Encounters with John Wayne Ch. 14

Wayne frowned at him, and said, "What do you mean you 'figured I had a thing for her...' how the hell would you know? You've never seen me with her before! Just how the hell long have you been here and just how much did you see?"

Oh shit...he'd just slipped and told Duke he'd seen more than he first let on. He stammered as he tried to figure out what to say. "I...I saw...I saw you...do that thing...with her...like you used to do...with Marlene." Duke asked him what "thing," so he explained, "You know, the thing with your hands on her face...and stroking her cheeks with your thumbs...when you were looking at her just before you kissed her. Marlene was the only other woman I ever saw you do that to, so I kind of figured that you must feel for her like you did for Marlene...am I wrong?" he asked curiously.

Wayne sighed heavily, as he moved to sit in a chair outside the kitchen door next to his friend, not even realizing at first from what he said, that his friend had probably watched him fucking Diana. He said quietly, "No, you're not wrong...but what I felt for Marlene was nothing compared to what I feel for her," as he glanced toward the open door leading out to the patio, where they could just barely hear her humming softly over the running shower.

Then, what his friend had said about seeing him put his hands on Diana's face to stroke her cheeks with his thumbs before he kissed her, registered in his brain that he'd done that just before the last time he fucked her. He looked up at his friend with a frown and asked quietly, "Just how much did you watch after I kissed her?!!" The look on his friend's face told him he'd seen it all. He frowned harder at the man, then whispered fiercely, "Why...?!!! How could you do that to me?!!!"

His friend swallowed hard, he had to tell him the truth; "I couldn't help it, Duke, I was riveted, it was so...it was the most...sensuous...beautiful...erotic...thing I had ever seen..." He had started with a look of fear and sincere regret on his face, but as he ended, he was looking at the Duke in awe. Duke was staring at him with a mixture of anger and confusion, and he was scared that he had just jeopardized their friendship.

Wayne was pissed as hell at his friend; how dare he intrude on them like that! But when his friend described how it had looked to him, he instantly visualized it and realized that, if he had accidentally walked up on a scene like that, he wasn't sure he would've been able to turn away, either. He glowered at his friend as he growled quietly, "I wish you'd had a better sense of decency, but I won't kill you for that unless you ever mention it again." His friend looked a little relieved then asked him how long he'd known her, and when he told him he just met her 24 hours ago, his friend was speechless, just staring at him in shock again.

He shook his head slowly as he started to pour all his fear and frustration into trying to explain to his friend how confused and scared he was. "I know...I know...it's crazy. I don't know why fate picked this moment of my life to throw my true soul mate at me, in the form of a woman almost young enough to be my daughter, and who has agreed to stay with me only for this weekend because she says she would never be able to survive a life with me! And now, I don't know if I'm going to be able to survive a life without her!" His voice was strained, and he leaned forward in the chair to prop his elbows on his knees, and rested his forehead on his hands as he stared at the floor, trying to keep his emotions in check. He'd never felt the need to explain anything about his feelings for a woman to any of his friends before, and it was starting to make him feel uncomfortable, thinking his friend was going ridicule him for this.

He had never seen the Duke look and sound so distraught before, and he knew this was something that he couldn't help him with, other than to provide support to his friend if he needed it. He put his hand on Duke's shoulder and said, "Damn, Duke, I don't know what to say. I've never been that lucky to feel as strongly about a woman as you obviously do for her. If fate had ever seen fit to throw a soul mate my way, I would probably have done exactly the same as you...grab onto her and make it last as long as possible...hoping for it to last forever and never take it for granted. But even if it had turned out to be only for a weekend, I'd at least have had some great memories and dreams to carry me through the rest of my life...they'd sure be better than the memories I have now..." His voice drifted off as he stared over Duke's head and started to feel regret that he'd never found someone to love that much.

Wayne took a deep breath and exhaled slowly when his friend's voice drifted off. His friend had said he didn't know what to say, but what he did say reminded Wayne that it was the same things he'd been trying to convince himself of ever since he'd realized how much he loved her...his friend was wiser than he'd given him credit for. He patted his friend's hand on his shoulder to get him to move it as he stood up to face him, then he looked at his friend seriously and said, "You said just what I needed to hear, thanks. Now, I need you to get out of here before she gets out of that shower and discovers you here, because I know it would drive her away. She agreed to this weekend only on the condition that no one would ever find out so she could preserve her anonymity. So, if I ever hear that you breathed a word about ANY of this to ANYONE..." He looked at his friend as if to warn him of the dire consequences he would face if he ever told anyone, and his friend shook his head solemnly with a look that told him he was vowing to keep this secret.

