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New Kid on the block.

It was a bright and sunny day with the sun looking about as shiny and bright as the golden retriever's fur. Very pleasant weather in fact! Great for fun in the sun, perfect for a summer vacation, and awesome for those times when you and your friends hung out with each other. Kevin Waters didn't have any of those things lined up for himself, and he probably wouldn't for a long time.

He didn't know why his dad had to pick the end of the school year to move. He had to leave all his friends and teachers behind at his old school and now he was in a new school district all together. New teachers, new classmates. It bombed.

Kevin didn't have anything or anyone here. Just a bunch of nothing. The house his parents had bought had a swingset in the backyard. He guessed it was cool. Kevin was sitting on one of the swings, it had a wood seat, and he was using his feet to kick himself into rocking backwards and forwards. He didn't feel like putting out the effort to actually swing.

The retriever wished he had something to do. Anything that wasn't sitting on the swingset or unpacking a million boxes, which is what his parents were doing in the kitchen and living room. Just a bunch of stuff they had special ideas about where to put it. He was already a little exhausted from shifting furniture around with his dad's help as his mother pointed to where she wanted what piece of furniture.

"Hey kid." A voice popped through the air from behind him. He planted his feet in the dirt beneath him and twisted the swing around to face the fence at the edge of the back of their new yard. He saw the owner of the voice from over the top of the fence. Before he could register anything more she added, "Sup."

Kevin saw the face perched between the wooden points of the fence planks. It was a redheaded girl that looked like she might have been older than him, but he didn't by how much. She just had the 'older' look, like all the girls in highschool kinda had.

"Uh, hi." Came the retrievers awkward reply. The girl had startled him and he wasn't well prepared for a better response than the one he gave considering he was looking at only a head sitting atop a fence like a scene from some cheesy horror B movie. Kevin had been sitting so lazily on the swing set that he'd zoned out and was now rebooting to focus on the new girl, whoever she was.

"You replacin' the old fogeys that used to live here?" The girl asked him plainly. She was a canine like him but she looked like she might have been a bit mixed. She certainly didn't have any retriever in her, that was for sure. The rich brown of her fur made him think she might have had some shepherd in her, but the lighter beige around her muzzle reminded him of one of his buddies that was a collie. The pattern and shades of her fur weren't pure enough for a kid his age to tell anything for certain.

"Yeah, I guess so." He told her. She had to have been a high schooler, he judged. He was still in middle school himself but with classes ending soon he might have to change schools again next year to start off as a freshman in high school. This new school district didn't have any K through 12's and instead divided everybody up between elementary, middle, and high and gave them their own campuses. His old school was a K through 12 so he never had to switch to a new campus because of a grade change before. This new city would change everything for him.

"That's cool. I live in the trailer park down the alley." She said and reached a hand over the fence so he could see and hooked her thumb in the air and gave it a point in the direction to her left, his right. "You in high school?" She asked him.

He shook his head that he wasn't, not yet.

"Next year. I'm in the 8th grade at Wilson." Kevin told her and she frowned back at him like that was the wrong answer to give. Wasn't his fault, he thought.

"That's lame. I'm in the 9th over at SanFur High. Might flunk this year though, so maybe we'll be in the same class, huh? If you go to SanFur." Kevin went to say something to that, but he wasn't sure what it should have been. It wasn't normal for him to hear anyone talk so casually about flunking out of a grade in school. His mother would kill him if he even made a D in something. He at most would make a C, if he did badly at all.

"I guess so... I think my mom is putting me in at SanFur." Was what the retriever ended up saying to her. She gave him a quick smile, or maybe it was a smirk, he couldn't tell.

"Sweet. Well, see you 'round, kid. I pass by here a lot so maybe we can hang some time." The mix told him, and then her face quickly vanished from atop the fence posts. She was gone as quickly as she'd come.

So at least he knew he had a neighbor that was close to his age now. His new house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, which was at the end of a long street full of other cul-de-sacs to create a modest sized subdivision. Despite the number of houses he'd yet to see any other kids his age. Kevin didn't know who this girl was, but it was kinda nice knowing that he knew he wasn't alone.

~

His new, and temporary, school sucked for him. The young retriever wasn't adjusting well and often sat alone at lunch and kept to himself at recess. He had made some acquaintances and some of the teachers seemed to like him, but he was not having as much fun as he did at his old school. Homesickness, he guessed. Half of his stuff was unboxed, but he couldn't find where his game consoles were.

The movers didn't put all the boxes where they were supposed to be so half the stuff in the house was put in the wrong rooms. His dad was pretty pissed about it. Kevin remembered dad throwing a fit over it, 'Who keeps their pots and pans in the Living Room, Cathy! Kitchen and Living Room aren't even the same number of words and they even put the box with my clubs in it in the bathroom! I wrote 'CLUBS plus GOLF' on the box, Cathy! I swear I thought I ever heard one of them say 'Frah-Gee-Lay', too!' Followed by, 'Hun, now you're just making things up. I'm sure they knew perfectly well that your score has been in the sink lately.' His dad couldn't argue with his mother's wit, but he still found the time to bitch out the moving company over the phone for what must have been a really uncomfortable hour for the person on the other end.

With only the boring stuff unpacked he felt lost as to what he should be doing. The swing set out back was a tall one fit for older kids, and he found comfort in the repetitive swinging motion that kicking his feet gave him. Hopefully his mother would just let him play video games all day once summer started up finally.

"Yo, kid." The voice startled him and Kevin stopped swinging to check it. "Havin' fun?" The voice drew his attention behind him and to the fence row.

"Not really." It was the girl from before, he noticed. She was still the only other kid he'd seen in the cul-de-sac, but Kevin was sure he could pick her out of a crowd with that boyishly short red hair of hers. He then added, "Hi."

"You don't get outside much, huh? Been by here every day but haven't seen you." She asked him and propped her chin between two of the points between fence planks. The retriever used his feet to spin himself in the swing to face her, but he didn't get up from his seat.

"Not really. We've been unpacking and running errands for the house a lot." Kevin told her. Most of the errands just meant he got dragged around town where he followed in his parents wake as they picked up new things for the house. It was like all their old stuff was suddenly rotten like old fruit and needed to be replaced with something fresh.

"That sucks. You got anything fun to do?" The girl asked, and he didn't.

"Not until I can find what box my consoles are in." She said and put her arms over the fence and crossed them under her chin. The mix looked like she played softball.

"Which ones? Or jus' the one?" She asked.

"I have a Nintendo and a Gameboy, but I can't find the box they're in." He told her and she started grinning.

"You have the new one? I jus' got the old Nintendo." The mix asked.

"Yeah, it's a SNES." Kevin told her.

"Wanna hang out?" The girl asked and he felt himself blush. The retriever wasn't used to hanging out with girls. All his old friends were guys and to add to that, girls were weird. Kevin didn't even know what they would do if they hung out anyway.

"I don't know. I don't have anything fun unpacked." Kevin told her, then she looked at him and yawned real big. That's when he first noticed a little more clearly that she had a ring piercing on her lower lip. He didn't see very many of those on girls. At least not from where he was from.

"'Kay. When I'm not fuckin' around at home I walk down to the creek. There aren't any other kids around here, by the way. Just me and you unless you count the apartments a mile or two away. But don't hang with those guys. They all go to Southview. Fuck them." She started talking, and again the retriever felt himself blush, but this time from her language. He had a few friends that cussed a little, but only light stuff, and whatever they felt they could get away with when their parents were all out of earshot. And all his friends had been boys, not girls. He'd never heard a girl cuss that was his age or close. "I was heading to the creek. So you want to come with?"

"Is it far?" Kevin asked.

"Nah." She told him, and he thought about it. The retriever came to the decision that If she was the only person his age that was available then he guessed he'd better start getting used to having her around. He shrugged, but something about that made her smile, like she knew a yes was coming her way.

"I guess so." He answered and her smile broadened to show some teeth.

"Sweet. This alley runs all down the cul-de-sac, dude. Hop over and I'll show you 'round." She said then disappeared behind the fence. The retriever hesitated briefly then let the swing spin him back the right way before getting up to approach the fence. Kevin was nervous about following this new girl somewhere he'd never been, but wasn't brave enough to voice that to a girl. He didn't consider himself a wuss and if his friends had been here they'd have goaded him on with the threat of ragging on him if he chickened out.

Once he was at the fence he saw tall it actually was. They probably made it that high so homeowners wouldn't have to see the alley on the other side of it. From the second floor he could see over the fence a little bit, but there wasn't much to see except the treeline. His cul-de-sac in the subdivision was more at the edge of his community of homes and he'd assumed that beyond the fence there were only woods and nothing else.

He lived in a bigger city now, but he never would have figured there'd be an actual creek behind the cul-de-sac. It wasn't like it took that long to drive to town. The retriever knew he wouldn't know more until he hopped the fence and joined the girl on the other side. Kevin put his hands on the top of the fence and figured she must have been tall to put her chin on top of the posts like she'd done before, or maybe she had to have been standing on something on the other side.

It was a struggle to climb over the fence without something to stand up on, but he made it up and over with a good swing of his legs to roll himself over the top. Lucky for him he was deft enough at the attempt that he'd avoided getting a fence post in the rib or splinter in his fur. The mixed girl was there waiting for him after he dropped to the dirt and picked himself back up. The alley was dirty and the treeline at the ground level was a nasty mix of weeds, bushes, and briars, which would have been another reason to just throw up a fence so none of it would need tending by a homeowner or groundskeeper.

"Sup" There she was standing with a smile, looking somewhat aloof, with her hands in her pockets. He looked her up and down without realizing the obviousness of the gesture and the retriever found himself more than a little surprised than he'd have ever guessed.

The girl was taller than him by a few inches and definitely looked like she played softball. The mix had a athletic quality to her he'd seen on the older girls at his old school, particularly the ones that played some kind of sport. His school only had softball and basketball, but those girls were always kind of fit. This girl in front of him was the same way, but still pretty enough to make him feel awfully shy now that they were face to face.

She also looked a bit... Trashy. It was something about the way that she carried herself. Not like the girls he was used to being around. She didn't seem dangerous, but there was a kind of quality to her that put him on edge. His boyish instincts were telling him his mother wouldn't like this girl if she met her.

"Hi." He told her before she turned about and started walking away from him down the alley. To their left stood the fence row and to the right was the treeline. It was dirty on this side of the fence and looked completely different from the rest of the cul-de-sac. She was several feet ahead of him and walking with a lazy grace. She was wearing jeans like he was, but had a beat up brown leather jacket zipped up over her. It looked like an old aviation jacket, but he doubted it was real. Probably just a knock off that had been handed down from owner to owner.

The more time Kevin was given to inspect her the more trashy looking she did seem to be. She wasn't like the girls he was used to seeing back at his old school. Didn't she say she lived in a trailer park? "So you said you lived near somewhere near here?" He asked her in an effort to break the silence.

"Yeah, but back the other way. Alley dead ends over at the dumpsters." She told him, then veered off to the right through a worn out path between the trees. Kevin followed her into the woods and discovered that the path continued for quite some ways. They walked mostly in silence for another five or six minutes until she stopped and ducked under some branches and he followed suit behind her. Beyond the branches was a man made canal that spanned maybe thirty feet and was flowing with a gentle current. The edges of the canal were grass and soil, but it was clearly dug out by the a construction company. His dad knew all about that kind of stuff.

