Our First Love

by Anthony Lamarr

  * * *

  I drank a cup of black coffee and read the newspaper between classes. As usual, I started with the obits. I never knew Mrs. Retired Walker’s real name, so with my fingers crossed, I scrutinized the obituary of every woman in her sixties or seventies to see if something written about the deceased women would catch my attention: A resident of the Myers Park community; Preceded by her husband, who passed a year ago; She was an avid walker. There were no flags today, which left me relieved and convinced that Mrs. Retired Walker merely grew tired of living alone, sold her house, and moved back to her childhood home in Bountiful.

  Public affairs reporting was the topic of today’s lecture. I sat through first period, so I’d heard the lecture. I sat through third period too because I was hoping Karen would stop by like she did last week. While I sat there waiting for her, I wrote this week’s blog. And since I couldn’t think of anything but Karen, I wrote about her.

  * * *

  The Way It Is – by Caleb Greene

  Falling In Love

  If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already noticed that the name of this week’s blog has changed. “The (not so true) Way I Remember It” is now “The Way It Is.” But, don’t worry. It’s only a temporary change. Why? Well, it’s because this week’s blog isn’t about a memory I wish I had lived. Instead, it’s about the memories I hope to make now that I’m falling in love.

  That’s right. I’m falling in love. And, believe it or not, this feeling is new to me. It’s my first time falling in love. At least, it’s the first time that I can remember. I’m guessing that because I’m a fairly good-looking guy (if I must say so myself), I’m cool, and I’ve got plenty of swagger, that somewhere back in my forgotten past, I had my share of admirers. So maybe I fell in love with the prettiest girl at my high school or maybe she was the girl next door. I don’t remember. And since I don’t remember, I feel like I’m falling in love for the first time.

  Her name is Karen and it was love at first sight. I knew I loved her the moment I laid eyes on her because I saw my life change before my eyes.

  Until I met Karen, I had given up on ever finding love. Actually, I can’t say I had given up, because I’d never thought about being in love. I didn’t think there was a place for love in my life. Thankfully, I met her.

  Karen! Karen! Karen!

  I’m gushing, aren’t I? I can’t help it. Like I said, these feelings are all new to me.

  When I’m with her, I never want to leave her side. When I’m not with her, I can’t stop thinking about her. So, one way or the other, she’s always with me.

  I know that it’s love because the very thought of her can turn a bad day into an unforgettably brilliant day. She has that kind of an effect on me.

  We have such a great time whenever we’re together. We were at the Springtime Tallahassee Parade and she told me she had always dreamed of marching in a parade. I responded by telling her that we were at a parade, so all we had to do was march. The next thing I knew, we were marching alongside the bands and floats in the parade.

  There is one problem though. I’m acting like a sixteen-year-old falling in love for the first time, and I know that it’s driving my brother Nigel crazy. He hasn’t said anything, but he keeps looking at me like he wants to say, “You’re embarrassing me. Now, grow up.” And, maybe I am. But you can’t blame me. I’ve never been in love.

  I’m falling and I don’t want to get up.

  Enough said.

  * * *

  I couldn’t wait to read the comments about this week’s blog. The comment I wanted to hear most was the one that wasn’t coming: the one from Nigel. He’d commented a few times in the past, so I figured Nigel would read the blog, but I was also sure that he wouldn’t say a thing to me about it.

  * * *

  Nigel really liked Karen. That’s why he started to see me as competition.

  * * *

  Karen didn’t show up during third period, which meant I wasted an hour sitting here listening to Nigel’s rambling.

  * * *

  Nigel and I were both thirty-four in the waist, so his pants fit me fine. The problem was the length. The cuffs were an inch above my ankles. Same went for his shirt and jacket. I tried on the charcoal Armani suit he wore to the Valentine’s Ball Friday night—the night he spent with Karen. I could still smell her perfume and feel her touching us. The thought of being that close to her aroused emotions that I’d never felt. An intense awakening undressed me in the living room and sent me sprinting to the shower. I was so hard it hurt. I wrapped my hand around my throbbing penis and I tried to make love to her. Damn. Damn! Damn! I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. Not then. I had to wait.

  * * *

  Was I still a virgin? Maybe I had sex before this life. Did I? I wish I could remember.

  * * *

  I still couldn’t believe Nigel went shopping at Governor’s Square Mall. I was sitting by the window when he pulled in the driveway this afternoon. The back seat and the trunk were packed to capacity. It took him three trips to bring all the bags inside. Then he separated them into two mounds on the living room floor. Thirteen bags in his pile and eleven bags in mine.

  “What’s the occasion?” I asked.

  “Spring,” he answered. “I hope you like what I picked out.”

  I opened a bag from Dillard’s. “Three Nautica shirts and two pair of shorts. How much did you spend?”

  “Not that much?”

  I closed the bag and opened a bag from the Gap. I saw the receipt first. “One-hundred, sixteen dollars! How much is not that much?”

  “All together, a grand and a half.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Yes,” he proudly declared. “Crazy in love.”

  I didn’t want to say it and I tried hard not to, but my spiteful side won out. “Me too,” I proclaimed.

