A Night at Debbie's House

"I think whatever it is we have to talk about, it will be much easier if I'm dressed more like this; don't you agree." She said motioning to her clothes with her free hand, before taking another sip of her wine.

I sighed as I reached for the glass of wine on the coffee table and then I took a long sip, but I avoided answering her question. I finally glanced back over at Erika and she was just sitting there quietly staring at me over the top of her wine glass, but it was not the kind of stare that was designed to make me feel uncomfortable. I think I really confused her by my peculiar behavior thus far and she just didn't know how to respond to it.

I put my wine glass on the table and kicked my heels off and curled my legs up on my chair in the same manner as Erika was sitting. Actually, I always sit this way at home, but frankly I was a little surprised that she was able to curl those incredibly long legs under her as easily as she did. On second thought, I really don't think there is anything she could do anymore that would either surprise or amaze me.

I tried to think about how I wanted to start this conversation, but the words just seemed to elude me. I was never lawyer material and wordsmithing was never my specialty and here was yet one more glowing reminder of that simple fact. I looked over at her and for the first time I thought I could see something in her eyes that I hadn't seen before. It was the look of compassion.

"Let me see if I can guess what the problem might be," she began slowly, maintaining eye contact with me as she spoke. "Judging from your behavior thus far, I'd say that you're trying to think of a way to tell me that you don't want to make love and sleep with me tonight. Now that is just a wild guess, but tell me - how close am I?"

I sighed deeply, but this time it was more from relief than any growing sense of frustration.

"Erika, I know I did a lot of babbling last night during our dinner, but I'm really clear headed now and I want you to know that I think what we had and did together last night was . . . was simply one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had in my life. And the sex was absolutely incredible."

A smile slowly started to come back to her lips, but it was a different kind of smile. She wasn't trying to seduce me with it this time, she was merely acknowledging my comment.

"When you invited me over here last night I couldn't wait to come. All I could think about since we left the restaurant was making love to you again and sleeping with you in the same bed the entire night, but then I realized that if I continued to see you and be with you, although the sex would continue to be terrific, I could – and probably would, really jeopardize a relationship that I have with someone whom I deeply love."

She waited for me to continue and when I didn't she filled in the missing words. "And that person would be Debbie Masters?"

I couldn't help myself, I nodded at her just before I began to cry and then I put my hand over my face and it just seemed to make everything much worse for me. Then I felt a pair of hands gently tugging on me and I looked up to see that Erika was trying to help me get to my feet and move over to the sofa, so I let her help me up and then I moved over to the sofa with her. When we sat down she folded her arms around me and I leaned into her, as she stroked my hair and tried to console me.

The total irony of the situation certainly did not escape my attention. Just moments ago this incredible vixen was prepared to provide me with a night of endless sexual bliss that I probably would have never forgotten until I closed my eyes for the final time. Now she was sitting here comforting me like a sister might in a moment of dire emotional need. This woman was not only smart and beautiful, but I could now see that she also possessed a level of maturity about her at only eighteen years that I had not even reached yet at twenty-two.

"I guess I realized tonight for the first time that what I was planning to do with you here – alone by ourselves, might really hurt her if she finds out about it and I don't ever want to do that to her. I just love her too much to ever hurt her. I've never had a relationship with anyone like this before so this is all so . . . so new to me and . . . and I just didn't think it through."

We sat there for a good while as I continued to cry a little and sniffle a lot. The entire time Erika patiently and quietly remained at my side and stroked my hair in the tenderest and most loving way without the slightest sexual overtone. During it all I developed a new feeling for the girl who previously had only served as the primary object of my sexual desire. I was starting to think of her as a friend.

When I seemed to finally collect myself Erika spoke to me in a near whisper. "I think I understand what you're saying, Jordan. Does this mean that you want to cancel the plans we made for tomorrow night at Debbie's house?"

I pulled back slightly from Erika's shoulder attempting to make eye contact with her. When she sensed what I was trying to do, she also moved back slightly to look at me. I'm sure I had the most quizzical look on my face and I could tell by the way she looked at me that she could tell immediately that I had no answer to her question. She smiled at me and then her smile slowly grew larger.

"Can I help you sort through this entire mess?" She asked softly.

I just nodded at her. Besides, she was doing great without me, why should I do anything to muck it up.

Her gaze seemed to be redirected towards the fireplace for a moment as she seemed to collect her thoughts. Then she looked back at me and smiled.

"I think I understand that you feel your actions are duplicitous if you're here alone making love to me, but if we were together and Debbie was also with us, you certainly wouldn't be cheating on her, would you?"

I thought about what Erika said for a moment and then I nodded my head in agreement. I could see now where she was going with this and it seemed to make perfect sense. But then again, it seemed that everything Erika said made perfect sense.

She smiled at me as I was agreeing with her. "Good, then I think your plans for tomorrow night should remain unchanged. Besides, this way we'll still be able to be together and you won't feel guilty about it. Now, are we in agreement then that we're still on for tomorrow night at Debbie's house?"

I smiled at her and nodded my head in total agreement.

