Impressions of You (The Impressions Series Book 1)

by Christopher Harlan

  “Good afternoon, beautiful,” he says as he stretches his arms above his head in a giant yawn. The sunlight is peeking through a gap in the closed curtains, and it illuminates Wesley’s face like an angel. He sits up and puts his arm around me, pulling me in, but I can’t give in, I really should go.

  “I need to get going,” I tell him. “It’s been amazing but I need to attend to my non-castle life,” I say, smiling. He grips me even harder and pulls me into his chest, and I lay my head down. If he keeps this up I’m not going to be able to resist, so I pull away from him and sit up. “No, really, there are some things I need to do, like eat and stuff,” I joke. “I also need to remind myself I haven’t actually taken a sabbatical from work, and that I need to get back to my kids and teaching.”

  “You can take a sabbatical if you like; I’m wealthy, you know, I’ll just buy you whatever you need to live.” He starts laughing. He’s never spoken about his money before and when he finally does it’s in a joking manner. He’s not the sugar daddy type anyhow. “I’m kidding obviously, I know how much you love your job. And you know how much I love your job, too. And now you understand why.”

  At first I thought it was the maternal thing. I’ve gotten that before, where guys think that female special needs teachers will just automatically make good mothers. The guys who are shopping around for families find that appealing, or the ones who already have kids, but those guys never saw me for me, they saw me in a role they wanted or needed. I was future good mom, instead of just Mia. But it occurred to me now that Wesley’s respect for my work came from having a special needs sister, and the realization made me feel even more connected to him, and I decided that I was comfortable enough to ask about her.

  “Wesley, can I ask you about Annabelle?” I ask gently, not wanting to upset him or ruin the moment we’re having. “Not about everything from last night, but about her. I wanted to know about her as a person.” For a moment I thought that my question might upset him, but then I saw that his face brightened at the idea of discussing his sister without discussing the crime. I’m sure that for years the two have been inseparable, but I can see that he hasn’t had many opportunities to talk about Annabelle, his sister and not Annabelle, abduction victim.

  “Anna and I were always best friends. She was the most happy, friendly, fun-loving little girl; always positive and always there for me.” His face truly lights up when he speaks of her, he likes to remember, but I can’t help but notice that all of his statements of her happiness are in the past tense, and the more he speaks of her the more curious I am about where she is now.

  “Was it difficult for your parents?” I ask.

  “You mean with Anna having Down’s syndrome?”

  “Yes.” I was very familiar with Down’s from my job. It’s a chromosomal error that happens when kids have an extra pair of their 21st chromosome, resulting in developmental delays and typically cognitive deficits. It was named after the British physician who described the symptoms of the disorder, Dr. John Langdon Down. I worked with Down’s kids on and off throughout my time at my school, and they had always been some of my favorite students.

  “I have to imagine that it was, particularly for my father. He was a man who would have perceived things such as that as a weakness.” Wesley’s dad sounded like a swell guy.

  “He thought your sister was weak because of her disorder?” I ask.

  “No,” he says, correcting me, “not her weakness, his. He was the kind of guy who would have taken one of his kids having a disorder like that as a sign of his own weakness, like some kind of failing of his own genes.”

  “That’s crazy, Wesley.” I’m not even trying to hold back my judgment at that shit; I don’t care if it sounds offensive. I want to be respectful, but people having stupid beliefs and bad opinions of special needs populations makes me so mad; I’ve dealt with that kind of ignorance my whole career, even sometimes from parents, and I have no tolerance at all for it.

  “Yeah, it’s ridiculous.” He sighed. “But I was a toddler when Anna was born, and the topic was never discussed in front of me that I can ever remember, but I got to know my father’s psychology pretty well over the years, and you have to understand the mind set of men like him.” I didn’t want to understand anything about him. What his father was able to accomplish is admirable on many levels, but that was no excuse for him being ignorant of his own child’s disorder, as far as I saw it. “Men like my father strived to be perfect in everything, and they viewed flaws—any flaws—as personal failings or signals of weaknesses. It isn’t right, I know, but it’s just the way they have to think to accomplish the things that they do.”

  “That’s nuts,” I say disdainfully.

  “Yes it is,” he says. “But you asked.” I did, and Wesley was right, if I wanted to understand the answer to my question I had to at least listen without letting my emotions take over. “To his credit I never saw my father treat Anna like she was a family embarrassment, or raise her much differently from me and Kane. She had all of the special schooling she needed, and a series of private tutors.” That was good. Down’s kids usually needed specialized classrooms because of the learning deficits that were typical of their disorder. “She’s my responsibility now.” There it is; he’s finally speaking about his sister in the present tense. “She’s in a private assisted living facility; the best money can buy, with a full time staff that attends to all of her needs, most of which are emotional now, due to the trauma of what she experienced.”

