Eyes downcast, I say quietly, “You know I’ve reached out to you. It was you who made it clear you didn’t want to have much to do with me unless I played your game.”
“Well, now, I’ve been around for a good bit, Kitrina, not that you’d notice. I can’t say that I’ve seen you reaching out much,” Lamont contributes blandly.
“This is crazy,” I reply hoarsely. “Are you serious? You don’t even belong here, so kindly keep your opinion out of this.”
“He belongs more than your goddamned charity case over there. Why do I even bother with you anymore, Kitrina? Oh, go ahead and go with your contractor. Lamont and I have everything under control here.” She crooks a finger and Lamont strolls over to her. He makes a show of kissing her lips in a PDA display worthy of late night TV. I divert my gaze, feeling sick.
“Bye, Kit,” Lamont replies with a wave of his fingers. The urge to hit him in the face is almost too much to suppress
“Understand this,” Candace calls over her shoulder as she saunters out of the room, “if you leave with that hoodlum, consider yourself dead to me. I did it with my own parents. What makes you think I won’t do it with you?”
“You mean to tell me you’d disown me for being with Jayson?” I say incredulously to her back.
My volume rises to match my anger. “Why? Because he’s not rich enough, Mom? Because he doesn’t come from the right family? What is it? Tell me exactly why he isn’t good enough!”
Jayson steps forward and puts a calming hand on my shoulder. “Kit, it’s okay. Don’t fight on my account. I’ve got thick skin, but I’m not leaving you here alone to be treated like this. I’ll wait with you out front until Cast can swing through and take you home so your mother doesn’t make the mistake of shutting you out for good, thinking you’re leaving with me,” he murmurs against my ear. I lean into his touch, eyes closed. How could she ask me to give this up?
“No, it’s not fine. If she doesn’t accept you, then she might as well disown me because you’re a part of me, Jayson. So, take a good look at me, Mom! Get high enough up on your high horse to take a good look,” I shout. Candace keeps walking, and I feel invisible, and it hurts. I notice guests slipping into the coatroom to grab their things and leave, and the foyer empties of all but Jayson, Lamont and me.
“Ugh! This is going too far,” Lamont says. “Kitrina, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, leaving with a man like Jayson. I grew up with him. I know him. All his hidden little ways. Take it from me. You should leave this scumbag alone.” Jayson scowls at Lamont.
“I don’t even know you,” I retort. “Why would I listen to a word you have to say? Matter of fact, why the fuck are you even here, you piece of—.”
“Kit, don’t.” Jayson wraps an arm around me and hauls me away before I can claw the eyeballs out of Lamont’s arrogant face. “Lamont, I don’t know why the hell you have it in for me, but I’ve got no beef with you. Whatever you’ve got going on with Mrs. Schneider is between you and her. As for me and Kit, we’re none of your goddamned business. Man, what’s gotten into you? You’ve changed.”
“Oh, I’ve changed?” Lamont spits. “Well, I guess you’re right, but it’s for the better. Here’s the thing, Jayson. We both got out of the same hellhole, but you did it with your brawny strength, tough guy, and I did it with my brains. I don’t have a problem with you, Jayson. I’m just trying to protect my future daughter-in-law from settling for someone like you when…well, she could be with someone more like me. Like us. All of us here. Except you.”
“Where do you get off talking to him like that?” I snarl.
“Acting exactly like you used to act? I’ve been on the receiving end of classism, so don’t try to put me in my place, Kitrina Schneider. Or has slumming it suddenly made you forget you actually aren’t the underdog here? You chose to be common. I mean, look at you! He’s already debasing you. You’re causing a scene like a hoodrat—.”
Jayson lunges forward, snatching Lamont off his feet by the lapels. The rage propels them all the way to the wall and Jayson issues a vicious, quiet threat. “Don’t you ever fucking insult her again, you understand me? I don’t know what you told Kitrina’s mother to weasel your way into her life, but I assure you she won’t stand for you talking to her daughter like that. Candace Schneider is the least of your problems if you do it again around me.”
Jayson shoves Lamont back. Lamont drops to the floor, and Jayson pops his knuckles like he’d rather smash his face than walk off like he does.
