Read Online The First Time by Joy Fielding - Free Book Online

mother was laughing, it meant she was happy, and if she was happy, it meant everything was all right, her parents were going to stay together. She wasn’t about to become an unpleasant statistic and hopeless cliché, the child of a broken home, the product of a bitter divorce, like so many of her friends and classmates.
    If her mother was laughing, then all was right with the world, Kim reassured herself, trying to block out the eerie sound of her mother’s laughter earlier in the day, a grating sound that was anything but happy—frantic as opposed to abandoned, closer to hysteria than genuine mirth, and like the angry whispers of Kim’s first childhood memory, too loud. Much, much too loud.
    Was that it? Had her parents had another fight? Her father had gone out again last night after dinner, supposedly back to the office to prepare for today’s trial. But wasn’t one of the reasons they’d moved to the suburbs so that he’d have space for an office at home, one that came complete with computer, printer, and fax machine? Had it really been necessary for him to drive back into the city? Or was there another reason, a reason who was young and pretty and half his age, like the reason Andy Reese’s father found to walk out on hisfamily? Or Pam Baker’s father, who was rumored to have more than one reason for abandoning his.
    Or the reason Kim had seen her father kissing on a street corner, full on the lips in the middle of a sunny afternoon around the time they’d moved to Evanston, a reason who was plump and dark-haired and looked nothing like her mother at all.
    Was that the reason she’d come down for breakfast this morning and found her mother standing alone in the middle of the backyard pool laughing like a lunatic?
    Kim had never said anything to her mother about seeing her father with another woman. Instead she’d tried to convince herself that the woman was merely a friend, no, less than that, an acquaintance, maybe even a business acquaintance, perhaps a grateful client, although since when did one kiss clients, however grateful they may be, on the lips like that? Full on the mouth, she thought, the way Teddy Cranston had kissed her on Saturday night, his tongue gently teasing the tip of her own.
    Kim brought her fingers to her lips, feeling them tingling still, as she relived the softness of Teddy’s touch, so unlike the kisses of other boys her age. Of course Teddy was a few years older than the other boys she’d dated. He was seventeen and a senior, heading off to college next fall, either Columbia or NYU, he told her confidently, depending on whether he decided to study medicine or the movies. But Saturday night, he’d seemed more interested in getting his hand inside her sweater than in getting into either medical or film school, and she’d been tempted, really tempted, to let him. All the other girls were doing it. That andmore. Lots of girls her age had already gone all the way. She heard them giggling about it in the school washrooms as they hunched over the condom dispensaries. Guys hated condoms, she heard them complain, so most times they didn’t bother using them, especially after they’d done it a few times and knew the guy was all right. “You should try it, Kimbo,” one of the girls had teased, aiming a packet of condoms at her head.
    “Yeah,” several of the other girls joined in, pelting her with condoms. “Try it. You’ll like it.”
    Would she? Kim wondered, feeling Teddy’s invisible hand at her breast.
    Her breasts, Kim thought with wonder, watching the swell of her no-longer-child’s bosom rise and fall with each breath. Last year at this time, her breasts were virtually nonexistent, and suddenly, about six months ago, there they were. No notice, no warning, no
I think you’d better prepare yourself
. Overnight she’d gone from an A to a C cup, and the world suddenly snapped to attention. Only with breast size, it seemed, was a C preferred to an A.
    Kim recalled the