Jessica

Jessica #2

I hadn't exactly been sitting around all summer waiting for Jessie to return for the fall semester. I loved my old three and one half story (counting the magical attic), eighteen hundred's, SEARS catalogue farmhouse. However, the previous winter had proven that it wasn't fun to live in while trying to stay warm with ten foot ceilings and little if any insulation in the walls. I had reinforced the flooring and cut a hole in the living room wall. Then I laid firebrick, covered it all with green ceramic tiles and sat back and congratulated myself on building my second wood-burning stove.

The first stove had been built in the basement of my first home and it had worked so well in circulating everything through my boiler, that my winter gas bill wasn't greater than mid-summer's. This one, however, was a far simpler design and hopefully would keep at least one room in the big old house warm. Twenty-two by twenty-seven with ten foot ceilings and two sliding-in-the-wall doors, it was a large room to heat. I could plastic wrap the windows which overlooked the porch. It would be tenable as long as there was a fire. And once all that masonry got heated, like a large flywheel, hours would pass before needing to make a second fire--I'd just have arrange the furniture to surround the stove.

After letting everything dry, making a few small, smoky fires to test the draft, I gave it two thumbs up. It passed the test. If I was to sleep in the house over winter, I would have to move even the bed down from the second floor or accept being reduced to the couch for the second time in my life. Of course, there was always that second option. There too I hadn't exactly been sitting on my laurels.

I had made the second house largely as a visitor's quarters, not as a 'Better Homes & Garden' front cover home. However, I spruced it up as best as I could over the summer by planting a low growing hedge twenty feet out from the front door along the drive. I had also got around to laying the sod in the small front yard. Then I snaked trickle irrigation system across the roof and planted dwarf golden privet. It wasn't going to win any beauty contests but after it was all said and done, looking from a distance, I thought it a vast improvement to the weeds. I thought if the privet didn't last the winter, I would try the prairie plants I had priced from a natural garden center. But for now, I had decided to go the cheap route instead. All in all, along with the flower boxes and three large wooden storm doors that could be swung over to seal the sliding glass doors, I thought Jessica would be pleased. Our last correspondence had informed me that she'd be arriving on fourteenth with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. Yet here it was the fifteenth and no word from her.

Anxiety had, for the most part, become a thing of the past. I had been retired for more than twenty years. Other than hiding from press and panhandlers, winning the lottery had significantly reduced the normal everyday worries and anxieties. Trust funds for the kids and grandkids had taken half of what the state had left me with. The purchase of the property, needed maintenance on the main house and the building of the second house had taken just about all the rest. It was all a gift from God. I had never planned on having so much this late in life to begin with. I was comfortable but not rich. I still a good amount of money saved plus the money from the sale of the house I had raised my children in. Then there was my retirement fund and social security. I wasn't exactly hurting. I just had to watch, as I had all my life, my P's and Q's.

It was my second restless night. 'Where oh where could my baby be?' the song lyrics haunted me. Had she been in an accident? Had she decided not to live so far away from the school, taking a place closer? Had she found someone her own age? Someone to provide her with all those babies which she so often talked about having? So many maybe's assailed my mind. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it or fault her for.

Blazingly bright sun greeted my eyes as it filtered in through all for windows. That's what I get for sleeping upstairs. Squeezing open an eye to peek further, the realization suddenly struck me. I looked at the clock. Oh, my, god. It was ten thirty! When had I ever slept this late? I felt like shit. How much sleep had I actually gotten? And now, something in the far reaches of my consciousness was informing me that there was something else out of kilter. It was a smell. It smelled like....

"Hey babe! What are you still doing in bed? That's not like you. Not like you at all. You feeling okay, sweetie?"

'Bacon,' my consciousness finally registered the scent as Jess leaned over to kiss me.

"I decided to make you breakfast when I saw you were still sleeping," the blonde aberration spoke to me. "So get up. Now!... old man!" she laughed as she left the room.

"When did you get here?" was my first question after descending Jacob's ladder into a room filled with the scent of bacon, eggs, toast and female.

