Tag: The Treehouse (Page 3 of 3)

The Treehouse – Chapter 3
By
Caliboy1991

Bryan
I washed the cereal bowl before setting it on the drying rack. Mom and Granny were still asleep. Mom had been working the lunch and supper-until closing shift. She usually slept until she had to get to work. Granny wasn’t much better. She gets up just early enough to catch the first of her soaps. As long as I didn’t make a mess, they didn’t give a damn what I ate for breakfast, so long as I didn’t disturb them.

I closed the door and started across our overgrown front lawn. It was early, not even eight in the morning, and I hoped Erin would be at the treehouse. We hadn’t managed to connect over the weekend, but this was the first official day of summer and I hoped we could hang out. Despite how early it was, the sun kissed the earth with a promise of another hot day. I wasn’t too worried about that; I was ready. I wore a red and white striped tank top and an old pair of jeans, which I had cut the legs off a few inches below the inseam. Short shorts were all the rage that summer. They were tight, being leftovers from last year, but they still fit. My Keds were dried out, and I was back in them, sporting a pair of knee-high white socks. They were perfect for traipsing through tall grass.

Even though it took less than ten minutes to walk to the treehouse, my face was red and sweaty and my long hair was plastered to my forehead. The place was quiet and looked deserted. My chest was tight, and I worried Erin wouldn’t be there. Still, I had walked the whole way. I wasn’t about to turn around and leave without at least calling for her, “Erin!”

A moment later, one of the shutters on the treehouse opened and Erin poked her head out, “Hey Bryan! You made it. Come on up.”
By the time I reached the platform, my hands were sweaty. I still didn’t care for the narrow walkway around the treehouse. It was a long fall, and I had no interest in breaking any bones. I opened the door and went in.

Erin sat at the table with a box of Pop-Tarts. She wore the same thing she wore the previous Friday. Just her underwear. One of the sleeping bags was unrolled and had a slept in look to it. It was hard not to stare at her, now that I knew those puffy little nipples belonged to a girl, but I tried, “You slept out here?”

She nodded, handing me a foil-wrapped package of Pop-Tarts. “Yeah. If you’re hungry, these are good. I liked sleeping out here. The treehouse gets a pleasant breeze at night. You should come over tonight, we could play board games and hang out all night. It’d be cool to the max.”

“Wouldn’t your mom care?”

Erin shrugged, “She’s too stoned on her booze to care. She knows where to find me.”

Try as I might, I couldn’t keep my eyes from returning to the puffy buds on her chest. Still, I tried to look elsewhere, “What do you wanna do today?”

She swallowed a bite of a Pop-Tart, “What about going canoeing?”

I had never been canoeing. “C-, canoeing? How?”

Erin stood up. It almost felt like she was enjoying giving me another opportunity to stare at her panties, and pointed toward the house in the distance. “My dad’s old canoe is up by our house. You and I can haul it over to the river. It’s only a couple of hundred yards away. Then we can paddle it down to the reservoir.”

I tore my eyes away from Erin’s body. Six hundred feet? That was a long way to haul a canoe. Still, if that’s what the girl wanted to do, I could no more deny her than I could stop breathing. “Okay.”

Erin flashed me a smile as she stood and grabbed a pair of shorts that looked like they had been made the same way mine had. There wasn’t a lot of leg on my shorts. There was even less on hers. Her tank top was a solid baby blue and once she had it on, the slight rise on her chest was almost impossible to see. Once she pulled on her own Keds, she said, “We can make some sandwiches at my house, then we’ll get the canoe.”

It only took a few minutes to walk to Erin’s house. The canoe lay against the side of the house. The green painted hull was made from aluminum. She walked past it and headed toward the house’s back door. Her mom kept the house cool. Almost cold. Compared to my Granny’s place, it was downright arctic. The sweat cooled from my face almost instantly when we stepped inside.

Even though we were between the kitchen and the dining room, the house felt large. At least a lot bigger than the single-wide I lived in. Even the dining room table could easily seat six. A bar with green linoleum separated the kitchen from the dining area, and Erin hurried around it and grabbed a loaf of bread.

“Peanut butter and jelly okay?” she asked.

I nodded. PB and J wasn’t my favorite, but it beat having to go home and beg some food from Grandma. As Erin made the sandwiches, a noise from elsewhere in the house drew my attention. A moment later, a woman with disheveled hair the same blonde as Erin’s came into the kitchen. Her eyes were red and her feet shuffled more than walked.

“I thought I heard a noise. How’s my pumpkin?”

Erin’s eyes pierced into the woman, “Mom. Really?”

Her mother shuffled over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Lone Star beer, as she twisted off the top, her eyes fell on me, “Oh, who’s your little friend, Pumpkin?”

Erin shook her head, much to my amusement. Her mother wasn’t what I expected. Except for the booze. The girl huffed, “This is Bryan. He’s my friend. We’re going to take dad’s canoe onto the river.”

The woman took a long pull on the bottle. She smacked her lips, “Fine. Don’t break your daddy’s shit if you use it. Don’t forget to put some sun screen on. You don’t wanna burn… Pumpkin.”

She turned and shuffled back into the living room, leaving my friend furious, “I hate that fucking name,” she muttered.

I shook my head, “Are you sure our moms aren’t related?”

She gave me a look that silenced me while she finished making the sandwiches. She disappeared down a hallway and returned with a small red and white Igloo cooler and a brown plastic bottle of Coppertone.

She grabbed an empty two-liter glass bottle with a Coca-Cola logo on the side and filled it with tap water and added it to the cooler too. Still upset, she grumbled, “That should do. Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Back at the canoe, Erin put Igloo in the boat’s bottom, and grabbed the front, “Come on, Bryan. Now you see why I like hanging out in my treehouse.”

That canoe was a heavy son-of-a-bitch. I was seventy-five pounds soaking wet. My muscles were more of a promise at that point and helping Erin carry it to the river was the most physical activity I’d ever taken on in my eleven years.

