You Can Go Home Again

She laughed. "Hell, no. When you let me drive the 442, I'll let you drive this."

"Okay, you can drive it," I said.

She cocked her head and raised that eyebrow. "Right, like I'm really trusting you here. You've never let me drive it. I'll let you drive and you'll renege, I know you."

She opened the door and spread the blanket out in the back seat. She stood back and Atlas climbed slowly in. He was already panting and two white strings were hanging from his jowls. She wiped them away with a corner of the blanket.

She started it up and turned the air on high. It wouldn't matter. He always panted in a car. We drove for thirty minutes, and I knew where we were going.

"Hey, you really are going to kill me and dump my body in the lake," I said. "Atlas will bite you if you hurt me."

"No, the puppy would never bite Mamma, would he," she cooed. He panted happily. It was freezing in the car. I could feel frost forming on my mustache. I looked over at Ripley and her nipples were trying to tear holes in her shirt. She saw me. She glanced down and giggled. "Kind of cold, isn't it? You wanted to bring him."

I didn't mind looking at those little buttons at all, but I wasn't about to let her know. I just grunted and looked away. I looked again after a minute, when I thought she wasn't watching. We pulled up at the marina and she parked and popped the trunk. I got out and let Atlas out. I snapped his leash on. Most people are a little intimidated when they see a 160-pound beast walking toward them unless he's on a leash. Ripley got a big basket and a cooler out of the trunk. I grabbed one handle of the cooler and she carried the basket. We walked down onto the marina and she nodded to the left. We walked about fifty feet and she indicated a nice cabin cruiser tied up there.

"This is it," she said. We climbed aboard and helped Atlas on. A worker cast off the lines and Ripley idled us out of the no wake zone before she pulled the throttles back and the big boat leaped up on plane. She ran us about five miles up the lake and pulled up into a cove. "Tie us off to that tree," she said.

She killed the engines and I tied us off. "Whose boat is this?" I asked.

"It's mine," she said. "I've had it for about six months."

"Doing pretty good for yourself, aren't you?" I said.

"I signed a pretty big contract," she said. "This is my signing bonus."

"Jesus, Ripley, you're running with the big boys," I said.

"Want a beer?" she asked. I took one and we moved up to the front deck. We sat facing each other on the cushions and I knew the heavy hitting was about to begin.

"Okay, I'm going to give it to you," she said. "You might not like it, but if you'll just listen to me, I'll listen to you, deal?"

"You expect me to just sit here?" I asked.

"No, I'd like that, but I don't expect it," she said. I snorted.

She leaned back against the cushion and stretched those impossibly long legs out. "Kaine, I love you," she said. "I've loved you since our first date. I never stopped and I don't think I ever will. You're the only man I've ever loved. You're the one for me. When I came to you and told you I needed to get away for a while, I never meant permanently. I wasn't even thinking of another man. I was still as much in love with you as ever. I thought I was too much in love with you. I was wrong. I didn't know it at the time, but I was."

"I hate to say this, Ripley," I said, "but this sounds like buyer's remorse. It sounds like you went out and got what you thought you wanted and it didn't turn out like you thought it would."

"No, you're wrong," she said. "What I regret is the way I did it, not that I did. I grew up, Kaine. I was a stupid, callow girl. I'm a woman now. I did what I needed to do and if you hadn't run away like you did, it would have been so much easier for both of us. I'm not sure it was a bad thing. "

"You're not sure it was a bad thing? It was sure as hell a bad thing for me; I can tell you that. You're telling me you don't regret leaving me?"

"I didn't intend to leave you, Kaine, I keep telling you. I moved out. It's not the same."

"That's bullshit, but have it your way. You had something you 'needed to do', so instead of trying to work it out together, you just moved out. And now you're telling me everything would have been okay if only I had sat at home all alone and waited for you to decide to come back to me?"

"I didn't say I was smart, Kaine, and I've already told you I'm sorry for hurting you so badly. I can't really regret it, though, because while I was away, I did grow up. When I found out I was pregnant, I had to grow up in a hurry."

"When did you find out?" I asked.

"Not for a while," she said. "I really didn't think about missing my periods. The first thing I noticed was being a little nauseated in the morning. I just thought I had a bug. It didn't go away and I went to the doctor. That's when I found out. I was nine weeks along."

