Confined

by Barbi Barnard

  “You want to try,” he supplied for me.

  I nodded, looking everywhere but at him. “Yes,” I answered softly. “I’d like to try.”

  Steve leaned forward and pressed his lips softly to mine, “We will. When the time is right.”

  I groaned inwardly. That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to do it now. Hell, in a sense I wanted to get it over and done with so that we could move on to the next phase. “Steve,” I said softly, “could we at least, I don’t know, try?”

  He sighed softly. “How about a compromise,” he offered. “We can make out like teenagers and see what happens.”

  “Deal,” I replied greedily, anxious to take what I could get and not look back.

  Steve leaned forward, brushing a strand of hair off my shoulder, his lips skimming a gentle path up my collarbone, nipping his way to my ear lobe.

  “I love you, JoJo Weston,” he murmured in my ear. “I love you so much.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned into him. “I love you,” I whispered.

  “Steve, let’s go upstairs.”

  I felt him wrestle with his subconscious. Will you, wont you – back and forth he went. I glanced at him, my eyes pleading with him to give in; I was being selfish, I wanted more than just this.

  “JoJo,” he sighed.

  “Steve,” I replied.

  “What if you’re not ready?”

  “I’m ready,” I told him. I didn’t know if I was ready or not, but we were sure as hell were about to find out. “Follow me.”

  He allowed me to lead him upstairs, I leaned into him, snaking my arms around his neck. “Steve,” I said, my lips brushing against his. “If you don’t take me to bed right freaking now, we are going to have a huge problem on our hands and I am not talking about your-“ I motioned below the waist of his pants, “well, all that going on down there.”

  He chuckled nervously and tilted his head to the side and said, “I uh, yeah, sorry about that.”

  I smiled, fighting embarrassment. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. My gut reaction was to smile and fake it till I made it. Together we sat down side by side on the edge of my bed; the tension so thick could’ve been cut with a knife.

  “So,” I said unable to fight the awkwardness. “Is it supposed to be this weird?”

  Steve laughed. “Yeah, I think so, if I remember correctly my first time was so awkwardly painful the girl I did it with moved the following weekend.”

  “Oh no,” I gasped, horrified. “Are you serious?”

  “No,” he snorted. “I’m totally kidding.”

  “Oh, you ass.” I threw myself back across the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “I want to do this,” I said softly.

  “I know you do,” he replied, lying down beside me.

  “I’m just scared.” I rolled onto my side so we were lying face to face, the dim glow of the bedside lamp illuminating our faces.

  I rolled onto my side and stared at him in the darkness. “I’m seriously trying to move on; I don’t want to be that person anymore. I want to be with you, in every possible way.”

  “I know you do,” he repeated. “And we’ll be together that way when we can. Until then, there is plenty of other just as interesting and fun, things we can do together.”

  Oh?” I feigned interest. “Like what?

  “Like this,” he said pulling at the hem of my shirt. It slid effortlessly up past my navel, exposing my skin to the soft touch of his warm lips on my cool skin.

  My eyes slid shut and I willed myself to breath, to just inhale and exhale. Steve’s lips circle my belly button and travels up the center of my abdomen. He stopped at the raised hemline of my tee and glanced up at me.

  “You alright?” he asked softly.

  I opened my eyes and looked up at him. “Right as rain,” I replied.

  “So is it okay if I do this?” he pulled my shirt up further, exposing my naked breast. I shivered as the soft cotton material scraped against sensitive skin.

  “Mhmm,” I said, the sound rumbling in the back of my throat.

  “What about this?” he asked, raining kisses in the valley between my breasts.

  “Yes,” I moaned.

  “And this is tolerable?” he wrapped his lips around my erect nipple and sucked gently. Nibbling slightly on the tip.

  The pleasurable pain set my nerves tingling like a flash fire, a rapidly moving front traveling across my whole body. Gone was the awkwardness associated with first time lovers, lust and desire shoved it aside. The need to feel his hands on my body, his lips on my skin was unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

  “No,” I breathed, reaching for his shirt, pulling it up over his head, and tossing it aside. I fumbled with the button on his pants. Steve reached for my hand, stopping me.

  “Slow down,” he said. “It’s not a race, we have all night.”

