Second That Emotion
by Latikia
Copyright © 2006
Chapter 6
I finished my run, taking my time
because of the icy conditions, and then headed in. No one was downstairs,
so I figured they were either in the family room in the basement or they’d all gone
to bed. It was getting on towards
I was in and out quickly, just enough to wash off the sweat and stink. I pulled on my robe, left the towel hanging to dry overnight, and headed back up. When I opened the door all the lights were off. I hadn’t turned off the lights.
The lamp on my nightstand clicked on to reveal Izzy lying in my bed. I shut the door behind me and locked it.
“Hey, Izzy…what’s up?” Should I link, try to figure out what was going on? I decided no. I’d let her tell me in her own time.
“You did it, didn’t you?” I walked past the bed to my dresser, opened the lowest drawer and took out a pair of pajamas. Tossing them to the foot of the bed I shut the drawer and undid the belt of my robe.
“Did what?” I shucked off the robe and stood naked in front of my sister.
“You linked with Mom and Dad at the same time.” I could see Izzy’s curiosity was getting the best of her. I grinned and picked up the pajama bottoms and slid into them.
“Yeah I did. It was actually pretty easy after the Mall.”
“Alright Ike!” she crowed, as pleased as if she’d done it herself. I suppose she had every reason to be pleased, having nursed me thru my depression and coached me to my current level of ability. I couldn’t have done it without her. I probably wouldn’t have done it without her.
I put on the pajama top and began doing up the buttons.
“So? Did you help them stop fighting?”
My fingers fumbled with the button I was working on. I shook my head, no.
“I don’t think there’s anything I can do to help. I don’t know enough to help them. And I don’t think Dad will listen to me anyway.”
I finished with the buttons and
climbed under the covers next to Izzy. She snuggled up next to me,
resting her head on my chest. I explained what had happened, what they’d
said, what I’d said and what I’d felt from them. It was nearly
“I think Dad’s cheating on Mom.” She said. “I think that’s what the guilt means. The fear is probably him thinking that you know. Either that or he’s afraid Mom knows. And I think Mom does know. God, what a mess.”
Izzy held herself tighter against me, and I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder.
“You know what? I don’t think I’ve linked with a single person yet who wasn’t feeling fear.” I said softly.
Izzy was quiet for a while. “That isn’t surprising, if you think about it. Everyone’s afraid of something. Most people are constantly afraid of bad things that might happen, either to them or someone they care about. That’s what makes paranoia. And bad things are always happening.”
“I’ve felt it in you too Izzy.”
She chuckled. “I just bet you have. In a way, you might be luckier than the rest of us. See, for a long time I worried constantly about what other people thought about me. What my friends thought about me. Did I look cool? Was I wearing the right clothes? Was I hanging out with the right people? It was desperately important that they only thought good things and I was really afraid that I’d do or say something that would screw that up. Teenagers are really bad that way. I was really bad that way. I’m getting better at not caring, but it’s still there.”
“How does this make me lucky? I’m a teenager too, you know.”
She thumped me on the chest with her fist, then rubbed her flattened hand over the spot she’d just hit.
“Yeah, you are. But because of who you are, you’ve been isolated. Not because you wanted it that way, but there just didn’t seem to be any other way for you. So you don’t have any friends to be worried about. You’ve always figured everyone hated or at the very least disliked you. You aren’t afraid in that way like everyone else is.”
“I’m afraid sometimes Izzy.”
“What are you afraid of?”
I tensed up. Could I tell her? Could I trust her? If I told her, would she use it against me? Tell her friends and allow them to use it against me? After all, she’d only been nice to me for a couple of days now. This was asking an awful lot.
“Ike? I won’t tell anyone, I swear.” I took a deep breath and released it slowly.
“I’m afraid of pain. Emotional pain mostly. I’ve been feeling so much of it lately. And I’m afraid no one will ever like me, that everyone I ever meet will think I’m a freak. Most of all I’m afraid of how much I want to hurt people who hurt me.”