“Okay, I think it’s time for you to get out,” Lamont responds coolly. He shakily gets to his feet.
“Let’s go, Jayson.” I grab Jayson’s hand and walk with him out the door. He pauses in front of the house, waiting with me like he said he would, but I have no intention of waiting for Cast. I keep walking towards Jayson’s truck. Jayson reluctantly follows me but tries to get me to stay.
“Kit, we should wait out here. Candace doesn’t need to think you drove off with me, and I know she has her people watching to report back to her. I already texted my brother. You won’t have to wait long to get home,” he says tiredly.
“I told you I’m not! Open the goddamn door!”
“Fuck, Kitrina!”
“Don’t you humiliate me in front of all these people too,” I plead softly, tears rolling one after the other down my face. Guests bump past us, evacuating the scene of disaster. Some look like they want to speak to me but I turn my face away. I only want to talk to Jayson. I take his chin in my hands and make him look at me. My voice is quiet but adamant. “I’m not stupid for loving you. You’re not wrong for loving me, and we’re NOT letting these people win. Now open the door!”
The locks click free, and I scramble up into the truck, slamming the passenger door shut behind me. Jayson has no choice but to get in too. He cranks up the truck and powers on the heat, but he doesn’t move. “Drive,” I order. “Please get me the hell away from this place. I never want to see it again.”
Jayson groans fretfully. “This never should’ve happened. This is all my fault.” His knuckles turn white around the steering wheel. He slams a palm against the wheel and grips it tighter. “Fuck!” he yells again, throwing it into reverse and backing out. We get on the highway and shoot toward my place. The miles don’t speed by fast enough. I want to be as far away from that house as humanly possible. I want to be in New York. Paris. Bangkok.
“It’s not your fault,” I try to persuade him. “It’s not! It’s Mom’s and Lamont’s fault. She thinks she’s protecting me. She’s really just trying to bend me to her will, and I can’t let her keep doing this to me or to you. And, who the hell is Lamont anyway?”
“I don’t know who Lamont has become, but he used to be my best friend. I’m pretty sure we’re enemies now.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters now. It’s me and you, Jayson. Me and you against the world.”
Chapter 28
JAYSON
“Two people can’t take on the whole world, Kit. Even if they could, I wouldn’t want you to spend your life with the weight of the world on your shoulders. That’s not how love’s supposed to be.”
She glowers. “It’s a figure of speech,” she says testily.
I ignore the look and keep my eyes on the road, looking for my exit. I rev the engine, the sound causing me to flash back to all those years ago when Lamont and I went for the joyride. Funny how life cycles. Only this time I’m not a drunk sixteen-year-old, and I don’t have a death wish. I have a life wish. Sitting next to me is my best friend and lover, someone who holds me in high esteem, and I want her beside me for the long haul. I seriously need to get Kitrina out of her idealistic phase and into the real world if this relationship is going to work.
“I want to take you somewhere, but it’s gonna be a long drive. Are you down for the ride?” I accelerate the car and whip it through the traffic, heading for a spot I haven’t been to in ages.
“There’s nowhere else
I want to be right now than with you.” She answers by rote and speaks like she’s reading from a mental script, which makes me want to tell her again that love isn’t like that.
Yet I swallow with remorse at the thought of her someday not saying shit like that, not thinking that way—innocently, sweetly, naively romantic. I honestly don’t want Kitrina to see the day love hurts and leaves scars or the day she realizes the world is too big for two people to go up against. Maybe it’s not her that has the problematic view; maybe it’s me and others like me who have seen enough terrible relationships to be skeptical of anything that seems too good.
Like us. Maybe I sabotaged myself, thinking we were too good to be true. Had I given Kitrina the benefit of the doubt instead of automatically believing she would reject the parts of me that I, myself, reject, I might have revealed more of myself to her.
“If there’s something you need to say to me, I’m ready to listen.” She says it expectantly, like she knows more than she’s let on. I look at her curiously. Has Candace already dropped the bomb without me knowing?
I nod slowly. “There is. It might change things between us.”
