by Claire Adams
We finally made it back to campus and Johnny pulled into the temporary parking next to the dorms. I was exhausted, but as he lifted me down from the high seat, wrapping his arms around me, I thought about what it would take to sneak Johnny into my room again. He kissed me, his hands wandering over my body slowly — not enough to be indecent, but enough to set a little tingling fire starting through my belly, down into my hips. I wanted him. I wished that I had the energy to do more than kiss him; I wished that the stupid dorm wasn’t girls-only at night.
Johnny and I kissed for what seemed like hours, breaking away to murmur silly little things to each other before starting up again. I knew that neither of us wanted to separate, that neither of us wanted to be the one to break off and end the night. It had been a stupid party with my parents, but the little tryst in my bedroom and the drive to and from had made it a lot better than it might have been. I hoped that I would never have to go to another one of my parents’ events by myself ever again — and I hoped, deep down, that I could just keep going to them with Johnny.
Finally, Johnny broke away from my lips, looking down at me. We were both panting slightly, and I could feel the ridge of his hardening erection pressing into me, showing that he was starting to get as turned on as I was. We’d have to stop or find a way to keep going somewhere more private. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” Johnny said, smiling slightly at me. “Since the moment I first laid eyes on you, actually.” I tilted my head, confused. A little voice in the back of my mind warned me to expect something terrible, though it wouldn’t specify exactly what it could be.
“What’s that?” I asked, smiling up at him. Johnny kissed me lightly on the lips once more, barely a peck.
“I love you.” My eyes widened. Of all the things I had expected to come out of his mouth, that had not been on the list; we had only been seeing each other a few weeks. I couldn’t imagine any guy Johnny’s age or mine being ready to say that so soon. He’d wanted to tell me that since he first saw me?
“You’re kidding me,” I said, giving him a playful nudge. Johnny shook his head, still smiling.
“Nope. Ever since you ran into me, right when that happened and I saw your beautiful face, I thought to myself ‘God, I love this girl.’” I blushed, smiling like an idiot.
“Before you even knew my name?” I laughed, delighted and more pleased than I could ever remember being. “What if my name was like—Gretchen, or something?” Johnny laughed.
“I don’t love you for your name, dummy,” he told me, kissing my forehead. “I love you because you’re sweet and beautiful and funny and smart.” Johnny kissed my lips once more. “I never want to be without you again. I want to just keep making you happy, making you smile exactly like this.” I blushed a deeper red, not quite able to meet his gaze for a moment.
“I love you, too,” I said finally, looking up into his bright eyes. We kissed one final time and then Johnny broke away, giving me a nudge towards the dorms. I watched him climb up into the truck and walked towards the entrance of the dorm building, still smiling like an idiot.
Chapter Ten
A few days later, I was once more happy, comfortable, and content with my life the way it stood. I was confident about Johnny and how he felt about me, I was glad that I hadn’t broached what was probably a needlessly painful subject just to satisfy stupid paranoia that I was feeling. Whoever had commented anonymously on Claire White’s memorial page obviously had a grudge against Johnny and the stupid girl from the dining hall had obviously just wanted me out of the way so that she could go after him herself. Everything was the way that it should be.
I had told Georgia the next morning after my parents’ anniversary party about what Johnny had said and she had beamed. “See? I told you you should give him the benefit of the doubt.” I felt a little guilty over the fact that I had let her linger in the belief that Johnny and I had talked about the situation even though we hadn’t, but I couldn’t bring myself to correct her. But everything was all good in my life, so it wasn’t like there was much to worry about on that score.
Just like we had before, Johnny and I texted each other constantly through the rest of the weekend, chatting about silly things — stupid class assignments and group projects, things going on in the Phi Kappa house, and upcoming games. There was an away game coming up, which made me a little sad. After taking a few days away from him, I wanted to make up for lost time. But I knew that I didn’t really have much grounds to complain. After all, if Johnny wasn’t the hotshot hockey player that he had always been, he might not have had those particular qualities that made me love him. I didn’t want to change anything about him at all.
I went to class and managed to focus on the things the professors were saying; it was definitely better for everyone when Johnny and I were together — at least from my perspective. I could daydream about him and still manage to get my notes down, still manage to somehow absorb whatever was going on around me. It was a really good compromise and I indulged myself as much as I could stand, especially when it came to telling Johnny about the little fantasies I entertained or hearing about the ones he had thought up involving me.
We could go out to the woods again, make a whole night of it, Johnny suggested. Not just have s’mores, but actually cook a meal, and then I’ve got this really comfy tent we could sleep in…or not sleep, haha. I countered that he would have to find a way to deal with the mosquitoes and he suggested that keeping me in the tent through the night was good enough to prevent getting bitten.
Well, we could take a trip to my parents’ house, I suggested. I mean, yeah, they won’t let us sleep in the same room, but what’s to stop us from sneaking out to the hot tub after they’ve gone to bed? I’ve never had sex in a hot tub before.
Back and forth the messages flew between us; they weren’t all crazy and sexy, but a lot of them were, and I joked to Johnny that with the plans we’d stacked up between us — different fantasies and ideas — we’d never manage to make it through finals, we’d be too busy getting each other off.
