Jade (7 page)

She’s feeling guilty, I think, because when she sees me frown, she looks down, and says, “Mister Oliver, he, my boss. No secret for Mister Oliver.”

I shrug and say, “Don’t worry about it.” 

I understand her lack of loyalty to me. I’m just a visitor, and he’s a more permanent fixture. I can’t expect her to jeopardize her job because I patched up her son and nephew’s knees.

The instant of courage I just had has passed. 

I really need to be alone for a moment. Going out is not an option with this rain, and my room is stuffy and claustrophobic if I close the door. The lab is my only choice. On weekends, it’s usually empty. I go in and switch on the fan but not the light, and sit on the floor with my back to the wall. I put on my headphones that stay on my worktable, wrap my arms around my legs, close my eyes and rest my head on my knees. I concentrate on the music, and take a deep breath. This is what I do when I get stuck in work, and need to calm down the turmoil in my head. Some days I can almost stop to think.

A couple of songs later, someone comes and sits next to me. One strong arm wraps around me and I know it’s Oliver. I have his smell and his touch memorized, already. He pulls me towards him, and I don’t resist. I’m like a ball of raw nerves.

The headphones are gently pulled away from my head. 

 “Before running away, you could have given me the chance to tell you why it was not a good idea.”

I don’t answer. I don’t have anything to say. He’s probably right; I overreacted. I have this tendency to fly off the handle when I’m not in my element. I’m a little batty. Ok, I’m seriously batty.

“It’s because I don’t want to take advantage of the moment. I would really be happy to be your first,” he waits a few seconds. His words sink in as he continues, “I want to be sure it’s really what you want. Also, I wouldn’t want to do it here.” 

He stays silent again for a moment, and then adds, “And there’s a more practical aspect to be considered. For instance, I’m out of condoms, and you really don’t want to take that chance with me right now. I need to take a test.”

I take in a very deep breath. His explanations are very reasonable. I’m the one who acted like a child. Do I want him so much that I’m not thinking straight, anymore?  

“I guess I should thank you, then, because I’m not on the pill,” I say without lifting my head from my knees.

“That makes for another good reason,” he says. I can hear the smile in his voice.

He pushes me forward, and slides between the wall and me. I’m now sitting between his outstretched legs, and he pulls me against him.

 “Come on, Jade, let go a little,” he says, and I do. I lean against him as he kisses my neck. He finds a soft spot close to my shoulder that sends shivers down my spine. My back is to his chest, and I twist a little, and nestle my head into his neck testing to see if he has a similar soft spot that I could press on. Judging by the way he holds me tighter, I would say yes. I love it; I’ve just discovered a new field to experiment with!  

He feels so right. It’s as if I’m safe and belong right here, in his arms. I relax, and a little ball of heat starts to swell in my chest. 

His hands slide under my T-shirt, light as feathers on my tummy.

“I locked the door. No one will walk in on us,” he says as his hands rise and cup my breasts. His touch is so sweet that my nipples pebble. He pinches them a little, and the ball of heat spreads throughout my body. I moan, and lift my head and aim again at the soft skin at the bottom of his neck that is the mirror of mine. 

My temperature rises as he slides a hand between my legs. My entire body goes rigid, and then relaxes as he presses on me there through the rigid material of the jeans. I’m caught in a turmoil, and I know I need more. The other hand presses on my stomach, and slips under my jeans. I hold in my breath. 

 “Let me show you how to make the best of this rainy day,” he whispers into my neck.

Both hands on the button of my jeans, he pulls down the zipper to get access and chuckles, “I wouldn’t have pegged you as one to go commando.”

I don’t explain, because I’m not sure I can make an articulate sentence. One finger slowly slides down and his palm presses on my most sensitive spot. He pulls out and I buck against his hand, and cry out.

He does not stop, but he hushes me with his mouth. We’re a step away from the dining room; I shouldn’t make any noise but I can’t refrain from moaning.

