The Opportunist (14 page)

“I’m not quitting,” I said putting my hands on my hips. “I have to work. Not all of us have rich parents and trust funds to see us through life.”

His face became white. He hated for anyone to mention the fact that he was loaded, least of all me. He walked out of the store without a goodbye. I threw a pen at the door, wishing he was still there so it could hit him on the head.

From then on, anytime I worked, Caleb’s car was parked in the lot when I left. We never acknowledged each other in the parking lot, and we never spoke about it during our regular relationship hours. But at midnight, he was always there, making sure I was safe. I liked it.

It took me a while to get used to Caleb’s vast popularity. Maybe five people on campus knew my name, but his was a name that was engraved on brass plaques in the school’s gymnasium.

“I feel like I’m dating a celebrity,” I said, when we were out to dinner one night and a couple of girls waved to him from the next table. He rolled his eyes and played it off like I was being dramatic. But, my jealousy weaseled its way into my mind every time some bimbo paid him homage.

Those girls had no regard for the fact that he was my boyfriend. They were waiting for the chance to pounce on him—just like I had.

And then there was the sex issue. We hadn’t gone that far. Cammie quizzed me nightly on just how far our make-out sessions went.

“We just kiss,” I told her for the umpteenth time. We were both in our beds, with the lights out and Cammie was sucking on a lollipop, making wet, slurping noises.

“Olivia, just looking at that man makes me want to have sex and I’m sure ninety nine percent of the female student body agrees with me. What’s your issue? Wait! Were you molested?”

I rolled over and refused to say anything more. What did Camadora know anyway? Weren’t freshman infamous for being stupid and slutty? Wasn’t my father famous for ‘finding it somewhere else’?

No. I wasn’t going to use my father as an excuse to lose Caleb again. Caleb was faithful, attentive, and he had never pushed me to do more than kiss, because he respected me. I remembered the last time we kissed. It had been in his room, lying on his bed. His whole body had felt tense, like he was wound up and ready to spring loose. What if he was using every ounce of self-control when he was with me? The word ‘cock tease’ sprung to mind and I crept further under my covers in shame.

It wasn’t that I didn’t think about having sex with him. I thought about it all the time. But, thinking and doing were two different things. I wasn’t ready and I didn’t know why.

Laura Hilberson was found the same week Caleb and I messed around for the first time. The police found her wandering the Miami airport, barefoot, and her eyelids hanging low over milky eyes. Laura's story was that a man had abducted her while she was jogging on a trail at a park not two miles from the school. Calling for help, he claimed to have sprained an ankle, and begged for her assistance. He asked to be helped to his car, which was just yonder, over the rise. Reluctantly, Laura agreed. She shouldered his weight and walked the short distance to his white van. The van was an old Astro van with rust eating away the metal like cancer. Hindsight told Laura that the darkly tinted windows and slightly cracked rear door was a flashing warning sign. As she helped him into the driver’s seat, he let his keys slip from his fingers and fall into the grass at Laura’s feet. When she bent to retrieve them, the man lifted a crowbar from the passenger seat and connected it with one powerful motion to Laura’s pretty temple. He then shoved her into the back and drove her to what the papers were calling “The Rapist’s Den.”

Laura remembered being kept in a basement of some sort, for a time she couldn’t determine, because she had been sedated. The man, who she described as “shy,” used her for sex and company. Then one day, for no good reason, kissed her on the cheek and dropped her off at the airport. She told police his name was Devon. Laura Hilberson had been missing for six months.

While Laura was lying in a hospital bed being questioned by police, Caleb and I were at a charity auction that most seniors in his fraternity were required to attend. It was one of those fluffy affairs where everyone dresses up in expensive suits and dresses, with waiters circle the room with flutes of champagne. He spotted a group of people who were huddled together in a tight pack.

“I went to high school with them,” he said casually, sliding an olive off of a toothpick with his mouth.

“How many of those girls did you date?” I said eyeing the group. Nearly all of the girls were beautiful enough to be on the cover of a magazine and several of them had greeted Caleb with a sensual familiarity that made my green monster crack his knuckles.

“Adriana Parsevo,” his voice was so low I had to strain to hear him. I repositioned my ear closer to his lips and shivered when I felt them against my lobe. “She’s in the little silver dress,” I directed my gaze towards a striking girl whose dress didn’t manage to cover even a tenth of her never ending legs. What was it with Caleb and the legs?

“We dated for a while, She was very…experimental,” that last word and the texture of his voice hinted at so much, I felt a surge of jealousy crush my windpipe. Caleb, seemingly enjoying my reaction, continued.

“The girl she’s speaking to, the one drinking the mimosa, is named Kirsten if I recall correctly. She has a birthmark that resembles Africa on the inside of her thigh.”

I blew air hard through my nose and glared at him. He laughed—the type of naughty, sexy, chuckle that stirred the sleeping butterflies in my belly.

“You asked Duchess…”

I pictured him kissing those girls. His fingers tracing their birthmarks and my breath caught in my throat. I hated them and I hated him for liking them.

“Would you like to hear more?” he asked, lips grazing the top of my ear.

“No,” I said surly and I meant it. Asking was a big mistake.

As soon as we got in his car, I pounced on him. I kissed him hard—jumping across the seat and climbing into his lap. He laughed into my mouth knowing that his game had struck a chord and he cupped his hands around my buttocks. I ignored him and kept working intent on proving myself seductive.

