It Happened on Maple Street

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  How, at Rachel’s grandmother’s house, I’d been certain that spending the weekend with James was the right thing to do.

  James was kind. Gentle. Soft spoken. He was going to be a chemical engineer. And maybe a part-time preacher.

  I did what he told me to do. I thought about his request all weekend.

  He woke up to the sound of tears. Or maybe to the soft jerks that accompanied Emily’s sobs. She was sitting upright on the opposite side of the backseat, looking out the window.

  He’d screwed up.

  “Hey,” Tim said softly, pulling her back to him. “I’m sorry about that.” She held herself stiffly, resisting him. “I was talking to you.”

  “I know.”

  “I was pouring my heart out.” Obviously he’d been asleep longer than she knew.

  “I know, Teach, and I feel the same way, I swear . . .” He loved her. That was all that mattered. “I just . . . the feel of you against me, listening to your voice, it just felt so . . . you know, like we were married and . . .”

  “Married?” The stiffness left her body. She leaned against him.

  “Not now, or anything, but I’ve been thinking about it. Someday.”

  “You want us to get married?”

  “Someday.”

  “I love you, Cowboy.”

  “I love you, too, Teach.”

  And before she could launch into a rehash of whatever heart outpouring he’d missed during his nap, providing more chances for him to make a mess of things, he turned her face up to his and kissed her. They were in a secluded part of the park.

  And lovemaking always seemed to get rid of Emily’s insecurities where he was concerned.

  “Have you thought about my question?” It was Saturday afternoon, and James and I were driving back from the home where his mother was spending the long weekend, babysitting for a couple of cute kids whose parents had opted to spend the holiday alone together rather than with their kids.

  James’s mother had felt as sorry for the kids as I had. She’d made a Thanksgiving dinner, of sorts. She’d made me feel more welcome than I could ever have imagined.

  She also made it clear that she would be more than thrilled to have me for a daughter.

  “Did you tell your mother you were going to ask me?”

  “I mentioned that I might. You’re staying at the apartment. She’d have guessed anyway.”

  The apartment. We were heading back there. I liked the place. It was small but very well kept. Clean. Decorated. Lots of plants. It felt open and calm and welcoming and safe.

  I was sleeping in James’s room, in one of the two twin beds. He’d slept in his mother’s double bed in the room next door.

  “I’ve thought about it.”

  “And?”

  “I . . . ”

  I was twenty years old and other than Tim, James was the only man I’d ever even thought about spending a lifetime with. I could make him happy. I had no doubts about that. And I enjoyed being with him.

  He’d be a good provider. A good protector.

  “I . . . guess.”

  He stopped the car and stared, his mouth open. “You mean it?” You’d think the man was hard up for women, rather than the target of more than half of the girls in our social club.

  I thought about what I was doing, scared to death. I thought about the boys I’d known, the few I’d dated since Tim. I thought about Tim choosing the safety of Emily rather than trusting me to be there for him for the rest of our lives. “Yes,” I said.

  I was going to get married.

  Excitement flooded me.

  And I felt like crying.

  Thirteen

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK? SHOULD THE PICTURE HANG HERE or over there?” Dressed in jeans and a loose fitting button-down shirt, Emily stood on the hearth of the fireplace in the hundred–year-old home she’d rented from her grandparents. She was holding a picture Tim’s mom had painted. It was one of Tim’s favorites. The covered bridge brought back memories of childhood freedom and a world filled with nothing but opportunities.

  “There,” he said, grabbing the cement nails and hammer. It was early spring. Birds were back from their winter getaways, buds were starting to pop out on the trees. He’d seen his first flowers of the season the night before on the way home from the gas station where he’d worked his usual four-hour evening shift.

  And instead of being out on his bike, he was spending this glorious Saturday helping Emily move. He’d taken the day off for this.

  “Come on,” she said, taking his hand as soon as he’d hung the picture. “Let’s go put the bed together.”

  She knew him well.

  And half an hour later, when he had the slats in place, the mattress and box springs she’d been using since she was in junior high placed on top of them, he helped her put on the sheets and quilt her grandmother had made for her when she graduated from high school. Pillow cases were next.

  Emily threw the pillows toward the headboard and then sat down. “Come here, Cowboy.” She grabbed his hand and spread her knees, pulling him between them. “You want to take a break?” She glanced at the fly of his jeans.

  He wanted to want to. Usually he wanted to.

  Must be the weather. The bike that had been cooped up under a cover all winter calling out to him.

  “We have to christen the place.” Emily’s smile would probably have shocked the people who saw her every day at school.

  Why was he hesitating? Her having a place of her own was a godsend to them. No more timing their lovemaking when his mom was out or her parents were gone. No more frustrating sessions in the car.

  They were adults. And free. And . . .

  “What’s wrong?” That hurt look was back in her eyes. He hated that look. His Emily was so sweet. Everything he’d ever wanted, really. Mostly.

  “Nothing,” he said, pushing thoughts of his motorcycle to the back of his mind. “Just . . . it’s just kind of . . .”

  She sat back, her expression guarded. “What?”