Struggling under the weight, somehow, I kept my end of the canoe off the ground until I couldn’t hold it anymore. When I set it down, I could see the river. We were less than a hundred yards away. “How many times did you and your dad do this?”

Erin wiped her brow, “Dunno. We only got to go out a few times last summer. He was getting sick by then. I don’t remember it being this heavy.”

The last thing I wanted to do was second guess my only friend, I said, “I’m rested, I think. Let’s try again.”

With every step, the canoe felt heavier, but the sight of the brown water of the Angelina River gave me just enough motivation to make the last few dozen steps. Erin set her end into the water, as I barely avoided dropping my end.

I stretched and rubbed my muscles, “You know we’re gonna have to haul this back to your house too.”

I laughed when Erin sent me a sour smile and flipped me off. But she laughed when she raised her middle finger. Once we had the canoe resting most of the way in the water, she pulled the Coppertone bottle from the Igloo, “We’ll get a lot of sun today. We should put this on or we’ll bake like lobsters.”

We rubbed the sweet-smelling sunblock on our arms and legs. Then she said, “Turn around. I’ll get shoulders above your tank top.”

I complied, and I felt the cold lotion drop on the top of my shoulders before Erin’s fingers rubbed it into my exposed skin. She even spun me around and rubbed the lotion onto the exposed part of my neck and collar.

She handed me the bottle, “Can you get my back too?”

She turned and offered me her back. I had to reach up higher on her back than mine. My fingers tingled as I rubbed lotion into her shoulders. Even though there wasn’t anything sensual about putting sunscreen on each other, the butterflies in my stomach fluttered and flapped. By the time I finished rubbing sunscreen onto Erin’s collar and shoulders, my penis was painfully erect. I’d never been happier for tight fitting shorts.

Once she returned to lotion to the Igloo, I came around and looked inside the canoe. There were four bars evenly spaced, but no seats. “Um, Erin, where are we supposed to sit?”

The girl came over and grabbed a paddle, “Don’t sit on the thwarts,” she pointed at the bars. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Erin climbed in the canoe and knelt at the back while facing forward, on her knees, resting them on an orange life jacket. “We sit like this. When we get tired, we can use the life jacket as a seat.”

She climbed from the canoe and I helped her push it in the rest of the way into the water until only a foot or two of the canoe rested on the riverbank. She pointed toward the front, “You’ll sit up there and paddle. I’ll be in the back, paddling and steering.”

I had seen Disney movies of people canoeing and they all looked like they were having a great time. “Why can’t I steer? It looks like fun.”

Erin grinned at me and thrust a paddle into my hands. She stepped even closer until her shoes touched mine, “I’m the stronger canoer, so I’ll steer the canoe. Do you even know how to steer this thing?”

The fact that she was several inches taller and probably a lot stronger than me kept me from saying something I would have regretted. Instead, I shook my head.

“Boys,” Erin’s voice was full of exasperation and scorn. “Once you have the hang of it, maybe we’ll trade places.”

Bowing to her experience, I knelt in the front of the canoe as Erin pushed off from the river bank, nimbly stepping over the rearmost thwart and sitting down without getting wet. The watercraft rocked gently from side to side as she dipped her paddle into the river and sent us downstream.

After twenty minutes of instructions as we let the languid current do most of the work taking us down the river, I figured out how to paddle without pissing Erin off too much. Turns out, it’s easier for the person in the canoe’s front to splash water onto the person in the rear. After floating under the bridge I’d tried to jump from, the current lessened as the river widened and fed into Lake Rayburn. We had to paddle in earnest to send our canoe gliding across the water. I could see the shoreline on either side of us. But straight ahead, the lake seemed to go on forever.

“How far are we going?”

Erin rested her paddle on the canoe’s gunwales. “Let’s find some shade along the shoreline. I’m getting hungry.”

By the time we paddled under an overhanging tree, I was winded too, “Going back’s going to suck.”

Erin snickered, “Yeah. And once we’re back in the river, it’ll all be upstream.”

I shook my head. I was hard-pressed to understand why I let her talk me into this. Then, as Erin jumped from the boat into the shallow water up to her shins, she tied the canoe to a tree, “Come on, Bryan. We’ll eat lunch on dry land.”

When we sat on a grassy spot under the tree, Erin’s knee brushed against mine as she rummaged around in the Igloo and pulled out a couple of sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. When she gave me one, I remembered why I let her talk me into this. She had saved me and wanted to be my friend. I realized as I accepted the sandwich, I would follow her anywhere.

Erin
It had been months since I had been out on the river, let alone the lake. My muscles were sore, and I was just as glad as Bryan to stop along the shoreline for lunch. After we ate, I stared across the lake, “Dad used to bring me out here. Before he got sick. He’d always pack a picnic lunch, and we’d sit under a tree just like this one and eat. Sometimes we’d spend the entire day picnicking, canoeing, and swimming. It was so much fun.”

I missed my dad so much at that moment. Bryan surprised me when he reached over and rested his hand on my knee. There was genuine affection in his voice, “Your dad sounds like he was super cool.”

My stomach was all aflutter. The well of emotion that swept over me almost caused me to lean over and kiss him. I barely restrained myself. It was lame, but all I could come up with was, “Thanks, Bryan. I miss him so much but I’m glad you’re my friend.”

The words weren’t enough. In that moment, I realized whatever I had felt for Wendy, I felt something stronger for this beautiful eleven-year-old boy. All I could come up with was a lame thanks. He deserved better. Unable to contain my emotions, I leaned over and hugged him. I could feel our chests against each other and wondered if he could feel my tiny buds through our shirts. I sure could. They tingled something fierce as I hugged him.

The way he responded, returning my hug, made my heart soar even while the fluttering in my stomach was nearly too much. How he didn’t feel the pounding of my heart was a mystery. Finally, we ended our hug. It had only lasted a moment, but the smile on Bryan’s face was enough to suspect he felt similarly.

We both muttered, “thanks,” and “that was nice.” Not wanting to dwell on my emotions anymore, I reclined on the grass and said, “I’m going to take a little nap. You should too. It’ll make us feel more rested when we head back.”