Caleb’s mood changed quickly and soon all smiles were gone as we were tangled together in a kiss so intense we were both panting. I thought I was going to die when his fingers lowered the straps of my dress and I felt air on my breasts. Then there was more than air. His hands and his mouth found me and I wondered why I had never done this before. I said something. I don’t know what it was, but my voice seemed to snap him back to reality, because he tore away from me the moment he heard it and held me at arm’s length. I had never done anything as wanton, as daring, and what was kept safely beneath my bra and he had never had to stop at such an early point in foreplay.

“Why—? I was breathless and still clutching at his shirt. He kissed me softly on the lips. All sexual charge was gone. He turned on the ignition.

I climbed back to my side of the car and slumped down in my seat. It was because he didn’t want to go halfway. There was no “messing around” with Caleb. Most guys were happy to cop as many feels as they could get. With Caleb, it was different. You either went all the way, or you stayed in the shallow waters of kissing. He wouldn’t sleaze his way into sex, by pulling me further and further away from my chastity by giving me pieces of what I was missing. I sat back in my seat and contemplated throwing all of my inhibitions to the wind. What were they anyway? I could barely remember when I thought of his hands and the way they knew exactly where to touch.

I wondered what my mother would say. She would be happy that I found a guy like Caleb, but she would still be wary of him. My father had gifted us both with a package of suspicion that sat like a teeth baring watchdog in our minds. “Guard your heart, so it doesn’t get broken like mine,” my mother would say as often as twice a week.

Sheri, my mother’s best friend, brought Oliver Kaspen’s life to an abrupt end one Fourth of July after I turned eleven. She used his own 22 gauge shotgun to do the deed, plastering his grey matter all over her pink flamingo shower curtain. Unbeknownst to my mother, Sheri was one of the many women my father used for sex and money. She reminded me of a watery eyed cocker spaniel with a personality as slimey as a raw egg. Before my mother found out about his affair with Sheri, I knew. On the afternoons that my mom worked late and my father picked me up from school, we would go visit his ‘friends.’ These friends all happened to be women, and either had access to money, drugs or both.

“Don’t you go telling your ma about these little visits you’ve been making over here with your dad,” Sheri said wagging a finger at me. “She’s got enough on her plate as is, and your dad just needs a friend to talk to.”

They talked for hours in Sheri’s bedroom, sometimes with the radio playing oldies and cigarette smoke seeping from the crack under the door. My dad would be real nice to me after he came out of the bedroom. We always stopped for gelato on the way home. I didn’t miss him when he was gone. He was just some guy who walked me home from school and bribed me with ice-cream. At the time of his death, it had been ten months since I’d last seen him, and he hadn’t even called for my birthday. Oliver Kaspen, my namesake, died leaving me with a flurry of bad memories and a deadbolt on my heart that only he had the key to. I had daddy issues that doomed Caleb from the get go.

Chapter Ten

The Present

 Sunday morning I wake in my bed, my hair reeking of sweat and cigarettes.  I groan, roll over, and vomit into my trashcan. My trashcan? I didn’t remember putting it there. Then I hear the toilet flush.

My God-Caleb!

I collapse against my pillow and put my hand over my eyes.

“Hey there gorgeous,” Caleb walks in carrying a tray and smiling sunshine all over the room.  I groan again and hide my face in a pillow. Last night: Alcohol, betrayal by a friend, an embarrassing phone call.

“I am so sorry I called you. I don’t know what I was thinking,” I croak.

“Don’t be,” he says placing the tray on my nightstand. “I feel honored that I was your first choice.” He picks up a glass of water and a little white pill and places them both in my hand.  I hang my head in shame and snack on my thumb nail.

“I brought you some toast too—if you’re up to it.” I take one look at the bread and butter and my stomach churns. I shake my head and he quickly removes the tray.

My hero.

“I called the motel this morning,” he says not looking at me. I bolt upright in bed and feel my head spin. “Your friend checked out last night. Apparently, he was in hurry to get out of town,” he leans against the wall and looks at me through his lashes. If I wasn’t so nauseous, I would have smiled at the sight of him in my bedroom.

“Some friend, huh?” I toy with my comforter.

“It wasn’t your fault. Men like that should be castrated.”  I nod and sniff my agreement. “But, if he ever comes near you again Olivia, I’m going to kill him.”

I liked that. I liked that a lot.

The ‘Friends’ theme song is playing from my small television when I get out of the shower. I shuffle into the living room in my robe and slippers and stand around like I don’t know where to sit. Caleb scoots over to make room on the couch for me and I curl into the corner. I decide to make some semblance toward being honest. 

“I like you Caleb,” I blurt and then I cover my face with my hands in embarrassment. “That sounded like a fifth grade confession.”

“I’m not being funny. This is serious.
We
are not a good idea. You don’t know who you are and I know
exactly
who I am, which is why you should probably be running for your life.”

“You don’t really want me to do that.” He is being half serious now or at least he isn’t smiling anymore.

“No. But it would be the best thing.” I am ringing my hands in the sleeves of my gown. I feel nervous and sick to my stomach, plus the way he’s looking at me isn’t making things easier.

“You are bouncing me around like a yo-yo here,” he says placing both of his hands on his knees, as if he is getting ready to stand up.