Summer of Regrets
Chapter 3
Lilly
I cannot believe how fast
this summer has flown by! It is already the middle of August. I have spent
every day since the Fourth of July with Bobby in some way or the other. During
the week, mom usually drops me off at Mona’s on her way to work and John picks
me up on his way home from work. Mona is usually somewhere nearby and so is
Bobby’s sister Melissa, but, for the most part it is usually just me and Bobby.
Technically speaking though, mom thinks I am spending time with Melissa. On the
weekends we all go to Mona’s. Mom and John have always wanted me to get along
with John’s family. The more time I spend with Bobby, the more I tend to agree
that I like spending time with John’s family! I am just very glad that I don’t
think of Bobby as my cousin. I haven’t seen Margie much this summer. We talk on
the phone every day. She doesn’t approve of me spending time with Bobby. She
thinks that I am “two-timing” Shawn but we are pretty much over any way, so I
don’t see it as two-timing anyone. I don’t know what her problem is.
Bobby will be leaving for
college tomorrow morning. I’ve had such a good time with him. He doesn’t treat
me like I’m some weird, little girl. He treats me like I’m his age. He makes me
feel like a woman when he looks at me. I have never been able to talk to anyone
the way that I can talk to Bobby. I don’t even talk to Margie the way I talk to
him. He just gets me and nobody has ever taken the time to do that before.
As I pull my t-shirt and
shorts on over my bathing suite I am having a really hard time believing that
today is the last day that I will be with Bobby till next summer. He doesn’t
have time during the school year to come to Mona’s during small breaks, only
during the summer. He did promise me that he would be back here as soon as
school was out next May. I just wonder if he will still find me that
interesting a year from now. Bobby and I are going to spend most of the day at
the pool. Mom has agreed to let me spend the night at Mona’s to cook-out with
them tonight and then ride to the airport with them tomorrow to drop Bobby off.
When mom drops me off at
Mona’s I just let myself in the front door like I have every day this summer. I
don’t see or hear anyone at first so I start through the house. I find Bobby
standing at the counter in the kitchen putting frozen waffles in the toaster.
“Hey beautiful!” He tells me
as smiles his full on, gorgeous smile. “Want some breakfast?”
“Sure!” I tell him as I sit
my bag down by the back door and join him at the counter.
Bobby lays two waffles out
on a plate and hands them to me. “There’s butter and syrup over here.” He
points to a spot on the counter on the other side of him.
“Thanks!” I walk around him
and set my plate down on the counter. As I start to put some butter on my
waffles Bobby moves around behind me and wraps me in a hug. This hug seems like
more this morning. He hugs me at least once every day, but never like this. I
just keep working on the butter and waffle thing because I am starting to feel
a little awkward.
“Mmmm, you smell good.” He
tells me as he puts his face in my hair and inhales. “I can’t believe today is
our last day together.”
“Me either.” I agree with
him. He squeezes me tight against him once more and then lets me go just as the
toaster pops up two more waffles. Thankfully he sets off to fixing his own
plate. We stand there at the counter and start to eat in silence. I haven’t
seen nor heard Mona yet so I am really beginning to wonder where she is so I
ask. “Bobby, where are Mona and Melissa?”
“Grandmother and Melissa
left earlier to go shopping all day. Looks like you’re stuck with me today
girl!” The look in his eyes changes for just a brief moment almost like a mask
slips away and then quickly fits back into place.
“Ok. So what are we going to
do?” I hope that my voice doesn’t sound as shaky as it feels but something just
does not feel right today.
“Well, we could go to the
pool for a while and then just hang out. I just want to spend every minute of
my last day here with you.” This time he looks absolutely sincere, and he gives
me that smile of his, so of course I melt and agree.
Bobby and I spend biggest
part of the morning at the pool. We jump off of the diving boards together,
splash each other, and laugh as the other one tries to do some funny flip in
the water. We laugh, talk, sit in the sun, and just play.
“Come on, let’s go back to
the house for lunch. It’s too hot out here to think about eating.” Bobby tells
me as we try to decide what we want to eat.
