Settling In

NOTE: This story is a follow-up to "A Bus Worth Missing," posted 4/14/16 in the romance section. To get the most out of this new story, interested readers might wish to read "A Bus Worth Missing" first, written from Ryan's point of view. Now it's Coleen's turn. As always, feedback is much appreciated, yea or nay.

Some girls get swept off their feet. Ryan Bradley, my ex-probation agent, swept me off the bus. Had Ryan not boarded that Greyhound in Baltimore when he did, I'd have been on my way to Springfield, Missouri to live with my good aunt Madeline, most likely never to see Ryan again.

Somehow, he managed to fall in love with me in Ocean City and decided he didn't want to live without me. Don't ask what he sees in me because I'm not sure. Yes, I'm pretty (so I've been told) and smart (according to an IQ test that I barely remember taking). But my childhood was a nightmare. I spent the first eighteen months of it in an orphanage before being adopted by Jim and Teresa Warren, church going, harsh disciplinarians, quick to punish, slow to nurture. When I got into my early teens, Jim started to molest me, sneaking into my room at night and fondling my privates. Too scared to tell anyone ("something real bad will happen to you if you do," he used to tell me), I began smoking pot and using methamphetamine in order to cope. My confidence and self image plunged; I was full of self loathing. By my mid-teens, I got up the courage to tell someone about the abuse, and they contacted child protective services. The agency took me away from the Warrens and put me in foster care, though their investigation could find no conclusive proof of abuse.

Things went from bad to worse. I dropped out of high school and began hanging out with a girl named Gloria Fiddler. Sure, it's funny now, her name, appropriate for the way she wasted her life. It wasn't so funny when I partnered with her to steal library books with the intention of selling them to make money to get high and party, and then got arrested, convicted and sentenced to a women's correctional facility. After serving six months, I got released on probation. That's when I met Agent Bradley. We were both hot for each other, something we managed to keep under wraps. Ryan was disciplined enough not to violate professional protocol and I resisted the urge to exploit his obvious attraction to me, to manipulate him the way some female offenders do with their agents. Our relationship remained strictly professional until that day he gave me a lift to Salisbury to stand trial for violating probation by failing to complete the last twenty hours of my one-hundred hours of community service. The judge gave me time served and I was off probation (it had expired anyway). Ryan then drove me to Ocean City (he had planned to vacation there) and dropped me off on Coastal Highway. That should have been the end of my contact with Ryan. But then, after meeting a drug dealer on the boardwalk who almost beat me senseless after I refused to join his operation, I ended up back on Coastal Highway late at night, homeless and scared. Ryan, thank goodness, happened to be driving by and stopped. Somebody else would have ignored me, left me to an ignoble fate. Not Ryan, chivalrous and caring to a fault. He stopped and comforted me, told me I could stay with him for the next few days at his rented condo.

Long story short, we had an incredibly romantic time together, and neither of us wanted to say goodbye after returning to Baltimore. But my aunt had wired me money for my return trip to Springfield (my hometown). Moreover, I needed to return in order to register on time for community college, which I planned to attend in the fall. So Ryan drove me to the bus station and watched from the street as I cried and blew him kisses from the window. That's when he boarded the bus, told me he loved me and didn't want to live without me. I melted into his arms, then left the bus to make a life with Ryan Bradley, my ex-probation agent who made me feel better about myself than anybody I had ever known.

***************

The bus that was to take me to Springfield left a week ago. I'm now living with Ryan in his garden style, two-bedroom apartment in Baltimore County. It still feels surreal, this unlikely journey that took me from jail, to living with Kim (my former jail mate) while on probation, then back to court in Salisbury, then on to Ocean City and now back to Baltimore, living with this wonderful guy who once supervised me per a court order. We're still adjusting, making all those little compromises you make to accommodate someone else, discovering facets of your significant other that you never knew—their sleeping and eating habits, the way they squeeze the toothpaste, leave the kitchen after eating, etc. Ocean City was great. But, like all resort getaways, it isn't "real life." You don't really know someone until you live with them is more than just a cliché. Not once in Ocean City did I hear Ryan burp or fart. Now I do. At least he excuses himself. And not once in Ocean City did Ryan see my klutziness, dropping and spilling things. Now he does. At least I clean up after myself.

