He grew quiet afterwards, a bit nervous and fidgety, but at least he seemed cured (at least temporarily) of his craziness. He paced the room, and then snapped out of his contemplation, saying, “The bed! I must clean the bed, wash the sheets, air the matrass! The smell of it, oh dear…”

As he said this Faye felt most of his juice seeping out of her, onto the bed. Sitting on her bare bum, only now did she notice the coarseness of the sheets and the ruggedness of the worn-out blanket, the matrass was hard and thin. Odd how it hadn’t bothered her before.

It had all been over and done with pretty quick. He had apologized, and she had told him it was fine, and it really was. She felt good about it. It had been wonderful getting as close to him as possible, closer than close: partly occupying the same space.

She watched him fascinated, as he paced the room (and watched his tail, which so gracefully followed his every move), and her watching only seemed to make him more nervous.

“Get dressed, okay,” he said, not comfortable with her sitting naked in his home, “and please get off the bed. I have to get all of this to the lake.”

“Will your mother be home soon?”

“Soon? Ha, no, thank the stars! She’ll be home at sundown.”

“Maybe you just shouldn’t bother about the sheets,” Faye said, getting up and locating her bra, “let her smell my stink. My parents know about it, maybe she should too.”

“Are you mad?” he said, looking at her like she was mad. He pulled off the sheets and blanket, and then carried the matrass outside. Faye didn’t ask for a cloth to wipe herself with, and put on her panties, thinking she’ll put clean ones on as soon as she gets home. (And leave these lying around on the floor for her mother to find, she smiled at herself, no, she couldn’t…)

As he came back in, she told him she had some other questions when she arrived here, and had to think for a moment what they were again.

“Oh yeah, were you following me last night, after you left?”

He looked at the wooden floor and then said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what would happen now that your father had found out. I just couldn’t leave you completely on your own. So I waited around. No idea what I was waiting for, or what I was expecting. And then when I saw you come down the tree, I didn’t know what you were going to do, or where you’d be going, or what was going on, so I followed you. Had to run pretty hard to keep up, actually.”

“But why? Why didn’t you talk to me? I was clearly looking for you, going to your home, to Old Man Williams..?”

“Because I couldn’t get close to you, or something in my brain would short-circuit again! I didn’t understand what was going on. I thought there was something wrong with me, with my mind, and I was scared!” He looked at her like he was about to cry.

Faye quickly told him, “Okay, it’s okay! I understand. What I don’t understand, next question, keep up…”

“I really should go and wash these sheets you know.” He stood there looking helpless, with the sheets bunched up under his arms.

“In a moment,” Faye said, fully dressed, in charge of the situation. “When you told me about New York, and this Brick character living there, why didn’t you tell me the plan was for us both to go, and not just you? That that was what Pearly meant?”

“Well, because I didn’t want to put pressure on you, like I was suggesting or expecting you to come with me, leave your family, your home, and I didn’t want you to feel guilty, or sorry, if you chose not to, you understand? I wanted you to come up with the idea of joining me, I wanted to leave you really free to choose, you understand?”

“I do,” she said. That was a pretty good reason. She stepped up to him and kissed his nose, and then his lips.

“One last question,” she said, up close.

“I have one, shouldn’t you be in school today?”

“No, school’s fine without me. One last question. What is it you love about me?”

“Everything! That one was easy.”

“Yes, but that’s because you’re in love with me, in truelove. You love my hair, but it’s really no different from other girls’ hair, you love my eyes… okay, they are pretty good eyes, I admit that, but all the rest of it, my breasts, my skin, my scent, my whatever you love, it’s all just a trick love plays on you. You would love all those things about anyone you’d fallen in love with.”

“But isn’t the fact that I fell in love with you, and not anyone else, enough?”

“…I’m not sure.”

“Where the hell have you been, young lady!” Her mother sounded and looked high-strung, ready to snap at any moment.

Faye was prepared, and lied easily, “I needed to say farewell to Johnny, so I did. You’ll be locking me away, so this was my last chance. We’ve said goodbye, and I won’t be seeing him again for a long time.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

This seemed to deflate some of the tension of her mother. “If you’re lying, girl, and if you try something like this one more time,” she threatened, “we’ll send the police after your boy, and we’ll see how much they like it he’s back running after you again. I swear, no more nice mom and pop, young lady, because you don’t deserve us!”

