CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Right after they got back, Sophia was waiting for Warren to come to her house so they could go to the ice rink. He had gotten his license right after they had gotten back. "Finally, I’m not the only child around here," he quipped.

They got to the rink and they were putting their skates on. June was there, waiting for them.

"Guys, I’ve got an idea. I want to scrap the Sinatra program." Warren said.

"Huh?" Sophia asked. "It’s half way choreographed!"

"Yeah, I know, and if you don’t want to, we won’t. But I really like the big band free we’re doing for the Junior series, and I thought I wanted to do something similar for the Senior Free we’re doing at nationals. So, I made a couple cuts, all Glenn Miller, and I really like it. No slow stuff, just mid-tempo and fast."

"What cuts?"

"String of Pearls and Little Brown Jug."

"Got it?" Warren nodded at her. "Put it in."

They got on the ice, and Warren popped the CD of the cuts he had made into the CD player. As was their habit, they played it a couple of times, just skating around together on the ice, and playing with a few basic ideas.

"You’re right," Sophia agreed, "I like this better. June?"

"I agree. That’s a killer cut, Warren."

"And just think," Sophia said mischievously, "I’ll be shaking my grove thang to the end of Little Brown Jug. Jess oughtta like that."

Warren laughed. "You just keep your costume on, Pookie."

"Whassamatter, lover boy, you don’t want to naked ice dance in front of 15 thousand paying customers and a nationwide TV audience at Nationals?"

"Actually, I’d love to, but we’d lose a couple tenths on the presentation mark when the judges find out that you can’t properly point your tits like you do your toes."

"Lessee—ice dancing nude in front of thousands with my sweetie in a cold ice rink. I guarantee my tits would be pointed."

"Yeah, but can you make them bounce and jiggle in unison?" She just hit him that time.

They walked into Sophia’s house, and found Dan, her mother's boyfriend, there, along with a girl a couple years younger than Sophia.

"I’m glad you’re home," Ellen said. "Hi Warren. Sophia, we figured it was time you two finally met. This is Dan’s daughter, Katherine."

"Hi, Sophia, I’ve heard so much about you."

"Me, too," Sophia smiled warmly. "This is Warren, my sweetie."

"Hi, Warren. I’ve heard a lot about you, too."

"My reputation precedes me," Warren grinned.

"How was skating?" Ellen asked.

"Great, considering I had to put up with yet another brainstorm from Christopher Dean over here. Scrap the partially choreographed free dance, I’ve got a better idea. And, since it was him, it was a better idea, because he’s always right, infuriating as that is." Sophia was grinning the whole time.

"Hey, what can I say. I’ve got Glenn Miller on the brain. And that music will lend itself to a killer ending."

"Let’s go out into the living room," Ellen suggested.

"This seems like a family thing. You want I should get lost?" Warren whispered in Ellen’s ear.

"Of course not, Warren, you are family," she smiled at him.

"I saw you guys on TV this winter at Nationals. I’m a figure skating freak, you know," Katherine confessed. "I was watching it with a couple of friends and got all goofy ‘Hey, that’s my Dad’s girlfriend’s daughter! Wow!’"

Everyone laughed. "The funny thing is," Warren told her, "they almost never show juniors on TV, and nobody told us they were showing us. We’re watching what we thought was going to be the Senior free dance, and there we were. We got as goofy as you did."

"It’s a good thing my sweetie here has a compulsion about videotaping all televised figure skating, or we might have missed getting it on tape," Sophie said.

Katherine giggled. "I’ve been looking forward to meeting you guys. I’ve met Eric and Tara, but kept missing you."

"My impossible schedule," Sophia laughed. "Our coach keeps begging us to train more, and we keep telling her, not until they come up with the thirty hour day. So, Katherine, how old are you again?"

"I turned fourteen in January. Oh, and call me Kate, everyone else does."

"January? What date?" Sophia asked.

"The fourteenth."

"Cool. Exactly three days after Warren’s."

"We Capricorns have to stick together," Warren grinned.

"How old are you?" Kate asked. "I don’t remember if Dad ever told me that."

"I turned seventeen in May. Baby-face, here, turned sixteen in January. I’m a cradle-robber, you see," she said to Kate’s laughter.

