Day 2

When Caitlyn awoke again, something was pressing her in an inappropriate place.

Once again it took a while to understand the surroundings, and it wasn't really until she saw Jon's face that everything fell into place. Then she felt his arms around her, felt his shoulder pillowing her head, his cheek pressed against hers, his entire body pressed down the length of hers. She was naked—they both were—and the thing poking her in the inappropriate place turned out to be his erection, pressing up between her thighs.

She could also feel an odd sort of crust drying on the inside of her legs. That was another thing nobody had ever told her about.

We did it, she thought to herself. We did it. In every sense of the word. We're married. It's done. I... I am Mrs. Caitlyn Stanford.

It's going to take a while to get used to that.

It was hard to tell what time it was; she couldn't see the clock, and whatever sunlight was pouring down on the Earth was being mollified by the overcast sky. It was her favorite season, because everything was so timeless; morning and afternoon and evening blended together in a grey slurry of diffuse light and everpine green. Plus, if they got lucky, it would rain. She had always loved rain. She especially loved rain in Jon's company.

She sort of wanted to know what time it was, and it would be nice to relieve her bladder, but Jon was still asleep, and it was too darned nice here in his arms. It was a little awkward with his neck and head arching over hers—a bit muggy, from lack of air circulation—but not uncomfortable. In fact, she couldn't recall ever feeling this well-rested. Or this relaxed. Or this... Loved.

She remembered now what they had done last night—his hands on her breasts, the urgent heat between her legs, and finally his member inside her—and the thought made her blush, both at the idea of having actually had sex and at the fact that she kind of wanted to do it again. Maybe not now, but, soon, definitely soon. She certainly understood now why Jon had always been eager to push their physical activities past the realm of the clothed. It hadn't been the earth-breaking, life-shattering event some people said it was; in fact, it had been downright uncomfortable to have his penis inside of her. But he'd said it would feel good eventually, and the whole rest of it had been so wonderful that she was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He never made a fuss about it, but I know he chafed at having to wait until marriage to do this. Well... I think it was a good idea to wait—it's not like we were hurt by playing it safe—but I'm also glad we don't have to wait anymore.

She remembered the first time he had managed to get her motor running. He'd kissed her ears before that night, but never her neck, and when he did, all the rest of the world had fallen away. "I've never felt like that before," she had confessed afterwards. "I never knew I could feel that way before." And he had smiled and said, "That's what I'm here for."

She had never known she could feel this way either: comfortable, safe, sheltered... And satisfied, satisfied in more ways than she could explain. It was like nothing could touch her here.

Except for the things she wanted to touch her.

When she kissed his shoulder, he stirred, and when she kissed his neck, he said, "Mmmm." She had only done it a few times before in her life.

"Good morning," she said.

"Good morning, Mrs. Stanford," he said.

"Hee," she said. "It's going to take a while to get used to that."

"Then I shall say it every morning," he said, "until it is as natural to you as breathing."

"Can you see the clock?"

"Oh, is that all you woke me up for?"

"Heehee. I'm just curious."

"It's a little before ten."

"Hmm. I should get up. But. I'm so comfortable here."

"So am I. But I have to pee again."

"Yeah. And after... What we did earlier... I should probably take a shower again."

"Hmm." She heard his smile. "That sounds like a good idea. I think I'll join you."

"What?" she said. "In the shower?"

"Why not? It's big enough for the two of us. And I can help you wash your hair."

On second thought, that did sound nice. "Well, since you ask so nicely..."

He spooled up the shower while she used the toilet, and then joined him under the warm spray. He took her into his arms immediately and kissed her, heedless of the water coming down on them, and after a moment she closed her eyes and let him. He was right, the shower was indeed big enough for two. Actually, maybe even more than that. Which would be really weird, but I hear some people like that sort of thing.

When they broke apart, his penis was at full staff again, poking at her belly. "Umm," she said. She had enjoyed their session in bed, but she wasn't sure she was up for a repeat performance.

"Oh, um," he said. "It does that."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It does that a lot. It doesn't take a whole lot for it to go hard."

"What, so, you mean— Every time we've kissed, for the last, like, year and a half—"

He shrugged, embarrassed.

"That's... That's kinda..."

"It's just what it does. I don't have control over it. And most of the time you couldn't tell, right? 'cause I was wearing pants."

"Yeah, but..." The thought that, for over a year, he'd had that thing pointing at her... Had she married a nymphomaniac? He had said it was normal, but surely that couldn't be so.

"Look, baby," he said. "Bottom line, it comes down to you. It's you that makes this thing get ready for action, and it's you that decides how and when it gets any action. If we moved too fast last night, you just say the word and we'll slow down. There is nothing that will happen in this marriage that you don't want."

And the thing was, he meant it. She knew he meant it. He had made promises like these many times before, and always kept them. And love welled up inside her and she reached for him and hugged him close, and if that meant he got an erection, that was okay, because there were worse prices to pay for having her beloved close at hand.

He did wash her hair, lathering the shampoo into her long mane of night-dark hair with tender and obvious affection. It felt remarkably good to have him attend to her like that, and she thought she might want to shower with him a bit more frequently. She washed his back, too, and most of his front as well, though she left his private parts for him to take care of. He did no such thing; he washed her everything. It made her a bit uncomfortable to have him wandering around down there, especially with soapy hands, but she said nothing, and he was gracious about it. And, to her surprise, he didn't try to start anything sexual. His erection was always there, sometimes up, sometimes down, but never really fading entirely, but he seemed content to ignore it.

After they had toweled off (he helped with that too), she got dressed in some of the clothes her father had sent her, while he called Polkiss-Leyton Dentistry. "Good news," he said, "they're okay with me taking the day off. Actually, they're okay with me taking the week off, but I'm not sure I will."

"Today, at least, though," she said. It had been over a month since they'd gotten to actually spend an entire day together—much less the twenty-four hours they'd be approaching at about 4 this afternoon—and she didn't want to miss a moment of it.

"Yeah," he said. "We've got a lot of stuff to do, anyway."

"Like what," she said.

"Well... To start with, we need to raid your house and get some of your stuff," he said. "I have no real idea how to move your harp, especially not in Buffy—" (that was what Melinda had named the Celica) "—but your clothes and other things we can at least retrieve. Anything else, we should buy."

"We might want to start a joint bank account," she said. "Pool our assets."

"If you're serious about finding a job, now's the time to start."

"We should probably look for a place of our own."

"Yeah."

"You're right, we do have a lot of things to do."

"Good thing we got out of bed, huh."

"Yeah. But it was comfortable there."

He smiled. "The bed'll still be there when we get back."

They started off towards the Delaney house. It was on the way when Jon saw something that made him slap his forehead in anxiety. "Holy crap, we also gotta get some condoms."

"What?"

"Condoms? You know, birth control? Something like that?"

They were passing by the Planned Parenthood, she realized. "That's a really good point." They had first spoken of children a long time ago, and decided to hold off on that part of their lives for at least a few years.

"God, I should've remembered last night when we were doing it," he said. He knew she didn't like it when he took the Lord's name in vain, and normally he was pretty good about it. He must be really worried. "I've got some, they were right there in the nightstand. I can't believe I forgot."

Why he had condoms, she didn't want to know. "I remembered." If she had known, she might've made a different decision.

"What? Then why didn't you say something?"

"I... I just. I thought... Jon, it was our first time. Your first time, my first time, our first time together. I didn't want... I wanted it to be pure." There was that too. What a drag it would've been to have to stop and put on a condom. "Just you and me, with nothing artificial in the way, just the way God intended it."

"Yeah, but..." (She had no idea how much that pleased him; nor would he be able to communicate it for quite some time.) "What if you get pregnant?"

She gave a deep sigh. That was the question, wasn't it. "Dad used to say that he believes in a woman's right to choose. And, when she has sex, she's made her choice."

"So... You'd..."

"If it happens, it happens."

"We're not ready for a baby."

"I know." She sighed. "Maybe it wasn't the smartest choice."

"Maybe it wasn't," he agreed. But his hand caught hers and squeezed it fast, and she knew how much he appreciated it.

Caitlyn had been pretty sure her mom would be out at school—probably halfway through the reading course of the day—and she was right; Dad was out to work as well. Only Rex, the collie, was there to greet them, which he did, with marked enthusiasm. As always, he paid extra attention to Jon's pants. Caitlyn had always been embarrassed on his behalf, but Jon took it in stride. "Yes, Rex, cats. There are such things in the world as cats, and their hair gets on my pants. Sheesh, you'd think after a year and a half..."

A thought occurred to Caitlyn, and she blushed. "Maybe he smells... What we did."

Rex immediately nosed over and started sniffing at her crotch.

Jon's eyebrows jumped. Caitlyn, her face red, stifled a giggle.

