Sister Golden Hair Delight Ch. 39

Rachel was hanging on his neck, kissing him like the long-lost cousin she was. Holding the two leis we had brought, I looked for another woman about the same age. Instead, a woman in her late 20s, early 30s walked up to me and introduced herself.

"Glad to meet you, Mrs. Osborne. I'm Sophia. We only have the carry-ons, we've learned to travel lightly."

Rachel's friend, Sophia, was an elegant, slim woman about five and a half feet tall with Mediterranean coloring and was dressed in what seemed to be Guess jeans and a top that looked even more expensive.

There were wicked scars marring the left side of her striking face which she had not tried to hide and seemed to proudly wear. As an emergency room nurse, I knew the trauma necessary to cause them was deep and irreparable. How the two of them ever met, let alone travel together mystified me.

All the while, Rachel had been hanging on Bobbi's neck, laughing and joking with him. Second cousin, huh? Isn't that what Americans called 'kissing cousins? Every time I saw Bobbi with another woman, I became jealous and here I was almost twice her age and my self-worth was heading downhill.

By this time, Bobbi was pretty embarrassed by his mistake and tried to calm Rachel down by introducing her to me.

"Sayomi..." he put his arm around my waist, macho move on his part to establish some boundaries with Rachel, I guessed. "This is Rachel. She's... well, she's a little older than I remember."

No kidding! Be cool, I told myself, just be cool.

"Aloha, Rachel. Bobbi, this her friend, Sophia."

On the ride back, I asked if they had been to Hawaii before.

"We were her," Sophia said, "earlier this year on our way to New Zealand. Incredible country, you really must go there."

"Oh," I said, brilliantly, more to say something than having something to say. "How did you meet?"

"I was Rachel's counselor in high school. We found we had many interests in common..."

Rachel giggled. Sophia looked at her, smiling.

Sophia....

The woman's question threw me back to that awful night of the senior prom when Rachel's and my world changed forever. Even though what happened to me still bothers me sometime when I look into the mirror, I wouldn't have changed a single moment because it brought my Rachel into my life.

I was Rachel's academic counselor at the high school I was at, researching new material for my next book. My previous five ones, used across the country as basic texts for psychology, had brought in enough money each year that I could do what I wished... as long as I had another book coming down the line or updated one into a new edition.

Rachel was a beautiful rosebud just opening to bloom when I met her for the first time. During her senior year, I mentored her as best I could about her interests and what universities would suit her needs the best.

As the year progressed, we became closer than teacher-student and our conversations meandered eventually to boys... and girls... and sex.

Rachel told me she had dated a few boys but they, as she put it, 'were all jerks.'

How quickly she had grasped the fundamental truth about most boys and many men, they WERE all jerks. Boys had only one thing on their minds: sex. We really couldn't blame them, it was wired into their brains so that the species could survive when life-spans were measured in short years and not decades.

As good as that might have been, they were also wired to 'get in and get out' as I liked to call it in my second textbook. While it worked ten, twenty, thirty thousand years ago, it also explained why they were such lousy... not lovers, just semen producers. To be a lover required a romantic bond that boys were just not capable of forming that soon in their lives when everything was working but their brains.

"They're just so stupid," Rachel had told me, "acting like they were five or six years old. They take me out on a date and then their friends somehow show up and then the attention shifts to them while they're staring at my breasts or legs or my butt and whispering like I can't hear them. It's just so... degrading."

Despite the fact that I didn't know then what I so wonderfully know now, I should have picked up the subtle hints that she was giving me and I eventually understood why she kept coming to see me just to see me. It never occurred to me that she would be interested in me.

Everyone had her convinced she just HAD to go to the senior prom and only agreed to go with one of the more popular boys who had been chasing her all year when I told her I would be there to chaperone.

The first half of the dance seemed to be all right and every time I saw her, she seemed to be having a good time. I had to go to the ladies' room, though, and when I came back, I couldn't find her anywhere and the table she had been sitting at was empty.

"Suzette, where's Rachel?"

"She went outside with Trent, she didn't look to well and he said he take to get some fresh air."

Hoping against hope, I rushed outside trying to find them. I couldn't find them anywhere... I was panicking... I ran to my car and madly drove around the lot, looking... looking... looking.

And, there... in the farthest reaches of the lot, under the shade trees, was a group of boys all in a crowd standing around a car. Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus! I raced up faster than ever could be safe, slammed on the brakes, popped the trunk and took out my baseball bat that was waiting for the upcoming summer leagues.

Without thinking past that, I rushed into the crowd. Enough of them had been startled by my car screeching to a halt that they ran away but there were still three standing outside the car while Trent kept trying to find his way inside her.

Along with everything else about him, he was a total incompetent, even trying to rape a girl that had Rohypnol in her system.

The three moved back and disappeared from my sight into the darkness. I reached into the car as far as I could and dragged him out onto the asphalt and began to hit him and hit him and hit him.

So angry was I, his genitals were a bloody mess and his jaw was broken and a lot of teeth were missing... I still kept hitting.

Stupid boys think because they take you somewhere you have to have sex with them.

Suddenly, I felt a burning across my face, again and again and again. There was blood in my eyes and I felt dizzy with the pain. I put up my arm to protect my face, backing off, wiping the blood away, seeing my attacker, one of the bastards had returned with a switchblade, still approaching me.

I thought I was going to die, cut up in the dark lot and my only thoughts were what was going to happen to my Rachel, my dear sweet Rachel.

Blood was all over my dress and I leaned woozily against the car, slowly waving my bat around, daring him to come.

I thought the red lights I was seeing was my own blood and just as I was sinking down onto the ground I thought the white lights were welcoming me into heaven, I saw the boy with the knife gang-tackled by two of the off-duty police the school had hired to security.

Where were they when Rachel needed them? How did they know to come?

I was still groggy in the ambulance but awake enough to demand they take me to Rachel.

"We're going to the same hospital... please, calm down. She'll be OK, it's you we're worried about."

I woke up in the hospital the next day. Rachel's parents were waiting in the hallway, all night, the nurse had said, waiting for me to wake up.

My face was numb and covered with hospital dressings. I had touched my face but couldn't feel anything.

"How's... Rachel?" I could barely get the words out, my mouth didn't seem to work right. Oh, God, what did my face look like? All I could remember was getting cut over and over and over.

"Rachel is going to see you when you're ready. You saved her and we don't know what to say. We were uncomfortable with you... she was talking to you and not to us... we're... sorry." Rachel's father's voice just faded away as I fell asleep again when the morphine dripped again into my blood.

When I woke again, at least I think it was when I woke again, my darling Rachel was sitting next to my bed, holding my hand. We were alone but she whispered just the same, "Hey, sexy, I love you. I'll be here until forever."

Had I really heard what my heart desired or was it just another drug-induced dream?

Rachel stayed with me for the rest of the day and I was released the next morning with appointments scheduled to save what was left of my face. Even now, when I think of it and I'm all alone, I cringe and touch my face, crying that I wasn't beautiful anymore for my Rachel.

I thanked God that Rachel remembered nothing of that night because of the date-rape drug and that drunken bastard wasn't able to do anymore than bruise her thighs as he tried to rip her underwear.

With less than a week left in the school year, Rachel never returned to school. She told her parents she was moving in with me and help me heal from my injuries.

Sayomi....

"I took her home and we've been together ever since." Sophia smiled at me, I guess looking some sort of reaction from me.

I seemed to be surrounded by women loving women. It was something to think about... if only in my dreams.