This is a work of fiction and any resemblance by any character or situation to any actual person or event is purely coincidental. All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.
Chapter Eight
"You know what amazes me? All the stars we're looking at right now, the light we're seeing from most of them was created before Jesus was born, and it's just now getting to us laying here looking up at the sky in 2022," Kim said softly. "That just blows my mind, all that's happened since those suns thousands or even millions of light years away gave off the light we're seeing here tonight."
She exuded an innocent wonderment as we lay on a palette of blankets we had made for ourselves on the grass of my secluded back yard after the last glow of dusk dissolved into a cool, cloudless and moonless night. She pointed out constellations and formations she had learned from her grandmother as a child: Virgo, Taurus, Gemini; the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper.
We had spent the whole day together -- almost all of it naked -- since Kim had appeared at my door in the middle of the morning beaming over the good news she wanted to share about her imminent emancipation from her marriage to Roger Rainey. We passed the hours inside, talking, napping, making love, showering, making love again. And again. That I had orgasmed twice over seven or eight hours was something I hadn't achieved since my twenties. For her, we had lost count. I had kissed and/or caressed most every square centimeter -- every contour, curve and crevice -- of her. Now, under cover of night and safely out of view, we gathered up blankets and, still naked, spread them on the lawn, saving one to cover us as needed from the late spring nighttime chill.
What I learned about her only drew me closer. To say she had grown up disadvantaged was an understatement. After high school in particular, the former Kimberly Garber was alone and struggled to keep a roof over her head. She had lived for nearly a month in the ancient Chevy Malibu that had been her grandmother's. Service station and supermarket restrooms were as close as she could get to a bath. In nursing school, her dormitory room became her home -- the place where she had spent several Christmases, Thanksgivings and New Year's Eves alone, eating frozen pizzas or oatmeal, reading or watching her black-and-white portable TV.
When Roger came along, he seemed to her to be her rescuer -- a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, who treated her like a princess during their courtship. That he was secretive about what he shared with her concerning his childhood and never introduced Kim to his parents other than a brother who lived down the road in Holly Springs, Mississippi, would have --
should
have -- troubled her more, but with her own disadvantaged, disrupted childhood, she had little point of reference from which to judge.
"He was kind of like the moon. Sometimes, he could be so bright that he could light the whole world up, but there was always this dark side that nobody ever got to see," Kim had said.
Most of the relationships she'd had with men had been brief. Many of them had only one interest -- what was in her panties -- and figured a girl with so few resources would be easy. But she wasn't. When she refused to put out, she said, they'd drop her cold, one even evicting her from his car on a backroad miles from town. Those who hung around and seemed to want a lasting relationship abandoned her upon learning that she could not have children.
When she met Roger, who had no interest in or intention to procreate, all the pieces at last seemed to fit. But no sooner than she accepted his marriage proposal, he seemed increasingly distant. She wrote it off to his efforts to establish himself in "business," though he never discussed exactly what kind of work he was doing. It worsened after they married, and he became openly contemptuous of her efforts to talk to him about what he had done each day. He'd tell her, "it's none of your concern," or "things are going fine" or, perhaps his most honest response, "there's confidential things I can't discuss."
After seven years, the signs that he was a serial adulterer involved in some sort of shady -- likely criminal -- dealings were inescapable. The last straw was the sexting messages she saw on his phone from "Sweet Tater." What Kim didn't know until she read his federal indictment was that part of his perfidious livelihood involved soliciting nude and sexually explicit selfies and videos from vulnerable women like Sweet Tater whom he had conned and exploited for years and selling them without their knowledge or consent to illegal offshore purveyors of online porn.
There was more hurt in Kimberly's life than my mostly stable, middle-class upbringing allowed me to fully grasp -- hurt that Kim hid behind her confident, assertive, go-getter façade. Because I was blessed really get to know her, I found an enchanting, vulnerable, innocent and caring woman who, in spite of everything, still held out hope for a better day.
That woman now owned my heart.
"Kim?"
"Uh huh?" she answered, turning her gaze away from the heavens and toward me, her face softly illuminated by the solar-powered footlights that illuminated the railing to my deck.
"You know it wasn't supposed to be this way. I had it all planned: I would lead this sort of monastic life, get through this divorce, lock my feelings away in a box and stow it in the attic and be done with relationships with women," I said.
Kim's brow furrowed in concern and her eyes searched my face for what might come next. The pain from and fear of men brushing her off was still raw within her.
"Go on," she said.
"For years, you were right here under my nose -- literally close enough for you to see me in my most unguarded moments. I never gave you much of a thought until the afternoon a few weeks ago, and ..." I said. "That opened my world back up. You made me realize that I am still very much a functioning man. You revived what I thought had died."
"Mmm hmm," she said guardedly. "Where's this going, Gordo?"
I swallowed hard. Truth time. Damn the consequences.
"I don't want to scare you away, Kim, but things have changed for me, and I am throwing out the script. It started as a physical attraction, but I've developed very deep feelings for you because I've gotten to know you, to know
Kimberly
-- the real
