“Annabeth and I are going hiking w/ a friend of hers Sat. Want to come? Cold Brook State Forest. We want to be out by 9. #GHF.”
The abrupt text message came as a welcome surprise. It was the first I had heard from my friend Collin Travers in over a month. He’d raved over this Annabeth girl for a solid week at the end of summer, but had quickly turned evasive about introducing her. His participation in game nights or downtown excursions had then abruptly halted, and he’d gone completely silent since. Several of our friends had joked that he’d joined a cult. I was happy for him to have found someone after a lengthy drought, but I’d been getting worried. It was good to hear from him.
The bit at the end was a dollop of sugar atop my sense of relief. “GHF” was an old shorthand from dating life during our stint together in college: Girls Have Friends. Evidently this was to be an informal blind date. My own drought was long enough that the possibility came with a tickling edge of excitement. Besides which, with the weather turning colder, there would be few pleasant weekends to get outside until spring. I replied affirmatively at once.
The response that flashed onto my screen was unexpected. “Meet us at the parking area on Rt 115 at 8:45. Don’t be late! Nice to meet you. Collin speaks highly of you. -A.” Well, maybe Collin had gotten busy with something. Maybe he was in the can. Annabeth, at any rate, seemed rather formidable.
I put together a day pack the night before and stumbled towards a bagel and take-out coffee at 6:30 on a cool, partly overcast morning. It was too early to be out of bed on a weekend. The sun wasn’t even up yet. I’d left myself plenty of time and the light traffic meant I pulled off into the gravel lot by quarter past eight. There were three other cars there already but none of them were Collin’s, and there was no sign of him anywhere about. I spent the time pointlessly wondering what my “date” was going to be like and trying to keep my expectations low. An unfamiliar purple Jeep pulled off the main road at 8:40 and parked directly beside me. Collin emerged from the driver’s seat on my immediate left, with the two girls vague shapes on the far side of the truck.
“Hey Jack,” Collin greeted me with an affable smile, “good to see you. Sorry I’ve been a little AWOL lately.” His tone had a weird strain of jocularity to, trying to sound relaxed and not quite succeeding. In a slightly rueful but more genuine whisper he added, “you’ll see why.”
The two women rounding the back corner of the Jeep made my eyes widen and my mouth part slightly, if only for an instant. The nearer had a short black bob of hair and was an inch or so shorter than the girl with the chestnut braid beside her. The pullover fleeces each wore did little to hide the lithe, athletic figures that the leggings running down to two pairs of well-worn hiking boots accentuated. They could have been competitive track stars or gymnasts. Their expressions of knowing amusement showed they had not missed my reaction to them, and I felt myself blushing. “So one of you must be Annabeth?” I asked rhetorically, extending my hand with what I hoped appeared to be easy-going confidence. It was immediately clear why Collin had been so occupied. I didn’t blame him a bit.
The dark-haired girl gave me a smiling look of appraisal and took my hand firmly. “I’m Annabeth, this is my friend Samantha.”
“Can I call you Sam?” I asked pleasantly.
“Boys shouldn’t ask to call, they should just show a little nerve and do it,” The long-haired woman replied, deadpan. She waited patiently while my brain worked its way through the required Oxford comma pun. Can I call you, Sam? Of course. I had walked right into that one. “Yes, Sam is fine”, she finally said with a smile. “I’m just fucking with you.”
The morning warmed with the rising sun and the hike shaped up to surpass my hopes. It was a glorious fall day made even better by the company. I couldn’t help it. The subconscious sensation of victory made little appealing flickers in my mind every time we passed other men on the trail. I was eight feet tall. I was a giant-killer. Collin and I had the cheerleaders on our arms at homecoming. Was it stupid? Of course it was; I knew that plainly. I was getting miles ahead of myself at the very least. But the little instinctual voice was still insistently crowing, regardless.
The conversation for the first two hours was light, amiable, and pleasantly sparse enough to simply enjoy the woods. I was happy to have been vigilant about exercising that fall. The women both had the physiques of greyhounds, and even Collin looked like he had found time to log plenty of hard miles during his absence the past few weeks. The little blinding burst of euphoria brought on by the proximity of pretty girls mellowed sufficiently that I noticed other changes in him as well. His ears were pierced, for one thing. That was new. There was something else, too, something that took a long time to parse. In a sweatshirt, shorts, and running tights, most of his body was covered, but his hands and forearms were entirely hairless. He’d never been a competitive swimmer, so that was new too.
