Ice Fishing With the Twins
Lubrican
Ice Fishing with the Twins
by Robert Lubrican
Bookapy Edition
Copyright 2018 Robert Lubrican
Second edition edited 2023
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Table of Contents
Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six |
Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve
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Chapter One
People say that those of us who live in Minnesota must be crazy, what with how cold it gets in the winter and all the ice and snow that has to be dealt with. I get that. Most of those people think of it in the context of their own lives. Like, say you work at an office somewhere in the city but you live in the suburbs, so your commute is an hour or so. If you live that way in Minnesota, getting to the office by eight would mean you have to get up at four, get dressed for shoveling the new accumulation of snow off the driveway, getting the car started and, if you don't have a garage, getting it cleaned off, too.
Then there's that hour of commute which, with all the new-fallen snow, means it's now at least two hours, assuming some idiot doesn't cause a major pileup that closes the road, which means you have to find an alternative route that might not have been plowed yet.
So I get it.
But those people don't get to go ice fishing. At least not unless they plan a major road trip that might take a day or more, just to get there.
I, on the other hand, can toss the camping gear into my truck and, three hours later, be set up and fishing.
"So," you say, "what if I don't like ice fishing?"
Well, then, this story isn't going to be interesting to you, because it's about ice fishing.
Actually, it's about a whole lot more than ice fishing, but it was ice fishing that made it all happen so, there you go.
As has already been established, I love ice fishing. Other people want to lie on hot sand under the burning rays of the sun at the ocean, or frolic in a nice clean swimming pool, or play softball or golf or any of a million other pursuits people use their free time to enjoy.
Me? I'd rather lie on an air mattress in a snug tent, reading a good book, with a fishing line in the circle in the ice I just cut out, waiting for a fish to take the bait.
I don't care what kind of fish, be it Walleye, Pike, Sauger, Perch, Bass, Muskie, or Crappie. They all taste great cooked in a cast iron skillet with a portion of fried potatoes and maybe some baked beans and cornbread. And don't believe that crap that Pike are too boney to clean and prepare.
My grandpa taught me the secret of dealing with that.
"What," you ask, "if you get bored and fall asleep and a fish takes your bait?"
Obviously, you're not an ice fisherman. If you were, you'd know how that works. Suffice it to say that we wake up. And, if there's no bite during a nap, then it's just a nap.
Catching fish is the main idea, of course. Otherwise you could just pitch a tent in your back yard and take a nap out there, but that would be ridiculous and even someone who can't spell "ice fisherman" would know that.
But the solitude, out on the ice, can be healing. You have time to think and it's practically as comfortable as being home. The air is crisp and clean. Your neighbors, if you have any, are usually polite and quiet. The ice talks to you, making little noises as it expands and contracts, or sounds made by other people are conveyed through it. And if your neighbors turn out to be rowdy college kids, you can unpin the tent from the ice and move away from them to a new spot. And all this happens on a huge expanse of water ... that you can walk around on.
In my case there's another reason I go as often as I can. I met my wife on the ice. She was seventeen and I was a year older. We went to the same school but didn't know each other. Her family set up not far from us and when they needed something - I can't remember what - they sent her over to ask us if we had it. She was bundled up, of course. All I could see was her face. But one look in those eyes and I was hooked like ... well, a fish.
I asked her out and the rest is history. We were crazy for each other. My first year at college, while she was still a senior in high school, about killed me, but then we could be together again. We finished college together and I started my own business while she taught third grade. Two years later we decided to have a baby and a month into trying that she got sick.
It was a glioblastoma in a part of the brain they couldn't operate on. It didn't matter that she was ten years younger than the "usual" victim of that kind of cancer. It didn't matter that she had none of the genetic issues that sometimes cause a tumor like that. Nothing mattered. It was aggressive and three months later I buried her next to her mother in a plot somebody in their family had bought seventy-odd years before. When you're in your late twenties, you don't think about things like having a burial plot ready to go, should you need one.
She went ice fishing with me all the time. It was her passion, too. To be honest, sharing a sleeping bag on the ice was our passion. The fishing was just frosting on the cake. We spent literally hours and hours, naked, inside two zipped-together bags, paying attention to each other instead of the lines in the water.
My last ice fishing trip with her was five years ago. Being on the ice without her isn't as painful now as it used to be. Sometimes I think about her and sometimes I don't. Either way, it's good.
Serendipity, chance, or fate, or whatever you want to call it, is a wild and crazy thing. It was what brought Cathy and me together before we fell in love and got married. It's probably what got her a job in Thief River Falls, which was only an hour from her dad and my family. There were literally dozens of places to go fishing there. It was good for us. Really good. Until it wasn't so good anymore and I had to bury her. Well … what was in that casket in that grave plot wasn't Cathy but I marked the time she graced the world by putting what she left behind, there.
So I stayed in Thief River Falls. Cathy wasn't there, but memories of her were. Before she left she told me to find love again, but I hadn't tried that, yet. Maybe one day it would be time. It wasn't, yet, though.
It turned out serendipity wasn't finished with me yet. The house next to mine was owned by a man I'd never met. It was a rental, and there had been several tenants come and go. Fate was at work again when it became vacant and was needed by a gold star widow with twin girls who was trying to pick up the pieces of her life while I was trying to pick up the pieces of my own.
Gloria moved into the house next door barely four months after I lost Cathy. Her twins were ten. Her husband had been a crew chief on one of those helicopters that have two rotors, one in the front and one in the back. It got shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan and everybody on board was killed.
Serendipity is why I was home when she arrived in an SUV towing a U-haul trailer and she and the girls started moving things in. I happened to look out the window as they tried to get a chest of drawers up the un-shoveled walk (it had snowed six inches the night before) and into the house. She was on one end and the twins were on the other. She slipped and I saw her foot go under the furniture as she went down. She screamed, the girls let go of their end, the chest of drawers fell over, and I went out to help.
That's how I met the Robertsons, Gloria and her daughters Samantha and Karla.
The injury didn't look bad enough to require professional medical help but we put her in a chair to keep her off the ankle for a while. I shoveled the walk and then helped the girls get everything else in. I didn't have anything pressing to get done and I needed the exercise. I was still in good shape, but had gained a few pounds since winter started. I'd been sitting around, feeling sorry for myself.
When we got finished I looked at Gloria's ankle again. It was her right foot and it was more swollen than before. There were purple streaks beginning to form. When she put even a little weight on it she winced and sat back down. I suggested a visit to the ER and she started crying. I was unaware she'd only been a widow for a month. The girls and I hadn't chatted much while we worked and all Gloria had done was tell us what room to put things in as we brought them in.
I told her it wasn't that bad. She didn't say anything about her husband - not then - but pointed out (somewhat sarcastically, in my opinion) that she couldn't use that foot on either the accelerator or brake, and then that she couldn't just go off and leave the girls alone. She wasn't trying to get me to help her, but no decent person would have walked away.
