Chapter 19
The air was cool as Jenna stepped out of her car for the night of her birthday party. The bar’s repairs had been finished on time, and they’d all checked out. Nothing was amiss; The Wheel had passed its inspection and Jenna felt good having everyone inside.
She’d never imagined that her Roaring Twenties theme would turn out so spectacularly. Strings of rhinestones hung from the rafters, twinkling as the lights bounced off of them. Music blared from speakers, while white, gold and black decorations hung around the room. Balloons and flowers were bundled together as centerpieces on the tables. People were already there, talking and having a good time.
Hannah was the first person to greet her at the door. She was wearing a stunning emerald green dress, green feather boa, and long black satin gloves on her hands. She’d pressed her curly red hair into waves that traveled down the side of her face and wrapped around her neck into a bundled ponytail.
“You look amazing!” Jenna exclaimed, pulling her into a tight hug.
Hannah stepped back, eyeing her from head to toe. She twirled her finger around and Jenna did a spin. She got a whistle from Brock, who was sitting on a stool by the door. Even he was in a suit with a cummerbund.
Jenna wore a royal blue dress with a sequin pattern that stopped just above her knees and a shiny blue hairpiece that wrapped around her tightly wound bun. She smiled brightly, without a care or worry in the world. It was her birthday. She was ready to have fun and then get the hell out of Doveport.
The most surprising part of her night was seeing her dad in full costume as we worked behind the bar. He wore a pinstriped vest with a monocle dangling from it. People were laughing, and he was smiling. There wasn’t a sad face to be seen.
“Ahem, ahem, ahem,” Tanner obnoxiously cleared his throat as he walked up behind them.
Jenna turned around and couldn’t help but swoon. He wore a brown suit with a matching vest. A white flower hung from his pocket, and his blond strands were slicked back. He reminded her of a young Brad Pitt.
“Close your mouth,” Hannah whispered to her before greeting Tanner. “You look great, Tanner! You’re going to look amazing next to the birthday girl.”
“I feel great! You guys are looking at the newest firefighter to pass the Doveport Fire Lieutenant’s Exam!” he shouted wide-eyed.
A cheer erupted from a bunch of firefighters sitting around the bar. Jenna threw her arms around him. “Congratulations! I’m so proud of you! That’s awesome, Tanner!”
“Not as awesome as you,” he told her. She tried to pull away from their hug, but Tanner kept her close. “Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight?”
“No, but you’re free to do so whenever the feeling comes over you,” she smirked.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered into her ear. It sent chills down her spine that landed right between her thighs.
She turned to face him. “Does this mean you forgive me for being an ass?”
“Of course. Actually, can we go talk for a second? In the back?”
Jenna had a feeling that she’d be late to her own party if she walked into that room, but she didn’t care. It was going to be her last night in Doveport and it was her birthday. So she did a little damage control, asking Hannah to be her buffer and tell people she was on her way.
Once she and Tanner were in the back room, he leaned back on the table, letting his jacket fall open. Jenna tossed her clutch behind him and stood there with her hands on her hips. “So I guess we have a lot to talk about, huh?”
“Yeah. So… I haven’t been completely mad at you this entire time. Honestly, with Brandy out of my hair and you thinking I was upset, which I was, it gave me time to focus on studying. Sorry if I was being a jerk, I just really needed the time to pass this test.”
“I get it,” she nodded with a smile. “I’m going on a little road trip to some of the grad schools I got accepted to. I’ve washed my hands of my dad’s issues with the people he lets in this bar. I’m tired of crying every time I walk down the street. I don’t want to get so lost in what I feel when I’m with you that it makes me forget what I’ve always planned to do. I don’t want to be the crazy ex-girlfriend turned new summer fling. So all is forgiven. I’m leaving on my trip tomorrow.”
“When are you coming back?”
“I don’t think I am,” she said solemnly.
“What do you mean? You have to come back. You gotta say goodbye to your dad, and Hannah, and… me.” His eyes avoided hers. It was the first time he’d ever done that to her. His vulnerability was showing, and somehow it made him even sexier than when he was pounding her to multiple orgasms.
“I’m actually planning to decide on a school while I’m on the road and set up shop before the fall semester starts. My dad and Hannah are going to drive my stuff out, so I’ll get to see them again then. I just have too many Mom memories, you memories, bad memories, heck, even good ones, in Doveport to stay here another day. From now on I gotta do this place in weekly, school vacation doses that don’t cripple my emotional threshold.”
“So tonight’s really going to be my last night seeing you.” He licked his lips. “Well, how about a going away kiss?”