It was going to be hard to leave her two closets behind. Dressing well (and stylishly, if eccentrically) was one of her favorite habits, and once Nathan had moved out she had claimed his room, and especially his closet, with alacrity. But there wasn't time for a lengthy debate; she had already been making decisions in the car, and once they got up to her room, she sent Jon for a suitcase and immediately began pulling things out. The vast majority of it, she knew, she would have to leave behind; she was only taking that which she absolutely could not bear to leave behind. The Winnie-the-Pooh coveralls, for instance. How could she live without those?

She took a moment to look around the room. She had a lot of stuff, she realized. She had decorated the room herself, on the Victorian principle that every spare ounce of space should be used. The shelf above her bed was covered in Beanie Babies, and much of her doll furniture was on display on the dressers and tables. None of it was practical. She would have to leave all of it here. This was a goodbye that would be a lot harder to make.

She gathered up her cosmetics, her toiletries, and what Jon called her hair-control devices. She picked up a few personal effects, like her journal, and stowed them in her backpack along with her schoolbooks. Her full-size harp, which was taller than Jon, they were not able to bring, but she took her Celtic lap harp as well as her oboe, and they only-half-jokingly talked about wedging the three-quarters harp in the back seats. If they laid it its spine on the floor, curve side upward and the base towards one of the doors, it might fit; but it would probably be damaged during the trip. It would have to remain as well.

Their next stop was a local bank branch, there to pool their financial assets. Caitlyn had thought to bring her checkbook, but Jon had not, so they went to his bank (Citibank) to unite their monies as they had their lives. It took about an hour to close Jon's personal account and transfer its assets to the new one they had opened in their names ("Jon and Caitlyn Stanford" was what would appear on the checks). Caitlyn was astounded at the total assets: nearly forty thousand dollars in stocks, bonds and liquid capital. "What, did you win the lottery or something," she asked once they were out of the building.

"No," said Jon, embarrassed. "I opened that account when I was ten. I've been putting stuff in it ever since. Then my dad's been playing the stock market on my behalf—we did some good work off of Google, we jumped on the Marvel Comics bandwagon, stuff like that. Plus, most of my extended family just gives me money on holidays. And I've been working at Polkiss-Leyton for about a year now, which is, you know, thirty thousand in itself, after taxes. I don't have much in the way of expenses... Well, clearly, enough to have eaten through most of the rest of my savings. But that's over the course of a lifetime. I mean, I only really started making money once I started working at Polkiss-Leyton. Basically, I just... Saved."

"We'll probably be okay financially for a while," said Caitlyn, eyeing the statement.

"Probably," said Jon. "But maybe not. What if you need a car all of a sudden?—which you will, considering that, with my schedule, there's no way I could drop you off at school at a reasonable time."

She hadn't even considered that. "I... I could take the bus," she said. Cars were... What, twenty or thirty thousand dollars? And that was on top of her school payments and whatever living expenses they might accrue. ...Wait, school? Oh heck, I'm supposed to be in class right now! Finals are next week!

"You could," said Jon. "Which reminds me, we probably have to do DMV paperwork to transfer Buffy to my ownership."

"Can we get lunch first?" she asked. "It's noon." Class would have to wait. She had more important things to spend the day on. And more important people, too.

As they ate, a thought occurred to her. "I guess we didn't get a chance to write our own vows."

"Yeah," Jon said.

"I hope that was okay with you," she said. She had been rather surprised when he'd brought up the suggestion—he hadn't realized he would take such an interest in their promises to each other—but she'd been willing to go along with it. After all, she was writing hers.

"Actually... Yeah. I kind of liked the traditional ones."

"Really?"

"Yeah, there's something very... Final about them. It's fitting. I mean, we really have made a significant commitment to one another, and I don't think any vow I could've written would have reflected that."

She smiled. "That was why I liked them too. I like the thought that there's nothing we won't share with each other."

"Germs," he said. "Diseases. Bad housing conditions. Your french fries."

"Okay, one thing we won't share," she said, grinning.

"Hypocrite."

"Hey, I asked you if you wanted fries, and you said you didn't! You could've gotten your own!"

"But I didn't, because I knew that, being my wife and all, you'd be willing to share."

"Well, I'm not. So deal with it, buster."

They giggled at each other.

After they had eaten, they went to Caitlyn's bank and arranged for her account to be closed and her funds transferred as well. This time it was Jon's eyebrows that went up. "And you were grilling me about things?"

She colored. "It's only like $20,000."

"For someone who's never had a job and whose only income is playing weddings at $250 a pop, that's not exactly a small amount of money."

"Yeah, but, I got money from my relatives too. And when Aunt Muriel passed away two years ago she split her savings up between me, Nathan and my cousins, 'cause she never had kids of her own. That was like ten thousand right there—after tax." She well remembered the fuss her father had made over that. "Pay to Caesar's what is Caesar's, yes," he'd said, "but Caesar sure seems to have an overinflated opinion of himself, doesn't he."

"Maybe we will be okay financially for a while," he said.

"Assuming I don't need a car."

"Yeah. And depending on housing."

"How are we going to find out about that?"

"How else? The Internet."

But they had two more stops to make first. Jon called his father and confirmed the DMV paperwork they would need to go through to transfer the Celica to Jon's name. That in itself took over an hour, requiring several cross-referencing phone calls back to Mr. and Mrs. Stanton for numbers, facts and other minutiae. Then, finally, they swung by the Planned Parenthood to get their ducks in order so that there wouldn't be any unexpected ducks.

The employee, a tall amazon of a woman named Sharon, offered Caitlyn a morning-after pill, but she declined; that was too close to abortion for her taste. They would just have to chance it. Sharon then asked when Caitlyn had had her last period: it had started last Wednesday and, in fact, ended just this Saturday. "You should be okay, then," said Sharon. "It's the wrong time in your cycle for ovulation. You can always take a home pregnancy test if you want to be extra sure."

Caitlyn found herself with a prescription for an oral contraceptive, which they would need a drug store to fill out. While they were at it, Jon got a box of condoms, in supplement to whatever supply he had secreted away at home: "The pill won't actually take effect for a little while," Sharon had told them. "I would at least wait until your next period occurs before you start going bareback. In the meanwhile, you'll want to find an alternative method of contraception in the meantime. Condoms are generally the way to go, but if you really want to be safe you should use more than one form of contraception. The only problem is that most of the female methods are like the pill—you have to put them in place ahead of time or else they won't be effective—and you can't really stack male methods."

"Couldn't you just put on two condoms?" Caitlyn asked.

"Not really, they don't work that way," said Sharon. "You're likely to break one or both of them trying to put the second one on, and then where have you gotten? And female condoms... Well, they suck, let's just put it that way."

"Female condoms?" said Caitlyn in confusion. "They make female condoms?"

"She's new at this," said Jon apologetically.

"Don't worry, at least she's asking questions," said Sharon. "There aren't a whole lot of communities that do abstinence-only education anymore, but you can always tell when one of them comes in. No one tells them to use a condom, so they have unprotected sex—and then they come in here, asking how they got pregnant."

Caitlyn shook her head. "Even I know that, and I stayed a virgin until I got married."

"Oh, really? Congratulations!" said Sharon. "Shotgun of some sort?"

"No, more like the other way around," said Jon. "Shotgun is when the parents force the kids to marry. We did it so they couldn't stop us from marrying. So, maybe like a gunshot wedding."

And yes, Caitlyn found out, they did make female condoms. Jon said that they were basically Ziploc bags, and about as comfortable and conducive to sexual enjoyment. There were also "diaphragms," latex caps that fit over her cervix (My what?) and needed to be supplemented with "spermicidal foam," which in itself was perfectly acceptable method—but both needed to be applied ahead of time, as much as half an hour in advance, and were not supposed to be left in for long. Caitlyn, who had had sex exactly once in her life, could already see the impracticalities of such a method—completely aside from the difficulty of somehow managing to reach all the way inside herself like that. She wondered if there were people who actually had to schedule sex into their day planners. That was the only way she could think of to have the equipment installed in a timely and appropriate fashion.

There was also a dizzying and spectacular array of male condoms. Caitlyn had had no idea that there were so many. Were there that many kinds of penises in the world? Or were there other differences? Why did a condom need to be "ribbed for her pleasure"? How would ribs add to her pleasure? Not that there was anything un-pleasurable about ribs, especially barbequed ones, but she didn't think that was what the condom makers were thinking of. There were condoms advertised for small penises, some for large; there were latex ones and sheepskin ones (which Jon said were actually made of intestines, of all things); there were extra-thin ones "for enhanced sensations" (Why? What about sex needs to be enhanced?) and the ribbed-for-her-pleasure ones; there were even flavored ones, colored like candy and covered in lubrication that tasted (supposedly) like fruit. It was insane. She was pleased when Jon selected a red box of plain, no-nonsense Trojans—pleased, but a little curious as well. She wondered if they made chocolate-flavored condoms.

