Blog a Short Book

April is Blog a Short Book month and Camp NaNoWriMo. I wasn't planning on the books in The Circle of Confusion series to be much more than 50,000 words. So, I'm going to try to finish writing The Circle of Confusion: P. J. during the month of April and I'm going to blog my progress here.

Chapter One

I can’t believe I let myself get talked into going to college. The art classes are interesting, but Algebra sucks. It sucked in high school, it sucks in college, and I still suck at it. The professor is droning on about simple linear equations and I don’t get it. I’m trying to take notes as he talks, but he’s talking so fast that I can’t keep up. God this sucks!

This is my third week of college and I hate it. If it wasn’t for the fact that I get to see Jamie every day, I’d probably quit, scholarship or not. Jamie keeps telling me it will get easier, but staring at the jumble of numbers and letters on my paper, I’m having a hard time believing that.

Finally, giving up on the note taking, I start sketching a picture of Jamie. I start with the eyes that have captivated me for years. Even in elementary school, long before I fell in love with her, I thought she had the most beautiful eyes. I didn’t know in elementary school that the name for the color of her eyes was topaz, but as an artist now I find that it’s one of my favorite colors and often use it in my work.

The chick sitting next to me is some kind of athlete. She always comes to class looking freshly showered, wearing her athletic pants, and a WKU t-shirt. My newly developed gaydar tells me that she is mostly likely gay. That and the strut she has. The confident cocky strut is more than athletic, it’s very butch. We’ve never really spoken to each other, but I know her name is Lori Weaver from attendance call.

She looks over at the picture of Jamie I’m drawing and gives me a grin. Yep, definitely gay.

When class ends Lori points to the picture on my notebook and says, “She’s very pretty.”

I smile, “Thanks.”

She nods and grins knowingly. “So are you getting any of this?” she motions toward the front of the room where the professor is packing up his stuff.

“No. You?”

“No,” she admits, “I hate math.”

“Me, too. I’m an art major so I really don’t understand why I have to take this class anyway.”

Lori agreed, “I know what you mean. Unfortunately, I’m an exercise science major and I will have to know how to use a lot of this.”

“Bummer.”

“Yep. Well, I’ll see you Friday,” she says, grabs her backpack and walks toward the door.

I follow and try to mentally prepare myself for my next class, psychology.

Psychology class is almost all the way on the other side of campus, so I have to really hoof it get there in the fifteen minutes between classes. Thankfully, Jamie is in this class with me. It was the only one that I could get with her this semester. She’s waiting for me outside the building. I want to grab her and kiss her, but we both agreed that we didn’t want to be quite that out on campus.

Jamie laces her arm through mine, “So how was algebra?”

“It sucks.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling up at me, “I’ll help you with it, just like I did last year.”

Jamie helping me with algebra our senior year in high school was how we ended up getting to really know each other and fall in love. Although, I think I’d been in love with her since ninth grade, I just didn’t know I was gay back then. In fact, I wasn’t really sure I was gay until New Year’s Eve last year when Jamie kissed me at midnight that night. At that moment, I had no doubt in my mind that I was gay and that I was totally in love with the beautiful girl kissing me.

“Do you have to work tonight?” Jamie asks.

“Yeah, six to midnight,” I say opening the door to the building for us. “Why?”

She looks into my eyes and gives me the look that always makes my knees weak. “I thought we could go to your aunt’s house to study.”

I blush at the thought of what she really means by ‘study’. “When’s your last class,” I ask, my voice dropping with the rise of my arousal.

“I’ll be out of class by three-thirty,” she says.

My aunt doesn’t get home from work until after five. That would give us an hour of alone time. “You’ll be in Cherry right?”

She nods.

“I’ll pick you up in front of the building,” I say as I slide my hand up her arm, lightly brushing the side of her breast.

Her eyes twinkle with desire and drop to my lips. She runs her tongue across her lower lip and smiles, “Sounds good.”

We walk into the class room and I look around, wondering if anyone caught the exchange we shared, but no one seemed to be paying attention to us. I let out a small sigh of relief. It feels like we are completely alone when we have those moments because there is nothing else but her when she looks at me like that.

The class is only half full, but we take seats in the back, sitting side by side so we can look at each other during class. I watch her as she takes her text book and notebook out of her backpack. She tucks her chestnut hair behind her ear to get it out of her face.

Looking over at me, she catches me watching her and smiles, “Stop it.”

“Can’t help it,” I say and wonder if she really has any idea how much I love her.

The professor came into the room and we have to start focusing on class stuff, which is hard to do with her sitting right next to me, but I manage to take some decent notes. I’m more interested in psychology than I am algebra, so it’s been easier to keep a decent grade in this class.

This class doesn’t seem to last long at all. I know it’s partially because I’m interested in the topic, but mostly it’s because I get to be next to Jamie.

