New Year’s Surprise

"I think it had something to do with making sure we liked each other for the right reasons, and not just because we shared the same opinions on sex."

"Oh yeah." Ben thoughtfully shifted his jawbone from side to side. "Tell me this: What steps should we take to find out whether or not we like each other for the right reasons?"

Tamara laughed. "Well... you could just ask."

"Yeah," Ben said with a laugh of his own. "Alright. Do you like me?"

"Yes. I really do."

"Okay. Tell me why."

"Because you're nice. And sexy. And you're very important to me, to my life. And we think alike on a whole lot of topics that have nothing to do with sex." She skimmed her lovely arms across the top of the water. "I've always looked forward to being with you, and I've never dreaded it. You're the boy I compare other boys to before I say 'yes' to a date." She advanced a few inches toward Ben, imperceptible to anyone who wasn't watching her as closely as Ben was. "You're the boy I think about when I'm in another man's arms. I've had a crush on you your whole life, too."

Ben shortened the distance between them. "I might be ready now."

"Might be?"

"I'm still not sure it's a good idea to just start kissing like this. Neither of us has any self-control when it comes to lust."

Tamara nodded. "But?"

"But... I have no self-control."

Tamara licked her lips. "I'm waiting."

Ben blew out his breath. "What about the fact that we're both nearly naked in the pool?"

"You mean, can we just kiss and not do anything else?"

"That's just what I mean."

"We can wait until we're dry and clothed again."

"That sounds like a more sensible plan."

"Good. You go first."

Ben didn't move. It was a comedic moment, but neither laughed. Ben said, "We could pretend we've got clothes on."

"I won't look if you won't."

"Deal." Ben reached out—he had, without knowing it, closed the gap between them to a single arm's length—and tentatively caressed Tamara's wet shoulder, first one, then both. "You're so pretty," he said, echoing his thoughts precisely. Then he pulled the girl, light as a feather as she floating in the water, close enough for his mouth to touch hers. He kissed her, softly, sacredly, with a sense of reverence. With that kiss he told her everything that was left to say—how much he wanted her, needed her, respected her, lusted after her. And when her hands wrapped around his biceps, and she pulled his body closer to hers, he heard her saying the same things back to him.

Minutes passed one after another, and the newly christened lovers took their time. They pressed their bodies together under the water, not purposefully but neither accidentally, more of a comfortable bumping together from time to time. Ben waited patiently for Tamara's mouth to open and invite his tongue. After she did, they licked each other softly, carelessly. This, Ben realized, was what all his relationships leading to this moment should have been: fun. Kissing Tamara, holding her close, was just as natural, relaxing and rewarding as any hobby he'd ever pursued. Yes, he would make Tamara his hobby. He was hooked.

Suddenly, surprisingly, Tamara pulled away. Ben didn't know what to expect next, so he was thrilled when turned her back to him, placed her hands on his and wrapped his arms around her torso. They floated that way for a few moments, wrapped in each other's embrace, forming a memory.

"That was a good start," Tamara said.

"Are you sure we have to stop?" Ben asked, deliberately interjecting a touch of smartass to the proceedings.

Tamara turned her face so that her soft, warm cheek nestled against Ben's neck. "I suddenly had the thought, I wasn't done talking to you yet."

A few more smartass comments came to mind, but Ben simply said, "I know. Me too."

"I'm glad we kissed," Tamara said. "I want to some more. Maybe after dinner."

"Hey, that's right. We still have to spend New Year's Eve together."

"I never forgot. It's the most romantic part of this whole wonderful day."

"'Romantic,'" Ben said thoughtfully. "I never thought you'd see me that way."

"I never stopped," Tamara said. Maybe she pressed a little harder against him at that moment, maybe not—it was hard to tell in the water.

The girl broke free, swam to the pool's edge, climbed out, gathered her clothes and walked toward the women's locker room. "I'm going to take a shower... alone."

"Damn," Ben said, and meaning it.

"You need anything?"

"Can you find me some hair gel?"

"If I can't, I'm a pretty sucky snooper. Look for it when you come back to the pool." And with that, she vanished. It was the first time since late morning they'd been apart.

