"Damn." Jenny and Tom thought simultaneously.
Jenny knew she had to try to
play it off, and quickly, for to do otherwise would cause Tom more pain than
she was willing to inflict.
"Hmmm?
What's going on?" she hastily pulled herself out of the chair and into a
standing position, throwing in an arm stretch for good measure. "Oh my gosh! Did I fall asleep? What time is it?"
She stared at Tom, willing him
to buy her act while at the same time waiting for an answer. He had been
staring at Jenny, watching her features with a look of open speculation. He
finally noticed that she had stopped speaking and that she seemed to be waiting
for him to say something. Belatedly he remembered what she had asked and looked
down at his watch.
"It's 8:35."
"Already?
Wow. Well let's get going then, shall we? We don't want everyone wondering
where we are."
And with that she breezed out
the door leaving Tom with no choice but to follow. Thankfully he seemed to be
willing to let the matter drop without comment and to follow her out to the car
without incident. Of course that was based on appearances, which in this case
Jenny was all too willing to judge on.
[[[[[]]]]]
In actuality he was stunned,
and more than a little unnerved to hear his girlfriend call out another guy's
name. It could've been worse though, he tried to tell himself, it could have
happened during--no! No way! Tom slammed his mental brakes down hard and fast on
that one. For one thing, it's not as if they'd ever done anything like that.
And it's not that Tom never thought about it, either. It's just he always
thought he'd have time to work on that aspect of their relationship later. He
had been listening to people tell him that he and Jenny were going to be
together forever for so long that he'd accepted it as truth without question.
And since they were going to be together forever he had plenty of time now to
devote to other things--like himself. He always thought Jenny would be there.
Not that he was completely
dense--he knew how other guys looked at Jenny, even if she seemed unaware. But
Tom had always been there to make sure every guy knew who Jenny was with. He
thought he had his bases pretty well covered. He never even considered that she
would like anyone else. He heard the girls at school tell Jenny repeatedly how
lucky she was to have Tom, what a great guy he was, how envious they all were.
He always agreed with their assertions and he figured before all this that
Jenny did too.
He had been working at
planning their future life for some time now. He had lettered in three sports
and was so good at athletics that scouts from some of the biggest schools in
the country were keeping in touch with him regularly. Once he decided on a
school he was going to let Jenny know so she could go with him. Then he would
major in sports administration or journalism--something that would lend itself
well to a background in athletics. Of course he wouldn't have a chance to use
his degree for at least fifteen years--that's the minimum amount of time he
expected to be able to make a lucrative salary as a professional athlete. And Jenny? She would be at every game cheering him on like
always. They would get married after college, preferably during the off- season
after his first year as a pro. Their honeymoon would be incredible--an extended
version of the wedding night. Speaking of the wedding night--"Wait a second! Those are the same types of thoughts you
were trying to avoid earlier. Stop the madness!" he rebuked himself
silently.
But the madness wouldn't stop.
His mind kept producing one image over and over again. It was this image that
made Tom doubt the future existence of a wedding night
with Jenny for the first time in his whole life. Playing over and over again in
a continuous loop was the memory of Jenny kissing Julian at the end of the
first Game.
When Julian had said the deal
needed to be sealed with a kiss Tom had expected Jenny to protest, try to twist
her head and offer her cheek as a substitute, something like that. But instead
she had turned her face up without hesitation and offered her lips freely.
Tom's brain kept replaying the length of the kiss in agonizing slow motion. He
had noticed that it was Julian who had ended the kiss.
His mind had the look in
Jenny's eyes afterwards burned into its core. While her lips formed a soft pout
of wonder her eyes held an unguarded look of want. Jenny had responded to
Julian in a way she had never responded to Tom. And that irked Tom to no end.
Guys in the locker room were
prone to talking about their near-conquests all the time. They told stories of
how hot some girl made them and that the need to touch them was all they could
think about to the point of finding themselves in pain from it. There were
tales of guys who were so far gone it was all they could do to be content with
simply looking at a certain girl. More often than not they longed to drag her
into the nearest closet for a demonstration of their lustful urges. And of
course all the stories stated that the girl felt the same way, usually in fact
she was feeling a desire far more potent. There was talk about the moans and
the whimpered pleas uttered in moments of passion, and of looks in a girl's
eyes that heightened the level of excitement more efficiently than words.