All Jon said was, "That's the first time I ever stood in the condom aisle without feeling self-conscious." She wondered what he meant by that.

It was nearly four in the afternoon when they got back to Jon's parents' house. They unpacked Caitlyn's things—in itself an adventure, because Jon's closet was fairly full as well; he ended up folding up about half his things and putting them in a bureau for cold storage—and cached their new birth control methods to the appropriate places (Caitlyn to her morning ablutions, Jon to the nightstand). Caitlyn felt remarkably self-conscious about the blister pack in her little satchel of toiletry gear. Why should she? She was married, she was being responsible (or trying to be). Where was the shame in that? Or maybe it was the implication that she enjoyed sex. Did proper, responsible young women use birth control?

Jon's computer opened the Internet at a touch. One-bedroom apartments were running anywhere from $500 to $1,000 a month in the greater area, and they marked down the few that weren't currently occupied; it was, after all, Tuesday, December 11th. There were used cars available from $10,000 upward, but Jon said he wouldn't trust anything cheaper than $15,000. Craigslist was their touchstone, for these things and all others. There were a surprising amount of musical gigs available, both one-shot and permanent, and Caitlyn bookmarked some of the most promising ones. Her piano talents were a bit rusty, but she thought she could get them up to speed, and there was always work for a good harpist. Maybe there was hope for this slapdash marriage after all.

Finally Caitlyn closed the browser and glanced at the clock: not long before 5:00. Jon, who had been writing a public announcement e-mail of their nuptials on his laptop, had finished long ago. "Well," she said. "What should we do now?"

"Hmm?" Jon said.

"It's too early for dinner, it's too early for sleep. What should we do?"

"I dunno, what do you wanna do?"

"I should probably do some homework," she said, remembering now a half-written paper that she had neglected to copy off the computer at her parents' house. "And I've got music to practice, though without my harp that'll be a little difficult."

"You could play air harp."

She laughed. "Yeah right."

"We could... I dunno, we could watch a movie, we could read, we could... I mean, what did we normally do when we had time together?"

"We watched movies," she said. "Or we played The Sims. But mostly, it was just an excuse for us to cuddle."

He laughed. "That's very true." He walked over and drew her into his arms. "So, my lovely wife. What would you like to pretend to do while we cuddle?"

"Hmm." His shoulder made a wonderful pillow. "I like it when you say that."

They ended up forgoing the excuse entirely and simply stretching out fully-clothed on the bed. He lay on his back, and she sprawled out across him, protected and content. His chest was warm and firm, but even more than that she could hear and feel the beating of his heart. She loved that.

"So," he said. "What did you think of... What we did last night?"

"Umm," she said. "It was... It was good."

"...Oh," he said. She had a hunch he had noticed the non-committal tone. "Did you like it?"

The thing was, the truth was far too embarrassing. "...Yes," she mumbled.

"Sweetie, there's nothing wrong with that. Your body's meant to enjoy it. That's what it's designed for. There's no crime in enjoying what God intended you to enjoy."

"Yes, but... It still feels... Wrong. Like, we aren't... Like it's wrong for us to be doing... What we did."

"Why? Baby, we're married. In the sight of God and man, we were married. And in the sight of Uncle Sam, too. Unless you're going to tell me that Reverend Pendleton is actually from some obscure denomination that ordains people via e-mail."

"No, it's not that, it's—"

"Is Caitlyn not your real name? Did you sign with a pseudonym?"

Anger and desperation burst out of her in equal measure. "Jon, stop it!"

He fell silent, surprised.

"Why did we get married? Because it was convenient. That's like people who get married to gain citizenship in America. It's not legally binding, it's wrong. It's a sin. How are we any better? Jon, if you were to tell me that having sex with me wasn't a motivation in marrying me in such a rush, you'd be lying, and you know it. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't desperate to get out my mother's house. That's why we got married, not because we love each other. We were means to an end. That's a sin. That's wrong. We..." She was almost crying now. "We..."

"Caitlyn," he said—quietly, but something in his voice still moved her to stillness.

"What you say is true. But it would also be a lie to say we married each other solely out of convenience. Do you love me? Do you want to spend your life with me? Do you want to make children with me, and raise them with me? Do you want to grow old with me?" He didn't wait for her answer (Yes). "Because that's what you've said, for over a year, and I believe you meant it. I know I meant it when I said those things to you. Caitlyn, we do love each other. And nothing can change that.

"Now, that's not to say that other things haven't crept in, because, yes, they have. There was convenience involved. It was the best solution to a bad situation—not necessarily a good solution, but the best one. Well, baby, that's just how life works. No one's motives are perfectly pure. We all want selfish things. And God knows that. And He takes that into account when weighing human actions, because He created us selfish, and He knows that the only thing we can do about that is try to be selfish in a way that makes us selfless.

"Look. We're married now. I could be a cruel, insensitive asshole to you, that's technically within my rights as a husband. I would probably notice very quickly, however, that you wouldn't be very nice to me. If I tried being nice to you, you'd probably lighten up as well. Thus, it benefits me to be nice to be nice to you.

"But even more than that, it pleases me to be nice to you. I like seeing you happy, I like seeing you smiling—I especially like seeing you naked and sighing in pleasure, but that's besides the point." She felt her face reddening. "Being nice to you makes you nice to me, yes, but that's ultimately a bonus. It would please me to be nice to you even if it didn't make you treat me any differently. Am I being selfish? Absolutely. But am I being selfish in a way that benefits other people? Again, absolutely.

"Selfishness is a weapon like any other: its effects depends on who wields it, and why. I mean, look at your mother, praying for Nathan's life to fall apart so he's forced to move back home. Sure, it would make her happy to have her son back, but what about what Nathaniel wants? She's ignoring that and focusing solely on her own needs. That's selfishness used in a bad way."

Caitlyn's brow hardened at the thought. "I still can't believe she did that. Praying to God for Nathan to screw up?"

"Yeah. If God has the sense He gave a goat, he'll just chuck those in the Junk Mail folder."

"Yeah..."

"But, Caitlyn..." His hand touched her chin, nudging her face up to his. His blue eyes were serious. "I love you. Nothing can change that. I've wanted to marry you for as long as we've dated. We've been planning our wedding for seven months on and off. We were going to end up here anyway; now we're just a little bit ahead of schedule. The underlying facts—that I love you, and want to be with you for the rest of my life—have not, and never have, changed."

She kissed him. "You always know how to cheer me up."

They spent a long time on that bed, kissing, just experiencing each other's presence. Sometimes she felt like she forgot each day just how much she loved being in his arms, next to his body, but she didn't mind; she got to discover it anew every time. His arms and back were so strong, like a wall to ward off harm and evil. She felt safe in his arms—safe, and sheltered, embraced but never confined. He fit her perfectly, just the way she wanted to be fit.

The only awkward moment came when he placed his hand on her breast. She was worried that he would try to initiate sex again, which she didn't want—the door was open, at the very least, and the last thing they might need was to be walked in on by his parents or sister—and she said, "No, Jon, not now," and she thought he might be disappointed but if so he gave no sign of it, simply let his hand rest there for a moment and then took it away to stroke her face. She loved him for that too.

As she'd thought they might, Jon's parents came up at about 6:00 and invited them to dinner. It would be their treat, they said, as part of the rather disjointed wedding festivities. So Mr. and Mrs. Stanford Sr. treated Mr. and Mrs. Stanford Jr., plus Melinda, to dinner at Chadley's, a very posh steak restaurant with pretensions of gourmet-dom, according to Melinda: "You can tell by the prices on the menu: there's no decimal places, just block dollars." As far as Caitlyn was concerned, they were more than pretensions: the food was delicious, if occasionally unorthodox—who would have thought that lime would enhance the flavor of corn?, but it did.

Caitlyn found herself contrasting it to dinners with her own family. Once, years ago, there had been this sort of relaxation, this sort of camaraderie, this sort of banter; but then Nathan had gone off to college, a year early like Caitlyn herself had, and things had started to change as his world-view expanded from eleven years of home-schooling to the entire wide world that compresses itself into a university. By the time Caitlyn started her undergraduate career, the atmosphere around the Delaney table was always frosty with disapproval. When Nathan left, things only got worse.

There was none of that here. Jon had told her stories about his family and the utter misery that had once reigned there, as his own mother tried to force her children into molds that did not fit them in the slightest, but Jon had allied with Melinda and his own father Glenn to finally convince her that trying to hammer her square children into round holes was only causing damage. A midnight ambulance ride for Melinda, who collapsed from malnutrition due to anorexia, was instrumental in winning the case. Now Regina Stanford was a hands-off mother—too hands-off, in Jon's estimation, because Melinda had dropped out of high school, never gone to college, and at twenty-two had still not been gainfully employed. Clearly, Caitlyn supposed, it was possible to go too far in the other direction. She thought she'd really rather have a hands-off mother, though, than one who was probably at this very moment praying for her daughter's marriage to end in messy divorce.

