Mountains Wanted (13 page)

James pulled back and
grabbed Sarah’s legs, placing her ankles on his shoulder, which changed the
angle of entry and forced her to cry out in response to the intensity. He
braced himself with his hands on either side of her and she ran her fingers
down his bulging triceps as his pace began to quicken.
Holy fuck, his arms
are amazing!
she observed, her fingertips stroking up and down his muscle
fibers. She looked up into his eyes, which were completely devoted to the task
at hand, namely sending her over the edge of sanity. Her climax bubbled up
deep within her, shooting ripples of pleasure from the epicenter of her pelvis
and radiating out to her extremities and back again in waves.  

Sweat beaded on his
forehead, James released Sarah’s ankles and spread her thighs wide. “I’m not
going to last much longer,” he warned. She felt him grow impossibly hard and
then he suddenly pulled out, stroking his cock with his hand three or four
times until a spurt of fluid shot out, hitting Sarah along the collarbone, the
second coating the bottom half of her breast. Sarah studied him, his eyes
closed, his hand still squeezing and releasing his seed onto Sarah’s abdomen,
his body vibrating with pleasure. Sarah was so turned on watching him that her
fingers instinctively migrated to her sex. James opened his eyes and
watched Sarah touching herself for just a moment before he kneeled between her
legs and put his mouth to work where her fingers had just been. “Oh god,”
Sarah sighed at the feel of his hot tongue against her clit, “Oh god, don’t
stop!”  He picked up the pace and she began to buck against him, splashing
her juices all over his face, holding him steady while her orgasm shook through
her.

“I think we made a
mess,” James said as he laid down beside her. His face was wet, the bed
was wet, and Sarah’s body from her neck to her navel bore the evidence of
James’ release.  

“I got a pearl
necklace,” Sarah laughed.  “And then some!” She swung her legs over
the side of the bed and stood up. “My sheets never last very long with you
around,” she teased him.

“Tell you what,” James
bargained, “You go start the shower and I’ll strip the bed.  Deal?”

Sarah giggled and
nodded. As she glided across the hall to the bathroom she was struck by a
singular thought:
In this moment, I am so happy. I’m completely full of
joy. And it’s HIM. He makes me this way.

She returned to the
bedroom where James was bent over the bed, lifting the fitted sheet from its
grip on the corner of the mattress. She studied the musculature of his
back before he realized she was standing there admiring him. She must have worn
a peculiar expression because as he whipped around he questioned, “Are you
staring at my ass?”

Sarah sheepishly
laughed. “Well, now that you mention it, you do have a very nice one!” She
moved behind him and gave him a playful smack. “The water is ready. Go
ahead and I’m going to just grab my robe and check my phone. Oh, maybe you
should check yours too?”

He nodded and fished his
out of his pants pocket, taking it with him across the hall to the bathroom.
She dug into her purse and pulled out her blinking phone. There was a text from
Rachel and two from Abby. The latter one read, “On my way home,” and the
timestamp was twenty minutes ago.

SHIT!!!
 Sarah screamed inside her head.
Why is
she coming home?
The first text was vague and only said, “Leaving the
party.” Sarah glanced at the clock on her nightstand and back at her
phone. 
She should be here anytime.
She threw on her robe and ran
into the bathroom.

“Hey,” she peeked around
the shower curtain.

James could read on her
face that something was wrong. “What is it?”

“Issue with my kid. Apparently
she’s coming home.”

His immediate reaction
was clearly one of disappointment. “Oh. What should we do?”

“Go ahead and shower and
then you can either wait in here for me or you can go home if you want.
 It’s totally up to you. Did you hear anything about your sister?”

“Not yet.”  How
quickly they had both come crashing back to reality and how deflated they both
felt. Sarah was suddenly furious at the thought of not getting to spend the
night curled up in her lover’s arms.
Abby better have a damn good
explanation for this
, Sarah thought as she threw on some jeans and a
t-shirt and headed downstairs. She saw lights flashing in the driveway and
assumed it was Chloe’s parents bringing home an under-the-weather Abby.

Instead of Abby opening
the back door with her key like Sarah expected, the front doorbell rang,
echoing through the silent house. Sarah’s heart began to pound as she
considered all the different reasons Abby wasn’t letting herself in the house.
 I
hope she just lost her key
, Sarah thought, rushing to the door to open it
and revealing Abby and two adults she didn’t recognize. She knew they weren’t
Chloe’s parents, whom she’d met on multiple occasions.

“Dr. Lynde?” the man
addressed her as soon as Sarah shoved the storm door open. Abby looked tiny
next to the 6’4” silver-haired man and his tall, thin, elegant-looking female
companion.

