Scrabbled

I woke up and looked over. Caleb was still asleep, so I crept over the the computer.

BobbyBuns: He asked me!

RiverWalk: What? When?

BobbyBuns: Yesterday!

RiverWalk: Did you sleep with him, finally?

BobbyBuns: <blush>

RiverWalk: It’s about time. Maybe you’ll talk about something other than him, now.

BobbyBuns: I think I have some bad new for you. I don’t think I’ll be coming back to school.

Tess: What? Whoa!! Let me catch up here! He asked you, you shacked up, and you’re not coming to school?

BobbyBuns: We’re not ‘shacking up’! You know that!

Tess: Oh, so sorry for offending your delicate Christian sensibilities. You are engaging in intercourse with your husband. But, seriously, you’re not coming back to school? What about your degree? What about the play?

BobbyBuns: I have my ‘Mrs.’ Degree now, and you know that’s the one I really wanted. And Mr. Grumman is going to kill me, isn’t he?!

PhillipBoatman: Hey, let a cousin in on the news. Married, then?

BobbyBuns: Yeah. Oh, and there’s going to be a party. Starts today, runs all week. Everyone’s invited, OK? Tell everyone that I can’t get to.

PhillipBoatman: Even distant cousins?

BobbyBuns: Especially distant cousins. We haven’t seen you all in a while. Bring all the girls, too!

PhillipBoatman: Well, I doubt my folks will be able to come, but I can run down with the girls, if you’re sure there will be plenty of floor space for sleeping bags.

BobbyBuns: Yes, for everyone. My… old… house, Caleb’s house, every square inch. If there are too many we can ask some church friends for floor space. Our church, Caleb’s church (I’m going to have to get used to saying ‘our’ in a different way, aren’t I?) lots of space.

PhillipBoatman: Great!

JoshuaMcDeere: What? Really? To who…?

—

Caleb was still asleep when I finally wound down ‘sharing’, so I snuck off to the bathroom kind of hoping I wouldn’t run into Jenny, but she was sitting on top of the toilet. I think she was waiting for me. “Hey,” she said, and then blushed. I guess I did too. It was only the second time in my life I had had to face someone when I and everyone else knew that I had been…

“Hey,” I said, stripping off and getting in the shower, “did you sleep all right?”

“Yes,” she said, and then added, with a grin in her voice, “Did you?”

I didn’t answer, instead cupping my hand and launching water at her, cause her to shriek. We were having the party today , so I didn’t have time for my hair to dry, which was a shame as it was getting oily. “Are you ready for this party, Jenny? I can’t figure out what I am going to wear.”

“Well, he just bought you all those new clothes, wear some of those.”

I got out of the shower, “Do you think?”

“Sure, I mean, he just bought them for you, you just got married, you know, so something ‘for him’, kind of thing. The girls will understand, no matter how ugly they are.”

“They aren’t ugly!” I said, swatting her, then toweling vigorously off. “I have to get back to Caleb.”

I wrapped the towel around myself as Jenny giggled. I walked back to my… our room. And saw Ben and Beth, bouncing on the bed, with Caleb in the middle. “Caleb?” I said, but Ben and Beth came leaping over to me, grabbing at me and forcing me to grab my towel.

“Caleb sleeps with you now?” Beth asked, causing me to blush, although she had no idea what that meant, I mean, except for, you know, where he slept. She knew the facts of life, we taught those early, but not the logistics of it.

“Yes Beth, last night. But tommorrow night I will be sleeping over at his house. You will have to go over there to bounce on my bed.”

“Over to Caleb’s house?” Ben said, “Yeah! Will he make waffles?”

“Sure I will sport,” Caleb said, getting out of bed and picking him up, “Any time I’m home, you can come have waffles. Should I make some today?”

“Yeah!” Screamed both the twins.

“Ok,” Caleb said, “Go tell your mother that I will be down to cook right after my shower.”

The twins raced off and Robert leveraged himself out of bed, grabbing for a pair of boxers. I closed the door and dropped my towel. “Ummm, what do you want me to wear?”

“Well, we’ll be moving stuff, so something casual. Until it is time for the party.”

“No, I mean to breakfast.”

