Why, Of Course You Can!!

"I'd sure like to! You two seem to be enjoying yourselves! But I need to finish getting Buster his exercise, or he'll be impossible tonight. Thanks for the offer!" she called out in a sexy, Southern drawl, as she turned, leading Buster back in the direction of the lighthouse. The two jogged back the way they had come.

"Jesus, Hannah," I said, after she was out of earshot. "Did you want us to get caught?" She was still stroking my cock.

"Maybe," Hannah grinned. "I thought that if she saw us maybe she'd want to join the party. Wouldn't you have enjoyed a ménage à trois? Anyway, wasn't she gorgeous?"

"Yeah, but... Jesus, Hannah." I shook my head. "Do you think she saw what we were doing?" I asked genuinely concerned that I might soon be facing a South Carolina magistrate on a charge of lewd and lascivious behavior.

"What do you think she meant by 'you two seem to be enjoying yourselves?'" Hannah responded.

"Oh my god," I said, shaking my head again.

"Relax, baby."

"How the hell am I supposed to do that? You're still jacking me off!"

"I thought maybe you'd be up for round two! Wasn't that exciting?"

"Yeah, exciting and illegal," I said, pulling her hand from my suit. Then, I cupped her face in my hands, and I kissed her. Sometimes, she drove me crazy, but our lovemaking was never boring. That was for sure. That was not the only time she talked me into making love in public, but it was the closest we ever came to getting caught.

*****

When classes started up again in the fall, something was different. I realized pretty quickly what it was. No Sandi. She was in Ann Arbor now, so there was less scenery when I was at school, and for some reason that I couldn't explain, I missed her -- a lot. When I got home, I still had Hannah to keep me occupied. She had moved in at the start of the school year, but both of us thought it would be our last one in and around Fair Oaks. We needed to add a little more excitement and culture to our lives.

We made a pact. We would both apply for jobs in a few select cities in which we wanted to live. If either one of us was successful, we would move together to the city. Then, the other person could take his or her time finding another job, or something else to do.

It didn't surprise me that Hannah found another job before I did. She was really good at what she did, and I figured pretty sought after, considering that good school counselors were not a dime a dozen. The job was in an affluent suburb of Chicago, just up the North Shore.

I turned in my letter of resignation on the first of April. At my request, Mr. Joyce wrote me a great letter of recommendation and told me that he was sad to see me go. He also said that if I ever needed a job again and wanted to return to the area, that I should give him a call.

Leaving FOHS would be bittersweet. On the one hand, I had grown tired of spending 70 hours a week involved in one aspect or another of FOHS life. On the other hand, I really enjoyed my time there, had learned a lot about teaching, and had met some great people that I knew that I would miss a lot.

First and foremost were Jeff and Jacky, but we promised them that because they were less than two hours away, and we were certain to want to get out of the city occasionally, we would come back often to visit. Besides, my family was still in the Detroit area, and I had to pass right through Fair Oaks to get there. I figured I would probably see them every Christmas and Spring Break at the very least.

The other person that I was already really missing, of course, was Sandi Mortensen. I don't know why she had had such a big impact on me, but she had. She was both incredibly sexy and intelligent, and there was no denying that I was attracted to her, even if I already had a woman in my life.

The other thing was that she was a kind of an interesting project for me, and so in a strange way, I wanted to find out if she was going to make it, not just academically in college, but in her personal life as well. I don't know why I was so sentimental, especially in her case, but I wanted her to be happy.

When that school year ended, Hannah and I packed up our things, said goodbye to John and Terri, and Jeff and Jacky, and moved to a funky neighborhood on Chicago's North Side. Late that summer, I found a job at a school in Westchester. It was a bit of a drive from our flat on the North Side, but it was a good school, and it forced me to really "up my game" as a teacher. I was still putting a lot of hours into my teaching, even if I didn't have all those co-curricular activities.

We made it back to Fair Oaks three times that first year after we moved and stayed at Jeff and Jacky's farmhouse twice. It amazed me just how much I missed the peace and quiet after the hustle and bustle of the city. But that's the point, isn't it? You can't have it both ways. But as much as Hannah and I had made those trips for our own mental health, it was Jeff and Jacky's mental health that was in question that whole year. It was a rough one for them.

