Read The Bride Experiment Online
Authors: Mimi Jefferson
The Bride Experiment (15 page)
“He invited me to his house the next weekend. I had no intention of going at first, but for some reason, I went. We all sat around the table; it was me, his wife, and their two girls. He sells insurance and lives across the street from our old elementary school.
“After dinner, we got to talking and he invited me to church. That's what happened to you, isn't it? That's why you kicked me out of your room that day, because of your relationship with Jesus, right? You notice, I never called you after that. I respect that.”
Joan nodded her head. “I see.”
“So many girls I know spend Saturday night screaming some dude's name and Sunday morning screaming Jesus' name. I'm glad you are not one of those girls. Well, that night at his church, I almost walked to the front. I know a lot of people do it, but I have no intention of having one foot in the world and one foot in the church. I'm too scared of God to play with Him.
“Saying no to me that night, even though you had that desire, I never forgot that. I would be with other women and remember you. No disrespect, but I know how much you enjoyed sex. So if you love Him enough to say no, well, that must be some kind of love.
“I guess that was the first time I realized that people who call themselves Christians aren't all the same. I know lots of people who go to church, but they all do the same things I do, or worse. You know what my friend told me? He said, âBeing in the garage doesn't make something a car, and being in church doesn't make someone a Christian.'
“He gave me a Bible and I've been reading it. I didn't realize Bibles came in other versions. I got an NIV. Have you ever heard of it?”
Joan didn't bother telling him that the New International Version was one of the most popular versions of the Bible. She just nodded.
“There's this big men's conference at the stadium downtown. My friend wants me to come with him.”
“You should go.”
“Thank you, I needed to hear that coming from you. Joan, I got two questions for you. Why are you dressed like that, and why are you hanging around with a woman like Sonya?”
“I don't know, Darren,” Joan said quietly. “It made sense at the time. I barely know Sonya.” She felt like she had been summoned to the principal's office.
“So you wanted to hook up with me tonight, old-school style?”
“Yeah.”
“And now?”
Joan said nothing.
“Joan, I don't know what's going on with you, but let me tell you something. You deserve better than that.”
Joan looked confused.
“Okay, let's say we went back to your place and did our thing, just like we used to. Then what? What happens in the morning?” Darren asked.
“You don't understand, Darren. It's been so long. I just need this one night, you know, then maybe I can think straight. You remember when we were in that Chinese restaurant in Charlotte? Do you remember what you did to me underneath the table? It was so spontaneous and so much fun. I want you to do that to me tonight. Only not in public this time, but back at my place.”
“Are you listening to me, Joan? What I did to you that night was totally disrespectful.”
“Darren, don't make it sound so horrible. I have no regrets. We were just having fun, enjoying life and each other.”
“Were you having fun the next day when I just left and didn't bother to tell you where I was going? You called and called me, but I was laying up with some other woman, so I didn't bother to call you back. If I remember correctly, I don't think I called you until two weeks later. Joan, don't make it better than it actually was. I was horrible to you that weekend, and on many other occasions.”
“But things are different now.”
“Why, Joan? Because this time, you aren't looking for a relationship? All you want is the sex?”
“Exactly, Darren. That's all I want.” Joan snapped her fingers. “Now can we please stop talking and walk back to the car and drive to my place? Come on, Darren. I need you tonight. I need to be touched and taken to that place where only you can take me. I need to be held, caressed, and loved like any other woman. I'm human, baby. Don't you understand that?”
“But what about what you said a while back?”
“Forget what I said.” Joan grabbed Darren's keys out of his pocket. “Let's do this, Big D.”
Darren grabbed Joan's hand, and they slowly strolled back to his car.
Joan tried not to smile too hard. But being this close to Darren made everything in her world better. She was so excited; honestly, she wanted to start singing. When they arrived at her condo, Joan asked Darren to wait on the sofa while she went into the bedroom to freshen up. She wanted to come out wearing a sexy piece of lingerie, but she had thrown all of her pieces away, believing that the next man to see her naked would be her husband, and she would buy all new things for her wedding night.
Without anything special to wear, Joan decided to come out to meet Darren with nothing on at all. Darren apparently was answering a text message when she came in. It took him a few moments to notice she was standing there.
