Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
JAKE
January, 2013
What. The. Fuck.
It took me several seconds to process what had just happened.
Cave Man and Mad Man were ecstatic. I could tell by the way my cock lurched inside Shelby as the hot sting of the slap fully registered. Fuck yeah! This kitten’s got claws!
Truth be told, I was no stranger to pain during sex, but that had been a very long time ago.
My curiosity of all the things that could happen on a night like this immediately expanded from the typical Will she spend the night? and Does she like to cuddle ? to Will we need Bactine? and Will there be a broken lamp on my hotel bill ?
I caught Shelby’s shocked expression at what she had done; a flash of a recoil as if she expected me to react violently. Almost immediately, however, she moved into recovery mode. She kissed my face softly, several times, where it was most likely beet red. Where it might even have borne her handprint. She kissed her way down my neck and resumed her rhythmic grinding as if nothing had happened.
Meanwhile, I could feel her stilted breath as she tried desperately to stifle her crying. My shoulder became wet with her tears.
Evolved man needed to get involved.
“Hey, hey. Stop.” I whispered as I gently grabbed her hands from my shoulders. “Just hold on a second.” I peeled her body away from mine until she was facing me. Her face was streaked with tears, her nose runny and red. She looked down, ashamed.
As much as I’ve appreciated Shelby’s beauty up until now, nothing could hold a candle to this. Broken wide open, exposing her softest insides, I was spellbound.
She choked and sputtered as she tried to inhale, trying to get enough air in to speak. She put her hands over her face.
“Oh my God. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean…” she whispered, too embarrassed to speak loudly.
“Hey. I know.” I pulled her hands away from her face as I encouraged her to look at me. “I know.” I raised my hand to wipe another tear just as it crested her lower eyelid.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay…You just had an emotional response. It happens.” I gently lifted her off me and guided her to the bed to sit down. “Hang on. I’ll be right back,” I told her.
I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and the two white bathrobes from the closet. Yes, I would be giving a robe to Shelby to preserve her dignity as we moved past this moment, but there was a reason I needed one for myself. I didn’t want her having to concern herself with my erection that wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. You see, Evolved Man liked another kind of pain.
Not physical pain. And not the affliction of it.
No, he had a thing for emotional pain and the irresistible allure of being able to fix it.
My name is Jake Ford and I have a savior complex. Hero or “white knight” complex. Whatever you’d prefer to call it.
Evolved man often conspired with Mad Man to rescue the “damsel in distress.” And this exquisite damsel was in more distress than I’d come across in quite some time.
To be fair, I didn’t get off on the pain itself. It was the vulnerability and the emotional intimacy. And for me, this was a hundred times more intimate than my having been inside her just minutes before.
I helped Shelby on with her robe and then pulled her into me. Holding her head against my chest, I tried to temper my breathing in order to calm her.
When I was nineteen and home from the University of Arizona for the summer, my mother and I were watching my little brother Trevor play his last home baseball game of his junior year. It was a big deal, scouts had come to see him, and he was looking down the barrel of a full scholarship. He had everything going for him, all of it in the palm of his hand.
After hitting a monster line drive straight down first, as he was rounding second base, his legs gave out from under him. We all thought he tripped.
But he didn’t get up. He lay there motionless. My mother and I stood immediately, her with a vise grip on my arm. I started to move to guide her down the bleachers toward the field, but she stayed frozen in place. I had no choice but to stay frozen with her and watch it all play out like a bad dream.
Coaches and staff ran out from both teams. All the players stood in a broad circle on the field around him, paralyzed with fear and helplessness.
He’s got to be okay. Just move a little, Trev.
His coach scanned the stands until his eyes found ours, all color drained from his face. He shook his head.
One of the coaches had begun CPR. The paramedics arrived and began their efforts.
All of it had been in vain, however. Trevor was gone before he hit the ground.
The explanation we got for my brother’s SCD, or “sudden cardiac death” was an undiagnosed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the thickening of the heart muscle making it hard for it to pump blood effectively. It’s common for it to go undetected, and it’s spectacularly unfair how quickly it can take a young life without warning.