On each of our visits, they seemed different. We spent one day with them over Labor Day weekend, and both Jeff and Jacky seemed unusually quiet and reserved. This was truly out of character for Jeff -- he had always been the most obnoxious and silly person that I had ever known, and normally, he rarely stopped talking.

Jacky's reticence made a lot more sense. She had always been a much quieter person, but now her mother was ill, really ill. During the summer, she had been diagnosed with Stage Four pancreatic cancer, and in late August, Jacky traveled to Mt. Pleasant to be with her for two weeks during her first rounds of chemotherapy. Jacky seemed unwilling to want to talk about her mother on that trip. It was probably a good thing that we were only there one day.

We saw them again at Thanksgiving, and Jeff seemed to be back to normal, but Jacky was in bad shape. Her mother's illness was completely devastating her; that was obvious. Her mother was not responding to the chemo, and Jacky had grown fatalistic about losing her. I remembered that her father had died four years before, also from pancreatic cancer.

I spent a lot of time with her over those four days. She had been there for me, when Sharon had left me, and I felt I owed her the same kind of care and concern. It wasn't that Jacky was unwilling to talk now. In fact, she spoke more to me over that holiday than in all the time I've known her, but there was something else, something wrong besides her mother's illness, and it seemed to have to do with Jeff.

I remembered the Kübler-Ross stages. Jacky was in denial about something, but it didn't seem to be her mother's illness. That she had already accepted. She just didn't want her mother to have suffer. But there was something that she not only couldn't accept, she couldn't even believe was real. Despite all of our talking, whatever it was, she wasn't willing to share it with me.

Right before Christmas, Jacky's mother died. Hannah and I drove to Mt. Pleasant for the funeral. It was sad. Thankfully, Jacky came from a big family, and she seemed to be getting a lot support from her brothers and sisters. We never really got to spend much time with either one of them, and funerals make everything awkward and difficult. They had family matters to attend to, and so we let them attend to them. Over the next few months, all four of us talked a lot on the phone, and for the first time in their marriage, there were problems in the Hackbarth household. For some reason, Jacky was really angry with Jeff.

We intended to visit again over Spring Break, but then Jeff did something I could never have believed he was capable of. He booked them onto a Caribbean cruise -- seven days on Carnival -- Cozumel, Belize, Grand Cayman, Mahogany Bay. What was baffling about this was not just that Jeff was notoriously cheap; in all of the years that I had know him, he had never set foot outside of the State of Michigan, so this was nothing short of stunning. Just as stunning were the changes that Hannah and I saw in both of them after they returned.

The next year Jeff got a new job, and he and Jacky left Fair Oaks. That was hard for me to believe; they just seemed so much a part of that community that it was hard to think of them as distinct entities. They were still in Michigan, that wasn't going to change, but they had moved pretty far north to Cadillac, where Jeff was teaching in the middle school, and only coaching the younger kids. He actually preferred that. And Jacky? By that next summer, Jacky was pregnant!

The following year during Spring Break, Hannah and I traveled to Cadillac to see their new baby girl, Carrie. She was a beauty, and they both seemed really happy, unbelievably happy, like their earlier troubles had vanished. But that was the last time we saw them for awhile.

After four years at Westchester, I enrolled in a graduate program at DePaul, and started working on my Masters. With all of that going on, my relationship with Hannah started to slowly deteriorate. We were still really good friends, and we continued living together, but the romance had lost its fire. We just didn't spend enough time together. So we came to a kind of mutual decision to free each other up, in case either one of us wanted to begin seeing another person.

The next year, Hannah got a different job and moved out of Chicago, so I was living alone now. I had some friends in the city, and they were trying to set me up with girls they knew, but so far nothing had come of it. Besides, between school and my graduate program, I was too busy to try to concentrate on a relationship. I was a little lonely and extremely horny.

*****

That Christmas I decided to drive home two days before the holiday. Just as I got out of the city, heading east on Interstate 94, it started to snow. I kept going; I figure it would let up, but instead it just came down harder. By the time I crossed the border into Michigan, it was a full blown blizzard, and I didn't know if was going to make it home that night.

