by Jamie Knight
“I’m so glad I have you, Stella,” I told her, taking her into my arms for a hug.
“I’ll be there every step of the way, girl, don’t you worry. I got you,” Stella reassured me, as she tightly returned my embrace.
****
Two days later, I was standing in the parking lot of the church after riding up on Stella’s bike. He was waiting for me, standing by his car with his hands clasped before him.
Alexander stared at me with a burning desire. I could tell, for my body was pulled towards him in a manner akin to metal. He was magnetic, and I could not resist. But I had to. I had to stay strong.
Stella had walked me through taking this whole meeting to another level. Alexander had hurt me, and I wanted to know how deep his feelings were for the girl he supposedly loved.
Was it all for the sex?
Was it his ego needing nourishment from a naïve young girl with dreams of grandeur running amok in her head, or did he really want to take this to a different tier and be together with me forever?
Or am I alone in raising this child?
Stella was watching from a safe distance. We chose the location of the church, since we had played from afar with telescopes and had discovered the perfect observatory spots in some abandoned houses a few miles away.
Right then and there, she was watching his every move. Ready to come to my help if things didn’t go as planned or if I acted out of rage. She knew how far my anger would go. Only she knew.
He was too damn fine for this, and I guess he had to make up for lost time.
I dropped my bike, Stella’s bike, and walked towards the old tree in the distance.
I loved that ancient maple tree. It had been there ever since the beginning of my faith and had been the first place I had seen Alexander from. I was only seventeen and he had come in all high and mighty one Sunday, and as soon as I saw him, I fell in love with him.
I did not see his fame or money; I just saw a man I could be with and grow with. His vibe felt compatible to mine, even as soon as we had first met. Without explanation, I could sense the strings of fate tying our destinies together in the oddest of ways. Time had passed, and he was still there.
And here we stood; right under the maple where it had all started. He had followed me and stood a few paces beyond the tree. We were going to talk and finally hash it out.
“Hello, Alexander,” I started.
“Hello, my love,” he replied.
It was as good a place to begin again as any.
Chapter Thirty
Alexander
Before I saw Valeria again for the first time in what felt like forever, it was a cold Friday night, and we had been waiting in the car for an hour. No one was going to show up and the church lot was getting emptier with every minute we waited.
“She’s not going to show, Jon,” I stuttered.
I was a mess, my nerves taking a mind of their own and flipping my insides like jerky. I had no idea why Jon had dressed me up so dapper, and there was a chance no one would come see me; least of all Valeria.
Valeria…
That name just had an effect on me.
I had to smile, remembering our small misadventures. I badly needed to see her, and the wait was getting me uncomfortable. We had decided to take the truck, for it was less conspicuous in the parking lot, and the church building was mostly deserted at this time of evening.
“Patience, sir. She set this up, and she will show up. She wants to talk to you as badly as you want to talk to her. It’s quite poetic, don’t you think? Her choosing the exact place where this whole thing started?”
Jon drawled, a slight laugh vibrating through his mustache.
It is poetic. More like poetic justice.
I was wrought with guilt, thinking over the things I had told her parents in order to end things between us. It was childish of me, and heavily unprecedented. Sure, I had my reasons. I hadn’t wanted her to get in trouble. I knew I was wrong for her – at least logically speaking. But emotionally, I knew we were right together, and that was the feeling that I should have listened to.
The sun dipped lower and so did my expectations. It was finally nighttime, and the mosquitoes buzzed outside the glass windows, fighting with the moths for the streetlamps.
“Ah, sir. I think your lady has arrived — apparently on her steed, too,” Jon chortled.
I squinted to get a better view of what Valeria had come on, and I could only fall short of a gentle sigh. Turning up the street, Valeria rode on a blue bicycle in a black dress, coming towards the church with a squeak in her tires and a yellow flower in her blonde hair.
She pedaled slowly, letting me take her in full view as I got out of the truck.
“Stay inside, Jon, please.”
“As you wish, sir,” he agreed, taking out his beloved Kindle to read another portion of a book while he waited for me, as always.
Shutting the car door let the cold air slap me in the face for all the injustice I had done to the beautiful creature that had rode into my sight. She stopped the bike and placed it on the fading tarmac, straightening her dress.
Simple and elegant, Valeria strode towards the beautiful tree in a shimmering gown with beautiful flats, her features glowing so sweetly I had to sigh in delight.
I followed her, entranced by her curves, wishing to hold her in my arms and tell her how sorry I was for what I had insinuated. How sorry I am.
I wanted to tell her how much I loved her, how much I needed her in my life, how much my being needed her to survive and that I was dying inside.
We both stopped and were hidden in the cover of the falling leaves. The rustling of the breeze and the leaves as they mated in a harmonious embrace filled the space within and around us as we stared at each other, both thinking of how the next few words would alter the shape of our lives.
“Hello, Alexander.”
“Hello, Valeria.”
For minutes, nothing but silence split the cold night air. One set of eyes looked hard and stared at the other’s eyes, each belonging to two people who felt the thread of emotion bind them in a trance that neither of us could get out of.