He was carrying all of the food, water, and sundries for both himself and Annabeth, who had only a fanny pack with seemingly all of their valuables- phones, keys, and money. It occurred to me at our first stop that I was probably coming across as thoughtless for not offering to do likewise, despite realizing that Sam could have carried her small pack for a week without tiring. “Would you like me to take some of that stuff for you?” I asked gamely, trying to sound casual.
“How dashing and gallant,” Samantha answered with a friendly but gently mocking lilt. “Why not take my fleece?” she asked coyly, rolling her shoulders and pulling it over her head. “It’s warmed up enough I don’t need it anyway. You can take Anne’s, too. I think Collin’s weighted down enough already.” I was happy to oblige and crammed the garments into my now-overstuffed pack. The view of bare midriffs and sports bras was more than compensation for the small added load.
I tried to get Collin to open up about his absence but his replies became increasingly terse. There was some joke the three of them were in on that I was ignorant about, and his nervousness seemed to increase at the same rate as their amusement. I finally let the matter go and tried to delve into the girls’ backgrounds. Sam was a physical therapist while Annabeth was studying law. They knew each other ‘from way back’, but the details provided were vague. They artfully turned the conversation towards me, and I found myself speaking at such length I soon feared I must be boring them. I had an uneasy feeling I was being very gently interrogated, but my answers were apparently sufficiently appealing to them that it seemed clear I had passed some kind of unspoken test.
After lunch, the patter between us gradually turned more ribald. We were angling back towards the cars by then, following a trail that led to a series of stair-step falls in the stream for which the park was named. We sat down beside a wide granite basin into which a fifteen-foot cascade plunged from a fern-covered shelf above us. The day had warmed to almost seventy and Collin and I had long since shed out sweatshirts. Annabeth stood up all at once I said, “I’m going in. Come on.” She raised Collin by the hand without asking, and to my surprise silently directed him to pull off his tee shirt and shorts. My observation of his arms had been correct- his chest was totally hairless, even below the navel, and looked as though he had been working out intensively- there was new lean muscle on his light frame. More surprising still, his ears were not the only thing pierced. Little dumbbell-shaped crossbars of silver metal glinted from each nipple. Stripped to only black tights, he followed her into the cold water, sputtering.
“Well, what do you say?” Sam asked from beside me, pulling off hiking boots and socks. “You’re not going to be a pussy, are you?”
“We’re gonna get blisters from wet feet,” I protested.
“Oh come on,” she rolled her eyes, stepping up to mid-calf in the clear water. “No wonder you’re single. Strip down and get in here, you little bitch.” Her tone was light and friendly enough that the term did not sound like an insult. Thankful that’d I’d worn tights to fend off the morning chill myself, I took off my boots, tee shirt, and socks, and finally shorts, then followed to where Sam was waiting with a beaming grin.
Away from the falls, the pool deepened sufficiently for swimming after passing in foaming rapids over a little stone shelf. Collin and Annabeth were already beyond it, submerged to their necks and treading water. Sam was waiting for me there, soaking wet and utterly radiant. But the water was icy and atop the shelf I paused. “Go on, bitch,” she pointed with an exquisite finger, voice still playful but now with a cool authoritarian edge. “Get in there.” The with a deft swipe of a sinewy leg and a hard push between my shoulder blades, she tumbled me forward before I could answer.
Five minutes later, we’d all swum to a sunny shelf at the lower edge of the pool, half-numb with cold and laughing ecstatically. I was ashamed for having hesitated. It was absolutely delightful.
“I think that’s what I’ll call you from now on,” Sam said in a playful, almost sing-song voice. “Bitch. Yeah, that fits. Bitch bitch bitchety bitch. You don’t mind, do you bitch?”
“I thought I was bitch,” Collin interjected with feigned hurt. I wouldn’t have been any more surprised had I heard a donkey bray in the clearing, but the comment seemed unremarkable between them.
