Noah repeated, "Financial
"That's right because
every other aspect in my life has been anything but wonderful, son. Of all of these years, the only happy years that I've had were these two years of marriage with Natasha. She's the only one that has really made me who I am today, not when it comes to my financial status; thus I did that, but when it comes to my love life."
"So, you've allowed your chaotic love life to make you unhappy."
"That's right, and I can't help it, Noah. Without love, I am nothing."
"Let's change the subject so that you don't start recalling the worst moments in your love life, and start crying. Was your family poor?"
"No, we weren't poor, we were middle class. I got the money that I needed for college because I joined the army."
"Were you ever a sergeant?"
"Yes, I was, but as soon as I finished college, I abandoned the army. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I didn't want to continue to fight in a war. If I had stayed in the army, I'd be dead right now. Son, if you knew how many times I've cheated death before 1969, when all of this started, you'd be shocked."
"I can only imagine. Do you have nightmares about it?"
"No. As soon as my financial status got better, I used all of the money that I earned during the first years of working at Spears Beauty Care Corporation, what it was called back in the day, to get psychological help and overcome my war traumas. Now, I don't even remember my life as a fighter of the nation."
"That's great," said Noah and cleared his throat. "So, what was it like, your marriage to Hayley?"
"Do you know what, son?
We'd spend the rest of the night talking solely about that and we still wouldn't finish for the next 365 days, so I'll tell you all about that little by little, when I have the time. I'll make some time for us to talk."
"Do you mind me staying here to watch some music videos?"
"No. Actually, I enjoy music videos, too," said Scott and laughed. "Do you want to pull yourself up and lie down beside me, and we'll watch them together?" Chapter 3
Noah watched videos with his father for the next two hours and then walked out of his room and closed the door behind him. He walked the hallway to the living room and all of a sudden, Nicole bumped into him on the way to the big kitchen. Noah wanted to get a glass of milk. Nicole had promised Natasha not to get out of her room and to stay away from Noah, but even though Natasha was still awake, and in the second living room, finishing watching her DVD movie, she had broken her promise. Smiling, she said, "Hello, Noah."
Surprised, Noah said, "Nicole, I don't mean to be rude, but you have to stay away from me."
Deeply saddened and with a face of horror, she asked, "Why?"
"We can't have a relationship. You're my mother in law’s little sister."
"Noah..."
He interrupted her and said, "I know that you're interested in me, but there can't be anything between us."
She walked beside him, turned around, stood in front of him, pulled down the straps of her negligee and asked, "Don't you like me?" with a devilish voice.
He cleared his throat with his head down, and then lifted his head and looked her in the eyes and said, "I can't deny that you're very beautiful. You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen,
but---"
She interrupted him and asked, "But what?"
"If I have a relationship with you, I'll be committing a crime. It's called statutory rape, and I don't want to go back to jail."
She gasped and asked, "Go back to jail?"
He sighed.
She asked, "Have you been in jail before?"
Noah put his arm around the back of her neck and put his hand on her shoulder. They walked to the third living room, which was the closest one, and said, "Why don't we sit down and talk? There are a lot of things about me that you have to know, but I can only tell you a few of them tonight because it's late, and you have to get up to get ready to go to school within," and then looked at the clock on the wall behind him, in the doorway to the entrance to the living room and said, "seven and a half hours." It was eleven thirty.
She smiled and said, "You'll have more than enough time to open up to me and sooner or later, you will have told me all of your secrets." She held his hand and said, "I like you so much, and I think that I'm falling in love with you. I'm ecstatic because I've never felt this way about a man before.
Yes, believe it or not, you are able to make that much of an impact on a woman."
He stayed silent this time.
He didn't know what else to say. Nothing that he said would get through to her and he knew it. Nothing that he said could convince her that he and Nicole couldn't be together. Meanwhile, Brandy was at her older sister Hayley Marie's house, talking to her best friend, Dean. They were in the living room, laughing, talking and having a little fun. Soft music was on. Brandy was Hayley Marie's youngest daughter. She was eighteen years old. She and Dean had known each other since they were in preschool and have been the best of friends ever since.
