MARIA

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FIN WAS NOWHERE TO be seen. The Hollywood movie producer and Rockwell were talking my ear off.

My phone rang and I retrieved it from the small pocket on the side of my dress. I didn’t recognize the number and I considered ignoring it but then curiosity got the better of me.

With all of the party noise going on around me it was very difficult to make out what the person on the other end of the line was saying so I just told whoever it was to text me.

Then I ended the call and went right back to smiling and nodding at the two men seated on either side of me on the couch.

The DJ who’d been playing music while the pianist was taking a break announced that it was now his turn to take a break.

The pianist sat down behind the piano and I could tell from the way he attacked the keys that he’d been drinking during his break. Drinking a lot.

The most incredible thing about it was that he still played very well, despite the fact that his eyes were basically closed and his head was shaking like a tree in the wind.

Everyone started dancing and generally having a good time.

Fin came to my mind again and I wondered where he was and what he was doing.

Was I really interested in having a relationship with him?

My mind drifted back to my high school days and my relationship with my high school sweetheart, Johnny.

I used to stare at him in class and whenever he looked at me, I would act all shy and quickly look away. He had wavy black hair and hazel eyes.

He was gorgeous.

For some reason, Johnny never seemed to care about all of the attention he got from the other girls in class and as far as I knew he had never had a girlfriend before me.

I later found out that his mother had very strict requirements for any girl who wanted to date her boy. One of these was that Johnny was only allowed to date girls who were still virgins and this, obviously, eliminated about ninety percent of the girls at our high school.

But not me. I don’t know exactly how Johnny found out about my virginity. He must have heard it through the gossip grapevine at school.

I’d made the mistake of telling one of the other girls that I was still a virgin and it soon became a widely publicized fact in our school, as if I had some kind of contagious disease. But the same thing which had been my greatest drawback with the other kids also turned out to be my greatest strength when it came to Johnny.

I will never forget the day when he walked right over to me and asked me out of the blue, “Will you go to the prom with me?”

“The prom?” I couldn’t believe he was asking me to the prom.

“Yes, the prom. You know, the dance where everybody drinks and dances and has a good time.”

“Well... I... I guess,” I stuttered.

Johnny burst out laughing.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Ever since that day we were basically inseparable. He took me home to meet his mom and when she asked me if I was still a virgin, which was an incredibly weird and rude thing to ask, I simply replied, “Yes.”

I should have told her it was none of her business because it wasn’t!

Anyway, from that moment on, Johnny’s parents treated me as if I was their own daughter. Even though we never really talked about it I knew that it was almost a done deal that his parents expected we would get married after school.

Johnny’s dad worked at a construction site and Johnny already worked there with him on the weekends, so everyone expected that Johnny would join the construction team full-time after school and this was just fine with me.

I’m not sure who was more surprised and disappointed to learn that Johnny had decided to go and work on an oil rig after school, his parents or me.

For some reason, Johnny decided that he didn’t want to join the construction business with his dad and no matter how much anyone tried to convince him that he should stay, he refused to listen to reason.

Of course he promised that he would be coming home regularly and that we would be seeing each other often, but almost a year went by before he came home from the oil rig for the first time.

I was already heartbroken by this time and when he asked to see me I said no. Even though my heart was breaking, I forced myself to stay away from Johnny and a week later I landed my first job as a housekeeper in a neighboring town.

I realized that if I accepted the job I would probably never see Johnny again, but I felt like I had no real choice. I was certainly not prepared to become one of those women who only saw their husbands once or twice a year whenever they took a break from their work on an oil rig or something. Mama also assured me that I was doing the right thing. She said I deserved better.

Even though I still thought about Johnny a lot after I started working as a housekeeper, those memories eventually faded and the hurt subsided.

The roar of a car engine sounded from the front of the house and I found myself wondering whether Fin had perhaps taken his lady friend for a ride in his Ferrari again.

Just then my phone beeped, signaling a text. I took it out to read the message. I am waiting for you outside. It’s Johnny.

It couldn’t possibly be Johnny. I ignored the text.

I noticed a dark, attractive looking man standing at the door and wondered if I should get up and go and greet him. Fin had asked all of us to keep a lookout for any guests who might be arriving late and to make sure they were well cared for upon their arrival.

This man had definitely not been at the party from the beginning, as I would have certainly noticed him. Just when I was about to get up to go and ask the new arrival if I could get him a drink, he looked right at me and came walking in my direction.

I thought that the man had probably noticed the pin on my dress and that he was walking over to ask me to get him a drink.

As he was walking up to me, a slow realization started dawning in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“Are you just going to sit there and stare at me or get up and give me a hug?” the man asked and for a second I couldn’t understand how on earth he had the gall to just walk in and flirt with me that way but then realization in the back of my mind came full circle and the thought burst through. It was Johnny, my high school Johnny!

I slowly got up and didn’t even notice anyone else in the room as I finally stood face to face with Johnny again after years of not seeing him.

