Gina and Mike Read Online Free Page B

and gray, we can get out our yearbooks and read what we wrote to each other. That’ll be fun. Remember, you said you’d love me even when I’m old and wrinkled and have white hair and false teeth.
    Love you always, Gina
     
    Yep. That was the plan. We’d marry and grow old together.  After Gina dumped me, I swore off girls. Thought I’d never get married. The breakup happened the summer before our freshman year in college. I’m still not sure I know what happened.
     
    ****
     
    1982
     
    One day we were great and the next day we weren’t. I tried talking to Gina about it, but the more I tried, the more distant she became. The night of the prom was the beginning of the end. We went to the after party at Jeremy’s house and everything seemed great until we went to the woods to make out.
    It was like Gina didn’t want me to touch her. I tried doing everything she liked, but she kept pushing my hand away or turning her head.  When I tried to slip off her bikini underwear, she pulled them back up. When I unhooked her bra, she seemed like she was pissed about it. She definitely wasn’t the Gina I knew – and loved. Something had happened, but damn if I knew what? And Gina sure as hell wasn’t talking about it. She had been acting this way for weeks.
    “Gina, baby, what’s wrong?” I asked, rubbing my thumb over her full lips. “It’s been so long since we made love. I think I’m going to explode I want you so bad. Is it me? Don’t I turn you on anymore?”
    Gina bit her lower lip.  “It’s not you.”
    “Well, damn, Gina, I’m the only one here so it’s tough not to think it’s me. There was a time when kisses down your neck and chest would have had you clawing the shirt off my back. Now you’re colder than the deep freezer at work. What the hell am I supposed to think?”
    Gina sat perfectly still on the sleeping blanket, wringing her hands, and staring straight ahead. She didn’t want to look at me. She was bathed in soft moonlight and I swear she looked like an angel. It killed me not to be able to touch her in the way I wanted to. 
    “I just need time.”
    “Time for what? You’ve been saying that for weeks, and I’ve given you weeks. But you just become more and more distant. It’s like I’m losing you and I don’t know what to do to stop it. At first I thought that whatever was going on, you’d tell me about it eventually. You always do. Well, did. Anyway, you haven’t and I know it’s still on your mind.”
    “I’m sorry, Mike. I’m trying.”
    She turned and looked at me and I searched her glassy eyes, looking for something I knew I wasn’t going to find. 
    “That’s just it,” I said. “You used to not have to try. It just happened. We were great together.”
    I’m not sure why it didn’t hit me before, but I thought maybe Gina was pregnant. She was on the pill, but still.
    “You’re not pregnant, are you?” I asked.
    Gina shook her head. “Jesus, no. It’s not that.”
    I let out a heavy sigh.
    “I wish it were that,” she whispered.
    “What you’d say?” I asked.
    “Nothing.”
    “You said you wish you were pregnant. I heard you,” I told her.
    “Well, if you heard me then why’d you asked what I said?”
    “Christ, Gina. I’m not ready to be a dad. But if that would be better than whatever’s going on, whatever’s going on must be pretty damn bad.”
    Gina didn’t say anything, but I could tell by the way her body stiffened that she was uncomfortable. 
    “You’re not gay, are you?”
    She jabbed her elbow into my side.
    “Just checking cause, you know, you don’t seem to want me. Or this.”
    I took her hand and placed in on my crotch and you would have thought that I had cut off her arm.
    Gina jumped up. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
    I stood up and tried to hug her but she turned away. “Gina, baby. I’m Sorry. I didn’t mean.”
    “You didn’t mean? You didn’t mean? You think I’m a whore, don’t you? Don’t you?