The bell rang for break, and Tami made her way outside to the courtyard, where she often hung out during those precious fifteen minutes of midday freedom. Kimberley was already at the picnic table, and she smiled as Tami sat down opposite her.

"So….did you show Eric a thing or two prom night?"

"Maybe," Tami confessed.

"Because he sure has been smiling a lot today."

"We didn't go all the way, but I'm starting to think maybe my timeline is a little arbitrary," Tami admitted to her. "This absolutely no sex in high school thing…I can't quite remember why I came up with that."

Kimberley chuckled.

"How did it go with you and Jack?"

The chuckle transitioned to a sigh. "He was a perfect gentleman, as usual."

"So…"

"We made out a little. He felt me up a bit. But that was it. He is not kidding about this no sex before marriage thing."

"But you had a good time?"

"I had a great time. And I'm going to keep having a great time with him for the rest of the year, and I'll always remember Jack fondly as my high school sweetheart."

"Remember him? You say that like you think you're going to break up before college."

"We are going to break up before college, Tami. What's the point? I'm not becoming Catholic. We're not going to have a sexless, long-distance relationship for four years, hundreds of miles apart at two different colleges. It's just not happening. So I'm going to break it off after graduation."

"You don't love him?" Tami asked.

Kimberley looked around to ensure they were out of anyone's earshot. "Yeah, I do kind of love him," she confessed. "And I know I'm going to miss him. A lot, at first, probably. But I'm just being realistic here."

Tami toyed with the strap of her backpack. A sudden wave of sick fear rolled in her stomach. "Do you think long distance relationships ever really last?"

"You and Eric are going to last, honey," Kimberley assured her. "You'll only be apart for a year, anyway, and less than a four hour drive."

"You mean if I can transfer to UT-Austin to be near him at TMU."

"Oh, we all know you will, Tami. And then you two will get married after you graduate. He'll coach at some high school, and you'll be a high school guidance counselor – "

"- A high school guidance counselor?" Tami asked. "Why not a therapist at a private practice?"

"Because you both want your summers off so you have lots of time for sex."

Tami laughed. "You've been looking in your crystal ball?"

"No, I have a magic mirror that tells the future. You'll buy a house with his and hers closets, and you'll have 2.5 kids, and a white picket fence."

"2.5 kids?"

"One of them is going to be a midget, unfortunately, but you'll love him anyway."

Tami shook her head and smiled.

"Eric's going to make the boy dress up as a leprechaun and play the school mascot when he's head coach at Notre Dame. That's where he'll run into Jack again, who will be an ex-Jesuit priest and a professor of Physics."

"An ex-Jesuit?" Tami asked.

"Yeah, because by then he'll have left the priesthood to marry an ex-prostitute."

"Who's marrying a prostitute?" Eric asked.

Tami looked over Kimberley's shoulder to see Jack and Eric approaching. Jack slid onto the bench next to Kimberley and kissed her cheek. Eric took a spot next to Tami.

"We were just talking about a book we both read," Kimberley said. "It wouldn't interest you boys. It was a Harlequin romance."

"I knew it!" Eric said, looking at Tami with triumph. "I knew that's what you were shoving in your purse that day at the coffee shop. Classic, my ass."

[*]

On the last Saturday in April, Eric took Tami on another picnic in the clearing. He did not bring wine this time.

After their lunch, they packed up the basket and lay down side by side on the blanket, where they made out for a tantalizingly long time, lips nibbling necks and ears, hands roaming over clothes, bodies pressed and moving together.

Eric eventually slid his hands beneath her shirt and unhooked her bra to caress her bare breasts. His touch was like feathers and then fire, and the tension mounted little by little until her body was burning with desire for him. When he began lightly pinching her nipples, she groaned, not just from the pleasure of his touch, but because the tingling between her legs had grown torturous.

She couldn't do this anymore, this mere fooling around.

She wanted him.

In a decisive instant, she pulled away. "Do you have condoms?"

Confusion flickered first in his expressive eyes, then surprise, then joyful expectation. "Yeah!"

