I wasn’t listening to the words of all those who guided me. Or to books or teachings or anything earthly. I was listening to my heart. Finally. And it had led me where it knew I needed to be all along.
Tim’s leg nudged mine, spreading my legs, and I opened to him, welcoming him in. I felt the head of him at my opening just as I had thirty years before. We were on Maple Street. In the downstairs bed again.
Only this time he didn’t stop. He nudged gently and that was when I left all sense of self. I was floating in an inexplicable space. Tim was there, sliding inside me. Without effort. My body knew him, recognized him. Greeted him with a moist warmth that guided him home.
There was no pain. No stretching. He fit perfectly. And I knew. My body had been made for him.
Only him.
He pulled back and slid in again, and with each thrust he filled me more, fit me better.
I’d never imagined anything so incredible. Tension was building inside me, but there was no threat. No defense. Just a welcoming of what his occupation would bring.
Belief was suspended. I didn’t have to work that hard. Didn’t have the option of disbelief. I rode with him, having no idea of what would happen next. Each moment was all there was. And each moment was perfect.
Until the most perfect moment of all. My body was reaching. Toward Tim. And toward a pinnacle it had never reached before. I heard my voice as I cried out and tumbled from one world to the next, pulsating around Tim just seconds before he groaned, and groaned again, emptying himself into me.
As I came back to a sense of where I was, I didn’t return to who I’d been. Tim and I . . . we were complete now.
And I was the woman I’d been meant to be.
We untangled, and still there was no awkwardness.
“Okay, Barney,” I said, filled with a new confidence, a boldness I’d lost somewhere along the way, “that one I owed you, the next one you will have to earn.”
Before he touched me again—and he would touch me again, I was absolutely certain of that fact—he was going to have to promise me some kind of future.
And before that, I had to tell him what he’d be signing on for. Because I didn’t kid myself. I knew that all of our encounters wouldn’t be as perfect as the one we’d just had.
I had issues. Times when just the feel of a man’s hand on my shoulder flipped me out. A form of post-traumatic stress disorder, I’d been told.
I was claustrophobic and had insomnia more often than not. I was high maintenance. And he had some tough choices to make.
Twenty-Five
TIM WENT TO WORK, I WENT TO SIGN BOOKS, AND THE WORLD rejoined our lives. I would be forever thankful for those magical moments in my hotel room, but by the time Tim picked me up that afternoon, life had intruded. I’d had a call from Chris on my cell phone.
He wanted me to have my stuff out of the house by the end of the weekend. And he was going to start charging me rent for the office space starting Monday. I wasn’t sure he could do that. But I wasn’t sure he couldn’t, either.
And the reality hit that my life was in the Southwest. Tim’s was in Ohio. I couldn’t move that far from my mother. I couldn’t tolerate cold and months of gray. And I was going to be strapped for cash for the time it took me to rebuild my life. He couldn’t leave a twenty-year career. He owned a home.
We’d come back to his room to have our talk. He was on a business call, and I was dreading the upcoming conversation. My stomach had returned to one huge knot.
I heard the words Tim was saying to his associate, and I stood. I needed to walk. Or take a drive. There was no place to go.
What if Tim didn’t understand? What if he judged me? What if James had been right and what had happened had somehow been my fault?
I hadn’t told him no.
What if I’d just reunited with Tim, finally owning his heart, giving him my whole heart, only to lose him again?
I wouldn’t blame him if he opted out of this one.
Even if he didn’t blame me, didn’t find me disgusting, just dealing with the fact that it had happened at all was hard. There were so many what-ifs. So many lost chances.
So many things that couldn’t be fixed.
We’d lost thirty years that would never be returned.
I had trust issues. Privacy issues.
I heard Tim say goodbye.
Twisting my hands, I turned to face the man I loved with all of my heart, feeling trapped.
He was smiling, his brown eyes twinkling. He pulled me to him and kissed me, opening his mouth and taking me with him into the place where only he and I existed. My tongue met his, and everything else faded away.
“Mmmm.” His hungry growl made me hungry, too. “I thought about this all day long.”
With his hands at my back, he pulled me against him, fitting his groin to my pelvis. He was hard.
And offering me a respite. Another time out of time. A trip back to fantasy land. I accepted his invitation.
I was in that place again, lying with Tim, floating on clouds of sensation, untouchable. One perfect moment led to another, until . . . it didn’t.
Tim’s fingers were between my legs, touching me. I could feel the crescendo building, and then, out of nowhere, there was dread. And coldness.
I lost all sensation. And started to panic.
I’d promised myself I never had to have sex again. I’d promised. I didn’t have to.
His fingers continued to move against my private parts, and I started to cry and squeezed my eyes shut to hold in the tears. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want . . . It had been so good. And I’d hoped and . . . I didn’t want to do this. I’d promised me I didn’t have to. Ever again. And . . . I was trapped. I couldn’t get out. I had to get out. I had to.