So I drove them all to the hospital and stayed in the ER waiting room with Samantha and Karla.
That's when I found out about their dad, and having to move out of their house, which was on the post he was stationed at, and her deciding to move to Thief River Falls, where one of his uncles owned the house they were moving into. They were torn up, but at ten years of age, the inability to truly comprehend the depth of the shit they'd just been dropped into protected them a little bit. In following years, they'd understand more, but they toughened up more, too. All things considered (again, my opinion) things turned out okay for them. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Gloria finally returned in a wheel chair with a cast on her foot. It wasn't a walking cast. They loaned her a pair of crutches, but recommended renting a wheelchair for a couple of weeks.
She was not happy.
I took them out to dinner, so at least they wouldn't go to bed hungry. Gloria was twenty-nine. She'd had the twins when she was nineteen. I was then thirty-three. Our ages were close enough that we had some shared life experiences, but far enough apart that she thought of me as 'older.' As time progressed, I imagined she thought of me as the older brother she'd never had. Again, I'm getting ahead of things, but how we met and that first day set the stage for what was to follow. It's important people understand that she and the girls were just my neighbors.
I had no designs on her and certainly not on her daughters. I wasn't looking for a woman and she for sure wasn't looking for a man, but she needed help and I already had a soft spot in my heart for those girls. It broke my heart when I learned about their story in that ER waiting room.
So I helped them over the next week, putting together beds and installing the mirror on the back of the vanity, moving furniture here and there while Gloria tried to decide where she liked it. The twins couldn't cook, so I made sure they all had a hot meal each day and taught them some cooking basics at the same time; that kind of stuff. They understood microwave ovens, so they managed not to starve. Eventually I took over a six pack of beer and Gloria and I sat in the dark and traded stories.
We had a lot in common. Had things been different, we would have been attracted to each other. There was chemistry there. Both of us sensed that, but that chemistry was channeled - by both of us - towards friendship, rather than romance. I liken it to two people, both married, who are attracted to each other. They know it's wrong (feel it's wrong, in our case) to be attracted like that, so they try to ignore it and mold it into a different kind of relationship.
She grew to think of me as that older brother I mentioned. The girls sort of adopted me as a surrogate uncle, but they usually only called me "Uncle Bob" when they wanted something and were trying to butter me up. Most of the time I was just "Bob". There was never any formality, no "Mister Giordano" or any of that, even on that first day. Maybe it was just the frenetic circumstances of how we met, or what we all did for the first twenty-four hours after we met. I don't know. All I know is that the twins treated me more like a peer than a grown man.
That eventually developed into a relationship that enjoyed a lot of teasing. Kids tease each other. Sometimes they're mean about it. I don't think they understand how that can affect the target of the teasing, and I don't honestly think they understand why they're doing it. There's a desire to be top dog in humans. It's just instinct. And when you don't know how to earn that position, sometimes it's instinct to try to put others down to raise yourself up.
Not that they were vicious about it. It was just stuff like calling me old, or fat, or stupid. And I have to admit it usually made sense in the context of the moment. When you wear a T shirt that's ten years old, and you've gained twenty pounds since you went to that concert and got that T shirt ... well ... you look a little pudgy.
In one sense that kind of teasing was a product of a basic honesty that we were able to establish early on. I wasn't trying to impress anybody when we met. They just needed help. And none of them were looking to impress me. They were just trying to take another step forward. So there were none of the social games we sometimes play when we meet someone new and try to make a good impression.
That honesty lasted and I think it became a bulwark in all our lives. We became friends, but because of our shared loss and pain, that friendship was deeper than usual. I understood what they were going through on a deep, intimate level. And they understood my pain and loss as well.
At the same time, the details of the friendships were vastly different. Gloria and I could talk about anything. We sought each other's advice on a multitude of issues. Among them was the subject of dating. That didn't come up until two years later. Both of us talked it back and forth and decided we weren't ready. Cathy had told me firmly that I was to move on after she left, and find someone else to love and all that. I had to promise her I would, but my mental fingers were crossed behind my back. There was no way I could just happily go bar hopping or whatever, looking for another woman to fill my bed. Gloria's heart was still broken. It was patched together, but not strong enough to hazard in that way. And, of course, her husband never told her to be happy without him. I'm sure he would have, if he'd known what was going to happen to him. But he didn't and so ... she didn't.
The girls were fraternal twins, and while it was impossible to mistake one for the other, they did a lot of the "twin things" you hear about. They were inseparable. They would have taken a bullet for each other.
That said, Samantha was a classic tomboy, while Karla was the very picture of a girly girl.
Sam likes rough and tumble sports and doing dangerous things. She holds her own with boys even a couple of years older than she is on the hockey rink. If we lived in Oklahoma she'd be the girl trying to break the barrier and get on the football team, or ride broncs in the Rodeo. She said she was either going to be a high school gym teacher, an astronaut or a lawyer. Try to figure that one out. She was fearless.
Karla, on the other hand, avoided getting dirty in any way. She didn't even want to sweat. While her sister was on the ice knocking boys down, Karla sat on the sidelines and knitted or just talked to one of the boys that she drew like bees to honey. She wore dresses, rather than jeans and T shirts, and made some of her own clothes, even designing some of them herself instead of buying a pre-made pattern. She liked making jewelry and wrote in her diary every day. She went to dance classes while her sister took lessons in taekwondo. Karla was in choir. Samantha had just as good a voice, but wasn't interested. Karla said she was going to study "design" in college, whatever that meant.
Physically, they looked like sisters, but there were distinct differences in their physiology. Sam's baby fat turned into muscles. Karla developed curves that were more pronounced. Sam wore her hair in a ponytail almost all the time. Karla wore hers either up in some complicated arrangement, or down and loose. Sam had higher cheekbones and a longer neck. Karla's fingers were longer and more deft.
Karla was more demure. She sat like a lady and used more formal language. She often addressed Gloria as "Mother" but it wasn't sarcastic or a suggestion she was perturbed. It was a sign of respect. Sam called Gloria "Mom" most of the time, but had a host of nicknames. I once heard her say to her sister, "I was talking to my parental unit, not you, so butt out!"
Both called me Bob most of the time. Samantha would go so far as to say, "Hey butthead, I need some help here." Karla would never soil her mouth like that. If I tripped over something, Karla might call me, "Poor, awkward Bob." Sam would say, "What a spaz," and laugh.
It was fascinating to be around them. They had different interests, but their attitudes about most things were identical. They both felt the same way about subjects in school; loving math and hating physics, for instance. Both were terrified when they took speech and had to give one in front of the class. They liked the same foods, with a few exceptions. Sam loves black olives, for example, and won't touch green ones, while Karla is the opposite.
I had gone to college. Gloria had married her high school sweetheart. So I was the one who got called when help was needed with homework. I was the one who got called when something broke. Or Samantha would bring it to my house, walk in like she owned the place and ask me to fix it. Or if she could, she'd try to fix it using my tools.
