CHAPTER FIFTEEN
By finals in mid-May Rebecca had turned nineteen and was head over heels in love with Jared Sloan. He made her laugh and wasn’t afraid to tease her about being so compulsive about school and work. And he was self-confident enough that he wasn’t threatened by her ambitions. She could be herself with him. Not just a Blackburn, not just a scholarship student, not just an egghead, not just a young, attractive, blue-eyed woman. It was liberating.
He stayed in Boston for several days after the groundbreaking for the new Winston & Sloan Building. They went everywhere together. They traipsed through Boston Common and the Public Garden, went window-shopping on Newbury Street, wandered through the Museum of Fine Arts, checked out their old haunts on Charles Street. Rebecca managed to find time for them to be together without sacrificing her work, classes or studying. Jared showed up at the library one afternoon and patiently read while she reshelved books.
When he headed back to California, he sent her postcards of the Golden Gate Bridge and jotted on the back that San Francisco was a lovers’ paradise.
“Whoa,” Sofi kept saying, “that man’s smitten.”
So was Rebecca.
Even if she knew whatever they’d started was going to come to an abrupt halt on June first when Jared headed for Saigon.
“Don’t you think it’s nuts for him to want to spend a year in Vietnam?” she would ask her grandfather.
“Yes,” Thomas Blackburn would say, “especially now. I fear South Vietnam’s a dying country.”
He would then proceed to expound on the most recent trials to besiege the country where he’d spent so many years, and had lost so much. He lectured Rebecca on the devastating effects of the 1973 American military withdrawal and the Arab oil embargo on the country’s economy, the suicidal intransigence and shortsightedness of the Thieu regime, the rampant corruption, the lack of interest in Vietnam of an American people preoccupied with the Watergate scandal and the future of their own president. Rebecca knew better than to interrupt when he was on one of his tirades. She had learned that, despite her grandfather’s public silence, in private he spared no one his opinions. At least not her.
“But,” he would eventually conclude, “I can understand Jared’s compulsion to go there. I felt it myself more than fifty years ago.” And he would penetrate her with his icy clear eyes. “Do you, Rebecca?”
“Not right now,” she would always say. “I have to think about school and work. I don’t have the time or the money to go gallivanting all over the world.”
Of course, Jared Sloan did.
He came back to Boston on a warm, sunny May afternoon and found her studying for her microeconomics final on a grassy embankment overlooking Storrow Drive and the Charles River, dotted with hundreds of small white sails.
“Hey, there,” he said, startling her.
She squinted up at him in the sun, and her heartbeat steadied at the sight of him, with his crooked grin and dark, sun-washed hair. Smiling, she laid down her textbook and threw herself on him, and together they fell back onto the grass.
Jared laughed. “Not a bad public display of affection for a repressed Yankee.”
“Don’t forget I’m half-Southerner. Where’d you come from?”
“San Francisco.”
“To visit your mother?”
“To visit you.”
His mouth found hers, and they rolled over on the ground, Jared ending up on top, bits of grass sticking in his hair. She relished the feel of his weight on her. His tongue flicked hot and wet against hers, and he murmured, “I could make love to you right here.”
“We’d be arrested.”
“All for a good cause.”
She laughed, seeing the piratical gleam in his eyes. “I’ve missed you.”
To her surprise, he rolled off her and sat up, exhaling in relief.
“Did you have any doubts?” she asked, shocked.
“Yeah,” he admitted, “I did. You Blackburns are a self-sufficient lot, you know. And you, R.J.—Ms. Four-oh Average, Ms. Future Diplomat, Ms. Full Scholarship—you’re about as intense as they come. They didn’t break the mold when your grandfather was born.”
Rebecca wasn’t sure that was a compliment, however accurate he might be. She abandoned microeconomics for a walk along the river holding hands with Jared. Afterward they grabbed a couple of hot dogs from a vendor on Commonwealth Avenue and headed back to her dorm, talking all the way. When they reached her room, Jared’s gaze rested on Sofi’s stripped bed, closet, desk and bureau.
“Oh,” Rebecca said, “she finished her last final yesterday and headed home to Westchester.”
“Did she, now?”