He ripped his wallet from the back pocket of his shorts and it flung open. In his excitement, some of the contents spilled out. He shoved the money and receipts back inside and pulled out a foil packet. When he kissed her, she began hastily unbuttoning his shorts.

Tami would like to have said their very first time was perfect, that it was a romantic storybook encounter, but it wasn't perfect. It was hungry. Disorderly. Quick.

Both were already on the brink from their intense make-out session. They didn't even get their shorts and underwear down to their ankles before she was begging him to come inside. Once he was, Eric came in two swift strokes, groaning against her shoulder.

Sorry followed his shudder. "I'm so sorry. I can touch you. Or –"

There was a rustling in the woods, and, startled and embarrassed, they hurriedly pulled up their underwear and shorts. Eric had just shoved the used condom beneath the blanket when a couple broke through the woods, the man carrying a hiking stick.

"Mornin'," Eric drawled, and waved, even while trying to catch his breath.

"It's the afternoon, really," the man said.

[*]

Eric switched off the truck alongside the curb, five car lengths from the parsonage. They hadn't said much on anything on the drive back. "Listen," he said, "That doesn't usually happen to me. I swear."

"We made out a really long time first," she reassured him. "And you haven't had sex in…what? Nine months?"

He looked away from her, out the window. A car drove by, well above the speed limit, with a woosh.

"The first time with anyone is never that good," she insisted, as though she'd had dozens of other first times before him, instead of just two. "It'll be better the next time."

He looked back at her. "You still want there to be a next time?"

"Of course."

He put his head back against the head rest, closed his eyes, and sighed with relief.

She put a hand on his leg. "You're more upset about this than I am, Eric. If those hikers hadn't interrupted us, I know you'd have taken care of me another way."

"I didn't want to take care of you another way. I wanted…." He opened his eyes and looked at her hand on his leg. "Ladies first."

She smiled. "Look, the whole thing was rushed. I rushed it. I've been fantasizing about it for so long that – "

"You have?"

A little embarrassed by her confession, and by the memory of some of those fantasies, she slid her hand away. "Sure. So when I decided I wanted it…" She shrugged. "I probably shouldn't have sprung it on you like that, when you didn't know we were headed there, and you were already so close."

He put a hand on the steering wheel and ran his fingertips nervously over the plastic. "I wanted to make it special for you. Our first time. Something you'd remember forever."

"Oh, I'll remember it forever," she laughed. "Being interrupted like that? You don't forget that."

He smiled, a little wearily. "You're pretty great," he said. "You…" He turned to her. "You're really pretty great."

She gave him a smile of love and compassion.

"I swear I'm going to make it up to you. All you have to do is name the day." He leaned over and kissed her. They were still kissing when there was a knock on Tami's window and they jerked apart.

The Reverend smiled and waved and made a cranking motion with his hand. Tami rolled down her window. "Daddy," she said. "Really?"

"I was just walking home from the church. I had a counseling session. Does Eric want to stay for lunch?"

"We already had a picnic," Tami told him.

"Then how about dessert? Or have you two already had dessert?"

Tami bit down on her laugh and caught Eric's eye. He looked straight down, his face paling a shade.

"No," Tami said. "No, we haven't."

The Reverend smiled. "Eric, want to come in for ice cream?"

"Uh…" Eric looked mortified by the thought of sharing ice cream with her father right after having sex with her. "Thank you, Reverend, for the invitation. But I promised my mom I'd mow the lawn this afternoon. Can I take a rain check?"

"You know you're welcome in our house anytime," Tami's father replied.

[*]

The second time they had sex, three days later in Eric's bedroom, while his mother was volunteering at the church's clothing closet and his father was at Taylor's, was more like Tami's fantasy.

They explored each other slowly. There were whispered words of love, sighs, and a slow dance of mounting pleasure on his soft gray sheets. Tami came with a whimper - the first time. When he brought her to orgasm the second time, she cried out loudly, and only then did Eric moan his way to a release that left him shuddering beside her.

They held each other close, until the trembling stopped, and their breath leveled, and he said, "That felt really good. Was it good for you?"

"I've never felt like this before," Tami answered. "I didn't know I could feel like this."