Love unfeigned, p.1
Love Unfeigned, page 1
Love Unfeigned
Nadine C. Keels
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2013 by Nadine C. Keels
Cover Design:
Nadine C. Keels
Image of young woman courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
Literary references to Scripture are taken from the King James Version of The Holy Bible. Scripture marked ASV is taken from the American Standard Version of The Holy Bible.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any further resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is not intended.
Find Nadine online at:
www.prismaticprospects.wordpress.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
~~~
This one’s for J.E.
for helping me to better understand what it is, exactly, that I do
~~~
Contents
~~~
She
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
~
There’s More
~~~
Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love…
love one another from the heart fervently…
I Peter 1:22 (ASV)
~~~
She
~~~
While it wasn’t the most familiar phenomenon to her awareness, that electric sensation still screamed, noiselessly, and flickered rapidly with ambiguous memory, tingling from the nape of her neck and upwards over her scalp to taunt the roots of her softly waved, raven hair, as the sensation had once or twice in her distant, or perhaps immediate, past. She, with her gloved hands full of holiday shopping bags, had left the sidewalk and had been on the verge of setting off on a precisely-timed jaywalk to return to her car, which was parked across the busy downtown street, but time, space, and sound were suspended in a sharply severed second.
Sight was no longer physical. She paused, her dark, questioning eyes now on an unmoving search for something unseen and meagerly remembered. What was it, and what had triggered its arousal? She had the sudden urge to call out a name, to get something’s—someone’s—attention, but she wasn’t clear on what name it was that she should be calling.
She might have stood there for an instant too long if her own attention hadn’t, at that moment, been seized by a vehement shout somewhere behind her, issued by an identifiable, masculine voice she hadn’t heard in years.
“Lorraine!”
Her head inclined toward the shout just prior to her looking up in time to see a car coming at her, apparently braking but still approaching too fast.
Mercy. She was in the street.
A panicked blaring of the car’s horn sounded before she felt a hand grab her arm, and she was yanked back onto the sidewalk. Her footing was precariously shaken, due to the vigor of the pull on her arm and the narrow heels of her ankle boots, and so began the quick, awkward shuffling of hers and another person’s feet, in lieu of a fall, until she was stilled with her back pushed up against a department store window, one of her shopping bags on the ground and both her arms now tightly gripped as she looked into the close, alarmed gape of sepia eyes facing her. Sepia eyes that she knew.
She didn’t hear the frantically irate expletive yelled at her through the window of the passing car that had nearly hit her, nor did she notice when she dropped another bag as she stared at the young man holding her against the department store glass, the mists of their equally short and heavy breathing against the wintry air mingling between their faces. Her eyes moved almost wildly down to the man’s full lips and smoothly bearded jaw and then flew back up to meet his gaze, which she did not know had taken an especial note of the contour of her nose.
“James,” she declared in a winded murmur.
His anxious grip on her arms slackened while he eased her off of the window, but he did not let go of her. His hands slid up to her shoulders, giving them a slight squeeze, enhancing the warmth that was already enclosed inside of her wool coat and scarf, and then his hold eased downward, stopping at her wrists. She was the only one near enough to see that he jolted when the space between the end of one of her gloves and the sleeve of her coat came into view.
An unbidden sigh escaped her mouth. Recollection, unbounded by time, ensued.
~~~
Chapter One
Me
~~~
Girls mostly played with girls, and boys mostly played with boys. Even being as girly as I was, with my dolls and flowery tea sets at home, I wasn’t one you would usually find in a big group of other girls during recess at school. However, I did play with a girl in my third grade class, Sara, more than I did with anyone else. Auburn-haired, heavily-freckled, faithful Sara could be trusted for jump rope, for plenty of laughter, and for the trading of a fair share of secrets. I regarded her as my best friend, and whenever one of us did happen to be found in a larger bunch of girls on the playground, the other was sure to be there. Unless, of course, she or I was absent from school that day.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t opposed to playing with boys every so often. They proved to be the best competition for me at wall ball. I was hailed as the best girl Wall Baller in all of third grade, and when I started running out of boys my age to beat, a classmate suggested that I should try to play with some of the bigger kids. I considered it, looking to Sara to see if she thought it was a good idea. When she only shrugged, I told her, “I’ll do it tomorrow, if you come with me.”
I was nervous the first time Sara and I went to get in a different wall ball line with fourth and fifth graders. Earl, my fourth grade virtual twin, poked his kinkily-curled raven head out of the front of the line to smile at me. “What’re you doing over here, Raindrop?” he called down the line.
“I’m here to play, Early,” I called back.
“And I’m here to watch,” Sara piped up, eager to justify her young presence in this older crowd.
A boy I recognized to be from Earl’s class shook his head. “She can’t play with us. We’ll kill her.” He pointed back at me with his thumb. “Earl, man, get your sister.”
