We were hungry, so we thought we'd go grab a
sub from
Subway. I didn't have a
license at the time, so she drove, in her father's
Toyota pickup.
It was late, and we didn't really want to eat in the restaurant all alone, so we decided to find a place to park. After driving around for a bit, we settled on the deserted parking lot of an out-of-the-way nature park. As she drove to the very back of the lot, we passed another car on its way out. They looked at us strangely, but we kept going.
In the dim illumination of a nearby streetlight, we ate our sandwiches and talked. We were happy. Things were going well. Times were good.
We started making out.
First it was just an innocent kiss before we headed home. Then the kiss went on for longer than expected, and "home" took on a whole new meaning. Hands roamed, temperatures rose, adrenaline rushed. A shirt came off. A bra (after some fumbling) was removed. We did our best to get comfortable on the short bench seat in spite of the gear shift wedged between us. We forgot that we were in a truck parked in a public place.
Just as the pile of clothing on the floor was about to get bigger, a light flickered past the rearview mirror and caught my eye. A quick turn of my head told me all was not well. A car was approaching.
"Oh shit," I said. "Someone's coming."
Despite the inadvertent pun, she knew we were in potentially very deep shit depending on who turned out to be in the approaching car. To our great dismay, the headlights in the mirror were soon accompanied by red and blue flashing strobes.
"Quick, put your shirt back on before the cop gets here!"
I didn't need to say it, but I did anyway because my brain was on the verge of not working anymore. We couldn't find the shirt. Where had we put it? It had to be somewhere on the floor. There was the bra, there was the Subway trash, but where was the shirt?
"You're sitting on it," she said calmly as she pulled it from under me and put it on, just in time for the cop to appear at my window with his flashlight.
I shook nervously as I handed him my I.D.. She was perfectly calm. She smiled and listened intently when he pointed out that it was considered sexual delinquency when minors were found in a situation like this. The usual policy, he said, was to contact the parents. Oh dear God no, I thought. My parents would kill me. And then her parents would kill me. No good.
More happened, although I was getting fuzzy from here. At some point, the cop had her get out of the car and he talked to her privately to make sure I wasn't holding her hostage or raping her or anything like that. Thankfully, she wasn't mad at me, so she didn't claim that I was holding her against her will. The cop kindly informed us that we should go home now, and that, for future reference, public parks close at sundown.
She dropped me off at home, cutting off my flood of embarrassed apologies. She was so calm. I was a wreck. I walked in the door and quietly tried to sneak up to my room. Mom noticed me, said good night, smiled, and went to bed. I spent the rest of the night wondering whether the cop had called my parents and they had decided to let me stew with guilt, or whether the cop hadn't bothered calling them at all.
I never brought it up, and to this day I don't know. But it taught me a valuable lesson in maturity.