My mother was in shock. Her body moving, breathing and talking only because it remembered how. My aunts, uncles, and cousins poured in from Venezuela to help. I was so grateful to be taken in by their warm and enveloping compassion as they took care of absolutely everything. I was just a kid, and I didn’t know anything about planning a funeral, much less how to process my own grief.
After my brother was buried, after all the relatives had gone, my mother collapsed into a pile on the bathroom floor.
Her grief had sent her gastrointestinal system into chaos, and she couldn’t keep anything inside her. I put pillows and blankets on the bathroom floor. Every few hours I’d bring her soup, crackers, fruit, and water, trying to get her to eat and drink for me. After a few days, she seemed to be able to hold things in a little better, so I gently coaxed her into her bedroom. There she stayed for weeks.
I’d read to her, and we’d watch movies, but mostly she slept. I made the decision I wouldn’t be going back to school that fall. My mother needed me too much.
After consistently meeting her where she was and not pushing too hard, by mid-summer, she was ready to start venturing outside. Short trips at first, since she still tired so easily. We would conveniently bump into her friends while we were out and about—I’d arranged for this in advance since she was adamant about not having the energy to see anyone on purpose. Every little encounter seemed to add a little more to her life meter. By late fall, she was beginning to seem like herself again.
At Christmas, a few of the relatives made the trip back to Portland since it would be the first one without Trevor. The firsts are the hardest, so everyone was respectfully somber. But my Uncle Mauricio, who was notoriously crude and inappropriate, said something off the cuff and made my mother laugh. A full, wonderful, exuberant belly laugh where tears streamed down her face. At that moment something clicked inside me.
It struck me that I had been the catalyst for her emergence from the deep, dark depths of her grief. That, if not for me, she may have stayed in that bathroom. I proclaimed myself her savior and the realization felt exhilarating.
My immature, underdeveloped brain locked this information in, and over time, it became infused and intertwined with my personality.
I didn’t go back to Arizona, but I did take a few classes at the local community college. I saw an ad for auditions for a community theater play so I gave it a shot. I got the part, and the rest, as they say, is history. I’d found my passion.
I’d also found a seemingly endless supply of wounded, lost and broken people I could fix.Especially once I headed to LA.
I made friends with a few guys who needed a nudge, but mostly it was the women that I was drawn to. I could become anything they needed. A strong, solid, grounding force. A gentle, kind, soothing presence. A “tough love” disciplinarian, filling in for Daddy’s inadequacies. It wasn’t always romantic, but when it was, the physical part of the addiction was a high beyond any drug. I felt powerful, like I was healing them with my sex.
My acting fed my addiction, and my addiction fed my acting. I was completely full of myself most of the time. For a long time.
Chloe, the goth dream girl makeup artist, had been such a beautiful disaster, but she nearly took me down with her. She had not only introduced me to industrial music and the edgier side of new wave, but she’d also showed me an edgier side of foreplay. Riding crops, floggers, candle wax, nipple clamps, and the like. I responded especially favorably to being bitten, even more so if it left marks. Once, when she was stroking me while simultaneously biting the flesh just above my knee, she broke the skin with her sharply pointed canine teeth. She licked the wound and the second she showed me my blood on her tongue, I came so hard I broke a blood vessel in my eye.
Our dynamic had started out experimental and fun. Over time however, it became clear that she had some demons from her past that she was trying to exorcise through me somehow. And even though I still liked it, it was edging further and further into dangerous territory. I was locked in, however, bound and determined to help her any way that I could.
We became a codependent mess.
Somehow, I managed to break myself free from her grasp just as she was falling further down, ultimately losing herself to a heroin addiction for a while. Last I’d heard she’d been clean for a long time, gotten married and had kids. No thanks to me.
The dangerous dance with Chloe had scared me enough to seek therapy. I wanted to develop healthier relationships, but I was inconsistent, and I could never seem to get to the heart of where my issues lived. And the problem with a savior complex is that your ego becomes this uncontrollable monster that convinces you what you are doing is good and necessary. You are helping people. You can’t see past that to the damage you are doing— to other people and to yourself.
