Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 22:49:23 -0800 (PST)
From: SJL <geekwriter143@yahoo.com>
Subject: Paul and Adam, Chapter Five

OK, you didn't like Chapter Four that much.  It's OK.  Thanks to the few of
you who wrote and said you *did* like it.  For the rest of you, there will
be sex in this chapter, I promise.

All usualy disclaimers apply.  Don't read this if you shouldn't read this.
Do at least one good deed every day.

Even with fewer responses to Chapter Four than previous chapters, I'm still
swamped.  If you ask me questions I'll email the answers back to you.  If
you just want to tell me what you think, know that I thank you for your
input and I probably won't be able to get back to you.  As always, the
address is geekwriter143@yahoo.com

On to Chapter Five of Paul & Adam, from Adam's POV.

____________________________________________________

"You hurt your leg, little bro?" Mitch asks as I rub my knee.  I realize
it's been aching nearly the entire morning.

"I don't know," I admit.  We're sitting in a large booth at McDonald's
having breakfast with a bunch of other people from the team.  "It's been
hurting a lot, lately.  Both legs, really, but it doesn't seem connected to
practice."

"Maybe it's growing pains," offers Laura Brown.  She's a junior and she
does a wicked 400 fly.

"You think?" I ask.  I realize as soon as it pops out of my mouth how
desperate I must sound.  I expect people to laugh, but no one does.

"I got 'em bad when I was in seventh grade," she says.  "I grew, like, six
inches in a year.  Kept me up at nights."

The thought of growing six inches is extremely appealing, and my father is
pretty damn tall so I might have inherited his genes, but I don't want to
get my hopes up.  "My mom's only five-five," I say, as if that explains
anything.

"Caroline and I are gonna catch a movie tonight," Mitch says to me.  "You
and Paul wanna come along?"

I know he doesn't mean anything by it, at least I don't think he does, but
the way he puts Paul and I nearly into the same breath disturbs me.  It's
like he's talking about us as if we were a couple.  "I don't know what I'm
doing tonight," I say, trying to sound nonchalant about the whole thing.

Mitch shrugs and starts talking to Laura and a couple of the other guys
about the benefits and drawbacks of drag suits.  My heart's pounding in my
chest.  No one seems to notice it.

It felt totally natural last night to lay in bed next to Paul.  Kissing him
and holding him close to me seemed normal, and it was honestly the best I'd
felt in a long time.  It was just waking up in the morning and seeing
everything in the light that was weird.

Paul had still been asleep when the alarm went off, and it didn't seem to
faze him a bit.  He kept sleeping, his chest rising and falling with his
slow, shallow breaths.

I got dressed as quietly as I could, then just stood in the middle of his
room, watching him sleep.  I tried to call back the feelings from the night
before, the absolute calm I'd felt in his arms, but it was gone.  Now he
was just my best friend, and the things we'd done together hardly seemed
real.

"You need a ride home?" Mitch asks me, and I realize that everybody is
getting up to leave.

"Uh, no," I say.  "I've got my bike."

"You sure?" he asks.  "That was a hard workout today.  I feel like jelly."

I am tired, and my muscles are weak, but I shake my head.  "I'll be OK," I
tell him.

I pedal my bike slowly, too tired from that morning's sets to do anything
but coast along.  When I get home there's a message from Mark and Jimmy
telling me to come to the arcade.  I erase it.  There's a note on the
kitchen counter from my father, too, telling me to be ready to go out to
dinner at six.  I crumple the note up and toss it into the trash.

I don't feel like going to the arcade at the moment, so I go to the
bathroom, instead, and strip out of my clothes.  I start the water, run it
hot to soothe my muscles, and stand in front of the mirror as the tub
fills.

I stand up straight and look at myself.  Have I grown any?  I'd like to
believe that the ache in my legs is growing pains, but I'm not sure.  With
my luck I'll stay 5'6" forever, and no matter how hard you work, a 5'6"
swimmer can't get very far.  The longer the boat the faster it goes, as
Coach says.  I'm strong, and I've got great cardiovascular strength, but
there's only so much you can do without the proper body length.

Legs too short, arms too short, but my torso's long and lean.  I hope I'll
grow into it.  I smile as I realize that every time I look into the mirror
I only see my faults.  I squint my eyes and take a step back, turn
sideways.  I wonder what Paul sees when he looks at me.  Whatever it is, I
don't see it.  I give up and slide into the tub, groaning at how good the
hot water feels.