He stared at me curiously. And lustfully. “What’s wrong with what you usually wear?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said, relieved, and starting to hunt for my nightshirt. “It’s just that you wanted something different in my dream.”

“Oh?”

I stopped, and blushed. “You wanted, like, what I wore yesterday.”

“Oh! Wow! That would be awesome!”

“Oh,” I said, bright red. “Oh, Ok.”

“I didn’t mean you had to do it!” he said, hurriedly.

“You don’t want…?”

He came over and held me. “I would LOVE for you to parade around like that. But I don’t want to make you uncomfortable; or give your mom and dad a heart attack. Wear what you feel comfortable wearing.”

I pulled on a pair of boxers, and put my nightshirt over it, but I didn’t feel comfortable.. At all. I knew what he wanted but, today, I wasn’t brave enough to wear it. I went downstairs feeling like a failure. He didn’t notice, though.

“Hey Mom,” Caleb said, kissing her on the cheek, “Did the twins tell you?”

“That you were going to cook? Or that you let them bounce on your bed?”

Caleb laughed, “That I was going to cook,” He said, opening the fridge and reaching for the eggs.

“You are a brave boy,” Mother said, “acting so brave the day that everyone is coming to your house to celebrate your marriage. The day you will be the focus of everyone’s attention…”

“You cannot do it, Mom,” Caleb said, “you cannot make me upset today. Today I woke up with the most beautiful girl in the world in my bed, your wonderful daughter.”

“Waffles, waffles!” The twins yelled, coming down the stairs.

“Hey, ” He said, “I hope you all are going to help me… Hey Jenny,” he said, “I hope you all are going to help us move Bobbi today.”

“Sure,” Said Jenny, looking very cute in her little pink Pajamas. “I even asked Ralph, and he said he would come too.”

“To breakfast?” Caleb said.

“What?” Jenny said.

“Invite him to breakfast, and we’ll start right afterward. He’ll love those PJ’s.”

“You, you think so?”

“Yeah, I’ll make more waffles.”

“I, umm, you really think he will like the Pajamas?”

“I’m a guy,” he said, “I know.”

“Ok…” she said, reaching for the phone. “Ralph? Oh, Mr. Carlton, could I speak to Ralph? Ralph? Hey, do you want to come over for breakfast? We’re going to start moving Bobbi right afterwards and Caleb said… you would? Ok.”

She turned away from the phone, all pink. “He’s coming. I should change,” she said, and ran upstairs.

Caleb watched her run upstairs, “Hey, Mom, you know my technique, right? I need to do something. Bobbi, could you come with me?”

I followed after him, very confused. “Caleb?” But he just grabbed my hand and said, “We need to get upstairs and get dressed.”

“What?”

“You do know how to get dressed?” He asked, pulling me upstairs.

We dressed in a rush, and he took me outfront. A couple of minutes later an old truck drove up and Ralph got out. “Caleb? Bobbi?”

“Hey Ralph,” Caleb said, “I need to talk to you.”

“Oh?” He said, looking from one of us to the other.

“Yeah,” Caleb said, “I got married yesterday, you know, to Bobbi here. And that makes me Jenny’s brother. Now, if I had had one of my own sisters, and she started, you know, seeing someone, I would have had a talk with him. But I didn’t, so I figure I will have it with you.”

“Are you kidding?” Ralph said.

Caleb put his hand around Ralph’s shoulders, “Nope, not at all. Now, listen. I need to tell you the rules of this family. Thou shalt not, and I mean that in the Biblical sense, thou shalt not touch my sister in any way in private that you would not right in front of her mother, you got it?”

“We haven’t…”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m telling you. No touching until you talk with Dad. And then, you can touch her all you want. Got it?”

“What? You mean her Dad would let me…?”

“Once you agree to marry her, yes.”

“Oh. But… you mean… we have to get married first?”

“Well, yes, but it is easy. You don’t have to go to church, or go to a judge, or nothing like that. You just go to her father, tell him that you want to marry her. And then, if he doesn’t kill you, you get to sleep with her. Got it?”

“Are you serious?”

