Chapter 3
The ducks quacked on the pond. Sonny sat down on a bench in the park.
Cloe lingered a few feet away. She hesitated to sit down next to him. He was supposed to be her subject, after all. One thing was certain. She wouldn’t take her phone out again. She was finished interviewing him—maybe forever.
So what was she doing out here? If she wasn’t interviewing him, she should be on her way back to the office. She had an excuse for bailing on the interview and the sports page article. He refused to give an interview. The manager arranged it without getting his permission first. End of story. Her editor would understand that. No skin off her nose.
She didn’t walk away, though. Why not? What did she really have to talk to him about? He was terminal. He wanted to live the rest of his life in peace. So what?
He waved his hand toward the bench. “Sit down.”
She hugged her clutch bag against her chest and sat down next to him. The wooden bench chilled her ass through her jeans. She really ought to leave.
“So what do you want to talk about?” he asked.
“Nothing, I guess,” she replied. “I don’t know why I came out here. There’s nothing more to say, is there?”
“Don’t you want to interview me?”
“No, I don’t want to interview you.”
“Then why did you come out here?”
“I really don’t know.”
He cast a glance her way and went back to looking at the ducks. “Well, you know about all there is to know about me. Maybe I can interview you instead.”
“Me!” Her head whipped around. “What do you want to know about me for?”
“So I can use the incriminating information against you, of course. If you print something I don’t like, I’ll have some material to blackmail you.”
Cloe’s eyes widened.
“I’m just kidding.”
She sank back on the bench. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“I shouldn’t be here, either,” he shot back. “I should be in a campervan halfway to the Grand Canyon by now. I shouldn’t be talking to a girl half my age about personal subjects that could get us both in hot water.”
“Well, what do you want to interview me about?”
“You asked how I got into boxing. Why don’t you tell me how you got into journalism.”
“I thought I already explained that.”
“Well, do you have a boyfriend?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Just answer the question, ma’am.”
Cloe had to smile. “Now you sound like Carl.”
“Carl would never ask if you had a boyfriend.”
“No, I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Why not? You’re attractive enough.”
“I just don’t. I never have.”
He stared at her with his mouth open. “You never had a boyfriend?”
“What’s so strange about that? Most guys aren’t interested in women like me.”
“What are you talking about?” he gasped. “What kind of women are most guys not interested in, I’d like to know.”
“Women with all this extra padding all over them. Most guys want supermodels, and I’m not one.”
Sonny gaped at her in shock. Then he smacked his lips and shook his head at the pond full of birds. “Let me tell you a little secret, darlin’. Most guys don’t want supermodels. Most guys want extra padding all over a woman—the more the better. Don’t you know how beautiful you are?”
“I’m not beautiful,” she replied. “That’s why I’ve never had a boyfriend.”
He closed his eyes. “Please God tell me you’ve at least kissed a guy.”
“Of course I’ve kissed a guy.”
“Who did you kiss, if you didn’t kiss your boyfriend?”
“Just guys in high school, and a few guys in college. Kissing them doesn’t make them my boyfriends.”
“What else have you done?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m intrigued now,” he replied. “I would really like to know how a woman as incredibly drop dead gorgeous as you are can kiss a few guys in high school and college and not have boyfriends. I’d like to know how she can get to the age you are now without realizing how beautiful she really is.”
“Will you stop saying that? I am not beautiful. You’re just being cruel.”
Sonny groaned. “Tell me you’ve done it with some of these guys at least. Tell me you’re not a virgin or anything like that.”
“I am a virgin,” she replied with no shame. “I’ve made out with a few guys, but I’ve never gone all the way. That would be taking it too far.”
“Are you out of your mind?” he shrieked. “What have you been doing with yourself all your life?”
She shrugged. “Just going to school, working and hanging out with my friends and stuff. I have enough to worry about without wasting time on guys. All they want to do is kiss, make out and feel me up, and when they’ve done all that, they want to go all the way. Why should I give them the time of day when they act like that?”
His mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”
“What? What’s so terrible about that?”
He clucked his tongue and shook his head again. “So many wasted years! So much wasted youth.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He rounded on her. “Listen, lady. You’re young. Making out and doing it is what young people are supposed to be doing. It’s what young men and young women are supposed to be doing together. They’re not supposed to be just going to school working and hanging out with their friends and stuff. They’re supposed to be getting it on in the backs of cars and the back seats of movie theaters, in allies and car washes and every other place they can do it. That’s what being young is for.”