Then his friend said, "But, this is my house...where am I supposed to go for tonight?"

Wayne thought for a moment then went over to the couch to get his keys out of his pants pocket, and said, "Here, I'll give you the key to my room at the hotel and you can stay there, or you can go to the marina and stay on my boat...which would you prefer?" His friend said he would prefer to stay on the boat, so Wayne gave him his keys to the boat; then he had another great idea. He asked his friend to take the boat out in the morning and bring it here around 10:00 and anchor offshore then come in on the small rubber outboard boat, leave it on the beach and hide somewhere outside until he took Diana out to the boat. Then he could just hang around the house until they got back...he just wanted to take her out for a while, so he'd have another memory of her...on his boat.

His friend smiled and said, "Sure, Duke, no problem." Then they shook hands and he headed toward the front door, just as they heard the shower outside shut off. Wayne looked at him and motioned with his arms for him to hurry and get out, then headed out the open patio door, closing it behind him. He hurried over to the shower and laid the towels aside to open the wooden shower door and walk in just as she was reaching for the door to open it and walk out, and she jumped, not expecting him to be there.

"Oh! There you are!" she exclaimed. "I was beginning to wonder what happened to you...where did you disappear to?" she asked with a slight frown on her face, as he backed her into the shower, closing the door and turning it back on quickly so she couldn't hear the sound of his friend's car leaving from the front of the house.

Then he said, "I...had to go to the bathroom and it took a little longer than I expected." That seemed like a logical explanation to him, and it seemed that she believed it, so he relaxed and stepped under the shower to rinse the sweat and salt water residue from his body. She sat on a corner bench seat and just watched him, with a soft smile on her lips and glowing embers in her eyes as she gazed up and down his body. It still amazed him how much she desired him, and every time he saw her looking at him like that, it made his loins tingle, though that was all it could do at the moment.

He turned the shower off and opened the door, then held his hand out to her to help her stand and led her out of the shower, then handed her a towel and they both dried themselves. Then she wrapped the towel around her body under her arms and tucked it closed, so he wrapped his towel around his hips, like he'd done when his friend caught him by surprise. As they looked at each other, they smiled sexily, both of them liking the way the other looked in nothing but a towel.

Then, she asked him to tell her where the bathroom was because she needed to go; he told her where to find it and then told her he would pour them some glasses of wine and they could relax for a little bit on the patio in the double chaise lounge. She smiled and nodded her agreement, so they turned and went inside and paused at the door to the kitchen to kiss softly, then he went into the kitchen and she headed upstairs to the bathroom. While in there, she found a comb on the vanity and used it to get a few tangles out of her wet hair before they got worse, and then combed all of her hair smooth.

He rinsed the glasses they had used earlier at lunch and poured what was left of the white wine into them and carried them out to the patio. Then he went back inside to get a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket, then back out to the patio and settled himself on the large, comfortable double chaise and lit a cigarette while he waited for her.

She joined him a few minutes later, and as he handed her a glass of wine when she had settled herself beside him, he proposed another toast, "To a weekend that just seems to get better and better...," he said softly in his deep, sexy voice. She smiled and whispered "yes" as they clinked their glasses then drank some wine. Though he felt he had loved her forever, he knew there was still so much about her that he didn't know, and he wanted to know everything. He figured he should just start at the beginning, so he said, "I want to know everything about you...tell me what you were like as a little girl and growing up...please?" he pleaded when he saw her expression of disbelief.

She smiled and reluctantly agreed, asking him for a cigarette to help calm her nerves so she could reveal more of her confusing, emotional childhood and adolescence to him. She knew, once she told him about all this, it was going to make her have to reveal more of the emotional turmoil she felt about what was happening between them, and why she was so scared and convinced she could not have a life with him.

He looked surprised, but handed her a cigarette and held the lighter as she lit it. He noticed her hand was shaking slightly and wondered why she was so nervous. She started talking slowly, and stopped every so often to drag on the cigarette or take a drink of wine. Her voice stayed mostly even, but occasionally, he would hear a slight tremor in it when she would talk about something painful. This was what she revealed to him:

She was the "baby" of her family, born almost 10 years after her last brother, and her father almost spoiled her the way he doted on her. Her mother had been forced into the role of disciplinarian with her, but, even so, she always knew her mother loved her as much as she did everyone else. She wasn't that close to her brothers, mostly because they were all so much older than she, but she was very close to her sister, because her sister was 17 years older and had always been more like a second mother to her. She was closer in age to most of her nieces and nephew, and by the time she was 6 years old, she grew up pretty much as an only child.

