The Jock and the Dreamer

by Shana Vanterpool

“I grew up across from a corn field,” she said, taking her coffee and breakfast. “I had nightmares of getting lost in them for years.”

  “Did you?”

  “Get lost?” She frowned. “Yes.”

  I used my heel to prop myself up on the tire, using the leverage to sit atop my hood. I gave her my hand and took her things, hoisting her up beside me.

  “What happened?”

  She took her time answering, taking a bite of her egg and cheese sandwich. “My mom was having a bad day. I was ten, and Dad was running late at work. He worked at the oil plant in town. On her bad days he made me stay home from school with her.” She sighed, from deep down inside. “It’s hard to tell my mom no. If she wants it, and it doesn’t seem like a bad choice, why not give it to her? I think that’s what hurts the most. I get why my dad does what he does. I know what he’s thinking when I call, and he doesn’t answer. I don’t need him, so why bother? Anyway, she dragged me out into that corn field. The sun was setting. She just kept going, and going, and I couldn’t keep up. I lost her. I just kept walking, seeing the same thing over and over again, getting more lost. Dad didn’t find me until the sun rose.”

  I studied the side of her face. The way she told the story didn’t feel right. “Did your mom get home that night?”

  She nodded.

  “What’s wrong with her, Es?”

  “She’s mentally ill. Agoraphobia, OCD, anxiety; she has a hard time sometimes distinguishing between reality and the world she creates in her mind.”

  Now I knew why calling her crazy had hurt her so much. I felt like a tool bag. “How many times did stuff like that happen?”

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the corn field. “I don’t know. A lot. After that, Dad took me out of school, so I could stay with her full-time. He home-schooled me. College was supposed to be my way out. But all it really did was further alienate me from the only people I had.”

  She was willing to put up with a lot of shit just to have someone. Puzzle pieces as to who she was started to fall into place. Why she put up with Ren and Bri all those years. Why she saw me and didn’t think twice about attaching her star to my fucked up galaxy. She’d been dunked in her mother’s insanity and never really got a chance to know her own life.

  “Let’s go,” she huffed.

  “Where?”

  “Into the corn field.” She jumped down from the hood of my car and took off, sprinting across the street without even looking.

  “What about our things?” I shouted, groaning when she didn’t listen. I couldn’t leave the only things we had unattended. But I couldn’t let her go into that corn field alone either. I put the rest of the food in the truck and got in, pulling it to the other side of the road.

  “I saw the bent angles of corn stalks from where she entered. I knocked them aside, listening to the sounds of her footsteps crunching. “Esmaie!”

  “I used to wonder if she led me out there on purpose,” came her sad admission.

  It sounded like it was behind me, and to the side of me, and I couldn’t imagine being ten-years-old and stuck in one of these places at night. “Would she?”

  “I don’t know, that’s the part that hurts so much.” She appeared at my side. Beautiful and lost.

  I grabbed her hand. “You ever watch Forest Gump?”

  She bobbed her head. “What about it?”

  “You remember that part when him and Jenny are running from her dad and they hide in the field outside of her trailer?”

  She gripped my hand.

  I sank to my knees and pulled her down beside me, surrounded by corn stalks, already picked for the year and browning. It was eerily silent, except for our heavy breathing and the wind cutting through the stalks.

  “It’s strange to think that the corn field across from her place was a refuge, and yours was a trap. Two different kids, same story.”

  She brought my hand to her lap and rubbed the back of it. “I never told anyone that. Dad always told me to keep my mouth shut, or someone would take me from them. They were all I had.” She finally met my eyes. “I didn’t want to lose them.”

  I saw the years of torment, but also, the years of hope. Holding out for something better but still somehow appreciating what she had. Overhead, the sun was blinding again. Shining down right in our eyes. I leaned over and kissed her, unable to help myself.

  She met my kiss. Matched my kiss. Tasting me as I devoured her. Just like at the lake, the moment our hunger met in the middle, we were too starving to think straight. She tasted like her coffee. Creamy, sweet, and invigorating. I swept my tongue over hers, losing myself when she moaned.

