Johnny

by Rachel Dunning

  “Thank you,” she said to me.

  We didn’t let go of each other for a while.

  -3-

  My dad wasn’t allowed visitors for the first six weeks. “Vicious withdrawal symptoms,” my mom told me.

  That worked for me, because I didn’t want to see him either.

  I didn’t hate him. I still loved him. But I didn’t want to see him.

  If someone had told me I must, I would have. If my mom had piped up one Saturday and said, “Honey, we’re going over to see pops,” I would have.

  But until anyone said that, there was nothing in me pushing me to take the initiative.

  The great chasm and gulf that I’d felt around me after my mom had told me about their history and how they’d grown apart, was the great abyss in the relationship between me and my father.

  No more magic...

  I so wanted to build a snowman with him again.

  But the snow had melted.

  My mind was adrift, especially at school. I think having a supportive family like the Abreus around helped me cope with things and stopped me from slitting my wrists or jumping off a mountain, but it didn’t help me keep focused on schoolwork.

  At night I would dream, ugly dreams that left me shivering when I woke up and made me blink three times before I turned on the light. Other times, I’d wake up screaming, dreaming of blood or of falling out of a plane, or of my foot sticking behind my ankle and me plummeting over the Grand Canyon. And underneath it all, down on the ground waiting for me, was my father, smiling, or angry, but always with his arms open, and a fanged grin that made me want to release my bladder.

  The blood of that night, the rage in his eyes, had triggered something in me, and I was subconsciously afraid of him. No matter how much I loved him, I had come to see him also as a man, an everyday man. Not only as my dad.

  And that scared me the most.

  The shocks since I fell down those stairs left me unable to focus on anything. Whereas mom seemed to be doing better, especially with all the help Iliana was providing for her, I was retreating into a cave.

  Only Johnny could penetrate it.

  I’d lost touch with Viv, Lee, all the girls.

  My grades hit rock bottom (except for English Lit—again).

  As the days and weeks trudged on by, a need formed inside me, a hunger, a primordial calling toward survival.

  I needed Johnny.

  I needed Johnny like I needed air.

  I needed a month in the sun or on the beach. I needed a trip down to Florida. I needed a roadtrip across Route 66. I didn’t need to understand that “A quantity may be substituted for its equal in any expression” or that “The measure of an exterior angle of a triangle is equal to the sum of the measures of the two non-adjacent interior angles” or that “distance traveled divided by time is not a constant value.”

  I needed to know about life.

  Because my life was falling apart.

  Johnny became life to me.

  -4-

  He’d since gained a reputation at school, a reputation he didn’t like. Guys flocked to him after the fight at Jess’s party. He was the new Alpha Male, I guess.

  He hated it.

  But nobody ever screwed with him again. Guys knew now that he could fight and they also knew that people liked him and supported him just because of the person he was, so lots of guys in school “had his back.” Eduardo and KC were, according to Johnny, just guys he’d never disrespected and so they’d helped him.

  I imagine he had their back as well. All I know is he was somehow “connected.” And he became connected because he always granted people the importance they deserved. “Uncool” kids were cool around him. He gave them the time of day.

  You make a lot of friends that way.

  But girls are different.

  And Nicole was different.

  Not only had her plan backfired, the “cool” guy that she had been dating—Mark—was now nothing more than a Woman Beater. She’d lost even that.

  She didn’t take it lightly.

  If there was anyone who made it her sole goal and purpose in life to never let me forget just how fucked up my life at home was, it was Nicole.

  How she had the dirt she had was something I couldn’t figure out.

  But she had it. And she spread it.

  And she made my life a misery.

  “How’s daddy dearest, still hustling?”

  “Did daddy push you off the stairs, sweetie-pie?”

  “There’s an opening at Homefront Trailer Park. You guys moving in?”

  I finally flipped.

  She’d wanted me to lose it.

  And I did.

  It was a full-on catfight with nails and hair-pulling and chick punches and everything!

  It went instantly viral on the internet.

  I’d love to tell you that I won, but simply by me participating in it, I had already lost.

  If I’d ever thought things couldn’t get any worse, they just had.

  -5-

  I started avoiding all common areas as much as I could.

  I even felt a sense of empathy for my dad with his statement of “just wanting to feel good” and using booze to soothe his nerves.

  I felt the same suddenly.

  Johnny and I started avoiding the canteen, preferring to snuggle against a tree while I read a romance and he looked over some of the accounts for his dad’s shipping company. He was really getting into that now, behaving like an “adult” and learning the executive and accounting side of the business.

  I could almost sense Vivian and the girls’ relief when I chose not to sit with them during recess anymore. I was persona non grata. They wouldn’t turn me away, but I didn’t want to make them uncomfortable by my presence.

  I was depressed.

  I was alone.

  And, perhaps subconsciously, perhaps fully aware, I yearned suddenly more than ever for Johnny, for his touch, for the comfort of his breath on my skin.

