Her finger on his lips stopped the humiliating babbling. “It’s okay, Cowboy. We’re really engaged? Officially?”
“We will be as soon as you answer my question. Assuming your answer is yes.”
“Of course it’s yes, you idiot,” she said, pulling him up on his feet and throwing her arms around him before planting a wet one on him.
His feeling of dread was just a result of the very natural fear of change.
He was happy. He loved Emily.
Everything else would work itself out.
I tried to like sex. Thankfully James didn’t ask for it often during the fall of ’81 and spring of ’82. But the couple of times he did ask, I didn’t refuse him. I wasn’t a virgin anymore. I didn’t have anything to hold out for. I was willing to serve his needs. Because, other than the sex, I really liked being with him.
I was safe with James. He knew me better than anyone. And he didn’t try to change me. Nor did he criticize my shortcomings. He just accepted me, loved me, as I was. He continued to encourage me to write. To start my Harlequin romance. And I would have if I hadn’t been working two jobs to help supplement his living expenses so that he didn’t have to work and could concentrate on his upper-level physics classes and get done with school.
He was due to graduate in August of ’82, and we were going to be married the following week. Mom and I had found my dress. It was being altered. We had a reception hall, a band, and flowers all picked out. I’d received my teaching certificate and had a job lined up for the fall as a substitute teacher in a suburb of Columbus.
I was living in an apartment in the city, across the hall from Chum and only a few miles from James’s place.
On the second Friday in June of 1982, James invited me over for a cookout at his apartment complex. He had a studio unit, paid for by student loans and me, and had become friends with a couple of fellow chemistry students who lived in the same building. He wanted me to meet them.
I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. The three of them talked about their classes, making fun of themselves as much as of their professor. James was the wittiest of the three and, I thought, the most perceptive. I couldn’t remember a time I’d laughed so hard.
And for the first time in forever, I was happy. The future was going to hold a lot more nights like that one. It was going to be good.
The guys left around eleven, and I turned to ask James if he wanted to sit out on the balcony a bit longer.
He’d locked the door and was coming toward me, a strange look on his face.
“You liked them, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did. They were nice guys. But I expected them to be. They’re your friends.”
“No, I mean, you really liked them.”
He couldn’t mean what I thought he meant. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You’re a whore, Tara. You just can’t turn it off. And if you want it that badly, then I’ll be the one to give it to you.”
When he lifted me to the card table that served as his dining room, I knew what was coming.
“No!” I squirmed and pushed. “No, James. Not again.”
“You want this. You know you do.”
“No! I don’t!”
“Of course you do. You want it this way. That’s why you act like you do. You’re a whore.”
I fought him, but it did no good. He was much bigger, much stronger than I was.
As soon as he finished, James softened. Became the gentle, caring man I knew him to be. He invited me to lie with him.
Without a word I went into the bathroom and locked the door. I spent a good part of that night crying—the first real tears I’d cried since the first time James had defiled me.
He’d just done it for the last time.
I pulled off my engagement ring.