  “Is that what pulled you away from our date the other day?” I ask.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t want to say anything at the time. I didn’t even know how, Mia. I hope you get that now.” I finally understood. “Since . . . the incident, Anna is prone to emotional outbursts. She still has nightmares all the time, and she gets depressed really easily.” Jesus, I can’t believe that this poor woman still has to deal with the trauma of what happened to her more than a decade ago. It just wasn’t fair. “She’s been doing better recently, though, for the most part, but when she starts going off like she did the other day I’m the only person who really calms her down, and I have to stop whatever I’m doing and go to her. She just doesn’t have anyone else who can comfort her.”

  Now I feel really stupid. Here is this man who literally ran off to calm down his emotionally traumatized, special needs little sister and I spent an entire day convincing myself that he was with another woman. I feel like crying. Annabelle wasn’t the only one with demons impacting her day-to-day interactions. My insecurities had been like an antibiotic resistant strain of a disease in my life; no matter the intervention—years of therapy, broken relationships, or countless crazy thoughts—they never quite went away. They were always there, just beneath the surface of my normal, funny, well-adjusted exterior, waiting to destroy the possibility of good things in my life. I was determined not to have them screw things up with Wesley, I’m not sure that I’d recover from that.

  “Before you go, let me cook you some breakfast, I think we both worked up an appetite.” We certainly did, and I let him change the subject without any more questions, I can tell that he’s reached his limit of wanting to talk about what happened. And while I’d love nothing more than another home-cooked meal, I had to go.

  “I have a better idea,” I say in exchange.

  “I don’t doubt that you do,” he jokes. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Dinner, my place, tomorrow night, and definitely take-out because trust me you don’t want me cooking anything more challenging than a piece of toast. Even that’s iffy.”

  “Okay, sounds great,” he says confidently. I’m excited that he accepts my invitation so readily, but I have a catch he doesn’t know about yet.

  “And I want you to meet my friends.” I intentionally throw this in at the end, knowing he’s not going to jump at it the same way he jumped at the idea of dinner with me. Me and two of my closest friends could be a bit of a crowd, and I didn’t want to trigger Wesley’s an
xiety, but I needed to show him that there was more to me, and that he needed to meet the people in my life; the ones who help make me who I am. When I mention that my friends will be at dinner there’s a noticeable hesitation in his answer, and his face tenses up the way I’ve come to recognize when he’s getting anxious. Before letting him work himself up with exaggerated thoughts I tell him, “It’s my two oldest friends, Dacia and Kevin, it won’t be like a party or anything. They’re like my family and they’re really cool people, and it would mean the world to me for you to meet them.” I knew that last part would get him. I wasn’t trying to manipulate him, I was just being honest, but I knew that if I phrased it that way he’d most likely say yes.

  The truth was I needed to test what we had outside of this bedroom. I loved every minute that we were alone like this, but on its own this was just an intense fantasy, not reality. Reality was dinners with friends and family, or social events where other people would be moving around in uncomfortable ways. Reality was going to the movies, or having a drink at a bar, dancing the night away at clubs, and yes, being around people. All of those things together, along with the intimate times alone, formed the basis of a real relationship, and that’s what I wanted with Wesley. I didn’t want some secretive booty call with a rich mystery man who lived in the forest; I wanted to grant the greatest guy that I’ve ever met the title of being my boyfriend. What we had was real and serious, but I needed it to be as real in public as it was in private. I needed to see how far Wesley’s anxiety would go, and how much it would hold him back from the things that I needed in a relationship. I figured pizza with Dacia and Kevin would be a good teaser of my real life.

  “If it’s important to you, then you know I’ll be there. You know that,” he answers. “I may need to pop a few pills beforehand, but that’s nothing new.” I can tell that he’s being brave for me, but that’s exactly what I needed him to do. I didn’t want to push him or make him uncomfortable, but I’m glad that he’s pushing himself voluntarily for me.

  I put on my wrinkled dress and kiss Wesley one last time before getting out of there. The last kiss was everything the first kiss was; intense, firm, and completely arousing for both of us. I could see the protrusion of Wesley’s cock sticking up under his sheets, and it took all my self-control to not hike up my dress and ride him one last time before leaving. He gets up to walk me out but I stop him. “It’s okay,” I say, motioning for him to lie back down. “You relax and lounge, I remember the way, I’ll show myself out.”

  “Until tomorrow, then, Mia,” he whispers in my ear when our kiss is over. “And you can walk yourself out but I have to get up anyway. I won’t be staying in bed. Kane and I have work to attend to.” Work? Strangely enough in all Wesley’s discussion of his father and family wealth he hadn’t mentioned what he actually did for a living, or if he even had a job.

  “Oh, okay,” I say, intentionally trying to sound confused. “I didn’t know you worked with your brother. Actually, I didn’t know that you worked at all, you didn’t mention.”

  “I don’t,” he says, “at least not in the traditional sense. I don’t have office hours, or someplace I have to report to, really. I’m more like a consultant of sorts—I’m chairman of the board of Father’s company, Marsden, Inc., but I don’t run the day-to-day operations. I inherited my parent’s wealth, plus I make money from the company, and Kane is on the board as well, just like our father wanted. It’s more than enough to live on for a very long time—generations worth of time, actually.” Listening to him talk I can’t even imagine money like he has, I don’t think most normal people could, and hearing him use the word generations was surreal. It took me years of full time work to save enough for a down payment on a little fixer-upper ranch, and he could have bought my house outright for the financial equivalent of five dollars.

