“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay, sweets? I can only be honorable up to a point.”
He got to his feet and tugged her along behind him. Looping a lazy arm around her shoulders, he sauntered with her to the stairway. There he stopped her just as she’d gained the first step. He stood on the floor so their eyes were now on the same level. In the deep shadows, his palms held her hips and he turned her to face him before he enclosed her in a warm embrace once again, found her lips for a last, lingering kiss, then turned her away with a soft, “Good night.”
Chapter Eight
THERESA AND BRIAN were not alone long enough during that day to speak of anything that had happened the night before, or to exchange touches or insight as to what the other was thinking of all that had passed between them. It was a lazy day. They’d all been up late and took turns napping, sprawled in chairs, on floors before the New Year’s Day football games that flickered on the television screen or tucked into their own rooms. It seemed to take until nearly suppertime for everyone to come fully alive, and even then, it was a subdued group, for with only one more day before Brian and Jeff would be gone, they all felt an impending sense of loss.
The following morning, Theresa awakened shortly after dawn and lay staring at the pewter frog Brian had given her. She recalled everything that had happened between them since the first night when they’d sat side by side with his elbow pressing hers throughout that extremely sensuous love scene.
Who was she trying to fool? It had almost been predestined, this feeling she had for Brian Scanlon. She was falling in love with him, with a man two years her junior who admitted he’d had sexual encounters with any number of admiring fans. The idea that he was fully experienced and worldly made her feel inadequate and puerile. Again she wondered why he’d want an introverted, frightened virgin like her.
She was daunted by his physical beauty, for it seemed to dazzle when compared to her ordinary-to-homely features, making her believe he couldn’t possibly be attracted to her, as he’d said he was. How could he possibly be? With women like Felice fawning over him, pursuing him, eager to share more than just a bump-and-grind dance with him, why would Brian Scanlon possibly pursue Theresa Brubaker?
She sighed, closed her eyes and tried to imagine lying naked with him but found it impossible to picture herself in that context. She was too inhibited, too freckled, too redheaded to fit the part. She wished she were shaped like a pencil and had russet skin and sleek, auburn hair. She wished she’d found at least one boy or man sometime during her life who’d have been able to break through the barriers of self-consciousness to give her some sense of what to expect if she allowed Brian more sexual liberties.
The pewter frog sat on the shelf, caught in a still life, fiddling his silent note and smiling. I’m like that frog. My life is like a silent note; I play, but I haven’t felt the music of the heart.
It was seven-thirty. She heard her parents leave for work, but the rest of the house was silent. She dragged herself from bed, dressed and made coffee, and still nobody else roused. Tomorrow Brian and Jeff would leave, and the house would seem abandoned. The mere thought of it filled her with loneliness. How would she make it from day to day when Brian was gone? How unfair that he should be snatched away just when they discovered their attraction for each other. She wandered to the bathroom, collected the dirty towels from the rack, hung up fresh ones, went to her room and added her own soiled laundry to the pile. She wondered how long she should wait before starting the washing machine to launder Jeff’s clothes so he could take them back clean and save a laundry bill.
They had been running free all week, the whole bunch of them, and nobody had bothered much with homemaking chores. The pile of dirty clothes at the bottom of the laundry chute would be mountainous.
She waited until ten o’clock before creeping down the basement stairs like a burglar, sneaking onto each tread, afraid the step would creak and awaken Brian, who lay on his belly with both arms flung up, his ear pressed to one biceps. She halted in her tracks, gazing across the dim room at his bare back, at the outline of his hips and legs beneath the green blanket. His right leg was extended, his left bent with the tip of its knee peeking from under the covers. The only men she’d ever seen in bed were her father and Jeff. But seeing Brian there, listening to the light snuffle of his regular breathing, had a decidedly sensual effect upon Theresa.
She clutched her armload of dirty laundry and tiptoed to the laundry-room door, turned the knob soundlessly and latched it behind her with equally little noise.
She sorted out six piles of colors, dropped the first stack into the machine and grimaced at how loud the selector dial sounded when she spun it to its starting position—the clicks erupted through the silence like a tommy gun. When she pushed the knob to start the water flowing, it sounded like Niagara Falls had just rerouted through the basement. Soap, softener, then she picked her way across the floor between hills of fabric and opened the door to the family room.
She had just managed to get it closed silently again when Brian—still on his belly—lifted his head, emitted a snort and scratched his nose with the back of one hand. She stood transfixed, watching the light from the sliding glass door find its way across the ridges of his shoulder blades and the individual ones of his spinal column to the spot where the sheet divided his body in half. He cleared his throat, lifted his head again and intuitively glanced back over his shoulder.
Theresa stood rooted to the spot, holding onto the doorknob behind her, feeling the blood raddle her cheeks at being discovered there, watching him awaken.