Oliver whispers that it’s the reason why he wants to make love with me in a more secluded place. He wants me to be able to scream if I feel like it. In fact, he would actually love to make me scream. He tells me how he would go about doing it. The way he talks to me and the things he says he will do to me are so erotic that it pushes me over the edge. I slam back against him, and shatter in millions of little starbursts. Pure pleasure rushes through me and I’ve never felt so alive. I’m shuddering and even after he’s removed his hands and zipped my pants up.

He tilts my head sideways to reach for my mouth. As he kisses me, I think that I’m being selfish. I want to reciprocate so I ask, “What can I do for you?”

He laughs and says, “You’ve done it already, you’ve made me come in my pants. It hadn’t happened to me in a while! It’s like I’m sixteen, again.”

He sounds so joyous when he says it that I know it’s okay to just rest against him and bask in the warmth of the moment.

We just stay there until he says, “Come on, sexy lady, I need my breakfast.”

I grin. No one’s ever called me sexy before.

He springs up, and offers his hands. He pulls me up to my feet, and holds me a moment, looking at my face. I wonder if I’ve become transparent, because I feel like he’s looking right in my soul. Does the way I feel inside shows on my face? Probably because he’s got a smug smile as he tousles my hair.

He makes me blush when he says, “I like the way you glow today.”

We step out of the lab, and Cook’s standing by the door. The look on her face tells me that she knows what we just did, but I can’t say if she approves or not. She probably doesn’t care one way or another. She pushes a bundle into my arms. I take it, and look: my clean T-shirts and undies. She must have taken them in yesterday night. I suppress an impulse to hug her and just say thank you in Lao. She makes a strange sound, and I’m not sure what it means.

After another breakfast of rice and fruit I climb back upstairs to put my clean laundry away, and come back down as a different person than I was only an hour ago.

❦

Because of the bad weather, everyone lingers around the dining room for the better part of the day. 

Olivier and his crew have been preparing for the coming week’s work, looking over a large geological map spread out on one of the tables. 

I read and listen to music until the low battery of my tablet forces me to stop. When I pop out of my electronic isolation, I see that the French lawyers have found cards. They are playing a game called “La Belotte”. I watch them for a while doing a little reverse engineering in my head. It’s a simpler version of bridge with a 32-cards deck. I quickly lose interest. My mind’s drifting away to Oliver, who’s still working with his team. I don’t even know his last name.  

I stand up. He looks up at me, and extends an arm as an invitation, which I can’t resist. I come close to him, and he wraps it around my waist.

“What are you up to?” He asks, nuzzling his head against me. Liam is the only one who acknowledges the affectionate gesture. He winks at me.

“Just going up to recharge my tablet, and find something to read.”

“We’re about done; I’ll come with you to help you pick a book.”

I grin. I’m pretty sure that reading is the last thing on his mind.  

We go to his room. My sarong is still on the bed where I left it when I ran away this morning; I pick it up and fold it while Oliver puts the map away at his desk.

Lying on the bed, face to face and fully clothed, we do something we’ve never done before; we talk.

He already knows most of what there is to know about me. I’m twenty-two, and I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’ve come here to try to figure it out.

Thanks to generous scholarships, I don’t have the pile of debts that my fellow students have. I’ve also consistently worked while studying, so I even have some money set aside. 

I tell him that I’m not close to my family. We don’t relate. I only have one friend, Agatha, but I also have a few buddies. They are mainly men who are more socially awkward than me who I met in college, and with whom I enjoyed playing video games. Those guys are very sweet in their odd-ball sort of ways, and now they make an incredible amount of money using their mad mathematician skills on the stock market. 

I tell him what I’ve told no one, not even Agatha, who’s very weird with money. I’ve entrusted my life savings to those guys, and they’ve multiplied it. They gave me back the initial amount, doubled, and they are playing with the rest. The last time I looked, I was not rich, but I had enough money to make a significant down payment on a house wherever I decide to settle. 

Now it’s his turn. He hesitates, like he doesn’t know where to start. His father just passed away but they were so estranged he did not even bother to attend the funeral. He has two sisters, and a mother who is in the restaurant business. I can hear affection and pride in his voice when he talks about her. She raised them by herself, and she did a great job of it.