“Wow! Don't I at least get a nightcap first?” he asked.
Joan seductively walked toward him. “Of course, you can have a nightcap, but you are going to have to work for it.”
She sat in Darren's lap. Darren quickly pulled her off his lap and onto the sofa. “Just do one thing for me before we get this started.”
“Okay, but after that, we are going into the bedroom and you are going to do to me what you did in that restaurant. No questions asked then. . . . You promise?”
“I promise.” Darren cleared his throat. “Go get me a Bible.”
“Excuse me!”
“Yeah, I need a Bible.” Darren started to look at his phone again. “Look up First Corinthians 10:13 and read it to me.”
“You got scripture references saved in your phone?” Joan asked with an attitude.
“Will you please just go find a Bible and read that to me?”
Joan didn't move.
“The sooner you move, the sooner we can get on with the night's activities.”
Joan realized what Darren was trying to do, but as she reached for a Bible from her bookcase, she vowed it wouldn't stop her. She began to read, “âNo temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful, He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.'”
Darren stood up, grabbed Joan's hands, and brought her to him. “My Joan, my delicious Joan. I want you so bad right now, it hurts; but you belong to Jesus Christ and I'm not about to infringe upon His property, however tempting you may be. The next man that gets to enjoy your loveliness will have to go through Him first. I am not worthy. The next man will be your husband and it will be your wedding night.” Darren opened the door to let himself out. “Sweet dreams, my queen.”
Chapter 27
Joan waited a few moments; then she looked out the window. She wanted to see Darren walk away. He was walking away, only he wasn't alone. Sean was walking with him. Joan got dressed, grabbed a couple of quarts of ice cream, and knocked on Sonya's door. “Hey, Sonya, it's me. I just saw Sean leave.”
“I'm coming,” Joan heard Sonya say from the other side of the door. Joan waited patiently. It took Sonya too long to get to the door. She reminded herself to get Sonya's phone number so she could call first next time. When Sonya finally answered the door, Joan almost dropped the ice cream.
“What happened?”
Sonya had tears in her eyes. Her face was red and swollen, and she appeared to be hurting all over.
“Help me back to the sofa, please,” Sonya insisted.
Joan put the ice cream down and gently walked Sonya back to the sofa. All she had on was her robe. Her once-spotless condo now looked a mess. Joan gasped when she realized it had taken her sore body that long to make the short trip to the door.
“Did Sean do this to you? Let me call the police.” Joan ran to pick up the phone.
“No . . . no. Joan, just stop it, please. I'm fine. I just need to rest.”
“What do you mean
you are fine?
You can barely walk. We need to call the police and tell them what he did to you.”
you are fine?
You can barely walk. We need to call the police and tell them what he did to you.”
“Joan, please. What do you want me to tell them? I met this guy for the first time tonight and drove him to my condo with the intent to have sex?” She sighed. “Everything started out great, but then after a few minutes, he began to get rough and eventually started beating and slapping me around.”
“But if you told him to stop and he didn't, it is rape!”
“Thank you for caring, Joan, but frankly that's not the thing I'm most worried about.”
“What else happened?”
“I always carry my own condoms. I buy the highestquality products out there and I make a point to put them on whomever I'm with, regardless of what he thinks about it. I have seen too many grown men who don't have a clue on how to use one properly, making them useless and putting me at risk.”
Joan nodded.
“So I put the condom on him.” Sonya dropped her head. “But at some point, he took it off, without me realizing it. I asked him about it when he was getting dressed, but he just blew me off. I've got a bad feeling about this, Joan. I think he may have given me something on purpose.”
Sonya got this faraway look in her eyes. “I remember this HIV-infected lady doing an interview on abstinence. The host kept trying to get her to tell the audience to use condoms. The host didn't seem to like her only speaking about abstinence. Well, the HIV-infected lady finally said something like, âI'm sorry, perhaps abstinence seems foolish to you, but what seems foolish to me is to trust a piece of latex to guard your life against an incurable disease.”'
Sonya shook her head back and forth. “Now I know what she meant. I thought I could do whatever I wanted, as long as I used a condom, but a condom didn't guard me from this. And just think, Joan, he seemed like such a nice guy.”