One of my parents' first really big fights was about redoing the bathroom.
Mom said we needed to get it done and Dad said it was fine like it was,
plus redoing it would be expensive.  My dad's kind of a Scrooge when it
comes to money, no matter how much he makes.  My mom ended up winning, I
guess, because she got to redo the bathroom.  I'm glad she won, because she
put in the biggest bathtub I've ever seen.  When I sit in it, the water
comes up to my armpits.  I can stretch out all the way and not even have to
bend my legs when I lay back.

Maybe it's not exactly a manly thing, taking a bath, but I tell myself it's
purely therapeutic.  After all, our team can't afford a spa, and it's good
for your muscles to relax in warm water after a tough workout.  Especially
when you put the jets on, which I do.

Soon, I'm stretched out in the tub with whirlpool jets sending the water in
eddies around me.  I close my eyes and know I'll fall asleep.  I usually
do, though only for about five minutes at a time.

I stay in the tub until the water's nearly lukewarm.  I massage my leg
muscles, my sore thighs.  I stretch as I get out of the water, then reach
down to pull the plug and let the tub drain.

I feel a lot better, not an ache anywhere, and I wash my face with cool
water to get rid of the sweat that always forms when I take a hot bath.
It's past noon, and my stomach's growling, so I wrap a towel around my
waist and pad barefoot into the kitchen to make myself a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich.

I sit down at the kitchen table to eat, and pull a crumbled up ball of
paper out of the trash and smooth it out.  It's the note from my father.

"Adam, please by home by six so that we can go out to dinner.  See you
then.  Love, Dad."

Love, Dad.  Hmmm.  He's definitely different than he was even two days ago.
I wonder if it's Rebecca's influence or just the fact that he doesn't have
my mother around to fight with.  They're both OK on their own, a little
annoying but not too bad.  It's when they're together that they turn into
assholes.  I don't want to admit it, but it's probably best that my mother
left.

I finish my sandwich, then make another one.  It's almost one o'clock by
the time I head back to my room to get dressed.  Mark will be pissy that it
took me so long to get to the arcade, but he'll live.

In my room, the faces of my heroes look out at me from the walls.  Ian
Thorpe frozen in the air as he dives from the starting block, toothy Pieter
van den Hoogenband pumping his fist in the air after a win, and Alexander
Popov, my favorite, the man I want to swim like.  He's a dolphin in the
water, gliding through it with what seems like no effort at all, his
powerful kicks propelling him nearly as much as his smooth, gliding strokes
through the water.  He looks a little bit like Paul.  Nothing that anybody
else would notice, really, but their coloring is similar.  The cheekbones
are the same.

I wonder what it would be like to race him.  I'm too small for the sprints
he does, I have to rely on my atypical cardiovascular strength for distance
races, now, since for whatever lucky genetic reason I don't tire half as
fast as most swimmers my age.  But if I did race Popov...I grin as I
realize that he'd shoot by me so fast I'd probably rock in the water as if
a torpedo had just gone by.  He can kick 50 meters in 29 seconds, after
all, using nothing but the power of his legs.

"Adam?"  The voice startles me.  I tighten my towel around my waist and
take a step towards the doorway.  "Adam, where you at?"

It's Paul.  "You scared the shit out of me," I say, stepping out into the
hall.  "What are you doing here?"

"Mark sent me to get you," he says.

I feel annoyed that he just came in without knocking, though I know I
shouldn't.  Neither one of us ever knocks--we haven't since we were kids.
We treat each other's houses as if they were our own.

"Since when do you run Mark's errands?" I ask, turning back into my room.

"Since I'd rather be here with you than at the arcade," Paul replies.

That annoys me, too.  Everything he does annoys me-how he comes into my
room without asking, how he locks the door behind him as if something's
going to happen.

"I was just about to leave," I snap.  "He didn't have to send you like a
little errand boy.  Jesus."

Paul doesn't say anything.  I turn and drop my towel and stand naked in
front of my closet.  I can feel his eyes on me.  I turn to face him and
what I was going to say, <<Stop staring at me like some kind of fag,>>
catches in my throat.  It's hard to stay mad at Paul when he looks at me
like he does, when I can see in his eyes that he looks at me in a way no
one else ever has.

"What do you see when you look at me?" I ask softly.

Paul's leaning back against my closed door.  He shrugs.  "I just see you,"
he says, as if it's the simplest thing in the world.

"Yeah, but I don't think I see the same thing you do when I look in the
mirror," I tell him.  "I see short legs and a skinny chest.  I see
everything that's wrong with me.  Tell me what you see."

