“Oh, you know I do,” Cheyenne said, and leaned down. I thought for a moment they might kiss, but no, Eva wiped a glob of me off her cheek and fed it to her friend. Cheyenne watched me out of the corner of her eye and bobbed up and down on Eva’s fingers like she was sucking a cock. That got a laugh out of Eva, and like that, the show ended. She got to her feet and I wrapped an arm around her to kiss her forehead.
“You are wild,” I said. “I like that.”
* * *
The next few days were a blur. I spent every moment I could with Eva, christening each room in my house, the deck, the patio, and even the garage on one memorable occasion. We made time for her friends, but they had summer jobs to tend to while the pair of us were pretty free to revel in our new relationship.
It wasn’t just the sex. We took long walks that left us not exactly lost but certainly farther away from humanity than I’d ever been. A day drive saw us back in Pike Bridge, having lunch with my family there and exploring all our old haunts. We kept it going and wound up in New Bainbridge, where we walked through the campus we both attended and stayed the night in a hotel — where of course we made love in every room before we had to check out.
I wasn’t sure how to bring up Cheyenne’s longing looks on the Fourth. Hell, I wasn’t even sure it was my business. And yeah, a selfish part of me looked at Eva and growled “mine,” but in my heart, I think I was always going to say something. Or I’d like to assume I would have, I don’t really know.
However it would have played out if things ran their course was changed the day Eva found out I never kayaked before. It was also the morning we drove back from New Bainbridge, so we were passing through the Harpy Mountains.
“I should have stopped at a couple sporting goods stores and priced out a kayak or a canoe,” I said. It was an idle comment, but even a trickle can start a flood.
“Ooh. Cheyenne has a couple. Well, I mean, her parents do, but you get the idea.”
“Have you ever done it?” I asked.
She had her phone out and was idly playing with different camera angles in the changing shade of the mountains for road trip pictures for her modeling page. She thought she looked basic with her hair back in a ponytail slipped through a baseball cap and a raglan tee with the logo for Queso Conquistador, a small chain of Tex-Mex restaurants she was modeling for that summer by showing off their merchandise in sexy ways.
“Yeah! I love it. And Overlark is perfect for it. The lake is so shallow you can’t really go in above your head. Have you?”
“No. Well, not as an adult, anyways. I’ve got pictures from when my brothers and I were kids and we went out on a rowboat, but I was so young it doesn’t count.”
She started tapping away on her phone and a minute later got a response. “Cheyenne says we can borrow her tandem kayak. Oh, this is going to be fun. It’s a workout but it’s so relaxing.”
“How did you two meet?”
“Friends of friends. I started my modeling page my sophomore year, and my pictures were… well, they were okay, but I was doing a lot of things wrong. Bad angles, bad lighting, But I knew makeup really, really well because of Mom.”
“Remind me, your mom…”
“She’s a makeup consultant. Anyways. Friends of Cheyenne’s found out I was getting into online modeling, and introduced us. When we found out we had similar histories of fighting to lose weight but not starving ourselves, we bonded. What she knew about lighting and camera angles, she taught me, and what I knew about makeup, I taught her, and then her roommate. We started to branch out a bit, bring in other girls. It’s fun. Like our own modeling agency, only no mean bitches allowed. Good vibes only.”
I thought for a moment about how to phrase the next words out of my mouth and still came up short. “Uh. Fourth of July. That got pretty wild. You two… you’ve shown off like that before for each other?”
Eva chuckled. “I wasn’t a virgin before you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No, no, no judgment. I just… ah… have you two ever hooked up?”
“Oooh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She goosed my cock through my khaki shorts. “No. We’ve kissed a few times but mostly for the pics. Guys love that.”
“I’ll bet,” I said, thinking of Cheyenne standing next to me in the dark as Eva sucked my cock.
I didn’t know if I should bring that up, so I let it slide. She deserved to know, and I knew now I’d tell her at some point, probably soon. But talk shifted to the upcoming start of her job, another topic I’d been meaning to bring up with her.
“I’ll need to start going through some of the training material and paperwork, get that done,” she said.
“And housing?” I asked, playing innocent.
“Oh, uh…”
“I was looking at rentals, and did you know Ted and Annette Parker’s house is up for rent in Pike Bridge? Beautiful place. On the expensive side, but…”
Eva gave me a sidelong look. “It was a cute place,” she said warily.
“There are rentals opening up all over New Bainbridge too. About as expensive but you’d be in the city, close to your college friends.”
“I… I…” She looked so flustered I couldn’t hold back my grin anymore and she smacked me. “Oh, you’re an asshole.”