“Then…” She moves a hand to the radio. “Don’t say anything yet. Let’s just enjoy the ride.”
“Kitrina, some things can’t wait.”
“Hey, it’s waited this long, right?” she says sensibly. She turns up the stereo. Music floods through the speakers, filling the interior of the truck and making it impossible to talk without yelling.
Kit gives me a wan smile and lays her head back on the headrest, drained of the superpower idealism that made my little firebrand ignite with righteous anger back at her mother’s place. She rolls down her window. The bracing cold air mixes with the heat from the car and fogs up my windows, but I don’t roll it back up.
I adjust the thermostat and set the car on cruise control, resting my head too. In the center between the driver’s seat and the passenger’s side, our hands come together and fingers intertwine. We drive like that for the hour it takes to get up the San Francisco coast to where I want to take her. It’s a beautiful idea to just enjoy the ride. I let my mind travel back to Christmas Eves when I was a kid. There was little money but Momma always got us something. And there was good food and family…there was kindness. That’s all Kitrina wants.
We don’t stop until we make it to Ano Nuevo State Park. “I’ve been here before,” she says in pleasant surprise as she gazes out the window. “In the summer, the falls up by Elliot Creek are lovely. I’ve never seen it in winter, though. I didn’t think the state park stayed open during the cold season.”
“My grandparents brought my brothers and me here once when we were children, and I always planned on coming back but never really had the time. It was a wonderful trip back then in the midst of all the hardship the four of us had to go through. And that’s what I want to talk to you about, Kit.”
The falling drifts of snow refuse to stick along the fringes of the beach where murky waves lap at the dark sand. We’re not dressed for a hike through the densely wooded park, and it’s not the right time of the year for a nature walk anyway. I realize my spur of the moment detour might have been poorly thought out. However, I pull the truck over on the side of the narrow road and overlook the cliff to the ocean down below.
“I wish we could go down to the waterfall. Wouldn’t that be something to see? Oh, but I guess the water’s probably low this time of year. Down to a trickle,” Kit surmises.
It’s the perfect metaphor for relationships. Sometimes things are overflowing, and sometimes it takes everything to keep up the flow. “It doesn’t matter. It’s still beautiful.” I squeeze her hand tighter. “Kitrina, I don’t want to lose you.”
“I don’t know how else to show you that I’m willing to make whatever sacrifices have to be made for us to be together. Are you sure you want to tell me what you have to tell me now?” She flashes a wry half-smile, speaks in a light tone of voice that tells me it’s safe to talk but she’s scared of what I might say. I shake my head, chuckling softly, sadly.
“How do I put this…Basically, I’m the product of a single-parent home and grew up in a rough stretch of town. I have a…past.” I omit the word ‘criminal.’ I just can’t make the words come out. I’m a coward.
“That’s not news, Jayson. Everybody has a past. I have a past.” I see Kit trying her damn hardest to understand what I’m not saying but see her coming up short.
“Kit, you have a past anchored and rooted in comfort and security, and for all your sweet and noble attempts at equalizing our social standing, your past prepares you for a different future than the one mine prepared me for. You had so many more advantages than me…You don’t know me, Kit. You don’t know what you don’t know. I wish I could be as blindly optimistic as you, but we have to act responsibly. This relationship is costing you.”
“Jayson.”
“Kitrina, I am not the kind of man you give up your family to be with. I just heard your mother tell you in front of God and everybody that she’d disown you if you left with me, and you left anyway. Why would you do that?” The question boggles me. Even knowing Candace couldn’t have been serious, I wonder why Kit took the risk. If Momma ever said that to me…
Kitrina lifts her head and stares me down. “Unless you brought me all the way out here to say you don’t care for me and don’t want to be with me, then there’s no point in you telling me you’re not worth the fight. Frankly, I don’t care what happened in either of our pasts because I just left all my advantages behind. Now, it’s up to you to put your past behind you because it’s not in my way.”
Kit grabs my face and presses her mouth hard to mine, a desperate kiss that seals the words she just said. She’s willing to walk away from her advantages if I’m willing to walk away from my disadvantages. It shouldn’t affect my jaded heart the way it does, but right then…right then is when I fall in love with her.
