Her face was confused, but she shook her head east and west with a tiny wobble.
“Then what makes you a monster? The fact that you were hurt, but you were strong enough to keep living despite it?”
“I… just hate the way people see me.”
“How do they see you Amelia?” He stopped for a moment and wondered aloud, “... how do I see you?”
“Like I’m pitiful… a burned up freak.” He touched the passenger side mirror and the glass cocked upwards.
“Look down at this mirror.” He glanced down at her and saw her eyes dart downwards to the reflective surface. “You’re not a freak to me. Are you pristine like the day you were born and perfect? No. But are you beautiful and worth savoring? Most certainly.” This time when his hand cupped her cheek, she leaned her head into the palm for more of his warmth.
“Maybe not right now… But when you get to see me for what I look like without clothes on, then you will run for the hills.” She stressed the word will as if the emphasis were intended to be both a portent of their future and reminder of a distant memory combined.
“No, I won’t. Amelia, what I like about you most is who you are as a person. I like the woman that buys food for the shelter without fail, even though you are too scared to bring the food yourself for fear of being scorned. It’s not about what you look like. When we make love, it will just be us, nobody else. It would be the act of using our bodies to become even closer to one mind. What you look like doesn’t matter to me. That changes with time anyway… Why are you afraid to let me in?”
“I’m just not ready for that yet. You don’t understand.”
“Try me. I may just and better than you think.” He would. She wasn’t the only person that had been burned by life.
She smiled, the quirk of lips was sad. “Ask me that later.”
“I’ll table it for now. But don’t think that I will forget it.” And he wouldn’t, she was only getting a reprieve here and now.
Amelia sighed. “I wouldn’t expect that.”
“Good.”
He wanted to remove the hollow sadness from her eyes. “Well, we have somewhere to be, but before we go let me give you something.”
“What?”
“This.” With that he swooped in and fitted his lips to hers, crowded her into a rock and a hard place. She was trapped between the SUV door and the man who made her heart beat faster. He tried hard to be gentle with her, to work her lips as if they were more delicate than butterfly wings. But she wouldn’t let him.
Amelia’s oral reply was aggressive, her hips flush against his, the hollows of her thighs home to the fit of his erection, which he had allowed to hang left in his boxers today. Her jeans radiated heat that scalded him to the quick and made him wish there were less clothes and more time.
With that unwelcome mental reminder, he pulled away from her reluctantly and couldn’t contain his smile at the visage of her blushed cheeks, the color almost a faint burgundy under the deep peanut butter brown of her skin. Amelia’s lips were a bright and bruised blush and swollen from their orally fixated aggressions. She was more pliable this way, as if she were made for his arms alone to enjoy. There was no other woman that had ever felt so good before. It had been awhile since he had been with anyone, but even his memories were nowhere near as nice.
She was so beautiful that he had to let her go.
Chapter Five: Let’s Play Ball!
Amelia was petrified to simply state the truth. She was about to actually put herself in the realm of people she didn’t know. And for no reason other than pure entertainment within a crowd. But after she had grudgingly conceded that she would go to the ball game, the remaining hours before Ben arrived, she spent fretting. What could she wear that wouldn’t make her stand out in the like a sore thumb while she was there?
When she dug past the monotone wardrobe of dark and light neutral hued turtlenecks, past the bland blazers and cardigans to match and beyond her extensive collection of slacks, there it was. She found her old college hooded sweatshirt and ball cap. If she put a thin mock neck shirt beneath, most of her scars wouldn’t show.
With the hat on and if she carefully combed her hair, she may be able to pass muster if the person giving the once over was quick.
She waited nervously at the door for half an hour and she made reason after reason to beg off while in the foyer. But when he arrived wearing a pair of jeans and a jacket bearing the Union Underdogs logo, she knew she had to keep her word.
Why did it have to feel this way? She was alright on her own these last years and she had learned to appreciate the value of her own company.
They made their way towards the municipal field, where most people would follow the bus into Charlotte. There was idle chit chat, and she got the chance to actually talk to another person about her books for the first time in years. It was amazing to see what he thought unfiltered and without artifice. The rave reviews he’d given the Ambrose Jenner series were beyond what she thought a red blooded man would like. The books were written from a male perspective, but the romantic angle was apparent as the Detective had a love interest that he scorched the sheets with on several occasions in every novel.
The scenes were borderline erotica and more descriptive than mainstream graphic. For him to enjoy that told her that he was open minded, as the Detective was into kink. Lots of it and the man frequently found ways to toy with his lover until she was nearly comatose. But she had never experienced the things she wrote about. Those were fresh from her imagination and plenty of research.