On the other hand, if they did dress alike, they looked astonishingly alike. At the time the things happened that this story is about, both were five-foot eight, with light brown hair that, if unbound, fell between their shoulder blades. Both had good posture and neither was ashamed of her breasts, like some girls get as they battle puberty. They had good teeth that were exposed a lot in smiles.
They just looked healthy and nubile. If you looked closely, though, you'd see that one of them was more toned and athletic looking, while the other was more soft curves and had more flesh on her.
Of course I could tell them apart, even from across the street. I'd seen them both grow up. I was there to bandage scrapes and hug them when they were worried or scared. I didn't think they could surprise me anymore.
Boy, did I turn out to be wrong about that.
When they were just a month shy of turning sixteen, I announced I was going ice fishing for an extended weekend. It was early in the season but I'd waited all summer and I wasn't going to wait any longer.
"Why?" you ask, "did you feel it was important to tell them you were going ice fishing?"
Well, that's a valid question, and it has a simple answer. My purpose for telling them was in case Gloria needed anything done before I left.
I'm a consultant and my work hours are very flexible. I'm also really good at what I do, and I'm efficient enough that I have lots of spare time. So I took care of repairs around the house (both hers and mine) and did some taxi service for either Samantha or Karla once in a while.
I was their "male role model" as Gloria put it, but most of all I was just there to entertain (look out for) the girls while Gloria was at work or cooked, or took a nap, or went to the doctor or out with her friends for a girls' night out or whatever.
As mentioned, we lived in Thief River Falls, MN, where the population is a few more than eight thousand. The Chamber of Commerce will tell you there are tons of things to do in Thief River Falls, but the residents there usually drive the fifty miles to Grand Forks if they want a night out or do some shopping around. So I was either at her house, or the girls were at mine, pretty regularly. It was unusual, in fact, if we didn't eat supper together three or four times a week.
The other thing was that Gloria was thinking about going to work full time. She'd had some part time jobs, to help make ends meet. Without a college education that's all she could get. Tony's life insurance had kept them going, but they weren't wealthy and it was running out. She was worried about college expenses. She had, in fact, two job interviews lined up for the following week. The thing was that while she felt like the twins were "old enough" - they were pretty self-sufficient these days - she still had that bee buzzing around in the back of her head, whispering that she could lose them in a second, like she's lost Tony. Something could happen. It could be an accident, or some criminal victimizing them, or some other unforeseen danger. Part of her felt like she should be there to watch over them. But she knew she needed to get a job. It wasn't a formal arrangement, but I had always been her go-to babysitter in the past.
So if I was going to be gone for any extended period, I told them about it.
So, anyway, we were having supper, as I said before, when I mentioned I was going ice fishing that weekend.
It was Thursday night, and I had nothing work-related scheduled for Friday, so I said I was leaving in the morning. That's when I got my first surprise. It was delivered by Samantha.
"How come you never invite us to go ice fishing?"
"Ewww," was Karla's response. "Touch slimy fish? I don't think so!"
"They're not slimy," I snorted. "Slippery, yes, but only because they're wet."
"Still ewww," she said, making a face. "They stink."
Gloria just looked on.
"I never knew you were interested," I said, looking at Sam. Nobody in the family had ever shown one iota of curiosity, much less attraction toward ice fishing. I generally ate everything I caught on site, so I hadn't brought fish home for them to consume.
"I wasn't," said the girl. "Now I am. Is there a problem with that?"
"Of course not," I said. "I'd be happy to take you along, but I'm leaving tomorrow, when you're at school."
"We don't have school tomorrow," said Sam. "It's a teacher work day."
"What the heck is a teacher work day?" I asked. "Don't teachers work every day?"
"I don't know. We don't go there and watch them on teacher work days," said Sam, pragmatically.
"Okay, fine, but I'm not sure you'd like it."
"Why not? I could take my skates and get in some speed work."
"Ice like that isn't smooth," I said. "Besides, the idea is to fish," I added, dryly.
"I'd do that too," she said, defensively. "I'm just bored."
"Ice fishing does not cure boredom," I said, sagely. "In fact, I suspect it might cause boredom for some people."
"I wouldn't be bored with you there," she said. "We could talk."
"That we could," I said. "It occurs to me, though, that we should probably ask your mother about this."
She turned her head and looked at Gloria. "Can I go?"
Gloria held up a finger. "I have a few questions," she said.
"Shoot," I replied.
"Isn't it dangerous?" asked Gloria. I had told them tales, in the past, of trucks and ice houses breaking through the ice and going to Davy Jones' locker.
"I know what to look for to avoid problems," I said.
"Don't you go with just a tent?" she asked.
That was true. I didn't build a fancy ice house that had to be hauled out there on a trailer and pushed or pulled out onto the ice. That was too much hassle. I just drove stakes into the ice and set up my dome tent. It was designed to sleep six adults, which meant I had room to cut a hole in the floor (a little bigger than the hole in the ice would be) and still have space to put a queen size air mattress in it with a little room left to walk around things. Some clothes, a Coleman propane heater, a camp stove for cooking and coffee, a gas lantern, a lawn chair, and my fishing stuff was all I needed.
"Yeah," I said.
"Well, doesn't it get cold?"
"Not really," I said. "I have a little heater that keeps things above freezing. The right clothes, boots, and gloves makes things fine."
"What about at night?" asked Gloria. "You can't run the heater all night. That would be dangerous, right?"
"Sure," I said. "But I have an arctic sleeping bag. I can't even use it in the summer. You'd roast in one of them in the summer."
"And do you have one for the girls?"
I still had Cathy's bag. It had never been unrolled since she died, but I'd kept it in a closet. The thought of one of the girls getting in it made something inside me twang in an off chord sort of way, but I pushed that down.
"I have one they could probably both fit into," I said. "If they really liked each other," I added.
"I'm not going," said Karla, firmly. "Jane can have it all to herself."
"Jane?" asked Samantha, looking at her sister strangely.
"As in Tarzan," said Karla. "If you want to go off into the wilds, with bears and moose and slimy fish, that's your business. I'm staying right here where there are soft beds and microwaves and electricity."
"Fine by me," said Samantha. "You snore, anyway."
"I do not snore!" yelled Karla. This was an argument they'd had dozens of times.
I cut them off.
"It doesn't matter if Karla doesn't want to go."
Sam turned back to her mother.
"So can I go?"
"It's fine with me," said Gloria, "as long as I don't hear any whining about it when you get back. If you go, you're in for the whole experience. You can't complain and tell Bob you want to go home."
"No problem," said Samantha, with the confidence of callow youth.
"Okay," I said. "After supper we'll sit down and I'll make you a list of what you need to bring."
And that's how I got roped into taking my tomboy neighbor ice fishing with me.
It was only the first of many things I didn't expect to happen ... that would happen in the coming months.