“Life and death, life and death. Now come on inside,” Caleb said, pulling him by his shoulders, ” Too bad you didn’t come earlier. You should have seen her in her pink pajamas. They were great on her. Yould’ve been in the office with her father in minutes. Come on, dude.”

Whoa,” Caleb said, an hour later, when, back sitting in bed, I finally finished my story, or at least the first pass. “That’s quite a story.”

“Not exactly what you thought we would be doing on our wedding night, eh?” I asked him.

“Well, I hope it’s not all we’ll be doing…”

It felt wonderful to sing again, using my voice, my own voice, without feeling like someone else was going to shift it into Bass at any moment. Caleb even noticed and sang louder, with me. Poor Ralph looked so out of place. Caleb was glowing, and Ralph kept looking at him.

Finally the torture was over, for Ralph, and we were done singing. Mother and Jenny went upstairs, Ralph in tow, to bathe and put the twins to bed. Dad sat down on the couch, “So, Caleb, you finally popped the question? What did it take you, two weeks?”

I was just pouring myself some sparkling cider, and I almost spilled it. “What?”

“Keeping secrets from her already?” Dad asked with a grin, “an excellent policy. Sorry I spilled the beans.”

“What secret?” I asked Caleb, my hands on my hips.

“I, uhh, I asked your father a few days ago, you know, if I could marry you. When you told me to read your journal and you… well, I figured you must have figured it out.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh.” I thought back. “Maybe I sort of did, I mean, maybe I did notice that you changed a couple of weeks back. You got even more nervous around me, even more than usual.”

Dad laughed, “Poor Caleb. But, all’s well that ends well. Somehow you finally got up the courage to ask, eh? Tell me, what did you do? Get drunk?”

Caleb flushed, “No. It was Bobbi, actually. She…” he blushed.

“Was THAT what did it?” I said. “A little peep show and you proposed?”

“No, I mean, yes, I mean…” He stopped, and took a drink of his cider. “It wasn’t that I got all hot and horny… I did, but that wasn’t it. It was just if you were willing to do that for me, just to encourage me… And then I read your journal, and realized that you were all mad at me… I knew I couldn’t wait any more. I didn’t want you mad at me.”

Dad looked quizzically at me, “Peep show?”

“I, uh, I came down to breakfast in my underwear.”

Dad raised his eyebrows, “Oh? And Caleb happened to come over for breakfast?”

“Well, I sort of invited him.”

“I see! That might do it indeed. I am surprised that my rather shy daughter did that, and that her mother allowed it. Did some girlfriend put you up to that? Or maybe your mother, getting desperate?”

“Or her mother what?” asked Mother, coming down the stairs.

“No, Mother was kind of freaked out. No, it wasn’t Mother. It was this dream I had. This really weird dream.”

Jenny and Ralph came down, “Well, I think the twins like Ralph,” Jenny said. “He tells a mean bedtime story. I didn’t think they would let us go.”

“So, what was this dream?” Caleb asked, but I blushed and shook my head, looking at Ralph and Jenny. “Oh, sorry. Maybe later.” He said, looking very awkward.

“Well, again, congratulations,” Father said, raising his glass, “may you bear us many grandchildren, and soon.”

Everyone raised their glasses, but Ralph looked confused. “Are you…” he blushed and stopped.

“Spit it out man, “Caleb said, slapping him across the shoulders. “‘What is it?”

“I mean, you aren’t married yet… are you…” he took a deep breath and, bright red, said, “Are you sleeping together?’

“Ah,” Dad said, looking back and forth between Ralph and Jenny, who was also blushing. “I guess you don’t know our strange views.”

He settled back. “In the beginning,” he intoned, and Jenny and I laughed. This was so Dad. Even Mr. And Mrs. Jones grinned a bit (I mean, the older Mr. And Mrs. Jones). “Jenny’s mother and I used to be something close to what you call ‘hippies’,” he said. “A short phase, near the end of our college careers, and not exactly our personality. But, anyway, we ‘came together’ during that time and I, at least, was loath to end our relationship when we both woke up to reality. And then we started attending church where, quite frankly, we were rather deceptive… calling ourselves ‘Mr. And Mrs.’ Even though, in our own minds and certainly if the church members had known about it, we weren’t married.”

