Chapter 4

Chapter 4

After watching another hour and a half of television, Janet fell silent and a soft, whispering snore came from her side of the couch.  He couldn’t help but smile.  Earlier, he’d found her more than attractive, beautiful and graceful, and after it was “out in the open” he could admit to himself that he had found her as sexually appealing as she knew she was.

Now, she looked like a little kid who’d tried to tay up all night just to see the sun rise.

He shook her foot gently.

“Janet.  Janet.  Wake up.”  She mumbled incoherently and opened her eyes, absently wiping a thin trickle of drool from the corner of her mouth and he held back a soft wave of laughter.

“Wha…Did I fall asleep?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“I’m sorry Rob.”

“Not a problem.  Here, I’ll help you to bed.”

“Yeah, thanks.”  He helped her to her feet, holding her arm as she struggled to find her balance.

“Where to?”

“Just down the hall there.  Gimme a second here.”  She eyed the couch sleepily for a moment and finally noticed the remote sitting on the coffee table.  She turned off the television and the lamp, and then started haltingly down the hall, making sure Rob was with her.

They reached her bedroom, and she looked up at him, eyeing him with playful suspicion for a moment.  “If I invite you in for a second, you’re not going to think I’m going back on what I said earlier, are you?”

“No, of course not,” he lied.

“Liar.”  She smiled though.  “It’s okay; I’m not going back on what I said, but if you can keep that in mind, you can come and tuck me in.”  She turned towards the door, paused, and turned back.  “I almost forgot,” she said as she looked up at him again.

In that brief moment, looking into eyes that he could now see were as deep a green as any pine forest had ever been, he felt a quick, nauseating vertigo, as though looking down from a great height into a sea of emeralds, though much clearer and darker than any gemstones his twenty-one years had shown him.  She grabbed his hand lightly, pulling him from the sea he was happily drowning in, and placed her other hand gently behind his head.  Before he knew what was happening, their lips were touching gently, firmly and lovingly, in a kiss he would measure all future kisses by.

“That’s for a wonderful date, Rob.  I had a great time tonight.”  He briefly wondered where the words were coming from before realizing that she had pulled away.  His mind raced, searching hundreds of great movie quotes for the perfect line to seal this night with.  Finally it had one, but his mouth betrayed him.

“Me too.”  Idiot, he thought.  Surely, out of all the movies where a beautiful woman surprises a guy with a kiss, there had to be one-just one-line that was a little better than “Me too.”

Janet didn’t seem to care though; she smiled up at him again, and gave him another, quick and light kiss.  “I’m still not going back on what I said though,” she said as she turned back towards her bedroom door.

Part of him hoped she was lying, just being coy.  He found the rest of him hoped it too.

“Wait here a second while I change.”  She shut the door gently.

“Sure,” he said, as though there were really much of a choice in the matter.

He looked at the walls of the hallway, sparsely decorated but with a couple of pictures hanging slightly off-center.  He adjusted one of a happy, older couple he assumed were her parents, sitting in front of a tree, holding each other comfortably.  Another he left crooked, one of a girl that looked like a slightly older version of Janet sat smiling peacefully in a swing at some park he didn’t recognize.  Lisa, that’s her name, he reminded himself, assuming that the girl in the picture was Janet’s sister.

There were other pictures and hangings adorning the walls, but none of guys, other than whom he had figured was her father.  At least he didn’t have to worry about an overly protective brother assaulting him.

The door clicked open behind him, and Janet peeked her head into the hallway modestly.

“One more second.”  She ducked back into her room, and he could hear her climbing into bed.  “Okay, come on in,” she called, and he went through the still-open door.

The room was mostly what he’d expected: some clothes lying on the floor and over the back of a chair, a few crystal unicorns and similar novelties, a light floral patterned bed set, standard post-teenage fare.  No posters of teen idols or the male equivalents of unrealistically proportioned females adorned the walls; a calendar of puppies hanging over an aging white metal and wood desk was about the closest to “girly” decorations as she seemed interested in.

She reached over and turned on the bedside lamp.  “Could you hit that switch?”  She indicated the light switch behind him, and he turned and flipped it off.  “Okay, thanks.  Come here.”  He sat down next to her, mildly nervous and yet completely comfortable at the same time.

He wanted to say something, anything to keep the night from dying the painful, awkward death of a first kiss.  Instead, he studied his shoes.  He wanted to kiss her again, and while he had to admit that it was at least partly to make her rethink her early assurances against an intimate encounter, he also wanted it solely for the sake of the kiss.  He realized she was humming, an old song that wasn’t that far from his mind either.

“That’s a pretty song,” he said.  He looked up and saw that she was staring at him intently, a placid, knowing smile on her face.  “If you ask me nicely, I might play it for you some time.”

“Only if I can call you Sam when I ask.”

“Only when you ask me to play it again.”

“Of all the coffee shops, in all the towns, in all the world, you had to walk into mine.”  He was silent for a moment.

“You’re wrong though.  The song, I mean.  That wasn’t just a kiss.”  The words came out more seriously than he’d intended, but still she looked at him peacefully.

“Wasn’t it?”  He only looked at her in response, not trusting his mouth to keep from ruining the moment.  She took his hand and gently pulled him closer.  “I don’t think it was either.”  Her voice was soft, seductive, and driving him crazy with a desire he’d never felt before, not of that magnitude.

He looked in her eyes and saw a sudden fragility, a vulnerable ripple in the deep green sea as she leaned in closer to him.  Janet put her arms around his neck and kissed him again, more patiently but more affectionately as well.

After what seemed both hours and only seconds, she ended the kiss and rested her head on his shoulder.  He held her, enjoying the soft, warm feathers of her breath on his neck.

“Rob?” she whispered into his ear.

“Yes, Janet?”  She pulled away, and he looked into her eyes again, eyes still filled with heartbreaking vulnerability.

“You’re still not getting any.”  He laughed in spite of himself, and she smiled.  The frailty had left her eyes now, and he was thankful.  He didn’t know if he could stand to see it much longer.

“But,” she continued, placing a hand on his forearm, “I’d appreciate it if you would hold me for a while until I go to sleep.”

“I would be honored to,” he replied with a light hearted formality.  He took off his shoes as she edged over to the other side of the bed.

“By the way,” she said as he lay down next to her.  “You were wrong too.”  He looked at her curiously.  “No one ever asks Sam to ‘play it again,’ Ilsa just asks him to play it.”  He smiled at her.  She laid her head on his shoulder, and it fit as though they were two halves finally combined.  He stroked her hair gently as they lay in comfortable silence.

“Sleep well, Janet,”

“Goodnight, Rob.”  He could tell by her muffled tone she was already mostly asleep, and he lay there, running his hand gently through her soft, black hair until he too fell asleep not long after.

He woke in darkness, not realizing he’d been asleep.  A certainty that the night had been a dream struck him with almost painful force.  Janet stirred softly, warm at his side, assuring him that she had been real at least.  At some point in the night, she had merely woken and shut off the lamp, not wanting to disturb him, let alone make him leave.

He smiled in the darkness and pulled her closer.<–>