Brandy had more boyfriends than girl friends because she trusted boys more. Boys rarely got into the business of their friends. Besides, if she ever got a boyfriend, she wouldn't have to worry about her girl friend taking him from her.
Jealousy was always an issue. Half of the boys in her school were her friends, while only three of the girls in the same school were her friends. Her girlfriends, they didn't understand why this was. They'd never betray Brandy, nor would they? Only time would tell. "I don't understand why you have so many friends and you haven't had a boyfriend yet, like a mate."
"I'm not attracted to any of the guys, Dean. It's just me. I don't know why."
"You don't find any of the guys hot?"
"Many of the guys in our school are hot; it's just that none of them are my type. I know I'm weird. I'm demanding. I just won't get under the sheets with any guy that I bump into."
"Gee, could it be that you're into older men and that's why you don't like any of the guys at our school."
Brandy thought about what she was going to say for a few minutes as she rolled her eyes and said, "You know what? That's a possibility. I don't know I'd have to have an older boyfriend to know for sure. It's weird because I was always the biggest fan of the hottest older celebrities. These actors," she said and gave away a big sigh of pleasure with a smile of her face. "I never found younger celebrities hot."
"Yeah, that's definitely what it is. Have you ever fallen in love or had a crush on an older man that wasn't a celebrity, one that you were close to?"
"I once had the biggest crush on Hayden's dad."
"Hayden's dad?" said Dean, astounded. "He's forty-nine years old! What, are you crazy?" and then he smiled and looked her in the eyes and asked. "Do you know if he ever felt the same for you?"
"When it comes to men, I always find the dad a lot hotter than the son. You ought to know that.
You know me better than my own parents know me. I've told you things that I didn't even think about telling them, Dean Moses!"
"I know, Brandy. Have you ever been physically attracted to my Dad?" said Dean, still smiling evilly.
"I am attracted to your dad as we speak, very strongly attracted," she replied, grinding her teeth, thinking that this would make Dean angry.
"You can't be serious. My dad's forty-one."
"I like the package," she said and laughed nervously. "No, really, I do! You ought to be thinking that I don't know what in the world I'm talking about," she said, blushing.
"It's nice to know that you like my dad."
"If he weren't married to your mom..."
"Oh, I know, I know, please omit the details of what you guys would do if he weren't married to my mom."
"I'd never tear them apart because infatuation is not enough to get me to do that. In order to break up a marriage, I'd have to be madly in love. It would have to be a matter of the heart."
Dean got up and said, "Gee, thanks for assuring me that you don't feel strongly enough for him to tear him and my mom apart. Hey, I've always wondered, from the moment that you first told me that you preferred older men... Do the men have to be older than forty or just older than you are?"
"They don't have to be older than forty. Being older than twenty-five would do the trick." "So, you like men that are
older than twenty-five."
Smiling, she said, "Yes. I'd love to have a twenty-seven or twenty-eight-year-old boyfriend, but if those guys reject me, I'll go for guys over forty years old. I know that those would never reject me."
Dean laughed nervously and said, "Oh!"
The day after, at seven o'clock in the morning, Nicole got up to get ready to go to school. She was still very sleepy because she and Noah stayed up all night talking, until three twenty. Natasha and Scott had no idea about this, though, because the whole time, they were talking very quietly, almost whispering, and no one could hear them. Besides the fact that she slept for four hours last night, she couldn't stop thinking about Noah. There had to be a way to get him to be with her. She had to find the way to make him crazy about her enough for him to forget about the laws and the police. As she walked to the door to open it and get out, she tripped into her own CD's, and fell and hit her mouth with the doorknob. It hurt like hell, but she didn't dare to scream. She had two broken lips and a loose tooth. The damage was bad. She started letting out rivers of blood as she tried to clean it off with her fingers, so that no one would notice that she'd had an accident. She wanted to go to school today. She had three tests that she'd studied for countless hours. Nicole didn't finish studying for those tests until Noah arrived. Yeah, she finished studying that late, and she'd been studying since she got home from school, at two thirty. She wasn't about to miss those tests now, not for anything in the world. "Oh," she said, still lying on the floor, almost knocked out.