“Oh honey!” Izzy climbed up and lay down on top of me like I was a mattress. Her arms snaked around my neck and back as she pressed herself hard against me.
“Ike, there are people out there who will never like you, no matter what you do. You can’t change that. But there are some out there who will like you if you give them the chance. There are even some who’ll love you. And don’t you ever think you’re a freak. It’s a stupid word. All it means is ‘not normal’. Well, I’ll tell you a little secret…there’s no such thing as ‘normal’ or ‘average’ or ‘ordinary’. Anybody who claims to be ‘normal’ is just announcing that they’re boring, dull and uninteresting. Being ‘normal’ or ‘average’, that’s something to be afraid of.” She stopped for a bit and kissed me on the lips.
“And it’s perfectly okay to want to hurt people who hurt you. As long as you don’t need to hurt them. Deep down you are a very decent and good hearted guy.”
I held her tight against me. “Thank you.” I whispered against her neck.
“Thank you for trusting me.”
I looked over at my alarm clock. Almost one in the morning.
“You sleeping here tonight?” I asked.
“If you don’t mind.”
“Nah…it’s cool.” I rolled her off of me, reached over and switched on the alarm and turned off the lamp. Pulling the blankets up over us, Izzy and I spooned together and went to sleep.
No, we didn’t make love…or have sex. But after that night, from time to time, she would come up and spend the night with me.
True to her word, Izzy got her friends to stop making my life a living hell, mostly by example. I don’t know it for a fact, and she never would tell me, but I think she might have used a bit of brute force too.
I finished up 8th grade without too much trouble, and graduated to become a high school freshman, Izzy moved up to senior and Ivan graduated and went off to play football in college. Good riddance.
With Izzy’s help I made a few friends, and on my own decided to play soccer. I wanted to stay away from the more violently aggressive sports. The nice thing about soccer; I was too busy moving to think about linking with any of the other players.
Mom and Dad didn’t fight with each other where I could hear them. Once in a while I would link with my Dad, just to keep track of what was up with him. I don’t think he stopped his cheating. I know he didn’t stop feeling guilty.
Freshman year came and went. Izzy graduated and went off to college. I missed her a lot. She was my ally and confidant. She promised to call and write as often as she could. And she did pretty regularly for a while. Until she met Rick. She stopped calling, but kept writing every month…and then that stopped too. Mom said that these things happened when children grew up and moved on with their lives. I think she was as hurt by it as I was, if for different reasons.
Yeah, I was jealous. I did my fourteen year old best not to let on. I don’t think she would have noticed anyway.
My tiny collection of friends helped get me thru the school year, along with the soccer season, but it became glaringly obvious to me that I was never going to fit in. I began to make plans to get the hell out of high school as soon as possible. I talked to my advisor and started taking advanced placement tests, CLEP tests and every other thing I could think of to enable my escape.
Granddad would drop by every few months and we’d talk about how I was doing, how I was handling my talent, how the family was doing…that sort of thing.
Sophomore year. I was fifteen and horny as hell. Puberty and my libido had finally caught up with each other. Looking back I think I lived with a constant hard-on. I must have jerked off three or four times a day for a while, until I rubbed my self raw and had to cut back out of self defense.
I kept lifting weights and hitting the punching bags, and running at night on top of soccer practices. I got heftier and I suppose I was attractive enough because towards the end of that year I got my first girlfriend. Vickie Carter.
Vickie was very pretty. She was much shorter than I was, about five two, had pale blond hair, freckles and green eyes. She was a cheerleader and very fit. Her body was compact and rock solid, with smallish breasts, trim tight legs and a firm little bubble butt.
I was smitten.
I’d avoided linking with anyone (apart from my parents) since Izzy had gone off to college. I think I was afraid of getting too close emotionally.