  From deep in her soul.

  For me.

  ***

  Esmaie

  It was amazing the things our minds suppressed. I hadn’t thought about the corn field in years. Not until I woke up in Wade’s truck and it was the first thing I saw. Suddenly, I was ten-years-old again, and my mother was dragging me deeper and deeper into the maze. She hadn’t said a word, just walked, and walked, even when I tapped her arm and begged her to tell me where we were going. She walked too fast at one point, when it was dark and cold, and I tripped in a hole, and when I looked up she was gone; no matter how hard I screamed she didn’t answer me.

  Wade’s kiss soothed my soul, burying my memories where they had been.

  I lost my balance and we both fell into the stalks, me on my back and him on top of me. He tasted warm and comforting, encompassing me as he shifted his weight to rest between my legs. His hands cradled my face as he kissed me. It struck me how intense our kiss was. How each time I kissed him harder, he managed to beat me. It was a competition we both wanted to win.

  The heat of the sun shone onto us, bathing us in golden warmth. I drug my fingers through his hair as he moved his kiss to the corner of my mouth and then to my jaw, nipping and licking my flesh along the way. I’d never breathed so hard before. It was the loudest thing in the world to me. The huskiness of my passion, of my want. “Wade,” I moaned, staring into the blinding sunlight.

  Spots danced in my eyes. He kissed down my neck and between my breasts, leaving me panting when he found my nipple through my shirt. I closed my eyes, letting the sensations wash over me. So much good, so much heat.

  His fingertips dug into my sides. He bit down on my nipple through my shirt, rolling the hard bud between his teeth. The scent of him mixed with the dry corn stalks, filling my lungs as I tried to breathe.

  “Stop me,” he groaned, his lips kissing lower, and lower, until he came to my jeans. He rested his chin on my buckle, eyes crystal blue in the sunlight.

  “Why would I do that?” I sat up on my elbows and held his face between my hands. “I don’t want you to stop.”

  His eyes darkened. With lust or something else, I couldn’t tell. “Neither one of us is ready to have sex yet.”

  “Don’t speak for me.” I shoved his face away and sat up, fixing my shirt. “You can have sex with random idiots, but not me?”

  His face crumpled, and he put it in his hands before dropping them and facing me. “I haven’t had sex with anyone in a long time. With them, it would have been just sex. It won’t be that way with you. I haven’t made love to another woman before, Esmaie.” His voice wobbled. “Please understand that. I don’t want to hurt you, baby. But I don’t want to—”

  “Hurt Sabrina?” I guessed.

  He didn’t deny or confirm.

  I tried to put myself in his position. I’d never made love before, even thinking about it I knew sleeping with Wade wouldn’t be the same as having sex with someone else. It would be like at the lake, but ten times more consuming. Lips, tongues, sweat, and lust—we’d be lost to what we felt. When we happened, I wanted his mind and body with me. Not with someone else.

  I sighed, letting my hurt out with it. It wasn’t fair for me to be hurt. Not when he was hurting, too.

  I slid close to him and got on my knees, sliding between his parted legs. I put my hands on h
is shoulders as he watched me curiously, putting his hands on my waist. “Say that again.”

  “What?”

  “That you want to make love to me.” My thighs pressed together.

  A spark turned his eyes into tripping stones; I fell over and over again staring into them. “I do, Es. Damn it, I do. But it messes with my head, with my heart. I’m… trying,” he breathed. “To make sense of us, to put to rest one relationship, to say goodbye and hello, but it’s hard.” His forehead fell gently to rest on my chest.

  I hugged him to me. “Wade, you don’t have to choose between us, don’t you get it? I don’t want to replace anything. I want you to love her, and I hope for your love for me. You don’t have—”

  “That isn’t fair to you. You don’t deserve to compete with anyone else’s love. You deserve one-hundred percent of someone’s heart. To have all the memories, all the love, all the pain, all the tears—you deserve everything, Esmaie. I don’t know if I can give you that.”