Even though her parents had always made her feel loved and repeatedly told her that she was pretty and smart, she never really believed them, because most of the kids in her neighborhood always teased her and picked on her because she was one of the youngest and smallest in the neighborhood. She took that very personally; she had always felt, as a young girl, that other people's opinions of her mattered more than her own family's, so she went through most of her childhood and adolescence with very low self-esteem. She had only one true friend when she was growing up, who lived across the street from her so they were able to spend a lot of time together, for which she was really thankful.

Her best friend Lynn was the only person, outside of her family, that made her feel like she was a worthwhile human being. Lynn was over a year older and a grade higher in school, and was smarter, prettier, and taller and skinnier than she, and always seemed to attract the attention of more boys than she did. She was a little envious of that, and when her body blossomed to a shapelier figure than her friend Lynn's just before she was 13, she started to use that as her way to attract the attention of boys by dressing to show off her figure. It worked, but boys were only attracted to her because of her body, and when she wouldn't put out for them, they quickly lost interest.

She never seemed to be able to attract any boy who was interested in her as a person; they just wanted to see how far they could get with her when making out. She told Lynn a few years later how upset she was because of this, and Lynn had tried to reassure her that someday, some guy would come along and realize what a wonderful person she was. But Lynn also told her that she wasn't doing herself justice by trying to attract boys with her body and that she needed to relax and just be who she was. The problem with that was, she had no idea who she was.

Not long after that was when she saw her first one of his movies and she was hooked on him. She told Lynn how watching him had made her feel, and she was shocked when Lynn told her she didn't understand what she saw in him. They stayed friends through her junior year in high school, even though she couldn't share her infatuation for him with Lynn; then Lynn graduated and went off to college and they just drifted away from each other, which still saddened her at times. Her senior year of high school was just OK because she didn't have any other true friends, so she had filled the void by doing plays and musicals and going to see as many of his movies as she could...and falling harder and harder for him. That was the main reason why she'd had the impulse to move out here and try to get into the business—just for the chance to meet him.

Her family had disapproved even though they thought she was talented because they were afraid that it would crush her if she wasn't able to make it as a big star. They told her if she intended to go through with it, then she would have to figure out how to come up with the money to pay her way to move all the way across the country. So she found a job working as a secretary in the office of one of the many industrial plants in her hometown and moonlighted as a waitress in a nice restaurant. The waitress job had been a good boost to her self-esteem, because most of the men who came there for business dinners would flirt with her and then tip her well because she would flirt back and give them very good service. "Not that kind of service!" she smiled and said sarcastically when he raised his eyebrows at her.

Her parents let her continue to live with them so she could save as much money as she could, and it took her a little over 2 years to save enough to get out here. Then she packed as many of her belongings as she could into 2 trunks, bought a train ticket, and came to Hollywood with just enough money to pay for a couple months rent on a small furnished apartment and buy groceries for a few weeks until she was able to find a job that would pay her enough to be able to stay. During her job hunting was when she had started to decide from reading the entertainment papers that she didn't like the thought of her life being everybody else's business if she were to become famous.

So, she found the props job at the studio, and she finished with, "And you know the rest of the story." She turned to look at him with a wry smile, then took a last drag on her cigarette and leaned across him to put it out in the ashtray on the table beside him and sat back, slowly exhaling the smoke from her lungs. She felt calmer but a little lightheaded since she hadn't had a cigarette in a while.

He had a slight frown on his face as he had been watching her throughout her whole story, and he had seen the looks of pain that crossed her face when she talked about what a low opinion she had of herself growing up. He wished he could erase those painful memories for her, but then, she probably wouldn't be the person she is now, and she might never have loved him. He realized that, if boys had paid attention to her and discovered how truly beautiful she was, she probably would have never even noticed him or even bothered to see any of his movies. How ironic, it seemed to him, that she had to experience that pain when she was younger in order for it to lead her to him. She was right, everything in life seemed to be connected in some way or another and it seemed that some things happened for very specific reasons. Now, if he could just figure out how to convince her that they could be happy together...always...