The Education of Giacomo Jones Ch. 04

She pressed both hands to her mouth, stunned, looking at the crowd now well in excess of 200 people, all clapping in time, like a 360-degree heartbeat, the percussion ricocheting off the high steel roof and painted cinderblock walls. She dropped to her knees, overcome with emotion, her hands hiding her face. Rance knelt beside her, his arms encircling her as he reassured her of what she already knew - these are people who turned out this afternoon to show their love, appreciation and admiration for her, one of their own. He helped her to her feet and she clung to him for support.

At that point, the clapping became a throaty cheer that lasted for 15 or 20 seconds before Perry Hemphill stepped forward and joined Rance and Gia in the middle of the circle and raised his arms in an appeal for quiet.

"I just want you to know, Gia... and Rance... how much we've missed you here over the past two weeks or so. You might not sense it during the busy work of a week as we all do our jobs to create a champion here, but you are an essential and treasured part of this team. You are part of its one heartbeat. And it's true that we don't acknowledge just how valued and loved our people are until... something like this and then they're not here. Then, we notice. We feel the emptiness, the absence of a good and uplifting spirit, a member of this team who gives her all - all the time! - and seeks nothing in return."

"Gia, the people you see here surrounding you now - they were all asking about you last week when the trouble came, some were crying and praying for you when the reports came out about what you must have endured - I can't even imagine," Perry Hemphill continued. "Literally, grown men and women... crying."

"That day, the Tuesday before last, was one of the proudest moments I've had as a head coach when our team met at midfield on the field after practice and joined their hands in prayer for both of you but particularly Gia. I was worried that they were so upset by what had happened to y'all that I wouldn't be able to get them to focus on LSU. But then something beautiful happened. Mojo Hale came up with the idea that bonded this team around you two with the goal of beating LSU. Mojo, why don't you come explain what went down next," the coach said.

The hulking, gangly tight end ambled out sheepishly and hugged Rance and Gia. Then he stood by his coach and began speaking.

"See, it's like this. We had this prayer and all, and that was good, but then I'm like, 'OK, but what we got to show for Gia? We asking God to comfort her, but what we doing to help God out with that?' So then I said to the team, 'OK, why don't we put some skin in this and make this personal by saying right now we gonna win this LSU game for Gia and Rance, and if we don't then we done let both of them down," Mojo said. "And everybody on this team, right then and there, say 'losing ain't gonna happen.'"

"Well, from Tuesday afternoon on, y'all were what we was playing for. And before we ran onto the field for the game, last thing we said, every one of us, was that we got to have this one for Jock... I mean Gia... 'cuz she and Rance are one of us and they need us and we need them," Mojo said.

"Well... we won that mutha-fucka!"

The team roared, in both laughter and appreciation.

At that point Mason Gerow stepped forward and handed Perry Hemphill a white box wrapped in green and gold ribbon. Perry handed it to Gia.

"Gia, this is from all of us for you," he said.

She took it, shook it and asked Rance to hold it while she untied the ribbons. She opened the box, took out the team-autographed and customized game football and held it as gently and reverently as if it were the pure crystal college football national championship trophy itself. She handed the ball to Rance and ran over to Mojo and hugged him tightly, then she did the same to Perry Hemphill who seemed overcome with emotion as he and Gia embraced. He whispered something into her ear before she went back to Rance's side.

Rance leaned over to her and whispered to her as emotions consumed her. "It's OK if you want to say something, and it's OK if you don't. Up to you, Gia."

She nodded at him and kept one hand clasped tightly in his as she cleared her throat.

"Well, this... this means the world to me. This goes a long way to helping me cope with the events of that day and the days since," she said haltingly.

"Surviving that day, that's... that's nothing to celebrate. Very much the opposite. It's an experience I would like to forget. But knowing that your minds and your prayers and your hearts were with me - with us - in the awful and continuing aftermath is something to rejoice in. That you resolved during the week to dedicate this game to us, that it united this team - our team - and brought us closer to our goal of a championship is... everything to me. I guess that knowing that we matter to you, that's something I will have here, in my heart, for as long as I live," she said as her voice faltered. "Thank you and God bless you all."

