~*~
Three hours later I slammed the heavy tome shut and wilted back against the back of the chair.
"I'm spent," I groaned. "Can we take a break before starting in on second year?" My eyes, tired from reading the small print, closed in exhaustion. "I don't think I can take anymore tonight."
"I'm in total agreement," Jack sighed stretching himself out on the couch.
We relaxed in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the feeling of getting through the first year curriculum with Jack making hardly any mistakes. Then he sat up and patted the cushion next to him inviting me to go over and sit with him on the couch. Without hesitation, I hauled myself off my chair and plonked myself down beside him.
"Time to blur out," Jack announced clicking the TV on. A random movie was starting and, because I was so weary, I found myself becoming totally engrossed in it despite its somewhat lacklustre plot. During the course of the film I edged closer to Jack until, by the time the credits were rolling, I was leaning back against him, my head resting against his arm which was draped along the back of the couch.
While we watched the words appear on the screen, caught up in the lull which happens at the end of every film, Jack began absentmindedly stroking my hair and I smiled at the feeling.
"Hey, do you mind if I ask you a question?" He said drowsily, clicking off the T.V. with his free hand.
"Skipping over the fact that you already have, I'll say yes" I replied cheekily.
I felt his chest expand beside me as he took a deep breath and his hand paused its stroking movement. "Why do you think you get so nervous about being touched?"
I froze and my heart started to beat a little faster. "Oh….um," I stuttered, unable to formulate a better response due to the suddenness of the question. Jack wasn't usually one to cut straight to the point, it left me reeling in confusion.
"You don't have to answer if you don't want to," Jack said quickly, obviously realising how much his question had thrown me.
"No, it’s OK," I said, scooting away from him and wedging myself into the far corner between the back of the couch and the armrest. "Just give me a minute."
He nodded and waited patiently as I gathered together the thoughts that I’d had over the years as to the impetus of my phobia.
"I think it was sort of a gradual thing," I began hesitantly. "It’s not like one day I woke up and thought 'if one more guy touches me I'm going to freak!' To start off with I guess I wasn't interested in boys at all until well after my fourteenth birthday. All the other girls were going nuts over this boy or another and I would go home to you and Matt burping and fighting and generally being idiotic and would think 'they want that?'"
Jack smiled at the last bit, but didn't say anything, which encouraged me to keep going.
"I didn't ever feel I needed one either, a boyfriend that is. Then suddenly everybody started asking why I didn't have a boyfriend, like, what was wrong with me? Thinking back on it, it was so stupid. I mean hardly anyone in high school actually had a boyfriend so why did people get on my case about it?" I was flooded with residual frustration from the past. "It was so stupid!" Realising that I sounded like I was whining exactly like the grade 9 kid I'd been, I adjusted my tone.
"So then there was this guy in grade 10, Rhys, who everybody said liked me and so I let myself get bulldozed by my supposed friends into going out with him. Of course then it turned out that he was only going out with me so he could meet you and Matt and…"
"Get on the football team," Jack finished for me and I nodded the truth of it.
"Yep, his agenda became pretty clear after a while, date me, meet you, get on the team, sleep with me, dump me. Nice, huh?" Despite my flippant tone the memory still hurt.
"Good footballer, though," Jack said thoughtfully and, choking with indignation, I smacked his shoulder. "Joking," he said quickly, holding up his hands in surrender. "Hell, despite how good he was Matt and I kicked him off the team as soon as we found out what he was up to, didn't we?"
"And I should think so too!" I crossed my arms defensively. "Still, it was me who dated him for most of grade 9, can you believe it?"
It had been a rhetorical question, but Jack answered it before I had time to continue."No. Couldn't believe it then, still doesn't make sense now. He was a total dickhead."
"Well, I don't remember you saying that back then," I accused him, taken aback by his vehemence on the subject.
He shrugged. "Of course I didn't say anything. You were going through a stage where you would do exactly the opposite of whatever Matt or I advised you to do just to show that you could. We thought if we said anything bad about him you'd stay with him longer just to spite us so we decided to just wait for you to get over it."
I gaped at him. How condescending! I felt a little burble of anger in my stomach at the idea of Matt and Jack discussing my pathetic little teenage rebellion and deciding I would grow out of it. OK, it was true that at about that age I was keen on showing how independent I was and, determined to get out from under Matt's wing, had begun deliberately doing the opposite of what he suggested, but, still…! I thought hard before phrasing my reply.
"Although that's almost too patronising for words I accept that you were probably right in not saying anything."
"How diplomatic of you," Jack grinned and I stuck my tongue out at him before realising that that action pretty much undid the maturity of my previous sentence.
"I remember explaining what had happened between Rhys and me to Mum and, after she gave me a hug, she held me at arm’s length and said, 'Well, really, darling, what did you expect from somebody with no vowels in their name?’"