Ben walked on shaky legs to the boys' room. Why shaky? Was it from being in the pool, or was it Tamara? The urge to jerk off in the locker room shower was tremendous, but two things kept him from it. First, he was, shockingly, not in the mood, not in light of the truly genuine emotional buzz he was still sharing with the love of his life, against all odds. Somehow he thought he might cheapen the experience if he acted selfishly at this point. And secondly, because he saw the situation for what it was, and because he now saw Tamara in a whole new light, he knew he might be ruining good things to come in the later evening by jerking one out too early. Calculating, yes, but there it was. If he was wrong, he could always do the dirty work at a later hour.

The lovers didn't say much as they circled each other by the pool, swapping hair gel and a brush, taking turns with a hair dryer Tamara had found. With a sense of near-anticlimax, they threw their towels in the dirty laundry basket in the corner and left the building. Tamara held Ben's hand as they walked to the car, and Ben opened her door for her. "Oh my god," she said girlishly, as she poured herself into the passenger's seat.

"Where are we going now?" Ben asked once he was behind the wheel.

"Well, Wendy may have been a fan of Wendy's, but I don't mind an expensive meal now and then."

"I've been saving money on meals for six months," Ben admitted. "I think I could splurge for our first date."

"Our first date. This all seems like a dream."

"Don't say that shit," Ben joked. "I have a habit of waking up early from good dreams."

"Not this one," Tamara reassured him, and she took his hand once again.

Ben drove to a restaurant very close to the college campus, a place that seemed to entice two different types of clientele—students on dates who wanted seafood and pasta but couldn't afford the fancier places on the edge of town, and professors meeting their spouses for dinner and cocktails. The place wasn't immune from the jeans-and-t-shirt crowd, but most students took the time to comb their hair and dig out a shirt with a collar for the occasion. This night, New Year's Eve in a town where hardly any students had stuck around, the dining room floor was only half full.

Tamara couldn't stop smiling, and that made Ben smile. After they ordered their food, they spent the first part of the evening recalling stories from their hometown—sometimes laughing hard over a shared memory, sometimes revealing previously unknown insights about people in their separate social circles. Talk of parties and school functions led to scientific analysis of the friends and enemies who made them memorable, and such talk of people inevitably led to the topic of past boyfriends/girlfriends.

"I remember Clarisse the most," Tamara said, as her fork played with a shrimp covered in alfredo sauce. "Beverly and I both liked her so much. We figured you'd turn her into the fourth Musketeer."

"God, Clarisse. Well, it's been years, so I guess it's safe for the truth to come out."

"The truth? Oh boy, that sounds juicy."

"If you think that now, just wait, especially in light of recent facts that have surfaced."

"Well, don't make me wait!"

"It's nothing, just this... She decided she was a lesbian."

"No way! Clarisse?"

"And you'll never guess who."

"Mary Lanois!" Tamara exclaimed.

"What? How'd you know that?"

"Oh man, it was the big gossip in the tennis locker room that year. Mary wouldn't shut up about how she was going to grow up to marry another woman, and then all of a sudden, she started taking French, and she wouldn't shut up about how she was going to move to France. And I'm sitting here now, thinking, oh my god, Clarisse was the president of the French Club. She wouldn't shut up about moving to France, either! It's so obvious, now."

"Well, I heard last year that Clarisse did move to France. She's in chef's college."

"How great for her! And what about Mary?"

"Who knows? We'll probably find her here on the West Coast sometime soon. She'd fit right in."

Tamara laughed her agreement, then she said, "Hmmm."

"Hmmm what?"

"Just thinking... Mary wasn't the only progressive in our high school. I would have turned heads, if anyone knew about..."

"I guess so." Ben skewered some steamed vegetables and waited his turn to eat them. "You and Beverly led a secret life. And to think, you were both dating all those boys at the same time. Hey, can I ask, did you ever share about Bev and you with any of the boys you dated?"

"Oh god no. No way. Most of them were just boy toys."

"You and Sammy were pretty close."

"Sammy? He was smart, but totally conceited. I told him how much I liked his hair, and he gave me the best oral sex I ever had. After Beverly, of course."

"You know, if you're telling the truth about how much sex you and Bev had with other boys in high school, I'm surprised word didn't get around."

"It wasn't about quantity, but quality," Tamara said, then sipped from her glass of Coke. "I only had two one-night-stands, both my senior year, plus the three steady boyfriends you knew about. Five was a lot of boys to have sex with, but with girls like Penny Calief making the rounds, Bev and I weren't going to make any headlines in the gossip mags."

"Penny Calief. What a total slut. I wanted her."

"I bet you did, you perv."

"I wanted you, too."

"Did not."