Holly had been the closest thing I’d had to a normal relationship, but when I ended things because there was nothing more I could do for her, I knew enough was enough. I found myself a new therapist, and it had been going well. Until.
Until I got Kendra’s email about Shelby’s husband.
Shelby, whom I was struck by in an instant in her audition video. Whom I’d watched as she played Cherrie Bombshell instructing her viewers on the perfect pinup pout or dry hair roller set. Whose beauty and magnetism in person tripped me up more than I’d ever thought possible.
And now she was a grieving widow?
This was more temptation than I could bear, and it seemed to be well worth a backslide. I didn’t tell any of this to my therapist. I was fully aware of the slippery slope leading to nothing but trouble both for myself and for Shelby, but there was no way in hell I could resist.
When I’d returned to the table that evening and noticed her switch flipped on, that look of fiery determination in her electric blue eyes, I was delighted beyond words.
Somehow, I sensed it was vital to let her have the wheel with me eagerly along for the ride.
But I could not let her hijack our first kiss.
I pulled away from her lip lock to take my time.
To memorize every centimeter, every curve and angle of her face. Tease out and savor the exquisite anticipation. Indulge in the deliberate manipulation of time that is so rare an opportunity.
Of course I was desperate to touch and taste every inch of her impossibly creamy skin and I ached to fuck her senseless.
But since the day we met, I had been dying to kiss her, and I’d be damned if I let it be just a pit stop on the way to our final destination.
I wanted…I needed it to mean something.
In my soap days, women would be so afraid to be nervous around me. They wanted to appear so cool, so together, they thought it would make them more appealing, so they’d put on an act. Become someone else. Little did they know, I’d likely have been much more entranced by the opposite.
While I’d stepped away in the restaurant, Shelby had put on this persona as a defense mechanism, a coat of armor to hide her nervousness and give her courage. It amused me to no end that I recognized it immediately. She was channeling her YouTube persona; Cherrie Bombshell had come out to play. Between that and the bravery a few glasses of wine can provide, she’d proclaimed herself ready, willing and able.
But as soon as I pressed pause on our kiss, I saw it. The tiny cracks in her armor. When I pulled away from her to dive deeply into her eyes and trace the contours of her beautiful face, I watched and felt as the pulse in her neck quickened to a machine gun pace. Her jaw slacked, parting her pillowy lips. Her chest began heaving in waves and I could practically feel the vibration of her pounding heart. I was affecting her as much as she was affecting me, and I relished this momentary glimpse of her vulnerability.
Then, as I initiated the kiss the way that I wanted, as our lips met, as I teased and tasted, exploring her warm, delicious mouth, when our tongues danced together in a perfect steamy tango, I felt her melt. Her legs threatening to buckle beneath her, her body becoming heavier in my arms. She was on the cusp of surrender.
She broke our kiss to regain her composure and become the steely temptress once again, but I knew it would only be a matter of time before her armor failed completely.
And now here she was, falling apart in my arms.
I let her go momentarily to grab the duvet and pull it down. I sat at the head of the bed propped up on pillows. “Come up here with me,” I said as I patted the spot and outstretched my arms.
She smiled weakly and crawled up next to me. She fit herself perfectly in the nook I’d made and laid her head on my chest. I would let her take the lead–this moment would only be what she needed it to be. If she started to kiss me and we continued where we’d left off, if she wanted to talk, if she fell asleep, if we just continued to lay here with no words—just me stroking her hair, caressing her back, any or all of it would be perfect. I was just grateful to have her in my arms, bearing witness to her most personal pain.
“I’m so embarrassed. I have no idea why I would have done that. I’ve never hit anyone in my life. I’ve never even spanked my son.” She was trying hard not to cry again.
“Sometimes our emotions get the better of us, especially if we’ve experienced tragic loss or trauma. My mother went through all of it. She’d be in the middle of something mundane and start to cry. Or laugh. Or scream. Waves of grief come crashing down at the most inopportune moments. Believe me, I really do understand. And you didn’t hit me all that hard.” I lied. My cheek still throbbed, and I wished I could put ice on it without making her feel worse.
