Jon Ch. 01

Intro:

This is a partially-true story. Jon is real, although that's not his name, and my history with him - including the foot-stroking at the party - is real. But I haven't seen him in seven years - I never even thought about him until I saw him on a friend's profile on Facebook - and he never did my gardening for me, and we've never had sex.

Yet.

(Please don't confuse this Jon with the John from "An Evening With John" -- they're not the same person at all. That John was a totally made-up character...this one is real, mostly. I probably shouldn't have given them such similar names, but hey, I couldn't exactly call this one by his real name, and Jon is just how he ended up. I may go back and change the other one's name, or think up a new name for this one, but for now you're stuck with it.)

The Story:

I've known Jon for 12 years - fully half my life - and I never truly heard him speak until this morning.

When I woke up today, he was the last thing on my mind. For several years I hadn't thought of him at all. He was my crush in secondary school and the year after, but when I started college my tastes changed. Instead of the blonde boy-band type, I went for edgier guys: sexy Asian guys with spiked hair and deep brown almond eyes; beautiful black boys with skin like velvet and cocks the colour of a ripe plum. For the last 7 years I haven't thought of Jon at all.

And then I saw him out my window when I woke up, all glowing in the early-morning sunlight, and I realised that, against all reason, I'd fallen - or perhaps re-fallen? - in lust with a boy who's the opposite of my usual type, because he's just as shiny and golden as I am.

Jon was a favourite fantasy of mine on and off throughout secondary school. I walked into the introduction assembly on the first day of Year Seven, all starched uniform and trembling lip, and for the first ten minutes I didn't hear a word the headmaster was saying because I was too busy looking around at all the people. I was terrified, and all I could think about was how much I didn't want to be there. I'd only gone to a "normal" (i.e. state-run) primary school for a year and a half; before that I'd been at a private school, and secondary school was at least twice the size of my previous school - perhaps ten times the size of any of the private schools I'd been at. I'd never seen so many kids gathered into a single room before, and all I could do was look around the assembly hall and concentrate on looking interested, confident and aloof, instead of the trembling mass of jelly that I was inside. Even as a 12-year-old I knew better than to show any insecurity when faced with a crowd of strangers.

After panning over all the scarily grown-up upper school kids, I turned and watched the Year Eights, most of whom were whispering and nudging each other and laughing, clearly happy that they were no longer the youngest in the school. And my gaze landed on a boy, one of the few who was quiet, who was looking right back at me. He had the bluest eyes I'd ever seen, and even from across the hall they seemed to stare right into me. He didn't smile at me, but I had the strangest sense of approval from him, and it gave me the courage to stand up tall and throw myself into school life, and that one glance stayed with me through the entire five years I was there.

Throughout those five years, I never talked to Jon, never spent any time in his presence (although we knew a lot of the same people), never even smiled at him in passing. I grew older, got mostly good grades, learned about boys. I bloomed late, but eventually started dating, although never guys from school. I made a lot of buddies and companions, and a couple of close friends. My tendency towards aloofness made it difficult to commit myself to one group of people, and I mostly drifted between cliques, being friends with everyone and close to no-one, and at the end of Year Eleven I was voted both "Person most likely to help a stranger in need" and "Most enigmatic". But I had a fairly happy school career, and despite a long illness that led to me missing a lot of classes between years Nine and Eleven, I left in 2000 with 7 GCSE A-C grades and a handful of friends who I knew I'd keep in touch with.

I took a gap year after GCSEs, more to recover and get my health back than from any wish to work or travel, although I did end up going to Spain with my mother for seven or eight months, where I did some au pair work, lay out on the beach a lot, dated a new boy every night and wrote many letters to friends back home in England. By the time I came back in autumn 2001, my health was fairly normal and I was ready for college.

