Re-Discovery Ch. 01

"I heard you were back in town," I heard the voice from behind me and turned to see who it was.

The person I saw seemed familiar but in a different sort of way. She had grown up over the past years but still remained the same in a way. I smiled a small smile and turned back to my booze.

"For a little while," I said as I slammed back the shooter of Tequila. I had two more lined up. Why should I pay any attention to Miss Popular when she'd known me for more than fifteen years and never paid me any attention in all that time?

But seeing her only brought the pain even closer to the surface now. Miss Popular, whose actual name was Jacqueline, had been Renee's closest friend.Yes, Renee, my soul cried out quietly.Why did you have to leave me? Why did you have to go? But then again that question was one that she, the only love whom I had ever known, could not answer. It was not as if she had left of her own volition.

Seeing her high school friend only made it harder. This was partially the reason why I had stayed away all that time, coming home only to bury her. This was my home. There were too many lingering memories...things that would never go away...the theater where I took her on a date...the road that we used to drive to get to the lake on the weekends...the park where I would lay with my head on her lap, reading her poetry during the springtime...

So many glimpses that were in living color, yet would never leap from the canvas of my memory. They would never be again.So why should I come home? My only home was solitude. My only friend was the loneliness that seemed to surround me. And the tequila comforted me.

I smiled ironically after chasing the Tequila with a beer. I turned to see that she was still standing there. The woman was interrupting the drunk that I had planned. Shaking my head, I turned back to the bar and slammed back the next shooter in line, feeling the effects of the alcohol washing over me. I loved that feeling. It was comfortable for me.

It seemed like the only warmth that I felt these days came from the bottle. I shivered at the thought, trying to remember what it was like to feel something else beside the cold emptiness. I couldn't recall what it was life. That was what life had turned into for me.

Pissing me off all the more, Jacqueline sat down next to me and stared at me. I ignored her. I took a long pull from my beer as I spent another night chasing ghosts.

"I was so sorry when I heard about Renee," Jacqueline said quietly as she made herself comfortable inside my silent requiem without an invitation. I remained silent. Why were words necessary?

"I went to her funeral and saw you from the back before I slipped away," she said with what seemed like a tear in her eye. "It seemed so private."

She fell silent. "I didn't want to intrude."

Why did I even bother coming home? I asked myself. I had been gone for five years and now that I was back, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I didn't belong here anymore. This was no longer my home.

All my supposed friends were mere strangers and family were only those with the same last name as mine. My friends were waiting for me on the field of battle. My family now was waiting for me in the foxhole for my return. That was my home now. That was where I belonged.

As I slammed the empty shot glass onto the bar, Jackie-Jacqueline-picked up the remaining shooter and tossed it back in one swallow. I looked at her stunned. She was always a little miss goodie two-shoes. She never drank and never swore. She had the brains of a rocket scientist and the looks of a model. She was perfect. Why the hell she was sitting next to me in a dingy beer and shot bar was beyond me.

But there she was and she wasn't going away.

Jacqueline slammed the shot glass down on the bar.

"Looks like all your booze is gone now, Jimmy," she said with a faraway look in her eyes. It was a look that I was familiar with. I'm sure that I've had it before; and I recognized it from the faces of other soldiers, warriors, who somehow found a way to escape in their mind to somewhere else, if even for just a moment.

Before I could order up another line of shooters and chasers, Jacqueline's voice broke in again. "I got booze back at my house. It's free and you can crash on my couch."

Leaning over to her slowly, I examined her in a near-drunk state without speaking a word. Her bottom lip trembled under the scrutiny. Never before, I thought, had she ever been so studied. She seemed uncomfortable but she did not move.

"And what's in it for you?" I asked quietly with sarcasm and bitterness. I had grown suspicious in my age. I would have laughed had I thought about it more. I was only twenty-four, but combat has a way of aging a man.

"Maybe I don't want to be alone," she said so quietly, I could barely hear her.

When her hand reached out slowly, tentatively, and touched my cheek, it felt like fire touching the ice of my skin, the first sunlight to shine upon an icy field after a long cold winter. But even before I could analyze her touch, she drew back as if the touch burned.

Unsteadily I stood up and she followed suit.

Twenty minutes later I found myself in her apartment that stood atop an old storefront on Main Street. What I found was not what I had expected. While she went to the kitchen to get the bottle of booze, I explored, for the first time seeing someone whom I'd known for more than fifteen years.

I could tell her favorite color was green. So was mine. Her couch was a deep forest green. Her border on her walls was green as well. It looked comfortable. It felt warm here. Somehow I could tell that it wasn't simply the heat from the booze that I had been drinking.

What amazed me most were the books that were on the two five-shelf book cases next to her computer desk. All the titles and authors were familiar to me. Rudyard Kipling. Edgar Allan Poe. Emily Dickinson.Canterbury Tales. All familiar...yet so distant.

I found an 1897 print ofShakespeare's Works and I pulled it off the shelf and felt the leather cover. I smiled to myself feeling the book in my hand. There was comfort in books, in the words. I could shut myself off from the world and didn't have to face it.

Yes, I thought. I was comfortable in the silence of the words.

