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She stroked my cheek and said, “Don’t worry, sweetie.”
She’d never called me that before. I loved it. Did she have any idea how indescribably wonderful she was? When she said, “This is definitely the safe time of the month,” I didn’t give condoms another thought. Being with her was the greatest thing that had happened to me in a long time.
Jodi Jackson and I first made love the summer we were seventeen, and that changed everything.
She was the campground owner’s daughter. Her dad was my dad’s high school and Marine buddy. Mom, Dad, and I’d come to northern Wisconsin for a month’s visit, but we’d stayed longer, and I’d kissed Jodi a lot during the last couple of weeks.
We'd packed a lunch in a cooler and canoed Big Sand Lake during the morning under a blue, sunny Wisconsin sky. At noontime, we ate chicken sandwiches and drank root beer on a beach, a soft breeze cooling us. We sat cross-legged on a blanket in the hot sand and faced each other, our picnic basket between us, lunch finished.
Jodi’s eyes shone green as emeralds, and we were both tanned honey-brown from hanging out at the beach and fishing in a boat on Big Sand Lake. “What are you looking at?” Jodi asked.
“Your eyes,” I said. “I’m looking at your eyes.”
“Got two of them. Like you.”
“Yours are crossed.”
“They are not!” Her face opened into a grin, an angel’s face with a snub nose, round cheeks, and full pink lips. “You know how many ears Davy Crockett had?”
“Not another riddle!”
“Three ears: Right ear. Left ear. And the wild frontier.”
She laughed and waggled a finger in my face. Her curly blond hair—sun-bleached in front, darker in back, almost red—bounced with life. She was a five-foot-two dynamo who loved riddles and sometimes popped them into the conversation without warning. They were all stupid, but I couldn’t help but laugh anyway.
Now she traced a finger across my shoulder, and my skin tingled. “You’ve got a really nice tan. I love the little cleft in your chin.” She leaned forward and teased my lips with a butterfly-light kiss. “What are you thinking about?”
My heart knocking around in my chest, I slid the picnic basket aside. I wiggled closer to her and looped my arm around her neck. I drew her to me and kissed her softly parted mouth. She kissed me back—a lethal kiss for both of us. A zing of adrenaline shot through me. Did she she made soft humming sounds when we kissed?
“I know where there’s a deer-hunter’s cabin in the woods,” she said, her eyes riveted on mine.
“Not smart.” Close like this, I noted the sprinkling of freckles across her nose and on her cheeks.
“Smart’s not how I’m feeling.” She reached out and stroked my cheek. Her seductive touch was fire.
“You sure you want to do this?” I asked, my heart knocking around again.
“Don’t you?” Softly.
When she said that, I forgot to breathe for a second. “Yes,” I said. A whisper. “But I don’t have a condom. I never expected...”
“I’m no where near ovulation,” she said. “We’re safe.”
I blinked. I’m sure I looked confused. Three years ago, as a freshman in high school in Family Living class, I remember reading right along with girls about menstrual cycles and other stuff like fertile awareness and ovulation. The girls seemed to already know about everything, and I didn’t pay much attention. I figured when the time came all I’d need to know was how to roll on a condom, which our teacher Mrs. Dickerson demonstrated one day on a small banana, while students snickered almost uncontrollably, hands plastered over their mouths.
Now here I was with this beautiful, feisty girl who was into me, and I was without a condom. This was no laughing matter.
“We’re safe,” Jodi said again. “Nothing to worry about.”
“You sure?”
She raised an eyebrow, as if to tell me she knew what she was talking about. I believed her. Who else but Jodi would know about her own body, right? Besides, she wanted to be an environmental biologist. She knew everything about plants and animals and insects and reproduction and all that stuff.
We made love in the musty cabin on the lower half of a set of squeaky, rickety bunk beds. Jodi wore a yellow T-shirt and matching shorts, a white bikini underneath. I wore a white T-shirt and cutoffs. She smelled of sunshine and lilacs and tasted of clean sweat. Her hair was soft and silky in my hands. At six-two, 205 pounds, I had a tough time maneuvering on the bunk bed with Jodi. Luckily, she had no hang-ups about sex. She laughed and screamed, my heart thumped a million beats a second, and we both had fun. In fact, we worked so well together we did it twice.
After we had time to catch our breath and I realized what we’d done, the thought of not using a condom worried me a bit. I didn’t say anything, but Jodi seemed to sense my concern—feminine intuition, I guessed. She stroked my cheek and said, “Don’t worry, sweetie.”
She’d never called me that before. I loved it. Did she have any idea how indescribably wonderful she was? When she said, “This is definitely the safe time of the month,” I didn’t give condoms another thought. Being with her was the greatest thing that had happened to me in a long time.
Later, when Jodi and I sat on the dock where we’d tied the canoe, dangling our feet in the water, a guilty feeling overtook me. Had I used Jodi to escape the fact that cancer had a deadly grip on my dad, and I was watching him slowly die? I’d had no right to use Jodi like that. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was hurt her. Or maybe she was taking pity on me. A romp in a deer hunter’s cabin to help me forget for a while.
“Why so silent, Michael?”
“Just...thinking.”
Jodi jumped up, grabbed my sides, and started tickling me. I struggled to stand and catch her wrists. I caught one but lost my balance. Laughing, we tumbled backward into six feet of cool, blue lake water.