Paul smiles and moves towards me.  "There's nothing wrong with you," he
says.  "You're perfect."  I shiver when I realize that he means it.  "I
love your thumbs," he says.

I laugh.  "What?"

He takes my hand in his, turns it so that he can see the back of my thumb.
"See, here how below the first knuckle it tapers in, then widens out again?
It's called a waisted thumb, and it means you have a kind heart.  My
grandmother taught me that."

I look down at my thumb.  I never paid much attention to it, except to
wonder if I should hold it tight against my other fingers or in a dog-ear
crimp during my stroke.

"The hair on your arms is like threads of white gold," Paul says, running
his hand over my forearm.  "Your skin is the color of caramel, except
here," he touches my hip, "where it's the color of cream."

"You're making me hungry," I tease.  I want to break the seriousness of the
moment because it scares me a little, how sincere Paul is.  He's thought
about this before.  He's thought about it a lot.  I'm not sure if I want to
know how much he's thought about me.

"And here," Paul continues.  He touches the hollow just behind my jaw.
"Your skin is so soft here, and it makes me want to..."  He leans and
kisses me there and I sigh and close my eyes.

"Your nipples are dark pink, almost brown," he says.  His fingers brush my
nipples and I swallow hard.  "And you have the most adorable bellybutton
I've ever seen."

I laugh and look down at my navel.  I'd never thought of it as adorable,
never thought of it much at all.

My cock's getting hard and part of me tries to tell me that I should cover
myself, that I shouldn't be getting hard just by standing there naked while
my best friend looks at me.

"I always thought," Paul says.  He's moving around me, now, coming to stand
behind me.  "I always thought that if you got a tattoo, you should get it
here."  He touches the small of my back and spreads his hands out to the
sides.  "Because it's a perfect little hollow, and something here would
draw attention not only to itself, but to your strong back above it, your
round ass below."

"You're the artist," I say.  My voice is thick and I swallow hard to clear
my throat.  "What would you put there?"

"Hmmm."  He squats down so that his eyes are level with my lower back.  He
touches my spine, his finger drawing spirals on my skin.  "I don't know,
yet," he admits.  He starts again, this time the movements of his finger
are more jagged, with swirls only at the end.  He stands up and the heat of
his hands on the skin of my back is driving me crazy.  "I'll have to think
about it," Paul says.

I turn and pull him to me, kiss him frantically.  He seems startled at
first, as if he wasn't aware of what his touch, his look did to me.  Then
he kisses me back and moans into my mouth and his hands shake a little as
they touch me, and I know he wants me as much as I want him.

And it's like swimming--there's no thought, just action.  There's nothing
in the world except Paul's body, my body.  My fingers are in his hair and I
grip his head in my hands as I kiss him, hungry for him, pulling him as
close to me as I can.

I'm tugging at his clothes, yanking them off his body, not caring if I rip
anything because all I want is his skin against my skin.  I wind my arms
around him and his bare chest presses against mine.

Our feet move and stumble over each other as we kiss, turning in slow
circles as we grab and grope each other, marking skin with urgent fingers.

His arms are around me so tight, his fingers digging into the skin of my
back so deep it hurts, but I don't care because the pain is good.  I want
him to hold me that close; I want him to need me that much.

I'm breathless by the time we make it to the bed.  I push Paul back and
climb over him, refusing to keep my mouth from his for more than a few
seconds.  I suck on his tongue and bite his lips.

My cock is hard and dripping precum, aching for contact.  I fumble with
Paul's fly as I continue to kiss him.  I can't undo the buttons and I end
up just pulling at it and I hear the buttons pop but I don't pay any
attention because I'm kissing him and his hands are sliding up and down my
back and squeezing my ass and I jerk his shorts down and groan as our cocks
finally touch.

I'm on top of him, straddling him, grinding my cock against his and sucking
on his lower lip and he's squeezing my ass, parting it, and I moan low as
his fingers find their target.  It's the most intimate thing anyone's ever
done, the way Paul touches me there, his fingers stroking and probing my
asshole, sending sharp stabs of pleasure through me.

He rolls me over and pins my shoulders to the bed.  He starts kissing my
jaw, my neck, the hollow of my collarbones.  I want him at my mouth again,
I feel empty without his tongue against mine but I can only moan because I
can't find the words to tell him.  I can't speak at all, couldn't form a
sentence if my life depended on it because nothing exists except Paul and
the places he's touching me.