"You've found my secret," Jacqueline softly said from behind me.

When I turned around, I saw her holding a bottle of Tequila in one hand and a pair of shooters in the other, leaning against the wall next to the door that led into the kitchen. Her smile was full of warmth and I couldn't help but return it.

Does she know how empty I am inside? I asked myself.Are my eyes smiling now or am I going through the motions?

"I never figured you for a fan of Shakespeare, Jacqueline," I said with a grin.

"There's a lot about me that I'm sure you don't know," she replied, smiling defiantly at me.

The smile I returned was uncomfortable. There was something unsaid there that I was left to ponder. I returned the book to the shelf, trying to make myself busy. This was unsteady ground for me. I've never been here before.

"Call me Jackie," I heard her say.

"I think I'll call you Jacqueline," was the simple answer. It didn't ask for compromise or a response.

When I looked over at her, she was looking away and blushing, smiling down at the ground.

It was only then that I noticed her considerable feminine charms. I had always known that she was beautiful, but had never really noticed it. At five-foot five she had a very athletic frame, toned, I could tell. Her deep blue eyes complemented her dark hair rather well, I thought to myself. Her skin was fair, silky and smooth. Yes, I thought to myself, she was a very beautiful woman.

Breaking the moment, Jacqueline moved to the couch with the grace of a dancer and sat down comfortably on it before looking up at me. She looked up at me, waiting for me to join her.

"This is not what I expected to find," I said simply, asking it in a way of a statement as I joined her on the couch. I watched her pour the drinks while she formed her answer.

"There's a lot about me that I'm sure you don't know about," she said again, something unsaid, just beneath the surface.

"So what are you doing now?" I asked, making conversation, not wanting the silence. The silence only echoed, haunting me and I had to fight it. I couldn't let the silence take over.

"I'm working as a network administrator, right now," she said. Then she giggled and smiled. "Actually I'm the director of information technology at Ramsey Group. After four years of higher education learning how to write code, I'm stuck as a net geek, setting up network security systems for middle aged geeks who don't know the first thing about computers."

I chuckled as I took the shooter out of her hand and slammed it back.Ahhhh, I thought to myself. It felt so good. It tasted good. There was comfort there.

When I looked up, I found her eyes on me. I looked away, feeling guilty for wanting the drink so bad. When I looked back up her eyes were still on me. I met them and did not back down.

"Drinking yourself to death won't bring her back, Jimmy," she said.Jimmy. She'd never called me that before. I can't for the life of me ever remember her even saying my name.

"No," I said, agreeing. "But at least it keeps me warm at night."

The laugh that followed was both said and delighted.

"I know what you mean." Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her slam the shooter back. Her body shook as the warmth of the booze washed over her.

She began to talk without being bidden. It seemed like she was poring her soul out to me and I was left wondering why. I wondered why she had chosen me.

"I went to State and graduatedSum Cumme Laudewith a dual degree in computer science and business administration and then I came out to the world and it was nothing like I had expected it to be. My parents thought that school would have been a good way for me to snag a boy worth settling down with."

Her laugh was bitter.

"And yet nobody interested me. I would look at them and wonder when they would grow up. I wondered if they were grown up and this was what I was destined to be like, these small minds living in their small worlds, so selfish and neurotic."

I couldn't help but laugh with delight. I had learned that some years ago, long before I had even joined the military. The books that I had read opened my mind to a world that was far bigger than the town of 5,000 that I had grown up in. My mind had been opened up to a world just waiting to be discovered.

She found me with a distant yet familiar smile on my face.

"When you came home to marry Renee, I was jealous," she said with a sparkle in her eye and a coy smile.

"Jealous?" I asked. "Why the hell would you be jealous?" This woman had everything, and she was jealous?

"Because you were coming home to take her away from this small little protected world and whisking her away to somewhere far away."

"Southern California isn't all it's cracked up to be." I didn't know what was worse for me, the small town mentality or the bigger city where one could get just as lost.

Jacqueline's sigh broke my thought. "But you had the one thing that I always wanted but could never find."

I looked over at her and found her eyes on me, looking at me in an odd sort of way that I couldn't describe. It was like she was standing on her toes trying to look into the dark recesses of my soul. My hand reached for the bottle of tequila and I could feel myself sweating under her gaze.

"And what was that?" I asked, discomfited by the silence.

"Love."

That one word, I thought to myself. It was the bastard word of the English language. It was said with one syllable, yet had depth that matched the deepest ocean. It could equal the tallest mountain.Love, I said to myself over and over again in my mind.What was love? What did it mean? What happens to love when it is ignored and remains locked away inside a box in a closet that nobody ever takes down off the shelf anymore?

I looked over at her and found her eyes on me. They were blue. A deep blue that contrasted Renee's sea green eyes that would remain locked and burned into my brain. I'm sure that Jacqueline could see where my mind was, but there was no jealousy there. There was no anger. She knew it; she was comfortable with it. How odd women could be, I thought to myself as I returned her gaze.

My eyes never left her as she softly set the shot glass on the table and turned toward me. I didn't move, watching her slightly shaking as she lifted her hand to my cheek. It was warm. I closed my eyes feeling the electric heat of the touch as if I had been lost in the wilderness in the dead of winter to come home to feel the heat of the fire once more.

