March 1992

She was walking home from school with her friend Addy, who lived across the street and down a few houses from her. The pair turned onto their street and the girls said their goodbyes. It was Friday, finally, and they wouldn’t see each other until Monday – Addy was out of town for the weekend, she was visiting her father in Bloomington.

Jennifer walked up the street to her house, which was at the end. He sidled out, seemingly from nowhere, a knowing and self-satisfied grin on his face. Jennifer rolled her eyes and continued walking.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said, following her. “Your mom told you to stay away from me again, hasn’t she?” he asked, but Jennifer kept on walking, yet she couldn’t help a smile spreading across her face. He laughed at her expression, strode in front of her and stopped, placing his arms on her shoulders. “Well?”

“Well what?” she asked.

“Why are you being careful of me?” he questioned earnestly.

“I’ve been busy with school and sports,” she said.

“You’re lying.”

“Uh-uh,” Jennifer shook her head and he looked at her oddly, cocking a dark eyebrow. Jennifer smiled more and burst out laughing.

“I knew it,” he replied.

“Excuse me, it’s a half-truth. I have been busy with school and sports. But, my mom,” she sighed.

“The mother,” he said evenly, but Jennifer knew her mother and he did not get along. When they were younger it was fine, but now Nancy was concerned with their closeness and was urging her daughter to make friends. Hang out with people other than him.

They continued walking up the street to Jennifer’s house, at the end of the cul-de-sac. They lived next door to each other, and had all of Jennifer’s life. They made instant friends, and had been inseparable until high school. They’d gone to the same elementary and middle school but when it came to high school, Nancy and Daniel Bouvier, sent their daughter to St Ambrose, a private school. A very fancy private school. A very prestigious private school.

“What did she say this time?” he asked.

“Same old, same old. It’s not fitting for a girl of my dignity to be seen milling around the streets and loitering in town with someone like you. People will talk, and before I know it I’ll have a reputation,” explained Jennifer.

He scoffed. “And you follow her advice?”

“She’s my mother, what am I supposed to do?”

“Tell her to piss off and shove it up her ass,” he replied.

“Mr Anderson, I shall tell your father that you used such language in the presence of a lady,” Jennifer said in a fake posh voice.

“You sound like your mother,” he laughed. “But seriously, why don’t you?” he asked when they had calmed down.

“I need her.”

“For what?” he asked.

“She’s my mom, I can’t just turn my back on her. And besides, she has the food and money,” Jennifer laughed. “Until I go to college I need her, after that I can tell her to shove it, except maybe not in those words,” she explained. He looked forlorn and he lowered his head.

“Oh right, I forgot that you’re abandoning me in less than a year,” he said meekly.

“I’m not abandoning you,” Jennifer said. They stopped near her house, the driveway empty, which meant that both her parents were still at work- usually on Friday’s they came home early. “Why don’t you come with me?” she suggested, half serious, half joking.

“Oh, yeah right, can you imagine me in the big city? I don’t even like travelling into Chicago, it’d be worse in Boston. And what would I do? Big city like that, all the learned and cultured people, I’d get laughed out of any job interview I went to.”

“You’re at the community college, you could get a job. Or transfer your study,” suggested Jennifer. He looked down guiltily and scuffed the ground with the tip of his well-worn shoe.

“I dropped out,” he mumbled, barely audible.

“Pardon?” Jennifer asked, though she had heard him the first time, she just couldn’t believe it.

“I dropped out,” he repeated.

“Ric!” she exclaimed. “You were doing so well. Why did you leave?”

“It ate into too much of my jamming time,” he admitted. Ric was the bass player for a band he had formed with his buddies during high school. Jennifer had been there for them since day one, she was their biggest fan. Everyone else told him that it was all a crappy dream and that it would never work out, but Jennifer stood by them, and he appreciated that.

“And you prioritized your band ahead of a possible job?” she asked sarcastically. Ric had the good grace to look sheepish. “So what are you doing now?”

“Uncle Reg has got me a job at the tyre store but I get Friday afternoons, Saturdays and Sundays off, so I can focus on the band,” beamed Ric.

“So it all works out then,” stated Jennifer. She turned to leave to walk up the path to the house.