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I was going to Canada on this particular trip, since the ice would be a little better farther north. I already had my outdoors card and fishing license. A juvenile can fish with an adult who has them, so Sam was fine as long as she was with me. They all had passports, having done some tourist stuff in Canada before.
She was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at six, Friday morning, when she trudged through the snow to my house. My stuff was already packed in the truck, safe from the elements under the topper in the back. I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth. Sam stomped in as if we lived together.
"Let's go!" she said.
"I'm in the bathroom, here," I pointed out.
She frowned.
"Hey. What happens if I have to go to the bathroom?"
"You squat over a bucket," I said. I hadn't thought of that. It reminded me that I'd also forgotten to pack the bucket.
"For real?" Her eyebrows rose.
"There aren't public toilets out there," I said.
She shrugged.
"Okay."
"I'll take a walk when that happens," I offered.
"Okay," she said, with not a care in the world.
I had a quick fantasy of having the same conversation with Karla. She'd melt down and run home to mamma. Sam was actually impressed when I loaded the "facilities" into the truck. I'd taken an old aluminum lawn chair and used the struts from it to make a frame that fit over a five gallon plastic bucket. It even had a toilet seat bolted to it.
We were quiet in the truck, listening to the news and weather report. I stopped for gas and to get breakfast burritos. I already had a thermos of coffee. Two hours later we were north of Fort Frances, Ontario, at Frog Lake. In case you're one of those people who looks stuff like this up, there are actually two Frog Lakes in Canada ... sort of. I found this out at a truck stop, when some well-meaning person told me I was going the wrong direction if I wanted to get to Frog Lake. The better known one is in Alberta, but I like the one in Ontario. Its name on the map is something else, but all the locals call it Frog Lake.
We had the tent set up by nine, a hole cut and stuff moved in by ten, and had lines in the water by ten-fifteen. I fiddled with the heater and unrolled my sleeping bag.
"So we're both sleeping there?" Sam commented, standing and looking at the air mattress.
"We'll be in separate sleeping bags," I said. "I won't attack you. I promise."
"You wish," she snorted.
I stopped and gave her a look.
"You are somewhat of a babe," I said.
Don't ask me why I said that. I think I was trying to needle her, but it didn't work out that way.
"No I'm not," she said, firmly.
"I'm the guy, which means I get to make that determination," I said, grinning.
"So you actually think I'm a babe?" She sounded skeptical.
"You'd do in a pinch," I teased.
"So what does that make you? A dirty old man?"
"I'm not old," I said, leering.
This familiarity sounds sudden, but remember I'd seen them in PJs and bikinis their entire adolescent lives. I'd only slept over at their house a handful of times, when the power went out and they felt better if I was there, but I'd been there at bedtime and gotten literally hundreds of good night hugs and kisses. I'd had lithe, girlish bodies pressed against me during those hugs and kisses, and I was fully aware that the bumps that appeared on their chests had gotten bigger and bigger until now they were full-sized lady parts.
They were both fun to hug. And they were both cute. Gloria had mentioned a couple of times that she wasn't looking forward to what she called "boy-itis", a disease she said strikes all girls sooner or later. Neither girl had yet expressed an interest in any particular boy, or boys in general, for that matter. But we both knew it was coming.
"So what do we do now?" she asked.
"We wait for old mister fish to think he's smarter than we are and bite the hook."
"And until he does?"
"Read, listen to music, dream, sleep ... whatever," I said.
"Can I go skate?"
"Yes, but stay close. I don't know this for a fact, but skating might cause noise and some folks might feel like it scares the fish. If anybody yells at you, come back here."
That wasn't likely. When we set up, we could only see one other fishing shack, and it was a couple of hundred yards away.
So off she went, on her hockey skates, all excited to see how fast she could get going.
I had looked around before choosing a spot to set up our tent, but once I found one, I didn't explore hundreds of yards away from it. It turned out there was a thin area three hundred yards away. It was marked with a sign, but she missed it. Later she said she was going so fast she couldn't have read the sign anyway.
Which is why, when she sailed out onto the thin patch ... she broke through.
Chapter Two
We were lucky. There just happened to be a guy looking for a place to set up, who saw her go through. He threw her a rope and dragged her to the edge of the hole. She enlarged the hole three more feet before the ice would support her weight and he could drag her out. She'd only been in for four or five minutes, but there was a fairly stiff breeze so the wind chill was close to zero, if not below. She pointed to the tent and he brought her over.
His name was Glen and he offered to call somebody, but I told him I had it covered.
The problem was ... I didn't have it covered.
She was soaked and all we had was a tent. True, I had a propane heater, but there was no way it could deal with this issue. She had dry clothes, but not a spare parka and in any case I had to warm her up before we did anything else. I stripped her down myself because she was shivering so badly she couldn't do anything with her hands. I think the feeling was gone in her fingers anyway. I stuffed her into her sleeping bag and piled mine on top of her like a blanket. I got the stove going to heat up some soup for her.
All this happened at a somewhat frantic pace, so frantic, in fact, that I don't actually remember paying attention to her naked body. I remember seeing one bluish breast, with a dark nipple, but that's all. She was moaning and her teeth were chattering so hard I could hear them clicking together. She was so cold she was stuttering.
Or maybe that was the shivering. I don't know. She was shaking too badly to drink the soup without spilling most of it all over the place.
What I realized was that being in the bag wasn't enough. An arctic bag will keep you warm, but only if you start out that way. I guess that's not technically true. If you get in it cold, it will warm up eventually, but only if your body is making heat. Hers wasn't. At least not fast enough.
I only knew of one other way to warm her up quickly. I couldn't haul her back to the truck. It was too far in her condition and it would take too long to warm up the interior enough to help her.
So I went back to my Boy Scout training. I zipped my bag to hers, joining them together.
Then I stripped naked and got in with her.
Her groans, as my warm body hit her ice-cold flesh sounded like she was dying. It was agony. You couldn't interpret it as anything else. It sounded like she was being burned or something. But her body didn't shy away from mine. Not even a little. As I hugged her, she was like a boa constrictor. Her arms went around me and she tried to merge our flesh. Her legs wrapped around mine and she just made noises. She felt like she was vibrating, and couldn't be still at all.
Eventually her body began to slow down a little. It stopped shaking and then it became more sensual. She was still rubbing against me, but it was in a less frantic way. The best way I can describe it is to compare it to a starving man who gets food. At first he's frantic. He can't eat fast enough. He's almost frustrated because he can't chew fast enough, or swallow fast enough to make him feel like he's making progress. She was like that at first, trying to touch every part of her to some warm part of me. Then, like the food begins to register with the starving man's brain, her body registered the fact that it was warming up. It wasn't warm ... but it was better. Finally she was able to speak coherently.
"You're s-s-s-o warrrrmmmm," she said against my chest.
I rubbed my hands on her smooth back, creating friction. I hadn't been able to do that before this because she was moving too violently.