Vickie and I had been going out for about three weeks. I had become a minor soccer star, working my way up to the Varsity squad mostly on the basis of my size, and Vickie was a Prom Queen/Head Cheerleader in training. We started out kissing, which I’d gotten pretty good at thanks to Izzy’s tutoring, and by the third week we were looking for isolated spots around school and our respective neighborhoods to make out in. Neither of us was old enough to drive yet so we were a bit stuck most of the time.
One night in May after a big match with our cross-town rival we found ourselves alone in her house. Her parents had gone out for the evening to a dinner party or card game or something, and Vickie was an only child so there were no siblings to worry about.
Alone together in her room we’d been kissing and groping one another and having a pretty good time. I unbuttoned her shirt and slid my hand inside and under her bra, lifting the lacy cup up and off her freckled tit. I tore my lips from hers, laid her back on the bed and attacked her pouty pink nipple and freckle spotted boob with my lips and tongue. Reaching up with my free hand I unsnapped the front release bra and slipped it and her shirt over her shoulders and half way down her back, trapping her arms down and out of the way.
Nibbling first at one sweet tit then switching to the other, I eased one hand down over her soft belly, enjoying the heat she was generating as well as the tiny tremors that rippled up and down her abs. Slowly my hand worked down and unbuttoned her jeans, then slipped under the elastic of her panties and between her thighs.
Vickie moaned loudly when I put a hickey beneath her left nipple and eased my middle finger between her swollen outer pussy lips. I kissed my way down over her stomach to her belly button, removed my hand from her pants and began working her jeans and panties down over her hips.
Up to this point I had assumed that she wanted this as much as I did, but for some reason I began to have doubts. I had no idea what she wanted. My mother had pounded ‘no means no’ into my head for a couple of years now, but what did silence mean?
“What do you want Vic? Tell me what you need.” I pleaded with her.
She’d been a willing participant in all the kissing we’d done for the past few weeks, and not quite passive in the petting department. But did she want what I was about to do? Why wouldn’t she tell me? Maybe she didn’t know how. Maybe this was all new to her. If so I had an obligation here to go easy. At least as far as my limited experience would let me.
Vickie was silent, but I could feel her body shaking.
Damnit all…I needed to know. So I linked.
Amusement, anticipation, feelings of superiority, a sense of power and control, smugness and a tinge of fear with revulsion.
My breathing had been rapid and ragged, my muscles taught with sexual tension and lust. My blood had been pounding like a kettle drum in my head and between my legs. I went cold. My body relaxed, my heart slowed, and anger began to grow.
This had all been so very convenient, so well orchestrated and arranged. My thoughts split and I thought about several things while at the same time I finished sliding Vickie’s pants down over her round butt and off her legs.
What was wrong with this picture? I looked around the room, concentrating on what I saw that shouldn’t be there, while part of my mind looked for things that should be there but weren’t.
There was my gym bag over by the door where I’d dropped it when we came in. Over by the closet was Vickie’s bag, the one she carried her school books in. It lay on top of a second book bag. Two book bags? I recognized Vickie’s bag as the one with sunflowers drawn all over it. I recognized the second one too. It belonged to Vickie’s friend Laurie. Rumor around the locker room suggested in rather forceful terms that Laurie didn’t like guys.
Inside I went dead cold. Vickie had been using me to hide her relationship with Laurie. That explained the revulsion and fear. The rest of her muddled emotions came from thinking of how she’d manipulated and controlled me.
Anger flowed thru me like water thru a colander.
I lifted Vickie’s legs up and tossed them over my shoulders then lay my left arm across her hips and inserted two fingers up into her drippy pussy.
“Look at me Vickie.” I growled in my rasping baritone. No more cracking voice for this kid.
Vickie tilted her head up and looked at me; her face a blank, her emotions held tightly under control…she thought.
Keeping my eyes locked on hers I dipped my mouth down and licked her outer pussy lips from my fingers all the way up to her hooded clit.
Her excitement began to grow a little, and she didn’t like it one little bit.
I stroked my fingers in and out of her faster and faster as I kept licking and sucking on her outer and inner lips. Vickie’s breathing was getting harsher and more broken. I could feel her hips begin to twitch, just a little.