"Did you know she was mine?" I asked.

"Kaine, there was never a doubt," she said. "You are the only man I ever allowed to touch me in an intimate way from the time we started dating until the day our divorce became final."

"Couldn't wait for the ink to dry?" I asked.

She looked at me and she was angry. Her eyes flashed. "No, and I never touched anyone until after Makenna was born, either," she said.

It sounded as if she was playing games to me. "What are you saying, Ripley?"

"I'm just telling you that there was, and is, no question who Makenna's father is," she said.

All right, we could leave that alone for now. "Okay, go on," I said. "I'll try not to say anything unless I have a question."

She nodded. "Kaine, I wasn't leaving you. I wanted to be your wife. I've wanted nothing else since our first date. I just wanted a chance to see if I could make it on my own. We'd been together since my second freshman semester. I lived with my parents, had one semester living in the dorms and then I moved in with you."

"Ripley, that doesn't make sense. You already were making it on your own. Hell, you were a celebrity by the time you were 21, and it wasn't as if you were part of a team or anything. It was just you."

She thought for a moment. "Yes, I guess it would seem like that. Kaine, the Ripley O'Keefe who everyone thinks they know doesn't really exist. She's a character I made up, and I play her very well. She has a lot in common with me, but she's not me. A lot of performers are like that, I think. My career, all this stuff," she waved her had around the cabin cruiser, "is her, it's not really me. When I was out in public, people always expected to meet her, not me. I started to wonder if there really was a me any more. You know, I never really lived on my own."

"I wasn't much different," I told her.

"Yes, I know that," she said. "The difference is I thought you would be just fine without me. I didn't know how I would be if I didn't have you. I needed to learn to trust myself. It really had nothing to do with you or us, it was me. I needed to trust me, that I was capable of standing on my own two feet. I fucked it up. I'm very, very sorry. I never intended for anything that happened to happen. I didn't understand how upset you were, I didn't understand how I was affecting you and hurting you. I knew you didn't like the idea, but I needed to try it on my own. I was young and stupid, Kaine. I found out just how stupid when you left."

"Well, it just sounded like psychobabble to me," I said. "It sounded to me like you were telling me I wasn't enough for you, that you were looking for an upgrade, and that I wasn't what you needed."

"No, no, it wasn't like that at all!" She had tears in those impossibly huge eyes. "I needed you more than ever! I needed you to be there for me, help me see that I was a person, on my own. I just needed to find the right words to tell you how much I loved you and that I wasn't leaving you, that you had done nothing wrong, that it was me, but when I got myself together, three days later, you were gone."

"I thought you wanted me gone," I said.

"No!" She fell to the floor on her knees in front of me and held my hands. "I never wanted that. God, Kaine, I searched everywhere for you. I called everyone I knew. I went home and cried. Christ, I cried so damn hard. Your parents didn't know where you were; you quit your job; you just disappeared. I didn't go to work for two weeks; I spent every minute thinking about you, looking for you, trying to track you down. Then I got the divorce papers in the mail."

"I thought that's what you wanted," I said again.

"Well, you were wrong," she said. "That's when I found out you were in Alaska. Your attorney told me. I went to court and asked for counseling. The judge agreed, but there was no way to get you here. I could have explained everything. Then I found out I was pregnant!"

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I went to pieces," she said. "I wondered how this could happen. I was on the pill, for God's sake. You were the only man that had ever made love to me. I knew it was our baby, but I'd fucked everything up so bad that I didn't know what to do. I went to your mom and dad.

"I told them everything. I told them how stupid I had been. They agreed with me, I could tell, but they never said one bad word to me," she said. "They took care of me for a week. I stayed with them. You have wonderful parents, Kaine. They went to childbirth classes with me, took me to doctor's appointments, your mother was there in the room with me when Makenna was born. She was the first one to hold her. I'm not even sure they believed that she was ours, but they were my rocks."

I sat back, trying to take this all in. I didn't know what to think or what to do. "What do you want, Ripley," I finally asked. "What do you want from me?"

"You know exactly what I want," she said. "God, why are you such a fucking coward, Kaine?"

