by Amy Field
A couple of hours after Cal picked her up, Janie felt comfortable again. They went off-campus. The dinner was awesome, the movie funny. They ended up in a car park on the top of a hill. Cal sat her beside him on his Mustang’s engine hood and they watched the lights of the city below them. It was a sparkling moment.
“Listen,” Cal said, “I hope you feel okay.”
Janie dragged herself closer to Cal.
“I sure do,” she whispered.
Cal threw an arm around her shoulders. The car park was empty, the night young. He turned his head and kissed her.
“I skipped an evening training session for this,” Cal said, “but I had never made a better decision.”
Janie just giggled. She felt Cal’s hand starting to explore her body under her shirt. She did not oppose him, she could not resist him. On the contrary, she got even braver since that last, first time. Her hands run circles on the smooth skin covering Cal’s chest and back. Then she reached down to his belt and popped it open.
“You want it here?” Cal asked. His breathing accelerated, he followed up each of his words with a slight moan.
“Or more like inside there,” Janie pointed at the Mustang. Cal grabbed her hand and pulled Janie onto the back seats. They ended up in mad kissing. Janie’s hand slipped inside Cal’s pants. She touched it first with the tip of her fingers, then grabbed it, wrapping her delicate palm around the throbbing, pulsating monstrosity. Cal started to undress her with wild, passionate moves. Janie’s shirt did not come off without suffering some light damage. They started to laugh. After Cal was done, Janie undressed him completely with, slow and gentle moves which drove Cal out of her right mind. Finally, Janie took a seat in Cal’s bare lap. She reached down and aimed him inside her.
This time Janie dictated the rhythm and they lasted a lot longer. Just before Cal came, he lifted Janie up and emptied his load onto the back of the front seat.
Janie laughed.
“That is some ugly mess you make around yourself,” she kidded him.
“It is some sweet mess, you make around me,” Cal replied.
They reluctantly put their clothes back on and drove back to the campus. Cal dropped Janie off at the dorm. A couple of Linda’s cheerleader friends just arrived home.
“Listen,” Cal said keeping an eye on the other girls, “I hope you are not going nuts again.”
Janie smiled at him. She did not even try to kiss Cal this time.
“That depends on you,” she said and walked away.
She heard the Mustang darting ahead, and waited until the noise of the engine faded away towards the direction of Cal’s fraternity house.
The cheerleader girls just stood there flabbergasted.
So, Janie thought, Cal would not kiss her in front of others.
It did not matter, she thought, because she had a plan.
Chapter 11
A couple of days later Janie went to Cal’s fraternity house with a single reason in her mind. She wanted Cal to recognize her as her girlfriend in front of his best friends. Everybody knew what was going on between the two of them by then and she felt that her move would just make it easier for Cal to make this official.
It was late in the afternoon and many of the football players lingered around the house. Janie approached one of them she knew from chemistry class.
“Hey, Dillon,” she greeted him a little sheepishly. For her great relief Dillon was not even surprised that he saw her around the fraternity house.
“Hey, Janie,” he said with a considerable amount of respect in his tone. “Are you looking for Cal?”
Janie’s heart jumped. Cal’s best friend recognizing her as a girl who belonged to Cal was almost as good as kissing Cal openly in front of everyone.
“Yes,” Janie said, “do you know where I can find him?”
Dillon nodded.
“I will get him for you!”
Janie nodded.
Dillon disappeared inside the house. Janie turned towards the other players who inspected her openly by then. For a change, Janie did not feel herself embarrassed in their company. They all looked at her with a certain kind of appreciation – a kind Janie had hardly experienced before.
“How is it going?” one of them winked at her.
Janie smiled but did not answer.
Just then Cal’s Mustang parked down in front of the house. Janie’s heart jumped, again. Here was the big moment she had been dreaming about every minute she spent awake throughout the last couple of days.
But for her mild disappointment it was not Cal getting out of his car. It was an older, cruder version of her boyfriend.
“The coach,” one of the players warned the others. Cal’s father’s presence had a curious effect on the guys. They all straightened their backs, and tried their best to look tougher than a second before.
The coach walked up to their group and said hello.
“Good evening, Mr. Bailey,” the guys replied together.
“And who is this,” he pointed at Janie.
Janie could not answer. What was she supposed to say? Suddenly, meeting Cal’s father in person, made Janie understood.
Then Cal arrived from the house with Dillon on his side. When he realized that Janie and his father was about to get introduced, he turned a little white.
“Son,” the coach shouted at Cal, “would you care introduce me to this girl!”
“Of course, Sir,” Cal answered sheepishly.
“So?” his father demanded. “Is this the girl who made you skip your training the other day?”
Cal did not answer.
“Is this girl your girlfriend?” Mr. Bailey repeated his question.
Cal exchanged a frightened glance with Janie.
“No, Sir,” he said finally.
But that was not enough, not for Cal’s father.
“Who is she then?” he asked.
Cal gulped. Judging by the expression on his face, he swallowed something sour and unpleasant.