“Oh, you are, bitch,” Annabeth replied, laughing. “But you’re my bitch. Jack is Sam’s bitch. At least that’s the goal.”
The conversation had taken a sudden turn for the surreal, but the day’s exercise, the frigid swim, the warm sun, and the shapely wet female forms beside me made it seem like natural banter, clever and witty. I wanted to play along. I wanted them to like me. Whatever they were playing at, I didn’t want to seem like some dumb, lame, square.
“You can call me whatever you like,” I intoned jovially, harkening back to our shared grammatical joke in the parking lot, “so long as you call me. ‘Bitch’ is fine,” I yawned. “It’s a term of endearment, right?”
“Oh, of course,” Sam smiled running a wet toe along the outside of my left leg. “Unless you’d prefer ‘pussy’ or ‘cunt’. I like ‘bitch’, though. Yeah, I think I’ll call you that.” She rolled to one side and got to her feet, looking down at me. “Say it, bitch. Tell me you like it.”
“I’m your bitch, Sam,” I said in a sarcastic, self-mocking voice. “Thanks for that.”
There was a flicker of momentary dissatisfaction on the lovely face. “Say it like you mean it, bitch.”
A sudden, unexpected feeling of being outside myself washed over me. “Thank you for making me your bitch, Sam,” I reiterated, this time sounding like a child caught stealing treats from the kitchen.
“That is so much better,” she replied, beaming. Her expression filled me with bright, warm happiness that I had not anticipated. Despite the cold, I felt the stirrings of an erection that would soon be unmistakable beneath sopping-wet spandex and blushed.
“It’s got to be getting late,” I yawned, making a show of determining the sun’s sinking position in the sky while turning my body away from view. “This is great, but we should get heading back.”
To my relief, there was general agreement, and we stumbled barefoot over the rocks back to where our gear awaited. Another group of hikers was approaching anyway, so it was a good time to move on. I fumbled to grab my shorts and felt a sudden slap on the back of my hand that was just slightly too forceful to be only playful. “Not those, bitch,” Sam intoned in a voice low enough that (blessedly) the strangers approaching would not overhear. “You’re decent. Just the tights are fine. After all, you’ve been enjoying the view ever since our first stop this morning, and you haven’t just been looking at nature. Fair’s fair.”
My mind once again flipped to nervousness about my smoldering state of arousal. This was breaking a fundamental social convention, after all. Tights were fine under shorts- they were just an extra layer for warmth while exercising- but showing off your junk just wasn’t done. There was a strange sense of juxtaposition. It was acutely uncomfortable being the one looked at instead of doing the looking. A disturbing vulnerability came along with that. It occurred to me that, more than the view itself, was probably the point. But Sam did not seem inclined to budge on this point, and I had no desire to make a fuss. I folded the shorts and stowed them in my pack, thankful I was at least allowed my tee shirt and hopeful it hung low enough to break the sight line of anyone we passed on the trail.
Collin was left in the same half-dressed state I was, but seemed more relaxed for it. At least he did not have to worry about arousal- there was a bulge beneath his leggings that suggested he was wearing a cup. I could not imagine why and had too many other intrusive thoughts circulating in my mind to care.
We were soon approaching the parking lot, and I wondered what would happen next. Nobody spoke about it, and an irrational sense of disappointment settled over me, deepening with each step. I didn’t want the day to end. In sight of the trail head, I tried to muster the most casual voice I could. “This has been a lot of fun. I’d be psyched if I could get your number, Sam. I’d…” I paused for a half second, and steeled myself for a plunge as nerve-wracking as the one into the falls. “I’d like to see you again, if that’s cool.”
Sam looked at me with the expression of an angler regarding a bending, dancing pole. “Plans tonight, bitch?” She asked playfully. “Hot date, maybe?”
“No,” I stammered, anticipating what was coming, hoping desperately I would be proved right. “Why?”
“Good, because you’d have to change them. I was thinking maybe your bitch ass would like to come back to Anne’s place and get some dinner, but maybe Fortnight is more important to you or something. What do you think?”
I let out a relieved, exultant sigh in spite of myself. “I’d like that a lot, thanks.”