Glenn and Regina Stanford had essentially renounced their parenthood, promoting their children directly to adult status. It led to a disturbing lack of guidance, but also a strong bond of camaraderie. The members of the Stanford family were equal, with no one having any more authority over the others (or at least much more). The parents and children, no longer tied in place by power structure, had become friends.

Caitlyn wondered at this strange family mechanic. Was it the kind of thing she would like to create for her children? She and Jon had been raised in similar environments, and had vowed, both separately and together, not to make the mistakes their parents had. The Stanfords were going to raise their children differently than they themselves had been raised. But what different way were they going to choose? That's a question we haven't quite answered. We know what we're not going to do—but, in a multiple-choice test like this one, that isn't necessarily saying much.

Suddenly a thought speared through her. "It's Tuesday. Jon, it's Tuesday. I have Bible study at eight!"

Jon's eyes popped open. "What time is it." He flipped open his cellphone. "Shit!"

"I take it we have to leave," said Mr. Stanford, looking both bemused and amused.

"I can drive you," said Jon, "but you're going to be at least half an hour late even if we leave this instant."

"Actually..." said Caitlyn, hesitating on the instant of a new realization. "...I'd kinda like it if you would come with me."

Jon looked at her, blinking.

She wasn't sure what had driven her to say that, but she had. She wanted him to come with her. Partially she wanted to walk in there with him on her arm and rings on their fingers and see how people reacted, but it was more than that. Jon wasn't a lapsed Christian, but he was close, and she didn't think that should be allowed to stand. She had been brought up Christian, and she believed in the Message. For her, Bible study was an opportunity to learn about one of the few things that, in the end, really mattered. She knew Jon didn't agree, but if this marriage was going to affect his faith, she wanted to be in a positive way—and as soon as possible.

"Please," said Caitlyn. "I... I think it would be a good idea."

Jon looked at her for a moment more, and then shrugged and turned to his dad. "We do have to leave."

"Then let's leave," said Mr. Stanford, signaling for the check.

By driving like a man possessed, Jon was able to shave it down to 27 minutes late. To her chagrin, only three of the other eight group members were actually in attendance: old Mrs. Lippmann, and the group leaders, siblings Gerald Mormont and Dacey Klein. "It's the Christmas season," Gerald said. "Everyone's so busy this time of year. There's always a sharp drop-off in attendance once Thanksgiving rolls around."

"I see you've brought a new accessory today," said Dacey with a bright grin. She, like Caitlyn, was a jewelry enthusiast, and the two had spent plenty of time comparing notes on earrings, necklaces, men and various other accoutrements no woman should go without. They all knew Jon—he'd been attending church with her for most of their relationship—but this was one of the first times he'd chosen to come to one of these study sessions. "It's good to see you, Jon."

"I didn't get a chance to tell you on Sunday, Caitlyn," said Mrs. Lippmann, "but your playing was beautiful. I have always enjoyed your music at the services."

"So what's with you two," Gerald asked congenially. "Were you late at dinner or something?"

"Yeah, we... We lost track of the time," said Jon.

"That seems to happen to me a lot," said Dacey. "I'll be at work plugging away at the latest financial reports, and then suddenly I get a phone call from Stephen: 'Mom, you were supposed to pick me up an hour ago!' I'm thinking I've got to get an alarm clock for my office!" She laughed.

"Jon, I'm not sure how much Caitlyn tells you about what she tells us," Gerald said, "but, speaking solely as an outsider, I wanted you to know that we were all very impressed with the way you handled the confrontation between Caitlyn and her mother three weeks ago."

"Yes," said Mrs. Lippmann, "very impressed."

"Obviously, Caitlyn wasn't able to give us a word-for-word description of what was said," Gerald continued, "but we felt you handled it with a great deal of maturity and wisdom."

Jon's eyebrows were in his hair. "Umm. Thank you." It had been an eruption after Mrs. Delaney had caught them kissing in a quiet corner of the church gardens. Nothing untoward had been going on—clothes on, hands in the right places, just two people sharing a quick kiss because if they didn't now, they couldn't at all today—but Mrs. Delaney had read them the riot act. When Caitlyn had told them about the 'discussion' that followed (she used the term loosely), the other group members had pointed out how well Jon had deflected any of Mrs. Delaney's attempts to attack him, without launching an attack of his own or even raising his voice. Mom had been essentially talked out of the entire argument, which had only pissed her off more.

"Well," said Gerald. "Since we're all here—as many of us as are likely to show up, that is—why don't we get started."

Caitlyn passed Jon a Bible as they sat down. He seemed uncomfortable with it, which didn't seem a good sign to her.

They ended up near Dacey Klein, who looked over and said, "Ooh, Jon, I like your ring. Is that new?"

Jon looked very uncomfortable now. "Err, yeah," he said. "Fairly recent."

Dacey's eyes automatically drifted to Caitlyn's hands. "Did Caitlyn get it for... Oh my." At the sound of her voice, everyone looked up.

Caitlyn fidgeted. Now that the moment was on her, she felt panic more than anything else. Didn't I want this? Am I really so fickle as that?

"Heaven forefend," said Mrs. Lippmann, who was evidently possessed of alarming eyesight. "Now even the children are getting married."

"Are getting what!" said Gerald.

"Look at her," Dacey said. "Check your own finger. It's right there."

"When did this happen," Gerald asked.

"And why weren't we invited!" Dacey asked. She jumped up and gulped Caitlyn into a hug. "Congratulations!"

"Well, um," said Caitlyn, trying without success to wiggle free. "It, uh." The simple fact was, she wasn't sure she should tell them the truth. Or could tell them the truth. There was much she didn't say about her home life, and she was not by nature a self-disclosing sort of person. "It's a long story," she finished lamely.

"We have time!" said Dacey brightly.

Caitlyn looked at Jon, feeling a sinking in her gut. Jon had been pushing her to start telling people. She knew what he was going to say before he said it, and he did not disappoint her.

"Do you trust them?" he asked.

Well, that was a loaded question—they were right here in the room, after all! But there was also that thing about 'Thou shalt not lie.' "Yes."

"Then I think you should tell them," said Jon.

"You think I should tell them."

"I think you should tell them all of it," said Jon.

Caitlyn closed her eyes. "I was afraid you might say that."

Jon was not a self-disclosing person by nature either, but he knew the value of trust. It was he who had taught her that the basis of all friendship is vulnerability, that the only way to start a true friendship was to tell the potential friend something they could use to hurt you. Before that, though, you had to choose the right person—which Jon was a lot better at than she was. Evidently he trusted Dacey and Gerald, and even Mrs. Lippmann, evidently—if he hadn't, he wouldn't have said to go for it. But it wasn't his family at risk, or his reputation, if any of this somehow got to Mrs. Delaney through the grapevine.

"You don't have to tell us anything you're not comfortable with, Caitlyn," said Dacey, sitting down in the nearest chair.

Oh yes I do, Caitlyn thought. "I know," Caitlyn said.

All right.

"I don't know how much you know about myself and my family," Caitlyn said. "I mean, I know what we show to the outside world, but, as with most families, that's not half of what actually goes on."

"Is this something we want to hear?" Gerald asked. "Is this something that might possibly change opinions, hurt feelings, undermine respect... That sort of thing?"

"Yes," said Caitlyn bluntly, "but I wouldn't be speaking of it except in direst need."

Gerald nodded. "So, in other words, we didn't have this conversation. Nobody knows anything about you or Jon or Linda or Sam Delaney that isn't apparent on the surface. Are we agreed?" He looked around the circle and got a confirmation from everyone. This was an old policy with the church's small groups: that anything could be spoken of, in strictest confidence. Caitlyn had never expected to be the person speaking. Caitlyn had never wanted to be the person speaking.

She didn't try to explain the truth of her need: not to be heard, but to speak. She needed—Jon was right about this, she realized—she needed to be able to speak out and have her opinion be respected. She needed to be confident her voice would be heard.

"Well, as I'm sure you know, my brother Nathan moved to Idaho the summer before last, a year after he graduated. What I'm sure you don't know is the circumstances surrounding that move. I'm sure you don't know it because, to my knowledge, none of us have ever spoken of it." Well, Nathan had probably spoken of it to his girlfriend Shanelle—no, his wife Shanelle, now—but Boise was a little far away. "To explain the events of the last twenty-four hours, I need to speak of it now.

"When you saw the four of us in church, you saw a happy family. We were all of us active in the church, and especially in music." Nathan with his ebullient confidence; her father as implacable as an iceberg; her mother, first teaching the children's chorus and then moving on to head the bell choir; and Caitlyn herself, as harpist, pianist and oboist. "What you didn't see was how strictly my mother controlled us. Her word is absolute law in the house, and if you try to protest you just get in worse trouble, even if you're right. Either you fall in line or you get squashed.