I jumped to my feet. "That's it," I yelled. "If all you can do is call me names, when you're the one who fucked up and left, this is finished. Take me back, Ripley."

She just knelt there, looking up at me. "No," she said.

I stormed over to the driver's seat. The fucking keys were missing. "Where are the keys?"

"I'm not giving them to you," she said. "We're staying here until we're done."

"I'm done now," I told her.

"Running away again?" she asked. "How has that been going for you, Kaine? You're miserable. What are you going to do? Are you going to bail on Makenna? Move back to Alaska? Why don't you try Siberia, this time? Sit down and stop proving my point. Your solution to problems is to bail. That isn't going to work this time. You're not the sort of man to abandon your daughter. Didn't you promise to take her fishing tomorrow?"

I felt incredibly weary. I went back and sat down. She had me trapped here. "I'll ask it again. What do you want from me, Ripley?"

"I'm here, Kaine," she said. "I'm right here. I love you with all my heart. I always have. I think you love me. I'm asking for a chance. That's all I want, just a chance. I'm asking you to let me prove that I've grown up. Take Makenna fishing. I know you love that and I'm sure she will love it, too. Get to know her. Fall in love with her. She'll make your life special again."

I had to smile at that thought. "I'm sure she will. I want to do that, Ripley. That's it?"

"No, you know that isn't it," she said. "I'm making the first move here because I fucked everything up. I'm asking you out. There's a charity function I have Tuesday night. I want you to take me. After it's over, I want you to take me dancing. Not late, because we have to pick up Makenna. Your parents have agreed to keep her. Then I want you to let us spend the night at your house. We'll stay in your guest room. I'll cook breakfast in the morning. Will you?"

I thought for a minute. "I have a condition," I said.

She looked dubious. "What?"

"I cook breakfast," I said.

She laughed and it gave me that same old thrill. "Maybe that's better," she said. "I do cook, now. I have a baby to feed. I had to learn."

"So, what now?" I asked. "Are you going to hold me hostage here?"

"Yes," she said. "I'm feeling like a swim. You up for it?"

"I forgot my trunks," I said. "You didn't mention we were going for a boat ride."

"Remember when you took me canoeing on Labor Day the first year we were married?" she asked.

I did remember it. It was pretty memorable. We'd stopped at a gravel bar for lunch. She'd stripped and enticed me into the water. We wound up making love, first on the blanket, and then with her bent over the canoe we'd turned upside down on the bank. "Ripley, I don't think..." I started.

She stood and slowly began unbuttoning her blouse. My throat was dry and I took a swig from my water bottle. She pulled the tails of her blouse open and those phenomenal breasts were displayed in all their glory. I was right; she didn't have on a bra. They were just as mouthwatering as the last time I'd seen them. More so, I believe. They looked bigger. They were still perfectly shaped globes, sitting high and proud on her chest. The tops were sprinkled with the freckles I remembered so well, fading to a clear creamy white. Her nipples were erect, cherry colored bullets, topping areolae that were a little puffy, forming miniature peaks of their own. I licked my lips and she laughed, sending ripples bouncing through the heavy mounds.

"I see you still like them," she said, glancing down at the rising lump in my shorts. She was joking, of course.

Ripley exudes more sensuality than it is possible to describe. Everything about her just screams sensual in foot high neon letters. She's gorgeous, but that's not it. She has the ability to make men into fools. We're pretty much fools when it comes to women, anyway, but Ripley is in her own class. The first time we went out was on her eighteenth birthday. I took her dancing and gave her the jade dagger. She moves like a cat, lithe, sinuous, gliding as her weight shifts. She got up at one point and danced for me, just standing by our booth.

Two guys were walking past about five feet from where she was dancing. They had both seen her when they were about twenty feet away. They couldn't take their eyes off her. They walked toward each other, so hypnotized by Ripley's dance that they crashed into each other, sending them both sprawling on the floor. That's the effect she has. That's with her clothes on.

All the time we dated and all the time we were married, friends, strangers, people at the gas station, all asked me who she was. When they discovered she was my girlfriend or wife, they asked inappropriate questions or made stupid comments. "Is she as good as she looks? You're tapping that? Damn, dude, how did you get that?" It never ended. At first, it offended me and I told them to shut the fuck up. After the thousandth time, I just ignored them. I would have been in a fight every day of my life if I hadn't just passed it off.

