Page 24 of Loving Jake

Jake grabbed her other forearm and curled each of his hands around her arms in a deathly grip. “Easy lays? If you think I treated you like some kind of whore, then maybe you better learn the difference.” Jake bent his head and captured her lips in a punishing kiss. He coerced her back against the adjacent wall, determined to show her how much her accusation hurt him.

He planted his strong legs in front of her and blocked her escape from his forced embrace. While one of his hands held her head in a bruising kiss, the other hand rapidly traveled under her blouse and over her ribcage. He continued to assault her lips with his own, and he swallowed each of her soft moans.He fumbled for only a second with her bra, before he made quick haste of the center clasp. His hands felt rough against her naked breasts, the slow tenderness of their earlier lovemaking gone.

Kimberly choked out a cry, then went limp, and sagged in his arms. She no longer participated in their impassioned lovemaking, and it was as if a bucket of ice water had been thrown over his head. He swore under his breath. What the hell was he doing? He only meant to frighten her, to get back at her for thinking that when he made love to her, it meant nothing to him. My God, what have I done? He backed away from her, his face devoid of color. He ran shaky fingers through his hair, positive now that he had lost his mind. “Kim, I... I’m sorry.” He took several ragged breaths. “I only meant to show you...hell, I’m so sorry.”

He walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. He rested his elbows against his knees and buried his head in his hands. He didn’t understand how he could have gotten so carried away. Never before in his life had he let himself get so out of control with a woman. He had to leave, had to get away from her before he harmed her any further. He lifted his head, intent on getting up when she sat down beside him.

“Jake,” she whispered brokenly. She walked over to the bed and sat down next to him. “Jake, I love you. Please tell me what’s wrong. Please.”

Jake looked into her eyes, brimmed with tears. After the way he had just treated her, she responded withI love you? He shook his head in disgust. He didn’t deserve her, never would, but he needed to tell her the truth. She deserved at least that much from him. “Shh, Kim. Please don’t talk about love, not with me.”

He reached over and wiped a sole tear off of her cheekwith the tip of his finger. He breathed deeply before beginning, “Kim, I don’t know how much you know about my marriage or divorce, so I’m going to start from the beginning.” He placed a soft kiss on her forehead before he stood up and walked over to the window. He was on the brink of conjuring up all of the ugly memories from the past, and he didn’t want to be near Kimberly while he did it. He knew she would be able to see past his cold words into the pain that was nestled in his heart. She would offer her sympathy, and he would be all too willing to accept it. And he couldn’t. Kimberly deserved someone a hell of a lot better than him, and he would make sure that she understood just that.

“Kimberly, when I was thirteen, I got mumps. A severe case. We... Zane, Gramps, and I,” he clarified, “had just moved to California. Fortunately, Zane was at baseball camp when I first broke out, so he was spared from getting infected. Anyway, Gramps took me to a doctor, who basically suggested I take some aspirin and get a lot of rest. Gramps believed that if we had still been in Texas, and I had seen our family doctor, my case of the mumps might not have become so severe. Even though he called our doctor in Texas, and was told that wasn’t necessarily the case, Gramps still felt responsible.”

Kimberly stared back at him, confusion radiated from her eyes. “Jake, I don’t understand? Weren’t you vaccinated? I thought all kids were vaccinated for mumps.”

Jake sighed. “My grandfather thought I had been, so he contacted the pediatrician my mother had taken us to as kids and was told that according to their records, my mother had refused to get us vaccinated. She had had this idea that they did more harm than good. My grandfather had no idea. Everyone, including our new doctors, assumed we had been vaccinated. I don’t think my grandfather ever forgave her.” He ran a handover his chin. “As soon as I was better, and Zane was back from camp, Gramps made sure our vaccines were up to date.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Kim.” He slowly turned to confront her. “I had a severe case of mumps as a teenage boy. I developed Orchitis, which is an inflammation of the, well, I’m not going to go into the details. Let’s just say it was bad and extremely unpleasant.” Jake shifted his stance to look out the window again. He shook his head, and his laughter was filled with bitterness. “It left me sterile. I can’t have children.”

He waited for her gasp of shock, and even though he was surprised when it never came, he continued. “I met Brenda soon after graduate school. I was up front about my inability to ‘reproduce’ right from the beginning. Brenda’s reaction was different from any other girl I dated. She was elated. She joked about how lucky it was that she would never have to worry about birth control. She was a dedicated career girl, she had told me. She had no room in her life, then or in the future, for children. We married a year after we met. Neither of us had much family, so it was a simple ceremony by a Justice of the Peace in Boston.”

He stared at the floor. “Soon after we got married, I landed a job as a journalist for a major network. I began traveling all over the world. Brenda was an interior designer, which I mistakenly thought kept her occupied while I was away. I was making pretty good money, considering my lack of experience and age at the time. When Brenda suggested we buy a house in the suburbs of New York, complete with four bedrooms and a big backyard, I didn’t even protest. I felt so guilty for leaving her alone while I was off on assignments that I indulged her any time the opportunity presented itself. Brenda had been having a hard time with her own career and decided to take time off to evaluate what she wanted to do withher life.”