While Tom listened to the talk
he had always simply assumed he and Jenny had a purer kind of love than that of
the locker room. He thought he and Jenny were above all that nonsense, that
what he felt when he kissed her was real, and better than all the talk he
heard. Of course he believed that it was just that--talk. He never imagined he
was missing out on anything. He assumed that their wedding night would be an
expression of their perfect love, unlike anything he had heard about or seen in
the media. He never thought he was supposed to be practically begging for Jenny
to go farther and farther in physical demonstrations of love, that he should
have intimate acts be pretty much at the forefront of his mind. He didn't
believe that he would never feel complete until it happened and that once it
did he would feel compelled to always be on the lookout for a way to guarantee
a repeat performance.
Tom had never bought in to any
of it until he saw Jenny and Julian kiss.
At first his brain refused to
accept the picture of Jenny kissing someone else as real. That was hard enough,
but for his brain to grasp that Jenny enjoyed it was another matter entirely.
From the moment she opened her eyes and let Tom see the emotion there he had
been in the grips of a jealousy which frightened him with its intensity. He
found a small sliver of comfort in the knowledge that Jenny had been as caught
off guard as he was--otherwise she surely would have kept her expression
neutral instead of displaying her emotions for everyone to see.
He had wanted to kiss Jenny in
the car before the second Game to see if he could feel something new and
intense. He wanted to see a look in Jenny's eyes that suggested she'd be all
right to test the boundaries of their physical relationship. He didn't know how
to make it happen and so he had just leaned in and willed it to be so. But then
that song came on and he knew she was thinking of Julian by the look in her
eyes and he broke off the attempt. He left that incident knowing another truth
as well--passion, chemistry, whatever name you put to it, it
just happens. There are no instructions to follow no set of steps to take, and
only one rule to remember--it either happens between two people or it doesn't.
And sometimes when it happened
it was without rhyme or reason. Tom knew logically that he and Jenny were ideal
candidates--they were planning on spending their lives together after all--yet
for some reason when Fate stepped in to introduce passion it was in the form of
Julian, not Tom.
So where did that leave Tom?
He and Jenny had both found out their relationship was lacking at the same
time. But Julian was out of the picture now and Tom and Jenny were left
to--what? Did they want to try to patch things up? Hope that Jenny would
someday learn to respond to Tom the way she did to Julian? Or did they break up
and pray they both found someone else? Someone they never even knew they were
looking for?
[[[[[]]]]]
Thankfully these thoughts were
keeping Tom occupied on the drive over to the party so Jenny could get lost in
her own world. She never knew she was living in a world without passion--never
understood what she'd been missing until Julian took her into his arms. He had
told her she was missing something and asked if he could show her what it was
and he did just that.
Her heartbeat was still racing
from this latest dream. There was a very small, almost miniscule part of her
that was glad she had woken up when she did. That part of her was scared of
where things had been heading. If she hadn't woken up it would have been up to
Julian to stop things from going too far--Jenny became pretty much mindless
when his lips touched hers. And what exactly was too far?
With Tom Jenny had never
needed to establish any kind of boundaries--he had done that for her. And she
never felt a need, or more precisely a desire, to push those limits. There was
a dire need for boundaries, and fast, preferably before the next dream. Jenny
had a nagging thought that continued to permeate her consciousness--she was
close to being a slave for passion in her dreams, but would she ever find
anything to rival it in her waking hours? If so with who?
Should she try to repair the damage to her relationship with Tom and hope that
someday she could feel these feelings for him? Or should she and Tom break up
and try to find new love with new people?
As they pulled into the
driveway Jenny put the thoughts from her mind with a force of will. She was
here to have fun and not to plague herself with distressing thoughts. She
didn't find it too hard to focus on something else for the night. She knew she
would have to return to the painful subject soon because of one indisputable
fact--in a dream-state or not--with Julian the feelings were so intense they
couldn't be anything but real.
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AN: I hope that someone is still reading this besides me. If you are out there let me know! Until next time.Disclaimer: I know I own nothing besides the plot. I'm not kidding myself.