The Education of Giacomo Jones Ch. 05

"You are the most beautiful, sexy, desirable woman on earth," he said, grasping her narrow waist and pulling her toward him. She plopped onto his lap, her legs parted, and she guided his hands immediately to her underside, already slick with her intoxicating arousal. He slipped his index and middle fingers easily into her as his thumb swirled around her straining clitoris. He dipped his mouth to her swollen left nipple, tonguing and greedily sucking it into his mouth as Gia's abdomen strained upward under Rance's busy fingers.

"I can't take this anymore," Gia gasped, her right hand finding Rance's hardness, its stiff shaft already streaked with precum. "I need this... in me... now."

Gia stood briefly, facing Rance's seated form, placed one knee on each side of his hips and slid herself forward until the underside of Rance's rigid cock was pressed against the matted hair of her pubic mound and the apex of her slit. That sensation alone -- of contact with his beautiful Gia -- and his weeklong absence of intimacy necessitated by her period and his need to focus on beating Georgia -- almost prematurely liberated Rance large load of cum. Urgently, Gia grabbed his hair-triggered erection, positioned quickly at her entrance and sank fully down upon him.

"Ohhhhh, God...," Gia moaned as she sat there momentarily motionless, her eyes closed, her pussy acclimating itself again to Rance's mass and the familiar, pleasing fullness she felt. Rance clenched his eyes shut, bit the inside of his cheeks slightly and tried to think about the win over Georgia to momentarily short-circuit the pleasure center of his brain and forestall his orgasm.

When at last both opened their eyes, they gazed at other and sighed in a sense of fulfilled wonderment. "I love you so much, Rance Martin."

Rance pulled her gently to him and kissed her tenderly, one hand threading gently through her silky, black hair and lifting it back and away from her pretty face. Their kiss remained unbroken for what seemed like long minutes as their hips began pressing their genitals more tightly into each other.

Ultimately, nature's own ancient needs and urgings heightened their tempo. This was untamed, animal lust as they had never experienced in the several short weeks since they had mutually abandoned their virginity the night of their season-opening victory over Wake Forest. Rance slammed powerfully upward into her, pushing his manhood as far is he could into her wet, welcoming womanhood. Gia grasped the back cushions of the love seat and used her legs to bounce herself lewdly on his swollen, hair-triggered penis.

It was a pace that couldn't sustain itself long, and it didn't. It is impossible to say whether Gia's climax - her spasming hips and clutching pelvic muscles - triggered the gush of semen Rance shot deep into her, or the other way around. Orgasm had gripped them at the same instant, leaving both in dizzying ecstasy and moaning loudly, oblivious to anyone who might overhear in nearby apartments.

"I will never forget this day, my beautiful girl. And its most indelible and wonderful moment is the one we're living right now. I love you without limit, Gia," Rance said as they both caught their breath and each gently caressed the other's face.

Reluctantly, they decoupled. Neither bothered with a shower, shunning anything that would break this time of shared bliss. Naked, they lay in Gia's bed, arms and legs entangled, taking turns raining tender kisses on the face, neck and shoulders of the other until, at last, sleep claimed them.

●●●

Three games remained on the Generals' regular season schedule - all of them fellow members of the Southeastern Conference's Eastern Division. Fulbright sat atop the SEC East standings. Like Georgia, Fulbright stood at 8-1 but had the lead over the Bulldogs by virtue of the stunning head-to-head victory over them. The final quarter of the 12-game regular season included, chronologically, home games against Missouri and Tennessee and a season-closing road trip to Gainesville, Florida, to play the Gators, struggling under a first-year coach. The Generals would be strongly favored against Missouri and Florida, though both were more than capable of pulling off an upset. The Volunteers -- also at 8-1, having lost only to Georgia -- still nurtured hopes of winning the SEC East and a berth in the conference championship game by knocking off Fulbright and praying Georgia would lose again. Tennessee, Ed and Lorraine Martin's alma mater, were loaded with elite talent and ran the same volatile, up-tempo offense as Fulbright.

On Sunday afternoon, when the Generals reviewed game film of their win over Georgia, the practice facility was abuzz. Back on duty in the equipment room was Jock Jones. After Saturday's warm welcome by a team flush from a huge victory, staying away was something Gia could no longer condone. Her heart belonged here.