His hair was standing up at odd angles. His cheek and jaw wore the shadow of a night’s growth. His eyes were still swollen from sleep. “Good morning,” he managed in a voice raspy from disuse. The greeting was accompanied by a slow over-the-shoulder smile that drew up one side of his mouth engagingly. Lazily, he rolled over, crooking one arm behind his head, presenting an armpit shadowed by dark hair and a chest sprinkled with a liberal portion of the same.
“Good morning.” Her voice came out a whisper.
“What time is it?”
“After ten.” She flapped an apologetic palm at the laundry-room door. “I’m sorry I woke you up with the washer, but I wanted to get the laundry started.
Jeff’s clothes ... are ... he ...” To Theresa’s dismay the words chugged away into silence, and she stood staring at half of a naked man, one who made everything inside her body go as watery as the sounds emanating from the other side of the wall.
“Come here.” He didn’t move; nothing more than the beguiling lips formed the invitation. His right arm cradled the back of his head. His left lay flat on his belly, the thumb resting in his navel, which was exposed above the blanket. One knee was straight, the other one bent so that its outline formed a triangle beneath the blankets. “Come here, Theresa,” he repeated, more softly than before, lifting a hand toward her.
Her startled expression warned him she’d dreamed up an excuse, even before she began to voice it. “I have to—”
“Come.” He rolled to one hip, and for a horrifying moment she thought he was going to get up and come to get her. But he only braced up one elbow and extended a hand, palm up.
She wiped her own palms on her thighs and advanced slowly across the room but stopped two feet from the edge of his mattress. His hand remained open, waiting. Upon it she could see the calluses on each of its four fingertips from playing the guitar. He had very, very long fingers. And he slept with his watch on.
It was so still just then she thought she could hear its electronic hum.
He moved himself up just high enough and strained forward across the remaining two feet to capture her hand and drag her toward him. Her kneecaps struck the frame of the bed, and she toppled down, twisting at the last minute to land half on one hip but coming to rest at an awkward angle, half across his bare chest.
“Good morning.” His smile was thorough, teasing and warmed places inside Theresa that she’d
never realized hadn’t known complete warmth before. He slipped one arm between her and the mattress and rolled to his hip facing her, managing to maneuver her stomach flush against his. She recalled in bemused fascination that she’d read that men often wake up fully aroused, but she was too ignorant to know if it was true of Brian this morning. He brushed her cheek with the backs of his knuckles, and his voice was charmingly gruff. “I find it hard to believe there’s one woman left in this world who still blushes at age twenty-five.” He dipped his head to touch her lips with a nibbling kiss. “And you know what?” He ran the tip of an exploring index finger across the juncture of her lips, causing them to fall open as she caught a breath in her throat. “Some day I’m going to see you wearing only that.” He dipped his head again, but when their mouths joined, he rolled her over on her back and lay half across her body. His back was warm, firm, and beneath her palm she felt each taut muscle across his shoulders, then explored his ribs, like a warm, living vibraphone upon which her fingers played.
His naked chest was pressed against her breasts, flattening them in a way that felt wholly wonderful. She was wearing a thick wool hunter’s shirt of gold and black squares, buttoned up the front, its deep tails flapping loose about her hips, which were squeezed tightly into a pair of washed-out denim Levi’s. The shirt left her totally accessible—she realized that just as his weight bore down on her, and he lifted one knee across her thighs, rubbing up and down repeatedly, slowly inching higher until the inner bend of knee softly chafed the feminine mound at the juncture of her legs. Still kissing her, he found the arm with which she was protecting her breast and forced it up over his shoulder. Then his hand skimmed down the scratchy wool shirt, up under its tails and onto the bare band of skin between her jeans and bra. He drew a valentine on her ribs, then cupped her breast with unyielding authority, pushing on it so hard it caused a queer but welcome ache in the hollow of her throat. She felt the nerves begin to jump deep in her stomach, but controlled the urge to fight him off. The caress was brief, almost as if he was testing her, telling her, get used to it, try it, just this much, a little at a time. But, to Theresa’s surprise, when his fingers left her breast, they skimmed straight down the center of her belly, along the hard zipper of her jeans and cupped the very warm, throbbing spot at the base of the zipper. Within the constricting blue denim her flesh immediately responded with a heat so awesome it caught her by surprise. She sucked in a quick, delighted breath, and her eyelids slammed closed. Her back arched up off the mattress and fire shot from the spot he caressed down to her toes. He clutched her with a hard, forceful palm, pushing upward until she was certain he could feel the pulsebeat throbbing through the hard, flat-felled seams of the Levi’s. He stroked her through the tight, binding denim—once, twice, almost as if marking her with his stamp of possession.
Before she could decide whether to fight or yield, his hand was gone. She lay looking up at his stormy green eyes while he braced on both elbows, and their labored breathing pounded out the message of mutual arousal.
