The Book Lover Ch 03

Homecoming

She was a freshman in high school and her mom had been so excited when Brad had invited her to go with him to homecoming. She had no interest in accepting.

"Come on Jess," Anne had pled with her. "Brad is a really good looking guy. And he's the starting quarterback. It's a huge thing that he's asking you as a freshman to homecoming with him. It would be a great way to get to know people and establish yourself in your new school."

"Brad is an oaf," Jessie replied, "who only cares about football. I don't think he's ever even read a book that wasn't a playbook."

"So?" Anne said. "Not everything has to be about books, Jess. You need to learn to have a little fun now and then."

"Books

are

fun, mom," Jess replied.

"And so are boys," her mom had answered, "even if they don't care that much about books. Brad is a hunk. And he's popular. It'll be good for you. I promise. You know what they say. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

"I think Jack was just a dull boy to begin with," Jess had grumbled.

Brad was definitely a dull boy. So what if he was good looking? Why the hell should she care about that in the first place?

Jessie actually had no idea whether or not Brad was good looking. She knew girls that talked about boys and how attractive they were. Many of them mentioned Brad on more than one occasion. But it was a completely foreign concept to Jessie. She really didn't think about whether or not people were physically attractive. It never entered into her assessment of them at all. She only cared about their intelligence and their ability to carry on a conversation and dig deep into interesting topics. From that perspective, Brad would be about the last person in school she would want to hang out with.

Jess knew she was widely considered one of the prettiest girls in school, so boys had always been interested in her. But they were always interested in her looks, and not her intellect. It drove her crazy that boys would get so nervous around her that they couldn't carry on even the most basic conversation. None of them seemed capable of the types of conversation she really wanted to have, so she tended to avoid them.

The boys all assumed it meant she was a lesbian, but that wasn't accurate at all. She wasn't attracted to girls any more or any less than to boys. She was attracted to people who were intelligent and articulate and who loved to learn as much as she did. She didn't even consider the idea of physical attraction. To her it seemed a foreign concept. If she had been forced to identify her sexuality, she would have described herself as asexual. She simply never found herself thinking about sex, or romance, or whether or not people were physically attractive.

But she knew she wasn't going to win this argument with her mother.

"Okay," she said to her mom. "I'll go to homecoming with him, even if he is a neanderthal."

Her mom had practically dragged her out to buy a dress, that very afternoon. It's quite possible that it was the first time in history that a girl had tried to talk her mother into buying a

less

revealing dress. The dress they settled on showed off far more skin that Jessie was comfortable with. She already knew that all the guys would be trying to see just how much the slit in the dress over her thigh revealed, and how much cleavage would be on display when she leaned forward. They wouldn't care at all about her mind when she was dressed like that.

She also thought it was a huge waste of time and money to get the dress and new shoes, and to get her hair and nails done so that she could look attractive in a bunch of pictures with a boy she couldn't stand. But it was what her mother wanted, and Jessie knew better than to try to fight her on it.

When Brad arrived to pick her up, her mom giddily took pictures of the two of them together. Jessie felt as though she knew exactly how Jasmine had felt in Aladdin. It was clear that Brad thought of her as the prize he had won. We was clearly impressed with the revealing dress her mom had picked and spent much of his time gawking at her body and very little time treating her like anything other than a beautiful adornment on his arm.

They had gone out for dinner at a very expensive restaurant. Jessie knew that Brad's family had a lot of money, as did her own, but it still seemed such a pompous display of opulence that was completely unnecessary and a complete waste of money. It didn't help that Brad seemed completely incapable of any intelligent conversation. He seemed to only want to talk about how great his performance was in the game the night before. He went on and on about how he had led the team on a last minute drive that had won them the game. It also didn't help that he seemed to have a hard time keeping his eyes on her face, choosing to focus a lot of his attention a little lower.

They got to the dance, and Brad immediately took her to meet his best friend.

"Jess," he said to her, "this is Jason. Jason - Jess."

Jason was an offensive lineman, who was 6'5" tall and had to weigh close to 300 pounds. He towered over Jessie, and invaded her personal space. He looked down on her and used his proximity to attempt to hide the fact that he was trying to get a look down her dress. It didn't work. Jessie knew exactly what he was doing.

"She's hot, dude," Jason said to Brad, almost as if she wasn't even there, right in front of him. "Nice score."

He held up his hand and Brad gave him a high five. It was more confirmation that Brad didn't really care about anything other than how good she looked as he paraded her about. He introduced her to others of his friends from the football team. Nearly all of them responded in the same way, congratulating Brad on having such a beautiful date for Homecoming, treating her like she was nothing other than eye candy for their friend, the quarterback.

"C'mon," Brad said eventually, after showing her off to all his friends, "let's go dance."

She knew she didn't really have a choice in the matter. Her opinions didn't matter. She was only there for Brad to show off.

Once they got on the dance floor, however, she realized there was one other thing that Brad assumed she was there for.

