ANDREA FELT a little better after her shower. In four years’ time she’d never once talked about Scotty, never once shared her anguish with anyone. But while it had helped to talk about it, to be wrapped within the secure cocoon of Doug’s arms, the guilt was still just as bitter, as unrelenting as ever. How could she ever promise to love and to cherish again? What did those empty promises mean? She’d promised to look after Scotty. Her parents had left an innocent little boy in her hands and had come home to a nightmare.
“Mmm. That smells good,” she said, finding Doug in her kitchen ladling tomato soup into two bowls.
He sat down across from her, passing her a package of saltines. “I called the hospital. Jeremy’s sleeping peacefully.”
“Thank God.” Andrea had never meant two words more in her life. Maybe they could just put the past twelve hours behind them.
“So where does your divorce fit into all this?”
She looked at Doug over the spoon suspended halfway between her bowl and her mouth. He was watching her intently. It wasn’t over yet.
Andrea’s first instinct was to throw him out, to plead fatigue, to lie to him, but she couldn’t. She loved Doug. She couldn’t give him promises, she couldn’t give him commitments or a future. But she could give him the truth. He deserved that, at least.
She put her spoon back in her bowl, leaving it there.
“As soon as we knew that Scotty was going to make it, John jumped on the incident as proof of my inappropriateness for police work.”
Doug dropped his own spoon, disgust flaring across his stubbled face.
“Wait.” Andrea held up a hand, forestalling what he might say. “In a way he was right. As a cop, I should’ve seen the signs long before Scotty snorted that bad batch. But that wasn’t what broke up our marriage. It was the way I had failed at home. I was trained to see the signs, to protect the public from people like those who’d started in on Scotty to begin with, and I’d been so complacent in my knowledge that I lost perspective. I never put two and two together where my brother was concerned. John was worried that I’d fail my own kids like I failed Scotty, that I couldn’t do my job and take care of a family, too. He wanted children. He just didn’t want me to be their mother. Not unless I gave up my career.”
“And you couldn’t do that.”
Andrea felt so incompetent. “Nope. At the expense of my marriage, in spite of the vows I’d taken till death do us part, I chose my career over my husband. I was served with divorce papers exactly one month after Scotty’s overdose.”
Doug swore, getting up from the table to pour his soup down the sink. He didn’t say anything else, but the rigid set of his shoulders told her what he thought of John’s sense of timing. It felt good to have someone champion her, even though she’d been in the wrong.
She helped Doug with the dishes and then followed him back down the hall to her bedroom. She pulled on her sleep shirt while Doug showered, listening to him set the soap in the dish, wondering if she’d ever share a house with him. She doubted it. After all he’d heard, she doubted that Doug would ever ask her to.
“I’d like to meet Scotty.” His words were easy enough as he came through the door into her bedroom, but they sent Andrea into a panic.
“You can’t.” She sat frozen at the foot of the bed, staring at him.
Doug stood rooted to the spot, his towel slung loosely around his hips, beaded drops of moisture clinging to the hair on his chest. “Why not?”
The words were more challenging than curious.
Andrea felt trapped. She’d never intended to confess the rest. It was her biggest humiliation.
“He hasn’t spoken to me in almost three years.”
“What?” Doug was staring at her as if he’d never seen her before.
“He hates me,” she said flatly.
“That’s ridiculous. He was the one who made the mistakes. How could he hate you?”
Andrea rose to her little brother’s defense. “He was a child, Doug. A little boy just waiting for someone to catch him, to help him out of a situation that was too big for him to handle. He’d trusted me to watch out for his welfare, to guard and protect him. I failed to do that.”
“You’re not God, Andrea. He can’t hold you responsible for thugs on the playground.”
“He can do whatever he chooses to do, Doug, and I, for one, can’t say I blame him. Things haven’t been easy for him. After his overdose became public knowledge he was forced out of his Cub Scout troop, and that summer, scared parents didn’t want him in T-ball. The couple of boys that used to be Scotty’s friends weren’t allowed to play with him anymore. He’d always been a shy boy, slow to make friends. How could he have been expected to deal with total rejection? He felt like I let him down. And he’s right, I did.”
“Didn’t your parents fight it? Didn’t they try to reason with the parents who were blackballing him?”
