Do You Still Hold Me in Your Heart?

**Do You Still Hold Me In Your Heart?** by juanwildone

It was another one of those damn fucking hot days. I packed my tools away and slid behind the wheel of my pick-up. I can't say I was looking forward to the three hour drive hour, but I was definitely looking forward to depositing the check in my pocket.

East Texas is just too damn hot. Fortunately, I saw a roadhouse up ahead and pulled into the nearly empty parking lot. That suited me just fine as I was not looking to be sociable, as long as the beer was cold, the A/C worked, and I could get something digestible- I was fine. I eased myself onto the barstool and ordered a cold one. I nodded when the bartender asked if I wanted to watch the game. I was in mid-sip when the TV came on. Damn thing was set for the County Music Video Channel; the announcer introduced the new number one video - I should have known. The opening chorus wrenched my eyes to the screen and I watched as the singers face, showing the lines and cares of a life on the road slowly dissolved into a flash back scene of twenty years ago - I groaned.

The bartender mistook my discomfort for disapproval. He shook his head and opined that the singer was one of the hottest women in music; and how he "sure as hell" wouldn't kick her out of his bed. I told him he didn't know what the hell he was talking about. He said he knew what he liked and he liked "too fucking bad for you" Jolene.

God, I loved fucking Jolene in the morning. The sun streaming in would set her hair on fire -a golden glow surrounding auburn tresses. Her hair would be flat here, full there, a riot of individuality...you knew Jolene by her hair; wild, free, exciting - take your breath away sexy, pulled back intense... prowling. (She pulled it back into a tight bun once, like a librarian...that memory alone makes me tremble.)

The palest green eyes - scary, with flames dancing through them when her blood was up. Intoxicatingly alluring when her lust was on - God she could get me to do any damn thing she wanted. Anything, damn that woman.

I liked her eyes best in the morning when they were heavy lidded and soft...when she was soft...and warm...and yielding. She was drier in the morning, hotter too - internally I mean. At night she'd get real wet and wild, fucking Jolene after the sun went down seemed to be as much a contest, or a battle, as a coupling. At night she was demanding, insistent - she knew what she wanted (hell she knew what I wanted too) and she got it...more often then not.

But damn, in the morning, pretty much any morning...man, for me that was the best. Sometimes she'd just throw a leg over me all casual-like, reach down between her legs take hold of old Howard (Ok, let me explain - I met Jolene at a bar across the street from a Howard Johnson's. I was pretty drunk at the time and kept slurring her name from Jay -lynne to Joel - ine, finally she said "Jo like Ho Jo, ya know, across the street." I told her I did know and escorted right across the street to the front desk, and got us a room. We just about broke the bed by check-out the next day. So she named my johnson "Howard", sometimes "Howie" when she was all friskie and everything, and once, when I drank way too much, just "How" as in "How is that supposed to help me?" And believe you me, I never got that drunk again.) After taking hold of old Howard she promptly slid down upon him.

I was foolish enough, our first-time together, to think that it was just a one-night stand. I had a piss filled hard on the next morning and she used it with relish to get herself off twice. I can't come like that in the morning (gotta pee first), which didn't seem to concern her one bit. She just laughed and said that every time I took a piss that day I'd be smelling her. Then she kind of laser-beamed me with those eyes of hers and said that if I were to drop by her place after work and her smell was still on me, she'd be inclined to freshen it up - as long as it was always her smell. Which was how this old tomcat became famously monogamous for the first time in his life - damn that woman.

Sometimes though, in the morning, I'd get my wake-up piss taken care of and then slide back into bed beside her. I'd either spoon her or take her from the rear. This was fraught with a certain amount of danger in that, old Howard tended to rub a spot in Jolene that turned her on tremendously, only her arousal would be delayed for about an hour or so until she was fully awake. I'd be getting settled in at work and get a call from some lust-driven cum crazed banshee screaming at me. She'd be telling me just what was going to happen to me that night. The more calls I got during the day, the greater my service was required that night - I always felt it was for the greater good.

Or sometimes I'd crawl between her thighs and plow her good and proper - nuthin' wrong with that.

We were made for each other. We were exclusive to each other. Except once, I guess. I had done the spoon thing to her in the morning, for a long time, and I must have gotten close to a dozen banshee calls throughout the day. I was walking around with a steel pipe in my jeans all fucking day. I usually got home between 5:30 and 6:15. She kept reminding me not to be late, as she had some old college roommates coming by around 7 and she wanted to get a good fuck in before they arrived. I purposely didn't get home until 7:20 that evening. I'm telling you, if her eyes were fire, my goose would have been cooked, then and there.

She made some quick introductions and then dragged me into the kitchen. She had my belt unbuckled and my jeans around my knees before I knew what was happening. She hitched her dress up over her hips and leaned across the counter.