He lay down beside me and before long, we were both asleep.

I awoke to a hand on my arm, shaking me, “Erin, Erin. Wake up. The weather!”

My eyes fluttered open at the same time I became aware of a chill on my skin. Wide-eyed, Bryan pointed to the sky. Dark storm clouds blocked the sun. My brain tried to wake up, “Shit! Where’d the sun go?

Bryan was already on his feet and offering his hand, “Don’t know. I woke up because I was getting cold.”

A glance at my watch and I swore again, “Shit, it’s almost four. We slept the whole fucking afternoon.”

I felt a burst of adrenaline shoot through me. I didn’t want to be on the lake when the skies open up. When we threw the Igloo into the canoe, the sleep really had helped. I felt refreshed and ready to get to paddling. We hadn’t gone far before the first splatters of rain hit. We redoubled our effort, pulling toward the mouth of the Angelina River in the distance.

The drops were falling all around us by the time we reached the mouth of the river. And that’s when the storm hit. The wind hit just before sheets of rain lashed at us, drenching us to the bone. Bryan was flagging by the time we were inching our way up the river. I had to shout to keep the wind from ripping my words away, “We’re not far, Bryan. The sooner we get back, the sooner we can get out of our wet clothes and get dry.”

If there was anything positive, it was the wind blew from the southwest, pushing against our backs as we paddled upstream. By the time I steered toward the riverbank, a couple of inches of water filled the bottom of the canoe. When the bow dug into the shore, Bryan lept into the water and, with my help, dragged the canoe fully onto the shore, where I tied it to a nearby tree.

I was cold and miserable. But also thankful we made it home safe. I had feared what might become of us had a lightning strike hit close to our aluminum canoe. I felt relief as I shouted, “Come on! Let’s go to the treehouse. We can ride out the storm there.”

I grabbed Bryan’s hand as we dashed toward the treehouse. We beached the canoe a couple of hundred yards behind my house. The treehouse was several hundred yards further into the dense thicket of trees. We only made it halfway before my legs ached and I slowed to a walk, not letting go of Bryan’s hand. We weren’t going to get any less wet by wasting any more energy. With the wind whipping our hair and clothes, and driving rain pelting us, we walked the rest of the way to the treehouse.

As soaked as we were, I didn’t want us bringing our wet clothes inside. We’d only get everything inside wet. So, I pulled at my tank top, and throwing it at the base of the tree. The look on Bryan’s face was one of pure confusion.

My cold fingers fought the button above my pants zipper as I said, “Take your clothes off. I don’t want us dripping water all over the place.”

I wrestled the button loose at my waist and showed him what I meant by pulling my shorts off. Even though I’d seen him in his underwear the previous Friday, I wasn’t sure how compliant Bryan would be. I glanced his way; his shirt was off and he was tugging his shorts down.

When he tossed his shorts on top of mine, his hands reflexively went to cover his crotch. He was gorgeous, soaked to the skin, in just his underwear. “This good?”

Even though I had only known him for a couple of days, I felt more comfortable with him than anyone other than my dad. And that included Wendy. That’s why I decided to test our boundary. I shook my head and hooked my thumbs into the waist of my panties and pulled them off too. The look of shock on Bryan’s face was worth it. But I hadn’t done it to shock him. I really hated getting water on the floor or the mattress.

His eyes fixed on my puffy slit between my legs. Wendy had never teased me about how badly I lagged the other girls in my grade. She was sweet like that, even though she had a nice patch of dark pubic curls and I was as bare as a little kid. I prayed I wasn’t making a mistake with Bryan.

Another blast of wind blew against us, and I decided not to push the issue and turned and climbed the ladder. When I reached the top, I looked below. Bryan stood at the bottom of the ladder and tossed his underwear onto the pile of our clothes before following me.

He was halfway up the ladder when I turned and hurried into the treehouse. On the far side of the mattress, I had left a bath towel from an earlier sleepover and I grabbed it and finished toweling myself dry when Bryan’s silhouette was in the doorway. The room was dark and even though it was clear he was naked, I couldn’t see anything but his form. But I didn’t need to see his features to know he had to be miserable. I finished with the towel, so I held it out, “Come on in, Bry, and dry off.”

His hands were covering his groin when he came over. There was a long moment of awkward hesitancy before he finally reached out and took the towel. I couldn’t help myself. I chuckled, “Dude, it’s too dark to see anything. Get dry; you’ll feel better.”

What would make me feel better was getting into one of the sleeping bags. The storm had brought a chill and even though I wasn’t dripping water anymore, my skin was chilled. While Bryan dried off, I climbed into one of the sleeping bags. His teeth were chattering by the time he dropped the towel and unrolled the other sleeping bag.

I still felt some chill, so once he was in the bag I said, “Come here. We’ll warm up faster if we cuddle together.”

Copyright 2021 – Caliboy1991
All rights reserved

The Treehouse – Chapter 1
By
Caliboy1991

Erin
When I didn’t move, Bryan got the message and climbed to his feet, ignoring my outstretched hand.

There was a moment when I considered dragging his ass back into the Angelina River and finishing what he’d started, but something inside told me he needed a friend even worse than me. I returned to the road and soon was walking alongside it as it led us toward my house.

We were about half a mile away from it when Bryan stopped and pointed to the right where an old dilapidated single-wide sat. He pointed, “That’s my granny’s place. Me and my mom live there now.”

I winced. That place was a shithole. I grabbed at Bryan’s arm and pulled him along, “That’s cool. That means we’re neighbors. Come on.”

Pine trees lined the drainage ditch on either side of the road. And when we were a few hundred yards shy of the drive leading to where I lived with my mom, I stopped in the middle of the road. The forlorn expression on the boy’s face made me second guess myself for a moment. Could I trust him?

