The Drifter
by
Alexandra de Lago
Copyright © 2015 by Alexandra del Lago
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Book Description
Cathy is a small town girl with big dreams and a powerful imagination. Cathy's mother longs for a life of prosperity and security for Cathy, the kind of life she never had. But when a handsome drifter blows into their insular and orderly world, her dreams will be shattered. However, his love will transform Cathy, challenging her to become who she really is, despite her mother's deadly interference.
A powerful story of the transformative nature of erotic love.
The Blue Girl
Blue Girl stood at the bedroom window tapping her foot while she smoked a cigarette. The night had a fresh young wildness about it that beckoned her. She waiting for all the sounds in the house to die down, for Ma and Pa to settle into their large creaky bed, and for Pa to start snoring. She heard her brother, Bill, shuffling around next door and the click clicking of Sweetheart's claws across the floorboards. The dog whimpered softly as she pawed at Bill's door, and then shook her head, her collar tinkling as he let her in.
Blue Girl looked at the stars, wondering if they were dead or still burning, wondering if aliens would ever come to Earth and uplift civilization and mankind. Probably not, she thought, those stars were so far away - unless they could travel faster than the speed of light, or come through a black hole from another dimension. Blue Girl's brother, Billy, read a lot of science fiction, and sometimes she swiped his books but skimmed them, so her notions of what was possible in the real world and the real universe were fuzzy.
The scent of wildflowers was on the breeze and beyond that, something that smelled swampy and rank. Beyond their town, the wild was still lurking as if they were on the edge of the known earth. Jimmy probably couldn't get out tonight, she thought, or else she would have already seen him cutting across the yards. Sometime in early spring, he had realized she liked him and had developed a habit of sneaking out during the night and coming over to her house. The first time it happened she couldn't believe it. He had been so matter of fact, and so charming. That was the thing about him. He could get away with just about everything. He would charm the teachers at school with his put on manners, and even her Ma, who was so sour, and locked into her own suffering, smiled at his fancy talk.
Early that spring he had started coming over, late at night sometimes, just because he couldn't sleep, he said; he was so anxious for the year to end so that real life could start. In the beginning, they would just talk.
'Just talkin', Ma!' she would shout when her mother poked her nose onto the porch to check on them.
But recently they had stopped talking, not because Jimmy didn't have anything to say; he always had all kinds of crazy thoughts and ideas, but because they had started necking. She guessed she was in love with him, even though he made that funny sucking sound when he kissed her, and even though sometimes she wasn't that interested.
It felt good and all, but Blue Girl had her own thoughts and ideas, just as he had. Sometimes when Jimmy would start talking about inventing things, machines and how they worked, she would just zone out.
'I'm gonna sing, Jim. I'm gonna be famous,' she said once, interrupting him.
'Sure you will, Cath.' Then he tried to feel her up, so she never knew if he had really meant it or not. It had only been a passing idea, anyway.
Blue Girl played the piano; she filled her notebooks with snatches of poetry. Sometimes she worked the poems out, sometimes she just jotted down phrases that came to mind. Walking through the woods with Sweetheart, her brain would fill with ideas that came out of nowhere, and she would rush home to get them down on paper. Sometimes they'd sit near the quarry, and Blue Girl would look at the water and dream all sorts of dreams.
'Eh,' Ma said, 'Everyone thinks something wonderful will happen to them when they are your age.'
Ma and Pa expected Blue Girl to go to college. She had applied and been accepted but even with her scholarship, they could barely scrape together enough money to send her to the state school. They had never gotten the chance to do that themselves, but Pa always read a lot. Ma was too busy. She never had time to sit.
'Go to college. You have good grades. You can make something of yourself,' Ma had always said, and the implication was that she had wasted her own life, a life which had gone nowhere and which she hated.
'You like Jim, Ma? Don't you?' Blue Girl would ask, and Ma would just shrug. Blue Girl kept asking over and over, trying to get some sense of what her mother thought, and finally Ma said, 'Don't let him get too familiar, if you know what I mean.'
Blue Girl knew. But she did not listen.
The next few nights, she waited for Jimmy to turn up and when he didn't, Blue Girl cornered him at school while he was taking his jacket out of his locker.
'Hey,' she said, feigning indifference, but he did not reply, nor did he meet her gaze. 'You haven't been by lately.'
'I'm in a rush, Cath,' he said brusquely, and then he softened, 'Listen you're great, but you're a still a kid, if you know what I mean.'
Blue Girl was left standing there with her heart pounding, wondering what had changed between them. I'm eighteen, she thought, and ready to graduate.
Travis
She was half way home, walking along the side of the road under the crab apple trees which were flowering, holding her books closely to her chest. She didn't even look up when a man crossed her path, and moved sideways to avoid him. They danced a shuffle before she heard his soft laughter. She looked up from the ground and saw that he was slim and tall, and had a long lovely face that was joyous and open when he smiled. He tipped his hat, which was sweat soaked around the ribbon, and she turned to watch him go, watching his blue jeans and his white shirt receding as he walked down the strip of road.