"There wasn't much way to resist. We couldn't appeal to Dad because he always just kept silent. Or, if he did speak up, it was to agree with Mom. Even if Nathan and I were to ally together, Mom would just ground us both. She had all the power, and all we could do was cry about it." Which they had. Or at least she had.

"It wasn't so bad until Nathan went to college. We were both home-schooled, so for a long time we figured that things at our house were just the way things were. But then he got out, and two years later I got out, and we both discovered that things could be really, really different. You could raise your kids on television. You could be permissive. You could be strict. You could be overprotective. You could be loving. You could be so busy with your job that the only way you could relate to your child was by buying him toys. Or, more often than not, you weren't any of them, but rather a little of all of them. You were normal."

"This is all enlightening," said Gerald, with his usual gift for tact, "but how does it relate to that ring on your finger?"

"Don't worry, I'm getting to that," said Caitlyn.

"After we started meeting other kids and finding out what their lives were like, the rebellion really picked up. Nathan and I realized just how much we disliked the way our parents were raising us, and he at the very least told them that in no uncertain terms. Mom's response was to ground him for a month, and furthermore declare that, since he was a child, he was not allowed an opinion on the matter." Nathan had raged and stormed and slapped things off shelves, but there was ultimately nothing either of them could do about it.

"After a year of working at the 7-11 on Polk Street, Nathan decided he'd had enough. He packed up, opened negotiations with his girlfriend, and planned the move to Idaho. If you ask Mom what it was like, getting all his things packaged up to be shipped out, she won't tell you. She can't tell you. She doesn't know. Nathaniel did it all himself. He didn't even tell Mom and Dad until two weeks before he left. He just sat them down and said, 'Hey, I'm leaving,' and didn't give them a choice in the matter."

"What did Linda say to that," asked Dacey.

Caitlyn had the line from memory: " 'If you walk out that door, don't expect to ever walk back in.' " She could still hear it, in her mother's voice.

"And what did Nathaniel say," Gerald asked.

Nathan had smiled that great, cocky grin of his, and just shrugged. " 'Fine with me,' is all he said."

Her audience said nothing.

"And so now Mom uses Nathan as this example of everything bad. I think she's privately convinced that he does drugs and sleeps with prostitutes. Any time I do something she doesn't like, she's all, 'You're turning into another Nathan.' And now she prays daily to the Lord. She prays to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost—whom she doesn't believe in, but just in case. And she prays that Nathaniel loses his job. She prays for his girlfriend to dump him. She prays for his lease to dry up. She prays for his life to go so catastrophically wrong that he has no choice but to return home. To her."

Mrs. Lippmann said, "I think we see where this is going."

"What was it your mother found out... What did you say it was, twenty-four hours ago?" said Gerald.

Thirty, by now. "She found out that Jon asked me to marry him." She had said those words twenty or thirty times over the last two days—heck, she and Jon had gone and actually gotten married—but she found that they still sent a thrill of happiness through her.

There was silence.

"And you didn't tell us!" Dacey exclaimed.

"When exactly did this happen?" Mrs. Lippman asked.

"Jon, what's so funny?" said Gerald.

Jon was laughing. "That's exactly what my co-workers said when they found out."

"Which was?" Gerald said.

"Yesterday."

"We didn't tell anybody," Caitlyn protested. "No one except Nathan, and Jon's friend Beth who helped him pull it off. We didn't want it to somehow accidentally get back to my mom. We wanted to use it to our advantage, not have her find out at random and then blow her stack."

"And what did she do when she found out," Dacey asked.

"Blew her stack," said Caitlyn.

Jon was smirking again. Was this still funny to him?

"So, your mom found out," Dacey said, "and blew her stack. How did Jon get involved?"

"Nathan brought me in," said Jon from her right. "Mrs. Delaney called him and asked if he knew. And of course he said, Yeah, he'd known ever since it happened three weeks ago. And of course she was incredulous."

"That she wasn't told?" Dacey asked.

"Or that you said yes at all," Mrs. Lippmann asked.

That was the far more pertinent question. Caitlyn hadn't known the old lady had it in her. "That I said yes. Mom doesn't approve of— Well, she doesn't approve of me dating in general, and she extra-doesn't approve of me dating Jon. I think she kept hoping it was just a phase I'd get through. —Keeps hoping."

"Well, I can only speak for myself, but I think that's a rather misguided hope," said Dacey. "If you had told me—in a timely manner, thank you very much—that you two were engaged, all I would've said was, It's about time."

Caitlyn felt a blush and a smile spreading on her cheeks simultaneously.

"I think that if the others in the group were here, they'd also agree that the two of you are very good for each other," said Gerald. "I certainly think so, and I know my sister does as well. It's there for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. Why does Linda have such problems accepting it?"

"It's hard to accept your children growing up," said Mrs. Lippmann. "It's hard to accept that they don't need you anymore, especially if your husband has passed on, like my Frank did. Who are you without someone to mother?"

"Yes, but, shouldn't she be happy as well?" Dacey said. "I mean, I have toddlers of my own, and I can't imagine how I'll feel when they grow up and leave, but I like to think I'll pray that they find someone who is good for them, and live happy lives with them. And Caitlyn and Jon complement each other. We only see them a couple hours a week, but even we know that. How could Linda, who has probably seen a lot more of them, possibly have missed it?"

"Willful ignorance," said Mrs. Lippmann. "I faced enough of it from my mother, and my children faced enough of it from me. She doesn't want to see it, so she doesn't. You can lead a horse to water..."

"So, Jon came in," said Gerald, trying vainly to keep the discussion on-topic. "He came in because Nathan called him. What were you trying to accomplish, Jon?"

Jon was opening and closing his mouth like a fish. "Uh, oh, well, uh... Truthfully... I was just there because Nathan asked me to step in."

"And what did he want you to do?" Gerald said.

Jon took a deep breath. "He wanted me to help Caitlyn leave. He said that Mrs. Delaney would be in disarray, and this would be the perfect time to conduct a little snatch-and-grab, before she came to her senses and really dropped the heavy end of the hammer on Cait. I didn't know what to think. I mean, yes, anything I can do to keep her safe, but... That's a bit drastic, right? But Caitlyn made the choice in the end. She said, 'Get me out of here.' So, I did."

"What did Linda say," Dacey asked.

Caitlyn gave a tired sigh. " 'If you walk out that door...' "

"Of course," said Jon, "we snuck in earlier today using the house key that Mr. Delaney thoughtfully provided in his care package, so, that threat seems to have been null and void."

"And what happened after you left," Gerald asked.

"Well..." Caitlyn shrugged. "We weren't sure what to do. I mean, I still live at home, Jon still lives at home, we don't really have that much money... He's been working since he graduated, and once he met me he says he really started saving up. But that didn't help the question of where I was going to stay. I couldn't go home—"

"You probably didn't want to, either," said Dacey.

"Not hardly. But Nathan's in Idaho, and Uncle Max and Grammy both live too close, Mom would've hunted me down and I don't know if they could've stood up to her. I don't really have any other friends, because I was home-schooled for so much of my life. And I needed to escape somehow."

"So, Jon," said Dacey.

"Except for the Bible," said Mrs. Lippmann. "Old Testament and New."

"Right," said Gerald.

"And so... You got married?" said Dacey.

Caitlyn grimaced. "It sounds pretty stupid when you put it that way."

"Well, then, let me drop an obligatory reference to Britney Spears's fifty-five-hour fiasco and make you feel better," said Gerald, grinning.

"And I guess this was... Yesterday," said Dacey.

"In the chapel," said Jon, pointing, "about... Twenty-four hours ago."

"How did your mom take it," Dacey asked.

"I... I don't know," said Caitlyn, feeling another wave of shame. "We... We didn't tell her. I invited my dad, but, I asked him not to tell until after the ceremony, and... Well, Dad keeps quiet sometimes. Maybe he hasn't said anything at all."

"Is that all, or, are you guys taking a honeymoon, or, doing a reception, or..." Dacey asked.

"My sister just wants to know when the party is," Gerald said, with a deadpan look that gave away the joke.

"Probably in... March. —ish," said Caitlyn. "We're still working on the plans."

"Honeymoon is out until we manage to find a little more income," said Jon. "Which we need to find anyway, because, we can't just keep living in my parents' house."

"Wow," said Dacey. "Sounds like you folks are getting dropped into the real world."

"Kind of," Caitlyn agreed. "I think... I think we knew some of it beforehand. But knowing is a lot different than experiencing."

"Do you regret it?" Gerald asked. "I mean, I really doubt we're about to see another 55-hour marriage here, but... Any feelings, anything like that?"

Caitlyn and Jon looked at each other for a long moment.

"We've had... Doubts," said Jon, without looking away.

"We've definitely had doubts," said Caitlyn, turning back to the others. "No one knows better than we do just what a big step we took."

