Claiming Her_A Romance Collection

by R. R. Banks

  "You're really going to like it here," I said.

  He glanced over at me and seem to struggle to withhold rolling his eyes.

  "I doubt it," he said. "It looks like there isn't very much to do."

  "I'm sure that there's plenty to do," I told him. "You're going to be starting at your new school in a couple of days and tryouts for the baseball team are soon. Hopefully, you're not going to have a lot of time to be looking for other things to do."

  I meant it both as a way to encourage him to be more open to our new home and as a warning. I didn't take this move or the tremendous change that it represented in our lives lightly, and I didn't want to think that he did either. I wanted him to know that I wanted him to live up to my expectations.

  "I know," he said. "We've been over this."

  I started to say something to him about his attitude but decided to let it go this time. I remembered being his age and how much upheaval even seemingly small changes could cause. He had just been taken away from the only town he was old enough to remember living in, his school, his friends, essentially everything that he knew. I couldn't really expect an already rebellious teenager to be readily receptive to the situation. I could cut him a little slack now and give him a chance to settle in. Besides, if I was being completely honest with myself, I didn't know if even I was entirely convinced. No matter how hopeful and optimistic I tried to be, there was a part of me that still said this might not work out the way that I wanted it to. It was entirely possible that uprooting Jason was going to be the catalyst for him completely falling apart. In my efforts to help my son get back on track and live a better life, could I actually be pushing him over the edge?

  "Are you hungry?"

  "Yeah," he said. "What time is it anyway? It seems like we should be there by now."

  I nodded.

  "I got a little bit turned around," I admitted. "It seems the GPS doesn't like to work this far out. But it's actually not as late as it seems. It's just darker out here because there aren't as many lights as there are closer to the city."

  "Would it be overdramatic if I pointed out that you have literally taken the light out of my life?" he asked.

  I looked over at him and saw that there was a slight shimmer of humor in his eyes and I laughed, nodding.

  "That would be very overdramatic," I said. "I think that you will learn to survive on less electrical light. I promise that Silver Lake has sunlight. There's even a moon and stars."

  "The moon doesn't actually produce any of its own light, Dad."

  "Hey, look at you, showing off your science mastery."

  "Yeah. I'm a science wizard. I am also aware that despite popular belief, the moon is not, in fact, made out of cheese."

  I laughed again. It was good to hear my son sound like the Jason I used to know before something changed and the fog so common in teenage years settled over him. That was the son I wanted back, the son who I wanted to give a better chance. Getting even that small glimpse of him was enough to motivate me even more. I noticed a building with a neon sign up ahead and pointed at it.

  "Well, would you look at that? Neon. Your lifeforce."

  "It's a pizza shop! Now that is my lifeforce."

  Buoyed by the appearance of the still-open pizza store, I turned into the parking lot and we headed inside. Jason wanted to stay there and eat, but I was eager to get into our new house and ordered the pizza to go. Soon, classic white pizza box in hand, we got back into the car and headed on our way again. Jason clutched the pizza tightly on his lap as if ready to defend it to the death. He didn't take his eyes away from the windshield again until we had pulled up into the driveway of a white two-story house and I turned off the car.

  "This is it," I said.

  He leaned over to glance through my window at the house. I waited for some type of response, but he didn't seem to have much of a reaction.

  "Really?" he finally said.

  What the hell kind of reaction is that?

  I looked at the house and the porch light that I had purposely turned on and left burning when I found the house during the last visit. The finalities of the purchase were coming the next day, but this was our house. Our new home.

  "Yes, really," I said, feeling defensive.

  After a few seconds, Jason nodded.

  "Which one is my room?"

  That sounds almost optimistic.

  "Why don't we go inside and you can find out?"

  We got out and climbed the steps toward the front door. The worn welcome mat that had been on the porch when I first saw the house was still sitting there. It made me wonder about the people who had lived there before I bought it. They had been gone for quite some time, as the house had been sitting on the market for more than two years, by the time that I chose it. Even though the last owners of the house had nothing to do with me, the fact that they had been here in Silver Lake brought questions to my mind as to why they had chosen to leave. It was this defensiveness, that had haunted me for my entire life, and that I was struggling to put behind me.

  I opened the door and we stepped into the entryway. There was a faint smell of cleaner hanging in the air and I wondered if the real estate agent who had sold the house to me had hired a team to come in and clean it in preparation of our arrival. I knew that it was probably more likely that she had come in here herself and cleaned up, getting rid of the slight mustiness and dust that had filled the space when she had first opened the house for me. She had apologized profusely for that, telling me that no one had shown any interest in the house for more than a year. I hadn't minded. I liked that the house had been closed up for so long. The stillness was reassuring.

