Taylor Made Owens (15 page)

With an expression that combined incredulity with distress, he tried, “No way.”

“Listen, Bobby,” she said stepping up close to him, clutching his forearm and staring into his eyes, “It’s true. I let him have his way with me last month.”

So crestfallen that it looked like he got an instant sunburn, he backed away from her. “How could you do that!” he screamed with so much passion and volume it startled Kristen. He was close to tears. In her eyes, his visceral reaction revealed the love he had for her, which was unexpected but wonderful. It also exposed his double standard, which was infuriating.

“How could I do that?” Kristen responded vehemently. “You have no right to be upset at me. How many women have you had? How many did you have in the past few days?”

“One, about twenty times!” he said, wanting to get her back.

“And you have the nerve to get angry with me?” she returned, with fury. “I can’t believe what an unmitigated hypocrite you are!” Wanting to drive her message home, she continued, “Do you feel the pain now? That horrible sickly feeling in the pit of your stomach? That’s how I feel every time I find out you’ve been with a woman, and you just stand there and tell me you’ve banged a woman twenty times as if it’s nothing to me. Well, I laid him five times and I loved it!” she lied.

“You set yourself up to me as someone immaculate, as someone above everyone else, and I believed it,” he said. “You were my girl on a pedestal, the only person I really respected. Now I see you’re just like everyone else.”

“It’s not as if it was a one-night stand. I’ve been seeing him for three summers. He’s a captivating man.”

“And what am I to make of that, Taylor? That I have nothing to worry about because you love him?”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, fearing the ominous turn that the quarrel was taking. “I never said I loved him.”

“You must love him passionately if you made love to him; that’s the standard you set for yourself.”

That stumped her. The irony was palpable. She’d stopped Dominic because she’d wanted to preserve her virginity for the man she loved passionately, the man standing in front of her. She wanted to admit she didn’t go all the way with Dominic, but it would just seem like a lie by this point. “Bobby, um, I—”

“You’ve said it yourself: it’s about love, not sex, and I’ve said it’s the opposite.”

“Right, and you’ve made it clear you don’t love me,” she rejoined, taking back the offensive. “Do you expect me to stay on some stupid pedestal you’ve put me on while you fool around with anyone you please, and I stay chaste just in case you decide to start loving me?”

“That sickly feeling in the pit of your stomach: How bad might it be for you if I loved the woman I slept with?” Robert said despondently. She couldn’t respond to the question and began to panic about the destination of the path she chose. He continued, bitterly, “Don’t worry about the pedestal business. You’re off it forever. I’ll never feel the same about you again. You’ve made your choice and sealed it with a screw. I’ll never love you, but now that I know what kind of a girl you are, stop by any time if you want some sex.”

She slapped him hard across his already bruised cheek. As he grimaced in pain she grimaced in horror that she’d so mindlessly succumbed to her violent impulse. Disloyal love inspires hostility even in the most gentle of souls.

Rubbing his cheek, he finished, “Get out of here. Go marry Dominic if he makes you so happy.”

“Maybe I will!” spurted the girl petulantly as she rushed out of the basement and the house.

B
oth teens were shaken to the bone by the contretemps that ended so forcefully. It was hard to see at that juncture how they could ever reconcile. Kristen was understandably disobliged by his duplicitous reaction, but inconsolable about the real possibility that she’d lost him forever. Despite her tender years, she would have married Robert in an instant if he had but asked, something that wouldn’t change until he did ask.

Robert’s world was turned upside-down. Maybe he
had
loved her, he thought, being so dismayed by what had happened, but his object of affection was despoiled. Like a pristine mountain lake befouled with a ton of sludge, he didn’t want to see it anymore, although he would dip into it if invited. The thought of that sludge sullying his angel was enough to drive him to distraction. He envisioned them naked together, in each other’s arms, in the throes of passion, and he was overwhelmed with angst. He pictured Dominic’s hands caressing different parts of her body, and he cringed. He imagined her moans of ecstasy, and he felt sick. For the first time, Robert Owens understood the emotional pain he had caused Kristen. He regretted it, but the crucial difference, he told himself, was that he wasn’t in love with the women he’d had. He didn’t know that she wasn’t in love with Dominic.