  * * *

  Nigel would never say it, and he assumed I didn’t know it, but he hated having to share Karen with me.

  * * *

  Karen was a godsend. She gave us a real life. We became more than onlookers. More than walking, breathing, animated specters. We were really alive. I loved our new life, and I would have done anything to keep from going back to our old life.

  * * *

  Nigel, Karen, and I ate dinner at Karen’s house Wednesday night. We had planned to go out, but then Karen decided she would cook dinner and we could hang out around the house. Karen cooked the best lasagna I’ve ever tasted. She said she found the recipe handwritten on the inside back cover of a copy of The Godfather that she bought at a yard sale. Anyway, we were discussing how much Tallahassee had grown over the past few years, when she commented on all the changes Orlando, her hometown, was undergoing when she was home in December. She asked if we had ever been to Orlando and I immediately turned and looked at Nigel. We both answered no. I was telling the truth, and Nigel’s inculpable expression nearly had me convinced he was telling the truth even though I knew better. I scribbled a mental note.

  Nigel was in the Orlando area in December.

  * * *

  Every morning I woke up with a massive hard-on pitching my blanket like a teepee. I was getting desperate now, and I didn’t know how much longer I could fight this feeling. It took all of me to deny myself this morning, like yesterday and the day before that. The reason I couldn’t seem to think of anything but making love to Karen was that Nigel kept that part of her from me. He kept saying he hadn’t made love to her, and I kept pretending to believe him.

  * * *

  “Hello. You’ve reached the office of Karen Davis,” the voice recording announced. “I’m away from my desk, so please leave me a message.”

  Karen was in class. I called to hear her sultry voice on the answering machine.

  Dr. Alexander asked us to call him Hubert.

  “We’re wading in the gulf, tying string to raw chicken wings, and you’re calling me Dr. Alexander. Off campus, I’m Hubert. Besides, I don’t hear you call
ing Karen, Dr. Davis.”

  “That’s because she told me that she doesn’t care for handles,” Nigel explained.

  “Don’t argue with him,” Gloria butted in. “This is the first time I’ve heard my husband tell someone not to address him as Dr. Alexander. This is a breakthrough.”

  It was Saturday morning and we made our way through Hickory Mound, near the mouth of the Econfina River in Taylor County. We parked and set up in a clearing near a large drainage pipe. We began by tying chicken wings to six strings and tying the other end of the strings to wooden stakes that we mounted in the ground. Karen and Gloria tossed the chicken bait in the water and tended to the strings, while we walked along the edge of the tea-colored water trying to scoop crabs from the shallows with our nets. Nigel and I acted like two clowns the first time Karen yelled she had a crab on one of her strings. We nearly broke our necks racing over to her. And in our haste, we scared the hell out of everything in the water. It was two hours before we spotted another crab. After Nigel netted that one, it turned into a free-for-all. By noon, our cooler was full.

  Around that time, the lunch bell rang and swarms of sand gnats, mosquitoes, and yellow flies smacked their lips and said grace. We packed in a hurry and headed back to Tallahassee. Hubert dropped us off on campus where Karen’s Pathfinder was parked, and we followed him to his house. There, we spent the afternoon listening to old school music, drinking Heinekens and Crown Royal, and pigging out on garlic crabs, potatoes, corn on the cob, and smoked sausage. I ate and drank until I was miserable. Around seven, when the mosquitoes crashed the cookout, we said bye to the Alexanders and thanked them for the good time. We drove to Karen’s house where we parked the Lexus that morning, kissed Karen good night, then checked back into 207 Circle Drive. It turned out to be a Saturday well spent.

  * * *

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off Karen today. When she looked at me, it felt like she was looking inside me. And the smile on her face said she liked what she saw. Yes, she’s my brother’s girlfriend, but I couldn’t turn this feeling off. I wanted to put my arms around her and hold her next to me. I wanted to kiss her. Make love to her. Be hers.

  * * *

  I asked Nigel why Karen never called him here at home. He said she called him on his cell phone whenever she wanted to talk. I asked him if she knew the number here. He said he didn’t know. I asked him had he given her the number here. He said no. I asked why. He said because she never asked for it.

  * * *

  The tulips did the trick.

  Nigel came home early from work today. He was obviously ruffled. His face was flushed. His hair was hand-brushed into place. His heart was defiled and filled with a jealous rage. He was blunt, leaving no room for discussion. He told me to stay away from Karen and to stay out of his love life.

  “Listen, Caleb, I’m only going to say this one time. I want you to stay away from Karen and I want you to stay out of my love life. Do you hear me?”

  “What brought this on?” I asked and waited for him to tell me what happened when Karen received the tulips, but he didn’t say anything about taking a midday recess to quench the fires I ignited in her. He didn’t have to. I already knew.

  “Don’t worry about what brought it on,” Nigel responded. “Just stay away from us. I won’t tell you again.”

  I’d never been the type you could bully, so I stood and looked directly at Nigel. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

  “Telling you,” he replied.

  “And if for some reason I didn’t quite hear you or I don’t give a damn, what’s up?”

  I thought Nigel would back down, but he didn’t.

  “Try me and see,” he answered.

