The Blonde Ch. 01

"I wanted to spend the next day with you, you remember? But you were afraid things were moving too fast, and you took off. I was disappointed, and a little hurt; so I called Alison and we got together that night. We had dinner and went to bed together.

"And when it was over, I missed you. That's the truth--I didn't feel guilty, because you and I hadn't made any promises to each other, but I wished I was still with you instead of with Alison.

"I swear to God, I have not spoken to her or seen her even once since that night. The message you heard was the typical kind of 'booty call' we used to make; she had no idea I was in a relationship now."

I stopped, and sat back. Tommie was gazing intently at me, her brows furrowed, tears on her cheeks. She said, "is this really the truth, Jack? Can I trust you?"

I said, "as God is my witness. On my mother's grave, I swear to you."

She looked at me a while longer; then she stood up and came around to my side of the booth. "Move over," she said in a shaky voice, and then she had her arms around me, hugging me and crying, while I said, "shh" and "it's okay" and felt the joy of holding her again.

We did that for about ten minutes, ignoring the smiling faces of the people around us, and then I said, "how about if you sit right next to me while we eat? I don't want to let you get away again."

She giggled and nodded. We ate side-by-side, happily bumping thighs and elbows and shoulders, talking about what had happened and how we'd missed each other and how silly it was to let a misunderstanding like that make us both so miserable.

When it was time for dessert Tommie said she was full, but I insisted on ordering two pieces of a big gooey chocolate cake like the one I'd brought her on our first dinner date. "Now go sit across from me, honey, because I have a couple of other things to tell you."

She looked alarmed and I said, "just little things, I swear!"

I took her hands in mine and said, "I promise I will never lie to you--but I did tell you a little fib once, and I want to get it off my chest."

With a sorrowful look I said, "my aunt didn't actually send me those orchestra tickets. I bought them because I hoped you would go out with me."

Tommie smiled and said, "that's terrible, Jack! What an evil man you are. Your punishment is that you have to pay the check."

"I was going to do that anyway--how about if my punishment is I've got to take you out somewhere really expensive for dinner this weekend?"

She agreed, and I went on, "that was my first and only lie to you. But I do have something else to tell you. When we met at Minestra, when Irene was showing you around that first day--that's not the first time I ever saw you."

"Really? I don't remember another time."

"It was here, at the Akropolis. That's why I wanted to come back here with you tonight." I told her the whole story, of being so attracted to her and of the conversation I'd overheard between her and Katie.

"I'd just listened to you talk about how miserable it was to be treated like a sex object, and how badly the men in your life behaved--and then when I saw you I was overwhelmed--really. I wanted you, and I felt ashamed of myself.

"After that day I vowed to myself I would never be the kind of asshole who treated women the way you'd been treated. And when we met at Minestra I did everything I could to show you I was a decent, honest guy--not just some pussyhound who was determined to get you into bed.

"I didn't know if we'd ever go out, or if we'd even be friends, but at least I could behave like a pleasant, respectful, kind colleague."

She smiled at me. "Is that why it took so long for you to ask me out? And why you came up with that cockamamie story about your aunt?"

"Pretty lame, wasn't it? But yes, absolutely. I wanted you to know me as a friend first, to have an idea of what I was like. And I hoped that a concert together would feel a little less like a 'date,' a little less like just one more guy hitting on you."

Tommie pulled one of my hands to her lips and kissed it. "Well, it seems to have worked, baby. I never realized what a player you were until it was too late, and now I'm in love with you so I guess I'm stuck."

"Well, it was ... wait a minute. In love with me?"

She nodded silently, a mock-solemn look on her face. I waited a minute and then said, "I think we need to get the check and get the hell out of here!"

****************

We were lying in my bed, Tommie curled up against me, and I wondered whether it was possible to be any happier. We'd come running back to my place from the Akropolis and jumped into bed, tearing off our clothes as fast as we could, and we'd fucked like a couple of teenagers alone in mom and dad's house for the first time: fast and furious, desperate to have each other.

And then we'd rested, and snuggled, and kissed; and made love again slowly, with whispers and sighs and promises. Tonight was the first time we'd said "I love you" to each other, and it meant a lot to both of us.

"Hey," she said quietly, "are you asleep?"

"Snxxxx," I replied, pretending to be snoring, and she poked me. "I'm serious, Jack. I need to talk to you, but it can wait until the morning if you want."

"No, I'm awake." I disentangled myself from Tommie and sat up against the headboard, putting a pillow behind me. "This sounds serious."

"It is. Well, not bad serious. But it's just ... you need to know some things about my past. I guess you know a little already, from that conversation between me and Katie. But I need to tell you the rest of it. And then I think you'll understand why I went so crazy when I heard the message on your machine."

