Chapter 119

“Trust is dangerous.”
—Pittacus Lore, Eight’s Origin

I DID SOMETHING VERY UNUSUAL in my morning concert Sunday. I played alone and from music. Oh, Sophie had volunteered to sit with me and listen but I turned her down. I had a feeling our musical advisors weren’t entirely happy with us after last night’s performance. Well, Vinnie was. I think Jannie was okay with it. LeBlanc and Sokolov were confused at best and disappointed at worst. Those guys wanted a note-perfect performance according to their interpretations.

I knew they both tuned into my Sunday morning concert, so I wanted to show them I was serious about my music and our lively performance at the Ren Faire wasn’t because we were tossing off the shackles of the composers. I set the music on my stand and sat at a slight angle so it didn’t block the camera from watching me. The piece was Bach’s Lute Suite in E Minor. It has six movements, most of which are different Renaissance dances. I had the notes memorized, but I paid attention to the other markings in the sheet music as I played.

I have a tendency to just drop into the music trance when I’m playing alone and let the emotion of the piece carry me along. If you are watching the music like I was this morning, you can’t space out. For me, it’s really hard to find my place in the music if I lose it. I pretty much have to stop and start over. Well, the advantage of the suite was that most of the movements were significantly less than four minutes long, so the two times I did have to stop and start over, it wasn’t like I had to play fifteen minutes of music to get to the place I goofed up.

And you know what? When I edited and uploaded the video, I could hear the difference in my playing. I needed to do this more often.

Nanette and I went out for a good run down at that church near Ossian where the running club often met. It’s one of my favorite trails. It was a little damp because the storm that affected us at Penn the day before had moved across the whole northern half of the state. We ran our first pass around the three-mile course slowly to make sure our footing was good. But then we took off on a second circuit and stretched out our legs. Most everyone else had left by the time we completed the second 5k.

“I’m so impressed with the way you’ve mastered your stride,” Nanette said. “When I first met you, I didn’t imagine you’d ever walk without a limp, let alone run distance races and win.”

“You were a lot of the reason I can do that,” I said. “Nan, I don’t tell you enough how important running with you is to me. It’s a big part of what I love about you.”

“Enough to skip Kentucky next weekend and run in Noblesville with me?” she teased.

“Um ... I kind of promised...”

“I’m teasing, Jacob. That’s one of the things we’re all learning about having this group thing we have. It’s a two-edged sword. Someone is almost always available to be with you but you can’t always be available to be with everyone,” she said. I automatically took her hand as we cooled down and guided our steps through the old cemetery. “I know you agreed to do the last weekend of the season with Desi and her family, and that they decided they were getting much better business than if they packed up and went to Indy PopCon like last year. And besides, Livy and Rachel are going to run with me. They won’t be with the rest of you in Kentucky.”

“That’s really what we’re learning from all this, isn’t it? I’m still having trouble with feeling like I need to give all of myself to each of my girlfriends.”

“No, you need to give all of yourself to all of your girlfriends,” she said. “There’s a difference. When you give to all of us, you can’t slight any of us. Nor can we you.”

I stopped in front of Joseph Hennessey’s grave as I did whenever we came out to this church. I crouched down and looked more closely. I’d never really found anything about the man online. Almost like he hadn’t existed. Except there was this grave and I had his hat, picked up at a vintage clothing store I just happened into last spring. I noted that he lay next to his wife who preceded him in death a few years earlier. Her name was Diana. There was nothing about her dates or name that was remotely like either of V1’s wives. It was just a coincidence that we shared initials.

“You always stop here when we walk after a run. What is it you see here, lover?” Nanette whispered.

“Oh, it’s nothing, really,” I shrugged. “Our initials are the same. And he died the day I was born.”

“He died in 2018. I know I’m a cradle robber but I’m sure you’re more than two years old.”

“Two years ago, yesterday,” I said. “When I woke up from a coma in the hospital.”

“Oh, my. Oh, Jacob. And you told us you woke up with past life memories. His?”