"Boom." She said loudly and waved her hands in front of her to present the 'creek' to him she'd been talking about.

"This is a canal, I think." He told her as he stepped up beside her.

"Huh? Whatever, both start with a c." The girl replied, and he shrugged. She dropped down to her butt and laid out on the bank with her arms crossed under her head.

Kevin noticed her front without the worry of her catching where his eyes were wandering. She was wearing a tight leather jacket in the middle of summer, and her jeans were kinda baggy. The retriever figured she was the tomboy type. His jeans fit on him tighter than hers fit on her. It was weird seeing a girl his age wear something that didn't hug her butt like shrink wrap. Even his mom was wearing those high top jeans.

The mix looked like she might have been busty, but the jacket was the only thing he could see. She had it zipped up the front and it was so tightly fitted on her Kevin swore she was wearing the wrong size. He wasn't an expert on boobs, but he knew she had to have something kinda nice on her what with how her chest was trying to push out the front of the jacket. She'd need to lose the jacket for him to know for sure, though. Underneath the jacket he could see a little bit of something else she was wearing when he went looking around her collar.

He didn't give himself any more time to look her over and sat down beside her with some space left between the two of them. On the other side of the canal there were more trees and no civilization in sight. It was weird seeing so many trees in one spot. San Furnando normally wasn't this green unless it was all planted by hand and kept watered with sprinklers. He wondered if the canal had something to do with it.

"This all you do?" He asked her after a bit. She crossed her legs and hummed.

"Once school's out for summer next month I'll probably start swimmin'. Current aint too strong. Good for keepin' fit!" She said and he looked back out at the water flowing through the canal. The current wasn't too bad. Kinda like one of those lazy rivers they have at water parks. Kevin then had the sudden thought that if it was summer he might could talk his parents into taking him to one. He wouldn't have any friends to go with, though. Not anymore, unless he old friends could drive out to San Furnando. Probably not. His old house was almost an hour away by car.

"Do you play any sports?" He asked her to change the subject. Kevin was still thinking she had to be on some kind of team with how she looked.

"Fuck no." The girl cussed, which made him blush. So she didn't play softball. "I just like swimmin'. Better than bein' a fatass like my mom."

"Guess so." He said. Kevin wasn't sure how he felt about how she talked. If he ever said anything like that about his mother he'd never be able to sit again, and assuming there was anything left of him afterwards. He'd already had his fill of soap from a past mistake of asking what something he heard at school meant.

"You?" She asked him, turning her head his way to watch him. This time he shrugged instead of answering right away. He wasn't much of a 'somebody' back at his old school. Him and his friends had been the kind of the misfits that just liked arcades and video games. The retriever never got into sports much, besides little league baseball. His dad had been hoping he'd play baseball all through school, but it wasn't something he really wanted to do and his mother usually took his side whenever his dad would start to nudge him in the direction of the ball field.

"No. I was in FFA at my old school. I don't know if I'll join at this school." She laughed at that after he confessed to the only thing he did participate in. It was easy stuff to do and it got him out of school for field trips. He didn't even know yet if his new school would have an FFA chapter, or if he'd even bother joining.

"The farmer's gang?" She laughed, he started blushed at his old club being called that. He felt self conscious now for having admitted he was a member.

"Yeah, I guess." Kevin replied.

"At least you ain't on the debate team." And she went back to relaxing. They stayed there for several more minutes until he decided to lay down much like she was. They weren't very far away from the cul-de-sac and the greater community, but the trees and brush helped shield so much noise it was almost like they were alone. It was really peaceful.

"It's nice out here." The retriever finally said.

"Yep." She told him. He wasn't wearing his watch to know for sure, but apparently they were at the "creek" for a while before she got bored and hopped up to leave. Kevin was led back to the alley while she told him that when school let out for good that maybe they could go swimming. He told her he wouldn't mind doing that. Kevin felt awkward just being asked to go swimming by a girl he'd only just met, and an older one at that.

His mother asked him where he'd been and he played it safe and told her the truth. She seemed glad that he met someone his age that lived near them. Kevin didn't describe her any, and he let his mother fill in the blanks on her own. If she was ok with him hanging out with a high schooler from SanFur, a school his mother was already familiar with and liked enough to be enrolling him in it, then that was good enough for him.

He didn't remember her name, or if she'd even given it to him, after he got up to his bedroom on the second floor. Kevin didn't tell her his name either, and he was starting to feel bad about it. If he saw her again he'd make it a point to exchange names with her.

---

The next day Kevin kept watching for her face pop up over the fence row, and the day after that, and then the weekend had arrived with no sign of her at all. In another two weeks his new school was going to let out for summer break and he hadn't made any progress on making friends. It was made worse since once classes let out for summer he'd be going to a new school the following year and he'd be starting over.

The only person he'd really hung out with in a meaningful way was the high school girl whose name he still didn't know, and he still felt kinda bad about never having asked her for her name. It wasn't like he was asking her for her number so he didn't know why it didn't occur to him to ask. At least he'd found his game consoles and so at least the retriever had something to occupy his time with. Kevin felt uneasy that he'd told her he had the newer Nintendo. He kinda didn't want his parents to know she was, as he knew they'd put it, 'trailer trash'. He'd not bothered to elaborate any further with them on who she was, which fortunately was made easier by the fact that he didn't actually know much of anything at all.

He kept himself outside Saturday hoping to see her, but she proved a no show until around lunchtime. He had been going in and out of the house so much his mother had noticed and actually told him to go play his game so he'd still still for a change.

"Yo!" She'd finally made her appearance just as he was about to go back in the house to give up and play games. Kevin had already eaten lunch by then and had been planning on spending the rest of the day playing games like his mother had suggested, rather than waste it on waiting for a girl he barely knew to peek over the fence.

"Hi!" He waved at her. He was seated on the swing, but facing toward the fence this time rather than away from it. The girl waved him over and he hopped off the swing to join her at the fence.

"Been aiight?" She asked him from over the fence.

"Yeah, I guess so." Kevin answered and she made a quick noise that sounded like a laugh. She slung an arm over the fence and stuck her thumb out to point in the direction of the alley behind her.

"Wanna go swimmin'? It's fuckin' hot today, and work was bullshit the last two days." She asked him. As he recovered from the sudden use of profanity he had to work through his curiosity. She had to work?

"You're old enough to work?"

She smiled at him. "Nah not really. I just get paid to help keep my dad's shop clean. Don't know if it's legal."

It made a bit more sense now that it was her dad putting her to work. His own parents certainly could find ways to put him to work. Kevin then switched gears and let his thoughts linger over her request. He had swim trunks he could get, and it was really hot today. The news said it was suppose to be a record summer.

"So you wanna go or not?"

"I'll have to ask my mom, but I don't know if she'd be ok with me going... Alone with a girl." He admitted and realized how much of a dweeb he must have looked right then. She smirked and let out a laugh.

"Then lie, scrub. Tell her you, me, and a couple of the guys are goin' swimming down at the canal." She said with a dismissive wave of the hand, whilst also mocking his correcting her about the creek being a canal. She then, for added measure, tossed out, "Say it's Tom, Dick, and Larry."

Kevin shrugged, but knew it wouldn't hurt to fib a little.

"I can try. I don't mind going." He told her. Kevin never got many chances to explore outside his social circle, and now that he was thrown out into a new place with no preexisting network of his own he naturally figured that this girl, whoever she ended up being, would be the only social circle he'd have until high school started. After that? The young retriever had no idea what would happen.

"Good, then hop to it, guy. Swimmin' solo ain't so wicked." She told him and disappeared behind the fence. And so Kevin went back inside and asked his mother if he could go swimming. She asked him who he was going with and he felt bad about lying, but it didn't stop him from doing it. Kevin was careful to change the names he'd been told him to say. They sounded too much like references to something his mother would know, and then call bull on.

Despite his worries his mom was ok with him going out. He was actually really relieved at how easy it was to get her permission, too. Maybe she was just grateful that he'd made some friends? That thought just made him feel a little more guilty about lying to her since if she'd known the truth she'd not have let him go.

Kevin changed clothes into a white shirt and his swim trunks and headed back out to the fence. She must have heard him coming and was again popping her head over the fence.

"She said yes?" She said, noting his change of shirt and drawstring trunks with a beach towel over his shoulder.

"Yeah. She just wants me to come back before she makes dinner." Kevin told her and started trying to climb the fence.

"Aiight. Well let's go!" She said. Kevin climbed the fence and saw that she was was dressed the same as the last time he'd seen her. Same jeans with her old leather jacket wrapped around her and zipped up, which in this heat seemed dumb to the retriever. Sure it looked a bit thin but why would you want to wear an extra layer during a California summer? She had a towel slung over her shoulder, at least. He'd brought along his, too.

"You're dressed to swim?" He asked her.

"Eh? Nah. It's underneath. I don't tell my mom shit." She replied, confusing him. He marveled at her lack of respect for her mother. He couldn't dismiss the mental imagery of trailer trash stereotypes he'd always see on tv.

"My name is Kevin." He told her as soon as common sense returned to him. Kevin finally had his chance to make up for not exchanging names the first time they'd met.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Duh. I'm Marcy, but just call me Mars, aiight?" She told him with a smile. Kevin had never met a Marcy before, but her name reminded her of the Peanuts cartoon.

"Mars?" He asked her. That was a weird nickname and she didn't look like the type to be interested in space, but maybe he was wrong? Marcy, or Mars, lifted her hand and tousled her fingers through her boyishly cut and richly hued hair. It was a natural and striking deep shade of red.

"Red like the planet. I like it." She told him, and then the nickname made enough sense for him to question why he didn't consider it himself. "Now come on, let's dip."

The canal was the same as the day they'd left it, and he threw his towel down on a clean looking spot of grass by the shore and turned away from Mars while she stripped off her outer layer. Kevin hadn't expected Mars to start changing without at least giving him a warning!

"Quit blushin', Bashful." He heard her say from behind him and he gave her an over the shoulder look and saw she was wearing a bright yellow bikini with a pile of clothing next to her that consisted of her jeans, jacket, and a plain white tee with a sports bra dumped on top.

"I'm not!" And with that she turned and sprinted at full throttle toward the canal and jumped right into it with a big splash for a finish. Kevin felt himself blushing under his fur. He had no idea she was so pretty under that tomboy outfit she wore. The bikini she wore was a sharp contrast over her reddish brown and white fur and it could hardly hide much of her figure.

On some other girl it might have seemed modest, but Mars had a rack that filled out her top so much he wondered if she had bought the wrong size, because it barely fit her enough to cover her breasts. The 9th grade would be awesome if This is what high school girls looked like by default! And everything below the chest wasn't bad either! She looked fit and toned everywhere with a roundness to her hips and thighs that got his teenage hormones flowing. She looked the complete opposite of what she acted and dressed like.

"Water's fine! You tryin' to go home dry?" Mars called out to him with a smile and a wave from the canal. She was far enough out in the canal to leave herself neck deep in the gentle current. Kevin pulled off his shirt and she whistled at him. He blushed at her, but figured that her whistle was a sarcastic and joking one as his own boyish figure was skinny like a pencil. He joined her the same way she entered the water with a running jump at full speed. The water was warm on the surface but cold around his feet once he came up for air.

"Kinda cold below." He paddled over to where she was.

"Not as cold as it is on the bottom!" And then he watched as she ducked under water for several long seconds before popping back up for air. "It's like ice if you can touch the bottom."

