Chapter 4

My parents knew I had gone to court. My dad had to work and my mom wasn’t interested in the drama of the courtroom, so neither knew how long that process would take. When we got back to the parking lot and she got her car I stood by her open door and looked into the car.

“I’ve been gone six hours and I should really check in with my mother before she starts to worry and begins making inquiries,” I said.

“I am eager to show you some money, Bob,” she said, tersely.

“Do you want this to be hurried? Do you want me to just take a peek at the currency but not have time to count it?”

“You may be young, but you’re very good at this,” she muttered. “Okay. Go home and check in. I will call your mother.”

“What will you talk about?” I inquired.

“Don’t you worry about that. You just check in and tell her it was no fun and unpleasant, and that I was very upset. Make sure you tell her I was upset.”

“That won’t be hard because that’s true,” I said.

“I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Okay.”

She started her car and reached for the handle to close her door. Then she looked up at me.

“And Bob?”

“Yes?”

“Do not masturbate.”

I blinked.

“I won’t,” I said.

“I’ll see you in a little bit,” she said.

Then she closed her door and drove off, leaving me standing there.

It was apples and oranges and I think we both knew that. But together, we were part of a fruit bowl, and a fruit bowl can be a beautiful, tasty and satisfying thing.

I felt like someone had said we were going to make a movie and I was going to be in the role of the hero and Valerie Stanton was going to be in the role of the maiden in distress. There were going to be sex scenes in this movie, which would require us to pretend to be intimate. We had both glanced at the script and neither of us was averse to doing a run-through to see if we could convince an audience that the romance was genuine. This was my first real role, but I thought I might be able to pull it off. And if I wasn’t convincing in the early stages of things, maybe my co-star would help coach me.

That was really the only way I could see all this. It was only a movie. I was just playing a role.

But actors and actresses fall in love and become an item all the time. Maybe that could happen to me, too.

I drove home and went inside to find that Mom had made me chocolate chip cookies as a reward for doing my civic duty. She asked me what it was like and I told her how intimidating it all was. I said Mrs. Stanton was all shook up, and about how everybody in the courtroom saw the pictures of her beaten to a pulp. I happened to mention that the accused had glared at her a lot, which was true. She hadn’t said anything about that, but I thought it was a good touch. I had eaten four cookies when Mom’s phone rang.

“It’s Valerie,” she said, after looking at the screen. She swiped and put the phone to her ear.

“What’s wrong?” she whined, almost instantly. She listened for another minute without saying anything and then said, “Valerie! Calm down. I’ll be right over. Just take a breath. I’ll be there within a minute.”

She tapped her phone and looked at me.

“She’s a mess. She’s having a breakdown. Court and seeing him brought it all back to her and she’s crying her eyes out. We need to go over there and help her get through this.”

“I was going to take a shower,” I ad-libbed.

“You can take a shower later. You need to come with me. You know that she’s calmer when you’re there.”

We rushed and Mom tapped in the code to open the door. We found Valerie (I had never addressed her as anything other than “Mrs. Stanton” before this, but circumstances had changed and I could now think of her as Valerie) lying on her couch, sobbing her eyes out. Her makeup was streaked on her cheeks and her eyes were all red and puffy. Mom sat down and hugged her and told her everything was fine and all that kind of stuff and Valerie “calmed down” little by little until she could, in fits and starts, explain that she held it together in the courtroom, and when I took her to get a cinnamon roll, when she could talk to me about other things, but as soon as she got home, and was alone where she had been brutally beaten, it all came back to her.

“My therapist says I have PTSD,” she moaned. “I think I had a panic attack. I feel so stupid!”

“You’re not stupid,” cooed Mom. “You don’t have to fight this alone. I’m here and Bobby is here. You just need some sleep. Let’s get you in bed. Bob, you go make some tea while I get her in bed. Sweeten it with honey.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said.

I went and microwaved a cup with a teabag in it. I knew where the honey was and dribbled it in, stirring and sipping until it tasted right.

I took it to her bedroom door, which was closed, and tapped on it discreetly. My mother opened the door and took the tea.

“Wait in the living room. I’m going to settle her in and then we can decide what to do.”

I sat on the couch, playing a paint by number game on my phone. I did almost one whole picture before my mother appeared.

