Jayson: A New Adult / Coming of Age Romance (21 page)

The locks click free, and I scramble up into the truck, slamming the passenger door shut behind me. Jayson has no choice but to get in too. He cranks up the truck and powers on the heat, but he doesn’t move. “Drive,” I order. “Please get me the hell away from this place. I never want to see it again.”

Jayson groans fretfully. “This never should’ve happened. This is all my fault.” His knuckles turn white around the steering wheel. He slams a palm against the wheel and grips it tighter. “Fuck!” he yells again, throwing it into reverse and backing out. We get on the highway and shoot toward my place. The miles don’t speed by fast enough. I want to be as far away from that house as humanly possible. I want to be in New York. Paris. Bangkok.

“It’s not your fault,” I try to persuade him. “It’s not! It’s Mom’s and Lamont’s fault. She thinks she’s protecting me. She’s really just trying to bend me to her will, and I can’t let her keep doing this to me or to you. And, who the hell is Lamont anyway?”

“I don’t know who Lamont has become, but he used to be my best friend. I’m pretty sure we’re enemies now.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters now. It’s me and you, Jayson. Me and you against the world.”

“
T
wo people can’t take
on the whole world, Kit. Even if they could, I wouldn’t want you to spend your life with the weight of the world on your shoulders. That’s not how love’s supposed to be.”

She glowers. “It’s a figure of speech,” she says testily.

I ignore the look and keep my eyes on the road, looking for my exit. I rev the engine, the sound causing me to flash back to all those years ago when Lamont and I went for the joyride. Funny how life cycles. Only this time I’m not a drunk sixteen-year-old, and I don’t have a death wish. I have a life wish. Sitting next to me is my best friend and lover, someone who holds me in high esteem, and I want her beside me for the long haul. I seriously need to get Kitrina out of her idealistic phase and into the real world if this relationship is going to work.

“I want to take you somewhere, but it’s gonna be a long drive. Are you down for the ride?” I accelerate the car and whip it through the traffic, heading for a spot I haven’t been to in ages.

“There’s nowhere else I want to be right now than with you.” She answers by rote and speaks like she’s reading from a mental script, which makes me want to tell her again that love isn’t like that.

Yet I swallow with remorse at the thought of her someday not saying shit like that, not thinking that way—innocently, sweetly, naively romantic. I honestly don’t want Kitrina to see the day love hurts and leaves scars or the day she realizes the world is too big for two people to go up against. Maybe it’s not her that has the problematic view; maybe it’s me and others like me who have seen enough terrible relationships to be skeptical of anything that seems too good.

Like us. Maybe I sabotaged myself, thinking we were too good to be true. Had I given Kitrina the benefit of the doubt instead of automatically believing she would reject the parts of me that I, myself, reject, I might have revealed more of myself to her.

“If there’s something you need to say to me, I’m ready to listen.” She says it expectantly, like she knows more than she’s let on. I look at her curiously. Has Candace already dropped the bomb without me knowing?

I nod slowly. “There is. It might change things between us.”

“Then…” She moves a hand to the radio. “Don’t say anything yet. Let’s just enjoy the ride.”

“Kitrina, some things can’t wait.”

“Hey, it’s waited this long, right?” she says sensibly. She turns up the stereo. Music floods through the speakers, filling the interior of the truck and making it impossible to talk without yelling.

Kit gives me a wan smile and lays her head back on the headrest, drained of the superpower idealism that made my little firebrand ignite with righteous anger back at her mother’s place. She rolls down her window. The bracing cold air mixes with the heat from the car and fogs up my windows, but I don’t roll it back up.

I adjust the thermostat and set the car on cruise control, resting my head too. In the center between the driver’s seat and the passenger’s side, our hands come together and fingers intertwine. We drive like that for the hour it takes to get up the San Francisco coast to where I want to take her. It’s a beautiful idea to just enjoy the ride. I let my mind travel back to Christmas Eves when I was a kid. There was little money but Momma always got us something. And there was good food and family…there was kindness. That’s all Kitrina wants.

