Foreplay For More
September 18, 1978, Monday, New Paltz, NY
Please pay attention to the following school announcements:
Good morning everyone and hope you all had a wonderful weekend.
Our sports teams have all had recent success. The football team won in a close 10-9 win over Pine Bush. It was a crazy game as the team rushed for a whopping 295 yards and didn’t complete even one pass in 15 attempts in the win.
The soccer team kicked off their league schedule last Friday with a super exciting game at Highland. Team captain, Conor Walsh, scored four goals, the last one with only seconds remaining for a 4-3 win. That’s how you do it!
In girls' volleyball, not to be outdone, captain Kai Adams served for nineteen consecutive points in a straight sets win over Coleman. Way to go team!
In club news, the chess club is holding tryouts and spots are extremely limited, ahem. Be sure to sign up early.
That is all, have a great day.
∞
Kai walked into her typing class and sitting in the back row was Conor. She had no idea what he was doing there. She started tingling as she took her seat a row ahead of him and over by the windows.
Soon she heard a tap, tap, tapping that clearly was the beat for Stayin Alive coming from an IBM Selectric as the rest of the students stumbled into class. She looked back at Conor, and he was smiling like a fool.
Up to now, she’d been attracted by the way he flexed his muscles, the swagger he had in his gait, and the confident way he danced down a soccer field playing keep away with his opponents. He also had a smile that lit up his whole face and made her feel like jelly inside.
She really started falling for him when he made her laugh like today in typing class. It went beyond the silliness. Conor had a witty response to the world, and she loved the way he kept things light with a twist of irony.
Typing class had started and while the teacher was setting up the day’s drills, Kai passed a note back to Conor. It read, “What are you doing here?”
A few minutes later he passed it back. Kai unfolded it and the note read, “I think I’ve got real potential in the clerical field…and, well, you’re here, so there’s that!” She looked back at him with a crooked smile, then sent the note back.
Conor read, “My house tonight? We can discuss your career options. Say, 7 PM?” His heart beat faster, and he was thrilled at the prospect.
His note back was simple, “You’re on. Address?” Kai sent back her address with a note telling him to bring some homework and knock on the slider to her bedroom in the back of her house.
∞
Looking in the mirror, Kai was still getting used to seeing herself without dorky glasses and pigtails. Make-up was still new to her, and she added a little mascara and eye shadow. She loved how it accented her hazel-colored eyes.
Her mom bought her a small bottle of Chanel #5 years ago, and it was the only perfume she owned. She had never used it and only opened the bottle from time to time to smell it to remember her mom. Rose water, jasmine, and sandalwood scented; it was the only thing she thought perfume should smell like.
Being that tonight was her first real meeting alone with a boy, it was time to use a little. She thought the person in the mirror was pretty, if not a bit sexy, and it gave her a small boost of confidence.
She opened a drawer of her dresser and pulled out a pair of the Gloria Vanderbilt designer jeans her mom had bought her on the Champs-Elysée. She wasn’t used to putting them on and it was a struggle squeezing into them. They looked really good on her.
She pulled on a tight-fitting white t-shirt with a heart cut out in front and noticed right away that it was way too revealing. Instead, she chose a thin lavender sleeveless mock turtleneck. As with everything she wore lately, it was pretty tight fitting, and her chest stood out. She added stud earrings, and a necklace her mom’s boyfriend Rick had given her as a going-away present.
The image reflecting back at her seemed like someone she didn’t know, but she couldn’t do much about it. She thought she looked very adult, maybe more than she should for a first “meeting” with Conor. She went with it anyway, curious to see where it would lead.
∞
After supper, Conor told his mom he was going over to a friend’s house to do homework and asked to use her car. This was a new one. Conor had never used doing homework as a car excuse before. She asked him which friend, and without naming Kai, he said it was a new friend.
Conor had matured a lot over the summer, and his mom sensed Conor was visiting a girl and was nervous about telling her. Without asking anything else, she tossed him the keys to her car and asked him to be home by a decent hour since it was a school night.
