“She’s already forgotten you, ‘DoorMatt,’ ” he said as he put his arm around me and started to lead me away. Then he turned back to Matt and said, “Let’s go up to our room, Julie. I can’t wait to get you alone,” leaving Matt standing humiliated and frustrated on the dance floor.
Manny had thought of everything. He’d brought his record player and the Johnny Mathis album, the one we studied by. He’d even ordered my favorite flowers, yellow roses, from the front desk at the hotel. He could be very romantic. Or at least he played a good game of it.
“The flowers are beautiful,” I said.
“There’s a card,” Manny said, holding it out for me to open.
Jewels & Manny
Meant to be Together
Opal Weekend
“That’s so sweet,” I said, genuinely touched by the sentiment.
He locked the hotel room door, and we were finally alone. He opened the window so the cool night air and the ocean breeze filled the room.
“Come to the window,” he said, pulling me close as our hands locked and we looked out over the ocean together. The moon was full and shards of stars hung low in the heavens, sparkling like priceless jewels. The night enveloped me, fitting like a snug star-skin. I scanned the sky and identified Orion.
The sighting triggered memories of all the nights we had studied the constellations together at my house. I would spread a blanket out on the grass and we would lie down head to head. I’d point to the sky, easily locating my favorite constellation, Orion, by the row of three stars forming his belt and the row of faint stars forming his sword.
“There’s Orion the Hunter,” I would tell Manny. “He has two of the brightest stars in the sky. That blue-white star called Rigel marks his right foot. And Betelgeuse is the red star marking Orion’s left shoulder.”
My head was always in the stars. When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut. Manny and I had converted an old clothes dryer into our spaceship and actually tried to launch it from the side of my yard.
We had known each other almost all our lives, but I was still a little nervous around him, even though being here with him in Jacksonville Beach felt so right. I focused on the steady sound of the waves crashing against the shore outside our window.
It reminded me of the classic seduction scenes I had seen in the movies, and I thought I knew what was coming next. Manny looked at me with his dreamy brown eyes and reached out to embrace me. He caressed my face, kissed me long and sweet on the mouth, and led me over to the bed. He undressed me slowly, pulling down the zipper in the back of my dress, fumbling with the clasps on my bra, before he removed his clothes. He couldn’t stop looking at me, and I didn’t want him to stop.
His hand outlined the space around the medallion and traced the rest of my body. I shuddered, perhaps from anticipation or perhaps from the cold November air.
“Are you cold, Jewels?” he asked. “Come here. I’ll make you warm.”
He wrapped me in his arms and kissed me heatedly, pressing our bodies against each other. He laid me down on the bed and traced his fingers lightly over my breasts and along my stomach, and kissed me again. I couldn’t believe how tender he was. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. He cupped my breasts in his hands and kissed them, then licked the nipples lightly with his tongue.
“Beautiful, so beautiful,” he said.
Then he touched me between my legs until I was moist. I groaned. He kissed me again on the lips, and I responded to his touch.
“Are you ready for me, amada?” he asked gently.
I wanted him, but I whispered hesitantly, turning my face away, “You know this…will be my first time.”
He sat up abruptly, breaking the mood. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No,” I said. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. I want to.” I sounded tentative, but my body was aching for him and I didn’t want to ruin the moment.
“But I thought… I mean, you and Matt… Didn’t you two…” he tried uncertainly.
“No,” I said.
“But the way Matt talks, it’s like he owns you. You never…?” Manny left the words hanging. Manny knew I hadn’t slept with Matt. He had made a specific point of asking me earlier.
“Manny, of course not. I already told you that. Didn’t you believe me?”
“Then I’m really the first?” he said, a big smile breaking out on his face. He seemed genuinely pleased. “I’m glad. Are you sure about this?” he asked again. I nodded, as if I could really stop this runaway train.
He kissed me hungrily everywhere, examining every part of my body. I was burning for him, although the room was sweet and cool. I wanted to be closer to him. Needed to be.
We were lost in each other to the strains of “Wonderful, Wonderful” and “Chances Are.” When I thought I couldn’t stand it any more, he entered me, gently at first, then insistently. I bit my lip for a moment, but I was so excited I didn’t really notice the discomfort. It was the most perfect moment I’d ever experienced.
When it was over we both sat back, held hands, and stared up at the ceiling grinning. We focused on the steady whir of the fan. Then we looked at each other. Manny was staring at me like he was seeing me for the very first time.
“That was worth the wait.” Manny smiled. “You don’t know how long I’ve thought about us…you know, together like this.”
I started crying.
“Jewels, I didn’t hurt you, did I, amada?” he asked, suddenly alarmed. “Was it okay for you?”
“It was wonderful…just wonderful,” was all I could say, echoing the lyrics to the song I had just heard. I held more tightly onto his hand while he reached over and kissed me gently. Something inside me stirred. I wanted to be with him again, and he sensed it.
“You’re so sexy,” he said, running his hands all over my body appreciatively, murmuring softly in Spanish, trying to drive me wild. He touched me gently between my legs while he kissed me until I was ready to climax. Then he climbed on top of me and was inside me again. I held onto him tightly. We remained that way until he rolled off me and we fell asleep, still in each other’s arms.