Adjusting, accommodating, compromising—it isn't easy. But nothing worth doing ever is, is it? And so far it's been more than worth it. The love making, for example. I was no virgin when I met Ryan. I'd been fucked—FUCKED—not made love to the way Ryan does to me, putting his heart into it as well as his penis, then holding and kissing me after we've climaxed. Teresa Warren, my adopted mom, used to listen to a song that went, "is this a lasting treasure, or just a moment's pleasure?" I can't help but wonder how long this thing with Ryan will last. My troubled upbringing left me with chronic insecurity, a feeling that nothing good that happens to me will ever last. The bad dreams that have invaded my sleep for years still do. I'm falling through space in a vacuum, with no safety net and no one to help me. Sometimes I awake, shaking and crying. But then I'm okay because Ryan is there to hold and comfort me.

Two weeks into my stay it dawns on me that I need to be doing something other than surfing the net and watching TV while Ryan is at work. So, I do what I had planned to do in Springfield, enroll in community college. The guidance counselor almost shits when she asks what high school I attended and I tell her I had dropped out, earning my GED in jail. I sign up for twelve credits, the minimum for a full time student. Ryan pays the tuition, but only after I insist on paying him back. Then, to do that, I get a job behind the counter at Starbucks.

By mid-September, I'm a very busy girl, working and going to school. As if that isn't enough, Ryan buys me a membership at his CrossFit gym. I've never had a weight problem, though I've never exercised regularly either. "People like me hate people like you," he jokes, pointing out that genetics has endowed me with a naturally firm body, creating the illusion that I work out or play sports. Ryan had been a chubby kid and teen (I found that hard to believe until he showed me the pictures). Then, in his first year of college, he decided to make himself over. He did that through CrossFit, putting in dedicated hours, never missing a workout unless he was sick. Looking at those pics, you'd never believe it's the same person. The chubby, doughboy teen transformed himself into a muscular, five-foot ten hunk, six-pack and all.

I admire his discipline, the discipline I never had—not to exercise and not to study very much. As I told him in Ocean City, school always came easy to me. I was bored, though not bored enough or ambitious enough to seek a more rigorous program. Getting high was easier. Getting in trouble was easier (well, it was until my arrest). Besides, even though on some level I knew I was smart, I lacked the confidence to move forward in a positive direction. I'm still not where I want to be, brimming with self-assurance and self-liking instead of the self-loathing that still clings to me like the proverbial monkey on my back. But with Ryan's help I'm trying. "You need to reinvent yourself," he says. "And to do that you need to recondition yourself, break your old ways of thinking and create a new mindset so you can realize the great potential you have."

I get what he means but not fully until I read about the work of B.F. Skinner in my psychology textbook. Skinner was all about positive reinforcement, altering behavior through positive reward. Jim Warren spent years breaking me down, making me feel worthless. So it's an uphill battle trying to realize my so-called great potential. But it's happening, little by little. I'm earning good grades in class and getting fitter and stronger by the week. CrossFit, once something I did mostly to please Ryan, has become my passion. Where once he had to almost drag me to the gym, he now has to almost drag me out.

Like many of the women, I train in a sports bra and tight shorts hemmed not too far below my firm, curvy butt. Guys take notice and Ryan takes notice of them taking notice. Not that he's the jealous type. Still, it sometimes makes him uncomfortable watching guys leer at me. "Guess I should have expected it," he says. "No cutie like you with a bod to match who trains in a male dominated gym all spandexed up can escape being leered at."