We don’t stop until we make it to Ano Nuevo State Park. “I’ve been here before,” she says in pleasant surprise as she gazes out the window. “In the summer, the falls up by Elliot Creek are lovely. I’ve never seen it in winter, though. I didn’t think the state park stayed open during the cold season.”

“My grandparents brought my brothers and me here once when we were children, and I always planned on coming back but never really had the time. It was a wonderful trip back then in the midst of all the hardship the four of us had to go through. And that’s what I want to talk to you about, Kit.”

The falling drifts of snow refuse to stick along the fringes of the beach where murky waves lap at the dark sand. We’re not dressed for a hike through the densely wooded park, and it’s not the right time of the year for a nature walk anyway. I realize my spur of the moment detour might have been poorly thought out. However, I pull the truck over on the side of the narrow road and overlook the cliff to the ocean down below.

“I wish we could go down to the waterfall. Wouldn’t that be something to see? Oh, but I guess the water’s probably low this time of year. Down to a trickle,” Kit surmises.

It’s the perfect metaphor for relationships. Sometimes things are overflowing, and sometimes it takes everything to keep up the flow. “It doesn’t matter. It’s still beautiful.” I squeeze her hand tighter. “Kitrina, I don’t want to lose you.”

“I don’t know how else to show you that I’m willing to make whatever sacrifices have to be made for us to be together. Are you sure you want to tell me what you have to tell me now?” She flashes a wry half-smile, speaks in a light tone of voice that tells me it’s safe to talk but she’s scared of what I might say. I shake my head, chuckling softly, sadly.

“How do I put this…Basically, I’m the product of a single-parent home and grew up in a rough stretch of town. I have a…past.” I omit the word ‘criminal.’ I just can’t make the words come out. I’m a coward.

“That’s not news, Jayson. Everybody has a past. I have a past.” I see Kit trying her damn hardest to understand what I’m not saying but see her coming up short.

“Kit, you have a past anchored and rooted in comfort and security, and for all your sweet and noble attempts at equalizing our social standing, your past prepares you for a different future than the one mine prepared me for. You had so many more advantages than me…You don’t know me, Kit. You don’t know what you don’t know. I wish I could be as blindly optimistic as you, but we have to act responsibly. This relationship is costing you.”

“Jayson.”

“Kitrina, I am not the kind of man you give up your family to be with. I just heard your mother tell you in front of God and everybody that she’d disown you if you left with me, and you left anyway. Why would you do that?” The question boggles me. Even knowing Candace couldn’t have been serious, I wonder why Kit took the risk. If Momma ever said that to me…

Kitrina lifts her head and stares me down. “Unless you brought me all the way out here to say you don’t care for me and don’t want to be with me, then there’s no point in you telling me you’re not worth the fight. Frankly, I don’t care what happened in either of our pasts because I just left all my advantages behind. Now, it’s up to you to put your past behind you because it’s not in my way.”

Kit grabs my face and presses her mouth hard to mine, a desperate kiss that seals the words she just said. She’s willing to walk away from her advantages if I’m willing to walk away from my disadvantages. It shouldn’t affect my jaded heart the way it does, but right then…right then is when I fall in love with her.

I stare out at the frigid landscape running parallel to the ocean. A thin blanket of snow covers the ground at the edge of the woods and clings to the branches of spindly, black trees. A flock of birds fly against a late evening sky filled with wispy clouds. If I could preserve the moment and stay with her like this, in a bubble of silence above a beautiful precipice, I would. I heard once that falling in love doesn’t hurt. It’s the landing that kills. I’d rather hang here in limbo than risk a crash, and even though it’s past time to tell her the whole truth…I can’t. How much longer can I hold out? How much longer before she grows up and sees without the rose-colored glasses?

I
t’s
after dark by the time we arrive at my house. “Do you want me to stay or…” Jayson trails off uncertainly.

“Ashby’s with your mom, right? I’d love it if you stay.”