“Two things happened after that, at almost the same time. The first was that I, we really, began to become rather attracted by this ‘Christ’ person and what he had done for us.”

Ralph nodded. He had always attended our church, I mean the church my parents and I went to. I looked at Caleb. I would be going to a new church, now. Anyway, so Ralph was fairly familiar with the gospel and all that sort of thing. We didn’t do ‘testimonies’ in main church but we were familiar with them in Sunday School and camp and all, so he was familiar with this sort of thing.

“Long story short, we got ‘saved’. But, at the same time, I was rather busy studying this whole marriage issue, and I was very unimpressed by what our culture had to say about it. Remember, I came from ‘hippy’ness, throw off societies assumptions, and all of that? So I looked at our assumptions in light of what Scripture had to say and they were all wrong, or at least I couldn’t see how they could be right. In the end I talked to the pastor about it. Poor guy, he was so excited that we had just ‘come forward’ and suddenly he was having to defend his view of a ‘church marriage’. And in the middle of it he found out we weren’t ‘married’ and he said we would have to stop living together. And I said there was no way I was doing that… Roberta was already born by then, and I wouldn’t’ have anyway, so, in the end, we had a rather abrupt departure from his church.”

“So, you aren’t married?!” Ralph asked, looking back and forth from my mom and dad, bright red.

“In God’s eyes they are, young man,” Mr. Jones said, seriously. The only thing necessary for a marriage is the permission of the father of the bride, and they had that.”

Indeed, Grandpa had been rather a hippy himself, in a very old fashioned way, and he had been thrilled with Dad. Less thrilled when they had ‘gotten religion’ but he had ‘gotten religion’ himself a few years later.

“So, yes, Dude, we’re sleeping together,” Caleb said, suddenly, causing me to blush furiously. “And so, any day now, we might make ourselves a grandkid for somebody.”

“Are you, aren’t you using protection?” Ralph asked, blushing again. “Do you want to have a child so soon?” I began to have a bit of respect for this kid. I had never really liked Jenny’s relationship with him but this conversation showed me he had some real guts.

“Protection?!” Caleb said, “Last thing in the world we need is protection!” He hugged me tight and said, “Seriously, Dude, we want children. We’ll never use ‘protection’ as you call it. Children are a wonderful gift from God, to be refused at your own peril.”

“Well, I’m glad we got that settled,” Dad said, “Now, the next question is, when is the party?”

“Party?” Ralph said….

—

“I have to pee,” I said. “I drank about a gallon of sparkling cider.”

The Jones were gone, Ralph had gone, Jenny had walked him out and then gone up to her room, and Mother had gone up to shower, leaving the three of us in the living room.

“Well, maybe it is time to break up our little party,” Caleb said, in what he no doubt hoped was a casual tone. A tone which failed, as Daddy laughed.

“Poor boy!” He said, “How very rude of us. Take your husband upstairs, my darling, before he explodes.” And, laughing, he got up and started putting the glasses and things away.

I looked at Caleb, who was blushing. But I had no time for blushing boys and raced upstairs. I really had to pee.

“Hey, Jenny,” I said, popping into the bathroom and racing over to the toilet. “How’s it going with Ralph?”

“Oh, fine,” she said. “He was totally freaked out by you and Caleb.” A knock came at the door,

“Bobbi?” I looked at Jenny, who shrugged,

“Come on in, Caleb,” I said. He came in, looked at Jenny in her night shirt, and stood, awkwardly, against the sink and tried to watch me while pretending not to watch me. I decided I wanted a shower, and wanted to tease Caleb, so I started to strip off. Jenny, grinning, finished brushing her teeth and went off.

I was in the shower when he pulled the curtain aside on one edge, “About that dream,” he said.

“What?”

“That dream, the one you had, the one that got you to leave me your journal and all.”

I turned toward him, “You want to know about the dream? Hardly what I thought you wanted to talk about on our first night together.” He blushed, and looked so downcast, that I reached out and kissed him, getting his shirt all wet. “I’m sorry love, I fully understand why you would want to know I went nuts this morning.”

“It all started like this…”

—