The Book Lover Ch. 13

Jessie laughed.

"Anyway," she continued, "Hamid mentioned it was who I become when the book is taken away. So I got to thinking. You mentioned that Eli sold the book to Gramps back in November of 2001. I don't...."

"But that was the book that this was copied from," Tom interrupted.

Jessie shook her head.

"I don't think so," Jessie said.

"But Eli said it couldn't be restored this well," Tom insisted.

"And I'm sure he'd say it couldn't actually have sex with me, and change my cup size and allow me to force my desires onto other people, don't you think?"

Tom shrugged.

"I think the book can heal itself when it has the energy to do so."

"And where does it get that energy?"

"From people like me. Think about it, since I found this book, how have you felt after you and I have sex?"

He thought for a minute.

"Really, ecstatically happy?"

"And..."

"Exhausted," he had to admit.

"Same with everyone else. Harold slept for hours after we had sex the first time. Me, on the other hand, I feel completely invigorated. Almost like I could go run a marathon. But when I come out of an encounter with the book?"

"Let me guess, completely exhausted?"

She nodded her affirmation.

"I think the book feeds on my sexual energy and can use that energy to repair itself. I in turn feed on the energy of those I have sex with. Part of the reason I've been a little out of control is that when I come out of an encounter with the book, I feel so hungry, and the quickest way to recover is to have sex with someone."

It did make quite a bit of sense to him, except the part about the book healing itself, but he had to admit, the ability of the book to heal itself may have been the least strange of the abilities they were attributing to it.

"So, the book came into Gramps' possession looking hundreds of years old, meaning it had been a long time since it had been fed enough energy to heal itself. While it was in his house, it magically found a reserve of energy that it could use to repair itself. The fact that it went hundreds of years without finding anyone that could feed it energy means that someone who can do it must be extremely rare. The fact that I happened to be living at his house when the book got there, and the fact that I am one of the rare people that can feed it energy can't be a coincidence. It just can't be."

Tom had to admit that it all sounded so eerily persuasive. Completely impossible based on everything he knew up until that morning, but so damned logical based on this new knowledge.

"So you had the book back then? When you were what, 12 years old?"

"11, actually," she replied "but yeah. I think I found the book when Gramps had it. In much the same way I found it two weeks ago."

"Which is?" Tom queried.

"I could feel it's heat radiating. Calling to me. I didn't come across it randomly. I felt it. A bin was so hot I almost couldn't touch it. It made me dig in and find it. I'm speculating that Gramps found me in with the book, doing something that no Grandpa ever wants to see his granddaughter doing, and then he took it from me. And I became the same person I became when you took the book on Monday. The nympho was gone, replaced by the intelligent, driven, but completely asexual person you met back in college."

"But why would that happen?"

"I don't know. Hamid said something about the book coming to me when I was too young. Perhaps it overloaded my senses and my whole being changed to suppress the experience?"

Oh God, this was more than he had ever expected to hear from the woman he had fallen in love with. None of this seemed at all possible, but in the light of all the evidence he'd been given, it also seemed like the most likely explanation.

"So let's assume for just a moment that I am right," Jessie continued, "that the woman you've lived with for the last two weeks is actually the way I was born, and that the woman you met and fell in love with only existed because she was trying to suppress some previous trauma of some sort. If that is the case, and I'm not saying that I know it is, but if it is - which of the two women, if any, would you want to marry?"

"Oh Jessie," he responded, "you know that..."

"Sshhhhh," she interrupted him. "I don't want you to answer the question right now. I want you to take your time. But I've been thinking about this a lot in the last couple of days and I think there is something you should do while you're deciding."

"Which is?"

"Well, for starters, I want you to take the engagement ring back, and stash it somewhere where I'm not going to find it."

She silenced him as he tried to object to it.

"Hear me out," she said. "I want you, right now, to take the book from me. Take it to work and lock it away in a desk. When you do that, if things happen like they did on Monday, I will go back to being the woman you met in college, fell in love with, and asked to marry you. I'm relatively sure I will forget that you ever proposed to me in the first place, just like on Monday. So the presence of the engagement ring will be confusing to me anyway. Just like all my new clothes?"

"Your new clothes?"