Sam rode with me as we pulled out of the lot just before sunset. She told me a few more tantalizing details about her background and childhood, then we settled into an easy conversation about my friendship with Collin, clipping off miles for half an hour as if it were an eyeblink. “Left here, bitch,” Sam ordered casually at a twisting side road that led up along a forested hillside. “Almost there. Excited?”
“Yes,” I answered with unthinking honesty. After all, we were clearly going to fuck, weren’t we? I had a sudden gnawing doubt. I was assuming too much. “I mean, I’m hungry,” I stammered. “What are we cooking?”
A sideways glance showed a look of amused contempt plainly visible on Sam’s enchanting face. The hook was firmly set; she could reel in at her leisure and she knew it. Ignoring my question, she peered past the bright sweep of the headlights and pointed. “Right just past the green mailbox.”
The car crunched over a gravel driveway up a shallow hillside to Anne’s home. It was an hour past sunset, and we hurried into the sprawling house to escape the gathering evening chill. The Jeep was already parked and lights inside shone through the front windows. The place was obviously old but well-kept, built like a fortress from cut granite and tucked into the middle of a wide forested lot out of sight of any neighbors. The big living room warm and inviting, and Collin was already at work in the fireplace while Anne was bustling in the kitchen.
“Wow, nice place,” I muttered unconsciously as Collin gave a nervous smile over his shoulder.
“Thanks. Family money.” Annabeth had returned from the adjoining kitchen with an open bottle of wine and two filled glasses. “Sam and I will go clean up. Have dinner on the table in fifteen minutes. Collin knows what to do.”
Dinner was pre-made Italian, evidently cooked the night before in anticipation and only requiring brief re-heating. The girls disappeared up the staircase and soon there was a sound of running water. Meanwhile, Collin, still half-dressed in hiking clothes, busied himself pulling foil-covered plates from the restaurant-sized refrigerator. “So dude,” I asked cautiously, “level with me. What’s going on here?”
“We need to get the main dishes warm first, then we can put out the salad and bread,” he answered lamely, not turning around.
“You know that’s not what I mean. Annabeth… what’s up with her? With you two?”
Collin paused, slumped his shoulders slightly, and turned around. “I’m as happy as I’ve ever been. Honestly. So don’t judge, okay? Anna’s amazing.” An inscrutable look passed his face, an indecipherable mix of regret and excited anticipation. “She asked about my friends, and decided you sounded perfect for Samantha. And you’re here, so maybe she was right.”
I rummaged through the cabinets for dinner plates. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean you went up like an express elevator when she started calling you ‘bitch’, that’s what. Maybe you thought we couldn’t see, but I did, so Anne did, too. She doesn’t miss anything, and I doubt Sam does, either.” His voice was hushed and defensive, as if he feared being overheard. “So don’t judge!” he repeated himself emphatically. “Seriously. You’re tailing behind Sam like a lost puppy. It isn’t just me!”
“So she likes talking dirty,” I said weakly, trying to sound indifferent. “And I like her talking dirty. I’m not too proud to admit that’s a turn-on.”
“Well, you chose to come here,” Collin answered in a self-justifying voice. “You could’ve just gone home. This isn’t my fault.”
“Your fault? Sam’s gorgeous and smart and self-assured. I’m not finding fault. Dude, if anything, I’m thanking you for the chance to meet her.”
We put the final touches on the table just as female voices could be heard descending the stairs. Freshly washed and wrapped in silk bathrobes, the two women descended the stairs chatting amiably. “Thank you, dears,” Annabeth called out happily, and Sam offered an approving smile. Her reddish hair, freed from the braid, was radiant about her shoulders.
Collin made a point to pass everything to the women first before we served ourselves, but the meal was enjoyable and the conversation easy and banal. There was a slow-burning sense of anticipation that grew like a gathering storm cloud, but beneath its shadow were long minutes of nondescript pleasantries. We talked about the day, the season, and the food (which, hungry as I was, seemed delicious) and I found myself becoming inexplicably nervous. The creeping sense that the rest of the gathering was in on some joke that I alone was blind to kept nagging at me. When the meal was finished and Collin rose to clear the table, I moved to help him at once without being asked. My nerves made it hard to sit still, and I had a vague sense that it was expected. An approving smile from Sam confirmed my intuition.
