“You’re so cool,” he kept saying, and the more he said it, the more cool she felt. Easy to hold your head high and keep your shoulders back when someone was looking at you like he wanted to see you. Easy to meet his eyes when they held everything you wanted to see. Easy to smile when he gave you such a sweet glimpse of the rest of your life.
And it wasn’t over when they left the diner. They drove to the quarry, which was nearly deserted by then, and entered through Jenny’s special hidden spot. The motorcycle carried them up the gentle path to the far edge of the pitch-black pool. They set their helmets on the ground and changed places, so that she was in front, leaning back. His arms held her there, no questions asked, hands under her anorak, stroking her middle.
“Some people say there’s a quarry creature down there,” she told him. “They say it came out of the rock when the place was flooded, and lives in the very deepest part.”
“So you believe it?” Pete asked.
She thought for a minute, then nodded. “I like thinking it has a whole family down there, so it isn’t alone. It’s a peaceful creature. It hasn’t ever hurt anyone.”
“Has anyone ever actually seen it?”
“Some people say so.”
“Have you?”
“I’m not sure. I come up here a lot and just sit on the edge and look and look and look at the water. I’ve imagined the creature so many times. Maybe one of those times was real.”
Pete’s hands rose until his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts.
She closed her eyes. “Hard to believe sometimes, what’s real and what isn’t.” He was cupping her breasts so very lightly that it felt fine. No, it felt better than fine. It felt wonderful. But it wasn’t enough.
He helped her turn in the saddle to face him and looped her arms around his neck. This time his hands went under her sweater and found the lace of her bra.
“So cool,” he whispered. He caught her mouth in a kiss that was shortened only because they were both breathing hard. Then he unhooked the bra and caressed her bare breasts. “Feel good?”
Jenny nodded. It felt so good she couldn’t have found the words, and even if she had, couldn’t have pushed them past her throat. From there on down, everything inside her was swelling, more and more as his hands kneaded and tugged, more and more with the pleasure his eyes held.
“Want to go home?” he asked in a husky whisper.
She gave another quick nod.
Less than a minute later, she was helmeted behind him and they were on their way. This time, Jenny didn’t see what they passed. She closed her eyes inside the helmet and concentrated on savoring whatever it was that had taken over her body— because it had been taken over, for sure. It was humming and throbbing, doing things it had never done, making her think of doing things she had never done, like rubbing Pete’s stomach and slipping her hands lower.
She gasped at what she felt.
He returned her hands to a safer place and called back a choked, “Keep that up, and we’ll go off the road!”
“I’m sorry!”
“Don’t be!”
Well, she wasn’t. Not really. She was feeling as high as when they had been racing along the highway, or dancing at Giro’s, or petting at the quarry. She was feeling like maybe good things really were possible.
He sailed down her street, careened into the driveway, and braked at the very bottom of the side steps, but when he took her hand to lead her inside, she balked. “Bad memories,” she said with the shake of her head, and he seemed to understand, because he was the one who made for the pine tree out back and held aside the curtain of boughs for her to enter.
If it was cold, she didn’t notice. Her body was so hot that she couldn’t get her clothes off fast enough, and then the heat Pete generated took over. He kissed her and touched her until she was begging him to do something, anything to end the nagging she felt in her belly. But he wasn’t rushing, he said. He wanted her to feel finally what a woman should feel, he said. He wanted her to know she was beautiful and feminine and loved, he said, and if she decided she wasn’t ready to have him inside her, that was all right, too, he said.
But she was ready. Nothing about Pete was even remotely like the past. Her body was on fire.
He did it then, pushed inside her until she barely had room to breathe, and when he began to move, she thought she would die. She felt it all, the push and tug of it, vivid, hot, and challenging, until she arched her back and came apart.
*
“I’ve never climaxed before,” she confessed.
“I’m glad.”
“I’ve never really made love before.”
He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers.
They were in the attic, sitting beneath the gable on a makeshift bed of pillows and quilts. A single candle flickered nearby. Pete wore nothing but his jeans, which were zipped but not snapped. Jenny wore nothing but her pearl earrings and his butter-soft shirt. It was a scene out of a fantasy, like something she might read in Cosmo. She felt so normal, so happy to be normal, so physically pleased and emotionally full that she wanted to cry.
She touched his face, wide-set eyes and eyebrows, high cheekbones, straight nose, square jaw. She ran her fingers through his hair, which was inky, thick, and stylishly long. She traced the curve of his ear, touched the left lobe where an earring might sit, imagined a tiny diamond there. She marked his collarbone with her thumbs, palmed the firm muscles of his upper arms, let her knuckles graze the hair on his chest.
Then she sighed. “Whatever do you see in me?”
“I told you at the start. You’re different.”
“I’m not beautiful.”
“I think you are.”
“I don’t have long legs like a model.”
“That’s okay. Taking all that energy to grow long legs leaves them scrawny everywhere else. Long legs don’t turn me on.” He unbuttoned the shirt she wore and spread it wide. “This does.”