There was little education from a game in which Fulbright had done so much so well. Perry Hemphill had considered abandoning the review of the previous day's results when he remembered his team's letdown after the upset win earlier over South Carolina. But this was a much more mature team, he reasoned to himself, and would better reset its focus and game-week preparation for the upcoming home game with Missouri than it did heading into the Vanderbilt game.

Before the team had split into the offensive unit and the defensive unit to separately watch and critique their performances against Georgia, Hemphill took the occasion to admonish his players. Complacency, he noted, is the enemy. You're going to see breathless praise all week from the press. The new college polls would inevitably have Fulbright in the low single digits near the very pinnacle.

"Your friends and people you don't even know over social media are going to tell you how great, how perfect you are. And that's fine because none of that bullshit matters one iota... unless... you start... believing it," the coach said, delivering the last five words slowly and emphatically. "And then, we're screwed."

"Last week showed how much you've matured, how much you've grown. This is a level of maturity you've realized from both winning and from losing over the first three-fourths of this long season," Hemphill said. "But that's last week. Now we're entering the fourth quarter of this season, far wiser and mentally stronger than we've ever been, and when are championships won?"

"Fourth quarter!" the team replied in unison, joining their coach in holding up one hand with four fingers extended.

"Let's get down to business," Hemp said.

The week seemed to speed by. Gia was stunned at how differently, with a concentration and seriousness of purpose, this team went about its work than the last week she was a part of its daily life one month before. Practices went crisply. There was no time wasted. Players were attentive, inquisitive, collaborative and even inventive in discussing problems the weekend's opponent had presented for them in film study and how to solve them. That was part of the individual mental discipline Rance Martin helped inculcate into the team's culture.

Gia and Rance had settled almost fully back into their pre-Geno Millions routine, eschewing physical intimacy beyond Tuesday of each game week to focus on both academic work and the quest for a football title. By Friday afternoon ahead of the Mizzou game, when the football team was gathering to retreat to its pre-game team hotel, the two lovers had assumed their "game faces."

As kickoff approached at noon Eastern Time in Fullbright Stadium, Rance found comfort in being able to see Gia working with the equipment crew on the periphery of the field for the first time since the game at Vandy.

"Our game, No. 74. Sixty minutes, full focus, total effort," she told Rance as she walked within earshot of him during warmups. He nodded. "Amen, Gia," was all he said.

Missouri gave Fulbright all it could handle for about 20 minutes. Five minutes into the second quarter, neither team had scored. The Tigers had put together a seven-play drive that took them to Fulbright's 17 yard line when a Missouri receiver bobbled a pass that LaShon Quincy snagged out of thin air and raced 86 yards to give Fulbright a 7-0 lead. The Generals extended the margin to 17-0 by halftime, but Missouri proved itself gritty and, by halftime, had almost as many yards of total offense against Fulbright as Georgia had amassed after two quarters the previous week.

In the second half, however, Fulbright's defense smothered the Tigers, and the Generals' offense put points on the board every time it possessed the ball. Missouri eventually scored after Fulbright pulled its starters at the beginning of the fourth quarter. When it was all over, Fulbright had earned its ninth victory of the season 44-10 over Mizzou.

After the game, Rance waited outside the equipment staff area for Gia to finish her postgame duties and walked with her to the Honors College dorm. There, they exorcised the anxieties of four days of self-imposed chastity and then showered and dressed for dinner Saturday evening with Rance's Aunt Semmie, owner of the oceanside condo in Myrtle Beach where so much of Rance's and Gia's healing had begun.

Emily Gartlan had picked up the nickname Semmie almost four decades earlier from her kid sister, Lorraine -- Rance's mother. Until Lorrie was 4 years old, "Semmie" is what came out of her mouth when she attempted to pronounce her older sister's given name, but by then the name had stuck family-wide. So Semmie it remains within the family.