The amazing thing was she didn't give a damn. Sure, she knew the effect she had, but she didn't particularly care for it. That lush body held all that promise and excitement but I was the one that got to unwrap it. The new decoration in her navel seemed to tell me that had changed.

The first time we made love was a spiritual experience for me. The feel of her was otherworldly. She was soft as a kitten, but steel underneath. She worked out religiously, and it showed. She started slowly. She loved foreplay, but sex was a little painful for her, the first couple of times. She was so tight and so incredibly exotic that I'm afraid I didn't give her time to really get into it. The third time, I knew it was coming and I got hard in the shower before our date just thinking about it. Stroking myself off in the shower before our date relieved a little of the excitement and I got her off twice with my mouth before sliding into all that tightness and heat. She was ready, dripping wet and flushed with excitement, her face showing that slack look of prolonged sexual arousal. I stroked her, slowly at first and then bringing her up to a boil. When she reached her peak I slowed, leaving her straining there for long minutes before plunging into her, taking her over the edge and she screamed out her ecstasy, cumming, writhing, bridging up against me as I pounded into her.

She never looked back, becoming a dynamic, aggressive lover, initiating sex as often as I did, coming into the full promise of that luscious body and becoming a sexual partner that most people would have trouble imagining. I shook my head to get rid of those memories. I had to nip this in the bud.

"Ripley," I said, "keep your clothes on."

She looked puzzled.

"What? Why?" she asked, "You've never turned me down before."

"Ripley, this is too important, Makenna is too important. This is serious business; it's not going to be solved between the sheets. Sex was never our problem, at least, not that I know of," I said. "Yes, you're as sexy as hell. You know that. I'd love to just take you and go for a ride down memory lane. It would be crazy good, but when it was over, I'd still be pissed at you for walking out on me and you'd still be pissed at me for not just taking it."

She looked thoughtful, and then started to button up her shirt.

"You're right, Kaine, I shouldn't have tried to manipulate you like that; but what are we going to do?"

"You tell me, because I haven't a fucking clue," I said.

She sat there, lost in thought for long minutes. I got up and got us both a beer. She leaned back against a boat cushion, looking like a flame-haired angel. God, she was so beautiful she made my soul ache. Her chin was in her hands and she had that same look on her face as that "Thinker" statue. She glanced at me from time to time and then she sat back again.

"The first thing we are going to do is remove Makenna from the equation," she finally said.

"Remove, what's that supposed to mean?" I was upset by that statement, more than I could have believed. "You aren't going to let me see her?"

A look of horror flashed over her features. "No, no, Kaine, it's not that at all. Never think that. Kaine, What I meant was I'm very sorry that I made her part of you and me. I should never have done that."

"I understand," I said. "No, she shouldn't be a part of anything else other than being loved and given everything that a loving mother and father can give her."

She nodded. "Yes, that's what I meant. I didn't like involving her at all, but I had to do something to get you to talk to me."

She thought a moment. "There's something else. I'm not sorry for barging into your place the other day, but I am sorry for... well, acting as if I owned the place. You know, swigging your beer and swiping your pizza. That wasn't right, but I was just so happy to finally be with you in your house, I was almost giddy with it. Can you understand?"

I did. I opened my arms and beckoned to her. She smiled, wistfully, and came crawling over to sit between my spread legs on the deck. She leaned back against me and I wrapped her in my arms. It felt so right and so good that I wanted to stay like that forever.

"Will you go to the charity event with me?" she asked.

"Well, it isn't as if my social calendar is packed," I chuckled. "Sure, Ripley, I'd love to go."

We sat there, talking quietly, and finished our beers. I had forgotten how good it felt to just sit with her and talk. There was something I wanted to ask, and I finally figured out how.

"Ripley, you know how every fall, Lucy tells Charlie Brown to run up and kick the football while she holds it for him?"

She laughed and interrupted me. "And every year she pulls it away and he lands on his ass?"

"Yeah, and the next year she tells him why it won't be like last year, and then it is?" We chuckled together, and then she looked at me seriously.