According to Jane (17 page)

"Oh, God," he groaned, pushing my legs further apart and sticking a couple of fingers into the sensitive area between them. I was dry, so let's just say this was less than comfortable. "I'll make it good for you, Ellie."

He poked and prodded at the soft flesh there, reminding me of the unpleasantness of that gynecological exam Mom made Di and me go to once. I swallowed and tried to relax. In no way did that work.

I felt the sharp jab of a fingernail against my inner wall and gasped. Jason increased his poking until the discomfort was too much for me to take.

"Stop," I whispered, batting at his hand.

"Too intense for you, too?" he said, grinning. "I know. I can't wait anymore either."

Without giving me a chance to correct his latest misperception, he shackled my wrists above my head with his hands, constricting my circulation. His mouth latched onto mine and the force of his body plunged on top of me.

I writhed beneath him, trying to loosen his grip. His hands relaxed a fraction, but his hips crushed mine and his erection pressed tight against my opening.

"Jason," I managed to say. "Slow down--" I was feeling a little warmer at my core now that he'd removed his fingers, but I was nowhere close to catching up with him.

"I'm so hot for you." He pumped his hips again, the tip of his penis sliding just barely inside me.

Then a peculiar thing happened. Jason's face contorted strangely, and he arched his back and pushed, moaning all the while. Only, his erection popped out of my body and, instead of bursting through my virginal wall, it slithered between my legs. I suspected he didn't notice.

After a few additional moans, he collapsed against me and hugged me tight. "You're so amazing, Ellie," he mumbled in my ear before falling to the blanket with a thump.

"Um, thanks."

I paused, waiting for him to acknowledge that what he'd
planned
on happening didn't, in fact, happen. But there was nothing. Not a sound out of him.

I nudged his shoulder. "Jason?"

"Mmm?" He swiveled slightly toward me and glanced at my face with a sleepy, half-glazed-over smile. "So sweet," he murmured.

"Do you need to do anything else?" I hinted.

"Hmm," he sighed. "Don't think so." There was a pause. "Go to the bathroom, maybe." He looked down at his limp condom and tugged it off. "But I'm too tired."

"Oh."

"Thanks, Ellie. You were great." Thirty seconds later he was snoring softly.

I shut my eyes and, if my soul hadn't ached so much, I would've laughed. I remembered something Jane once said: "The power of doing anything with quickness is always much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance." Truer words.

Please, I thought, tell me all guys aren't this stupid. Or this incompetent. Are they? Without thinking, I opened my mind up to Jane again and asked her this same question.

After a few huffs, she answered tartly,
I would like to think not. You, however, have been remarkably foolish. Get dressed.

For once I didn't argue with her. I slipped my clothes back on and positioned myself on my pillow, my head five inches from Jason's. I didn't touch him, though.

Nate and Sabrina were still going at it on the other side of the closet door, having a more mutually good time. I felt a pang of envy and brushed away a tear that wouldn't go away on its own.

This couldn't possibly count as my first time, could it? If so, sex really sucked. I hugged myself and tried to keep from clenching my jaw.

Take care, Ellie
, Jane whispered in the moments before I finally fell asleep, her tone the comforting voice of a caring elder.
A mistake was made this one time, but you need not reproach yourself forever. You shall recover from this hurt
, she promised me.
I shall help you
.

The next morning I awoke, in the closet, amidst a sea of scattered belongings: high-heeled shoes, hairclips, Jason's discarded clothing, the empty 7Up bottle still reeking of Everclear, used and unused Trojans, my ruined reputation...you know, the usual post-prom wreckage.

I brushed myself off, tried to stretch the kink out of my neck and opened the closet door to slip into the bathroom just as Terrie and Krista snuck into our room.

"Morning," I whispered, since the others were still asleep.

Krista gave me a good once-over and giggled. Terrie grinned and said, "Congrats, El! The first time's really exciting, huh?"

I caught my reflection in the room mirror and gasped before I could stop myself. I looked flushed. Tousled. Like I should've been auditioning for the role of Streetwalker/Chorus Girl in Pat Benatar's "Love Is A Battlefield" video. I opened my mouth to explain, but just then Jason emerged from the depths of the closet.

"Mornin', ladies," he said, kissing the top of my matted hair. "You look sweet today, El," he whispered to me before sauntering into the bathroom with a blanket wrapped around his waist, a saucy smile on his lips and a prideful gleam in his eye.

Terrie winked knowingly. "Wow, you got yourself a gentleman."

Appearances can be QUITE deceiving
, Jane inserted.

"Uh, yeah," I murmured, more to Jane than to my friend.

"Glad you two had fun," Terrie said before waking up Sabrina.