  “Well, okay, then, I’ll leave you boys to it,” I say on my way out. “Text me later.” My head was still spinning from the last day, and leaving him naked and hard in that bed was nearly impossible for me, but there would be more opportunities for that another time. Right now I had some texts to return.

  I WAKE UP REFRESHED this morning. I have work in a little while, but I get up especially early so I can eat a decent breakfast (power bar and coffee are decent, right) and catch up on some prep stuff for my class. Part of me never left Wesley’s mansion, and when I close my eyes I’m there with him still, surrounded by the softness of his bed and held in the strength of his arms.

  I’ve wanted Wesley since the moment I laid my eyes on him, and now I know that I’m falling for him, hard, and everything that transpired last night told me that he felt the same way about me. The words he spoke were one thing—he’s been sweet and loving towards me since that first night at the bar, even when he had his awkward moments, but it was his recent actions that communicated his feelings the most. Last night went past intense stares and sexy flirtation; last night he let me into a part of his life that no one else has ever known; and we went beyond any conceptions of just dating and into a realm of true intimacy. Then there was the sex. Oh my God. There. Was. The. Sex.

  I’ve had my fair share of boyfriends, and I was hardly inexperienced when it came to sex, but I had never felt anything even remotely close to what I did when I was with Wesley. When he touches me my entire body responds to him like no one I’ve ever been with. There’s no effort, no warm up, and no need to fake any of the feelings I express towards him. We were taking the next step, and he was evolving from my tall handsome secret into something that could be classified as a real relationship.

  Pizza with a few friends sounds pretty normal, nothing anyone would consider that important. It’s funny how certain social events can be milestones in relationships, like a first date, a one-year anniversary, or meeting the other person’s parents for the first time. For Wesley and me it would be pepperoni pizza at my place with two of my closest friends, people whose opinions are more important than those of my actual family in many ways.

  I didn’t see my family much these days, so they haven’t gotten to experience the parade of ex-boyfriends I’ve accumulated through the last few years, which was probably a good thing. My sister, Jenna, lives on the West Coast, in California, and my parents bought a home in the Pacific Northwest five years ago after my dad finally retired, leaving me the sole Careri in New York. Because of the distance I’m strategic as to what parts of my love live I gave them access to. Jenna and Mom can be low-key judgmental, always finding ways to slip in remarks about how close to thirty I was, and how I need to get married if I ever want to have children of my own, which they knew I did.

  Nothing like some words from Mom to bring out my insecurities! The truth is that, before Wesley, the only place I found complete calm and trust in myself was at work, with my kids. But spending six hours a day with other people’s children obviously wasn’t the same as having to wake up four times a night for feedings, or preparing second grade lunches, or any of the other aspects of being a mom that I didn’t trust myself to do well. I know that I’m a decent caregiver, and that I’m a good teacher, but I have no idea what kind of mother I’d be. But I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I haven’t wanted to be a mom, despite doubting myself.

  I arranged our little pizza party yesterday afternoon, after my GPS struggled to get me out of the forest that the Marsden Mansion is practically buried in. Once my digital British lady guided me back to civilization, I came home to a much needed shower. I took my wrinkled dress to the dry cleaners, and then called my friends to arrange dinner. I knew that they were going to be skeptical of the invitation at first. Last Kevin and Dacia heard of Wesley, I was complaining to them because I thought he was a little weird and guarded. But they had each told me the same thing, trust yourself, Mia. I did, and so far it’s worked out in my favor. Hopefully they’d give him a fair chance.

  I realize that Wesley is kind of going into the situation blind. Not only does he not know that I told other people about the
doubts I was having, he also doesn’t really know who my friends are. I didn’t give him any details about my relationship with each of them, or what their personalities are like, or even the dynamic between everyone in the group. I know it’s unfair of me to put him in that situation, especially when I know he was pushing himself to the brink of what his anxious mind could socially tolerate just to make me happy, so I decide it’s only right to debrief him a little. I type up a long text that reads:

  Mia: Just thought I’d give you a little heads-up on my friends before dinner tonight, maybe it’ll ease your mind a little. Kevin best high school friend—never dated him (before you ask) but think he liked me—very witty and sarcastic. Dacia is fucked up but kind, decent, and strong. We go back to high school. End of debrief. I can’t wait to see you later on. XOXO.

  It only takes about thirty seconds before I get a response from him.

  Wesley: Got it, got it, and got it. Thanks for information. I can’t wait to see you either. Going to go pop that pill now. Oh, and check your email please.

  My email? How did he even have my email, I know I never gave it to him. I check my email from my phone. Nothing from Wesley. I text him back.

  Mia: I don’t see anything.

  He immediately returns my text.