"I think reality has a way of intruding on even the most well-intentioned of plans," said Jon.

"But what Jon brought up—while I was spazzing out, too—what Jon brought up was that we haven't really done anything but speed up the timeline. It was about time for him to ask me, we'd been talking about it for over a year." She'd been wondering for months when he'd finally ask, and was even getting a bit nervous. She almost didn't dare to ask. What a relief it had been to find out he'd been in collaboration with Beth for months, and had delayed only because he couldn't get the plan right. "We've just... Known. For a long time. That we would end up married. I don't think we ever really questioned it after about our third month together. So, what's wrong with a year and a half earlier than expected?"

"Would you have married him even without the pressure of your mom going off the deep end?" Gerald asked.

Caitlyn looked at Jon.

"I would have married him a long time ago," she said softly. "But... We could never get the other ducks in order."

"Like?" said Dacey.

"Like... Money, mostly," said Jon. "Housing. All those practical things."

"But also figuring out how to tell it to Mom, in a way that wouldn't make her blow her stack," Caitlyn said.

"We essentially pulled a Nathan," said Jon. "Which was something we'd vowed never to do, unless at last resort. Caitlyn wants to somehow leave her mother in a peaceful way. She wants to be let go of. She wants Mrs. Delaney to be okay with her leaving. As opposed to praying to God that her marriage ends in messy divorce. Which she is probably doing right now."

Huh, thought Caitlyn. I guess great minds think alike. "What we really wanted to do was to approach her with a sort of coalition. We'd tell her that we'd gotten engaged, and then give her a choice. Jon says—and I think he's right about this—Jon says that she tries to control us the way she does because she's scared of us. Somehow. She keeps us locked up in chains because, if we break free, she's scared we'll hurt us somehow."

"Which makes sense," said Gerald. "Remember in the beginning of Jurassic Park, how they kept all the dinosaurs in tight little cages so that they couldn't hurt anyone?"

"Ignoring the fact that being crammed in a tight little cage makes one want to hurt people," said Dacey.

"I think it's what you said, Mrs. Lippmann," Caitlyn said. "Mom wouldn't know what to do if she wasn't a mother. That's why she teaches second-graders, that's why she wants Nathan back, that's why she can't, she can't abide the idea of us growing up..."

"So, you use the engagement as..."

"As an ultimatum, basically," said Jon. " 'Your daughter has grown up, and there is nothing you can do about it.' But now we're operating from a position of strength. We have something she wants—her daughter—and she has something we want—a grown-up, free-to-leave Caitlyn. We trade. We tell her, 'You have a choice. You can let Caitlyn leave—and come back—as she pleases, or you can cling to her so hard that she never wants to return, just like Nathan.' And then we'd have a bunch of other people—Rev. Pendleton, Grandma and Grandpa Cassidy, Caitlyn's music teachers—who could tell her just what they thought of her parenting methods. One person you can ignore, but that many..."

"One person she does ignore," said Caitlyn. "I never expected Grampa to take my side in this, but he did, and he gave Mom a piece of his mind. And she basically told him to shut up and butt out, her own father, because it wasn't his business."

"And so that's the sort of thing you were planning to do," Gerald asked.

"We're still hoping to do that, actually," said Caitlyn.

Jon turned to her. "We are?"

Mrs. Lippmann cackled: a single "Ha!"

"Jon, I know you're going to say I don't have to go back there if I don't want to," Caitlyn said to him. The thought filled her with hope and joy. But... "Well, I want to. She's my mother." This was the woman who had given birth to her, after all. Who had held her hand when she broke her arm at six years old. Who had let her write a book report on flowers, just because she knew little Caity loved them. There was so much history there—too much to just abandon, even if some (most) (all) of the recent stuff had been so terrible. This was family. "You went up against your mother, but you didn't just abandon her. You love her. You needed her to change, yes, so that you and your sister could live, but that didn't mean you left her entirely. It's the same with me. I don't want to stay, but I don't want to leave things like this."

Jon said nothing. Then he fetched up a deep sigh, as if contemplating some arduous piece of work, and she knew she had him.

"How many people have you recruited," Gerald asked.

Caitlyn grimaced. "No one, so far."

"Well," said Gerald. "Good thing you just recruited us, then. I mean, you didn't tell us Jon proposed to you, you didn't invite us to the wedding— You better not leave us out of this one." He grinned.

"Absolutely," said Dacey. "I'm not entirely sure what we can contribute, but if you need us, we're yours."

Caitlyn felt her heart thudding in her throat. They said what?

"Toldja," said Jon, smirking.

"Look, stop that," she said, smacking his arm. "You don't have to be so smug about everything."

"What did he tell you," Dacey said.

"He told me... Because, getting people to agree to help with the plan... I'd have to, like, tell them the whole story, you know? And Jon... Jon always said..."

"She never believed me," said Jon. "But what I told her was, 'There isn't a person alive who wouldn't be sympathetic to your cause.' "

"Yeah," said Caitlyn.

"Maybe she'll believe it now," Jon said, "since you two have so kindly proven it."

"Hopefully she will," Gerald said. "Because you're right, Jon. No one would be anything but sympathetic. They might not necessarily offer to help, but I'm sure they'd at least wish you well."

"It's not exactly a picnic, what you've had to go through, Caitlyn," said Dacey. "No one's going to blame you for wanting to change your situation."

"Well... Thank you," said Caitlyn. "—For offering to help, I mean. That... That really does mean a lot to me."

"Toldja so," said Jon again, an unrepentant grin on his face.

"Shut up!" said Caitlyn, laughing. He would have to gloat about it!

"Young lady, you need to be more firm than that," said Mrs. Lippmann. "You take it from me: husbands will run roughshod over you if you let them. You keep him in line now, or in five years he'll be unmanageable."

Caitlyn couldn't quite keep a straight face, but she gave Jon her best glare nonetheless. "Jon, put that smile away or you're sleeping on the couch tonight!"

Jon's mouth popped open in a highly satisfactory manner. "Oh-hhhhh," said Gerald and Dacey, like ballgame spectators who have just witnessed a brilliant play.

"That's lesson one," said Mrs. Lippmann, totally unfazed. "You come back when you're ready for the next one, missy."

Jon managed to keep himself quiet until they got to the car, but once they were on the road he immediately burst out, "No fair!"

Caitlyn was feeling very pleased with herself. "How so?"

"I can't banish you to the couch. I can't do anything of the sort! You're not playing fair!"

"All's fair in love and war," said Caitlyn glibly.

"Humph," said Jon, doing a very good impression of an injured martyr, though his rather excessive sulkiness gave the joke away. "This is the thanks I get. I deliver you from slavery under your mother, I provide for you, I even studied the Bible for you. And what do I get? 'Shut up or you're sleeping on the couch.' I may just go sleep on it anyway, if that's how you feel."

"You wouldn't," said Caitlyn confidently.

"Oh really," he said, haughty to the end.

"And, even if you did—" She took his hand from the steering wheel and kissed it. "—I'd have to come down and join you."

"Ummm," he said. "That would be okay with me."

When they arrived at the house, it was closer to ten 'o'clock than nine; the discussion of Caitlyn's situation had run over-time, though obviously none of the small group members had been inclined to protest. As they checked their e-mail and gave another glance over Craigslist (nothing new had emerged), Caitlyn felt a sliver of dread in her stomach, one that grew with every passing moment. It was a little too late to start anything (a movie, for instance), but a little too early to sleep. However, if a husband and wife wanted to go and... do what husbands and wives did, this was probably the perfect time. And therein lay the dread: what would Jon think if she spoke up?

"Jon, would you..." He looked over, and with burning face she blurted it out: "Would you like to get in bed with me?"

Jon blinked at her.

"In case, you know... Something should happen to happen," she finished lamely.

The smile that grew on his face was one of the happiest sights she had ever beheld. "Race you."

They brushed their teeth and ran their nightly ablutions. This time Jon took charge of the situation from the beginning. "Let's not bother with clothes," he said. "And let's leave a light on. We're gonna make this educational."

She felt a brush of panic: lights on? With clothes off? But then, he'd seen most of it the night before, and all of it this morning when they showered. But then, they hadn't been... Doing things... When he'd seen.

She caught herself in mid-insecurity. Will you quit it? He's told you he loves you time and again. He's told you he thinks you're attractive time and again. He's been building you up to this for months, even though you didn't realize it until this moment. And he hasn't steered you wrong yet.

"Educational?" she said. "What, wasn't Sex Ed enough?"

Jon gave her a wide grin. "Baby, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

They sat together on the bed, facing each other, wearing nothing. She felt the nippy cold, as she had the night before, and put it out of her head as unimportant. Jon hair was darker below than it was above, like her own, and it reassured her to realize that it was just as unruly as hers. She had often wondered if something was wrong with it.

