Chapter 18

I arrived at Papa and Nana’s about seven-thirty and took care of Jethro. I debated leaving him outside because I was having company, but what the hell it was his house. Rachael arrived at eight carrying a medium sized overnight bag. I greeted her at the door and took the bag. I showed her the bedroom and bathroom, dropped her bag on the bed and went back to the family room. Jethro seemed smitten with Rachael. He was on his best behavior and followed her around like a puppy. He was even circumspect about sniffing her. It was most unusual behavior for him.

Rachael put her things away in the bathroom and joined me on the couch. I had the radio playing low as we snuggled up and told each other about our vacations so far. Kayla had told Rachael a little about the park incident and I filled in the blanks. Rachael was appalled at the extent of my injuries, insisting on looking at my calf and forearm. I truthfully told her that I was mostly healed, and that Emma was worth every single stitch.

She told me about her Christmas in Rhode Island and about the goings on among the rich and infamous in Newport. Her grandparents had arranged for her to meet a slew of eligible young bachelors. She even went out with two of the men but they both were conceited and full of themselves. She said they had acted as if she was supposed to drop and spread her legs just because they were Vanderbilts or Rockefellers. Despite all that, she had a nice visit because her grandparents were sweethearts. She said she told them about me in general terms omitting that I was eight years younger than her. She laughed when she related that they were the most impressed because I was the nephew of Viktor Pulaski, the Count of Kaminski. It seems that Uncle Vic’s wife Alexandra was the niece of Rachael’s grandfather’s business partner. Being related to royalty had elevated my stock considerably.

We moved from talking to making out on the couch. Rachael excused herself after a few minutes of tongue wrestling.

“I’m going to slip into something more comfortable,” she said. “Come find me in ten minutes or so.”

Man, that was a line out of my best stroke fantasy when I was thirteen! I waited exactly ten minutes and two seconds before heading to the bedroom. When I saw her lying on the bed, I begrudged myself those two seconds! My eyes almost popped out of my head at the sight of her posed so artfully. She was wearing a deep red opaque floor length negligee and her golden hair was spread on top of the pillow she reclined against like a halo. One knee was drawn up so that the silky crimson material draped across her thighs. Her hands were at her sides, palms down on the mattress and eyes were smoldering blue diamonds.

My hands shook as I shed my clothes down to my underwear. I crawled into the bed with her and spent the next hour trying to show her how beautiful and sexy she was. I know I’m tooting my own horn, but I think my lovemaking was inspired that night. I think that Rachael might even agree with me, especially since she came so hard once that she actually fainted for almost a full minute. I never have figured out what made sex with Rachael so special. She certainly wasn’t the best I ever had, or the most responsive or even the tightest. Maybe it was that I loved her and that she was my first, or maybe it was her vulnerability that made me try so hard to please her.

As if the lovemaking thing was enough for me to think about, I was also puzzled by how body shy she was. Oh she let me get her naked and feast my eyes on her when we were in the throes of passion but afterward she was right back in her negligee. For a woman who spent so much effort on having the best body I’d ever seen, she sure spent a lot of time hiding it. Rachael also wasn’t a snuggler – as were Katrina and Dee-Dee – but we did fall asleep holding hands.

When I woke up the next morning, Rachael was leaning against the headboard looking at me, her arms wrapped around her knees.

“Good morning,” I said.

Her return greeting was nowhere near what I expected to hear. She looked at me solemnly for a few seconds before speaking.

“Johnny, last night was the most wonderful night I can remember ever having. You were so loving and romantic. No matter how I try to make it about something else, all I can think about with you is love. You are addicting, and I’m afraid that if I spend too much time with you I’ll be hooked.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” I asked.

“Right now, yes it is. I’ve explained this to you before, Honey, neither one of us is at a place in our lives where falling totally in love would work. If I allowed myself to fall for you I’d want you totally to myself and screw everyone and everything else.”

“So what now, you dump me again?”

“No, I told you I needed you in my life, but right now it has to be in small doses. Can you understand that?”

I lay there and thought about it for a few minutes and strangely enough, I did understand. Rachael, for all her self-improvement, was still a troubled and fragile person. It might take years for her to overcome all that had happened to her at the hands of Jesse Wentworth, her asshole ex-husband. I also saw what my grandfather had been telling me when I was broken up when she trashed me a year ago. I decided that I would accept her terms and be happy with the time we spent together in the hopes that things would get better as time passed. I was going to have to learn that trick she had of turning her feelings on and off at will one day.