“What are you doing here? How did you get here?” I asked.

“I’m happy to see you, too.” Johnny laughed. “And as for how I got here, I drove myself over in my BMW.”

“But how did you know to find me here?”

“It took a lot of asking around! But as the owner of a very successful New York construction company I do have my ways of getting information,” he said and kept smiling as if something was very funny.

I nearly smacked him right in his face, but fortunately Rockwell got up and introduced himself to Johnny before I could do anything. They started talking about construction and I heard Johnny say to Rockwell that he could help him build an extension on his mansion.

Johnny acted as if the situation was quite normal and when he looked at me again, he still had that smile on his face.

“You come outside with me right now!” I said and the tone of my voice must have convinced Johnny that it would be a prudent thing to do as I said.

“It was great meeting you. I’m sure we’ll get a chance again later on to discuss that extension,” Johnny said as I led him outside.

I immediately noticed the BMW to which Johnny was referring. It was no ordinary car and it had the kind of design you would expect from a race car.

“She’s a real beauty, isn’t she?” Johnny said.

I looked at the deep blue color of his car and had to admit that it looked really beautiful. I turned to Johnny with a puzzled expression on my face.

“What happened, Johnny? Where have you been all this time and how can you afford a car like that?”

“I worked on the oil rig for three years and saved up enough money to start a construction company with my dad. It was so successful that my dad has now retired to a house on the beach in Florida and I have lots of people running the company for me. I spend most of my time on my favorite hobby, which is to build up and modify cars such as the one you are staring at right now.”

“Why did you leave me alone for an entire year?” I asked.

I was still feeling angry, but seeing Johnny again also awakened some other emotions deep inside me, which I thought had gone away forever.

I was feeling a mixture of happiness and excitement with some measure of anger in there as well.

“They wouldn’t allow me to go home during that first year so there was nothing I could do about it.”

“You know that I waited for you and thought about you and dreamed about you for twelve months, don’t you?” I said.

“I can assure you I did exactly the same thing on the oil rig. All I could think about was you and when I would see you again. I tried to see you but you refused me and then you disappeared.”

“You broke my heart.”

“I know and I’m sorry. But instead of standing here digging up the past, why don’t we go inside and talk? What have you been doing all these years?”

I ignored his question. I hadn’t really been doing much. “Do you even have an invitation to this party? You do know that this is where I work, right?”

“Yes, I have an invitation and yes, I know this is where you work. Fin has actually contracted my construction company and he asked me to drop by. I coincidently heard from someone that Fin had a beautiful girl working for him named Maria and when I saw a picture of you which had been taken at one of Fin’s parties I recognized you right away. You are still just as beautiful as the last day I saw you.”

To say that I was taken aback by Johnny’s sudden reappearance and his tale of good fortune would be the understatement of the century. There was something about him now which was very different, something about the confident way in which he came across and the way he spoke.

I wasn’t quite sure whether I liked the change but I decided it was time he and I caught up so I led him back inside the house.

My heart was still feeling all funny and I wondered if I was still secretly in love with Johnny after all of these years. I guessed only time would tell and the evening was still young so time was the one thing we did have.

Johnny and I went back inside but I never got an opportunity to really speak with him as he was quickly flanked by two attractive girls who knew him from somewhere else. From the way they touched him and spoke to him, it quickly became clear to me that Johnny must have jumped in the sack with both of them sometime in the past.

There was just something about the seductive way they looked at him and touched him which suggested that they had shared intimate moments together.

I found myself comparing Johnny to Fin and realized that they were now similar in the sense that they both liked flirting and sleeping with beautiful women, but they were also very different in one specific way. With Fin I always got the sense that he was looking for a way back to the innocence of his past, while Johnny made me feel like he was hungry to lose even more of his innocence.

“Will you excuse me, Johnny? I have to go to the kitchen and get something,” I said.

Johnny nodded. “Sure, I will be right here when you get back.”

I walked off in the direction of the kitchen but then turned down the corridor toward the indoor swimming pool. I needed to get away from Johnny so I could clear my mind and thought I might be able to spend a couple of quiet moments next to the heated pool.

I was wrong.

“Maria! Come join us!” Fin shouted.

Fin was splashing around in the pool with lots of pretty girls in their underwear. I felt like running away but it was too late.

Fin had already seen me and I noticed that his blonde lady friend...girlfriend or whatever she was, was also looking at me. I was definitely not going to strip down to my underwear and jump in the pool with them, but everyone was having so much fun that I decided to stand around and simply enjoy the spectacle.

“That looks like fun. I think I will join you all in the pool!” Rockwell said from behind me.

When I turned around, he was already stripped down to his boxer shorts.

He was in remarkably good shape and he didn’t look half bad in his underwear. He smiled at me before running towards the pool and jumping in, causing a big splash.

I hated that Fin was in the pool with women who were in their underwear but what I could do or say? He was my boss not my boyfriend.