  Jason followed me into the house and looked around, taking in the living room to one side and dining room to the other. Ahead of us was the staircase, sitting in front of the hallway that led down to the eat-in kitchen and two bedrooms. Upstairs were three more bedrooms. It was far more space than either of us had before, and I looked forward to figuring out ways to use it all. I knew that one of the bedrooms would be my gym, holding my weights and treadmill so that I could keep in shape at home rather than always relying on the equipment at the firehouse. The three bedrooms upstairs had already been designated and I waited for Jason to run upstairs and find the one that I had chosen for him. I had arranged for a new bed to be delivered to trade up from the tiny twin he had been in for years and decked it out in the burgundy and gray that he had pointed out to me. Sitting in the middle of the bed was a new bat and batting gloves. The room positioned in between ours would be an office where he could do his homework and I could keep up with all of those fun aspects of being an adult that I had to take on by myself when my ex-wife left. Paying bills and keeping records wasn't my favorite Saturday afternoon activity, but at least with the new job and the lower cost of living here in Silver Lake it would be even easier to handle and I could grow the college savings I had been secretly keeping for Jason for the last several years.

  I was spreading the pizza and cans of soda on the floor in the dining room and wishing that I had arranged for the moving truck to show up today rather than tomorrow when I heard Jason's heavy footsteps coming down the steps.

  At least I knew it was going to be harder for him to sneak out.

  "What do you think?" I asked.

  "It's bigger than my old room," he said.

  It wasn't a rousing endorsement, but I'd take it. Jason dropped down onto the floor across from me and reached for a slice of pizza. Silence fell between us, but it was a comfortable silence. It was a silence that held the feeling that we were in this together, that maybe this truly was what was best for both of us.

  That night I stayed up well after I had pried Jason away from his computer and confiscated his phone, forcing him into the teenage limbo of having nothing to do but either sit up and sulk or actually go to sleep. I roamed through our new house feeling on edge. I had hoped that the house would already feel like home, as though the very act of us moving into it would som
ehow soften all of the edges of the newness and unfamiliarity and create a sense of calm and security. Instead the quiet around us and near-emptiness of the rooms was only a reminder of how strange and different this was. It only emphasized that this was it, this was our life now, and there was no turning back. It almost felt like the house was testing me, as though it knew who I was and was daring me to overcome all that had happened to me in the past to create a more worthwhile life here in Silver Lake.

  I hadn't bothered to order myself a new bed along with Jason's, and the one from the old house was still on the moving truck that wouldn't arrive until the next day. This meant that I spent my first night in my new home camping out in the sleeping bag that I had shoved into the trunk of the car with barely enough room to spare. The hardwood floor was one of the most heavily emphasized features of the home when I toured it, and even though it was attractive, at that moment all I cared about was that it was hard and cold enough to make my back ache within a few minutes of laying down. I wished that I had a sexy little distraction to keep me warm through the night. I had thought of Debbie frequently in the last several weeks, but now I couldn't get her off my mind. Being back here only made those thoughts closer and clearer. A big part of me wanted to get in the car and drive back out to the bar, just to see if she was there. Another part of me though, the logical, more responsible, and sometimes unbearably obnoxious part of me, told me that I couldn't just leave Jason at the house, so I could go chasing the sexy woman that had literally fallen into my arms. Even if I could figure out a way to justify it, chances were she wouldn't be there.

  Would I even want her to be?

  That was a question I wasn't sure how to answer. The whole point of making up a name for her was because I had no intention of ever seeing her again. I didn't want even the slightest link to her. Now I couldn't stop thinking about her.

  Chapter Four

  Gwendolyn

  "I'm leaving everything, moving to Hawaii, and becoming a hula dancer."

  I fought out of my jacket and threw it onto the chair in front of me. The Reverend stared at me as though he wasn't sure what to do. I glared at him as I reached down to pull off my boots. The slushy melted snow outside had managed to creep into the boots and my socks were wet and cold.

  "Oh, don't look at me like that," I said to him. "I'm sure that I could find an equal-opportunity luau that would be willing to take on a slightly dancing challenged, culturally inaccurate dancer. Maybe I could learn to be one of those fire dancers. I would definitely stay warm then."

  The Reverend continued to stare at me and then gave a big, dramatic yawn. His long pink tongue unfurled from his mouth and then his little head dropped forward to rest on his paw. I couldn't expect much more from him. After all, The Reverend Holy Frijole was just a cat. He couldn't really understand the intricacies of my deep-seated hatred for the first few weeks of the year. By this point, I was tired of the dropping temperatures, tired of the gross, partially melted snow, and tired of the overall malaise and funk that settled over after the holiday season came to an end. I once had really high hopes for this season. It had started with a particular pop after my one-night stand with the gorgeous stranger from the bar, but as high as that peak was, the rest of the season kind of tumbled. The sparkle and excitement from that encounter had faded and by the time the New Year rolled around, I was right back to where I was in January of every year. I never really understood why I felt this way at the beginning of each year. Even though I didn't have anyone to celebrate the holidays with other than my parents for the last few years, I really loved Christmas. It was my favorite time of the year just as it had been since I was a little girl, and I looked forward to it for months. While other people were still gorging on candy corn and seeing just how long the pumpkins would last sitting on their front porch, I was scoping out the first bottles of eggnog and unraveling strands of lights. Every year I was excited. Every year I looked forward to decorating and shopping and singing carols and all those other things that made November through December the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

