A different kind of wave came over him, one of nostalgia, combined with loneliness, and he knew in that moment what was missing from his life. He wanted someone to share this with. He didn’t want to go back to his beach house to shower and prepare to go to Myrtle Beach so he could find a woman to talk to. He wanted to go back to his beach house and have her already there waiting for him.
He caught the sweat dripping from his eyes with the hem of his t-shirt. Then he began jogging again. At a fast clip—anxious to get there. He was going to read the rest of that story, then every story on that disc until he figured out who the woman was who wrote those stories. Because somehow he knew, he just knew she was writing to his soul. And he had to find her.
Chapter XII
While Clint and Callie got reacquainted with each other, Rand caroused the bars, punished his body at the base gym, and brooded. Masterfully. He was quick to feel the unfairness of finally, finally, falling in love with a woman. Why did it have to be with his best friend’s wife? Why was the only woman he had ever managed to fall in love with already taken?
It took some M.P.s at a bar one night to help him back to reality. Picking fights because he wanted to feel the pain of a bashing instead of the pain blooming in his chest was not a career advancement tactic. Fortunately, he knew one of the military’s finest chief warrant officers and he used his influence to keep the highly aggressive harassment he’d doled out to two sailors off the record. So he’d had his wake-up call. Get over it.
But nothing he tried seemed to keep his thoughts of her at bay. And his body, yearning for her touch, was driving him insane. Yet he wasn’t ready to be “unfaithful,” as ridiculous as that sounded. No matter how drunk he got he remembered how much she meant to him, how much he wanted her. He knew no other woman could take her place in his heart, and he wasn’t about to surrender his body just for the mechanics of it.
In a desperate attempt to find a way to be close to her, if only peripherally, he gave in to an all-consuming curiosity to find out more about the woman he loved, so he tracked down Callie’s mother.
He felt he had to find a way to stay connected to Callie, and as traitorous and foolish as it was, he felt he’d be closer to Callie if he could talk to someone about her who knew her. He remembered she’d told him her maiden name was Donalty and that her mom lived in Aberdeen, not far from the base. It hadn’t taken long to find her, and late one afternoon he’d knocked on Mrs. Donalty’s door. Irma was happy to have company, and over a bottle of Jack Daniel’s they purged their memories . . . one following the other, as if trying to one-up the other on Callie trivia.
“Her daddy made her go to finishin’ school ya know. Cost a pretty penny we didn’t have. Nobody I ever knew went to a la-de-da charm school—but her daddy insisted she go. He wanted her to look like a lady, act like a lady—be all elegant and regal like a damned princess. He thought she was about as fine as spun sugar, and twice as sweet.”
“She is, and I won’t have you saying otherwise,” Rand muttered as he toyed with the half empty shot glass, spinning it between his hands on the old scarred up pine table.
“Well it’s damn funny then that after all the fancy teachin’ that she ends up being unfaithful to her man and having two men puttin’ it to her.”
“Now I won’t have you talkin’ about her like that. I mean it.”
“I just can’t get over the irony, her Daddy’s vestal virgin doin’ two men at the same time. If’n he weren’t already dead, this surely would kill him. Do ya’ll watch each other gettin’ it on?”
He stood and had to rein in his temper, his fists were like grenades, ready to explode. Then he saw her tears falling on the table. He moved to kneel beside her. Gripping both shoulders he made her look him in the eye.
“It’s not like that. We both love her. Adore her.”
She snorted, “Trust me, I know about men loving her, adoring her, wanting to have her . . . as a wee baby she stole my husband’s heart and from the moment she called him papa I was never able to get a single piece of it back.”
“I got another bottle in the car. I think I’m about drunk enough to hear this.”
She smiled sardonically and lifted her glass, “And I think I’m about drunk enough to tell it.”
They heard a scraping noise around the corner when the ancient refrigerator stopped the loud humming when the compressor kicked off. They both turned to see Callie leaning on the doorjamb, her purse sliding to the floor by her feet.