During my first year of college, I found myself commuting between London and my hometown twice a week, spending weekdays at my Dad's in Highgate and weekends with friends at home. Despite horrendous amounts of studying to do, I made time to see my close girlfriends once a week or so, and we'd window shop, meet for coffee, sometimes go to bars or parties. It was at one of these parties that I saw Jon for the first time in a little over a year. It was a costume party, a sort of joint birthday-early Hallowe'en thing, and although I noticed the guy with the great bod in the Sean John jacket and the "Scream" mask, I didn't have a clue who it was until I'd been there several hours. I found out when I was sitting on a bench at the side of the room and felt a finger stroking my foot through my strappy gold shoe, and looked around into a set of piercing blue eyes that I recognized instantly. Nothing had ever surprised me more. Over the years I'd convinced myself that he'd never noticed me in the first place; that I'd imagined our eyes meeting that first day and that, in fact, he was completely unaware of my existence...and here he was, stroking my foot like he knew me intimately. Within a second my heart was thundering, and my nipples were pebbly-hard. My stomach flipped over, and still does when I think of that moment. Incredible what one finger can do, and even more incredible how a single memory can elicit such a reaction in me years later.

We didn't talk; I was too shocked, and shock makes me stupid. We didn't dance. And yet that one touch has made one of my clearest memories of him up until today.

I saw him once more during that college year - at a Christmas ball - but shortly after Christmas my classes got harder, with coursework heaped on from every angle, and I no longer had the time to party. And by Valentines' Day I was head-over-heels in love with a boy from my chemistry class and thought about Jon no longer. Time passed. I dated Michael for a long time, finally parting amicably eighteen months ago. And over the years Jon's memory faded in my mind to a distant picture of a beautiful boy I'd once almost known.

Then this morning, I woke early. I'm not sure how early exactly, but I guess it must have been 6-ish. I could tell the sun had been up for a while - it starts to get light at about 4.30 am at this time of year - but the light was that pale gold colour that you only get in the early morning, before most of the world is up and about. Not really warm yet, but holding the promise of heat. For a while I sat on the balcony outside my bedroom and listened to the birds singing, and basked in the relative calm. In a large town, nothing is ever totally quiet - there are always some traffic or machinery sounds, even in the dead of the night - but my house is set pretty far back from the road, in the outer suburbs, and at 6 in the morning things are fairly still, and quiet enough to listen to the birds and the breeze blowing through the willow trees. After a while I made my way to the kitchen to make a cup of herbal tea, and when I came back to my bedroom I heard a new sound in the garden. A swishing sound, like branches brushing against each other. And I peeked out the french door to see the object of my long-ago desires cutting the bushes.

I can't tell you how long I watched him, peering around the curtain through the open door, pulling my head back quickly any time he looked toward me. Eventually I saw him look away and smile to himself, and I knew I'd been busted, so I took myself and my tea out onto the balcony and smiled back at him, slightly embarrassed - more that he'd seen me running away than that he'd seen me looking in the first place. And then he spoke.

"I didn't know you lived here." And oh, that voice. I'd heard him whisper in my ear before, heard echoes of it in a crowded room, but had never heard him speak properly, out loud, just to me. And yet somehow I'd known what he would sound like. Because he sounded just the way he looked: mellow and golden and warm. Like the sunlight that shone through the trees he was tending to, or the golden sands of the South African beaches that he had called home before his family moved to England. I looked at him and felt my embarrassment melt away.

"I didn't know you worked here."

He smiled. "Only during the summer. I don't work in the summer, so I do occasional yard work as a volunteer. Your mother's the one who just had a hip replacement?"

I nodded. Mom loved doing the garden, but since her operation last winter she'd only been able to do the stuff low to the ground. It was just too dangerous for her to stand on a ladder, and at five foot two there wasn't a whole lot on the hedges and trees that she could reach from the ground. I wasn't the best at using heavy cutting machines, and she'd mentioned that she'd talked to a local organization that provided free or low-cost home and garden repairs for elderly and disabled people. I'd totally forgotten about it until Jon brought it up just now.

"What kind of job allows you to not work in the summer?"

"I'm a teacher."

That one brought me up short. Of all the things I'd imagined him doing, teaching was not one of them. "What kind of teacher?"

"Certain sports. Mostly the dance-related martial arts. Capoeira, N'golo, Danyme, occasional Tae-Bo or kickboxing."

That sounded more like it, but..."You teach that in schools?"

"Capoeira and Tae-Bo, yeah."

"They didn't have anything like that around when we were at school."

He laughed. "Most places still don't. I mostly work at the performing arts school." He named a prominent school in the next town over. "Once a week I teach a local class for kids who've been discipline problems at school. The combination of the physical exercise and the discipline you learn through the dance seems to help them work out their hostility in a constructive way."

I nodded. "That's really nice." For a few moments we were both quiet. Then he grinned up at me again. "So you actually remember going to school with me, huh?"