When the professor releases us, Jamie and I walk together up the hill toward the science building where her next class will be. I have an art appreciation class next, and then I’ll head to the parking garage to get my Jeep and swing around to Cherry Hall to pick Jamie up. It’ll only be an hour until I get her, but knowing that we are going to get to be alone for a little while is going to make it seem like forever. We’ve had so much going on since I moved to Bowling Green that we’ve only had one chance to make love in the past three weeks. There always seems to be someone around, or people showing up at my aunt’s house when we get a minute alone. We even tried to make love in her dorm room, but there were so many people wandering around in the halls that we were afraid someone would hear us.

We parted ways at the top of the hill where she had to go to the science building and I had to go to the art building. Jamie leaned toward me before she crossed the road and planted a small kiss on my cheek. I was stunned she was so brave and blushed crimson. “I’ll see you soon,” she says, and then crosses the road when the walk sign changed saying it was safe for her to cross.

I watch her walk down the slight hill to the science building before turning around and trotting down the hill and across the center of campus to the fine arts building. After going down hill for a while, I have to turn and go back up a hill and then down two sets of steps to get to the fine arts building. This is my favorite place on campus. You can here music being practiced and smell paint as you walk through the building.

The drawing class I have seems very basic to me because I’ve been drawing for so long, but I’m hoping that we will start drawing more complicated pieces in the near future. The art appreciation seems even more trivial because I already know most of the information about artists that we discuss.

My scholarship for this year will allow me to get some good classes in towards my degree, but I just have to decide if I really want to continue after the scholarship expires next year. I love getting to be with Jamie every day, but this school thing is just not me. Maybe by the end of the year I’ll feel differently. But right now, I feel like I should be working more because that’s who I am. I’ve had a job since I was thirteen. I’ve babysat, mowed yards, cleaned houses and worked at McDonald’s, like I do now.

I never expected to go to college. I expected to go to work in the factory where my stepfather works, but Jamie and her father encouraged me to go to college. Jamie’s father basically made my scholarship come together by talking to people he knew.

It’s not like I don’t want to make a living being an artist, it’s just that I can’t see myself making a lot of money as an artist. I mean, I’m good at drawing, but I’m not that great. And so much of art that sells today is done with computers, and that’s what most of the artists out there are making most of their money. I’m just not that computer savvy and I’m afraid getting better at math may be required to create the computer art.

* * *

The afternoon didn’t take as long as I thought it would to go by. We discussed Michelangelo, my all time favorite artist, in art appreciation class which made class interesting today, so the time went by quickly.

From the fine arts building, it’s not far to the parking garage. I was parked on the second level. Getting out of the parking garage took longer than getting to my Jeep did. It was that time of day when everyone was headed home so everyone was leaving the parking garage at the same time.

Finally, I pull up in front of Cherry Hall. Jamie is sitting on a bench in front of the building talking to a very pretty blonde girl who looks to be about our age. Jamie turns and looks at me as soon as I pull up. She gives me bright smile and that helps squelch some of the jealousy I am feeling about her sitting there talking to another girl. She jumps up from the bench, waves to the girl, and heads for the Jeep.

When she gets into the Jeep, she gives my arm a tight squeeze. “I missed you,” she says.

“You did,” I say, “You just saw me a few hours ago.”

“I know,” Jamie says with a smile, “but the anticipation of us being alone has been eating away at me. I can’t wait to get you alone.”

I pull up to a stop sign and look over at her. The heat in her eyes is undeniable. We are going to be lucky if we make it to my bedroom at my aunt’s house. “Hurry,” she says.

Pulling through the stop sign, I drive the route that will take us to my aunt’s house the fastest. We barely pulled to a stop before Jamie and I hop out of the Jeep and race to the front door of the house. She has her hands on my hips and is hugging me from behind as I unlock the door.

I open the door and call out, “Anyone home?”  There’s no answer so I turn and pin Jamie to the door and kiss her.

Jamie slides her hands over my shoulders and into my hair as she kisses me back. When we come up for air, she grabs my hand and pulls me down the hall to my bedroom. She pushes me inside and then shuts and locks the door behind us. She pulls me to her and kisses me hard. She starts pulling my shirt out of my pants and runs her hands inside it up to my breasts and squeezes them gently. “God, it has been forever since we made love, “she says as she pushes my t-shirt over my head.

“I know,” I say and start pulling her t-shirt off and kiss the top of her breasts. I start unfastening her jeans. “We need to get naked.”

She reaches down and helps me push her jeans and panties off, and then we both work on mine. I fall down on the bed as she is trying to get my shoes off so she can pull my jeans off. We both laugh. Once the boots, socks and jeans are off, Jamie starts kissing her way up my leg. I’m completely breathless watching her place small kisses just inside my thigh she pushes my legs apart and is just about to take me when I hear the front door open.