He gave her a wildly exaggerated lecherous look and pounced, hooking one arm around her waist and tossing her playfully down on her skinny bed. Rebecca laughed—until she saw his eyes. Then she knew he wasn’t just horsing around.
Her breath caught. “Jared…”
His body was strong and hard on top of hers. Rebecca could feel him breathing, feel him wanting her. A sharp stab of longing went through her—and a little fear. “Do not go Blackburn on him and tell the man you’re a virgin,” Sofi had warned her before leaving. “You’ll scare him.” Rebecca had countered that she wasn’t even sure she’d see Jared Sloan again. Sofi had groaned and said her roommate was so naive.
He smiled tenderly and brushed the hair back from her forehead. “I thought I’d never do this in a dorm bunk again.”
“Bully for you,” Rebecca blurted. “I’ve never done it at all!” Too late, she caught herself. “I mean—”
“R.J., it’ll be all right.” Lowering his mouth to hers, he kissed her softly, slowly. “I promise.”
She nodded that she believed him, but her practical nature asserted itself. “You’re prepared?”
He laughed. “You’re the one who calls me a pirate—”
“I don’t mean ready, I mean prepared.”
“I was just teasing. I know what you mean. Yes, Ms. Four-oh Blackburn, I’m prepared.”
He plucked a package of condoms from his jeans pocket and set it on the edge of the bed. Rebecca didn’t know whether to be pleased or appalled. “You planned this?”
“Let’s just say I’m ever-hopeful. R.J.” He had the grace to be embarrassed. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re direct?”
She gave him a mock look of innocence. “A Blackburn direct? Imagine.”
As outspoken as she was, she didn’t find undressing in front of Jared easy. She felt shy and inexperienced, but the prospect of leaving the job to him unnerved her, at least for the first time. It would just be too awkward.
And in spite of her five brothers and their notorious absence of modesty, she wasn’t sure about having Jared undress in front of her, either. He was tanned and muscled, but she didn’t know if she should stare, look away, make a comment, or, just for a change, keep her mouth shut.
Finally he came to her on the ridiculous bed and smoothed his palms over her bare shoulders, just looking at her. “If you want me to stop…if I hurt you…”
She shook her head. “You won’t.”
But she wished she felt as confident as she sounded and resisted the impulse to crack a joke to relieve the strange tension that was making her mouth tingle and her skin feel almost alive. A breeze from the opened window made her shiver. Then Jared stroked her upper arms and she was hot again. She lay back on the bed, bringing him with her, reveling in the erotic sensation of her bare skin against his. They would have to take their time, she thought. She wanted to take note of everything.
But Jared had other ideas, and he communicated his urgency—made her feel it, as well—when they kissed. He explored her mouth with his tongue, matched its probing rhythm with his hips, and all her self-consciousness and nervousness vanished. Yes, she thought, I want this….
He touched her everywhere, whispered how beautiful she was, how soft and perfect her breasts were, how strong her thighs were, and she quickly stopped taking her mental notes, surprised and consumed by the shuddering abandon of her own arousal. She was bursting with a longing that made her want to laugh and cry and just hold him forever. She kept her eyes open every minute, and when he eased into her gently, carefully, she realized there was little more than a pinching tightness. Then she pulled him deeper into her, urging him on. It was the only cue he needed. His thrusts grew harder, deeper, faster, and she responded to each one with a lust that only hours ago would have amazed her, until at last she was no longer thinking, only feeling.
He came first, she seconds later, exploding as he kept pace with her, whispering for her to enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. And she did, crying out with the joy of it, with the rawness and beauty of their pleasure.
Much later, when they were back in their jeans and sitting cross-legged on the narrow bed, Jared fastened his mesmerizing gaze on her. “Come with me to Saigon, R.J.”
“Saigon?” Assuming he was just kidding, she laughed. “Oh, sure, I’ ll just call up TWA and have them mail me a ticket.”
But he was serious. “It’s just a year. I’d pay your way—consider it a loan. When you got back you could pick up where you left off. R.J., you’re so smart, you’ll be drowning in money by the time you’re thirty. We’d have a whole year together, the two of us.”