Once they were a few miles away, she looked out of the window and tried to ignore her imperfect reflection as it scrolled, hologram-like, super-imposed atop the landscape they passed. She scraped at her hair, combed the layered length in front of her face. Amelia was so lost in thought that she didn’t realize the SUV was off the beaten path until she felt the gravel sputter beneath the wheels.
In that moment, a million thoughts and images flashed into her conscious. Primarily, that maybe she had made a mistake. What if he was going to hurt her? Rape her? Murder her?
Stop it, you’re being a ninny. If he wanted to rape, kill, or beat you, he didn’t have to make you dress up and come out into the back roads. He could have easily hurt you any way he wanted right in the privacy of your own home. And no one would know for ages.
Then her overly active imagination played the scene in her mind’s eye, what it would look like if she were murdered.
The police would look at her half decayed body, maybe partially eaten by wildlife or bugs. Months could go by before anyone even looked for her. Her bills were paid forward for six months at the time, so her lights and everything might still be on. She was a woman alone and the case would grow cold after no suspects could be found. Her possessions would be split up amid the charities that she had in her will, including her home and car.
It would be a pathetic way to go.
But when she stepped from the SUV, Ben looked at her as if she were the only woman in the world. By the time he mentioned the words “when” and “make love”, she was toast. Her body was always on a low simmer, a by-product of the novels she wrote for a living and her natural libido, combined with a lack of physical satisfaction.
Her rampant imagination took another fantasy flight once again, but now she was in his arms in her bed.
The massive four-poster was framed in candlelight, courtesy of the huge pillar luminaries posted in the corners of the room. Their bodies entwined, a scant sheet twisted around their locked groins the only covering able to come between them as she fisted and gripped at the fabric. His cock would be a close fit as she was tight from years without penetration, save her fingers. His skin glistened and the only things she would wear that night were his body and her own sweat.
The moment her sex swelled with lust, his lips latched onto hers. The exploration was gentle, but she didn’t want that. Didn’t need that. Her fantasies were too deep for the delicate kiss he tried to se
rve her, and she wasn’t having it. Not now. Her hips nestled perfectly against his. That is, until she felt the erection down the leg of his pants.
Amelia didn’t remark on the iron hard bar of cock she felt embedded into her right thigh. But she did explore it. All she had to do was shift in the right direction and there he was cradled between her thighs, hard, hot and ready. For her. That realization, the fact that he saw her as lust-worthy made all of the difference. Her perspective was no longer that of a broken woman with a whole man, but that of a woman afire. But when she was pressed even closer to the car door and felt the mirror dig into her ribs, she had to stop this. They were on the side of the road, and any person could pass by while she necked like a horny teenager.
The thought was embarrassing, but even more so arousing. She wasn’t certain how she had come to this pass and so quickly. He had her at the single admission of her beauty. There were still the misgivings of her past, and those didn’t completely disappear. But Amelia was willing to try, and that was more than she had to go on before.
The ride the rest of the way was quiet, Ben didn’t speak at all, and Amelia didn’t either. What was left to be told? Everything and the weight of the unspeakable battered her mentally. He knew nothing about her, not the big stuff. Not the events that made her the person in the seat next to him. Nor even what happened afterwards. All he knew was the essence of her. But admittedly, that was something that no other person had bothered to learn since she became the shut-in she was today. That was something that she couldn’t share via a book jacket, or pre-launch media press release.
The bus was warming up as the Durango parked in the back of the lot. Benjamin quickly jumped out and walked to her side to let her out. It was then that she noticed the huge group of children that ran from several directions to converge with Ben as the center. And by extension she was bathed in the glory of exuberant pre-adolescence. It was… quite simply amazing and astounding all at once.
“Hey coach B!”
“You’re suposta to take us for pizza after right?”
“When are we leaving?”
“Are we riding on the bus with you?”
The melee of questions came from so many directions, that she wasn’t sure how he would manage the patience to deal with all of them.
But in the same way he gentled her, he calmed the children more deftly and quickly than a kindergarten teacher would.
“Hey team! Are you ready for the game?”
A resounding chorus of, “Yes Coach!” or some variation spread among the crowd until every member had concurred at least once. Though, some exuberant youths did so a few times.
Ben laughed with the happy children. “Good. Tonight, I want everybody to do their share. And why is that?”
A tiny boy maybe seven replied. “Because’s there’s no I in team.”
“Because we’re suppos-ta?” Another child piped in with a giggle.
“Because we wanna win?” She couldn’t see the child that said that one.
“I think all of the above sounds good to me.” Ben smiled and she saw the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes expand beneath the brim of his ball cap. “So are we ready to load up and ride out?”
The words, “Sure are Coach!” pealed around her in surround sound with premature victory yells.