Once during the night I woke up with a start and found him staring down at me. Something was troubling me, but I couldn’t put a finger on it.
I could see his face in the moonlight. Such a beautiful face, I thought.
“I love the way your nose crinkles when you’re worried,” he said touching my nose. “Is everything okay?”
“Did you use anything, protection, I mean?” I asked, unsure of what that really meant. “I’m not on the Pill.” Mackie was, but I didn’t have the nerve to go to the infirmary for a prescription.
“Sssh,” he whispered. “Don’t worry. Everything will be okay.” Risky behavior was part of Manny’s repertoire.
“I’ll protect you,” he assured me. I was so naïve that I stupidly believed him. On the field that afternoon, the announcer had reported that the Gator defense gave their players great protection. But, cocooned inside our hotel room, I wondered about the level of protection Manny was providing.
Manny had always been my protector. As I began to drift off to sleep again, my mind raced back in time.
When we were in the fifth grade, Manny protected me during the air-raid drills at school. Miamians had gone crazy back then, building fallout shelters to safeguard themselves and their families against the threat of a nuclear attack from the tiny island of Cuba.
Sylvia Goldsmith, Elena Gellar, and Mackie’s mother, Muriel, attended a community preparedness course at the local school, “How to Prepare for a Nuclear Attack,” and learned about stocking up on canned goods, water, and matches.
Cuban missile crisis fever was rampant. With menacing Russian ships only ninety miles away from Miami, the women took the whole thing very seriously. Relations between the two countries were strained.
“It’s all about the power,” Elena pronounced in broken English, speaking with conviction. “Who has it, who want
s it, who takes it!”
When the women returned from their classes, my mother went right out to tend her garden, as if flowers would really matter when the end of the world came. Sylvia watered her hydrangeas, and Elena pampered her petunias. My mother corralled my brother Joel and me and marched us single file down the long, dark hall in the middle of our house to wait for the all-clear siren. My mother hadn’t wanted to scare us. “This is only a hurricane drill, children,” she had insisted. But I wasn’t fooled.
At school, twice a day, we were instructed to hide under our wooden desks—scant protection against the blast—in preparation for the nuclear meltdown that mercifully never came.
It was during one of those duck-and-cover air raid drills that Manny and I huddled under our school desks. Our desks were always together because our last names—Gellar and Goldsmith—were as close as the two of us. The siren’s piercing sound was deafening, and my hands flew to my ears. Instinctively, he reached out and grabbed my hand tightly, possessively in his. “Don’t worry, Jewels, I’ll protect you,” he mouthed. Even back then, I desperately wanted to believe him.
At the hotel on Jacksonville Beach, I fell asleep, contentedly clutching the emerald medallion, which bound us to each other.
Manny’s mother had given me the medallion at a swim party at West End Pool to celebrate my Sweet Sixteen. Lifting the emerald medallion from where it was nestled against my heart, I closed my hand around the precious stone and thought of the moment when Elena had bestowed the priceless gift on me.
“The best, most important thing is family,” Elena had said. “You’ve always been like a daughter to me, Julie.”
What Elena was essentially saying was that she had handpicked me, the daughter of her best friend, Sylvia, to marry her son. When I unwrapped the small but heavy package, I was shocked.
“But this is too much. Mrs. Gellar, I can’t take this.”
“I know if my sister were here, she would want you to have this.” Elena placed the chain around my neck and hugged me. Tears clouded my eyes. And I knew that Elena had transferred all the love and affection she had felt for her sister to my mother, her best friend, and in turn, to me. Now maybe her dreams and my dreams were finally about to come true.
Manny and I slept in late the next morning and made love again. I felt free to be honest with him for the first time in our relationship. We explored each other playfully and talked about everything and nothing.
If things could only stay this way, I thought, the way they were in this room, on this morning. I thought Manny must truly love me, and there was now no doubt I was in love with him. I even let myself believe we had a future together.
“Jewels, you’re beautiful,” he told me as we walked along the beach together that morning, hand in hand, our bare feet—his large dark brown ones and my smaller pale ones—lined up in the surf and sand.
“So are you,” I said, and meant it. He laughed, easily accepting the compliment. He was, I thought, his face so beautiful and exotic next to my ordinary one. That he might love me was almost beyond belief.
When we were younger, we were inseparable. Wherever I went, Manny was never far behind. There was nothing I couldn’t tell him, except the way I really felt.
After what had just happened between us last night, I wanted him more than ever. But I didn’t want to pressure him. This might be a momentary feeling that for him would pass. For me, I knew it never would. But he would have to take the lead in the relationship if it was ever going to progress.
We went back into our hotel room, took a long, luxurious shower together, exploring each other playfully, before we packed and joined the others for breakfast. I didn’t really want to see other people right now. I didn’t want to break the spell, destroy the perfection we had shared, share him with anyone. I hoped Matt wouldn’t be there, for he could certainly see that something had changed. I felt like the whole world was watching, like I was lit like some enormous neon sign, flashing, “Julie Slept With Manny.” I hoped it wasn’t that obvious.
