CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Holden
“So, your flight arrives at nine-fifteen tonight,” I said, staring at Wynn’s smiling face on my laptop screen. I had just made it home from Jude’s apartment when the Skype call dinged on my laptop. Wynn was in Denver, getting ready to catch a connecting flight to Springfield. I was in a foul fucking mood after my conversation with Jude’s roommate, Izzy, but I mustered a smile for my old pal’s benefit.
“Yep, I’ve got an hour layover here in Denver, then I should hit the ground there around nine-fifteen to nine-thirty tonight.” He chuckled. “I probably shouldn’t use the phrase ‘hit the ground’ when it comes to air travel. I should land safely and gently there around nine-fifteen or nine-thirty.”
Wynn always made me smile, even when I didn’t feel like doing so. “Cool. I’m looking forward to hanging out with you this weekend. You need me to pick you up at the airport?”
“Nope, the association was kind enough to rent me a car for the weekend,” he said. His smile faded into a frown. “So, you’re looking forward to hanging out with me this weekend? What about your new girlfriend? Jude? Surely you didn’t clear your calendar with that gorgeous piece of ass just to spend the fucking weekend with me?”
I forced the smile again. “Ah, yeah, actually… we’re… taking a break…”
“Taking a break? Jesus, what are you guys, fifteen?” He scrunched up his nose. “Ah, fuck, Holden. What did you do?”
I frowned at the screen. “What? I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why are you taking a break?”
“Because… well fuck… I don’t know,” I said, getting angry at myself. “We just are.”
He nodded and rubbed his chin knowingly. “I gotta tell you, buddy, I’m a little surprised. I mean, the way you talked about this girl, well, honestly, I thought maybe she was more than a one-night stand.”
“Yeah, well…”
He sighed. “Honestly, from what you’ve been telling me about her I was hoping to sample those delights myself this weekend to see if she made me walk on Cloud 9 like she does you. I mean, if you wanted to share her, of course.”
“Of course,” I said without hesitation. “I think Jude would love you and vice versa.”
“Oh well. Now it sounds like you’ve fallen off that cloud. At least for now.”
I pushed Jude to the back of my mind and played my man card. “Yeah… well… whatever. I’m sure we can find another girl or two to play with us this weekend.”
“No worries,” Wynn said, wiggling his cellphone at the screen. “I still have my little black book of horny bitches in the Springfield area. We’ll be neck-deep in pussy before the weekend is out.”
“Sounds like a perfect plan,” I said, glancing at my watch. It was nearly five o’clock on a Friday night. Sadly, I had no plans and nowhere I needed to go. I could have gone to one of the campus bars and picked up a girl for the night, but my heart—and my cock— just wasn’t in the mood for a little strange. There was a case of Corona in the fridge. Maybe I’d just order a pizza and see how many of those I could drink before passing out in my own puke.
“Hey, you okay?” Wynn asked, tapping a fingertip to the screen.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m good,” I said, nodding. “I was just making a grocery list in my head. You know; beer, chips, rubbers, porn—the essentials. I’ll see you when you get here later tonight.”
“Okay, pal,” Wynn said. “Rest up the old cock tonight because this weekend is going to be fucking epic, no pun intended. You have my word.”
“Sounds good. Chat with you soon.”
The smile dropped from my lips the moment I clicked off the Skype call. I hung up quickly before I could tell Wynn what I was really thinking, that none of us were in our right minds; me, him, Jude, all the other women we had fucked together and separately over the years. We were all a bunch of sex maniacs that didn’t give a flying shit what happened to anyone so long as we got our rocks off. And this weekend would be the same.
I closed the laptop and was picking up the phone to order that pizza when the doorbell rang. I ignored it, figuring it was my pain in the ass neighbor Larry wanting to borrow my lawn mower or some other tool he’d never bother to return. I was looking up the number of Domino’s on my phone when the doorbell rang three more times in the next ten seconds, I set the phone aside and went to answer the door, ready to tell Larry to get off my motherfucking porch.
I jerked open the door.
Jude was standing on my front porch.
I felt my heart start beating again.
“What are you doing here?” I asked because I could think of nothing else to say. “I thought you were, well, I don’t know what.”
“I was being stupid,” she said quietly. She lifted her chin and tried to smile. “And I’m here hoping you will forgive me.”
I leaned against door and smiled. I sighed heavily, as if a week’s worth of tension was leaving my body via my breath. I said, “There’s nothing to forgive.” I pulled open the door and stepped aside. “Want to come inside so we can… talk?”
“Actually, I’m afraid if I come in there at this moment we’ll just rip each other’s clothes off and I’ll forget to say everything I’ve come here to say.”
I frowned at her words for a moment, then shrugged and stepped out onto the porch. I glanced across the street. Larry was in his front yard using my hedge clippers to trim the bushes in front of his house. He held up a hand and I gave him a nod, then took Jude’s arm to direct her to the porch swing.
“Okay, we can talk out here if you don’t mind nosey neighbors.”
“I love this neighborhood,” she said as we sat down and I started swinging us gently with my feet planted on the plank porch. She glanced Larry’s way. He was trying to trim the hedge and spy on us at the same time. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to slice off a hand. “I assume that’s the neighborhood gossip.”
“The neighborhood is filled with gossipers,” I said. I bumped her with my elbow. “But forget him. Talk to me, Jude. What’s going on with you?”
“Am I talking to my lover or to my therapist?” she asked. She folded her hands in her lap and pressed her thumbs together. “I mean, if you don’t mind being both.”
“Which one do you want to talk to first?” I asked. “I just need to flip the switch in my brain and we’ll be good to go.”