“She’s calmed down and she took an Ambien. I need to go get supper ready but she doesn’t want to be alone so I told her you would stay here. She said that was good and that if you’re here she’ll feel safe. When your father gets home and has had his supper, I’ll come over so you can go eat, or have Tom come over or something.”

“Okay,” I said. “What should I do?”

“Just be here. You can go knock on her door and tell her you’ll be in the house, but don’t go in and bother her. She’s not dressed to receive male visitors. You can nap on the couch.” She looked at her watch. “It should only be a couple of hours before you can go home, okay?”

“Fine,” I sighed. “I was going to take a nap anyway. I can get some work done tonight.”

“Lock the door behind me,” she said, and off she went to fix supper.

I went to a window and watched my mom go back in our house. I waited another five minutes, just in case, and then went to Valerie’s bedroom. I tapped and opened the door. She was in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin.

“Are you asleep?” I inquired.

“Of course not,” she said. “Get in here! What took you so long?”

“I wanted to make sure your new best friend didn’t come back over here to do something she forgot,” I said. “I’m supposed to be sleeping on your couch.”

“Never mind that. You’ve told me I’m beautiful. Did you mean that?”

“Of course I did,” I said.

“Would you say I look like a million dollars?”

“Yes, I would,” I said.

She threw the covers back and revealed that she was naked. It was the first time I’d seen her naked with unbruised skin.

“You, sir, have won the lottery. This is your first million dollar installment.”

“I won’t believe it until I can get my hands on it,” I said, playing my role.

“Your clothes are probably dirty and my sheets are clean,” she said. “Take your clothes off, please.”

Whether it was this “I’m only in a movie” thing or not, I had no trouble stripping and revealing that I was fully erect. I went to the bed and stood beside it. She stared at my prong.

“When I interrupted you that time, I just got a glimpse. It’s even more impressive than I thought it was going to be.”

“Really? Impressive?” I preened.

“Don’t get a big head,” she said. “What I should have said was that you’ll do in a pinch.”

“Awww.”

“Why are you standing there? You should be in bed, comforting me as I try to work through my PTSD issues.”

So I got in bed with her. Just like that.

It was crazy. I had never been in bed with a woman, before. I had never been naked with a woman, before. I had never known I was going to get to have sex in the very near future, before. There were so many ‘firsts’ that I actually froze up, like a computer that has too much data to process.

“Bob?” I heard worry in her voice as her hands slid over my back. “You’re all stiff, Bob, and not in a good way.”

She pulled her hands in and pushed me back from her upper torso. Her face looked all wavy and I realized I was crying. Then I felt the tears gathering against the dam of my nose on one side of my face and the drip of tears falling off my eyelashes on the other side.

“Bob?” Now she sounded scared. “What’s wrong, Baby?”

“Not wrong,” I choked. “Happy!”

And then I sobbed like a little girl as emotions I didn’t even know were all locked up inside me suddenly came out of every pore on my body. Suddenly, the heat I felt of her body against mine made me finally understand that this was actually real, that it wasn’t a dream or fantasy and that it was as tangible as anything could be.

In that moment, if she had been the conniving, evil bitch her husband later claimed she was in his trial, she could have destroyed me. She could have crushed my spirit in a way that would have been permanent, preventing me from ever being able to trust a woman again. She could have pushed me out of bed and sneered at me, laughing about how the little boy actually thought that she might grace him with her body when, in fact, he was a worm who wasn’t even deserving of her glance, much less putting his pathetic little penis in her queenly vagina. That was exactly what my father had warned me about, a warning he felt was necessary just from seeing her photograph. My dad knew, deep down (or thought he knew) that I’d never have a real chance with a woman this beautiful, and that unreasonable expectations could lead to my undoing.

But I knew, somehow, that she would never do that to me. It might not last. She might change her mind down the road, but in this moment I knew we shared something so beautiful that it would be worth it if it only lasted twenty minutes.

I know how all this sounds, but I was a little overwrought there for a bit.

Her hands returned to my back and she pulled me against her as she did what I had done months before. She rained little kisses all over my face and told me it would be okay until my sobs settled into hiccupping little jags, and then just sighs as I tried to catch my breath. I had a moment of panic as she suddenly climbed over me and got off the bed, but all she was doing was getting a tissue which she handed to me and said, “Blow your nose.” I did and she took the tissue and (I assume) threw it away and climbed back over me, which was different enough and interesting enough that it distracted me from my little meltdown.