Being Jane
by Arabella Quinn
Being Jane
Copyright © 2014 by Arabella Quinn
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Jane
I hadn’t been out of the house for anything remotely resembling fun in at least a month. Still, as I stepped onto the porch, carefully closing the rusty screen door instead of letting it slam shut, I could feel my mother’s eyes boring holes into the back of my head. I shrugged off her disapproval and walked over to my junker of a car.
Sliding behind the wheel, I stopped for a moment and said a silent prayer. Please start. I smiled when the engine turned over on the first try. It was a good sign. The smile slowly disappeared from my face as I nervously watched the gas gauge. It barely moved above ‘E’. I could make it into town and back, but I would need to deal with filling the tank soon. As it was, I barely had enough money for one beer at the local bar.
Pushing away the nagging worries that seemed to perpetually follow me around, I rolled down the window and headed towards town. My life consisted of one boring day after another. Not spoiled-brat kind of boring, but deep down bone-weary kind of boring. And I was going to milk this one little ray of sunshine that poked its way into my life for everything it was worth. I was banking on this rare night out to sustain me for a very long time.
I hadn’t seen Johnnie Morano in over four years, ever since our high school graduation. We had been good friends since sophomore year and he had taken me to Senior Prom. He couldn’t wait to escape this town. After graduation, he headed to college somewhere in California and that’s the last I had heard of him until his phone call last night.
I had been washing dishes in the kitchen when the phone rang, startling us all. My mother glanced at my father nervously as he approached the phone, as if it would suddenly jump up and attack him. No one ever called our house except for my best friend, Millie. And she never called after 8 PM.
When my father handed the phone to me mouthing, ‘it’s a boy asking for you’, I couldn’t imagine who it could possibly be. The conversation was brief. Johnnie told me that he was in town visiting his parents and asked if I wanted to meet him out the following night. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face as I accepted his offer. I also couldn’t help but notice the flash of suspicion cross over my mother’s face as she listened to my side of the conversation.
After the phone call, I answered my mother’s prying questions (yes, the boy who took me to prom) and left her to stew in her crazy suspicions or whatever was going on inside her head, and headed to my bedroom to call Millie in private. When something this momentous happened -in my boring life, this was considered momentous- you had to share and dissect it to pieces with your best friend.
Because the phone call with Johnnie was only about two minutes long, there wasn’t much to dissect, so naturally, we started reminiscing about our prom. That night had been like a Cinderella fairytale come true for me. I was a complete wallflower in high school. I had only two friends, Millie and Johnnie, and a few other kids who occasionally talked to me, but mostly, I was as unnoticeable as the faded wall murals. I was one of the insignificant people in high school that no one paid any attention to and everyone quickly forgot.
I didn’t even expect to go to the prom, but Johnnie asked me and then he got some guy that he was friends with to ask Millie. My mother was beside herself, but luckily my aunt, my father’s sister, convinced her that it was ridiculous to not allow me to attend my own prom.
Thank goodness, Aunt Bettie took me under her wing. She lent me my cousin’s prom dress from five years earlier. My mother considered my cousin, Sabrina, a wild child. She dressed obscenely (i.e. like a normal teenager), she acted like a hussy (dated guys) and showed no respect to her elders (rolled her eyes at my mom’s constant insanity). Suffice it to say, the dress did not go over well with my mother.
Sabrina’s prom dress was slightly out of fashion, but a hundred times better than anything my mother would have chosen. I knew most of the girls from school would be wearing full-length strapless dresses, but this dress had spaghetti straps and fell to the knees with a cute flared skirt. The dress was a beautiful navy-blue satiny fabric with silver sparkles all over it. The only problem was that my feet would be very visible, and I had no shoes that would work, and cousin Sabrina, unfortunately, had giant feet.
Mom had taken it upon herself to go out and buy me a pair of shoes as a graduation present. I almost cried with misery when I saw them: black closed-toe sandals with a one-inch heel and an ankle strap. They looked like shoes that even a ten year old would turn her nose up at.
Aunt Bettie came to the rescue again, helping me return the shoes at the local shop in town. Unfortunately, they weren’t even $29.99 as marked on the box. Mom had gotten them on sale for $16.99. It seemed my budget for shoes was going to be pitifully low. Aunt Bettie took me to the mall. I hadn’t been there in years, so I had to work hard to keep my jaw from hanging open at all the nice stuff I saw there. My dress code was strictly sales rack rags from low-end stores. And the only style my mother bought for me was baggy: shirts that were a far cry from form fitting and formless droopy pants.
My aunt forced me to try on a pair of silver sparkly three-inch strappy sandals, even as I protested that Mom would kill me if I bought them. I fell in love with them and only half-heartedly complained when Aunt Bettie insisted on paying the difference in price from the $16.99 that I had in my budget. She also bought me a bottle of glittery silver nail polish. Did I mention that my aunt is a beautician? So of course, she did my hair for the day of the prom in a gorgeous up-do of soft flowing curls.
And while I may have felt like Cinderella going to the ball, my mother hated every minute of it, especially that I returned the shoes she had picked out. I don’t think she talked to me that entire summer.