She had an expression of exasperation and torment in her eyes, and her body posture suggested a slight curve that I could have sworn wasn’t there before.
Her feet shuffled, slightly rustling the leaves crumpled beneath them. Her calves silently glided over one another; her skin glowing in the old streetlamp’s light above us. It flickered akin to the buzz of a fruit fly, and the church behind us stood defiantly in the wind that gathered a voice to caution of the cold night to come.
Valeria had a change to her, a change that whispered anger in her eyes. I could understand why she had that much compression in her cheeks, how much her hair bounced healthy in the wind, and how her hips warned of danger if I treaded carelessly.
The words could not dare fail me then, for it was my fault. My faults for letting her go through whatever her soul screamed at me. It was my miserable need and yearning for her body and companionship that led us down this horrendous path, one on which uncertainty coupled with trouble at the end of the rabbit hole.
She needs to know.
She clearly had patience, waiting for me to start. I had no intention of failing her, for my mind and body were in turmoil, unsure of the poison or healing song that would pour out of her mouth. My throat was held back by a lump that grew hotter and saltier by the second, and I stuttered.
Keep it together, Alexander. It’s now or never.
“Valeria…” I started, holding onto my own arms for support.
It was cold and windy, and she seemed a tad touched by the gust.
If only Jon could help me. No. This is mine and mind alone to handle. I’m the one who messed it all up, and it’s time to fix it.
“May I come closer to you?”
She was taken aback by my brazen attitude. Shaking her head once, I halted my advances. It hurt when she held up her hand and shook her pret
ty head the second time. Her voice was well controlled and prepared.
“Alexander, the reason I asked for this meeting was to finally give us a chance to talk. We never had that actually; a time to lay down what we both wanted and still want now. I want to be as clear as I can to kill the mixed messages, and I hope you’ll be okay with that.”
She had taken her time to think this through.
So have I.
“Valeria, I wish you knew how much I have suffered without you,” I broke out, trying to search into her eyes for a semblance of understanding.
All I could see was the pits of the abyss, and a waiting judgment. She looked away, as if upset at my remarks.
Can’t she see how much I’m trying here?
The tension was high, and she stared away, grabbing the ancient thickened tree stem by the trunk and stepping on the crunched-up leaves beneath her. Her dress glimmered in the night, triggering the memory of fireflies in my mind.
She did not want me near to her, yet the burning desire to hold her in my arms burned deeper than an inferno, more intense than a hurricane meeting the depths of an erupted volcano.
“You left me, Alexander,” she whispered.
I tensed.
“You left me in a lie, and went on with your life as if I was nothing.”
“I…”
“Nothing, Alexander. What we had was nothing, right? A meaningless fling that got you to cum inside a virgin hard and slowly satisfy your sick sadist desires, you, you!” she screamed, turning around and facing me.
Her face was wet with the emotions of bitterness and anger, and I could just stare at her face, but not at her eyes.
“You fucking left me to rot. You should have known what my parents would do to me, you bastard! You are a fucking asshole. You think that was manly, huh? Dropping me off at my parents’ house and giving a stupid excuse as that — sleeping on my desk? Really, Alexander? Really?”
I turned away, giving her time. The least I could do was let her get all her anger out.
“Face me, you fuck!” she screamed at me. “You had the decency of eating me out and fucking my asshole; face me like the man you think you are!”
A slight stir in my core rose, and the warmth traced its way onto my face and through my eyes.
Am I…crying? I’m fucking crying!
That actually stung.
The last time I shed tears was for my family, oh, Mom…
Turning around to face her, I noticed the truck had been moved. Jonathan had left and I didn’t even notice.
We were alone.
Good.
I would not hide what I felt. I couldn’t.
Not now; not ever again.
“I’m sorry that I told your parents you fell asleep at the desk,” I finally told her, which was the truth. “I honestly thought I was protecting you from their wrath, because I thought the alternative – that you were drunk – would go down much less smoothly with them. I shouldn’t have done it, though. I regret it. I should have just kept you with me in the office or at my house and then had you tell them you were with Stella overnight.”
“That wouldn’t have worked,” she said. “They would have called me and Stella to try to find out what I was up to. They still made me have permission even for a sleepover.”
I looked at her, wanting to insist that this was further proof that I had done the best thing in a bad situation. But it wasn’t time to prove myself right. It was time to make things up to her.
“Never mind my regrets. The past is the past,” I told her. “I can’t fix it, and for that I’m sorry. But I can focus on the here and now. And on the future I want with you, so badly. I don’t know what you’ve gone through in the past couple of months, Valeria, but I’m here now… Let me make it up to you by…”
“By doing what, Alexander?” she mocked, turning on her heel to face me. “Singing me a lullaby? Or maybe you’d like to take me to the moon in one of your top secret high tech toys, huh? You want to be here now? Where the fuck was your act of care and compassion when you fucking lied to me, Alexander? My own mother beat the hell out of me just because of that one night. A night I came to truly hate you for. You left me in the hands of a psychopath, and she got what she had wanted all these years — to finally instill the fear of God in me.”