There were no other kids within a couple of miles and with Cheryl shit-talking me to the other girls, I couldn’t afford to be too picky unless I wanted my summer to suck worse than it already did. I turned on Bryan, and after chewing on my lip, said, “Okay, pretty boy. Here’s the deal. I’m going to show you my treehouse. But if you breathe a word of it to anyone else, I’ll take you back to the river and finish the job. Got it?”

Bryan’s eyes were huge, saucer-round when he nodded, “O-, okay.”

With what I hoped was a new friend, I jumped across the culvert and cut through the tree line. Beyond the road was a big thicket of pine trees. The tree tops mostly kept the sun from hitting the ground, and patches of grass were mixed in with plants and decaying pine needles. I knew this area like the back of my hand and moved confidently through the trees, despite the lack of a trail. The further into the forest we went, the towering pine trees intermixed with stately live oak trees.

The boy stumbled as he followed me, and I found myself smiling. It wasn’t his fault, but he reeked of city living. Despite him slowing us down, it only took a few minutes to reach the treehouse. I stopped and pointed, “There it is.”

Bryan’s eyes peered into branches and leaves of the huge live oak that held my private sanctuary. You really had to search to find the wooden walls, so I took some mercy on him and showed him the ladder built into the trunk of the tree, “Come on, Bryan. Follow me up.”

I scampered up the wooden rungs until I reached the wide ledge that ran around three of the four walls of the treehouse. I was most of the way up when I heard his voice waft, “You’re dripping on me.”

Once I stood on the platform, I waved, “Come on up.”

Bryan stood there for a moment. I worried I might have scared him away. My dad used to tell m my personality can be a touch aggressive. Eventually, the boy followed me up the ladder. After he reached the top, he edged over to the plywood walls, as far away from the ledge as possible.

I tried to put him at ease as I pointed out the sturdy construction, “Me and my dad built this. He was a contractor and built houses for a living.”

Then I pointed toward the road, “Your place is back that way.”

Through the trees, I could barely make out my house, “Over there is my house.”

Opposite the direction we came, there was a gap in the trees and I could see the sunlight reflect off water, “Over there’s the Angelina River. It’s not that far from where you jumped. It flows into Lake Rayburn. We have a canoe. My dad used to take me canoeing.”

I enjoyed the look of wonder on Bryan’s face. “Come on, it’s even better inside.”

Opening the door, I waved him into the treehouse. There were windows on three sides, and enough light poured through the shutters for us to see. The mattress I slept on whenever I spent the night was in the middle of the floor. I kept a couple of sleeping bags rolled up atop the mattress. Against the side with the door, was an old dining table me and my dad found one day while remodeling a home. It had seen better days; its Formica top curled along the corners. There was even an old Vietnam-era steel ammo container on the far wall.

Bryan spun around, “Holy shit, Erin, this is cool. Your dad did an amazing job.”

It shouldn’t have. But the comment pricked my pride, “I helped him and did almost as much would as he did. We finished a bit more than a year ago.”

Barely containing a huff, I pointed to a ladder that led to the roof, “Come on, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

I led Bryan up the ladder and pushed open a trap door. The roof was flat with barely any slope. Once he joined me, I spread my hands wide, taking in the almost perfect view from so high up, “This is my kingdom; where I come to get away.”

Bryan’s eyes were wide as he glanced over the side of the roof, “There aren’t any hand-rails. How do you keep from falling off?”

I smirked as I sat on the warm water-proofed linoleum that covered the heavy two-by-fours and plywood that made up my tree house’s roof. “By not falling off. Don’t be such a pussy, Bryan.”

He blushed. I don’t know if it was for being scared or from my language. But I really didn’t care. I loved the warmth beating down on us. Water still drenched us from our earlier dip in the river and my clothes were uncomfortably soggy. Even though I wanted to be friends with him, I wasn’t sure how he would respond if I stripped off my wet clothes. I wouldn’t have batted an eye if it had been me and Wendy. Of course, Wendy and I had seen each other naked several times, so we were already familiar with each other’s bodies.

But Bryan? I didn’t know the boy or how he would respond. Before, when my dad was still alive, I hadn’t had to worry about that. He didn’t care if I ran around in my panties or even naked. I was his little tomboy and clothing was optional when I hung out with him. There was only one way to find out how Bryan would react.

I unbuttoned the top button of my shirt, “What time you gotta be home?”

Bryan tore his eyes away from my hands as I unbuttoned the second button and looked at his watch, “Shit. Stupid watch. Um, I dunno. Mom doesn’t much care. As long as I’m home by dark, my granny won’t care either.”

I nodded as I undid the third button, “I’m soaked, man. I’m going to lay my clothes out to dry. You should too.”

I felt the boy’s eyes on me as finished unbuttoning my shirt. Before things went to shit, Mom would have killed me if she knew I was taking my shirt off in front of a boy. Would probably drag my ass to the store and buy me some undershirts, maybe even a training bra. But my tits were tiny, scarcely bigger than a boy’s. And my shirt was made of a thick cotton weave, making an undershirt unnecessary. I pushed the shirt off my shoulders and spread it over the linoleum to dry.

Bryan
I didn’t like it when Aaron asked me if I was a pussy. Sure, he was older and taller than me. Until then, he was the only kid who hadn’t teased me or treated me like an outcast. Also, I liked how brash and outgoing he was. After everything I’d endured at the hands of the other sixth-grade boys, I was gun-shy and timid; he was everything I wasn’t.

Except soaked. We were both dripping wet from him saving my ass. Still, when he started to strip on the roof of the tree house, I thought he was brave and cool. After all the torment I’d endured at the hands of my class-mates, I don’t think I could have just taken my shirt off first in front of someone else. He made it seem easy.

Once he laid his wet shirt on the linoleum, Aaron turned to me. He had a farmer’s tan; his arms below where his shirt sleeves ended were golden. His torso was rail-thin. His shoulders were slightly narrower than his hips. His chest was more developed than mine, with puffy nipples like I’d seen on one or two of the older boys.

He dipped his head toward his shirt, “Come on, you’re soaked. They’ll dry quicker if you take them off.”