Sarah nodded. Her spine
was tingling.
Nothing about this seems good
, she thought.

“Sorry for disrupting
your evening. We’re Tyler’s parents, Steve and Jessica. I’m sorry we
aren’t here under better circumstances.”

Sarah looked from him to
his wife and then down to Abby who was teary-eyed and pale. “Call me
Sarah. Please come in and tell me what’s going on.”

Abby entered first, and
Sarah noticed that she was trudging along slowly and a little off-balance. The
grandfather clock in the dining room was chiming midnight with long, slow,
ringing notes as Sarah ushered her company into the kitchen. She offered
them something to drink, which they declined, and they all took seats around
the table. Abby looked sallow and forlorn as she stared at the same apparently
captivating speck on the tile floor.

“We were out at a party
tonight,” Tyler’s mother began to explain. “We’d told Tyler we would be
home around 1 or 2 AM. He’s sixteen and we didn’t see any problem leaving
him alone. He’s always been a responsible kid.”

His father took over the
story, “We came home early because my wife was feeling ill and we found your
daughter half naked and drunk in our living room. They’d broken into our liquor
cabinet.”

Oh my god
, Sarah thought.  
Are you fucking
kidding me?  
Her blood began to boil thinking of how Abby had lied
about the party, about going to Chloe’s house, about Tyler’s parents being
home.
Not to mention the thought of James still upstairs in my bedroom,
where I should have be getting my brains fucked out.
She glared at her
daughter. “Go up to your room, Abigail. We will discuss this in the morning.”

After Abby left, she got
a few more details about the evening’s debacle from Steve and Jessica and
thanked them profusely for returning her daughter home safely. Then she
apologized and promised that Abby would be appropriately punished. They pledged
to do the same with Tyler. She said goodbye and closed the door, shutting out
the cold night air. Her face flushed, her head pounding, she tried to
collect her thoughts before heading upstairs to check on James.
 I
figured something was going on with that girl,
Sarah thought. 
I
should have trusted my instincts when I found that condom in her room. I should
have pushed her for more information.
Myriad “should haves” bombarded her
mind as she climbed each stair as she hurried to see if James was lying in bed,
awaiting her return.

He had already left.

***

   
       
Sarah
tossed and turned that night, her body missing James and the feeling of him
curled against her. She was so angry at her daughter that even when she finally
succumbed to slumber, she’d rouse in tiny fits of rage, remembering the events
of the preceding night all over again. She hoped Abby was not sleeping
peacefully down the hall, but that she was considering her actions and growing
more and more repentant. Finally, Sarah jolted awake for good at 6:45 AM
and reached for her phone. Thoughts of James and his sister were foremost in
her mind.

There was no text from
James waiting for her, but there was one from Rachel:
OMG!  Well done,
Lovechop! He’s a catch! Xoxo

She wished she’d had a
chance to review the evening with James. She was wildly curious what he thought
of Rachel and Jack. That conversation probably would have happened in or after
the shower, if they hadn’t been so rudely interrupted by a drunk and deceitful
fifteen-year-old.
Ah, there’s the ire again
, Sarah noted. She threw her
robe on and marched down the hall to Abby’s room where she threw open the door
and subsequently aroused from slumber a very groggy teenager.

Abby sat up in her bed
and rubbed her eyes, which might have been a covert move to conceal a snippet
of eye-rolling, but Sarah wasn’t sure. She took a deep breath and attempted to
formulate a speech that didn’t involve blowing a gasket. “What happened last
night?” she finally decided her approach. 
Non-judgmental. Open-ended. Best
I can do under the circumstances.

Abby managed to look
relatively contrite. Her small voice offered, “I screwed up, Mom, I’m sorry.”

“That’s it?  That’s
all you’re going to say?” Sarah couldn’t believe that Abby, who possessed
the cunning argumentative skills of a defense attorney, wasn’t going to offer
some sort of crazy excuse for her behavior.

“Well, I got caught with
my hands in the cookie jar,” Abby explained. “What else can I say? Go ahead and
ground me or whatever other punishment you’re going to give me. I know I
deserve it.”

Sarah was not expecting
her to concede so easily. It made her suspect more was going on and Abby was
pleading down. She might be accepting fault for a “lesser crime” instead of
implicating herself in a more serious matter. 
Another legal analogy
,
she noted. She decided to cut to the chase: “Are you and Tyler having sex?”

Silence.

“Abby?” Her daughter’s
gaze had shifted straight ahead. “I’m not going to judge you, Abby, I just
want to know the truth.” Sarah had not forgotten what it felt like to hide her
sexual exploits from her mother. She remembered the lies. The justifications. She
also remembered when her mother had discovered the truth that she had been
understanding and kind...and that there was something about everything being
all out in the open that made sneaking around to have sex that much less
appealing.  

