The Boots My Mother Gave Me (7 page)

I threw my head back, opened my mouth, and laid my tongue against my bottom teeth allowing snowflakes to wet my palate, arms wide open, palms up toward the sky as I spun in circles. Jeremiah leaned against the front of his Jeep smiling, watching me in my amusement. I stopped, facing him, noticing how the moonlight cascaded over his silhouette, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

“How many times have you been here?” I asked somewhere between a question and an accusation. He paused momentarily, teasing as he began counting on his fingers. “Now, I know why you brought me up here, given the day’s events. A vulnerable prey is an easier one,” I joked.

“Do you even do vulnerable?”

“Not if I can help it.” I walked back to him. He had our food sitting on top of the Jeep hood as it idled, the warmth of the engine maintaining the integrity of our coveted chilidogs. I opened mine, dousing it with relish and mustard.

“So, who have you brought up here?” I bit into my chilidog.

“I can’t remember.”

“Nobody brings a girl to Lookout Point and forgets who the girl was. Unless you’ve brought so many of them up here, you lost track.” I helped him open his relish packet, squeezing it onto his chilidog. “Cassidy Isaacs! You took her to prom. She came back to school Monday telling everyone about you and her and Lookout Point. She had boobs in seventh grade, big ones.”

“I know,” Jeremiah assured, he had not missed that fact. I elbowed him in the ribs as I sipped my soda. He groaned at the playful jab to his side.

“What’s it like?”

“What?”

“You know, sex?”

“Who do you think I am?” he asked, insinuating he was innocent of such knowledge.

“Then where did the nickname come from,
Big Johnson?
” I smiled, less than convinced.

“That’s what the guys on the team call me because I’ve got a lot of size.” He took a bite of his chilidog, smearing mustard on the side of his lip. I instinctively wiped the mustard from his face with my finger and stuck it in my mouth, licking my finger clean.

“Yeah, you’re a big guy, but the girls call you that, too, with a certain intonation.”

“Did you just lick that mustard off your finger?” he asked, as if he either didn’t believe what he saw or was completely grossed out.

“It’s a habit. Kat and I have done it for years. Don’t dodge my question.”

“Here’s the thing. Everyone lies about how many people they’ve been with. Guys over report, girls keep the number low. And what do you mean that’s what the girls call me? You girls are worse than we are. I’d like to be a fly on your locker room wall.”

“We swat flies on our locker room wall. And you still didn’t answer my question.” I chased some run away mustard on my own lip with my tongue. Jeremiah helped me out, wiping at it with his finger. He looked at the mustard, thought for a moment and stuck it in his mouth, licking his finger clean. We cracked up laughing.

“So really, what’s it like? Sex?”

He put his chilidog down wiping his hands on his napkin. “It’s good. It’s different. It feels great. It’s quick for the most part, at least when you first start having it. It’s kind of like it’s over before it gets started. It’s kind of awkward.”

“That doesn’t sound so great.”

“But it gets better. You build up stamina. You get better at it. My dad says it’s like a fine wine, ya know, it gets better with age.”

“Your dad knows you have sex?”

“Yeah. I talk to my dad about everything. At least I have someone other than a bunch of boneheaded jocks to talk to about it.”

“Do you use protection? Aren’t you afraid you might get someone pregnant?”

“I don’t have it that much. I’ve only had it a few times. And yeah, I use condoms. Am I on trial here?”

“Huh, guess I had higher expectations. You know like they portray in the movies,” I said.

“It probably can be after you’ve had some practice at it. The first time you ever tried to ride a bicycle, you probably crashed and burned, right? I know you did, I was there.” He chuckled. “Anyway, you can’t expect to be good at something you have no experience with. It’s like everything else. It takes time to build your skills. That’s why I think we’re so full of hormones now, so we can do it over and over again until we’re finally good at it once we’re adults.” He smiled coyly, much too proud of his deduction.

“I never heard it explained quite that way.” I rolled my eyes and smiled, as I wrinkled up my chilidog wrapper. “If so, I’m way behind the eight-ball.”

“Girls like you should stay behind the eight-ball.”

“But guys like you should sex it up every chance you get?”

“You know what I mean. Wait until it means something to you. Don’t just do it to do it.”