The group of kids ran hell bent for leather towards the bus and piled on in the same fashion that they had unloaded in the first place. There was one mother who carried a cooler onto the bus before she kissed her child’s freckled forehead and climbed into a stereotypical “mommy wagon” minivan.
“Come on, let me get you seated.” He took her hand and motioned for her to precede him up the metal trimmed steps. The two seats in front were empty, and Benjamin showed her the one behind the driver’s seat. There was only space for one adult, or two small children on the slick cushion but she didn’t remark on it.
He walked down the aisle and the kids were quiet, as if every word that fell from his lips was pure gold. “Alright, I’m only going to say this once. I want us to win, but having a good time is more important. As a team I am very proud of our season thus far, and no matter what happens tonight, you are all winners in my book. Just make sure that none of you vomit on the field this time, and make sure to keep all of your teeth. If we do that much, I’ll consider the night a success.”
The kids laughed en masse. Amelia couldn’t help joining in, and with her overactive imagination she couldn’t help envisioning what that particular game would have looked like. Afterwards, Benjamin opened the cooler positioned at the back of the bus where the assistant coach sat.
“Everybody, we have a special guest today. Her name is Amelia.”
“Hi Ms. Amelia!” She heard several variations of the greeting from the hyper children around her and even the assistant coach gave a quick greeting by way of a tossed up hand.
Amelia smiled, how could she have thought to turn this offer down for her usual night of boring, lonely nothingness? “Hi everybody.”
When the children were silent again, or a quiet as a group of kids could be when armed with the energy of youth and the natural excitement that went along with it, Ben piped in. “Okay you guys, Conan’s mom was kind enough to supply some snacks for the ride. We’ve got,” Amelia watched as he leaned over and began pulling out small foil packets. “Juice pouches, and in several different flavors too. Looks like apple, grape and fruit punch.”
There were lots of oohs, ahhs, and a few kids called out, “Awesome!”
“Okay, give me a show of hands, who wants apple?” About half of the kids tossed their hands up.
Benjamin handed the right number of pouches to the assistant coach, who passed them out.
“Who wants grape?” The remaining hands went up.
“Nobody wants fruit punch? Mmm, more for me.” Ben chuckled.
“We know that one’s your fav-rit, coach.” The boy she saw with his mom earlier piped up.
Ben’s smile was radiant, and enthralling. The man truly enjoyed children, and the little ones seemed to like him back just as much.
“It’s the best of…” Ben was cut off before he could finish.
“Both worlds!” A small group of kids completed the sentence, and Amelia knew that this was a running joke among the team.
After everyone was calmed and seated again, Amelia watched Ben climb into the driver’s seat and turn on the bus. He pumped the brakes over and over again for a few minutes.
”So you’re driving?” She leaned forward to ask him the question as the volume of chatty children was an ear splitting decibel.
“Yep, I have a CDL. I got the license a couple of years ago when the pee-wee team was gifted with this bus to go to away games. There wasn’t a driver amid the group with the appropriate class needed to push one of these puppies, so I bit the bullet and got it. The parents carpool together in most cases, so everybody can save on gas.”
“Wow. What if you can’t drive?”
“If that happens, the parents would just follow each other there. Not a big deal, that’s the way it was before the bus anyway.”
Amelia could see how that would work just fine, but the bus would make the trip much easier on the parents involved. “Oh, okay.”
“I have something for you.” Ben smirked, and then winked at her.
“Okay… what is that, pray tell?”
“Open your hand and close your eyes.”
He looked back at her expectantly and she complied. It was cold, wet and had a plastic straw attached? When she cracked her eyelids open, she saw one of the fruit punch pouches in her hand.
“It’s the best of both worlds.” He smiled brightly.
“So how is this supposed to work exactly?” It wasn’t as if she had much experience with children.
“Watch.” He took a pouch from his pocket and pulled the straw off the front, then jabbed the unwrapped stem in a small hole apparently built for the plastic.
Amelia tried to do the same,
but her straw ended up bent as she stabbed in the direction of the tiny circular window in the foil.
“Not quite. It takes some finesse,” he laughed, “and a spot of patience. Here, take mine.” Amelia handed her juice to Ben and took the ready to serve packet in lieu.
“Thanks.” He quickly popped the straw in and immediately began to suck the contents dry. She was so rapt watching him that she didn’t even drink hers.
“You’re not going to drink?”
“Uh, yeah.” She held the pouch to her lips and drank. The first sip was delightful, way more refreshing than she anticipated. Now, she saw why he slurped the thing down the way he had. The juice was somehow yummier than any she’d ever had before. Maybe because of the pouch’s small size. It wasn’t fair that as soon as she was able to taste the juice it was gone and she only held a crumpled wad of foil at the end.
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