Noah was passing by her room at that very moment. He'd come from Scott and Natasha's room, which was in the same hallway as Nicole's room, five doors away, on the same side.
Rob's room and what used to be Noah's room was all the way in the other hallway, which was considerably far away. Rob liked that room because it was spacious, beautiful, and because it was far enough from the baby and nothing that he did disturbed the baby. He loved his loud music and he would do anything to avoid having to give it up. He heard Nicole moaning.
She was in trouble. He knocked the door and said, quietly, "Are you ok, Nicole?"
She got up very slowly and carefully and she unlocked and opened the door for him. There was no use in hiding it. She'd miss her tests, or so she thought. She still had her hand on her mouth, but she couldn't hide the blood because it was spilling in between her fingers. "Oh, my God!" he said. "What happened to you?"
She let go of her mouth and with all of her best efforts, she said, "I tripped into something and hit my mouth with the doorknob."
Noah went in and looked at the doorknob on the inside. It was inundated with blood. "Oh, my God, what happened here?"
She couldn't help shedding tears. "What am I going to do now? I've got to go to the hospital and to the dentist to take care of this damage. God knows how long it will take me to go back to school."
He placed both hands on her face and looking at her, sadly, he said, "Don't worry about school. Your health is much more important. We've got to take care of that mouth. Come on, let's go tell your sister," he said, put her arm around her shoulder, turned around, opened the door, walked out of the room, and they walked together to Natasha's room. Scott had left one hour before. They walked in.
Natasha was in the bathroom, taking a shower. They sat on her bed together and Noah said, "I guess that we're going to have to wait."
She got up and said, "I don't have to wait. I can walk in and tell her. If she asks you anything about it, just be sure to tell her that you weren't with me when it happened, so that she doesn't think that it was your fault."
"Don't worry. She's not going to think that."
Nicole opened the door to Natasha's bathroom and walked in very slowly and carefully, to make sure not to slip and fall, yet again. This time, a fall would be far more dangerous, or even deadly. Natasha noticed that someone was in her room. She saw Nicole's bleeding face through the sliding door, which was transparent. She turned the shower off, slid the door open and said, "Nicole, oh, my God!"
Nicole walked closer to her. "Natasha..."
Crying, Natasha asked, "What happened?"
"I tripped and hit my face with the doorknob."
"Jesus!" said Natasha as she caressed Nicole's face and observed her horribly broken mouth. "The fall was very hard because it's the only way that a doorknob could do this much damage."
"It was very hard," said Nicole, crying. "It hurts like hell." "Your mouth looks like someone took a hammer and hit you very hard with it, repeatedly," said Natasha, horrified. "We've got to get you to the hospital." Natasha walked out of the bathtub, slowly and carefully; thus the entire floor was wet, and covered her naked body with the biggest towel that she could find, which was fortunately in a rack right above her luxurious and beautiful toilet. They walked out of the bathroom together. "Be careful, Nikki, the floor is wet." They walked into the room. Natasha gasped when she saw Noah sitting on her bed. "Do you think you can tell me more about what happened?" she said to him.
He got up and said, "I brought her here."
Natasha walked closer to Noah, placed her right hand on his left cheek and said, "Thank you for caring so much about my sister."
With a sad face, he replied, "I care very much about everyone in this house," and wrapped Nicole and Natasha in a big hug. He then walked by them to walk out of the room and give Natasha her privacy.
When he was steps from the hallway, Natasha said, "Noah," and he turned around and looked at her and Nicole once again, "get ready. We're going to the hospital. Once that Nicole has her own room in the hospital and nurses and doctors start caring for her and giving her tests, I want you to go to Nicole's school and get her make- up work. I'll stay with her the whole time."
"You got it," he said, turned around, walked out of the room, and closed the door behind him. Noah walked the hallway to the secondary hallway and went to his new bedroom to pick out the clothes that he would wear, which Scott had put in his closet without him knowing anything, and take a shower. Rob was sitting on his bed. As Noah walked in, he gasped. "Hi, Rob!"
