21 Miles East of Quartzsite

A loud eruption of hoots and hollers broke Tess's train of thought. She looked out into the bar to see what the people were watching, but no one was watching the TVs. All of the young people were looking down at their phones. Would they ever live in the real world?

She turned back to Jack who was also looking at his phone. She was about to lash out at him when Mary interrupted.

"Tess, you'd better get Peter away from that girl."

Mary lead Tess to the bar.

Jack followed the instructions that Cathryn had texted and headed straight for her car.

"What the hell happened?" Jack asked as they drove out of the parking lot.

"I was going to ask you the same thing."

Jack hung his head. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Oh, I know what happened. I just want the details."

"What do you think happened?"

"She held your hand and walked you to a quiet place. She softly stroked your arm, hand and face while she made it seem like she'd never done anything to hurt you. You believed her even though you knew better. Then she asked you to do something for her. It was probably something degrading, something that you would never do with a clear head. But with her touching you, staring into your eyes and purring into your ear you were completely powerless to say no."

Jack wondered how she knew so much.

"That's textbook male manipulation. Every sleazy bitch in town knows how to do it."

"I'm so fucking pathetic."

"No, you're not pathetic. You had your defenses all set. You weren't going to the party. You didn't even reply to her invitation. I was the one that made you go. It was my fault."

She continued, "The thing you don't seem to understand is that you are genetically programmed to help people, particularly women. Once people like Tess realize that, they will take advantage of you again and again. It's like you have a handicap, except with the right woman it's a blessing."

Jack meekly smiled. "At least there's hope."

"There's more than hope. You can be that person you want to be. You just can't be it with her."

The passing streetlights created deep shadows that moved across her face as she drove. Only her dark eyes and deep-red lipstick held constant. Somehow Cathryn was becoming more attractive with each passing day. Jack wondered how it was possible that the girl at the truckstop could be so beautiful; was it the clothes or something deeper that had changed?

Jack had just laid down in bed when he heard Cathryn called from her bedroom.

"Jack, could you come here please."

She was sitting up in her bed, wearing the vintage nightgown he had seen before. She patted the bed and said, "Sit down here next to me."

He arranged his boxers so that he wouldn't be exposed as he sat.

She took his hand in hers and examined it. She touched a scar near his wrist with her index finger, then traced a tendon down to the end of his finger. "I want you to help me understand what is going on. Can you please help me?"

"Of course."

She smiled as she turned his hand over and examined his palm. "I saw Tess in action today, but I didn't get why she wanted to talk to you. Can you please tell me?"

"Please don't ask that."

"Oh, Jack, don't be afraid. I'm not going to hurt you." Cathryn had known he would be easy to manipulate, but it wasn't until she had seen Tess's merciless onslaught that she realized how strong her hold was on him. Cathryn resolved to break Tess's hold with a little manipulation of her own.

"Please, please don't."

"Won't you please help me?" Cathryn purred. Her voice was as smooth as silk. She knew that he would help. He had no choice.

She softly rubbed her hand on his. Her eyes were focused on his hand, but she was paying attention to every movement his body made.

"I don't see how this is going to help." Jack's cock surged up through the gap in his boxers. He tried to readjust himself, but she wouldn't let go of his hand.

"It's alright. Your cock is supposed to get hard." Cathryn appealed to a base desire of his subconscious. She touched his hand, his arm and his face. She nurtured his erection by touching everything but the erection itself.

Jack felt like he was lost in a stormy ocean of emotion. Waves of desire crashed over him. He wanted to please her, but was appalled at the same time. Cathryn was manipulating him just like Tess did. He had thought he could trust her, but he was no longer certain.

"Your cock got hard today at the party didn't it?"

He was silent.

"It's okay, just tell me that your cock got hard." She brush a stray hair from his face.

The sensation of her fingers on his face caused his cock to surge again.

"My cock was hard. My cock gets hard every time she touches me."

Cathryn smiled, "That's a good boy. Now tell me what you talked about."

Jack was silent.

"You're not helping me Jack. You said you would help me. Tell me what she wanted." Her hand made an excursion up his leg.