“No Momma, let me. I can tell it so much better than you. I lived it, remember?” There was no mistaking the coldness in her eyes or the firm set of her chin. She was not happy that Rand was here. The steely look she gave him told him that she was going to give him the story he came to hear, and that she was going to make sure he heard every blistering detail.
She slung a chair around and plopped into it, seemingly heedless that her legs were splayed and that her skirt was high on her thighs.
Her mother spluttered at the sight.
“I don’t always sit like a lady Momma, just because I know how to.”
Rand covered her hand with his, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here. And I never should have told your momma about the three of us.”
She pulled her hand from under his, “No, you shouldn’t have. But as you did, here’s your sordid story . . . every disgusting, distasteful, filthy part of it.” She took what was left of the drink in Rand’s shot glass and downed it.
“My father worked at night, he was a bank auditor. And for as long as I can remember, he would kiss me on the forehead at 6:30 when he left for work. Then when he came home just before dawn, he would lift the covers, pull up my nightshirt and kiss me . . . there. I didn’t think you knew this momma. But I found out differently the night of my father’s funeral.” She gave her mother a hard stare.
“After everyone had left and we’d made some semblance of showing our respect, honoring him, and crying over his sudden death, you told me how you heard him come in the front door every night, make his way to my room and whisper things to me while I slept. What kind of things I asked you, remember? God you were hateful that day.
“You told me you saw him stroke me and tell me how pretty I was, how lovely my genitalia was, because he wouldn’t say pussy, although I know that’s the exact word he used years later when I was a teenager. If he saw I was awake when he came in, he smiled up at me and kissed me harder, and longer. Sometimes he put a finger inside me, but always he told me how lovely I was.”
She looked over at Rand, her eyes defiant but he could see the hurt in her eyes. She took a cigarette from her mother’s pack on the table. He’d never seen her smoke, but she tamped it, put to her lips and lit it like a pro. She took a deep drag and let it out, reminding him of Eva Gardner or Elizabeth Taylor in one of the old black and white movies. But it obviously didn’t appeal to her no matter how good she looked doing it as she crushed it out in the ashtray after only one puff.
“I wasn’t allowed to date for the longest time, and always before going out I was taken aside by him and told not to let my date touch me, especially there. No matter what the boy said, or how I felt. And then after I got home, and he got home, he would come to my room to see if I had done anything I shouldn’t have. I never knew how he knew, except that I didn’t do anything wrong, so I knew he could never say that I had. Maybe that had been his plan all along.
“When I went away to college, I’m not sure who the separation was harder on, him or me. Despite the nights that I dreaded, we always had fun together all the other times. We played video games, cooked, went to the movies, ball games, fishing . . . he even made doing laundry less tedious. I came to think of it as his due to be able to examine me every night. After all, I was his daughter; he had made me. And when he started referring to the area down there as ‘his pus
sy,’ it kind of solidified those feelings. He did own me. He told me that pretty damned often.
“He always said that it was all right if other men wanted me, but that they could never have what he had. That I was his. That I belonged to him.
“He came to visit me at college once, without Mom. I was surprised to see him when I opened the door. When I said hi and asked why he was there, he said, ‘You know why,’ and he barged right in. ‘Show me what’s mine,’ were his next words, and I panicked. I was no longer a virgin and I was sure he’d know it as soon as he looked at me. Plus, my boyfriend and I had taken a razor and neatened things up down there—quite drastically.
“So for the first time ever I argued with him and said I didn’t want him to look at me there. He got furious, dragged me to the bed and ripped my panties off. As soon as he saw the narrow little triangle my boyfriend and I had left as my sole claim to pubes, he began spanking me, and calling me names. He spanked my pussy—hard, really hard, with his open hand, and I cried at him that I wasn’t a slut, and that I hadn’t let anyone violate me. When I lied and said I was still a virgin, he finally stopped. Then, when the area between my legs was on fire and as hot as it had ever felt, he spread my legs wide and kissed me. He kept kissing me. He was crying and kissing me at the same time. I don’t know how it happened, but I came. And I cried some more. Then he spanked me again. God it hurt. I can still feel it sometimes, that raw, tingling feeling. It hurt so badly, and I was sore for days.
