the problems she'd been assigned. When we finished, she was practically beaming.
"Thanks! It would have taken me waaaay longer if you hadn't helped!"
"No problem," I said, patting her on the head as I stood to fix dinner. "Any time you need a hand, I'd be glad to help."
Like I said, no single raindrop. But raindrops add up...