I had my headphones on and my eyes closed when I felt the first warm splash on my cheek. My uncle Jayme, back from his latest adventure, squirting me in the face with a water gun that did not contain water, judging from the yeasty smell it left on my shirt.
"Jayme!" I shrieked, "Is that warm beer? You're so disgusting!" I swatted at him, but he leaped out of my reach, laughing, as he headed in to torment my mother. He must have pulled the same trick on her, because within seconds I heard her similar shriek and his somewhat muffled laughter.
I smiled to myself because I knew the summer would be far more fun with him around. Jayme was my mother's youngest sibling, the "oops," as he was so often called, and he lived up to the name. Little Jayme did was responsible, productive - or hell, even legal -- but he had a great time and enjoyed life to the fullest. He made his living playing in bars for a hundred here or there, crashed with roommates and spent summers and holidays with us. At twenty-four, he was18 years my mother's junior and far more like an older cousin than an uncle, and my twin brother and I loved when he came to visit. Although it usually ended with my father not speaking to my mother for a few days, I could count on Jayme to provide excitement and give Derek and me a taste of his carefree, exotic life.
Not only that, but I'd always had a huge crush on Jayme. Around the time I was twelve, my interest in him became more physical. I couldn't keep my eyes off him. Every time he touched me or even turned his blue eyes in my direction, my heart raced and my stomach did flip-flops. Of course, he'd always considered me just a kid, but I hoped that this summer -- my eighteenth summer - he would see me as an equal.
This time, Jayme had just returned from a sailing trip, the details of which were sketchy at best. The sun had had bronzed his skin and bleached his hair and beard. His wiry body seemed more muscular than ever, and his legendary appetite was even more ferocious than usual. He ate three plates before he even spoke, which had my mother worried but my father delighted. He hated Jayme's sense of humor, which he thought was inappropriate; his lack of concern for dinner table etiquette, which Jayme loved to play up in my father's presence; and his hippie looks. Jayme didn't shave or brush his hair, and he paid little attention to clothing; though always clean he looked, according to my father, "like a homeless drug addict." But Derek and I couldn't get enough of Jayme's wild looks and bohemian attitude. Which was exactly what my father was most afraid of.
That night we lobbied for a slasher film double-feature that sent my father immediately upstairs with a glass of bourbon. My mom hung in there for awhile, happy to see her youngest and favorite sibling. Finally, when the yawning overtook her, she excused herself, squeezing Jayme and murmuring sleepily at us not to make too much noise as she headed up the stairs. Derek and I both rolled our eyes. We'd turned 18 in May, and I couldn't wait for us to go to college and not be treated like children.
Jayme knew this. The second my mom went upstairs, he turned to us and whispered, "I know of a party. Are you two in?" Derek, always the worrier, glanced guiltily back at the stairs, but I didn't have to be asked twice. While Derek stammered his excuses, I raced to my room and shed my lounge pants for cutoffs and a halter top. I fluffed my hair and spritzed myself with some body spray and evaluated myself in the mirror: long, tan legs; flat stomach peeking out between the cutoffs and top; full, pert breasts; big brown eyes; long, silky hair. I didn't look like a kid anymore, either. Would he notice?
"There's my little party girl!" Jayme teased, when I returned to the living room. "Damn, Skinny, you're growing up nicely," he said, eyeing me appreciatively. I thought he looked at me longer than he had earlier, but maybe I was just imagining it. He clearly still saw me as a kid. He still used that horrible nickname from my childhood, so it was obvious that I was mistaken. So off we went, leaving Derek to the comfort of the living room.
"Not much of a party animal, is he?" he mused, as we slipped out the back door.
"Nope," I agreed. "I think he'd love to stay home all the time and just play video games. I swear that's all he does in that dark room of his."
Jayme hooted. "I guarantee that's not all he does," he said with a grin, wiggling his eyebrows lasciviously at me.
"Oh, God, that's so disgusting! I really don't want to picture my brother jerking off, thank you very much!"
"Yep, that image is in there now. Good luck with that." He grinned again and pulled me behind him by the wrist, leading me through the back gate and onto the gravel alley that connected the back yards of the three other houses on our part of the lake. "So where are we going, anyway?" I asked.
"You'll see," he said, cupping his hands to light a cigarette. After a drag he offered it wordlessly to me, and not wanting to seem like a kid, I took a puff. "Look at you, bad girl. You're just all grown up this summer, aren't you?" And this time I didn't mistake the appraising glance he gave me, because he held my gaze when my eyes met his. I knew that look.
Suddenly I had butterflies.
"Yeah, so..." he cleared his throat. "You know where you're going. And you know everyone there."
"I do?" I asked. And then I realized where he was leading me. Josh Hickman's house, the last house between the lake and the river. Josh was older than me but younger than Jayme, in his early twenties though it was hard to tell, because he neither worked nor attended school. A trust fund baby, he spent most of his time driving his Mustang around with random blondes and partying with his mother, who was an infamous hostess of underage parties and a rumored cougar.
"Seriously? Josh Hickman's house?" I complained. Not that it was a true complaint. Secretly, I thought Josh was sexy -- his loose-limbed, perpetually-stoned dark beauty the stuff of many a private fantasy for the girls in the classes behind him. Many times I had pictured Josh when I touched myself, and the memory of that made me blush now. I was so grateful for the cover of darkness.
"Seriously. And I am seriously gonna make Mrs. Hickman beg for it tonight," he bragged, scratching his chest and grinning at me.
"Yeah," I scoffed, "Because that's hard to do."