"Good. Now, unless you object or feel terribly uncomfortable about it, I'm going to be in this house all alone tonight and I would still love to have you stay with me. We could order pizza and watch movies and just have an old fashioned girl's sleepover. I even promise to behave myself. What do you say?"

When I was in middle school and later on in high school I was invited to sleepover by only one girl in my entire life and that was my best friend Allie. Don't get me wrong, that's not a complaint or criticism of her in any way. I adored Allie and she was a really great friend and if her parents hadn't moved to Ohio after our high school graduation I'm reasonably certain of two things.

First, Allie and I had talked about going off to college together during our entire senior year and I'm certain that we would have gone to UT in the fall, probably even roomed together and most likely we would have remained the best of friends.

What I'm equally certain about is that Allie and I would have eventually expanded on our kissing and mutual masturbation and by the time we were in Austin I'm sure we would have been fucking each other on a regular basis. Had that scenario played out, I suspect that I would have learned about my proclivity towards women much earlier and as to whether that would have been a good or a bad thing – who knows. Anyway, I digress.

The point I was trying to make here is this. In high school I would have sold my soul to the devil if anyone close to Erika in appearance or popularity would have ever shown me the time of day, let alone invite me to a sleepover at her house. I certainly know that I'm not in high school anymore – at least not as a student, but there was no way on the planet that I was going to let an invitation like this pass me by.

"I'd love to spend the night here with you, Erika." I said, with the first visible smile returning to my face in a long while.

Okay, I don't want to bore you with all of the details of everything we did, but I want share a few things with you. First, we watched two movies that were definite chic flicks, in fact they were as close to lesbian movies as I've ever seen and if they did anything they made me aware that I don't see too many movies.

The first one was entitled 'Personal Best' with Mariel Hemingway and Patrice Donnelly and I thought it was terrific – up until the end. I know I'm a terrible romantic, but I was sad that they did not wind up together and of course that made me think of Debbie and then I started missing her all over again.

The second movie was 'Kissing Jessica Stein,' and it caused me to wonder whether there are any movies out there were two women just fall in love and then wind up together living happily ever after. I mean, is that just too much to ask for?

Sometime after the first movie and somewhere towards the end of the second one Erika asked me a question that I had never been asked before in my entire life and when I heard it I became nearly giddy with excitement.

"You know Jordan, you have a really gorgeous body, your hair is just perfect and your eyes – well, your eyes are simply the most beautiful shade of green I've ever seen. You should also know that they are what attracted me to you in the first place. You have so much to work with, yet you do so little with your makeup. Would you mind terribly if I showed you a few things that I've picked up over the years?"

Duh! I don't know why I didn't think to ask her to do that myself. If anyone could teach me about the proper application of makeup this former super model sure as heck could. I couldn't nod my head fast enough and she seemed to be delighted with my enthusiastic response. So we paraded hand-in-hand up the long circular stairwell to the second floor and into a bedroom that I thought only existed in romance novels or on a movie set.

For those of you who might have an interest in such things, let me tell you about Erika's room. Like most women I'm terrible at guessing distance, so I just had to ask her. She told me that the room was twenty four feet wide and thirty four feet long and a huge ceiling fan was turning lazily near the center above her bed.

A chair rail seemed to partition the walls in half and below that rail was wallpaper that contained a very subdued pink and green floral pattern on a white background. Above the chair rail the walls were painted a very pale pink color, but the pink was so faint it actually looked closer to a white, which would have been my guess until Erika informed me otherwise.

As we first entered the room, to the right side of the door, there was an illuminated aquarium that was full of hundreds of bright colors and dozens of different varieties of fish and many unrecognizable marine creatures. Erika told me that it was slightly more than one hundred gallons of salt water and she pointed out all the different life forms in the tank, which personally impressed me as science teacher. I never thought about how beautiful an aquarium could be in a room and I decided at that moment that I wanted to get one.

To the left side of the doorway, Erika had an elaborate built in secretarial desk and bookcase. Although the entire area was orderly, it was evident that it was her primary work station.

There were two laptops visible on the desk, a large LCD screen that appeared to be plugged into a docking station and a laser printer situated on top of the bookcase. In addition, there were the usual things you'd expect to see in a computer work area, such as reams of paper, blank writeable CDs, pens, legal pads, a calculator and a stand containing audio CDs that she obviously played through her computer. Her backpack was hanging on the back of her chair.

There were two windows on the long wall to our left that had wooden shutters instead of the usual window treatments and they were painted in white. All the bedroom furniture was also in a matching white. There was a four poster queen-size bed positioned evenly between the windows with a two drawer nightstand on each side of the bed. A small white ceramic lamp with a plain white shade adorned the top of each nightstand and a digital alarm clock was in plain view on one of the nightstands, along with a bottle of spring water sitting on a glass coaster.

Immediately opposite her bed was a large make-up table with a huge three angle mirror at the very back. There were two florescent fixtures that appeared to be carefully positioned in a way that would minimize any shadowing. The table was filled with every kind of makeup product imaginable and I couldn't even see what was inside the six drawers. Everything was perfectly organized. As I looked at that make-up area I couldn't help but be in awe when I realized that this was where Erika performed her magic.