He dived and tried to touch the bottom and succeeded in putting a hand on the sticky muddy down below. It was freezing cold and he quickly went back up for air. "It's cold."

"It'll get warmer later in the summer." She told him, and then they swam. She was a better swimmer than he was, but he figured if he swam enough in the canal he'd get better and maybe even best her at doing laps. They were there for what felt like a few hours doing nothing but laps and splashing. It took Kevin by surprise at how easy it was to let the awkwardness drift away from his interaction with Mars and just let himself have fun with her. He was actually having fun!

The western sky was beginning to take a shade of rusty red. "Guess you need to get back to momma?" She asked him as she hiked out of the water while shaking one leg and then the other to sling water off her dripping fur. He tried to pretend that he didn't notice how her chest shook right along with her legs.

"Yeah, I should." He joined her on the bank and grabbed up his towel to dry himself. "This was a lot of fun."

"Yeah, it was nice havin' a buddy to hang with. Turn 'round unless you want to see a naked bitch." He was about to ask her what she meant, but then he saw her reach behind herself to undo her top and he quickly turned away while she went and stripped down. He could hear her drying off with her towel behind him as he felt the skin beneath his fur go about as her as her head. "What a gentleman your momma raised. I'm all decent again."

Kevin turned back toward her and saw she was decent in the sense that was no longer naked. Mars had pulled her sports bra on and had apparently wrung out her bikini bottom of water before putting it back up. He was amazed at how much smaller her bust looked when it was bound up in a sports bra. He didn't really understand cup sizes, but it was like her boobs had shrunk a size or two by just putting on the top.

"That looks uncomfortable." He said out loud, which got her attention.

"What?" She asked, and now with him feeling put on the spot he was regretting having said anything. "What's uncomfortable? Bein' the shiznit?"

"No, I mean. Your, uh, bra looks like it'd be uncomfortable." She casually looked down at her chest and wiggled her sports bra into a better position before shaking her chest to settle the mass and running her fingers under the edge of the material. To Kevin, it was as a foreign a display as a luncheon with a sultan.

"Oh. The puppies don't get in the way if I strap 'em down. Why?" She asked and began to pull on her jeans.

"Nothing, I just thought it'd be uncomfortable to wear." Kevin noted that she didn't look uncomfortable. It was just the mental image of himself wearing something ultra tight that had him feeling sympathetic to what in his mind had to be uncomfortable. The retriever could viscerally imagine how uncomfortable it would have been if his mother had bought a cup that was too small back when he played little league and they made all the boys were one for safety.

"You're just sad I put 'em away." And over her top went her tshirt. He blushed at her for having fun at his expense, but he couldn't blame her either. He had been looking, but he was also concerned for her!

"It's not my fault I don't have high school girls in my class." She was zipping up her jacket by then. The aviation jacket helped further mask her bust.

"Next year, you'll find out I'm a cut above the rest. It pays being two years older than the competition." Mars told him. He pulled on his own tshirt so they were both back to being fully dressed.

"How old are you?" She told him she was 16, which didn't really surprise him since he already knew she had to be older. 16 did seem a bit high though. Kevin had turned 13 earlier in the school year before he'd moved. Part of the reason they waited until the end of the school year to move was so that he could have his birthday party with his friends.

"Oh." He replied.

"My mom fucked up trying to homeschool me during kindergarten so she had to put me in school at 6 instead of 5. Then I flunked out of 3rd grade! So I've got a 2 year head start on the other girls in certain areas." She patted her chest with both hands for emphasis then dropped them to her hips for the same. "Pretty sure I'm flunking two of my classes this year though so we'll be in the same grade if I do!"

That explained a lot, but also left him feeling even less enthusiastic about his parents finding out about Mars.

Now that they were dressed the two of them didn't have anything else to gather up except their towels. Mars led the way back to the alley, making small talk about how her math teacher blew chunks and that's why she was probably flunking, then she left him behind at his house so she could make her own way back home.

She told him they'd need to go swimming again soon and he didn't hesitate this time to agree with her. That was something he was really looking forward to, he thought to himself. It made him feel a little weird and warm the more he realized how much he had enjoyed going for a swim with Mars. He had to lie a little bit to his mother when he got back in the house, but she was too happy that he had started making friends to noticed that he was being suspicious and dodgy regarding who he was with. He also caught her in the middle of making dinner so she was distracted by that, too.

He didn't see Mars at all on Sunday and as the next two weeks ticked by on the calendar he got to hang out with her a couple more times down at the canal, and even went swimming with her another two times. During that time he'd begun to appreciate her crude honesty and tomboyish beauty. She was like a rough cut diamond. Mars was an irregular and hard girl, yet she was still fundamentally valuable and beautiful all the same. Kevin was starting to get those anxious feelings around her, like a fluttering feeling with butterflies. The young retriever was feeling that he was now falling for one of "those kinds of girls" that parents warned their sons about on the tv sitcoms.

---

At the end of the two weeks school finally let out and he wasn't sure how often he'd see Mars. The fact neither of them were in school wasn't a guarantee. She'd told him she likes to help her dad at his shop since her parents are split up. Mars apparently didn't like her mother any, who had full custody of her. The only way she got to see her dad was to help him at his shop by riding her bike there, and he apparently the only reason she had any money at all was because her dad was paying her for the help she was giving him.

It was on a following Wednesday that his mother finally got to meet the girl her son was hanging out with. Kevin had been upstairs in his room playing Nintendo when Mars came looking for him and didn't see him in the backyard, which had been their routine. His mother called him down and found her in the kitchen with Mars sitting casually at the island. His mother had a look of concern on her face that "Marcy" was not the sweet girl next door she had envisioned from his handful of not wholly honest descriptions he'd given her.

"Hi, Kevs!" She called cheerfully out to him when she saw him coming down the stairs. Kevin said hi back and spent a few awkward minutes talking with them, but eventually his mother let them go and they retreated up his room to play more Nintendo. Over the next two hours she checked in on them six times. A few of those times she just peeked in without saying anything. It was embarrassingly obvious that she was acting suspicious. Hopefully her trust in him would be great enough to keep her from going crazy with conspiracy theories about what was going on in his bedroom.

"Your mom is pretty nice. She totally thinks I'm going to jump your dick though." He blushed and watched as his Kirby rolled off the map. She laughed and stole one of his stars.

"Well, I didn't tell her a whole lot about you. Just that you were a girl that lived somewhere else in the neighborhood." He admitted and mashed the A button because his character was sleeping from exhaustion. It was then Mars' turn again, which she used to steal two more stars giving her the lead.

"Didn't want her to know you were out hanging with trailer trash, huh?" When he heard her say it Kevin felt his face flush with shame. He wanted to shrink and disappear. "It's cool. If I had kids I'd not want them to hang with me either."

"I don't think you're trash." He told her. She dunked her Kirby through the goal and cleared the map. She was really good at Kirby's Dream Course.

"That don't matter. It's what your mom thinks that matters." Mars added and he didn't know what else he could have added to that. They kept playing for a while longer until he heard his dad get home from work. The two of them could heard the muffled conversation between a man and woman so Kevin knew it was his dad and he was liking being told all about Mars from his mother. "Guess I should dip so you can get chewed out for playing games with a hoochie. Cool?"

"I guess. I don't know." She stood up and led the way back down downstairs, which led to another awkward few minutes of his dad politely interrogating Mars. The mood felt tense to him at first, but then shifted to be more positive once Mars let slip that she's been helping her dad out at his shop. Apparently his dad was familiar with that auto shop and had a high opinion of it. Mars' dad must be a good mechanic to have built up a reputation for his shop.

After she left he did have an awkward conversation about not getting roped into anything he wasn't old enough to be doing because of peer pressure. No smoking, no drinking, and none of that 'marijuana crap, Kevin, you've seen the commercials it'll fry your brain like an egg'. It was a weird conversation that he didn't want to have and he had to tell them he'd never seen her drink or smoke or do anything else and that even if she did he's not interested in anything like that. And that was all true! He hadn't even heard her talk about any of that during the time he'd known her. That stuff costs money and she didn't very much of that to blow.

He thought he was over and done with the parental interrogation by the time he was allowed to retreat back to his room, but was very mistaken. His dad came into his bedroom and shut his door behind him and they had a round of "the talk". Kevin wanted to die so badly that he didn't leave his room again until his mother was shouting for him to come down for dinner.

---

It wasn't until the weekend that he saw Mars next. Kevin learned that she helped out her dad on Thursdays and Fridays every week. Mondays to Wednesdays were kind of dependant what her dad felt he could get her to help with. Sometimes she had off and sometimes she didn't, but he always let her have the weekend to herself.

"So how bad was it after I left?" She'd asked him after they'd split from his house after she dropped by on Saturday. They were both at the canal doing a fat load of nothing by laying out on the bank next to the canal. The water, flowing along with shades of green and brown, looked inviting with how hot it was, but neither of them had any change of clothes to go swimming in. They hadn't planned on taking a dip in the water that day.

"They talked to me about resisting peer pressure, and then my dad told me the birds and the bees." Kevin began, and Mars laughed way harder at that than he appreciated.

"Well, at least your dad thinks you've got a chance, otherwise he wouldn't be giving you the talk." He blushed at the implications she was spelling out. Just the idea of something going on between them made him feel red and funny. "And it's hella hot today. I don't know why I didn't bring my bikini."

He was wondering why she didn't, too. All he had on was just a yellow T and a pair of khaki shorts. Had she brought the bikini she always wore when they went swimming he could have told her they matched yellow with yellow.

"I think it's suppose to be this hot tomorrow, too. Maybe we can go swimming then." He told her. The entire summer was going to be hot, but anything that got Mars to go swimming was a good thing. He'd like that a lot.

"Yeah, I guess." She sat up from the grass to unzip and pull off her jacket. It really wasn't a heavy weight jacket, he noticed. It was a thin layer of dark brown leather with a very fine fuzzy inside lining. Despite being so thin he knew it still had to be smoldering in this heat. With her jacket folded in half and sat to her side Mars was left with jeans she cut off at the knee and a muscle shirt over her sports bra. He could see double straps over her shoulders which had an attractive appeal of its own.

"Why do you wear that jacket so much? It's summertime." He asked her.

"It was my grandad's. He was a pilot in WW2. He gave it to my dad then he gave it to me. I like it." She told him just as she started stripping off her muscle shirt. She sat it aside and laid back against the grass looking much more comfortable, and to his young eyes much more appealing. He had to look back out at the water to distract himself.

"So it's a real aviator jacket. I thought it was a knock off." The water looked cool and had a soothing effect over him. It stood in stark contrast to the hot girl laying on the grass next to him.

"Duh." She laughed.

"That's cool." Kevin did think it was cool. So her dad was a vet. That was kinda neat. His dad would always buy fireworks and shoot them off every 4th of July and Memorial Day. Kevin didn't know if they'd let him do that in the cul-de-sac but maybe, he thought, knowing her grandfather was a WW2 veteran would improve her reputation in his parent's eyes. Maybe. They were both kinda patriotic on the holidays.

"Also why I wear this." She pointed a thumb at her chest. "They're too big. My dad and granddad were skinny dudes, like you. My fatass mother gave me too much meat on my chest to fit in this jacket without flattening them out with a sports bra."

"Oh. I guess that makes sense." He replied. The retriever glanced over at her and saw that she was looking up at the sky. He took that opening to look down at her chest and was reminded that her bust looked smaller inside her top than he knew it actually was. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure, sup?" Mars tilted her head over his way and he felt the spotlight fall on him.

