Emma

I lock my door and set off down the hall on my way to class. I’m running through my afternoon schedule in my head when I hear a voice calling my name. I look up to see Makayla walking toward me, which surprises me a little—I didn’t think Dave was home. “Hey, Makayla,” I say. “Is Dave back already?”

“No, not for a while yet,” she replies with a grin. “I’m here to talk to you—I’m glad I caught you.” She falls in beside me as I walk. “Remember I mentioned my friend Emma?” I make an affirmative noise, and she continues. “I finally talked her into hiring you, but she doesn’t want to meet you on campus. Actually”—Makayla clears her throat—“she wants to meet you at my house.”

“Why?” I ask in surprise.

“Two reasons. One, she wants to meet you on familiar territory, and my house is almost as familiar to her as her own. Two, she really doesn’t want her parents finding out, and if she tells them she’s over at my house, they won’t think anything of it.”

“Are your parents out of town again?”

“Not yet,” Makayla tells me, “but they will be for most of next week. What’s your schedule look like?”

I contact Alyssa and we get Emma on the schedule.

*******

Makayla lets me in and leads me to the same room where I met with her. This is the first time I’ve been to her house since then. “Emma’s not here yet—” she begins, and then the doorbell rings. “Here, sit down, Andrew, I’ll be right back.”

It takes a couple minutes before Makayla reappears. “Andrew, this is my friend Emma,” she says, giving the other girl a gentle push into the room. It takes all my willpower to keep my jaw from dropping. I’ve been subconsciously expecting—partly because she’s Japanese, but more because my mind associates her with Makayla—someone slender, and probably shorter than Makayla. Well, shorter than Makayla, she is, but not slender. In fact, except for the expression on her face, she looks a lot like the Japanese AV star Shion Utsunomiya—long wavy brown hair, full hips, and an amazing pair of tits that she’s clearly trying (and failing) to keep from looking huge. She’d be a sex goddess if she didn’t look timid and self-conscious.

I stand up and extend my hand. “Hi, Emma,” I say softly, “I’m Andrew Lane. I’m very pleased to meet you. Will you sit with me?” Reluctantly, she comes to me and takes my hand. I think she might resist when I gently draw her down beside me, but she doesn’t. She pulls her hand back to clasp the other one in her lap and sits with her head down. Makayla sits on the other loveseat and leans forward.

“Emma,” she says, putting a hand on the other girl’s shoulder, “I’m with you. It’s going to be good. Trust me, it’s going to be wonderful.” Emma looks up at her with a conflicted, uncertain expression.

“Don’t worry, Emma,” I say quietly. She turns to look at me. “I won’t do anything you don’t want to do. If you just want to talk, we’ll just talk. I’d like to get to know you.”

Now she looks skeptical. “Why?” she asks, her voice a surprising rich contralto.

“Because Makayla says you’re worth knowing, and she’s worth believing,” I tell Emma frankly. Her eyes widen and she turns to look at her friend, her entire face a question. Makayla nods; one corner of her mouth twitches with a small half-smile.

I can see Emma’s body ease a little. She turns to look at me and says, hesitantly but more strongly, “What would you ask?”

“Tell me who Emma Tanaka is,” I respond gently. “Tell me what she cares about. Everyone has a story, and everyone’s story is worth hearing. Tell me yours.”

That strikes a chord with her, as it turns out she’s a writer. She’s been writing stories since she was in elementary school, she has a blog (“I won’t tell you the name, though”), and she’s majoring in writing with a minor in literature. We talk about profs we’ve had, and share notes on profs we might have later.

It takes a while for Emma to begin to relax in a meaningful way. She twitches and stiffens a little when I shift position and lay my arm along the back of the loveseat, but soon relaxes again. The pattern repeats each time I shift a little closer to her; each time, she reacts less. It really doesn’t take that long before our thighs are touching. I shift my arm forward to rest my hand on her shoulder, and she twitches again—but I can feel her fighting her own reaction, and after a moment she actually leans into me.

So softly I can barely hear her, Emma says, “You need to understand my family.” This is a sharp turn in the conversation, but not a surprising one. It sounds like her parents are strongly sexually repressed; they’re certainly repressive. They’ve never let her date, they kept her out of sex ed classes, and they’ve done everything they can to screen what she sees. They made her live at home instead of on campus to try to keep her under their control as much as possible—though she admits, hanging her head, that out of fear, she probably would have made the same choice herself.

“But I see how much happier Makayla is, and I want that,” Emma finally says. “I want what she has. But—I’m afraid.”