And so the day began.

A little over an hour later, we entered the restaurant for the Morning-After Breakfast. Jason slung that proprietary arm around my shoulders and, again, pecked the top of my head with a kiss. He caressed my arm slowly with a fingertip and, I swear, gave off some kind of I-Just-Had-Sex-With-A-Virgin pheromone.

Heads turned. The overt signs of our familiarity were not lost on anyone. Peers, who'd been too self-absorbed to care during Prom--Day One, now watched us with real scrutiny.

I was tempted to give Jason a good hard shove and announce to the crowd that Jason Bertignoli didn't know how to satisfy a woman, or even know what he'd done (or hadn't done) the night before. But, of course, a Good Girl wouldn't blow the charade, so I didn't.

Amanda was whispering something to Sam as we walked passed the long table where they sat. He nodded at her, but he turned his eyes toward Jason and me. An expression, somewhere between a glower and a grimace, flashed across his face. A moment later it was gone, and so were we. The waitress seated us in another room.

As we waited for our food, the guys debated the instruments they wanted to "play" for the upcoming Air Band Bash. Matt proposed they take on a Guns N' Roses song, and Nate said, "Hey, the girls could be back-up singers and--"

"For GNR?" Steve laughed. "Nah, man, I don't think so."

"What if we did Robert Palmer's new one, 'Addicted to Love'?" Jason suggested. "Our girls could dress up in short skirts, wear shiny red lipstick and pretend to play guitars behind us."

"Awesome!" Matt said.

Nate nodded.

Steve smirked and said, "Now that's an image I like."

I thought,
Our
girls? Shoot me now.

Jason gave me a warm, lingering look, which should've brought a feeling of relief after our embarrassing night in the closet. Maybe I was the only one who was embarrassed, though. Jason, by contrast, looked exultant, and the other three couples seemed closer this morning. More relaxed with each other.

I felt strangely disconnected from all of them and more exposed in jeans and a tucked-in T-shirt than I had that morning in my crinkled, half-on/half-off prom dress.

I forced a smile and said, "Thanks for my share of the invitation, but I'm not into performing onstage."

Merely into acting everywhere else,
Jane chimed in.

I took a long, slow sip of ice water, hoping it wouldn't add to the chill running through my veins.

Terrie and Sabrina begged off the project, too, but Krista really got into it. She giggled and announced, "I have lots of short skirts." Steve raised an eyebrow at that and began giving her air-band pointers.

As Terrie and her sister worked on getting their stories straight for the upcoming parental inquisition, I sat back, watching it all with a painful vulnerability churning in my stomach that I wanted and needed to squelch. Soon. And with a lack of sexual satisfaction too intense to verbalize, even to Jane. (Although, certainly, she'd guessed.) And with a sheer determination never, ever to feel this indifferent toward making love again.

I gritted my teeth and stabbed at my French toast.

Next time, I promised myself, I'd get it right because
next time
I'd choose the guy, not let him choose me.

Everything nourishes what is strong
already.

--
Pride and Prejudice

I
'd choose the guy next time.

What a vow to make. But, oh, how right it had seemed then in theory. How admirable I thought it was in principle. How very wrong the reality turned out to be.

Funny how the passage of time lets you see your youthful decisions with more clarity. Hindsight being 20/20, and all that. Especially when, as a grown-up, you find yourself surrounded by angsty teens. All day long. And, at times, even in the midst of the dreaded prom season.

One late-April morning, a few weeks after my Easter shopping excursion with Jane and about a month before the big wedding/union in Toronto, I was in the school library filling out order forms for the latest Hot Teen-Reads. I'd be damned if Meadowview High didn't keep the most current award-winning authors on the shelves right alongside the young-adult classics, so I had a stack of requests in front of me and I was silently working my way through them.

Two senior girls sat at a small, round table a few yards to my left. They were not working--silently or otherwise. They were comparing notes on their prom, which was coming up that weekend.

After some chatter on the subject of dresses, the one I knew to be Simona said to her friend Karyn, "Jenni told me that Mike told her brother that he asked Liz to prom after he heard that Scott asked you."

Karyn inhaled sharply and said in a voice too loud for the library, "That's
so
not true! He's just saying that to screw with me. To start a rumor or something." She glanced wildly around her, saw me staring at them and lowered the volume (but not enough so I couldn't still hear her). "He's a loser," she whispered.

Simona crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows. "That's
not
what you thought when you hooked up with him at Jenni's party."

"That was
weeks
ago, and anyway--" Karyn inhaled again. "Oh, my God, shhh! There he is."