“Still. I’m so sorry.” She managed to look up at me, her blue eyes swimming and makeup streaked across her face like abstract art. My heart lunged and I was reminded of my body’s aching need. I wrapped my arms tighter around her.
I was hoping she’d say more, talk through more, let me in more. But she continued to remain alone in her own head, every now and then snuggling in a little closer.
Another hour went by, and Shelby got up to use the bathroom. She began to gather her clothes. “I think I’d better go. I’m sorry tonight turned out like this,” she said.
“Turned out like what? Honestly, I had such a wonderful time at dinner, and it has been an absolute honor to spend this quiet time with you. Really.”
She looked at me bewildered. As if it were impossible that a man could enjoy an evening that didn’t end with him having an orgasm.
“Plus, getting to see you naked,” I made an elaborate chef’s kiss. She smiled gratefully and headed back to the bathroom. When she came out, she’d smoothed her hair and scrubbed the makeup off her face. Looking so fresh and innocent and still so vulnerable, I knew I desperately needed to see her again. This couldn’t be the end. “I’m in Chicago for a few days in March for work and I’d have a chance to tack on a few extra days…I was wondering if you’d be interested in coming down and meeting me?”
She looked at me and glanced down. “Maybe? Can I have a few days to think about it? I’m house hunting and I’m about to put my current house up for sale. There’s a lot to do. Plus getting the time off…”
“Okay, no pressure. Why don’t I give you my number so you can let me know. It’d be somewhere around the fifteenth.”
She took her phone out to put in my contact information. “Like I said, I just have a lot going on right now. We’ll have to see.” She moved toward the door.
It was hard to be optimistic, she seemed like she was going to find any excuse not to meet me, and this would be the last time I saw her. Again, I found myself with nothing to lose. I crossed the space between us and put my hands on either side of her face, gently demanding her full attention. “Shelby, you are an amazing woman. I really, really want to see you again.”
She closed her eyes and tilted her head, reaching a hand up to press mine more firmly against her cheek, just for a second. I kissed her softly on the lips, then she took my hands and removed them from her face.
“Goodbye, Jake.” And she was gone.
There was nothing left to do, so I poured my body into the bed.
The next morning, I went to the hotel gym and tried to work out some of the erratic emotions swirling through me. It helped a little, but then I immediately undid all my hard work when I subsequently had four cups of coffee. Being over caffeinated at the airport is rarely a good idea, especially when undercut with angst and uncertainty. I was unreasonably irritated with everyone and everything. It sucks being a minor celebrity while simultaneously having real human emotions. God forbid Jake Ford gets short with someone. It’s assumed from then on that I am a just another Hollywood asshole.
When it was my turn at the TSA checkpoint, I reached into my front backpack pocket for my passport. As my hand sunk deeper, the back of my fingers brushed against something soft. Something lacy. In hindsight, I probably should have waited to inspect it until after I was through security, but my curiosity got the best of me, and I pulled it out. There, dangling from my fingers right in front of the burly TSA agent, was Shelby’s black thong. I quickly shoved it back in the pocket, but the agent’s cheeky smile and the shake of his head told me I hadn’t been quite fast enough.
Once past security, I found a bench and reached into the pocket again. Along with the underwear, there was a note written on the hotel stationary.
Jake,
Thank you for everything tonight. I am still so very sorry for the way things ended, but I’d love to be able to make it up to you sometime. I owe you (at least) one.
Shelby
She included her phone number. The best I could figure was she’d made her covert moves on her way out of the bathroom. Right before the conversation about Chicago. She knew full well we’d be seeing each other again.
Stealthy little minx.
I entered her number in my phone and took a picture my handing holding Shelby’s underwear.
I’m guessing you’re responsible for this? Probably worse things I could have pulled out of my bag at TSA.
;)
So… Chicago?
Yes, Chicago. We’ll talk details soon.
I was no longer unreasonably irritated. Instead, I wandered around the Las Vegas airport with a big, dumb smile plastered on my face, much preferring to look like a Hollywood idiot rather than a Hollywood asshole.