"What happened?" I asked. It was the first time I'd had a chance to talk to her. Glen had told me he saw her go through the ice, and that that air in her parka had kept her on the surface until he could get a rope to her. I pretty well knew what had happened, but I didn't understand how she could get on thin ice.
"I d-d-don't k-k-k-know," she moaned.
It turned out she just wasn't paying attention. She was centered on the speed, and on looking at the surface directly ahead of her feet, trying to avoid cracks and bumps in the ice that might make her trip. She wasn't worried about falling down. She knew she could roll and her thick clothes would cushion the fall. But she didn't want to fall, because going fast was too much fun. Falling would interrupt that fun. We worked all that out later. Much later.
It took an hour before she didn't need her naked neighbor in bed with her.
Especially since her neighbor, because he was naked in a sleeping bag with her, remembered being naked in a sleeping bag with another woman and reacted to that ... physically.
At that point, however, she didn't want her naked neighbor to get out of the bag.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
I had hinted that I should get out of bed several times. Each time she squeezed her arms around me. Finally it was necessary that I get more forceful about it.
"The crisis is over," I said.
"I don't think so," she said, her breath hot on my chest. Her hair felt hot on my shoulder, too. I know that sounds silly, but it did. Her head had been inside the bag since I put her there. Mine had been inside, too, initially, but when she finally stopped shivering, I poked my head out into the cold air.
I was uncomfortable for a number of reasons. I'm sure those would be obvious to the average, normal person. But I was feeling neither average, nor normal. I was in bed with one of the girls. That's what I called them, usually: The girls. I referred to them that way to Gloria in conversation, and she used the same noun to collectivize them. Before this it had just been that, a noun that made it easy to identify who we were talking about. "The girls" was also a way, for me at least, to be less intimate about them. That might sound silly, too, but if I used an actual name, that evoked a flood of thoughts about that specific girl.
I'm not explaining this very well. I'll just give you some examples. If someone said "Karla" to me, the image my mind filled with was Karla in her ballet tutu, whirling around on stage at a recital. Or I imagined her at the sewing machine, attention focused on the cloth as it flowed under the bouncing needle. If someone said "Sam" to me, I thought of her up in a tree, grinning down at me. I had chased her and she knew she was safe because I wouldn't climb the tree to get to her. Or I remembered the first time I saw her in a bikini and realized she had grown up parts, all of a sudden. So if Gloria said "I need to talk about Samantha" to me, before I even sat down my mind was reflecting on all those memories of who Samantha was and what she'd done. If she called and said, "I need some help with the girls," then I just went, and wasn't thinking about anyone in particular.
That may seem a little like I'm in need of the talents of a good mental health professional, but it's the way things were. I say "were" because once I'd been naked in a sleeping bag with one half of my sixteen-year-old twin neighbors, there was no way in the world I would ever be able to think of her as just "one of the girls" anymore.
I'd been okay for the first fifteen minutes. I was too worried about her to think about anything except looking for evidence that she was going to be okay. I was also trying to remember all the symptoms that indicated a visit to the ER was mandatory. Then I thought about the fact that, while she had dry clothes to put on (eventually) her parka was wet. Glen had said it floated, and the outer shell was made of nylon. I knew it was down-filled. If we were lucky, not much water had seeped through the seams. If the down was wet, though, the coat was worthless until it could be rendered completely dry, and she didn't have a spare. I had insulated coveralls, but I didn't like wearing them all that much. I much preferred my down pants and parka. Push come to shove, though, I'd have to give her the parka. She and her sister together would fit in the coveralls.
All this time she was moaning and whimpering and rubbing up against me. I rubbed her arms and back and her ice-cold bottom, but only once. When I realized I had my hand on Sam's ass, I moved it. She gave no indication that she was aware of my trespass.
After those first fifteen minutes, though, I'd reflected on everything there was to reflect on, medically speaking, and decided she was going to be okay. Then my mind began to think about where I was and what I was doing. Part of that was because she'd warmed up enough so that she shivered only a little, every thirty seconds or so. But what grabbed my attention the most was that now she wasn't so much wiggling against me, as clasping me and ... well ... humping me a little bit!
I did not want to believe that. But as another ten minutes went by it became obvious. Her legs were still wrapped around mine, with her half on top of me and my right thigh was trapped between both of hers. Every four or five seconds she'd push her loins against my leg. And where her breasts were glued to my chest, her arms squeezed just a little, as her hips pressed against me. It was very subtle, but after a while it was also very obvious.
It became clear she was rubbing her pussy against my thigh ... masturbating on me!
Then there was the problem that, whether my mind was elsewhere or not, my body knew very well where it was. It was pressed up against a naked female, one I liked a lot and one I'd admired on a number of occasions.
And no, I wasn't some lecherous, drooling pervert. But if there's a pretty girl around, not many guys can or will just ignore her. And this pretty girl had a great personality, and a great smile, and gave me hugs and kisses on the cheek with great regularity. I had only felt bad a couple of times about thoughts I had for Karla and Sam. One was the day I mentioned before when I first saw Sam wearing a bikini and had ... um ... impure thoughts about how grown up she suddenly looked. The other was a day I went to the beach with them, and they scampered around in their bikinis, looking ... delicious. They'd worn bikinis since they were little, but before this, the triangles of their tops just lay on their flat chests, little pieces of cloth covering unremarkable skin. Their nipples looked like boy's nipples. They were fourteen that summer and, suddenly, they had bulges galore. Somehow I'd missed the gentle bumps growing under those triangles. I hadn't paid attention as swells developed. When they took off their T shirts and shorts that day, and exposed identical white bikinis that set off their chestnut brown hair beautifully, they had breasts! And they had hips to go with them!
I felt bad because I got an erection, just looking at them. They were talking about something, eager to be out on the beach, free to frolic around in the water, ready to bedazzle unwary men and boys. So they didn't see the look in my eye as I wished I had them confined in a dim room, where I could have my trollish way with them.
I averted my attention from them intentionally, looking at Gloria ... just in time to see her reveal her own bikini. It was orange and had a big bow between the cups. Both the top and bottoms were conservative, comparatively speaking. Her daughters had gotten me going, though, and I had to go for a run just to control my lustful thoughts about all three of them. I thought about Cathy as I ran, but all I could remember were her last words, exhorting me to move on with my life and find someone else to love. I remember spending an inordinate amount of time reading that day. Fortunately, I'd brought a good book.
So there I was with a girl I'd wanted to confine in a dark room so I could abuse her ... confined in a dark sleeping bag with her ... naked.
You know what happened. It didn't even matter that it had been years since I'd had a woman. I'm pretty sure if I'd been in the process of having another woman when she had the accident, I'd still have gotten a monster boner for Sam, once we were in that bag and I felt like she'd probably be okay.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
There comes a moment when the elephant in the room cannot be ignored any longer.