Dad gave Johnnie the obligatory pre-prom lecture, but Johnnie didn’t look too intimidated. I was busy peeking through the staircase spindles at Johnnie looking so handsome in a tuxedo and listening with mortification to my father’s instructions, “Bring her home directly after the prom. Don’t stop off anywhere, son.”
I was extremely nervous about the whole thing, but I was determined to lose my virginity that night. I was looking prettier than I had ever looked in my entire life. You could actually tell that I was a girl. When I had first come downstairs after getting ready, I saw my mother’s face grow red and mottled and could see her sputtering and roiling with anxiety, while my father hastily glanced away when he saw me. There was nothing indecent about the dress. But it was me, Jane. And yes, I had boobs. And dammit, they looked good. For once, I wouldn’t let my mother’s extreme prudishness ruin my night.
That night was a lot of firsts for me. It was my first date with a boy and my first school dance. But it wasn’t my first kiss and Johnnie wasn’t my first lover. My first kiss had happened about two weeks earlier and losing my virginity never did happen that night.
My first kiss had probably been the biggest and craziest thing that had ever happened to me up to that point in my life. Before I had been aske
d to the prom, my mother must have been feeling pretty generous, because she allowed me to sleep over Millie’s house one night. It was the third time ever that I had slept away from my home. In a flash of genius, Millie asked her parents if she could stay over my house. Voilà. In a matter of moments, my boring life had sparked some excitement. And luckily, my mother was too timid to pick up the phone to check with Millie’s parents. We had the whole night to do whatever we wanted.
The problem was that neither of us had any clue as to what we could possibly do. Go to the mall? Neither of us had money and it was too far to drive for either of us. (Did I mention how sheltered we were?) Movies? Bowling? No money. I sat dejectedly, knowing that we would probably squander this golden opportunity.
Suddenly, Millie sat up straight. “I heard a bunch of kids talking in class. There’s a party at Jordan’s house tonight.”
My mouth fell open in shock. “Are you crazy? We can’t go to a party! That’s for the cool kids only. They would probably laugh us right out the door.”
I saw a stubborn glint in Millie’s eyes. “Well, I don’t want to sit around doing nothing all night. Let’s just go. Who cares if they kick us out anyway? We’ll be graduating in a few weeks and we’ll never see them again.”
I felt a nauseous churning in my stomach. “I wouldn’t be able to show my face in school again. It would be so humiliating! No way, Millie.”
“We’ve spent our whole lives bitching that nothing exciting ever happens to us.” Millie twisted her long dark hair around her fingers. “If we’re too chicken-shit to try, we deserve it. I’m just sick of it all.”
I pretended not to notice as Millie surreptitiously wiped at the tears welling up in her eyes. Her words hung heavy in the air.
Just moments before, I had been thinking scornfully about my mother. I would never get busted for the fake sleep-over, because my mother was scared of the phone. She only made phone calls if she absolutely had to. My mother lived her life terrified of her own shadow. Timid and worrying. Wringing her hands and waiting for the worst to come.
Was I becoming just like her? I cringed. But, this was so different. Right?
Millie was chewing on her nails. “Yeah. It was a dumb idea.”
“Not dumb. Just scary.” Could I possibly do something so insane?
It turns out that I could, and I did. And it led to being kissed by the hottest boy at school, Dustin Hamilton. Dusty was the captain of the lacrosse team and was a football and basketball star, too. On top of his athletic ability, he was impossibly gorgeous- dark wavy hair, sapphire blue eyes, a friendly smile with adorable dimples and straight white teeth, and a well-toned physique. A man’s body, not the scrawny builds that so many of the boys our age still had. Not that I noticed or anything.
Dusty was so impossibly out of my reach that I never even bothered fantasizing about him. I stuck to dreaming about guys like Johnnie, cute in a skinny, boyish way.
So when the alcohol finally wore off the morning after the party and I finally pieced together what my drunken antics the past night had resulted in, a mistaken kiss from Dusty, I about died of embarrassment. And it didn’t help that rumors were flying around the school that I had sex with him. It was more than my sheltered little mind could cope with.
But I had survived the disaster and went to the prom a week later with Johnnie. We all had the night of our lives. Millie’s date had swiped a bottle of whiskey from his parents. The four of us arrived tipsy. I drank just enough to take the edge off my nerves and allow myself to have a good time. We danced and laughed all night.
I was having a great time with Johnnie. We even made-out during a slow dance. Even with all the excitement going on around me, I still remember I kept one eye on Dusty and his date. And as preposterous as it sounds, I could have sworn at times that Dusty was watching me, which only caused my heart to skip a beat and my skin to overheat, as I threw caution to the wind and partied like it was my last night on Earth.
But, too quickly, the prom was over and Johnnie and I were parked at a hook-up spot awkwardly hanging out while we waited for Millie and her date to rejoin us. Millie lost her virginity that night. Despite my bumbling attempts to signal to Johnnie that I was willing, nothing happened between us, even after I practically mauled him in my desperation. It was a huge letdown on that memorable night.
