Free Intermission by Erika Almond Page B

becoming rich and famous. His plan for that
wasn’t hitched to anything in particular. Mostly we played kiss and tell. Riley
did infinitely more of both than I, and one night I had to admit that my
eighteenth birthday was nigh and I hadn’t yet gone all the way.
    Riley had looked up at me from the floor of the treehouse,
where he was lying down while I knelt next to him and sketched him. “Why the
heck not, Josie? Sex is fun.”
    “Bobby Kincaid was the only one who had half a skill at
touching me and he moved away last year. Look around us, Riley. Who among the
yahoos at our school deserves to see my naked body? Besides,” I said, “I don’t
want to just have sex with some guy who doesn’t care about me. I want to make
love.”
    Riley was quiet while he braided a section of my long auburn
hair that had tumbled his way as I drew him. Then he softly proposed, “I know
how to make love, Josie.”
    I knew he did. I knew from what I’d heard girls say about
him and from the stories he told me about having sex with them. He never told a
demeaning or disrespectful tale. He was positively rapturous over the delicious
wonders of the female body and couldn’t seem to get enough of them. By senior
year, Riley had also been with a few older women who’d schooled him well.
    In a way he was the one who’d ruined the chances of any
other boy at Mayfield High having at me. From what I’d heard, Riley was born to
make love. He had a leisurely pace, he apparently came equipped with a large
cock curved perfectly to fit a woman’s innermosts and his motto was, “She comes
first.”
    That night, as I sketched his beautiful mouth, I accepted
his offer.
    We set a single rule. This would be a one-time only thing so
our friendship would remain intact. We shook on that. On the night of my
eighteenth birthday, in the treehouse, Riley laid me down gently on a soft pile
of blankets taken from the beds of his six brothers and sisters, all of them
out cheering the Mayfield Mavericks. We shared our first kiss, so tender, so
sweet I had to force myself to recall our one rule. With each piece of clothing
he slipped from my body he told me how beautiful I was and his eyes said he
meant it. He kissed my breasts slowly, his full lips suckling my nipples with
such gentleness that my back arched up to his mouth with hunger. My hips
writhed as though possessed when he went down on me and licked me so happily
I’d have thought my juices were honey. I remembered to this day my first orgasm
given me by a man. Fireworks.
    Riley had taken his time with all of this, making sure I was
adored and sated and ready for the big moment. Still, I wasn’t sure when he
peeled off his briefs and unveiled the instrument that would make me a woman.
The rumors whispered around Mayfield County didn’t come close. Riley’s cock was
long, large and curved up like a smile at the thought of being inside me. It
was both magnificent and intimidating.
    “Don’t you worry, Josie,” Riley said as he rolled on a
condom. “I’m an ‘easy does it’ kind of guy.” Unlike most teenage boys, Riley
wasn’t impatient. He teased me with his head to the point that I grabbed his
hips to get him inside me. By the time he finally entered my honeypot, I wanted
him so badly my virginity was a mere technicality on the way to another
physical Fourth of July.
    Riley gave me a few more of those that night. We reckoned we
ought to do all the fun things we could think of since this would be our only
night together. The next day we’d go back to being best friends. We’d made a
deal and shaken hands on it.
    Years later I was the one who broke that deal. Since my
first and only night with Riley, I’d had a couple of nice relationships that
never quite brought a sigh to my heart and I’d been in love. Once. A brutal
experience in art college that sent me running back from New York City to
Hawthorne. I swore as I cried on Riley’s shoulder that I’d never give my heart
to anyone