“We’re playing at Scorpio tomorrow night, you wanna come and see us?” he asked, shouting as the distance between them increased. Jennifer stopped walking and stood on the spot.

“I’m under 21, and so are you.”

“I’m 21 in three weeks baby,” Ric pumped his fist triumphantly up in the air. “Please?” he asked. “You’ve been to our other gigs and not been caught.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she replied, turning once more to leave. Ric stayed where he was, watching Jennifer walk away.

“I love you,” he shouted.

“Goodnight, Ric,” she shouted back.

Richard Anderson, or Ric as he was more commonly known, had been best friends with Jennifer Bouvier since they were both young, despite the fact that he was two and half years older than she. They had attended the same elementary school and middle school, but when it came high school Jennifer had been packed off to St Ambrose, a snobby private school, though her parents could well afford it. Daniel Bouvier was a doctor and her mother Nancy was a bookkeeper.

They lived in a cul-de-sac that was halfway between Oak Brook and Downers Grove. From the cul-de-sac it was a six minute drive to both destinations. Jennifer’s parents both worked in Oak Brook, an affluent village where the rich tended to mingle, and Jennifer attended school there. Ric on the other hand, had been sent to DuPage High School, where at seventeen he had dropped out. He wasted two years of his life, in and out of jobs, trying to establish his band and make a name for himself in the music scene, but this had been mostly unsuccessful, apart from a few auditions he had been too.

At the gentle insistence of Jennifer, he had enrolled in DuPage Community College, taking up a basic mechanics course, but now he had dropped out to focus on the band once more. His Uncle Reginald had offered him a job at the tyre store he owned in the heart of Downers. Things always seemed to work out for Ric – he was very resourceful and could just make things work.

He had been in love with Jennifer for nearly a year now. As children, he had always told her that he loved her, and he had, but that had been a sort of constant, steady love that comes with familiarity, like the love between a brother and sister, the unquestioned love that’s just there. This love he had now was new and passionate, as most first loves are. He had been confused when he had seen her, that day he realized he was in love with her.

She had been getting ready to go the prom with her date Billy Peterson, a rich kid whose father worked with Daniel Bouvier. He had gone over to see Jennifer that evening, and when he saw her standing there in front of the mirror, doing the finishing touches, looking absolutely stunning in her indigo gown, her dark brown hair pinned on top of her head, it was if he was seeing her properly for the first time. Before he hadn’t noticed her, but now he noticed her, and it was confusing.

She was so much like a sister to him, but now he was having all these lustful thoughts and he loved it, yet he hated himself afterwards. Part of it was knowing that she could never truly be his. Her mother, where once she had accepted him and liked the fact they were best friends, she now only just tolerated him and her disapproval was very clear. The look in her dark eyes every time she saw them together said it all. ‘Stay away from my daughter’ Nancy Bouvier’s face read.

He was tall, 5’10, sooty black curls that were now cut shorter and closer cropped to his head and green eyes with gold flecks. His nose had once been straight up and down – a Roman nose, but when he was fifteen he got whacked in the face with a wooden baseball bat and broken his nose, and now it was curved out of place slightly at the bridge and had a bump on it. He had been worried that he would lose his looks; he always was very conceited, but it was quite the opposite, it added to the overall look, which was strong and masculine with just a hint of pretty boy.

He had no problems getting girls. He had been initiated into the pleasures of sex on his sixteenth birthday by a much more experienced friend of his sister’s, and ever since then he’d had a healthy appetite. So one of his favourite pastimes was chasing tail. Of course, being in a band helped. Chicks always ate that up. They always liked to hang around because, in the event that the band made it big, they could tell everyone that “I was there from the beginning.” Except there was only one girl who had been there from the beginning – sweet little Jennifer Bouvier.

On Saturday, she was at Ric’s house, listening to the band jam and practice before their gig later on that evening. She always liked watching the boys rehearse and fine tune their material, discussing how to play certain parts and what songs should be in their set list. A lot of their material was covers, but there was also a few original compositions in there. One of their most popular songs, for people who had been following the band for the last two years, was ‘Iron Lung’ a comedic, spoof song about smoking and drug use.

