Petra the Small

"A bar-b-que!" Jenny exclaimed. "I love bar-b-que!"

She jumped up and gave Jerry a hug and a kiss.

"Are you sure we aren't imposing?"

Petra thought the story about their other guests canceling might be just that, a story.

"I'm sure. He invited us even before I had told him we were on a road trip. Relax Petra, this guy is family. You'll love his place and wait till you meet his wife. What a wonderful woman."

It seemed settled. They gathered all their maps and other carry-along stuff and went out to the truck and Honda. Jenny and Petra had spoken again about their car-to-truck signals and were ready to go when Tom said he had a present for them. He opened the trunk of the Honda and just inside was a bag with the logo of the Best Western on it. He handed the bag to Petra.

When she looked inside, she squealed in delight. She reached in and pulled out two portable two-way radios. Tom said, "This way you don't need signals. You can actually talk."

Both women hugged him. Another five minutes were spent getting batteries in the radios and testing them. Petra noticed that Tom thought ahead very well; he even bought two extra sets of batteries for each radio.

When the big truck pulled onto I-25 South, it was ten-sixteen in the morning. The Honda was right behind them. Jerry was driving the truck and Tom was driving the Honda. They were both wearing Levis and t-shirts with a long-sleeved shirt on just their left arms. Driving south all day would have had their left arm in the sun all day. Jenny was wearing blue shorts and a blue and white striped tank top. Petra had noticed at breakfast that she wasn't wearing a bra. The men had noticed before that.

When Petra and Jenny went to the restroom after breakfast, Petra asked Jenny about it.

Jenny smiled.

"I don't want anything to get in the way of Jerry being able to touch me. If I wouldn't get arrested, I wouldn't even wear the tank top."

"Sometimes you are so wicked!" Petra teased.

On the way back to the table, Petra wondered if Tom wanted to touch her while they drove.

Petra sat in the passenger side of her Honda for the first time since the day her Dad had to drive it home from the dealership. She watched Tom drive. He had moved the seat back just a bit to compensate for being just a bit taller than Petra, and for the blocks on the pedals. Every so often, he would look over at her and smile. After they were clear of the city and the traffic had eased up quite a bit, he relaxed and took his right hand off the wheel and put it on Petra's left thigh. Since she was wearing a tube top beneath bib overall shorts, what he found was warm, smooth skin. She almost jumped when he put his hand on her leg. She would have jumped but she saw it coming and forced herself not to jump. She liked the feel of it.

Lost in her thoughts, Petra was surprised and did jump when the radio in her lap suddenly spoke.

"Should we do lunch in Colorado Springs or Pueblo?" Jenny's voice asked.

Petra pushed the "talk" button and said, "Give us a minute. We'll talk it over."

Then she forgot to release the button and asked Tom, "Well?"

"I think I'd rather stop in Colorado Springs, then the space between lunch and dinner will be bigger and I'll be even hungrier."

"You're already hungry? Petra said. "We just finished breakfast."

"I'm hungry for you. A nibble here. A nibble there."

They both laughed. Petra put the radio up near her mouth and said, "We vote for Colorado Springs."

Then she released the button. She heard Jenny and Jerry laughing.

Jenny spoke thru her laughter, "Do you want us to stop at a restaurant or a motel?"

Tom and Petra both blushed realizing that their friends had heard every word. When they finally stopped laughing Tom took the radio and said, "A restaurant will do for now."

He made a big deal of releasing the "talk" button.

Petra started to apologize, "Tom, I'm really sorr..."

"Stop it. If you do something that gets someone injured physically, then apologize. If you start a war, apologize. If you are the cause of the government raising taxes, apologize. Other than that, don't apologize. I've been embarrassed before, and for much worse reasons. Don't apologize for having our friends, our family, know that we love each other. I have it in my head that up in the cab of the big truck just ahead there is a man fondling a woman as they both smile and drive down the road.

Petra smiled and again picked up the radio. "Jenny, can I check something out with you?"

She released the button. Jenny's voice came back, "Sure. What is it?"

"Is Jerry fondling you as we drive down the road?" Click.

"Look out the window." Jenny answered, laughing.

Petra looked up and saw Jenny's arm out the passenger window waving her tank top. Petra started laughing. Tom asked what was so funny. Petra told him and they both laughed.

Less than a minute later Petra had a wild thought. Before she thought about it too much she acted on it. She unhooked the straps of the bib overalls and peeled the tube top up over her head and off.

She held the radio up and said, "Can you see us in the mirror?"

She rolled the window down and stuck the tube top out the window. Two seconds later, a gust of wind took it from her hand.

