Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 00:04:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jess Krop <jess_krop@yahoo.ca>
Subject: Different Worlds (FF) 2/4

                           Different Worlds
                                Part 2

I started to spend more time in Sam's world.  At first, I would head
down to where she and other street kids hung out on weekend
afternoons.  Soon, I started hanging out there after work a few days
during the week.  I started to get to know some of Sam's friends from
the streets.  They were an interesting group.  There were punks,
complete with self-pierced eyebrows and bottles of cheap, foul beer,
some ageing hippies, with ratty hair and a perpetual odour of
marijuana, and various others who were there because nowhere else did
they feel at home.  There were also a lot of Bohemian types who joined
the street kids in the evenings and on weekends, mostly people who had
jobs or were in school, but still knew these kids and hung out with
them.  I learned more about Sam, too.  She worked during the winters
at a health food store to pay rent, but she wasn't working now, except
for the occasional part-time gig and selling artwork to tourists on
the sidewalks.  I can't remember how it came up, but she also
mentioned about a week after we met that a girl she had been dating
for a year or so had left her in April to hitchhike to Nevada and
wander around in the desert.  It sounded like the loss had hurt her a
lot, so I didn't ask questions.  I did hear myself telling her that I
wasn't really seeing anyone at the time, either.  I think I was just
trying to console her, but the news did cheer her up.

I noticed myself gradually changing as I spent more time with them,
too.  One day, as I was grabbing a cotton shirt out of my closet, I
noticed a pair of dress pants I used to wear often at the back under a
fallen jacket.  I didn't miss them.  Instead, I wondered how I could
have been so silly as to buy a pair of pants so impractical.  The
weren't very formal, but even so they'd have be torn the first time I
sat down on a sidewalk in them to talk to Sam.  Impulsively, I
gathered up a bag of old dress clothes and shoes, and dropped them in
a Salvation Army bin on my way to work.  Good riddance.

A beautiful Saturday afternoon a few months after I first talked to
Sam, I headed down to see her at the corner where we usually met, but
she wasn't there.  She had told me she was going to be canvassing for
Greenpeace until about one o'clock, and I was a little early, so I sat
down with some other girls and said hi to them.  There was someone
there I had never seen before, an Asian girl with her hair done up in
cute braids.  Someone else introduced us, and told me that her name
was Sheila.  "And this is Rachel," she said as she pointed to me, "you
know, Sam's new girlfriend."

"Oh, hi!", Sheila said.  "Hey", I smiled back, but I was more than a
little surprised to hear myself described as Sam's girlfriend.  I
mean, I had gotten to know Sam pretty well over the past few months.
We often met and had lunch together or just sat and talked, and she
had even crashed at my house a few times.  She often came to see me on
my coffee breaks at work.  But did that make us girlfriends?  Just
then, Sam came up, and put her arms around me from behind, her hands
lightly but unquestionably on my breasts.  "Hey, sweetie," she said
softly in my ear.  God, I loved it when she did that.

"Hey yourself.  Good to see you."  Sam gave me a kiss, dropped her
bag, and sat down beside me.  Maybe that's why these girls thought we
were dating, I thought-- but lots of them were very friendly with each
other.  They'd flirt or just greet each other with a kiss all the
time.  Weren't Sam and I just being friendly?  After all, everyone's
affectionate towards their friends.  Meanwhile, the object of my
affections interrupted this train of thoughts by announcing that her
bag of pamphlets was unbelievably heavy, and hence her muscles were
very sore, so I stopped my speculation and moved behind her to
massaged her shoulders.  I loved how strong Sam was.  While I rubbed
her shoulders and neck, she stretched, and I could feel her muscles
moving powerfully beneath the skin.  She wasn't a very large woman,
but everything she had was in perfect shape.  It was obvious to me at
times like this that she didn't spend her days behind a desk in a
library like I did.  Apparently my fingers were strong enough, though,
because Sam sighed in contentment and leaned back against my torso as
I knelt behind her.  I stopped wondering about my relationship with
her, and relaxed, happy to see her.  A while later, we went for a walk
along the river which runs through the city.

We were strolling along the river, hand in hand, when I popped the
question.

"Sam, am I your girlfriend?"  She gave me one of her amazing smiles.

"Do you want to be my girlfriend, Rachel?"

"I think I'd like that.  I've never had a girlfriend before, though."

"Yeah, I guessed that.  If you had, you would have noticed that I was
trying to pick you up."

"You tried to pick me up?"

"Well, if you're my girlfriend, then someone must have picked one of
us up!"

"Does that mean I'm your girlfriend?"

Sam laughed, and put her head on my shoulder.  "My darling Rachel, I
would love for you to be my girlfriend.  Do you want to be my
girlfriend?"