“Hey, Babe!” It was Tim’s voice. He was above me. But there was nothing between my legs.
“Babe?”
I opened my eyes.
“Babe, it’s me. Tim.”
I focused on the voice. And then the face above mine. I looked into his eyes. They called out to me just as they always had. He was right. It was Tim. My Tim.
Reaching for him, I pulled him down to me and held on while I sobbed.
Tara was in the bathroom. She’d calmed down, and they’d gone out for something to eat. He didn’t want to push her, but he had to know what was going on. He didn’t have a hope in hell of fixing it if he didn’t know what it was.
Whether she wanted to talk or not, at this point he needed an explanation at the very least.
The bathroom door opened and she came slowly out into the dimly lit room. Sometime between disaster and dinner, the sun had set.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“This. Me. The day.”
“I’m not sorry for any of it. Come sit with me,” he said, patting the couch beside him.
She sat down, but no part of her body was touching his. He pulled her over and put his arm around her shoulder.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s bad.”
“I figured that much out.”
“You aren’t going to like it.”
“That’s pretty obvious, too. I couldn’t possibly like anything that’s hurt you this badly.”
“You might not like me.” She started to cry and then took a deep breath, composing herself.
“I find that highly doubtful.”
“James . . . he did something really bad.”
Tim thought he was prepared. He’d gone through all of the scenarios—the lost custody thing, the affair possibility. And suddenly something clicked. The afternoon’s debacle.
Coupled with James . . .
He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear any more. And he knew he had to.
“Tell me.”
“We were on a date, and he took me down this deserted country road.”
He clenched his teeth. Needing to shut out the sound of her voice. And the pictures in his head.
“And?”
“He . . . he wanted to have sex, and I said no, and he . . .”
“He what?”
“No one knows. He told me never to tell anyone, and I haven’t. Ever. Not anyone. Not my mom. Not Chris. I don’t talk about it, Tim. Please, can’t we just leave it alone? Please?”
“No.”
“He put himself up in me, okay?”
He’d figured it out. And was glad for the darkness.
“He had sex with you.”
“Not normal sex.”
“What does that mean?”
“He didn’t go where you went today.”
Tim froze. All of him. His heart. His body. And his mind, too. Her words played themselves over him a second time. And a third.
“Where did he . . . go?”
But he knew.
God in heaven, how in the hell could this have happened? To his Tara? She’d been his, dammit. His. Her gifts, they’d been for him.
She’d been so sweet. So innocent. And . . .
“Up my backside.”
Calm. Stay calm.
“Did you tell him he could?”
“Of course not! I didn’t even know anything like that was anatomically possible.”
“He raped you.”
Her silence scared him. “Good God, Babe, he didn’t just rape you . . . he sodomized you!”
She was crying, softly.
“When did this happen?”
“In April of 1980.”
“Before I came to see you in July.”
That’s why she’d been so different that day. She hadn’t been in love with another man. She’d been worse than raped.
God damn the fucking bastard to hell.
“We’ll get through this.”
I wanted to believe him. It was 3:00 am and we were lying in bed in Tim’s hotel room. We were naked, and he was holding me with my head on his shoulder. We’d been talking all night.
“When did you say you met James?”
“In April of 1979.”
“A month after I didn’t meet you for lunch.”
“Yeah.”
“If I’d met you . . .”
I put my finger to his lips. “Don’t. The what-ifs will eat us alive if we let them.”
They might eat us alive anyway. We’d had so many near misses. So many times when tragedy could have been prevented. If I’d told Tim how I felt instead of asking for my ring back . . .
“We’re going to get through this.”
“How? You can’t even make love to me without danger of me flipping out on you.”
“So? If we never made love again, I’d still be happy with you. I love sex, Tara, don’t get me wrong, but I love you more.”
“But . . .”
“Besides,” he grinned at her, the old Tim grin, “I have a lot more faith in my abilities than you do. You had no problem the first time today.”
He was right about that. I was still shocked, every time I thought about it. “Because I was eighteen again and . . .”
“Then you’ll be eighteen every time until we get you through this.”
“And what happens when I have another episode like I had this afternoon?”
“Then we stop.”
“You’d stop?” I turned to look at him.
“Of course I’d stop. I did today, didn’t I? We go together, Babe, or we don’t go at all.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“What part of ‘I love you’ are you not getting?”
So I was a little slow. I was trying as hard as I could to catch up. I was not going to repeat my mistakes and let my life go on without me. One thing I knew for sure. If I had to choose between thirty extra years of life and sharing life with Tim, I’d give up the thirty years of life to have Tim.
“Trust me, Babe, I’m here to stay.”
Trust. “That night, after James . . . I decided then and there that I would never, ever trust anyone to take care of me again.”