We met for lunch every day and Johnny walked me to class every morning, catching me halfway from the dining hall to the building and taking advantage of the fact that I always left a little early to pull me off to the side where we could have some privacy and make out with me. I was in a nearly-constant state of bliss, spending more time with the man I loved without doubting him. Everyone had more or less accepted the fact that Johnny was into me wasn’t on the market anymore. I guessed that Georgia might have let slip the fact that he had said “I love you” to someone in the dorms. I still got envying glances from the girls, especially when Johnny and I walked around campus together holding hands, obviously a couple, but no one made any real, overt moves to flirt with him while I was around.
Earlier in the morning, Johnny had walked me to class, giving me a last, lingering kiss when we got to the door that put me in the perfect state of mind to daydream. Fortunately, the class I was in would be more difficult to fail than it would be to pass. Introduction to Academic Life was the least challenging of all of my classes, of any class I had ever taken. The lesson of the day was about procrastination and good work habits, and while the professor droned on about calendars and using different apps to manage our college work load and make sure we didn’t have finals sneak up on us all at once, I started to think about Johnny.
My favorite little fantasy about him was taking him to my parents’ house while they were out on vacation. We would lounge around in the hot tub, making out, touching each other everywhere, getting really hot and heavy, and maybe making love for a little while. Then we’d go back up to my room again. I imagined Johnny laying me in my bed, going down on me, teasing me the way he always did — bringing me to the edge of climaxing and then backing off, over and over again until I was sure I would die if he didn’t let me orgasm.
I was just starting to get really turned on, able to feel how wet I was becoming, to feel the heat in my cheeks
and chest as I imagined Johnny slithering up along my body to kiss me on the lips and finally give me what I wanted, when my phone started vibrating in my pocket. I pulled it out carefully to keep from getting caught, but instead of a text from Johnny, it was my mom calling me. I frowned. I had been careful to tell her about when I had classes—but of course, she didn’t even pay attention. I rolled my eyes and pressed the button to stop the vibrating. It was probably just an invitation for Johnny and me to come to dinner.
As I walked over to my second class of the day, my phone started vibrating again; once more, it was mom. I rolled my eyes and told myself that I would deal with it later. She always managed to forget anything about my life that wasn’t convenient to her. It vibrated two more times during class with calls from her and by the time I was out of class for a couple of hours, lunch and a little break before my afternoon classes, I saw that she had left a couple of messages. I walked out to the little seating area off to the side of the building outside and decided that whatever it was obvious she thought was urgent; I listened to the first message. “Hey, Becky. I really need you to give me a call back.” That was fairly standard, but Mom’s voice sounded tense. Maybe she’d had a fight with Dad. Or maybe there was some huge catering mishap and she needed to vent. “Becky-love,” the second one — tenser than the first — started out. “Please give me a call back as soon as you get this. We really need to talk. Really. We need to talk.”
Oh good grief, I thought to myself, watching as my classmates drifted towards the dining hall. My stomach was rumbling, too. I’d listen to the last message and then text mom to let her know I would call her back soon, and then I’d eat something. Whatever was going on in her life could not possibly be that urgent. Oh God — what if Dad’s been in an accident? That would be a big deal. That would be a huge deal. No wonder Mom would have completely forgotten about my schedule — my schedule wouldn’t matter in the face of that. I opened up the most recent voicemail and held the phone to my ear. “Becky, I know you’re busy, but please, please give me a call back as soon as you can. Your father and I hired a private investigator to look into Johnny. Before you roll your eyes at me or doing that, you really need to listen. We knew you two were getting serious, so we had him checked out just as a matter of course. Becky! Becky — you have to stay away from him. He’s dangerous. Call me back just as soon as you can, sweetie.” I stared at my phone for a long moment as the shock rolled over me. I had no idea what to do.
BREATHLESS #4
Chapter One
After a few moments, the sheer shock of my mom’s message on my phone began to abate; I decided that I had to get back to my dorm room — that was not the kind of call that I could make in the middle of campus where anyone could hear. I hurried across campus, my heart pounding in my chest. They hired a private investigator? I shook my head as I remembered that detail. I wasn’t sure whether to be angry with them for taking that precaution when they had no real reason to suspect that Johnny had ever done anything wrong or upset and panicked about whatever the investigator had uncovered about him. You never confronted him about that comment. You never talked to him. You never even asked him about it. In spite of the fact that I’d given up talking to him about what I had read, I had never quite fully lost the back-of-my-mind feeling of fear and suspicion about Johnny.
I didn’t even wait for the elevator. I half-ran through the hall of the first floor of dorm rooms and punched at the safety bar of the door to the stairwell. My heart was pounding so fast I barely noticed the stairs themselves as I went up flight after flight, heading up to my room — the one place I could safely call my mom and talk about whatever she had found out through her private investigator.
