Homecoming Queen, page 27
She thought of the phone calls from Mack and Sonny and wondered if she could still possibly be attracted to one or even both of them when she did finally see them again. Fantasy was one thing, real life was quite another. Maybe she wouldn’t have any desire once she saw them. But what if she did? Which one would she want - first? That moth-eaten thought, as moldy as the fake fur on her homecoming queen cape, made her laugh out loud.
Kenyon giggled, too, having no idea why.
CHAPTER 37
1973
Making love again was as if it had always been meant to be. He was a rapturous lover, and she was starved for him. Or starved for love. She didn’t know the difference and didn’t care. Still, it had taken them months to get to that night in January when they’d finally grabbed each other in a frenzy of desire.
She’d put off seeing him for a month after she and Kenyon moved to Lansing in early September the preceding fall, giving him one excuse after another on the phone for why he shouldn’t come over. But then he’d shown up at the apartment one night with a small cooler containing a six-pack of Coke and a bottle of chocolate milk as house-warming gifts, insisting he wouldn’t stay long.
Kenyon had stared up at him with wide eyes, precociously measuring him up, finally deciding he was okay. After all, he’d brought her chocolate milk. Plus, he’d complimented her on her shiny red shoes.
He’d stayed for about fifteen minutes and, true to his word, he left. It’d been a good thing, too, because the moment she laid eyes on him again, Llayne knew she was in trouble.
Time and time again she vowed to herself that she wouldn’t complicate her life with him or with any man. Not yet. I need to concentrate on Kenyon. I’m too busy. I’m not ready. She’d chanted within her head like a mantra.
But he kept on stopping over, once a week for a month, never staying long, sensing Llayne’s need for independence and not wanting to pressure her. Intuitively, he understood her desire to do things on her own and to succeed at being a single mother.
She wanted to unpack her own boxes, paint her own walls, and hang her own pictures. She wanted to take good care of her child, handle her new job, and do well in school. She wanted to plan her own destiny and open her own jars.
After all, she’d depended on a man once before, and he’d died on her. Mack grasped the exigency of her knowing she could go it alone if she had to. Once she knew that inexorably, perhaps she would choose not to anymore. Perhaps then she would be ready to let him into her life. So he took it very, very slowly.
It was early November when he started stopping over twice a week. The first week of December, he brought Christmas gifts for which he was invited to stay for dinner. Then he invited them to his farm outside of town. It was the last week of December when he couldn’t contain himself any longer and went over every day. She didn’t tell him to go away, which encouraged him mightily.
From her point of view, he was making it more and more difficult for her to keep her vow of celibacy. She did everything within her power to deny her feelings, but they refused to cease and desist. And I used to be so good at denial, she mused.
Kenyon adored him, too, as he did her, calling him their “man-friend.” She liked it when they went to his farmhouse ‘cuz he had lots of rooms and a yard to run around in.
But she liked it best of all when he came to their place at night to read her bedtime stories. He knew about her daddy, the Lex daddy in the picture by her bed, and sometimes he told her stories about how her daddy had been a baseball player and a hero and a very nice man. But that daddy Lex was gone to Heaven with mommy Soon Lee. They were the same stories her mommy told her but she liked it even better when he told them. Kenyon wished their man-friend could be her daddy.
Llayne relished it that he and her daughter hit it off so well and that he had become her own best friend. That was, until that day in January, one year and one day after Lex’s death. On that evening he became her lover.
That day began when Llayne woke up with a start at four in the morning, recalling with absolute clarity the dream she’d had. Or perhaps it hadn’t been a dream.
Lex had come to her in her sleep. It filled her with joy to see him again, so healthy and beautiful, standing before her, a look of absolute peace on his face and an aura of ideal patience about him. He would wait for as long as it took.