His mouth finds one of my nipples and he licks it gently, suckles, lightly
grazes it with his teeth.  I writhe beneath him and want to throw him off
me, want to take control again, but I'm weak, my muscles are jelly as he
kisses and caresses me.  I let my head sink deeper against the mattress and
surrender to him.  He can do whatever he wants with me.  In that moment,
I'm his.

Paul kisses my other nipple, runs his fingers lightly down my ribcage and I
feel the hairs on my body prickle.  His mouth is on my abdomen, kissing my
navel, flicking his tongue against it.  His fingers trail down to my
hipbones, circle them lightly.  I shiver.

His hands are beneath my thighs, pressing them up, and I let him lift my
legs as he kisses the inside of my thighs.  His tongue flicks against the
smooth skin beneath my balls and it's like explosions in my brain.  I want
to tell him not to stop, that it's the spot that drives me wild, but I
can't speak and then he presses my knees to my chest and his tongue moves
down and I forget how to breathe.

Paul's tongue is on my asshole, bathing it in spit, teasing it so gently.
Christ.  Jesus Christ, nobody every told me about this.  I wouldn't have
believed them anyway, could never have believed that anything could feel so
good.

Every touch of his tongue and it's like electricity shot through me.  I
feel myself relaxing, opening to him, and his tongue probes further inside
me and I'm gripping the sheets in my hands and twisting them and pressing
my head hard into the mattress and I know I'm moaning.  I'm probably
screaming, it feels so amazing.  I'm probably screaming but I can't tell
because even though my eyes are open I can't see anything, can't hear
anything, can't feel anything except Paul's touch and his tongue pushing
deeper and deeper inside me.

I come without even touching my cock.  I come just from the feel of Paul's
tongue in my ass, and when I do it's like the air cracks.  I expect to hear
thunder, see lightning.  I expect the walls to collapse around us, to be
buried beneath rubble, because how can you continue to exist after
something like that?  How can you experience pleasure that intense and
live?

Paul's kissing me.  I feel his mouth on my stomach and chest, feel his
fingers in my hair, feel his mouth over mine.  "Adam," he says, "Adam,
baby, did you like it?  Was it OK?"

I want to laugh.  Was it OK?  I open my eyes and he's peering down at me
and he kisses me again and I manage to lift my arm enough to stroke his
hair.  I'm shaking.  I open my mouth to speak and when I do all that comes
out is, "Love you, love you, love you."

"I love you, too," Paul says.  "God, Adam, I love you so much."

I want to return the pleasure, make him feel like he made me feel, but I
can't keep my eyes open.  I try to wrap my arms around him and can barely
control my muscles.  I'm dizzy and drifting and I don't know if I fall
asleep or if I pass out.

Then I'm conscious and Paul's lying next to me, holding me, kissing me
gently.

"Wow," I manage to say.

He smiles down at me.  "You like it?"

I nod.  "Wow."

"You don't think it was dirty?" he asks.

I shake my head.  "Paul," I whisper.  "God, Paul, it was...how did you know
to do that?  How did you know it would make me feel so good?"

"I didn't," he admits.  "I've read about it, and I thought it was hot,
wanted to do it, but I didn't know if you'd like it."

I smile.  "I liked it."

"Yeah, I figured that out."

My strength is starting to come back and my chest is filled with a giddy
lightness.  I start to laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing.  I just feel good, that's all."  I sit up and push him onto his
back, climb over him and sit on his thighs.  I reach forward and touch his
face, trace my fingers over his high cheekbones.  I gaze into his
almond-shaped eyes, dark as midnight pools of water.

"You're amazing," I say softly.  I can tell the comment pleases him because
he smiles and his cheeks turn pink with a slight blush.  I lean forward to
kiss him and feel his cock hard as steel against my stomach.

"Tell me what you want," I whisper in his ear.  "Tell me what you want me
to do.  I'll do anything you want, you just have to tell me."

Paul hesitates, then whispers, "Suck me."

I grin down at him.  "Yeah?  You want me to suck your cock?"  Saying the
words feels sexy--I like to hear them come out of my mouth.

"Yeah," he says.  He reaches up and strokes my hair.  "Please, Adam, suck
me."

I kiss my way down his chest and I know he's watching me, but I'm not
self-conscious.  I don't care if he's watching me.  The whole world could
be watching me, and it wouldn't change a thing.  I dip my head down and
take the head of his cock between my lips.  The taste of it, which would
have worried me before, is nothing.  It's better than nothing-it's good.
It's the taste of Paul.