"How big are they?" He asked bashfully. She was a girl, so he figured she'd know. It made him anxious just asking about it, though, and he was wishing he'd just piped up and left it a mystery.

"I don't know. My mom hardly buys me anything new to wear. I don't think I have anything that fits like it's suppose to." Mars told him. Her easy manner while she answered him made him feel a bit better about having asked in the first place. "This bra is for like, a C cup, I think. I think that's what my bikini is, too? I'm probably a D, or DD. Just remember they are Super Sized, and you'll have it right." She told him.

"I don't think they sell that size in stores, Mars." Kevin told her.

She giggled like a boy. "Dork. So, you going shopping for me?"

Kevin told her he wasn't, but added that she might need to herself one day. She looked down at her chest and gave a lazy sneer at her bust.

"Nah, this top is Tonka Tough. Rock solid. My bikini, too. Though I did have to add in a bunch of extra thread at some of the seams. These puppies just can't keep themselves in the crib." She mashed her chest together and readjusted the 'puppies' in her bra for comfort. "Be glad boys don't have to deal with this shit, Kevs."

"Speedos." He added absently. This caught her notice.

"Speedos?" She asked him with a curious look.

"Yeah. Big guys need a speedo that fits right, don't they?" He told her, which a provoked a laugh out of her.

"Speedos? Not so much, Kevs. I think you'd do aiight in trunks." She told him with another laugh.

"I wasn't saying I needed one!" He defended himself. Wait, was he actually defending himself if she was implying he didn't need a speedo? Was that bad good? Bad bad? He confused himself and let it go. He hoped she was just telling him he didn't need a speedo to impress her, even though that's not what he was trying to tell her? He dropped it and looked back out at the canal to save himself from his own thoughts.

"Oh fuck it, I'm going." She surprised him and he darted his eyes back to Mars who was then beginning to sit upright.

"You're leaving?" He asked her fearing she was bored and wanted to head home. Mars started to stand and Kevin hurriedly tried to pick himself up to try and stand with her, but she beat him to the punch with something that left him speechless.

"No, I'm goin swimmin', dork." And with that she grabbed the bottom of her sports bra and yanked it over her head in one laboured motion. Kevin was treated to a crystal clear view of her boobs being hoisted up by the taut fabric of her sports bra before finally spilling free down her chest as she tugged the top over her head. The science of kinetic energy. That was the demonstration on display as her orbs danced in the open air as they bounded about before him like twin heavenly bodies.

The retriever couldn't have looked away if he tried. The moment he caught a glimpse of them he couldn't stop himself from staring while his lips parted in awe. Mars started undoing her shorts and pulled them and her panties off all in the same motion. She didn't seem to care at all that he was seeing her naked, watching her strip down even! Then she took off running to do a cannonball into the canal. Mars was now skinny dipping. The prettiest girl he'd ever seen popped her head out of the water and told him to come and join him, but he declined out of hot embarrassment and a tent he wouldn't have been able to hide. "Suit yourself, Kevs!"

---

For the first time in a while Kevin felt that his summer was going to go better than he ever thought it could. He'd become friends with a new girl, Mars, and was hanging out with her a lot. He'd even gotten to see her naked, even if it was just for a short moment, and despite that he was too cowardly to watch her when she got back out of the canal to get her clothes. It was too bad he didn't have any other friends around to brag about any of it. Something told him that Mars wouldn't even care, and might have even told him to embellish the story to cash in on more of those bragging rights.

That one time had been a fluke though. In all the times they went swimming since, which by now had been often enough, she always had her bikini on under her clothes. Kevin didn't know if that was something deliberate she was doing because she knew she'd be swimming that day, or if maybe she was just making it a point to not show off to Kevin a second time. He didn't know. There was still plenty of summer left for the two of them to enjoy and he thought that maybe fate would smile upon him once again before school started back up and he'd see more of her. The retriever didn't have the guts to ask her, if, she could... you know. On purpose.

He got a small job mowing lawns for a few of his neighbors on the cul-de-sac. When he wasn't doing that and other odd jobs for his neighbors, or doing chores for his parents, he was playing Nintendo and hanging out with the pretty girl he'd met from the trailer park. It really wasn't as bad a summer as he'd feared when he had first moved in.

Kevin even had time to go to the mall with his parents and spend some of the money he was earning from his chores and hard work. He mostly bought comic books since they were more affordable than games for his SNES.

As an inside joke he went into a clothing store and bought a speedo in secret. The lady running the cash register was nothing but tight lipped smiles and contained giggles at him as she rung up his item, and it embarrassed him a lot since she looked like she was in her early twenties. It felt worse when it was a girl young enough to be his sister that was giggling at his choice of underwear. But anyway, Kevin thought it'd be a real funny gag to do like Mars and wear it under his clothes the next time they went out to go swimming.

That same day he had to buy a hat and a t shirt, too. With those extra things in his bag it was easier to hide the speedo so if his parents were to peek into the bag to see what he bought they wouldn't yank him aside about the underwear. He really didn't want to have to explain why he was buying a bright flashy red speedo. They wouldn't have believed him if he told the truth about it being a joke, and that might even provoke them into asking why he wanted to make the joke anyway, which treaded dangerously close to him admitting that he'd seen Mars go skinny dipping in the canal. Kevin could say hasta la vista to his friendship with Mars if that happened.

The next time he saw Mars he asked her if she wanted to go swimming. He had been prepared for it since it was Saturday and he knew Mars didn't work today. She was good about hanging out with him whenever she'd get the chance. It was pretty obvious that she didn't linger around her mom much more than she was obligated to and her mom didn't seem to care if her daughter wandered about wherever. Kevin didn't complain, he liked hanging out with Mars.

"Sure, if you're ok with me skinny dippin'. I ain't got my gear today." He blushed, but Kevin wasn't willing to put off his joke until later. He was already wearing his speedo underneath his trunks, which he'd worn by default when he got up this morning expecting a trip to the canal.

"I'll go swimming with you, but not naked." He told her, and she was fine with that. Was she actually going to go skinny dipping because he asked her to go swimming with him? Didn't that almost mean that he'd asked her to show herself naked? His heart was racing a bit. Both because he'd asked her to show off and because he was planning on doing his little gag.

Kevin was also going to get to see her naked again! He didn't know why his joke was so important, and it wasn't even anything good. Just stupid self-depreciating humor at best. Making a clown of himself. He told Mars he'd go check in with his mom and she waited while he raced inside, but not too fast as to not look overly excited by the prospect of swimming with her. His mother gave her consent so long as he didn't have anything else he was suppose to do for their neighbors, which he thankfully didn't. She gave the all clear and back to the fence Kevin went.

"Yeah, I can go. Just be back before dinner." He told Mars back at the fence as he started climbing over. She waited until he dropped over the other side of the fence and walked next to him.

"Cool beans." And to the canal they went. "Kinda wanted to play more Earthworm Jim though, just so you know."

"There's always tomorrow. Or later today if your mom would let you eat dinner with us." He told her. She laughed when he volunteered dinner.

"Asking me out to dinner already, Kevs?" She said and elbowed him in the arm. He let out an 'ouch' and rubbed the sore spot.

"No! But my parents aren't that suspicious of you. I don't think they'd say no if I asked them."

"Maybe that's true, Kevs, but I'm thinkin' you're just more interested in seeing Mars and her moons, right?" He blushed at her and fumbled his words for a moment before he recovered, feeling a bit dejected.

"That's not why, Mars." He tried telling her seriously, and he meant it! Sure, he did want to see, but that wasn't... He felt guilty now at being so excited about... He sighed quiet enough for her not to notice. She lifted her shoulders and held out her arms in a gestured response. "It's not!" He added.

"Chill, it's cool." She said with a chuckle as they ducked under the branches and through the wooded trail. The pair had reached the canal, and he was of mixed emotions about it now.

Just as he'd been hoping she'd do, Mars began to strip herself down, and he did indeed get to see her naked in all her tomboyish glory. The seed of guilt that'd been planted earlier sucked a little of the awe and wonder from the moment, though.

For Kevin to pull off his gag, as he'd not given up on it yet, he would need her to go in first. The retriever had it all planned out in his head. She would dive in first and he would rock his plan into action on the side of the bank and it'd be the funniest thing ever. Queue the audience laugh track. He'd be the Fresh Prince of SanFur. Kevin took his time to pull off his socks and sandals before taking off his shirt. He even folded it and place it over his beach towel in a stack to waste a little more time.

"You are so obvious, Kevs." He then dared to look at her directly instead of from his periphery. Mars was standing upright and naked with her facing him, full frontal. She had a hand on one hip with her hip cocked at an angle. It was a captivating pose that was a cross between proud and cocky. It was stunning.

"I, huh?" Kevin fumbled right into a speech impediment he didn't know he had. Whatever vocabulary he'd stuffed into his personal rolodex throughout his long thirteen years of education failed him in that moment.

"If you want to look, just look, dork. You're cool, Kevs. I don't bite unless bitten." She smile real nice at him, rocked her hip from one leg to the other, then spun on her heel and did a running jump into the water. It took him some moments to get over his initial embarrassment. He hadn't been thinking that maybe he was being obvious, but now that it had been so bluntly pointed out to him he saw that it was pretty clear. It just wasn't clear in the way Mars realized. He wasn't trying to peek at her, but trying to make sure she got wet first. Kevin was too busy scheming to even enjoy the view to its fullest. At least she had the courtesy to get him to look at her!

And she apparently didn't care? He was fully confused. Girls were perplexing and mysterious even when they acted like boys! But he had to make his gag work before he could join her in the water.

She was underwater when he stood up and got to the water's edge. When she popped back up he got her attention with a look, and when Kevin knew he had her attention he hooked his thumbs under his waistband and began to tug them right down his legs. He watched her facial expression shift from mild surprise, then to what he shockingly thought was joy, and then finally to an explosive fit of laughter.

"Oh, FUCK, Kevs!" His bright red speedo flashed under the summer sun in all its splendid, gaudy, flamboyant glory. It did nothing at all to complement his fur, but then that wasn't the point of him wearing it. Kevin had picked something bright and shocking for the effect it would have when she'd see it, and the end result he sought had been acquired. "WHY, you dork, are you wearing a fucking speedo, oh my God, I thought you were going to show me your cock, oh shit!" She was still caught in a fit of laughter while she slapped the surface of the water to sling water his way.

"Oh come on, Mars, it's not that bad is it?" Feeling drunk on the success of his joke Kevin put his arms behind his head like a male model and wiggled his hips from side to side like a ham. She had to swim closer to the shore to put ground under her feet because it looked like she was having trouble keeping her head above water. Seeing her laugh so hard filled him with pride. His gag could have gone a million different ways and this time, in this moment of his life, something of his design had gone off perfectly!

"Kevs, you look like a clown with its fake nose on the wrong head. This is awesome, but don't ever wear that again." She told him and he let his arms down and she splashed at him once more.

"Alright, I only bought it for the laughs!" He told her and took his own turn to laugh at himself.

"I'm serious, Kevs! The next time you yank your shorts down in front of me there better be a bone to bury or I'm putting you in a choke hold, you dork!" He finally started blushing and was now feeling just a little bit exposed. "And put your trunks back on or your mother is going to think we were bumpin' uglies!"