She felt the caress of his eyes, felt herself warm up and start aching all over again. She made a sound that was vaguely his name.
“What do I see in you?” he asked. “I see freshness. Newness. Innocence.”
“I’m not innocent. I’m not even decent. I’ve led an awful life.” It bothered her to think how awful. It bothered her that Pete didn’t know. But if she told him and he left because of it, she didn’t know what she would do.
“I’ve made my own mistakes,” he said.
“Not like mine,” she assured him.
He was suddenly brash. “Wanna bet? I stole my best friend’s sweetheart. How’s that for decency?”
Jenny figured there was more to the story. “When?”
“When I left. Everyone was begging me to stay, telling me how much they needed me, how much they depended on me, but I could taste freedom and, man, was it sweet. But they kept arguing and begging and reasoning. By that time the need was raging inside, and I couldn’t get it out, because the guilt was bad enough without the yelling. I figured I’d show them I wasn’t a saint, knock their starry-eyed view right out with a one-two punch. So I took her away with me.”
“Did you love her?”
“No,” he said without meeting Jenny’s eyes.
“What happened then?”
“It lasted a month. I gave her money and sent her back, but it was never the same for her there. She left again, alone that time. I don’t know what happened to her after that.” He finally looked at Jenny. “I know what happened to me. I moved from place to place and couldn’t find peace. It was like I had the mark of Cain on my forehead. I met all the wrong women. Until you. I don’t deserve you, Jenny, but I want you anyway. I’m willing to change to keep you. We’ll start over together.”
Jenny’s heart was so full that she was able to say little more than a wishful, “You make it sound easy.”
“It has to be, if you want it enough.”
Jenny wanted to believe that in the very worst way. “But w
hat if there are other people involved— like that friend and your family? What if they don’t want you starting over?”
“They will. Times are hard. They need the help.”
“My father will say the same thing. He won’t want me to leave.”
“The situation is different. Your father doesn’t need you the same way. His needs are entirely selfish. But you’ve been loyal to him all these years. You’ve put your own interests second to his. Now’s your time.”
“But he’s my father.”
“You’re an adult. You have a right to make choices of your own.”
“You don’t understand. He won’t let me leave.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Pete insisted. “You aren’t his to let or not let leave. You’re your own person. He makes the choices that decide his life. You have a right to make the ones that decide yours.”
Lord, how many times she had told herself that. Dan had said it, too, and Reverend Putty, and Miriam.
“What if he disagrees?”
Pete grinned. “I’ll help you convince him. Between the two of us, it’ll be a cinch.” Prayerlike, his hands came down between her breasts. His palms raked her nipples. His mouth followed.
She clutched his head. “I want to start over. I’ve been wanting to for so long. Only I couldn’t.”
He worked his way up until his mouth was next to hers. “Me neither, because I kept thinking I could do it alone. But I can’t.” His eyes went to hers. He looked vulnerable. “You’ll leave with me, won’t you?”
She caught her breath.
“Marry me? Have my babies?”
She put her hands to her mouth. She couldn’t believe what a gift he was, offering her everything she had always, always wanted.
“I love you, Jenny.”
She paused then, thinking again— still— that he was too good to be true. “Really?”
“Really.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I’ve had lots of relationships. I’ve never told a woman I loved her before.”
“There’s so much you don’t know about me.”
“I know what I need.”
“What if there was something so dark it’d curdle your blood?”
“You’ve heard my dark secret. Yours can’t be much worse. Besides, blood doesn’t curdle.”
“You know what I mean. What if there was?”
“If there was, it’d make me feel less guilty for my own crummy past. It’d help me remember that things have to be different this time. I love you, Jenny.”
He sealed the words with a kiss, and she returned it, but that didn’t seem enough somehow. She wanted to do something special, something different, something other women in his life might not have had the courage or the know-how or the love to do.
Still kissing him, she urged him to his back. She licked his chin, then his throat. She scraped her teeth down his chest, along the line of hair that tapered toward his navel, and all the while her hands worked at his zipper. By the time her head reached it, she had him free. He was hot against her lips, smooth to her tongue, musky in a way that cleared her head of the past so completely that nothing could mar the purity of her pleasure— and it was a shock, that pleasure. She had started this for him. It ended up being just as special for her.
*
And so the night went. They talked, made love, and slept; talked, made love, and slept. Shortly before dawn they climbed out to the roof and watched the sun rise and slowly burn off the fog. With the fog went the chill, and with the chill went prudence. Opening the quilt, they lay nude in the still-pale sun, and once that was done, making love was inevitable.
Some might have said Jenny was thumbing her nose at the town, making love in broad daylight that way. Jenny herself would have said, if asked by someone who had no business asking, that she was simply christening her new slate roof.
In truth, she was celebrating a change in her life. She had never been as happy or as bold, certainly never as sure of herself as she was with Pete. And calm. That, too. Even with Darden coming home the next day.
