According to Jane

by Marilyn Brant

  I laughed.

  He got the condom on within a few seconds and tossed the packet to the floor. With the best of our ability we angled ourselves so everything that needed to connect would be aligned…but this proved trickier than I’d thought. Jason Bertignoli hadn’t managed to maneuver it right and hadn’t noticed. But Sam Blaine — well, he knew the difference.

  Sensing the depth of his extensive past experience filled me with my first real bolt of apprehension that night. How many girls had he had already? How could I possibly measure up?

  But Sam refused to allow time for second-guessing. He puffed out a couple breaths then said in my ear, “Guide me.”

  “What?”

  He exhaled another few times. “Reach up, between your legs, and guide me. I don’t wanna hurt you.”

  I swallowed, nodded, did as he asked. The thin plastic of the condom slipped against my palm. His penis jumped in my hand — just like Jason’s, I remembered. But, unlike Jason, Sam was a near master at nuance and control for a teenage boy.

  I helped Sam slide an inch or two inside of me. Then I released him. I got the feeling he wouldn’t need more help than that.

  He didn’t.

  He filled me with himself with one quick thrust, breaking through my physical and emotional barriers in an instant. I cried out, and he caressed me, whispering, “I’m sorry…I did that too fast. I’ll go slower now, Ellie. I promise.”

  True to his word, he began moving his hips in a slow, sinewy fashion, creating in me a longing for him so strong I had no idea where it came from or how I could possibly bear it. He thrust in and pulled out again, and again, and again. Every time we joined closer together, we leaped higher toward a place of unrecognizable origin. Maybe where our souls mingled before we were born.

  “Sam, I can’t — can’t believe this — ”

  He moaned. “I know.” Then he looked right into my eyes, and what I saw there rooted me more firmly to the backseat than anything else could have. His expression was one of pure powerlessness against this energy between us. It was disbelief combined with adoration and merged with undisguised terror.

  “It’s okay,” I told him, straining upward to lightly kiss his cheek.

  I heard what sounded almost like a whimper coming from deep within him. It may have even been a sob, but he buried his face in between my breasts to muffle it. Then his fingertips grasped the backs of my thighs, and he brought his mouth to mine, covering it as if to stifle a scream.

  The tilted angle changed the way our hips pressed together, and my very flesh began to quake. Sam’s motions quickened, and he slipped one hand between us, touching me just above the union of our bodies. It sparked pure combustion and engulfed me in fire.

  A moment later, Sam came apart in my arms as the flame that lit me ignited him as well. He cried out my name and then pressed me to him.

  He held me and nuzzled his chin against my neck. “That was incredible,” he murmured.

  “Yeah.”

  After a few minutes, he kissed my nose and heaved himself off me, reaching for a tissue box under the driver’s seat. When he removed the condom, I heard a sharp gasp.

  “Jesus, Ellie. There’s blood on the tissue.” He stared at me, horrified. “I thought — I mean, everybody thought you and Bertignoli did it. I didn’t know…” He gulped. “God, you could’ve said something — ”

  I sat up. “Everybody thought that? So, that’s why y-you figured it’d be okay to sleep with me? Here? Tonight?” I asked, my face heating up and my stomach twisting into an entity my body didn’t recognize.

  “NO! No, it’s not that. I’m just — it’s just — ” He stopped and looked at me hard. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. And physically I was. Emotionally, not so much.

  He touched my shoulder gingerly, as if it were breakable now. As if it weren’t one of the body parts he’d been squeezing with such vigor just a few moments ago. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, really,” I told him. “Don’t worry about it.” But it looked like he was doing more than worrying. Panicking seemed closer to the truth. Did I ruin it? Were we going to be okay?

  The two of us drew our clothes on in silence and my heart waited in limbo. I wanted him to be affectionate toward me again. To look me in the eye as he had only a few minutes before.