Rob got up and said, "I want to talk to you."
Noah smiled and said, "Sure. You can talk to me about anything," as he walked to the closet and opened the door to get a shirt and a pair of pants.
Rob walked closer to him and said, "I've got a problem. My girlfriend told me that she could keep no secrets from me, and that you cheated on Jennifer with her."
Noah looked at him with a widely open mouth and bulging eyes. "Rob, I..."
"Before I tell you her name, you have to tell me if you ever cheated on your wife, and with how many women."
Upset, Noah turned around and faced him and said, "That's bull. I never cheated on my wife, with your girlfriend or with anybody."
Surprised, Rob said, "Wouldn't you like to confront her about it? I don't mind, you know. As a matter of fact, I am thinking of breaking up with her, not because she was with you, but because I don't know how many men she was sleeping with while she was sleeping with you." "I don't want to confront her about anything. That wouldn't stop her from lying, so it's no use. I don't even want to know who she is because I swear on my older son's grave that I never," he said, crying, "ever cheated on his mother. I can prove it to you any day, Rob."
Extremely upset, Rob yelled, "Noah, she told me that her two-year-old son was yours! How can you say you never cheated on Jennifer?"
"I know that it's hard for you to believe me Rob," said Noah, crying bitterly, "but I am telling you the truth. You know what? I changed my mind. I do want to know who she is. I'm going to have a DNA test to prove to you that her son is not my child. Do you really think that I have the mind to have unprotected sex with a woman that's not my wife? Never! If an adulterous relationship destroys a marriage, an illegitimate child does even worse!"
Rob put both hands on Noah's shoulder, and said, "Relax, all right? Whenever you're ready, we will go to her house together, confront her, and you will demand a DNA test."
"What if she says that she doesn't want a DNA test?"
"We'll steal the child from her for a few hours and do it on the down low."
Noah gasped.
"Oh, come on, Noah! You're acting like you've never committed a crime before!"
"What if we get caught?" "We won't. Just like my
little sister Nicole, I know how to do the most horrible things without getting caught. All that you have to do is trust me."
Rob walked out of Noah's room. Just when he was about to close the door, Noah, said, "Rob, I need you to do me a favor."
Rob opened the door, looked Noah in the eyes and said, "Sure, anything."
"Your sister broke her mouth, completely, even some of her teeth."
Rob gasped and went back into the room. "What?" "Natasha asked me to go get her make-up work for her, but if I do that, they will think the worst of me, you know, that I'm her lover and I'm taking responsibility of her things, and I'll get in trouble."
"Yeah, man, you're right. I will do that. I just finished college and I am not going to start practicing my career until July 15th."
"Good."
Rob walked out of Noah's room and closed the door behind him. Then, he walked the hallway, the kitchen, and another hallway to Natasha's room for the next twenty minutes. Yes, that's how far most of the bedrooms in the house were from each other. Natasha was finishing her makeup. It took her less than a half an hour to get dressed because she was in a hurry. She was applying deep pink lip- gloss on her lower lip. Rob knocked the door. "Come in!" she said.
Rob opened the door and went in. "Noah just told me about Nicole's accident." Natasha turned around and looked at him and said, "It would make you feel horrible to see her. She looks like someone smashed her mouth with a sledgehammer.
She's disfigured Rob."
Shedding tears, Rob walked closer to her older sister and said, "How did this happen? Nicole was one of the most beautiful women in the world. How could this happen?"
Crying, Natasha said, "She tripped and hit her mouth with the doorknob."
"Oh, my God, are you for
real?"
"I know that she's not
going to be disfigured for long. The best plastic surgeon in town will get her face back to normal," said Natasha, wiping her tears away with her hands. "Our sister's going to be fine."
Two hours later, Noah, Nicole, Rob, and Natasha arrived at the hospital. They went to emergency and walked in. They walked together to the nurses' desk. "We need help urgently," Rob said. Nicole was so badly disfigured that she had to wear a cotton mask. "My sister had a horrible accident."
"Mrs. Spears," said the nurse, outraged, "what happened? Your sister's disfigured! How did this happen?"