"So, the point was," Jon said. "I wanted to just let it all hang out. Here's me, here's you, let's ask questions, let's look around. Let's see all there is to see. I don't want you to feel like my body is some foreign machine. I don't want you to feel that way about your body either. I want you to be comfortable."

"That'd be easier if it wasn't December," said Caitlyn with a weak attempt at a smile.

"It is kinda cold," Jon agreed. "But there's nothing we can really do about that. Not for a while, anyway.

"So. Here I am. Here you are. I'm not wearing anything, neither are you. Look all you want. Any questions so far?"

Caitlyn shook her head. She did actually have one—What the heck are we doing?—but she didn't feel comfortable asking it. The thing was, this was so different from what they'd done before. That had been tender, warm, under covers, nothing like this naked numbness with the lights shining down, splintering on her eyes. She felt like a bug under a microscope.

"There's body parts that get all the attention," Jon said. "Mostly boobs, dick and pussy."

" 'Pussy'?" she said.

"It's a slang word for 'vagina'."

"How did that happen," she asked. She wasn't all that familiar with her vagina, but it didn't seem even vaguely feline to her.

"I dunno. 'Cause it's soft and furry?" he said. "I didn't make it up."

"Where did you hear it?"

"The Internet." He gave a wry laugh. "Where else?"

"Oh. Um. Is there like a webpage I could learn all this on?"

"Mmm, probably, but, why would you want to use a computer when you could use me?" He said this with such ingenuity that she had to smile.

"Okay, so. Cock, pussy and boobs. That's where most of the attention goes. But not everybody realizes that there are other body parts that can transmit pleasant sensations. These places are the back, neck, scalp, ears, and fingers and toes." She immediately recognized the places he paid most attention to in their non-sexual physical contact. He has been building me up to this for months.

"Being touched in these places doesn't have to be sexual. In fact, it's not sexual, not in its own right. Really, it just feels nice. But that's part of sex—getting you feeling good and getting you relaxed. If you're tense, it doesn't happen. I'm honestly kind of surprised things worked out as well as they did last night."

"Yeah. I think... Well, it was a rollercoaster of a day," she said. Which was an understatement. She'd gone from wild joy to disconsolate loss and back, several times. "I was just to the point where..." Where I was vulnerable. Where I just needed you so badly, that I would've let you do... Anything. Good thing we got married, he could've pushed me into it and I couldn't've said no. I just needed to trust someone so much... "I dunno. I think that... If we had gotten married normally? You know, without all the rush and the insanity and... If we had done that, things probably wouldn't've worked out like they did. Sexually, I mean. I would've tensed up and been all..."

"Nervous."

"Yeah. Self-conscious. It's just, yesterday, I was so... Needy. I needed to be loved so badly, and you gave me that, and... It was like I couldn't even conceive of mistrusting you. I would've walked off a cliff if you'd told me to."

"You kinda did," he said in a strange voice. "Good thing I was there to catch you."

She didn't know what to say to that, and she couldn't think of anything else to do, so she kissed him. After a moment she felt him respond, felt his arms snake around her, and they leaned forward to press against each other, their naked bodies together.

"So," he murmured. "Let's get you past your nervousness."

As before, he bore her down to the bed, their arms around each other, and after a few moments of kissing began to wander down the line of her jaw, across her neck, around her ears. She had always loved the tingly excitement his lips ignited inside her—but now, compared to the things they had done last night, it felt but a paltry warmth. She felt a moment of loss; something had passed that they could never reclaim.

I guess it was my innocence.

This time she was very conscious of his penis, erect but folded down against her leg. Even through that undersensitive appendage, she could feel its warmth. She hadn't noticed that yesterday—but then, how she could be expected to notice anything about it, when it was inside her.

Soon, he began to kiss his way down her body to her breasts, and without realizing it, she tensed. It wasn't all that surprising a reaction, she decided later; after all, they were one of the most vulnerable parts of her body, and the times someone had touched them intentionally could be counted on one hand. Jon, she would find out later, noticed it too; but he knew there was nothing to be afraid of, and had decided to prove it to her.

And when his mouth closed around her nipple and her mouth opened in pleasure, he did.

What was I afraid of? I loved it when he did this. But it also begged a question. "Why do you suck on my... My breasts. You're not a baby."

He blinked up at her. "Why, don't you like it?"

"I... I like it." It felt wonderful—like his kisses on her neck, like his tongue tickling the backside of her ear, but better, and stronger. "But... Is it going to feel that way with a baby?" That would just be weird, in her opinion.

He shrugged. "I don't know. When you have one, tell me." And with that, he returned to his suckling, awakening strings of fire inside her that raced and pulsed through her in waves and ran her breath ragged through her mouth.

He transferred on occasion from one to the other, leaving the nipple shiny and contracted and a little bit cold in the nippy air, only to return, and each time the tide inside her rose higher and higher. He noticed her arm curled around his head, drawing him in closer, and wondered when that had happened. She could still feel his penis—his... cock? Where had that term come from?—pressed against her outer thigh, and his body all along hers, and most of all his breath and the touch of his lips on her nipples as he licked and sucked and pulled.

"Does it... Does it go any farther than this," she asked.

He stopped. "Hunh?"

"I mean... It feels good, but... Last time, you did this and then you put your hand... Down there... And then you put your thing down there, and, it was nice, but..."

"Oh," he said. "Yeah, it goes any farther than this. If I do my job right, you have an orgasm."

"I have a... What?"

He gaped at her. "What went on in your Sex Ed class? Oh, wait, homeschooled, never mind. What was your Sex Ed class? Must've been abstinence-only. 'Don't have sex or you'll get an STD and die. And then you'll get pregnant. After you're dead.' Oh, for crying out loud..."

"What's an orgasm," she asked.

"It's... Oh, God, how do I explain. It's what sex leads up to."

She was lost, and surely it showed on her face.

"Okay, we have to do a biology lesson, a little bit. Some crazy scientists named Masters and Johnson (such great names for sexual researchers, wouldn't you say?) did the research and discovered that there's four basic phases of human sexual response. First is arousal, which is what you're going through now. Blood flow to your pelvic region increases, which makes a man's penis hard and makes you start to get wet down there, among other things. Plus heart rate and so on." His hand cupped her breast as he spoke, and continued its ministrations—which made it a little hard to concentrate.

"Next is plateau, which is just a steady building-up. Everything just keeps growing—the penis gets harder, the vagina expands and the uterus moves to make room inside you for the penis. Orgasm is the third phase. It's the release of all the pent-up sexual energy. In men, that's when ejaculation happens. In women, it's a little more complex."

"That's... That's when the egg is released?" she said, grasping for the nearest metaphor. "Wait, no, that's what happens during her period."

"Yeah. Scientists aren't really sure what female orgasm accomplishes. It causes your vagina and uterus to contract several times, and I think there are other things that happen too but I don't remember them. Some women describe it as being sort of like a sneeze, but down there. But the point is, it feels good. It feels really good."

She frowned. Sneezing out of her private parts didn't sound all that pleasurable. "I don't think I've ever had one of those."

"Probably not," he agreed. "I think you'd know if you had."

"So... You do all these things... So that I have an orgasm?"

"Yeah, so that you come," he said, which confused her even more. Come where? "But, it's hard. Most women report that... Well. It's not easy, let's just leave it at that. I'll try. But I don't know if I'll succeed."

She was a little surprised by his intensity. "That's okay," she said magnanimously. "I'm sure you will be sufficient to the task."

"Here's hoping," he grumbled, before attacking her breast again. Then there were no words, and she was lost once again on the ebb and tide of feelings that did, in fact, feel very, very good.

It wasn't too long before she felt his hand began to drift yet lower, and she felt the crimson tingles all down her stomach before his fingers began to brush gently through her pubic hair. He didn't put anything inside her, not yet, but his hand cupping her outside sent tingles and a rush of warmth up her spine, and her legs parted almost involuntarily. She didn't hear the noises she made, the mewing gasps or the whispered encouragements. She didn't notice her hand latching onto his, keeping it from withdrawing from her pubic region. She was lost in a world of her own, a world of their making.

But when finally she felt an intrusion, slipping easily into her passage, she stopped and looked up. "Finger again?"

He blinked. "Why, what's wrong with it?"

"I thought you were... Giving me an..." She hesitated over the unfamiliar word. "Orgasm."

"I am."

"With your hand? I thought you had to use your... You know. Thing."

"Huh? Oh, no, not hardly. Having intercourse is actually one of the worst ways to make a woman come."

This time she caught the word from context: it must be a slang term for orgasm. At least it's easier to say. "Why not? I thought sex is supposed to feel good."

"It does," he said. "But... Well, biology lesson number two. Do you know what the clitoris is?"

"Umm..." She'd heard whispered talk about it, of course, and occasionally run into a reference in a textbook. She knew it was part of her equipment down there, but nothing more. "No, not really."