Just before I reached the Fair Oaks exit, traffic slowed to a crawl and eventually it ground to a complete halt. People got out of their cars and started having snowball fights right there on the Interstate.

When the cars started moving again, we were going five miles an hour, and when I saw the sign signaling one mile to the Fair Oaks exit, I considered stopping. It still took me 10 more minutes to reach the off-ramp, and that clinched it. So I made an executive decision. Why keep going?

With Jeff and Jacky gone, I didn't have a place to stay, but there was a motel The Rafters, just off the Interstate, and it had a restaurant and bar that were pretty good. We used to go there every once and awhile when I lived in the area. It was only about three miles from our house on the lake, and the place was usually hopping. I figured that I would do one of two things: if it kept snowing, I would get a room and spend the night, otherwise, I would get a drink and maybe something to eat, and if it started to let up, I'd drive the rest of the way that night.

I pulled off the highway and into the parking lot of The Rafters. I got out of my car, and walked inside the bar. My eyes hadn't even had a chance to adjust to the dimly lit place, when I heard the word, "Time!" I turned my head, "Jesus Christ, it's Time! Time, what the hell are you doing here?"

Three young guys, all of them former students and basketball players of mine came rushing up to me, shaking my hand, and patting me on the back. I hadn't even said hello to each of them before one slipped a beer mug into my hand. They grabbed me a chair, and I sat down at a table with them.

I explained about the snow and that I was headed back home for Christmas -- that traffic was stalled on the Interstate, and that I was waiting out the snow.

The three were all real characters -- kids that I had taught in multiple classes and coached in at least one sport, so I knew them all well. I asked each of them what they were up to.

Steve Kohler was still enrolled in school at Western Michigan in Kalamazoo; he still had three semesters to go before he earned a degree in Ag Economics.

Bill Piontek, who was a pretty bright kid, was just about to finish up at Michigan. He would earn his BS in Biology in May and already had a job offer from a lab in Ann Arbor.

Lance Bachman, who was still living in town, worked for his father, the owner of the Fair Oaks area waste management company. As the only son in the Bachman clan, he would undoubtedly inherit the family business.

I asked them about girlfriends, and the volume in the room decreased considerably. None of them had anyone they dated on a steady basis. They asked me about Jeff, if I'd seen him lately. I told them about his baby girl, his job in Cadillac, his house in the woods.

"So how about you, Time? You still in Chi-town?" Lance asked, oblivious to the fact that no one other than truckers themselves had used trucker lingo since "Convoy" was a hit nearly 30 years earlier.

"Yep. Still there," I said taking a big swig from my beer. "City of Big Shoulders."

"You still teaching?" Steve asked. "I hope so, 'cause you were the best fuckin' teacher I ever had." He grabbed the pitcher and refilled my mug.

"Thanks, Steve, that's nice of you say that. Doubt that it's true, but it's nice to hear, anyway. Yes, I'm still teaching, probably will be until somebody offers me a lot of money to be a principal. I'm in graduate school right now."

"Jesus, Time, you don't wanna be a fuckin' principal, do ya?" Bill asked with surprise, apparently remembering an unpleasant incident with Keith Joyce.

"Not really, but it's about the only way to make any kind of real money in education. So I don't know, we'll see."

"You still with that same chick? The second one, what was her name?" Steve asked.

"Hannah. No, we broke up awhile ago," I said, embarrassed even though there was no reason for me to be.

"You got another girlfriend now?" Lance inquired.

"No. I don't think there are any girls interested in me. I'm a shitty boyfriend," I said glumly.

"What the fuck you talking about, Time? You know that's not true. Come on, what about Sandi Mortensen?" Bill challenged me.

"What about her?" I asked. Just the name made me sit up in my chair.

"Jesus, Time! She never stops talking about you," he said, like I was an idiot.

"Not anymore," I said dismissively. "That was a long time ago. I haven't seen her for over six years."

"Time!" all three said simultaneously, shaking their heads and looking at me like I was the most pathetic being on two feet. All three came at me at the same time.

"She talks about you every time I see her."

"You haven't seen her for six years? My god, Time. She is so fucking hot right now, and to the best of my knowledge, she isn't fucking anybody, at least not anybody around here. And you know why? 'Cause she still wants to fuck you!"