Nicole was crying in Noah's arms. His arms were wrapped all around her. He was shedding tears. She feared that she'd been left disfigured forever and that no one could fix her mouth. Natasha said, "She tripped and hit her mouth with the doorknob of the door to her bedroom."
"Geese!" said the nurse. "We have to get her to the doctor immediately!"
In a matter of minutes, Nicole was in Dr. Hayes' office. He was horrified when he saw her swollen lips and her mouth on the inside. "I can't believe this," he said. "Even her tongue suffered horrible damage!"
"Can her face be restored to the way it was, doctor?" said Natasha, shedding thick tears. "It can," Dr. Hayes said, "but it's going to take a while, eighteen months at least."
"So, there's hope?" said Nicole, hardly being able to speak because of the damage done to her tongue.
Smiling sweetly, Dr.
Hayes caressed Nicole's face and said, "Yes, there is. Don't worry. Within eighteen months, you'll be your old beautiful self again. I guarantee it. You will look normal in much less time, but you're going to be exactly like you used to be in eighteen months."
"That's fine," replied Nicole, "as long as I see my old face in the mirror someday." Nicole hugged Dr. Hayes and cried in his arms. He couldn't help but to cry, too. Chapter 4
Nicole was in the operating room. While doctors were doing everything that they could to fix as much of the damage on her face as possible in one operation, to make the number of operations the smallest that it could be, Dr. Carter was examining her x- rays. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. All of Nicole's upper teeth were broken in half and she'd lost three of her upper teeth and one of her lower teeth. Her tongue was broken. Fortunately, Noah had found the tip of her tongue that was missing minutes before heading to the hospital, and he took it with him for doctors to implant once again it. Even Nicole's gums were damaged. Despite meeting her only hours before, Noah felt that he cared deeply about Nicole. He didn't think that he was in love because to him it was too soon to fall in love, but he surely knew that he wanted her for himself. He was considering accepting her proposal of being together. He needed a woman in his life. He didn't want to go around sleeping with other women. He hadn't had sex for six months because he feared catching a sexually-transmitted disease from another woman or impregnating her. Jennifer was the only woman that he'd ever have unprotected sex with because he was his wife and he felt that he didn't need to protect himself from her, but he also knew that condoms broke most of the time, and he didn't want to risk a broken condom and an instant infection. He feared it greatly. He knew that if he caught a sexually transmitted disease, the chances of getting married again would be slim. He'd surely marry a woman his age if he fell in love again and got completely over Jennifer, and no woman would want to marry him knowing that because of a disease, she wouldn't be able to have children with him. He had four children of his own, but the court had taken away custody, and the new wife would surely want kids of her own. He wanted Nicole to be his wife, but he didn't know if she wanted to get married. He really felt that she was infatuated with him, that she wasn't in love, and if he proposed to her, she'd laugh in his face. While doctors operated on Nicole, she thought about what it would be like now with her and Noah. She thought that if he didn't want to have a relationship with her before, he'd much less want to have a relationship with her now because she was disfigured. She didn't know the first thing about Noah. She had no idea if he was capable of loving a woman regardless of how she looked. However, Noah needed a woman, not a Barbie doll. He could care less what a woman looked like. He wanted one, and he wanted her now, not for a one-night stand, but for the rest of his life.
Noah still loved Jennifer with all of his heart. It was very difficult for him to get over the woman that he loved for eight and a half years. He knew that he wouldn't get over her from one day to the next. When he loved, he loved deeply. Jennifer had not only taught him how to make love, but she'd also shown him how to love. He couldn't stop recalling the moments that he had with her. From time to time, he remembered their first time together. Although she'd been with two men before meeting him, when they had sex for the first time, she was more like a virgin than an experienced woman. It seemed that she'd never had sex before, so their first time was really weird. The lovemaking was reciprocal, but it didn't feel good for her to take over. She felt that she needed a lot more sexual experience for it to be pleasant for her to be in control--in bed. However, after they got married, they had sex a lot more often than before, and every day, she got better. That was precisely why Noah never cheated. He didn't have to. Jennifer was the woman that he wanted her to be, when he wanted. When he wanted her to be serene, she was, and when he wanted her to be wild, she was.
