The kissing went on for a long time. There were moments when she was lost completely, forgetting who she was or where she was, aware only of what she was doing and how good it was to kiss like this. Finally he released her. They separated slowly, moving like creatures in a dream, and he took a crushed pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He gave her one and took one for himself and lit them with the dashboard lighter.
She drew the smoke into her lungs and fought off the inevitable impulse to cough. Instead she blew the smoke out in a long thin column and watched it hover in the air of the closed car. Then Dan rolled down the window and the smoke trailed out into the darkness.
“Beautiful night,” he said.
She nodded without speaking.
“This is nice,” he went on. “Being here with you. Just relaxing and enjoying ourselves.”
She was glad he had said that. His words seemed to excuse their presence there, to transform a trite petting situation into something reasonable and defensible. They smoked in silence and she listened to crickets chirp in the tall grass. There was a way to tell the temperature from the crickets. You counted the number of chirps in fourteen seconds, added forty, and the result was the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. She considered asking Dan for his watch so that she could find out how warm it was. The thought was quietly ridiculous and she started to giggle.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. Something just struck me as funny. It’s nothing important.”
He took her cigarette from her and pitched it with his own out the window onto the road. She wondered if the cigarettes would start a fire. Then her thoughts were cut off because he was kissing her again.
She gasped. This time his clever hand had found her breast and he was holding her gently but firmly while his tongue darted into her mouth. His hand moved skillfully and her breast seemed alive and on fire. She could feel the outlines of his fingers as he stroked her and caressed her.
He had touched her breasts before, had touched them through her clothing, but this was somehow different Before, his caresses had been stimulating but not intoxicating, inspiring warmth but not passion. But this was not the same now. This was passion, the first genuine passion she had ever felt.
She knew that she ought to stop him or at least make some pretense of resisting. But if she stopped him the warm feeling would go away and she did not want to lose it, did not want the sweet sensation of his hand upon her breast to cease. It was too good, too pleasant.
“April—”
And she murmured in reply: “Don’t stop, Danny. It feels so good. Don’t stop.”
He took her at her word.
Her sweater was a long-sleeved cardigan that buttoned down in front. He released her and began to undo the buttons. This, she knew, was clearly wrong. A nice girl did not let a boy take her clothes off. Some girls, of course, were all too willing to let a boy undress them and do other things. But a great gulf separated these girls from nice girls like herself. Boys took these girls for rides, took their clothes off, make love to them. But boys married and respected nice girls.
He unbuttoned the last button and thrust his hand inside her sweater. She felt the teasing fingers on her breast. Only the thin white bra stood between those fingers and her bare flesh.
And she forgot all about nice girls.
“April—”
She looked at him.
“We oughta get in the back seat. There’s more room back there.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t.”
He shrugged. “Might as well be comfortable,” he said. “It’s not too comfortable here — the steering wheel, and everything. The back seat’s better.”
It was, she decided, quite a night for firsts. It was the first time he had parked right away on a date, and the first he had unbuttoned her sweater. Now it was the first time they had ever left the front seat for the back. The back seat, she knew, was where people did It. In the back seat they went All The Way. But she told herself that they were not going to go All The Way. It was just as Danny said — the back seat would be more comfortable to neck in, so why not use it?
They got into the back seat.
Immediately he kissed her again and his hand found its place inside her sweater. His other hand joined it, and both hands went around her body until they found the clasp of her bra. Again she felt that another milestone was being reached, but again she was unable to offer so much as token resistance. His fingers were clumsy, but he managed nevertheless to unlock the bra and remove it, leaving her firm breasts bare.
His hands fondled them.
“They’re so pretty, April. So nice and firm. Do you like it when I touch them like this?”
She liked it much too much. Her whole body was throbbing with passion now and her breasts were quivering under his touch. Her nipples stood up stiff and alert, and every time his fingers brushed over them a jolt of pure passion went through her, spreading outward from her breasts and engulfing her entire body.
Then his fingers were on the hem of her skirt. He raised her shirt, slipped a hand under the cloth and squeezed her knee. This, she knew, was dangerous. They were treading on thin ice. When he had unbuttoned her sweater they had passed the thin and arbitrary line which distinguishes necking from petting. Now, with the new twist which he was adding by slipping his hand below her skirt, they were traversing another emotional boundary. There was a distinct difference between petting above the waist and petting below the waist. Even nice girls might pet above the waist with their steadies.
But below the waist was something different.
“We’d better stop.” Her voice was only a whisper, and if he heard it he paid no attention. Somehow she could not bring herself to repeat her mild protest. If what they were doing was wrong, why in the world did it feel so good? If it was indecent to let a boy touch your thighs, then why did it make them tingle so nicely?
A good question.
“So smooth,” he was saying now, his tone reverent.
“You’ve got the smoothest skin. So nice to touch.”
It was only a matter of time before her panties were down and he was touching her more and she was quivering like a shimmering bowlful of jelly. It was only a matter of time before she was lying on her back on the car seat with her knees up and her brain swimming in equal parts of lust and fear. It was only a matter of time before he was crouching above her, ready for her.
“No!”
But again he ignored her, and again she did not have the strength to repeat herself. She knew inwardly that It was going to happen and that she wanted It as much as he did. She knew that It might very well be wrong, but that right or wrong It was going to take place.
She watched what he was doing, and she wondered whether he had had sense enough to visit her father’s drugstore, or any drugstore. The thought almost made her laugh and then he was touching her again, and she was beyond laughter and beyond tears, ready for whatever would happen.
Then it began.
There was pain first, sheer pain that tore her in two and made her want to scream out against the night. The pain went all through her — she could not see or think or feel anything but all-consuming hurting.
But then the pain began to subside. And, magically, something else took the place of the pain. The pain gave way to a tide of pleasure greater than anything she had ever been able to imagine, a tide of pleasure that caught her up and spun her in whirling dizzying circles of light and darkness.
Magic.
Right or wrong, good or bad, clever or foolish — adjectives fell away from her, fell away before the advance of the tidal wave of pleasure. She let herself respond to the fullest, let her body move as it had to move and writhe as it had to writhe. The passion spun her around and raced forward with her and the world began to move with her and It was happening, happening, and nothing on earth could stop It.