"What is she doing now? Did she graduate from Michigan?"

"No, man," Bill said. "She dropped out after a year. But even then, and that was four years ago -- every once in awhile, I would run into her in Ann Arbor; sometimes I'd give her a ride back home -- she literally never stopped talking about you. I shit you not. She's fuckin' in love with you!"

"She's got a job. She works for the county." Lance added. "Some office thing -- secretary or something."

"She's got her own place now, and hey, you know where she lives? Like two houses from where you did out on the lake," Bill said.

"And you know where she hangs out?" Steve asked, smiling. "You're sittin' in the place, Time! I'm surprised she's not here tonight. This is the closest bar to her house. She's here all the time!"

The whole thing had my head spinning. Sandi Mortensen. I just kept running images of her over and over in my head. Then, reality kicked in. What the hell was I doing? Was it still snowing? Was I going to keep going? Was I staying here? I still had a four hour drive ahead of me. I needed to make a decision.

I told the guys that I was going to step outside, and check on the weather. When I opened the door, there were a few inches of dry snow accumulated on the ground, but not a flake in the sky. I went back inside to the bar, and asked the bartender if he knew what the weather was like heading east on Interstate 94. He pointed to a trucker seated at the bar, who looked at me and said, "the roads are fine, not a problem all the way to Detroit. Most of the snow stayed to the south of here."

"Thanks," I said, and I returned to the table with the three young guys.

"It stopped snowing, guys. I'm gonna try to make it home tonight."

"Come on, Time, spend the night. You can stay at my house," Lance said, "I got my own place. I have an extra bedroom. Besides, if you stick around, I bet Sandi shows up. Then, you won't need my bedroom!" They all laughed.

"No, guys, I gotta hit the road. I'm only going to be home for a few days anyway, and my mother is expecting me tonight. But, I tell you what, I'll be driving back home on the day after Christmas. Then, I'll have plenty of time. I'll stop back in here. Maybe, I'll see you then, okay."

They said they understood. I thanked them for the beer, wished them Merry Christmas, and told them it was great to see them all. Then, I headed out to the parking lot and the long ribbon of highway back to my roots. I should have been tired, even exhausted. It had been a long day, but my heart was beating so fast, there was no way I could fall asleep.

Sandi Mortensen. Sandi Mortensen. I kept saying her name over and over again in my mind. Those kids never knew how much they were tempting me. I had concealed my real feelings from them, from myself, because I had never really forgotten Sandi.

I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my family. It was nice to see them all, but I was distracted throughout my visit. At one point on Christmas Eve, I was opening a gift, and all of a sudden I just stopped. Everybody was waiting for me to pull the gift wrap off the box, and I was just staring off into space. I was daydreaming about Sandi. They were all looking at me, and my mind was someplace else, on the other end of the state.

My mother turned to me and asked, "Jeff, what's wrong? Which one are you missing? Sharon...? Or Hannah...?" Hearing their names shook me from my dream state.

"No, Mom... it's not that. I... I... I was just thinking..." I paused. I wasn't really sure what I was going to say. I couldn't really explain, "... about a book."

"What book?" she asked.

"The Great Gatsby."

My sister looked at me, like I was insane. "Why are you thinking about The Great Gatsby on Christmas Eve? I mean it's a great book and all, but isn't it an odd time to be preoccupied with F. Scott Fitzgerald?"

"No, it's just that.... I don't know why, but I was thinking of that line of Gatsby's, about two-thirds of the way through the book. You know, when Nick says to Gatsby, 'You can't repeat the past.' And then Gatsby responds, 'Can't repeat the past? Why, of course you can!'"

"I don't know why, but I was just thinking what an incredible virtue it must be to really believe that. To really believe that you can remake your life. Do things all over again. Fix your mistakes. Have a second shot at everything."

"So you were thinking of Sharon or Hannah or maybe both of them?" my mother said.

"No," I said with complete honesty, "I don't know what the hell I was thinking of. I'm sorry." Then, I shook my head, and I remembered where we were and what I was doing, and went back to the package in my lap. "Now, where was I?" I said laughing at myself.