Semmie's late husband was Frank Gartlan, the second-generation owner of Gartlan Realty, a chain of real estate offices dominant throughout the South Carolina Piedmont and Coastal region. Frank, a dozen years Semmie's senior, had passed away five years ago from early onset Alzheimer's Disease, and Semmie had taken over the business at least five years before that when her husband's intellectual decline became undeniable. Under her control, Gartlan Realty had doubled its number of offices, particularly in the prized Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach markets, and more than quadrupled its revenues. In the previous calendar year, it had managed sales of properties with an gross aggregate value of more than two-and-a-half billion dollars.

As one would expect from someone of such wealth, Gia and Rance would join Aunt Semmie in the most opulent of and prestigious of settings: the campus home of Arthur Overshaw, the president of Fulbright University. Such audiences were commonplace for donors who had given the university millions of dollars, as alumnus Frank Gartlan had done and as Emily Gartlan had done since his passing.

Gia wore a business suit she used for meetings with biotech executives who came to campus to entice her with offers of immediate and lucrative employment or underwriting her graduate studies in exchange for a commitment to join their companies afterward. Rance dressed in a charcoal gray suit he used most often for funerals, weddings and other moderately dressy occasions. He had to have a white dress shirt custom tailored to fit his size 22 neck and his barrel chest and huge biceps, but that narrowed to a waist of only 40 inches. He wore a forest green tie with a gold silk handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit jacket, a nod to Fulbright's colors.

Rance and Gia were jittery as they waited by the Honors College entrance for Aunt Semmie to pick them up and drive them to the president's residence on the opposite corner of the campus. This wasn't how they normally spent the evening after a home football victory. Normally, they'd gather with friends at a small party at someone's apartment or, if they could find such a thing, an out-of-the-way bar with live music that the out-of-town fans and alumni hadn't managed to take over. But tonight, it was long-stemmed glasses, servers in white coats, suits and ties, monied donors and the university president his own self.

Both knew that had fate and Geno Millions not made them reluctant and largely reclusive celebrities over the past month, it's doubtful that they would be part of a command audience in this salon of power and privilege on this Saturday evening, though being the nephew of a platinum-level donor greased the rails somewhat.

They arrived fashionably late as was Aunt Semmie's penchant. Tonight, it was deliberate, knowing that the evening's marquee guests were in the back seat of her Range Rover. And, as she instinctively knew, every one of the swells gathered for the evening, led by President Art Overshaw, was queued to greet them, to be shake their hands and tell them how proud they were of the way they handled the crisis and get photographed with them.

"You two are both honors students. This awful tragedy happened in the Honors College Residency where you live, Gia. Can you tell me, Gia or Rance, what is it that you've learned in your very young lives that helped you endure this ordeal and come back, seemingly pretty well, in a remarkably short period of time," the president asked from the head of a massive rectangular table that seated a dozen people for a dinner of lobster and veal.

"Well, President Overshaw, I don't know that what we did was anything 'learned,' at least not in an academic sense. There's a lot that my mind has chosen to box up and stow away somewhere that I don't really recall from that day. But in the lead-up, at least speaking for myself, you just fall back on your lifelong sense of right and wrong," Gia said, demurely putting down her silverware and looking directly at the college president.

"If it's all right, that's as far as I want to go. I had rather let the memories and images of all that happened stay sealed for now in those boxes. I don't want to try to open them, and you certainly don't want to peek inside," she said, then fell silent.

"Of course," the president said.

Evangeline Overshaw, the university's first lady, sensed the tension building in Gia.

"Gia, would you like to take a break, go outside and get some fresh air?" Evangeline said.

Gia nodded. "Yes, that would be nice, thank you. If I may be excused for a moment," she said. Those around the table nodded their assent. Gia and Evangeline walked together through the mansion's grand foyer through the president's study and out its French doors to a patio that doubled as a magnificent flower garden. A man in a white jacket had followed them with two glasses of ice water.

"May I bring you anything else?" the young man asked.

"I know you're not yet 21 and this isn't something Arthur needs to know about," Evangeline said to Gia, "but can I offer you a glass of wine?"

"That would be lovely," Gia said.

"Then two Pinot Grigios please, Charlie," she told the server, who nodded, turned smartly and walked away.