“Come live with me. You can have any room for an office or a studio. Mine included. The view up there is fantastic.”
She studied me. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. I know you wanted to take things slow, but even if you decide this isn’t going to work out-”
“It’s going to work out,” she said quietly. “Don’t you dare think it isn’t. I’m crazy about you.”
“I’m crazy about you too. So what do you think? Want to move in?”
“Yes. Absolutely. Yes.” She pushed over the center console and kissed my cheek. When she pulled away, Eva smacked my hip. “Jerk move old man. I thought you were serious there for a second.”
“Aw, I’m sorry.”
We talked offices the rest of the trip. Eva was always going to be shy about what she really wanted to a certain extent, but I finally wrangled out of her that what she was thinking was that she’d like to convert the basement where I had my workout gear into a combination office and photo shoot area. That sounded good to me since there would still be plenty of room down there in an unused room for my weights.
Back home, we took the time to unpack and grab some water before we headed to Cheyenne’s. She was gone for the day, as were the rest of the roommates. The kayak was in the garage against a wall. I noticed skis there too and winced. Although it was only mid-July, I needed to start thinking about firewood for the winter and a generator in case the power failed. If I got stuck at home in a blizzard, which was a very real possibility, I wanted to be prepared. So much to think about, being a new homeowner.
Big though it might be, Overlark Lake was pretty shallow, all things considered. There were no motorized boats for that reason, which was perfect in my estimation. I loved the quiet of the lake, and it was emphasized even more as we paddled miles on end. The muscles it took weren’t ones I used often, and I have to admit, it took me by surprise how much strength it sapped from me.
We beached at a public access dock and rested on our backs under the shade of a pine. Eva snuggled in tight next to me and I could have slept like that, if it wasn’t for the people at the campsites around us.
But we both paid for the inactivity. When we returned to the water my muscles bitched in a symphony that would have made Andrea Bocelli proud. I wasn’t the only one. “We went waaaay too far,” Eva groaned after she upended the last of her water down her throat. “We’re going to go home and we are going to soak in the tub for hours.”
That was enough to spur me on to the finish, and finally we reached the shoreline nearest Cheyenne’s. Eva bounded ahead to start up the bath while I carried the kayak up the path, my muscles by now extraordinarily grumpy with me.
The bath helped, but by that point, we were so drained we didn’t even fool around — much. Nor did we make it back to my place. We crashed on Eva’s bed there at Cheyenne’s, the cool sheets and her desk fan too nice to ignore. I didn’t remember closing my eyes. All I knew was Eva snuggling back against me, her butt nice and warm against my half-hard prick, and then I was waking up, startled by something I didn’t consciously hear at first.
What I did know was that I was thirsty. Damned thirsty. I slipped out of bed, threw on my shorts and tee shirt with a lot of additional muscle pain, and headed out into the hallway. There, I heard it. A faint sob.
Someone was crying.
It took me a minute to find Cheyenne. She wasn’t downstairs or in her room, but out on her deck, head in her hands, her whole body shaking from the force of the tears she was trying to hold back. I slid open the door and she jumped, staring up at me under a mask of utterly ruined makeup.
“Oh shit,” she said, scrambling off her stool-height chair and moving towards the door. “I didn’t mean for anyone to hear me.”
“Hey. Stop,” I said, grabbing her shoulder. She did, and broke out into a fresh wave of tears. I didn’t know what else to do so I came in for a hug.
Cheyenne tucked into me. I squeezed her tighter and held her like that for a long minute. Finally she pulled back and asked mutely, “Is she awake too? I don’t want her to see me like this.”
“Because you want her too.”
She looked up at me. “Yes. I guess… you saw at the party.”
“Yeah. I put it together pretty fast.”
“I’m sorry. I won’t ever come between you two. But I walked past her bedroom tonight and I saw her and you and…” She gave me a broken smile. “I just hope someday I find that someone like you two found each other again.”
“Does she know?”
“No. And I want to keep it that way.”
“Okay. I won’t tell her. But I want to know why you never did.”
“I did try to, once. We were doing a cute little shoot, you know, kisses on the cheek, that sort of thing. We’d been drinking a little wine. One of our kisses got… mm… deeper. I thought maybe in the moment she liked it. But she pulled away and laughed it off and told me we really shouldn’t drink so much. I thought about telling her how I feel but here I am, two years later, and nope, still a coward. And now she has you and that’s amazing, it really is. I swear, all I want is for her to be happy.” She pulled away completely and headed for the door. “I’m sorry. This was never supposed to… I’m sorry. Please don’t tell her.”
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