Page 127 of S is for SEX

EMILY

July 26, 2006

Although it had only been two months since Jackson and I had met, we really hadn’t been separated at all during that period of time. And, if a person had the means and methods to measure the quality of time we had spent together, they would without a doubt agree our life together had been nothing short of a living dream.

As a young girl, I often guessed what my life would become, and when I would reach a point that I was satisfied with what I had either obtained or achieved. I suspected I would be fifty or maybe even slightly younger, but certainly not twenty-one. If given an opportunity as a high school girl to paint a perfect picture of what I expected my dream man to be, I never would have painted a picture of Jackson, but maybe that’s why so many relationships when we are young and foolish just don’t seem to last beyond a matter of weeks.

In my opinion, when we’re young, we don’t really know what we need, and it seems we settle for what we desire. Our desires are based on the thoughts and feelings of our inexperienced youth, and therefore aren’t in line with what we truly need, leaving us in the not-so-distant future in a position to choose either settling for what it is we have, or moving on in an attempt to find what we have come to believe we actually need.

And most women I knew seemed to settle for what they had, choosing not to seek what it was they truly needed.

I was fortunate. Jackson found me. And, be it by blind luck or fate, he had proven to be exactly what I needed.

“Put the fuckers wherever you want them,” he said as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

The July sun bore down on us like a heavy weight, the humidity from the previous night’s rain making the air so thick it was difficult to breathe. As if the temperature and my exposure to the sun over the course of the morning had caused mild brain damage, I continued to stare like an idiot at the ground.

“Okay,” I said as I gazed blankly at the pots of flowers we had brought home.

Jackson stood, studying the hole he had dug, and eventually turned away and walked into the garage. In a few minutes he returned with a small green box and carefully placed it into the hole. After tossing some dirt on top of the box, he lowered the rose bush into the hole and began adding some of the bagged soil we had purchased.

In the previous month I had backed out of the lease on my apartment and moved all of my belongings into Jackson’s home. Although he continued to call it our home, I really felt like it was his, and that I was invading his space. The addition of the flowers we had purchased together was a great help in convincing me it was a home we shared, and not one I was simply a guest in. As I continued to stare at them, I wondered if he realized in suggesting we plant flowers together that it would make me feel more comfortable.

“You realize those impatiens are annuals, and they won’t come back next year, don’t you?” he asked as he finished planting his rose bush.

“Huh?” I responded as I gazed down at the pots of flowers, confused on where to put each one of them.

“Annuals will last for this season and die. Perennials will come back year after year. The rose bush is a perennial; we’ll have it for as long as we live here. It’ll be ours forever…well…as long as it lives, but they say they live thirty years or longer…” he explained as he shoveled the extra soil into the wheelbarrow.

“So these guys are gonna die?” I asked as I peered down at my flowers.

“That’s why they were on sale. We can enjoy ‘em for the rest of the summer, though,” he said as he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside.

“Put it back on,” I said jokingly as I covered my eyes.

Seeing him shirtless was sheer torture. His body was as perfect as I suspected anyone’s could ever be, and seeing it covered by a tight white tank tormented me enough. When he removed his shirt, I was forced to accept him as being a shirtless gorgeous tattooed biker until he chose to make sexual advancements toward me.

I had learned a lot about Jackson since we met, and although I initially tried dressing scantily, acting horny, and making idle sexual suggestions, I learned he was a far too disciplined to allow me to coerce him into sex. I simply had to enjoy watching him and wait until he decided he was ready.

As he pushed the wheelbarrow toward where I was standing, the muscles on his biceps flared. His washboard abs appeared to be chiseled out of stone, a product of his daily workouts, eating properly, and rarely enjoying sweets. The closer he got to me, the more I wanted to look away, but doing so was as impossible as any other time he was close enough for me to admire. As the sweat covering his torso glistened in the hot afternoon sun, I forced myself to tear my eyes from him and once again gaze down at my poor choice in flowers.

“Staring at ‘em isn’t going to do a lot of good,” he said as he shoved the end of the wheelbarrow into my thigh.

“Hey, watch where you’re going,” I said as I shoved against it.

He released the wooden handles, walked around me as if I wasn’t there, and slapped my ass as he passed by. After turning on the garden hose, he dragged it toward the rose bush he had planted, placed it on top of the new soil, and returned to my withering one-time-only and soon to be dead choice of flowers. As he placed his hands on his hips and gazed down at the flowers, he exhaled a sigh and shook his head lightly.

“What did you bury with the rose bush?” I asked.

He shifted his eyes upward, met my gaze, and grinned.

“Something we’ll dig up together on a rainy day,” he responded.

“What are we going to do with these guys?” I asked as I kicked my toe against one of the pots.

“Don’t get mad because they’re going to die, Em. Everything dies. Everything has a beginning and an ending. Just be glad you’re allowed to enjoy them while you’re able,” he said as he picked up two of the pots and placed them into the wheelbarrow.

“Where are we taking them?” I asked.

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