As soon as she awoke, she knew what he was waiting for; he was waiting for her to move on with her life. He’d been gently, lovingly prodding her, telling her without words that it was time for her to stop measuring her life in terms of how long it’d been since he died. She needed to go forward, for herself and for his child. Her child now. He was very, very happy about Kenyon.
Arising quietly so as not to awake the girl, who slept on the other side of the flowered sheet that hung from the ceiling to separate their beds in the one-room apartment, Llayne went to her jewelry box. Moonlight filtered in through the window to light the way as she opened the box. The gesture caused the ruby inset in the delicate, gold ring on the third finger of her left hand to glint in the low light. Her wedding ring was a replica of a Victorian wedding ring. She’d wondered if she would never take it off.
Yet, her husband, her heavenly husband, had just told her it was time. Slipping it off her finger, she kissed it and reverently placed it in the box next to his wedding band, the one she’d worn on a chain around her neck for so long. Now the circles, the two rings, seemed complete, belonging together. Someday they would belong to Kenyon.
It was hard to go to her mundane job in the college financial aid office at eight a.m. after such a momentous event in the wee hours of the morning, but life moved on. She went to class in the late afternoon, then picked Kenyon up from child care and went home as usual.
But things were different. It was the night she would have her first real date with their man-friend. He’d invited Llayne out to dinner, just the two of them. On occasion they had accompanied one another to after-work functions but had never had what could be called a real date.
A neighbor, a Brazilian woman, had offered to sit with Kenyon. So Llayne had a baby-sitter and she even had the next morning off from work. She had no excuses left for not going out with him. Besides, Lex had come to her, leaving no barriers whatsoever.
Kenyon watched in wonder when her mommy took a lingering shower. She always took a fast one in the morning. Every day when her mommy picked her up from the play place, they came home or went to the park and played some more. But today Mommy was too busy. She was going to dinner with their man-friend, and Kenyon didn’t get to go.
Llayne finished her shower, towel dried her body and her hair, wrapped the towel around herself, then put her hair up in rollers, something the child had never seen before. Usually she let it dry naturally. Kenyon wanted rollers in her hair too, and Llayne managed to get a couple to stay in the silky mane. Then Llayne stuck her head under what looked to Kenyon like a big balloon that made a lot of noise. Mommy said it was to dry her hair. Now Kenyon thought the whole thing was really getting ridiculous. How long could someone spend getting ready to go eat? It was so boring.
Still, the little one stood by and stared as her mommy finished taking the rollers out of her hair and combed it. Then she put lotion all over her body. Of course, Kenyon wanted some, too, so Mommy put some on her arms. Then Mommy painted red nail polish on her own fingers and toes. Kenyon didn’t get any polish, though, ‘cuz she was too little. She was too little for makeup, too, which her mommy spent a lot of time putting on her own face.
“Besides,” Mommy said, kissing the tip of her nose, “your little face doesn’t need makeup because it’s perfectly beautiful the way it is.”
By the time Llayne dropped the short, red shift of a dress over her head, Kenyon had long since left the bathroom to go play with her toys. She was happy when the neighbor woman, Miss Eneida, came over and whisked her away. Finally, she’d have somebody to play with. She gave her mommy, who was acting so strangely, a quick kiss and then flitted out the door in her special shoes, rollers in her hair, and her veil in hand.
As soon as the door closed behind her daughter, Llayne felt a stab of abandonment, as if her security blanket had vanished. She would be all alone with him. She wouldn’t be a mommy or a student or a buddy.
She would be a woman.
With that revelation glowing in her mind, she conceded that the time had come for total self-disclosure. The unqualified, unadulterated truth was that she wanted him. Desperately.
Taking a deep breath to compose herself, she put on the silky, red sweater that matched her dress. She’d spent a week’s pay splurging on the outfit at K-mart, an outlandish expenditure for her, but one she delighted in making.