  All night was nowhere nearly long enough. He did things to me I’d only ever seen done in movies. As I fell asleep in the early predawn hours that Saturday morning, an overwhelming wave of love and perfection washed over, dragging me further down into sleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  So much can happen in the blink of an eye. Even more can happen in five years. The events of the last five years are not important; they are mundane and typical.

  There were high points, like sitting in the courtroom as the judge sentenced Curtis Duggar to five to eight years in jail for harassing me. There are low points as well, like walking to the mailbox one rainy October afternoon and finding a letter from the parole board at the King County Correctional facility informing me that said harasser was up for parole and asking if I would like to speak at his hearing.

  The passage of said times forces you to watch as your child goes from a girl to a teenager. You watch as she packs up her dolls and stuffed animals, as posters of pop music’s hottest new singers paper her walls, as issues of People and Seventeen magazines replaced Diary of Wimpy Kid books.

  The time also brings you to the love of your life, a man so perfect it’s as if the universe plucked him out of your subconscious. We didn’t marry; we didn’t see the point. Life was perfect the way it was and I’m not saying marriage would’ve screwed it up, but maybe it would have. Look at my marriage to Kyle – he was, essentially, a good man, but it didn’t work. We didn’t last and I loved him. I didn’t want to take a chance and risk my marriage to Steve not working, so we didn’t. We lived in Dad’s old house, went to work every day, and each night when we lay in bed, I silently thanked God for giving me a little bit of good in the battlefield of bad that had surrounded me.

  At the kitchen table in the here and now, Steve set the letter down and sighed. “I know,” I said. “It’d be nice if he just went away permanently.”

  “Yeah, but that won’t happen, not anytime soon at least.” Again, he sighed. “What do you want to do?”

  “Honestly? I want to drive to Seattle next week and beg them not to let him out. These last years have been great, peaceful and quiet; it’s been huge relief not having to worry about him bothering us. I’m afraid of what’s going to happen if they let him out. Know what I mean?”

  Steve nodded, folding the letter back up and slipping it back into its envelope. He handed it to me and said, “Go then and tell them exactly what you just told me.”

  It was my turn to sigh. I knew, deep down inside, it wouldn’t do much good. Curtis was a nuisance, but not a major criminal. Regardless of what I told the parole board, they were going to release him.

  My worst fears were confirmed a few weeks later when, after the parole hearing, I got another letter in the mail stating, that while the board understood and sympathized with my concerns and fears, Curtis Duggar was a model inmate and demonstrated rehabilitated behavior.

  “Rehabilitated behaviors?” I shouted at Steve. “What the hell does that even mean?”

  Steve crossed the kitchen and took the letter from me. “It j
ust means that they don’t have a reason to keep him incarcerated anymore. I know it sucks, but with prison over-crowding and lack of funds, there’s not much anyone can do.”

  “I know,” I said, quieting my tone. “It’s just-“

  “It’ll be okay,” Steve said, setting the letter on the counter and wrapping his arms around me. “Maybe he really did learn his lesson. Hopefully he’ll go home to his family and leave you – us – alone.”

  “Or maybe he’s really a great actor and he’s been using the last five years to plot his perfect revenge,” I muttered.

  Steve laughed. “I doubt it. What time is Emma supposed to be home?”

  “I think she said six. She was supposed to stay after school, something to do with the homecoming dance.”

  “You know there’s a boy on the committee that she likes, right?”

  “I know,” I said. “Tommy something or the other.”

  “I don’t like it,” Steve said. “Boys are shifty.”

  I laughed and opened the fridge, getting out a bag of fresh green beans. “They are, but Emma’s smart; she’s not going to do anything stupid,” I said, setting the beans next to the cutting board.

  “It’s not Emma I’m worried about.”

  “It’ll be fine.” I told him, leaning forward to kiss his rough cheek.

  “Tommy something or the other better hope so. I really don’t want to kick some teenage kid’s ass for breaking my daughter’s heart.”

  I smiled at that, not at kicking the kid’s ass, but his daughter’s heart part. Over the last few years, Steve had really stepped up and taken a fatherly role in Emma’s life. She relished the way he doted on her and she was a serious daddy’s girl. “It’ll be fine,” I said, turning to him. I placed my hand on his forearm and glanced up at him. “Okay?”

  He kissed my forehead. “Okay,” he muttered.

  “Thanks. Now can you please get the colander from the cabinet?”