“I had to tell my boyfriend my period came early because I was so red and ugly and swollen. I didn’t want him to see me; he would have had a lot of questions I didn’t know how to answer. I knew this wasn’t normal, at least not for everyone else, but it was normal for me. It’s all I ever knew. It had always been this way—ever since I could remember, it had been this way.
“This was in September. The end of November I brought my boyfriend home for Thanksgiving and at the beginning of the meal when we toasted, we announced that we would be getting married in the spring. My dad stood up so fast that his chair tipped over, and I saw his face go red in anger, he looked at Todd, my boyfriend, and asked, ‘Have you already fucked her?’
“When Todd didn’t answer, he yelled at him, ‘Answer me!’”
“‘Uh, yes sir. I have sir,’ he said.
“My dad spun on his heel and headed for the bedroom. My mom jumped up and followed him screaming, ‘No! No! Don’t! Don’t!’ I had no idea what was going on.
“Then I heard the shot. My mother had just gotten to the doorway when his brains flew through the air and splattered onto their bed. He had killed himself.”
There was silence in the room for several moments. Callie lifted her chin from her chest and stared at her mother, but clearly she was talking to Rand when she said, “And that’s why she and I were never close. She knew he loved me more than her. That he desired me, and not her.
“After his funeral, it all just fell apart. Todd decided I wasn’t the right one for him after all; Mom wouldn’t stop drinking and blaming me for Daddy’s death, telling me over and over again, that my being a bad girl and ‘fucking the first man who came along,’ had killed him. Hell, I hadn’t even finished my first semester in college. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I couldn’t go home. My mother had made it very clear that she did not want me.
“One of my teachers, Mr. Edwards, helped me get a student loan and I moved in with a group of girls who were renting a house. I managed to get a degree majoring in English with Library Sciences as my minor so I could become a librarian. And as soon as I graduated, I was hired at the local library in a junior position. It wasn’t enough money to make ends meet and after the student loan money ran out, I started looking for ways to make some extra money.
“I had a boyfriend at the time who thought it would be a hoot if I entertained his friends at a bachelor party. He worked on me for weeks before finally wearing me down. I finally agreed to go topless for them as I desperately needed the money. He said that they’d each pay a hundred dollars to see my breasts. The scenario I would play out was one of a topless bartender and cocktail waitress. He even bought me a skimpy outfit, something between playboy bunny and saucy Lolita. Then he liquored me up to make sure I’d go through with it.
“We arrived at the party and he removed my overcoat. Underneath I was topless. I remember I had a black velvet collar with a small heart charm dangling at my throat, a white skirt with frothy crinolines underneath, and a lacy white thong. A white garter belt with white fishnet stockings and black stiletto pumps completed the look. As I stood there in front of twenty-eight men, mostly college students, some with their dads, some profs, and one man who I think was a reverend, I remember them praising my breasts. Saying things like, ’Lovely,’ ‘Spectacular,’ ‘Great tits,’ ‘Jay, you lucky dog!’ It went on and on. They were effusive with applause, especially two men who had been my teachers. I was red with shame while my boyfriend was multiplying $100 times twenty-eight.
“And he just lapped it all up as he came up behind me, grabbed my breasts from underneath, lifted them high and shoved them together as if offering them up. He thumbed my nipples, and I admit it did amazing things to me. Then he let go and humiliated me by making them jiggle lewdly. While everyone was oohing and aahing and being mesmerized by the size of my breasts, he pinched my nipples—hard. I remember it was harder than he had ever pinched them before. Then the talk was all about my long nipples and how much they’d pay to suck on them.”