I turned my hand and went looking for her G-spot. When I found it, her lust flowered and her need blossomed. I rubbed and tapped on the spot, still keeping her hips pressed down on the bed using my left arm. Vickie began to groan and thrash.
“Ugggg! Unnnnh! Ohhhhh!”
Her head was rolling side to side and her hands were clutching at my hair, trying to force my mouth down harder on her pussy.
Her emotions were swirling, twisting even more than her body. Fear, power, control…all gone, replaced by lust. Her need was starting to burn. I drew it out. I could feel the connecting points on her body; I could sense where a tiny tickle would send her over the edge. I stayed away from those places and played her lust like a guitar solo.
I kept her close to the edge, then eased off and let her slid back and started over again. And again and again and again.
I intensified the link and climbed inside her. I felt her heart racing faster and faster, thumping like a trip-hammer. I felt her blood boiling and her muscles tensing. Her passion was alive and screaming, at least on the inside. On the outside she just grunted and groaned. But inside I felt the walls of her pussy spasm, the muscles of her anus clench and release, the skin of her breasts and nipples tighten and strain. And her clit begged to be touched, licked, rubbed, nibbled, chewed and sucked.
I felt all of it. I pulled it from her until everything she was feeling, everything she could feel, was mine. And when she was on the verge of cumming I flicked her clit with the tip of my tongue, sucked in the last shreds of her orgasm…and threw all of it back along the link right to the core of her nervous system.
Vickie sat up straight and screamed at the top of her lungs, her hands wound tight in my long red hair trying to shove my face away from her, but she didn’t have the strength.
Her body locked up tight in that seated position, muscles twisting and twitching, tendons pulled so tight they might snap, eyes wide open with shock, amazement and final release.
She passed out and slumped back down on the bed. From my vantage point I could see along the vast open plain that was Vickie Carter’s belly, all the way up her stomach to the hills and valley of her chest. And everywhere I looked I saw goosebumps. Acres and acres of goosebumps.
I pried her fingers out of my hair, stood up and straightened up my clothes. When I figured I was presentable I checked the link. Pleasantly happy and completely relaxed. Nothing else.
I cut the link.
I went to the closet door where the book bags lay and opened it. Inside, with a look of lust and terror on her face was Laurie, crouched down with one hand down her pants and between her legs.
I stared at her for a few seconds. I gestured in the direction of the naked girl on the bed.
“She’s all yours. Just try and top that.”
I picked up my gym bag and left, letting myself out of the house and walking home.
So much for my first girlfriend.
Word got around quickly, like it always does, that Vickie and I had broken up. I never said one word to anyone about it, but I heard about a week later that she had dumped me for unspecified sexual reasons. Apparently I was bad in bed, but that’s okay, her friend Laurie was there to help her get over the trauma.
I went back to playing soccer. No other girls seemed interested in hooking up with me after that, not even to attend the Junior Prom. So I stayed home. That very same night Isabeau called for the first time in ages, and even wanted to talk to me.
“Ike, how’s it going?” She actually seemed upbeat and happy. Well, I wasn’t, and I’d be damned if I’d pretend anymore…for anyone.
“Great, Isabeau, just great.” I replied in a deadpan tone. “I dumped my very first girlfriend two weeks ago when I found out she was using me to hide a relationship with another girl. Then the two of them started spreading rumors about how pathetic I am in the sex department, and now I can’t get a date to the Junior Prom, which happens to be tonight. How the fuck’s it going with you?”
I hung up abruptly, not giving her a chance to say anything, and went to my room, put on my sweats stormed downstairs and went for the longest run of my life. Maybe not Forrest Gump long, but pretty damn long. I might have run long enough for it to count as a marathon. When I’d left the house it was just going on seven PM, and when I’d finally played out and had to stop it was after two in the morning.