"It's the... It would be your penis, if you were a guy."

"So, I... I pee out if it?"

"No, no, it would... You don't. Just, the sticky-outy part of the penis. If the baby is male, it turns into the penis in the womb. If not, it stays clitoris."

"So what does it do, then?" she asked.

His hand moved, a tiny bit, and suddenly pleasure washed over her in a dizzying wave.

"That," he said.

"Oh..." she breathed.

"It's actually the only organ on either gender that has no other purpose but sexual pleasure," he said.

"Wow." She giggled. "I feel lucky."

"See, here's—" She felt his finger, sliding into her. "Here's your vagina. Here's your pussy." It slid out again, and began to travel up towards her pubic hair. "But up here..." The wave of joy again. "...is the clit. When I'm down here..." His finger slid inside her again. "There's not much contact on it, is there? And it doesn't feel anywhere near as good, because there just aren't as many nerves in your vagina as there are in your clit. So, sexual intercourse doesn't do the job very well."

"So, how do you do it?" she asked. Not that she was trying to drop hints or anything, but she definitely wanted more.

"You work on the clit directly," he said. "With fingers, or your hand, or your mouth."

"Your mouth?" She'd heard the term 'oral sex' before, but never considered what it meant. "Isn't that... Why would you want to put your mouth down there?" Isn't it dirty?, was what she wanted to ask, but then, this whole act involved naughty bits, so maybe that was a redundant question. And the scary thing was, he was already heading south.

"Because it feels good for you?" he said. And then his head descended between her legs.

Afterwards, she would have clear recollection what would ultimately prove to be her first orgasm (clearly, he was sufficient to the task). She had no real idea what process he went through down there; eventually, years and months later, when sex had become a natural part of her, she would be able to reconstruct it, but of that day she would only remember flashes and instants and impressions. There was his breath, warm on her sex; and then the first touch of his lips as he kissed her; and then an immediate impulse of pleasure when he first began to suck on her clit. After that there was only groaning and thrashing and her hands tangled in his hair and the rising of her moans until the crescendo, release showering through her like fronds from a firework, and then the long aftermath as her heart slowed down.

When she came to, he was wrapped around her, holding her tight. "You were right," she mumbled. "It was good."

"Toldja," he said, in that insufferably smug tone.

"Shut up."

"If you enjoyed it," he said, in an entirely different tone, "it was worth it."

"Hee." What she didn't know was that the process had taken over an hour. In fact, it would be some time until she grasped just what a miracle it was that he—a stranger, someone outside herself—had managed to give her her first orgasm.

"How are you," she asked.

"Umm," he said, shuffling himself. "Pretty good."

She became aware of his erect penis again, and realized just what was going through his head. She was feeling a little bit too comfortable to move, but if that was what he wanted... "Did you want to... You know?"

"I don't have to put it inside you," he said, almost apologetically. "There are... Other ways."

"Like?"

"Well... You could do to me what I just did to you."

That sounded kind of interesting, but it also sounded like a lot of work. "No, just... Go ahead," she said. She supposed she ought to be grateful, but at the moment, she would almost rather him to just climb onboard and do his thing. (Looking back on this moment in later years, she would think, What a guy I was being. Have an orgasm, fall asleep. Good thing Jon kept pushing me...)

"All right," said Jon, undaunted. "Here—let's try something new." Now his arms were around her shoulders, drawing her up. "Let's get some blankets on, it's cold..."

Sleepily, she accepted warmth and shelter, settling against him.

"Okay, now— Let's do it this way. Caitlyn?"

"Mmm."

"Are you awake?"

Not really. "...Sure."

"All right then," he said, "help yourself," and the tone of his voice made her open her eyes. She saw him lying beside her, on his back, grinning over at her—naked from the waist up, the blankets tossed back, and his penis proud and erect and jutting into the air.

She started to protest that she was too tired—and that, furthermore, there was no way of making this work!—but even as she opened her mouth, she started seeing how it could be done. She would need to sling one leg over him and basically sit on top of him... The idea piqued her curiosity—and opened a deep hunger inside her.

Shrugging out of the blankets, she knelt above him on the bed, straddling him, feeling him brush her inner thighs as she did. After that it was hard to look down and see what was going on—she had breasts in the way—so she asked him to put himself in the right place, and a moment later she felt the touch of his cock at her entrance, and then more as he rubbed himself up and down her sex. Cock? Well... It's strange, but in the heat of the moment, it sure beats 'penis.'

She began to sink down on him, slowly, feeling him push up inside her. It was a strange feeling, to have something there where nothing normally was, but not an uncomfortable one. She felt... Full. Full in a way she had never felt before; full in a way she had never known she could feel.

When at last her buttocks touched the top of his legs, when at last he was as fully inside her as he could be, she could have sworn that he was deeper inside her than last time, and she could feel the revving heat inside her, that perilous climb to orgasm that had been so good. He was right, there was no pressure on her clitoris—but as she leaned forward to look down at him, it pressed against his skin, and she trembled.

His hands reached up to cup her breasts, and then to her shoulders, to pull her down to him; inside herself, she felt him withdraw a little. "I've always wanted to do this," he whispered.

It was pretty nice to her, too. "Well, I'm glad you got your wish," she whispered, and then kissed him deeply as she lay supine on him, his cock (penis) deep within and his arms around her.

"So, what do I do," she asked.

"You just... You move your hips up and down," he said. "Make me go in and out of you."

"And then you..." Tasting the word for the first time. "Come?"

"Eventually, yeah— Oh shit, we forgot to put on the condom!"

Caitlyn made a face. "Why did we bother with all that if we're gonna forget to—"

"There's still time, go ahead—"

She lifted off of him while he dug in the nightstand. Coming out with a foil square, he tore open the top, revealing a dome of translucent latex with a ring around the outside. When he placed the dome on the tip of his penis, the ring turned out to be the rest of the condom, unrolling now like Venetian blinds. In a trice he was clad and ready for action. She made a note to herself to learn how he did it.

It felt different this time: drier, somehow, and his entrance less smooth. She supposed that might be the condom—after all, they weren't actually made of rubber but they were called that, and what would it be like to stick something rubber inside her? He also felt more slick, less bumpy—and not in a good way. She instantly understood just what a smart instinctive choice she had made, for their pleasure if not for their future, by letting him penetrate her uncovered that first time.

He must have sensed it too, for his finger found her clitoris again, and she shuddered and tremored with him still inside of her. It felt wildly, marvelously good. Later she would realize that her pussy had contracted instinctively at his touch, and long eventual experience would teach her that squeezing down with her pussy muscles felt a lot better when there was something—say, his cock—inside it.

I guess pussy beats 'vagina' too. It's too... Scientific.

"Whenever you're ready," he said.

She didn't think she would have an orgasm this time, and she didn't. Which was not to say that it didn't feel good, because it did; it just wasn't anything on the level of him using his mouth on her crotch. Now that he had mentioned it, she could feel bursts of pleasure every time that sensitive bud brushed against his penis or his body, and soon she learned to maneuver herself so that it happened on every stroke. She remained prone, kissing him, for a time, but then sat upright above him, for the pleasure of the added depth. She felt him moving below, withdrawing out of her when she moved up and meeting her back on her downstroke. And she was able to watch his face—his mouth open, eyes closed, eyebrows drawn, the quickness of his breath, the expression on his face like he was reaching for something. She had never seen it before, but she thought she rather liked it.

When he came—had his orgasm—it was rather different, because of the latex condom. She felt an almost imperceptible swell within her, and then an increased warmth up near the top of the slick not-quite-penis within her. His face told her more, really: the way his mouth opened, his gasping, the soft moan he made. And then he fell quiescent beneath her, and she knew he was done.

She leaned down, accepting his arms around her. "I love you."

"And I love you."

She thought she could have fallen asleep in his arms, just like this, without him even withdrawing—she had a hunch he could too—but he groaned and said, "I need to take off the condom." And after that, there wasn't much point. She watched him squeeze out the air and tie a knot in the end, and then stuff it back in the wrapper. Though quite a bit longer than when it had come out, it was fairly flat and scrunched in pretty well. Then, when he was done, he coaxed her back into her position over him, draped down on him like a blanket. A moment later she felt the comforters around her shoulders. It was still sinfully good.

"It's backwards," she said after a moment. Normally he was the one cradling her; now it was the other way around.

"I know," he said. "But variety is the spice of life, right? And besides, I like it."

"You do?" She hadn't known that about him.

"Just, you always needed to be held more than I did."

That was true as far as it went, she supposed, but it still surprised her. He had always seemed so self-sufficient. She had come to him with her emptiness and her loss and he had always had the answers. The thought that he might need pampering, just as much as she did...

Well. I've always wanted to give something back to him, haven't I? "Any time," she said. "Any time you want me, my love."

His arms slid around her, holding her to him tightly. "Yay."