“I tried. Mom and Dad were too busy dealing with Scotty. But people are a funny lot when they’re scared. Scotty’s mishap, as the other parents termed it, hit a little too close to home. They were horrified by the danger that had entered their upper-middle-class elementary-school hallways through my baby brother. They were running scared. They didn’t bother to be tactful when they let me know that I’d blown it. After all, I’m a cop. Why hadn’t I prevented things from getting so out of hand?”
Doug threw down his towel. “I don’t believe this. What about Scotty? Didn’t you try to reason with him? He’s your brother, for Pete’s sake. You can’t go through life ignoring each other.”
Andrea felt tears choking her throat again. When would she ever have cried enough?
“I tried to talk to Scotty,” she said, meeting Doug’s gaze squarely. “Even after I visited his hospital room and he demanded that I leave, even after he’d told me repeatedly that he hated me, I still tried. I wanted to apologize, to do whatever I could do to help him through the mess he was so ill-equipped to handle. But my attempts only seemed to upset him more. At first he screamed at me every time he saw me, and then later, the few times he’d talk to me at all, he was formal and awkward, as though I were some great-aunt of his. It was his counselor who finally suggested that Scotty might need some time, and mine who reminded me that I could only bang my head against a wall so many times before I broke. So I’ve been giving him the time he needs, for more months than I care to count.”
Doug grabbed up Andrea from the foot of the bed, crushing her in his arms, doing his gut-level best to erase her loneliness, to fuse it with his own. But even as he held her, he doubted that he’d ever really have her. They weren’t just dealing with a failed marriage, with scarred emotions. Her ex-husband’s words were too deeply embedded in her heart, her own crucifixion of herself too complete, her brother’s condemnation ringing too loudly in her ears for her to ease up on herself. Doug wasn’t sure she’d ever recover. He had no idea how to make things better for her.
He led her to the bed, tucking her under the covers, wondering if Andrea’s self-loathing might just be bigger than both of them. He wanted so badly to lie with her, to hold her through the night, but he knew better than to try. Now he understood why Andrea insisted on being alone.
He was zipping up his jeans before Andrea realized that he was going to leave her. The walls of her apartment closed in on her, reverberating with all the words they’d absorbed that night, replaying memories that were demons just waiting to destroy her.
“Don’t go. Please don’t go.” She heard her voice begging Doug to stay, and didn’t even care. She couldn’t bear to be alone. Just for one night, she couldn’t bear to be alone.
Without a word Doug slipped out of his jeans again and crawled in beside her, pulling her back into the safe haven of his arms. His leather wristband pressed comfortingly between her shoulder blades.
“It’s okay, baby. I’m right here,” he said in the most tender voice she’d ever heard him use. It slid over her skin, touching her in all the right places, offering her forgetfulness within the magic of his desire.
She snuggled against him, desperately eager for him to take her away from herself, from her thoughts and fears, from her belief that she was a lesser being, and transport her to a place where she was desirable, beautiful, courageous.
She waited for Doug’s fingers to trail across her skin, to take possession of her breast, to tease her to the point of insanity. She expected the hair-roughed heaviness of his thigh to slip between her legs, to spread them apart and ready her to take his most intimate offering. But he didn’t. He simply lay with her.
Andrea lay awake long into the night, refusing to cry. She didn’t blame Doug for not wanting to love her. It had been a long time since she’d loved herself.
* * *
LITTLE SPIRALS OF HEAVEN spun down Andrea’s body, settling in her womanhood, nudging her awake. She didn’t move. She didn’t even want to breathe, for fear that she’d make the magical dream go away.
Calloused fingers captured her breast beneath her nightshirt, teasing the tip of her nipple. Every ounce of Andrea’s concentration settled in that spot, glorying in the miracle of her awakening.
She shivered as the covers rolled away, but she welcomed the bite of cool air on her skin. Her nightshirt slid up her body, exposing her belly and then her breasts to the early-morning light. And then she felt one of her nipples being grazed by bearded stubble, by the hot velvety sleekness of a tongue, by lips that suckled her with fierce longing.
Andrea abandoned herself to the magic that only Doug could give her, refusing to allow thought to interfere with the perfection he was creating. She opened her eyes, relinquishing sleep so she could join Doug in the world he’d made for them.
He lay on his stomach beside her, his naked buttocks tight and firm to her hungry gaze. His dark head nestled against her chest as if he had come home, as if he was where he’d always belonged, as if her body was his haven.
“It’s about time you joined me, woman.” He lifted his head from her breast, fondling her moistened flesh with his thumb as his gaze bore into hers.
She slid her fingers boldly over his behind and then back up to fan out over his shoulders. “All you have to do is ask,” she said, meeting his gaze.