He continued to resist her gentle persuasion.

"Oh, Jack, I'm only doing this for you." She continued to caress his leg.

Jack did not want to expose any of this to Cathryn, but she was impossible for him to deny. He could feel anxiety building within himself as he said, "She wanted me back."

"But she has Peter now. I don't understand."

"She thought I wanted her to have another lover. She said she did it to make me happy." A bolt of panic struck him as the words left his mouth. His stomach wrapped itself into a knot and his whole body began to sweat. He stood up and said, "I can't do this. You have to go."

"What?"

"I can't do this." The panic rapidly subsided and his will began to build.

"Of course you can."

"I won't be tooled like this, and the only way I know how to prevent it is to stay away from people that take advantage of me. You have to leave."

"Tonight?"

"No, you can find a place tomorrow." He went back into his room and closed the door.

Cathryn couldn't believe she'd been so stupid. She should have known that he would be pissed off about being manipulated and she knew that his only defence was to push her away. It was exactly what he'd done with Tess. Now she'd fucked everything up. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The next morning Jack couldn't look her in the eye. They navigated around the toaster and coffee maker like strangers at a breakfast bar.

Cathryn was tempted to apologize, but thought it would sound like she was being manipulative. She said, "Do I need to go back to Arizona, or will you still support me?"

Jack considered the question. It didn't sound like manipulation, and she needed to know. He said, "I'll support you." It was what he had committed to do, but he still felt like a sucker.

She moved in with one of the other girls from work later that day.

A couple of days later Tess knocked at the door. She burst in as Jack answered.

"Would you mind reining in your bitch?" She spit the words at him. She was dressed in sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Her hair was a mess and she wasn't wearing any makeup. He had never seen her look so disheveled.

"Good morning to you too."

"Don't give me that shit. Where is the little cunt?" Tess stormed around Jack's apartment.

"What's going on?"

"Oh, like you don't know."

"Please humor me." He maximized politeness to contrast her rudeness.

"That little bitch of yours is posting six-second video clips of Peter making an ass of himself all over the internet. She started at the party and refuses to stop. I'm going to rip her fucking head off when I get my hands on her."

That explained the rapid exit from Mary's party. Jack laughed, "It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."

"Fuck you. I would have thought that you of all people would have been sympathetic to public humiliation."

"You're horrible. It's time for you to leave." With that he pushed her out the door and said, "Give Peter my best."

She stumbled onto the grass and shouted, "Fuck you asshole!"

Jack looked down on her spread out on the grass. "You really are a sleazy bitch. How did I miss that?" The expression on her face revealed that she knew he was gone for good. He closed the door without a second look.

That evening Jack found the videos online. Humiliating was an understatement. It was bad enough that Peter was cheating on Tess and trying to bird dog Jack's girl for a second time, but he was completely oblivious to what was going on. He interpreted Cathryn's mordant smile as encouraging and he boorishly insulted everyone and everything in sight. But the saddest part was that the videos captured the real Peter.

The thought of Peter being humiliated brought a smile to Jack's face. Of course, Tess would be humiliated by association. He wondered how long it would be before Tess had someone new, and then he decided he didn't care.

------------------

"I think mister lonely heart at table 12 is in love with you," said the new waitress.

Cathryn replied, "I should be so lucky."

"He's there every morning, and he only sits at your tables. I think he's got the hots for you." she sang in an unrecognizable melody.

Every morning Jack was there to check up on her, just like he said he would. Every morning he was there reminding her of something that could have been. Every morning she prayed for a second chance.

The morning rush had died down so she took the seat across from him. "More coffee?"

"No, thanks."

"What time do you want to leave tomorrow morning?" It was the end of her probation and the probation officer wanted to see her in person. In two days they would no longer be bound, and she would probably never see him again.

He picked her up at 10. She looked as nice as he'd ever seen her. A white sweater covered her arms and a short skirt let her legs show. "You look beautiful."

"Thanks." She was consciously as perky and attractive as she could possibly be.