A bit of a weird thing to say, Faye thought, but she said, “okay,” and left it at that.

When her father came home, she heard them talking and arguing. Obviously about her. Normally she would have cracked open her door, so she could hear what they were saying, she didn’t bother this time. She didn’t care. She thought it was unfair how parents could treat their children any way they liked.

At dinner her father said (trying hard to sound casual about it), “So, your mother tells me you skipped school today and went to see that Johnny…”

“Yes, I had to say goodbye.”

“So, this was the last time?”

“That’s right. He said he’d wait for me to come back from—what-was-it-again-?— military boarding school, was it?”

“Oh, well, that’s nice of him,” said her mother. Sounding satisfied.

“… You don’t think he’ll wait for me, do you?” She kept her voice calm, not wanting to freak out the twins, who didn’t seem to be paying attention, but you could never be sure.

“Sure he will,” said her father cheerily, chewing his beef, “you’re a great gal, after all!” He sounded as relieved about it as her mother did, not a worry in the world.

“I just want you to know,” she said bravely, “we’re madly in love!” There, chew on that.

Her father swallowed hard and looked at his wife. His wife returned his look and then turned to her daughter, and said with an icy smile, “That’s just great, honey! When you eventually get out of boarding school, you’ll be an adult, and if you want to ruin your life by running around with a lemurian, that’s just fine with us! You’ll no longer be our responsibility, and we’ll respect your choices as an adult.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” said Faye.

“Didn’t you tell us once,” said Samuel, one of the twins, looking at no one in particular, “that if you love someone it doesn’t matter who they are?”

“So I did, duckie. But I was talking about gay men and women. I was talking about humans. You shouldn’t fall in love with a fish, or a chair, now should you?” (Sandy laughed hard at this, while Samuel remained focused.)

“So, if Johnny was a gay human it would be alright,” concluded Samuel.

“Or if Faye was a gay lemurian,” said Sandy sagely.

“Sure,” said mother, “we would have no problem with that, and Faye and Johnny could live their lives as happy, uhm, gay lemurians.”

“Then how come a human falls in love with a lemurian?” Samuel continued.

“Well, either this human is just crying for attention, or if this human really thinks she’s in love with a lemurian, then perhaps there’s something wrong with this human.”

“And there’s something wrong with the lemurian for loving her back,” said Sandy.

“Isn’t it nice then how two people with something with them have found each other?”

“See? That’s right, Sam, you tell ‘em” Faye said animatedly, “this guy is talking sense!”

Sprawled on her bed, freshly showered (and teeth brushed, mom), she was feeling pretty proud of herself for keeping her cool during dinner. Her parents had really been trying to rile up. Boy, she’d love to tell Johnny all about it. She automatically looked at her partially open window. She would normally expect him around this hour.

She imagined him coming through the window, giving her his smile and without saying a word, taking off his clothes. Her mother had been right on that point, she had known what had been the best way for Faye and Johnny to spent their time here, and understandably suspected them of just that. What fun they could have had together for those two and a half weeks, but all they had done was talked and read.

She imagined Johnny lightly on top of her, his tongue deep in her mouth, his body between her legs. She rolled down her panties and flicked them away with her foot. She had never before used or thought of the word ‘horny’ in a non-joking manner, but she thought it was a good word to describe how she felt now. She shoved two finger into her wet softness. What she still had found a bit icky the last time she tried it, felt just right now. It didn’t feel quite the same as Johnny’s beautiful pink penis, but it was close enough, and with her inner eye she thought she saw him looking at her from afar, as she surrendered to this feeling. She wished she could get deeper, she couldn’t get deep enough, and then had her other hand join in, locating the right spot, pushing and rubbing. She got a rhythm going, a natural rhythm. It took some doing, and it came up slowly, in waves, warm tropical waves, growing waves, with ever more force, until the dam broke—she almost cried out, it was so good. It jolted through her body, sending shocks through her pelvis and up her spine, a tingling warm brightness behind her eyes… god! … and if she could just… there you go, she could keep it going..!

She was a panting, clammy, sticky, beautiful mess. So, this was what Claudette had been talking about!