  He leaned down, retrieving the colander from the back of the cabinet. “So, aside from that-“ he motioned the letter on the counter, “how was your day?”

  “Kind of boring,” I answered. “I did some grocery shopping and took that shirt of yours to the dry cleaners. How about you, interesting day?”

  “Same here, I had to fax some paperwork to Seattle about an old murder case.”

  I waited for him to say more, but he remained silent as I chopped the green beans. Before I could ask anything more about the murder, headlights washed over the front yard.

  “Emma’s home,” Steve said. “I’m gonna run upstairs and change.”

  “Okay babe. There are clean clothes in the basket at the foot of the bed; I haven’t had a chance to put them away yet.”

  “Roger that,” he replied as he left the room. In the hall, he said hello to Emma then heavy footsteps as he climbed the stairs.

  “Mom!” Emma called.

  “In the kitchen,” I replied back just as loud. “What’s up?”

  “Oh my gosh,” she giggled as she rushed into the kitchen. “I got a date to the dance!”

  I set the knife down and turned to her. “Honey, that’s great!”

  “I know!”

  “What’s his name? Tell me all about him.”

  Emma sighed dreamily and hopped onto the counter, snagging a green bean out of the bag. “His name is Tommy. He’s a senior and he plays football and he’s cute.”

  “Let me guess, he’s the quarterback?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “Good guess,” I replied.

  Emma smiled and sighed dreamily. “He’s so great Mom, really. I can’t wait for you to meet him; you’re going to love him.”

  I smiled, but inside I felt sick. Part of me was afraid history was repeating itself, but part of me was happy that she was happy. “I bet. Are we going to meet him before the dance?”

  “If you want to, I guess. I can ask him to come by before, so you and Steve can meet him, if you’d like.”

  “It’s up to you Emma, but yes, we’d like to meet him.”

  “Mom are you alright? You look a little, I dunno, green.”

  “I’m fine,” I smiled at her. “We’re going to have to find you a dress.”

  “I know!” Her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. “Do you think we can go to Seattle to find one?”

  “Why don’t we try closer first, see if we can’t find something. If we can’t, then we’ll go to Seattle.”

  “Awesomesauce. Well, I have homework to do. I’ll be in my room.” Emma leapt off the counter and crossed the kitchen, grabbing her backpack off the table before exiting the room.

  Alone in the kitchen, I turned the radio on and resumed chopping the beans. As I chopped, I thought about Emma’s date, excited for her. It would be fun to go shopping with her. Maybe we could just skip all the local places and just go on into the city. It might be fun.

  “What’s on your mind beautiful?” Behind me the fridge opened briefly, then shut.

  “Just thinking about taking Emma to Seattle to find a dress for the dance.”

  “Sounds like a good idea. When are you two planning that trip?”

  I shrugged. “I have to talk to Emma about it, see when she’s free,”

  Steve took a swig of beer and nodded. “Do you need help with dinner?”

  “Nah, I got it.”

  “Okay, I’ll be in the other room if you need me.”

  Alone again, my thoughts drifted from Emma’s dance to Curtis Duggar, then ultimately to Rodger Byers and his gang of assholes. Steve continued to look for him, even after Curtis’s conviction, but never had any luck locating him.

  It was weird, I’ll admit that, but truth be told, I was kind of glad no one knew where he was. Because no one knowing where he was meant that he was most likely dead and if he was dead, then he probably deserved it.

  I know that sounds wrong, but what he did was wrong and karma is a, well, she’s a bitch. Focus, I ordered myself as I dumped handfuls of green beans into the waiting pot on the stove.

  “Mom,” Emma rushed into the kitchen, her laptop clutched safely to her chest. “I found the most perfect dress.”

  I laughed. “I thought you were doing homework?”

  “I was,” she said sheepishly. “I was taking a break and looking at homecoming dresses, you know getting an idea about what I want and I think I found it.”

  “Okay,” I said, dropping the last of the beans into the pot. “Let me see.”

  She squealed excitedly and opened the laptop. “Okay, ready?”

  The most unexpected dress appeared on the screen before me. Black and knee length with cap sleeved and crinoline, her dream dress looked like it escaped the set of Designing Women.

  “I like it,” I told her, which was the truth, I was expecting her to want some sparkly, strapless dress that barely covered her butt cheeks, but this was a pleasant surprise. Modest and vintage.