We had a lot of people come and go from our house when I was a kid. Gary, who was deaf, and let us use his Mustang to drive to Pittsburg, lived with us for a few months while he got back on his feet. Rocky, who was a talented handyman, and took care of most of the issues around the house as a way to pay rent, he was with us for about a year. The summer between my Sophomore and Junior year in high school Shantell Spring Nashatka came to live with us. Her parents needed to relocate due to their jobs and Shantell wanted to finish out her senior year at the same high school, and being a friend of my sister we invited her into our house. She was a year younger than my sister and took her room when she went to college.
Shantell was a forward, confident, and attractive girl. I hadn't really met anyone as aggressive with life as she was. The fact that she moved into a house with people that she barely knew and made herself part of our family without hesitation intrigued me. Shantell fell into our household routines and followed the rules and curfews without complaints. I appreciated her not making a fuss and having her there was a much calmer life than when my sister was at home. She was nice. She was easy to converse with, and she was pretty.
It didn't take long for us to sit up and talk into the midnight hours after my parents went to bed. We would talk about our ambitions (hers were greater than mine) and our lives (without giving any secrets away). We would sit on the floor just outside of my room leaning against the walls and talk, and flirt, and giggle, all the while trying to be as quiet as possible so we didn't wake my parents on the other side of the house.
I would talk about church and how I was saving myself for marriage because that was what God would want. And I didn’t want to get any diseases because I had witnessed the things my sister went through, not that I thought Shantell had any. She would indulge my thoughts and not make fun of some of the ridiculous claims I tried to get her to agree upon. The exact moment we leaned in to kiss is a blur of a memory. I can say that I was shirtless and wearing a pair of short cotton shorts, which is what I wore to sleep in for years. And she most likely had on a pair of silk or cotton shorts with a spaghetti strapped top that matched.
Our nights over that summer and throughout the following year consisted of us talking at night and our conversations always led to our mouths pressed against each other and our hands finding all the warm and hard places under our shorts. Shantell would always joke as her hand was up the leg of my shorts, stroking me, that she wouldn’t take it too far because I was “saving myself”. I always thought it was a funny thing to do but appreciated her understanding what my limits were.
It would have been a winter night or early spring, because she was wearing this ‘little house on the prairie’ flannel gown that went down to her ankles, that things went further than they had before. I was wearing my usual faded yellow tan cotton shorts, and only the shorts. I remember we were in the kitchen on the floor this night with my back against the refrigerator. As we kissed and her hand was between my legs and I was getting harder with each stroke she moved her mouth to my ear and down my neck. I tilted my head to feel her breath run down my neck. She traced the tendons of my neck down to my shoulder with the tip of her tongue and placed her hand on my chest. With the perfect amount of gentleness and pressure she pushed me away from the refrigerator to lay on the floor.
Her mouth created a trail of goosebumps over my chest as she moved closer to the elastic band of my shorts, her hand never loosing rhythm between my legs. I never objected to any of this despite so many of our conversations. She moved her hips so they were laying next to my chest and pulled down my shorts. Her hand raised me up to her mouth and the warmth that wrapped around me caused my hips to raise from the floor. She took my hand, opened her legs, and placed it where it had been many times before. I clumsily found my way inside of her and she pressed herself against me.
Her hips matched the rhythm of her mouth, while my hips matched the rhythm of my hand. We were in tune and it felt better than anything I had experience before. I didn’t close my eyes. I watched every move of hers to ensure it was real. I kept my eyes on her because this was the first time it was happening with a girl. I kept my eyes open to ensure I was not imagining it to be a girl like I did when it was Vito.
We came together and I left my fingers inside of her while her hips slowed but didn’t stop. She kept me in her mouth until my erection subsided. She laid her head on my chest and we looked into each others eyes and smiled.
There was a flinch in my face and I sat up. I apologized. I said that should not have happened and I left her laying on the floor in the kitchen. I pulled the door to my room shut and locked the door. I was scared. I felt dirty, because I always felt dirty after that happened. I didn’t want to feel dirty and gross. I needed to wash it off. I took my shorts off and turned the shower to the hottest it would get. I climbed in and started scrubbing. I didn’t like how I felt and could not reconcile the conflict in my body of enjoyment and disgust.
Just as I stepped out of the shower there was a knock at my door and my mothers voice asking what I was doing. I opened the door wrapped in my towel, my hair still wet dripping on the carpet to see Shantell standing behind my mom.
She fucking went and woke up my mom to tell on me for taking a shower at one in the morning. She knew my mom would berate me with questions as to why I was showering so late, and ask me what was I doing. All in the vain of concern for my wellbeing. All because I walked away from our tender moment. But she didn’t know and I couldn’t tell her.
That was the last time we had our nightly conversations. The hurt on both sides I think ran too deep.
