She certainly hadn’t objected to sharing her space with him - space that he had paid for. Rather, it had simply taken her by surprise to suddenly see his jeans hanging next to hers, his toothbrush and shampoo taking up residence in the bathroom, his cotton boxer briefs snuggling up next to her undies in the top drawer. She hadn’t expected him to make such a move so quickly, not, of course, that she’d ever cohabitated in any way with a guy before. And even to someone as inexperienced and inept at relationships as she was, it seemed like a pretty big deal to stash clothes and shoes at your girlfriend’s apartment.
Jackson was also incredibly diligent about contacting her on a daily basis. At least once a day, and usually several times, he would text or email her. They video chatted almost every day, though she nearly always let him be the one to initiate any sort of contact. The last thing she wanted to do was message him when he was on a construction site, or, worse, in the presence of his father or brother or another nosy family member who would be sure to ask who he was talking to. It would only be a matter of time before his parents and brothers realized he wasn’t bringing a date to any of their family dinners or events, and Scarlett would be willing to bet that Jackson had never gone longer than a few weeks in between girlfriends, probably going back to his high school days. From that point his family would also be sure to take notice of his frequent weekends away and put two and two together - that he did in fact have a new girlfriend but that she lived out of town. After that would come all the questions about this woman - her name, where she lived, who her family was, the request to see photos of her.
She snickered to imagine the look on her father’s face if Jackson ever actually had the nerve to show everyone a picture of her. Neil would probably pee his pants, she thought in gleeful satisfaction, or keel over in a dead faint.
But dealing with his family was, fortunately, Jackson’s problem and not hers. For now, she was simply going to finish her breakfast and enjoy the first Saturday she’d had off from work since her junior year of high school, not counting the occasional holiday that had happened to fall on a weekend. It felt weird, she acknowledged, not to be rushing off to her weekend job, to know she had the entire weekend free to do whatever she wanted. She had no real concrete plans, aside from going through some tutorials for the architectural design software on her new computer, and maybe making some notes for her senior thesis. She was admittedly somewhat at loose ends right now, not quite sure of how to fill her days.
And like it or not, she missed Jackson. The two weekends he had spent up here with her had been magical, whether they had gone for a swim together in the pool or a hike in one of the nearby canyons, or shopped for groceries and then combined their limited culinary skills to cook up a surprisingly tasty meal, or simply snuggled up on the sofa to watch TV. And it went without saying that the times they had spent in bed - quite a lot of time, she realized now with a guilty little smile - had been incomparable to anything else she’d ever experienced.
She didn’t like to think about how Jackson had become such a masterful lover, refused to let herself imagine how many other women he had fucked over the years. But at least she was reaping the benefits of all that experience now, she reassured herself. Over the course of three mere weekends, she’d become far more confident of herself in bed, had even initiated sex on more than one occasion, and was gradually turning into a sensual, passionate creature that she barely recognized as herself.
She was also learning to be less self-conscious about her body, a process that had been helped along by the weight she’d gained, and the way her boobs and hips and ass had filled out some. Oh, she’d never be considered voluptuous or even curvy, but at least you couldn’t count all of her ribs nowadays, and her shoulders didn’t stick out like knife blades when she wore something sleeveless.
The ugly, puckered scar was quite another matter, though, and something she didn’t ever think she could look at without cringing a little. Jackson never seemed the least bit bothered by it, and hadn’t brought up the idea of plastic surgery again. The fact that he could just accept her the way she was, could act like he never even gave the scar a second thought, was just one more reason she was so crazy about the man.
Summer had flown by more quickly than usual this year, and she was due to begin her senior year at Berkeley this coming Wednesday. She’d already purchased the textbooks she would need for the fall semester, and finished some suggested pre-class reading and research assignments for a couple of her courses.
It still boggled her mind that in about nine months time she would be in possession of a bachelors degree in architecture from one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Scarlett thought back to her rebellious, difficult fifteen-year-old self, and shuddered a bit in recollection. That Scarlett was still getting into scrapes and fights on almost a daily basis, was getting called into the guidance counselor’s office at least once a week, was failing more classes than she was acing, and hated the very idea of school. That Scarlett would have laughed in snotty derision at the mere suggestion that she could even get into college, much less one of the very best ones. She hadn’t had a real clear idea back then of how she expected her life to turn out, hadn’t been able to do much more than live day to day and hope she didn’t get kicked out of another foster home, or get suspended from school for bloodying some bitchy girl’s nose or “accidentally” setting fire to a different girl’s hair. She had been a real terror back then, she admitted to herself now, and it was still a miracle that Margie and Roz had agreed to take her in considering the piles of emotional baggage she’d been carting around with her.
Thinking of her former foster mothers brought a smile to her face, and she took a quick selfie with coffee mug in hand and the open courtyard of the apartment complex in the background. She texted it to both of them with a brief message – “First Saturday as a woman of leisure. Feels great but weird, like I ought to be someplace else right now. Is it normal to feel sort of useless and lazy? Love you both!”
It took less than five minutes for Margie to reply back.
“You look fantastic, sweetie, happy and healthy and gorgeous. And you so deserve to have your weekends off. Knowing you I’m not surprised to hear you’re feeling like you should be working instead. Just relax, okay? Having a couple of days off each week is actually pretty normal, you know? So it’s okay to be normal. But not too normal, because that just wouldn’t be the Scarlett we love so much!”
Scarlett laughed in reply. She and Margie texted back and forth for a few more minutes until Roz stumbled sleepily into the kitchen and Margie felt obliged to get her wife some coffee and breakfast. But their all too brief exchange of messages had been more than enough to reassure Scarlett that she shouldn’t feel in the least bit guilty at finally having a weekend off in more than five years.
As she rinsed out her coffee mug, she realized that as of late she’d been communicating a lot more with Margie and Roz, had felt this need to reach out to them and reaffirm the familial bonds they had formed. Maybe the need had arisen after observing how much family support her half-sister Hannah had received, how many people loved her, how close they all were. And she’d been all too bitterly reminded that she actually had a family of her own - grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins. But because of her father’s selfishness and irresponsibility it was a family she was forbidden to ever know. At times she wished she had never learned of their existence so that she didn’t have to torture herself with images of happy family holidays or get-togethers that would always happen without her presence.