She breathed away a heavy sigh of tiredness, one that could not be mended by a swift apology or cuddles and kisses.
Lisa, you animal! You fucking beat your own flesh and blood?
“Your mother…. I didn’t know, Valeria. I swear to you. If I had known what she would do the moment I walked away from that door…”
“You would have done what?” she heavily interjected.
The tension sliced through the agony in her voice, for tears of sadness were all she had to show.
“What? Tell me, Alexander. What would the almighty-swaggered, filthy-rich Alexander Foster do to have saved me from that retribution that was totally waiting to just fall on my head and send me to hell? Go on… I dare you to tell me.”
She is fucking pissed, and I have no justification.
My company, my work, my reputation…
“For fuck sakes, you’re thinking about it? I knew you had no soul, even when I gave my virginity to you… even then I should have listened to my gut.”
She did not even stop her line of thought. Her arms were shaking from the cold winds that had engulfed us, and even the gentleman in me could not offer her my jacket in light of the anger she radiated.
Valeria glided through the air in a manner even I did not see coming. She was leaving and had not even heard me out. Grabbing her by the arm was not going to work. Neither was begging her to listen. She had to listen to me one way or the other, though. She just had to. It was our destiny to be together and I was determined to make it work.
Her dress caught the wind as she moved, and I followed, silently. My fingers found her midriff, and curled around her waist, waiting for rejection. There was none.
Her smooth skin danced with nervousness at my fingers; my toes curled in delight and my stomach knotted in fear.
Will she reject me?
She turned, curling in my arms, as she turned to face me. The flickering light from above illuminated and bounced off her face and opened up her reddening eyes to me.
I was not letting go, not until she would listen to what I had to say.
“Valeria… my Valeria. Leaving so soon? Please don’t. Please forgive me, and stay here with me. Forever.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Valeria
Things were not going as planned.
I had, all at the spur of the moment, gone off like a stray bullet ricocheting off the walls of a subway tunnel. My feelings for Alexander Foster were founded on physical attraction to him, yet I wanted a bind that did not involve our genitals mashing together.
I wanted love unbound. I wanted a partner, not a dominant male seeking pleasure only for himself.
I wanted a man.
And he arrived, only in the ways society and the world deemed wrong in the eyes of God. And I persevered for over a year, waiting for the right time.
Despite mom hitting me spiritually with a hammer, and physically to prove a point, I still chose to follow my heart. I knew what was inside was pure and true, until my gut stepped in.
I hated Alexander for leaving me. For leaving me pregnant with a child that only I knew about. He had not deserved to know about it, though – had he?
I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. I hated the uncertainty he caused in me. My head said no, but my heart and my entire body said yes, please.
The cold wind raging around us did not stop me from spewing my deep anger at him. The flickering lights and the eerie night sky glimmering in the midst of darkness could not begin to fathom what blood lust I had for him. Even the unseen shadows lurking around, staring at a young woman and a middle-aged man arguing over their feelings for each other, did not faze me.
He just stood there,
looking at me, when I was not looking, and staring away in defeat when I did. Alexander knew he had wronged me, and his only way of acknowledging this was his silence.
His silence irked me.
Hard.
Despondent tears buzzed my eyes, waiting for an answer that never came. All he was giving me were excuses. Remembering how my own mom had beaten me to within an inch of my life nearly to the warm embrace of death while thinking of her God instead of her own daughter sliced through my heart; bitterness shook my core, and I was hating all men right there and then.
He faced me with a blank look. His eyes stung with pain from my lash of words, and our souls had contact for the briefest of moments. The distinguishable look of surprise on him was proof enough that he had not cried in a very long time.
Nostalgia was in his twitch of a nose, and with his voice echoing out in the wind, he started, “I don’t know what you’ve gone through in the past few weeks Valeria, but I’m here now… Let me make it up to you by…”
Make it up to me?
Does he take me to be that cheap?
Mocking him seemed like a great idea in my head at the time, but at one point I believe I took it too far. The emotions were getting heated, and he took it all, swimming in my hate and anger and disgust at the time we lost, the pain I endured, and not for one moment did I consider how he felt, what he went through.
I wanted to be selfish, and my whims allowed me to. Venom singed him bite after sting after scratch, and I did not stop. It all took a blur of a moment for me to walk away, believing that the conversation was going nowhere. Turning on my heel, crunching some leaves as I went, I decided enough was enough.
Calves tired, knees bent and ready to walk, I cut through the air obstructing the light above me. The winds sang in pain and sorrow, with my plan down in the gutter. I had wanted him to show his love to me, and all he could do was throw money at it.
I was just a convenience.
Two noisy steps. That’s all it took.
Two steps away from Alexander Foster towards Stella’s direction, when hard hands calmly embraced my midriff. Sparks flickered inside me, and I could not resist his touch. I could not pull away.