  Finally, he glanced around the car — the backseat littered with evidence of prophylactic usage and the front seat with proof of underage drinking — and he said, “Looks like I’m gonna have to really clean up here before I give the keys back to my dad, huh?”

  I sort of laughed and, a second later, he joined me. He put an unsteady hand over mine. “You’ll be all right getting home? I mean, I could drive you if you think — ”

  “I’ll be fine. The rum wore off a long time ago.”

  He nodded. “Then I’ll walk you to your car.” There was nothing optional about this statement. Sam seemed determined to play the gentleman until the very end. This eased my mind. Gave me hope. Convinced me things between us would turn out fine.

  Hand in hand we strolled down the block, the music at Chad’s house growing louder as we neared it, but no one — thankfully — lingered out front. Everyone had stayed in the backyard where the booze and the action were supposed to be. Everyone except us.

  “Good night, Ellie,” Sam said, kissing me breathless against my car door. “Thanks for an amazing evening. I hope it was, um — ”

  “Good for me, too?” I supplied.

  He shot me a sheepish glance and chuckled. “Uh-huh, yeah.”

  “You couldn’t tell?”

  He closed his eyes and tilted his chin upward, as if remembering. Then he faced me. “Guess I’d give it a thumbs-up.”

  “And you’d be right,” I said. “See you Monday, Sam.”

  A troubled expression crossed his face. “Yeah, well…okay. Drive, uh, safely.”

  I got in the car and pulled it into the street, Sam’s reflection in my rearview mirror showed him standing still as a marble sculpture, watching me leave. He cared about me. Sam cared!

  I floated home on the wings of newfound love.

  The next morning, as I awakened into my bright bedroom, the world aglow with recollections of intimacy and evening delights, I remembered Jane. Finally.

  Morning, Jane, I said, opening the door of consciousness wide enough to let her in again.

  No answer.

  Jane, c’mon. Don’t be pissed off. I told you things would be okay, and they are. Sam was wonderful. So amazingly wonderful! He’s not a nasty Mr. Wickham after all. You believe me, right?

  No answer.

  I laughed. Everything in the Grand Universe seemed magnificent on this electrifying Sunday. Okay, fine. I know you’re just being stubborn and don’t want to admit you were wrong about him. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to all of your advice last night, but I think I made the right decision after all. I paused. Do you think this is what love feels like?

  No answer.

  I sighed. Have it your way. I’m feeling too good to let you spoil it.

  By the next morning, however, some of my giddiness had worn off. It wasn’t as though I’d seriously expected Sam to stop by or call me at home…not exactly. He’d never done either before. But if he’d wanted to, he could have. Our phone number was listed. He knew which street we lived on. His house was within easy walking distance. And no one would’ve given him a hard time for visiting because no one (but a silent Jane) knew what’d happened between us.

  I was certain, though, that things would be great in school that day. Our only scheduled final exam was in chem II, and there was no way he’d miss that. I counted the Monday-morning minutes until I could get to class.

  With a grin on my face that I couldn’t hide, I marched into the chemistry room ten minutes early and looked around. Sam’s lab partner sat at their table poring over his notes, and Terrie waited for me at ours, but Sam wasn’t in the room yet.

  I did the usual chitchat thing w
ith Terrie, who thought I’d left Chad’s party early because I had a headache. Then I pretended to review a few formulas, all the time keeping one eye on the door.

  Terrie said, “You’re looking way too cheerful for test day.”

  “I’m just glad this is our last week,” I told her. “We can’t get to summer and freedom without the finals, right?”

  She warily agreed. “Still, that’s no reason to look so thrilled. Someone’ll think you have crib notes.”

  I shrugged off her irritability. Nothing was going to put me in a bad mood that day. Nothing.

  Then, with a minute to spare, Sam slipped into the room.

  I looked up and smiled at him. A really big and probably very geeky smile, but I was ecstatic to see him again after thirty-four eternity-long hours apart.

  He met my gaze and gave me a tight smile in return. Mine dimmed a little and my heart’s fluttering turned to a painful quiver.

