LOVING HER SOUL MATE (7 page)

When his hand moved down further, between her legs
and his finger entered what was already a wet passage, her entire body
tightened with anticipation.
 
John knew
his way around
pussy,
it was obvious, because he was
handling hers to perfection.
 
He eased
his finger in, moving it ever so gently from side to side, capturing the
moisture and rolling around in it.
 

“You’re so wet, babe,” he said as he fingered
her.
 
“I love to feel your wetness.”

Shay loved how he felt it, too, but she wasn’t about
to verbalize it.
 
She was still upset
with herself for allowing this to begin again.
 
But if felt so damn good!

It wasn’t until John whispered in her ear, “I want
to fuck you again, Shay,” did she realize what she was doing.
 
And she immediately pulled back from
him.
 
His finger at first resisted her
pull, remaining lodged in her pussy, but then he slowly, reluctantly pulled
out.

“I can’t do this,” she said.

John understood her anguish.
 
He understood she didn’t want some physical
relationship without any commitments.
 
But he also understood his need.
 
“We’re two consenting adults, Shay.
 
I’m not asking you to marry me.”

“Right,” she said.
 
“You’re just asking me to fuck you.
 
Just like you ask woman after woman after woman to
fuck you.
 
Despite what happened
Friday night, John, which I still can’t explain, I’m not one of those women.”

John’s heart plummeted.
 
That wasn’t what he meant at all.
 
“Of course you aren’t!” he said as if that
was self-explanatory.
 
“I don’t want you
to be.”

“Then why are you bothering with me?
 
Why did you call me to your office?
 
Why are you trying to get into my panties
when you’ve got a wealth of women whose panties are readily open to you?
 
It’s a dead end street.
 
You don’t want to make any commitment to me
and I’m not ready to commit to you or anybody else.
 
I just broke up with Lonnie.
 
It’s too damn early.
 
What happened Friday night was just an
aberration,
it was just an outpouring of passion.
 
Nothing more.
 
You know it and I know it.”

Although she was right, John still didn’t see their
relationship as only physical.
 
They made
an emotional connection too, although neither one of them seemed to want to
admit it.
 

“Who says we have to commit to each other?” he
tried again.
 
“Maybe we can just take it
slow and see where this leads.” He didn’t know why he was so hell bent on
having her in his life.
  
Yes, her sex
was great, and yes, he loved being with her like that.
 
But damn.
 
He didn’t really know her, did he?
 
And that emotional connection they did make kind of necessitated that it
would require some kind of commitment eventually.
 
When he knew, like she knew, neither one of
them were ready for that.

“I’d better get to the courthouse,” she said,
turning to leave.
 
“Ronnie’s waiting.”

But John grabbed her by the arm.
 
Shay looked at him.
  
Why, she wondered, was he trying so hard to
beat this dead horse?
 

The look on her face, of a kind of bewildered
distress, gave John pause.
 
The last
thing he needed was a hot and heavy affair with a woman who turned him on the
way Shay did.
 
And the last thing Shay
needed was him.

He reluctantly, but necessarily let her go.

THREE

Three months later

John Malone woke up in a bed he
quickly realized was not his own and with a hangover that caused his sleepy blue
eyes to squint.
 
He looked to his left
and saw a woman lying there, some bleached blonde with her big pink breasts
uncovered and her eyes, were they blue, brown, or green he couldn’t say,
closed.
 
Kate or Kim or
some such name.
 
Something with a K.
 
He
remembered a K.
 
He remembered talking
with her at the bar last night, laughing about stamina and studs or some other
filler talk, and then following her to her house.
 
Had a few drinks, he remembered drinking with
her, and kind of, sort of remembered screwing her.
 

He did something with her at any
rate.
 
She was screaming in excitement
and wiggling underneath him, and he remembered thinking at the time how he
wished she would shut the hell up.
 

Now it was another five a.m. and
he was crawling out of another woman’s bed with yet another overused, limp dick
that gave him nothing more than memories so unremarkable that he wasn’t even
interested in the details.
 
He just
wanted out.
 

She began to stir as he stood up,
causing him to glance back at her.
 
The harsh glare of the morning light revealed lines of age around
her eyes that the darkness of the bar never would have.
 
But she remained asleep as he moved
lightly.
 
He was hoping she wouldn’t wake
up.
 
Because he wasn’t
interested.
 
He was never
interested the morning after, no matter who the female was.
 
If she woke up she might want to exchange
numbers.
 
She might want to make plans to
meet up again when he knew meeting up again with some female he met in some bar
wasn’t going to happen.
 

He just wanted out.
 

He grabbed his jeans and jersey
from various spots around the room, and began dressing quietly but
quickly.
 
He glanced in the wastebasket
by the bed.
 
Saw two freshly-used condoms,
one at the bottom and another that barely made it and was hanging on the
wastebasket’s rim.
 
Damn
, he thought as he dressed.
 
He fucked her twice?
 
Her
?
 
When he didn’t remember anything worth
remembering about their hookup, just her screams of excitement and wiggles, and
how her excitement irritated him.
 