I pull my t-shirt back on over
my wet bathing suit and then just wrap my towel around my waist. When we get
back to Mona’s we hit the kitchen to find some lunch. We decide to make BLT
sandwiches. Bobby finds a bag of potato chips for the taking. We eat our
sandwiches on Mona’s sun porch, where we’ve got all the sunshine but the
wonderful comforts of the air conditioning.
“I am going to miss you, you
know?” Bobby tells me as he pops another potato chip in his mouth.
“I am going to miss you too
Bobby.” Suddenly I feel really, really shy.
“I have never had a summer
here that I have enjoyed this much. I really don’t want to leave tomorrow.”
I don’t know what to say to
him so I just smile back. Bobby is just sitting across the table looking at me.
Neither one of us talk any more. We finish up our lunch and put the dishes in
the dishwasher.
“Would you like to just stay
in and watch a movie or something? It is just too hot out there to go back to
the pool.” Bobby turns to me, steps in close and takes both of my hands in his.
“Sure. I’m going to go put
on some dry clothes though.” It really
is too hot to go back out there right now.
As I start to step away from
him, his grasp tightens on my hands. He lets one of them go as he grabs my chin
between his thumb and forefinger. Next he leans down and gives me a soft, quick
kiss right on the tip of my nose. “Hurry back.” He tells me as he lets me go
and I stumble out of the kitchen down the hall to the bathroom.
I shut and lock the bathroom
door and just fall back against it. I can’t believe he just did that! I don’t
know if I feel weirded out by it or if I am absolutely amazed by it. I ponder
everything while I change my clothes and hang my bathing suit up in the
bathroom to dry. When I get out to the den, I notice that Bobby has changed
clothes too and is working on putting a movie into the DVD player.
“Pretty Woman ok?” He asks
me as he holds up the box it came out of. “This is pretty much the only thing
that Mona has in here.” He rolls his eyes a little bit at that.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I like
that one.” I tell him with a smile. Suddenly I feel all nervous inside. Bobby
just smiles back at me as he walks over toward the couch.
“Come on then. Sit down and
I will get the show started.” He pats the seat right beside him and I go sit
beside of him. I curl my legs up against my chest and wrap my arms around my
knees. This is my normal movie watching position.
We sit there side by side
and watch the movie. Just as Richard Gere snaps a big jewelry box lid on Julia
Roberts’s fingers Bobby moves a little closer to me. The heat coming off of him
feels good. I was actually starting to get a little cold. As Richard Gere and
Julia Roberts are getting ready to board a small jet on the television screen, he
puts his arm around me.
“You look like you’re cold.”
He tells me as a way of explaining his action.
“I am actually.” I smile up
at him and settle into his embrace a little more for the warmth.
Before I can get settled
good and back into the movie, Bobby’s free hand comes up to the side of my face
and pulls me around to look at him. The next thing I know he kisses me, right
on the mouth. “I’ve wanted to do that all summer.” He says in a lower than
normal voice. I’m beyond shocked so I don’t say anything back to him. I don’t
know whether I liked being kissed by him or whether I should get up and move. I
just sit there and stare at him. He searches my eyes for a moment then leans in
and kisses me again. This time he kisses me harder and even harder still until
his tongue slowly parts my lips and finds its way inside my mouth. He moves his
hand from my face to around my back and pulls me closer to him. There is a
voice in the back of my head screaming at me to push away and stop but I
cannot. There is still another part of me that is enjoying the kissing.
I don’t know how long we kiss
like that. It feels like forever when he finally pulls back and looks at me. He
leans his forehead down against mine and just looks into my eyes. We’re both
breathless. Bobby stands up off of the couch and in one move grabs both of my
hands and pulls me up with him. He doesn’t say anything, but he starts backing
out of the den, leading me with him. We step inside of his room. He pulls me
far enough in that he shuts the door behind me. The next thing I know he has me
pushed up against the door, his hands are on both sides of my shoulders pinning
me in. He looks at me for a moment and then starts to kiss me again. He goes
straight for the deep kisses this time, there is no slowly working up to it.
My mind is still trying to
figure out what to do; the two sides fighting against each other of whether to
stop or whether to just enjoy. Suddenly I feel one of Bobby’s hands move down
to rest on my waist. His fingers reach under the hem of my shirt and start to
brush against my skin. After a minute or so of just rubbing the skin just under
my shirt his hand starts to move higher up my side. I reach down and grab hold
of his arm to stop his hand from moving any higher.