Communication was their best friend. They had problems every now and then, but they had nothing to do with sex or money. Every time they had a problem it was because they didn't agree on something, because of a difference of opinions. Nevertheless, they always seemed to be able to work it out. They never went to sleep angry with each other. They'd always hold each other while they were sleeping. To everyone that knew them, they were the perfect couple. Noah never got tired of a woman. He was always monogamous. He was incapable of cheating or sleeping around. One woman was all that he needed. That was one of many reasons why he never cheated. In the bedroom, Jennifer always did what he wanted her to and she always let him do what he wanted to. Outside the bedroom, Noah seldom got what he wanted from Jennifer. She was rebellious and extremely hard to tame.
However, he'd never leave her. He loved her just the way that she was, and there was nothing of her that he wanted to change. He strongly felt that in a marriage, either the man or the woman had to be in control, and since he wasn't chauvinistic, he didn't mind her being in control. He was a modern man. His mother taught him to respect a woman at all times. She told him not to ever be unfaithful to a woman and never to lay a hand on her, to respect her wishes, and this was just what he'd done with his wife. Noah knew that he couldn't have a formal relationship with the first woman he saw. It had to be a woman that was able to work things out every time they had a fight, that would understand him, treat him right, and most importantly of all--be faithful to him, always. He thought that if a woman like Jennifer, a woman that wasn't a virgin when his relationship with her started, could remain faithful to him, that every woman could. After all, he wasn't the best lover in the world, so he thought, but he wasn't bad enough for the woman to cheat on him.
Nicole was the perfect woman for him, but would she ever marry him? He had no idea that Nicole was a virgin. He thought that she was so hot that at least twenty of the guys at school would've had sex with her. She certainly didn't seem to be a virgin. Virginity wasn't obvious in all women. In fact, people only knew that Nicole was a virgin if she told them, and of everyone at school, Alex was the only one that knew. Nicole knew for sure that if she told anybody else, all of the guys would pressure her to have sex with them or some of them might even rape her. They wouldn't resist such a temptation. Without knowing anything about her sexual experience or inexperience, all of the guys were either in love with her, or they wanted her for one night. Every guy at her school liked her. Just imagining how they'd react if they found out that she was a virgin made her cringe. Alex would never tell her secret. She wouldn't have to. If Noah got tangled on Nicole's web, she'd lose her virginity before anyone even knew that she was a virgin.
Rob was worried. Now that Nicole was in the hospital, it was the perfect time for him and Noah to confront Lily, his girlfriend. Rob wanted this to get straightened out. He didn't want Scott to know that Noah had an illegitimate child, so he needed to prove who the real father of Lily’s son was before Scott heard about Lily's accusations. Scott's heart would be broken if he knew about this. He'd feel that Noah wasn't completely honest with him, that he'd hidden things from him, and knowing that Noah had an illegitimate child would make him be ashamed of being Noah's father. That was not the example that Scott and Barbara had given Noah. Scott wasn't a saint, and he knew it, and Noah knew it as well. He'd cheated on his wife and that was what had put an end to their marriage, but he hadn't had an illegitimate child with Hayley. Hayley wanted to have Scott's child but she never could.
Scott made it clear to her that under no circumstances, they could have unprotected sex. Either they had to use condoms, or she had to get on birth control. Hayley never dared to do anything for Scott to impregnate her without his knowledge, because she knew that if they ever conceived a child without Scott knowing that she'd gotten off of birth control to get pregnant, Scott would kill her without the minimal feeling of remorse if she didn't have an abortion. When they were married, Scott didn't want to have a child with Hayley either---ever.
Scott knew that his divorce was partly her fault, thus if she hadn't seduced him when he was drunk, the first night that their illicit love started, nothing would ever have happened between them. She knew that when someone was either drunk or high on a drug, he or she had no control of his or her actions, and she took advantage of him.
Hayley also knew that she was addictive, and once that a man got a hold of her, he'd never let go, and she made sure that Scott could never let go of her. Neverth