"I’m going to be a freshman this fall—I take it you’re going to be a senior?" Sophia nodded. "And Warren’s going to be a junior?"

"No, Warren’s going to be a senior."

"So, he’s almost exactly two years older than I am but he’s three grades ahead of me?"

"I started school a year early," Warren told her.

"Y’see, Kate," Sophia told her, "if you stick around long enough, you will find out, that when God was passing out brains, Warren kept sneaking back into line and got seconds. And thirds. And fourths." Kate giggled, while Warren hit Sophia with a pillow.

"You guys go to Oceanview, too?"

"I do. Warren goes to St. Mike’s."

"Aaah. A preppy."

"Yup."

"Well," Ellen interjected, "there was a reason we wanted to make sure you guys met as soon as possible, because you’re going to be seeing a lot more of each other." She smiled at Dan. "We’re getting married."

"WHAT?" Sophie jumped up and wrapped her mother in a bear hug. "Mom, that’s fantastic!" She walked over to Dan, and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "Welcome to the crazy family, Dan."

"Congratulations, you guys," Warren echoed.

Then everyone noticed that Kate was not sharing in the enthusiasm. "Married?" she said hesitantly.

"Are you all right, honey?" Dan asked.

"I don’t know."

"I thought you liked Ellen."

"I love Ellen, I really do. But married? I mean……I’m happy for you guys….I do want you to be happy, Dad….but…I….." she faltered.

Sophie looked at Kate. "Your mom left when you were five, and you don’t see her much, right?"

"Yeah. She’s whacko. I prefer to avoid her if at all possible."

"So," Sophia continued, "For nine years, it’s been You and Dad Against The World, right?"

Kate relaxed and smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. I am happy for you guys, but this is a huge change."

"Sophia, you’re an insightful young lady," Dan supplied.

"I keep telling her she should go into psychology instead of meteorology," Warren said.

"Ah, I’m gonna combine the two and become The Weather Shrink. I’ll have my own radio show. ‘You need to explore your inner child, so I suggest you go run barefoot through the park tomorrow, when it will be 75 degrees and sunny with a light breeze from the northwest.’" Everyone cracked up at that.

Kate smiled. "I’ll be fine. Congratulations, guys. I just need to adjust." She thought for a minute. "When?"

"ASAP. Before the summer is out. Small ceremony, just you kids," Ellen offered.

"That’s fast. Where are we going to live?" Kate asked.

"Here," Ellen smiled. "Plenty of room."

"Can I ask a selfish question?" Kate asked.

"Sure," Dan said.

"Is there a room for me? I’m used to having my own room."

"We don’t, at the moment, have an extra room. We thought about putting you in with Tara, but she’s eight and that wouldn’t be fair to you. We also thought about putting you in with Sophia—her room is huge—but that probably wouldn’t work, either, because Sophia needs her privacy."

"Uh-huh," Kate said with a huge grin, looking back and forth at Sophia and Warren.

"So, this is what we came up with. We have a basement, that we started finishing part of, and never finished."

"Yeah," interjected Sophia, "there’s a room down there, and it’s huge, but there’s nothing in it."

"It needs a finished ceiling, and a few other touches. We were going to make it into a playroom, but we never did. But it’s heated, there’s electricity in there, we just have to touch it up. It even has its own entrance from the outside. It would make a terrific bachelorette pad."

"I’ve got some guys that are going to come help," Dan said. "We’re going to fix it all up."

"However," Ellen looked at Kate, "Sophia gets first dibs on that room."

"That’s fair. She’s got a boyfriend, she needs a bachelorette pad more than I do," Kate smiled.

"I was hoping you’d say that." Sophia smiled.

"You’re old enough," Ellen said, "and I know what’s going on. The house is going to be a lot more crowded now. You need your privacy. Nobody will bother you down there. I expect Warren will practically move in, now." Everyone cracked up at that.

"And, you, Kate, will get Sophie’s room," Ellen said.

"You’ll love it," Sophia said.

"Can I see?"

"Sure. C’mon, Warren, let’s show the kid the make-out pad we’re bequeathing to her."

Kate loved the room—"it’s huge!"—and seemed to be a lot more at ease, now that the living arrangements were coming together.

"It will be weird, though. From two people in a house to six will be a big adjustment."

