by Mia Ford
I found the door open and I barged in with everybody stopping what they were doing. They stared at me. I could tell that Julia was upset that she had been ambushed. Lillian had her hands on the back of her neck and she was looking at me for any kind of help that I could give them.
There was definitely a feminine touch to the living room with splashes of color that no man in their right mind would put together.
“If I had been any later, I’m sure that there would’ve been an audience at the window. You know how a man likes to see women fight amongst themselves. It’s a bit of an erotic charge. That is the reason why they watch women wrestling and cage fighting. All of you; take a seat and let’s calm down before we begin.” I passed Lillian my contribution to dinner which consisted of a very decadent chocolate cheesecake from Antonio’s restaurant.
“I’ve had just about enough of this and I’m leaving.” Julia tried to dodge around me, but I had played football with the guys and knew exactly what move she was going to make. “I don’t need this. I love him and I don’t think that I’ve ever stopped. He needs to know how I feel. I’m going to tell him everything and there’s nothing that any of you can do to stop me.” I saw a glass vase and I was tempted to smash it upside her head to knock some sense into her.
“Nobody’s telling you that you’re not entitled to your feelings. I do think that it would be good for you to hear us out before you do anything that you’re going to regret.” She had on a pair of black pants, skintight and it was obviously her way of getting Marshall to give her attention. The red shirt was covered by a long open white sweater.
“I’ve already been through this with the two of them and I don’t need you to get into the middle of this. You’re only doing this because you’re getting paid to. It makes me sick to my stomach and I can’t sleep knowing that you’re playing him for a fool.” Her emotions were tangled up and her heart was raging out of control for a man that probably didn’t even remember her name. Come to think of it, when he mentioned that the girls were following him, he couldn’t say her name. He said Lillian, Tina, and the other one.
This was not something that I could tell Julia. She would think that it was some sort of maneuver and I would lose any hope of convincing her that he wasn’t right for her.
“I’m not here to tell you that your feelings don’t matter. All of you have been in the same shoes. I get this feeling that you might have daddy issues. There’s no reason to get up in my face. I’m just telling you how I see things and you can obviously refute my claim. Let me tell you what I have learned about him so far and maybe that will change your mind.” I took her hand gently, showing no animosity and led her to where she was sitting shaking like a leaf.
“I know exactly what he’s like and I don’t need you to tell me. I’ve always been a good catholic girl. I’ve never strayed from the flock. I’ve done what I’ve been told and I’m through with it. If I want to be with him, then why should I listen to any of this?” It was a good question and one that I was prepared to answer because I had gone over it in my head a hundred times since talking to Lillian.
“I understand where you’re coming from. I’ve been there myself and it’s hard to see what is right in front of you. I have some insights that you might want to hear. Can you at least listen for the next 20 minutes? If after what I have to say nothing changes, then I will gladly give back the money and we can all go our separate ways.” She was fuming, but at least she wasn’t tearing out of here with the water works on display.
“I need to say something.” Tina was sitting in a gray chair with her legs folded wearing a summer dress which was a little unusual for this weather. “Marshall does have some good qualities. He shows compassion, but it’s only an act and I’m ashamed to think back on the things that I did with him. I have a boyfriend and after looking myself in the mirror, I realized that he was the devil in disguise. I told my boyfriend and he was understandably upset, but he reminded me that we weren’t married. We are still together, but it was a rocky road for a time. This man does not deserve your respect.” Tina was soft-spoken and there wasn’t an ounce of hatred that seeped into any words that came from her mouth.
“I don’t see what difference that makes. I doubt that he told you that he was looking for love and didn’t know how to recognize it until he met me.” Her voice was echoed as all three of them mimicked the very same sentence verbatim. I could tell that Julia was stunned. She thought that she was special enough for him to treat her differently than others.
“We’ve all heard that before and it’s his way of lowering our guard. I fell for it myself. I look back and I think how stupid I was to give him that kind of power over me. Don’t you see that he has learned to weasel his way into our lives? You can’t be that out of touch with reality that you don’t understand that he’s a loser. He only needs to give us one look and we follow him like he’s some sort of pied piper. I don’t blame you for feeling this deeply and I still do in some regard.” It was nice to see that they were talking and not screaming at each other. Lillian had now lowered her register and was touching Julia’s hand. She was giving her a reason to grieve for a relationship that never was.
“You all took a huge risk by coming to me for help. My plan was to meet him and then strike up a conversation, but things didn’t go exactly as I intended. He followed you and then confronted me where I worked.” I could tell that they were not happy with this new set of circumstances. “I convinced him that you were all there to warn me about him. I had to do some fancy footwork, but I let him know that I would be responsible for how I perceived him. I told him that I would not allow anybody to run his name through the mud.” They listened intently without saying one word.
