“Hey, Cowboy?” Her voice was soft as she ran her fingers lightly along the jeans encasing his thigh.
“Yeah.” Her touch was nice.
“I haven’t asked you to move in with me. I just asked you to help move me in.”
He should probably be embarrassed. Relief took precedence.
“I love you, Cowboy.” Emily’s words floated around him, holding them in their sweetness. “I know you have things to do before you’ll be thinking about setting up house . . .”
She did? He was a tad bit curious about what “things” she thought he had to do. But not enough to risk asking.
“I do, too,” she said.
“What things?”
“I need some time on my own. My whole life I’ve had to answer to my parents. Commuting to UC saved a lot of money, but it meant that I never had time in a dorm, finding my freedom like other kids did. Th
is is my time.”
His elation was simmering down. “You planning to hold wild parties?” Inviting other guys over?
“Of course not,” she smiled, her hand moving up a little higher on his thigh. “I’m planning to eat what I want when I want without anyone to know or worry about me. I’m planning to leave my clothes on the floor if I want, or pick them up if I want. I’m planning to put the milk on the refrigerator door because I want it there, and to set my makeup on the counter like I’ve always wanted to. I’m planning to play what music I want, when I want, as loud or soft as I want. And . . ,” her hand brushed against the seam that joined the legs of his jeans, “I’m planning to entertain the man I love.”
Bingo.
“Come on, Sweetie Pie. You can do this. We’re engaged. I’m going to be your husband. But that’s not for a couple of years, and you’ve got me so tied up in knots I’m going crazy.”
I looked out the window of the car. The farmer’s fields that stretched for miles on either side of us had just been freshly plowed. I’d seen the fresh tractor marks and newly disturbed dirt in the car’s headlights as we’d driven down the long deserted road. I wasn’t sure what farmers did in April, but I prayed that one would need to check his dirt at night.
“I have to be pure when I get married.” I repeated the words I’d said countless times before. To Tim. And to James, too. The first time he’d pressured me to let him have sex with me was the weekend I’d stayed with him in Atlanta over Thanksgiving. The night I’d agreed to marry him. After we’d told his mom. And my best childhood friend. And, at her behest, bit the bullet and called my folks and told them, too.
That night he’d crawled into the twin bed I was using in his room and told me about a man’s needs and how only his woman could satisfy them. I’d told him, quite gently and with love, that I’d be fine with that after we were married. He’d coaxed. Cajoled. Gently. And when I’d started to get upset, he’d conceded that I was right and it would be even better if we waited. He’d slept in the room with me that night, though. In the other twin bed.
For months after that, he’d been as he’d been in the beginning. Satisfied to hold my hand and bestow his chaste kisses on me. But there’d been a time or two—once over spring break—when he’d pressured me to undo my clothes for him. To let him touch private places.
I said no.
I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want him to do that.
And that unsettled me. Would I want it when we got married? I told myself I would. That once I let him actually touch me I’d feel things again. For now, my lack of temptation made it easy to stick to my principles this time around. Sometimes I thought that maybe, because I’d repented, God was helping me to be a good girl by taking away the temptation that had consumed me during my relationship with Tim.
Sometimes I worried that I would never ever feel those feelings again because they were meant for one man only—Tim.
The one thing I knew for certain was that I was not going to be physically intimate without marriage.
And now here I was, on a dark country road, miles from any sign of civilization, more than an hour from campus with a man who wanted to have sex.
He’d said he wanted time alone with me. That he wanted to talk about us.
He’d been feeling insecure. And I felt guilty about that. So I agreed to the talk.
I hadn’t agreed to more than that.
“Tara, it’s your job to do this.”
“Not now it’s not. We aren’t married yet.” With Tim, lovemaking had been a mutual give and take. Not one person doing it for the other.
“But I’m a man and men need, you know, release. And the only way I can get that, in a way that God approves, is if I do it with you. We love each other. You’re wearing my ring. We’re getting married. Do you really think God’s going to care about an earthly piece of paper? What he cares about is that we’re committed to each other. That it will only ever be me and you.”