I grabbed the hem of my T-shirt and tossed it down beside his blue and white checkered shirt before tackling the zipper of my pants. While I sat down to pull my pants down, Aaron unfastened his jeans and jumped up and down on one foot and then the other as he tugged the wet pants legs off.

When he finished, he spread both our jeans out to dry in the sun. When he turned back to face me, my curiosity about the older boy got the better of me. My eyes went to his underwear. He was wearing a pair of white cotton panties. Something else was missing too.

Stunned, I stammered, “Aaron, you’re a girl?!”

Heat radiated from her face as she stared down at me. “Yeah. You didn’t know? Erin’s a girl’s name, you know.”

My hands drifted to my crotch. My underwear was wet and the outline of my penis might have been visible. “It’s not Aaron? A-a-r-o-n?”

She giggled as she sat down across from me, “No, silly. Erin. E-R-I-N. Jesus Christ, this is awkward. I’m sorry, dude. I thought you could tell.”

Seeing her laughing at the misunderstanding, it was easy to find the humor in our predicament. Her chest wasn’t puffy like a teenage boy’s. But like a girl with the first hint of budding breasts. “Oh, shit, Erin. I’m sorry. I, um, screwed that up.”

She leaned back, as though she didn’t have a care in the world, letting the sun dry her skin, “It’s fine, Bryan. Maybe I should have told you when I dragged your ass from the water, that a girl had saved you.”

My ears turned red as I flushed. Jumping off that bridge had been spectacularly stupid. But at least there had been one good thing about it. “Maybe. I’m just glad you were there. I was being stupid.”

She bobbed her head, “Yeah. Don’t fucking do something like that ever again, dude. Or at least wait until summer is over. Otherwise, it’s going to get really boring around here.”
I was sitting on the roof of a tree house, in my underwear next to a girl a year or two older than me, also in just her underwear. The butterflies in my stomach churned. This wasn’t anything like being with Davy, no matter what I had earlier thought. The way she sat, I could see her panties. Just like my underwear, hers were damp and I could see the outline of her puffy slit. No, nothing like being with Davy.

Erin caught my eye and smiled, “You’re checking me out, Bryan. I thought you said you were gay.”

I don’t think I ever stopped blushing, but I sure felt the heat in my face, “N-, no. I said I didn’t know.”

Laughing, she reached over and patted my arm, “I’m just fucking with you, dude. Some of the girls in the eighth grade think I’m a dyke.”

I thought a dike was a dam used to hold back water. “A dam?”

Erin leaned all the way back on the linoleum and laughed. Not a girly laugh, but a belly laugh, “Oh, shit. That’s funny. No. A dyke is a girl who likes other girls. You know, like a fag is for a boy.”

All the pieces fell into place. Erin’s boyish clothing, her short haircut, even the way she talked. It all made perfect sense. Before I could screw up the courage to ask her about it, my expression gave me away. She shook her head, “I don’t know if I am. I enjoy camping, hiking, canoeing. I don’t think those things make me a dike; all I know is I’m a tomboy.”

There it was again. When she spoke, I felt drawn to her. Like some boys, Erin could dominate a conversation if she wanted, just by the strength of her personality. Still, her answer confused me, “Do you like boys?”

She grimaced, “Most of them are stupid.”

The vehemence against my sex stunned me, “B-, but I’m a boy.”

She glowered back, “Yeah. And you tried to kill yourself. That was pretty dumb.”

I lapsed into silence. Erin was right, as much as it galled m to admit it. After a long period of silence, I asked, “Then why’d you show me this place, if I’m dumb.”

Erin shrugged, “This is my first summer without my dad. If you haven’t picked up on it, I don’t exactly have a lot of friends. The girls in my glass think I want to be a boy or am a lezbo, and the boys are dumb. I thought maybe we could be friends, God knows, you could use one.”

The last sentence stung. Probably because there was a ton of truth in it. I wanted a friend more than anything else. Erin was willing and the fact that her treehouse was in easy walking distance from Granny’s trailer and I didn’t have any other prospects, made it an easy decision, “Yeah, I guess that’d be cool, Erin. So, what happened to your dad? Your mom divorce him?”

I figured that was just about the most common reason to not have a dad anymore. I was the poster child for that problem. Erin dropped her eyes; Oh shit. I said something wrong. Before I could figure out how to unsay it, she found her voice, “No. He died of cancer a few months ago.”

I winced. I really stepped in it that time. “Shit. I’m sorry. I just assumed.”

She actually rubbed her eyes. I felt bad as she tried to control her emotions, “It’s no big deal. I’m handling it. Your parents get divorced?”

I nodded. Even though Bill wasn’t my real dad, he was the only father I’d ever known. Still, compared to Erin’s loss, mine seemed insignificant in comparison.

We fell quiet, lying on our backs under the late afternoon Texas sun. It didn’t take too long to feel my skin grow hot. My skin was still pale and I would burn if I stayed out much longer. I sat up and felt my clothes. They were still damp.

Erin eyed me, “We better get back inside before you burn to a crisp.”

As I followed my new friend down the ladder, my eyes were drawn to her back. Erin had a light even tan across of her back. I was pretty sure she only wore a shirt when she had no choice. Compared to her, I was a pasty ghost. Once inside the treehouse, she felt her panties before sitting down on the mattress.

Before I could sit beside her, she held up a hand, “Only if your underwear is dry.”

Erin
I couldn’t help but smile at the look on Bryan’s face. The way his long auburn locks framed his face and the way his cute lips formed an O confirmed my earlier assessment. He was a beautiful boy. He patted his underwear and then grabbed a chair from next to the old table and pulled it to the bed, “This okay?”

I felt heat spreading from my cheeks as I nodded. I loved hanging out with Wendy Kennedy. Over the spring, she had really helped get me through a rough patch after my dad died. But her family was moving out of Zavalla now that school was out. She was the kind of friend I could say or do anything with and she would be right there with me. Seeing Bryan lowering himself into the chair, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe we could find something similar between us. What would I have said to Wendy in this situation?