Kevin picked up his trunks and suddenly had a thought as to what to do. It made him hesitate, but his hands were already following through with the idea even as his brain continued to debate it. He was embarrassed now, but he was also emboldened by his comedic triumph. He stepped away from the water's edge and dropped his trunks to the grass by his feet and as quickly and as smoothly as he could... Kevin tugged off his speedo and patiently put his trunks back on. When he stood up to toss his speedo over to where he'd left his towel and shirt he saw Mars looking at him intently with her mouth pinched into a tight lipped smile. He felt a rush of blood hit him square in the face and threw the speedo over to his things.

Kevin waded awkwardly into the water next to her. "Hi."

"Forget Nintendo, Kevs. Let's play doctor next time we're at your house." His eyes went wide right before she grabbed him by the head and shoulders and dunked him underwater. She was gracious enough to him to not say anything more about his speedo or them playing doctor. As they swam and fooled around at the canal, keeping it PG, Kevin was left guessing that in order to make a girl laugh you sometimes had to take a few risks to your ego. He was feeling confident that this time the risk was worth the embarrassment.

---

After that summer continued on slowly, day by day, with video games, swims at the canal, and odd jobs up and down the cul-de-sac for his neighbors. One day, riding with his dad to help pick up things for the house, Kevin even got to see the shop Mars' dad owned and operated. Kevin and Mars had hung out so much this summer that his parents had been given more than one opportunity to pry into Mars' life a little, which taught them a bit more about what Mars did to help her dad. Kevin had noticed that his dad in particular seemed to be impressed by that, and Kevin was more than grateful for anything that would improve relations between his parents and 'that girl' they weren't too sure about.

"That's that auto repair shop your friend Marcy's dad owns." His dad told him while they were driving down the interstate. Kevin could see that it was a modestly sized shop that sat off next to the highway. It was a bit rough and dirty looking, but there were some nice looking cars and trucks parked in and around it.

"Looks kinda junky." He'd told his dad. Kevin knew they were on their way to some hardware store, and his dad took the very next exit, which would have them drive passed Mars' shop. It was a Thursday so he knew Mars was probably working. Then he heard his dad click on his turn signal and became rapidly, acutely, aware that his father was now turning into the shop's driveway. Why was his dad stopping?

As his dad navigated through the gravel lot to find an open space he said, "Any job that requires you take apart a vehicle gets you dirty, Kevin. They do pretty good work here. A few of the guys at the new office have taken their cars here before. You're friend's dad has a good reputation around him."

They parked and Kevin had to chase his way out to follow his dad after he got out of the car and started walking to the front door of the shop. The 'office' part of the business had a big glass window letting you look in at the little waiting room. Looking to the left Kevin could see several open bays running the length of a long metal building connected the office, and it looked like each one was filled with a vehicle hoisted up on a lift with men in grey jumpsuits working on them all.

Kevin followed his dad through the glass door and watched as the little bell on the counter was tapped a few times to some tune he didn't recognise. He wanted to make a bet with himself that his dad was just using this as an excuse to meet whoever Mars' dad was. A tall man in a jumpsuit walked out from a back office and approached the counter. He was a somewhat skinny german shepherd that looked about as old as his dad did.

"Afternoon, what can I do for ya?" The shepherd asked.

"Yeah, I'm hoping I can have somebody check my car's battery and levels. It's about time for it. Maybe my air pressure, too." Kevin listened as his dad made his request for service.

"Can do. I don't have a bay open right now, but if you didn't mind it I can have somebody run out to the lot and check your car. Might be a short bit before I can grab a free man, though. We've got a full load this week." The man explained. Kevin saw that there was a oval name tag stitched onto the front of man's jumpsuit. Looked like 'Roger' was his name.

"That's fine. Say, do you know if the gentleman that owns this business is here?" Kevin dared to look over at his dad, who wasn't paying his son much attention and instead had all of it directed at 'Roger'. Kevin felt cold. Was his dad really going to talk to Mars' dad?

"Well, sir, that 'gentleman' is me." Roger laughed, seemingly at the idea of being referred to as a gentleman. Kevin watched his dad smile and extend a hand. The two shook, and his dad started talking again.

"Mr Roger, I'm Jonathan Waters, and this is my boy Kevin. Don't you know his daughter, Kevin?" His dad turned and looked at him, and so did the shepherd. He felt so awkward and on the spot now. 'Just kill me', he thought to himself.

"Yeah, I know Marcy." He said her real name and wanted to disappear so hard. He felt so under the spotlight now that it was threatening to give him a sunburn under his fur. Mars' dad laughed, but he sounded friendly enough. He remembered that Mars had said both her dad and grandfather were skinny men, and Roger did look skinny.

"Well, then." Roger said and leaned over the counter to offer Kevin his hand. Kevin tried to do as his father always told him and give a firm squeeze whenever giving a handshake. 'You should never give another man a weak handshake, Kevin', he heard his dad's voice in his head. The older man's grip was stronger than his own, but at least he'd given it a good go of it. "Marcy doesn't have many kids to hang out with over at her mother's, but she's mentioned you a few times, Kevin. It's a nice little surprise. I got her in the back cleaning up."

"Yeah, we just moved in not too long ago and we're pretty happy Kevin isn't by himself. There aren't hardly any kids his age where we ended up settling. Guess your summer isn't turning out so lonely after all, isn't it, Kevin?" His dad looked over his way and Kevin looked back by darted his eyes between the two men. He nodded.

"Yes, sir. I like hanging out with Marcy." His dad smiled and the shepherd chuckled.

"I've been teaching my girl how to do a few simple things with the vehicles, I can volunteer her to check your battery and things if you didn't mind her trying." Roger said and propped his elbows on the counter.

"Sure, let her learn a little more." His dad offered back. Roger turned about and went to a door that opened out into the shop portion of the building.

"'Ey, Marcy, come up to the front, darlin'!" He shouted out into the noise of the shop. Kevin could hear another voice, sounded male, shout her name, too. A few moments later Mars came running up to the door wearing just a pair of jeans and a filthy white tank top. Kevin could see the edges of her sports bra. He thought she looked cute dressed like that.

"Yeah, dad?" She asked her father then passed a glance over at the front counter where Kevin and his dad stood. Mars locked eyes with him and looked confused, then passed a glance at his dad. "Hi, Mr Waters."

"Marcy, Mr Waters wants his car checked out. Go run and check his battery, tires, and fluid levels, will yah, darlin'." He told her and patted her on the shoulder as she nodded to him and ran back off into the shop, presumably to grab whatever she'd need.

"You been having her help out for very long?" Kevin looked back over at his dad who'd taken to leaning against the counter with his elbows propped on it. Roger peeked out the door a little more then wandered back to the front counter.

"Only about a year. It lets me give her some money and gives her an excuse to come see dear old dad." There was a glass window pane to the side that let you look out at the shop and he saw Mars run sneakily past the window with some stuff in her arms. A few small items that you'd need to check a car, Kevin guessed. "Me and her mother been separated for about five years."

The front door then opened and Mars poked her head inside.

"Mr Waters, your car is the silver Buick, right?"

"Sure is, Marcy. Keys are in the ignition." Kevin and Mars shared a look and he smiled at her and she smiled back before disappearing back out the door.

"You know what all kinds of services we do, Jonathan?" Roger asked and the two men talked literal shop for several minutes, which then devolved into car talk Kevin wasn't much interested in. He was bored and wanted to leave. Sure, he liked that Mars was here, but it wasn't really the same when she was out working on his dad's car and couldn't hang out with him. He saw there was a candy machine in the corner of the waiting room so he bought some gumballs. Kevin stepped over to the front entrance and opened the door before asking if he could go see what Mars was doing.

"Sure, but don't be distracting her from doing her job. She's on her daddy's time right now not her own." His dad replied and Kevin heard her dad laugh as he slipped out the front door.

Mars was hovering over the engine of the car with the hood up. She glanced at the door, having heard it open, and saw him walking toward her.

"So did you ask your dad to let your visit me, huh?" Mars asked him and he told her that he hadn't. He watched her work and popped one of the gumballs into his mouth.

"Gumball?" He offered her a piece since he bought enough for both of them. She pulled a long narrow stick out of an opening hole. Something to do with the engine. Mars then showed him her hands.

"I'm covered in oil, Kevs." She told him, and the fur of her hands was all stained with unnatural blacks and browns. He'd only watched his dad mess around with the car a little bit, but he suspected she was just checking the oil. There was a plastic looking device, bigger than his gameboy, with some wires running from it. Mars had it sitting on a plastic ledge near the front bumper.

Kevin held up one of the gumballs between his fingers and offered it to her. "Say 'ahh'."

"Ahh" And she leaned over and snatched the gumball from his fingers while sucking on his fingertips briefly before pulling herself back before she began visibly chewing. He felt himself blush and he could feel his fingers were damp with her spit. She turned back to the car and he took the opening to stick his hand in his pocket where he tried to rub his fingers dry. "So do I owe you a gumball now?"

"No." He laughed and retrieved his hand from his pocket feeling glad that she wasn't paying attention to his hand. Feeling her spit on his fingers made him nervous that his dad would somehow 'know' that he'd fed her a gumball like it was a grape. Kevin didn't want her to think he was grossed out. It actually made him feel fluttery on the inside.

He watched as Mars replaced some caps under the hood then shut it. She took a metal pressure gauge and started going around the car to take off the caps on the tires to check the pressure on each one. "I think your dad just wanted an excuse to stop by."

"Why is that?" Kevin said while following her around as she finished checking tire after tire and replacing the caps on each of the little nozzles.

"The battery is good, oil level is good and looks clean. The other fluids were ok. And the tires look ok." Kevin glanced back at the front of the car and wondered. His suspicious feeling that this was just his dad coming to check out who Mars' dad was might be true. They'd be in the front office chatting still talking shop and other 'dad stuff'.

"Huh."

"Well, I'm done. I need to go tell dad. I'm on 'my daddy's time and not mine' remember?" And she giggled and he had to laugh as well. He let her go in first and she started telling her dad what the verdict was. Kevin fell in behind her then sidestepped off to stand a little more near his dad.

"Well, I won't charge you for the check up since Marcy didn't have to do anything. You drop by again if you ever need anything done, though, Jonathan." Roger told his dad and then turned his gaze over to his daughter. "That's assuming you're sure you did everything right."

"I did everything just the way you taught me, dad." And Kevin watched her dad nod at her and he turned back to his father, who took the opportunity to speak.

"I'm sure she did fine, Roger. Maybe if her mother doesn't mind Marcy can drop by to have dinner with us one day as a thank you for looking at the car. I'm sure Kevin wouldn't mind getting the chance to feed her some real food instead of some bubble gum." His father said and both men started laughing like only a pair of dads could while Kevin and Mars deflated under the weight of their embarrassment. The big window at the front of the shop sure was nice and clear.

---

He wasn't around to hear the conversation, and Kevin was very curious to know how it went, but it was the day after him and his dad's trip into town that his mother told him to invite Mars to dinner. Kevin didn't know her phone number so he couldn't call her. He didn't know her mom's name either so the phonebook wouldn't help him any.

"Well, it doesn't have to be tonight. I can cook whatever day she says she can come over." Kevin had been told. He found himself that afternoon sitting out on the swing in the yard hoping she'd drop by. He was actually strangely excited by the prospect of her coming over for dinner, since it meant that his parents actually were taking to her more.