I should have known my parents would hire someone; I should have known that they wouldn’t have taken the cue that I’d chosen my own college, that I was an adult. I should have guessed that they were going to be just as paranoid as ever about any guy I chose for myself. It wasn’t fair, but I should have expected it. I paused as I came to one of the landings between floors, almost out of breath from how quickly I had been taking the stairs. It couldn’t be anything, could it? I thought about it. Johnny had only ever had the one situation in his life, hadn’t he? Or maybe — the thought chilled me — there was something that the girl in the dining hall didn’t know about. Maybe there was a history there.
I couldn’t believe it. There was no way Johnny could possibly be some hardened criminal or some abusive, cruel person. He was sweet and kind and thoughtful constantly when it came to me. I hadn’t known him very long, but if someone had the kind of past that a private investigator could uncover, they wouldn’t be able to hide their true colors, would they?
I made my way up the last couple of flights of stairs more slowly; I couldn’t reconcile the Johnny I had met, the Johnny I had made love with and who had taken me into the woods on the sweetest, nicest date I had ever been on, with someone who could be the kind of man who would alarm my mother. Of course, I thought bitterly, it could just be that she thought he was dangerous because one of his uncles once shoplifted from a store. In my mom’s eyes, a poor background would be dangerous. But nonetheless, I had to lend her a certain amount of attention. I knew that in spite of how little I respected her views on wealth and things like that — her pretentiousness — she loved me and cared about me and wanted me to be happy. She wouldn’t have called so many times if it was something like Johnny being poor.
That opened up the question once more in my mind of just what it was that Johnny had done. If he had done something other than be involved with a girl who committed suicide, I should know about it, shouldn’t I? I came to my floor and pushed the heavy stairwell door open with difficulty. My heart was pounding inside my chest as if it wanted to explode, and I had to walk slowly, already exhausted, towards my dorm room. I had to hope that Georgia wasn’t around; I needed the most privacy humanly possible for the conversation that I was about to have with my mom. What had her stupid private investigator discovered? I couldn’t imagine. It had to be more than what had happened with Claire, didn’t it? I had taken Johnny at face value when he had told me about his involvement with the girl who had committed suicide. But there had been that comment. On the one hand, I had Johnny’s assertion that he had only been her boyfriend and that people were still bitter at him, still blamed him, for not being able to save a troubled girl from killing herself. On the other hand, there were the spiteful words of the girl who obviously wanted Johnny for herself and the comment from Claire White’s memorial page where someone had said that Johnny should be in prison, too, and that what he had done to Claire was not love.
And I had Johnny’s behavior. He had always been sweet and kind with me, funny and confident. I had seen him be aggressive on the ice, but that was how hockey players were, wasn’t it? I had never seen him treat a single woman with anything more than slight disgust and that was when the jealous girl from the dining hall had flashed him and pressed her boobs against the Plexiglas at a game. My mind was spinning as I closed the door to my bedroom in the dorm and caught my breath. I looked at my phone. Mom obviously urgently wanted to tell me something — I couldn’t just let it wait. I would have to call her and find out what she knew or thought she knew about the situation.
But as I pulled up her contact information and started to hit the button to dial out, it occurred to me that once more I wasn’t giving Johnny the benefit of trust. Anything that Mom had to say to me was something I wouldn’t be hearing about from the man it concerned himself. I was once more going to listen to what amounted to rumor instead of confronting the man who had told me he loved me.
I had been with him so many times; I had had so many opportunities to ask him more. Even when we had been alone in the woods and I had asked him about Claire White, I had just let it go when he asked me to. At the time, it had seemed like the best idea. It had seemed cruel to try and drag it out of him when he was clearly upset about having to talk about the girlfriend he had lost his
virginity to. But had it just been stupid of me to let him distract me from asking about it again? Every time I had been on the edge of confronting him, asking him to his face if there was more to the situation than what he had told me before, I had stopped short. It would be better just to face whatever Mom had heard from her ridiculous private investigator and figure out how to deal with it. Figure out how to confront Johnny and what this meant for me.
I pressed the call icon on my screen and took a deep breath. Mom would probably still be freaking out; one of us had to remain calm. I closed my eyes as the phone rang. Damnit, Mom, I thought as it rang once and then twice. You wanted me to call back. Answer the damn phone already.
“Sweetie! Oh thank God,” Mom said the moment the call connected. “I’ve been so worried all this time.”
“Mom,” I said, as she started to rattle on, sounding panicked. “Mom. What’s going on? You hired a private investigator? Isn’t that a little over the top?”
“Sweetie, if you knew what I know about that boy you’re dating you’d thank me for it.” I rolled my eyes.
“Okay, so tell me what you know about Johnny.” Mom took a deep breath, and I knew she had been expecting me to argue harder against what she and Dad had done. I just wanted it over with; I wanted to know if there was something else for me to worry about with Johnny or if there was just the same old scandal.
“One of his girlfriends, a girl called Claire White, killed herself a few years ago,” Mom said. I sighed with relief. It was just the same scandal that had come up before.
“Mom,” I interrupted. “I know about Claire White. She was Johnny’s girlfriend, they were together in high school, and yeah it’s very sad that she killed herself, but it’s not like someone can blame Johnny for that.”
“Becky, sweetie — if he could do what he did to her, what’s to say he won’t turn around and do it to you, too?” I rolled my eyes again.