"Luckily, it’s a big house," Sophia laughed. "And it’s six-and-a-half, because Warren’s here a lot."

Warren was reading a book. "I even have half my book collection here, because I read more here than I do in my own house. This one’s Sophie’s, though."

"I must admit, I do enjoy the thought of having a big sister. I don’t have a sister, I don’t have a mother, I just have Dad. And there’s certain things a girl can’t ask her Dad."

"About what?" Sophia asked.

"About……well……you know." She blushed and glanced at Warren.

Warren picked up on it. "You ladies want me to make myself scarce?" he grinned.

"No," Kate smiled. "I don’t want to intrude."

"First of all," Sophia said, "it is not intruding, and Warren is never upset if I send him away to have girl talk, and he will leave now if we want him to. Second, though, you have to understand that you don’t have to send Warren away. He’s not like most guys, he has more female friends than male friends, and he gets involved in more girl talk than most girls. Plus, he’s a great listener, offers great advice, and will never make fun of you or say that a question you ask is silly."

"OK. I suppose I have to get used to him." Kate smiled at Warren, then turned back to Sophia. "You guys…..you know…..do it?"

Sophia smiled. "Every chance we get."

"What does your mother say."

"’Change your own sheets, dear,’" Warren cracked up, as Kate looked at Sophia in amazement. "She’s known all along."

"And she doesn’t mind?"

"Nope."

"Wow," Kate said. "I think if I was having sex, my Dad would kill me."

"I am not you, trust me. I have a little bit of a past." She outlined most of it for Kate.

"Wow. And you’re so healthy now, or so it seems."

"It’s real. I have changed a whole hell of a lot since I was your age."

"And I take it, after all that, your Mom figured that having sex with a guy that really loved you was no big deal?"

"Exactly. Plus, she loves Warren to death, that makes a difference."

"So you guys weren’t virgins when you hooked up?"

" I was not a virgin," Sophia offered.

Kate looked at Warren. "You were?"

"Guilty as charged," Warren quipped. "Pookie over there was my first. And, oh, what a first it was."

"I seduced him," Sophia said with a gleam in her eye. "He didn’t know what hit him."

"True, all true." Warren agreed.

Kate looked back and forth between them, wide-eyed. Sophia added, "There’s a lesson for you, Kate. When you really figure out what you want, grab it. And don’t let it go. Even if it squirms."

"I never squirmed."

"OK, so you flinched."

"That was because you made me deaf." Kate’s eyes just got bigger, as she looked at Warren. He just laughed. "Kate, let’s just say we’d probably better make sure they soundproof that bachelorette pad downstairs because, if it’s not, you’re going to have yourself some high-decibel entertainment."

Kate looked at them blankly. Sophie smiled at her. "I scream during sex."

"Really, really loud," Warren embellished.

Kate just shook her head. "I am way too sweet and innocent for this."

Sophia laughed. "Are you really?"

"Well……" Kate smiled. "I am a virgin, if that’s what you mean. But call me intensely curious."

"Just wait until it feels right, Kate. Don’t rush in out of curiosity. Trust me on this one."

"OK. Actually, I don’t know if I’m actually curious to do it. Knowing what it’s all about would be nice. I know next to nothing. I know what sex is, that’s about it."

"What do you think sex is?" Sophia asked her.

Kate blushed furiously. "Well, you know. The guy takes his thing and sticks it in…"

"Ok, that’s intercourse. What about other kinds of sex?"

"What do you mean?" Kate was confused.

"Well, like oral sex. Fellatio. Cunnilingus."

Kate looked up. "That last word, I asked my Dad once what it meant, and he went off on me. He said it was dirty, and never to say it again."

"Did you ask any friends what it was?" Sophia asked her.

"I actually don’t have a lot of friends. I keep to myself."

"Well, cunnilingus is oral sex with the female being the recipient," Sophia told her.

"I don’t get it."

"He uses his tongue…down there."

"HUH?"

"Yup."

Kate blushed furiously. "Does Warren do that to you?"

"Frequently, and with great skill and enthusiasm, as a matter of fact."

"Do you like it?"

"It’s fantastic. One of the best feelings a girl can have, if the guy knows what he’s doing, and Warren does, believe me."

"Wow." Kate thought for a minute. "Dad said that only dirty people did stuff like that."