He goes on from family to school, and tells me that he has an engineering degree from an Ivy League school. His domain is double geology and gemmology.  

“My PhD thesis is a best seller in those fields. It’s a complete analysis of the subject matter from a historical and scientific perspective.”

“That’s impressive.” I mean it. Very few PhD theses get real distribution. “What is it about?”

“Nephrite and jadeite,” he says with a cocky smile.

My jaw drops, and everything falls into place: his answer when he first heard my name, and the crew’s smirks.

He shakes his head, and says, “I’ve earned world-wide recognition not only with my thesis but also with the field work I’ve done since I started working. No one’s calling me this to my face, but I know I have a nickname, it’s ‘The Jade Master.’”

“Cute,” I say, laughing.

His hands slide under my t-shirt, and I know I won’t get any further information from him tonight. All the questions I had for him fly out of my brain through the open window and under the pouring rain.

❦

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A STRANGE SOUND BRINGS ME out of sleep. When my eyes open I see the squeaking ceiling fan, and I remember that I’m in Oliver’s room. I stretch on the bed and, it’s a miracle, my back is not killing me.

It’s not that late, but he’s already gone. They probably went back to the mine for the week. He didn’t say he was leaving or when he would return. I don’t want to be a miserable person; one that spends every single minute waiting for some one else to return, especially because there are few things that I hate more than waiting. 

Agatha better give me a ton of work to do to keep my mind occupied.

After a quick shower, I go downstairs. Agatha’s back, and she’s having breakfast with James. The rain has stopped. She tells me that the roads to where she was planning to go next are flooded. 

 “Why don’t we go walk around the temples in town?” she asks.

“Sure, sounds like fun.”

We each throw a raincoat into our bags, and swap our flip-flops for plastic shoes. Agatha’s driver gets us there. I’m happy neither of us has to drive: the roads are covered with mud, and there are fallen branches everywhere.

In town it’s a real mob scene. 

“Songrkran,” says Agatha.

“Pee Mai Lao,” says the driver.

“Different names for the same event,” I say.

“Yes, how do you know about that?” she asks.

“I’ve seen pictures of the new year celebration. Initially, you were to take a little water and rice flour and put it on the face of the people you like as a symbol of prosperity for the new year.”

“Always the inquisitive mind,” she says, and then, mocking me, she puts out a hand to stop the flow of information she fears I’m going to drown her with. “Now it has degenerated, even here, into a giant water pistol battle. Let’s join them and have fun!”

We walk down the street, and purchase two water pistols and fill them up. We squirt back all the kids that attack us. Every so often, on the side of the street, there’s a big bucket filled with water where we can refill. The most daring kids come to me, and put rice flour on my face. A more adventurous one touches my hair. I grab him, and make him twirl. He’s laughing hysterically, and I wish that I could learn to let go like he does. I put him down, and look up to Agatha, who is standing there, staring at me with her mouth open. 

“What’s with you?” she asks.

“New year, new me,” I answer jokingly.

“I like it, it suits you.”

That’s when I see him: Oliver. He’s standing on the corner of the street, talking to a young girl. She can’t be older than eighteen; she’s breathtakingly pretty and she looks up to him adoringly. They are not touching, but they don’t need to. The way they stand so close to each other screams intimacy to me. 

I want to look away, but I can’t. I watch him climb onto a motorcycle, the cross-country type with high wheels. She climbs behind him, wraps her arms around his waist and leans her head on his back. She presses herself against him, and says something to him that makes him throw his head back, like it’s the funniest thing anyone has ever told him. I watch the blissful look on her face, and I recognize it. It’s the same one that I was wearing yesterday. 

“Did I say something wrong?” asks Agatha.

“No, nothing at all.” 

My original carefree smile has turned into an artificial imitation that doesn’t fool her for a second. She turns around to figure out what I was looking at, but now they’re gone. There’s just a joyous crowd celebrating the new year.