Petra twisted around quick enough to see it float over the edge of the road and down into a canyon. The sounds of laughing came from the radio. Petra looked at Tom and asked, "What will I do? My clothes are in the truck."

Tom picked up the radio and spoke quietly, "We will now have a period of radio silence until the city limits of Colorado Springs." Click.

He put the radio in a depression in the dash and reached over with his right hand until he found Petra's nipple. His hand covered her nipple and rubbed lightly across it. Petra looked around again to see if there were any cars or trucks nearby. There weren't. She started to pull the bib up and Tom stopped her with his hand, then put his hand on her other nipple. She moaned. She also looked down and saw that from the waist up to her chin the direct sunlight covered her. Tom stopped rubbing her with the palm of his hand and gently pinched her nipple between his thumb and first finger. Petra pushed against his fingers and let out a tiny moan. Tom kept his eyes on the road and saw a sign that said, "Colorado Springs 2 Miles." He pulled his hand away from Petra's chest.

She looked over at him and asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Not wrong. Just urgent. I want you to steer the car." Petra took hold of the wheel and when she had control she said, "OK. I've got it."

Tom fully released the wheel and took off the long sleeved shirt and then the t-shirt. He put the long sleeved shirt back on, giving the t-shirt to Petra. Then he took the wheel back from her.

"We are less than two miles from the Colorado Springs city limits. Pull on my t-shirt and fix the straps on your bibs and no one except the two in front of us will ever know."

Petra pulled Tom's t-shirt on and noticed his smell on it. She also noticed that her nipples liked the feeling of his shirt rubbing gently across them. She fixed the straps on her bibs and tucked the shirt into the overalls. The shirt was big on her, but not too bad.

Tom looked over and smiled. Petra smiled back, climbed up on her knees and leaned over, kissing him on the neck. As she kissed him he noticed the sign saying, "City Limits Colorado Springs." The truck ahead signaled as the radio announced they were pulling off for lunch.

Petra sat back down and kept smiling as they followed the truck into a truck stop parking area. Tom parked the Honda right up close to the back of the truck, and then he and Petra got out. They joined Jenny and Jerry as they walked to the restaurant entrance. Jerry opened the door for everyone and as Petra passed him he said, "Nice shirt." Petra gently hit him on the shoulder.

Colorado Springs and south ...

After lunch, they filled both vehicles with fuel and got back on I-25 South. Petra asked Tom again about this group of friends that he had and that now she was welcomed into. She asked, "How did this group start?"

"It started when Jerry was writing some fiction a few years ago. He was creating a world in his book and it came to him that it didn't need to be like the world he was living in. So he created a world where people loved each other. He wrote for about a year about every aspect of their lives, how they worked together, played together, supported each other emotionally, physically, spiritually, and how their love expressed itself in the world around them. By the time he was finished writing the first draft of the book, he had started talking to the people he knew about his vision for that world. One night three years ago, I was invited to dinner at Harvey's place and met Jerry there. After a great dinner, we sat out in Harvey's backyard and talked, with Jerry doing the most talking. By midnight I was converted. What he was talking about was what had been missing from my life all my life."

"What happened next?"

"I went home and couldn't sleep. I thought all night about some of the things Jerry had said. They made sense but I didn't see how they could work."

"Things like what?"

"Well, Jerry said that in order to have this work for each of us we would each need to decide that life the way we held it didn't work."

"Life the way we held it?"

"We have expectations about the way life is supposed to be, and it isn't that way. Most everyone I know believes that love is something that happens to you. They believe that God or the tooth-fairy brings the perfect someone to you and lightning strikes so you'll know they are the one. If that belief worked, most of us wouldn't know anyone who had been thru a break-up or a divorce."

"So, if we hold a belief that doesn't work, we need to let that belief go?"

"Could someone believe that if you love me, you should know what I want without my telling you what I want?"

"I don't believe that."

"I didn't say you believed it. I asked if you thought anyone could believe that."

"Yes. I think my high school English teacher believed something like that."

"Is that a belief that would work for her?"

"No. No one is going to be able to read her mind."

"So what Jerry was saying is that for his world to exist, we would have to look at what we believe and toss everything that didn't work for us. I started looking at that."

"And what did you find?"

"That there are lots of beliefs that I had that just don't work. I believed that love was an accident. I believed that God would lead me to the right place to live, the right college to go to, and the right house to buy. After college I had three job offers and I believed that God would lead me to pick the right one. The job I took lasted six months. The owner stopped paying the employees after the fourth month, and he was arrested and the company died two months later. I believed that God would give me a sign about what I should do next. None of those beliefs worked for me."

"So you tossed out believing in God?"

