Saved By The Doctor (BWWM Romance) (2 page)

Before she could think too hard about how all of it was making her feel, Victoria wrapped her hand around Jackie's arm and led her down the short stairs, onto the main floor of the club and across the dance floor. As they sifted through the crowd of people, she could feel strange hands caressing her body, accidentally and on purpose. She made eye contact with almost everyone she walked past, her mind wandering almost as quickly and as restlessly as her desire, until someone placed a hand on her hip, and kept it there. She looked up to find a face gazing down on her, but just as she tried to get a good look at him, the strobes began. In the flashing lights, it took everything in her to keep from falling over.  Nevertheless, the only thing she knew about him was the fact that he smelled good and was gloriously tall.

“Do you want a drink?” he murmured into her ear, his voice sounding like a glorious mix of youth and maturity.

Felling tipsy, Jackie laughed, but the sound of it was lost in the music. She reached up, grabbing the back of his neck and drawing his head back down to her level. “I don't need a drink. Let's just dance,” she replied, her lips pressed against his ear. She couldn't draw away without first planting a kiss on that bit of skin just above his ear.

She felt him smile beneath her lips. “All right,” he replied as he rested both of his hands on her hips and gently moved her so that she was standing in front of him. She reached up to him, placing her palm on his cheek to balance herself. They swayed back and forth together, Jackie getting more and more into him the more they danced. She looked up to find Victoria less than a foot away, necking with a guy who looked like he spent all of his free time in a gym.

“You are so hot,” he whispered.

The sensation of his breath brushing against her skin was enough to send her into a frenzy. However, she didn't know if it was the alcohol, the strobe lights, or the music, but she was starting to feel extremely out of control. She turned herself around, pressing her body against his for no other reason than the fact that she needed the support and couldn't handle herself without it. “Actually, I think I do need that drink,” she murmured into his ear.

He slipped his hands from around her waist, taking her face in both of his hands. Before she could take another breath, he pressed his lips against hers, prying her mouth open with his tongue. Jackie's eyes flashed wide open as what was a sweet surprise quickly changed into an unwanted advance. She couldn't believe how aggressive he had suddenly become, eating her face under the dark cover of the club. Her stomach lurched at the taste of cigarettes in his mouth and, all at once, the last thing she wanted was to spend another moment with him. Thankfully, he pulled away. “What will you have?” he asked, snaking his hand down her arm and intertwining his fingers in hers.

Jackie cocked her head to one side as she took her hand out of his. “Look, it's just gonna be water. I'll actually be fine by myself.” She had to yell the words to make sure that they were heard over the thick sound of music banging against the walls.

But he dragged her back towards him just when she thought she was getting away. “No, you look. I need you. Let me get you something. Come on,” he begged.

He was becoming more and more unattractive by the minute. Jackie decided it wasn't worth the argument and made her way to the bar without him, but just as she reached it, she turned to find that he had followed her. “I'm really dizzy. I mean it. I need some air.”

But he drew her towards him yet again, caging her in his tight grip and pressing his lips against hers. “But I need you.”

Jackie exerted as much force as she could to get away from him, but she couldn't budge. “No. I'm honestly just not into it. Can you get that?” she asserted, but when he still would not let her go, she started to panic. She tried to pull away yet again, but he grabbed her arm and led her even farther away from the dance floor. She could feel her stomach rolling with fear as they moved through the crowd; no one even realized she needed help, let alone go through the pain of trying to intervene. Before she could blink twice, they were out in the cold air and Jackie's face was starting to hurt. As it was getting late at that point, there was almost no one left in line waiting to get into the club. He dragged her down the dark street and into an empty alley, pressing her back against the dirty brick wall. “I want you right here.”

Jackie tried to push him away, but he flipped her over, banging her head against the hard surface. Blood trickled down the side of her face, but she was too disoriented to push him away at that point. And yet, just as the ringing in her ears was beginning to subside, she felt him peel her skirt up. Her jaw swung open and her throat swelled for a scream, the cold air biting at the back of her neck. “Stop!” she hissed, but he had already unzipped.

The next thing she felt was him inside of her.

Chapter Two

*** 6 Years Later ***

Jackie's eyes flashed open to the sun streaming through her open window and the sound of a fire truck's sirens wailing through the morning air as it sat suspended at the corner of Nostrand Avenue, trapped amongst the morning rush. Jackie sunk back into her bed, covering her eyes with her arm as she tried to tell herself that it couldn't be the next morning; not just yet. With a sigh, she yanked herself up and checked her phone. There were two voice mails. “Who the hell leaves voice messages?” she asked herself as she pressed the button and pressed it to her ear. A smile dragged itself across her tired face as the sound of her mother's voice; the best combination of tranquil and wise filled her ears.

“Jackie? Jackie? You didn't answer my phone call last night. I thought something had happened to you. Anyway, I think I left my glasses at your little loft. Just let me know if you find them. I can't read the Gospels without them.”

Jackie put her phone down, deciding to ignore the second voice mail for as long as she could. Her mother couldn't have left two. “Laila!” she called, her voice still rough from the shoddy six-hour night. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and glanced at herself in the mirror that hung on the opposite wall from her bed. Her residual frown deepened as she noticed just how tired she looked. Her skin, which had started to darken as a result of the increasing temperatures and solar intensity of the impending spring, showed signs of deep wrinkles and strong discoloration. A rim of purple shadows, her hazel pupils contrasting beautifully with her olive skin, surrounded her heavily lidded eyes. She ran her hands through her soft, thick curls, wincing as each finger got caught. She told herself to stop going to bed without a nightcap because it was really getting to be ridiculous.

