“That’s your experience with sex? Well, don’t put me in the same category as that guy, Callie.” He had circled me back towards the car now.
“If you come out here tonight, I’ll know it’s because you want to. If you don’t, you can bring the car back tomorrow sometime and I’ll take you back home. I’ll understand. I’m putting this ball in your court. I don’t want you feeling pressured, but I do want you.”
We were back at the car.
“Now once again, can I please touch my lips gently to yours? I already kissed Kelly goodbye,” he smiled.
I said, “My lips are yours.”
He gently kissed me goodbye and Kelly and I drove out of the yard for Hudson.
Decisions, decisions, decisions!
***
Pre-meditated sex (hell of a date.) Well, all day I asked myself: How can I do this? Would going back make me what Dane had called me from his motorcycle? Oh the hell with Dane, he didn’t know anything. And this guy was completely different. Then again, I didn’t want to lose what friendship I’d found with Shay. He was fun, exciting, someone everyone looked up to, and now I understood why. Especially after he’d brought me Kelly.
I kept going back and forth. I landed on: What’s the worst that can happen? He crawls on top of your body, he’s there about two or three minutes, and he gets off of you. You can close your eyes, grit your teeth, and hope it doesn’t hurt like Dane. Then you’ll probably go riding or something fun, and it will make up for the miserable few minutes.
Well then, okay, I had decided. I was going.
Mom and Dad took care of Kelly. I told them I was going out to help Shay with some things (I couldn’t say, ‘I’m going out to get laid!’) I left early enough so I could get there around 7 p.m. I brought my own PJs and extra clothes. I wanted to get there before he came to the Big House for the night.
The drive there was a tense one. I just kept saying to myself, Get the damn thing over with. Get the damn thing over with.
To my amazement, when I pulled up in the circle drive, the lights were all on in the lower level.
Well Cookie must be there, I thought. I knocked on the door and Shay answered with a smile. “Hey,” he said. “I really like your car.”
***
I don’t remember what we talked about that first half hour. I was all nerves and trying to act calm. I think Shay asked if I’d eaten and I said, ‘Yes,’ even though I hadn’t. I was too nervous to eat. Then we went in and sat down, both on the same sofa this time.
“I made you some iced tea, Callie.”
“What, no warm milk?” I teased.
“No, this has caffeine in it, I want you awake!” He poured me a glass, grinning.
(I’m thinking: Oh please let me just sleep through it!)
“Take off your shoes and stay awhile,” he said. He was barefoot. “Do you want me to rub your feet?”
“Hey, that’s a great idea!”
I put my feet up on the sofa on his lap. He gave me a nice foot rub, then gently ran his hand about six or seven inches up my leg.
“You really have soft legs,” he said.
“I have a very soft body,” I said. “Some women like their bodies to be hard, I like mine soft.”
“I like soft bodies on women,” he said, moving his hands back to my feet, kneading the pressure points. “A hard-bodied woman would make me feel like I was with a guy…”
“You’re sure you wouldn’t like that?” I joked. “Sure you’re not…you-know-what?”
This cracked him up. “I don’t think so. But if you’d like, I can provide you with forty or fifty references…”
“Am I the next notch on that king-sized bed post?”
“Did you see any notches in there, smart mouth? After all, it is my parents’ room, and I do have some respect for them.”
“Then why are we going in there? Isn’t that the plan?”
“You’re the exception to the rule.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.” He got up and turned the music on.
He lit three or four candles. “Let’s dance, Callie.”
We began to dance slowly to the music, making a lot of small talk. It was different than when I danced with him at the club, where I wanted the correct slow dance procedure. Now I had both my arms around his neck and his right arm was around my back, his left arm holding the base of my neck like a baby, the tips of his fingers in my hair. His touch was so tender, and, man, he always smelled so damn good.
After about twenty minutes of sweet, slow dancing, the small talk faded away, and he brought his hands around front and unbuttoned two buttons. A little more soft dancing, a couple more buttons…
I was holding my breath.
“Calm down,” he said gently. “Everything’s fine.”
I guess I needed to hear this somehow. I took a deep breath and felt myself relax a bit. Finally he put his arm around my back and slipped my blouse off. Still dancing close.
“Callie, you can open my shirt if you’d like,” he suggested. “Then we can gently touch our flesh together.”
I unbuttoned his shirt. He let loose of me and slipped it off. Golly, what am I doing? I thought. Here I am in my bra, him with no shirt on and his hand on my bare back! Then like a magic trick my bra was loose and fell to the floor. (Now I really did want to dance close—so he wouldn’t see me topless!)