“She is just nobody, Sir,” he said finally.
Janie’s world turned upside down. She started to run away from the fraternity house, not looking back even once. Her tears were falling – round, fat, and shining tears shed by a broken heart.
Chapter 12
The upcoming couple of weeks were the worst Janie had ever experienced in her whole life. She found some remedy in studying and decided to ignore Cal completely. She did not answer his calls, did not read his messages. He was dead to her as far as Janie was concerned.
As far as the others knowing their story, and that meant about the whole campus, were concerned, they did not ignore Janie. They used every occasion to roast her about her stalking of the football team captain. Janie was all set to move back home as soon as the mid-term exams were concluded. She could not afford another fail, especially not because of Cal.
Janie decided that before she left, she would show them courage. Instead of hiding inside her room, she went over to study in the library.
Before entering the huge study room, she took a deep breath. Then she pushed the door in and cut across the hall with decisive steps. The students started some exciting muttering as soon as they recognized her. She spotted Linda in one corner surrounded by her cheerleader friends. Lindsay bent ahead towards Linda, whispered something into her ear and pointed at Janie. Linda blinked up and shot a hateful glance at her.
Janie did not care. She found an empty desk in one of the corners and sat down behind it. She opened her books and plugged the earphones of her iPod into her ears. She found peace and continued her reading.
Then something hit her head from behind. It was soft and light but pointy. She looked down the floor next to her foot. A paper airplane laid there invitingly.
The whole spectrum of human emotions rushed through her unsuspecting soul, mind, and body.
She bent down and picked the piece of paper up with trembling hands. She unfolded it.
“I LOVE YOU,” the note said, plain an
d simple.
Janie looked up and around. Cal stood a couple of feet behind her and had a very sorry expression on his face.
Janie stood up.
By then the whole library was watching their duo.
Cal took the first step towards her, but Janie closed the distance separating them with a wild dash ahead. She landed between Cal’s inviting arms and they exchanged a mad kiss.
“What?” Janie muttered.
“Shush,” Cal hushed her.
They kept up the kissing. The audience started to cheer. Cal grabbed her arm and pulled her outside. They run through the entrance hand in hand, finally free.
In front of the library they bumped into Coach Bailey.
“Cal?” his father exclaimed.
“She is my girlfriend, dad,” Cal announced, “and if you want me to keep playing that stupid game, you better start being nice to her!”
Mr. Bailey gasped for some air.
But Janie and Cal did not care.
All this was behind them, they would never again let other people’s expectations spoil their happiness.
The sun was setting behind the library.
Janie and Cal walked away hand in hand towards a better day.
THE END
Book IV
Prisoner of Passion
A Prison Romance
Chapter 1
The tattoos were a giveaway that he had been in prison before.
That, and the hard, suspicious look that he had in his eyes.
Laura Halliston had seen such men before. They were, almost to a man, distrustful of everyone and everything around them. They had become indoctrinated by the system in which they lived. They had grown accustomed to people telling them what to do. As a result, when they got out of prison, or a mental hospital, or mission for the homeless, they were either very happy or very miserable. If they were miserable, as the man in front of her certainly was, that misery derived from wanting to be free and finding at every turn that freedom was not easily achieved.
There were other indications that he had been in prison as well. He had hard leg and arm muscles. He did not have a big stomach, as some of the other men she’d slept with had. He walked with his fists clenched and his jaw set tight. It was as if he was holding in his anger, waiting to find just the time to let it explode all over someone. It was that posture which attracted her to him. That was what made her think about seeing what color underwear he wore.
She had been reading in a bookstore. Light jazz music floated through the air as it drifted down from speakers twenty feet or more overhead. The store was plastered with red hearts, on posters, greeting cards; they even hung suspended from the ceiling – big, gaudy pink ones with glittered edge wafting slowly by the slight air-conditioning breeze. She had been leaning back in a brown leather chair when she happened to look up at her book, and took all of it in.
Just before she gave all her attention back to the story she was reading, that’s when she saw him. It was a pure accident, the kind that happens every day- the kind that changes the course of lives and, on some very rare occasions, the course of history.
She didn’t imagine that seeing him would alter the history of anything. In all likelihood, he had just come from the homeless shelter less than half a mile away. The bookstore let anybody and everybody come in. The shelter let people stay overnight when the weather was bad - as it always was from the middle of December until the middle of March in Pennsylvania. It did not let them stay during the day. She knew that and found that she didn’t care. It had not been that long ago when she had been on the point of losing her job. She dreaded to think what would have happened to her then if she had not taken the precaution of saving up three month’s worth of rent in advance. She might have ended up in a shelter somewhere, just as he had.
She closed her book and stood up. She found herself following him. He descended a set of stairs, and then stopped to look at a group of books in the local history section. She ducked behind a bookshelf, trying not to be seen. Then he headed downstairs into the basement. She followed him down there, as well. When she reached the downstairs area, she stopped for a moment. He was not there. It was though he had disappeared.