“I’d be okay with that, Tanner,” she smiled.
Before she could say anything else he was off the table with his hand cradling her neck and his tongue in her mouth. The softness of his lips sent chills all over her body. Moaning with every twist and turn of their faces, Jenna let herself get enveloped in their embrace. She pushed his jacket off, catching it and tossing it onto a chair. He began to fumble around with her dress, but she stopped him.
Jenna turned around and planted her palms against the wall, telling him, “Unzip me.”
“This is more than a goodbye kiss, huh?”
“It doesn’t have to be,” she told him.
The sound of her dress coming off was his only reply. He tossed it over his jacket and stood back drinking in every ounce of her beauty, the bulge in his pants growing with every passing second. Jenna was wearing a black lace strapless bra with a matching thong and even a garter belt.
“Roaring twenties all the way.” Tanner smiled wide.
“All the way,” she said, licking her lips.
Tanner went to her, pushing her against the wall, just as he had before. He spread her legs with his foot and she flinched as his finger grazed her center. It was then that his dominating side took over. All of his vulnerability about losing her disappeared into his lust and the need to fulfill their passionate urges.
“Turn around,” he commanded.
Jenna did as she was told.
“Hands up,” he whispered while nibbling on her earlobe. Holding them in place, he rubbed her from her neck down over the curvature of her backside until he landed in that tender spot they both loved for him to touch. Once there, he moved in and out of her swiftly. They needed to hurry so she wouldn’t miss the party.
He waited for her to orgasm over his fingertips before he pulled himself out of his boxers and slid inside her. Jenna’s back arched as he pushed himself back and forth into her. The steady rocking of her body against his moved in unison with every breath they took together. Tanner wrapped an arm around her back, grasping her shoulder with one hand while the other flicked at her center. He moved in and out of her swiftly, with vigor, with fire, with passion like never before.
Pulling away from the wall, he spun her around, picked her up and sat her on the table. Tanner leaned into her, slid back in and continued to thrust inside her pleasure center with every fiber of his being. Jenna could have sworn he was working twice as hard to make this a moment she’d never forget.
As Tanner continued thrusting in and out of her, he moved back to look her in the eyes. “I’m going to miss you.”
Jenna giggled between pants. “Wrong time for goodbyes.”
“It’s never a right time to say goodbye to you,” he said, kissing her tenderly. And as their tongues collided for what they thought would be their last time, it felt like the Earth moved when they climaxed together.
Tanner and Jenna took their time getting dressed and making sure they looked the same as when they’d gone in. They finished just in the nick of time as her dad burst through the door. “Alright, enough with the making out. Let’s get out there! You have a bunch of people looking for you, Jenna. This is your birthday. Let’s go celebrate it.”
Jenna looked to Tanner, who had a huge grin across his face. It complemented his blushing red cheeks. As they joined the rest of the partygoers, she couldn’t help but whisper to him, “It could have been worse. He could have walked in while you had me pinned to the wall.”
“What was that, now?” Paul asked.
“Nothing, Daddy,” Jenna giggled, and Tanner made a face for her to stop.
“I got through this entire summer without your dad actually shooting me,” he murmured. “I want to leave it like that. I still got a physical to pass for my exam.”
Jenna shook her head and enjoyed the rest of the night. They all danced, laughed, and reminisced a bit as the night went on. People didn’t get too drunk—Paul was watering down the drinks—and the police didn’t come to shut them down. Her birthday party was a success.
Towards the end of the night Paul brought out a cake and everyone sang her “Happy Birthday”. She smiled as she blew out her candles—and suddenly that was it for Jenna. Her stomach began to churn and her appetite vanished. Hannah looked at her with worry in her eyes. “You’re not drunk again, are you?”
“Absolutely not! Just a little queasy, you know?”
“Queasy? Just like that? Think it was something you ate?” she asked, cutting into the cake.
“Um,” Jenna began breathing hard, “I’m not too sure.”
“Hey, sweetie, you alright? You’re looking a little pale there,” her dad asked, scrunching his face to match her own expression.
“Here, maybe you should just have a piece of cake to settle your stomach,” Hannah offered, but it was too much for Jenna. One soft bite of the decadent dessert from Mr. Donner’s bakery and she went flying to the bathroom.
When she returned, people were starting to file out. Nauseously wishing everyone a good night, Jenna plopped down at the bar until The Wheel was empty. Her stomach kept churning and there seemed to be nothing she could do about it.
“You going to be okay to drive?” Paul asked her.