I stare out at the frigid landscape running parallel to the ocean. A thin blanket of snow covers the ground at the edge of the woods and clings to the branches of spindly, black trees. A flock of birds fly against a late evening sky filled with wispy clouds. If I could preserve the moment and stay with her like this, in a bubble of silence above a beautiful precipice, I would. I heard once that falling in love doesn’t hurt. It’s the landing that kills. I’d rather hang here in limbo than risk a crash, and even though it’s past time to tell her the whole truth…I can’t. How much longer can I hold out? How much longer before she grows up and sees without the rose-colored glasses?
Chapter 29
KITRINA
It’s after dark by the time we arrive at my house. “Do you want me to stay or…” Jayson trails off uncertainly.
“Ashby’s with your mom, right? I’d love it if you stay.”
Exhausted by the emotional evening, I shuffle over to the sectional and plop down heavily. He wordlessly follows. “Moving forward,” I reply, “is there anything else you want to tell me? Besides the fact that you have a past.” I smile. Jayson kneels on the floor at my feet and eases off my heels, reaches up under my dress to peel down my pantyhose. My milky bare legs look fluorescent in the darkness. He bows his head and drifts silky kisses from my inner knee to my upper thigh. As he roams, my eyes close.
“I want to tell you how much I love the way you see me, and I hope it never changes.”
His warm, breathy kisses soothe aches that go soul deep. “I love you.” The words escape my lips before I think them through.
“Shhh,” he shushes me gently and hooks his fingertips under the hem of my panties, drawing them down and leaving me exposed. “No more talk. Just show me.”
As he pulls me to the edge of the seat and eases his mouth to the fountain between my legs, I moan, head lolling deliriously against the back of the sectional. The tip of his tongue curls within me, licking the moisture and inspiring more wetness with slow, teasing strokes in and out. I hitch in a breath in pleasure and squeeze
my eyes shut. I claw blindly at the sectional cushions. “Don’t you mean you’ll show me? You’re doing all the work,” I whimper.
“Mmm, hardly that. I can taste it. I don’t have to work for it at all. Your body tells me in a million ways.” Jayson pushes his hands beneath my bottom and clasps my upper thighs, spreading me wider. “Like this, when your nectar coats my tongue and confesses you’re sweet on me.” His chuckle fans the flames, and my soft giggle morphs into a throaty moan as he swiftly flicks his tongue.
My back arches and my pelvis rolls forward in an undulating wave, chasing the high tide of pleasure. “You feel so good,” I confess. He groans in response and clamps his lips over my clit, sucking the throbbing erogenous zone and laving circles around the pink pearl. Wet, wild sweeps of his tongue leave me fully engorged and ready to release. I gasp in amazement at the erotic torture. My fingers slip along the uncompromising fabric of the sectional as I try to get a handhold, as if holding on will slow the rush of ecstasy.
He breaks free to gasp, “There’s so much I can’t say…but, you already know, don’t you?” His burning eyes are embers in the dark, sincere and open. I do know, and he doesn’t have to say it.
My fingertips graze over his crew cut, and I clutch the back of his head to lead him back to the conversation going on between our bodies. My hips buck with the shock of exquisite pleasure when he kisses me there again. I ride his face with complete abandonment, my thighs quivering, thrills zigzagging from my skull to my toes. I can’t believe how it keeps intensifying, as if desire has set up its own networks, its veins and arteries feeding me what I need to stay alive. My hands reach down to caress the stubble of his cheek, and my voice echoes through the empty house, crying his name. I don’t care if I seem wanton. I want. I need. I crave him.
Jayson moans with the same craving. He exposes his thick, corded manhood and strokes it while he devours me. I get aroused at the thought that it turns him on to please me as much as it turns me on. It makes me want to return the favor. I entertain stopping him to do just that, but each time I open my mouth to say I’ve had enough, he does something differently with his tongue that has me begging him for more. Mindless with desire, I skate closer to completion. “Oh, Jayson, yes!” I exclaim.
Jayson: A New Adult / Coming of Age Romance Page 22