"Physically? I sure as hell did. I mean, damn, to think I could have been your boy toy!"

"Come on, Ben. Are you kidding with me?"

"Just slightly. I mean, if you and I had hooked up, we might have been a couple all this time."

"It never would have worked. We were brother and sister. That's how it was. You know it's true."

"Yeah, I do know it. I'm just saying."

"Plus," Tamara said, wiping the last of her meal from her lips with the linen napkin, "who knows if we'd have made it this long? Maybe by waiting, we were able to make today possible."

"You're probably right about that. And I wouldn't miss this for the world."

Tamara casually placed her hand on the tabletop, offering it to Ben. Ben accepted. She said, "So how will this work?"

"This? You mean us? Do we really need to map the whole thing out?"

"No, of course not. It's just... I mean, there's a reason we didn't do this before, right? I want to make sure we both still want it."

"I do," Ben said very quickly, almost as a reflex. He wanted there to be no doubt in the girl's mind.

"Me too," Tamara said. "So what next? How will it work?"

"Well, for starters, next time you want to watch my porn, all you have to do is ask."

Tamara groaned. "Look, ass, I didn't say anything at first because I didn't want to be a rat, but your sister's the one who's totally been stealing your tapes for years. I never once went into your room... unless Beverly forced me to follow her."

"You're not innocent."

"Are you mad?"

"Not really. I knew about all the embarrassing shit in Beverly's life, too. She's not the only one who snooped around where she didn't belong. Although, it certainly puts her collection of vibrators in a different light, knowing she wasn't using them alone."

Tamara continued to speak with refreshing candor about her past with Bev, as though a great weight had been lifted between her and Ben. "Oh hot damn, she had the best toys. She never wanted to buy tapes or anything—I guess you had to cross state lines for that shit, and you always had plenty—but she never minded walking right into Barney's Toy Box and buying a new dildo when she felt like it. She was always so..."

"Confident," Ben said. "I always envied her for that."

"You were confident, too."

"In ways. But not like Bev. She was the perfect girl to have as a twin. We knew some other twins who were ashamed of the fact, always pretended they didn't know each other at school. I'm sure you remember some of them. Or else they dressed the same—gag me. But Bev and I were just friends, good friends. We still are. Honestly... I'm a little worried about what we're going to tell her about... everything that happened today."

"I thought it was all a secret between us two."

"Come on. The Three Musketeers, remember? You're gonna tell her that you fessed up to me. But really, I was talking about... you know. You and me. Going on a date."

"Or two."

"Or twenty."

"Yeah, I can see why you'd be worried. But I'm not."

"Not at all?"

"No way. She wants you to be happy. And me too. She'll be really excited, I think."

"You'd think I'd know that. She's my twin, after all."

"Yeah. But she was my lover."

The turn of phrase caught Ben's attention. Even in the spirit of frankness they were enjoying, Ben hadn't expected Tamara to put it that way. He said, "I sort of feel like, if Bev were my brother instead, I'd be getting his ex-girlfriend when he was done with her, and it would make him mad. But you said it wasn't like that with you and Bev. That you were never in love."

"It wasn't. Not ever. I didn't mean 'lovers' like that. I just meant, we shared a bed. It was just sex, but the one-night-stands you and I have both had were also just sex, and what I had with Beverly obviously meant a lot more than that. It went on for years. It was our secret, and we kept it. It's part of who I am." Tamara looked out the window. "I've never talked to anyone about this before. Not even Bev."

"Yeah," Ben said, trying to sound understanding. "That's all I meant before... It's amazing to me that I thought Bev and I shared everything, and now I find out, we didn't at all."

"That's not true, Ben. Not really. Look, she'll want to be part of the discussion. She's my friend and your sister. You and her can talk about this if you want. Like I could stop you."

"But it's good to know you don't mind."

"I don't," Tamara said with a smile.

"I love when you smile," Ben said.

"I love when you smile, too."

They shared another wonderful time of silence, and Ben was amazed at how comfortable he felt simply sitting and waiting with Tamara, not worrying about what would come next. He was tempted to revise their history and say that it had always been this way between them, but he knew that wasn't true. This was something new, though it had grown from the seed of their past friendship. In the end, they had simply found the right time to begin.

"Thank you for dinner," Tamara said.

"You're welcome," Ben replied.

"What do you want to do now? Should we go somewhere? I mean, like, a party?"

"Naw," Ben said. "I don't know of any."