“I don’t know, Dad. Maybe it’s just going-away jitters or something. I probably just need some sleep and a healthy breakfast. Can I get pancakes in the morning?”
“Whatever you want, Jenna. Whatever you want.”
Chapter 20
The sound of Jenna hurling up everything she’d eaten in an attempt to settle her stomach echoed around the house. Paul stood outside of her bathroom door with his hand on it as if he could touch her, soothe her, make her feel better.
“I don’t think you should go on this trip, Jenna,” he told her through the door.
She yanked the door open, her face even paler than the night before. “Dad, I have to go. You were right, I’ve been making a mess out of things since I’ve been back home. I just need to go back to school so I can feel like a normal student again. It’s too much crying and worrying when I’m home.”
“I was just saying that you shouldn’t leave today. You should wait until whatever bug this is passes. You don’t want to be on the road and sick as a dog. You’ll be miserable, and you’ll make a bad impression on the schools if you show up like that. You can’t let them see you sick until you’re already enrolled. Then it’s too late,” he smiled.
She hugged him tight. “Daddy, they already accepted me. But I don’t think I’m going. I honestly feel like I’ve made my decision. I don’t need to go all the way across the state for grad school when Pitt is only a couple of hours away.”
“Don’t let getting sick scare you into staying near home!” he warned her.
“It’s not. They have an amazing master’s program, and I’d get the opportunity to possibly work with the Steelers after I graduate.”
“Now that’s the way to win your old man over, bribe him with free football tickets. Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe you should go to the doctor.”
“Listen to me, Daddy, if I’m not feeling better by Tuesday I will go to the doctor. I promise.”
Jenna spent the next few days tethered to the bathroom. She was constantly nauseous. She could barely eat, couldn’t sleep, and couldn’t even think about leaving on her trip. While she wasn’t running a fever, everything her father brought her seemed to make her nauseous.
“That’s it! You promised!” he told her as she clutched the toilet yet again. “Let’s go.”
“Daddy, I can’t,” she whined. “Everything moves when I move.”
“That’s why you have to,” he told her. He put a bucket in her hand and picked her up off the floor, cradling her in his arms. After he put her in his truck, across the back seat of the cabin, he got in and floored it to her doctor. He drove the truck so fast that Jenna didn’t have a chance to get sick. He rushed her into the doctor’s office where a few people were already waiting.
Jenna sat down far away from everyone, keeping a kung fu grip on her bucket. The other patients contorted their faces in disgust as Paul spoke with the receptionist. Luckily for them, Jenna didn’t have to wait long; unbeknownst to her, Paul had made an appointment the previous day.
Jenna walked into the office by herself. While she wanted her father in there for support, he opted to stay outside. She sat there, looking as green as the ugly pastel walls, waiting for the doctor to come in.
A nurse was the first to enter. For some reason her white lab coat triggered Jenna’s nausea, and she reached hurriedly for the bucket.
The doctor walked in just as she began to vomit again. “My goodness, I hope that’s not because of my face,” he joked when she’d finished. “How ya doing, Jenna? I haven’t seen you since your physical last year. This doesn’t look good at all.”
“Yeah, you think?” she replied sarcastically.
“Nasty bug with a nasty attitude. Aren’t we lucky today, Nancy?” he laughed with the nurse.
“Please, I don’t mean to be rude, but I haven’t stopped throwing up since Saturday night. I just need to figure out what’s wrong with me so I can head to school. The semester starts in a few weeks.”
“Well, if this is anything contagious, a university campus is the last place I’d advise you to go… don’t want to start an epidemic and have the CDC quarantine the place, now do we? Ha-ha. Um, okay Nancy, let’s just run the gamut here. We’ll take blood, temp, fluids, everything, urine too just in case, and as soon as we get the results I’ll be back in.” He smiled and left, still chuckling to himself.
“Urine for what?” Jenna asked Nancy. “Since when do you need urine to tell me if I have a cold or the flu?”
“No, that’s to check if you’re pregnant,” the nurse laughed.
Jenna’s face dropped. She was mortified at the thought. “Nooooo, no, no, no, no, no. I can’t be. I’d better not be! I have so many plans and so many places to go and so many things to do.”
Jenna began sobbing into the bucket.
Nancy patted her on the back. “Let’s just calm down. Take a deep breath, outside of the vomit bucket so we don’t make ourselves throw up again. How about we get the urine and blood samples out of the way first and we’ll take it from there?”
