happen when he got bored and tired of my sickness, of my sadness and sorrow?
All I knew is that I didn’t want to find out.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE WEEK FOLLOWING JAKE’S REVELATION flew by. We fell into a comfortable routine. Jake made dinner, and I did the dishes. Then, we’d watch a movie on the couch before going to bed and falling asleep in each others’ arms. He never tried for anything more. He was giving me time, but he didn’t understand that even a lifetime may not have been enough. I wasn’t ever going to be normal. No amount of time could make me that. From the outside, we looked like quite like a regular all-American couple.
The very opposite of what we really were.
After a long day of sorting through purchase orders and receipts at the shop, Jake brought me to the beach so I could take pictures of the coming sunset. It was the third time we’d gone for that reason. My camera quickly became an extension of my arm and my vision. I took it everywhere.
Jake and I walked hand in hand along the shore. I was getting used to the way he was always touching me, and I was filled with dread whenever I thought about the time not too far off when I would no longer be able to reach for him in the middle of the night. It had been only days, but already I didn’t know how I would ever sleep alone again.
Had we only known each other for less than two weeks? It seemed like there was never a time when I didn’t know Jake.
The night breeze pricked at my skin through my shirt as I pulled my camera out of the bag and flung it around my neck. I was glad Jake hadn’t gotten me a digital camera. I couldn’t wait to develop the negatives myself in a real dark room. Jake had told me that when he was back from his job, he would set up a makeshift dark room for me wherever we ended up.
I practically just met him and he was making arrangements for me in his life and in his home. I’d never had that before.
Jake was sitting in the sand with his face to the sky, eyes closed. I took the opportunity to get some candid shots of him. “Don’t you have enough pictures of me already?” he asked, without opening his eyes. I had taken a bunch of him this week. My favorite was one of him with a cigarette in his mouth as he pulled up to the apartment on his bike. I couldn’t wait to develop that one. The sight of him made all sorts of crazy shit happen inside of me, which made me both incredibly happy and scared out of my mind.
“Nope,” I answered. I would need to remember what he looked like when he left for good. I needed hundreds more.
Maybe thousands.
I pushed myself between his legs, and he opened his eyes. “Hey babe,” he said, spreading his arms to me.
I sat facing the sunset with my back to him, wrapped up in Jake and the comfort of our silence. His cheek rested on mine as we watched the last of the sun disappear into the horizon.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. “I made this for you.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out an ornate metal charm attached to a simple stainless steel chain.
“You made this?” The pendant was a collection of interwoven silver wires. If I looked closely at the middle of the pendant, I could see his initials JFD where the wires connected. “It’s beautiful,” I told him. And it truly was. In fact, it was the most beautiful piece of jewelry I had ever seen.
“I made it for you a while ago, but I was afraid to give it to you.”
“What’s a while ago?”
Jake’s face reddened a little. “Shortly after I met you that night in the yard. I couldn’t get you out of my head. I asked around about you a little bit, too, and before I knew it, I was standing there with a welder in my hand at the shop, making this.”
“Why did you want to make this for me back then? We never even talked that night.” I thought back on the night just two weeks ago that involved me being homeless and Jake threatening me with his gun. “It was more like a fight.”
“It was the best fight I’ve ever had.” Jake opened the clasp and motioned for me to turn around. I lifted my hair so he could put the chain around my neck and close the clasp. His fingers brushed against the back of my neck. Goose bumps popped up all over my legs from the contact, and I shivered at the sensation.
I held my new gift between my fingers and inspected it. I wouldn’t have believed he was so talented. His work was so detailed and delicate. “Thank you,” I said. “For everything. I mean it. You’ve done so much for me.” Jake lifted my chin to him and looked me in my eyes. I continued, “You deserve way more than I could ever give you in return.” I meant it. He deserved more than me, I had nothing to offer him. Nothing he would want anyway.
“Why does this sound sort of like a goodbye?”
“It isn’t... not yet anyway.”
“I’m not leaving until tomorrow, Bee. Let’s save it for then.” Jake didn’t understand that I wasn’t talking about this trip. I was talking about him leaving for good.
Without me.
His beautiful blue eyes sparkled. He looked at me with such intensity, such fire. I wanted to know what he saw in me that made him look that way, because I didn’t see it. Maybe, he was delusional. He turned me to face him, tilted my chin up, and slowly, very slowly, closed his lips over mine.
My very first real kiss.
I didn’t pull away. Instead, I surprised myself and leaned into him. I closed my eyes, the sensation was like nothing I’d expected. The feeling didn’t end where our flesh met. It was so much more than mouth-on-mouth.
It was like our kiss had started a wordless conversation between our bodies.