At midday the band packed up, having finished practice and being very happy with how everything sounded, and the new songs they’d been working on. Their gear was stacked into the pickup truck and taken to Scorpio in anticipation of the gig later on.

“What’d you think?” Ric asked Jennifer. She jumped down from her seat on one of the disused amps in the garage and followed Ric into the main part of the house.

“I thought it was great. You have such good chemistry,” she answered.

Ric knew that she was telling the truth and that she wasn’t exaggerating for his benefit. For the duration of the time he had known her, a lie nor a swear word had ever passed her pretty little mouth. It was as if she was incapable of foul speech or even foul thoughts. He knew it had to do with her upbringing. Her parents both came from money and had brought Jennifer up to be ‘the perfect lady’. Ric used to think of the Bouvier’s household as a finishing school, and Nancy was the head matron.

Jennifer followed Ric through the living room and into the small kitchen, where he opened the fridge and got out a carton of orange juice and the doings for a sandwich. He made them each some lunch and they lounged around the Anderson family home for the afternoon, watching television and being lazy.

Ric, his older sister Deidre, and their father Richard had moved into the cul-de-sac in 1973, when Ric was a baby. His mother Meg had died when he was a new-born and they family had relocated from inner city Chicago to the suburbs. Back then, the cul-de-sac hadn’t been as exclusive as it now was, and the family of three had made fast friends with some of the other families on the block. But this soon changed when the rich and wealthy started moving into the area, and Richard and his young family soon found themselves snubbed because of their financial situation.

It slowly got worse and they were shunned further when in 1984, sixteen-year-old Deidre found herself pregnant outside of wedlock – quite the scandal in a tight-knit community such as the cul-de-sac. Because his mother had died when he was young, Ric never had that maternal relationship and he didn’t fully understand Jennifer’s relationship with her mother.

Nancy could be very harsh on Jennifer and was constantly berating her, and Jennifer was constantly at the mercy of the family name and was told not to sully it and that she had a duty to uphold it. Ric didn’t know why she didn’t up and leave, and tell her mother to shove it, but Jennifer’s unwavering loyalty was something that he admired and indeed loved about her.

“So, can you make it tonight?” Ric asked.

“But I’ve just seen you play now,” replied Jennifer.

“C’mon Jenn, you have to be there tonight, please?”

“My mom’s cracking down really hard at the moment. I don’t know if I can,” said Jennifer.

“Binny’s going,” Ric stated. Binny was a girl that Jennifer knew from her relationship to the band. Binny was quite notorious on the Chicago music scene, and she liked to hang around all the up and coming bands and the give them ‘the experience’ which meant sex and alcohol and sometimes drugs. Jennifer was acquainted with Binny because of her relationship to the band. She supposed that she and Binny were friends, though they had very different perspectives on life.

“Binny goes to all your gigs.”

“Please?” he asked.

“Fine,” Jennifer replied.

“Thank you,” Ric smiled. Jennifer watched him clean the kitchen up, packing away all the dishes and leftovers from lunch.

“Do you sleep with Binny?” she asked. Ric paused and stared into her dainty blue gaze, the colour of forget-me-nots. “You have, haven’t you?” she pressed.

“Once,” he admitted.

“And?”

“And what?” he rebuked.

“Did you enjoy making love to her?” asked Jennifer. She felt foolish and sheepish, but also very curious about this side of things. Part of her was also jealous that another girl had had Ric’s attentions at one point.

“Sex is sex. You don’t have to love someone to sleep with them. Making love is… well it’s different,” Ric shrugged.

“So it was just sex then?”

“Yes. Binny was just sex. She was just there at the time, so we did it. I suppose you disprove of all this? You think differently of me now?” he questioned.

“No. I don’t think differently of you, and I never could,” she said.

The pair lazed around the house for another hour or so before Jennifer had to get going.

“So you’ll be there tonight?” Ric pressed as he walked her out the front door and to her house, which he always did, even though they lived less than a hundred yards from each other.

“I’ll try my best,” Jennifer replied, smiling at Ric. Scorpio, the club that Ric and his band were playing at that night, was in Downers Grove which was a less than ten minute walk.