“Okaaaaaayy,” Jenna sobbed. It wasn’t long before she was getting pricked, poked, prodded, and cuffed. While the nurse did everything she was supposed to, Jenna was wishing she’d done everything she was supposed to do—like making Tanner wear a condom.
As she sat there waiting for the doctor to come back she did the math. She started with trying to remember the first day of her last period. The summer flashed through her mind in a blur as she began running it down out loud. “Okay, I came home and threw a party. Brandy and Tanner broke up at that party. Tanner kissed me that night, but we didn’t…”
She took a few deep breaths to curb her nausea before continuing. “We kept going back and forth, yada, yada, yada. We did the thing in his office and the thing at his house. Ooh! His house was the first time. And that was how many weeks ago? And my last period was right after I got home in that first week of June, this is now August… Holy crap, I’m pregnant!”
“Congratulations, you’re pregnant!” the doctor announced as he entered the room.
“Stop it! Stop it now!”
“Um, you would have to go somewhere else to discuss that kind of procedure. There are several options available to you this early, but personally I recommend waiting. First, false positives aren’t unheard of, especially for the urine test, and we only have urine so far. We’re still waiting for blood, and then I want to schedule an ultrasound. But if it’s confirmed—and I expect it will be—you should really give this some thought. After the morning sickness passes. Sit down, talk it over with your partner and perhaps your father. Don’t make any rash decisions you may regret later. Because what you’re talking about is something that can’t be undone.”
They talked through every possible scenario, but the end result was still the same as when he’d walked in: She was pregnant. Jenna wanted to cry. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to run away to school and never see anyone ever again. But she settled on walking out of the doctor’s office with her dad.
“So what is it? The flu? You know where you caught it, or who gave it to you?” Paul posed question after question in the truck.
“Oh yeah,” Jenna laughed, “I know who gave it to me, alright.”
They drove around for a while with the windows open; the fresh air seemed to help, and it was as if the dark cloud of sea sickness had lifted away from her. Paul had to stop at The Wheel, but Jenna elected to wait outside, afraid that the nausea would return in the barroom fug. She didn’t want to stay in the car, though. She had far too much on her mind, and besides, it was the first time in days she’d been able to walk around without the bucket.
She found herself standing in front of Tanner’s building. Just as she was about to go inside to talk to him, out he walked with a familiar blonde who she really didn’t want to see. Jenna was frozen in her tracks, and her heart ripped into pieces when she saw them embrace. A soft kiss from Brandy too close to his mouth solidified her fears. Neither of them had seen her yet, and she didn’t want to be seen. She rounded the corner to hide before making her way back toward The Wheel.
Having Brandy as her child’s stepmother just didn’t have a good ring to it. Raising her child with a father who was constantly lying to her didn’t sound any better. She still didn’t know what to believe, but she knew when enough was enough. She was done with both of them.
Paul was perplexed as he watched Jenna slump towards the truck, get inside and slam the door behind her. “Daddy, can you just take me home?”
“Sure, Jenna, whatever you want.”
Once they got back, she sifted through her mother’s letters, looking for affirmation. Scattering the letters around her bed, she finally found the one she was searching for:
August 20th, 2014
Dearest Jenna-Marie,
The soft sobs coming from your room was a sound I’d hoped I’d never have to hear: the sound of my daughter’s heart breaking. I wish there was something I could do. But heartache is one of those guaranteed things in life. It’s right up there with mistakes, and breathing. When you find a love so pure that losing it does this to you, just know you’ve found one of the rarest things in life.
It’s funny that way, isn’t it? Heartbreak is guaranteed, but a love worthy of it isn’t. I hate that you have to go through this right before you take off to school, but your father and I are both sure it’s the right decision. Tanner mentioned asking you to marry him. That didn’t go over well with Daddy. He was ready to strangle him, but I didn’t let him. I told him that I know you. You’re a good girl with a good head on your shoulders. You wouldn’t throw away your future for a love that was uncertain. And from the sounds emanating from your room, I have a feeling I was right.
I’m so sorry, Jenna. I know how much you two cared about each other, but marriage isn’t the answer. Cementing yourselves together in the hope that the other won’t move on while you’re apart is a recipe for disaster. If this love between you two is true, it will come back to you. It may not be anytime soon, or it could be tomorrow.
Just know that when it does come, with whomever you find it, it will be beautiful. It will mean hard work and compromise. You need to strive every day to love yourself as much as you love your significant other. And keep your love alive by trying to fall in love with him all over again with every passing day. Be sweet, be kind, and be stern with your love, because if it’s true it will be one of the most important treasures of your lifetime. Choose your happiness.
Love always and forever,
Mom