I kissed her forehead. "I'll listen to anything you want to tell me, but you don't have to unless you want to. I already know that you're sexy as hell and that men have treated you badly--I assume that's what this is about?"

"Yeah. I guess some of it you can imagine, but I want you to know about all of it. Tonight, if that's okay. Because the way I feel about you is serious, and ... and I want you to know, that's all."

Some of what she told me I might have been able to predict. By the time she was 13 Tommie had already been sexier-looking than her 16 year-old sister Alice, and she had no idea how to cope with male attention. What made it worse is that Alice was jealous of her, and not the least bit protective or helpful.

"And my parents were clueless--I couldn't tell them anything about what was going on. I was pretty much on my own."

Like every teenage girl she'd been desperate to fit in, and flattered by male attention.

Predictably, what that had led to was being taken advantage of by several members of the high school football team. But what happened after that was perhaps less predictable, and more devastating.

"During senior year I was seduced by my friend Rita's father. He was tall and handsome and all of us had a bit of a crush on him. He was always friendly to all of Rita's friends, and her house was our main hang-out; we had pizza parties there, and occasional sleepovers.

"Anyway, during one of those sleepovers he sat around drinking beer with us girls, there were about five of us staying over. Rita's mom was away seeing her grandma.

"And we all went to sleep eventually--and in the middle of the night Rita's dad came and woke me, said he needed to talk to me. So we went back into his bedroom--I was pretty sleepy and still a bit drunk--and he sat next to me on the bed, put his arm around me, and told me how special I was. Not only beautiful, you know, but intelligent and sensitive. I was the only person who understood him, he said--his wife was so focused on her own work, she barely paid attention to him anymore."

Tommie looked at me. "I know all of this is the usual bullshit, Jack, but I was 18 then and I'd never heard it before, and he was this handsome older man I had a crush on. Anyway, he started touching me and kissing me, and we made out for a while, and I was in heaven. And pretty soon he had my nightie up to my shoulders and his boxers off and he was fucking the hell out of me.

"It didn't hurt, because my virginity was long gone, and he was a grown man and knew what he was doing, so the sex was wonderful. We made love for hours--I guess I should say 'fucked,' but I thought we were making love. And in the early morning I sneaked back into the room the girls were in.

"After that we started meeting whenever we could, for about four months. I thought I was in love. Arthur had sort of hinted that he wanted to be with me, and maybe he'd get a divorce, you know? He never promised anything, but just a hint was more than enough for me. I was such an idiot! Thank God he'd had a vasectomy, because I never even thought about birth control.

"We kept it completely secret, not only from his wife of course but from Rita. We used to meet in motels, or sometimes at his house when Rita and her mom went on college visits. He loved being the 'sex guide' for a young, inexperienced woman; we fucked in lots of different positions, he taught me all about oral sex, and we did anal a few times because he really liked it, even though I didn't.

"And then one day I went over there after school, to do some studying with Rita, and when I rang the bell her mom came to the door, stared furiously at me, and slapped me across the face. She called me a 'fucking slut' and told me to never come back.

"At school the next day Rita wouldn't talk to me--and even worse, she told everyone we knew that I'd been a whore with her father. She was devastated, of course, but she took it out on me instead of her dad. I heard her mom threw him out of the house; they got divorced about a year later.

"This time even my parents heard about it, because Rita's mom called and yelled at them. They were furious with me. I tried to explain that Arthur had seduced me--I think my mom sort of understood but my father was so angry he wouldn't speak to me for a month.

"And of course the rest of my senior year at school was a total nightmare. The kids made my life miserable, and even some of the male teachers saw me as fair game. I got propositioned by several of them and they wouldn't leave me alone until I threatened to tell the principal."

Tommie was dry-eyed and calm as she told me this terrible story. I guess she'd long ago done all the crying about it that she would ever do. I hugged her to me and said, "I'm so sorry, baby. It sounds completely awful."

She smiled and said, "yeah, well, it wasn't so great. You've heard most of it, I can tell you the rest pretty quickly."

"There's MORE?"

"Oh, yeah--college."

She sat silently for a minute before continuing. "You remember I transferred, right? I did a year and a half at Ball State, and then finished at IU?"

I nodded.

"Well, there was a reason for that. There were several professors at Ball State who wanted to sleep with me--they tried the usual seduction stuff, but after Arthur I had no trouble seeing through their bullshit.

"But there was also an accounting professor who tried to blackmail me, sophomore year. He gave me two Ds and an F on our first three problem sets, and when I went to his Office Hours to talk to him he told me straight out that I "made his dick hard" and he wanted to sleep with me.

"And he said unless I fucked him he'd fail me for the course and I'd lose my scholarship."