They listened to the radio for the first hour, then Cathryn's phone rang and she turned down the music to take the call. She chatted for a few minutes with a boy that wanted to take her out. She was polite, but noncommittal. It wasn't five minutes before her phone rang again and she had a similar conversation with a different boy.

"You're popular now."

"I guess so. It's funny, it wasn't that long ago I couldn't get anyone, including my own sister, to pick up the phone. Now attractive guys call me day and night."

Jack gave a hollow smile, "You've come a long way."

They rode in silence for a few minutes before her phone rang a third time. This time she turned it off.

"Do you remember the conversation we had in the car after we saw last saw the judge? You were worried that you couldn't be the man I needed."

"I remember."

"Well, you were there for me. I wish I could have been there for you."

"Why would you need to be there for me? I'm the white knight. I don't need to be rescued."

"You know that's not true."

Jack drove in silence. He wanted to leave his problems buried.

Cathryn thought for a few moments. Today was her last chance, she had to make it count. She'd spent that last couple of months trying to figure out a way to address their relationship. Despite that, she was here winging it on the last day. "Tell me what happened Jack. I thought we were doing so well. We were a team at the party, but I made one mistake, one well intentioned mistake, and wham! goodbye, so long forever. Was it that horrible that I played with you? You seemed to like it when Tess did it."

Jack didn't want to have this conversation. He said, "I think I'd rather talk about your rape."

"No, you don't get to say that. I wear my rape on my arms. Whatever happened to you is buried. All I see are the consequences."

He failed to reply before she continued, "How long am I going to have to wait for you to find your way out of your prison? It will take forever if you fail to acknowledge you're in a prison."

He caught the reference to their earlier conversation, and he knew what she was driving at, but he didn't know how to answer.

"Would it really be that objectionable for me to help you?"

"I don't need your help."

"Oh right, you were doing great with Tess at the party. You'd be wrapped around her finger right now if I hadn't slimed Peter."

He knew she was right. "But you were just going to take her place."

"No, I wasn't. I just wanted to know what was going on. I just wanted to know you better. I wanted to be intimate with you."

She continued, "You could look for a thousand years and never find someone that feels the way I do about you. If you have any feelings for me at all you have to let me in." She laid her cards on the table. It was a gamble, but she figured she had nothing to lose.

Jack knew that he had feelings for her. He was surprised at how lonely he had been after she left. How did she leave such a big hole in his life after only a few months? He replayed their conversation in his mind. She hadn't touched him, asked for his help, given him big doe eyes, or spoke in a soft voice. If anything she sounded a little desperate and shrill.

He said, "You really did slime Peter. Tess kicked him out; she's got some new guy that no one likes now."

"I kind of felt sorry for Peter. He was just a pawn that we all used."

"You probably did him a favor."

Cathryn nodded; he probably was better off.

"Were you as effective with your own revenge?"

Tess didn't like to discuss anything to do with her rape, but she answered in the spirit of shared intimacy, "Well, no. He died from prostate cancer a few years ago."

Jack was sorry he asked. He shut up and drove.

When they got to Quartzsite they checked into the same room at the same motel they had stayed in before. They walked hand in hand from the motel to the best restaurant in town, which was really a bar that served decent food. Jack picked the quietest table and ordered their best bottle of red wine. He was implicitly giving her what she asked for, and he hoped he wouldn't regret it.

The waiter poured the wine, took their order then left them alone.

She raised wine glass and said, "Tomorrow you will be free of me, and I will be an independent, self sufficient woman. Here's to independence."

Jack touched his glass to hers with a tinge of melancholy resting in his gut.

"I will also finally be able to kiss you," she said with a broad smile.

"To lots and lots of kisses," said Jack with another clink of their glasses.

Cathryn clasped her hands at the edge of the table. She spoke directly, with no detectable emotion. "Do you want to tell me here, or do you want to wait until we get back to the motel room?"

Their table was secluded enough to have a private conversation. "We might as well get it over with." Jack refilled his glass then downed it in one gulp.

"I wasn't totally honest with you. After I found Tess and Peter in bed, she raced after me and caught me before I could leave. She cooed in that voice of hers, and stroked my head, arms and hands. She told me how precious I was to her, how much she loved me and that she couldn't make it through life without my help. Some part of me knew it was all bullshit, but there was another part that wanted to believe her. I stayed, like the schmuck that I am."