Conor popped into the bathroom to check his look in the mirror. Fortunately, there were no new pimples and after running a brush through his long shoulder-length hair, was confident he was presentable. He wasn’t fashion-conscious, wearing a pair of jeans and an untucked flannel shirt. He felt clothes were not as important as the person found within them.
Grabbing his AP History textbook, Conor yelled goodbye to his mom as he went out the door. He hopped in the front seat of her car, put the keys in the ignition, and leaned back in the seat before turning over the engine.
For the last few weeks, aside from soccer, he’d thought of little else than Kai Adams. They’d eyed each other in the hallways, traded knowing glances at practice, and had brief exchanges in the cafeteria. Over a week ago, apart from a kiss after the Highland game where little was said, he didn’t know much about her. Sitting in his mom’s car about to go over to her house, Conor got a queasy feeling.
He started to second-guess things. Maybe she flirted with everyone. Or got carried away with his big game at Highland and her kiss after was her way of celebrating.
Conor was anything but a lady's man. He’d had only a few dates his whole life and one was for the junior prom and the other was for last year’s homecoming dance. Both of which were last-minute mercy dates, of girls he barely knew.
He sat there and took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. He started thinking about how things were different this school year. He remembered how the women counselors at summer camp made a fuss about him, and they were all college girls. One even told him if he were older, she wouldn’t have let another woman near him. Maybe Kai did have a crush on him, he thought. She did ask him to come over, and she wouldn’t have if she weren’t interested.
Conor reached for the keys and started the car. He thought that if Kai wasn’t as interested in him as he was in her, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. All he could do was be himself and see where things went.
As he pulled out of the driveway, he also said to himself, “Kai’s freaking awesome, don’t mess it up.”
∞
A low donk, donk, donk sound came from the glass slider.
Kai looked up from her calculus homework and saw Conor knocking, and she let him in. She noticed he was wearing her favorite flannel shirt and felt a tingle deep inside. He didn’t kiss or embrace her, he merely walked through the door, said hello, and leaned up against the wall.
Clearly, she hadn’t fully thought this part through. They knew each other and all, but still, he was on her home turf and seemed to hold back, unsure how to act in this new situation.
Conor tried acting casually but had a pretty queasy feeling of the unknown. Kai looked sensational, dressed like a fashion model. To take his mind off her looks, Conor scanned her room, taking in the pictures and things she had strewn about.
Kai saw him staring at the huge poster-sized picture on the wall over her bedboard. She explained it was shot by the famous photographer, Willy Ronis, overlooking the rooftops of 1950s Paris. The picture had a couple nuzzling each other as they looked out over the city’s rooftops shrouded in a mist.
She told him it reminded her of the romance and mystery she found in visiting the various parts of the city. Conor hadn’t ever been in a high school girl's bedroom before now and figured there’d be posters of Andy Gibb or John Travolta hanging on the wall. This wall-sized photograph was as beautiful as it was surprising.
On another wall, two antique folding fans framed behind glass were hung. They had intricate flowery designs and seemed incredibly old. She told Conor they were a gift from the mayor of Chenonceaux, a French village where her mom was studying for her sociology degree.
There was also a large, matted picture of her mom standing in front of the old Mohonk Gatehouse, found west of town. She was beautiful, and Conor realized where Kai got her good looks.
Kai’s room was feminine, not girly. There was a sofa and a desk with all sorts of cool knickknacks. Her room was as interesting and surprising as she was. He realized what made it different was that it was a room that an adult lived in and not a schoolgirl.
“Come sit over here,” Kai said with a smile
She sat cross-legged and patted the cushion next to her on the sofa.
She added, “There’s plenty of room, and I promise I won’t bite, at least not right away.”
He set his history book on the edge of the bed and sat next to her.
“Does your dad know I’m here? Coming in through the slider seems like I’m sneaking in the back door. I’d hate to have him come in and find me here alone with his daughter with the door closed,” Conor asked.
What a good guy she thought. If that awful Aaron the quarterback was here, he’d already have her jeans down to her ankles by now, if he could pry her out of them.