"Not long. Just long enough to hear your snoring from outside! Here, sit down and eat your eggs. Nothing fancy. Remember, it's the thought that counts." She kissed me once again, this time a bit longer and whole lot sweeter.

"Have no fear, Jessica is here!"

"What kept you?" I inquired as I maneuvered my eggs atop a slice of toast before dicing it all up.

"Do want the long story or the short?"

"Short," I mumbled as I shoveled egg yoke soaked toast into my mouth.

"Well," as she began to reply, taking a deep breath before pulling out a chair to sit across from me. "Dad had a heart attack." Quickly she added, holding up a halt signaling hand, "He's ok. It was a mild one. Maybe now he will follow the doctor's orders. He stopped smoking two years ago but we couldn't get him to scale back on his sweets and his favorite fatty rib tips. He's as thin as a rail and fit as a skunk so he thinks it doesn't matter. But being able to do physically strenuous work from sunrise to sunset without taking a breather doesn't mean you're necessarily good to go."

"Wow! Sorry to hear that. Glad to hear, though, that it wasn't any worse. Why didn't you call?"

"There's something you need to know about me. I get in these moods where I just sort of shut down and go inside myself. I'm sorry. I know I should have called. Probably had you worried, didn't I?"

"More worried that you had been in an accident or something."

Turning to one side, I watched as her patented smile crept from one corner of her face to the other. Her eyes were bright. The dark cloud seemed to have lifted.

"Or something?" she laughed, sliding off her shoes before skirting over to sit next to me as I finished the last piece of bacon. "You were thinking maybe I wouldn't come?"

My head bobbed as I hummed a 'maybe.'

"You're not going to get rid of me so easily, Ted. I like my little hideaway in the woods. And yes, I like what you've done to the place. Do you plan on moving in with me this winter like last?"

Smiling and continuing to hum another mischievous 'maybe,' the young blonde beauty grabbed my face and kissed me with her whole being.

What happened after that remains a blur. Breakfast tray pushed aside, clothes castoff in every direction. Breakfast sausage was suddenly on the menu, self serve! I found it to be one of her most endearing character traits --youthful enthusiasm.

"Mmmmm," Jessica playfully moaned before looking up while swirling my manhood with her hand. "Did you miss me as much as I missed you?"

"More than youth could ever conceive." As she returned to mouthing my pleasure, I took inventory. She had braided her hair into two ponytails that hung down each side of the bobbing head. Her hair was longer now, long enough to touch her breasts which were slightly smaller than I remembered. She had lost weight. Her tummy was smaller but her bush was as full and resplendent as the last time she had allowed my fingers to play therein. She smelled of sandalwood.

After the appropriate amount of time, though she was thoroughly enjoying herself, I tugged on one of the dangling braided blonde tails, pulling her up onto the table to drink in another one of her delectable kisses as she lay on top of me.

"Yes I missed you. And yes, the thought had raced through my mind that perhaps you had chosen some place closer to the school."

"No way! I love my little house. And I love that it's way out here in the middle of nowhere. Far from the madness of immature, drunken boys and silly girls who run after them." Her hand caressed the side of my face as her eyes slid down to gaze at my lips. "There's also the fact that.....I love you, Ted!" There was a hesitancy about the verbalization yet there was an honesty about it that melted my heart. I immediately feared that at some point in the future I was going to wound and break her heart.

The reality of the raw facts that I was seventy and she was just turned twenty something clouded my acceptance of her confession. I was too much the pragmatist, too analytical and too pessimistic to have the hope of, in the end, being a good thing for her. She was young and naïve. I was old, experienced and becoming all too rapidly, cynical of life. Yet how could I resist her? How could I turn away from her? How could I not drink in her youth, her vitality and her enthusiasm.

"Jessie, I wish I was fifty years younger. Why couldn't I have been born fifty years later?"

"Because, silly! Then you'd be one of those immature, drunken college boys!"

All I could do was smile at her and wrap my arms around her and smother her like a small child. Tears began welling up in me but a man, an older, mature, father figure wasn't allowed to cry. "Big boys don't cry. Big boys don't cry," sang in my head.