That moment came when her hand, which had been on my lower back, drifted around, over my hip, and managed to get between us, where it wrapped around the elephant's trunk. That would be my erection, of course.
"Sam," I said, a little breathlessly. That was all I had. Just her name.
"I thought so," she said into my chest. "I thought I felt something between us."
Finally she wiggled her head out of the opening of the zipped-together bags. She did not, however, let go of my traitorous penis.
"This should be awkward," she said, looking at me with serious eyes. Her hair was still damp, but no longer plastered to her skull. She looked like she might have just gotten out of the shower. "So why don't I feel awkward?"
"Because I'm feeling awkward enough for both of us?" I suggested.
"You saved my life," she said, still gazing into my eyes.
"A guy named Glen saved your life," I corrected.
"He got me out of the water, but you saved me from freezing to death," she said.
"Your mother would have killed me if I brought you home frozen," I said.
Her hand squeezed, gently, the same kind of gently that she'd been humping me with earlier.
"My mother does not need to know any of this happened," she said.
"Sweetie, you probably need to go to the hospital. You were coughing your guts out when he got you out. If you got water in your lungs, it can cause infection. We can't pretend this just didn't happen. That's a great way to get into big trouble with your mother," I counseled. "Immense trouble. The kind of trouble that can last for years."
"There's no way I'm telling her about this," said Sam, squeezing my cock again.
"If you mean the lengths I went to to warm you up, then we can agree on that," I said. "Would you please stop doing that?"
"This?"
She squeezed again.
"Yes, that."
"Come on. It's the first one I ever got my hands on," she said. She did not let go.
"I'm sorry that happened," I said. "It was out of my control, an unfortunate byproduct of getting you warm."
"I'm not sorry," she said.
"What happened to my Tomboy buddy?" I asked. "What happened to 'I'm not going to go on dates until I'm twenty-five!'?"
"I don't want to go on a date, but there's no way I'm going to pass up a chance like this," she said.
"Sam, you almost died!"
"No I didn't. I was scared, but as soon as you got in here with me and I felt how hot you were, I knew I'd be okay. Thank you."
And then she kissed me! Right on the lips!
No, it wasn't a long, lingering lover's kiss. But it for sure wasn't what I was used to, a quick peck on the cheek. Her lips were warm and soft, and the kiss lasted a lot longer than a peck. I don't remember just how much longer, but it wasn't a lip lock or anything.
What I do remember is that she squeezed my penis at the same time.
And, of course, I wished she'd do both a bunch more times.
"We can't do this," I said, as she pulled her face back.
"Too late. We already did," she said.
The imp was back.
"You know what I mean."
"Get a grip, Bob," she said. "You're not molesting me. If anything, I'm the one molesting you."
"Tell that to the judge, when he puts me in prison for fifteen to twenty," I said.
"For there to be a judge, there must be witnesses and police and all sorts of people." She grinned. "None of whom are present."
I decided she needed to start taking this seriously. So I tried to shock her.
"Sam, the reason that thing is so hard is that it wants to go inside you and make a baby in you."
She almost let go of me ... but not quite. I could tell I'd gotten her attention, though. Then the confidence firmed in her face.
"For that to happen, I'd have to let you do that. While I am enjoying this a lot, there's no chance of that. So don't worry about it."
"I'm not worrying about it," I said, lying through my teeth. "It's just what I want to do. I came here to catch fish, not catch you."
"Ha, ha," she said. "Okay. I'll make you a deal."
"What kind of deal?"
"We'll get out of here and I'll put on dry clothes. I have to get my hair dry, too. And we'll fish. But I get a favor from you later."
"What favor?" I asked.
"Just a favor," she said. "Deal?"
"I'm not comfortable about this," I said.
"I am. I'd be happy to stay here like this all day." She squeezed my prick again.
"Okay!" I said. Anything to get out of the situation I was in.
"You get out first," she said.
I climbed out. She sat up in the bag, avid to see my groin. She was blatant about it. So I turned away from her and tried to get dressed without putting on a show. I put on the coveralls and my ear-flap fur hat.
When I turned around she was still sitting, with the sleeping bag pooled around her waist, her upper torso exposed. She had the cutest, pink nipples, that were spiked so firmly they looked like they could tear through a bra. Her breasts looked smaller naked than they did under a T shirt. They were too small to sag, but were obviously breasts. She was drying her hair with a towel she'd gotten out of her bag. I wanted to suck those stiff little nipples, so I tried to think of something else.
"Don't lose all that warmth we worked so hard to generate," I growled at her.
"I'm fine," she said.
She made it clear that modesty was no longer a thing we shared.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
We did fish. We didn't go to the hospital. She said she wasn't coughing, so there was no need. We also cooked some more soup and read a little bit. She'd brought ear buds and a personal music device, and she used that for a while. She messed with her skates, but I'd cut the laces to get them off of her and she didn't have another set with her. In any case, they had frozen almost solid.
What we didn't do was talk about it.
You know the "it" I mean.
I asked her if she wanted to go home, and she shook her head.
"I'm fine," she said, and then went back to whatever it was she'd been doing.
I caught one bass, a pretty nice one, maybe a three-pounder, and that was supper, along with fried potatoes and beans.
"Beans?" she asked, raising one eyebrow as I served her.
"Protein," I said. "And they're hot."
"And now I get to look forward to farts in the night," she groused.
"As do I," I quipped, grinning.
The fish was good. It was the first fresh-caught pan-fried fish she'd ever had, and she said she'd pay better attention to fishing on the morrow.
Then, when it got dark, we read by lantern for a while. Finally I said I was going to turn in.
"I'm ready to collect the favor you owe me," she said.
I felt like groaning, but didn't.
"What?" I asked.
"I want us to zip the bags back together and sleep in them tonight," she said.
I had taken them apart and aired them out. She'd gotten a little dampness inside them, but exposing them to freezing air had caused the damp areas to freeze into crystals, which then flaked off. My mother used to wash the sheets and then hang them up outside in freezing weather. It was a source of endless fascination to me. She'd put them up wet and they'd freeze solid. Then, a few hours later, they were flapping in the wind, cold, but dry.
"That's out of the question," I said.
"You promised," she reminded me.
"I didn't know what I was promising."
"Of course not, but I did."
I stared at her.
"I think you know why I can't agree to that, promise or no promise."
"Come on," she moaned. "It's not like we're going to have sex. It's just that it's so warm!"
"What's warm for you is torture for me," I said.
"So you do want to have sex with me," she said.
"Samantha," I said, my voice grave. "I will not play these games with you. I love you. And because I love you, I'm not going to sleep naked with you inside one bag."
"Who said we'd be naked?" she said. "I brought jammies."
"I always sleep nude when I'm camping," I said. "You should, too. Clothing restricts blood flow and you'll get cold if you wear anything. You can get away with socks, but only if they're not too tight around the ankle. You take the clothes you're going to wear tomorrow inside the bag with you, so they're warm in the morning."