Brad started with his hand on her lower back, but by the third song he began to slide it downward, into territory that he had no business exploring.

"No, Brad," she said to him every time he got close, and she would reach down and move it back up onto her back, but the message didn't get through to him. He kept trying to get his hand on her behind, and she kept moving it back and telling him no.

"Oh c'mon," he said to her. "It's not going to hurt you to let me touch you a little. I promise you'll enjoy how it feels."

"I am not interested in finding out how it feels Brad," she responded to him. "Keep your hand where it belongs, on my back."

"Someone needs to melt this ice queen, Jess," Brad said to her, "So you can learn to have a little fun. There are a lot of guys wanting to have some fun with you Jess. You will be really popular once you learn to lighten up a bit. Trust me."

"Not going to happen, Brad," she said.

But he wasn't listening. He decided to try a different approach. When she was thinking he was going to keep trying to move his hand downward, he changed tactics and instead moved his hand between him and moved it onto her chest. Having caught her off guard, he was able to reach his target. That was it. She'd had more than enough of this whole scene.

She pulled away from him and slapped him across the face as hard as she could. This caught everyone's attention. They all watched as Brad retaliated, swinging back at her with a closed fist. She managed to see it coming and duck underneath the swing, but everyone saw Brad attempting to punch her.

She immediately ran out of the gym where the dance was being held. She was so mad she couldn't even remember how she got home. But she got herself home and vowed she would never go out with a boy for the rest of her life.

The boys all stayed away from her after that incident. Brad was pissed at her for slapping him, and even more pissed that everyone saw him taking a swing at her. It made a lot of girls in the school unwilling to go out with him, even though he was so handsome and popular. He began telling everyone about how she told him she wasn't interested in boys at all, which seemed to confirm the rumors already going through the school. She didn't mind, however since it meant that the boys pretty much left her alone after that.

Tom

It wasn't until she met Tom in college that she had a friend who was a boy. Of course, she didn't really think of him as a boyfriend, but simply a good friend that happened to be a boy. He was the first boy she'd met that cared much more about what was between her ears than what was between her legs or inside of her bra. He was the classic computer geek, studying computer engineering, but according to her roommates, he was far too cute to be a typical computer nerd.

Of course, Jessie didn't notice his physical looks, or even care about them. She just knew he was about the smartest person she had ever met. There was almost no subject that he didn't know a lot about. He loved discussing politics, or religion, or philosophy, or technology. He could even hold his own when they would go out in the city to study architecture for one of her classes. They spent a lot of weekends at Gramp's place, reading books from his library and debating their meanings, or discussing a variety of other topics. Gramps loved him, and that did more to draw Jessie closer to him than almost anything else.

They were practically inseparable for her last year of undergraduate school and all through her masters program, and everyone assumed that they were sleeping together.

They weren't.

It wasn't until after Jessie got her masters degree in architecture that she even kissed him. They had gone out to celebrate and gotten more than a little drunk, something they seldom did. She invited him in for a cup of coffee. They drank the coffee and she got up the courage to ask a question she had always wondered about.

"Do you find me attractive, Tom?" She asked him point blank.

He looked at her and blushed the deepest shade of red Jessie had ever seen.

"Can you handle the truth?" He asked back. She assumed that meant he was going to tell her that he thought she was ugly, but at that moment she had to know.

"Yes," she agreed. "I really want to know the truth."

"You are, without question," he said looking her deeply in the eyes, "the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on."

"OK," she replied laughing, "you can stop with the bullshit. I'm serious, do you find me physically attractive?"

"That was exactly what I was talking about. You are physically the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, and I'm not the only one who thinks that. All my roommates are so jealous of me they can hardly stand it."

"But if you find me so attractive," she asked, "then how come you've never even tried to kiss me?"

He cocked his head to the side and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"The truth?" He asked.

"Of course," she replied.

"Because I never got any signs from you that that was what you wanted. I love being around you. You are the smartest woman I have ever met. Even though you are sexy as hell, you earn everything you get with your mind and hard work. I would never jeopardize the relationship we have by asking for anything more."

"So you've been getting a little on the side, then?"

He frowned and then actually scowled a little.

"Oh, c'mon," she said. "I couldn't possibly be upset about it if you did. There has never been even a hint of a romantic relationship between us. I couldn't possibly expect you to not pursue that romance somewhere else."

"Oh, Jess," he sighed, "how could you possibly be so blind?"

"What do you mean?"

"I haven't even wanted to look at another girl since the day I first met you."

"So I'm expected to believe that a college age man, in the height of his sexual prime, living in the hook up culture that is New York City, has been celibate for the last three years just so he can hang out with me and Gramps and debate things?"

"It doesn't really matter to me whether or not you believe it. You asked for the truth, I gave you the truth. I am madly in love with you, Jess, and have been since a week after I met you. If spending my time with you meant that I had to live the rest of my life as a celibate monk, I'd take that trade in a heart beat."