  Tim sat beside her. He loved her. He really did. There was just something missing. In him. “It’s all me,” he said.

  Her lips started to tremble. “You’re breaking up with me.”

  “No! It’s nothing like that.” Emily needed a ring. She needed forever. And he wanted that, too.

  Someday.

  Probably.

  “I love you, Teach, you know that.” He grinned his best grin. The kind that usually had her melting for him.

  “Then what?” She played with a couple of his fingers.

  “I just . . . I’m not ready to . . . live together.” The words were a relief. Yeah, that’s all that was bothering him. “You’re all settled. You’ve got your degree, your career, but I’m still in school. I’ve got another year before I graduate.” He’d lost a little time when he’d left Wright State to transfer to an engineering school in Dayton.

  She didn’t say a word. But she was listening.

  “I’m not ready to take on the financial responsibility of a home. It takes pretty much all I make to help Mom keep up with hers.”

  “Hey, Cowboy?” Her voice was soft as she ran her fingers lightly along the jeans encasing his thigh.

  “Yeah.” Her touch was nice.

  “I haven’t asked you to move in with me. I just asked you to help move me in.”

  He should probably be embarrassed. Relief took precedence.

  “I love you, Cowboy.” Emily’s words floated around him, holding them in their sweetness. “I know you have things to do before you’ll be thinking about setting up house . . .”

  She did? He was a tad bit curious about what “things” she thought he had to do. But not enough to risk asking.

  “I do, too,” she said.

  “What things?”

  “I need some time on my own. My whole life I’ve had to answer to my parents. Commuting to UC saved a lot of money, but it meant that I never had time in a dorm, finding my freedom like other kids did. Th
is is my time.”

  His elation was simmering down. “You planning to hold wild parties?” Inviting other guys over?

  “Of course not,” she smiled, her hand moving up a little higher on his thigh. “I’m planning to eat what I want when I want without anyone to know or worry about me. I’m planning to leave my clothes on the floor if I want, or pick them up if I want. I’m planning to put the milk on the refrigerator door because I want it there, and to set my makeup on the counter like I’ve always wanted to. I’m planning to play what music I want, when I want, as loud or soft as I want. And . . ,” her hand brushed against the seam that joined the legs of his jeans, “I’m planning to entertain the man I love.”

  Bingo.

  “Come on, Sweetie Pie. You can do this. We’re engaged. I’m going to be your husband. But that’s not for a couple of years, and you’ve got me so tied up in knots I’m going crazy.”

  I looked out the window of the car. The farmer’s fields that stretched for miles on either side of us had just been freshly plowed. I’d seen the fresh tractor marks and newly disturbed dirt in the car’s headlights as we’d driven down the long deserted road. I wasn’t sure what farmers did in April, but I prayed that one would need to check his dirt at night.

  “I have to be pure when I get married.” I repeated the words I’d said countless times before. To Tim. And to James, too. The first time he’d pressured me to let him have sex with me was the weekend I’d stayed with him in Atlanta over Thanksgiving. The night I’d agreed to marry him. After we’d told his mom. And my best childhood friend. And, at her behest, bit the bullet and called my folks and told them, too.

  That night he’d crawled into the twin bed I was using in his room and told me about a man’s needs and how only his woman could satisfy them. I’d told him, quite gently and with love, that I’d be fine with that after we were married. He’d coaxed. Cajoled. Gently. And when I’d started to get upset, he’d conceded that I was right and it would be even better if we waited. He’d slept in the room with me that night, though. In the other twin bed.

  For months after that, he’d been as he’d been in the beginning. Satisfied to hold my hand and bestow his chaste kisses on me. But there’d been a time or two—once over spring break—when he’d pressured me to undo my clothes for him. To let him touch private places.

  I said no.

  I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want him to do that.

  And that unsettled me. Would I want it when we got married? I told myself I would. That once I let him actually touch me I’d feel things again. For now, my lack of temptation made it easy to stick to my principles this time around. Sometimes I thought that maybe, because I’d repented, God was helping me to be a good girl by taking away the temptation that had consumed me during my relationship with Tim.

  Sometimes I worried that I would never ever feel those feelings again because they were meant for one man only—Tim.

  The one thing I knew for certain was that I was not going to be physically intimate without marriage.

  And now here I was, on a dark country road, miles from any sign of civilization, more than an hour from campus with a man who wanted to have sex.

  He’d said he wanted time alone with me. That he wanted to talk about us.

  He’d been feeling insecure. And I felt guilty about that. So I agreed to the talk.

  I hadn’t agreed to more than that.

  “Tara, it’s your job to do this.”

  “Not now it’s not. We aren’t married yet.” With Tim, lovemaking had been a mutual give and take. Not one person doing it for the other.

  “But I’m a man and men need, you know, release. And the only way I can get that, in a way that God approves, is if I do it with you. We love each other. You’re wearing my ring. We’re getting married. Do you really think God’s going to care about an earthly piece of paper? What he cares about is that we’re committed to each other. That it will only ever be me and you.”

  James had been chosen to give us our social club messages that semester, in addition to leading our prayers. I’d heard leaders talk about his Bible study and his level of faith and commitment.