From the house, Ric could see Nancy Bouvier watching her daughter out the large bay window in the living room. “We have an audience,” he commented matter-of-factly.

“We always have an audience.”

“Should we start hugging and kissing? That’d really give her something to complain about,” Ric said. Jennifer laughed, thinking this was all a joke, yet for Ric it wasn’t.

“Goodbye. I’ll see you later,” she replied, turning and walking to her house.

“I love you,” shouted Ric.

At ten o’clock Ric and his band Sledgehammer took the stage at Scorpio, a little dive bar in downtown Downers Grove. The band had rather a good following, and as Ric tuned his bass and the rest of the band got ready, he looked out at the sea of perhaps one hundred faces and saw a lot of the regulars there.

Binny was of course in attendance, she was sitting at the bar drinking her usual choice drink of vodka and cranberry. Ric remembered what it had been like to kiss Binny. She tasted of vodka and cranberry, but it was mixed with cigarettes and something that was slightly salty he couldn’t quite pick up. He found out later that before sleeping with him, she had sucked off some random in the toilet stall. Binny was a classy kind of girl.

He searched around for Jennifer but he didn’t see her and his heart sank. He imagined that her mother had found out and was now keeping Jennifer hostage in the house. But as those first notes came from his bass guitar, he saw her. She pushed her way to the front and stood at the side of the small stage, smiling up at Ric.

Her dark hair was brushed out and hung half way down her back and she was wearing a tight pink t-shirt that was about two sizes too small – her stomach was on display, and a black skirt. She never ever wore clothes like this and he imagined that she had dressed very carefully in a bid to fit in with the ‘cool club crowd’, but she stood out, in a good way.

The band ran through their set, mostly old covers: The Doors, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young and Blondie, but some of their own material was thrown into the mix. When the opening bass chords for ‘Iron Lung’ were played, the crowd screamed the house down. It was their most popular and well known song.

Slowly, Ric’s hard work was starting to pay off and Sledgehammer was starting to be recognized. All those long hours of public relations work, walking up and down town, sticking flyers everywhere and playing club gigs was starting to come together, and he had no doubt that soon the band would be noticed by a talent scout.

As the set came to a close, Ric sauntered up to the microphone and spoke. “This next song is dedicated to my girl Jennifer.” He looked down at her smiled fondly. The delicate chords came over the speakers as the band broke into a raw, laid-back version of ‘This must be the place’ by Talking Heads, one of Jennifer’s favourite songs.

Ric’s lazy, crooner vocals blasted out of the microphone. He looked so effortlessly cool standing up there, his sooty black curls matted with sweat, wearing leather pants, boots and a loose, white cavalier shirt. Jennifer’s heart soared, her eyes not leaving his as he sang the song directly to her. He was certain that he could see her dainty blue eyes glistening with tears.

The song came to a close, and Jennifer felt as if time had stood still. She didn’t know what came over her, or what possessed her to do it, but she got up on that stage and stood next to Ric, took his face in her hands and kissed him.

Jennifer disappeared into the shadows as the band packed everything up and collected their payment from the owner of the bar. All the gear was packed into Sammy’s pickup truck.

“Hey Ricky,” yelled Bobby, sitting on the back of the pickup truck, a bottle of beer in each hand. Binny was next to him, her top pulled up and her tits flopped out. “We’re going to RJ’s, wanna come?”

“No thanks,” Ric replied. He was standing next to Jennifer outside the club, ready to walk home.

“Your loss,” Bobby said. The truck pulled away and drove off in the direction of RJ’s a crappy little hole-in-wall club, filthier than Scorpio, where the biker gangs liked to hide out from police.

They walked home mostly in silence, neither of them saying anything. There was nothing to say. Ric’s song and Jennifer’s kiss had said everything.

“Can I come back to yours?” she asked Ric as they turned into the cul-de-sac. “I don’t really feel like being home right now. Mom was on high alert today and it was hard enough to sneak out. I think I’m going to wait a while before sneaking back in.” Jennifer laughed but it was humorless.

“Sure,” said Ric. He unlocked the door, flicked the lights on and went upstairs to his bedroom, Jennifer following on behind. His father wasn’t home, he had just started a new job as a security guard and he was on the night-shift.