"The first time I caught them I'd surprised them by coming home early. The second time she wanted to be caught. She didn't even ask Peter to leave. She just looked at me from underneath him and said that she would be done in a moment and that she had something important she wanted to talk about."

Cathryn didn't want to hear the rest, but she was transfixed by Jack's gruesome tale.

"She was naked when she came out of the bedroom. She reached down, touched my cock through my pants and said that she knew I would be hard. She said that my cock told the truth and nothing I could say would change the truth. She said that I had to stay with her because it was who I am and nothing would change that. She made me kiss her and fuck her. I could smell him and taste him all over her and it happened night after night. I put up with it for a couple of months and then I moved out. A few months later we got divorced."

"She raped you."

"No, it's not like I couldn't just get up and leave."

"That's exactly what you couldn't do. You were powerless and she took advantage of you. That's rape in anybody's book."

Jack refused to accept that he'd been raped. "No, I was just weak. I let her do it."

"You sound just like a rape victim. You were raped."

Jack paused for a moment. He didn't accept that he'd been raped, so he pressed on with his explanation, "Anyway, back to you. You called me into your room and told me where to sit, just as she would have done. You touched me the way she would have touched me, and you softly cooed, just the way she did. It took me back to her in bed with him, asking me to clean up his mess. I was overwhelmed by anxiety. I just had to push you away. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry? I am so sorry!"

The waitress interrupted their apologies with Jalapeno Poppers.

Jack put a full pepper into his mouth hoping the pain would be a distraction.

Cathryn thought about telling him that arousal during rape was common, that there were both psychological and physical aspects to rape, and that most male rape victims were erect during the act. But it wasn't where the conversation needed to go.

She said, "I regret asking you to tell me this."

Jack could feel the anxiety drain, "Now you know my kryptonite."

"Yes I do." She also had a much deeper appreciation of the white knight who had cared for her that night.

From there the conversation took a lighter track. Over dinner they discussed her work at the diner, an issue with the starter on the Falcon and some home improvements Jack hoped to get done.

On the way out Jack picked up another bottle of wine for the motel room. He put his arm around her and said, "I have one more thing that I want to say. Up until the night I found you, I thought about Tess sixty times an hour. Since that night, it's been you I think of."

With this Cathryn was certain she had him back. She was ecstatic.

Jack opened the door to let them in. He hadn't taken two steps into the room before she tackled him on the bed. She rolled, so that he was on top, and looked up into his eyes. "Now that you have me, what are you going to do with me?"

"Ah, yes. The eternal question, what to do with a fair maiden lying on your bed. Centuries of scholars have pondered this very question." They exchanged smiles, then he touched his tongue to her lips and traced the arc of her mouth with the tip of his tongue.

He kissed an eyebrow, then traced the ridge of her nose with the tip of his. She felt his hot breath on her face and smelled the Jalapenos from dinner.

"You're trying to torture me, aren't you?"

"After all you've put me through, I think you deserve it."

She slid his shirt up over his head, then strained to kiss his neck.

He sat up and straddled her. "Are there any rules tonight?"

She started to say, 'no', but stopped herself. "Just one. I want you to touch every part of my body with every part of your body."

Jack laughed, "That could get a little awkward."

"Well, you asked."

"So, it's my fault."

"Of course, you're the guy. Everything is always your fault."

He pondered her request as he unbuttoned her sweater. "I'm going to start with the tip of my nose."

"An excellent choice." she said as she slid her arms out of the sweater's sleeves.

He sat behind her and reached around to unbutton her blouse. He slowly undid the buttons as his nose pressed against the back of her neck. His breath was hot against her skin. She arched her back to amplify the sensation as he slowly breathed. In then out. Each breath seemed to last for ever. The button's defense held much longer than she expected as his breathing marked the passing time. In then out. She could feel the blood flowing to the organs between her legs and the lubricants building up. With each breath she became more and more aroused. In then out. When the last button fell he gently slid her blouse down the length of her arms.