  Who said love had to fit in this perfect, brand-new box? Odds are by the time our dreams had awoken to the first dregs of consciousness, we’d already given pieces of our hearts to someone else. Mine wasn’t untouched. It was just as scarred and empty as his.

  I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t. Not with my tears, fears, and uncertainty crammed in my throat. He crushed me to him. The entire time we hugged in that corn field, it felt like the sun was baring down on us, drenching us in ochre-colored dreams.

  That time when I left the corn field, I wasn’t cold, afraid, and lost. I was warm, hopeful, and closer to finding myself.

  “We’re supposed to be having fun,” Wade announced when we got back onto the road. “What’s something you’ve always wanted to do?”

  I thought about it. “Break a law.”

  He laughed uneasily. “We’re not robbing a bank.”

  “I didn’t say to rob a bank. Just something light. Like a misdemeanor.” I clapped excitedly. “Let’s steal something.”

  He gaped at me. “Listen, you little klepto, we’re not stealing anything. I want to make it through this without a police record.”

  I sighed sadly. “So much for having the time of our lives.” I was kidding, of course, but the frown between his brows was so funny as he tried to consider if I was in fact serious. “Why don’t we try doing something else. Like naked cartwheels on the side of the road.”

  He continued to gape at me. “I had no idea you were such a klepto naked freak. Explains your nudist question when we first met. Let’s make it out of Nebraska first, and then we’ll decide. I was thinking of heading west to the coast. What do you say?”

  “The beach?” I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice. “I’ve never been.”

  “You’re kidding me. Damn it, Esmaie. We’re going to the beach first. We’re pretty far away from warm water, but Oregon’s got some beautiful beaches. You down for that?”

  I was down for anything with him. I nodded, bringing my knees to my chest. “Did you grow up around the beach?”

  His smile was sad. “Practically lived on one. I’m from LA.”

  He was thinking of Sabrina. I could see it all over his face. The faraway, sad look in his eyes. His pupils shrunk, and his jaw tensed. I didn’t know if I should let him or pull him free of the memory. “I have to pee.” I figured it would bring him back to reality.

  He blinked, refocusing. “I don’t see a bathroom. Look on your phone.”

  I reached into the center console where it was charging to find that I had no bars. “No service.” I had a mini panic attack. “Oh no. It’s like we’re in the 1800’s.”

  He laughed. “In that case, you’re going to have to pee in a hole on the side of the road.”

  I scrunched up my nose. “They did not pee on the side of the road in the 1800’s. They didn’t even have all these roads then, nor did they have enough cars to drive them on in the last years of that century. Dumb jock.”

  He groaned. “It’s so sexy when you say smart shit. Speak facts to me.”

  “Okay, here’s a cool one. It’s really easy to think that modern day humans are complacent. We have technology to do practically anything. If something happened, something catastrophic to the entire world, and we were left to take care of ourselves, we’d slip right back into our ancestor’s way of life without even knowing it. We’d lose empathy, and social skills—we’d lose the things we think we need so badly to exist. Think about it. But we’d realize so much about our bodies that past species relied heavily on. Our sense of smell would get sharper, same as our eyes. We’d learn to hunt, to gather. We’re remarkable creatures when you think of what we can do physically. But of course, we don’t. We don’t have to. Our ancestors already did that for us.”

  He let his head fall slightly, giving me bedroom eyes. “You should be a teacher.”

  And just like that, it clicked. “Maybe I will.”

  “Not high school, though. You’d give all those poor guy’s boners and they’ll fail, and the decrease in social economics will be your fault. An all-girls school. Think along those lines.”

  I couldn’t hold my laugh in, rolling my eyes at his logic. “You’re ridiculous. And don’t say boner. It’s not sexy.”

  “Grow up. Boners are a part of life. Ever since I met you, they’re a daily part of mine.”

  My blush crept over my face. I smacked his driving arm. “Shut up.”

  “I have one right now.”