  Once he’d had a chance to sit down at his lab table, I swiveled around and said to both him and his lab partner, “So, are you guys ready?”

  His partner answered in the negative with one worried shake of his head then turned his attention back to his notebook.

  Sam shrugged and pulled out his pencil. “I think we’ll all do all right.” His voice was bland. Unemotional. Almost robotic. In the past, he’d used virtually every vocal tone on me — sarcastic, cold, infuriated, moderately friendly on rare occasion and, most recently, passionate — but he’d never sounded like this. He’d never been so believably indifferent.

  I tried to swallow back the hurt and blink away an intense sadness I felt rising behind my eyes. I stared at Sam, and waited for some clue, some indication that he was behaving this way for a logical reason. Or, at least, for a reason that wasn’t going to break my heart.

  “Put away your notebooks,” our teacher commanded, slamming the door and waving the exam booklets in the air. “Test time.”

  I reluctantly turned away from Sam, my mind still racing to solve a puzzle that couldn’t be unraveled with proven mathematical equations or valid scientific theory.

  Somehow I muddled my way through the exam. If I hadn’t crammed so much before Chad’s party, I might’ve flunked it. As it was, it seemed I was capable of passing every test but the one that mattered to me most: My First Real Morning After.

  Sam finished his final before any of us, and he flew out of the room. Despite my difficulty concentrating, I finished third and hoped he might be in the hall waiting for me. I turned in my exam booklet, collected my things and left.

  The hall was deserted.

  For a full two minutes I just stood there, breathing. My body’s involuntary functions were all I could handle. My heart pumped blood. My lungs took in and expelled oxygen. My stomach fought to digest the buttered toast I’d blissfully nibbled on at breakfast, a time that now seemed like generations ago.

  My world had become littered with the irreparable shards of what was left of my happiness.

  I ran into the bathroom, hid in a stall and sobbed as noiselessly as I could.

  After three days of numbness and misery, my path and Sam’s crossed in the hallway.

  “Hey,” he said, by way of pathetic greeting.

  I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I ducked my head and bolted for my locker. But, to my astonishment, fifteen seconds later he stood half a foot away, waiting for me to acknowledge him.

  “What?” I made my voice icy, forbidding. I refused to look at him and vowed to God Almighty that no matter what other things in my life I screwed up, this particular confrontation wouldn’t be one of them. Sam Blaine would not see me crying over him. The fucking bastard.

  “Look, Ellie — ” He sighed. “I guess we never talked about that night at Chad’s…”

  I shrugged and busied myself with cleaning out the remains of my locker. I crumpled up an old calculus worksheet, ripped down a magazine photo of Bon Jovi I’d taped up back in September (yeah, Sam gave love a bad name), dumped everything else on the tile floor by my backpack and slammed the locker door shut. “What about it?”

  “Uh, you know, how afterward we didn’t really have a chance to discuss anything, and — ”

  I finally looked at him. “There’s nothing to discuss, Sam. It was fun. Now it’s over. We’re both going off to college in a few months, and I’ll probably never see you again.” I paused long enough to get in a good glare. “Well, at least not until our ten-year reunion. Although I might skip that one and hold out until the twentieth. I’m sure you’ll be balding and getting kind of chunky by then. The perfect ‘doctor’ look.”

  “Okay, you’re mad. I get it. I’m — ” He stopped talking.

  “You’re what?” I said, expecting at least a measly apology.

  “I — I guess there’s no other way to say this.” His face took on the pasty cast of someone about to walk into a confessional. “I’ll be working constantly this summer to make money for school, and I know you’ll be busy, too. Then, like you said, we’ll be going to different colleges and won’t run into each other much. The timing’s really bad now. Things just wouldn’t work out long term…right?”

  I picked up the last of my books and papers, and I removed my school lock. “Congratulations, Sam. You’ve officially made me regret every second of Saturday night. You’re a coward and an idiot and I’m glad to be rid of you.” Then, dramatically, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked away. He didn’t follow me this time.