Recently, Ryan transitioned from X-fit to Olympic lifting, and suggests that I train to also compete in that sport. "You've got what it takes to excel—great flexibility, speed and explosiveness," he insists. "Build up your strength and you'll be winning medals and trophies before you know it." Speed, flexibility, explosiveness...hmm...Ryan's told me that before. But he was referring to my performance in the bedroom, not on the lifting platform.

Anyway, I take his advice, because of all the exercises employed in X-fit, the Olympic lifts (snatch and clean and jerk) are my favorite. So I concentrate on them while doing assistance exercises like squats and high pulls to increase my strength. By the end of November, I'm squatting with 102kg, snatching 63kkg and cleaning and jerking 77kg. Not bad for a five-foot-three, 57kg female newbie. Ryan loves the physical changes he sees as I progress. My quads, always shapely and strong, are even more so. Mounds of trapezius muscle sprout from my upper back, columns of spinal erectors flank my spine and extensive ab work has chiseled the faint outline of a six-pack into my stomach. "Guys like me go nuts for female muscle," he insists. I'm not entirely comfortable with my new-found muscularity, seeing it as a challenge to my image of femininity. Even so, I can't deny the sense of empowerment that being fit and strong give me. Had I felt like this as a young teen, Jim Warren would have never had his way with me.

Meanwhile, we keep discovering things about each other we never knew. There's our taste in music for example. Ryan is surprised to learn that I warm to opera and classical. My adopted parents listened to it a lot and ingrained in me a sense of appreciation for it. I played some of those popular arias over and over to the point where I could sing them in the original language, usually Italian. Ryan favors jazz and rock; but, with the exception of Ravel's "Bolero" and a few other warhorses, he knows almost zip about Mozart, Handel, Brahms, Puccini, Verdi, et al. Oh, he knows the names, but can't pick out Beethoven's fifth from Brahms' fourth, Verdi's "Rigoletto" from Puccini's "Tosca." Yet he's trying, willing to give my CD recordings a listen. He's okay with the orchestral stuff. Opera? Well, let's just say while listening to that he sometimes looks like he just swallowed the proverbial bitter pill. "If this doesn't prove I love you, nothing will," he teases.

I reciprocate. Rock I always listened to. Jazz? Not so much. I don't know bebop from soda pop, Coltrane from Getz, Davis from Parker, Brubeck from Monk. Like Ryan, I know the names but only through listening am I starting to connect them to their art. Like opera for Ryan, jazz for me is an acquired taste. Our taste in music might differ but our values regarding it—giving the unknown a chance, respecting each other's preferences—remain in sync.

Come December, as a Christmas gift, Ryan takes this to another level when he buys tickets to see Puccini's "La Boheme," perhaps my favorite opera, musically as well as dramatically. Even Ryan, hardly an opera fan, can't deny the exquisite beauty of the music after hearing it through one of my CDs. I know the story but have never seen it performed live. We're dressed casually (hardly anyone dresses for the opera anymore, especially for a local production such as this one) on this snowy Saturday evening, appropriate weather for the opera's setting, the Christmas season in early nineteenth century Paris. Typical of Puccini heroines, Mimi comes to a tragic end after falling in love with the poet Rodolfo. Ryan holds me as I cry through the final minutes of the final act, Rodolfo and Mimi singing of the good times they shared before she dies in Rodolfo's arms.

Ryan throws his arm around me as we step out into the frigid night air, spilling onto the sidewalk with the rest of the crowd. Snow, light and powdery, falls as I nestle against him, shivering. Normally not one for public displays of affection, Ryan leans me against the side of the concert hall and begins to kiss me, deep and passionate, warming me to the bone. It's just what I need after seeing poor Rodolfo crying his eyes out after Mimi succumbs to tuberculosis. It's apparently what he needs also. "I don't know what I'd do if I lost you," he says.

"I'm not going anywhere," I say, "except back to our place where I expect to be made love to in the manner to which I've grown accustomed."

He shakes his head and chuckles. "You can be so demanding at times."