"I'd be happy to sleep nude," she said. "I just want to do it with you."
"Sam!" I yelled.
"Okay, okay. You don't have to be a butthead about it," she said.
So we went to bed in separate bags. By necessity they were right next to each other, so we could both fit on the mattress, but they were separate bags.
I woke up later and heard her crying softly. I checked my watch. It was about 11:30.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"I'm cold," she complained.
"You shouldn't be," I said.
"Maybe I should have gone to the hospital after all," she whimpered. "I read that if you get a cold injury, you can get another one even easier."
"Shit," I groaned.
"I'm sure I'd be okay if I could just be next to you," she whined.
I thought about that. I was suspicious. She hadn't complained of cold feet or hands all day. And wasn't it heat injuries that spawned easier heat injuries? I couldn't remember. And all she'd do is cry all night if I didn't do something. That was either get up and take her to the hospital (or back home) or ... let her get in with me.
"There will be no hanky panky of any sort," I said, firmly.
"Absolutely not," she agreed.
"You're going to get a lot colder before we get the bags zipped together again," I warned.
"Then we'll hurry," she said.
I lit the lantern so we could see what we were doing. She'd taken my advice, and was naked as a jaybird when she scampered out of her bag. As was I. I didn't look at her. All I looked at was the zippers on the bags.
When we got back into the bags, there was still some residual heat in them, left over from before they were disturbed. But it was cold.
And her skin was anything but warm as she snuggled up to me. She seemed to need a while to get comfortable, during which I had to figure out what to do with my hands. I didn't mean to touch her anywhere inappropriate. Assuming you can justify the whole in-bed-together-naked-thing at all. But as she moved around I couldn't help but brush my hands here and there.
Before things got settled, I knew I'd been set up.
Her butt wasn't even cold.
A scheming woman she might have been, but she was also a woman of her word. She didn't grab me again. I'm pretty sure she knew I had another boner, because it was pressed against her diaphragm for a lot of the night, but she didn't wiggle around or do anything overtly sexual. Discounting the whole in-bed-together-naked-thing.
The next morning I told her that, if we hadn't zipped the bags together, we could both get dressed inside the nice, warm bag and then emerge into the cold, cruel world. I had to pee and, because my bag had been dual occupied, I couldn't use the pee bottle I routinely bring with me. I was grumpy about that, and having to get dressed outside the bag.
She stayed in it, nice and warm as I got out and struggled into my clothes. I felt her eyes on me the whole time, and thought about what was jutting out from my groin. Served her right if it scared her.
I went outside to relieve myself and when I got back she was rolling around inside the bags, getting dressed.
"This is harder than I thought it would be," she commented.
"It's also warmer," I said.
I got the stove going and put a hunk of frozen bacon in the pan. It would warm up and separate, eventually. Fresh eggs were out of the question on a trip like this, but the liquid kind in cartons will also thaw and cook over time, so that's what I bring. You just cut the carton off of the frozen block, and lay it in the pan. Toast is easy and filling. I'd put the bag with the packets of jelly under my feet when I went to bed. The bag had gotten knocked into the open and the packets were frozen, but not hard. Two people in a tent create more heat than you think and, if the tent is tight, it can be fifteen or twenty degrees warmer inside than out, in the morning.
The hole hadn't frozen over so while I cooked, Sam got the lines in the water again. She was wrapping the second one around its peg, driven into the ice, when it was almost jerked out of her hand. She yelped and I got there in time to help her with it.
She needed help. The pike that had struck at the dangling hook had to be three feet long and would barely fit through the hole in the ice. It was unhappy. In the end, I grabbed the knife I'd cut the bacon up with and jammed it through its gills, from side to side. That gave me a "handle" on the fish, though the tip wasn't sticking out enough to use for that purpose on the other side.
We were both panting when we finally got the fish away from the hole, where it could flop around until it expired.
"Wow!" gasped Sam.
"That's a good one," I said, grinning at her.
"Are you glad we stayed, now?" She arched one eyebrow at me.
"Of course," I said.
"Okay. Sometimes it's hard to tell, when you're being all noble."
"You mean like before you lied and finagled your way into my sleeping bag last night?" I said, confronting her about it.
"Yeah," she said with no shame whatsoever. "Like then."
"You weren't freezing," I accused.
"Well, I didn't think you'd give up if I just said I was lonely."
"You weren't lonely, either, little girl," I said.
She stuck her chest out. The effect was ruined by the fact that she was wearing her parka again.
"In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not a little girl anymore."
"Oh, I noticed," I said. "That's the problem."
"I thought we were best friends," she said.
"We are," I said. "And the last time I checked, best friends don't sleep together naked."
"Sure they do," she argued.
"Since when?"
"Since I fell through the ice and you saved my life."
"It's wrong, Sam," I groaned.
"I never felt anything so right in my whole life," she said.
"That's your hormones talking," I said.
"No, that's the part of my brain that knows how warm you are," she said. "Besides. There was no hanky panky last night. Nothing wrong happened at all."
"I bet your mother wouldn't agree with that assessment," I said.
"Of course she wouldn't. She won't agree I can do anything like that until I'm married!"
"And what's wrong with that?" I asked.
"How the heck am I supposed to learn anything?"
"You don't need to learn anything," I said.
"So I'm supposed to go on my honeymoon knowing nothing. I won't know what I like, or what he might like. We'll just flail around under the covers and maybe it will be fun, but maybe it won't. Gee, that sounds super."
"Sam, you're sixteen. You've got years to figure this stuff out."
"Not like this," she said.
"I have a question," I said. "When did you develop any interest in the male anatomy at all?"
"I'm not a lesbian, Bob," she said, perfectly seriously.
"I didn't think you had any interest in sex of any stripe," I said.
"Don't be an idiot," she said. "Every teenager is interested in sex."
"Well you sure never let it show," I said.
"Of course not. If you do, then people start acting weird."
"Gee, I'm sorry I acted weird," I said.
"Don't be. All you did was get a hardon. If it would have been anybody else, it would have been weird. But I don't mind if it's you."
"I don't think your mother would appreciate that, either."
"You know she's got a thing for you," said Sam.
I blinked.
"What?"
"She likes you."
"We're friends," I said. "I like her, too."
"No, I mean she likes you," said Sam. "She tries not to show it. She thinks it's not fair to our father. That's ridiculous, but she's hung up about it."
"I understand how she could feel that way, but I still think you're wrong." I said, still trying to process this new information. I hadn't seen one whit of evidence that Gloria had any interest in me as anything more than a friend.
"Believe whatever you want to," she said, flippantly. "So did you feel guilty for getting a boner with me?"
I blinked again.
"I guess I did ... do," I admitted.
"Well, you're both being silly," she said. "I love my dad, and I miss him, but there's no reason Mom can't be happy with somebody else. You, too."
"Since when did you take such an interest in my happiness?" I asked.