Realizing he’d be there any minute, she quickly daubed Shalimar toilet water behind her ears and behind her knees. Scuttling out of the bathroom, she went to the dresser beside her bed and opened her jewelry box, examining its meager contents. A quick scan determined that she didn’t have anything to wear with her outfit. She started to flip down the lid when a sparkle from the corner of the box caught her eye. She fondled the two wedding bands, then closed the lid.
She threw on her black heels, then back in the bathroom she glanced in the mirror for a final appraisal. She liked what she saw. She was a little thinner than she’d been in college, having gained back some of the weight she’d lost after Lex died when she became far too thin, but not all of it. So she was still thinner than before. Her jaw angled with the loss of baby fat and her ash-blond hair, which fell in loose waves down her back, only held a hint of the bleached streak that had once so boldly striped one side. She wore her make-up in more natural tones now, except for the red lipstick she had on to match her dress. But most of all she looked more grown-up.
She’d grown from a girl into a woman. Her blue eyes radiated confidence and insightfulness, qualities they hadn’t held when she was in college. And now those big, beautiful eyes also radiated mischief. It made her smile. She was ready for him.
Right on cue, the knock sounded. With calculated steps, she walked to the door and opened it.
Mack O’Brien stood there running one hand through his wavy, dark brown hair and holding a dozen red roses in the other. He grinned sheepishly at her, his washed-denim blue eyes taking her in from head to toe and back again.
Although she’d never tell should he decide to dispense with the posies from there-on-in, it was the thick hair and that cockeyed grin that did it. She took his hand in hers and pulled him inside. They gazed into one another’s eyes for only a brief moment before falling into a passionate kiss.
Flowers tossed to the floor, dinner reservation ignored, nothing else mattered. Months, actually years, of mutual sexual attraction exploded into wildly erotic coupling.
Their intensity was so great it felt like they might detonate in self-destruction. Their mouths sought every morsel, every angle on one another’s faces. They kissed hungrily, licked lavishly, and sucked gently. She ruffled her fingers through his hair, as she’d longed to do for what seemed like an eternity, the scent of his Old Spice intoxicating her.
Casting her sweater aside, he ran his hands all over her willing, supple body, up and down her bare arms, around her luscious breasts to finger her nipples through the thin fabric, encircling her small waist, across her curved hips, and clutching her solid buttocks in both big hands. He lifted her off the ground and her legs automatically went up around his hips, causing the short skirt of her dress to gather in her lap. Gazing down, he saw the nakedness there and moaned like a lion in heat.
With every ounce of control he could manage, Mack gently nudged her away and stood her in front of him. In total supplication, she let him look at her.
After sloughing off his suit jacket, he picked her up so carefully it was as if she were the most priceless package imaginable. He carried her to the big bed on the other side of the room and gently laid her down. Staring at her, he stood at the side of the bed as if in a hypnotic dream. She lifted herself up and stared back. Having already undressed one another with their eyes, he took one dainty foot in each hand to gently take off her shoes. Then he kicked off his own leather loafers and bent down to tug off his socks. When he stood up again, she reached up and untied his silk tie, pulled it off, and flung it away. He wove his fingers through her sumptuous hair. She unbuckled his leather belt and slipped it out of its loops. He grabbed the hem of her skirt and finagled it up around her squirming hips to run his hands over her bare, smooth legs, delicately tracing with his fingertips every inch of solid muscle, while he let the anticipation of what laid beneath that rumpled skirt swell inside him. She reached up and unbuttoned his shirt, tearing it off his body. Her eyes widened with pleasure as she ran her fingers through the spirals of hair on his muscle-bound chest and wended her way down to the button on his pants. It easily flipped open and she fingered the zipper, feeling the rock-hard bulge beneath.
That did it. All control dissolved and he tore her new, red dress off over her head. She jerked the zipper open and shoved his pants and underwear down to the floor and he kicked them aside.
The pupils of Llayne’s eyes involuntarily expanded at the sight of him fully naked. He was all lean muscle, he was magnificently endowed, he was gorgeous. He was irresistible.
