Love Story

5

I would like to say a word about our physical relationship.

For a strangely long while there wasn't any. I mean, there wasn't anything more significant than those kisses already mentioned (all of which I still remember in greatest detail). This was not standard procedure as far as I was concerned, being rather impulsive, impatient and quick to action.

If you were to tell any of a dozen girls at Tower Court, Wellesley, that Oliver Barrett IV had been dating a young lady daily for three weeks and had not slept with her, they would surely have laughed and severely questioned the femininity of the girl involved. But of course the actual facts were quite different.

I didn't know what to do.

Don't misunderstand or take that too literally. I knew all the moves. I just couldn't cope with my own feelings about making them. Jenny was so smart that I was afraid she might laugh at what I had traditionally considered the suave romantic (and unstoppable) style of Oliver Barrett IV. I was afraid of being rejected, yes. I was also afraid of being accepted for the wrong reasons. What I am fumbling to say is that I felt different about Jennifer, and didn't know what to say or even who to ask about it.

('You should have asked me,' she said later.) I just knew I had these feelings. For her. For all of her.

'You're gonna flunk out, Oliver.'

We were sitting in my room on a Sunday afternoon, reading.

'Oliver, you're gonna flunk out if you just sit there watching me study.'

'I'm not watching you study. I'm studying.'

'Bullshit. You're looking at my legs.'

'Only once in a while. Every chapter.'

'.'That book has extremely short chapters.'

'Listen, you narcissistic bitch, you're not that great-looking! '

'I know. But can I help it if you think so?'

I threw down my book and crossed the room to where she was sitting.

'Jenny, for Christ's sake, how can I read John Stuart Mill when every single second I'm dying to make love to you?'

She screwed up her brow and frowned.

'Oh, Oliver, wouldja please?'

I was crouching by her chair. She looked back into her book.

'Jenny — '

She closed her book softly, put it down, then placed her hands on the sides of my neck.

'Oliver — wouldja please.'

It all happened at once. Everything.

Our first physical encounter was the polar opposite of our first verbal one. It was all so unhurried, so soft, so gentle. I had never realized that this was the real Jenny — the soft one, whose touch was so light and so loving. And yet what truly shocked me was my own response. I was gentle, I was tender. Was this the real Oliver Barrett IV?

As I said, I had never seen Jenny with so much as her sweater opened an extra button. I was somewhat surprised to find that she wore a tiny golden cross. On one of those chains that never unlock. Meaning that when we made love, she still wore the cross. In a resting moment of that lovely afternoon, at one of those junctures when everything and nothing is relevant, I touched the little cross and inquired what her priest might have to say about our being in bed together, and so forth.

She answered that she had no priest.

'Aren't you a good Catholic girl?' I asked.

'Well, I'm a girl,' she said. 'And I'm good.'

She looked at me for confirmation and I smiled. She smiled back.

'So that's two out of three.'

I then asked her why the cross, welded, no less. She explained that it had been her mother's; she wore it for sentimental reasons, not religious. The conversation returned to ourselves.

'Hey, Oliver, did I tell you that I love you?' she said.

'No, Jen.'

'Why didn't you ask me?'

'I was afraid to, frankly.'

'Ask me now.'

'Do you love me, Jenny?'

She looked at me and wasn't being evasive when she answered:

'What do you think?'

'Yeah. I guess. Maybe.'

I kissed her neck.

'Oliver?'

'Yes?'

'I don't just love you …'

Oh, Christ, what was this?

'I love you very much, Oliver.'