During the next song or two, he unzipped my jeans and slid them down as far as he could with his hands, then just lifted his bare foot and brought them down to the floor.
“Step out of them,” he directed gently.
I did. He had me in a sort of trance.
Two people alone in a living room, dancing slowly to soft music, one in just silk panties, the other in jeans. He then danced me closer to the wall and when my back was up against it, he pushed both of my arms up in the air and sort of pinned them to the wall at the wrists, but not so tightly that I’d feel I didn’t have control.
He then ran his hands oh so slowly down my arms, across my arm pits, gently around my breasts, down my sides and my thighs, as low as his hands would go, all the while looking me directly in the eyes with a treasured look I’ll never forget for the rest of my life.
I brought my hands down from the wall and wrapped my arms around his neck. What on earth am I doing? I thought. Something strange was happening to me. I might have run if the feeling weren’t so erotic. I had never known what that word meant before. He never took his eyes off mine. It was as if our eyes were carrying this erotic spark and his hands were tending the flame.
Around this time he scooped me up into his arms, kissing me while he held me. Shay had the softest lips, the kind that made you want to say, ‘Can I have some more, please?’ He was just yummy! I don’t think he could help it. He just overflowed with animal magnetism. He was so damn sexy: lots of beautiful brown hair, sharp features, big brown eyes and a fantastic body.
I was putty in his hands by this time, and he knew it. He carried me into the master suite, opened the bed and put the two of us in the center (no scarf.) He pulled the sheet up to our waists. Well, the two kids, as Cookie called us, were in the king bed. Now what? I thought this would have been over an hour ago and it hadn’t even begun! I was feeling things I didn’t understand and didn’t care to.
“Hey Shay,” I whispered. “What if Cookie comes over?”
“I took care of that. I told her if my car was in the drive, she was off for the night and the next day too! And by the way, I also told Joe if my car’s here tonight, I’m taking the day off tomorrow and he’s in charge of the whole operation.”
“Just tell me Shay, what would your dad say?”
“Well, I guess it’s good that he’s in California,” he grinned.
Things were moving pretty slow for someone who wanted in-and-out like a flash. I was lying with my back against his chest, and he was oh, so gently, rubbing slowly up and down the length of my body, sending chills down my thighs and legs. His l
eft hand was rubbing my upper body, his right hand rubbing where ever he felt like moving it; so slowly in places I’d never been touched. My legs started to stiffen up and my toes curled under so tightly you couldn’t see the nail polish.
Shay must have felt my legs go stiff, as he lifted the sheet and said, “Look at your toes! Uncurl them.”
“I can’t!” I said. “They’re locked tight.”
“I love that, that’s so cute.” He turned me around, and starting kissing me. “You okay so far, curly toes?
Hell, who knew? By now my temperature must have been 278.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I was at the point were I just couldn’t take much more.
“Aren’t you going to do anything?” I asked him.
“I’m waiting for the five little magic words.”
“Oh hell, I don’t know what they are.”
“Well, you just keep thinking about it, we’ve got plenty of time.”
Legs stiffened, toes locked up, heart pounding, who could think?
“Why don’t you just do me? Do me!” I said.
“Not the right words, princess, but close.”
Finally I said, with absolutely no shame: “Make love to me.”
“That’s four…”
Being able to take absolutely no more foreplay, I said loudly, “Please, make love to me.”
“That’s what I’ve been waiting for you to say, princess.”
Well, it didn’t take but about five minutes before something happened to me, I had no idea what it was, but it went from head to toe. I wanted to grab the feeling, bottle it, hold on to it and never ever let it get away.
Oh my gosh…the feeling was leaving. I wanted it back, but it was gone! I was breathing so hard I felt there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. My legs started to loosen up, my toes uncurled.
Shay lifted his head and looked in my eyes. “You just climaxed, didn’t you?”
I didn’t even know what that meant. I said, “How do you know?”
“I felt it go through your body. Your legs are looser, and…aha!” He put his foot down my foot. “Those toes are uncurled.”
“Well, then. It’s over. Whew! Well, wow. I need a drink of water!”
“Oh no, no, no, princess, there are two of us here. You’re just going to have to wait a few minutes for that drink.”
I realized Shay had been waiting until he was sure everything was good for me. Since I was quite satisfied, I didn’t seem to care much about what happened to him—now there’s a bit of selfishness. But soon all things seemed to go as they should, and then two people needed drinks.
***
We had been at this little endeavor for almost two and a half hours. Not even close to the Wham Bam I’d expected. I guess Shay realized I didn’t know much about sex, and he started explaining a few things to me—information I could have used earlier. I wondered why my mom had never told me, but maybe it was just too hard for her. As Shay continued, though, I realized it meant something to him to be the one who was able to explain these things to me.