“One night, when we had been married almost two years, we went to dinner at a neighbor’s house. I think their names were Cynthia and Bill or Bob, something like that. I barely knew them, but apparently Brenda had become rather close to Cynthia. Her husband also traveled a lot as a salesman, and she stayed at home with their three children. I knew within minutes after we walked through their front door that Brenda had changed her mind about having children. The signs were there before she met Cynthia, but I guess I pretended to believe otherwise. It finally dawned on me that night that we owned a four-bedroom house, and I had no idea why.” Jake paused and thought that he might take a walk tonight, maybe it would help ease the headache that pounded harder as the day progressed. He shook his head and turned to stare out the window to see a pair of teenagers kissing underneath the street light.

Jake turned around and forced himself to continue, “I confronted Brenda as soon as we returned home. She confessed that she had had a change of heart and wanted children. She pleaded with me to have some tests taken and to consult some specialists about my problem.”

“I refused because I knew it was hopeless. I thought the discussion was closed, but that wasn’t the case. Brenda decided to take a more overt approach. She bought every book, magazine, and pamphlet ever written on the subjects of sterility and infertility. She became obsessed, forwarding articles to my email and begging me to read them. She left books in the bathroom, stuck them in my suitcase, and left them next to the remote control. I couldn’t open a drawer in the house without the word infertility staring me in the face. She contacted specialists all over the country and arranged for them to call me directly.”

Jake ran his fingers along his neck, and his hand stopped to massage the tense muscles at the back of his neck. “It got to the point that I couldn’t wait for my next assignment. About thetime I thought I had neared the point of insanity, I met a journalist who told me about two children he adopted from Guatemala. I was ecstatic. Adoption. Why hadn’t I thought of that before?”

“Brenda was mortified.” He shook his head as he recalled her outraged reaction. “Adoption? How ridiculous, she told me at the time. She would never consider adoption, not when she was perfectly capable of having children, she told me. And I, she claimed, denied her the opportunity. Soon everything became my fault. I was selfish. I was insensitive. I didn’t care.”

“Brenda became obsessed with having my sterility problem cured. She became more enraged each time that I refused to be tested. She started creating scenes when we were in public. She complained to complete strangers how selfish her husband was and how he denied her the children she desperately wanted.”

Jake took a deep, ragged breath as he recalled the next ugly memory. “On Christmas day--we had been married over three years by this time-- we went to my sister-in-law’s house. Karen, Brenda’s sister, had divorced before her daughter Alicia was born. Alicia was adorable at three-years-old and took to me right away. I was reading her some book, I don’t know, ‘Dora the Doctor’ or something like that, and Alicia was sitting on my lap. Brenda walked in on us and she, ah, she freaked out. She demanded that I stay away from her niece since I hated children. She acted as if I was a child molester or something.”

“I should have confronted her about our situation before then.” He exhaled deeply. “I had avoided it and the possibility of divorce. My own parents had never married, and I just didn’t want to go there, I guess.” His shoulders slumped, and he gazed out window, consumed by his memories.

“Soon after our visit to Karen’s house, Brenda started to accuse me of disliking children. I secretly hated children, Brenda would tell me over breakfast. Or the topic of conversationat dinner would be how jealous I was of all the attention a child would demand.”

Jake turned around to look at Kimberly, still seated quietly on the bed. “Our final argument, ironically, was after we returned home from a trip out west and attended one of your brother’s Fourth of July parties.

“We argued, rather brutally, neither of us holding anything back. I went out for a walk afterwards, and when I returned home several hours later, poof!... Brenda was gone, along with all of our savings and anything of value in the house. End of marriage. End of story.” He moved his bottom jaw back and forth and pressed his lips together. Her rejection still hurt, dammit. Despite everything, it still hurt.

He wanted to go outside for some air and was about to, when Kimberly walked over to stand in front of him. “Jake, I’m so sorry, but not every woman is like Brenda. I’m not like Brenda. Jake, things will be different between us?—"

“No, you don’t understand. I don’t want there to be an us. I don’t want an us with anyone. I went through hell with Brenda, and I won’t do it again?—"

“But—"

“Don’t bother, Kimberly. I heard it all before from Brenda. ‘Kids aren’t important. We have each other, blah, blah, blah.’ Kim, I don’t want the family thing anymore. I’ll be thirty-five years old next month. I’m set in my career, and I want different things out of my life now.” He tilted his head and looked her directly in the eyes before he continued. “Kim, I don’t love you. I like you. I respect you.”I love you more than I thought possible to love anyone,he silently added. He realized with a startling intensity that he loved her, and that was why, above everything else, he had to make her understand that she needed to get on with her life without him. Someday, she would meet and marry a man who deserved her, and they would have allthe children she ever dreamed of. She would forget about Jake Taylor.

“I like my life the way it is, Kimberly. I see the world. Each day is a different challenge.”I’d give anything to wake up next to you every morning. I wouldn’t care if I ever traveled outside of San Francisco again if I could only be with you.Jake swallowed back the hard lump in his throat. He lifted her chin up with his thumb. He watched her swipe at the tears that spilled out of the corners of her wide, dark eyes, and it broke his heart. “Kimberly, you’ll always be special to me.”

---