Different Worlds
Part 2
I started to spend more time in Sam's world. At first, I would head down to where she and other street kids hung out on weekend afternoons. Soon, I started hanging out there after work a few days during the week. I started to get to know some of Sam's friends from the streets. They were an interesting group. There were punks, complete with self-pierced eyebrows and bottles of cheap, foul beer, some ageing hippies, with ratty hair and a perpetual odour of marijuana, and various others who were there because nowhere else did they feel at home. There were also a lot of Bohemian types who joined the street kids in the evenings and on weekends, mostly people who had jobs or were in school, but still knew these kids and hung out with them. I learned more about Sam, too. She worked during the winters at a health food store to pay rent, but she wasn't working now, except for the occasional part-time gig and selling artwork to tourists on the sidewalks. I can't remember how it came up, but she also mentioned about a week after we met that a girl she had been dating for a year or so had left her in April to hitchhike to Nevada and wander around in the desert. It sounded like the loss had hurt her a lot, so I didn't ask questions. I did hear myself telling her that I wasn't really seeing anyone at the time, either. I think I was just trying to console her, but the news did cheer her up.
I noticed myself gradually changing as I spent more time with them, too. One day, as I was grabbing a cotton shirt out of my closet, I noticed a pair of dress pants I used to wear often at the back under a fallen jacket. I didn't miss them. Instead, I wondered how I could have been so silly as to buy a pair of pants so impractical. The weren't very formal, but even so they'd have be torn the first time I sat down on a sidewalk in them to talk to Sam. Impulsively, I gathered up a bag of old dress clothes and shoes, and dropped them in a Salvation Army bin on my way to work. Good riddance.
A beautiful Saturday afternoon a few months after I first talked to Sam, I headed down to see her at the corner where we usually met, but she wasn't there. She had told me she was going to be canvassing for Greenpeace until about one o'clock, and I was a little early, so I sat down with some other girls and said hi to them. There was someone there I had never seen before, an Asian girl with her hair done up in cute braids. Someone else introduced us, and told me that her name was Sheila. "And this is Rachel," she said as she pointed to me, "you know, Sam's new girlfriend."
"Oh, hi!", Sheila said. "Hey", I smiled back, but I was more than a little surprised to hear myself described as Sam's girlfriend. I mean, I had gotten to know Sam pretty well over the past few months. We often met and had lunch together or just sat and talked, and she had even crashed at my house a few times. She often came to see me on my coffee breaks at work. But did that make us girlfriends? Just then, Sam came up, and put her arms around me from behind, her hands lightly but unquestionably on my breasts. "Hey, sweetie," she said softly in my ear. God, I loved it when she did that.
"Hey yourself. Good to see you." Sam gave me a kiss, dropped her bag, and sat down beside me. Maybe that's why these girls thought we were dating, I thought-- but lots of them were very friendly with each other. They'd flirt or just greet each other with a kiss all the time. Weren't Sam and I just being friendly? After all, everyone's affectionate towards their friends. Meanwhile, the object of my affections interrupted this train of thoughts by announcing that her bag of pamphlets was unbelievably heavy, and hence her muscles were very sore, so I stopped my speculation and moved behind her to massaged her shoulders. I loved how strong Sam was. While I rubbed her shoulders and neck, she stretched, and I could feel her muscles moving powerfully beneath the skin. She wasn't a very large woman, but everything she had was in perfect shape. It was obvious to me at times like this that she didn't spend her days behind a desk in a library like I did. Apparently my fingers were strong enough, though, because Sam sighed in contentment and leaned back against my torso as I knelt behind her. I stopped wondering about my relationship with her, and relaxed, happy to see her. A while later, we went for a walk along the river which runs through the city.
We were strolling along the river, hand in hand, when I popped the question.
"Sam, am I your girlfriend?" She gave me one of her amazing smiles.
"Do you want to be my girlfriend, Rachel?"
"I think I'd like that. I've never had a girlfriend before, though."
"Yeah, I guessed that. If you had, you would have noticed that I was trying to pick you up."
"You tried to pick me up?"
"Well, if you're my girlfriend, then someone must have picked one of us up!"
"Does that mean I'm your girlfriend?"
Sam laughed, and put her head on my shoulder. "My darling Rachel, I would love for you to be my girlfriend. Do you want to be my girlfriend?"