I sagged down on the corner; I wasn’t even sure which corner it was. I’d stopped paying attention hours back. I cried a little bit, wiped my eyes and sat there feeling sorry for myself.
That evening was the first time since the episode with Vickie that I’d allowed myself to really feel. Sitting there on the corner I examined my feelings in the same way I would have if I could have linked with myself.
I saw pain, sorrow, a sense of isolation, loneliness, self-pity, a hint of desire and a whole lot of rage. I looked and looked, but I couldn’t find any fear.
Fuck it. Fuck it all. I was getting the hell out of this place soon and then I’d make my own happiness.
All the testing I’d done last year had paid off…I was going to graduate high school at the end of my junior year. I’d already taken the SAT and the ACT, scoring well enough to get into just about any school I wanted. My applications had been mailed off and I’d know which schools wanted me by spring of next year.
Fuck it all.
I got to my feet and loped home in the dark.
School ended, summer came and went and junior year started. Granddad died; natural causes they said it was. He told me on one of his last visits that he thought he’d had a pretty good life. He’d done just about everything he wanted to do, gone most all of the places he wanted to go; he’d ‘seen the elephant’. It was one of the old-time expressions he liked to use. Grandma, his wife, had died before I was born and I know he’d been lonely, but I hope having us nearby helped make up for it some.
I got my driver’s license and bought a car. It wasn’t new or flashy…but it was in good shape and it got me from point A to point B without breaking down or costing me a fortune for gas. That was all I cared about. What was it? Chevy something or other. I’ve never cared much about cars. They just aren’t something I have any real interest in except for driving.
Mom informed me before school started that Isabeau was pissed at me. Apparently she’d called back just after I took off for my marathon and had taken turns ranting and crying. Mom said she got the impression Isabeau was mostly upset at learning I’d had a girlfriend.
“Echt? Das tut mir leit.” (I was taking German that year.)
Mom wanted to know if I was going to call or write back to Isabeau and try to patch things up. I thought about it for a couple of minutes.
“No. I didn’t abandon her, she abandoned me.”
Mom sat at the kitchen table and motioned for me to sit next to her.
“Ike, sometimes things happen in our lives that we didn’t expect and we get overwhelmed. We don’t always know how to deal with the new things and it takes a while before we figure out how to merge the new with the old. You know what that’s like, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I know. But…Mom, she’s had more than a year to get used to it. It’s not new anymore. Fact is that she doesn’t care enough to be bothered. If it were just me I guess I could understand it, but she’s done it to you too. And it doesn’t even bother her. She calls up out of the blue and expects that everything will be just like she left it. That we won’t mind that she abandoned us.”
I stood up and kissed my mother on the cheek.
“No…I won’t be writing or calling her.”
I graduated from high school in June at the top of my class. I refused to be valedictorian. Let some damn fool who cared stand up there and tell them they were the future. I still had trouble accepting that they were the present.
I said goodbye to my few friends and teammates, collected my degree and started packing for college.
I’d decided to attend the
The first year was fast paced and frenetic. For the first time in my scholastic experience I had to do more than simply read the text books. It kept me pretty busy. I lived in the dorms and went thru a succession of roommates, until late in the second semester they stopped coming and I had the small room all to myself.
All year long I’d kept in touch with my Mother, weekly phone calls, and monthly letters regular as clockwork. I wasn’t going to abandon her. I went home for two weeks during the summer break to spend time with Mom. She seemed somehow older and weaker, smaller than I remembered. I felt bad having to go back and leave her there with just Dad for company.
We’d gotten word that Ivan had married during the summer. He sent pictures of the wedding. I don’t think they even bothered to send invitations to Mom and Dad. I know I didn’t get one.
I don’t like my brother. I’m not even sure I love him. Why would I?
Second year started and I was back to being buried beneath my schoolwork. I’d worked out a study system and had gotten to the point where it wasn’t the struggle it had been the year before. I made a couple of friends and even got hauled out of the dorm and out to a party.
Which is where
I met Carlie. Carline Van Luten, of the