Jack burst out laughing.
"One of her finest moments that." I joined in his laughter. "Anyway, then it was grade 10 and people started on at me to forget Rhys and, basically, try again which is where Stuart came in." I smiled fondly at the memory. "Ah, good old Stuart. He was the best boyfriend I've ever had."
"He was gay," Jack pointed out.
"I know, I helped him come out, remember? Pretty magnanimous of me considering that meant losing my shield against my friends trying to set me up," I joked, but Jack was back to looking at me seriously.
"He was your favourite?" He prompted and I nodded.
"Well, yeah. He never bragged about having rooted me to his mates or groped me or got off with any of my girlfriends."
"Well maybe that was because he was gay," Jack said in exasperation and I narrowed my eyes at him.
"You say that like it's a bad thing," I snapped.
"In terms of him being your boyfriend that is a bad thing and I don't think anyone is going to accuse me of being homophobic for saying so."
He was right as he, infuriatingly, always seemed to be.
"OK, whatever. He wasn't technically a brilliant candidate for my boyfriend, but he was, nevertheless, one of the kindest, loveliest blokes I've ever met," I surrendered, before continuing blithely, "So after that I developed a serious crush on Tommo which saw me through the rest of grade 10." As soon as the words left my mouth I froze and Jack made a funny choking sound.
"Developed a serious crush on whom, excuse me?" He said loudly, and my chest did a funny clenching thing at his tone. "Tommo? As in our Tommo?" He clarified, looking so horrified that I couldn't help a tiny smile spreading across my lips.
"What's so wrong with that?" I asked tentatively. "He's always been such a sweetheart to me and those tattoos of his are…well I've always thought they’re pretty sexy."
Jack's blood pressure seemed to be rising with each word I said, but, at the last, he smiled slightly and raised his eyebrows questioningly. "You think tattoos are sexy?" He asked and I nodded a little shyly. Goodness, but I was unburdening all my secrets onto him at once today!
"Well, that's good to know," he said quietly, but, before I could ask why that was, he moved on. "So you got a crush on Tommo, then what?"
"In terms of the Tommo thing then nothing," I said focusing back on my st
ory. "I spent grade 10 going bright red and falling over myself whenever he entered a room and nobody except Simone noticed. Tommo certainly didn't anyway. Then that summer you and Matt moved away, Simone get her first serious boyfriend and Rhys threw a party and didn't invite me because I was a 'frigid bitch'."
I pulled a face remembering how much I had hated that time. I had been desperately lonely those holidays because, although Simone always invited me when her and Dean had gone out, I’d had no desire to be the third wheel on their dates. Then Rhys had pretty much started a campaign to make me an outcast and something inside me had snapped.
"So, feeling like things had to change, I decided that I could force myself to like being with guys and became a party girl. Drinking helped a lot and I had a very successful strategy of getting hammered then pashing the closest guy available." I tried to make it sound like a joke, but it wasn't funny and neither Jack nor I were laughing. "I admit that it wasn't the best of plans and, although some of them weren't so bad, most of those guys made my skin crawl when they touched me."
Knowing that I was coming up to the worst bit of the story I paused and started playing with the tassel on a cushion. "Then it all came to a head with that guy who decided I was a tease who 'needed to be taught a lesson'," I said in a small voice, not managing to say those words, almost exactly the ones spoken to me at a friend's birthday party almost two years ago, without shuddering.
Jack was looking like he either wanted to hug me or break something and, as either occurrences might have led to me chickening out before I had finished my story, I rushed on. "He used his strength against me and pinned me to a wall before I even realised what he was going to do. He didn't manage to get more than a few gropes of my breasts before I managed to get away, but…" my voice cracked and my eyes filled with tears. Jack seemed to sense that I needed to pull myself together without his help and sat like a statue while I wiped my eyes and evened out my breathing.
When I looked up, his face was like stone and I knew he was using all his self control not to leap off the couch and hunt down the guy who had done me wrong so long ago.
"So," I continued, my voice only wobbling a little bit, "after that, needless to say, I went back to avoiding guys for a while. And I began to feel like I was in control again, but it turned out I was only in denial. I began not only trying to avoid dating guys, but also to avoid having them get anywhere near me full stop. I pushed all thoughts of boyfriends and dates and romance to the back of my mind and concentrated on finishing high school and getting the hell out of that town." Feeling like I was making the whole thing sound a bit too dramatic I shrugged. "Everybody has their insecurities right?" I asked. "Well that was just mine. Then I met Brad and, well, you know the rest."
There was silence for a moment after I finished my account then Jack cleared his throat and said, "Was?"
"Sorry?" I asked, not understanding.
"You said 'everybody has their insecurities and that was mine.'"
