TO LOVE OR NOT TO LOVE...THERE IS NO QUESTION!
Jack and Elaine had been married for twenty-seven years. He was of Caribbean heritage having been born in St. Vincent. She was Eurasian, born in Singapore. Her dad was a black American G.I. who had impregnated her mother while serving in Vietnam. After completing an interminable amount of paperwork, he had married her a few months before the end of his tour.
Unfortunately, he never made it back to the US, as one rainy evening while on patrol, he stepped on a land mine and was blown to smithereens!
Five years later, Mai Li arrived in New York through a program that allowed the children of American soldiers to settle in the US. With a five-year-old daughter, Elaine in tow, named for her deceased dad's mom, she set up residence in New York City.
Determined to make a better life for them, she took a job as a housekeeper to an elderly Jewish couple and with their advice and help, managed to see her daughter make it to college.
Jack's father was a schoolteacher and his mom, a homemaker. They also came to America to give their only child an opportunity for a better education. Like many West Indians, they worked hard to raise him with character and intelligence, and he did not let them down.
Elaine and Jack met while attending college. Both were majoring in Biology at Columbia University. While they didn't have many classes together, they were often in the same group laboratory sessions.
He noticed her grimacing when they had to dissect a fetal pig, and chuckled, asking her what the problem was. She told him that she hated to feel the slimy body in her hand and didn't know how she was going to do it. He offered to help her, and they struck up a friendship.
She was as fine as could be and to his great surprise, apparently was unaware of it! With beautiful golden-brown skin and shining black hair that hung halfway down her back, she was a beautiful sight to behold, and Jack didn't miss her sensual movements, fantastic legs and especially her ass. It was the bomb!
He also noticed that while a lot of young white guys followed her around with their tongues hanging out, offering her gifts and dates, she never paid them any mind.
This perplexed him as they had more money than he, more influence than he and offered her prospects for more than he ever could. He was glad, however, that she chose to hang with him and had better sense than to look a gift horse in the mouth!
What also attracted him to her, in addition to her body, was her keen mind, sparkling sense of humor and the fact that she apparently never realized nor cared how beautiful she was.
The class was a difficult one and they often studied together in vacant classrooms in between other classes. As they became more familiar with each other, she also invited him to her home when they prepared for exams. While doing so, he met her mom, Mai Li, who took to him immediately and would often gaze at him with a faraway look in her eyes that he couldn't fathom.
Later he learned that he reminded her of her deceased husband whom she still loved. He was dark skinned, well-built and handsome. She was fine looking too but had rebuffed all attempts by many men to bed and or marry her. She was committed to being faithful to her one and only love!
Jack and Elaine discovered that they were their parents' only children and had emigrated to the United States about the same time. As they worked together, she became more and more attached to him. When he asked her why she always wanted to hang out with him, she smiled enigmatically and told him that he was the only person who made her feel as if he really cared more about her than what was in her pants! Cheekily she added,
"...and you aint bad looking either!"
"You're not too bad yourself," he grinned.
"Oh me..." she responded, "I'm nothing special."
"Rigghhtt!!!" he teased.
She blushed at his effervescent praise.
They met in the cafeteria to eat lunch together so often that after a while, people assumed that they were an item even though he had never asked her for a date.
At the end of the semester, both had achieved good grades and as he accompanied her to the subway on her way home, he asked her what she was going to do to celebrate. She just shrugged her shoulders and said,
"Nothing."
He said, "Some of my friends are having a party this weekend, would you like to come?"
She looked at him and said, "Are you asking me out on a date?"
He smiled and said, "Yes! I've waited long to ask you, because I wasn't sure that you would want to go out with me."
Coquettishly, she teased, "and you think that I want to go out with you, now?"
Boldly he responded, "Yes."
She smiled and said, "You are really sure of yourself, Mister, aren't you?" And then she cutely ducked her head and whispered, "but I guess you're right."
They both laughed at their game playing. He looked at her with wonderment and murmured,
"God, you are so beautiful!"
Her heart filled so that tears came to her eyes because he had expressed the sentiment so honestly and naturally. She could tell that it was heartfelt.
Wrapping her in his arms, he kissed her forehead tenderly and her heart flipped.
The next Saturday evening, driving his dad's car, he picked her up at her home. Mai Li smiled as she saw them leave together.
Elaine had talked so much about Jack to her, that she thought that she already knew him. Based on all of the things that she described, she knew that he was going to be a good man and hoped that her daughter and he would become life partners and have a lifetime of happiness, not just a taste of heaven like she had.
It was obvious to her that Elaine was in love!
Elaine and Jack had a great time at the party. He only had one drink, saying that he was responsible for getting his precious cargo back home safely and he took that task seriously.
She smiled at how he seemed to automatically go into protector mode with her.
They danced all night, and his friends harassed him feigning their astonishment that such a pretty woman would go out with him. She was so tickled at their obvious camaraderie that often included her, as they also called her taste into question!
They reminded her of several of her own friends. His friends loved her, treated her with respect and she took to calling them "craz-ees!"