"Well," Tamara offered, "we could go back to your house."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. We can watch TV or something. You've got all those movies—" Tamara and Ben both laughed at the same time. "Not THOSE movies. I meant..."

"I know what you meant."

"It's already 8:30. We'll just... you know. Until midnight."

"Okay. Hey, I know, we'll get some dessert at the store and take it back with us. That'll keep us occupied."

"Excellent. Can we get a peach cobbler?"

Ben paid for the meal, and they got in the car. At the store, Tamara paid for the dessert with a credit card—"To make up for almost stealing your spaghetti"—and they took it back to Ben's place, not saying much along the way. Ben pretended to listen to the radio music, but all he could think about was how he'd never be able to control himself in an empty house with Tamara, not tonight.

"It's official now," he said, trying to get his mind off sex. "We're dating."

"We-e-e-e-ll," Tamara hedged, "just because we went on one date..."

"Ouch."

"Just joking. But if I could change one thing... Oh, never mind. I don't want to ruin a nice time."

"Uh-oh. That sounds scary."

"Nothing but the obvious. I wish it hadn't all started with... Man, I still can't even talk about it."

"You mean the infamous tapes?"

"Yes. That's what I mean."

"Alright, but look. Are you embarrassed at how I caught you, or ashamed that you like watching porn?"

"The first one, definitely. I'm a big girl, and I don't see anything wrong with porn. I'm even old enough to say 'porn' without giggling."

"Good. Me too. Then the only thing left is that I'm the one who should be humiliated, and I'm actually nothing but relieved."

"Yeah, I know. But all I meant was, it would have been nicer to have a less disgusting story to tell people about how we started out."

"That's no problem at all," Ben explained. "We'll just say you broke into my place to steal some spaghetti. My roommate's spaghetti."

Tamara laughed. "Okay. I like that."

As they parked in the driveway of Ben's house, he stopped the car engine and took the pretty girl's hand. "This morning when I pulled up to this spot, I was about as low as I could get. You have no idea how grateful I am you picked this morning to drop by."

"That's a nice way to put it. 'Drop by.'"

"I know you're still freaked out about the whole tape thing. Look at it this way. There were probably a hundred times I tried to talk myself into throwing all those things in the dumpster. People think what they think, and it's inevitable that one day I'd get caught. But if I had, then you never would have come to me like you did. Ever."

Tamara traced lines across the back of Ben's hand. "That DID occur to me. But I'm not convinced we never would have gotten together."

"You're probably right. Seems like... this was always supposed to happen."

Ben thought he detected a tear in Tamara's eye. "You were never this romantic growing up. But you were always very sweet."

"Let's get that dessert cooking."

Once in the house, Tamara put the cobbler in the oven, set the timer, and joined Ben on the sofa as he turned the TV on, sitting right next to him. Thankfully, she didn't try to hold his hand again; otherwise, he never would have been able to pry himself off of her. They watched a movie on cable for about fifteen minutes, and then Tamara turned off the TV and tossed the remote on the table.

"What?" Ben asked. "What is it?"

"That movie sucked."

"I'm not disagreeing."

"I've got an idea."

"Yeah?"

She buried her hands in Ben's hair and planted a big kiss on his lips, slowly, so slowly. The kiss escalated, and soon she was sitting on Ben's lap, offering her neck to his hot breath, his wet attentions. Ben was elated to find that the easy-going sense of fun from before hadn't been a fluke. His new girlfriend would continue to be just as open and happy in his arms as she had been that first time in the pool, and for that matter, all the years they'd known each other before tonight.

Just as Tamara was beginning to moan in a way Ben had never heard before, the timer in the kitchen went off. "Holy shit," Tamara said, as she tried unsuccessfully to pull herself away from Ben for the next few minutes. At last the oven timer refused to be ignored, and the girl stood, hair and clothes disheveled, and walked to the kitchen.

Ben followed her. She found hotpads and placed the dessert on the stovetop. "Are you hungry now?" she asked.

"Yes," Ben said, and he grabbed her, kissing her once again, holding her tight. Tamara fell back against the counter, pulling Ben with her, rubbing her hands over his chest and arms and hips. Her faint moans of pleasure returned, muffled as they were by Ben's mouth. And then, without disengaging from Ben's endeavors, she reached behind her and found the light switch. She turned off the kitchen light, the only light that had been on in the house (besides the TV, which was now also extinguished).