Silently, I could feel my body shudder as I sobbed lightly. It had been too long. Man was not meant to be without human contact. Man was not meant to live alone, but when God takes the love of your life, what do you have left? Nothing but loneliness.

When I opened my eyes I saw Jacqueline's eyes on me. They were warm and receptive. She knew who I had been thinking about. There was no doubt that she was that perceptive...and yet...yet there was no jealousy or anger in her eyes. There was only understanding.

"I know you miss her," she said quietly and I looked away in shame, feeling her touch and yet thinking of another.

I felt, but did not see, the soft feminine palm of her hand slowly caressing my cheek. It felt nice. Like a man who had been lost in the arid desert for too long and finally found water to quench his thirst...it felt refreshing.

Taking a deep breath, I turned to her and found my face inches from her. I was close enough to smell the faint scent of tequila mixed with mint from a stick of gum or mouthwash, or something. My eyes were locked on hers and we seemed to communicate for a moment, neither knowing what to say or what to do. The moment may have lasted but a fleeting second, but it felt like a lifetime. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I could feel my spirit crying out for her touch, desiring to feel her skin against mine.

Before I knew it, my lips were on hers, so soft and gentle they were. The kiss was tentative, slow and learning. Her lips were fresh. I could feel a taste of hunger in her kiss as well. I pulled away and looked into her eyes for a moment. My hand found her cheek and she pressed against its palm and closed her eyes.

Taking a deep breath, I kissed her again, this time exploring. In just a moment, my tongue was pushing against her teeth and she accepted it, and I tasted her for the first time. Our tongues danced and lashed against each other as the heat of the moment rose.

The kiss turned hungry and powerful as she pressed herself against me. I snaked a hand behind her head and I heard her whimper as my fingers entwined in her hair, pulling her to me. Her hands went around me and I could feel the same hunger within her. She pulled me into her, and she into me. Our tongues explored each others mouths as our hearts raced, pounding in sync with each other.

I pulled away, breathless and I looked to her. She was flushed crimson and I could tell that she was excited. Her eyes danced. Somewhere deep inside I told myself that I should leave. I didn't want to lead her on, promise things that I could not give. But...but...my soul cried out for her touch. My heart cried out for her comfort.

She must have known. Her hand touched my cheek, lightly with her knuckles as she spoke. "It's OK, Jimmy. I know you still love her. It's ok."

Before I could answer, she was standing before me, and I looked up at her. She held out her hand to me. Stuffing the part of me that wanted to leave deep inside a cavern where it would not be found, I rose and took her hand. The heat of her touch matched the heat in her flushed cheeks; it was delightful.

Silently, I followed her as we walked down the dark and narrow hallway to her bedroom. She led me while our hands barely touched. Effortlessly it was as if we floated away from the rest of the world. I could feel her electricity. I could smell her womanhood like it was a heady perfume.

Her bedroom was cluttered and small, cozy and comfortable. I looked around, discomfited to be here. Oh, I had been with women after Renee...but that had been different, so different. They had been mere vessels for my need, nothing more, and nothing less. But...this...this I could tell already would be something different.

I opened my mouth to speak. "Shhhhhhh," Jacqueline said as she put a finger over my lips, quieting me. "Don't speak. No words, Jimmy. I think we both need each other tonight."

Before I could answer her, she was pressing her lips to mine again and there were no pretensions about where this night would lead. I leaned down and kissed her, drinking her in as she pressed her warmth to me. Even through her bra and shirt I could feel her hardened nipples against my chest as she stood on her toes to reach my lips. Her arms wrapped around my neck and I rested my hands on her soft womanly hips.

After a moment she broke away from me and her breathing was ragged. Her eyes shined as she stepped away. Her eyes did not break with mine as her fingers pulled the white tee-shirt from the hem of her jeans and up over her head. I gasped when I saw the lacy white bra and the valley between her breasts. She smiled when she saw the look on my face.

Looking into my eyes, Jacqueline reached behind her and unclipped her bra and her firm breasts were free, the engorged nipples pointing at me. There was lust in my eyes as I approached her.

"Oh," she breathed as I pressed her against me, the harsh fabric of my shirt against her softness. I could feel her nipples against me as I kissed her hard and passionately, pressing my tongue into her mouth. She accepted me as she began to moan.

"I need you, Jimmy" she breathed as she stepped away. "I need you, now."

Silently, I undressed and I could feel her eyes on me. She saw my tattoos and my scars, and she silently took it all in. As I undressed, Jacqueline unsnapped her jeans and shrugged them past her hips and down her toned and thin legs under she was naked before me. The only hair was a small triangle above her womanhood. I could smell her womanhood in the air and I smiled when I saw her glistening sex.

Jacqueline clicked the small lamp on her bedside table off as we climbed into bed. I lay beside her in the dark and my hands explored her body. She rose to meet my touch when I found her firm breasts and hardened nipples. I was rewarded with a moan and sharp intake of breath when I rolled a nipple between my thumb and forefinger. She moved beneath me.