“If the N.V.A. didn’t overrun us first. You should hear my grandfather on the subject. Anyway, what would I do while you were off being an architect? Keep house? Make you dinner? I’m not going to take a year off from college just to hang around in Southeast Asia.”
Jared eyed her a moment. “You could get a job. I don’t need you to wait on me. Look, I have connections—”
“That’s just my point. Jared, please try to understand. I can’t let you pay my way or find me a job.”
“You don’t have to agree to anything that makes you uncomfortable,” he said quietly. “But R.J., after all that’s happened to your family, don’t you want to see Vietnam?”
She swallowed, stifling a rush of tears, amazed that after eleven years she still missed her father as much as she did. Nineteen years old and the emptiness just didn’t go away. She could feel him hugging her fiercely before he left for Southeast Asia for the last time. But she couldn’t see his face. She didn’t know why. Since she was eight she’d tried to remember what he’d looked like that hot afternoon at the airport, and she just couldn’t.
“Yes, I want to see Vietnam,” she said. Then she looked at Jared and added, “But on my own nickel.”
To his credit, he didn’t walk out on her, but leaned forward until she could see the flecks of white in his blue eyes. “Rebecca Blackburn, you are a giant pain in the ass sometimes. I’ll have you know I’ve been saving all year for this trip.” The break in tension was short-lived, and his expression grew serious again as he reached over and brushed his fingertips across the top of her hand, resting on her knee. “You might not get another chance, you know. You’re letting your pride get in the way of what could be the experience of a lifetime.”
“Maybe I am. But I haven’t badgered you to stay in Boston and watch me suffer through my second year of college.”
“I know. R.J.—” He broke off and looked away, tears glistening in his eyes. “I didn’t want this to happen. I’m going to miss you.”
She wanted to cry, but refused to. “Then what you’re saying is we’re finished.”
He pulled her to him, stroking her thick hair. “No, R.J., we’re just beginning.”
* * *
He drove back to Florida with her. They took the long way, stopping everywhere—and sharing everything. Driving, expenses, food, themselves. Rebecca discovered that Jared wanted to make his own way in the world, too. He didn’t feel sorry for himself or whine about having money, something Rebecca appreciated. He’d learned, he’d said, just to make his own decisions and not sweat the family’s reactions.
Rebecca saw him off at the Orlando airport. He’d say goodbye to his father in San Francisco, then start the long journey to Southeast Asia. For days after he left, she moped, walking in the citrus groves and trying to imagine that the sweat pouring down her back in the early summer heat was from long hours of lovemaking.
Jared called when he arrived in Saigon. She took no pleasure at the loneliness she heard in his voice. His apartment was small and hot, he told her, but he was selfish enough—loved her so much—that he wished she were with him. But they understood each other. He’d done what he had to do, and so had she.
They exchanged letters through the summer while she worked at Disney World and helped in the groves and went picnicking, fishing and frog-catching with her brothers, and through the fall when she resumed classes, her job at the library, and Sunday-night supper with Sofi and her grandfather on Beacon Hill. Thomas Blackburn continued to win at her and Sofi’s trivia game, and he refused to comment on the relationship between his granddaughter and Jared Sloan. Not, Rebecca was confident, that he didn’t have an opinion.
“You think we’re doomed, don’t you?” she asked him one night in February, almost a year since she’d met Jared.
He sniffed. “That’s hardly any of my business.”
“Since when’s that ever stopped you from stating your opinion? You told Sofi you thought her last boyfriend looked like a mushroom.”
“Well, he did—and she thought so, too.”
“So what about Jared?”
“I consider Jared Sloan a friend.”
“And?”
“And there’s a great deal of history between you and him.”
“That doesn’t tell me a thing.”
Sighing, he patted her hand. “Your life is for you to live.”
“Do you think I should have gone to Saigon with him?”
That one was easy; he didn’t even hesitate. “No.”
“Grandfather…”
“Vietnam,” he went on, cutting off her attempt to get at the deeper issues of his own years there, “isn’t a place for Blackburns.”
Maybe it was that comment, that night, more even than missing Jared that made her decision for her. It didn’t matter. Two weeks later she’d changed her mind.
She would go to Saigon.