Exhausted by the emotional evening, I shuffle over to the sectional and plop down heavily. He wordlessly follows. “Moving forward,” I reply, “is there anything else you want to tell me? Besides the fact that you have a past.” I smile. Jayson kneels on the floor at my feet and eases off my heels, reaches up under my dress to peel down my pantyhose. My milky bare legs look fluorescent in the darkness. He bows his head and drifts silky kisses from my inner knee to my upper thigh. As he roams, my eyes close.

“I want to tell you how much I love the way you see me, and I hope it never changes.”

His warm, breathy kisses soothe aches that go soul deep. “I love you.” The words escape my lips before I think them through.

“Shhh,” he shushes me gently and hooks his fingertips under the hem of my panties, drawing them down and leaving me exposed. “No more talk. Just show me.”

As he pulls me to the edge of the seat and eases his mouth to the fountain between my legs, I moan, head lolling deliriously against the back of the sectional. The tip of his tongue curls within me, licking the moisture and inspiring more wetness with slow, teasing strokes in and out. I hitch in a breath in pleasure and squeeze my eyes shut. I claw blindly at the sectional cushions. “Don’t you mean you’ll show me? You’re doing all the work,” I whimper.

“Mmm, hardly that. I can taste it. I don’t have to work for it at all. Your body tells me in a million ways.” Jayson pushes his hands beneath my bottom and clasps my upper thighs, spreading me wider. “Like this, when your nectar coats my tongue and confesses you’re sweet on me.” His chuckle fans the flames, and my soft giggle morphs into a throaty moan as he swiftly flicks his tongue.

My back arches and my pelvis rolls forward in an undulating wave, chasing the high tide of pleasure. “You feel so good,” I confess. He groans in response and clamps his lips over my clit, sucking the throbbing erogenous zone and laving circles around the pink pearl. Wet, wild sweeps of his tongue leave me fully engorged and ready to release. I gasp in amazement at the erotic torture. My fingers slip along the uncompromising fabric of the sectional as I try to get a handhold, as if holding on will slow the rush of ecstasy.

He breaks free to gasp, “There’s so much I can’t say…but, you already know, don’t you?” His burning eyes are embers in the dark, sincere and open. I do know, and he doesn’t have to say it.

My fingertips graze over his crew cut, and I clutch the back of his head to lead him back to the conversation going on between our bodies. My hips buck with the shock of exquisite pleasure when he kisses me there again. I ride his face with complete abandonment, my thighs quivering, thrills zigzagging from my skull to my toes. I can’t believe how it keeps intensifying, as if desire has set up its own networks, its veins and arteries feeding me what I need to stay alive. My hands reach down to caress the stubble of his cheek, and my voice echoes through the empty house, crying his name. I don’t care if I seem wanton. I want. I need. I crave him.

Jayson moans with the same craving. He exposes his thick, corded manhood and strokes it while he devours me. I get aroused at the thought that it turns him on to please me as much as it turns me on. It makes me want to return the favor. I entertain stopping him to do just that, but each time I open my mouth to say I’ve had enough, he does something differently with his tongue that has me begging him for more. Mindless with desire, I skate closer to completion. “Oh, Jayson, yes!” I exclaim.

There’s a frenzy between my legs. There’s a tension that snaps like a rubber band. Explosive cries erupt. Before the calm can descend after the orgasm, Jayson drags me down from the sectional into his lap. He spears upward into me and brings my quaking sex down around his shaft with a sure stroke that broadens my climax. He grips my buttocks as he climbs to his feet, and I clasp my hands behind his neck. The bar of his forearm provides leverage at the base of my spine. I wrap my long legs around his hips and rise and fall while he holds me.

Jayson grimaces with ecstasy. I can tell he’s holding back. “Give it all to me,” I urge. “Fuck me, Jayson! Oh God, yes! Like that…” His fingertips dig deeper into the fleshy hill of my ass, stretching my body with his deep, long strokes. My nails rake over his shoulders. As his mouth burns kisses down my chest to my breasts, I coo in rapture. All I can say is yes. Each plunge takes me closer to heaven.