Rachael was pleased that I bought into her idea of rationing our time together. She said she understood that it was going to be tough for us both but I’d appreciate it in the long run. I had my doubts but gloomily accepted her reasoning. I didn’t really want to add Rachael to my list of part time/some time lovers but what choice did I have?

I know you are wondering why I put up with all the drama that Rachael kept heaping on me. Well join the freakin’ club, ‘cause I didn’t have a clue either. When she told me before Christmas break that she would be coming home early, I thought it was going to be to spend the rest of the holiday with me. So what happens? We spend one night together and she says she’ll see me in a coupe of weeks and she splits for parts unknown.

The kicker was her reason. “Johnny, it is just too good when we are together,” she had the nerve to say.

Can you believe that shit? Hey, didn’t I say the same thing about her last Christmas? Well at least this year I wasn’t crying all over myself about her. This time she said she’d see me later.

My first instinct when she drove off was to call one of the other women in my life and fuck Rachael off my mind. I tabled that as a bad idea, though. It just wasn’t my nature to use someone like that. So instead I drove down to Jiffy Lube and used one of my gift certificates for an oil change. That burnt up all of thirty minutes. Since the Jiffy Lube was right down from Mama’s Diner, I stopped there for an early lunch. Mama’s was mostly empty that day, so to my great pleasure, Tina sat down and gabbed with me.

“So, Johnny, why the long face?” she asked.

I knew immediately that Tina was a perfect person to hear my tale of Rachael induced woe. Since I couldn’t legally get into a bar, Tina was the closest thing to a bartender I knew.

“This girl I like told me she only wants to see me occasionally because she says she’ll fall in love with me if she sees me more often. Then in the same breath, she says she needs me in her life. Oh yeah, and she wants me available for sex when the mood strikes her.”

Tina grinned and shook her head as if in wonder.

“And your complaint is what? Seems to me you have the opportunity to live every man’s fantasy, a woman who wants to sleep with you for the sex only. What’s the matter, are you holding out for a new bass boat?”

I chucked, you know that joke, right? It goes – This redneck guy gets a divorce so he takes out a personal ad in the paper: ‘Wanted, new wife, must be a good cook, love sex, and own a bass boat. Send picture of boat.’

Tina laughed, too.

“Seriously, Johnny. You’re only sixteen. What would you do if you two did fall in love? Let me tell you what happened to me. I fell in love at fifteen to a sweet talking guy two years older than me. Before I knew it, I was knocked up. So John Roy and I got married, we quit school and he got a job. He left me after two more babies, just left one day and never came back. I was a single mother with three kids at the age of twenty-one. Now I wouldn’t trade my kids for anything in the world. My youngest is in college now and I’m about to be a grandmother by my oldest. Still, I missed out on a lot of life.

“To top it off, now I’m in a situation similar to yours. I love this man, but he has other obligations, so we don’t get to spend much time together. So what I do is just enjoy every minute I get with him. Could be that would work for you, and who knows, maybe when you are older something will come of it. If not, you’ll at least have had the pleasure of being with her some.”

What Tina said made sense and sure gave me some insight into her life. I was as intrigued as hell about this man that she loved, but I kept my yap shut. I had a nice lunch that ended up being on the house and got a big hug from Tina. She wished me good luck and sent me back to Papa’s feeling much better. My cell phone rang as I was driving. I flipped it open and said hello.

“Hello, Johnny, this is Nina Murphy, remember me?”

“Yes, Ma’am. How could I forget anyone who kisses like you?”

“My brother-in-law wasn’t exaggerating when he said you must have kissed the Blarney Stone,” she said with a laugh.

“In Poland the stone like that is named the Pulaski Stone in honor of my family.”

“I can well imagine. Johnny, if you don’t have plans on New Years Eve, would you come to a party at my house?”

I didn’t even have a hint of plans.

“Gee, I don’t know Nina, will I be your date?” I suavely asked.

“You are much too glib to be only sixteen. No, I already have an escort, but I’m sure you’ll meet someone there more your age.”

“Hmmm, I smell a fix. That someone wouldn’t be named Shelia, would it?”

She laughed again; she had an easy natural laugh. “Could be, although she didn’t ask me to invite you. Actually, the twin terrors talked me into it. I don’t know if they are trying to help their sister or if they have designs on you themselves. So be warned. We’ll start about eight, the dress is casual but not sloppy, okay?”

