Six Ways to One Day

Chapter 7

You wake up to bright sunlight streaming through the gaps in your bedroom curtains. You give yourself a luxurious full body stretch and slowly open your eyes to stare at the ceiling. You let out a long sigh and say, "My summer went by entirely too fast." With only a couple of weeks left to your summer, before having to return to work in September, you feel a hint of regret. Even though you've never been the one to plan grand vacations during your time off, you were hoping from some new adventure this summer.

It didn't have to be an adventure that took you far away from home. It could have been anything, really. You would have taken any new experience. But to your discontent, no such thing took place for you this summer. You taught three consecutive SAT courses and taught English to business men in China for eight weeks. And as you started out the summer, you will end it with two weeks off to do as you wish.

Every summer since you started teaching, the two weeks before returning to school were spent preparing for the upcoming academic year. But this year, you've promised yourself you'd relegate only the last three days of the summer to prepping for school, and not a day more. This summer, you plan to spend the last two weeks, minus the three prep days, frivolously.

Keeping with the spirit of spending your time without care, this morning, you find yourself still lying in bed. You give your body a luxurious stretch and review the summer you've had thus far. For you, not much has happened in the past two months.

You never did hear from Flynn again after that night at the Hibernian Hall. But even after all this time, you thought about him and that night, every so often. Whenever a thought or a memory of Flynn came up to the surface of your mind, you'd think, "As often as I think about this man, who, for all intents and purposes, is a stranger, after knowing him only for a couple of hours, what would have happened to me, if I had given into my baser self's urgings and actually slept with him? I would have been heart broken. Good Lord... I really should not be allowed near men."

Even though your life has been quite uneventful and perhaps even boring, that has not been the case for all of your friends. Amanda and Charlie started dating immediately after their first meeting. Charlie had jumped into the relationship with both feet. When you saw the two together, it was Charlie that was the more affectionate and demonstrative one in the relationship. To your surprise, Amanda, who is normally reserved in her dealings with men and have always been cautious, when it came to matters of the heart, had welcomed his enthusiasm with open arms.

It didn't matter how reserved Amanda acted. You knew that she was crazy about him. One night, while out at dinner with the girls, Amanda confessed to you, "I think Charlie may be the one. I'm so afraid of saying it out loud. I barely allow myself to think about it, lest I jinx it, but I am falling for him pretty hard."

After three weeks of seeing each other almost constantly, Amanda finally gave in and slept with Charlie. The way she described their first-time having sex, the entire thing sounded like something close to a religious experience. Amanda said, "He worshipped my body. It was like he was a starving man, and I was a feast spread out just for him. The very first night, he went at me all night. He'd cum and we'd be cuddling, talking about whatever, and something would trigger him. He'd get so hard that his erection felt like an iron rod wrapped in a thin layer of skin. Charlie was so tender and generous. He made me climax so many times that I had to literally push him away from me."

The last time you saw the two interact, they were toothachingly sweet to each other. So much so that you couldn't help but smile at them. You couldn't be happier for them. But often, that happiness was slightly soured by the overheard exchange between Charlie and his best friend, Tae, all those weeks ago. You have no clue whether Tae has continued to advise Charlie of what he thinks should happen between him and Amanda, but from the looks of the happy couple, Charlie has been ignoring Tae's advice.