Laura took two steps forward while she looked around for him. Then, a large muscular arm wrapped itself around her chest. A male voice whispered in her ear, “You got some business with me?”
Her heart seized up all at once. Memories that she kept hidden away within herself sprang to the surface like wild animals with sharp claws and dripping fangs.
There were so much rope and a man that breathed heavy through his nostrils, and sometimes through his mouth. That man had sour breath that smelled like rancid onions. He gave off other odors as well, which were far less savory. He had... he had...
She struggled against the man’s grip to get free while she tried to shake off the memories that had come to her so suddenly, and unbidden. The man’s grip tightened for a moment. She feared that he wouldn't ever her go. A cry arose in her throat, and then died as soon as he released her. She stumbled forward, and then turned to face him.
A mistrustful expression had come across his face. When he squinted his eyes- as he did now- he looked like a man who never had enjoyed anything close to friendship in his life. He looked like someone who had lived his life alone for so long that his solitude had enveloped him in a quiet, restrictive embrace. Even though she felt unsafe around him and her instinct was telling her to get the hell out of there, there was also something that drew her to him. She had a brief thought that she was a moth on the point of burning herself.
She said, “No, I um... uh…”
She trailed off, unable to finish. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was doing following a strange man in a bookstore who did not look as though he belonged there. He looked like he belonged on a street corner where people beat each other up for the most trivial of reasons. She saw him with a baseball bat or a gun in his hand. She knew that she should have walked away from him. That would be have been the correct choice, she felt. Yet, her legs would not lift themselves off the ground. Her body did not want to travel away from him. There was something primal, something instinctive about the attraction she experienced. She couldn’t explain it, but there it was all the same.
He said, “Girl, what you playin' at? You tryin' to get me angry? Cause you well on your way.”
She said hated herself for stumbling over her words and not just coming straight to the point. That was, of course, that she even knew what the point was to begin with. She said, “Um well, I... it’s just, I think you’re interesting-looking.”
She blushed after she said it. Her cheeks became hot. She suddenly wanted to crawl into a hole and ignore the world for a little while. Seeing him scrutinize her made her feel even shorter than he was. He was taller than her by a head and a half. He was what Laura might have called - in another life that was - obnoxiously tall. She had always found herself intimidated by men who were significantly taller than herself. That, she reflected, comprised far too high a percentage of the population than she wished.
His eyes went suddenly wide. His features betrayed a split second of shock that she did not miss. In that split second, she perceived that no one had ever told him how attractive he was. She saw that he had spent his whole life around people who had put him down and made him feel bad about himself. That, she supposed, was what had caused him to be mistrustful towards others. If he had never been happy around other people, he never would have seen any reason to believe that other people could play a constructive role in his life.
Then, just as suddenly as it had disappeared, the hardened mask that he wore over his face returned. She would have missed the transition if she had not been paying attention. A sense of wonder passed through her. She had never before seen someone open themself up so plainly before her. She saw people every day of her life. They were ordinary people going about their daily business. Perhaps they were good, or perhaps they were not. She could nev
er tell either way. People never allowed themselves to be truly known to each other unless a close friendship developed. For that reason, she found it extraordinary that he should in an instant reveal so much about himself.
He said, “Attractive? The hell you say. I ain’t no attractive nobody. I’m a thug from Harlem. Always was, always will be. You know Harlem, lady girl? Them some mean streets, let me tell what.”
The longer that she stood before him, the more her courage rallied. Under other circumstances, she might have continued to mutter until he walked away from her. Something was different this time. She wanted to speak with him. That was unusual enough, the way her life had gone. She typically struggled through so much social anxiety and depression that she had trouble getting of bed, preparing her meals, or going to sleep at regular hours. It was only by chance that she was in the bookstore to get her weekly cut of hot chocolate. That was the only luxury she afforded herself. Most weeks, it was all she had the energy for.
She said, “I’ve never been Harlem. What’s it like?”
He let out an exasperated breath. He said, “Shoot girl, you don’t know? Got to be a man couldn’t live there without he was ripping off somebody. It’s a den of thieves. Some single mothers caught in between here and there. They got no place else to go.”
“Were you raised by a single mother?”
He eyed her up and down. She shivered, sure that he was undressing her in his mind. He said, “You just full of questions. Here you be asking me all this stuff, and I ain’t even told you my name yet. How’s that for a barrel of fish?”
“A barrel of fish? You mean like sardines?”
He put a single hand on his hip. The stance he adopted set her mind of a man exasperated with his environment. He said, “Naw, I ain’t talking no sardines. I’m talking like, I came from a bad place. I’m a bad man. What you want to do socializing around with somebody like me anyway?”
“I told you. I…”
He interrupted her before she could finish. He said, “Yeah, you told me. You find me attractive. 'Cept I ain’t no attractive person. Don’t know why you keep going on about that. Nobody and nothing never did or said anything positive about me before. The world I live in- it’s an unforgiving world. You get your head cut off just lookin' at somebody wrong. God forbid you ever try to play cards. That ain’t never happenin', no way no how.”