His skin is silky soft against my tongue, and as I wrap my lips around it I
can feel the hot hardness underneath his soft skin.  I slide my mouth up
and down slowly.  I don't know what to do, really, but in a way I do.
After all, I've been sucked before and I know what feels good, what
doesn't.  I make sure my lips are over my teeth, since I know from
experience how bad teeth feel slicing over your cock.

And it's natural, not weird at all to have my mouth so full of him.  I
close my eyes and lose myself in the hypnotic rhythm, making long, even
strokes and feeling him groan and twist beneath me.  I cup his balls in my
hand, squeeze them gently to the rhythm of my mouth on his cock.  I could
do this all day.  I could do this forever.  Whoever it was that decided
being a cocksucker was a bad thing obviously hadn't done it much.

When Paul comes I pull back and feel it pelt my face.  I'm laughing as I
hold his cock and his cum splashes against my chin, my cheeks, my neck.  I
slip my tongue out and lick some from the corner of my mouth and it's not
bad at all.  I wouldn't order it in a restaurant, but it's good in an
exhilarating, slightly dirty way.

"You're covered," Paul says, laughing with me.  He leans up and I feel his
tongue on my cheek as he laps it up.  We kiss, sharing the taste of his cum
and the sheer fact of what we're doing, how forbidden it is, makes me groan
into his mouth.

We fall back onto my bed, kissing and laughing, sweaty and cum-covered.  We
press our foreheads together, and I gaze into his dark eyes as he gazes
back at me.

A million things are going through my head-random, unconnected things like
the 4th of July, and the time I broke my arm jumping off the roof, and
whether or nod my dad will let me get a dog now that my mother, who's
allergic, is gone.

"We should get to the arcade," Paul says finally.  "Mark's probably got his
panties in a twist wondering where we are."

I laugh at the thought of Mark wearing panties.  "I think we stink," I tell
him.  "We should probably shower."

"If you spend any more time in the water you're going to grow gills," Paul
whispers.  He kisses the end of my nose.

"With any luck, you're right."

We shower, and though it's sexy it's not about sex.  I soap up his back and
kiss his shoulders and he washes my hair and his soapy fingers slide along
my ass crack.

"That's way better than showering alone," Paul says as we step out of the
shower.  We towel each other off, and I can't help but love how gentle he
is with me, how tenderly he dries me.

"Maybe we should blow dry your hair," I say as I rub the towel over Paul's
head.  "The guys might get suspicious if we've both got wet hair."

"Do you have a blow dryer?" Paul asks.  I admit that I don't, and I doubt
my dad does, either.  "It'll be fine," Paul says, combing his hair with his
fingers.  "It'll dry in the sun by the time we get there."

And he's right.  His hair is dry and mine nearly so when we reach the
arcade.  Mark and Jimmy are too busy trying to destroy each other at Pole
Position to be pissy about Paul and I being late.

I like the arcade with its old-fashioned video games, skee ball, electronic
darts.  You win tickets at darts and skee ball, and though we win a lot we
give them to Jimmy, who collects them for his little sisters.  It's not
like we give a shit about trading them in for plastic yo-yos or glitter
pencils, but his sisters, who are both still in elementary school, go crazy
every time we give them pocketfuls of those stupid gray tickets.

"You wanna catch a movie tonight?" Mark asks as I play him in darts.  He
always loses because he doesn't have the patience to take his time and aim.

I almost agree, then remember the dinner thing with my dad.  "Shit," I say,
tossing my last dart.  It hits the bull's-eye and Mark curses.  "I have to
go."

"What the fuck for?" Mark demands.

"I'm going out to dinner with my dad," I say.  "And probably Rebecca."

"Who's Rebecca?"

"Probably my future stepmother," I say.  I wave to Paul and Jimmy as I
hustle out of the arcade and unlock my bike as quickly as possible.

"Hey," Paul says.  He's come out of the arcade and he's looking at me.
"Were are you going?"

He annoys me again, but I try not to show it.  "I have to go to this dinner
thing with my dad," I tell him.  "I'll talk to you tomorrow, OK?"

Paul seems like he wants to say something more, but he doesn't.  I wave at
him again as I take off on my bike.  The clock on the side of the bank says
it's 5:53.  I'm cutting it damn close.

"You're late," my father says as I fly into the house.

I look at the clock on the microwave.  6:01.  "Barely," I say, panting.

Instead of yelling at me like he'd normally do, he laughs.  "OK, barely,"
he agrees.  "Go get changed.  We need to leave soon."

