Sister Golden Hair Delight Ch. 34

I was going to bring in the clinic's psychologist by the end of the day tomorrow.

On the counter top area to the side of my desk were several file folders. For all of Jimmy's insistence on digitizing everything, even he had felt there were some things better left off a computer.

"Please, close the door."

As he closed the door, I pulled out the various documents that I needed him to read and summarize for me. Although his current knowledge was sea warfare, his original degree was in oceanography and that was the ability I wanted to tap.

Indicating him to come closer and putting my hand on his shoulder, I handed him the papers. "Michael, honey, these papers are never to leave this office and the information must never be copied. There are only two copies and we can lose a lot of money if they get lost. I trust you with the information and I want you to work with me every day here from now on."

He looked at me like I had thrown him the last life preserver onboard the sinking ship.

Handing him a clipboard, I told him to read everything through several times, then draw up a flowchart and summarize the information that Jimmy had so painstakingly put down in his tight block printing. I pointed him at the couch. I kept telling myself to get another one; this one had so memories from when Jimmy and I made wild love on it.

Then, I'd have to throw out half the furniture I've been in contact with.

Every now and then, I'd look up and see how Michael was progressing and I was relieved to see that he was already drawing up a preliminary flowchart with colored pencils. I don't know where he got them but it showed the initiative I was hoping for.

When Philip came to escort me on my morning walk, he looked at Michael hard at work but didn't comment.

After yesterday, I didn't want to hike up to the gravesite and so asked him to find another direction to walk. I would have liked to go to the beach and stroll along the sand but he said that it was too wide open and chilly for me.

We went back and forth again about how I was pregnant and not sick or crippled and he said that he would rather die than see something happen to me.

Reaching into his pocket, he said, 'Here," and gave me a package of six Oreos. "Shhh," he whispered, "what they don't know..."

I laughed and taking the cookies from him, let my hand linger just a bit longer than necessary. I recognized I was treading into deep treacherous waters but between missing the caring touch of a strong, intelligent man and just wanting some companionship, I had begun seriously flirting with him. Kissing him yesterday afternoon, though, I knew I had crossed a line that I didn't know how to return to or even if I wanted to.

It wasn't flirting any longer and I recognized I would have to make up my mind what exactly I wanted, if not for his sake, then for Maria's, for mine.

Without thinking, he had gently encircled my waist with his arm and we walked away from the path we had been taking and onto a new one entirely. His two companions trailed about a hundred feet back. He had evidently spoken to them about it for as time went by they were farther and farther back each time we left the building.

While I knew he had questions about my new hairstyle, I also knew he wouldn't say something until he felt I was prepared to talk about it.

As we walked away, I rested my head against his shoulder and the stirrings of deep-seated feelings rose from the depths of my soul like a shuttle going into orbit.

**********

Monday, December 17th

I reached for the bowl of M&Ms that weren't there anymore. By now, everyone around me was on a 'candy' watch making sure that I didn't sneak in chocolates or cookies. They were too observant for my own good and I was left with only chewing gum, which soon hurt my mouth too much to continue.

It's been five months, now and I was no longer able to pretend I could keep up with the work. It was just too damn much between the baby and still thinking of Jimmy. I was also worried about Maria, Michael and now Philip.

The irony about that was Philip was supposed to be the one worrying about me. How much time, I wondered, did he do that; how much time did he just think about me? I knew he did. As our walks became more than just an exercise... our physical closeness... did it mirror our emotional closeness? I was falling in love with him, that I was sure of. Was he falling in love with me or was I just someone he was trying to comfort through a bad time in her life?

Could he possibly, truly be interested in a pregnant woman? A woman, who above all else was his employer? Would he jeopardize his situation by playing with my emotions? And, even though it was California and a diverse cultural environment, would he want to be permanently attached with a black, well, bi-racial woman, one who is bi-sexual? Hard questions hammered my heart. What were the answers?

Moving Michael into Mary's position was a good move. He was smarter than I had given him credit for and the transition was now a smooth one for both of us. Not only was the office running smoothly but he had asked permission to make improvements where he felt they were needed. I guess it was the 'new broom' syndrome.

Mary has been working so hard on the Ventura Project that I demanded she take the rest of the week off and spend more time with her family. I was taking everyone to Hawaii and Maria had her group flip a coin to see who could go and who could stay. She told her second, though, that he'd have to stay and could go with the others in late January. She promised to make it worth his while, she said.