“Nobody’s gonna kill her,” my brother asserted. “If she wants to play, she can play. She’s pretty good, anyway.”
“Psh.” The boy looked back at me with a mischievous grin, which was gleaming with braces on his teeth. “Maybe pretty good for an itty-bitty.”
I judged that I wasn’t much smaller than the boy talking, and I obviously wasn’t much younger, but I felt disproportionately embarrassed because I thought the boy was cute. I had a thing for braces. I wasn’t sure which side of chance I was on when I actually got the opportunity to contend against him at the wall, but I played what might have been my scrappiest round of wall ball up to that point in my playground career, the bright beads on my many, swinging black braids clicking soundly together as I ran, jumped, and pounded at that bouncy yellow sphere with a resolute fist.
I didn’t defeat every kid I faced that day, but I did win the respect of the entire line by beating Braces Boy.
“Well, Lori, you shut him up, at least,” Sara congratulated me once I was out of the game, when I’d been trumped by my last opponent. I looked over to see that Braces Boy had abandoned the wall ball line to go join a group of kids over at one of the tetherball rings.
I felt vindicated, silently agreeing with Sara as I got back in line, but it wasn’t many days later that I found out Sara and I hadn’t been completely right. That Friday after school, I was out along the side of the driveway of my house, squatting in a patch of soil, rocks, and plants to watch the activity of my favorite colony of ants there when Earl arrived back home from a neighborhood trip he’d taken on his bike. Pulling into the driveway with him, also on a bike, was Braces Boy.
“Hey, Itty-Bitty,” Braces greeted me. “What’re you doing over there in the dirt?”
“She’s babysitting her ants,” Earl told him as they dismounted their bikes to lean them against the driveway fence.
I rose from my squatting position. “I’m not ‘in’ the dirt,” I informed Braces Boy. I was ridiculously glad to see him and was just as determined not to show him so. “And don’t call me Itty-Bitty.”
Braces grinned. “Touchy. Mad that I let you win in wall ball at school?”
“You didn’t let me win, I hammered you,” I said, wiping my hands across my jeans and stepping out of the soil patch.
“Hammered me, my foot,” Braces guffawed, his hands going into the pockets of his own jeans. “I wouldn’t be caught dead trying hard against a lil’ third grade chick. What do I look like?”
What did he look like? I wasn’t about to tell him that he looked like the very glory of boyhood, standing there: dark brown hair that avoided being a mess but didn’t appear to care more tha n it had to, with a shock of it falling over his forehead; skin, somewhere between the colors of almond butter and cinnamon, that was thoroughly acquainted with the sun’s rays; thick, dark eyebrows; and that irresistible sparkle of metal in his mouth, impishly flaunting itself now, for my benefit.
That is, I wasn’t about to tell him how cute he looked.
I shrugged. “Well. If trying looks stupider than losing, then it is a good thing you lost.”
Earl broke out laughing at that.
“I didn’t lose,” Braces argued the point. “I let you win.”
“Aw, give it up,” Earl chided his buddy, giving Braces a push on the shoulder. “You said you were thirsty. Let’s get some juice and get out of here.”
Earl and Braces turned and headed into the house, and I was again squatting by the ant colony minutes later when the boys came back out to retrieve their bikes.
“Not done in the dirt yet, Itty-Bitty?” Braces asked my back.
“No,” I replied, not moving.
“You got a bike?”
That question brought my head around. “Why?”
“We’re gonna go ride at the park. Come on.”
“Come on? What for?”
“Yeah, she got a bike,” Earl cut in before Braces could answer me. “It’s a nice day, Raindrop. Won’t hurt to come with us.”
I wasn’t at all accustomed to being invited to hang around my older brother when he was with a friend of his. Perhaps my performance at wall ball that week had promoted me. Whatever the case was, while Earl hadn’t initiated the invitation, he did seem to want me along, so I got up, going to the garage to get my bike.
“So, It-Bit, it’s ‘Raindrop’?” Braces asked when I rode out of the driveway with the two of them.
The hint of a glare that I threw at Braces was in no way put on. “It’s Lorraine.” I was characteristically adamant about making sure no one tampered with my parents and brother’s exclusive moniker for me.
Braces didn’t grin in response. Later on, I was surprised by the thought that he could tell he’d accidentally gone a little too far with me and wasn’t pleased about it, but at the moment, I wasn’t going to go easy on him. I purposely shot a good ways ahead of him down the sidewalk, leaving a dash of disdain in my wake.
Wall ball didn’t mean or prove everything, though. Earl, standing on his pedals, soon passed me up without even thinking of it, and Braces, also standing, passed me as well, giving me a mild, otherwise unreadable look as he did so. I’d never mastered the art of riding my bike without simultaneously sitting down, and the boys were simply faster riders than me, regardless. It wasn’t long before I’d fallen significantly behind, thinking the boys would probably forget about me, but just when I had the sheepish thought of quitting this excursion and wheeling back home alone, Braces turned around and rode back to me.