It turned out that desire was a funny thing for me. In all my seventeen years, I never thought I’d be able to feel it. I always thought it was one of the feelings that’s been dead inside me. It wasn’t that I was searching for it. I didn’t want anything to do with it. But it was within me all along, I guessed. I’d just never met anyone capable of stirring it strongly enough to break through my determination not to feel it at all.
Until Jake.
He kept the kiss soft but short. I had a feeling that was out of consideration for me. I knew he didn’t want to push me, but when he pulled away, I felt the emptiness between us. It was like a crater had been left in the space he just occupied, cold and dark and empty. The rush in my veins was similar to the feeling I got after riding his bike wrapped around the back of him.
I wanted more.
More what? What was I capable of giving him? Could I take it further?
I had no idea. I just knew I wanted more of him.
“Jake, what are we doing?” I asked, breathless from the smallest of kisses.
“I am sitting on a beach, holding a very beautiful girl,” he said. I don’t think I was ever going to get used to him calling me beautiful. I had to remind myself he was only calling me beautiful because he hadn’t seen all of me. “And you?”
“No, really,” I persisted. “What are we doing?”
He was still confused. “Kissing?”
“Jake.”
He smirked. “I like the way you say my name.”
And, I thought I was the President of the United States of Avoidance.
“You know what I mean. With us. What’s going on with us? It’s important. I need to know now because at some point I’m not going to be able to give you what you want. And then what?”
He nuzzled his nose into my neck. “What is it you think I want?”
“Normal boy-girl stuff,” I said throwing my hands in the air. I felt defeated before this line of conversation had even gotten started.
“That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t want normal. I want you.” He smiled down at me. “And we do normal stuff. We kiss.” To prove his point he gave me a quick peck on the lips and smiled.
“What happens when a kiss isn’t enough?”
“Abby, just a few days ago you flinched anytime anyone touched you, and look at us now.”
I did look at us. I was sitting in between his legs, his chin rested on my shoulder, my hands on his thighs. “I still flinch when it comes to other people,” I said. My aversion to Jake may have no longer existed, but I still wanted to stroke-out if anyone else came within my personal space.
“But you don’t flinch when I touch you anymore, and that’s what counts.”
“I like it when you touch me,” I whispered, the very words were hard to say. “But I can’t even…” I pulled at the hem of my sleeves. I didn’t know how to tell him that I didn’t know if I would ever be able to allow him to see under my clothes.
Naked.
Ever.
“You can’t even what?”
“Show you,” I said. “I can’t show you... me.”
“Why don’t you just tell me about it, talk to me? Will that make it easier?” He was so much more understanding than I thought he’d be. “Instead of showing me what you think is so bad, you can just tell me.”
“I can’t,” I said. It was locked so tight in my memory it was a floodgate I wasn’t ready to open. Not just for Jake, but for me. I needed it to stay where I’d stored it for the last eight years.
“You will when you’re ready,” Jake said confidently.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready,” I told him. “There is a possibility that I’ll just be broken forever. I’m not just hiding my body, Jake. I’m pushing the memories out by not showing you what my past has done to me. It’s my way of holding on.” I shivered. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to just let it go.”
Jake smiled like he’d just accepted a challenge. “Bee, if you feel even a tiny bit of the attraction I feel when I’m around you, just a small amount of how bad I want you…” He kissed the spot behind my ear and flicked his tongue on my neck. Tingles traveled through my skin, sending messages to every part of my neglected body. “Then, taking our clothes off in front of each other is inevitable. It’s human nature. It’s us.” Jake seemed so sure of himself, but what he was saying sounded almost impossible to me.
“I think we both know we don’t exactly fit the human nature mold.”
“No, we don’t fit any mold. But, where you are concerned, it’s simple.” He kissed along my jaw line. “I want you, Abby. No bullshit. I want you just the way you are.” He moved his lips to the corner of my mouth and brushed them over my face as he spoke. I closed my eyes and my lips parted in anticipation. “I would very much like to see that body of yours, but there is no rush. We won’t do anything you’re not ready for.” He moved his hands to cup my ass through my shorts. “But damn, baby, waiting will be brutal.” He kissed me again.
“What if you don’t like what you see?”
“I don’t know how to explain this to you to make you understand. You’re beautiful, baby. Inside and out. I know this without having to see you with your clothes off.”
“You’re beautiful.” God, I said such dumb shit around him sometimes.
“Not on the inside I’m not.” His eyes grew serious. “I’m not stupid. I know it’s a dark place in there. ”
“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.” I said.
“What’s that from?” Jake asked.