She looked back over her shoulder and hissed, "heart attack fast, you bastard" which meant that I was supposed to fuck her as hard and as deep and as fast as I could until I felt I was about to have a heart attack. Normally I would be more then up (meaning me, Howard was more than just up, he was drooling with anticipation) for a good heart attack fuck, except that these tended to be real noisy and her friends weren't but on the other side on the door. I did what I was required to do and emptied what felt like a couple of days' worth into her. She straightened her dress and went back to her friends as if nothing had happened. I just stood there like a fool with my limp dick drooling on the floor before I zipped up and joined them.

I returned to the room still tucking in my shirt. The girls, Jolene's friends, were looking at me the way a fox looks at a chicken. Much to my surprise, Howard came roaring back to life - I noticed, they noticed, unfortunately Jolene noticed too. The two girls (damned if I can remember their names now) kept looking at Howard's current place of confinement, licking their lips and shifting their thighs back and forth.

I was digging the attention and indulging in many variations of standard male fantasies involving three sexy woman when I began to feel a heat on the side of my face. I turned just enough to see Jolene glaring at me in an attempt to give me a permanent tan.

Like a fool I said something stupid, you know, like "have either of you ever been with more then one person" or maybe something stupider. The girls smiled as their eyes got a little glazed, then Jolene whispered to me.

"Sugar britches (I immediately knew I was in deep, deep shit), the only way these two sluts are ever going to taste you is by eating it out of me." Now that image did nothing to settle ole' Howard down, but I wasn't stupid - I shut the fuck up.

Jolene had invited her friends to stay for dinner and asked me to go get some bar-b-q at this place we really like. I told her it would be about an hour by car and she said fine, and that I'd better be going. I heard the ominous sound of the door being locked behind me before I was even off the porch.

When I got back, the girls announced that they weren't hungry after all and left. I kept my mouth shut as Jolene and I ate. I put the remains in the fridge and began to make my late night moves. Jolene said she was too tired and went to bed. I sat there watching TV until way too late wondering just what had happened while I was away. I never asked, Jolene never said - but I never did anything stupid like that again.

Did I mention that Jolene was a singer? That's why she was in the bar the night we met. She sang and played guitar, wrote most of her own stuff. She did some covers of Patsy Kline songs that would leave you weak in the knees. She was always trying to break into the business by sending tapes to other singers, other writers, producers, record companies - that girl sent out a shit load of tapes.

I guess one finally got through...she got her break...I got a broken heart.

It was an August morning - and looked like it was going to be one of those damn fuckin' hot day. She had straddled me and gotten her two orgasms. On a normal day she would have gotten up to make me breakfast, leaving me to smell her on me all day long. But she told me to go drain Howard and then come back to bed. She wanted me to come inside her. I'm no fool, something unexpected - except that I didn't see the unexpected until it was too late.

I got back into bed and she made love to me like she never had before. She took me into her heat and just drew me out. I didn't just pour my seed into her that morning...I poured my heart. We whispered the things that lovers do. We both had tears in our eyes, only it turned out to be for very different reasons. She made me cum twice that morning.

I was thinking that this was the time. This was the moment when two people decided to live as one. I had my grandma's engagement ring in my sock drawer. It had been there for a while. I was thinking this was how I would remember the beginning of our life together - it never occurred to me that she was thinking this was how we'd remember the end.

We were just lying together - spent, but fulfilled. I got up to get dressed for work and she just lay there in bed. The covers were pushed down past her thighs and her naked body was posed like she'd been poured into place. I don't think that she ever looked more beautiful, more pure. I suggested we go out to a fancy restaurant that night "I have something special planned" - she didn't answer. Tears began to spill down her cheeks.

"The record company, the one in Nashville, called me yesterday; they want to sign me, offered me a contract. I'm flying out this afternoon."

I pushed the cold sinking feeling in my stomach aside, "Well that's OK, we'll just make it tomorrow night. We can..." But there was really nothing more to say. Through my own tears, even I could see that the end was in her eyes.

Damned if she didn't make it though. She had it all, the headlining tours, the records - everything. I heard about her marriage to her manager/producer...then heard about their divorce. It was about that time that she kind of faded from sight. Which I guess made her comeback so much more incredible.

I'd always been surprised that when she made it the first time, she sang other people's songs. On her comeback CD they were all hers, every damn one of them. Their titles were really interesting. A place name or a date - that's all. The title song was a date, "August 06, 1983."

With that song and that CD she swept the Country Music Awards that year. Everyone was happy for her; all the critics praised her song writing, the depth of emotion, the bittersweet quality of love. The first tine I heard it, I had to pull over. She even made a video - this damn video, the one playing on this damn TV in this damn bar.

The video begins with a young couple, lovers' actually...she's stretched out across a bed that he's just gotten out of...he dresses...and then leaves with his guitar in hand, never looking back. The scene is shot in real time; it's over in three minutes.

And over it, through it, like lovers' limbs entangled in it...was Jolene. Singing just above a whisper, as if she was right there beside your ear. Singing words of love sought, love found, of choices made and regrets lived.

I had forgotten those words, but now I remember them all too well - now I can't escape them. She must have written them down as she was flying away from me - moving on from one love to another. That last line of the chorus was new though. She could have been thinking it as she left.

"...am I etched inside your mind? Do you still hold me in your heart?"

Yeah...I do. Damn woman.