Page 9 of Change of Course
I took a job at the Limited Too over the summer. I exaggerated my work schedule to my parents, or I lied and told them I was out with Jesse, or with Courtney or Megan or Anna, but mostly, I was with Jackson.
His mom worked a lot. His stepdad spent evenings at the motorcycle club, which was not one of the scary ones but the kind that were ex-military and did community projects for fun. Nobody was home at his house.
We made love. We watched TV and ate popcorn and he cooked dinner sometimes. We had sex again. We spent time figuring out what we liked: Jackson had this thing for wrapping his hand up in my hair and pulling it taut, and I loved the way he went face first into my girlyparts, enthusiastically licking until he found a rhythm I liked, and I’d put my hands into his shaggy hair and hold him there until I came, and then he’d grab another condom from his nightstand and we’d Do It again.
And we’d whisper sweet things to each other. We’d talk about a future together, when we could be open about our feelings and be together all the time, and nobody would be unhappy with us. I dreamed out loud…we’d both go to college, and we’d have careers and two kids, and we’d buy a nice house in Old Southwest, the best neighborhood in the city, which was jammed full of family homes that were built for railroad executives, and we’d come home from work every day and kiss a lot, and we’d have nice cars. We’d have a personal chef because I had no kitchen skills, and we’d take family vacations to the Bahamas…
He’d said, “But what if I don’t want that? The whole keeping-up-with-the-Joneses thing?”
I’d shaken my head, confused. “Everybody wants to impress everybody else with their stuff. Why wouldn’t you want them?”
He hadn’t answered, so I’d sat up too, and he’d gotten distracted by the way my breasts bounced when I moved, and we had sex again, and we never brought up the topic after that.
Until it was time for me to leave for college, and he’d done absolutely nothing about his future. Instead, he’d worked at a warehouse all summer.
I asked if he’d be studying at the community college. He just stared at me. “What, I’m not good enough for you?”
“Don’t you want to be better? Doesn’t everybody want to be better?”
Those dark eyes of his went cold. “I won’t be your dirty little secret anymore, Cherry. Take me as I am, or don’t take me at all.”
I was an idiot. I made a terrible mistake.
But that was then, and this is now. I confess it to him. “I should never have broken up with you.” I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have hidden you from my parents and everybody else. And I for damn sure shouldn’t have married somebody who wasn’t you.”
Even this is a risky thing. Because how can you choose to marry someone based on six months’ worth of sneaking around? How can you really know someone while keeping the relationship a secret?
But it’s true that I didn’t choose Mike because of who he was. I chose Mike because of what he was: a wealthy, well-respected professional. Maybe it’s as much my fault as it was his.
“What’s your fault?” Jackson asks, taking my hand and leading me to one of the chairs by the window.
I tell him about my marriage. How my dad died, and I’d felt so alone and unprotected, especially when Daddy had advised me so carefully about what I should study and where I should go to do it and who I should hang out with and how I should spend my time.
Jackson’s shaking his head. “They raised you to think that you shouldn’t make your own decisions,” he says, with an edge of anger in his voice. “That you couldn’t make your own decisions. But you can, Cherry. I always knew you could do it. You just had to choose to be brave.”
“I’m not brave when it counts,” I say, miserable.
“But you can be,” he says, his eyes boring into mine, intense. “And listen up, sweetheart: you have a backbone. Use it. Use it to tell me to stick it up my ass, if you need to, but I fucked up too.” His nostrils flare, and he leans closer. “I let you tell me that what we had wasn’t enough. I believed that I wasn’t good enough. We were both stupid.”
Tears start coming to my eyes, and I wipe under them carefully with my fingers, trying to preserve my smoky makeup. Jackson makes an impatient noise and gets up from the table, coming back with a handful of tissues. “I was really glad to see you, Cherry.”
“Why do you call me that?” My voice is shaky and a little annoyed, but it feels good to say what’s on my mind. “Because you popped my cherry?”
He snorts out a surprised laugh. “I didn’t think you’d get that reference. You used to be pretty naive.”
I roll my eyes.
“But no,” he says, his voice going soft. “I call you Cherry because you used to wear that cherry lip gloss all the time.”
“I remember that!” It was flavored lip gloss in this little flip-top tube that I thought was the coolest, even though it was probably meant for girls younger than me.
“You tasted like cherry candy.” He smiles. “I was pretty addicted to you.”
“Was?” I tease a little, forgetting for a moment the breakup was really my fault.
He looks down, lifting one shoulder. “Well. It probably wouldn’t take much to make me backslide.” When he looks back up at me, his eyes are hot, stormy. “One kiss would do it, Cherry.”
The desire flooding through me is both familiar and new. There’s little of the forbidden in it, and a great deal of hope.