Rance noticed that in the subsequent ovation that filled the indoor practice field, some of his teammates wiped their eyes and tried to hide their quivering chins. Gia's boss, head equipment manager Leroy Forbes, wept openly. Perry Hemphill's eyes were still red and moist from his tearful embrace with Gia.

Oh, if the mind could photograph and indelibly hold such memories, in their painstaking detail and perfection, for the rest of our days, impervious to the clouds of age. If there is a final montage of life's most triumphant and poignant moments in the immediate prelude to our final earthly breath, this surely would be featured for Gia or for Rance when their times come.

When the gathering finally ended and those gathered slowly dispersed, returning to their tasks or getting ready for practice, dozens lingered just to speak to Gia and reassure her that they hope to see her back when she's able and that they hope it's soon.

"How long have you known about this, Rance?" Gia asked as he cranked his car to take her back to her room at the Courtyard.

"Couple of days now. Coach Hemp showed me the ball and asked if I wanted to take it to you. I told him it would probably mean more to you if it came from him. I just thought he would present it to you in person. I had no idea until yesterday that they wanted me to bring you to the IPF and do something on the field. But I had no idea this was what they would do. I was blown away."

"Thank you," Gia whispered, leaning over to kiss him. "I love you."

"I love you, too, baby. And now you know all those people in there do, too."

"Yes. I suppose they do," she said.

●●●

Rance finished his last class and his Friday conditioning workout the day before Fulbright's bye weekend, its Saturday off before diving into a brutal final slate of SEC games starting the following weekend hosting Georgia.

Gia had wrapped up her last class earlier in the morning - she attended remotely because the prof had tested positive for the coronavirus. When Rance arrived, she was waiting in the lobby of the Marriott Courtyard with not just her backpack but a large duffel bag that represented everything she had felt the need to have retrieved from the Honors College residence hall to the hotels that had been her home for the past three weeks.

"Wow, you're carrying everything for a beach weekend?" he asked her as he loaded her large bag into the back of his SUV.

"I am. I might not be coming back here when we come back Sunday," she said.

Rance's eyebrows raised incredulously, his eyes widened and he paused a moment.

"You're going back to the Honors College studio?" he said.

"I don't know. If I can't bring myself to do it, then I might check in to another hotel, I might go back to this one, but I got tired of that room, that view, day after day. I need a change of pace," she said.

"What if they don't have vacancy?" he said as both of them slid into the front seats of Rance's six-year-old Wagoneer, its back seat cluttered with empty sports drink bottles that dated to preseason two-a-days.

"Then I might have to bunk with a friend," she said, winking at Rance.

He smiled and nodded in silent approval. Slowly, particularly since Tuesday's surprise greeting by the football team and Perry Hemphill, his Gia was beginning to return. She was eating better. She could laugh, though not as often, as freely or as robustly as she had. On the nights they had spent together, she had managed to stay asleep longer and sleep more soundly, awakened fewer times by the horror reel that kept playing in a loop in her mind. And when she woke, she wasn't as initially panicked as she had been when Rance reached out to comfort her.

What had not returned was their physical intimacy, though there were encouraging omens. Over the past couple of days, she had allowed herself to kiss Rance more deeply than she had since before the Vandy game. But when Rance's hands moved from cupping her bottom and caressing her breasts, always through a layer of clothing, to attempting to explore her nipples or inside her panties, she seemed self-conscious, even fearful.

She would apologize profusely, even tearfully, to Rance. She didn't understand herself exactly why she was unable to make love with the man she loved, she said. The best she could explain it was that she was fearful that something deep within her psychologically might be broken and that she would not be the lover she had been to him, and that would be too painful for her to bear. So it was a threshold she had resisted.

Rance, to his credit, understood. He did not pressure Gia. He remained content to let her return to him incrementally, at her pace, but he encouraged her to discuss that along with all her other fears with the university-paid therapist she had been scheduled to see three times a week.

Much as Rance had misgivings about being away over the Generals' bye weekend, he felt it was important to take Gia out of Fallstrom again. His mother's family owned a high-rise beachfront condo in Myrtle Beach about a two-and-a-half hour drive from campus and had recommended that they take a break. This time of year, with the summer throngs long since gone, they could sit undisturbed on largely vacant strands of beach and let the tides, the sun, and the rhythmic roll of the waves work its magic on them both.

