I finally broke the hug and started to clean up the kitchen. Karen gave me more details about Bob and their breakup. It all amounted to her feeling stupid for believing his bullshit stories. I was surprised by some of the details, like the fact that she was a virgin on her wedding night and that they had only had sex 5 or 6 times in their brief marriage.
I assured her that buying Bob's line of crap was not her failure. She was in love and had always been such a trusting soul. I often worried about her falling for some asshole but was apparently powerless to recognize one for myself when it came down to it.
I finished putting things away and loaded the dishwasher as Karen wiped everything down. I said, "I'll get some things and sleep on the couch tonight. Tomorrow I'll get the upstairs cleaned up so you can make yourself at home for a while. I doubt you'll be back in Wilmington for over a week the way things are looking."
She looked at me with those pretty eyes and said, "Please stay with me at least for tonight, Billy. I'm not sure I can spend the night alone after what I've been through today."
I thought to myself, "...or the terrible past few months you've had."
"I'll do whatever you need me to do," I said honestly. "You're safe and dry now. We will both be forced to have a few days of downtime courtesy of Hurricane Florence"
"Downtime is something I haven't experienced since the summer before college," she said. "I'm not sure I'll know what to do."
We walked to the bedroom. I opened the closet to get a couple of extra pillows out and put fresh pillow cases on them. I went to the bathroom and got a new toothbrush out of the cabinet. I kept a few of them just in case.
Karen entered the bathroom and I showed her the toothbrush and where all of the hygiene items were stored then I started to brush my teeth as is my nightly routine. To my surprise she went over to the toilet and pulled down the pajama pants and boxers I had given her and sat down to pee as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
I guess my mouth had fallen open again and she laughed when she saw it. She said, "What's the matter, Billy?" in a sing-song voice. "You've seen a woman pee before, haven't you?"
This was completely true and it brought back a flood of memories. Our parents weren't hippies but nudity was pretty common around our house. In fairness, it was usually only partial nudity involving boxers for men and panties for women. Tops were always optional, especially in the summer months on the family homestead which had no air conditioning. Karen and I were quite close despite the age difference and only our own modesty at puberty caused a little more cover-up.
We touched frequently in our house and evening back rubs were not uncommon when we were in our adolescent years. Karen and I continued that until I went off to college and we lost the ability to spend much time together. The few times we saw one another we were very affectionate with respect to holding hands and kissing lightly on the lips. She seemed to look up to me and enjoy having me around.
The summer Karen turned 18 our parents took an extended trip to Canada to visit distant relatives and they left Karen home since she wanted to spend her last summer with her high school friends. That summer was as hot as any I remember and we were forced to revert to our old habits to cool off while our parents were away. My room was upstairs in the rear of our house and it got almost total shade due to the large, mature trees in the yard. My room had windows on opposite walls making it the only tolerable room in the house when the weather was like this. A gentle cross breeze was common in the summertime.
That summer Karen and I spent countless hours lying on my bed enjoying the breeze and getting to know one another more completely as (almost) adults. The sweltering heat meant that I was usually dressed only in boxers and Karen would only be wearing a thin tank top and panties. There was no other way to stay cool.
We would watch baseball games on TV while we would rub one another's backs and feet as many siblings do. Sometimes talk would turn to more personal things like sex and dating. Karen had been on a few dates but had not had sex yet. As for me, I'd only had sex with one girl at college and she turned out to be flaky so we parted ways soon afterwards. I learned little from it.