  At the end of the day, however, it was all just another reminder of the fairly solitary life that I lived. I spent time with my parents. I went to parties and gatherings. I attended the abysmal mandatory staff parties with other teachers. When all of that was over, however, I was essentially just sitting around my house with The Reverend surrounded by a lot of fanciness. I somehow forgot how that felt every year. Some sort of Christmas magic would come over me and I would lose all memory of those long, lonely evenings. I would remind myself of all the reasons why I didn't want a relationship and tell myself that I could enjoy the holiday season just fine all by myself. And when that happened, the decorations would come out and it would all start again. I would have fun at the parties. I would be nostalgic with my parents. I would fill a tiny stocking with catnip and toys for The Reverend.

  Then Christmas came and went.

  As much time and effort that I put into decorating, I couldn't bring myself to let the decorations stay up for long after Christmas. Seeing all the decorations up around the house somehow made it even sadder that the season was over, as if they reminded me of the things that I didn't do that I had intended to, or all the ways that my Christmas season had lacked the resemblance to a Victorian Christmas card that I so hoped one day I would be able to achieve. At that point, my sense of control and organization would kick in and I would have the undeniable urge to take down every last remnant of the Christmas season before the new year came. It would take weeks for me to put up all the decorations, but by December 30th all visual representations of the holiday were totally removed from my home. That just left me with a cold, grey end of winter.

  I was feeling particularly miserable at the beginning of that January. I had promised myself that I was going to be more social after the resounding success of my romp with the stranger and had even managed to make a date for New Year's Eve. That date, however, had been nothing short of an epic failure and hadn't even made it all the way to midnight. Instead, I had rung in the New Year in a pair of stretchy pants and a sweatshirt and kissed The Reverend when the ball dropped. Now, I love my cat and he had gotten me through some really tough times, but I wasn't convinced that a kiss from him was enough to really set me up for a good New Year. Now I was in the throes of the miserable weather and the downswing of the holiday season, I was just ready to put it all behind me. My temper tantrum in response to stepping into the half-frozen puddle in front of my house aside, I had committed myself to making the most of the year ahead of me. School was going to be starting up again the next day and I had a lot of ideas that I was excited about for my class. My first few months at the high school had been better than I had even hoped for, and I was looking forward to finishing up the year strong and getting ready for the next. I told myself that, soon enough, spring would return, and I would be able to shake myself out of this gloom.

  I was peeling off my wet socks and heading for my bedroom to change into something dry and warm when I suddenly remembered that I would be getting a new student. I knew that it couldn't be easy to move in the middle of a school year, particularly for sophomores in high school. I hoped that my new student would fit in with the rest of the class and that I would be able to do something to make this difficult transition as easy for him as possible.

  Dressed in my favorite sweat suit and slippers that closely resembled a pair of black boots with a neon geometric pattern, I shuffled my way back into the living room. I picked up the coat that I had thrown to the side and brought it over to the closet to hang up. Feeling like I had regained order in the house, I looked to The Reverend.

  "So, what sounds good for supper?" I walked into the kitchen and opened the freezer. My eyes scanned the assortment of frozen meals that were stacked neatly along one side. "Turkey or macaroni and cheese?"

  He turned his head away from me, which I took as an indication that I should celebrate my last evening of break before the school ye
ar started again with a container of gooey macaroni and cheese. Once the container came out of the microwave, I brought it into the living room and curled up in the middle of the couch to binge watch a show that I had probably seen ten times before. As the scene on my TV went from a fairly innocuous image of people dancing in a fantastically romanticized nightclub to strangers clawing each other’s clothes off, my mind wandered as it had many times before to the man I had met the week of Thanksgiving. I had gone to that bar with the full intention of picking somebody up or getting picked up. I had wanted the excitement. I had wanted the thrill.

  Let's be real honest here, I had wanted the orgasm.

  I never would have been able to concoct a man like Ethan, though. His body was like nothing I've ever seen and the hunger in his eyes was still burned into the back of my mind. When I close my eyes, I could still feel his fingertips on my skin and his lips pressed against mine. There had been many nights that I had spent fantasizing about him and wishing that I had lingered in the hotel room for just a couple of hours longer.

  Just as I had hoped I went into school the next day with a renewed sense of optimism and hope. It was as though some of the fog had lifted and I could see the potential that was lying ahead. I was looking forward to my lessons for the day and to meeting the new student who would join my class. I reviewed the roster when I first got into the classroom and noticed that the student’s name was Jason Baxter. It didn't give me any more information about him, but as the teacher of what would be his first class in his new school, I felt a sense of responsibility toward him. I wanted him to feel welcome and to get him involved as quickly as I could. I knew that even though these students thought that they were all grown up and ready to take on the world, they were still so young and vulnerable. Something like having to move away from their school and their friends and starting again could be incredibly difficult for them. They may never admit it, but just feeling included and accepted would be extremely important to him.