“Laila!” she screamed after another five minutes of no response from the raised platform, which constituted her daughter's bedroom.

She stumbled out of her room and into the short hallway and huge parlor beyond. An entire wall of windows, badly maintained, but windows nonetheless, covered the east side of her parlor, allowing the sun to simply pour in. It was the only good thing about her terribly accessed, impossibly segregated, century-old Brooklyn apartment. As she crossed the parlor, her feet slamming against the wood, rapidly heating from the sun, she wondered at how spoiled she was to think that throughout all of her undergrad, she had lived in a perfectly accessed subway in downtown Manhattan. She plugged in the coffee maker and then reentered her parlor. “Laila!” she called. By the time she got to her daughters room, she paused to catch her breath. She was a long way away from her nights of clubbing and her days of dance classes and yoga. With a sigh, she reached the foot of her daughter's bed. She couldn't help but to smile at the small form just underneath the quilt her grandmother had given her for her fifth birthday. Her tiny chest rose and fell with her every breath, the little wheezing sound filling the room.

Jackie rounded her bed, and gently shook her daughter. Once she was standing right next to her, watching her sleep ever so calmly, she found it extremely difficult to be firm with her. After all, Jackie had just had the hardest time getting herself out of bed. She nudged at her, willing her to wake up.

Laila moaned, stirring under her covers, but her eyes remained closed. “No,” she mumbled, before turning her face back into the pillow.

One glance at the pink wall clock hanging on the wall over her head told her that they were already five minutes late getting started on their day. “No, seriously, Laila. We're really out of time here,” she pressed, lifting the quilt away from her.

Laila stirred again, “No!” she yelled, shooting up, before falling back down onto the bed. “I'm sick, I don't want to go!” she cried before crawling back into her impossible ball.

“I can’t do this with you right now!” Jackie breathed with an exasperated voice. She pressed her hand against Laila's forehead. “Babe, you don't even have a fever. Let's go.” She reached underneath her shoulders to pick her up, but Laila pressed herself that much farther into the mattress.

“No. You’re not supposed to take my temperature with your hand, Momma!” she screamed.

Jackie raised an eyebrow, not sure whether to be annoyed with the fact that Laila was still carrying on a lie that was obviously not true and making them later with every passing minute, or proud of the fact that she not only knew what 'temperature' was, and how to pronounce it, but that she also was able to apply the concept correctly. “Baby, I can tell just from your voice that you are just fine. Now if you get up now, I'll let you have a tiny little sip of my coffee,” she replied, knowing that would be enough to coax her daughter away from the sheets.

Like magic, she shot up, her eyes wide with excitement. “Really? You will?” she exclaimed, her caramel skin flushing red as she jumped out of bed.

Jackie couldn't help but to laugh. She envied how her daughter could go from literally too tired to even open her eyes, to jumping up and down with excitement in mere moments. “Yes. But you have to shower in ten minutes,” she replied, conveniently leaving out the fact that she would brew a special, caffeine-free brew just for this purpose. Jackie liked to think of herself as a “cool mom,” but she was nowhere near cool enough to risk stunting Laila's growth. The doctors all said she was going to grow up to be at least 5'10, and Jackie was making it her personal mission to see that she claimed every single one of those inches.

“Okay!” Laila replied as she ran down s to the bathroom that the two of them shared.

Jackie took that time to set some music up for the rest of the morning. She sifted through the records she had placed in the box, painted just to match her daughter's room, to find the one that fit her mood exactly. People always thought she was strange for still listening to records, but she always said they reminded her of a simpler time. A smile tugged at her lips as she laid her hands on the Alicia Keys collectible she had picked up at a colleague's garage sale a couple of years back, and she set it up on the record player.

Once their entire loft was filled with the voice of Keys, she quickly made Laila’s bed, and then faced her closet. Before she could even begin to put together an outfit for Laila, she had to pick up the remnants of clothing the child had strewn all over the floor and re-hang them. She could already see Laila starting to have her own fashion sense. Soon enough, she was going to start insisting that she pick out her own clothes. Then Jackie would start having all those conversations she used to have with her parents in elementary school about what to wear.

By the time she had worked through all those hypothetical arguments, she had decided on a yellow dress with red roses on it. She held it up to the light, frowning at the way the sun filtered through the colors. Something about it wasn't quite right. She couldn't believe she had even bought it in the first place. The cogs in her head were turning as she struggled to figure out what exactly was wrong with it, but a quick glance at the clock told her that she really just did not have enough time to put together a state of the art outfit for her daughter's day of kindergarten. So she just settled on the dress.

Laila climbed up the stairs, her hair dripping and her face flushed from her hot shower. Her eyes went wide when she saw the dress. “Oh! This is my favorite!” she exclaimed as she stormed the bed, her voice lifting above the sound of the music.

Jackie raised an eyebrow. “Great! Now go put it on,” she replied as she ran back down the stairs and into the already steaming bathroom.

Once she had taken a hasty shower and cleaned both her and her daughter's hair out of the drain, she grabbed the first outfit she laid hands on, a white oxford shirt with dark overalls that had been stained with paint. It wasn't the nicest thing she owned, but it was good enough to get her to her daughter's elementary school and more than good enough for her to work in once she got back. As soon as she had gotten dressed, she went back to the kitchen. “Laila! Let's go!” she called as she pulled two granola bars out of the cabinet and poured her caffeinated coffee in her own mug and the decaf coffee in Laila's special mug. By the time she was done, Laila was emerging from her room, looking like a miniature model. At 5 years old, she already knew how to make her own ponytail and she worked that knowledge with every chance that she got.