"How are you doing, Gia. I mean really doing. I am in awe of your strength and your bravery, but I imagine that what you endured doesn't go away soon or easily. Is there anything you need that you aren't getting, that Arthur I can help you with?"

Gia sought to dab away a gathering teardrop before it spilled from her eye and streaked her carefully applied mascara. Evangeline offered her a fresh tissue from her purse.

"Thank you," Gia said, barely above a whisper.

"I can't think of anything tangible. The support I've gotten in the past couple of weeks from the university, the students, the team, and especially from Rance -- I've been blessed, really. The administration has been there with the security, the counseling, the logistical support to protect our privacy, you name it. There's just..." she halted again.

"... It's as you said, Mrs. Overshaw, this doesn't go away fast or easily. You sort of feel your way along, and I don't yet know what I don't know."

Evangeline nodded and gently patted Gia's hand as Charlie returned with two long-stemmed glasses filled with the light golden wine.

"I understand. I don't have the answers, and I don't think anyone who's honest with you will have them yet, either. Sometimes the best you can do is have people you can talk to when you feel the need. I am happy you have Rance -- you two are an adorable couple, by the way -- and that you have the team and Coach Hemphill and that the students and faculty have all embraced you so warmly. It's what I have always loved about this place," Evangeline said.

"I want you to know that you can talk to me any time you need to, and you can start by calling me Vangie," she said, pulling a business card from her purse, scratching through the public number and writing her personal cell number on the back of the card. "I haven't been through what you have, thank God. I don't know anyone who has exactly. But I am familiar with the world of mental health from my writing."

Evangeline Overshaw was a well-known author of nonfiction work that cast a critical eye on the poor job a broken mental health system had done for the most vulnerable people in the United States. Her three latest books were New York Times bestsellers.

"I'm very, very good at listening and I am just as good at keeping confidential what I am told in confidence. I will be there for you, Gia," she said.

Gia's lip quivered. She took a sip of wine.

"Thank you, Mrs.... I mean... Vangie," she said, smiling weakly.

"Rance and I plan to do an interview at some point with a correspondent for '60 Minutes,' but I don't plan to share anything from... deep down. We get to set the interview ground rules and maybe you can help me with those? Mitch Glazer has offered to help and knows the media part of this. I need someone I can trust who can help with the me part of it."

"Certainly Gia. I'd heard through the grapevine that Glazer was working on something, and I think '60 Minutes' is a good choice, at least for major media. I think you can trust '60 Minutes,' but you still have to be careful and intentional about what you discuss and what you withhold for your own wellbeing. I have some experience there and I'm happy to privately advise you and Rance."

Gia smiled, nodded and took a last sip of her wine.

"Bit of a chill in the air tonight, Gia. Perhaps we should rejoin the others so they don't think I'm monopolizing you?"

As they rose from their chairs, Gia reached for Evangeline and hugged her tightly.

"This means more than you can know."

"The blessing was mine, dear girl," Vangie said as they re-entered the oaky warmth of the president's residence.

●●●

Aunt Semmie invited Rance and Gia back to her suite in the Fulbright Alumni Hotel for a nightcap, and they took her up on it. It was only about a 200-yard stroll from there back to the Honors College dorm.

"Rance, turn on a game if you like. You needn't show me your IDs to have adult beverages here. What'll you have," she said.

"Beer's fine for me, Aunt Semmie. What about you, Gia?"

"Beer for me too, please," she said.

Rance settled on the ESPN evening game between Kentucky and Fulbright's opponent in the home finale the next week, Tennessee. The game, early in the third quarter, was already out of hand with Tennessee ahead by 28 points. Not much to be learned from a game this far gone, Rance reasoned, so he chose to engage with Gia and his aunt in conversation.

"So, Gia, my sister Lorrie tells me your mom is one of the most delightful people she's ever met and now I'm eager to meet her, too. At the risk of jumping ahead on the board too many slots, what are your plans for over the holidays? I know things are sort of up in the air right now because Fulbright might still be playing football in January," Semmie said.

"You're right, we haven't discussed it yet, even in passing, if you can believe it, and I really haven't given it any thought, even though semester finals start in about three weeks," Gia said, suddenly startled at the fast-approaching end of the year -- and her undergraduate commencement. "Damn!"