I hunched my back over and crossed my eyes while I talked in a patronizing hick accent, “Well, gee Jeremiah,
girls like me,
we’d love to do it just to do it, but we can’t seem to find anyone who’s willing, what with our hunched-backs and all.”

He laughed at my ridiculous impression. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Girls like me
are not exempt from hormones. We think about sex. We want to have sex. I want to have sex...someday.”

“You’re different, Harley. That’s all I meant. Trust me, you don’t want to be like other girls in our minds. Just take it as a compliment.”

“Some compliment. You had sex with Cassidy Isaacs, but you won’t have sex with me.”

“When and where Harley-girl? I swear, I’ll drop my pants right here in the freezing cold to have sex with you.” He playfully fumbled with his zipper.

I picked up a pile of snow shaping it into a compact, round ball. “How quickly you forget, we used to go skinny-dipping together down at the lake. I’ve already seen your
Big Johnson.
Back then, I’d say it was more like a
Little Johnson”
I accurately threw my snowball at him, hitting him square in the chest before I took off running.

“Now you got jokes.” He chased after me.

In all my gracefulness, I slipped in the snow, turning my ankle as I went down on the frozen ground. Between laughter, I managed to yelp, “Ouch, oh crap my ankle. Ow, that’s gonna hurt.” Jeremiah helped me to my feet. I wrapped my arms around his waist for support as I hobbled back to the Jeep. He picked me up, setting me on the hood for warmth as the engine idled.

“Let me see.” He pulled my boot and sock off before the swelling impeded their removal. “Ooh, Harley, this looks bad. Your ankle’s swollen. We better load up and get you to a hospital.”

“It does this sometimes. It’s an old injury. Doesn’t take much to flare up. RICE,” I said.

“Are you still hungry?”

I laughed. “No. R.I.C.E...Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. Don’t they teach you guys that in football?”

“We don’t call it RICE, Harley. I better get you home.”

“No. Not yet. Just throw some snow on it. I’ll be fine.”

Jeremiah accommodated me, as usual. He left the Jeep running while I sat on top of it, enjoying the warmth of the engine underneath me. He filled my sock with snow and wrapped it tightly around my ankle, which he had resourcefully elevated on his portable toolbox.

As he climbed on the hood of the Jeep snuggling in behind me, he wrapped his legs around mine and pulled me into his broad frame, my back resting against his chest as he leaned against the windshield. He threw a blanket over top of us and pulled it tight, tucking it in at the edges. There we sat, Jeremiah Johnson and me, on the hood of his Jeep, the moon and stars loomed above, feather-light snow continued to fall from the heavens, his body wrapped around mine, selflessly sharing his warmth.

I wanted to tell him how he had replaced the worst day of my life with the most wonderfully perfect night, and how in that one little moment all was right with the world.

“Hey, did I tell you I talked with the Marine recruiter last week?” He rubbed his hands briskly over my thighs generating heat. “I’m thinking about joining. They’ll pay for my education and I can travel, see the world a bit.”

“That’s a big decision. What about football? All the scholarships you’ve been offered?”

“Graduation’s right around the corner and I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but I have to do something. Something more than just play football, something that matters, ya know?” he said. “Not all of us are like you. You’ve had a plan ever since I can remember.”

“Some plan. I don’t even know where I’m going, I just know I’m gone.”

“God, I love that about you. You make your mind up and bam, that’s it, you do it.”

“Contemplation is a roadmap to doubt. Mom calls me impulsive. I like to think I’m intuitive. If you think about something...anything...long enough, you can talk yourself right out of it.”

Jeremiah leaned his head over my shoulder, resting his cheek against mine. “You ever doubt yourself?”

“All the time. Every little decision I make. I think about it, weighing the pros and cons. Then I make my choice, all the while hoping in the back of my mind it’s the right one,” I said. “Every now and then I trust my instinct and just react, my decision is made. Those are the best decisions, I think. Sometimes you just have to do it and think about it later.”

“Who’s going to do this with me when you leave? I’ve always had you, Harley-girl. What am I going to do when you’re...” he stopped himself mid-thought.