Sophie got a look in her eyes that Warren recognized—barely restrained fury, restrained because Kate was not the object of it.

"Well, Kate, your father’s wrong. What else did he tell you? Anything about masturbation?"

"Huh?"

"Playing with yourself."

"Oooh, my Dad caught me doing that. I was alone in my room, and he walked in on me with my hand down my pants. I wasn’t even doing much of anything.. And he took my head off. Said good girls don’t do that."

Warren looked at Sophia. She was really steaming.

"He’s wrong." She looked at her glass of soda. "I’m empty. Anyone else need a refill?" Kate and Warren demurred.

Sophia got downstairs. Dan and Ellen were in the living room. Sophia filled her glass, and walked into the living room, visibly trying to control herself.

She walked up to Dan, and hugged him from behind. "Look, I want to make sure you know, Dan, that I’ve always liked you a lot, and I think you’re great for my Mom, and I’m thrilled you guys are getting married."

Dan looked at her, bemused. "Why, thanks, Sophia."

"Good. I wanted to make sure you knew that before I took your head off. WHAT the FUCK are you doing to your daughter?"

"What?"

"We’re up there and she’s asking me about sex. She’s fourteen years old, and she doesn’t know jack! She’s got no close friends she can confide in, she’s got no mother, and she asks her Dad, the only person she can talk to, the simple definition of a word like cunnilingus, and he jumps down her throat and says ‘Don’t talk about that, that’s dirty’? You walk in on her masturbating—and if Mom ever walked in my room without knocking I’d kill her—you walk in on her, and tell her that good girls don’t do that? WHAT are you thinking??"

"Look, Sophia, I don’t need a seventeen year old girl who’s too big for her britches to tell me how to raise my fourteen year old daughter! If you’re going to be my stepdaughter, you’re going to learn some manners."

"Not hardly."

"WHO are YOU to talk to me this way?" Dan’s fury was almost matching Sophia’s.

"Who am I, Dan? I’ll tell you who I am. I’m a peer counselor. That’s a program we have at school, where kids can come in and talk to other kids about their problems. We’re trained in some of this, so we can handle some of these problems, and we have advisors and a good Psychologist available. But I’m a Peer Counselor, so the kids come to me first. You know what I see, there, Dan? Rape victims. Victims of abuse, like I was. Pregnant girls who have no clue. Lots of other things."

"Now, I was a special case when I was in trouble, because Mom was never closed about stuff like this—my problems had other causes. But 90% of the kids that I see with problems that relate to relationships or sex are repressed. They make bad decisions because they never got the information needed to make good decisions."

"I’m just trying to protect her," Dan said, his anger cooled.

"That’s my point. You can’t. You can only give her the support to protect herself. You aren’t doing that, Dan. And what you’re doing is only ‘protecting’ her from the feelings she’s getting from her own body. And that is wrong, wrong, wrong."

"Sophia, she’s only fourteen."

"Yeah, Dan, and when I was her age my virginity was two years gone and I was getting beat up and forced to have sex regularly. You know that. Look at your daughter, Dan. She’s not a little girl any more. Hormones are hormones, whether you’re 14 or 44. You can deal with yours. I’ve learned how to deal with mine, after much pain. Kate doesn’t have a clue."

"Listen. Every kid knows about intercourse. I’m sure you had the birds and bees talk with her. And I’m sure you said something about ‘that’s for older, married people’ or something like that.":

"Something like that."

"Right. So, now intercourse is The Forbidden Fruit. Anything short of intercourse, like oral sex or masturbation, has been defined as ‘dirty’. And her hormones are going full tilt. This is a fucking recipe for disaster. Trust me. And I’m sure that you’ve never said a word about birth control."

"Abstinence is birth control," Dan said peevishly.

"Bullshit. You rely on that—especially if she thinks anything else that might get her off is dirty—and you’re gonna be a grandfather before your time." She took a deep breath. "Or something a whole hell of a lot worse.

She looked down at her hands. "I lost one, you know. One of the girls I counsel. About a month before school got out. I haven’t talked about this with anyone except Warren, because it’s extremely painful to talk about. But I lost one, a freshman, not much older than Kate did. She was pregnant. She wasn’t completely sure just quite how this had happened. And, since she was either in denial or ignorant—I’m not sure which—the pregnancy was not confirmed until it was too late to abort it. And, faced with telling her father that she was four months pregnant, she took the easier way out. She slit her wrists. And now she’s dead."