Simona tried to swivel around in her chair in a nonchalant manner, but she couldn't pull it off. She was as obvious in her actions as Karyn and, it turned out, as lacking in subtlety as the lanky, dark-haired boy I recognized to be Mike. A boy who loitered near the teen magazine rack, skimming the titles and shooting glances at the girls--at Karyn in particular--in between his every breath.

There was something in the intensity of his gaze that made me think, Ah, so Mike really
does
like her. Even though he'd asked someone else to prom, Karyn was the one he wanted.

Had it been that way between Sam and me? Had our game of teen attraction-repulsion been so apparent that any adult observing us, even fleetingly, could've guessed where we were headed?

Yes
, Jane replied shortly.

I sighed. As I said, 20/20 hindsight.

A somewhat similar sense of improved vision happened for me in regards to weddings. I'd attended a number of them in my lifetime, a few especially memorable. However, up until I drove with Andrei to Mark and Seth's Canadian union, the piece de resistance had been the June afternoon Di and Alex joined their lives together. Forever. Or so we'd all hoped back then.

I went to
that
big event with Dominic and, although Reverend Jacobs officially presided, it was Jane who actually narrated the ceremony.

Those gowns are deplorable
, Jane told me with indignation, as if they were a personal affront.
I have rarely been witness to an occasion where the natural female form was marred so profoundly by lack of taste
.

I appraised Di's wedding gown, such that it was, as she sauntered down the aisle to the sounds of "Here Comes the Bride," the alternative-rock version. The light orange sheen of the clinging silk was pretty but, admittedly, an unusual choice given the occasion. Her pointy-nosed maid of honor wore a dark pink wraparound, which made the color scheme of the four-person wedding party a bit discordant. As for the cut of the dresses--well, let's just say Di's stance on wedding attire could most politely be defined as "minimalist."

Alex, however, stared at Di with a half-lidded gaze of sheer lust, so I guess he'd been a fan of the dress, even if most of the congregation (and especially Jane) found it appalling.

"Dearly beloved," the reverend mumbled, "we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Diana Lynn Barnett and Alexander Sinjin Evans--"

Sinjin?
Jane repeated with surprise.
How odd a choice for a Colonial man.

I stared from my pew up at my sister's almost-husband. Alex's dark hair was spiked in the front, longish in the back. His dangling silver earring caught the light through the stained glass. It seemed a genuine accessory, while the navy-colored suit he'd chosen, eschewing the traditional tux, fit well enough but appeared awkward on him somehow.

Yeah. I had to agree with Jane. There was nothing remotely Sinjin-like about him. Except, of course, that--like many of us--he'd had English ancestors in some prior century.

Colonial times ended two hundred years ago,
I told her.
You might not want to set your expectations too high for finding look-alikes from your era.

True
. There was a pause.
But faces really do not change, Ellie. At least, I had thought not
. She directed my attention to Di's maid of honor, the elder Daschell sister.
Notice her features. Very Germanic, do you not think? My family entertained visitors from the Continent who had similar face shapes and colouring.

But, Jane, remember that Kendra and Stacy are first-generation Americans. Their parents are both German. In general, there's been a lot more mingling of blood in the centuries since Europeans came to the New World. You saw kids in my high school and college who had blended ethnicities
.

Perhaps, but families still encourage their children to marry within certain boundaries.

I laughed.
But they don't always listen. Just think about Angelique and Leo. Not only are they different religions, but his background is mostly Hungarian, while she's a UK mutt like me--part English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh--with another nationality or two thrown in from her dad's side. Their kids are going to have a real mix of features, and if any one of those kids marries someone Asian or Hispanic or Black
--

Yes, I understand your reasoning, yet how commonplace is such a thing?

Look around
, I told her. I pointed out Alex's best man--a black-haired, Cuban-born guy--and his blond, fourth-generation Tennessee-born wife. She sat across the aisle from me and gazed at her husband with pride.
They've been married for a year
.

I nodded toward some of the other racially mixed couples in the congregation, some married, some engaged, and I reminded Jane of the guys I'd dated in college whose ethnicities and religions were different from mine, including Dominic, who was half Latino.

I would agree you were often willing to take a chance on a gentleman regardless of his background
, she said magnanimously, although it may well have been veiled criticism.
But while the search for true love in your time has the potential to expose you to a multitude of possible partners, it brings an equal abundance of heartbreaks
.

I rolled my eyes, not at all shocked by this latest pearl of Regency wisdom, but one didn't tell the formidable Jane Austen "Duh."

Before I could respond more appropriately, however, Jane added,
It is also a rather repetitive, cyclical process, it seems, as the same individuals, or those representing the varying types of male, keep reappearing
.

She was right about this, of course. I hadn't spent time compiling a list of male categories for no reason.