I told her it would be my pleasure to be there and asked for the address. She gave me her address and directions. I was pleased with the invitation if for no other reason than it got me out of the house. When you are sixteen there aren’t a lot of venues for New Year’s Eve parties. I didn’t think Dad would have any strenuous objections to me going, either, simply because of whose party it was.

As soon as I hung up with Nina, my phone rang again. This time it was Stan Hoffman. The Hoffman’s had been up in North Carolina visiting his grandparents and had just arrived back home. Jen Caldwell had already filled them in on the incident in the park so Stan was calling to make sure I was okay. Since I was only a few blocks from their house, I agreed to swing by for a few minutes. It was nice bull shitting around with Stan again. It was a pleasant change of pace from all the deep conversations I’d been having with women for the past week or so.

Stan was stoked about us both playing for the High School’s baseball team this year. Try outs were going to be the week after we came back from break and practice would start the following week. The conference our school belonged to had approved a twenty-four game season for the upcoming year so we would play for twelve weeks instead of eight. The season would run from February through April with tournaments and playoffs scheduled for early May.

Michelle came into the game room while we were talking. She had been at the grocery store with her mom when I arrived. She was all over the thing at the park while Stan had hardly mentioned it. I even had to roll up my jeans and show her the fresh scars on my calf before she was satisfied I was okay.

“Saving that little girl was the kind of thing I expected from you, Johnny. That’s why I feel so safe when I’m with you.”

I shrugged off the compliment and motioned her to lean forward. When she did I whispered in her ear.

‘I don’t know how safe you should feel, looking as good as you do right now. I think if Stan wasn’t here to protect you, I’d probably ravish you right here on the floor.”

She shivered when I gave her ear a little lick to punctuate my comments. Then she whispered back.

“You can’t rape the willing, Johnny.”

I hung out at the Hoffmans’ all evening, even cadging dinner off them. Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman commented on my adventure in the park. Stan and Michelle had really cool parents. The adult Hoffmans set the rules, and as long as their kids abided by them, they stayed out of their business. Disobeying the rules, however, brought swift and severe punishment. Restriction for a Hoffman kid was the twenty-first century equivalent to that prison where Paul Newman was, in the movie ‘Cool Hand Luke’.

At eight we watched the Holiday Bowl on ESPN. Even though the Holiday Bowl wasn’t a major bowl that would have an outcome on the Championship, it was a good game. The Red Raiders from Texas Tech beat up on some team from California. At half time Stan went up to his room to call his newest sweet thing leaving Michelle and me alone.

Michelle told me she wasn’t dating anyone at the moment. She was all kinds of put out because the last guy she seriously dated, bragged about what good head she gave. As is the case with those things, his bragging got back to her in fewer than three days. Stan had a chat with the guy but the damage had been done. She didn’t know whether any guy who asked her out was interested in her or just wanted a blowjob, so she was turning down everyone. I felt like kicking the guy’s ass myself. Guy’s like that poisoned the well for the rest of us. I liked Michelle a lot, she was one of the hottest girls in the school, and we had a history.

“So does the no dating thing include me?” I asked.

“Never,” she replied.

“Then will you go out with me Saturday night, dinner and a movie or something?”

“Oh my God, yes!”

“Good, but I’m going to have to make sure it’s all right with Stan, Okay?”

“Sure, Johnny,” she gushed, “that won’t be a problem at all.”

Michelle went to secure permission from her parents; when he returned, I asked Stan if he minded if Michelle and I dated. He grinned and said he had been hinting for almost a year that I should take her out.

“Pulaski, I’ve known you most of my life, I trust you and so do my parents. Besides that, Shelly has had a crush on you forever. I know it’s uncool to some people, but I care about my sister being happy. Just don’t break her heart man.”

I was touched by Stan’s little speech, and I sure knew where he was coming from being concerned for his sister’s happiness.

I stuck out my hand, “You have my word that I’ll try real hard not to hurt her.”

He shook my proffered hand then gave me another grin. “All right, that’s enough of that male bonding shit, shut up so I can watch the game will you?”

Michelle returned in about five minutes. Her big old grin told me her parents had said yes. She gave me the news verbally anyway, and told me she had a midnight curfew. Then she did something really cool, she told us good night and let us watch the ball game in peace. Score one for Michelle.

I was in bed asleep by eleven-thirty. The phone ringing at two AM woke me up instantly. Phones ringing late at night scare the hell out of me because it seems bad news always comes with those calls. I mumbled a sleepy hello into the receiver.

“Hi, Johnny.” It was Katrina.