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 Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 2:59 pm
This is a prompt-inspired piece written for the "Shameful Past" prompt that I posted (I hope those get popular and keep the guild active!). I was looking for a prompt to post and that particular one caught my eye. I have an amazing boyfriend, Jason, but for the first two or three months we were together his mother didn't like me at all. He (stupidly) told her some of the issues I've had in the past and this made her hate me and repeatedly try to convince him to break up with me. So this story is very loosely based on that.
Also, I experimented with a southern feel to the story, which was very interesting considering I've lived in upstate New York all my life. It was fun, though.
Maybe it was for the best.
Maybe his daddy was right about me.
James was sweet and sensitive and everything any girl could ever want. He was tall and muscular but still as soft as a teddy bear to hold. He deserved so much better than me but said he didn’t want nothing more or nothing less. He knew me better than I knew myself: he knew when to try to make me laugh and when to just let me cry; he knew how I could just lie in bed with him for hours and hours; he knew just how to touch every part of my body to get the reaction he wanted. I thought that we were perfect for each other; hell, I knew that we were perfect for each other.
But his daddy just didn’t like me, plain and simple.
As soon as he met me he made me out to be some kind of a whore. He said my clothes were un-Christian. He said that James and I were too physical with one another and we would wind up acting against the Lord.
Personally, I couldn’t care less about the Lord.
But then, when his daddy found out more about my past, he tried to end it. I hadn’t really been a good girl growing up, but I wasn’t that bad, neither. Sure I’d made some mistakes in the past; who hasn’t? But he did everything he could to get between James and me. He started by hinting at James that we weren’t right for each other, and then he flat out told James to break up with me. But James wouldn’t do it, not even for his father.
Last night was amazing. We were lying in bed together, bare skin pressed up tightly against bare skin, our hearts beating in unison and our breath coming in short, sharp bursts. We lay together, holding each other just as tightly as we could. I never wanted to let him go, and every time we were together like this, I knew that he didn’t want to let me go neither.
Our breath was beginning to level out when he laid a kiss on my forehead. He told me he loved me. Of course we tell each other ‘I love you’ all the time, seeing as we sure as hell do, but there was something different in the way he said it tonight.
I felt his body stiffen next to mine, not out of arousal, but cause of his nerves. He reached behind him onto the nightstand by his bed and grabbed a little box. He showed it to me and opened it.
“Will you marry me?”
I just cried with joy and I told him of course I’ll marry him, and I hugged him and I kissed him and he put the pretty engagement ring on my finger.
We fell asleep like that, all wrapped up in each other and glowing with joy.
I was getting ready for my show the next day. See, I was a dancer. I suppose that might be one of the reasons his daddy doesn’t like me: to him, any work that doesn’t use the human mind to its fullest potential just wasn’t a respectable one.
But it wasn’t like I wasn’t smart or anything. I’d never gone to college only because I could never afford it. I started dancing when I was still in high school when I heard through the grapevine that it was darn good money. I even started saving up to go to college. But when my folks found out what kind of work I was doing they just up and kicked me out of my own house, and paying for an apartment and heat and food and cable took up just about all the money I made dancing. So much for going to college.
I looked at myself in the mirror and was met with green eyes and flowing red hair. I wasn’t sure why James’s daddy didn’t like me. I wasn’t ugly or anything, and I wasn’t stupid, and I sure loved his son a whole heck of a lot. Isn’t that what really matters?
But I guess to him the lengths a girl will go to keep from starving tell more about her than just how much she loves his son.
There was a knock on my door and I spun away from the mirror in my chair, smoothing my red mini-dress down over my stockings. I called for my visitor to come in.
It was James. James came to most of my shows just to make sure none of the other guys were getting too excited over me. He also had a tendency to give me and some of the other girls some mighty fine tips, seeing as he and his father had a tidy sum of money and he knew just as well as I did what kinds of circumstances drive a girl to dancing.
James was just coming by to wish me luck in our show. He gave me a kiss on the forehead.
He also told me he brought his daddy.
My heart stopped for a moment.