His eyes glazed over in bliss as they roamed from her firm breasts rising and falling with excited breaths, to her slim torso which collapsed into a concave pleasure bowl with a cute belly-button in its center, then down to the mound between her legs that pulsated in primeval thrusts. It was an invitation he couldn’t resist any longer.
He dropped onto her and finally the sublime moment arrived. He entered her and she plunged into that netherworld between rapacious consciousness and primitive unconsciousness.
Soaring higher, higher, higher, she reached her peak and let out a scream. Her delight made it impossible for him to hold back any longer; he moaned with sheer rapture as he, too, reached the ultimate satisfaction. Clinging to each other, they lay there for a long time, gently stroking one another’s bodies.
She bent her arms up over her head and lowered her eyelids to look at him mischievously. “Oooh, I see you want more,” she noted, lowering an arm to wrap her hand around the object of that insight.
“Gee, how did you guess?”
This time their lovemaking became more than mere physical coupling. This time their bodies joined together to serve as a bridge for the joining of two souls.
Being with Mack almost felt like she was making love for the first time because she was a new woman, emotionally and spiritually. Never before had she had that kind of heady liberty, that kind of confidence, or that kind of erotic creative freedom to offer to a man. Never before had she been that comfortable with her body and her mind. Never before had she been so much of a woman.
With love overflowing in her heart, she knew that everything that had happened to her in her life to that point had made her the woman who could love this man. She felt immensely grateful.
Memories of screwing with Walton, the sleazy professor, were erased; the remembrance of making love with gentle Lex became a cherished, treasured primer.
“You know,” he said, breaking into her thoughts as they lay at rest, “I went back to Mt. Pleasant the summer after graduation to try to find you. I found out you were marrying Lex, though, so I left.”
“Why did you want to find me?”
“To ask you to marry me. What do you say to that?”
“I’ll say ‘yes’ as soon as you ask me.”
His smile was enormous as he turned over onto his stomach and locked his hands as if pleading. “Llayne Robertson Lexington, will you marry me?”
“Yes.”
After a lingering, celebratory kiss, she said, “You’ve changed the ritual of proposing marriage. It’s supposed to be on one knee, after a nice dinner or something, with clothes on. You’re buck naked and on your belly after, well, you know what after.”
“I didn’t want to do the same old thing everybody else does. Actually, I had the whole ritual planned quite nicely. We were going to have a romantic dinner, then I was going to take your hand, and give you... Ohmygod. I was going to give you...” he jumped up and rummaged through his pants’ pocket “…this.” The glint of diamond sparkled in the dark as he put the ring on her finger.
Mack O’Brien held his betrothed as she wept with joy.
CHAPTER 38
Eneida Estacio, the Brazilian neighbor woman, was no fool. She saw the gorgeous hunk of a man come to the apartment next door day after day, and every one of those days she saw him leave a horny man. Yet, sexual electricity sizzled between him and Kenyon’s beautiful young mother. As far as she could tell, it was the first time the two adults had been alone. It was time for some sparks to fly.
So, it was no surprise to her when he drove up that night, went into that apartment, and never came out. She checked out the window a number of times and his shiny black truck never moved from its parking spot.
Ah, how Eneida swooned over the idea of true love. At age forty-one, she doubted it would ever happen to her. Her job as a housekeeper at the Harley Hotel, which had excited her upon her arrival to the United States seven years earlier, had grown dull and tedious. And she missed her Brazilian tele-novellas, sexy short-series soap operas on television. Although more crudely produced, they were much bolder, sexier, and more fun than mundane American soaps. The goings on next door were proving to be a good replacement though.
That’s why when Llayne called at eleven o’clock that night to say she was coming to get Kenyon, Eneida put her off, insisting that the child was so sound asleep on the couch there was no need to wake her until morning. Llayne hesitated, said something to the man, and finally agreed. “I’ll pay you extra,” she said.