  I told myself I’d survive seeing him the coming weekend at our graduation, but I prayed I’d never have to lay eyes on him after that. I didn’t want to put up a front like this ever again.

  Jane, I whispered, I’m really sorry. Really. Sorry. You were right about him, I was wrong. I’ll never ignore your advice again. I swear.

  But, as had been the case all week, she didn’t answer, and I realized I was truly alone.

  I’d been abandoned by them both.

  Chapter 10

  There are very few of us who

  have heart enough to be really in

  love without encouragement.

  — Pride and Prejudice

  So, nine years later, I found myself facing Sam again. This time over the grande mochaccinos he’d ordered for us along with a couple of chocolate-covered biscotti.

  I couldn’t believe we were sitting there.

  Together.

  The seventeen-year-old girl in me still cringed with pain at the memories that bubbled up just from sharing the same airspace with Sam Blaine. Even now. Even nearly a decade later.

  I watched him try to get comfortable on the hard café chair. He inhaled fully (was he remembering us as teenagers, too?), tapped the handle of his coffee cup a few times and then opened the discussion on our past few years.

  “When last we left things,” he said in a somewhat forced, soap-opera narrator’s voice, “you were walking out the door of that dive bar with your boyfriend glaring at your back. Whatever happened to that Dominic guy?” He checked out my left hand. “I don’t see a ring on your finger.”

  Nothing like driving a stake through my heart.

  “Dominic and I parted ways that night, as you probably guessed.”

  Sam raised a brow. “Breakup effective immediately?”

  “Yep. Although I did receive a postcard from him about a year later,” I confessed. “He’d just gotten engaged to a cosmetics company VP, and they were in Hawaii celebrating. I think he wanted me to know he’d made it big. And almost every Christmas he sends a holiday card to me at my parents’ address, but we haven’t spoken again since then.”

  “I see.” Sam fidgeted with his biscotti before snapping off a sizable bite.

  “How about you and Camryn?”

  “She and I lost touch,” he said, chewing.

  “Breakup effective immediately?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Yep. I left for New York. She headed off to Philly. I do know from some mutual friends that she finished med school, though. Wen
t somewhere warm. San Antonio, maybe.”

  “Are you still in New York, then?”

  He shook his head. “Boston. I start the second year of my residency in a couple of weeks, but my parents have their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary next weekend and my sister’s kids wanted me to be here for the Fourth of July for once. So I came home. Didn’t think I’d get to see you, too.”

  An unfortunate coincidence, Jane grumbled.

  I knew I had to tread carefully here. Jane had eventually stopped her silent treatment after the one-night stand with Sam, but this didn’t happen until after college began and I was a good five-hour-drive away from Glen Forest. When she returned, she’d said it was because she was a woman of her word. Because I’d exacted that promise from her to be there with me during college, no matter what the circumstance.

  I was lucky she came back.

  The summer she didn’t speak to me, I’d missed her like crazy, and I sure didn’t want to incur her wrath again.

  So, I made a conscious but very respectful request of her. Please, Jane, can we suspend all commentary for just the next thirty minutes? I need to keep a clear head for this.

  She consented, but with a resounding huff.

  I inhaled and looked sharply at Sam. I’d expected his typical sarcasm, but didn’t find it. Present only was that strange light of curiosity and intensity that I hadn’t seen in a man’s eyes in what felt like ages.

  This both frightened and saddened me.

  It frightened me because Sam Blaine was a man. To me he’d always seemed more mature than our peers, but a nearly five-year absence since that night at The Bitter Tap (and, cripes, nine years since we were graduating seniors) put this growth in perspective. His adulthood was undeniable now. The next time our paths crossed, if ever they crossed again, he could be married. Or even a father. He was already a doctor, not the snotty teen I always thought of when I dredged up those old high-school hurts.