“I’m glad you asked, and I want to assure you that my dad doesn’t want to meet or know who visits me. He doesn’t take much interest in me and my sister. Since my parents divorced, he makes sure there’s food in the house and that’s about it. When I got back from France, he gave me this room and told me to treat it as my apartment. He made a point of telling me to use the slider to come and go.”
“It doesn’t matter that I’m here?” Conor asked.
“It matters to me!”
“Uh, that’s great, really it is, uh, you’re sure no one is going to come busting through that door?”
“Nope,” Kai said with a confident smile while unfolding one of her legs under her and brushing Conor’s thigh with her knee.
Conor smiled back at her. Still a bit uncomfortable, he didn’t say anything else. There was an awkward pause for a few moments.
“What book did you bring with you?”
Without waiting for an answer, she placed her hand on Conor’s knee to lift herself enough to reach over to her bed to grab his textbook. This sent tremors up his spine.
“It’s for AP history, we’re to read the first three chapters,” Conor croaked from his throat being clogged with nerves.
Kai opened the book to the table of contents yet didn’t pay any attention to it.
“Do you like history, or merely after AP credits?”
“Um, well, I don’t really care about AP credits. Since I was a kid, I’ve always read a lot, and most of the books I read are about history, so yeah I like it.”
Without hesitating, Kai asked, “What else do you like Conor?”
“Uh well, I don’t know, I like a lot of things.”
“Yeah, you’re right, too broad. O.K., you like studying history. Let’s shift gears. What’s your favorite food?” Kai asked.
“First, history is something I like to read about. I love filmmaking and that’s what I want to study. Second, I have a ton of favorite foods, too many to narrow down to only one.”
“Are you always this difficult?” Kai asked with a sarcastic smile.
“Oh my God, I’m usually much worse,” he kidded.
“O.K. this isn’t going to be easy. Let’s narrow it down some more. How about your favorite fruit?”
Warming up to her, after thinking for a second, he answered, “Hmmm, a perfectly ripe peach.” Then pausing a bit, he added, “Still, an apple pulled off a tree on a cool fall morning with the dew dripping off it, where the first bite is so sweet and crisp you can hear the crunch echo throughout the orchard, well, that’s also right up there.”
“Whoa, that sounds wonderful. Forget the peaches, I’d love to experience a bite of that apple,” Kai cooed ignoring Conor’s Adam and Eve connection.
“What’s your favorite?” Conor asked to turn the tables.
“Hey! This is my Q&A game, not yours, but since I’m not difficult, it’s strawberries for me. What about your favorite dessert?”
They were now both fully animated, with a rapid back and forth of their questions and answers, as if racing to learn more about each other.
“That’s easy, anything chocolate, cake, ice cream, pie, sundaes. You?”
“Crepe Suzette bien sur, from a cart on Rue du Four near the Mabillon metro station in Paris. They make the best crepes on the planet. Okay, how about your ‘go to’ main course?”
“A rib-eye steak medium rare, also perfectly fried chicken can be amazing depending on who’s cooking it. My mom doesn’t earn her love in the kitchen, but she’s amazing in many other ways.”
“Vegetable?”
“Ugh, not a huge veggie fan, corn on the cob, I guess” Conor answered.
“No Brussels sprouts, spinach, eggplant?”
“God no, none of them. I used to throw up when my big sister made me eat all the peas on my plate before she’d let me leave the table!”
“Tough sister! Sounds like she knows how difficult you can be,” Kai replied with a sly smile.
“No doubt, she’s about ten years older and back then was more babysitter than big sister. She went to college when I was in the second grade.”
“Okay then, we’re starting to fill in some of the blanks here. How about your favorite drink?”
“Hmmm, good question. A cold Orange Crush after a hot practice is surprisingly good, I also had several pints of Guinness over the summer, and it’s creeping up my all-time beverage list.”
“Looks like we both were introduced to fun drinks over the summer. My new favorite is pastis and water. It turns white like milk when you mix them and it tastes like black licorice, and it comes with one hell of a kick!”