She never thought she'd see him again. He recognized her one day when she had gone to the store to get some dry goods for Ma and offered her a ride home. Afterward, and occasionally, he would turn up out of nowhere, in the diner where she went with her friends after the movies to have a soda, and sometimes when she was alone, just walking. Was he following her, she wanted to ask. But he said he liked to wander sometimes, just to see what he could see. He was a wanderer in many respects, and he'd been doing that since he was a boy. Leaving places, just to leave them behind.
He took to calling her Blue Girl, because he thought she seemed a bit pensive, though it was a name her classmates had coined because she had always worn blue when she was younger. She was surprised that he used that word; she didn't think he was the kind of man who knew what it meant. He read some, he told her, and liked to learn new words. He had left school early, leaving behind his stepfather who used to tan his hide for the hell of it when he got drunk, and leaving his weakling mother who never stopped it from happening. He said this in a rueful way and then grinned as if he was ashamed of his circumstances but didn't want her to think he felt sorry for himself. Sometimes he would talk about his sister, who was smart like Blue Girl.
'I can tell you are,' he said. 'You should make something of yourself.'
She tried to get him to talk about the things he read, but he never had more than a word or two to say. 'I'm laconic -like,' he said, 'but you don't talk much
either.'
'It's because people here don't really understand me or what I'm trying to say, so I mostly keep my thoughts to myself.'
'We don't always need to talk,' he said. 'Sometimes it's just nice to be with someone and share the silence.'
She thought about that and how comfortable it made her feel since the sight of him made her go all funny inside. It felt like there was swarm of bees in her nether regions and that their buzzing was permeating her whole body and making it tingle and glow. This made her flush, which flustered her and made her feel ashamed of feelings and sensations that she could not control. She hoped he wouldn't notice, but if he had, he pretended not to.
The First Time
She met him one summer night when the wild was calling them both. The hay was in the meadow, the stars were in the sky, and she felt an animal restlessness welling up inside her that she couldn't explain. She was still thinking about Jimmy, and what went wrong, and feeling the sting of being rejected just like that.
The wind had died down and the stillness in her room was oppressive. She couldn't sleep because of the heat. She could hear Pa snoring, though otherwise the house was still. The cicadas were singing in the trees, and she heard someone on a motorcycle rip through the night before the sound faded into the distance.
She tip-toed down the hall and took a towel from the closet. As harried as Ma was, she always managed to make sachets of rose petals in glycerin to tuck between the linens. Blue Girl held the towel up to her nose and inhaled. She knew she was going down to the quarry, and she had a feeling that something was going to happen that was important, though she didn't know what that could be. Sweetheart's nose brushed against her leg, and the dog looked up at her with a puzzled expression as if to say, 'Are you going out this late at night?'
She put her finger up to her lip and Sweetheart followed her down to the kitchen silently. Blue Girl gave her a biscuit to distract her, and cracking open the door, slipped through. The moon lit her way down the white gravel road, and the dark trees hulking in the darkness at the roadside seemed menacing to her. It's nothing, she thought. Quit scaring yourself.
She reached the quarry, and now the moon was well and truly bright and reflecting over the still water. She had a feeling that it was so deep that if she reached the middle she might sink all the way to the center of the earth. I'll stay in the shallow end, she told herself.
She stripped down to her underwear and then thought how wonderful and cool the water would feel against her bare flesh. Looking around and seeing no one, she took off everything. The Blue Girl had long blond hair, and now she tied it up in a ponytail high on her head.
From the hill that abutted the quarry, Travis watched her. He knew she hadn't spotted him when she had cast her gaze around. She was a bright girl, he thought, but lost in her own world and didn't notice many things. He was chewing on stalk of grass and his long legs were spread out in front of him as he propped himself up on an elbow. He smelled of hay and soap, and his jeans and shirt were ironed and starched. He had thick black hair and blue eyes, and once someone had told him he looked like Gary Cooper or maybe a young Clint Eastwood, and he had screwed up his lip the way Clint had done in the movies and snarled a bit.
Cathy, he thought, remembering her name. He watched her lift up her arms to catch the wind, which had just begun to blow and promised to cool the air. He looked at her body, and the lift of her buttocks below her tapering back caught his eye, as she held out her arms toward the water as if she could embrace it and hold it like a lover. She had long muscular legs and she reminded him of a thoroughbred, though she did not hold herself that way normally because she was shy and did not know she was beautiful. She twisted in the wind, and he saw her high full breasts and felt himself growing hard just watching her.
She stepped into the water, shivering, and submerging her body, began to swim the breast stroke. She had gone some distance, and turning around, was shocked to see a man standing on the shore. Her heart began beating wildly and she wondered if she shouldn't swim to the other side and run for help, but realizing she was naked, felt conflicted and ashamed.
'Blue Girl!' he shouted, sensing her fear. He stood and came as close to the water as he could without wading into it and ruining his new boots.