“P. J.,” Aunt Cheryl calls. “I’m home.”

“Shit,” I hiss.

Jamie keeps moving forward and I lose my train of thought as her lips and tongue move closer to where I need her.

“P. J.! You here,” Aunt Cheryl calls out, much closer to my bedroom door.

“Yeah, I’m back here with Jamie,” I call back.

“Oops, sorry for interrupting,” Aunt Cheryl calls.

Jamie starts giggling and lays her head on my stomach. “We were so close.”

“We don’t have to stop,” I say, pulling her up to me and then rolling her over to her back. “She’ll go back to her room for awhile.”

“Mmmm,” Jamie kisses me on the lips and runs her hand over my stomach and downward.

“P. J.? Mom?” my cousin, Carla calls from the living room.

Now we were both are giggling. “Well, at least we got to be naked together for a few minutes,” Jamie says.

“Yeah,” I laugh and kiss her. Our lips linger, but Carla pounding on my bedroom door ends all hope of any continued making out.

“I’m in here with Jamie,” I call out.

“Oh man! Sorry,” Carla says.

I sit up and pull Jamie up with me. “It’s okay. We’ll be right out.”

“You have to go out first,” Jamie says. “It’s going to take a minute for me to get up enough nerve to go out there.”

“That’s so unfair,” I protest as I pull on my underwear. “It’s not like I’m any less embarrassed.”

“But, they’re your family,” Jamie says and swings her tan, well-muscled legs over the side of the bed. I hand her underwear to her.”

“Exactly,” I say pulling on my jeans, “all the more embarrassing.”

Jamie bends over to retrieve her jeans, and then stands to put them on. “I have to fix my make up too.”

She has me there. I don’t wear make-up so that isn’t something I sm going to have to fix. “Fine,” I say and pull her to me. I kiss her deeply, and then gently cup her breasts, “but you’ll owe me.”

Her sky blue eyes turn into melting sapphires. “I can’t wait to get to pay my dept,” she say and kisses me. “But we may have to get a hotel room.”

“I agree, maybe the next Saturday that I don’t have to work.”

 “Umm, that sounds good,” she purrs and gives me a small shove. “If you don’t get away from me, I’m going to throw you back on the bed and give you a real reason to be embarrassed.”

I contemplate letting her go through with her threat, but decide Aunt Cheryl might get mad. “Okay, okay,” I say stepping back and reaching for my sports bra.

Jamie picks up her bra and put it over her breasts. She turns her back to me, pulling the glasps around and asks, “Can you hook these for me?”

“Sure,” I hook the clasps together, enjoying the chance to touch her naked skin again.

After her bra is fastened, I grab my shirt, pull it on, and grab the door handle. I motion for her to kiss me. She had picked up her shirt but leans into me with just her bra on to kiss me. When she pulls back, she covers herself with her shirt. I open the door and go out.

Aunt Cheryl and Carla are sitting in the kitchen. Both of them blush when I come into the room. “Sorry about interrupting,” Aunt Cheryl says. “Next time text me and I’ll wait to come home.”

“I thought you weren’t going to get off until five.”

“I wasn’t,” she answers, “but we didn’t have anything to do so they sent us home early.”

 “And I came over to have dinner with Mom and you,” Carla says with a grin, “And I guess Jamie too.”

I look behind me and see Jamie sheepishly coming out of the hallway.

“Sorry for interrupting you guys,” Aunt Cheryl says.

Jamie’s face turns beet red, “Its okay, we weren’t really doing anything,”

“Yeah, right,” Carla laughs, “That’s why you’re turning fifty shades of red, right?”

Jamie’s blush deepened and she sat down at the table next to me.

“Sorry,” Carla pats Jamie on the arm. “I just couldn’t resist teasing you guys.”

“That’s okay,” I say. “I’ll remember that the next time you bring Rob by.”

It was Carla’s turn to blush.

“Well, now that we’re all here, what did you guys have planned tonight?” Aunt Cheryl asks.

“I have to work,” I say.

“I have to study,” Jamie replies.

“Well, bummer,” Aunt Cheryl says. “I thought we might all get to have dinner together and maybe play cards.”

“How about we plan on it for Saturday afternoon,” I reply. “I don’t have to go into work until eight this Saturday.”

“That sounds good,” Aunt Cheryl agrees. “I’m going to be off. Is that good for you, Jamie?”

“Sure. I wasn’t going home this weekend.”

“What about you and Rob?” Aunt Cheryl asks Carla.

“I’ll be able to for sure, but I’ll have to ask James if he has to work.”

“Great!” Cheryl gets up and marks her calendar. “If it’s nice we’ll have to cook out.”

“Steaks?” I ask.

“You buying?”

“How about hot dogs then,” I say and we all laugh.