Then, he lowers us to the long end of the sectional with rigid self-control, and I can tell he’s ready to release. Yet he visibly forces the frenzy to a lull. “I don’t want to fuck you, Kit. I want to make love to you,” he murmurs. I press my heels into the sectional, instinctively bowing my body to envelop his, which centers the tautness in my pelvis and upper inner thighs. My arms wrap around him, knees tightening at his waist. He sinks into my softness, a contrast of hard planes and hard pleasure.

I learn a lesson in the difference between passion and sensuality. This is sensual. His kisses linger long and drawn out. His hands dance up and down my sides and caress the outer curve of my legs. If I imagined rough sex was the ultimate measure of eroticism, I was wrong. The slowness heightens the intensity.

I clench inner muscles that I never knew existed before being with him. Squeezing him in my slick, tight sheath, I revel in how intimately we join together, how the evidence of my arousal wets my inner thighs and lathers the base of his erection. Jayson shudders, attempting to suppress the sounds of his excitement, but he’s unable to keep silent. “Ah, shit! You’re gonna make me come. Your fucking body, Kit!” We both look down in awe at the place where we connect. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he growls, moaning swear words into my ear as he desperately nibbles at my ear lobe. I caress the back of his head, having some idea. It must be the same as what he does to me.

I feel the magic unwind as my orgasm blots out awareness of everything else. No loud exclamation heralds its arrival this time. It renders me mute with wonder at the potency, and he feels it, too. The moment my body spasms, his erection jerks within me. I hold my breath and rocket out of this world. His hands tangle in my hair as he kisses me. He pushes deeper and deeper inside of my body, and it seems to me that he’s digging a channel to some part of me always hidden before now. He gets harder in my grip until he shudders violently in the last throes. I love it and I want to start over and I need to rest. The paralyzing pleasure finally eases its hold. We’re breathing heavily, spent. “You already know,” he repeats. I nod, shushing him. He loves me. I drift off, realizing we’ve crossed a milestone and wondering what lies ahead.

I
f buying
a house was me setting sail on my own, being with Jayson is me navigating unfamiliar seas. Mom turning her back on me is me losing all life boats. There’s no bailing out when things get hard now.

“Open the biggest gift first,” Jayson urges.

Bubbling with glee, I grab the big box under the spindly tree we hastily threw up a few days before. It’s wrapped in shiny green paper and tacked with a bright blue bow. “What is it?” I ask, shaking it.

“Hey, now. Stop that and open it up and see.” Jayson peels the tape from one side. I push his hand away and rip into it, eager to see what’s inside. When enough of the box gets exposed, I gush with excitement.

“Tools?” I laugh in amusement. “Wait, wait, this is how Castiel got me last time. Don’t tell me you used the packaging from a tool set to fool me again.”

“I promise it’s not just a picture of me. I’m not that egocentric.”

“Hmm, that’s too bad. Picture a framed photograph of you wearing nothing but boxers and a tool belt. I’d put it right there on the living room wall.” Jayson laughs and shakes his head against the idea. I giggle as I tear off the last bit of giftwrap. When I open the box, I discover that it is indeed tools. “Ha! Aww, baby, you got me exactly what you wanted for Christmas!”

Jayson grins. “Hey, I’m a practical guy. Now you can stop checking out tools from the design department at school. I wanted you to have what you need to build those boxes that you have to do for your classes. Check out the small electric saw. Plus, your own drill, leveler and all that, and it’s in pink. I hope you like it.”

“I love it. No more getting stuck on the waiting list when I need something at the last minute. Extra points for your originality. No one has ever bought me power tools before. Very thoughtful of you.”

Our first Christmas together, Jayson also gives me a gift card to Devil in the Details, courtesy of a tip from my best friend Grace, and my favorite gift from him is a charm bracelet with a tiny hammer. I give him new work boots and two paintings for his apartment that leave a satisfied smile his face, which is good because it took me forever to sneak away one of his other boots to check the shoe size. Thankfully, the steel toes fit.