She chopped her hand through the air. “Go on with you. It is not.”
“When exactly do you expect to lose your virginity? How do you expect to meet a guy you like enough to go all the way with?”
She refused to look at him. “How should I know?”
“You won’t. If you keep on the way you are, you won’t meet any guy you care about. You won’t let yourself get close enough even to let a guy kiss you, much less undress you and worship you, make you scream in ecstasy. What are you going to do when you’ve been working and stuff and you get to be forty-five and you’re still a virgin? What are you going to do then? Huh?”
She blushed all over. “I don’t have a clue. I never really thought about it.”
“Well, you better think about it. How old are you now?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Well, there you go. Pretty soon, you’ll be twenty-six, and then you’ll be twenty-seven, and on and on it will go. You’ll keep not letting yourself do it, and the years will pass, and you’ll be an old, lonely virgin. Then what?”
Cloe found herself staring at him in horror. For the first time in her life, she saw herself from outside. For the first time, she understood the bald truth. Those guys who tried to do it with her really did want her. They wanted her curves, her flesh and her big breasts. They wanted her wet and panting and excited.
She was the one who stopped it. She was the one who didn’t want it. Why? She could think of only one reason. She didn’t like herself. She didn’t like her big body. She didn’t want them looking at her, touching her and wanting her. She wanted to retreat and hide from her own desire and theirs.
The horror of being a twenty-five-year-old virgin going on forty-five hit her hard. Why did it take this battered old man to make her realize what was happening to her? He’d already lived and died. Now it was her turn. She couldn’t get back the years she wasted. She had to start right now to make sure this didn’t continue.
She thought fast. She knew half a dozen men at the paper she could turn her way with the blink of her eyelash. She pretended she didn’t notice them checking her out when she walked down the hall. She ignored them and waited for them to go away.
She fought back the urge to bolt then and there. She couldn’t lose control of herself—not yet. She would get out of this non-interview and find the first man who would give her the time of day. Once she lost her virginity, the rest would take care of itself. Once she did it with somebody, she could concentrate on the next person to do it with. One guy would lead to another. In no time at all, she would be normal.
She fidgeted on the bench. How could she get away from him? She couldn’t tell him she wanted to rush out and have sex that minute with the first guy she got hold of.
Before she decided what to say to him, he turned around, fixed her with his narrowed eyes, and said, “I think you better come back to my place.”
He couldn’t have surprised her more if he suggested doing it right there on the park bench. “Your place?”
“Yes, my place. I can’t allow you to go back to a life of misery and neglect. I can’t let you walk away without correcting this situation somehow.”
She picked her jaw up off the grass. “Are you seriously suggesting...?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. His eyes said it all.
Didn’t she just make up her mind to go do it with the first guy she found? Well, here he was, a willing guy, sitting right in front of her. Why not? I mean, why not?
Well, he was old enough to be her father, after all, but so what? Somebody had to be her first time. He would probably be a lot better than some pimply office boy. Everybody knew the stories about Sonny McCain’s exploits. Women threw themselves at him in every port. He must be an expert.
She blinked. He didn’t move. Was she really going to go through with this? She’d have to be crazy. What would she tell her friends—that she did it for the first time with Sonny McCain, the legendary boxer? No one would believe her. She would hardly believe it herself.
She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. The whole idea was preposterous. Go on an interview and wind up in bed with the subject? Forget it. Besides, she didn’t have to tell anybody. She told her friends every detail of her boring ass life, so why shouldn’t she keep something secret from them? Why did she care so much about what they thought, anyway?
Heaven knew her friends were getting it on with God knows what kind of guys. They told her all about it. She enjoyed her celibate superiority. She wouldn’t be so smug if she did something like this. She would lose her mystique. She would lose all her judgmental prestige. What would become of her? She would become the same old boring person as everyone else on the planet.
The whole time these thoughts fought and tumbled and struggled through her mind, he sat there staring at her. He waited, in no particular hurry.
She didn’t run away. She didn’t curse him. She didn’t call the police. She actually thought about it. She thought for two seconds it might not be such a bad idea.
So what did that make her? Did it make her a slut? Did it make her a horny bitch in search of a dick to back up to? No, it only made her a lonely, pathetic virgin in desperate need of a guy to take her home and put her out of her misery.
Without a word, he got up, brushed invisible dust off the seat of his pants, and walked away. He strode down the path a few paces and looked back. “Are you coming?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He walked around the pond and back onto the city streets. He didn’t look back again.