Walking down the street on Christmas Eve, people stopped me every fifteen feet, cooing and giggling and turning a walk that should have taken ten minutes into a half-hour odyssey to the park and back. "You're too darned cute, that's the problem," I said to my walking partner, who was dressed in his tiny little Santa jacket. Buster, his short cutesy dachshund legs with the little cutesy dachshund paws pattering on the cold sidewalk, barked in response.
A trio of young women were walking down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, and I prepared. As soon as they caught sight of Buster, they pounced on the poor puppy, subjecting him to horrifying scratches behind the ear and tummy rubs. "He's adorable!" one of them said as they continued on their way, having tortured my poor dog enough for one day.
"Thanks," I said. "Merry Christmas." Buster yapped season's greetings as well. "Come on, you little troublemaker, let's see if we can get home without being attacked again."
Sadly, we couldn't. Two more small packs of people cornered us before we could make it to the front door of the apartment building. It didn't help that Buster absolutely loved people, and strained against his leash to go say hello to everybody who walked by. There is nothing in the world that can make people devolve into belly-scratching, pet-name-calling monsters like a dachshund wearing a Santa jacket.
"I'm home," I called out as we walked through the front door into the apartment I shared with my girlfriend, Danielle. The whole place had been decked to the best of our amateur ability with Christmas decorations. A (plastic) tree next to the TV in the living room, a few bunches of mistletoe hung up at seemingly random positions, a wreath on the door, all that good stuff. I bent over to unhook Buster's leash from his collar and get him out of his jacket when I noticed something.
A pair of winter boots that I didn't recognize, still with chunks of salt from the sidewalk sticking to the soles. They looked a size too small for Danielle, so they probably weren't hers. "Dani, do we have company over?" I asked, guiding Buster's little paws out of the sleeves of his jacket.
"Yeah!" was my girlfriend's response. "In the living room!"
As soon as the jacket and the leash were off, Buster tore down the hall, yapping up a storm as his acute nose told him that there was a new person in the apartment who hadn't yet scratched his ears or belly. I heard a woman's cry of adoration, and then quiet giggling as Buster presumably threw himself on his back in front of her. I removed my own winter gear, wondering who was visiting. One of Danielle's co-workers? An old friend? Probably not family; the annual Christmas Eve party hosted by Danielle's aunt and uncle had been cancelled due to a sudden outbreak of the flu among the hosts, so it had been a quiet evening for us.
As I rounded the corner into the living room, I had the premonition that it wasn't going to be a very quiet evening for long. Sitting on the couch was my girlfriend, the smooth skinned, dark-haired Danielle, wearing an ugly green Christmas sweater (I don't want to taint my fingers by describing it accurately; just let it remain in your mind as a nebulous force of ugliness) and flannel pajama bottoms, and... Danielle, wearing a Santa dress that showed off a
lot
of cleavage that shook while she scratched Buster, who was technically not allowed on the couch but was too cute to be angry at. I only had the mirror vision for the briefest instant before the differences became obvious and I recognized who was scratching the dog.
"Nellie?" I almost shouted, staring in shock at the young woman who looked almost like a younger version of Danielle.
A smile lit up her pretty face, making the button nose (a trait shared with Danielle) crinkle cutely. "Derek! Hi!" she said, waving. Buster whined, unhappy that she wasn't using both hands to scratch his tummy. "Oh, okay, don't give me that." She returned her hand to Buster's exposed stomach.
Nellie was Danielle's shapely cousin, ten years her junior and a freshman at an out-of-state college this year. They looked so tremendously similar β which I believed was due to the fact that their mothers were identical twins β that they had frequently been mistaken for sisters, and they even acted like they were. They were incredibly close, despite their gap in age. So close, in fact, that when Nellie had asked to borrow me back in August so she could gain some sexual experience before going to college, Danielle had said "sure" instead of "what the fuck is wrong with you".
"I didn't know you were coming over," I said, taking a seat on the couch between her and Danielle. "Aren't your parents sick?"
"Yeah. Don't worry, I'm perfectly healthy. Since they're bedridden, they said I could come over to spend Christmas Eve with you two," Nellie said. She'd changed a lot since I'd last seen her four months ago, but not physically. I'd always known her as a nervous, kind of quiet kid, never looking me in the eye and falling over her words whenever she talked to me.
I had learned that this was because she'd had something of a crush on me for the three years I had been dating Danielle, but she had probably gotten over that after what we'd done together. Or if she wasn't over it, at least she was confident enough to be able to talk to me without stammering or second-guessing her own words. And confident enough to wear a cleavage-baring Santa dress that only reached halfway to her knees. The last time I'd seen her showing that much skin, she was naked.
'
Down, boy
,' I thought at my stirring genitalia. '
That was a one-time thing. Right?
'
"So, how's college been treating you?" I asked, hoping that the topic of the incredible sex we had wouldn't come up too quickly. We had all been okay with it, but if there was going to be any awkwardness, I didn't want it to flare up too quickly.
"Oh, it's been great so far. I love my classes, my roommate is great, and I've been getting a lot of nice attention," Nellie said, her tone making it clear what sort of attention she was talking about. That didn't take her long. "Although you kinda spoiled me."
"How?"
Danielle nudged me in the ribs. "You were
too
good, and now she's comparing all of her partners to you," she said, giving me a lopsided smile. My fears about awkwardness vanished at how casually she was talking about me boning her cousin. As a matter of fact, Danielle was sitting almost directly on the spot where Nellie's head had been when I gave her the first orgasm of the night. There were still holes in the cushions from her iron grip.