  I gave his crotch a sideways look.

  He gave me a wink.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I really do have to pee now.”

  He handed me a napkin from the breakfast bag. “I’ll pull over when you say the word.”

  “You want me to put a greasy napkin on my vagina?”

  “Oh, you really do have to pee? I thought that was code for you had to take a shit, but we’re not at that stage in our relationship.”

  I couldn’t believe him. I tossed the tissue at him and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Next time just tell me you’re going to grow a monkey tail. I’ll know what you mean.”

  “You’re disgusting. Conversation over.” I put the radio on, but of course it had no reception. Static blared through the speakers. There was nothing for miles but fields and fields of corn. I’d done a good job at keeping my eyes on the road or on him. “Ask me a question that doesn’t have to do with your dick and my bodily functions.”

  He took his time coming up with one, rubbing his jaw. I could hear the beginnings of his stubble growing in since he hadn’t had a shave. “If it were up to you, what would have happened after you spilled your heart out that day on the couch?”

  The corn fields, in that moment, were preferable to him. I couldn’t look at him when I answered and see even the slight shadowing of unease in his eyes. Not after the things we’d talked about. “What my ex did. Shrugged, said ‘okay,’ and went back to watching the movie. Everything else happened later.”

  He sighed deeply. “First of all, you have to remember something. How long ago was that?”

  “All four years of high school.”

  His head shook. “You were thirteen, fourteen. How can you possibly think that a man my age is going to go for that?”

  I didn’t answer. There wasn’t one he would like.

  “It’s fine to dream, baby. It’s okay to want something more than you want reason. But you have to insert some reality in there somewhere. Think of things on how likely they could happen, not think of how things aren’t going how your mind expected. I’d hate to think of the day when you say that shit to the wrong man, and they take advantage of your naivety.”

  Two things occurred to me after he finished talking. One, he didn’t take me seriously. And two, he didn’t see us together in the end, or he wouldn’t be considering the day I met another man. I tried to be reasonable. He’d already given his heart to someone else, and either didn’t think he had any left to give or didn’t think that was right. “Can I ask yo
u something?” I wondered, biting back my tears and the sick feeling he instilled in my stomach.

  “Yes…”

  “Think really hard about your answer. Please.” I took a deep breath, and then I laid my heart out on the line for the second time. I still had a large chunk of my heart left, and I wanted to give it to him. “Maybe I do need to think with my brain instead of my heart. Maybe you’re not wrong about that. But maybe you need to start thinking with your heart more. If you truly didn’t like me, or you really didn’t feel anything for me, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now. I think you feel what I feel, but you’re still very much hurting, and you’re scared, and you don’t think you can love someone else. I guess what I’m asking is do you really not see yourself with me at all?”

  His hands tightened around the steering wheel. His brow lowered as he stared hard at the road. His jaw tensed. And for a brief moment, his eyes slid closed, before they opened again, as if steeling himself. “I’m still in love with Sabrina.”

  “That isn’t what I asked, Wade.”

  “It’s impossible for me to be with someone else after I’ve already given—”

  “Answer the damn question!” I snapped.

  “Yes!” he growled. “Okay, damn it? Of course, I see myself with you, Esmaie. More and more every day. I hate myself for it, but I hate myself even more when I just want to be with you, but my past won’t let me.”

  A relieved, smug smile spread across my face. “I knew it.”

  “Shut up,” he grumbled, glaring murderously at the road. “You don’t deserve to be someone else’s second love, Esmaie.”

  “Oh, would you please shut up already? Don’t tell me what I deserve. I’ll tell myself that. You need to stop running from what you feel. If you need me to pull back, I will. But I want to be here. With you. And you want to be here, with me, don’t you?” I held my breath.

  “Yes,” he huffed, his shoulders sagging.

  I reached over and touched his arm, sliding my hand down until he gave me his. I cradled it on my lap, holding on to his hand with both of mine. “Don’t hate yourself. I don’t even have to know Sabrina to know that she’d never want that for you.”