A Tale of Two Paramours Ch. 04

"In her mind, Dating is likely tied together with emotional intimacy," the voice in my head suggested. And that was the problem. I was quite sure now that she had agreed to go to dinner because, after our first encounter, she felt something different for me than she had for her previous sexual partners, which meant our dinner was a date.

I glanced over at Jessi and saw that she was still looking down. I reached over and placed my hand on her leg just above her knee, where her skirt had ridden up when she sat down in the car. Jessi looked at me, her gaze intense. I had to look back at the road or I would have been caught in one of her too-long stares. I moved my hand off her leg, but she reached out and grasped it before I could withdraw it completely. We drove along holding hands.

We did not speak the rest of the way to the restaurant, although it was not a comfortable silence. Mainly, I was lost in my own thoughts, and I suspected the young woman beside me was a well. I was on the verge of speaking a few times, but trying to come up with something to say felt more awkward than the silence itself, so in the end I just stayed quiet.

As I pulled into the restaurant's parking lot, I felt Jessi's hand tremble just before she withdrew it from mine. I glanced at her and tried to smile, but she was studying her hands, which were now in her lap.

"Here we are," I said, cringing at how lame my own voice sounded.

Jessi did not respond. I parked and turned off my car, then got out and went around to the passenger side and opened the door for the young woman who was, I now accepted, my date. On the drive to the restaurant, I had acknowledged to myself that I was not going to follow my original plan to put an end to this. And upon that recognition of the real purpose of the evening, my goal had become to make this date as special for her as I could

I offered Jessi my hand. She took it as she stood up but dropped it once she was out of the car. I gestured for her to go first with my right hand as I placed my left hand on the small of her back. However, the young blonde did not move save for a tremor that seemed to run through her whole body. I turned and looked closely at her face. Her eyes were wide and her lips were slightly parted. She looked scared.

"Are you okay, Jessi?" I asked.

Jessi shuddered and blinked rapidly, then turned to me and shrugged.

"I - I - I guess," she stammered.

She then stepped away from my hand on her back, but as I started to drop it, she held out her own. Taking her soft, delicate hand in mine, I led her into the restaurant.

I had chosen a casual, family style restaurant because I had wanted a more public setting for telling Jessi we could not repeat our earlier encounter. Now, I was happy I had made the choice of a more casual restaurant because I thought it would be a less intimidating setting for the petite blonde's first date. Luckily, we did not have a long wait before we were seated facing each other at a small table.

Upon receiving the menus, Jessi immediately buried her face in hers. As with the car ride to the restaurant, we did not speak. I asked her once what she was going to order, but she just glanced up over the top of her menu, her vivid blue eyes wide, and shook her head. I then told her what I thought I would order, but I received no response to that at all. Jessi was clearly not familiar with typical dinner date small talk.

When the waitress came to take our orders, she asked Jessi for her order first. The young blonde started shaking, her eyes wide, as she stared at the waitress.

"Um," she started, but she could not finish. She dropped her eyes and looked at the menu.

"Could we have just a couple more minutes?" I asked the waitress.

"Do you want to order drinks first?" she asked.

"Sure," I replied. "I will have iced tea. What do you want, Jessi?"

Jessi looked at me over her menu, her eyes still wide. She looked lost.

After a few seconds, she blurted out, "Just water."

"Okay. I will be back with your drinks and to take your order," the waitress said, giving Jessi a concerned look before she walked away.

"Shit!" Jessi whispered when the waitress was gone. "I'm sorry, Mark. I am just nervous. I'll be better when I have some water."

"It's okay, Jessi," I tried to assure her. "Do you want me to order for you?"

The young woman across from me seemed to relax a bit and she managed a small smile.

"Yes, please," she replied.

"Not a problem," I told her. "What do you want?"

"A Caesar Salad," Jessi responded before disappearing again behind her menu.

