“What’s that?”
They turned around, looking back toward the car, but there wasn’t anyone in sight.
“Damn it, it’s the battery,” Ricky said. “I charged it yesterday, but it must not have taken.”
They walked back to the car.
“It may just start anyway,” he said, somewhat dubiously. “Let me try.”
He opened the door, got in, and turned the key, but it was dead as a doornail.
“We’re gonna have to walk back,” he said, getting out and putting his arm around her protectively. “It’s okay.”
He looked at her and could see that she was shaken, but her eyes were shining and she looked incredibly relieved. It suddenly occurred to him that she had been afraid he’d pull away from her, afraid that he wouldn’t understand and that he’d shut her out after he found out what had happened, as if it were her fault that some sick bastard had . . . My God, he thought, no wonder she’d been acting that way every time he tried to touch her! She had been violated and the assault had been upon the very core of her being. She felt unclean and was terrified that he would perceive her that way and want nothing more to do with her! Sweet Jesus, he thought, did she really think I’d turn my back on her just because she had been hurt? Did she really think I wouldn’t be there when she needed me the most?
Perhaps it was a corny gesture, but he offered her his arm. And it was exactly the right thing to do. With a smile, she hooked her arm through his and together they started back down the road.
Chapter Six
Chuck and Chili were slumped in indentical postures on the couch, heads arched back, mouths open, dead to the world. “Zonked,” as Chuck would have put it. Vera and Debbie sat on the other couch staring with bored expressions at Andy and Shelly, who were juggling. Shelly was juggling three apples while Andy juggled oranges, each concentrating intensely as he attempted to outdo the other. Neither Debbie nor Vera could believe that the evening had degenerated to such a mundane level.
“Do you give up?” said Shelly, concentrating fiercely as he juggled his apples.
“Not on your life!” said Andy, whose competitive drive led him to enter any physical contest, no matter how absurd. “You give up?”
“Never!” Shelly said.
Vera and Debbie exchanged helpless glances. “I know how to stop this,” Debbie said, smiling.
She got up off the couch and walked slowly over to Andy’s side, stopping right next to him and sliding up to him as he kept his eyes on the oranges.
“I can think of much better things for you to be doing with your hands,” she said in a husky voice, smiling and sashaying over to the stairs. Andy promptly allowed to oranges to drop.
“You win,” he said to Shelly as his oranges thudded to the floor and he hastened to follow Debbie up the stairs.
Shelly glanced around, saw that Andy and Debbie had departed and that Chuck and Chili were still asleep, then he looked at Vera nervously and smiled. “I guess that just leaves you and me . . . sort of,” he added, awkwardly.
Vera watched him juggle. “You really are very good at that,” she said, anxious to change the subject.
She turned back to tend the fire with the poker. Shelly stopped juggling his apples and watched her for a moment, licking his lips nervously as he saw the way her jeans stretched tightly over her ass. God, she was so damned beautiful . . . He took a deep breath and decided to take the plunge.
“Vera . . .” he started, hesitantly, “you and I have gotten to know each other a little today.” He gulped. “I like you. I like you a lot. I . . . I was thinking that maybe . . .”
Vera came up to him quickly and gently placed her hand upon his mouth, covering his lips with the tips of her fingers. “I don’t think so,” she said, trying to say it as gently as she knew how.
Shelly dropped his gaze to the floor, feeling his face burning with embarrassment. He felt like an idiot.
“Look,” said Vera, feeling sorry for him, “I’m going outside for a few minutes. And when I get back, we’ll talk, okay?”
She turned and walked out the front door, onto the porch. Shelly moved over to the living room window and watched her for a moment as she sat down on the porch steps.
“Sure, we’ll talk,” he said, a world of bitterness in his voice stemming from a lifetime of rejection. “Bitch.”
Vera ambled down the porch steps to the front walk leading to the driveway. The sun had gone down and the night was cool. She took a deep breath and sighed, unaware that Shelly was watching her with desperate longing through the living-room window. He really wasn’t a bad guy, she thought, even if he was a bit of a nerd. He’d shown a lot of guts at that convenience store with the bikers. Still, she thought, just because he wasn’t a bad guy was no reason for her to give in to what was obviously a fairly potent sexual fantasy he was having about her.
What was it about guys, she thought, that they couldn’t seem to think about girls in any other terms except as potential sexual conquests? They either wanted to take you to bed or they didn’t. That’s all there was to it so far as they seemed to be concerned. Friendship? Forget it. That’s what other guys were for, right? When it came to women, guys either wanted to ball them or they didn’t and girls would either put out or they wouldn’t. It really didn’t seem to be any more complex than that. How the hell could they expect to have reationships with women if they weren’t even willing to accept women as individuals, with wants and needs and feelings of their own?
Damn it, she thought, I like Shelly. At heart, he really is a decent sort of guy, but why do I have to feel guilty just because I don’t want to sleep with him? Why does my acceptance or rejection of him have to come down to whether or not I’ll go to bed with him? That’s just not fair, she thought.