"I like you too, Butthead," she said.
"Great," I sighed.
"Not like that," she snorted. "Not like my mother. I don't want to marry you or anything weird like that." She frowned. "Though I have to admit sleeping with you was awesome. I could get used to that."
"Maybe in an alternate universe," I said.
"No, really." She was quite serious. "I loved it. I've never felt that close to anybody before, except my mother and sister. And the coolest part was that you did have a boner, but it wasn't scary or anything! It just felt ... I don't know ... good."
"It's supposed to feel good," I said. "But only when you're older, and with somebody else's, not mine."
"Oh," she said, brightly. "Okay. Well, I'll be sixteen pretty soon. That's older. I guess I should start looking around for some other guy to sleep with. That shouldn't be too hard. Karla has guys buzzing around her like bees. I'm sure she'll loan me one or two."
"Nice try," I said. I knew there was no way this girl was going to become some kind of cock tease. It just wasn't in her. "You're not going to make me jealous."
"Who's trying to make you jealous?" she asked. "All I'll be doing is finding what I need."
"What you need is to have your bare butt spanked," I growled.
"Oh, so now you want to see my bare butt," she said, grinning. "And not only that, you want to touch it too!" She started a sing-song chant. "Bobby is a per-vert. Bobby is a per-vert."
"You have a fish to clean," I said.
I made her do the whole job, too.
Chapter Three
"This is good," came Sam's muffled words, issuing from a mouth full of fried pike.
"Now you know why none of what I catch ever makes it home," I said.
"I'm glad I came," she said. "It must get boring if you do this by yourself, though."
"Not for me," I said. "It's quiet and peaceful." I shot her a look. "Usually, that is."
She just grinned.
"I'm sleeping with you again tonight."
I groaned.
"Don't be such a goofball. It will be just like last night. We'll be warm, but nothing will happen."
"Oh, I know that," I said. "And that's the problem. This is all fun and games for you, Sam, but did you ever think of how I might feel about it?"
"Oh, I know how you feel about it," she said, her voice full of very adult innuendo. "You haven't been on a date since Cathy died, have you?"
"No," I confirmed.
"And you don't go out and hire prostitutes, right?"
"Of course not!" I barked.
"Well, then, you've been going without sex for a long time, and it doesn't look like it killed you."
"That's not the point," I said.
She got a shocked look on her face, but I could tell it was contrived.
"Wait! I get it. You haven't gone without sex ... you just only had sex with yourself!"
"Sam!" I yelled.
"Hey, it's no big deal. Everybody does it. According to Miss Simpson, my health teacher, it's a normal method of dealing with sexual stress." She put a finger to her lips and went "Shhhh. Nobody's supposed to know she said that. She said she might get fired if anybody finds out."
I was still trying to process the idea that Sam not only knew I probably masturbated, but that it sounded like maybe she did, too. This was blowing my mind.
"Then she shouldn't have said it," some part of my brain made me say.
"It was just with the girls," said Sam. "She said we shouldn't feel guilty about doing it if it was an alternative to messing around with boys."
"I don't know what to do," I sighed. It was true. I really didn't have any clue as to how to proceed. Sam had been my best friend for a while, and suddenly it was like I found out she had three eyes, or tentacles. We'd never talked about sex before. I hadn't thought she was interested in it, or that if she was, she was the one who would bring it up.
I blinked.
She had brought it up, in a manner of speaking. Granted, that had been a result of her accident, but she was approaching this with the same casual abandon that was there with everything else we ever discussed.
"You don't have to do anything," she said. "Just let me sleep with you and be warm."
My brain got going again. This was Sam. We were buds. She didn't want to have sex. She was just exploring new territory.
"How about if we wore underwear?" I suggested.
She gave me a stare.
"That sort of defeats the point, and anyway, you said we should sleep nude out here," she said.
Doubts assailed me. Just a few seconds ago I thought I knew what she wanted. But did I?
"What, exactly, to you want to get out of this?" I asked.
Finally she had to stop and think.
"I don't think I can explain it," she said. "It just feels so good."
"Did you get horny last night?" I asked, bluntly.
There was no hesitation whatsoever.
"Ohhhh yeah," she sighed.
I looked at her for ten or so seconds.
"I did, too, Sam," I said, seriously.
"Duh," she said. "Boner?"
"You've had the class, Sam. You know why it got that way and what I wanted to do with it."
"You mentioned that before," she said. "Do you really want me to have your baby?"
"Of course not," I snapped. "But my body doesn't know that, and I have hormones in my blood, too. Things get out of control, sometimes."
"Well, if you don't want to do that, and I don't want you to do that, it seems to me nothing could get out of control."
"How many teenage girls do you know who decided to get pregnant?" I asked.
"None," she said.
"And yet that happens all too often," I said.
"Yes, but in those cases, the guy did want to do that. He didn't try to resist, like you are."
"Sam," I groaned. "A part of me wants to have sex with you! We can't just get naked and sleep together!"
"You'll be fine," she said. "If things get too bad you can jerk off and relieve the stress. I won't mind."
"Who are you?" I whined. "What planet do you come from and what did you do with Sam?"
"If you want, you can do that before we get in bed," said Sam, helpfully. "And if you're shy about it, I can put my ear buds in and read or something while you do it." She frowned. "Though, to tell the truth, I would like to watch, if that would be okay. I mean where else could I get to see something so rad?"
It was more than I could take. I put the hood of my parka over my head and buttoned the neck. I went outside to take a walk. It was just dark enough that the stars were beginning to populate the sky. I could see a couple of other ice huts in the distance. I wondered what was going on in them. Was there some other poor schmuck over there being seduced by a winsome teenage girl?
I kicked a knob of ice with my boot. Sam wasn't trying to seduce me. She'd just gone from being sixteen one day to twenty-two the next. Falling through the ice had aged her half a decade. She'd confronted her mortality, or some such thing, and it had banished some of her inhibitions.
I thought about jerking off. But it was too fucking cold. Besides, with all the clothing I had on, it would be virtually impossible to reach things properly. And I wasn't hard just then. It seemed pretty stupid to try to get hard, so I could jerk off in order not to be hard. And let's face it. I wasn't supposed to be getting hard in the first place.
I decided to go back and lay down the law. There would be two bags this night. Separate bags. There would be no warm, female hand gripping my dripping penis. I'd take a towel into my sleeping bag with me, where I could jerk off in comfort and warmth.
Whatever she did in her bag would be her business.
I stomped back to the tent, unzipped it, and stepped inside. The lantern was lit, but turned down low. It was probably twenty degrees warmer in the tent. I opened my mouth to issue orders, as my eyes scanned the interior to find her.
She was already in the still-zipped-together sleeping bags. Her shoulders were bare and her hair fanned out on a pillow under her head. Her arms lay outside the bag, on her stomach. She was obviously naked under the bright colors of the sleeping bag fabric.