James explained to me that his daddy had entirely the wrong idea about what kind of work I do. His daddy seemed to be under the impression that I was one of those trashy girls who gets naked in front of a bunch of strangers and then sleeps with a few afterward to make a little extra cash.
But his daddy would see tonight that that’s not the kind of thing I do at all. I mean, sure, some of the girls I work with get really tight on cash and have to resort to those types of things, and it’d be a pure sour lie if I were to say I’d never been in that boat before. But ever since James–even a little before that–I’d never shown my body to any stranger, let alone let him do things to it.
The show was starting and James left the room to make sure his daddy didn’t wander off.
I went out on the stage with the other girls. I knew them all by name and I’d had a drink or two with a few of them, but I wouldn’t really consider any of them my friends. We were co-workers; we were all in similar situations and we empathized with one another, but that’s about it.
I was thankful that all the girls behaved themselves tonight. Even though stripping just wasn’t our thing, some of the girls had a tendency to bend the rules to make some extra cash. But they were all good tonight, and I knew I could face James’s daddy with my head held high.
Before I could get changed after the show, there was another knock on the door. I told them to come in and they did.
It was James and his daddy.
James’s daddy admitted that he’d had the wrong idea about me, and he sure as heck didn’t look too happy doing it.
But he said he knew the girls like me. He knew that all of us have resorted to filthy business at one time or another to get money. And he said he had an inside source that told him a few things about me.
James then looked his daddy straight in the eye, told his father how much he loved me, and then said he was going to marry me.
For a second his daddy’s face went pale, and then he just started laughing. He thought it was some kind of joke. James told his daddy he meant it.
His daddy’s face got as red as a lobster’s rump and he started yelling. He told James that I just wanted his money and that I wasn’t worth it and that he could do so much better than me; he could marry a Harvard graduate and they would become millionaires, or he could marry a nurse or something.
But his daddy made it very clear that there was no way in Hell James would marry me. He would never let his son be with anyone with such a ‘shameful’ past as mine.
A tear escaped my eye and started rolling down my cheek as I looked down. His daddy was right. James deserved so much better than me. I was going to lose him for sure now...
James then looked his daddy straight in the eye, told his father how much he loved me, and then said he was going to marry me. He told his daddy that he could support us if he wanted to, but if he didn’t support us then that sure wasn’t going to stop us.
His daddy didn’t answer. He stared at us both as if we’d suddenly grown another head and then he just turned and left the room.
I leaped up and hugged my James tighter than I ever have before. We went home, made sweet love, and slept.
The next morning his daddy dropped by. He asked if he could come in and James let him. He said he wanted to speak to us, so we all sat around the little round table in James’s kitchen.
James’s daddy said that he’d thought it over and that he’d decided that a disagreement wasn’t worth losing his only son, his future daughter-in-law, and any future grandkids. Even though he made it very clear he wasn’t happy about it, James and I both kinda figured he secretly was, at least a little.
We talked about our future together and James said he didn’t want me dancing any more. I disagreed at first, since the dancing was pretty good money, but James explained that dancing was the job of a single women who men could drool over freely, but I would no longer be a single woman. I agreed to start looking for another, more respectable job. With both of us working, I’d even be able to save up to go back to school if I wanted. Then maybe I could get an even better job and save up for my kids to go to college.
James’s daddy got up to leave after James had gone into the bathroom. But before he could leave I called for him to wait.
I admitted to James’s daddy that I’d done quite a few things in the past that I really regretted, and I explained that meeting James was the best thing that ever happened to me. I told him how James turned my life around and if I’d only met him sooner I wouldn’t have messed up so much in the past. I assured him that all the bad things I did were in the past and would stay there.
He smiled and turned to leave again, and I called out to him, “Good-bye, Mr. Sanders!”
James’s daddy paused for a moment before turning around and walking back to me. He kissed me on the forehead and told me to call him Daddy.
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Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2008 9:29 am
Awwww....
That was a cozy, well written story: short but sweet. I can't really rip it to shreds because there's exactly 0 errors in it, at least 0 that I found.
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Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 10:12 am
Haha, thanks. xP That was really more experimentation with a different voice than anything else.
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