“Now,” he was saying, “if we want to climax at the same time, we’ll have to concentrate on perfecting that by learning to read each other’s body movements and getting into the very same mindset.”
When I told him about the shot through my body, how I wanted to keep it and hold onto it forever, he said with the cutest grin, “I think if you had been able to hold on to it forever, it probably would have killed you.”
I snuggled closer to his chest, warm in the afterglow. I must have fallen asleep, flat on my back with no pillow, because around 4 a.m. I woke to Shay’s face close to mine, outlined in the low light from the amber sconce. He was propped up beside me on his elbow, gently feathering my bangs back, with this great, contented look on his face.
“What?” I asked softly.
“I love coming inside of your life,” he smiled.
He could not have said a more precious thing to me.
Thrills, Chills And Lies
After that night, our lives changed. We spent every minute we could together. I think we were trying to prefect our timing. After that first night in the suite, sex didn’t just become our middle name—it became our first.
We had many dates and we often took Kelly along. I remember one time we stopped to get a six-pack. She was asleep in the back seat of Shay’s car and Shay threw the pack of beer over the seat without thinking. We both yelled “The baby!” at the same time, and Shay jumped out and pulled the front seat forward. I just held my breath until I heard him say, “She’s okay. It landed on the opposite side.” I guess Cookie was right. We really were just kids.
Our relationship was great; except I was plagued by the many women who seemed to flock to him like flies to honey. If we were at a drive-through, ordering food, the girls would come up to the car and say little things like, “Well, Shay, did you get stuck babysitting again tonight?”
Shay would just be nice to them and let it roll off his back, but these girls just seemed to materialize out of nowhere, everywhere we went. I can’t say it didn’t bother me.
One day at the end of April, we went to a car parts store. Shay grabbed my arm and stopped me in my tracks.
“Callie,” he said quietly, “Dane Dalton is at the end of this aisle. Just walk by him and don’t even turn your head. I’m going to hold Kelly in the opposite direction.”
Shay said he noticed Dane copping a look, but Shay had everything blocked to Dane.
In the parking lot, I asked Shay if it bothered him to see Dane.
“Hell no,” he said. “I pity him. He has no idea what he gave up. I just don’t like him. I don’t like that he touched you.”
“You mean, he touched me before you did…don’t you? Well then, Shay, how does that make you feel about Kelly?”
He turned and looked at me as we were getting into his car. “Kelly is mine and best you and everyone else never forget that,” he said.
He could be ever so tender, but he did have a firm side that always let you know who was in the driver’s seat.
***
After several months of spending nearly every waking moment together, Shay told me something he should have told me a long time ago: that he had joined the Air National Guard before he met me, and on the 15th of May he would be going to boot camp for six months.
I was blown away. What was I going to do for six months without him? The night before he left, things were melancholy between us.
“Callie,” he said, “I want you to wait for me. I don’t want you to date anyone while I’m gone.”
I had nothing from him that said ‘you’re mine,’ so this felt like a tall order. Especially since I wasn’t sure he’d hold himself to the same standard.
“Please wait.” He sat there for a few minutes, just looking at my face. I think he was trying to read my expression. “You want me to give you something that means I want you to wait for me.”
I just looked down, but he knew what I was thinking. Then he got out of the car and looked around on the ground. He found an empty matchbook cover and brought it back in the car. Then he got his pen out of the glove box and sat there writing on the matchbook cover.
Callie, will you please, wait for me for 6 months. I love you, Shay.
He handed me the note. No words were spoken.
I took the matchbook.
***
Shay called me every Sunday morning and asked me questions like, “Did you have a good time at the Winston dance last night?” And, “Did you enjoy your Cheese Frenchie at Kings?” Or, “How did you like the baseball game at Knott’s Field?”
Someone was feeding him info on my every move. I guess partly I didn’t like being spied on, and partly I liked that he cared. Mostly I liked that he cared.
Then one Friday night, about three months in, Shay said he was coming home for the weekend, and asked if I would get his car and pick him up at the airport.
Shay’s father, Sterling (who I’d sassed at the bottle club) asked me to
pull the car up to their gas pump and filled the tank for me himself. Guess we’d struck up an alliance of sorts. I met Shay at the airport and was so happy to see him, but I started crying because they’d cut off all that beautiful hair.
“Hey, curly toes,” he said, “it’ll grow back. Believe me, it grows fast.”
I told my parents I was staying at Shay’s, he told his parents he was staying at my place, and we got a two-night motel suite. Judging from the weekend, you’d think he came home for only one reason, but hell, that was fine with me.
Samson and Sunset Page 5