The alley was just one hopped fence away from him. Kevin considered jumping it and walking in the direction Mars' lived on the off chance he'd stumble across the trailer park. It couldn't be hard to find. It was a trailer park. It would stand out.

A sense of urgency overtook him and he hopped the fence. The alley that lead the way Mars lived looked the same as the direction they walked to get to the canal. The houses to his right all looked different, but the alley never really changed. A dirty gravel path flanked by a fence row on one side and scraggly treeline on the other.

His community wasn't that large on a map. There might have been a few dozen homes spread out across multiple cul-de-sacs. The alley actually came to a stop at a road he was familiar with. He'd go down this road every time he rode with his parents to go deeper into town. He knew if he made a right turn he'd reach the intersection that led into the entrance to his subdivision. Going left would take him down the street and he lost track of where all that went. He didn't keep good memory of where things were when he rode in the car. He mostly played on his gameboy during trips.

Kevin didn't see any sign of Mars and had no idea where her trailer park was. It was probably off some side street and blocks away. He wondered how far she had to walk to make it to his house. He'd never figured it was this far.

He went back home and sat on the swing while hoping she'd show up so she could have dinner with him. Today was one of her work days with her dad, so that might have been why she hadn't turned up today. The fact he couldn't reach her made him feel lonely.

---

"Hey, do you want to have lunch with us this Saturday?" Those were the first words Kevin blurted out of his mouth when he saw her the next day. His mother had told him, possibly sensing that he was lonely, that she could make a big lunch on Saturday, that way he'd have more time to catch Mars and let her know.

"Um, yeah, sure." She said, looking like he'd caught her off guard. "That's how you take girls out on dates, Kev? Get your mom to cook for them?"

"It's not a date!" He flushed. She giggled.

"I don't feel like swimming today. I'm all crampy."

"Eat something you didn't like?" Kevin asked.

"Girl cramps, dork. Let's just hang out in your room."

Mars didn't feel like playing anything so he started playing Super Metroid while she watched and sat next to him on the floor with her hands in her jacket pockets. He didn't have any bean bag chairs so the were left to sit on the floor with their legs crossed. At his old house the door to his bedroom and his window were on opposite walls. That meant his bed was on one wall between them, then the tv was across from it. Him and his friends could lounge on the bed while they played his Nintendo.

The new house had his bedroom at the corner of the house so he had a door on one wall and a window on two others. The movers stuck his bed, per his mother's directions, in the corner of the bedroom between the windows and then the dresser with his tv on it was on the adjacent wall. You couldn't really lay on the bed and look straight at the tv without turning your head. That wasn't very convenient when you had a guest in your bedroom.

"Pause it." She told him and started standing.

"What?"

"Gotta pee." She said and he complained about it being TMI.

When she got back she had a can of soda and she popped something in her mouth before washing it down.

"Your mom is nice." She said and sat back down next time him.

"I thought you went to go pee. Where's my drink, huh?"

"I asked your mom if I could have something for my cramps." She replied.

"Stop having cramps." Kevin told her.

"As soon as you stop having boners." She laughed. He was glad he didn't have to have girl cramps. He just had to worry about having a tent in class when his teacher would ask him to go write on the board.

---

Kevin got his little dinner date to happen. Well, it wasn't a 'date'. It was just dinner that occurred on a date on the calendar. Mars had conveyed to him that she could come by. Privately she'd told him she didn't even asked her mother. Since it was a lunch thing she'd just leave the house like she always did and her mother didn't need to know the details.

"She never bothers me about where I go off to." Was her response to his questioning if she'd get in trouble for not telling her. "She doesn't care."

Mars had popped in early for lunch and together they played some games. Her cramps were gone and she was acting more herself. He'd talked her into playing Super Mario Kart since he actually was more likely to beat her at that one than he was at beating her at Kirby's Dream Course.

"You need to get a bike, Kevs." She told him while they played.

"Why? Do you have one?"

"Nope, but I'm saving up for one. I know how to get to my dad's shop so if I got a bike I can quit taking to bus in the mornings." She told him. Sounded like a long bike ride to make, which reminded him that he didn't know how far away she lived from him.

"How far away is your house?" He asked.

"Why?"

"I walked down the alley the other day and got to the street. I didn't know how to get to your house so I went back." He admitted and she laughed.

"I live several blocks away from you, Kevs. When I get my bike I can ride to your place super quick." She said. He'd hate having to walk that far. It made him wonder how she ever found the alley that went to the canal.

"So how'd you ever find the canal and stuff? If you live so far away."

"I wanted to get away from my mother. So I went walking somewhere no one could find me and found that alley, and just kept going. I did that a bunch and found the creek by snooping."

"Oh." He said. Mars' relationship with her mother didn't seem real good to him. He'd never met her and he kinda didn't want to. Not from how Mars talked about her. He added, "Well, I'm glad you found it. It'd be real lonely without you around."

"Like you, too, Kevs." She leaned once to the side and bumped into his shoulder. He blushed and didn't know what to say. He drove right off the side of rainbow road and Mars, and several other characters, overtook him. She laughed as she crossed the finish with him tagging along a few places behind her.

His mother called them down for dinner and they were greeted to what looked like country fried steak, mashed potatoes, and Kraft mac and cheese. For Kevin it was a normal dinner that his mother was making, but from the way Mars was attacking it he'd have suspected she'd never eaten it before.

"This is really good, Mrs Waters." She complimented his mother's cooking, which his mother responded very well to. His mother always liked being complimented, but usually she only got it after him and and his dad finished eating. There she was sitting with a smile while she ate her own plate's worth of food. Mars got a plate full of seconds like she had an empty void to fill.

After they both finished eating, which meant Kevin had to wait for Mars to finish her seconds, they helped his mother put away the dishes in the washer. Since it was still the afternoon there was daylight remaining to burn, and Kevin and Mars went back upstairs to his room.

"Your mom is a really good cook." She told him after they got themselves alone in his bedroom.

"Yeah, I guess so." Kevin didn't have much to compare his mother's cooking to except for his grandma's and the lunch ladies. His grandma was better and the lunch ladies were always worse.

"So want to go swimming tomorrow?" She asked while he blew on the cart for Kirby's Dream Course. He popped the game in and pushed the purple slider.

"Yeah, we can." He told her, then she proceeded to beat him at Kirby again.

---

So, his parents finally confessed to him that they'd be going on a special vacation for just the two of them. No Kevin allowed. They'd waited until after Kevin had enjoyed a little over half of his own summer vacation. They'd be leaving early the next upcoming Thursday and getting back the following Monday sometime around noon. Apparently there was a concert they wanted to attend involving an old band that made him gag just thinking about. Something only his parents could possibly enjoy. His mother took him into town to go grocery shopping and they stocked up on easy stuff he could make for himself without much trouble. Tv dinners, instant noodles, mac and cheese, etc. As a consolation for them ditching him for a few days she bought him a bunch of sodas and chips and told him he could take those to the canal he swims at with his friends, since she seemed to still be under the misapprehension that Mars wasn't his only friend, and have a little picnic.

Kevin didn't even get to tell Mars about any of this either. She'd been working with her dad too much for him to have the chance. He ended up roughing it all by himself until that Saturday rolled in. On Thursdays and Fridays he rarely saw Mars because of her time spent at her dad's shop, and this week had been no exception to that rule. Having already been solitary for two days and several hours worth of Saturday he'd started to get accustomed to being a lone wolf with just him and his Nintendo holding down the fort in between noodles and kid cuisine.

When Mars eventually dropped by he was inside playing Nintendo. It was actually a lot earlier than he was used to seeing her, too, being kinda around brunchtime. She'd knocked at their backdoor several times before he heard it and found her just as she was turning to leave.

"Sup, I didn't think you were home."

"No, I'm just the only one here. Wanna come in?" Mars stepped inside and Kevin closed the door after her and started telling her that there were a bunch of sodas in the fridge. Without him needing to ask her to Mars picked one and tossed it to him, which he almost failed to catch.

"So where the folks at?" She asked while popping her soda open. He joined her with his own, but with the added drama of fizz trying to escape the opening from having been shaken up during its aerial maneuver to his hands.

"They've been gone for the last two days. Won't be back until sometime Monday. They wanted to go on vacation." Kevin started explaining. She laughed like a boy when she heard the story.

"Aww, for real? Ditched. So you've just been playing with yourself this whole time?" He told her he had and ignored the obvious innuendo.

"Had I known they'd be gone I could have snuck over and treated you to a good time." She wiggled her eyebrows at him. Kevin laughed and told her that Nintendo and cartoons had been keeping him pretty occupied for the last two days. They were still in the kitchen with the two of them propping up their elbows on the kitchen island. She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Wasn't talkin' about that, dork." And she lifted a hand and made an 'OK' sign while shaking it back and forth next to her mouth with her tongue sticking pushing out her cheek on the opposite side of her face. Kevin blushed and Mars slapped the island with her palm and started cackling with laughter. "You're such a dork, Kev."

"You want my mother to hate you, don't you?" He laughed with her.

"No! She's cool. I bet it's nice having a mom that actually gives a shit about you." She said and Kevin suddenly felt a little down. "Hey, let's go play something. We've got all day."

Mars didn't say anything else about their respective mothers and he didn't bring it up either. She told him if they got bored with the Nintendo then maybe they could go swimming since she came over with her bikini under her outfit.

"Why not? It's not like I've got anything new to play." He told her on the way up the stairs.

"I think they're coming out with another Mario next year, but it looks a lot different."

"Yeah, you play as Yoshi I think. They talked about it a lot in my Nintendo Power magazine." They ended up picking out Kirby's Dream Course. Well, Kevin picked it out because he wanted to let her win without it looking like he was losing on purpose. He didn't have to throw a game of Kirby. She was just plain better than him at it.

"You nerd." She giggled as only she could while they sat next to each other with controllers in hand. Her shoulder was brushing up against his with her aviation jacket scratching him through his tee.

They played around until it was actually lunchtime and Kevin signalled his hunger with a growl from his stomach. Mars elbowed him in the ribs.

"So what's the host going to feed me? Or you planning on taking me out to dinner?" He was asked, and he shrugged.

"I have corndogs in the freezer. Or you want noodles?" She made a 'hmm' noise and paused the Nintendo. She ended up deciding on corndogs and he ate the same thing with some bags of chips for both of them and brand new sodas.

Kevin was beginning to realize that he might spend more time with her today than he ever had. They've hung out before for several hours, but never with her starting off their day this early and then, with his parents gone, she could stay until late. If her mother let her.

"Think you're mom will mind if you stay late? I mean, no one else is here." He asked her and she looked at him and stuck the last half of her corndog into her mouth until her fingertips were touching her lips where she held the stick. She giggled at his shy expression and pulled the stick out of her mouth and started chewing.

"She won't care. I can call her though and tell her I'm staying the night at a girlfriends."

"Stay the night?" Kevin replied when his voice decided it was time to break. Mars started laughing and her humor became contagious and he started giggled with her.

"Yeah, I can crash here." She told him, then gulped at her soda before crushing the can, "I can do that, right?"

"I've never had a sleepover with a girl before." Kevin blushed and Mars didn't laugh at him this time. He was trying to decide what to tell her! He'd honestly only had boys over to his house. He did want Mars to stay, but what would that mean? She'd already been kinda dirty today, and it made him wonder things that were making him blush under his fur.

"It's time to go swimming, Kev!" She changed the subject and stood up from the kitchen table where they'd been eating.

