All characters depicted in this story are 18 years old or older
* Life is a tapestry, a cloth woven from many different threads that create the whole. This story is a thread, a part of Barbra's story, contributing to the waft and weave that is the Whole cloth, being Jim.
Being Jim Ch.09: The Heart Has No Conscience
Or: The Guilty Heart
By Frodov
* This story is based entirely on true experiences from my past, names and a few details have been changed to provide anonymity for those involved. Discretion is a precious commodity and is becoming rarer every day. I reached way back to relive this story for everyone. At the time I was the ripe old age of thirty. Bear in mind that Cell phones were barely a novel idea at that time. The internet was taking its first baby steps and people were discovering the likes of A0L and to a lesser extent local messaging or electronic "bulletin boards". How many of you out there remember dial-up modems? Cable TV was still mostly commercial free. Ah, good times. So, in that frame of mind enjoy the memory.
The heart has no conscience, it has no shame and it has no off switch when it's on fire. Lust and love are interchangeable, so alike and so confusing at times. It's the confusion that leads to problems however. When one cannot tell the difference between the two it can lead to trouble... heart break and pain like nothing else. One must be ever vigilant and remember to think with their brain and not just follow their heart blindly.
The smell of chicken cacciatore tickled my nose even as I stepped up to the front porch and knocked on the door before opening it and poking my head in and announcing myself.
"What is that SMELL?" I asked towards the kitchen as I grinned at Dave who was sitting in his recliner holding a cold long neck that he lifted towards me in way of greeting. He grinned at me and rolled his eyes as Sarah sounded off from around the corner as she bustled about in the midst of putting the finishing touches on her culinary offering for tonight. I held up two bottles of wine, one red, one white by way of question to Dave. He just shrugged and nodded towards the kitchen deferring to Sarah's judgement. I tilted my head down in mock resignation and stepped around the corner into the DANGER ZONE.
If you spend any time at all around a full-blooded Italian woman, you learn to give her lots of space when she's in the depths of preparing a meal. Sarah was every bit the stereotypical hell on wheels when it came to order and chaos in her kitchen. She had everything planned and organized in her mind and if ANYTHING got out of line or altered there would be hell to pay for anyone disrupting her flow. I turned the corner at the doorway from the den to the kitchen and just leaned against the door jamb and observed her at work. She was very absorbed in her tasks at hand.
And lovely hands they were. Sarah had dolled up this evening for some reason. She wore what could only be described as a cross between a summer weight sun dress and a little black dress. It was black, but it had gossamer like butterflies and flower embossed or stitched or whatever into the nearly see through like mesh of the base material. Oh, she had on some sort of slip under it perhaps so as not to show her undergarments. Well...save for the recalcitrant bra strap that kept sliding down her right shoulder as she stirred this pot or lifted that pan. Her sturdy shoulders topping her lithe dancer like arms with those strong but beautiful Mediterranean heritage hands with the blood red nails.
Skinny she was not, but I hesitate to say that she was a big girl as she really wasn't. Oh, sure she had a little bit of a tummy, but then a lot of women over forty tend to have a bit of a softness there. Her hips were wide but not exaggeratedly so. Her backside was maybe a little bigger than she was when she was younger the curves were in all the right places and pleasantly distributed to say the least.
Sarah's face was full and had the Mediterranean features common to her Italian heritage. Dark eyes, dark hair of her eyebrows... and even a few recurring hairs on her upper lip that she groomed religiously, tweezing and plucking whenever one showed itself. You'd think maybe that she was hairy, but she most assuredly was not. In fact, something I learned over the time we knew each other, she had practically no hair on her legs what so ever. And what was there was so silky and fine as to be invisible anyway.
Oh, but that massive head of hair was abundant, and thick as it was silky. She claimed to have never colored it, except for one Halloween where she tried to die it red for a costume. She said it didn't turn out right so she never tried again. Normally that thick black mane would fall gracefully about her shoulders and almost down the middle of her back by her shoulder blades... except when she was cooking.
Sarah was indeed in her own little world as she focused on her cooking. She must have been listening to some music in her head as she was rocking her hips and stepping from one foot to the other in a swaying motion that was mesmerizing even to me. The swaying caused the bottom of her dress to... well... sway with the motion. The little head bobs and twitches just drew my eyes to her lovely bare neck as she had her thick silky black hair pulled into a loose bun on the back of her head to keep it out of her face and off her neck apparently. No, her neck wasn't bare, there was a very fine gold chain, almost a thread really, on which her tiny gold crucifix was hung and dangling down into her modest but very apparent cleavage. This dress was very flattering and very... eye catching I thought to myself.
Sarah must have sensed that she was being ogled, I know she already knew that I had arrived as I had announced myself as I came in the front door. Even if she was so absorbed in her cooking, I know she was aware. She half turned and glanced over her shoulder in a very coquettish way. Her lips were pursed and her brows knit but there was a sparkle in her dark almost obsidian black eyes as she locked them on my own. She held that look for maybe a heartbeat or two then she smiled at me and those red glossed lips turned up at the corners baring her dazzling white teeth. I noticed that here was a little speck of something on her right cheek just an inch or so to the right of her lips. Apparently, there had been a splash of some sauce or something and she was not aware of it.
"Hi Jim... dinner's almost ready, you're right on time! Oh! You brought wine! Thank You! I'll have Dave get out some glasses. DAVE!" She raised her voice to be heard over the TV in the other room.
"I'm on it!" Dave replied equally loud in the den as the sound of his recliner being closed up and him rising from it punctuated his statement.
Dave brushed against my left shoulder nudging me with his right arm as he moved to drop his empty long neck into the trash bin beside me next to the fridge.
"Duty calls..." He mumbled to me.
"What was that?" Sarah asked brusquely giving him a suspicious glare.