We were scheduled to leave early Thursday, the 20th. Jimmy had told me that early morning take-offs for Hawaii and the western Pacific were in consideration for the pilots. Otherwise, they'd be looking into the sun the whole flight and it would give us an early morning landing time.

Jimmy's death had forced me to look at the time given for personal relationships and realize that they were more important than any business except protecting the country. Jimmy had made that sacrifice and we're all alive but he is gone.

Maria had told me the completely terrifying story but... I still miss my Jimmy and know that he would haunt my life as long as I lived.

In the office, Michael was once again the man that had commanded fighter pilots in every way but as soon as we came home to the apartment, he still tended to revert to a submissive personality. I would talk to Maria about leaving him in her old apartment by himself and let him 'find' himself all over again without our hovering presence.

Maria and I were trying so hard to bring him away from that way of thinking. I was beginning to think it was a lost cause. How could we change almost thirty years of conditioning in just a few months? I had no answer but still refused to give up.

My short life with Jimmy seemed a million years ago. I was afraid that I would lose my memory of him, how he sounded when he whispered his love to me, how he held me when we made love, how his smile looked when he saw me.

The only thing I really had, besides the baby, was the recording he made before he left with Maria for the Pacific. Even there, he had his sense of humor but his love for Miriam, Maria and me was so obvious. It was the main reason that I eventually became lovers with her. We started with him in common and then built our own relationship on that. We had no one else.

She knew about my growing feelings for Philip and I knew about her fear that our love would change. I knew that Philip was obsessed with me, a pregnant woman carrying another man's child. I also knew that Philip had probably guessed there was something between Maria and myself but I wasn't sure if he had reached a final, true conclusion or what he would do about it.

I knew that if we were to move our own relationship further I would have to tell him. It occurred to me that I have known him so much longer than I had known Jimmy.

Had my love with Jimmy been doomed from the start? Our passion had burned hot and fast and seemed too uncontrollable to survive longer than it did.

Why did God take him away from me? Why did God take Miriam away from him? Why did God have Maria suffer those many years waiting for him to welcome her into his arms and love her?

Jimmy had a place in his soul for the three women in his life and I had hoped that I could understand how he did it. Afraid to admit it even to myself, I was in love with Philip. Afraid to admit it but I had no real idea how to tell him about Maria and me and what we were to each other, what we did to and with each other. Afraid that he would never accept it and leave me and I would be alone, again.

It was one of those impossible Southern California December days. The seasonal rains had finally arrived, bringing a small respite to the continual drought the state had been suffering through, the skies were so clear and blue it was as if I had fallen into a tourist picture postcard.

Philip arrived on time to take me for my afternoon 'baby' exercise. This time, I had insisted that we go outside. It was too beautiful a day to stay inside. I wanted fresh air, I wanted to feel the wind on my face, I wanted to smell the ocean. I wanted a taste of freedom, even if it was for only a fleeting moment.

"Philip, let's go for a walk outside, please. As those two will tell you, I do my best thinking when I'm just walking around." Since Jimmy left me, all I can do is walk and think about business matters and what might have been... and Philip. The problem was, lately I was thinking about Philip more and more.

Philip held out his hand, pulled me up from the couch and helped me with my three sizes too large windbreaker. As we walked outside, he handed me a wide-brimmed hat from the table near the door. "Don't want to see you get too dirty, or sunstroke."

He seemed to stare at me a moment too long, a moment too private, straight into the depths of my soul. What amazing hold did he have on me? Was he just a 'rebound' romance also doomed to self-destruct?

**********

My psychologist, the same one that Maria and I had chosen to help Michael rise from his own hell, was convinced that the dynamics of my life were changing too rapidly as I worked to fill the void caused by Jimmy's passing.

"How are things with you today, Alessa?" she had asked as I carefully settled onto the overstuffed chair. Her office looked more like a friendly den than an office. Of course, I knew it was necessary to put her patients at ease.

"Work is all right, if the day had about an extra twenty hours in it. But..."

She surprised me by cutting me off, the first time she ever interrupted my ramblings. "Are you working too hard, Alessa? I'm afraid that you have become so preoccupied with what you have to do that you're neglecting everything and everyone else. What are you going to do when the baby arrives?"

"I... I hadn't really thought about that. It doesn't seem to be real yet, even though I can feel the baby kicking strongly. And I look in the mirror. It's just that..." I really hadn't thought about it... Jesus, what an idiot I was.

I was red-faced with embarrassment.