“I knew that there was a reason why we came to you. There’s no way that either one of us could have done any better than what you did. I think that it goes without saying that we need to be united. If there is a weak link, then we need to either fix it or forget this whole thing.” It was obvious that her comments were meant for Julia.
We all turned and looked at her at the same time, putting her in our cross hairs and giving her a reason to throw her hands up in defeat. “I don’t see how you are going to make me forget about how nice he can be. There’s no way that you can take away how gentle a lover or how he brought the woman out of me too many times to count.” They had similar stories and I was running high with a temperature of 101 between my legs. I could see myself testing their theory and seeing if it held true.
I could smell the fragrance of Italian meatballs in the air. These were women after my own heart and had an affinity for Italian Food. I hadn’t told them anything about my heritage, but I was quite pleased that they had made something that would whet my appetite for the revenge that they were seeking.
“I don’t know how you can expect me to go along with this. All of you must know that it’s wrong to play with somebody’s life. Need I remind you that he didn’t force us to do anything against our will?” This was a woman of reason, but she was only making excuses for a man that was more dangerous than those that lurked outside of windows.
“The only thing that I want you to do, Julia is to let this play out for a little while longer. I’m sure that you can find something to occupy your time. The one thing that you can’t do is dwell on this or it’s going to drive you up the wall.” Lillian knew what she was talking about and she was suffering by keeping this from her husband.
I told them about how I had made him wait and then accidentally ran into him at the market. This was the first time that I saw Julia smile, but it didn’t last for any more than a fraction of a second. I could see that she was still on the fence. Her feelings for him had not gone away and it didn’t matter how he had literally cut her out of his life by not answering her phone calls. It should have been clear to her when the voice came back as out of service. It was obvious to me that he had to break his contract and get another phone and number to go along with it.
“I smell
something good in the kitchen. We might be able to see things differently on a full stomach.” I was trying to keep things cordial and decided to change the subject.
Lillian motioned for us to follow and then we walked into a dining room that was perfectly placed. Everything was where it was supposed to be and we all sat down as Lillian came over and served us rigatoni with meatballs and a sauce that obviously came from the empty bottle of Catelli on the counter.
We all raised our glasses and toasted to a sisterhood and a bond that could not be broken by the mere presence of a pretty face and body to match. “I want to take this opportunity to make you a solemn vow that I will not give up. This has become just as important to me as it has to all of you.” What I wasn’t telling them was that I was actually looking forward to seeing him again.
“I don’t know how you can be that close to him and not feel something. You must have ice water running through your veins.” Julia had made the table dinner conversation become more of a bashing of my character. “Can you honestly sit there and say that you wouldn’t want to sleep with him? That if you get the chance that you wouldn’t give him the benefit of your company in his bed.” I wasn’t sure how to respond so I decided to give her a political answer.
“I’m attracted to him, but this wouldn’t work unless there was something between us. I’m going to do everything and anything to get him to fall for me. I’m already on the right track and having him wait for me by the phone was a good test.” I told her something and nothing. It appeased her without her realizing that I had tap-danced around the subject.
The meal was fantastic and I knew that there was no way that I was going to have room for the cheesecake that I had brought along. Lillian must’ve had a high metabolism and she could really put away the food and not show it on her figure.
After dinner, Lillian and Tina were doing the dishes and Julia managed to corner me. “You have put my mind at ease, but I still don’t think this is right. I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to break down and call him and tell him everything. The only thing that you have accomplished is to give you a little bit more time. You may not think that a month is that long, but it feels like forever in my opinion.” I could see the reason why she was affected more than the other two.
Lillian and Tina had their lives turned upside down by this man. Lillian had a husband and Tina had a committed boyfriend. They were using that lifeline to pull them back from the abyss before they found themselves crawling on hands and knees for another go around with Marshall. That was the one thing that Julia didn’t have. Her lifeline came from her two new friends and me. I was taking care of business and I didn’t need the hassle of some lovelorn bitch standing in my way.
I left them as they converged in the living room to watch old movies on the television. I was going to have to push my timetable up. Tonight, was the night that I was going to break him down. I would rebuild his self-esteem only to tear it down again in front of the world.
Chapter seven
The wind was amazingly strong and the plane had only the pilot and both Marshall and I strapped into parachutes. I’d never done anything quite like this and my adrenaline was pumping like never before.
“I have to say that your expression was priceless when you arrived at the airfield and realized that we were going nighttime skydiving. You will not believe the feeling that you will have or the sights that you will see. The first time that I did this over the city was something that I can never forget.” I was sitting there on the bench trying to bolster the courage to step into the unknown.