Abby nodded.  

“Alright.” Sarah began
to formulate a game plan for dealing with this new dimension to the situation,
but before she could get very many plays telestrated in her mind, Abby burst
into tears. Sarah immediately went into overprotective maternal mode and felt
the anger she’d harbored since the night before fading, replaced by concern. “Oh
my god, Abby, did he hurt you? Did he force you?”

Abby’s body was shaking
with sobs. “No, of course not,” she managed.

“What’s wrong?” Sarah
asked gently, smoothing her daughter’s hair out of her face and wiping away a
tear that had rolled down her cheek.

“I just hate disappointing
you,” Abby confessed.  

“Oh baby,” Sarah held
her daughter tight, “I’m not disappointed.  I just want you to be safe and
happy, that’s all.” She rocked Abby back in forth in her arms for a few
moments, remembering what it was like to hold her when she was small and had
skinned her knee or had a bad day at school. Sometimes she wondered how this
could be the same child as that bright-eyed compliant little girl with pigtails
and freckles.  

She’d have to confront
Abby about the alcohol consumption, the lying, and give her the safe sex speech
again, but that could wait. She still wasn’t entirely sure that Abby’s
remorse wasn’t a ploy to help her achieve a lighter sentence, but Sarah wasn’t
going to delve more into that now. Right now she just wanted to hold her little
girl.

***

   
       
Pawel
called that afternoon to make sure Sarah had completely recovered from her
illness on Thursday night. And he wanted to invite her out for drinks after
work on Friday. Sarah was happy to hear from him, but couldn’t help but be
somewhat wistful that it wasn’t James calling.
Maybe I should just call him
later
, she considered. 
To check on his sister and all. And make
sure he hasn’t forgotten about me.
   
       
Owen came home from his
friend’s house and it was as if he sensed something had happened between his
mother and sister in his absence. Sarah noticed how chatty he was and thought
he may be trying to dissolve the tension. She couldn’t believe how perceptive
her son was sometimes.
A chip off the old block
, she laughed. Abby
retreated to her room shortly after Owen’s arrival. Owen reviewed his
entire weekend with his mother, even the parts she was there for. He
thought maybe she had missed some of it due to her illness so it was obviously
necessary to recap. Satisfied that his mother was completely up to date on his
activities, he ambled off to his room to finish up homework for Monday.

Sarah nervously shuffled
through the contacts in her phone until she came to James McAllister. She
hadn’t spoken to him on the phone since the day of their first date, way back
in August. Her heart was pounding as the phone rang. 
Holy shit, what is
wrong with me?
she scolded herself.
I feel like I’m in the eighth grade
phoning a boy for the first time.

“Hello?” came his husky
voice.

“Hey, James....what’s
up?” she tried to sound casual. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to you last
night.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” he
replied. “My mother called and I didn’t want to take it in the house where your
kid might hear, so I decided to go.”

“Oh,” Sarah let the
syllable float out across a long pause. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine,” he
reassured her. “My sister gave birth to a healthy baby girl at around 2 AM. Her
name is Marianna Katherine. 5 pounds, 3 ounces. She was a little
premature, so they are keeping her in the NICU for a few days, but she seems
fine so far.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” Sarah
exclaimed. “Wow, that’s quite a big name for such a tiny girl!  My middle
name is Katherine too. And my mom’s.”

“Really?” James asked. “That’s
my grandmother’s name.”

“Nice.” 
Awkward
silence. Shit, this is what I didn’t want to happen.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t
stay. Is everything okay with your daughter?” he questioned.

“Yeah, it will be. Teenagers,
ugh. When will I see you again?”
Might as well cut to the chase
, she
thought, she already felt her body longing for him and couldn’t help but feel
cheated out of several more rounds with him the night before.

“Actually” he said, his
voice showing a hint of excitement, “I was going to ask if you’d like to come
to my place next weekend. For dinner.”

She felt a burst inside
like a firework exploding, raining down glittery gold sparkles all around her. “I
would love that.”

They worked out the
details and then she disconnected, feeling giddy. She now had a date with Pawel
Friday night and James Saturday night.
Am I the luckiest woman on the planet
or what?
she wondered as she dialed Rachel’s number. She spent the next
hour on the phone with her best friend, picking apart in intricate detail every
nuance of the dinner conversation the night before.  