They arrived with about an hour of daylight left. Gia and Rance lugged the essentials - their backpacks and a case of Modelo Especial beer that Rance had scored from a teammate over 21 - and decided to take a sunset stroll along the beach to limber up muscles left stiff from the ride (and Rance's morning workout).

"I forgot how cold it can get once the sun goes down out here in the fall," Rance said. "Should have worn our sweatshirts."

"Suck it up, 74. It's brisk but this is balmy by Jersey City standards. It's just that this... this is more beautiful than Jersey City ever was. So peaceful here, no crowds," Gia said as she and Rance walked barefoot, hand-in-hand along the wet sand where the waves spent themselves after rushing ashore. "Look at that sky. And not a soul out here as far as you can see in either direction. Perfect."

"It is nice. But it's you, Gia Jones, who makes it perfect," he said, unclasping her hand, pulling her a little closer and looping his free hand around her waist. But it was Gia who pulled the two of them to a stop.

Maybe it was the clean salt air. Maybe it was the magenta western sky that dissolved into shades of lavender, then violet and finally inky indigo somewhere miles out over the Atlantic where the sea was no longer discernible from the clear sky but for the lights from massive cargo ships in the distance.

Maybe it was the release of being truly alone with Rance for the first time since their lives had taken this horrible turn in a place where there were no prying eyes. Maybe it was what Rance had just said - spontaneously, without time to plan it. Maybe it was all the aforementioned.

Whatever caused it, Gia looped her arms around Rance's bull neck, stood on her tiptoes and kissed him with an intensity and passion that both hoped was still alive but had been unable to find a way to confirm it. Until now.

Rance eagerly matched and returned her ardor, his arms encircling her chest and waist.

This was more than a kiss, it was a message: an unequivocal "I love you" from each to each. It was as though a reservoir had crumbled, and love pent up and left yearning for weeks, held captive by the gothic violence that had exploded around them, spilled out, subsuming all else.

When the kiss broke, Gia held Rance's face in both of her hands and looked directly in his eyes for a long moment. In the last gloaming of the autumn afternoon, Rance could see on Gia's cheeks wet streams where tears poured from her eyes. But her gaze remained locked on his eyes, and she seemed to struggle for words until finally it spilled from her in what sounded like a sob.

"God yes, I love you, Rance. I love you so," she bit her lip. "People say you're my boyfriend, but... no... what you've done to be with me and love me and see me through this... hellish awfulness - that's way beyond anything a boyfriend does. You're my rock, my constant."

Rance started to speak, but she cut him off.

"Sorry, but this has been building and I have to say what I have to say. I'm like a boiler ready to explode inside and I didn't know when or if I could ever speak this truth, but... this is the moment."

"We had this great, whirlwind, classic college romance that started the morning during two-a-days when you came over to me after practice and apologized for Mojo's fart comment, and I felt my heart flutter right then. And that night of our first kiss on the picnic table by your apartment. It might have followed that rosy script and we would have rocked on for a long time like that, your typical 'going-steady' campus couple - the excitement of big-time football and winning, beautiful lovemaking, relaxing at home with Pizza Don's and beer - and that would have been fine, like something on a greeting card."

Rance held her tightly and just listened intently, just as she needed him to.

"This Geno Millions thing... no relationship should survive that. I know I am not over it yet - I don't know if I will ever be fully over it. You don't see, feel, smell, taste the violence and evil and death that I did and just go about life as usual. But this much I know is true: at every crucial moment, what kept me from sliding into the darkness for a long time, maybe for good, was the faithful love of a strong, good -- damn good -- man.

"God tested us, but he put an angel on my shoulder for this. And that was you, my love. You, Rance Martin," she said. "The only other man whose faithful love I can compare this to is the only man I allowed to call me GiGi. I lost him, Rance. I never want to lose you."

Tears continued streaming down Gia's pretty face as her cleansing, soul-deep confession concluded. Rance wiped one cheek dry with his index finger far more gently than any hand that size should have been capable of. His gaze consumed her, and he lost himself in it. He bent down slightly and kissed the tears from her other cheek.