We each took a plate, wound our way through the buffet line, and sat outside on the patio facing the ocean. It was a bright, cool, sunny morning. Manny was looking at me intently, almost territorially, playing with the curl that fell on my forehead and trying to put it back into place, finding any excuse to touch me, born of our new awareness of each other. Matt walked over to our table and pulled up a chair.
“Hey, Julie,” he said trying to appear nonchalant, but I knew it had been difficult for him to come over. He was trying to read my emotions, which were transparent. Flushed, I turned away from him.
“Gellar…” He snarled the name. Manny was enjoying every minute of it. Matt swallowed hard. Manny put his arm around me protectively.
“Hey, Paver,” Manny said. “Why don’t you go find your date?”
Matt had probably guessed what had happened between Manny and me in our room last night. He was probably sick imagining us together like that. I felt bad about what he must be going through. I didn’t want to hurt Matt. And what did I really have with Manny? Did he return my feelings? I wanted desperately to believe it, but I wasn’t at all certain.
“We’d better head back,” Manny said. “I had a great time.” He put his arm around me and kissed me slowly, tracing my lips with his tongue, making it last for Matt’s benefit. I hoped this wasn’t just a macho competition between two fraternity brothers. Another notch on Manny’s belt. It was obvious Manny had been with other women. He was very experienced. I could only hope that our time together meant something significant to him. We were silent, but content, on the drive back. We didn’t need words between us. We never had.
When Manny brought me back to my apartment in Gainesville after the short drive from Jacksonville, he carried my luggage inside, took both of my hands in his, and pressed me up against the living room wall.
“I’ll see you later,” he said with a long, suggestive look and a deep kiss. “We have a study date before finals, don’t forget.” I looked up, unsure of what emotion I was seeing in his eyes.
I couldn’t concentrate on studying, so I paced the apartment until Mackie returned. A few minutes later I heard my roommate at the door when Little Jon was dropping her off. That meant Matt was outside, too. I didn’t want to think about that, and I hoped he hadn’t seen Manny leave.
“Mackie, thank God you’re here,” I said and grabbed her arm, pulling her inside, leaving Little Jon out on the front step.
“She’ll call you later,” I said, making my apologies.
“So tell me everything. Did you two finally do it?” Mackie wanted to know.
“Yes, couldn’t you tell?” I asked, beaming. “It was everything I’ve waited for. I just can’t describe it.”
“Sounds almost like a religious experience,” Mackie said.
“Now you’re making fun of me,” I said. “It wasn’t like that, but it was beautiful,” I tried to explain, to make my friend understand.
“Did the earth move?”
“Yeah, it kind of did.”
“You sound as if you experienced the second coming,” Mackie said. “Or the third?”
I blushed.
“I can see that shit-eating grin all over your face,” Mackie continued. “It was all over his face, too, but are you absolutely crazy? Giving up a great guy like Matt, who adores you for…what?”
“I thought Manny was your friend too,” I accused.
“Yes, but he’ll charm the pants off of you.” Mackie giggled. “Too late. Apparently he already has. He’s a louse where women are concerned. You knew that going in. I tried to warn you, and you wouldn’t listen.”
“But I love him. You know that. I can’t help myself.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of free will?”
“He didn’t do anything I didn’t want him to,” I admitted. “And we shared something really special. I think he feels it too, finally.”
“I hope so,” Mackie said sincerely. “For your sake, I hope
this relationship has finally turned the corner. He’s always had a thing for you, but I could never figure out whether it was lust or love.”
“Don’t be cruel,” I said. “Just be happy for me.”
Mackie hugged me. “You know I am. Well, what’s next?”
“I don’t know. He said he wanted to see me over Christmas. I think that’s a good sign.”
“What about next weekend?” Mackie pointedly raised her eyebrows.
“We have a study date on Friday,” I answered.
“Saturday is the last big fraternity party before winter break. Little Jon just asked me to go with him.” When she got no response, Mackie looked down, avoiding my eyes.
“You know something,” I insisted. “Don’t you? Because if you do, you’d better tell me now.”
“Well, Little Jon asked me what was going on between you and Manny. He said Manny was taking Nita Weinstein to the party.”
I was sure I hadn’t heard correctly.
“Are you sure?” I asked, even as I knew the answer.
“Yes. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you.”
“Well, Manny probably already had the date before this weekend and can’t break it now.” I tried hard to fight back the tears. I was always making excuses for his bad behavior toward me.
“Maybe,” Mackie admitted. “But he should have been man enough to admit that to you after he…”
I ran from the room. I was sure that was all it was—a previous engagement. But I wasn’t going to call him. I knew we would be studying for finals this week. He’d tell me then. Maybe I shouldn’t even keep the study date.
A short while later, the phone rang.
“Julie, it’s for you,” Mackie called out, cupping her hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s Matt.” I picked up the phone.
“Julie,” Matt said almost in a whisper. He must have called the moment he got back to the fraternity house. There was an uncomfortable silence between us. He didn’t want to ask and I didn’t want to answer. “Can I talk to you?”
Stones Page 10