The thought hit me right away. I grinned up at Bryan, “I guess. I was going to say you could sit on the mattress if you took your wet underwear off.”

Bryan’s cheeks turned scarlet, “W-, what? But I’d be naked!”

I could almost imagine bantering with Wendy as I retorted, “So? If you’re a fag, why would that matter?”

When I saw a look of confusion pass over Bryan’s features, I wondered if I pushed things too far. He shook his head, “I don’t know, Erin. How do I know if I am?”

He stunned me with an unexpected admission. I thought for sure he would huff up and deny it. I wanted to reach over to him and hug him and tell him I would still be his friend. But I was enjoying my banter. I leaned forward and put a hand on his knee, “One way to tell what you like is when your dick gets hard. If it gets hard around boys, maybe you’re gay. Around girls and maybe you’re not.”

Warning bells were going off inside my head; I should have stopped there. Instead, I squeezed his knee, “Is your dick hard now?”

Bryan closed his legs and crossed his arms over his crotch as his face remained redder than roses.

I pulled my hand away and sat back on the mattress. “That’s a shame. I’ve never seen a boy naked. Just girls.”

Bryan’s eyes left me. He scanned the treehouse for a moment before saying in a voice that warbled, “What’s there to do around here in the summer?”

Poor beautiful Bryan. He was uncomfortable. I couldn’t let go of how he might could fill the hole in my life created by Wendy’s absence, but I needed to leave that alone for now. I said, “There’s lots to do around here. We can play fort in the treehouse. Pretend there are Indians in the woods. That’d be fun. Right?”

A smile pulled at Bryan’s lips, “Yeah. That’d be fun.”

I waved toward one of the closed windows, “There’s also the river. It’s only a couple of hundred yards over yonder. We can go swimming there, also canoeing. You ever been canoeing?”

The boy shook his head, “No. You’d teach me?”

Wendy hadn’t liked doing a lot of the tomboy stuff I enjoyed. My heart began beating faster at the thought of all the things I used to do with my dad. If Bryan liked to do them too…
I gushed, “Yeah. I love canoeing. Me and my dad went canoeing lots back before he got sick. We can canoe down to Lake Rayburn, have a picnic. It’d be loads of fun. What about a bike? You got one?”

His lips tugged down. He sighed, “Yeah. But it’s a real beater.”

My heart sped up, “No worries. As long as you’ve got two wheels, we can ride around. I know most of the roads between here and Zavalla.”

I was talking too fast and hoped Bryan didn’t notice. I added, “Now that summer’s here, I’m going to sleep out here as often as possible.”

Bryan stared at me, eyes shifting from my face to my chest, down to my panties and back to my face again. But he didn’t relax his arms; they remained folded over his crotch. But his face held a hint of awe, “Your mom will let you?”

The boy was so protective of his crotch; I wondered if he was hard. Wendy was gone, so it wouldn’t be cheating on her if I saw him down there. I pushed the thought aside and replied, “Hell yeah. I turned thirteen last month. But even if I wasn’t, Mom wouldn’t give a damn. She’s in her own world. Sometimes, if I didn’t fix my own food, I think I’d starve. What about you?”
Bryan’s face softened, “I wonder if our moms are, like sisters. My mom doesn’t give a damn about me either. She divorced my stepdad and moved back to this shithole of a town. And we’re living with my granny. It sucks. At least you can escape to your treehouse.”

I didn’t feel lucky. But I felt a real kinship with Bryan at that moment. We were more alike than I would have guessed when I hauled him from the river. Maybe we would become even better friends than Wendy and I had been. “Yeah. I can. And it beats watching Mom drink herself to sleep every night.”

He shook his head, “Fuck. Our moms must be sisters. When my mom comes home from working her shift at the diner, she’ll drink booze and smoke pot until she passes out.”
Yep. Kindred spirits. My chuckle was dry as I climbed off the mattress and went over to the ammo crate. I rooted around, shifting board games like Candy Land out of the way. Pushed my paperback copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory aside until I found a deck of playing cards. “See, I knew there was a reason I rescued your skinny ass.”

I grabbed the other chair and sat at the old dining table and shuffled the cards, “Come on, let’s play some Go Fish.”

We sat there for more than an hour in nothing more than our underwear and built our collection of cards and talked. By the time we finished playing a couple of games, my throat was hoarse, but I felt more alive than I had since my dad died. I wish I had met Bryan when he first enrolled our school back in April; maybe I could have helped him to avoid getting picked on and called names. But one thing was for sure. I wanted to hang out with him as much as possible over the summer. Maybe I was a lesbian, maybe he was gay. Or maybe our first experiences wouldn’t define us. Maybe nothing would happen between us. But whatever may come, I wanted to share it with this long-haired boy who was a year and a half younger than me.

After the game, I fetched our clothes from the roof. They were warm but dry. When Bryan slid his pants up, covering his underwear, I could have sworn I saw a bulge. When I put my shirt on, my cheeks grew warm as I felt his eyes on me. Maybe he was just as curious about me as I was about him. Only time would tell.

Back on the ground, the sun was sliding down the western sky. Brain said, “Thanks for everything, Erin. I’m really glad we met. You’re the coolest person I’ve met since moving to Zavalla.”

The look he gave me melted my heart. God, he was such a beautiful boy. I flushed, “Ah, yeah. Well, I couldn’t let the one boy who might not be silly and stupid do himself in.”

The words felt absurd and not as sincere as I felt. I didn’t’ know what to say and I couldn’t take back the silly words. I stepped forward and put my arms around his shoulders and hugged him. I let go almost immediately, uncertain if I had done the right thing. Bryan’s arms came up and wrapped around my back and he returned the hug. It was over in an instant. I still didn’t know what to say, so I turned and started back toward the house I shared with my mom. A few moments later, heard a tuneless whistle and turned and saw Bryan walk back toward the road.