I start down the hall towards my room, then turn.  "Where are we going?" I
ask.

"Mel's," he replies.

Mel's is good.  Mel's is nice, but you can still wear jeans there.  I
change into jeans and clean tennis shoes, pull on a polo shirt since my dad
has this thing about how much nicer it is when you wear a shirt with a
collar.

"How was your day?" he asks as we pull out of the driveway in the red Saab
convertible he got when my mom accused him of having a midlife crisis.  "Do
anything interesting?"

I smirk and look out the window.  "Not really," I say, managing to keep my
voice steady.  It's not like I could tell him that I discovered how fucking
amazing it was to get your asshole licked.  "We had a wicked practice this
morning, coach had us do a 1650 right off the bat to see how in shape we've
been keeping ourselves."

"I thought distance was your thing," my father says.  I'm surprised that he
remembers.

"Well, yeah," I say.  "But first thing, that's tough.  It's a mile, you
know.  Thirty-three times across the pool."

"Up and back, or just across?" he asks.

"Just across," I say.  "It's a 50 yard pool."

My dad whistles through his teeth.  "Still.  You have to have gotten that
from your mother," he says.  "I sink like a stone."

I smile and slide down in my seat.  It's the closest thing to a compliment
I've ever gotten from him.

Mel's is a local treasure.  Everybody goes there, townies and college kids,
old and young.  When we get there the parking lot is packed and we have to
walk past a long line of people waiting to be seated.

Rebecca is sitting alone at a table, inspecting her napkin.  The place
smells good, like baking bread and the barbeque ribs it's famous for.  It's
dark, but not so much that you can't see where you're going.  The chairs
are heavy wood covered in soft vinyl cushions that look like leather.

"Sorry we're late," my father says as we near the table.  He leans over to
kiss Rebecca and it's weird because I've never seen him kiss my mother like
that.  My father sits next to her, and I sink into the chair across from
her and spread my napkin over my lap.

"I ordered you a Manhattan," Rebecca says to my father.  She looks at me,
"I didn't know what kind of pop you liked, so I didn't get you anything."

"Adam doesn't drink pop," my father says.  It startles me.  He seems to
know a lot more about me than I thought he did.

"Empty calories," I explain to her.  "I usually just drink water or milk."

"Always training," my father says, and if I'm not mistaken I hear a little
glint of pride in his voice.

"He's told me what an amazing swimmer you are," Rebecca says.  I feel like
I've stepped into the Twilight Zone.  I had no idea he talked about me,
that he even thought about me when I wasn't in his immediate line of sight.

"He hasn't told me anything about you," I say.  I don't mean it in a bad
way, and I don't think she takes it badly, either.

"Well, that's what this dinner is for," my father says.  "For the two of
you to get to know each other."

I look at Rebecca and I want to hate her, but she looks so nervous that I
can't.  We're not going to be buddies any time soon, but she seems to put
my dad in a better mood than I've ever seen him in, and that makes her OK
by me.

The waitress comes and brings my dad's Manhattan and a margarita for
Rebecca.  I didn't think she'd be old enough to drink, but she apparently
is.  I just ask for a big glass of water.

Turns out, Rebecca's the youngest of eight kids.  She laughs when she tells
me this, like it embarrasses her.  "We're Catholic," she says.
"Obviously."  She only works for my dad part time, because she's also in
school to become an accountant.  It seems like it would be boring as hell
to me, but she sounds really excited about it.

"Do you know what you want to go to college for?" she asks me.

I shake my head.  "No.  I just know that I want to go to Stanford."

My dad looks surprised.  "You do?" he asks.  "Really?"  I guess he doesn't
know everything about me, after all.

"Yeah," I say.  "Their swimming program's amazing.  And I've got the
grades.  I'll definitely be able to go if I ever start growing."

"I was your height until I was a junior," my father says.  "Built a lot
like you, too, although you take after your mother in looks, which is lucky
for you."  He laughs.  "You'll start sprouting up, soon.  Uncle David
didn't stop growing until he was 21."

That's encouraging, since my uncle David is nearly six foot six.  "Can I
get a dog?" I ask.

My father laughs.  "Where did that come from?"

"I don't know."  I shrug.  "I just always wanted one."

"I'll think about it," he says before taking a sip of his Manhattan.

I smile as I look down at the menu.  I'm going to get Mel's famous tequila
barbeque ribs, coleslaw, baked beans, and cornbread.  And I'm pretty damn
sure I'll have a dog before the middle of July.