His room was surprisingly tidy that night. His room was never messy, messy, but there was always balled up pieces of paper, overflowing ashtrays and the odd pornographic magazine lying around, but Jennifer noticed that everything had been cleaned up. He had even changed his bed sheets.

Jennifer sat down on the edge of the bed while Ric stayed standing. It was as if he wanted to say something to her but every time he started, he would think on it and close his mouth. Several times he did this. He picked up his acoustic bass and idly strummed.

“Can I sing you something I wrote?” he asked.

“Of course,” replied Jennifer. He sat down next to her on the bed and she shuffled over to accommodate.

Ric started gently strumming, and after a brief intro he sang. “His feelings for the girl bottled up… thoughts orbiting his mind. Heavy of heart as he opens the door. The house is empty, he is empty… fills his night thinking of her, longing for her. He gets carried away. His life in shreds, wasted away.”

Jennifer was at a loss for words. His low, crooner voice was heavy and filled with pent up feelings. “When you sing, you can hear the emotion,” she admitted. “Your voice is filled with sadness and angst.”

Ric smiled weakly. He wanted to sing more in the band, but Bobby the lead singer, wouldn’t let him. They had a love/hate relationship. One minute they could be best buddies and everything was fine between them and then the next minute they could be beating the crap out of each other. Though Bobby knew that Ric was the best man for the job, and Ric knew that Bobby was the best singer for the job.

“Who is this girl you sing of?” she asked Ric. She saw him grimace in the dim light of a nearly dead bulb that was starting to flash and flicker. Jennifer moved closer to him, her hand on his shoulder. “Unburden your heart,” she said in a soft voice. Ric leaned in and kissed her, tentatively at first, but then when she reciprocated he became more daring.

She knew it was wrong, and every inch of her body, every fiber of being was telling her not to do this. In her mind, she could hear her mother’s voice lecturing her on the promise of virtue and how she was to keep it until she was married, but she threw this aside. Her mind grew weaker as the desire in her body grew stronger.

Ric, with the gentle force of his body, pushed her back on the bed so she was underneath him. She ran her hands up underneath his shirt and he took it off. His chest was covered lightly in black fuzz and his body was lean; in the first flush of youth. She looked into his green eyes with the gold flecks and saw that the pupils were large with arousal. Reflected in his gaze she saw her own desire, but also her innocence. Had it been so noticeable before?

Ric leaned back on his knees, his growing arousal starting to strain against his leather pants. Thankfully Jennifer hadn’t noticed yet, and leather was slightly more forgiving than jeans, though for how much longer he didn’t know. She sat up with him and removed her tiny pink t-shirt. Her breasts were round and high and bigger than a handful, her bra only just containing them. She felt behind her and undid the clasps, letting the bra fall away.

The skin of her breasts was flushed and her nipples were rosy pink. Jennifer looked down at them and then up at Ric, who was staring. He noticed that on her right breast she had two little dark freckles around the areola. He gently traced down them with the pad of his thumb and at first she flinched and shied away from his touch. Ric smiled at her reassuringly and the second time round she let him touch her. Her nipples went stiff at his touch and she looked away, embarrassed.

Ric got up off the bed and stood, kicking his boots off and then unzipping his leather pants. He wasn’t wearing underwear that day, in fact, he hardly ever did. He stood there naked but Jennifer couldn’t look at him, she couldn’t bring herself to take in his youthful, clean-cut physique. He kneeled back on the bed next to her, took her hand and guided it to him.

It was only semi-hard, but underneath Jennifer’s timid touch it started to harden. She looked up at him with her beautiful blue eyes for his approval and he gave a single nod of the head. In the dim light he could see that her blue eyes had rays of gray and white running through them. Jennifer enclosed her hand around his dick and she heard a sigh catch in his throat. Ric gently guided her hand up and down, his hand over hers, showing her what to do.