To make this distinction manifest to Kristen, he decided to court her cousin. He phoned Jennifer, told her he had given up Kristen, and asked her come and see him. Delighted to hear that and hoping it signaled his final surrender to her, she agreed to come the next day. What she didn’t tell him was that she was planning to run away and stay with him. Her home life was worse than ever. She despised Jordan, who’d resumed his suggestive behavior with her—and had even rubbed against her breasts once. She was failing grade twelve. Regardless of the costs, she felt she had to get out of that situation. Robert’s call was the impetus she needed to take this step.

Telling her mother she was going on a school field trip for the weekend, she went to Robert’s on Friday afternoon. She told him she planned to stay the weekend.

The minute she got into his room, she took off her clothes. “Let’s make love right now,” she insisted as she took off his pants. “My period is due in a couple of days, and I want to get of much of you as possible before then. You won’t have to use a rubber.”

The artful creature lied. Her period came like clockwork every month, and it was due in nine days.

She was acting weird, he thought, but she was as stunning as ever. Just gazing at Jennifer had a way of making him forget about Kristen—and everything else. Sex with this superb creature is inherently good, he felt, like being elevated to a plane of existence above heaven. And God said, “Be ever good, devote your life to helping the poor and cure a hideous disease, and thou shalt be granted a roll in the hay with Jennifer Taylor.” Jennifer made an exception for the boy she loved.

They went to a dance at her old high school on Saturday night and caused a bit of a sensation, so news would get to Kristen.

The following Monday, Keri Knight, the school gossip who laughed after everything she said, stopped Kristen in the school hall to observe her reaction when she told her, “Like your cousin and that Owens boy were all, like, lovey-dovey at the dance Saturday night, tee hee hee. She was, like, so into him on the dance floor, like French kissing him and feeling him all over, the teacher had to separate them twice, tee hee hee.”

Thinking this signified his determination to get her back in a way that would hurt the most, Kristen reacted immediately with bulging eyes and gaping mouth. Keri smiled.

“He’s, like, a real player, eh? Tee hee hee.”

Kristen excused herself and hurried away. Within the hour, Keri had relayed the scene to all her acquaintances. “So I’m like, your boyfriend was at the dance with your cousin, and Kristen’s like, ‘Oh, my God!’ and I’m like, ‘He was practically making it with her on the dance floor,’ and she’s, like, all red and ready to cry or something, and I’m like, ‘He’s a real jerk,’ and she’s like ‘I have to go to class,’ but she, like, runs off to the washroom to cry I’m sure, tee hee hee.”

By the time the scandal mill finished churning that day, one story had it that Kristen’s boyfriend had done it with Jennifer right on the dance floor, and learning of this, Kristen had hung herself in the girls’ washroom, and another had it that Kristen’s boyfriend had knocked up her cousin, and that the couple were soon to be married. Kristen was comfortable the first rumor was without foundation, but the second one … well, Keri was in her glory telling everyone, “Kristen’s like ‘No! It can’t be!’ and I’m like, ‘That’s what everyone is saying,’ and she’s, like, ready to die and I’m, like, ‘There’s other fish in the sea,’ but she’s, like, all choked up, and she couldn’t say a thing, and her eyes were, like, all watery, boo hoo, and she, like, walks away in a trance, tee hee hee.”

To maximize Kristen’s anguish—and Jennifer was game for that—the two went to see Kristen that same Monday. “You’re not upset we’re seeing each other exclusively are you, cuz?” Jennifer said. “Because I know you have Dominic and all.”

She was fawning all over Robert, the way teenage girls do when they’re infatuated with a boyfriend: smiling at him; continually kissing him on his face, neck, and chest; inclining her head to his, taking his hands and placing them on her waist; clasping her hands behind his neck and staring desirously at him; and moving slowly against him as if she were making love with her clothes on. He was playing it cool, the way teenage boys do when they have a girl wrapped around their finger, but anyone could tell how much he was enjoying the attention.

Kristen looked on trying not to let on how perturbed she was. At least there was no evidence the two were engaged, which was an enormous relief. It helped her to seem convincing when she said, “I’m not upset in the least.”

“Why would she be?” Robert added. “She wants to marry him.”