“No. Don’t.” I say to him as
I pull my head away from his kisses.
“Shhh. It’s ok. Nobody’s
here. Nobody but us will know.” He looks me right in the eyes almost like he’s
pleading with me.
I don’t know how to answer
him or what to say so once again I just stare back at him. He starts kissing me
again and his fingers start to rub against my side again. I am still holding on
to his arm so his fingers are held in one place. He pushes the arm that I’m
holding around behind my back and pulls me up against him. Then he wraps his
other arm wrap around me and I am lifted off of the floor. My arms are trapped
down by my sides; I can’t move them to push him away. I am just about to start
freaking out when he starts moving, carrying me as he goes.
With my arms still trapped
he puts me down on his bed. I manage to get my mouth away from his. “No Bobby!
Stop!” I plead with him. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to do this. The
kissing was one thing but this is going way too far. He loosens his hold on me
and I am able to get my hands up in between me and him. He is too heavy for me
to push away so I start to struggle a little against him, but he still has me
pushed down into the mattress so hard that I can’t move very far. He moves so
fast; in one swift move he has pulled my shorts and underwear down my legs,
dropped them into the floor, and has and has pushed his shorts down and now
lays down on top of me.
“No! No! Don’t do this
Bobby!”
Summer of Regrets
Conclusion
From the way that Chapter 3
ends, we are sure that you can form your own opinions as to where this story
goes next. It is an intense story and one that we are afraid happens too often
to too many people – young girls and young boys alike. When we were trying to
come up with ideas for a new story, we wanted to do something more real instead
of the fantasy fiction that we had done with the previous two stories. We also
wanted to do a short story where there was a meaning or a lesson from it.
That’s when we came up with the plan for ‘Summer of Regrets’. We intended to
finish this saga out by the next chapter being the incident from Bobby’s point
of view, as Mona and Melissa return home and thankfully interrupt things, and then
the last chapter being several years later from Lilly’s point of view. We
wanted to show how this event in her childhood has affected her adult life. We
were going to have her run into him in this chapter and he was going to be
bald, fat, divorced, and just utterly awful and she was going to tell him off,
leaving her vindicated and giving her a little closure on that part of her
life. Unfortunately, neither of us could put ourselves into a frame of mind to
write Bobby’s point of view for a Chapter 4. This has been the hardest story
for either of us to write up to this point.
Rather than destroy the
whole story, we thought we would simply write a conclusion and hopefully move
on to next adventure living in our heads. Lilly’s story is fictitious. There is
no Lilly nor Bobby in either of our lives. Also, Lilly’s story does not end in
an actual rape, but in what you could say (for lack of a better way of saying
it) was a close call. None the less, it was a scary and scarring experience for
her and is no less troublesome than if it had been an actual rape. Our intent
to this story was to bring to light that things like this happen and that it is
in NO way ok. It is not ok for anyone to touch you in any manner that makes you
feel uncomfortable. It is not ok for anyone to force you into doing something
that you don’t want to do. Adults should know better than to put a child, and
that’s what Lilly was in this story, in a situation like this. So while there
wasn’t really that big of a difference in Lilly and Bobby’s ages, Bobby should
have known better than to ever try to entice a child. The one thing that we
would have hopefully addressed in
further chapters would be to say that if you find yourself in Lilly’s shoes,
you’ve got to know that one, it is not your fault regardless of the
circumstances leading up to the incident (no is no regardless); two, you need
to talk to an adult about what happened; and three, you cannot let this hold
you back in any way, shape, or form, nor can you let it run and ruin your life.
Find help, talk to someone, and do the best that you can to work through the
emotions and the past and seek out a future for yourself that doesn’t involve
being bogged down with bad things.
So, to those of you who have
been loyal readers of our stories, Thank You for your patience and continued
support of our work. Also, please accept our apologies for not completely
completing this story but accept our conclusion in its place. Stay tuned for
more to come from StephanieAndLauraBooks.
Sincerely,
Stephanie and Laura