Incapable of tolerating the silence that followed, I joked, “I’m sure you’ll have more volunteers for your time than you can handle.” Jeremiah said nothing, not even a smile or a laugh. He turned me toward him until we were face-to-face. I identified the look in his eyes. In my nervousness, I failed to keep my mouth shut, as usual. “Did you hear the one about the penguin and the monkey who walk into a bar? The penguin...” He placed his finger over my mouth, staunching my superfluous words.

“Ssh,” he whispered. Closing his eyes he spoke as a reminder to himself, and I heard my own words quoted back to me, “Just do it and think about it later.”

He cupped my chin with his hand, guiding my lips up to meet his. They were full and moist as they lingered over mine. I kept my eyes open momentarily watching him, his long, dark, curly eyelashes pressed tightly closed. His wavy, black surfer-boy hair brushed against the front of his forehead. In a matter of seconds, my hands seemingly unconscious in their action roamed him freely, one hand finding its way through his hair, the other inside his coat, steadily moving from his chest to his abdomen and around his back, as if it didn’t know where to land. I just had to touch him.

The more I touched him, the harder he breathed. He pulled me closer until my thighs straddled his as his tongue explored my mouth. I followed his lead.
What the hell was wrong with me?
It was like some kind of spell. I couldn’t stop. It felt so good. He felt so good. I couldn’t get close enough to him. I leaned forward until my chest touched his, my thighs followed, encompassing him tighter still.

I let the weight of my body sink into his lap. His desire was undeniable, warm and hard, constricted by his jeans. I had read about the male erection, watched movies where they talked about it, even heard other girls remark on it. This was my first up-close-and-personal encounter.

Stifled by his body’s reaction to mine, unsure of what to do, I pulled my mouth from his. He opened his eyes ever so slowly, revealing a glassed-over, sultry look. If sex looked like anything, that was it.
Did my eyes look like sex too?

“You wanna stop?” he panted, pulling the blanket up over my shoulders. My body shivered, and not from the cold.

Did I want to stop?
I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My mind said
stop
but my body saw a green light. I let my head fall backward, looking up at the sky for answers. The motion involuntarily arched my back, my hips rotating downward connecting firmly with his middle. He moaned returning my contact, shifting his hips upward, as his lips, gentle and wet, found my neck and my chest covering every inch of bruised, scathed flesh, softly healing in their touch.

In a moment, a painful memory was replaced with a new one, hot, sensual, and tender. For their duration, when I looked in the mirror and saw the bruises on my neck and chest, I was not filled with the memory of my father’s unrelenting hand, the furthest thing from my mind, actually. The bruises now represented safety, warmth, and sweetness. A moment shared with Jeremiah.

He pushed my coat off my shoulders, unzipping my sweatshirt to my navel, revealing only my bra underneath. I got dressed in such a hurry after he showed up at my apartment I skipped the undershirt. I watched him watch me, his eyes diverting from my lips, to my neck, to my breasts. It was like I was Christmas dinner and he didn’t know where to start. It was interesting, empowering really, to see how my body could affect the opposite sex. He swallowed hard as his hands encircled my waist.

My breasts grew taught through my bra from the combination of his touch and the cool night air. He met them with his mouth, warm and teasing. My hips moved against him impulsively, rhythmically. My middle, much like his mouth, felt wet.

Oh my God, what am I doing? I shouldn’t be doing this, but it feels amazing. Why does it feel so good if you’re not supposed to do it? I’m not that girl, the one who gives it up at Lookout Point. Just a little more, then I’ll stop. I’m not that girl.
I fumbled with the button and zipper on his jeans until my hand successfully felt the cotton of his tighty-whities. I had no idea what I was supposed to do now, I just wanted to touch him and make him feel as good as he had me.

I moved my hand inside the cotton waistband, naively exploring, touching, hopeful I was doing it right. He was hard and thick, the skin surprisingly silky.
No wonder they call him Big Johnson.

“Aw, God, Harley-girl,” he murmured, pushing me away from him. He jumped down from the hood, pacing the ground, buttoning himself up. Returning to the Jeep, he quickly zipped up my sweatshirt, pulling my coat around me.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No,
you
didn’t do anything wrong.” He continued to pace, running his fingers through his hair.