We finish off the gift giving with a kiss under the mistletoe and move on to Christmas brunch. The jalapeno shrimp poppers I tried making from an online recipe end up being an utter disaster, so Jayson takes me to the same Thai restaurant we went to a month back to enjoy real cooking. By the end of the day, I look back on the memories we made together with utter satisfaction. I’ll lay this holiday season up against the glossy, picture-perfect Christmases of my past anytime.

I don’t have a tree decorated with crystal from Tiffany’s or gifts with high-dollar price tags. There’s no lavish Christmas dinner with a turkey and honey ham and all the traditional sides. But while it’s a far cry from the glamor of yesteryear, it’s the best holiday I can remember having in a long, long time. The only damper is not having the chance to at least speak with my mom by phone. She won’t answer my calls.

Jayson curls up next to me on the couch for a last cuddle session before he has to get home and spend some time with his own family. “I hate to leave you here alone,” he says glumly.

“Don’t worry about it, babe. Professor Schwartz’s internship application is here to keep me company. I’ll be glad when I can ship it off. I want to begin the New Year with a clean slate.”

He kisses my temple, and I nestle deeper into the crook of his arm. “Try not to let morning catch you before you get some sleep. I know how you can get, and you do have to get some rest.”

“I’ll try,” I promise.

He leaves around eight in the evening. The clock above the stove reads after midnight as I put the finishing touches on the project for the internship. I step back with hands on my hips, staring at the miniature room. Rather than choosing a residential layout, I opted for an office lobby so I could include an exterior view, complete with wading pool and ornamental garden. Along with the application, I email the plans for the space and photos of the finished product before crating up the whole shadowbox to ship off tomorrow to whatever committee will decide my internship fate.

One last email goes to Professor Schwartz, thanking her for her support. For a while there, I was terrified I wouldn’t get things in on time because I had a late start, but it turns out the anxiety drove me to create my best interior design yet.

“Look at that,” I muse, glancing at the dark window. “In bed before the sun comes up.”

A
lot happens
in the week of vacation left following the dramatic disagreement with my mother. I chat with Grace a few days later about what happened, and she offers unyielding emotional support, while gushing about how wonderful things are between her and Castiel. It’s a bright spot in a row of so-so days.

“I’m glad I meddled in your affairs. I knew Castiel was into you, and you’re a terrible liar, Grace. I knew you had the hots for him. Of all the Zephyr brothers, Castiel is the biggest barrel of laughs, and you love a guy with a great sense of humor. So, when are you coming home? I mean back to San Francisco. I guess you’re already home,” I laugh.

Grace answers, “I’ll be back in time for school. I’d fly in sooner, but you know plane ticket prices soar around New Year’s. Plus, bad weather.”

I scowl at the window. “I know. It’s snowing over here right now. Jayson was coming over, but I told him not to risk it. This
us against the world
crap can get mighty lonely when it’s just me.”

“Aww, homie. I’ll be there to keep you company in no time,” Grace consoles me.

“Don’t mind my whining. All in all, things could be worse. What if he were the type to throw in the towel at the first sign of trouble? Granted, after the confrontation with Candace he did try to tell me we don’t belong together because he has a past.”

“What kind of past?”

“I told him we all have a past. He feels his background in contrast to my background puts us on uneven footing with me getting the short end of the stick. Personally, Grace, he’s in a much better position than a lot of guys his age, despite his humble beginnings. But during the short time we were actually welcome at the party, I cringed every time someone asked him what he does for a living.”

“What the heck for? It’s not like he works at a fast food restaurant or something, and even if he did, it’s a living.”

“I know, I know. I know how it sounds, but I am a product of my environment, too. Intrinsically, I’m aware that whether Jayson is a doctor or a small business owner, he’s still the same great guy. That doesn’t change the fact I wished he could shut ‘em all down and say, ‘Oh, I found the cure to every known cancer’ or something. The bottom line is Mother’s circle of friends have a hard time valuing anyone who isn’t on their socioeconomic level.”

“I have a feeling Jayson’s not bothered by that and neither should you be. My psychic senses tell me you need to do some soul searching if you’re worried about being a product of your environment, as you say. How is that going to affect your relationship with him?”