"Oh, ok!" He finished off the last of his own corndog about the same way Mars had hers and was chewing it while he ran upstairs to change into his trunks. Mars was leaning against the fence by the time he got back down the stairs and to the backdoor. He locked the house up and followed Mars over the fence and down the alley.

They were a little quiet on the walk to the canal and he kept thinking about the whole sleepover thing. It felt like she'd gone quiet because he didn't tell her right off the bat that he wanted her to stay the night. Kevin didn't have the courage to tell her he was nervous about all that, because of her and some of the things she'd said. He'd played his own part, too. His jokes and the way that he never told her not to stop being who she was. Did she really just want to stay the night after playing Nintendo all day?

Even after she stripped down to her bikini and they both started swimming everything felt off. They were splashing and playing, swimming laps back and forth across the canal, skipping rocks across the water to see if they could beat each other's record. Normal on the surface, but still. Kevin felt like the thing from earlier was still there underneath it all.

"Hey Mars?" He finally spoke up once they'd both worn themselves out with laps.

"Yeah, Kevs? Sup?" Judging by her voice he realized that the way he'd gotten her attention must have sounded dour. Well, he'd been kinda feeling down for the last hour or so.

"You surprised me earlier when we were eating. I didn't think you'd ever ask to stay the night." Mars looked embarrassed, which made it only the second time he'd ever seen her that way. His dad had been responsible for the first time over at her dad's shop, and now he'd been the cause of the second. She was always so confident around him. He was a dork, like she'd call him, and wasn't much for 'having a pair'. Maybe if he had more of what she had he'd not have been a misfit back at his old school.

"It's aiight, Kevs. I just thought I could, you know." She shrugged it off and Kevin could tell she was not really up for making eye contact with him, like he'd put her under the spotlight and it was now her turn to not know what to say. Just like when he was trying to think of what to tell her in the kitchen.

"You can call your mom when we get back. It's kinda lonely when I'm the only one home." He was blushing and his nerves forbid him from making eye contact with her when she looked back at him.

"Sure!" She said loudly at first before inhaling quietly then continuing. "I'll just tell her I got invited to a girlfriend's thing further down the Valley."

He looked at her and smiled. "Ok."

Mars wiped her hand over her hair and slung some excess water off to the grass. When she stood up he thought she'd go for her clothes, so he sat up, but instead she sat back down so she was right next to him. "Kinda tired of swimming."

"Yeah, me too." He told her back. Kevin noticed her fidgeting. "Sup?"

She exhaled hard and turned to look at him. His eyes had no choice but to widen. It looked like she'd steeled herself and was almost glaring at him, but she didn't look angry. "What?" He asked her, but instead of getting a reply he got her hand pushed into his chest.

Mars shoved him backwards until he hit the grass behind him with an 'ooph'. He gasped as she leaned her body over him until her heavy chest pressed against his and her lips planted themselves hard on his cheek where she kissed him. Mars rolled off him and stood back up.

"Ok, let's go back! I need to think of a better lie to tell my mom than girlfriend's thing down the valley."

"Oh-hokay!" His voice cracked again and he could hear how nervous he sounded when he spoke. "C-ool."

"Then I guess we can play Super Metroid, ok?" Talking quickly she was up ahead of him and picking up her clothes, but she didn't bother putting them on. "You never showed me that thing where you rescue the critters."

"Sure!" He had to chase after her because she was walking so fast and by the time they got to the fence behind his house they were running and laughing with all their nerves having melted into something way better.

---

By the time they were both back inside their regular clothes the two of them were playing Nintendo, or Kevin was rather. He had opened up an older save file in Super Metroid so he could replay the final area of the game so they Mars could see him get the secret ending where you rescued the Dachola and Etecoons.

"How you know they escaped?"

"You saw the little ship fly off the right side of the screen." He explained. It was pretty straight forward!

"Uh huh." She said. "Lame secret ending, dork."

They went back to playing and had a strange argument where they were each trying to make the other play a game they knew they were better at. Mars wanted to play Mario Kart and he wanted to play more Kirby Dream Course. They ended up settling on Mortal Kombat, which neither of them were any good at. Kevin just spammed 'Get Over Here!' while Mars kept rotating characters in frustration until she'd played as every character. Then they went back to Kirby.

The awkwardness from earlier in the day had faded away and Kevin was having fun. A lot of fun. Mars didn't towel herself off very well and her shirt was sticking to her fur a little. It was slowly air drying, but her fur still being damp wasn't helping it go any faster. He had this small grin on his face all while they were playing because the cute girl next to him was showing off whether she knew it or not. He was pretty sure she knew, but he wasn't going to bring it up if she wasn't.

"So when is your tummy gonna start rumbling again, dork?" She asked him. He wondered if this was her own way of telling him to feed her.

"I don't know. I guess I could eat something."

"It's like, almost 8. How late do you eat, Kevs?" She asked with a laugh.

"Woah. I didn't know it was that late." He said and she laughed. "Yeah let's eat."

"Something that's not more corndogs, please."

Downstairs in the kitchen Kevin had to show her all he had to offer. There were still corndogs in the box, he had some packages of instant noodles. He'd eaten all but one kid cuisine so far, so he figured she could eat that if she didn't mind it. And then he found three cans of Chef Boyardee. Mars ended up eating his last kid cuisine while he microwaved himself some beefaroni.

It was close to midnight when they finally started getting tired of games. Kevin had some movies his mom had recorded on tape for him, but none of them felt very appealing at the time. They were drifting into that period of a sleepover where everything was winding down more and more, which is usually when him and his buddies would separate off to sleep. Really, his room only consisted of videogames and some comic books, and Mars had never professed much interest in the latter.

"Well, what's up now, Kev?" She asked him as she sprawled onto her back and stretched her limbs out. They were idling on the Street Fighter menu screen since that's the last game they managed to get themselves to play. It was pretty obvious without needing to say it that they were both pretty tapped out on the Nintendo for the day.

"I don't know. I don't normally ever stay up this late." Kevin had to confess. Normally when he had friends over they crashed out by 10 or 11. They were never any good at staying up 'all night' like they all bragged they could.

"Aww, poor baby."

"Well, what about you?" Kevin laid himself back to join her on the floor. He saw her hoist her arms up and she made a wide gesture with her hands.

"I live by my own rules. Whatever I feel like, dork." She told him, then dropped her arms over her shoulders and crossed them underneath her head.

"Well, you got any ideas then? I can stay up late like the big kids." Kevin made an effort to look cool by joining her with a pair of crossed arms under his head with the added touch of lifting one leg up to gracefully lay it over the other to cross them. She noticed this maneuver and did the same so that they were both laying on the floor with all limbs crossed.

"We both could probably use a shower."

"Yeah." He laughed. They'd both taken the same dip in the canal. Sure, the water probably wasn't polluted and they weren't going to sprout any extra limbs, but his fur did feel a little icky from the water. "I've got some extra shirts and shorts you could wear after we both take showers."

"Anything that'll actually fit?" She asked him. He told her he didn't know with a lift of his shoulders. "Where they at?"

Kevin sat up and stood and fished out one of his pairs of drawstring boxers and a white tee. He put the shirt back in the draw. "You want a short sleeve or a muscle shirt?"

"Sleeveless, punk. Let me show off the guns." He laughed and tossed her the two items and she looked them over. "Well, this might be a tight fit."

"Not my fault you've got a pair of melons stuck to your chest."

"Yeah, but you could work out a little! Get some pecks on you." She said and tossed her change of clothes to the bed.

"Your boobs still wouldn't fit in my shirt, Mars." She stuck her tongue out at him. "So which of us goes first? Bathroom is in the hallway."

"I remember where your bathroom is, you dork!" She said and picked up the shirt he'd given her and threw it at him. He laughed and threw it back at her where she caught it. Mars put the shirt back on the bed with the boxers and she looked like she was going to say something, then stopped to hesitate, then opened her mouth again. "You can go first if you promise not to use up all the hot water."

"I don't take girl showers, Mars." He said as he stepped over to his bedroom door with his own change of white tee and a pair of grey boxers in hand.

"And what's that suppose to mean, you butt?" She called after him and he slipped through the door with a laugh.

He made it to the bathroom without anyone running him down. The new house had a nice upstairs bathroom in the hallway that had a big tub in it. His parent's had gone shopping and there was now a new shower head hanging over the tub and a decorative curtain rod to give him privacy. It had flowers all over it and looked girly, but his mother ruled the roost when it came to how the house looked so it was on her orders that he showered on Venus. He'd have preferred that he was showering with Mars, and then caught the sight of himself in the mirror and blushed. He didn't blush at himself but at the imaginary outline he saw of Mars in the mirror, standing right next to him had she been there.

Kevin had already turned the shower on and had begun to strip, beginning with his shirt, when Mars knocked on the bathroom door. He was still half dressed and opened the door a little ways to peek at her. "Yeah?"

Mars was standing in her bikini, having taken everything else off in his bedroom presumably, with her spare change of clothes draped over her arm. He waited for her to say something, but she was hesitating and finally looked away at a spot somewhere behind him in the bathroom. "You gonna make me ask if I can join you?" She said and looked as frustrated with him as she was embarrassed.

Kevin took his own turn to blush and looked back at the shower with its steam gently rising from over the top of the curtain rod. "Join?"

"It'd be faster, dork! And we've seen each other naked!" She explained. Again he heard her voice take on a nervous tone and he felt himself getting suddenly shy at the idea she was proposing. Mars wanted to skinny dip with him in the shower! He'd just been thinking of something very similar before, but now she was actually offering to make his imagination a reality. Mars would come to Venus in his bathroom and he didn't know how to handle that. But his experience from earlier in the day when she'd asked him if she could stay the night taught him that he needed to not be a coward with what he wanted. He didn't want Mars to think he didn't want to spend time with her when in fact he really wanted to, a lot! "I mean, we don't have ta. Showerin' isn't the same as swimmin' and-"

"It's ok. It's just skinny dipping, right?" He said and very bravely opened the bathroom door wider and gave her his best smile. He didn't feel very brave, and in fact he felt like he was going to shiver himself out of his shorts. Mars looked him in the eyes and he caught a look of surprise on her face like she'd been expecting to be told 'no' kinda like she'd been told before when she asked about staying over.

"Yeah." She said a little quieter so her nerves weren't so clear and open, then added, a little louder to cover herself. "You dork."

She stepped into the bathroom quickly and he felt so awkward shutting the bathroom door after her. They were now sealed together in his bathroom. The room was actually bigger than the one he used back at the old house, but now that he was in here with Mars it felt like a matchbox. She was so close to him, closer than he'd ever been. Of course, that wasn't true, but it sure felt like it was.

Mars sat her change of clothes on the toilet where he'd left his own outfit. Then, and it seemed to Kevin that she had rally herself to the task, she pulled off her bikini top and quickly dropped her bottoms to join it on the floor. He started blushing furiously and she was looking unlike her usual confident self, too. "Ok, so? You just gonna stare?"

"N-no!" He said, surprised by the outburst and he was operating on muscle memory before he was even able to think about what he was doing. His shorts and underwear were around his ankles and he bent over to help his feet clear the holes. Back upright he naturally covered himself with his hands. The shy butterflies fluttering around in his stomach felt like they were trying to hide themselves from his embarrassment as Mars looked him over. She wasn't hiding her nudity from him, but she looked about as awkward as he did.

She stuck out her hand to offer it to him. "Well, come on! Before the water gets cold."