I had to smile back. "Yeah."

"Hey, why don't you come down here and talk to me properly?"

I shook my head. "Too early to be out in the garden without proper clothes on. You come up here, if you want to talk more." I didn't think he'd take me up on the challenge. The garden out back is raised to about halfway between the ground floor and the upstairs, so it's only six feet or so from the grass to my balcony, but I still didn't think he'd come. I'd underestimated his sense of adventure, and his athletic skill. Stupid of me, considering we'd just been talking about dances that take an extraordinary amount of strength and energy. within a few moments he was pulling himself up over the railing and dropping down next to me on the balcony.

"Do I need to be quiet? Is anyone asleep?"

I shook my head. Although I technically lived at home, I slept and worked in a separate apartment, a set of two rooms that had been added on ten years ago and were connected to the main house by a covered walkway. The room on the bottom held exercise equipment and a large shower, and the top room had been mostly storage until Mom and I made it into my bedroom when I turned 18. It was the perfect compromise. I liked living at home, felt safer knowing that Mom wasn't alone, and certainly couldn't have afforded something as nice if I were renting, but the apartment provided me with the privacy to come and go as I wanted without disturbing Mom in the middle of the night. There was no way for anyone in the main house to hear us talking, even on the balcony, unless we yelled.

"So how much of school do you remember?" Jon looked curious.

I shrugged. "Most of it. Good and bad. Although the bad seems to be somewhat rose-tinted."

He nodded. "Do you remember me?"

"Sure." I was surprised. "Didn't I just say that, when I mentioned the days when we were at school?"

"Implied it. But I wasn't sure. You never talked to me at school."

"Yeah, I remember you." I looked out over the garden. "I guess we never talked because you were in the year above, and we never had a chance. Plus, I didn't have any reason to think you'd noticed me. Nobody really started mingling until Year Ten, and I missed most of that when I was sick."

He nodded again. "I noticed."

I glanced at him from underneath my eyelashes. "How much do YOU remember?"

"Of you? Everything."

I was startled. "Oh?"

"Sure. I remember your first day. I saw you in assembly, pretending you weren't scared when you so obviously were. I admired your grit. Even then you stood out from all the other Year Sevens."

I didn't have anything to say to that, so I just continued to look out over the lawn.

"I always noticed you, even when you didn't see me, you know. And when you did see me, I always wondered why you never said hi, or smiled."

"Didn't know you well enough, I guess."

"But you did notice me."

It wasn't a question, and I looked at him sharply, then looked away. "Yeah. I noticed you."

"And after school?"

"After school?"

"The summer after school ended. You noticed me at Batchwood?"

"You always wore a white Levi's vest that showed off your arms."

"And you usually wore a black and gold halterneck dress with a slit up the side. I always liked that dress."

I smiled. "It's still in my closet."

Jon turned me round to face him. "That costume party that Hannah had."

I looked away, but he gently turned my face back towards him. "You had on Sean John, and that ridiculous bleeding Scream mask."

"Very good." He grinned. "And you had the black dress on again. I think we were the only two people there who weren't wearing full costumes. What else do you remember?"

"You..." I took a deep breath. "You stroked my foot and offered me something illegal to smoke."

He nodded. "That's right. I didn't know about your brother then, or I wouldn't have. I'm sorry."

My brother died of a drug overdose when I was a kid. It more or less put me off illegal drugs for life, although I'd smoked pot a few times in my teen years. I didn't know Jon knew about that. He must have been talking to several people about me at some point to have obtained that particular piece of information, it wasn't common knowledge.

"It's okay."He was looking right at me, and I felt warm and breathless and looked down. This time he didn't stop me.

"Christmas formal."

"A peacock blue shirt and tux pants, and you danced in front of me and were part of the crowd that gathered around my armchair when I was laid up with the crutches and huge bandage on my leg. And you don't need to tell me. Same old dress."

"Same old Rose."

I heard a surprising warmth in his voice, and looked up to see him smiling at me, closer than he'd been a moment before. Then he leaned into me, and I felt hot breath on my ear. "I remember everything," he whispered. And then he was in front of me and smiling again, and all I could see was the world's bluest eyes and that warm, hard, sensuous mouth descending on mine.

To be continued - hopefully with some sex in the next chapter!

(c) Rosie Francis Dallanstorm 2008