When the waitress came back with our drinks, I ordered for both of us. I had wondered what Jessi would do when the waitress took her menu. I had thought that she would probably just look down at the table, but I was wrong. Without her menu to hide behind, Jessi's eyes darted all over the restaurant. She hunched up her shoulders and crossed her arms. As she started to tremble again, her breathing quickened. Suddenly, she leaned forward across the table, locked eyes with me, and whispered, "Everyone is staring at us."

I took a quick look around the rest of the restaurant, but I did not see anyone even looking our direction.

"I don't see anyone..." I began.

"The waitress was," Jessi interrupted. "She pointed at us and said something to another waitress."

Given Jessi's somewhat odd behavior, I would not have been surprised if the waitress had done exactly that. However, as no one else seemed to be looking at us at all, I tried to reassure my nervous date.

"She is probably just wondering if you are okay, Jessi," I said.

"She doesn't think we should be here together," Jessi snapped back, sitting up. Her eyes began darting around the room again.

"Why would she think that, Jessi?" I asked, watching her.

Jessi focused on me for a moment, and of course she held my gaze just a bit too long before responding. "Because I am too young for you," she explained. "They are thinking bad things about you, but they shouldn't. It's my fault."

It was my turn to stare at Jessi. I had no idea how to respond to what she had just said. Furthermore, she had become even more agitated after saying it. Her breathing was so rapid that she was almost hyperventilating, and she was turning in her chair to try to see the entire restaurant.

We sat there several more minutes, Jessi becoming more and more agitated, before I finally managed to ask, "Jessi, why would they think bad things about us?"

"They know about us," she answered. "They know I am a slut. They know I don't deserve this. They think I tricked you."

"No one thinks anything like that, Jessi," I assured her. "No one knows us. They are not worried about us at all - they are concerned with their own lives."

Again, I was the subject of her stare. The blonde's intense blue eyes were even wider than before, and tears were starting to form in them.

"No!" she exclaimed, a bit too loud. "They are staring. They are talking about us - about me. They know what I am."

"Jessi, calm down. It's okay," I said softly, trying to sooth her. "Why don't you have some water? You said water might make you feel better."

I saw the agitated blonde's lower lip tremble and then tears were streaming down her face.

"They know I am no good for you," she sobbed. "They know."

"Jessi, Honey..." I whispered as I reached out to wipe away her tears.

"I have to go," she sniffed.

Then, louder, Jessi proclaimed, "I have to go!"

With that, the petite blonde stood, grabbed her coat off the back of her chair, and rushed toward the door, past the waitress who was carrying our food to the table. The waitress looked after her, then turned to me. I was standing at the table; I had been ready to follow Jessi, but instead I sat back down and asked the waitress to bring the check and "to go" containers for our food.

"Is she okay?" the waitress asked, her concern obvious.

"She is working through a social anxiety issue," I told the waitress, which was as far as I could tell, the actual truth. We could both see Jessi pacing the sidewalk just on the other side of the restaurant's windows.

"Poor girl," the waitress said before leaving to get the boxes and the check.

When I had boxed up the food and signed the credit card slip, the waitress gave me a bag and a handful of chocolate mints, then said, "Please tell your daughter I hope she feels better soon. Oh, and don't forget her purse."

I hoped my face had not shown my momentary confusion when the waitress had referenced my "daughter." I placed the food boxes in the bag, dumped the chocolate on top of them, and grabbed Jessi's purse.

"Well, she certainly didn't hear what Jessi said to you," a snide voice in my head pointed out as I walked away from the waitress, "or she would have known that she is most certainly not your daughter, even though she is young enough to be."

And that was part of the problem - Jessi was young enough to be my daughter. We might not have felt it that much in class, because there I was her teacher and that was a dynamic in which older was expected. We had also not felt it (at least not as much) at her apartment, perhaps because we had been alone then. But I felt the problem now, as I exited the restaurant, the mistaken assumption by the waitress still fresh in my mind. And moreover, I knew Jessi felt it even worse, and had since even before we arrived at the restaurant.

When I reached my car, I found Jessi sitting on the curb in front of it, her head in her hands.

"Jessi, let's go," I coaxed her, reaching out my hand to her.

The blonde looked up at me, her face streaked with mascara and tears. She nodded, and took my offered hand as she stood up.

