“I do not twitch.”
“You twitch all right. Bottom line: You don’t want to have sex? Fine.” Well, not so fine, but you don’t have to know that. “Just don’t keep passing the platter if you don’t want me to eat.”
Nice analogy, boy. Real nice! the burr in his brain said.
“Are you saying I’m a tease?” She bristled like a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.
“Don’t put words in my mouth. Just know this.” He pointed a forefinger at her for emphasis. “I’m not a college kid anymore that you can twist around your little finger. The next time I put my mouth on yours… if you don’t bite off my tongue… I’m probably going for the real deal. And I don’t mean dry humping against a tree trunk.”
“Is that a threat?”
Oh, yeah. “Take it any way you want, sweetheart.” He pivoted on his bootheels and stomped away, pride intact. Or, with as much pride as a guy could have with a half-blown erection still sticking out of his jeans like the prow of a ship.
Windows to the past…
Raoul spent the rest of the afternoon locked in his bedroom reading old mail. It was an enlightening experience.
There were letters and birthday cards and Christmas greetings. Even the gifts his father had sent over the years had been returned and stored in the attic, according to what he read. Teddy bears. A child’s cowboy outfit. Drums. A BB gun. Some Western comic books. An Atari game system. Why his father had never given them to him on his rare visits he had no idea. Probably pride. Or misplaced revenge against his mother. Maybe just embarrassment.
His father had not been a gushy man, in person or in his letters. Some would have even described him as cold, especially in later years when bitterness clouded his thinking, but Raoul was beginning to get a better picture. A young man of eighteen having to take over a ranch when his parents were suddenly killed in an auto accident, the constant straggle to keep the ranch afloat, no social life to speak of, a one-night stand with a young woman that resulted in a baby he never knew… till its fourth birthday, years of a tug-of-war just to visit with his child. His father had been hurt so many times that he fought in the only way he knew how. If he didn’t show his emotions, he’d figured he couldn’t be hurt.
His father never used the word “love” in his letters, but Raoul no longer doubted that he had loved him. It was there between the lines. And in his actions.
When he finished the letters, he swiped at his eyes, threw the box on the bed, then opened the door and hollered at the top of his lungs, “Charmaine!”
Within seconds, she came running toward him from the kitchen, her hands all floury. “What? What’s wrong?” She looked his face over with concern, probably noticing the aftereffects of his tears.
“Did you know that my father paid for my college scholarship? The one I was offered after I lost my football scholarship for dropping out of school when you dumped me?” He took a deep breath following his long-winded question.
Her face flushed with guilt. “He asked me not to tell you.”
Secrets! More secrets! “Why?”
“Oh, don’t ask me that now.” She groaned.
“Why?”
“Because then I’d have to tell you why I had to drop out of school.”
That was not the answer he’d expected. His eyes went wide with shock. “What did your dropping out of school have to do with my dropping out of school and my father secretly funding my education, which, by the way, the ranch could not afford.”
“Oh, if you must know, my father—snake that he was and is—pulled the financial rug out from under me. He wanted me to use my influence with you and your father to sell him the ranch, which I wouldn’t do.”
Son of a bitch! Longtime puzzle pieces began to fall into place. “And that’s why you were getting a job in a strip joint?”
“It was not a strip joint, I tell you. But, yes, that’s why I needed to work.” She blushed and lifted her chin so high it was a wonder she didn’t get a nosebleed.