"Jesus," I said. "I know stuff like that goes on, but ... fuck."

"Yeah--fuck. Anyway, by this time I was a little bit smarter. I told him I had to think about it, and I'd come back the next week at the same time. When I went back, I had a tape recorder hidden in my purse and two girlfriends standing just outside his door, which I left open a crack.

"I got him to talk about it again, to make him say that he was blackmailing me for sex, and then I busted him. I went to the Dean of the Faculty with my recording and my girlfriends to back me up, and they fired him within a week."

"Good for you--that scumbag."

"Yeah, but it was still a big mess. They tried to keep my name out of it, but word spread fast and the student newspaper published a big article with my name and picture. So it was pretty obvious I had to get the hell out of there.

"My grades were good enough to transfer, so I applied to Indiana and left the next semester."

She gave me a little kiss and said, "almost done--we're almost at the end of Tommie's tale of woe."

"I could listen to you forever, honey. I'm just so sorry you had to live through all of this."

"By the time I got settled at IU I figured I'd seen it all. I was as wary and suspicious as a person could possibly be. I was still getting hit on by guys all the time, but I just blew them off. I probably didn't have more than five dates the first two years I was there. If it seemed like the guy just wanted to get into my pants--if I got even a little hint of that--he was history.

"I never went out alone, always with girlfriends. Once I was at a party with my friend Monica and she saved me. Some guy put something in my beer, roofies or something. She was dancing with somebody, but she happened to look over and see two guys kind of leading me towards the door, looking half-asleep. She screamed really loud and ran towards me, and the assholes just dropped me and hightailed it out of there. Thank God she was there! Ever since then I've been super-careful about watching my drink, any time I'm out in a public place."

I just shook my head. Who would drug a woman and then have sex with her while she was unconscious? What kind of scumbag do you have to be, to think that anything about that is okay?

"But even with all that caution, I got burned one more time. Senior year there was this grad student in chemistry, Rick. I was introduced to him in the Student Center by my roommate--he'd been her TA and she thought he was a fantastic guy. We dated for a couple of months and he didn't push me for sex at all, kept saying 'whenever you're ready, honey.'

"So I finally let my guard down and we started fucking. And it was all he wanted to do, day and night; I could hardly get any studying done. He had an off-campus apartment and I basically lived there.

"And after about two months of nonstop blowjobs and fucking he just dumped me. He broke my heart, told me 'it had been fun' but he didn't think we were meant for each other. Two weeks later I saw him in the campus pub being all lovey-dovey with somebody else, a brunette with big tits."

Again I pulled her gently to me and comforted her silently, just holding her.

"Nothing so special about that last story, I guess," she said. "Just another guy being an asshole--it happens every day. But it had happened to me so many times....

"Since college I've dated a lot, had a few 'boyfriends,' but no one seriously. A lot of men just dropped me when I wouldn't fuck them after two or three dates. I'm 27 years old and I've only had two real relationships before you--Rick, and another dickwad named Scott, about a year ago."

"I know about him," I said. "You were telling Katie about him in the diner."

"It is such a fucking CURSE being sexy!" she burst out. "I look at myself in the mirror, and I can see I'm attractive, you know, reasonably pretty.

"But I'm not a supermodel, I'm not Angelina Jolie. Why the hell don't men leave me alone? Why do they think it's okay to come up to me and say, 'the moment I saw you I got stiff in my pants,' or 'I want to fly you to Las Vegas and have you sit on my face for a whole weekend,' or 'I'll bet you can suck a golfball through a straw'?"

"Really?" I said.

"Really. I've heard every one of those, and plenty of others that are equally crude--if less inventive."

"Well you know, Tap," I said carefully, "I think you're beautiful and sexy too. But I also think you're funny and smart and thoughtful and incredibly fun to be with.

"And I like the way you cook, and the way you talk about music, and the ridiculous way you load my dishwasher..." I was pausing after each phrase to kiss her neck. "And the way you leave your socks on in bed, and the way you laugh at my stupid jokes..."

I stopped talking because Tommie was giggling, and I turned her head and we started kissing. We kissed for a long time.

"I love you," I said. "And I am not one of those assholes, and I will never ever treat you like that."

"I know that," she said.

****************

After that dinner at the Akropolis, and our wonderful make-up sex, and Tommie's long story about all that she'd been through, things just got better and better. It felt like she trusted me more, and every minute we spent together made me happy--it didn't even matter what we were doing.

I started thinking seriously about marriage; but I knew I would never take that step again without talking to my brother David. He was almost never around so I had to wait awhile before he'd visited enough times to get to know Tommie.

And when I'd gotten his approval, she and I got married.

In light of everything that's happened since ... if I knew then what I know now, would I still have married her? Ah, there's a question.