About four feet away on each side of the make-up table were huge matching dressers. On the top of one dresser on the right she had several framed photos that included a rather distinguished looking older gentleman and a woman who I assumed were her father and mother. There was also a photo of just her and her father that appeared to be taken recently in their home and there were two photos of her and Lisa together, along with a large portrait photo of Lisa that had an inscription written across it, but I thought it would be rude of me to try and read it. On the top of the other dresser was an LCD television that was about two feet wide.

On the far side of the room, opposite the door, Erika had created a comfortable sitting area that contained a large white floral print sofa adorned by at least a dozen color coordinated throw pillows and a matching overstuffed chair that looked like it was her favorite place to sit in the entire room. There were two floor goose-neck lamps that were positioned over each area to provide sufficient light for reading or studying.

Finally, I simply had to check out her closet and she was more than happy to oblige. If most of my parents' house could fit inside Erika's living room, I was pretty certain that Erika's walk-in closet was half again as large as my bedroom. It was so huge it had its own skylight and a separate air conditioning vent.

I was just guessing, but from the clothes that she had hanging in there it looked like she could wear a different outfit to school every day of the year and not wear the same thing twice. I rifled through some of the items and I can tell you this is a woman who has never had to purchase anything at Wal-Mart. Every item was from a major label, including her tee-shirts. I glanced at her rather impressive shoe collection and decided it was better if I didn't look at them too closely. I finally had to get out of there or I knew I'd never be able to wear any of my clothes again.

After the brief tour she sat me down in front of her make up table and draped a towel over me and then several towels over the huge mirror so I couldn't watch her work her magic. Then over the next two and a half hours the day changed from Friday to Saturday and as it did we drank our second bottle of wine and Erika worked on my face like an artist would on a canvas trying a host of different foundations, colors and shadowing effects, all designed to get the most out of what god and my parents had given me.

She would patiently try one color on me and then take it off and replace it with another, and she continued doing that for a long while until she found exactly the color that she thought was the perfect complement to my eyes and skin tone. Finally, she uttered the word I had been waiting to hear.

"Finished!" She exclaimed, and as I glanced up to see her face I could see a combination of expressions in her eyes that told me she was both pleased and excited by her efforts.

She kneeled in front of me and smiled excitedly before she spoke.

"Jordan, I want you to know that I tried fourteen different colors that I thought might work well for you and although most of them looked very good on you, I believe I finally found the perfect colors and shades to bring out your eyes and your skin tone. If you don't like it we can always change it, but if you do I'll show you exactly what products I used and what I did to achieve this look. Now, are you ready to see the new you?"

When I was a little girl growing up in Houston my family was never able to take a formal vacation because of the cost, but when I turned seven my parents thought I was finally old enough to start going to Six Flags or Astroworld as it was often called before it finally closed. So they began taking me there once each summer, thereafter. Even back then the tickets were fairly pricey when compared to almost any other family activity, so I knew it was a really big deal for them to spring for those tickets.

Anyway, the first time Elaine told me that they were going to take me to Six Flags over the Memorial Day weekend I remember being so excited I could barely get to sleep the entire week before. And when I finally turned fourteen it suddenly seemed like it was no longer appropriate for a high school student to be seen with her parents in public, so we stopped that annual pilgrimage at my request.

Sadly, deep down inside, I always regretted that decision. But for those seven years I remember that I looked forward to that weekend all year long and as that time drew close my excitement level would go right through the roof.

I hadn't felt that kind of excitement since those early trips to Six Flags, but I was damn well feeling it at that very moment. Erika turned the chair around slowly so I was facing the mirror now, but before she reached up to remove the bath towels she told me to close my eyes and not open them until she told me it was okay to do so and I instinctively obeyed.

As I heard the towels being removed from the mirror I could feel my excitement climb to an even higher level. When she finally told me it was okay to open my eyes I did so and I was staring right at Erika, who was still standing between me and the mirror brandishing the most playful grin across her face. When she saw my disappointment, she immediately apologized and then stepped out of my line of sight.

The face that was staring directly back at me from the mirror was vaguely familiar to me, but it certainly wasn't the face of Jordan Peters, at least not the Jordan Peters that I'd known for these many years. The woman I was now staring at was gorgeous and it took me several minutes before it seemed to finally dawn on me that it was my face in that mirror. As I continued to stare at my vision I slowly began to notice a few faint traces of the girl that I used to know and I could see that she was still lurking in there somewhere.

As one minute eventually became two and then three Erika continued waiting patiently for my response, but then she incorrectly interpreted my prolonged silence as a sign of my disapproval of her efforts. Her smile began to slowly fade and it was then replaced by a look of genuine concern. Finally, it was as if she could no longer contain herself.

"I'm so, so sorry Jordan, we can try something else. I promise you that I'll find something that will make you happy."

I still hadn't said a single word to her, as I kept turning my head slightly from side to side to look at the new me in the mirror from every possible angle. I finally looked up at her and for the first time I could see how upset she had become and I realized that I couldn't leave her hanging like that for another instant.