“Hellen Keller. It makes me think of us.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I like it. It works.” He held me tighter. “You’re under my skin, Bee. I really don’t care what’s under your clothes.” Jake thought for a moment. “Scratch that. I’d be pretty pissed if it turns out you have a dick.”
I burst out laughing.
“No, no dick,” I assured him. He sure knew how to break the tension of a serious conversation.
“So to clarify, you do, in fact, have a vagina?
“Yes, I do.”
“And you do not have a dick?” He was trying not to laugh as he asked.
“Yes, this is the case.”
“You sure? Not even a little dick?”
“Nope. Just standard issue female parts, as far as I know anyway.”
“Then baby, I really don’t see what the problem is here.” He grabbed me by the waist and stood. Picking me up in one quick motion, he lifted me above his shoulders and swung me around in the air. He let me slide back down against his body. When our mouths lined up, he held me in place and pulled me to him for another kiss. With one hand on the back of my head, he opened his mouth to me, deepening it. His tongue danced on mine. I moaned into his mouth as he pulled away and placed me on my feet. “You are going to be the death of me,” he said.
I could have lost myself in those blue eyes. I was pretty sure I already had.
I picked up my camera bag, and we turned toward the parking lot hand-in-hand as a group of people approached us. There were about twelve of them, some familiar. Owen was among them. He led the group with his arm around a small brunette girl wearing itty-bitty white jean shorts and a red bikini top that did nothing to cover her huge breasts. Big Willie Ray was at his side, dragging a cooler on wheels through the sand. Several girls—including Alissa—hung to the back of the crowd.
I tensed when they spotted us.
Alissa was the first to acknowledge us... or the first to acknowledge Jake, at least.
“Hey baby,” she said, eyeing our joined hands skeptically. “Where you been?”
She reached out to put her arms around him, but he stepped back and pulled me in front of him instead. He wrapped both arms around my waist. Alissa looked at him with her jaw open and her eyes wide.
“Home, mostly we’ve just been hanging out at home. Right, baby?” he asked me.
I didn’t get a chance to answer before Alissa interrupted. “She lives with you?”
“Technically, we live together,” he clarified. She looked like she was going to be sick.
Owen left the brunette and strode toward us, stumbling in the loose sand, a beer in his left hand. He had a soft cast on his right hand and wrist. I was glad to see I’d done some lasting damage. Alissa backed away when Owen approached. “You get tired of fucking all the other whores in this town, Dunn? You gotta make a move on my sloppy seconds?” Owen was either looking for a fight or just very, very stupid. I was thinking it was a bit of both.
Jakes clenched his fists. He was ready to fight back, but I’d been fighting my own battles my entire life.
“Nice cast, Owen. Seems like you might be the one who needs a whore now, seeing as how your right hand appears to be out of commission for a while. How’d you hurt yourself, anyway?” I asked.
“Shut up, you fucking freak. Why don’t you take that shirt off and show everyone what you’re hiding under those sleeves? ‘Cause I tell ya, I got a glimpse, and it ain’t fucking pretty under there.” He turned to Jake. “Good luck with that shit, brother. Hope you don’t mind losing your hard on. When she takes that ugly hoodie off, she’s even uglier underneath.”
My face flashed hot. I didn’t think Owen had seen me. When I’d woken up, all my clothes had been intact. He obviously had seen something. All the blood rushed from my face. Jake tightened like a bow being drawn back. His eyes darkened and he reached for the back of his jeans. Before he could make a very huge and very public mistake, I reached over and held my hand over his and the gun.
“Not worth it,” I whispered. I was trying to keep calm when all I really wanted was to set Jake loose on Owen.
Jake looked at me like I was crazy. “It’s worth it to me.”
I shook my head. “Too many people around. Too impulsive.” I was reasoning with him on a level I thought he would understand. What was I going to tell him, that it was wrong to take out his gun and pop Owen right there on the beach?
How do you reason with someone who kills people for a living? All I knew was that I was talking him down from a ledge I didn’t want him to be on.
Jake released the hold on his gun and closed his eyes for a few seconds. He was fighting for control. When he opened his eyes again, he looked down and smiled at me.
Control intact.
“Why are you smiling, motherfucker?” Owen taunted him. “You can’t be too happy about fucking a freak. If you haven’t tapped that yet, you should reconsider now. The shit she’s got going on under there is a cock-blocker, for sure.” Owen winked. “Somehow, it didn’t keep me from getting the job done though.”
Jake squared his shoulders and grabbed me by the waist. He walked me right through Owen’s group of friends. Just as we passed Owen, Jake pushed me to the side and landed a punch squarely across Owen’s jaw. He went down hard. His eyes were still open when he crashed on his back in the sand. Jake didn’t miss a beat. He just