Is this what it was like to be in love? This man, who had always treated her with the utmost respect, had just admitted that he would be willing to sacrifice his own physical desires just to be with her. How could a girl not melt at that?

She slid across the couch to be next to him. It was the closest physical contact they had ever shared as she pressed her body against his. She leaned in and kissed him, tentatively and awkwardly, on the lips. She pulled back and he lifted his hand to tenderly touch her face. He looked into her soul with eyes that were the most beautiful shade of emerald she had ever seen. He leaned in and kissed her with a passion that she hadn't ever known could exist. She had to admit that it felt pretty good to kiss him.

She returned the kiss and very quickly felt the passion swelling within

him

. She knew instantly that his desire for her was deep and profound and passionate, and she yearned to feel that same passion. She knew that she loved this man when she saw how insistent his physical passion for her was, and recognized that for three years he had kept that passion at bay just to be around her. But the passion didn't come to

her

. It never had. She enjoyed the physical contact and the sensation of his lips and occasionally his tongue against her lips, but she didn't feel any desire within her for something more.

She realized that, just as she could feel the intensity of his passion, he could sense her lack of it, and he pulled back. She looked at him with tears welling in her eyes, silently begging his forgiveness that she didn't feel the same way he did. He reached over and gently touched her face again, looking back with compassion and mirth in his eyes.

"I love you Jessie Murray, and I always will."

He stood and let himself out of the house and she sat on the couch and wept. For once in her life, she wanted desperately to feel the urges of sexual desire and they simply hadn't come, even for a man who she knew she loved more than anyone else she had ever met. Somehow she just

knew

that when Tom walked out of the door that night, he was walking out of her life forever.

But that simply wasn't the case. He called her the next day to ask about the new job she was going to start the next week with one the most prestigious architectural firms in the city. He met her for dinner after he got out of classes. He acted as though nothing was different between the two of them, and within half an hour she felt exactly the same way.

He was still a semester away from graduating, but was already working for a software company at the cutting edge of the security frontier. They saw less of each other after Jessie started working and he started defending his thesis, but she worked very hard from that first kiss to advance their physical relationship. They held hands and snuggled together on the couch and kissed each other frequently. She enjoyed the physical closeness she felt to him, but it was much the same to her as the enjoyment she got out of reading a good book. It felt good to know that she was physically close to the man she loved, but the sexual desire continued to evade her. While she was always very aware of the passion that built within him, he seemed just as aware of the lack of it within her, so they proceeded slowly and cautiously.

When he graduated from school, he began to look for his own apartment in the city. She went with him because she loved to look at the buildings and see how the architects had chosen to use space, but never found anything that either of them liked. After a couple of days of looking without any progress she finally threw out the idea she had always been thinking.

"Why don't you just come live with me?" She suggested. She did have a relatively roomy one bedroom apartment that they both really liked.

"Where would I sleep?" He asked, knowing that their physical relationship had not progressed to the point that he could be presumptuous.

"I have a Queen sized bed," she said, biting her lower lip as seductively as she knew how, which she knew was not very seductive at all.

"You're serious?" He replied and she could see the hope in his eyes.

"Very," she answered frankly.

He moved in two days later. They got ready for bed separately, with Tom coming out of the bathroom first wearing pajamas that she suspected were far more than what he would normally wear to bed. When she came out of the bathroom, the bedroom light was off, so he didn't notice until she climbed into bed and pressed her body to his that she was naked. There was no stopping him that night, even if Jessie still had to fake her desire. For the first time ever, they made love in the dark in Jessie's one bedroom apartment.

If it had been a movie, she would have translated the passion of their love into a great physical desire and been overwhelmed at how good it felt to finally make love to the man she loved. But it was

not

a movie, and all she could do was focus on the details of what was going on. She had expected the moment when he broke her hymen to be rather painful, but she curiously found that she never actually noticed it happening. She wondered if Tom would feel disappointment at not feeling himself pop her cherry, but he showed no signs of even being aware of it.

She had known that she would have been too dry to allow him entry, so she lubricated herself liberally before coming to bed in the hopes that would make him feel as though she was finally feeling the physical passion. If he noticed the artificial nature of the lubrication, he said nothing about it.

Secretly she had to admit that she was glad when he was finished within a couple of minutes of entering her. She was quite sure she would never really enjoy sex, but she did really enjoy how much it seemed to mean to him. She resolved that it was her time to sacrifice and she would do everything she could to learn to enjoy making love to him.

They rapidly fell into a pattern of having sex about once a week, usually on Friday night. It seemed to be just enough to keep Tom physically satisfied, and he never pushed for anything more. Jessie knew it was because her ability to pretend she wanted it never really fooled him. Without ever discussing it, they had settled on a compromise that worked quite well for both of them.

Jessie was quite certain that Tom had chosen their trip together to Paris as the romantic event he needed to propose marriage to her. She was more than ready to accept.

And then Gramps death had changed everything.