He hesitated, and saw her hand was shaking. Kevin closed one fist and let it fall away from his crotch and to his side while his other hand reached out to take hers. They held each other's hand as they awkwardly stepped into the shower with Mars taking the lead. Their hands didn't tremble so much once they were both standing under the water.

"Well, that wasn't so bad." He spoke up after about a minute of awkward silence. They were now both completely soaked. Mars smiled, then started giggling, and in no time it became contagious and he caught and started giggling, too. Mars touched him on the arm and grabbed him. He stopped giggling when she did, which was at the same time she decided to lean against him so her chest pressed against his.

She knocked all the words out of his vocabulary as she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him. They were pressed tight, front to front. Kevin tried to find her face but she had her head turned away from his to press her cheek to his shoulder. He put his shaky arms around her. He didn't know how long they were like that, but it felt like it had ended too soon when she finally pulled away.

"You pervert." She giggled. Since she was a little taller than him he was looking up at her, then she nodded her nose in the air to gesture down, and he looked down, then right back up with his face red hot. He'd not noticed! The water, and Mars, were so hot he'd, he'd confused the two! "It's aiight."

She pressed her lips to his cheek for the second time today and kissed him hard. His heart leapt and when she pulled herself away, and he saw her smile, he leaned forward to kiss her back on her cheek. Mars tilted her head just in time to let her lips catch his. Kevin's gasp was quickly muffled by the older girl's tongue poking itself way past his teeth while she grabbed him around for another hug and pulled him tight with one hand right behind his head.

There was no helping him now. His erection wasn't going anywhere and was now rapidly growing to its full length with it being trapped between their two bellies. He hugged her, she hugged him back, and he did a terrible job of making out with her. She stopped and started kissing him on the cheek repeatedly until he stopped her and kissed her back. They both started giggling and he forgot all about the soldier standing at attention. Kevin couldn't take his eyes off Mars' face and she wasn't looking away from him either, until she started to bite her lip while she giggled.

"Kev-" she started, then pinched her lips and stopped. "I kinda wanna go further."

"You do?" He asked dumbly and she start smirking. "I mean-"

"Dork." She told him and pulled her arms back around him to put her hands on his chest. He was just a skinny kid, but the way her fingers ran through his fur... it made him feel like he was being admired. She bumped her nose into his and they stared into each other's eyes. He was blushing again with the sensation of his dick sandwiched between them rushing back to the forefront of his mind. She put her cheek back on his shoulder.

"Do you remember when you showed me your speedo, Kev?" She asked him from below his chin. He was nervously rubbing her shoulders while her fingers slowly scratched at his chest.

"Y-yeah."

"I told you I wanted to play doctor the next time we were at your house." She reminded him, and he did remember. It had been a joke, of course. They'd both been joking around, Kevin thought.

"I remember." He told her. Mars drew her right arm down to his side and started rubbing at his ribs. It didn't tickle. Her hand was too soft and the water too warm.

"Can I be your doctor?" He started to quietly shake as he felt the hand on his side slowly drift lower and lower until he felt the back of her hand rubbing over his crotch. Her knuckles were rubbing him through his fur. "You don't have to let me, Kev." She whispered from atop his shoulder.

Kevin still had her shoulders in his hands. He could push her away and they could just quickly shower in awkward silence. That's what Kevin could do, and that's probably what his parent's would have wanted him to do. He even remembered the talk he'd gotten from his dad. That talk. Kevin had finally fallen for 'one of those kinda girls', but she really wasn't like that was she?

Kevin squeezed her shoulders, and he hoped that it felt to her that it was affection he was squeezing her with. He opened his mouth and inhaled. The retriever needed the air. Needed the strength. Mars was different from all the other girls he'd ever met. She was special. To him, she'd become the kinda girl that you fall in love with.

"C-can I-" He started, then fear stopped him and made him swallow. He gulped down a weird lump in his throat and started again. "C-can I be your doctor, too?"

Kevin didn't care that his voice cracked while he spoke. Mars pulled her head off his shoulder and kissed him. Her tongue entered his mouth and he felt her warmth against him. Kevin couldn't help but close his eyes as she tangled her tongue with his. She grabbed him and he jerked against her and gasped so hard he almost broke the kiss.

His eyes bolted open as she let herself fall backwards toward the shower wall and she tugged him along after her. Kevin had her pinned to the wall as her hand squeezed his soldier tight in her hand. It was she that broke the kiss. "You're a big dork."

"I can't help being a dork." He said, voice trembling.

"I'm not complainin' about you bein' a dork, dork." she giggled at him and kissed his cheek.

"I'm telling you that you're a BIG-" she squeezed him again and made him suck in a lungful of air at the shock of her touch. "Dork!"

Kevin didn't know what to say so instead of talking he hugged her and let his skinny body pretend it was strong enough to hold her to the wall like she wanted. Her free arm snaked around behind him and she rubbed him up and down his spine. He felt himself letting go. Her hand was massaging him down there, and her other hand was rubbing him back there. The warmth he felt from her was greater than the water from the shower head.

He exhaled and squeezed her tight and Mars responded by stroking him. He panted against her. Mars wasn't doing it to him the way he'd have done it to himself. There was no way for him to know what her hand would do next, as it wasn't his own. Every time the bottom of her hand bumped against the growing bulb of his knot he felt himself flinch at the touch. "You dork."

He buried his nose into the wet fur of her neck. The water from the shower head was starting to cool as Mars kept playing with him until she could start to feel his fingernails dig into her fur.

"Close?" She asked him. It sounded like she was panting with excitement. He shivered over her and buried his face deeper into the crook of her neck.

"Mmmh." Kevin nodded into her.

"How do you do it?" She asked him and started rubbing small circles in the fur above his tail. "When you get off."

Kevin had to swallow once before he could talk. "I s-squeeze. I s-squeeze um-"

"I gotcha." She stopped him and her other hand left his back. Mars knew what he was trying to say. The hand she'd been stroking him with slipped up to his tip. The other hand wrapped around his knot. Kevin couldn't stop himself from panting when he felt her fist close tightly around his knot. She squeezed and he let out a whimper. "It's aiight, Kevs."

Her other hand started stroking him again. She was going quicker while the hand on his knot kept its grip as tight as she could. It felt so good! Kevin had never thought it could feel this good when he did it on his own. Mars nestled her face into his neck so that they were bother nuzzling each other as she brought him closer and closer to his finish.

Mars was going to get him off! He felt it rushing through him. Those precious scant moments before he would feel it shoot ripped through him and he panicked. "Mars!" His voice cracked and somehow she understood. She suddenly dropped to a squat below him. Kevin followed her down with his eyes until he was pressing the top of his head to the shower wall with Mars squatting on her feet below him.

He watched her let go with the hand that was stroking him, and with her fist still clenched around his knot she put her mouth on him. There was no way he could have prevented the explosion that happened, not with her doing that! With no hope of containing it Kevin groaned and shuddered against both her and the wall with knees that threatening to buckle out from under him with every laboured flex of his member.

Mars busied herself by suckling on him silently with her lips wrapped tightly around his length. Her grip on his knot never let up and she was even squeezing him in tune to the twitching of his dick. With every touch of cheek and tongue Kevin felt like she was drawing out his essence. The white decor of the shower grew brighter until all detail faded into a blur. What would have been over and done with in thirty seconds had he'd been doing it Mars had managed to prolong into to what felt like a couple minutes worth of bliss.

Kevin could still hear the water rushing over them both and pelting at the floor. He was actually whining, too! Pressing himself against the wall he was so embarrassed that he was afraid to open his mouth to say anything at all lest it be come out as just a broken squeak. He swallowed and dropped his mouth open and exhaled a weak sounding, "Mars!"

She looked up at him with drops of cool water pelting her face from the shower head. She smiled around his dick before shutting her eyes and pushing herself back down his length until her lips touched his knot. Finally, she let go of his bulb and the pleasure and pain of his release began to ease. Kevin could still feel himself jumping inside her mouth with her tongue making little movements along the underside of his shaft.

Mars didn't move from her spot below him until both of them felt his his dick begin to soften. He couldn't tell if she'd even swallowed. Mars had never gulped once. "Mars..." He repeated with a pant.

She slid off him at last and the water suddenly felt far colder when it fell across his softening length to rinse him clean. Kevin, despite his weak legs, helped Mars to stand back up. She was actually smiling at him. Then she swallowed a couple of times to get it all down. "You seem pretty healthy to me, dude."

He smiled at her sheepishly and held her tightly on the shoulders. "I-I guess so."

"Now the water is getting cold, dork!" She slapped him lightly on the arm and planted a wet kiss on his cheek before leaning to the side to spin the knob around to shut the water off. When they stepped out of the tub it really did feel cold. They'd stayed in the shower for so long the steam wasn't making the bathroom a sauna anymore. It was just a chilly room now.

He got them both towels and Mars was content to dry off in silence while she continued to wear a smile on her face. They shared glances with each other and he found that he was smiling, too. "Think we're actually clean?" He found the courage to speak.

"Nope. We're just a pair of dirty dogs." She said and pulled his muscle shirt over her head making her the first one to be dressed. Mars waited for him to the finish drying and dressing himself before she pulled him out of the bathroom and back to his bedroom they went. Kevin didn't know what the right thing to say was after an experience like that, but Mars seemed to know what to do about that kind of stuff. Kevin decided to just ask her for her opinion.

"What should I say?"

"About?" She asked him and jumped onto his bed and sprawled out on it before rolling over onto her back. Kevin felt her eyes on him and he blushed again. He'd been red so much today he wondered if his fur would turn the same shade as her hair, then he really would be from Mars wouldn't he?

"About what we just did." He said.

"About what 'I' just did." She grinned at him. Mars was right. She'd been the one really doing something.

"Yeah." She watched him walk over to the bed and sit down, then it was Kevin's turn to watch her sit upright and scoot over to where he'd chosen to sit. Mars moved behind him and wrapped him up in a hug.

"Thank you for letting me stay the night." She kissed him on the cheek.

"Thank you for being my friend." He reached up to hold his hands on her arms. She didn't say anything at first, then shifted around to sit beside him where she could lean her head on his shoulder.

"Kevs, I think it'd be pretty tight if you said 'You're my girlfriend now.'" She told him after a few moments. He felt her words run through him like lightning. "Don't get nervous on me now, you dork!"

"I'm not!" He contested, but he was smiling so wide she could see all his teeth. His whole body became one with the shivers and tingles. "I'm just really..."

"You're just my really cute boyfriend now, sucker." She told him before she swung her legs around to slip her butt off the bed and onto the floor. "Now let me beat you up at Kirby some more."

He began to laugh at that and then Mars started laughing along with him. Kevin joined her on the floor while she started switching out the cartridges on the Super Nintendo. As he watched her push the On button on the console he wanted to say so much more to her, but every word that crossed his mind was laden with emotion he'd never before felt inside him. There wasn't a single thing Kevin could think to say that wouldn't leave him making a baby of himself if he'd have tried saying it.

Mars got the Nintendo running and she grabbed up both the controllers and turned to hand him one. She saw his face and immediately asked, "What's wrong?"

Kevin shook his head and smiled for her. He was just the dumb new kid that had moved into the neighborhood. He'd thought that he'd have been all alone. The young retriever managed to mouth out the words he felt for her, and her worried expression faded as she understood why his eyes looked the way they did. She leaned in and sat the controller in his lap before putting her lips against his.

"I love you, too, dork."