“Oh, I’m askin’, lady. I’m askin’ real hard.”
He pushed his thigh between her legs, spreading her open, and climbed on top of her.
“See how hard I’m askin’?” He nudged her womanhood with his bulging penis.
Andrea nuzzled her face into his neck, inhaling the musky male scent of him, tasting the saltiness of his flesh, flooding her senses with all that was Doug. She spread her legs wider, accommodating his swollen flesh, and rocked her hips upward, taking all of him in one brazen thrust.
“God, woman. How do you do this to me?” He ground her hips into the bed, taking over from her, filling her body so completely that she couldn’t possibly feel empty again. He pulled out slowly and plunged again, and again, and again, giving Andrea the most exquisite pleasure she had ever known.
And by the time his body was pulsing with release, flooding her with his seed, Andrea had never felt so cherished in her life. She clutched him to her even after he was spent, marveling at his ability to take a mass of knotted string and make it feel like spun gold.
* * *
GLORIA WAS REALLY getting mad. She’d done everything a mother could do, even a couple of things that most mothers probably couldn’t, and still Andrea was alone. Gloria didn’t get it. She’d thought for sure when she managed to pull off Thanksgiving that Andrea would finally at least announce that she had a boyfriend, maybe even bring him around for dinner. But nothing of the sort had happened.
She was beginning to worry that there was something fundamentally wrong with her daughter. Maybe that jerk ex-husband of hers had done more than desert her. Maybe he’d turned her off from men in the biblical sense. Of course, even fundamental wrongs could be fixed. And it was Gloria’s job, as Andrea’s mother, to do the fixing. After all, if a girl couldn’t talk to her mother about sex, who could she talk to?
Gloria chose her time carefully. She wanted to have an entire afternoon free of the guys so she wouldn’t have to embarrass Andrea by announcing that they were having ‘woman talk.’ On the first Sunday in December, she sent her husband and son to a Cincinnati Bengals game and then called Andrea over to help wrap Christmas presents.
“That pile over there on that chair are Scotty’s gifts and these on the table are your father’s. No, Andrea, don’t use that paper yet—those rolls of paper are for Scotty’s gifts, and for the ones we’re taking to the orphanage. Use the green foil on Pop’s, and save the red foil so I can do yours.”
Gloria surveyed her dining room, taking a last look at the order with which she’d arranged everything. It was likely to be chaos by the time they were finished.
“How’re Mark and Amy, Ma? Have you seen them lately?” Andrea reached over her mother to rip a piece of tape from the dispenser on the table.
“I think they’re flying to Vegas to get married over Christmas.”
“They’re eloping? Did they tell you that?”
“Of course not, Andrea. You don’t tell someone you’re eloping, or else it wouldn’t be eloping. You just run off and get married, all by yourselves, just like it was any other normal day. And then afterward—after you’ve done it and you’re really married—then you tell everybody.” Gloria figured it couldn’t hurt to make sure Andrea had a thorough understanding of these things.
Andrea smiled. “Then how do you know they’re going to do it, Ma?”
Gloria’s heart turned over. Her daughter really did have a beautiful smile. She carefully folded in the corners of the paper she was wrapping around a shirt box.
“Just wait, Andrea, you’ll see. They’ll be married by the New Year.”
They wrapped in silence, while Gloria tried to work up the guts to talk to Andrea about sex. Should she just come right out and talk about climaxes—female ones? Or should she approach Andrea more subtly, maybe ask a couple of leading questions first?
And then she remembered there was something else she needed to ask.
“How’s that boy you were with at the hospital last weekend?”
“Jeremy? He’s really doing okay, Ma. He has some tough times ahead of him, but so far he’s pulling through. They have him in detox and he’s still having hallucinations, but he seems to be ready to go straight. That’s most of the battle won right there.”
Gloria nodded. Her whole family was pulling for the boy. They all knew, firsthand, what the young man was going through. They knew all about the hell of rehab.
“You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do, won’t you?”
“Yeah, Ma. I’ll let you know.”
The packages were almost all wrapped. Gloria watched Andrea reach for the last box in Scotty’s pile. She watched her daughter measure and cut a piece of paper to fit the package, and took a deep breath.
“Do you like sex?”
“What?” Andrea dropped the scissors, putting a nick in the dining-room table.
“You know—sex. Do you like it?”
“No offense, Ma, but that’s really none of your concern.”