She began quizzing me about my then-burgeoning relationship with Dominic.
Tell me about Mr. Reyes-Jones,
she said.

I like him,
I admitted.
I'm attracted to him. I want to believe in him. But I don't know, Jane. Will it work?
I inhaled as much air as I could take in.
What do you think?

She considered.
What is it that most draws you to him?

His passion,
I said without hesitation.
The wild enthusiasm he has. He's not cold and cowardly or unintelligent or remotely effeminate or
--

Like any of the gentlemen you have thus encountered,
she finished for me.

Right. But, I mean, what do I know? He could be as stupidly self-centered as Jason. Or he could completely betray me like Sam. At what point do I take the risk? And, even if I decide to go for it, what if HE doesn't? What if I'm just another person he wants to have deep philosophical discussions with?

Jane thought about this as the Reverend droned on. "Diana, do you take this man..." and blah, blah, blah.

What I hated to admit, even to myself, was how much I'd been hurt by bad boyfriends in the past. How cynical they'd made me. How I doubted I'd ever find the soul mate I'd fantasized about. How I feared the thoughtful, romantic man who loved to dance with me and make me dinner and hold me was a myth. Someone who only existed in fiction through a writer's sleight of hand.

Well?
I finally asked Jane, eyeing a somewhat smug-looking Dominic, who sat next to me, alternately flipping through the hymnal and staring idly around the church.

Indeed, he does seem comfortable with himself at present
, Jane commented.
But his words and his actions are, in truth, occasionally at odds. I have suspicions I am quite unable to substantiate
.

I stopped listening to Reverend Jacobs altogether.
So, wait--you don't KNOW? You're as clueless about his character as I am? And all this time I thought you were supposed to be wiser than me
.

Neither of us is a perfect being
, Jane said, with no trace of venom. Then, less benignly,
I, of course, am not the one with a history of such lamentable suitors
.

I almost laughed aloud.
You forget, I've read your biography. Plenty of "history," as you say, was hinted at for you, dear Jane. Just because the intimate details of your romances weren't recorded for posterity doesn't mean they didn't exist
.

A moment of stone-cold silence followed.
My history lacked the outrageous drama of yours
, she retorted.

Well, she had me there.

Yet, at Mark and Seth's union, five years later in Toronto, I felt sure I was not in the midst of some new romantic melodrama. I felt sure I'd matured greatly. And I felt sure that what I was now experiencing with Andrei was merely a part of the relationship process--the next step, if you will, on my own road to eventual holy matrimony.

That bright, late-May afternoon, with Andrei as a member of our merry crowd, I scanned the congregation from my place at the podium, under a billowing white canopy, and read into the microphone a selection from Gibran's
The Prophet
.

"
When love beckons to you
,

follow it
...

And when its wings enfold you
,

yield to it
...

And when it speaks to you
,

believe in it
...

Think not that you can direct the course of love
,

for love
,

if it finds you worthy,

directs your course."

I looked into Mark and Seth's eyes, aglow with what I'd undoubtedly call love, and I smiled at them both. Then I stepped down from my perch of honor and wound my way back to my seat next to my Slavic boyfriend. He spread his palm over my bare knee and shot me a wink.

My old roommate Kim, who was sitting on the other side of me and struggling to keep her three little ones from whining or crawling under the seats, nudged me once and said, "Nice job." Then she hissed at her husband, "Grab Jordan! Don't let him eat the grass!"

Tom, who was the parental bookend further down the row, snatched up their nine-month-old son, pried the fistful of crabgrass from his little hand and stuck an arrowroot cracker in the kid's mouth.

Kim and I laughed. Tom grinned at us. Andrei's hand slid a few millimeters up my thigh. Jordan gummed the cracker and gurgled while Mark and Seth exchanged rings.

It was a near-perfect moment, and I could feel in my nerve fibers that I should be next. That I should get to have this crew all around me again--a year from now, perhaps--only Andrei and I would be the ones up in front of the crowd, pledging our vows and our intention for a shared future.

I impulsively turned to Andrei and planted a wet kiss on his cheek. He responded by slipping his fingers under the hem of my tasteful rose-colored dress.

"Not here," I whispered in panic.

"Where then?" he countered.

"Nowhere
now!
This is a wedding--"

"Then afterward. At big reception." He squeezed my thigh for emphasis before releasing me, and I tried to block out an unwelcome wave of dread.

Mostly, I loved sex with Andrei but, lately, it'd been getting wilder. Louder. Kinkier. And increasingly less discreet. We did it once in the employees' bathroom at the Shop-N-Save. We did it with handcuffs. Twice. He insisted we try it blindfolded, under the stars, at the park, before midnight one Tuesday. Thank God we didn't get caught.