"Ahhh, now look at what I've gone and done. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you sad," she said, touching my nose with an index finger.

"No, Jessie. You have done just the opposite. These are tears of joy, of sheer, unbelieving joy that you are real. It is beyond the scope of my imagination that someone as pretty, as sweet, as giving and as young as you gives me even a second notice let alone lay here like this with me, wanting me to make mad passionate love to her. I, I, I simply can't take it all in."

"Ahhhh. I'm the one who can't believe you treat me so, so good. Yes, I'm just a stupid little girl who has a crush on her teacher and I know that somewhere down the line the day is going to come and a decision is going to have to be made. But for now, I don't have to do or think of any of that. All I have to do is cook you breakfast and wash your back for you."

I closed my eyes as she leaned down and kissed me once again passionately and without reserve. Though I thought the better of confessing it myself, I did truly love her as well. I loved everything about her. Why did it take sixty-five years to find and appreciate a woman of Jessica's kilter?

Though she had lost weight, she was still as solid as ever. We exchanged the kitchen table for my bed. Jess had raced me up the stairs without a stitch on her. Flinging herself on the bed in wild youthful glee, I came into the room just as she rolled over on to her back, spreading her legs open wide to welcome me. And, as always, she was wet, satiny smooth and warm as I penetrated her. She was tight yet receptive. It was good to be back in her saddle again.

Jessica was an amazing lover. There was nothing hidden. No pretenses. No second guessing or 'Am I doing it right' or hesitation of any discernible sort. She was as open and free with me as anyone had ever been --ever! And I loved her all the more for it. And though I did not exactly mirror that innocence, she did offer me sanctuary to be as open and free with her as I had ever allowed myself to be. Seventy years I had been building my wall and here she was, with the greatest of ease, dismantling all of it one brick at a time. My grandmother had often gone on and on about having once entertained an angel. Jessica was no angel. She was more like Eve before the fall. Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She was my paradise, my garden to cultivate and fertilize and plant my seed in the hope that she would be the one who profited from the harvest.

We walked out the back door, each with our clothes draped over our arms, holding hands like school children, walking back around the pump house to shower off in the outdoor stall. We were lost in each other both mentally as well as physically. She informed me of her duties at the farm over the summer as I lathered her breasts over and over again, enjoying the sensation of them sliding through my hands before doing it over and over again. Then down her rock hard belly before combing and sudsing that thick, natural and unshaven pubic hair in her nether region. Contrary to what Miss Clairol had once quipped, it wasn't just her hairdresser who knew whether or not Jessica was really a blonde!

Toweled off and dressed we lazily wandered over to her little earthen bungalow. The conversation was now about the classes she would be taking and her lack of confidence in being able to keep up with the workload. The sun was high but already heading over into the west. Summer hadn't completely given its last glow but I knew it wouldn't be long before the advent of leafless trees and blowing snow. The first day of school was two days away. I listened and smiled as she jabbered on, finally revealing to me a bit of how she planned to spend the last two days of her summer freedom.

Together we unpacked her car. I left her so that she could go about cleaning the house to her own satisfaction while I drove her car around to the old maintenance shed back behind the pump house. There was a need to look for the noise she had kept hearing and increasingly worried about it soon after leaving home. It didn't take long to find that the noise maker was nothing more than a heavy vinyl shopping bag which had caught itself on her emergency brake cable. Like a good mentor, I took the time to do a quick once over, checking all fluid levels, the seriousness of a valve cover oil leak and tire pressures. It appeared that everything was good to go.

By the time I made it back to her, Jessie had the outdoor grill fired up with two large aluminum foil rocks roasting on the top of it. I had taught her the year before how to cut wedges out of Idaho's best and shoving onion and garlic and butter down in them before wrapping them in foil and throwing them in on top the dying embers of a fire. The weekend before, in anticipation of her return, I had made sure her refrigerator was stocked with all her confessed favorites including two large bone-in New York strip steaks. She didn't need teaching on how to cook them.