“Just answer me, Andrea. Do you like it?”
“Sure, I like it. Who doesn’t, if it’s with the right person?” Andrea paused in her wrapping to study her mother. “Wait a minute, Ma. Are you having troubles? Is there something wrong between you and Pop?”
Gloria snorted. Leave it to Andrea to try and turn the tables.
“No. There is nothing wrong between your father and me. He’s as randy as ever, and I still tingle every time he touches me. But what about you? Do you ever, you know, tingle?”
Andrea’s face filled with color. She resumed her wrapping. “That’s none of your business, Ma. Now how about we change the subject?”
Gloria was encouraged by the blush on her daughter’s cheeks. Maybe that Doug Avery was as good as he looked, after all. Maybe they’d have a very merry Christmas yet.
“I’m only trying to help, Andrea. You’re a grown woman. It’s not natural for you to go so long without sex. Your body needs the, uh, release.”
“Stay out of it, Ma.”
“Andrea, sex is natural, it’s necessary—”
“Ma! Shut up!”
Gloria smiled. Yep. It just might turn out to be a glorious Christmas, after all.
* * *
“OKAY, GANG, we’ve got time for one more before we wrap it up for the week. Someone throw out a pressure situation.”
“This really rad girl invites you over for a party. You get to her house and find out it’s just you and her. Her folks are gone for the weekend. You’re sitting next to her on the couch, getting up the guts to make a move on her, and she pulls out this joint and wants you to try just a toke or two.”
Doug listened to Jay Wilson describe every boy’s dream. “Okay, Jay’s got a good one. Shane? What would you do?”
“Take a stand?”
“How?”
“Tell her she’s so cool she doesn’t need that stuff?”
“She doesn’t buy it,” Jay called out.
“But she’s so beautiful and smart. She could have any guy she wanted. Why would she want to mess herself up like that?”
“She’s bored. Nothing’s exciting anymore.”
“I guess that means I’m not exciting, and if that’s the case, I don’t feel so good about being there anyway.”
“Catch.” Doug tossed Shane a miniature DARE Bear. He’d earned it. Doug was glad. Shane had been the only student in the class who had yet to earn a bear.
Doug looked over at Andrea as the kids packed up for the day. She was leaning against a desk, talking to a pretty red-headed girl. The girl had been crying during recess. Now she was smiling. Andrea was great with the kids. He didn’t know what he would have done without her in the classroom with him these past months.
Which raised a question that had been nagging at him more and more. Next week was graduation. What was going to happen to him and Andrea after that?
“You got plans for the weekend?” he asked her as they walked together out to the school parking lot.
“I’ve got to get to the mall. I’ve barely started my Christmas shopping.”
“You could pick up some great things at Winterfest.”
“What Winterfest?”
“Down at King’s Island. Stan was telling me they’ve turned the whole amusement park into a winter wonderland. Some of the rides are open, and all of the shops, of course.”
“But King’s Island is two hours away. That’s kind of far to go just to shop, don’t you think?”
“I wasn’t just thinking about shopping. I was thinking about having you all to myself, taking you on an old-fashioned sleigh ride, having to cuddle you to keep warm.” Doug paused and then jumped in feet first. “I was thinking about staying in the hotel there and having our own private Christmas.”
“Oh, Doug. Don’t do this. I want so badly to make you happy. God knows you deserve it. But I just can’t do something that’s going to make things even harder.”
“But why does it have to? Did something terrible happen last Saturday night when I slept with you all night long?”
She sighed, stopping beside her car to look up at him. The sadness in her eyes pierced Doug.
“More than you know. I haven’t been able to sleep all week for missing you beside me. And that was after only one night. You’re like an addiction. It scares me.”
Doug got the feeling that a lot more than a weekend was at stake here.
“Just what are you saying?” he asked carefully. He slid his hands into his trouser pockets.
“I don’t know,” she said, sounding as confused as a child. “I’m trying so hard to find a way out, to forgive myself, but it’s just not working. I’m beginning to think it never will. And I just can’t risk losing it all again.”
“So what are you saying?”
She looked up at him, her eyes pleading for understanding. “I guess I’m saying it would be best if we don’t see each other anymore—in a personal sense, I mean.”
Doug digested her words in silence. He felt there was something he should do or say, something he could give her that would help her find the courage to try again. But as he stood there in the semideserted parking lot, he couldn’t find that elusive something.
“I guess if that’s the way you want it...” He took a long last look at her, then walked away.