"Your friends seem to think I am already."
"But what do you think?"
What did I think? I looked at Sam's face again. We had stopped walking by now, and were standing near the shore of the river, a little ways away from the path, holding hands as we faced each other. Sam was wearing her usual patched jeans and an old green thrift store sweater. She looked right at me, and I could see nothing but love in her eyes. I suddenly realized that I had come to care very deeply for her, and that I wanted to be even closer to her and become a bigger part of her life. I can be such an idiot sometimes. Why does it take me so long to figure out my emotions?
"I want to be your girlfriend, Sam."
"I was hoping you'd say that."
We moved together and shared a kiss. We had kissed many times since that first day in the park, but this one was different. It lasted longer, and it was more passionate. I was just realizing that our relationship had whole levels I hadn't realized existed: Sam was kissing me like a lover. She had probably been doing that for a while, of course, but I knew it now. This time, I responded to her like a lover, too, and in the kiss I felt the promise of something more. All in all, it was a kiss to remember.
Eventually, we broke apart. Our relationship had definitely changed, and although I didn't know where it would lead, I knew I wanted to get Sam alone, somewhere a little less public. "Hey, Sam, do you want to go back to my place?"
"Sure thing, babe", she told me, and squeezed my ass. Fortunately, I lived close by.
At the time, I lived in a small apartment on the top floor of an old house which had been subdivided into separate living units. I had my own entrance around the back of the building, which we walked up. Once inside, I poured us both a cup of orange juice, and Sam kicked her boots into a corner near the door and sat on my couch, feet on my coffee table. I sat down beside her, with my feet tucked under me, and leaned on her shoulder. She put her arm around me, and I snuggled into her. Sam ran her fingers through my hair. "Have I told you that I love your hair?", she asked.
"No, but you play with it a lot." I paused, not sure how to proceed. "Um, Sam? What's going to change, between us, now that I'm your girlfriend?"
In reply, Sam brought her other arm up to my side, and began to lightly stroke my breast. "Well, now that you're my girl, I get to do things like this."
I giggled. "But you already did things like that."
Suddenly very serious, she looked into my eyes. "Not like this." Then she moved forward and began to kiss me.
Her arms were around me, caressing me, fingers stimulating my breasts. It felt so good, and so right. I melted into the embrace, and put my arms around her. Somehow, I felt her pulling me down to sort of lie on the couch underneath her. Suddenly, I was underneath her, and I felt her leg come in between mine. The next thing I knew, Sam had pushed my long skirt up to my knees, and her thigh was between my legs. I felt it push against my crotch as she rubbed it up and down against me. I had never felt this way before. I moaned and pulled Sam more tightly against me. She responded by rubbing against me harder than before. I barely noticed as she pulled off the sweater I was wearing, and fumbled with the buttons on my blouse. I must have helped her slip them off my arms, but I was only focusing on what her thigh was doing between mine, and what her hands were still doing with my breasts. I do remember that it was me who hurriedly sat up just long enough to undo my bra and toss it aside. Sam immediately began to play with my nipples, and kissed her way down my neck to suck on one. The entire time, she kept up a persistent pressure on my crotch, until finally my back arched with pleasure and I cried out as an orgasm rushed through me.
Sam had obviously done this many times before. She gradually stopped grinding into me, and lay down beside me with her arms around me, stroking my head and torso as she kissed me fully and deeply. "Oh, my god," I told her as I lay in a heap on the couch, "that was amazing."
"You're amazing", she said, and kissed me again.
Sam ended up staying the night. We fell asleep holding each other tightly on my futon. I woke up before Sam in the morning, and lay in bed quietly for almost half an hour reflecting on the past days events and watching her sleep-- her lips slightly parted, her chest gently rising and falling. Finally, I could stand it no longer, and leaned over and kissed her.
What were you supposed to say to someone the morning after you first made love? There hadn't been many of those in my life. To avoid the issue, I got up and prepared breakfast. A few minutes later, Sam joined me, and we shared coffee and bagels in my sunlit kitchen. She treated this like every other breakfast we'd had together, and I soon felt at ease. Sam had to be somewhere later that morning, so prepared herself to go. As she was lacing up her boots, she turned to me and said, "We should do this again, Rachel". I told her that I'd love to, and she gave me one last, wonderful kiss before heading out the door.