I stared at him in shock. He was right! I had referred to my phobia in the past tense. It had been a slip of the tongue, I hadn't consciously said it, but, as I thought about it, I realised that I truly did believe that I was getting over it. Not just that, I believed I would fully master my fears and be done with it.
"You're going to do it," I said in wonderment. "We're going to do it! Oh my God, Jack, this is going to work!" I squealed in excitement before throwing myself at him and flinging my arms around his neck. Jack's chest rumbled beneath me as he chuckled and then his arms were tightly wrapped around me and I felt a new batch of tears spring into my eyes.
"You're incredible," I murmured into his ear, delighting in the feel of my cheek against his, despite the slight rasp of stubble.
"I'm nothing special," he said gruffly and I leant back, straddling him, and looked him squarely in the eyes.
"Yes you are," I insisted, punctuating each word with a light slap to his chest. "And it's about time you admitted it."
"Oh, I don't know," Jack said with a sly smile. "I think I’m OK with having you tell me just how perfect I am."
I raised one eyebrow coquettishly at him and realised with a start that I was engaged in bona fide flirting. Oh well, if I was already doing it I might as well go the whole hog…
I daringly leant forward until, from the waist to the neck, our bodies were completely flattened against one another and our faces were so close he had to tilt his head slightly so our noses wouldn't collide.
"Who said anything about perfect?" I purred, making my voice deliberately low and sexy. I heard his breath hitch in his throat and noted, with some satisfaction, that I was having an effect on something else of his also. I didn't feel embarrassed as I thought I would, instead, the fact that he was obviously aroused, gave me a great sense of power.
It was pretty intoxicating actually.
We were so close I could feel his breath on my lips. If either one of us so much as moved a muscle we would be kissing, but we were frozen a hair’s breadth from each other.
Don't be so chicken shit! A voice in my head screamed, just kiss him already! And I knew that I would, I was just enjoying this moment beforehand when we each had the understanding of what was about to happen and we were savouring that knowledge. My eyes had just fluttered closed in anticipation of his lips on mine when there was a loud knocking at the door.
"Hello? Is anyone home?" Haley's voice called through from out in the corridor.
I was sorely tempted to shout out 'No, so piss off!' but I did the mature thing, simply sitting up and sticking my middle finger up at the closed door in that time honoured gesture of irritation.
"Just a minute, Haley," Jack called out and I looked at him sharply. A minute? A minute before what?
"Come on, Tally, let's just see what she wants," he whispered as he gently manoeuvred himself out from underneath me.
I sat, completely stunned, as he made his way over to the door and opened it. There was Haley in all her scantily clad glory, hair and makeup immaculate as only she would have during a Sunday night at home.
"I'm so sorry to barge in like this," she said in that breathless little voice of hers.
Yeah I just bet you are, I thought sarcastically.
"But my aunt's car won't start and she really wants to go to bingo. You couldn't come and check it out, could you? I mean if you're busy then…"
"No, that's fine," Jack interrupted. "It's probably just a flat battery like last time."
Fine? It most certainly was NOT fine! As Jack went towards the table to grab his car keys, I stood up and grabbed him by the front of his jumper.
"Could I have a word?" I growled, dragging him over to the corner where the fridge blocked Haley's view of us. "What do you think you're doing?" I hissed angrily.
"Come on, Tally," he said calmly. "Her aunt wants to go to bingo."
"Then she can take the f-ing bus," I snapped, forgetting to whisper and Jack shot me a pained look.
"I won't be long," he said, before gently removing my hand from his jumper and exiting the flat with Haley.
I couldn't believe it! He'd chosen Haley over me! Flying into a complete rage I gave a shriek of frustration and marched into my room, slamming the door behind me.
Her aunt wants to go to bingo, indeed! I could just see Haley deliberately leaving the car light on so that the battery would run flat and she could come running to Matt or Jack to save her.
I heaved my bookcase in front of the door and then flopped down onto my bed and screamed into my pillows.
I was still lying prone on my bed, my face buried in my pillows, when, about half an hour later, Jack returned to the flat. I heard him drop his keys onto the table and go into the bathroom to wash his hands. Then, finally, his footsteps came towards my door and he knocked gently upon it. I sat up and hugged a pillow to my chest, but didn't say anything.
"Tally, can I come in?" He asked. I said nothing. He went to open the door and came upon the resistance the bookcase offered.
"You do realise I'm strong enough to just push the door open, bookshelf and all," he sighed.
Yeah, but you won't, I thought.
"But I won't," he said after a moment. "Look, she needed a hand. That's what neighbours are for and I'm not going to stop helping her out just because you've decided you don't like her."
I kept my lips tightly pressed together.
"Fine, sulk if you want," Jack said sharply after the silence had stretched out for almost a minute. "But move that bookcase away from the door, if there's a fire I don't want you to die because of your immaturity."
And he stomped away again.