Free The Third Child by Marge Piercy

worried about what it wouldbe like when they had to stand up, for she could feel the air growing cooler. She worried about what she had done with him, but she did not regret it. She could not regret it, for it felt too strong. It felt as hard and real as the red rock she had picked up so many years ago on the mountain behind her grandpa’s farm and hidden away in her dresser drawer. This afternoon was hers.

•   CHAPTER FIVE   •
    F or the first time since she had come to Wesleyan, Melissa was not overjoyed to have Emily’s company. Emily went with her to health services but would not stop saying that Melissa had gone stark raving crazy.
    “Here you are, you kept your cherry till senior year, and this dude doesn’t even use a condom. What got into you—besides the obvious.”
    “It was different, Em, completely different.”
    “Must have been. Like did he give you something to drink?”
    “It wasn’t that way. I felt so close to him. He could see right into me. We could just communicate, like I do with you, the way it used to be with Billy.”
    They were walking back to the dorm. Melissa had the morning-after pill and a supply of birth control pills. “Did they give you a hard time?” Emily asked, finally easing up.
    Melissa shook her head. She still felt light-headed. “They’re glad if you come in, instead of getting pregnant. They know everybody fucks.” She took Emily’s arm. It always startled her, how tiny and fragile Emily was: bird bones.
    “Did you, like, feel you had to? You think the guy won’t look at you if you don’t do him. Besides, sometimes it just breaks the ice. Sometimes it makes it worse.” Emily squeezed her arm back in a gesture of affection. “Are you going to keep going out with him? I mean, your parents really will have shit fits.”
    “I don’t know, Em. But I’m not the least bit sorry. I mean, I had a real orgasm. I used to wonder what the fuss was about.” She still viewed it as something monumental, a divide in her life with a before and after.
    “It just means that he’s not a complete klutz like Jonah. Really!”
    “I don’t know. It’s like fate. The wheel stopped spinning and there he was.”
    “Duh. I think you’re in for a big letdown.”
    She remembered him saying, while he was still inside her, “I’m only taking what’s mine.” She had no idea what he meant, but it resonated. It had felt like fate to her right then. She wasn’t about to tell that to Emily. It was too private.
    Besides, she’d have to admit she hadn’t the foggiest notion what he meant. “Don’t tell Ronnie, okay? Nothing will come of it, probably. I don’t want her teasing me about Blake or being nosy.”
    “Did you tell Fern?”
    “I will if anything comes of it.”
     
    IT RAINED for two days, so it was not until Saturday that he took her back to their clearing. The evening before, they had supper together, Italian in town. She felt a great relief. They were to go on seeing each other. It was real. With both of them living in dormitories, it wasn’t too easy to grab privacy to make love. She thought that after a couple more weeks, maybe she could ask Fern to go study at the library for an hour and give them the room.
    They made love in a slower, more sensual way. She felt she had in some way grown up, because suddenly she could enjoy sex. She had always thought of it as a guy thing. Women put out and put up with it. But now she wanted it too. His skin was sleek and warm and almost hairless, like flesh formed of warm honey, of amber, except for his wiry pubic hair. They kissed until she had to draw back to catch her breath, and then they kissed again. He coiled against her, partly around her, lean and supple, rocking against her. She felt her skin, her flesh, her breasts and belly awaken wherever he caressed, wherever her skin brushed his, catching desire from him and burning, liquefying under his touch. She felt as if her body had changed its substance into something