Petra wondered about who this man was. He no longer seemed to be the man she shared a bed with the night before.

"No. I believe in God. In fact I have a better relationship to God now than I ever had before. The God I know and love now is much simpler that the one I used to believe in. I could believe in a God that needed me to beg him for the things I need in my life or I could believe in a God that wants the best for everyone. Which one would you believe in?"

"If I could choose? I don't get a choice."

"Sure you do. You could be a Jew, a Methodist, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Mormon, a Baptist, or a Catholic. Whichever one you pick, you are choosing to believe in the God they describe."

"And that has me so confused that I don't choose."

"It had me confused, too. So I met with Jerry a few more times and did lots of thinking about God and me. I even sat down over a month or two and read the Bible and other scriptures, too. I think I called Jerry almost every day during that period. He almost never answered my questions directly. He pointed me down different paths of thinking and had me explore what I thought, what worked for me."

"So, tell me about the God you believe in, please."

"OK. But I need you to understand that the way I will word it is what makes sense to me, what works for me. I'm sure that the family is willing to help you look at things yourself and to figure out what works for you."

"OK."

Petra turned sideways in her seat, put a pillow behind her back, and watched Tom's face intently.

"For me, there are words that mean the same as the word God. Every time we see the word God written, it is capitalized. I think the words that mean the same as God would better remind us of that if they were capitalized as well. Those words are Life and Love. When I read the Bible, I discovered that anywhere it spoke of God, you could change that word to Life or Love and the meaning became clearer. In fact, it enabled me to see where men had mucked around in writing the books because there are places where it became obvious that God/Love/Life wasn't what was being talked about. In those spots, some person was using God to justify doing things that neither Life or Love would do."

"OK. I'll stipulate that some of the Bible isn't about Love. Tell me more."

"Well, when I accepted that Life and Love are God, it enabled me to look at my relationship to God. I discovered that what I believe is that all of us are God. That is I believe that everything is alive and that everything is Love. That means that everything is God. Praying to God has us believe that God is somewhere else and we are calling on the prayer line. Believing that you are God has me treat you with Love and to honor you as someone who is divine. It also has me treat the environment carefully because everything is God. Everything is connected."

"Connected?"

"Yes. I've been reading lots of scientific stuff lately that says that research is showing that even tho it looks like you are over there and I am over here, science is able to show that the boundaries between us aren't there. The energy and the atoms that are you are in constant motion and interacting with my energy and my atoms; so much so that there really aren't any my atoms or your atoms. There are only atoms."

"So, you think God is Love and I am Love and I am God?"

"And Jenny is Love, and Jerry, and Mike and even the people I don't like."

"Well, if we are all connected and we are all Love, why do you want to be with me?"

"Have you ever been to Baskin-Robins?"

"Of course."

"They have lots of flavors, don't they?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a favorite?"

"Yes, chocolate fudge swirl."

"Are there other flavors you love as well?"

"Yes, but not as much as I love that one."

"I love you more than any other flavor on the planet. Not a little more, but more by an order of magnitude. I love you the most."

"How could you? We haven't known each other a month!"

"Where is it written that it takes a month, or six months, or even a year to be in love with someone?"

"I don't know."

"And if there is a book somewhere that says it takes five hundred hours of being together before you can be in love, would you believe the book?"

"No, I don't think so."

"I decided before your plane landed in New Mexico that I was in love with you. Meeting you was more about how to love you than about if."

"How can you decide you are in love with someone before you meet?"

"Have you ever met God, face to face, hung out together?"

"No, but that's different."

"Because you already have stuff made up about who God is, and how you can be in relationship with God. I can decide right now that when we meet Jerry's friends in Raton that I'm really going to like them. I can decide that I'm going to have them for my brother and my sister. I love them both, and I've never met them. Everyone at the party that was held at Jenny's place when you came to visit had already decided to love you and accept you into the family before your plane landed."

"They all treated me like I belonged. I really did feel welcome and not like a stranger."

"That was our intention. People who come and hang with us have one of two reactions to us. They discover they are part of our family or they get scared and run."

"How could someone run? I never felt as good around people as I felt that night."

"They could run because they realized at some level that in order to accept our love, they would need to give up their cherished beliefs about who they are and what they deserve."

"Oh."

Petra looked out the window and saw nothing. She thought about this family. They passed a sign and Petra came back to present long enough to read "Raton, 3 miles". She picked up the radio and said, "I just saw a sign for Raton, three miles."

"We saw it, too. Thanks." Jenny said.

A couple seconds later, Jerry's voice came over the radio.

"When we get off, we will head west about four miles. I won't be going over forty." They followed Jerry off I-25 and into Raton.