Before I opened the door for her, she squeezed my hand once and whispered, "I am so sorry, Mark." She then sat down in the car. I gave her the purse she had left at the able and closed the car door. Jessi just stared straight ahead.

Our drive back to her apartment complex was accomplished in total silence, as was our walk up the stairs to her apartment. However, when we were safely behind her closed door, Jessi sat heavily on the end of her bed and started to sob while repeating the word "sorry" over and over again.

"It's okay, Jessi," I told her, sitting beside her and handing her the bottle of water I had retrieved from her refrigerator.

Jessi took the bottle and drank nearly half of it. She then leaned against me, sniffing as she tried to wipe away her tears. I stroked her hair and tried to comfort her as best I could. After several minutes, Jessi pulled away from me and stood up. She used the back of one hand to wipe the last remnants of her tears from her face before she turned to face me.

Dropping to her knees in front of me and placing her hands on my legs, she said, "I am very, very sorry, Mark. I screwed up everything."

Jessi on her knees in front of me evoked a memory of her mouth on me, of her swallowing me completely, as well as served as a reminder of the selfie of her on her knees that she had sent me a couple of days earlier, followed by the text, "Wanna fuck my face, teach?" But I pushed those thoughts away before my body could respond. The last thing I wanted right now, and the last thing I thought Jessi needed, was for me to be aroused.

I pulled her up and had her sit back down beside me. I then put my arm around her shoulder, drew her close, and kissed her cheek.

"I am sorry that I put you in that position, Jessi," I told her.

The blonde snuggled her head against my chest and sighed.

"You have nothing to be sorry about, Mark," she replied. "You didn't have a panic attack in the restaurant."

I did not say anything, sensing that Jessi had more to say.

"I should've taken my medicine the moment I felt it start," she explained. "But I didn't want you to see me take it - I was afraid you'd think I was crazy. Great plan, huh?"

"I do not think you are crazy," I tried to reassure her.

"Oh no, I'm crazy, Mark," she said, sitting up again so she could look at me. "This was far from my first panic attack. I took my medicine before every one of your classes last semester because I was afraid of what might happen."

"Oh," I said, trying to buy time to come up with something comforting to say to her.

"I also took it before you came over on Monday," she admitted. "It helps me calm down, but it also makes my staring problem worse, so I decided not to take it tonight."

"You do not have anything to explain to me, Jessi," I told her. "It's fine."

"But it's not and I do, Mark," she said, her eyes boring into me. "I have to explain it because I need you to understand."

"Jessi, I understand," I told her.

"No, you don't," she disagreed. "I need you to really understand. I need it because I think I might lo..."

Jessi stopped short, a terrified look on her face. She started breathing rapidly, and I was afraid that she was going to have another attack, even with the medicine in her system. I did not know what else to do, so I pulled her to me and held her close, her head buried between my neck and shoulder.

"It's okay, it's okay," I repeated while stroking her hair.

But I knew it was not okay, not really. My blonde temptress, the young woman I had been unable to drive from my mind even when experiencing some of the best sex of my life with another woman, the young woman who admitted she had social anxiety issues and problems relating to others on an emotional level, had just almost professed her possible love for me. And what made it even further from 'okay' was that I feared that I was not that far from professing the same to her, despite my legitimate concerns about even continuing any relationship with her.

When she had control of herself again, Jessi sat back away from me, this time grabbing my hand and squeezing it.

"Well, fuck,' she murmured. "That cat's out of the bag."

I reached up and wiped a tear from her red streaked eyes.

"Maybe you would feel better if you ate," I said, steering us away from her near proclamation. "I brought the food from the restaurant."

Jessi smiled at me and squeezed my hand again. It was clear she was glad for the change of subject as well.

"Just let me clean up a bit first, Mark," she requested. "My face must be a horrible mess."

"You look fine," I told her, but blonde just shook her head.

"You are too nice," she said, her blue eyes softer than I had ever seen them as she reached up and ran her hand along my cheek.