He was wearing a black diving suit and I was wearing a blue diving suit. I had my hand on the cord of the parachute. I wanted to reestablish my control with gravity. Once I stepped out into the night, there was really no telling if I was going to freeze up and become like a deer in the headlights.
I finally took a deep breath, stood up and went to where he was standing at the open door. “I know that I said that I was up for anything, but this was not what I was expecting. I’ve never been very good with heights. There’s no time like the present to face my fear.” If I wasn’t careful, I was going to need a paper bag to breathe into.
He got behind me and I could feel his lips touching my ear upon contact. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. I won’t let anything happen to you. You have become more important to me than you can ever know. Put yourself in my hands and I promise that you won’t regret it.” He gave me a nudge. I needed him to push me through this and that was exactly what he was doing.
The rush of air and the feeling of weightlessness terrified me, but then something amazing happened. There was this sense of freedom and the lights that he spoke of really had to be experienced to know what he was talking about. I was floored and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was not the first and last time that I was going to do this.
I saw him coming up from beside me and then we were holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes. The goggles did nothing to prevent me from seeing that he really did care for me. He could’ve easily left me and made me face this on my own, but he didn’t do that.
Over the sound of the air displacement around me and the blood pumping between my ears, he managed to keep me calm and not feel overwhelmed to the point of panicking or being paralyzed.
“I’m so damn proud of you. I’ve never seen anybody be so open with their body that they were willing to throw it outside of an airplane. Add to that fact that you are terrified of heights and I think that I am beginning to understand who you are. We’re practically at the altitude that we are going to have to deploy our chutes.” He pulled the cord and was pulled back into the sky with me following not more than a few seconds later.
The jarring impact of being pulled from my comfort zone wrenched my neck. I floated aimlessly over the city. I followed my 2-minute training lesson from Marshall to the letter. When my feet landed on the hard-packed earth, I just wanted to run back to the plane and do it all over again. My excitement for what was obviously a death-defying act surprised me.
I couldn’t help myself and I ran into his arms. I knocked him down with me on top of him. “I can’t believe that I haven’t done this before. I’ve let my fears hold me hostage and I’m not going to do that anymore. You’re going to see a new woman. I always thought that I was fearless, but this was something that I didn’t want to share with anybody.” My body was pressed up against him with his hands around my waist and my eyes alight with a fire that could only be extinguished one way.
The big hose between his legs was the only thing that I had on my mind. I could feel him quite engorged and ready to take this to whatever venue we might have found to express ourselves physically.
He moved my hair behind my ears. He grazed my cheek with his fingertips which was only compounding the issue. He touched me so delicately that it was like he was dealing with a fragile doll that would break with too much force.
“I know exactly what you’re feeling. Normally, I would take advantage of that. For some reason, I can’t do that with you. I won’t be able to look at myself in the mirror and respect myself in the morning. It’s not you. I’m fighting my natural instinct to kiss you with a passion that will cause you nothing but heartache. I want something different from this. I can’t play by the same rules when you have thrown the rule book out the window.” I could see that it was taking a lot for him to push me away.
I lie there looking up at him with his back towards me. He was obviously struggling and fighting the urge to be the man that I thought that he was. I would’ve taken one for the team just so that I could hold this over him and give him a reason to think that I was better than all the rest. I could seal the deal like I did with any transaction by using my sexuality. Getting him emotionally attached could only be accomplished by throwing caution to the wind. I tried to convince myself that I was only doing this as part of the job, but I knew deep down that there was more to it than that.
“You are a
damn fool, but I think that it would be best not to take things too far. Just so you know; I would have done just about anything to please you. I don’t care what kind of act or depraved thought that you might have in your head. I would gladly strap on a pair of cuffs, put on a blindfold and let you ride me around the room like the pony express. You could put me into any position, treat me like I’m just a piece of ass and I would come back for more. Are you sure that you want to take this stand?” He looked over his shoulder and he shook his head like he couldn’t quite believe that he didn’t just grab the bull by the horns.
“It’s not fair and I’ve never felt this way before. I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t sleep the entire time that I was waiting for you to call. I know that I’m in deep. I’ve put on a brave face, but I’m powerless against you. I could just have my way with you and be done with it. It’s a pattern that I have to break. I don’t know why this is so hard. It’s always been easy and those girls that have come before you were merely misadventures.”
My heart was pumping with my palms sweaty and my eyes as big as saucers. I had to find a way to get rid of this pent-up energy and he was doing everything he could to push me away. I had only one other card to play.