“I think I need therapy more than I need to fuck,” she said with a sad smile. She glanced at me from the corner of her eyes. “Which is something I never thought I’d be saying.”
“Okay then, Dr. Holden Moss at your service.” Switching into psychotherapy mode was easy for me because, like it or not, I was always psychoanalyzing people in the back of my brain. I wasn’t judgmental, at least I tried hard not to be. I was just fascinated by how the human brain worked—or sometimes—didn’t work. I folded my hands in my lap to match hers and gave her a nod. “Please, Miss Allen, tell me what’s bothering you.”
Jude took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Quietly, with her eyes closed, she said, “I hate what I did to Keith Calloway and his family. I really hurt them all and I feel terrible about it. Like it’s all my fault. Every bit of it.”
“You did not hurt Keith Calloway or his family,” I said, keeping my voice steady and void of emotion. “To the contrary, I’m sure you brought Keith immense happiness and pleasure during your time together. It was Keith who hurt Keith’s family by making the choices he made. By cheating on his wife. By neglecting his job. By violating the court order to stay away from you. He took advantage of you, Jude, and the situation. He used you, not the other way around. You have no reason to feel badly over the choices Keith Calloway made.”
“But he might not have made those choices if I had not zeroed in on him,” she said, staring down at her hands. “Just like I zeroed in on you. I decided to seduce him—and you— as part of my stupid nymphomania games, without worrying about who would be hurt by my actions.”
“Jude, did you know Keith was married when you got involved with him? Did you know he had a wife and kids at home?”
She shook her head slowly. “No, I asked around to make sure. Everyone said he as single.”
“Did you think you were the first student he had slept with?”
She shook her head. “No. Again, I asked around. He had a bit of a reputation.” She bumped me with her shoulder. “Kind of like you.”
“Let’s leave my reputation out of this,” I said, smiling even though I was trying hard not to. “The point is, you did not know he was married. Correct?”
“Yes, correct. I would never get involved with a married man. I would never intentionally break up someone’s home. I would never do that.”
“So, if Keith lied to you about being married, you had no idea he had a family who might be hurt by your involvement with him. So, your intentions toward him were honorable, or at least as honorable as they could be when sex comes into play,” I said. “You never meant to hurt Keith or anyone else. So why are you blaming yourself now for an outcome that you could not possibly predict? There was no malice of forethought. You were ignorant of the truth. That is on Keith, not on you.”
I was a little surprised at how quickly my psyche training was coming back to me. I remembered that there were things about being a therapist that I truly loved, but more things that I hated, like taking every patient’s sadness home with me at the end of every day. But Jude was different. I wanted to take away her sadness. I wanted to absorb it from her body and absolve her from guilt. I wanted to make her feel better. I wanted to make her happy. At that moment, her happiness was all that mattered to me. I resisted the urge to put my hand on her leg and tell her it was all going to be okay.
“I should have known something was up,” she said. “All the sneaking around. The dark places. The late nights. Him telling me not to say anything to anyone about our affair. Fuck, I should have known something was up. I was just so… blind.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “But that does not mean you’re to blame for Keith’s troubles. Keith was cheating on his wife. He had cheated on her numerous time. You just happened to be with Keith when he got caught and dragged you into the middle of his troubles. He blamed you because he would not take responsibility for his own actions.”
“I dunno…”
“Keith decided to leave his family, Jude. You didn’t ask him to. You refused to have anything else to do with him. That’s when Keith decided to stalk and then attack you. I know you feel like you’re partially to blame for Keith’s problems, Jude, but that simply is not the case. If anything, you’re another victim of Keith’s deceit and lies. Rather than feeling sorry for the son of a bitch, you should be pissed off at him. Be mad at Keith, not at yourself, because you are amazing…”
She blinked at me. “I am?”
“You are,” I said with an affirming nod. “You are the most amazing woman I have ever met, but you’re caught up in your own head. You over analyze everything you do, thinking there must be a psychological reason for doing those things. You just need to spend some time outside of your head, Jude. Stop thinking so goddamn much. Sometimes it’s okay to do things just because those things feel good.”
She smiled sideways at me. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re the one fucking me now and that feels amazingly good.”
I shook my head adamantly. “I’m still your therapist at this moment,” I said seriously. “As your lover, I’d just tell you to let Keith deal with being Keith and move on. None of this was your fault. You have not directly or intentionally hurt anyone. So, stop beating yourself up.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She closed her eyes and seemed to relax as the swing moved slowly back and forth. A gentle breeze blew the hair back from her cheeks, making her sigh.
“You should have never stopped practicing,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder. “You’re very good.”
“Ah, I’m just okay,” I said, leaning my cheek against the top of her head. “Are you okay now?”
Her hand moved over to my thigh and she gave it a squeeze. I felt my cock twitch in my pants, so happy to be back in play.
“I will be more than okay in about thirty seconds,” she said, leaning in to stick her tongue in my ear. Little sparks shot through my body.
“What happens in thirty seconds?” I asked, putting my arm around her shoulders to pull her close. Her hand crept further up my thigh.
“That’s about how long you have to get me inside before I start tearing your clothes off,” she said. She nodded at Larry, who had given up pretending to trim the hedges and was staring directly at us with his mouth hanging open. “Unless, of course, you’d like to put on a little show for your neighbor.”
“Fuck my neighbor,” I said, getting quickly to my feet and holding my hand out for her to take.
“I’d rather fuck you,” she said coyly, taking my hand to follow me inside. She pretended to look at an imaginary watch on her wrist. “And now you have ten… nine… eight… seven…”
She never made it to six.