"I'll be right back," she informed me as she headed to her small bathroom.

When Jessi emerged again from the bathroom, her face was fresh and clean, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. The juxtaposition of her makeup-free face and the youthful hairstyle with her more sophisticated clothing made the young woman look younger to me than I had ever noticed before. I could not take my eyes off of her, even as I internally battled the uncertainty that her more youthful appearance had brought to the fore in my mind.

While she had been cleaning her face, I had unpacked our food set it out on her small table. Jessi walked over to the table, gave me a quick, small smile, and sat down. I took the other chair. As we sat and ate, Jessi started to tell me more what had been going through her mind in the restaurant. I told her again that she did not need to explain anything to me, but she made it clear that she thought she did.

"On the drive to the restaurant, I started to worry what people would think - because of our age difference," she told me, and my internal battle over that exact issue welled up again. "What I was worried most about is that they would think I was your daughter and then be weirded out if either of us did anything overly affectionate."

I decided at that point not to tell Jessi about the waitress assuming she was my daughter. I did not see any reason to exacerbate her concerns.

"Then when we got there,' she went on, "and I saw all the people inside, all I could think about was them looking at us and trying to figure out what you were doing with me. When we sat down, I felt like they were all staring at me, and that they knew I was a slut and that I had tricked you into being with me."

"I asked you to dinner," I pointed out, but Jessi shook her head.

"I know that, but they wouldn't," she clarified. "I was afraid they all would think badly of you because you were with me. I know it doesn't make sense. I often get paranoid during a panic attack. If it is one brought on by being in a group of people, then the paranoia is usually about what they are thinking or saying about me - or in this case, about us."

"I am sorry I put you in that position, Jessi," I said as I reached out and grabbed her hand.

"You didn't know, Mark," she said, and she squeezed my hand as she smiled. "And thank you for letting me get over it on my own - my parents almost never did that. They always tried to talk me through it, but since my mother was frequently the focal point of my panic attacks back then, that never worked. She never got it that I just needed time to calm down. Even after I went on my meds and she knew I had a real problem, she would still try to talk me..."

Jessi's stopped, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

"Sorry. You don't want to hear about my mother. Even my therapist got tired of hearing about my mother."

Then, abruptly, Jessi released my hand, pushed what was left of her salad away from her and announced, "I'm done with this. I am going to go change."

She stood up, turned, walked to her small dresser, pulled out something, and disappeared into her bathroom. I finished my now quite cold hamburger and pondered what she had told me. The panic attack and the associated paranoia fit with character traits I had noticed before, as well as some that she and I had discussed during my last visit. And while the actual experience of her panic attack itself had been troubling, I realized that overall it was not as bad as it could have been. I have a cousin whose panic attacks send her into a dark room by herself for at least a day, if not more, and Jessi's had not been nearly that severe. The young blonde seemed to recover fairly quickly, although I wondered how bad she might be without her medicine.

At the least, the severity of her panic attacks was another factor to consider with regard to continuing my relationship with her. Although, on some level I knew I had made my decision about that issue when Jessi had kissed me before we even left for dinner, and that decision had been cemented by her almost proclamation of possible love. I had no idea where we might be heading, but I knew that neither of us could, or wanted to, deny that we were going somewhere.

"Just be glad you did not tell her you could not see each other anymore while you were at the restaurant," the voice in my head pointed out. "Can you imagine what would have happened?"

Well, of course I could, and I agreed with the voice that I was glad I had not followed my original plan. However, that issue did raise another concern - Jessika. I had promised the brunette I would be careful with Jessi, both for my sake and for Jessika's (and for Jessi's sake too, my conscience added). I did not think Jessi would hurt Jessika or me, but I had enough doubt for it to be a nagging concern.

"You could break it off with Jessika," the voice suggested, but I terminated that line of thought swiftly. I just needed to make sure Jessi knew that I cared for her but that we would not be exclusive as we explored our relationship. As long as I did not actually mention Jessika to Jessi (or vice versa), I thought I could avoid major problems. I would realize some weeks later that these thoughts were evidence of my own hubris.