Copyright 2021 – Caliboy1991
All rights reserved

The Treehouse – Chapter 1
By
Caliboy1991

Bryan
The only life I ever knew had been ripped from me when my mom divorced my stepdad in the spring of 1980. My stepdad was the only thing worth a damn in my life, and losing him and our home in Dallas was a double whammy. My private hell went from bad to worse when Mom left Bill and forced me to move with her back to her hometown of Zavalla, Texas, population seven hundred; Salute! Sure, Bill was a drunk. But he wasn’t a mean drunk. More than that, he made time for me, which was more than I could say for my mom. When Mom wasn’t working, she was drunk or high. And if Bill said or did something to piss her off, she could fight like a wildcat.

I’d never been very good at fitting in. At least in Dallas, I had my friend Davy. The two of us had been close all the way through sixth grade when Mom upended my life and we had to move. Here in Zavalla, I didn’t know anyone. And the other boys already had their cliques and groups and I was too different to fit in.

They were farm boys and rough necks. They wore their hair short, wore button-down shirts, and acted tough. A scrawny boy who wouldn’t turn twelve until the end of August, with long auburn hair touching my shoulders, and eyelashes girls would kill to have, didn’t fit in.

I gripped the railing on the bridge and looked down at the languid river. Its brown water invited me to jump and end my pain, suffering, and humiliation. The last few days of school had been the worst yet. It had started the afternoon when Coach Watson had sent us to the showers at the end of PE. He had us running around the track at the high school for forty minutes. We were hot and sweaty, so when I hit the locker room, like several other boys, I stripped and headed to the shower.

I wasn’t the only one stealing glances, even if nobody else would admit it. A couple of the guys already had hair above their penises. The boy next to me in the shower was Danny Carver. He was closer to thirteen than twelve. He had a small, tight bush of pubic hair over a penis that was three inches when soft.

Seeing the older boy’s penis sent a flurry of butterflies through my stomach and before I realized it, my body betrayed me. My own penis, bald and thin, sprang to life, all nearly three inches pointed at the showerhead.

Danny took a step away, “Gross, Bryan. What the fuck? Are you some kind of fag?”

As soon as Danny spoke, the other boys in the shower saw me and laughed, calling me names like fag, queer and sissy. By the end of the last day at school, every boy seemed to know about it. My life was over.

Now, as I clung to the side of the bridge, my hands were wet from sweat, my feet dangling over the ledge. I could barely see where to put them through the blur of tears. Soon, none of it would matter. My chest heaved as a sob tore through me. They wouldn’t have me around next year to pick on. Nobody would.

I let go and stepped off.

***

Erin
I felt nothing but relief as I walked home from school on that last day of the seventh grade. My joy at an entire summer to relax and play were tempered by the memory of Cheryl Alsop’s snide comment just before after the last bell of the year. I had been cleaning some pens from my locker, tossing them into my nearly empty backpack when she came up to her locker, a few down from mine. She glanced at me and sneered.

She puffed out her chest, “Good thing you’re a lezbo dyke. No boy would want to be with a girl as flat as you.”

She slammed her locker and puffed out her b-cup sized chest as she walked past me. My eyes stung at the insult. Kiss a girl one time and everyone thinks you’re a lesbian!
She was still in earshot when I shot back, “Screw you, Cheryl. At least I’m not the fuck-toy of the eighth-grade football team.”

She faltered, but recovered without a backward glance. I didn’t know if she had sex with any of those eighth graders, but you know how rumors are. But that cuts both ways; I guess that’s why she thought I was a lesbian. After all, she caught Wendy Kennedy and me trading a kiss a few weeks before in the girl’s locker room. Of course, if she knew what Wendy and I had done over at Wendy’s house a few days before that, it would have cemented my reputation. It didn’t help that I was all tomboy.

I blame my dad for that. He swore he wanted a girl when I was born, but I’m not sure I believed him because we did so many things that you’d think a father and son would do. He taught me how to hit a ball, start a fire, sail a boat, and almost anything else you’d expect a dad to teach his son. For as long as I could remember, I wore my hair short, like a boy. I also wore jeans and shirts instead of dresses, skirts, and blouses.

I could take the dyke comment. The entire reason me and Wendy kissed was because we were both really curious. But the quip about my chest, that hurt. Here I was thirteen, the summer before my eighth-grade year and my tits were no more than mosquito bites. Cheryl’s boobs were the size of apples. Even Wendy needed the training bra she wore when we made out. Not me. I had two bumps on my chest, a little swelling. But my nipples were scarcely any larger than any boy’s. I hated how Cheryl was right. None of the boys paid me any attention. But they drooled over her and some of the other more developed girls.

I kicked a pebble on the side of the road as I neared the bridge over the Angelina River when I spied a boy climb over the railing on the side of the bridge. If anyone looked worse than me, it was him. I recognized him as a new kid in the grade below me. I knew nothing about him, but his head hung down and he looked to be crying.

Then he jumped.

I dropped my backpack and yelled, “Hey you! What the hell are you doing?”

I raced down the side of the embankment that led to the edge of the river. I pulled off my Keds and left them on the riverbank and dove into the river. Fortunately, the river wasn’t very wide where the bridge crossed. But it was deep in the middle, where the boy jumped. A few powerful strokes and I reached where he landed. Then I dove.

He was sinking toward the bottom. I scissored my legs, cutting through the water faster than he sank, and a moment later I grabbed his hand and reversed, kicking toward the surface. I pulled him to the shore and dragged him out of the water. His Keds, which nearly matched my own, could have dragged him to the bottom. Water streamed out of them, as well as his pants and t-shirt.

His eyes were unfocused when he let out a piercing scream. I stood up and swore, “What the fuck, dude?”

The boy’s eyes fluttered open. He had eyes of golden brown to match his auburn hair. When he saw me, he stopped screaming, as though maybe there were worse things than being rescued.

He snapped, “Why’d you do that? I knew what I was doing!”

I blinked in surprise before tearing into the ungrateful shit, “The fuck you say? Nobody in their right mind tries drowning themselves. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

The boy’s tears stung his eyes, “Why’d you go and do that? I wanna die.”