  Under this veil of sadness, after the night the suburban veneer of my perfect American life chipped and peeled, another spark was set aflame in me. An unexpected, uncalled-for, out-of-nowhere burning.

  To say I was “horny as hell” would cheapen it. Because what I was feeling wasn’t cheap. It wasn’t cheap at all.

  It was desperate.

  It was human.

  And it was beautiful.

  It was a need as fundamental as that for food, water, and sleep.

  What I was feeling was as urgent to me as the need to breathe.

  It was an urge toward raw, atavistic survival.

  Sitting under a tree at school, the sky gray and the branches still bare, I rubbed a finger down Johnny’s chest, above his cashmere sweater. And I said, “I’m ready.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ~ Johnny and Cat ~

  -1-

  If I’d made love to Johnny in any other time of my life, it would not have been this sweet. The need in me was a thirsty supplication for water, and his answer was maddening.

  I shed tears the day he took my virginity.

  I melted into an oblivion of joy when I discovered I’d also taken his.

  -2-

  It was near Valentine’s Day, six months before my eighteenth birthday. We took a hotel a few miles out; Johnny had a “friend” who got us in without having to show ID. We would only be using it for the afternoon even though we paid for the night. Johnny paid for it.

  Easy music played over ceiling speakers as Johnny opened the door to the plush and cozy room. As I entered it, cool, nervous sweat broke out over my legs.

  “I’m nervous,” I said to him suddenly.

  “Then we’ll just sit here and watch TV.” He pulled me close to him, ran his fingertips through my hair, just above my ears. When my pelvis touched his, my nervousness transmuted into a vague, inarticulate want; an urgency I couldn’t express; an incoherent madness that responded only to the blind parting of my lips as my tongue sought
his.

  It wasn’t long before the nervousness sublimated completely into a screaming, unspoken lust—just a delirious, covetous, craving hunger. For this man, this man I loved, who cared for me, who protected me, who was so good and kind and yet also so strong and powerful.

  My want for him dizzied me.

  Johnny’s lips trickled gently down my neck, his hands down my sides. He pushed against me below and I could feel he was already ready.

  My lips found his neck, and without thought, my tongue danced over it. His hands grabbed clumps of my dress and tugged it upwards.

  I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you.

  But I also wanted it to last. I wanted to hold myself back, wanted to fight this building pressure, a pressure so forceful that I was sure the lightest of winds against me would explode my body and make the very walls of this room crackle with fire.

  And then Johnny had me on the couch. I kicked my shoes off and felt myself spreading while he kneeled below me. He yanked me by my legs toward him and drove his hands up my back. My legs were around him, and every now and then his chest touched me there and I’d sizzle and wriggle to try and get him to touch me more.

  He stood. “Not here,” he said. He extended a hand to me and lifted me, walked me to the bed. There were red rose-petals all over it.

  And then he had my dress off.

  I was suddenly acutely self-aware. Still lusting, but wishing the lights were lower.

  He took his sweater and shirt off, cupped the back of my head in his palm, and lost himself kissing me.

  He moved over to a drawer, took a small towel out, and laid it on the bed. Then he eased me back, and I lay down on the bedspread, above red rose petals, the towel perfectly positioned under my butt.

  He got on top of me. Clothed, he rubbed me below, making me yearn and burn hot.

  The need in me was almost painful.

  He took off my leggings.

  He kissed my breasts, lingering, dancing around the light pink discs. Then down to my belly button.

  When he moved even lower, he took a deep, hungry breath.

  And then he made me moan.

  -3-

  His tongue slid under the seam of my panties—“Oh, God”—while his fingers pulled them downward.

  As the panties moved down, so did his lips.

  I felt the wetness of him as he licked the trimmed hairs of my mound, down, down, down—

  “Oh, dear God!

  —and then he was inside me.

  My back arched as Johnny lapped me gently, finally stinging me madly at my core.

  I shivered violently. And hissssssed with heat.

  He did it again, just toying around, inside, then penetrating deep.

  His hands went to my thighs and I lifted them. He pressed his open mouth harder against me until the warmth from his tongue and breath were too much to bear.

  I rubbed.

  I rocked.

  I ground myself against him.

  “Oh, God. Oh, dear God. Oh, baby, I’m gonna...I’m gonna...I’m gonna—”

  But I didn’t.

  When Johnny moved his lips away, my entire body trembled.

  I wanted him, wanted him so badly.

  He kissed me on my lips, and I licked the sweetness off of his. My hand found his jeans and boxers, and he helped me get them off.

  I grasped his manhood and held. Hotness radiated onto my palm, and then I pulled down, up. “Oh, Cat, stop.”

  “Don’t call me Cat if you want me to stop.”

  “But I always call you Cat.”

  “My point exactly.”

  I pulled down again, held him.

  “Baby, please, you need to stop that!” He grinned, and I felt his shaft tremble.

