Jennifer did not stay much longer at her mother’s house. She packed up most of her things and took some of her father’s things over to a storage facility. Jennifer had a feeling that the house would not be in the family the next time she was back in town and the thought saddened her. There was nothing to be done though, so she left to go back to school a couple of days early.
Her mother had called several times to try and get together, but Jennifer had ignored the messages and didn’t bother texting her until she was back at school. Even then, it was just to tell her that she made it back safely. The two women did not talk for the next several months and Jennifer even started to ignore the calls from her sister. She sort of went into a protective bubble.
Jennifer just tried to immerse herself in school and forget about what was going on back home. She had actually found a boyfriend too. It weirded her out though, because she found herself constantly comparing him to Charles. Charles was taller, she would think to herself. And she had felt differently as he had held her close. She didn’t feel the same way about her boyfriend Steve, though he was nice and they did have a good time together. They hadn’t gone all the way yet though. Jennifer had before, of course, she just hadn’t given it up yet with him. As the time stretched on, she wondered if she ever would. Maybe it had something to do with Charles, who lingered in the back of her mind, despite her attempts to dispel any thought of him.
Finally, the holidays were upon her and Jennifer felt compelled to go see her mother for Christmas. She had opted out of Thanksgiving and Darla had actually seemed uncharacteristically upset. She had called her the next morning and made Jennifer feel bad, so she had promised to go home for a couple days during the next holiday.
She dreaded the trip for many reasons though. One of the big ones was the reminder of the imminent loss of her childhood home and all those memories of her father that she was afraid would go with it. There was also her mother’s unwillingness to talk about it. On top of that she would have to deal with her new rich stepfather that she couldn’t stand to be around. And of course, the main reason to stay away would have been to avoid seeing the stepbrother she had sucked face with and whom she had allowed to feel her up. That was kind of a big one. It would have been a lot for anyone and Jennifer just felt so overwhelmed. She wished that she could find a good enough excuse to just skip the whole thing. But she was out of excuses.
The day that she was packing up for what would probably be her last ride “home”, she received a large envelope folded over in her mail box. It was a crisp textured eight and one half by eleven inch white envelope with no return address. Opening it curiously, she found a small collection of papers inside. There was a note that was on the top of the stack of legal papers that at first just confused her. Then it made tears well up in her eyes, blurring her vision. She could hardly believe it and had to read it through three times before it would begin to sink in.
“Jennifer, Samuel overheard the conversation with your mother about your childhood home. We hope this is not unwelcomed or too ostentatious of a gift, but we decided to buy it for you and would like to give it to you as an early Christmas present, if you will accept. Of course we will have to deal with some tax implications, etc. but we have attorneys for that sort of thing. Along with the house will also be a fund to be used for upkeep and repairs for the foreseeable future, so that this does not become a burden to you financially. You probably are wondering where this is coming from. We know what it is like to lose a parent and to want to hold on to their memory. We lost our mother. It is our sincerest wish that you accept this small gift on our behalf. You would be giving us great pleasure in receiving it. I hope to see you soon. Charles”
After she picked her jaw up off the floor and stopped crying tears of both joy and relief, she looked at the pages once more to be sure she wasn’t imagining it. The letter trembled in her hands as she read the important parts several times over. Then she looked at the new deed with her name on it. There it was in black and white, but she still couldn’t believe it. People don’t just give other people a house. Did they? Well, apparently. These guys did. It seemed like they had done that very thing. Jennifer was speechless as she made her final preparations for the trip home. She realized she was driving towards her home for real now. I was hers, unless this was some kind of trick. It was still hard to believe it in her mind. If it was true, she did not know how she could repay them for their kindness.
***
“Hey baby, are you leaving soon? I’m all ready.”
“Yeah Steve. I’m leaving now.”
“Ok babe. I’ll see you when you get here.”
Jennifer hung up and grimaced, she hated being called babe. Baby wasn’t so bad, but babe just grated on her nerves for some reason. She had mentioned it to Steve, but he did not seem to care too much and continued punctuating his sentences liberally with the nickname.
She had decided to take Steve with her for purely selfish reasons. The visit was already going to be more than she wanted to face and she planned to use her boyfriend as a buffer. This approach wasn’t going to win her any girlfriend of the year awards, but sometimes you just had to do what you had to do. The dinner was supposed to be at Ryan’s mansion and her stepbrothers were going to be there, as well as the rest of Ryan’s family. She had not met them, but Jennifer already imagined that she knew how it would go. She knew they were just people like her, but sometimes the money thing could be a lot to take. Of course those stepbrothers had just bought her a house, so maybe it was time to see them in a new light.
So she figured Steve could do the small talk thing with the rich folk, since he came from a pretty well-off family. She also figured that Steve would keep her mind and her lips away from the forbidden ones that she still felt attracted to. The knowledge of her new familial connection with Charles had not dampened the memory of the heat she had felt between them. Jennifer could still feel Charles’ body against hers. That feeling and the memory of that encounter had kept her up late at night on several occasions in the intervening months since she had seen him. She imagined that a man like that would always have a girlfriend but despite the obvious problems it would present, she couldn’t help but wish that he was available.
Jennifer picked up Steve and was glad to see that he had dressed up a bit with a button down and some slacks. He looked nice. Now if he could just leave out all the “babe” comments.
Since Jennifer supposedly had her own home now, she figured she had somewhere to escape to if things got to be too much on the trip. That helped her relax a bit. She assumed that her new benefactors had left the house as it was. She had actually lost track of what had happened with the house when she retreated into her bubble over the summer and fall. Anyhow, even though the family situation would be marginally more manageable now, she also realized that in coping with it she had potentially created another problem. By inviting him to meet the family it was very possible that he would assume that she was stepping up the relationship. That, of course, would mean sex for Steve. That would be a pretty reasonable conclusion actually. The problem was that Jennifer still wasn’t sure if she wanted to have sex with him, even though it had been several months since they had started dating. She had given him a few blow jobs to satiate his needs a bit and to let off some of the pressure he was no doubt feeling inside. She had certainly relieved that pressure admirably, but it clearly wasn’t enough. He wanted it all and she knew that that weekend, he would try to get it.
He kissed her as they were about to drive away from in front of his dorm but Jennifer was the one who pulled back when his mouth became more insistent. She pretended she had to focus on the drive ahead of them. From the look in his eyes, she imagined he was pretty sure they would be sleeping together any day now. At times like this, he seemed to look at her almost as a possession, Jennifer thought. She wasn’t sure if she liked it or not. Almost against her will, her body responded to his soft lips and probing tongue, and she momentarily contemplated ending her self-imposed dry spell. She really did need to have sex and so it was starting to look like Steve just might be in luck after all. The way she kept vacillating around this issue, she could understand how crazy men thought woman were. She felt a little crazy herself, she laughed inside.