"Yes. I've already packed all of my new clothes in boxes so I won't wonder where they came from like I did on Monday. You can tell me that I've been sick and that I retained a bunch of water and that's why my body looks different. Perhaps the physical changes will revert themselves and then I'll forget about it. You can say I had some really high fevers that could be causing some temporary memory loss."

Clearly Jessie had thought this all through quite thoroughly, which didn't surprise Tom at all.

"I've already emailed everyone I know that knew we were engaged and let them know that we decided the timing just isn't right. We fully expect to get engaged sometime in the future but we'd like everyone to just pretend it hasn't happened yet and respect our privacy on the issue. You can take your time to decide whether you'd rather just keep the version of me you met in college, the one I will likely revert to as soon as you leave with the book. It won't matter to me if you decide that, as I will never know the difference. I will go back to who I was when I met you, and I can assure you that having you in my life made me incredibly happy, so you don't have to worry that I will be longing for something more. I won't miss the changes the book brought to me, because I won't even be aware of them in the first place. This will give you a chance to decide for yourself which version of me you would rather be married to without any real influence from me. We'll just go back to the way things were, and only you will know the difference."

"And if I choose otherwise?"

"Just give the book back to me and we'll navigate the path together. I'll warn you that having a nympho for a wife won't be easy. I almost assuredly won't be the faithful, loving wife you might have always thought you were getting. So make that decision carefully."

He looked at her and saw tears forming in her eyes.

"Let me say one more thing, however," she continued, "if you are having a hard time deciding, and would like to know my opinion, let me tell you. I would much rather live my life as the repressed me, still married to you, than to be the real me without you. If you have any reservations about being married to this new me, I'd much rather go back to where things were before, because I was quite happy. Understood?"

"Understood," he said kissing her deeply.

He stood and grabbed the book.

"I will warn you," she said, "I think the book will try to make its way back to me. Should you decide to keep it from me, you will need to get it as far away from here as you possibly can."

He grabbed the book and stepped outside the door and made his way to the elevator, knowing full well that this was going to be a very hard decision to make.

Jessie sat on the plane next to Tom, who was asleep in the window seat next to her. She was too excited to sleep. They were finally going to Paris!

It took them a little more than six months from when they were supposed to have gone the first time, but they'd finally arranged it so that they could both get the time off and make the trip to Paris they had missed when Gramps passed.

Jessie had high hopes for the trip. She was really hoping that the romance always associated with The City of Love would help her be just a little more adventurous in bed with her boyfriend. She had begun to sense that the arrangement they had settled on with regards to sex just wasn't really working for Tom anymore.

Jessie had always had to feign interest in sex, and that hadn't changed at all, but she started to sense that Tom was becoming less and less satisfied with their Friday night liaisons. He didn't push her for more. He had never been pushy in that regard, always waiting for her to set the pace, and she never found the desire to expand their sexual activities.

She'd told herself that would change in Paris, however. She'd gone out and bought some sexy lingerie she intended to surprise him with. She planned to initiate sex much more often while they were in Paris. She really hoped the romance of the city would make her want to have sex more often.

In the last six weeks or so, she'd sensed that Tom's discontent with their sex lives had begun to affect other aspects of their relationship. In the past he'd been so good at compartmentalizing the physical aspects of their relationship from the intellectual and emotional aspects. But she'd seen that as his interest in their weekly bedroom romps was waning, so too was his interest in the discussions they loved to have with each other. She could feel him growing more and more distant and she really hoped this trip to Paris would be the starting point for them to turn that around. Maybe she'd finally develop some interest in sex that could help keep Tom more satisfied in that regard.

The memory loss that Tom had assured her would only be temporary hadn't been. She still found it weird that there were essentially two weeks of her life which she simply couldn't remember, but there wasn't much she could do about it, so she had just let it go and move on.

She found herself a little disappointed that the swelling in her breasts, apparently caused by the same fever that had caused the memory loss, had eventually gone away. She had learned to like having a little bit bigger breasts. It helped her fill out some of the dresses she liked that were made for a little bit bigger bust line. But once again, she'd accepted it and moved on.

It all would have been just fine if it hadn't been for the fact that Tom seemed to be getting more and more distant from her. He was the most important thing in her life, without question. She never would have survived the loss of Gramps if it hadn't been for him being there to console her and support her in her grief. They were just so perfect for each other, and she needed them to reconnect on this trip, to put some of the spark back into their relationship. She really hoped Paris was just the right place to help them do that