Chapter 1 One

• “Hi Mrs. Garcia,” Jake said as he looked in through the half-open door of the middle aged housekeeper’s room.
• “What’s up?”, she asked in response without looking up at him. Her eyes were focused on her reflection on the mirror she was holding. She was seated on the bed, applying lip balm on her lips due to the dryness of the weather.
• “Um... just came to tell you that I want to step out for a moment,” Jake explained, his eyes glued to her full lips.
• “Okay. Just don’t stay long,” Sarah admonished. “Your mum could return anytime.”
• “Nah, she won’t,” Jake scoffed as he ran off.
• How confident he sounded! He was probably the most confident 19-year old Sarah Garcia had ever encountered. She would never forget how he had boldly asked her to be his lover the previous year. The proposition took her by surprise so much that she couldn’t help but ask him to repeat himself. It was when he said it again that it finally dawned on her that he wasn’t joking! What a boy!
• At the time, she had laughed inwardly at the idea of dating a “child" that was less than half her age. It had taken her at least a couple minutes to digest his proposition. She first saw it as an insult and wanted to express her anger, but she quickly changed her mind and decided to just regard it as a childish act.
• “Come on,” she had said with a dismissive sigh, “the time for such things is in the past tor me.”
• She had thought that this would be enough to push him away without his feelings getting hurt from a rejection. But she was wrong! The bold little bastard had responded instantly with, “Says who?”
• “I’m almost 40, Jake,” she said, deciding to try another tack. “Your mother hired me to look after you and the house, not to be your lover. That would be a huge betrayal of her trust.”
• She really didn’t want to give him a direct rejection. No matter how crazy he was, he didn’t deserve that at all. She knew how boys could feel towards older women that they had a crush on, so she understood why he was doing what he was doing. But it was just that she had never seen any boy approach someone her age so directly and confidently before.
• “Well, she doesn’t have to know. Who will tell her? I wouldn’t,” Jake said, refusing to back down.
• Sarah sighed in frustration. She had tried all the tacks she could think of. What else could she tell him to make him drop the issue?
• “So, having a forbidden relationship is not enough, you also want to make it a secret?”, she said with a sneer.
• “Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess,” Jake had shrugged, still looking directly into her eyes, making it clear that he was waiting and expecting her to say yes to his proposal.
• The audacity!
• For the first time in her life, Sarah Garcia felt uncomfortable and fidgety in the presence of a teenager. She could hardly believe what was going on. Hell, she couldn’t even look him in the eye!
• Eventually, she mustered enough courage to tell him in a firm tone of finality, “It’s impossible, Jake. Totally impossible. It can’t happen. Forget about it.”
• “Okay. If you say so,” Jake had said and walked away just as abruptly as he has approached her.
• He had taken the rejection far better than she had expected. That was good. Sarah had sighed in relief and hoped that that was the end of the issue. But now, so many months after he made that shocking proposition to her, she still couldn’t get it out of her head. Jake, it seems, had since moved on. He was now dating other girls his age. Sarah wondered if he was having sex with them. Somehow, she didn’t feel very happy whenever she thought of him possibly having sex with those girls. Damn, she was behaving like the one who had done the propositioning instead of the one who had dished out the rejection.
• Sometimes, she even wondered if she had done the right thing by rejecting him, but almost immediately, her common sense would swiftly kick in and remind her of their age difference and the fact that she was his mother’s housekeeper! Hell, there was even a small part of her that was disappointed at the fact that he had backed down eventually and not put a bit more pressure on her. Who knew, she might have promised to consider the proposition if he had persisted a bit more. Or would she?
• A lot had happened since he first approached her. Could it be that her current feelings were as a result of the fact that she had been seeing him with other girls? Or in simple English, could she be jealous? The thought of this brought a blush of shame to her face and she quickly pushed the matter out of her mind completely. A woman her age shouldn’t be thinking like this at all. It was a shameful and immoral line of thought. Yes, she was officially divorced, but still... What was that sound??
• Sarah went over to the window and drew aside the curtains so she could see where the sound was coming from. Unsurprisingly, she saw Jake and three other people skittering down the driveway. At least two of them were rollerskating. That was clearly the source of the unusual sound. Sarah drew back the curtains and sighed. It seemed Jake had run into these friends of his when he stepped out and had decided to bring them home. But with the fact that two of them were girls, Sarah could already guess what would happen. But she didn’t want to think too much about it. She stayed in her room and listened as they jumped into the house and went straight up to Jake's room. She strained her ears for any further sounds, even though she knew fully well that they had gone too far to be heard.
• After spending several minutes sitting in her room and doing nothing, she finally got up and went out to look around the house and make sure that everything was in great shape.