Graduation ended that chapter in my life. Now as I approached the local bar where I was to meet with Johnnie again, four years later, I was no longer a virgin, but I was still saddled with most of the same problems I had always desperately hoped to have escaped long ago by now.
Chapter 2
Dustin
My cock knew it was Jane even before I did. I hadn’t seen her once after high school graduation. I figured she was one of the lucky ones, the smart ones, who made it out of town. That she’d gone to college and hadn’t looked back.
But long after I had given up looking for her during my college breaks while I was back at home, scanning the local bars, the diner, the high school football games or the get-togethers of old classmates; suddenly, there she was.
I stepped into the dimly lit bar with a group of my buddies and immediately sensed her presence. She was sitting at a high-top table with a guy who looked vaguely familiar. It looked like that Johnnie kid from high school who she went to the prom with. My eyes flitted back to Jane. It was definitely her, but she had changed in the four years since I had last seen her.
Her clothes showed off the amazing body that she had managed to keep well hidden all throughout high school and she was now wearing some makeup. Her hair was a lighter brown, streaked with golden highlights and cut into one of those edgy hairstyles that was really fashionable right now. Hell if I knew what it was called, but it looked damned good on her. I could only remember ever seeing her hair in a ponytail in high school. Except for at the prom.
The prom - when I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. And my date had noticed, too. Even though my girlfriend, Glenna, had believed me that I’d never slept with Jane and that it was all a big mix-up, she certainly hadn’t appreciated the fact that I couldn’t stop staring at her that night.
She had mocked Jane endlessly. “Of course you wouldn’t want a piece of that trash when you have me. Right, baby?”
Glenna had gone out of her way making sure that all the girls in her circle of friends agreed that Jane looked ridiculous in her old, unstylish and ugly dress. The girls sure agreed with her, considering she was the Prom Queen and one of the most popular girls at school. Most of the guys just kind of shrugged and didn’t really care.
But I didn’t agree. I thought Jane was the most beautiful girl at Prom. Her face absolutely radiated with happiness as she smiled and danced the night away. I couldn’t help but be jealous of all the little touches and secret smiles she gave to her date. That skinny kid, Johnnie, was fucking lucky. And I was stuck with the cold bitch of girlfriend, Glenna.
My friend, Chad, elbowed me, interrupting my high school memories. “C’mon. Let’s go get a table.”
Chad headed to the back of the bar. Suddenly, I didn’t want to play pool anymore. I wanted to stay up front and see if I could talk to Jane.
She must have felt the intensity of my gaze or even heard the pounding of my heart from so far away. She turned her head and looked directly at me, catching me staring. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open mid-sentence. I vaguely saw her friend, Johnnie, look over to find out what had caused her reaction.
I smiled and gave her a little wave, but she quickly turned her head the other way. But not before I saw her face and neck flush a gorgeous pink color. Was she remembering like I was?
The party at Jordan’s house had been the same as every other party. Jane Brown hadn’t even been on my radar. I had known who she was only in the same way that you know everybody in your high school class, even if you had never spoken to them before. I had vaguely noted that she and her inseparable friend, Millie, were at the party drinking only because I had never seen the
m out before. Ever.
After that, I hadn’t even spared a second thought to Jane. Glenna had been frustrating the hell out of me all night. Before we were officially dating, she had given me blowjobs every once in a while. Those days were long gone. Now, she grudgingly gave me sex once in a blue moon. Like she was throwing scraps to a begging dog. I had hoped I would get lucky that night, but she took off early with her giggling girlfriends, leaving me in a terrible mood.
I hung out with my boys, drinking until the place started emptying out. I was too drunk to drive home, so I headed through the sliding door that led to the finished basement where there was a sofa bed. I didn’t even bother to ask Jordy if I could stay over, I had crashed there many times and the lucky bastard was busy locked away in his bedroom with his girlfriend anyway.
I don’t know how long I had been sleeping when I woke up. At first I thought it was a dream. But no, something warm and very real was wriggling up against me. It took a few seconds for my fuzzy mind to put it together, but finally my mind cleared enough. Soft curves were gently pressing into me.
I felt my dick harden as my face broke out into a sleepy smile. Glenna must have come back to surprise me. Maybe there was a future for us after all. Maybe she did care about me.
My hands pushed aside the blanket separating us and wrapped around her hips. I dragged her against my hard cock and heard her soft moan. Her warm hand slid up my shirt and began sensually exploring my body.
I was horny as hell and her surprise had my heart pumping like mad. Somehow, in the darkness, I found her lips. They parted invitingly at my demanding intrusion. The kiss was different than any before. Her lips were soft and full and she tasted like beer, but there was a passionate response that I had never experienced before that drove me crazy. It was fiery and urgent.
She responded to my kiss like she couldn’t get enough. Jesus, I was getting so excited I had to be careful. I had never had that problem with Glenna before. My hips were grinding into her thigh and she was pressing right back against me. God, I wanted to feel her bare skin all over my body.
Being Jane: A New Adult Erotic Romance: Fountain of Love Page 1