So she slept deeply, back inside the house now, once the sun had moved higher, and she only awakened when the sound of the doorbell grew insistent.
Chapter Fifteen
Jenny struggled into her nightgown as she ran down the stairs. Holding the neck closed and the fabric bunched away from her breasts, she opened the front door a crack and squinted into the mid-morning light.
Reverend Putty looked to be leaving. He quickly turned around and came back. “Dear God in heaven, I was worried,” he said with a sigh. “I’ve been ringing the bell for ten minutes. I was beginning to think something was very wrong. Normally, I’d have simply assumed that you were off walking or even in town, though I just came from there and I didn’t see you, but then Dan asked if I wouldn’t remind you about the roof, since I was coming out here anyway, and when no one answered the bell I got to thinking—” He looked upward and crossed himself.
“I was asleep,” Jenny said.
“Well, I can see that”— he glanced at his watch—“but it’s eleven in the morning. That’s nearly half the day gone.” He sighed again. “All right, I’ll tell Dan to tell Merle that whatever he thought he saw up on that roof earlier was wrong. Here you are, covered head to toe in a prim-enough gown. Merle said you were naked, can you imagine that? ‘Naked on the roof in the cold,’ he said. I asked Dan. We agreed you’d have to be out of your mind to do something like that.”
Jenny yawned.
“Though if anyone has reason to be,” Reverend Putty went on, “you do. It’s been a rough spell for you, MaryBeth. I was glad to see you at the dance Friday night. After that, I was hoping you’d be at church on Sunday. I wrote my sermon with you in mind. Well, with Darden in mind, actually. It was about God’s love and what it means to forgive. I believe some of my people needed to hear it, though I do understand how they feel. They’re frightened. Darden was intimidating even before all this. But I think what we have to do now is to lay the past to rest. He paid for his crime. It behooves the rest of us as good Christians to welcome him back.”
Jenny wasn’t holding her breath for that to happen.
“It was an upbeat sermon. I’m sorry you missed it. If you’d like, I’ll print up a copy for you. I have to hand it to that computer. It does come in handy for times like this when someone just can’t be there to hear my message. You used to like coming to church, MaryBeth.”
“I went because Darden went.” He took her with him. She hadn’t had a choice. No matter that her mother refused to go, or that Darden’s belief in God was questionable. He had wanted the town to see her standing beside him.
“I recall you came even after Darden went away.”
“A few times.”
“Why did you stop?”
Jenny might have shrugged and looked away. But knowing what lay ahead, she wanted her say. “It was a bad time. I was alone and feeling guilty and sick. I needed someone to tell me I wasn’t terrible, but no one in town would do it. I thought that because people were in church, in God’s house, they might see me more kindly. Look at me more kindly. They didn’t. They could’ve used your sermon back then.”
“Try to understand, MaryBeth. They found the situation frightening. They didn’t know what to say.”
Jenny worked her head around on her neck to ease a kink that sleeping in the attic had left.
“They would like you back.”
“Did they tell you that?”
“They nodded through my whole sermon.”
Jenny could certainly see it. Reverend Putty’s sermons put Darden to sleep all the time.
“I’d like you back, too. You and Darden, both. Perhaps next Sunday? It would be a sign to the town that you’re willing to forgive and forget.” He bobbed on his toes and looked amused. “Consider this a personal invitation”— he shot another quick look upward—“from You Know Who, via His servant, yours truly. God loves you, MaryBeth.”
<
br /> “Does He?”
“Why, of course.”
She wasn’t sure she believed that. “I waited for Him to help me. He didn’t.”
“Oh, He did. He left you alone to work things out for yourself, so that you’d become a stronger person. I can see that you are. Those are beautiful earrings you’re wearing. They were your mother’s, weren’t they? Yes, they were. She wore them on her wedding day. I do believe she said they were a gift from your father. I married them, you know. I’ve been here that long. They were happy back then. Ahhh, dear. All we can hope now is that she’s resting in peace and forgiving Darden.” He tipped his head. “You used to look just like her. Maybe not so much anymore. You look quite different, actually.”
Jenny felt quite different, actually. “I found someone who loves me. His name’s Pete.”
“Pete? Pete who? Do I know him?”
“No. He’s from out west. You probably passed him on your way here. He rides a motorcycle.”
Reverend Putty scratched his head. “I don’t remember passing a motorcycle.”
“He was going in to get our breakfast. Coffee and doughnuts.” Just like the best of the Cosmo men did. She smiled at that. “He’s so cool.”
The pastor remained puzzled. “I think I would’ve heard the noise of a motorcycle.”
“Not the way he oils his machine,” Jenny said.
“Ahh. Well. That’s nice. I’m happy for you, MaryBeth. You deserve a good man.”
“I’ll be leaving with him.”
“Leaving Little Falls?”
Jenny nodded.
“Will Darden be going with you?”
“No. This is his home.”
“But you’re his daughter. You’re all he has.”
Flirting With Pete: A Novel Page 24