“Don't be so hard on yourself, Sonya. I've heard that even married men have affairs and give it to their wives. So you could be married and in what you believe to be a monogamous relationship and still get it.”
“Joan, I've never met a man who wanted to marry me, so that's not one of my problems, is it?” Frustrated, Sonya said, “Would you please go in that medicine cabinet and get the pills in that plain white bottle?”
Joan rushed to get the pills, along with a glass of water. She handed them to Sonya and asked, “Are these pain pills?”
Sonya smirked. “I guess you could call them that, but I actually call them my I-don't-give-a-care pills.” Sonya swallowed two of them without the water. “Because about ten minutes after I take them, I don't care about nothing. You want one?”
“No, thank you.” Joan heard a knock at the door.
“Could you get that, please? That's a couple of my friends from work. We are going to pop a few, drink a few, and forget this night ever happened,” Sonya stated.
Joan opened the door and two beautifully dressed ladies rushed in to comfort Sonya, one of them carrying a brown bag with several bottles of alcohol.
Joan took this as her cue to leave and closed the door behind her. Once she walked into her condo, she saw the Bible that Darren had made her read. She picked it up and read 1 Corinthians 10:13 out loud. Afterward, she got on her knees next to the sofa and prayed. “Thank you, God, for protecting me. Please forgive me and draw me nearer to you. And, God, please heal Sonya.”
Chapter 28
Miles was running so fast, he almost slipped. He knocked on James's bedroom door. “Wake up, it's Christmas! It's Christmas!” Miles was convinced that his letter to Santa went all the way to the North Pole and therefore he and James could expect shiny new bikes as soon as they made it out of their beds and went downstairs to the Christmas tree. James tried to convince him that there was no such thing as Santa, but Miles refused to believe him.
Year after year, young Miles would write letters. Since James refused to write his own, Miles would write James's too. When the gifts on the list didn't show up, Miles didn't get discouraged. He just decided that Santa must have had some great reason and he needed to behave better the next year.
James was ten and Miles was eight on this particular morning. Their dad had been away on a business trip for two weeks. Instead of coming back with the same surly attitude he left with, he came home feeling relaxed and refreshed, so much so that he kept kissing their mother on the cheek and twirling her around while they danced to imaginary music.
James got out of bed that morning, just to prove to Miles that there wasn't a Santa Claus. Before he had the opportunity, he saw two red bicycles underneath the tree. Next to them were two toy train sets and the biggest stack of comic books they had ever seen. James's and Miles's screams woke up their sleeping parents.
They walked into the living room in their bathrobes while holding hands and smiling. It was the perfect Christmas morning, like something out of a made-for-TV movie. Their father played with them, while their mother made cinnamon apple pancakes, pan sausage, scrambled eggs, and hash browns.
“James, do you want another pancake?” his mother asked.
Â
Â
James bolted up, looked around, and then nestled back into the airplane chair underneath him. It was all a dream. A nice stack of his mother's homemade pancakes would be so nice right now, though. A simple “hello” from her would bring joy to his heart. James put his hands over his eyes, daring the tears to follow. It would be nice to hear his mother say something. Anything would be great. But that wasn't happening. He would never hear his mother's or his brother's voice again.
The plane was silent now. All of the men were seated. Most were reading and a few appeared to be sleeping. James was glad they didn't see, or chose to ignore, the tears that he could no longer stop from falling down his face.
Right when he was starting to feel really embarrassed and overwhelmed, he remembered his pills and quickly unlocked his seat belt and went to the restroom. All he needed was one or two to get his mind right, he told himself as he hurried past the other passengers. He splashed water on his face and reached in his pocket for the tiny pills he had placed in a Tylenol bottle as a disguise. He didn't want anyone to know he was taking prescription medication. Only the bottle wasn't there. He retraced his steps. He couldn't remember where he could have lost them. Confused, he walked out of the restroom and sat back in his seat.
Before James could ask Kenneth if he had seen his bottle, Kenneth started to speak. “You remember the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible? There's something there that a lot of people miss. Let me explain. Adam and Eve were running around the Garden of Eden freely, content, without a care in the world. They enjoyed having God around. But what happened after they didn't obey God? They didn't want to be in God's presence. They actually started hiding. Can you imagine? One moment, everything was cool, then they disobeyed, and the next thing you know, they are hiding from the One they enjoyed so much before.”