Often I would just sit and stare at her as we ate, amazed at how quickly settled in and at home she made herself. She hadn't been one to elaborate on much of anything when we first met. However, now, her river of words flowed around me like a spring flood. I bathed myself in them, drunk on her presence.

I knew that physically there weren't any truly remarkable attributes about her. She was pretty but not Marilyn Monroe. And though she had lost weight, I knew somewhere down the line, probably as the babies began to slip out, she would fall into that all too typical farm marm rubenesque. There was no doubt that the babies would simply slip out of those hips, clearly made for child bearing. It didn't take much effort to imagine what a great mother she make.

We sat outside after dinner and dishes, mostly talked out for the moment, holding hands, we had made it back to sit on my front porch swing. In silent relaxation, a bit like father and daughter, a bit like lost lovers reunited, we slowly swayed back and forth listening to crickets, tree frogs, the ever increasing crescendo of cicadas and a trio of owls hooting from their perches somewhere in the surrounding trees. The night was pleasant. Not too warm. Not too cold. Just right for shorts, t-shirts and bare feet. An evening breeze gently ruffled the leaves of my oak and hickory sentinels while unfurled the flag out in the middle of the yard remained limp. This was just the sort of night I remembered, oh so many years ago, catching fireflies in ball jars at grandma's and buying lemon-lime phosphates for a nickel at the town's soda fountain. I could still imagine hearing the cheering of the home team playing baseball on the other side of town.

Jessica then turned to me as I was turning to look at her. We kissed each other with a peck and smiled. Next came one of those short but lingering kisses where her fingers slide across one side of my face before she sat back, sporting her patented Cheshire smiles.

"You up to doing it again?" she spoke in the darkening twilight.

I sat there smiling to myself. I knew we would fall asleep in a lovers embrace once again as we had done several times the year before. And yet I sensed the subtle differences. We were more comfortable with one another. There was some sense of being a 'couple' now. A bonding had been established and to a degree, a commitment. I knew for a fact, that if it wasn't for the looks on my children's faces, the youngest being only a few years her senior, not to mention the imagined look of disgust on her father's face and the bewilderment on her brothers, I probably would have it somewhere in the back of my head --the preparation to ask her to marry me. There was no denying it. What we had was special. Only the passage of time would reveal the truth of it. But for now, what we had was special enough to dissuade any negative sense of impropriety.

I guess that's what led up to me suddenly blurting out, "I love you, Jessie. I've loved you from the day we first met, when you smiled at me as I walked you down to show you the house." I chuckled, confessing, "And I can't believe I just said that out loud."

Jessie sat her drink back down on the porch before standing up. She stared out at the night briefly before turning to stand in front of me. With a quiet smile she climbed up on the swing, resting her bended knees to either side of my own. She laughed.

"We're like Hans Solo and Princess Leia in Star Wars. When you said that, I almost replied, 'I know!'" I watched as she smiled to herself before adding, "How did a girl like me end up falling for a guy like you?"

"Because you were a homesick child, first time away from mom and dad whereas I was a dirty old letch lusting after those big, beautiful American breasts of yours!" We both laughed.

"That's how you see it, do you?"

"I don't see it any way. I just see you. Every night I give thanks to God for decreeing our paths to cross. You are a godsend, Jessie. And maybe not tonight and hopefully not tomorrow night or the next night or for that matter next spring as you are leaving me again to head back to your parents, but I know now, I can honestly say that I no longer fear death. I can die in peace having had you so graciously make me feel so alive, so loved and even this late in dance, having some value."

"Hush your mouth! What a horrible thing to say."

"Yes. I need to remember that youth cannot know how age feels or thinks. Yet, that said, I confess, I am guilty of forgetting what it is like to be young and you having your whole life ahead of you."

As was often the case, whenever some serious bit of conversation arose, we were in the habit of one of us kissing the other. It was still her turn as she wrapped her arms around me before kissing me with a lingering sad concern. Then youth, in hope of erasing the doom and gloom, that kiss began to morph from being merely something sentimental. With impassioned fervency, Jessie's hips pressed in hard against mine as panting breath kisses swarmed over every area of my face. The realization of the reality of our inevitable future had touched her deeply.