He stopped her, after a few minutes of gentle and hesitant stroking. Her eyes were shy and innocent yet her movements were bold as she slipped her skirt off, Ric helping her pull it down and then casting it aside. Her underwear was a plain white pair with a little yellow rose in the center. As Ric went to pull them off, her mind was screaming at her to stop, still telling her that this was wrong and that they shouldn’t, but she found that she had lost control of her body. She wasn’t aware of her hands moving with his, helping him remove her underwear.

She lay back down on the bed as he admired her body. Here was a girl on the cusp of womanhood. Her body changing from adolescent to woman. He hadn’t imagined her to be so womanly, in his mind she was a young girl, like the girl he had always known and not the woman she had become. Here now he saw that she was a Goddess. She still retained a little childhood chubbiness, but she was no longer straight up and down, she had womanly curves.

He leaned over her and scanned her body. She was gorgeous. Her dark pubic hair was trimmed and tidily kept, and her nipples were taut little peaks. Her skin was flushed. He positioned himself over her, so that he was laying just at her entrance and when he looked into her eyes he expected to see resistance, but there was none. She wanted this as much as he did.

Part of him wanted to keep her as she was. The big brother in him was telling him to stop, to keep her pure and innocent, but that big brother voice was shut out and overridden by his body’s desire to possess this girl. She would be his. He leaned down and kissed her, and as he did he pushed into her. It was a short, sharp stabbing pain, but it was bearable as Jennifer braced herself through it.

Ric felt her tense underneath him. “Hush,” he whispered as he moved inside her. “Hush my baby.”

He thrust his hips gently, trying not to hurt her. He felt her start to relax once more and she clutched at him, trying to draw him nearer to her. It’s not so bad, she thought. In fact, she was starting to enjoy it. She liked the way Ric’s muscles on his back tensed and moved in the shadowy light, she liked the way he was holding her to him, as if he was scared that she would disappear. Ric heard a muffled sigh and Jennifer’s breathing catch. He increased the depth and the speed. He groaned.

He moved inside her. She felt so good. He raised his head and placed his forehead against hers. Their noses were touching, their faces mere inches apart. Jennifer opened her eyes and saw the look of desire in Ric’s green gaze and the ever changing expression on his face. Her heavy breathing and panting mixed in with his moans and soon they found a rhythm together, both of them moving in time to their own dance.

He kissed her gently while he thrusted, gaining speed and depth. His little harpy was coming to life, moving underneath him and sighing. Their bodies moved together, both of them breaking out in a sweat. He put his head in the space between her neck and the pillow and he could feel the softness of her dark brown hair and he caught the scent of it- wildflowers. Ric knew he wouldn’t last much longer – he felt the familiar warmth start to drown him.

He sped up, thrusted half a dozen more times, and then at the last possible moment he pulled out, moaned loudly and finished, some of it on her thigh, most of it on the sheet between her legs. In the darkness, Jennifer could hear his labored breathing.

“Ric?” she asked cautiously. She tried to feel around for him and became worried when she couldn’t find him. But then he was next to her once more, the warmth of his body enveloping her. He lay beside her and pulled her into him. She could hear the erratic thud, thud of his heart. “All those times you told me you loved me, you meant it didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yes. I think I always did love you, I just didn’t realize it.”

The two of them lay there until the Illinois sun started to break the horizon, the dim smoky blue light streaming through the window. Neither of them slept that night, and neither of them said anything more. What was there to say?

Jennifer slid out of bed and started to get dressed, she was suddenly very shy of her nakedness. She couldn’t meet Ric’s tender green gaze. And then she saw the stain on the bed sheet, on the space she had vacated –blood mixed in with something else. She realized it was his seed. Millions of thoughts were rushing around her head. Would her mother know that something was different about her? Was it obvious in her eyes that she was no longer a virgin? Would her parents be able to detect a loss of maidenhead?

“Will you come back to me?” Ric asked, sitting up in bed, the early morning light dancing on his chest.

“I’ll try to,” she said quietly. “Maybe not today or tomorrow, but after school perhaps.” Jennifer smiled weakly at him.

“It gets better,” Ric said. “I promise.”

Author's Note: Check out my other stories, the Jeff and Brianne series, Lesbifriends, Lesbinaughty, The Holiday, Revenge Affair, Our Little Secret, Love Nest and Paradise Lost & Found.