He shook his head as he zipped his
jeans and slipped into his shoes.
 
She
was probably a decent woman.
 
Was
probably just lonely and out for a good time.
 
Maybe was even hoping against hope that she’d find something different
out there this time.
 
Then he came along,
some big-dick Willie who promised nothing but had to know, if somebody’s
desperate enough, that nothing was a promise too.
 

The thought of her vulnerability
caused him to pause, and look at her again.
 
Was she hopeful?
 
Did she fall
asleep last night thinking she’d finally found Mister Right?
 
Did she think that all of her false starts
were finally over?
 
He sure hoped
not.
 
For her sake he prayed she wasn’t
that naïve.
 
She was old enough to know
better, but that didn’t mean she did.
 
Hell, he was pushing forty and still sleeping around like some teenager
in heat.
 
He should know better too.
 
But what could he do about it?
 
He always told them up front to expect
nothing from him.
 
Was it his fault if
they didn’t believe him?

After dressing and then tossing those
condoms into her bathroom toilet, he headed for the exit, glancing back at Kate
or Kim or whatever her name happened to be.
 
It was as if in watching her he could will her to remain at peace, to
remain asleep, so that he, like the bastard he knew he was, could silently get
away.

Shay locked the door of her small,
two-bedroom house on Bluestone Road and hurried to her
Volkswagen Beetle
.
 
She wore an ocean blue flair-leg pantsuit
with a sheer, white blouse that crisscrossed at her ample breasts, a red scarf
around her neck, and a pair of apple red stilettos that gave her the kind of
height she enjoyed.
 
She wasn’t normally
a matchy-matchy type of dresser, but today her wardrobe just fell into place.
 

She cranked up her
Beetle
, sat
her shoulder bag and briefcase on the passenger seat, and drove off.
 
Her neighborhood was older and quiet, with
rows and rows of small cottages made along the same style as her small, rented
house, but she loved it there.
 
The
neighbors, many of them seniors, treated her as if she was a long lost
daughter.
 
And one elderly
woman
who lived across town, a woman everybody called Aunt
Rae, was slowly becoming her closest friend.
 

Aunt Rae’s home was on the north
side of town in an area they called Dodge.
 
It was the poorest part of town, but it also housed many older people
who bought homes there decades ago when the area was safe and clean.
 
And they, like Rae, wasn’t about to
move.
 

Shay drove across to Rae’s small,
frame styled house and pulled quickly into the driveway.
 
She never had to blow her horn because Rae
was always ready.
 
And sure enough, as
soon as Shay’s VW turned into that driveway, the front door crept opened and
Rae Braxton came burrowing out.
 
With the
array of plastic bags she carried with her, from her crocheting needles and
balls, to her bags of medicines and ointments, she could easily be mistook for
a bag lady.
 
Even Shay, who first met her
at the local drugstore, thought she was perhaps homeless or very nearly.
 
But it wasn’t the case.
 
Rae used to be one of the most respected
schoolteachers in town, a woman who brook no mediocrity.
 
And although she’d been retired for nearly
twenty years now, and was certainly eccentric, she still possessed an excellent
mind.

She was also ornery as hell and
some often wondered why Shay even bothered with her.
 
Nobody else did.
 
But Shay could see beyond Rae’s gruff
exterior.
 
When Shay looked into the old
woman’s eyes, she didn’t see gruff.
 
She
saw somebody terrified of being alone, but just as terrified of settling for less.
 
In other words, Shay saw a lot of herself in
Aunt Rae.

Rae locked the door of her home
and hurried across her lawn to Shay’s passenger side door, gripping her bags as
if they were her security blanket.
 
Shay
moved her shoulder bag to the back seat and smiled as the short, dumpy woman
with the warm but stern face, stepped in.
 

“Good morning,” Shay said.
 

“You took your pretty time getting
here,” replied Rae.
 
“I don’t play that
late game.”

“You won’t be late, Aunt Rae.
 
Have I ever gotten you there late one time?”

“I’m just saying.
 
I don’t play that late thing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shay said with a
chuckle as she backed out of the driveway.
 

Rae, as was her way, gave Shay her
routine look-over.
 
Then, as was also her
way, she shook her head.
 

Shay smiled.
 
“What is it this time, Auntie?
 
I’m matching this time.”

“It’s a waste, that’s what time it
is.
 
Girl with your brains and beauty and
yet you’re all alone.”

“Here we go,” Shay said as she
turned the corner off of Liberty Street.

“Not in my day,” Rae
continued.
 
“They didn’t play that in my
day.”
 
Shay laughed at Rae’s use of
popular vernacular.
 
“In my day,” Rae
went on, “women had a career, but they also managed to find themselves a good
man too, raise a family, and be as happy as larks.
 
I was like you back then, stubborn just like
you.
 
Expecting too much from these men
and nobody could tell me a thing.
 
And it
all passed me by.
 
No husband, no
children, nothing.
 
Just memories of a
career long gone and old students who don’t know me anymore, and all these new
students who don’t care to know me.
 
I
don’t want that to happen to you.”