Rachel had to be brought
up to speed on what had happened with Abby. She was adamant that the punishment
be serious enough to deter Abby from making similarly bad choices in the
future. The friends also conferred about Thanksgiving plans, which was the
following week. Jack would be joining them this year, along with his four year
old daughter Gia. Rachel and Sarah traditionally celebrated holidays
together, with Sarah’s mom joining them. Oftentimes, they invited current
boyfriends, lovers, or sometimes colleagues who had nowhere else to go. Sarah
had debated asking either Pawel or James to join them for Thanksgiving dinner, seeing
as they were both away from family, but as she couldn’t ask both and she still
wasn’t sure about introducing either to her children, she decided to leave them
both off the guest list.

Phone calls behind her,
Sarah gritted her teeth and headed for Abby’s room. It was time to deliver
the bad news: the punishment.

***

   
       
Thanksgiving
morning started at 6 AM when Sarah went out to the sun porch to turn over the
turkey in the brine. She decided to sit out on the wicker loveseat to enjoy her
coffee and a novel she had just begun reading. It was so rare for her to
read something other than student papers or academic journals. 
Coffee
and pleasure reading as the sun rises. It doesn’t get any better than this
,
she thought, already immersed in the spirit of gratefulness fitting with the
holiday.  

There was a tart
crispness in the air and a shroud of bluish mist in the trees behind her
property line as the sun started to flirt with the horizon. It was one of
those days that felt exactly as it should. Across the field at her neighbor’s
house there were piles of formerly raked leaves that had been fully enjoyed and
jumped in by a slew of children. Her other neighbor had a dazzling display of
mums, cornstalks and pumpkins lining the porch steps. Sarah felt a sense of
peace as she closed up the sun porch and headed to the kitchen to start the
rest of the preparations.

Rachel arrived at 8 AM
to commence the cooking. Together they peeled potatoes, rolled out dough,
seasoned the vegetables, frosted the cake, and baked the pies. The kids,
including Rachel’s son, made frequent stops into the kitchen to supervise and
to solicit samples whenever possible. Sarah was glad to see that even Abby
was still interested in making regular public appearances, even if she still
felt a little raw over her punishment.

Sarah and Abby had had
it out Sunday night after Owen went to bed. Sarah chose to focus on the deceit
and the alcohol consumption and not the promiscuity this time. Abby was not
quite as remorseful as she had been in the morning.
It’s like she spent the
entire day bolstering her defenses,
Sarah observed, reviewing a mental list
of sociological theories to explain how Abby arrived at her argument, which
basically boiled down to: “I’m young and I’m only going to live once.”

Of course Sarah couldn’t
directly argue with that, but she could talk about the consequences of such
behavior. She reminded her daughter that underage drinking was illegal. She
lectured about trust and that lying to her mother was a good way to break the
trust they’d spent fifteen years establishing. She talked about being
sexually active and unintentional pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. In
the end, Abby broke down and cried again. Sarah considered that a minor
victory, even though she had to ground her for a month.
Growing up is tough.
Sometimes it hurts.
Sarah remembered exactly how quickly she grew up the
summer she found out she was pregnant with Abby.

Someday she would be
able to confess that whole story to Abby. Someday. She didn’t want her
daughter to think everything had been easy for her.
I don’t want her to
think I always made the right choices
, Sarah thought.
 I’m human too
and it’s important for Abby and Owen to both see that. But I’m not ready
to totally divulge that story...yet....

At high noon, Jack
arrived with his adorable daughter Gia and shortly after, Sarah’s mother Kathy
made her appearance with her famous oyster bacon dressing and sweet potato
casserole. Soon everyone was seated around the candlelit table set with the
fancy china and silver. All the guests’ stomachs rumbled at the delicious aromas
wafting through the room. Then as Sarah brought the centerpiece into the room,
all eyes fixated on the turkey, golden and juicy, ready to be carved. Sarah sat
at the head of the feast, electric knife in hand, so happy to see her loved
ones gathered around her.

Later, after the
festivities wound down and people were starting to pass out in
tryptophan-induced comas on every available horizontal surface, Sarah retreated
to her bedroom to have a moment of peace and to check her phone for messages.

Happy Thanksgiving
, James had texted.

She felt a pang of
sadness that he wasn’t there. She made a mental note to discuss her family
with him and whether or not he felt comfortable meeting them. She wondered if
he would ever be ready for that...it seemed like a big leap in their
relationship. She thought about the role he played in her life and how
there really wasn’t a label to describe it. He wasn’t just a friend. He
wasn’t quite a boyfriend. Yet, she felt he was becoming an increasingly
important part of her life. There had certainly been a shift since that day
they discussed their arrangement at Java the Hut. Things weren’t that simple
anymore. After some deliberation, she texted back:
I’m thankful for you.