“Care to revise that choice?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
At the moment I couldn’t think of one. I was too tired to think. Settling into the crook of Tim’s arm, I fell asleep.
Friday afternoon came all too soon. Tim drove the two of them to the airport, returned the car, went with Tara to check her bag, and then walked through security with her.
As elated as he’d been the morning before when he’d flown into Atlanta, he was sad that afternoon. He was on his way back to Ohio and sending Tara back to her life in Albuquerque.
He’d had her in his arms since they’d passed through security forty-five minutes before.
“I don’t know how this is going to work, me in Albuquerque and you in Ohio, I just don’t see the logistics.”
“Tara, don’t worry about it. What I know about life is that it will play itself out. An opportunity will present itself, and we’ll know what to do. Okay?”
She nodded, but he worried, too.
“Promise me you won’t back up on us.”
“Okay,” she said, as he’d known she would, but he also knew that deep down she was coming apart and he wouldn’t be there to help hold her together. He was sending her off alone to deal with the ending of her marriage, finding a home, and trying to deal with all of the memories they’d just brought to the surface, with the aftereffects of what that monster James had done to her. Talking about the incident had brought it out of a thirty-year deep freeze. He didn’t kid himself into thinking that there wouldn’t be fallout.
“Babe, just remember that I’m only a phone call away and it only takes four hours to fly to Ohio if you start to lose it. I can be out there in that amount of time, too, if you need me. And you can text me any time of the day or night.”
His flight was called. He pulled Tara behind some columns and kissed her. Really kissed her. Reminding her who they were and what they had together.
“Goodbye, Babe,” she said. “Call me when you land.”
“I will.”
He turned to go, but turned back. “Tara,” he called to her.
“Yeah?”
“I have something to tell you.”
She stepped closer with a worried look on her face. “What?”
“I love you. I’ve loved you since I met you on that cold rainy day in October of 1977. I just didn’t know how to get the words out. I just want you to know that. It’s always been there, and it always will be there.”
“I love you, too.”
“We’re going to make it.”
She nodded and, with tears in her eyes, turned and walked toward her gate.
Leaving her was excruciating. He’d just spent the greatest twenty-four hours of his life since 1977 and he was going home to an empty house and a life without Tara.
I’ve landed, and miss you like hell. I love you.
He sent the text to her when he landed in Ohio, but he knew it would be hours before she answered because she was on her flight home.
I’m home, Babe. I love you, and miss you more than ever.
Her text came in at four in the morning.
He was lying awake in bed without her. Something was going to have to change. Quickly. He’d already lost thirty years of a life with her. He wasn’t going to lose any more.
Less than a week after he returned from Atlanta, Tim had reached the limit on his patience, waiting for an opportunity to strike. Tara was in Albuquerque alone, dealing with her ex-husband and making plans to move to Phoenix. Her mother had taken the news of the divorce well, and she knew about Tim, too.
Her life was falling into place without him while he drove to work in the cold every day, did the same job he’d been doing for twenty years, and then drove home in the cold to an empty house. The Wednesday after he’d returned from Atlanta, he couldn’t face the empty house again.
He went instead to the local pub around the corner. It had been years since he’d been out drinking, and Rick, a fellow eng
ineer from work, had mentioned that he was going to be at the pub. Tim texted Tara and let her know he was out having dinner and a drink with a guy from work.
The first drink went down smooth and tasted good, so he ordered another. And then one more.
About that time, a text came in from Tara.
Hey, Babe, how’s dinner going?
He hurried to answer her.
Din good. Be bette ifff u are heee.
“Who are you texting?” Rick asked.
“I’ve been seeing a lady named Tara, Tara Gumser,” Tim said, pouring his heart out to a guy he’d been working with for fifteen years and who’d never even heard of Denise.
“To be exact, she was my first love and probably the reason I haven’t married all these years,” he continued.
He ordered another drink, not quite numb enough yet. But he was getting close.
His phone signaled another text.
How much have you had to drink, Tim?
Onlu 2 Hoo boit u
He thought that seemed right.
Then why are you misspelling so many words?
He was sure it was the phone messing up, but just to be sure, he paid his tab and headed for home.
An hour later, when Tara texted to tell him goodnight, he wasn’t feeling so well. He had no defenses. And no inhibitions, either. It was time to take care of business.
He texted her back.
I love you.
I love you, too, Babe.
And that’s when he really let it all fly. He just couldn’t pretend anymore. Not to himself. And not to anyone else.
Will you marry me and walk behind me the rest of my life?
He got the whole line out without a single misspelled word.
Are you drunk?
Maybe. Will you marry me?
Will you remember asking me in the morning?
Yes.
Yes, I will marry you, but I won’t walk behind you, ever. Or in front of you, either. I’ll walk beside you.
Okay
And just to be sure, he texted one more time.
It Happened on Maple Street Page 24