“Theresa, I’m going to miss you. But six months and I’ll be back. Okay?” His voice had gone even huskier with desire. What was he asking? The answer to the ambiguous question stuck in her throat.
“Brian, I ...I’m not sure.” She didn’t think she could make such a promise, if he meant what she thought he did.
“Just think about it then, will you? And when June comes, we’ll see.”
“A lot can happen between now and June.”
“I know. Just don’t ...” His troubled eyes traveled up to her hair. He soothed it back almost roughly, then returned his gaze to her amazed brown eyes, sending a message of fierce possession as absolute as that he’d delivered in his startling caress of a moment ago. “Don’t find somebody else. I want to be first, Theresa, because I understand you, and I’ll be good for you. That’s a promise.”
Just then Jeff’s voice boomed from above; the washing machine had brought the house to life at last. “Hey, where is everybody? Brian, you awake?”
“Yeah, just dressing. I’ll be right up.”
Theresa nudged Brian aside and leaped off the bed. But before she could scamper away he captured her wrist and pulled her back down. She landed with a soft plop, sitting on the edge of the bed. He braced on one elbow, half curling his body around her to look up into her face.
“Theresa, will you kiss me just once, without looking like you’re scared to death?”
“I’m not very good at any of this, Brian. I think you’d be a lot happier if you gave up on me,” she whispered.
He frowned, released the hand she’d been tugging in an effort to regain her freedom. But when it was released, it lay on the mattress beside her hip with the fingers curled tightly underneath. He studied it, then with a single finger stroked the backs of the freckled knuckles. Looking up onto her uncertain eyes, he said, “Never. I’ll never give up on you. I’ll be back in June, and we’ll see if we can’t get you past age fifteen.”
How does a person grow to be so self-assured at twenty-three, she wondered, meeting his unsmiling gaze with her own somber eyes.
His weight shifted. He kissed her fleetingly and ordered, “You go on up first. I’ll make my bed and wait a few minutes before I follow.”
That night they spent quietly at home. Patricia came over to be with Jeff. Margaret and Willard sat side by side on the sofa while Jeff sat Indian fashion on the floor and Brian took the piano bench, and the two played their guitars and sang. Theresa was curled up in one armchair, Amy in another, and Patricia sat just behind Jeff, sometimes resting her forehead on his upper arm, sometimes stroking his shoulder blade, sometimes humming along. But Theresa sat wrapped up with feet beneath her, and palms tucked between her thighs, watching Brian only when his eyes dropped to the fingerboard of his guitar or veered away to some other spot in the room.
She waited for the song she was certain would come sooner or later, and when Jeff suggested it, her heartbeat quickened, and she felt hollow and hot and sad.
Brian was playing his own guitar this time, a classic Epiphone Riviera, with a smooth, mellow sound and a thin body. She stared at the guitar cradled against Brian’s belly, and imagined how warm the mahogany must be from his skin.
My world is like a river
As dark as it is deep
Night after night the past slips in
And gathers all my sleep ....
The poignant words affirmed the melody, speaking directly to Theresa’s heart. Long before the song reached its second verse, her eyes had locked with Brian’s.
She slipped into the silence
Of my dreams last night
Wandering from room to room
She’s turning on each light.
Her laughter spills like water
From the river to the sea
I’m swept away from sadness
Clinging to her memory.
Theresa’s eyes dropped to Brian’s lips. They seemed to tremble slightly as they formed the next words.
Sweet memories...
Sweet memories...
His lips closed as he softly hummed the last eight notes of the song, and Theresa didn’t realize Jeff’s voice had fallen silent, leaving her to hum the harmony notes with Brian.
When the final chord diminished into silence, she became aware that everyone in the room was watching the two of them, adding up what seemed to be passing between them.
Jeff broke the spell. “Well, I’ve got packing to do.” He began settling his guitar into its velvet-lined case. “I’d better get Patricia home. We’ll have to get up and rolling by 8:30 in the morning.”
The guitar cases were snapped shut. Jeff and Patricia left, and within twenty minutes the rest of the household had all retired to their respective beds.
Theresa lay in the dark, not at all sleepy. The words of the song came back to beguile with their poignant message .... “Night after night the past slips in and gathers all my sleep.” She knew now what true desire f
elt like. It was tingling through each cell of her body, made all the more tempting by the fact that he lay in the room directly below hers, probably just as wide awake as she was, and for the same reason. But desire and abandon were two different things, and Theresa Brubaker would no more have gone down those stairs and lain with Brian Scanlon beneath her parents’ roof than she would have at age fourteen. Along with desire came an awareness of immorality, and she was a very moral woman who retained the age-old precepts taught her throughout her growing years. Knowing she would be disdained as “Victorian” in this age of promiscuity, she nevertheless had deeply ingrained feelings about right and wrong and realized she would never be able to have a sexual relationship with a man unless there was a full commitment between them first.