She calmed down when she realized he was not a stranger and knew in her heart that he wouldn't hurt her.
'Throw me my clothes,' she yelled.
Travis laughed, 'I've already seen all of you, so you might as well come out and dry off.'
Blue Girl's face was burning, but she ordered him to turn around. Travis laughed and did as she asked. She got dressed quickly, and he seemed to know when she was done and turned around to face her. She was ready to rush off, but he grabbed her arm and said, 'It's too nice of a night to waste alone indoors.'
She felt a surge of electricity pass through his hand to her arm to and was awed by the phenomenon. He let go and laughed with wonder and knowing. She really didn't want to go anywhere. She wanted to stay with him in the moonlight, not saying a thing, being just as they were, elemental and lost in the landscape. And anyway, she thought, ever since she had stepped out of the house she had had a sense of expectation that something tumultuous and significant was about to happen. She didn't know why she felt so comfortable with him. He was a drifter, someone who was going nowhere fast, but she felt drawn to him, as if his body was as familiar as her own.
He sensed her mood and suddenly pulled her close, murmuring, 'Cathy.'
To Cathy he felt completely different from Jimmy, and she instinctively knew that he would be good and good for her. He kissed her face and her lips, slipping his tongue into her mouth and flicking it over her lips. Then he sucked her top and bottom lips, repeating those actions over and over until she felt heady.
His had his hand at the small of her back and now drew her in more closely so that their bodies were aligned and touching. His tongue probed her mouth, and she sucked on it, quickly inserting her tongue into his mouth and imitating a fucking motion.
The Blue Girl didn't understand what had gotten into her or how she knew what to do, but she had to admit she had thought about Travis in her idle moments and about him putting his hands on her. It had made her go all funny inside, and she had felt pressure on her bladder like she needed to pee, only the sensation had been a little different, and she had rubbed herself against the motion of the washing machine before she had come. It was a relief and she had finished just seconds before Ma had walked into the laundry closet and seen her just standing there but hadn't notice the guilty look on her face. She remembered she had stuck out her own tongue and bitten down on it, imagining him kissing her and now that sensation was being reproduced.
'Mmmm,' he moaned, running his hands through her hair before kissing her deeply and hard. 'Come this way,' he said, and led her away from the water with its algae smell into a fallow field where he walked her to a huge oak tree.
'Have you made love before?' he asked.
The Blue Girl nodded yes, though it was a lie, but she didn't want him to stop or to know she wasn't experienced. He sat her down gently onto the ground after looking for a soft spot, and she looked up at the oak's sprawling canopy silhouetted against the night sky. She felt protected and sheltered as if they had entered a magical realm that all their own and distant from the rest of the world.
'What were you doing out there tonight?' she asked.
'I went into town. Maybe I was hoping to run into you. You're the only person I really like talking to around these parts.'
'And when you didn't find me?' she asked.
'I dunno,' he shrugged. 'Sometimes I come here when it's hot and I swim, but you were already there.'
'And you were just watching me,' she said, as if it was most normal thing in the world to do.
'Yes. You're beautiful.'
She knew he wasn't coming on to her the way Jimmy had before she had let him touch her breasts. Travis was real and meant what he said.
'Take off your clothes,' she said. 'I want to see what you look like too.'
Travis grinned and began to unbutton his shirt. His torso was smooth and taut but the muscles were developed from hard work, and his belly was so tight that it almost touched his backbone. She ran her hands across the expanse of his chest and caressed him as if he was a marble god.
'Take off everything,' she said.
He slipped his boots off. His hands reached for his belt buckle and he undid it and his fly, and as he stepped out of his rough jeans she saw he had lean but powerful legs that were cut down to the muscle fiber. She looked at his bulge and knew he would have a huge cock, and she knew this was good from the way other girls talked. Her heart was beginning to pound.
Stopping short, he said, 'Now you.'
Cathy had already taken her shoes off but now stood up and unzipped her cut-offs, letting them drop to the ground. She pulled off her t-shirt and was about to unhook her bra when he said, 'Wait.'
He stood in front of her and kissed her neck and tops of her breasts and then he pushed his body into hers, and as his hard cock pressed against her, she felt an explosive feeling arising in her, something that she had never felt before with a real man, though it ebbed and receded. He kissed her mouth again, and then he laid her down and holding her legs in the air, took off her panties. He reached for his cock and she saw its glistening head as he gripped the shaft which was thick and long. She had never imagined the sight of a man's organ would make her dizzy with excitement, but she was panting and felt herself growing wet. That welling was arising within her again and she felt her pussy becoming engorged and throbbing with anticipation.
'I want to look at you, Cathy,' he said. She spread her legs wide as he ran his hands slowly and luxuriously over the shaft of his cock. She wondered what he could see in that light, though the moon was white and high overhead, and imagined the light must be glistening off her wet pussy. She closed her eyes to visualize it and it made her even hotter.
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