“I’ve never heard of it. You can order me one someday in France.” Conor said with a wink.
“I would absolutely love that Conor, it’s a deal! All right, favorite place in the whole world?” Kai asked.
Without thinking, Conor offered, “Simple, up on the rocks above the hairpin turn on the Trapps side of the mountain, perched looking east at sunrise. It’s pretty spectacular.”
Kai gently shook her head. Overacting, she made a face with a mock look of hurt and slowly said, “Awe, not here with me?”
Not missing a beat, Conor quickly replied, “Of course, you’d be sitting right next to me as the sun came up.”
After thinking about it for a second he added, “Better yet, give me a few more minutes here in your room, and I’ll let you know!”
They chuckled and let the moment sink in. Kai placed her hand on Conor’s thigh, and he placed his hand over hers. As if on cue, their fingers intertwined, and they sat next to each other looking off into space for a few more moments of silence.
Kai squeezed his hand and looked up at Conor. He turned and looked deep into her eyes. Slowly he lowered himself toward her and stopped when their faces were only an inch away. He held her gaze, inhaling everything about her. She had light jasmine, rose, and musk scent, it was intoxicating.
As he looked into her, Kai sensed he was interested in everything about her, not only her boob size. It was both overwhelming and breathtaking and she loved it. No one had ever given themselves to her like this. Her mind was overcome with desire and her body was purring inside like a cat having its belly rubbed.
Remembering lessons learned in the summer from his British women friends, Conor delicately touched his lips to hers with a softness that was incredibly erotic. He held her there and gently massaged her lips with his. He continued to lightly caress her with small kisses on her face before moving back to her mouth. This time he dove in, moving his tongue in and rolling it with hers while hungrily kissing her lips with his whole mouth. He continued kissing her for a full minute before pulling away to look into her eyes and see if she was feeling what he was. The blissful look in her eyes told him all he needed to know.
Kai had never been kissed like this before. It was masculine, sensual, and confident and she didn’t want it to stop. She reached up and curled her hand behind his neck and drew him down toward her again and they kissed for even longer than the first time. He then kissed her neck and ear, dipping the tip of his tongue into her ear sending shivers through her body.
Conor held her hand and pulled her over to the bed where they lay next to each other. He started kissing her again on her neck, shoulder, temple, and mouth. He let his hands roam down to her midsection, rubbing and caressing her abdomen without touching any sensitive areas.
Kai couldn’t get enough of him. She moved him onto his back and hungrily kissed his mouth, pressing and rubbing her breasts against his chest, and letting out low groans of pleasure. Lying next to him, she moved a leg over the top of his and began rubbing the area between her legs against the side of his jeans. As she did this her breathing became faster. She moved her mouth to Conor’s ear lobe and flicked her tongue back and forth as her breaths came quicker. Conor pressed his leg between hers and kissed her deeply and passionately.
Kai was euphoric. She took his hand and moved it between her legs. He pulled it away and moved his leg back instead. He didn’t want things to go any further than they had. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop if he had his hands all over her body. After several minutes of strategic massaging and kissing, Kai’s breathing began to slow.
She laid on her back staring up at the ceiling. Lying beside her, he propped himself on his elbow and looked down into her wide-open eyes, enjoying the view for several moments. Kai looked as if she had run the race of her life and broke the world record in the process.
“I don’t know about you, that was pretty good. I could do this every night,” Conor teased.
Kai stared up at the ceiling without looking at him and said, “Yeah, you’re right it was good, and we need to keep at it until it’s perfect. Tomorrow night, same place, same time?”
“Tomorrow it is,” Conor said smirking.
“O.K., it’s settled then. By the way Conor, up on the cliffs at sunrise sounds beautiful, for now, though, your favorite place will have to be here with me.”
“I guess I can put up with that, for now,” Conor replied oozing with sarcasm.
Still staring at the ceiling, she reached over and punched him in the thigh. With that, he opened the slider and walked out into the night.