Country Lovin': Chapter Eight

Jessie had driven her to a small part of land by a stream. It was peaceful and quiet. It was isolated, yet open to a billion possibilities. In a two word description: breath taking.

Valene sat on a small bouler sticking out of the ground. Jessie took pleasure of a soft spot of grass and sat on the ground. He stretched himself out, supporting his upper body with his arms. He crossed his ankles and looked up at her.

He didn't know exactly what to hear or what to expect. He didn't know exactly what the hell he was doing here. Except for the fact that something had changed between them. Maybe...just maybe...they had connected somehow. How? Where? He didn't know.

He didn't like how Molly had treated Valene, either. He did know that Valene didn't look like she had been smacked in the face with a sixteen wheeler. Even though, compared to Valene, that was what Molly had looked like. Valene was...she was beautiful. Even though that word didn't seem to do her any justice.

Valene clasped her hands on her lap as she looked down at the graceful stream that rolled by her. It seemed so soothing and comforting. She could just sit here for hours and just watch the water tumble over the soft, smooth rocks. "I suppose you're still wondering about my story. I promise I'll tell you. It'll be today, while we're here. I'm just not sure if I can do it." She said softly, almost to the point of whispering.

"It's okay. I'm not busy." Jessie said as he itched his side, just below the rib cage.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She didn't know where to begin. So, she decided to start with what had caused this entire conversation, well...some of it anyway. "My mother died when I was seventeen years old. She died from lung cancer because of smoking." She smirked as she looked over at Jessie. "Because of that, I began to smoke." She laughed as though it was some kind of secret joke. She rubbed her forehead and looked up at the sky. "I tried to quit, but all the emotions, everything that I had tried to put away came rushing back at me. I couldn't tell anyone my secrets like I did with my mom, I didn't trust anyone like I did her. I became sick. Without my ciggarettes, I thought that I would've died. When I talk sick, I was sick. I threw up a lot, I had to stay in bed or laying down. If I did any quick movements I would throw up. So, finally, I began to smoke ciggarettes and I felt suddenly back at ease. My father, my sister, and my brother didn't think that because of my illness, that that was a reason to pick up smoking again."

Sighing again, she continued, "What do they know? Derek was close to my father, so he had someone to lean on. Nadine, well, she wasn't close to either of them, so it didn't matter one way or another. I, on the otherhand, had lost someone. I was on anti-depressants, because there had been a time that I thought of suicide. You think that I had probably been a little loopy, but when you don't have anyone left in the world, and everything that you seem to do ends up being wrong and you don't have anyone to turn to for help or advice, you just seem..." She couldn't finish, and Jessie knew what she meant.

"Lost?" He finished for her. She nodded. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes.

"I went to a therapist and I stayed with her for almost thirteen months. I came out still a smoker, but I didn't feel depressed. I've been afraid to stop smoking because I'm afraid I'll be sick and It'll bring back what I've tried to put away. I still can't open up to people, but I'm not pushing them away." She looked at him and smiled. He knew right away it wasn't a happy one, but one to show that she was okay. "Didn't think a person like me could hold such a story, did you Jessie?" She asked.

Instead of lying, he shook his head. "Do you still think that way?"

She looked at him, her fingers interlocked with each other. "What way?"

"That your ciggarettes help you feel cool, calm, and collected?" He asked.

"In a way yeah. I do wish I could stop, and I've been given it some thought. Of course, Nadine and Derek will be there when I do it. I couldn't do it unless they were there, holding my hand sort of speak." Then she let out a snort of laughter and placed her face in her hands. When she picked her head up, it wasn't laughing. "Even now, at twenty-six, I still need someone to hold my hand."

He wrinkled his brow at what she said. "There's nothing wrong with having someone hold your hand once in awhile. It doesn't make you less than a person."

She nodded. "I went to college after high school and became an accountant. I was good in math. I met my boyfriend--ex boyfriend--a couple of years later. He was the jock type. He was tall, very muscular, tanned, blue eyed, blonde hair. He had the cool air about him, the suave attitude. I had been so surprised to see him want me. I think it was then that I heard what people thought of me. This, I've never told a soul. Don't feel all special because I told you, either. I heard women talk about that I wasn't the pretty they thought Brad would like. I wasn't the most beautiful flower in the boquet. Stupid stuff like that. I knew they were jealous, but it still irked me, because I never heard anyone talk like that around Brad's former girlfriends."

"Did he tell 'em to knock it off?" Jessie wondered. If she said no, then he already hated the man. He wasn't even a man if he couldn't stand by his woman.

"Once. It had been the first time he heard it. That was what he told me. He didn't say it fiercly, but in a calm, kinda ticked, kinda way." She sounded as though she didn't believe the words that were coming out of her mouth. "Then, a couple of days before I came out here, on the night my father died, specifically, he told me that we were over. His reason: the passion had died in our relationship, that it had never been based on love, but sex. Only sex. Now that I say it to myself, he was probably right.

"I don't think of him anymore. This is probably the first time I've actually thought of him in detail. My father hasn't been dead a week and I still want him to call me, here. Asking me when I'll be home, when I'll come down and see him." She took her forefinger and rubbed the corner of her eye.

"That's natural." Jessie informed. He didn't want her to start thinking that it wasn't. He didn't want her to start crying. He wouldn't know what to do.

"Yeah, I know." She sighed. "It's my brother I'm worried about. He was really close to our father. I mean really close, like I was to our mother. I'm just afraid he'll go through what I went through. I don't want him to have to go through all that."

Jessie sat up and noticed, not for the first time, that there was something soft and vulnerable beneath the tough and snappy exterior. He had first noticed it when he saw her look at the picture he had found on the floor.

He stood up and placed a hand on her shoulder. "You glad you got that all out?" He asked.

"Yeah. That's pretty much my life. All handed to you in a beautiful basket. It hasn't been shiney, but it's my life." She sighed and stood. "Thanks for bringing me here. I didn't expect that such a soothing place could help me."

Jessie shrugged and smiled. "It's a place I come to when I need a little breathing room."

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She smiled and gave him a little wave when Jessie drove off. She was standing in the parking lot of the Bar and Grill. She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. She walked to her car and threw her purse onto the passenger side of the car.

She closed the door and started the car. She closed her eyes first, wondering if what she had done, being alone with Jessie, telling him about her past, about her life, if that had been real or just a fantasy. Had she wanted to tell him? Could her continuing attraction towards him fooling with her mind? She sighed and turned on her car.

She pulled into the drive way of her Aunt Kitty's home and was surprised to see a familiar car in the driveway. She smiled when she saw a familiar face standing in the doorway.

"Country Lovin': Chapter Nine"