He didn’t say anything, only gave me a sort of half-smile without any jokes in it, and I released a humbled little chortle of acceptance, not objecting to his riding beside me the rest of the way to the park.
Somewhere during the course of our play that afternoon, I learned that Braces’s name was Isaiah, and I took up addressing him accordingly, at least out loud. Despite that, I wouldn’t be equally fortunate, as although my family nickname was off limits, the “Itty-Bitty” and “It-Bit” labels had already stuck, as far as Braces was concerned.
From that day onward, Isaiah, the only child in his family, became a frequenter of our house, more frequent than any other children besides Earl and me. I wasn’t always bid to join Earl and Isaiah, particularly not when additional boys came with them to the house, but I was content to be included sometimes. There were occasions when I declined Earl and Isaiah’s invites for me to go out or to stay in for board games with them, as I was more than happy to amuse myself by myself or to play with Sara when she was visiting. She was so consistent about accompanying me at school when I wanted to play with bigger kids, even though it wasn’t her favorite thing to do, so I gave her my undivided attention when she was at my house, making sure she didn’t have to bother much with the boys there whenever she didn’t want to.
At Earl’s request, my parents began picking Isaiah up to go to church with us on Sundays. Isaiah’s parents had phased church out of their schedules years before but still thought it’d be useful for their son to go, apparently telling him, “The Tysons”—my family—“are good people.” Therefore, Earl, Isaiah, and I spent a small portion of many Saturday afternoons completing Bible lessons for Sunday school the next morning.
“Man!” Isaiah complained with a laugh one day while the three of us were lying on our stomachs on the carpeted floor of the rec room at my house, eating mini pretzels and poring over our worksheets and open Bibles. “Why does you guys’ church give out homework? We get enough work at regular school.”
I was scribbling a Bible verse on my paper. “Yeah, but this is easy stuff.”
“And it helps us not to be heathens,” Earl offered, throwing a pretzel into his mouth.
Isaiah grinned. “But I am a heathen. I think I am, anyway.”
Earl shook his head, talking around his pretzel. “No you’re not. You just try to act like it.”
“Your sister thinks I’m a heathen. Right, Itty-Bitty?”
I giggled. “I think you’re a big dummy, that’s what I think.”
“Psh. Well if I’m so dumb, then don’t ask me to help you with your math no more.”
There had been an afterschool instance or two when Isaiah had caught me struggling over problems from my math homework at the kitchen table, and he’d slid over to work out the problems with me until they made sense. I didn’t recall asking him to, though.
I looked up from my Bible lesson worksheet, spying out some bandaged spots on Isaiah’s forearm. He and Earl had gone out for a game of basketball with a few other boys down at the school play court earlier that week, and Isaiah had come to the house with some bleeding battle marks on his arm. My mom had been out grocery shopping at the time, and with my being the only other person in my family who knew where the first aid kit was, I’d taken it upon myself to disinfect and bandage up Isaiah’s wounds for him, doing an amateur but effective enough job of it. I’d had a mind to give his injured arm an “all better” kiss after I was finished, the kind of thing my mom had been wont to do when Earl and I were smaller, but I’d refrained from making such a gesture, doubtful about whether Isaiah would welcome it.
“Then gimme my bandages back,” I told him now, holding my hand out over the floor.
Isaiah’s hand went to protectively cover the bandages. “These aren’t the same ones you gave me. Those ones fell off when I took a bath.”
“You take baths?” I brought my hand back and plugged my nose. “Oh. You sure you do?”
Isaiah laughed, his braces on full twinkle as he pitched a pretzel at me. “Shut up, stupid.”
“Both of you shut up,” Earl ordered with a snicker, “and knock off the flirting. I’m trying to think. And don’t throw stuff at my sister, man, or we’ll have to take it outside.”
Now, I didn’t possess a wealth of knowledge pertaining to the human ritual and diversion of flirtation. Even the word “flirt” itself usually had a way of leaving a strange taste on my young brain’s palate when it would cross my ears. Still, hearing my brother make an unexpected reference to it, I was, all at once, curiously embarrassed. I refocused on my Bible lesson.
~~~
Chapter Two
Me
~~~
One evening after I’d started fourth grade, I approached my mom at the kitchen table, asking her if wearing beads in my hair made me look like a baby.
“You always look like my baby,” came her absent response. She was busy with bills and balancing her checkbook.
“Mom? I really want to know.”
“Hm?” My mom looked up from her checkbook then, staring at me. Her eyebrows rose. “Oh? Has it been bothering you to be called ‘Itty-Bitty’?” she asked in a certain tone that only mothers have.
I blinked, taken aback. Why was she bringing that up? I was only asking her about my hairstyle. “My hair’s getting long,” I told her. “I want to wear it more like yours.”