***

Bryan
I stared up at the boy who had just dragged me from the river. He wore blue jeans and one of those button-down shirts with the silver snaps instead of buttons. He was taller than me. I think I’d seen him at school, but I was sure. Water sluiced from his short blond hair, his shirt, and pants.

The boy’s face softened at my tears. He sat beside me and asked, “Aren’t you the new kid in the sixth grade? Why’d you try to kill yourself?”

It was clear he wasn’t going anywhere, so I sat up and pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, “Y-, yeah. I hate it here. Everyone hates me.”

The boy scoffed and shook his head. Water droplets splattered everywhere, “That’s bullshit. I don’t hate you. Of course, I don’t know you either. Should I?”

It wasn’t an offer of friendship, but neither was this older kid calling me names. I rubbed the water and tears from my eyes and ran my eyes over him. His face was strong; he had a square jaw compared to my own narrow features. His lips were thin and wide. Moreover, the open expression on his face made me wonder if I could trust him. He certainly couldn’t be any crueler than the boys in my class. My voice was ragged as I explained, “The other boys have been teasing me since I got here, calling me names and hitting and picking on me when the teachers weren’t around.”

The other boy flashed an apologetic look, “Sorry, man, that sucks. What’d they call you?”

I felt the tears well up, “Fag, queer. Shit like that.”

My mom would have slapped the shit out of me if she’d heard me cussing like that. She was a “do as I say, not as I do,” person. But I liked the taste of the profanity on my lips. It felt right. The way the boy talked, he certainly didn’t care. He stared at me, running his eyes from the top of my head to my soaking wet feet. “You’ve got longer hair than any of the boys. They all wear it short.”

He bit his lower lip as he looked at me pensively, “And…” he trailed off, without finishing his thought.

I looked the boy in the eyes. They were green, like a sea before a storm. I murmured, “What?”

He shrugged, “It’s just that you’ve got a really pretty face. It’s shaped like a heart. And you’ve got long and pretty eyelashes.”

I wanted him to shut up. Was this what everyone else saw? Instead, he added, “And you’ve got nice lips, like a girl’s.”

None of this was what I wanted to hear. I blinked at more tears threatening to spill down my cheeks. Even my savior thought I was gay. I didn’t know what to say, so I laid my head against my knees and let the tears return.

Finally, the boy said, “Well, are you? Gay, I mean.”

I wanted to raise my head and shout at this kid who didn’t know me at all. But the worst of it, I felt confused about it all. I’d be lying if I said the first time I’d looked at another boy’s stuff had been in the shower a few days before. No, even before that, before Mom divorcing Bill, Davy and I had seen each other naked a few times. He even talked me into touching him down there. It had been exciting and fun. I got a stiffy, and I loved how it felt when he touched me.

I thought back to the last time I had spent the night over at Davy’s. It was a Saturday afternoon. His parents had gone out, and we were alone in the house. They hadn’t been gone long when he smiled at me conspiratorially, “Hey, you want to see what I found in my dad’s closet?”

We’d known each other most of our lives. That mischievous look, coupled with some of the things we talked about, left little room to doubt that whatever it was would be naughty. So, naturally, I said, “Sure, what’d you find?”

He pulled Penthouse magazine from under his mattress and patted the spot next to him on the bed, “Check it out, Bry. This is some sweet shit!”

He showed me some pictures of naked women. They had huge tits and hairy pussies, and the way they stared back at us made me feel all weird inside. More than that, I was soon sporting a stiffy. After flipping through a few pages, Davy said, “Jeez, I’ve got a boner the size of Texas. I gotta get some relief.”

Without batting an eye, Davy pulled his shorts and underwear down. One thing I liked about my best friend was his sense of proportion. He was bigger than Rhode Island, but nowhere as big as Texas. His stiffy jutted into the air nearly four inches. He even had a couple of errant strands of hair growing at the base of his penis.

We had already seen each other’s packages a few times before. Even touched each other’s stuff. But this was the first time I saw him wrap his fingers around his little pole and stroke it. Before that day, I’d never even heard of masturbation, let alone seen it in action.

“Come on, Bry, I’m not putting on a fucking show. Let’s see it, man.”

I shucked my shorts and underwear. I’d have felt worse if Davy had teased me. But he was cool. When he saw my two inches, he shrugged, “You’ll get bigger.”

I mimicked Davy’s action on my own stiffy, and even though it felt good, I didn’t feel like I needed to moan like he did. After a couple of minutes, he said, “Here, Bry, let’s trade. You do me and I’ll do you.”

I wasn’t bashful with him anymore. So, when he wrapped his thumb and forefinger around my boner, I let him. The feeling of him touching me was a lot better than when I had been doing it. A moan slipped from my lips as a wave of bliss washed over me. After a bit, he stopped, “Come on, dude, jack me off.”

I wrapped my fingers around his stiffy. Unlike Davy doing me, he was big enough to use all of my fingers. I slid my hand up and down his shaft and he moaned again and again. I slowed when my hand grew tired, but he urged, “Don’t stop, it feels awesome.”

Egged on by my best friend, I kept jerking on him until a loud moan ripped from his mouth and his stiffy jerked in my hand. A blast of clear liquid shot from his penis and landed on his chest. Another pooled at his piss slit when I pulled my hand away. I was stunned. I had seen nothing like it before.

Davy laughed at the perplexed look on my face, “Been doing that for a couple of months now. Those are my baby makers, dude.”

I shook the memory away and looked back at the boy who had just pulled me from the river. “I don’t know.”

The boy’s stormy eyes studied me, like he was deep in thought. The silence was painful until he gave a firm nod and climbed to his feet, “I don’t give a fuck about that. I’m Aaron, by the way. What’s yours?”

I craned my neck to see his face, “Bryan. Are you going to leave me alone now?”

Aaron shook his head and offered me his hand, “Nope. You look like you could use a friend. God knows I could. Come on. You wanna see something cool?”

Copyright 2021 – Caliboy1991
All rights reserved