“Oh, you don’t know anything, jerk!” said the not-upset-in-the-least girl.

“I know she chose Dominic over me by throwing the two of us together to do battle over her. She thinks she’s goddamn Helen of Troy. He beat me and he got the spoils—or, should I say, the spoiled?”

Jennifer sniggered and placed his right hand on her bottom.

“Oh, you’re such an ass!” Kristen hollered. “I told you I didn’t set that up, and I meant it. And Dominic did not spoil me. I’m still a virgin!” she screamed at him. He gaped at her, wondering what the truth was.

“I never knew what you saw in Dominic, Krissy,” said Jennifer, as she sat Robert on the couch, sat sideways on his lap, put her arms around him, and played with his hair. “To me, he’s creepy and a little effeminate.” She kissed his forehead, nibbled on his left ear, and rubbed her nose against his.

“What? When have you ever met him?”

“It’s a big beach, cuz. He made several passes at me a couple of summers ago. The last time, he even offered me a gold bracelet with diamonds, exactly like the one you’re wearing.” Kristen grasped her bracelet. “I can’t stand him, and I knew you wanted him, so I’ve always told him to get lost. You can have him. I got the real jewel,” Jennifer said, sensually sniffing along his collarbones and up his neck, as if she were getting ready to make a feast of him.

The born seductress reveled in Kristen’s envy. She knelt between his legs, leaned her stomach against his crotch, and moved rhythmically against him, kissing him feverishly. “Naughty boy. I can feel how much you want me,” she purred. Kristen turned away in dismay. “I want you, too. Let’s go to my old room and make love.”

“No! Get out of my house!” roared her distraught cousin.
Why do I put up with that jackass?
Kristen asked herself after they left.
Why do I love him? He causes me nothing but pain
, she went on, watching through her window as the two walked toward his house, Jennifer with her head on his shoulder and arm around his waist, Robert with his arm around her waist. But love has never been logical; it’s biological, emotional and maybe even spiritual.

She found herself walking by his house the next day hoping not to see Jennifer’s car. It was there.
He can’t really be in love with her, can he?

No, Jennifer and Robert were not to be—for the time being, anyway. She desperately needed love and sought it from Robert. Now that they’d been to see Kristen, it was just a matter of time before word got to her mother about where she was. She had to make her move soon. Lisa called to inform Kara, but Kara said, “I give up! Let her do what she wants.” Bill then called his brother, who made plans to fly in on Wednesday.

He’d better ask me today
—
or else
, Jennifer declared to herself on Tuesday. With two tests to write, Robert had to go to school that day. Nervous about the showdown she was about to force with him, she got drunk while he was at school. Upon his arrival home, she wasted no time and minced no words. She blurted out, “I love you. Please marry me. Please ask me to be your wife.”

“What?” replied the shocked man. “You’re drunk out of your mind. I’m not marrying you or
anyone
any time soon. I told you this in August. We’re only seventeen, for Christ’s sake.”

“I am drunk, but I’m not lying. I need you. Please ask me to marry you.”

“No, Jenny.”

Now crying, she exclaimed, “I ran away from home. I can’t go back. I hate my step-father and my mother. I’m desperate. If you turn me away, I’ll die. I’ll kill myself!”

“Don’t you dare play the suicide card with me. You think a marriage made on a threat like that could possibly last? You need help. Talk to a counselor.”

“Oh, screw you!” said the brokenhearted girl. “I hate you! All you want from me is my body.” She hurried to the bathroom to empty her stomach.

He called the Taylor house. Bill answered. “Mr. Taylor, it’s Bob Owens. Jenny’s here. She’s drunk, and she’s threatening suicide if I don’t marry her. She needs help. Can you come over here right away?”

“I’ll be right there,” he said, rushing out to his car. Within a minute, the livid young lady left the bathroom and headed to the front door. Robert stood in her way. “Get out of my way,” she shrieked. “Move or I’ll scream!” He stood there uncomfortably. Jennifer came at him, scratched his arm and tried to kick him in the groin. He blocked it. She started screaming. “I’ll call the police!”

“Here they are. They certainly are responsive to you,” he said, trying anything to lighten the mood, as Bill came into the house.