James instinctively knew that Kenneth had his pills. Kenneth was talking in a voice that only James could hear, but he was looking straight ahead.
“We can learn so much from our first parents,” Kenneth went on. “There was this girl that lived on my block named Lisa. It was around the time I was fourteen or fifteen. She was what we used to call back then, âa freak,' meaning she would let the neighborhood boys have their way with her. Despite what everybody else was doing, I decided I wasn't going to be a part of it.
“During the summer, she and I would hang out playing board games and basketball. I was careful not to touch or handle her sexually in any way. The men I knew were always running around and chasing woman after woman. I vowed that I was going to be nothing like them. I was going to be the man who treated women with respect. It was like she was my big sister or something. She seemed to really enjoy our time together, and I'll have to admit, I did too. I don't know. . . . It was like I was doing something important while I was hanging out with her. . . . It was something that seemed to matter.
“One day, my boy Shamar's parents were away on vacation. They left him and his older brother in the house all week. I was there during the day. We really got into a lot of trouble that week. I woke up from a nap one afternoon, and Lisa was there. All the neighborhood boys were running a train on her in Shamar's parents' bed. It must have been at least ten of my friends in line waiting for their turn with her. I heard about Lisa, but that was the first time I had seen her that way. Shocked, I turned to walk away, but then all my boys started tripping about me being scared and stuff. Next thing I know, I was on top of her while they cheered me on, trying hard not to look like this was my first time. When it was all over, I threw the condom in her face, just like I saw the rest of them do.”
James looked up at Kenneth, surprised by what he had just said. Kenneth continued to look straight ahead and spoke in a quiet tone. “When I saw her the next day while walking down the street, I didn't even say anything. I couldn't look her in the face. I could barely stand myself. That's when it all started. That's when I stopped trying to be a good boy. That's when I started running from lady to lady. It was like I entered the dark side, and instead of turning myself around and going to the other side, I just kept getting deeper and deeper.
“I mean, I have participated in some stuff.” Kenneth's head dropped. “Sometimes I wake up and wonder . . . how exactly did that happen? I mean, what in the world was I thinking for that to make sense?” He turned to James. “Have you ever felt like that?”
James didn't respond.
“In college, the first time I heard about one of my friends participating in a threesome, I was shocked,” Kenneth said. “I didn't think I could ever do anything like that. But by graduation, I had slept with so many women, it made sense to try something new and do a couple of women at a time. Before long, what was impossible became routine.
“That's what happens when you start running. We don't confess and turn around. We just keep running deeper and deeper, getting spiritually further and further away from God each day.
“You know what I find intriguing?” Kenneth didn't wait for James to respond. “It's all the different ways people choose to run. For me, it was sex, alcohol, and drugs. For others, it is sports, video games, food, drugs, work, ambition, education, decorating and redecorating their homes, gambling, television, excessively cleaning, or filthiness. Even church work is how some people flee. Whatever it takes so that we don't have to be in God's presence.
“You know what's really funny?” Kenneth again didn't wait for James to answer. “The medical establishment is making a killing off this. They are passing out these pillsâthese pills that make it so easy to hide, to forget. Now you could keep taking your hiding pills, or you can decide that today will be the last day that you hide.
“Think about it, what has hiding gotten you so far? So, are you ready to try something different?” Kenneth handed James the pills. “Or would you rather keep hiding ?”
Other books
I Married the Third Horseman (Paranormal Romance and Divorce) by Angel, Michael
The Cactus Killer (The Inglewood Chronicles) by Jeremy Croston
Worth The Price (Hart's Fall, Montana) by Hunt, Delilah
Wicked Fate (The Wicked Trilogy) by Tabatha Vargo
Bond of Fate by Jane Corrie
The Celebutantes by Antonio Pagliarulo
Wicked Pleasures by Lora Leigh
Strange Bedpersons by Jennifer Crusie
Trouble Won't Wait by Autumn Piper
Me and My Shadow by Katie MacAlister