  I wasn’t ready to back down either, so I walked up to Nigel and stared him in the eyes. “Would you call this trying you?”

  “Yeah, I’d call it that,” he said.

  “So?” I solicited.

  Nigel shoved me in the chest, and I stumbled backwards and fell back on the sofa. I jumped up and was about to kick Nigel’s ass, when I saw the welcoming look on Nigel’s face. There was a long-time-coming smile on his face that signaled he was ready to release the years of pinned up anger and frustration on me.

  Nigel urged me on. “Come on. What’s the hold-up? Bring it.”

  I quickly rethought my plan. Nigel and I had never fought, but in my mind, I always figured I could beat him if we did. But, the way he was looking, I wasn’t sure. And, I wasn’t ready to take any chances. So I turned and walked over the recliner by the window.

  “I didn’t think you were up to the task.” Nigel turned and walked to his bedroom. He slammed the door shut.

  I went to bed around nine o’clock, hours earlier than I usually turned in. I thought I was ready, but my nerves got the best of me. I didn’t trip out though. After all, it was going to be my first time, and I didn’t want to rush things.

  It was a little after midnight, and I was standing in our office when the door opened and she walked in. Except for a tulip she used to caress her breasts, we were both naked. She handed me the tulip, then she turned around, placed her hands on the desk, and beckoned for me. I walked up behind her and waited for her to invite me in. Her smile told me to let myself in, and I replied, “Gladly.”

  I was sure Nigel and Karen’s first time didn’t happen here, but I was certain they made love here today. My first time, or at least the first time I remembered, was everything I imagined it would be. We made love. Tender. Passionate. Reckless love.

  During our second round, I sat in my desk chair and she sat in my lap, facing me. Our lips and body fused in ways I never thought possible.

  Our third go at it was on top of the desk around 4 a.m.

  At 5:30, we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  Forty minutes later, my alarm clock rang and I awoke to a brand-new world.

  * * *

  I’d never wanted to live and walk outside these walls as much as I did today. But as I sat here elated, I felt a tinge of envy toward Nigel because he was able to touch, feel, and know her. Touching, feeling, and knowing her made their love real.

  CHAPTER 20 NIGEL

  I spent spring break watching nervously as Caleb rediscovered our former life. Karen asked me to spend the break with her down in Orlando, but I passed. I couldn’t be away from home for an entire week. Especially not now…he was close.

  As much as I hated to admit it, I’d been out of whack since Caleb sent Karen the tulips and since I read his blog about falling in love with her. I couldn’t believe that I let jealousy make me want to fight him. Since that day, two incendiary questions held my future hostage. If Karen met and got to know Caleb, would she be more attracted to him? I hated myself for being so insecure about love and women. I’m thirty-five, not sixteen. I should know what I was capable of by now. Which brought up the second question: shouldn’t I know what I was capable of?

  I read somewhere that dreams were a reflection of our subconscious thoughts, and I hoped that wasn’t true. I read Caleb’s blog about falling in love with Karen while I was at work the other day, and that night I had a dream that Caleb and I really did get into it about Karen. He didn’t back down in the dream like he did in real life.

  In the dream, like in real life, I was sitting at my desk reading Caleb’s blog. I wasn’t surprised that he had fallen in love with Karen. After all, we shared my entire life. Why wouldn’t he want to share my love for her? I asked myself that question in real life and in the dream. In the dream, as in real life, the possible answers had me boiling over inside. It pissed me off that I had to share her with Caleb, and I let myself feel it. By the time I finished reading the blog I picked up my briefcase and marching out of the office. I was ready to tell Caleb how I really felt about him falling in love with my woman.

  I was sitting in our driveway before I realized I had made it home. In the dream, Caleb must have been telepathic, because he stood in the window waiting for me with a smirk on his face. In real life, he w
as standing in the window when I got home, but I don’t think he had the smirk on his face or at least I didn’t see it. That’s why I didn’t walk in the house ready to kick off in his ass like I was in the dream. Caleb had the smirk on his face in the dream knowing I was going to read the blog, and he guessed how pissed off I would be, especially after he sent her the tulips. He didn’t care though. He was as ready to fight over her as I was.

  I hurried out the car and slammed the door closed. Then, without looking up at the window where Caleb was still standing, I walked around the car and toward the front door. Usually, I took my time about unlocking the front door and going inside to make sure Caleb had time to go to his bedroom before I opened the door. In the dream, I didn’t waste any time. I had the key out when I stepped up to the door. I inserted the key, turned it, and pushed the door open.

  Caleb wasn’t in the living room.

  I stood in the doorway with the door opened and let my anger build. My anger had subsided slightly during the drive from campus to home, but I think seeing the smirk on Caleb’s face reignited it. I took my time about closing the front door, but as soon as it was closed, I turned and announced, “The door’s locked!”

  Caleb wasted no time opening his bedroom door and stepping into the hallway. “Yeah, it is. And…?” he asked in a sardonic tone.

  “And it’s whatever you got on your mind, little brother,” I replied and dropped the briefcase on the floor.

  Caleb took deliberate steps as he marched up the hallway toward the living room. “Seems like you’re the one with something on your mind,” he said.