"No more demanding than you when you made me pee into a cup to test me for drug use."

"Touché," he says as we head toward the parking garage.

Like our room in the condo in Ocean City, sliding glass doors take up almost the entire length of wall in our bedroom. After disrobing, we cut the lights and crack open the curtains. We stand and hold one another for a few minutes, watching the snow come down. "Is Bolero playing in your head?" I ask.

"Not this time. It's "La Boheme," you'll be pleased to know. That love duet in the first act."

"'O soave fanciulla' you mean."

"Show off."

I smile and embrace him once again, then snuggle naked with him under the covers. A soothing chiaroscuro of shadow and light baths the room, while ringing through my head is another heart-melting Puccini duet, 'voglialemi bene' from act one of "Madame Butterfly." Poor Ciocio-san, fated to die by her own hand after that cad Pinkerton leaves her for someone else, taking the child he made with Butterfly with him. Not yet, though, not until he returns to Japan three years later. So, like Ciocio-san, I embrace the moment, losing myself in my lover's kisses and the music I know so well. "Ah quanti occhi fisi, attende quanti sguardi" (Oh how kindly are the heavens on us shining), Butterfly sings. "Ah! Vien ah vien, sei mia" (Come, come then, be mine), Pinkerton answers.

It doesn't get any better than this, I think, wrapped in my lover's arms on a snowy December evening, Puccini's music swirling in my head like a soothing wind. Almost unconsciously I begin to hum the melody. "You've got a nice voice," Ryan says, and then begins to suck on my nipples.

"And you've got a nice tongue," I say. "My pussy's on fire and you haven't even gone there yet."

When he does, the music continues to swirl but I'm much too hot to sing. My legato has devolved into sighs, moans and groans, the universal vernacular of hot. Ryan is wedged between my legs, his tongue artfully working over my pussy in distinct movements—from adagio to allegro to allegro con brio. The room is spinning by the time he enters me. What once came between us no longer does, for I've been on the pill for weeks, consigning those gourmet Trojans to Ryan's sock drawer. Sensitive they might be, but those lambskins still take a backseat to skin on skin. No, it doesn't get any better than this, being made love to by a man I adore, a man who believes in me, who's getting ME to believe in me.

"Tamo," I whisper.

"Je vous aime aussi," he whispers back. He bends down to kiss me and winks. "I knew my high school French class would come in handy one day."

Vocally, I stay subdued until climax. Then, shrieks of delight fill the room, both mine and his. Afterward, as usual, he holds me, tells me he loves me. "Mimi and Rodolfo never had it so good," he says.

"No, and neither did Butterfly and Pinkerton." He looks at me quizzically. "The lovers in Madame Butterfly, another Puccini work. The tune I hummed comes from their act one love duet."

He nods. "Maybe you can play it for me sometime."

"Would love to," I say, pulling him closer to me. "Maybe I'll turn you into an opera fan yet."

He laughs. "I doubt it. But I am a Coleen Warren fan. Good enough?"

I rest my head on his hairy chest. "More than good enough. If only I felt deserving of it."

He sighs. "Here we go again. You said the same thing about that lobster meal in Ocean City. When are you going to wake up and realize what a wonderful person you are? That you deserve good things, deserve to be happy."

My eyes moisten. "I'm trying, Ryan. Believe me, I'm trying. Creating a new mindset isn't easy."

He holds me tighter and kisses me. "Honey, I know it isn't. It takes time. But you'll get there."

"You really think so?"

"I have no doubt."

When we finally close our eyes, I hear nothing more than the light patter of snowflakes against the glass and the voices in my head, the positive and negative voices dueling for supremacy, fighting each other for my attention. One echoes Ryan's encouraging words, while the other echoes words that have kept me down for so long, too damn long. The minutes tick by, the voices fade and then, in the wee hours of Sunday, sleep comes, blissful, peaceful sleep, with nary a nightmare to disturb it.