“I don’t think so. It’s just an interesting coincidence.”

“Yes, it is. Do you think it has meaning?”

“I read something online once that said the possibility of a coincidence occurring at any given time is always one hundred percent. It was a coincidence that I was wheeled into the physical therapy room just when you were up for the next appointment. It was a coincidence that you ran in the park where Em and I did. It was a coincidence that you spotted me running alone. It was...”

“I get it. It was a coincidence that I fell in love with you. All from the start of that chain of you waking up on August twenty-ninth in the hospital where I worked. The coincidences are all around us but we assign significance and meaning to them after the fact.”

I kissed her. She did not pull away in the least but rather molded herself to my body and offered herself to me fully. When we broke away from the kiss, she glanced around. Everyone who had been out for morning runs had left. The church service was over. Hers was the only car parked at the road. She took my hand and led me to where the cemetery started the downward slope and was hidden from everything but a farmhouse at least half a mile away.

“You need to help stretch me out,” she said. Okay. We hadn’t really stretched after the run and usually we did. She sat on the ground and pulled off her running shorts. My eyes popped open as she parted her legs in front of me. “Stretch me, lover.”

Oh. It didn’t take long for me to have my shorts off and be hovering over her. Nanette pulled me toward her and into her. She was delicious. Her pussy sucked at my cock and coaxed me to please her. Unlike my music, I forgot about timing and key signatures and was simply lost in the emotion.

It was nearly three o’clock when I drove down Donna’s long lane. After I showered, I made sure my essay for English was finished and I had no more homework to take care of. If it weren’t for our nightly study sessions, I think all of us would be behind in school. None of our parents were complaining about us gathering at any of our homes to study as long as our grades were all good.

Donna met me on the porch with a big hug and a kiss. That hug told me all I needed to know about the state of her underwear. There was no bra under that T-shirt to obstruct the intimacy of our embrace. I restrained myself from groping her and instead took her hand as she led me around to our usual entrance. I wondered if she ever used the front entrance.

“Do you have all your schoolwork done?” I asked.

“Yes. Do you?”

“I’m set for tomorrow. All the teachers want to get tests in before Labor Day so mostly we have reviews this week.”

“It does seem strange to have nearly four weeks of school before Labor Day,” Donna laughed. “Okay, we’ve taken care of all the school stuff. That’s enough of it for today.”

“I agree. I really just want to be with you for a while. I’m so glad you invited me out this afternoon.”

“We need to get past that,” she said.

“What?”

“Do you wait for all your girlfriends to invite you? Certainly, you must initiate contact sometimes. Tell me.”

“Well, we’ve kind of evolved, I guess. A lot of the time we’re all just deciding whose house we’ll study at that night. I try to go out with Rachel on Friday nights and we often invite another of our girlfriends to join us. And sometimes, I just call up and say, ‘Do you want to get together?’ I guess we all participate.”

“Yet you’ve never called and asked if it was convenient to stop by or if you could all come out to study one evening. Maybe like a Saturday afternoon.”

“Um ... I guess not. Is it okay?”

“I need to ask you seriously, Jacob. Am I a part of your pod? I want you to know I’d like to be. But I feel like you are still holding me away.”

I thought about what I’d overheard that weekend in Kentucky when John videoed us. “That’s the difference in a nutshell, John. You want to take care of me. I don’t want to be taken care of any more or less than I take care of my mates.” Donna had spoken the words to her ex-fiancé. It was the first open declaration of her intent. Then, by Wednesday we were all back in school and suddenly I felt like a high schooler and she was a teacher—even if no longer my teacher. I sighed.

“Have I really been so dense, Donna?” I led her to the porch swing and sat holding her hand. “I want you,” I whispered. “I want you to be part of our pod. I want you to be part of my life. I thought we were just taking it slowly but maybe we’ve been obstructing it without intending to. And then we get into situations where I screw up, like greeting you at the race yesterday. That was so stupid of me.”