"I love you with all I am, Gia," Rance said. She smiled that enchanting Gia smile, and he found it so irresistible that he covered it with his mouth. They resumed the kiss that had begun this transformational moment, perhaps with even more passion and shared love. All the professions of devotion shared between them and the unbroken spirit-to-spirit connection was affirmed as they clutched each other tightly and kissed until a large wave rolled ashore, wetting the hem of their shorts and almost knocking them off their feet.

"I guess that's God saying, 'Get a room, you two,'" Gia said.

"We've got one. And since it's almost dark, maybe we better start heading back to it," he said. He kissed her again, this time softly, gently, holding both her hands.

"Here, put your hand in mine, Gia," he whispered to her over the surf and the chilly ocean breeze. "Take my hand and don't ever worry about losing me."

●●●

Rance picked up an order of spicy beef and broccoli chow mein from Ho Toy, an authentic Szechuan restaurant that had been a Myrtle Beach fixture for nearly 70 years, founded by the Yen family, immigrants who had fled the genocide of Japanese invaders in China during World War II and before Mao's murderous revolution. They had worked their way from San Francisco across the United States to Myrtle Beach in the early 1950s.

They spread their paper cartons of chow mein, beef and broccoli, a side of egg rolls and a container of ginseng tea on the large table for 10 meant for hosting family Easter and July Fourth gatherings in a dining room that melded seamlessly with the expansive living area arranged around a 70-inch LCD ultra hi-def flatscreen. The Modelo Especial he had brought with him from Fallstrom had not yet chilled to its ideal temperature, but it would suffice.

Gia ate with more gusto than he had seen from her in nearly a month. True, neither of them had eaten more than a slice of convenience-store pizza since breakfast that morning, but Gia was ravenous. Still chilled from their walk along the beach, they drained the entire carafe of hot ginseng tea which they mutually agreed to add to the order because of its rumored aphrodisiac properties.

Rance had tried to imbue the moment with a bit of romance, dimming the lights throughout the condo and illuminating the table with a candelabra that he recalled was kept in a pantry. They clumsily tested their proficiency with chopsticks, attempting to feed each other using them but spilling almost as much on themselves as they consumed.

"Gross," Gia said as a piece of sauce-soaked broccoli caromed down the scoop neck of her shirt. "We should have brought baby bibs with us."

"Here, let me get it," Rance said, carefully forming his thumb and forefinger into something of a pincer and carefully extracting the sauce-slickened vegetable lodged in the valley between her breasts, just at the top of her sports bra wedged against the inside of her shirt.

"Since when did you get so dainty and circumspect," she said, glancing down at his handiwork amid her cleavage. "My girls aren't going to shatter if you touch them."

Rance held the bit of retrieved refugee broccoli to her lips and she covered his digits sensually with her lips as her tongue slowly pried the morsel from his grasp. Her tongue continued its work on his forefinger long after she had swallowed.

He removed his fingers and they leaned into each other, each taking their lingual explorations up a notch. She laced her fingers through the short, tight curls of his hair as his left arm wrapped around her back and chest, pulling her into him - a task complicated by the wooden arms to the dining room chairs.

Rance broke the kiss, stood and pulled Gia to her feet, almost toppling his chair in the process. She clung to Rance, her arms locked around his tree stump of a neck and her legs wrapping around his waist while covering his face with kisses. As one, Rance walked them into the master bedroom and sat down gently on the plush bed, its sheets already turned down by the housekeeping service that tends to the property.

Once on the bed, Gia gently pushed Rance onto his back, looking at him with an unmistakable hunger in her eyes, a look Rance not long ago had feared he might never see again. She crossed her arms and grasped the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her taut belly, her confined tits and her head and then dropped it to the floor behind her.

Rance had slid his hands over her tight, stretchy brassiere and allowed his fingers to probe beneath the fabric, feeling the warm, soft flesh and the turgid nubs of her nipples longing to breathe free. Gia swooned at the sensation she had deprived herself of for weeks and moaned loudly. With one hand, Rance traced a line beginning from her lips down her chin, her neck, to each of her covered nipples, then from the hollow between her breasts down her torso to her navel where he swirled one finger in a slow circle, setting her hips into motion grinding into Rance.