"Don't worry, we've plenty of time to worry about it, dear. Why did you come, today?"

"I have a personal problem..."

"Alessa, all our problems are personal problems."

"I don't know if I'm doing the right thing or not. There's this man I've been seeing. Am I disrespecting Jimmy... seeing someone? The baby hasn't even been born yet and I'm thinking about someone else."

"Jimmy had been the ultimate 'alpha male,'" as she put it. "Strong women are drawn to strong men, even those women that somehow might have submissive men serving them. It's a natural attraction; strength desires, wants, needs strength. And, woman to woman, I personally think that deep down inside, every woman wants a man to sweep her off her feet, to love her above all else, to bring her to passionate heights unreachable by herself or with a lesser man."

'Wow,' I thought, 'never saw that coming,' but the more I thought about it after I left her office, the more sense it seemed to make.

Why was I attracted to Philip? It was true that we were together several hours each day, rain or shine, indoors or out. Just the happenstance of familiarity had to have something to do with it. Even so, that should have fostered friendship at the most. I was beginning to feel the same way about him as when I saw my Jimmy... my heart beat just a little bit faster, my skin was just a little bit warmer and my breath came so rapidly I could almost faint.

God, I hoped there was more to it than that.

Are all our thoughts and actions just the result of chemical activities running through our bodies? Is everything just so that genes can be passed from one generation to the next without regard to what those genes have created, good or bad?

Is there no such thing as love? Is it just the physical reaction to pheromones? Do we have no choice in who we love?

I could now understand Maria's original relationship with Michael. To discover there were women who matter-of-factly found men to control, to have numerous sexual partners and have their husbands accept and support it, was a new and very strange concept I had never considered. I knew I had led a sheltered life before meeting Jimmy but these revelations brought my ignorance of the world to a completely new level.

I promised myself that I would investigate these things on the 'net when I had nothing better to do, which meant I probably wouldn't get around to it before the baby was born or I forgot about it entirely.

"You are subconsciously seeking your new 'alpha' and Philip is the only one here that fulfills that desire."

"How did you know?" I asked, unaware that I was so transparent in my actions. That explained my feelings for Maria to whom I wholeheartedly gave my submissive love to. How was it, then, that I had these feelings for Philip at the same time? It seemed counter-intuitive.

"Oh, Alessa, I've seen how he looks at you when he thinks no one is watching. More importantly, I've seen how you look at him and act around him. Even now, I can see it in your face. I saw those same emotions when Jim was here.

"Alessa, please be careful. You are so very vulnerable emotionally right now. I would hate to see you make a dangerous mistake.

"Have you spoken to Maria about him? With you two being lovers, I would hope that you've spoken to her about this before now. How do you think this will work out? Are you willing to sexually, emotionally share Philip with her if it comes down to that? Could you justify splitting your affections between the two of them?"

Is that what Jimmy had done? Did he split his affections between the three of us? ...or did he find a way to expand his heart large enough to love all three of us?

She had given me plenty to think about and I felt worse than when I had walked in.

**********

"So, when were you going to tell me," she asked. I looked at Maria and could feel myself blushing. Before I could stammer some stupid response, she smiled at me and said, "Oh, Alessa, I've seen how you've been lately when you come back from your walks. That's all you're doing, right? Wouldn't look to good for the CEO to be..."

"I haven't..." I protested a little too loudly. She acted as if she could look right through me.

"Alessa, I'm happy for you if that's what you want but where does that leave us?" She had become serious in just a second and looked at me waiting for an answer that wouldn't destroy her once again.

Philip had taken Michael downstairs to have lunch and I trusted him not to ask Michael anything that would give Maria or me a problem; when Maria and I had lunch on the days we could, it was just the two of us in my office. It was too much trouble for me to go all the way to hers in the secured intelligence wing.

"Maria.... This is going to sound... well, it shouldn't if you think about it, I think I'm bi. I love you and I love sleeping with you and I love kissing you and I love just being with you. I don't want that to ever change.

"Jimmy opened a new world for me and well... I liked what he did with me and what I did with him and someday, I'd like to do it again... you know, maybe with Philip. I'm sure that he is falling in love with me.

"That doesn't mean that you and I have to change anything... and before you say it will, I'm telling you, 'no, it won't.' We can expand what we already have. When the time is right, I'll... no, we'll explain it to him and if he doesn't want to be part of that, then... well, it will break my heart but he'll have to leave."

"Oh, Alessa... you little love-struck angel."