  He got up on his knees and grabbed a condom. He looked so beautiful. The area below the seam of his pants was a little lighter than the rest of him. I got suddenly jealous at how well he tanned, compared to my sun-sensitive skin. I took in all of him, the tight muscles at his waist, the defined line below it, the dark bush of curls around his shaft.

  All nervousness of being naked around him disappeared. Right now, all I wanted was to be naked with him. I wanted to be naked with him all the time.

  He slid the condom on, and I widened instinctively. There was a moment of sudden tension when I thought he would simply thrust into me.

  But he didn’t.

  Johnny caressed my hair. The tip of his shaft pushed gently inside the folds below, and the feeling made my mind scream.

  I widened more.

  Johnny waited, kissing me, until I was ready.

  And then I was.

  My body relaxed.

  Maybe I gave off some sign with my face, I don’t know. But he pushed a little deeper into me.

  “This might hurt,” he said.

  “Might?”

  “Yeah, might, I’ve, uhm, never done it...with a...”

  “With a virgin? You’re making me self conscious.”

  “Well, I heard...that it might hurt. Don’t laugh at me but I, uhm, researched it.”

  I laughed at him. However, the laughter made my stomach move, which inadvertently pushed him into me a little further.

  And the laughter stopped immediately.

  “OK,” I said. “Just go slow.”

  He did.

  If it hurt, I don’t remember it.

  All I remember is the slow motion of him filling me.

  All I remember is every muscle in my body surrendering to him.

  All I remember...is when he was inside me.

  And then forgetting all about pain...and rushing to help him finish.

  I started moaning. “Oh, dear sweet God.”

  It was during my first orgasm that I felt a tinge of pain, a quick sharp twang that was over quick.

  He was deep, so deep, and I don’t mean that in a tawdry way. It’s just the way it was. The more we continued, the deeper he went.

  When I burst, I rocked him vigorously. My body imploded and electric pleasure coursed through me.

  Later, I would discover that Johnny had actually come the moment he’d entered me. He’d kept his expression cool. And I hadn’t noticed.

  But when I came a second time, so did he. And then I did notice.

  Johnny’s expression was exquisite.

  -4-

  We made love a total of six times before we left the hotel room. And by that I mean, I climaxed six times, and so did Johnny. (No, seven.)

  It’s incredible what men are capable at that young and ripe age!

  The fourth and fifth times lasted an inordinately long time, and Johnny, although it was still pleasureful, had stopped being quite as careful as in the first few times. Number six seemed to go on forever.

  I was a little sensitive after that.

  It would be a few days before Johnny would confess to me that he’d “done other stuff with other girls, but never sex.”

  When he told me, I put my hand on his leg, and I said, “Johnny, I so love you.”

  -5-

  As a “celebration” of our union, Johnny had his entire right arm inked up with a river flowing toward a tree. His dad was cool with it. Patricio Abreu had some tats himself, old sailor-style ones—a faded anchor on his right forearm, some writing on his left shoulder.

  “If I told you what it meant you’d think it’s corny,” Johnny told me.

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  He looked at the fresh tat, the edges of each line still rimmed red. “It’s love.” He looked up at me to see if I was laughing.

  I wasn’t.

  “The river is love. The tree is us. The river flows to the tree. The tree grows.” He said nothing else.

  I didn’t laugh.

  I did the opposite.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ~ Love ~

  -1-

  Your touch, our heat.

  The lust, the beat

  of our hearts in rhythm

  as your hand

&
nbsp; finds the land

  of my pleasure.

  You stroke, we meet.

  I arch, and my feet

  rise high

  as your demand

  seeks the warmth

  of my treasure.

  You roar, we soar.

  I heave, you call

  out my name

  as your eyes

  hunt my skin

  at your leisure.

  We stop. We breathe.

  We touch. We leave

  the worries behind us

  as our minds

  pray and hope...

  ...this is forever.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ~ Reparation ~

  -1-

  Mom started working for Johnny’s dad as a senior accountant. She hadn’t done any accounting in years, but it’s what she was good at. When Pat offered her the job, she told him that we didn’t need charity. And he said, “Offering a skilled person a job is not charity, it’s logic.”

  “The wage you’re paying me is for someone with twenty years’ experience. I haven’t done any accounting since Cathy was born.”

  “And who manages the bills for the home? Who does the grocery shopping? Who’s been putting money away for Cathy’s college? Is that all not accounting? You have more than twenty years’ experience, and you have a college degree. What else could I want? Most importantly, I trust you. I’d rather have trust than experience, Alice.”

  Mom blushed, then she took the job.

  It meant we could keep the house.

  Dad had been keeping up the mortgage payments since he’d moved out, but it was starting to get weird because, well, it was pretty obvious that they were gonna get a divorce one of these days. (I didn’t understand why they hadn’t yet. Divorces are supposed to be quick in America.) And now dad was paying for two places. Both he and mom didn’t want to take me out of the school I was in, or disrupt my life any further by having us move out of where we were, but she wanted to stop being so dependent on him.