"Your friends seem to think I am already."

"But what do you think?"

What did I think?  I looked at Sam's face again.  We had stopped
walking by now, and were standing near the shore of the river, a
little ways away from the path, holding hands as we faced each other.
Sam was wearing her usual patched jeans and an old green thrift store
sweater.  She looked right at me, and I could see nothing but love in
her eyes.  I suddenly realized that I had come to care very deeply for
her, and that I wanted to be even closer to her and become a bigger
part of her life.  I can be such an idiot sometimes.  Why does it take
me so long to figure out my emotions?

"I want to be your girlfriend, Sam."

"I was hoping you'd say that."

We moved together and shared a kiss.  We had kissed many times since
that first day in the park, but this one was different.  It lasted
longer, and it was more passionate.  I was just realizing that our
relationship had whole levels I hadn't realized existed: Sam was
kissing me like a lover.  She had probably been doing that for a
while, of course, but I knew it now.  This time, I responded to her
like a lover, too, and in the kiss I felt the promise of something
more.  All in all, it was a kiss to remember.

Eventually, we broke apart.  Our relationship had definitely changed,
and although I didn't know where it would lead, I knew I wanted to get
Sam alone, somewhere a little less public.  "Hey, Sam, do you want to
go back to my place?"

"Sure thing, babe", she told me, and squeezed my ass.  Fortunately, I
lived close by.

At the time, I lived in a small apartment on the top floor of an old
house which had been subdivided into separate living units.  I had my
own entrance around the back of the building, which we walked up.
Once inside, I poured us both a cup of orange juice, and Sam kicked
her boots into a corner near the door and sat on my couch, feet on my
coffee table.  I sat down beside her, with my feet tucked under me,
and leaned on her shoulder.  She put her arm around me, and I snuggled
into her.  Sam ran her fingers through my hair.  "Have I told you that
I love your hair?", she asked.

"No, but you play with it a lot."  I paused, not sure how to proceed.
"Um, Sam?  What's going to change, between us, now that I'm your
girlfriend?"

In reply, Sam brought her other arm up to my side, and began to
lightly stroke my breast.  "Well, now that you're my girl, I get to do
things like this."

I giggled.  "But you already did things like that."

Suddenly very serious, she looked into my eyes.  "Not like this."
Then she moved forward and began to kiss me.

Her arms were around me, caressing me, fingers stimulating my breasts.
It felt so good, and so right.  I melted into the embrace, and put my
arms around her.  Somehow, I felt her pulling me down to sort of lie
on the couch underneath her.  Suddenly, I was underneath her, and I
felt her leg come in between mine.  The next thing I knew, Sam had
pushed my long skirt up to my knees, and her thigh was between my
legs.  I felt it push against my crotch as she rubbed it up and down
against me.  I had never felt this way before.  I moaned and pulled
Sam more tightly against me.  She responded by rubbing against me
harder than before.  I barely noticed as she pulled off the sweater I
was wearing, and fumbled with the buttons on my blouse.  I must have
helped her slip them off my arms, but I was only focusing on what her
thigh was doing between mine, and what her hands were still doing with
my breasts.  I do remember that it was me who hurriedly sat up just
long enough to undo my bra and toss it aside.  Sam immediately began
to play with my nipples, and kissed her way down my neck to suck on
one.  The entire time, she kept up a persistent pressure on my crotch,
until finally my back arched with pleasure and I cried out as an
orgasm rushed through me.

Sam had obviously done this many times before.  She gradually stopped
grinding into me, and lay down beside me with her arms around me,
stroking my head and torso as she kissed me fully and deeply.  "Oh, my
god," I told her as I lay in a heap on the couch, "that was amazing."

"You're amazing", she said, and kissed me again.

Sam ended up staying the night.  We fell asleep holding each other
tightly on my futon.  I woke up before Sam in the morning, and lay in
bed quietly for almost half an hour reflecting on the past days events
and watching her sleep-- her lips slightly parted, her chest gently
rising and falling.  Finally, I could stand it no longer, and leaned
over and kissed her.

What were you supposed to say to someone the morning after you first
made love?  There hadn't been many of those in my life.  To avoid the
issue, I got up and prepared breakfast.  A few minutes later, Sam
joined me, and we shared coffee and bagels in my sunlit kitchen.  She
treated this like every other breakfast we'd had together, and I soon
felt at ease.  Sam had to be somewhere later that morning, so prepared
herself to go.  As she was lacing up her boots, she turned to me and
said, "We should do this again, Rachel".  I told her that I'd love to,
and she gave me one last, wonderful kiss before heading out the door.