Ellen and Dan gasped.

"And the stories she told me of her father, Dan, I’m sorry to say, sound a lot like Kate describing you."

The room got quiet then. Sophie stood up.

"Dan, before you and mom walk down the aisle—and I hope you do" she smiled, "but, before you do, you need to know something. Any question Kate ever asks me about sex is going to get a straight and honest answer, to the best of my ability. You need to know that, and you will not be able to stop me, and nothing you do to me will stop me; and if you try to stop me here then when she gets to Oceanview she can march right into the peer counseling office and ask me there. I will be damned if I have to go to another funeral for a pregnant teenaged suicide and it’s my stepsister."

"Oh, and one other thing—when Kate asked me what cunnilingus was, I told her."

"Did she ask you anything else about it?"

"Yeah, she asked me if I had ever had it done to me, and if I liked it. And I answered her."

With that, she marched up the stairs.

"Damn, I knew she saw some bad shit in that peer counseling office, but not like this," Ellen said.

"Be that as it may, Ellen, I could have used some support there. She’s your daughter."

"Dan, she's right." Dan just stared at her. "Look, I almost lost Sophia, because of my mistakes. Now, I didn’t make the same mistakes you are, but I certainly recognize them—because my father made them. Sex is wrong, this is dirty, etc etc. And I ended up pregnant and married at 18 to a violent drunk."

Dan just stared at her.

"I never knew you treated Kate this way. I would have said something myself. I know you don’t want to hear it, but Sophia is right. And she’s right about something else—if you marry me, and Kate moves into this house, she will be living in the house with a sexually active seventeen year old. Sophia sleeps with Warren, in this house, that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s gonna be. I came too damn close to losing her to worry about a little sex with a guy she loves. You need to figure out if you can deal with that."

"Part of it is fear," Dan said. "Sometimes I don’t know what to tell her, so I try to push off her questions. Not the right way, either, apparently. Shit, Ellen, it can be tough being the single dad of a teenage girl. Sometimes I just get tongue tied, and then I say the wrong thing. "

Ellen smiled. "That’s easy. Now you can say, ‘that’s a girl thing. Talk to Ellen.’ Or Sophia, for that matter."

"I guess her talking to Sophia makes me nervous."

"I can see why, but, really, it shouldn’t. Because Sophia lost her virginity way too young and for the wrong reasons, and she knows it. She won’t be advising Kate to jump in the sack with some guy too hastily. She’s told me many times she wishes she had saved it for Warren."

"Yeah, but even she and Warren started too young, as far as I’m concerned."

"Yeah, but would they have if she was still a virgin? I doubt it. Besides which, she and Warren together are special, and Kate will figure that out quick. Look, Sophia’s a bit….unrestrained…..I know, but she’s sensible. She’s been through too much, and seen too much at peer counseling, not to be."

The kids were on their way downstairs.

"I love the room," Kate enthused. "Dad, are you all right?"

"Yeah, Katey, I’m fine. Did Sophia tell you she read me the riot act?"

"No. What?"

Sophia looked chagrined. "When I came downstairs, I took your father’s head off for making you ignorant and repressed about sex."

"WHAT?" Kate screamed. "Oh, Sophia, why did you do that?"

"It’s OK, Kate. I needed to hear it. But I need to ask Sophia a question."

"Shoot, Dan."

"If Katey comes to you in, say, six months, and says ‘Billy wants me, should I go to bed with him’ what would you tell her?"

"If you have to ask me, then you should wait. If there’s enough question in your mind to ask me, then you should wait. When you are so sure you have no doubts, then that’s a different story." Sophia smiled. "And I’d remind her about all those non-dirty things you can do with a guy without actually going all the way."

Dan had to smile. "OK, Ellen you were right. Very sensible." He turned to his daughter. "Kate, it’s been very tough to talk to you about sex and stuff. I’m sorry about that."

Kate smiled. "It’s OK."

"Well, I’m going to try. And, if I can’t give you an answer, since we’ll be living here, you’ll have Ellen and, God help me, Sophia, to ask." Dan smiled at his soon-to-be-stepdaughter, who smiled back at him.