Rand put his hand out, gripping her arm to stop her. “You don’t have to say anymore.”
“Yes, I do. It’s been years; I have to get this all out. You wanted to know, now you’re just going to have to sit there and listen.” She glared at her mother, who glared back at her. “And you, too, Momma. My shame is your shame.” She took a long breath and continued.
“A long line formed and each man had his turn to touch me until everyone began clamoring for drinks, then I had to do the job I was hired for, and serve them. With each drink I gave out, a hand reached out to pinch, tug, squeeze or slap at one or both of my breasts. Every time I passed by my boyfriend, he stopped me and kissed me with long sloppy kisses and then pinched my nipples incredibly hard. It hurt. Others were pinching my nipples, too, but he was getting some heightened pleasure from my pain. I could see his eyes glazing when I gasped, winced or cried out. But he didn’t stop, if anything he pinched even harder. For three hours my breasts were squeezed, caressed, fondled, thumped, pressed, licked, sucked, pulled, and slapped. I was alternately needy or repulsed. After the party really got going and everyone was getting very drunk, it was decided that it would be a really good idea to get my panties off, too. Jay was sent to take care of that—it was decided that, as my boyfriend, it would be his job to dispense with the rest of my clothing. They all chipped in and gave him five hundred dollars to get me totally naked. Of course, I didn’t know this at the time or I’d have bolted straightaway.
“Acting all amorous, he took me into a bedroom, leaned me up against a wall, and began making out with me, covering my breasts with kisses, sliding his hands under my skirt and under the elastic of my thong so he could insert his fingers into me. I was hot and needy and soon I was ready for him to fuck me. But instead, he slowly and painstakingly undressed me. I was so hot and so horny I would have let him do anything to me at that point and he knew it. In minutes I was completely naked, propped against a wall, my clothes thrown all over the bed. Then he grabbed me by the hand and pulled me back to the living room, and with a bow and a flourish, announced, ‘Gentlemen, my beautiful Callie, in all her naked glory. Isn’t she lovely?’
“I was naked in front of forty men as the party had grown considerably since it had begun. And as I was the only naked female in attendance, I was the center of attention. As I stood stunned, Jay began to caress me in front of them, pulling on my nipples and run
ning his hands over my body. Then he walked me over to one of his teachers and said, ‘Mr. Johnson, would you like to feel my girlfriend’s cunt? I could sure use a better grade.’ They all laughed as Mr. Johnson reached his hand down, grabbed my mound and squeezed it in his large hand. He slid his rough hand between my legs and his thick fingers played with my labial lips. I remember him saying in astonishment, ‘God, is she ever wet, I never felt a cunt so wet! Callie, you were always one of my favorite students, so this is a wet dream come true.’
“One finger went inside me, then two, and then he began frigging me like a jackhammer. Jay laughed as the others gathered around to watch and to wait their turn. I was mortified and tried to get away but Jay held me in place. Then someone stood up saying they had an idea and a bucket was passed around and money was dropped into it. Everyone wrote their name on a twenty and soon the bucket was filled and a name was drawn. One of the geeky grad students who had been my lab partner during my sophomore year won the right to take me into the back bedroom and fuck me. He was told he had to leave the door open so they could all watch. I don’t remember much about that part; it seemed rather short-lived. I don’t think he had a girlfriend and of course he was quite excited to have won me. Jay made him wear a condom, and all the others were envious because he was quite large.
“After he was done, Mr. Edwards, the teacher who had helped me get a student loan and kept me in school, covered me with a sheet and led me out. Before I left they took all the money from Jay and gave it to me. I had earned $3,490.
“On the way to the library, where I’d left my car, Mr. Edwards offered me $300 to suck his cock in the parking lot. I thought, ‘in for a penny . . .’
“He gave me a $200 tip. I made almost $4,000 that night and began my career as a stripper for stag parties. I never saw Jay again. He finally stopped calling after a month or so.
Flash Drive Page 13