  “That’s baloney,” I said. “If all God cared about was our emotional commitment, or our intention to stay together, then he wouldn’t require marriage at all.”

  The Bible clearly said a man and a woman were to marry before making love. I’d been taught that my whole life.

  “Would it be okay with you if we just sit close?” He ran his hand along my neck. “It’ll help if you just put a little pressure on . . . it. Just sit with me.”

  We’d been taught my first semester at Armstrong that girls were not to sit on boys’ laps. We’d be kicked out of dormitory living if we were caught sitting that way.

  I wasn’t a new student in the dorm anymore, but I didn’t want to break the rules. And I told him so.

  “Please, Sweetie Pie? You love me, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.” I thought I did. I wasn’t really sure what love was. He’d spilled a Coke on himself and I’d cared. I’d hated to see him humiliated and uncomfortable. I’d wanted to make it better for him. That meant I loved him, didn’t it?

  I still didn’t want to sit on his lap.

  “Do you understand about men?”

  “Yeah.” They got hard. And wanted to put it in women.

  “You know that it brings a man physical pain to be turned on and not get release?”

  No. And I didn’t want to know.

  Had it hurt Tim? He’d never let on. And why was I thinking of him now?

  It was wrong. Futile. And suddenly all I could think about was my Tim. About being on a country road with him.

  In the backseat of his car with his fingers between my legs, touching me in places only he had touched. His places.

  God, give me that country road again. Please, God.

  Wait. I stopped myself. God, please forgive my sinful thoughts.

  Tim didn’t want me. He hadn’t offered to marry me. James had. I was engaged to marry James. I was going to spend my life as his wife.

  It wasn’t fair to him that I was thinking about another man when all James wanted to do was love me. I was not a good and faithful woman. The Bible said that if our thoughts were impure, it was kin to impure actions.

  “Please, Sweetie Pie? Please just sit on my lap for a bit. Let me hold you.”

  My chest was so tight it hurt. “Okay. But only that. Nothing else. I have to be pure when we get married.”

  I wasn’t budging on that one. I’d paid a very dear price the one and only time I’d let my morals slip. I’d lost the man I loved more than anything else on earth. Because I’d been too easy. I’d lost my heart and all of the magic it had contained. Because I’d given too much too soon. And I’d spent two long years gaining back my self-respect with faithful service to God. I’d lost my family to put God first—to be forgiven and regain my pureness.

  James moved. There was a console between us. “Your seat will work better,” he said, his tall frame looming big in the car as he moved toward me. “The steering wheel is in the way here.”

  I didn’t say a word. He was never going to fit in my seat. Where was I going to go as he climbed over?

  “Put your seat back.”

  I did as I was told.

  And before I had my next thought, he’d picked me up and was sitting underneath me.

  “That’s it, just sit,” I said, feeling stupid. And dirty. And wanting to go home.

  I also wanted to be a good wife to the man I was going to spend the rest of my life beside. I wanted to be a good girl. I wanted to make him happy.

  I wanted to be capable of wanting him.

  So I sat there.

  He moved. And I sat. He moved again. I sat.

  He reached down. I couldn’t see what he was doing in the dark of the car, but he wasn’t touching me, just like he’d promised.

  “I know of something we can do to help me and you’ll still be
a virgin,” he said then, sounding . . . odd, and out of breath. There was no softness in his voice. No gentleness. He sounded like he was talking to another guy, not to the sweet girl he was going to marry.

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but I figured he was going to tell me.

  He was a good man. I knew his heart. And I trusted him.

  “As long as I’m pure when we get married . . .” I wouldn’t look. I would let him do what he needed to do and not speak of it again.

  He moved again, displacing me. His hands were between our bodies, but he wasn’t rubbing anything. He was fidgeting with something. His fingers were bunched. I heard clothes move. Heard his zipper. And my heart started to pound. The door was locked. He was holding me on a sideways angle.

  “I want to go back.”

  He didn’t say a word. But he was breathing hard. I didn’t like what was going on. At all. But I still trusted him. Mostly.

  I trusted him right until I felt his hands on the front of my jeans. My hands met his there, stifling his attempt to get my pants unfastened. I held on, trying to still his fingers. But they were beneath mine. And stronger than mine.

  As was the arm that held me around the middle as he moved me once again and got my jeans partially down, exposing my backside to the cool night air—and the roughness of his jeans. My legs were pinned between his and the dash of the car. His arm around me was like a brace, holding my arms down. His other hand was moving on my bottom, pulling me over. I started to fight and felt his push at the same time.

  With one shove he’d forced himself up inside the part of me he’d exposed.

  Pain held me frozen. I fought back nausea.

  I couldn’t think at all.

  In the space of a few seconds, the girl I’d been, the woman I’d hoped to be, died an excruciating death.

  “You were a very good girl tonight. My girl. You know how to take care of your man.”

  We were still in the car. My clothes were in place. So were James’s. His expression was calm as he drove down the highway back to school.

  “It’s your fault, you know.” I could hear him talking. I just couldn’t respond. I didn’t exist. I was a body that hurt. “I’ve never been like this before. You do it to me.”