CHAPTER 3

DESTINY

To say that I was shocked to see Brock Strom at my aunt’s church was an understatement. I never in a million years would have thought that I would run into anyone from my former life in a church in Iowa. As ridiculous as it might seem, since I hardly knew him, but Brock was the only man that I had ever loved. It all went back to when he had saved me from the most terrifying moment of my life.

“I’ve got you,” his deep, calming voice had said softly into my ear as he held my trembling body. Those words would echo wonderfully in my head for the rest of my life. It wasn’t long before my fantasies urged a change in his words from “I’ve got you” to “I love you.”

His rescue had truly seemed miraculous. My attacker had torn my clothes off and pinned me to the floor. He had put his knife right at my jugular. I still have a little, half inch scar from where the blade had poked through my skin. He said if I moved he’d slit my throat from ear to ear. He then unbuttoned and unzipped his pants. Right when he was pushing them down, I saw a flash of movement from my kitchen. Like a superhero, Brock suddenly appeared in my living room. His leg lifted and his foot snapped hard into my attacker’s head, knocking him out cold instantly.

“So you took the advice of the cops then.” Brock had stated as we sat by Cotton Creek and conversed.

In the aftermath, both Brock and the police suggested that I not be visible in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area after the attempted rape and potential murder. My attacker had gang ties. It seemed to me that they would be more angry with Brock than me. Nonetheless, I left with another girlfriend for the west coast. I had been California dreaming anyway.

I tried exotic dancing out west, but the attack, still fresh on my mind, made me skittish. So I got into porn instead. I started my own web site, as well as joining a popular web site that featured twelve girls. It was strictly girls with girls. I had been developing a growing fear of the type of men that patronized so called gentlemen’s clubs. After the attempted rape, it left me on the verge of panic attacks.

“Yes, I went to the west coast,” I told Brock. “I heard you went to Florida.”

“Yeah, Miami.”

“Why Miami?”

“Our shared incident had an unexpected benefit,” he informed me. “I got hired by a high profile security company. It got me out of the strip club, and at ten times the money.”

I nodded. “I um, got into, ah…”

“The Dirty Dozen,” Brock said with a little smile and an arched eyebrow. “I know you did porn. Is Sophie still in your life?”

“So you kept tabs on me, then?” I asked, part offended, part embarrassed, and actually disappointed. In my fantasies about Brock, he wasn’t the type of guy that went to strip bars or watched porn. It was a silly notion, even hypocritical. Dreaming he wasn’t a guy that went to strip clubs wasn’t at all realistic since he did security at one. This put him in a nude establishment way more than the average patron. But to me, Brock always seemed more interested in looking out for us girls rather than looking at us.

“I did,” he admitted.

“Why?”

“I got into the wrong line of work when I bounced at strip clubs,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean that I didn’t realize how much I felt like protecting you girls from all of those slime balls that just saw you all as a piece of meat,” Brock explained testily. “I couldn’t ignore the reality of what you girls were doing and how you all ended up there. Believe me, I had more than one girl tell me her life story, and they were never heartwarming tales. I just couldn’t compartmentalize it like other bouncers, bartenders, and you performers.”

Maybe my fantasy wasn’t far off after all! And I definitely wasn’t the only one that dreamed about Mr. Storm. Most girls talked about wanting to do unmentionables with him. He was big, very muscular with no fat, and movie star handsome despite the scars on his face. His nickname at the club was even Scarface.

He chuckled lightly. “Every time I checked up on you, I feared finding out that you were doing hardcore stuff with guys.”

“The lesbian stuff didn’t bother you?” I wanted to know.

“Not near as much as the thought of watching you being abused by guys, all the while acting like you loved it.” he replied. “By the way, how much of it was an act, or are you…”

“I’m bisexual,” I replied a little too quickly. “But to be honest, I haven’t been intimate with a guy since I was a teenager.”

Why did I tell him that last part?

“You didn’t answer me about Sophie,” he said.

“We broke up a few months ago,” I told him. “Due to religious convictions.”

“Did she take it hard?”

“She’s the one that broke up with me.”

His utterly baffled expression made me giggle. Obviously I had just been at a church service. Besides, if he knew about Sophie and me, and a lot of people did because of social media, she clearly was the wild one in our coupling. She had short dark hair, dark eyes, and a tough, don’t mess with me, countenance. She also was heavily tattooed, pierced, and had a penchant for heavy metal music.

“So would you still be together if she hadn’t?”

I shrugged. “To be honest, these last few days with my Aunt Belle I’ve hardly thought about Sophie. I’ve just been relishing the hope of a fresh start at a new life. I’m really getting into the Bible. Aunt Belle gave me some very interesting study guides, and they’ve been absorbing most of my days right now.”

“Maybe we could go out to dinner or something,” Brock blurted, then suddenly looked sheepish. “And then study the Bible together afterward, I mean.”

Was he trying to ask me out? Or did he just want to study? I wondered just how close he was to the guy I dreamed of? There’s no way he could possibly live up to my fantasy, but who could truly live up to a fantasy? I wanted to find out if he was a sex creep or not. But even if he had been, it seems he’s a regular church attendee now. “So did you just check on me, or do you like watching porn?”

“Both,” he said with a little smirk.

I felt myself blush, but at the same time I felt a surge of disappointment. “Okay, then.”

“But I didn’t know that you retired. I haven’t checked on you in well over a year.”

“How come you quit checking on me?” I asked, feeling strangely hurt.

“It didn’t feel right looking at that, you know, stuff when I began seeking God,” he replied.

Now I felt relief flood over me before I inquired. “I thought you weren’t a convert yet, and that you were still agnostic.”

Our eyes locked, and Brock looked a little confused. Oh my, I could look into those calm, acorn-colored eyes for hours. That is, if they also didn’t make me feel so uneasy.

“I don’t think agnostic was the right word, because I do believe in God.”

He paused, gazing up into the gently swaying tree branches and stirred the air with his right hand.

“Surrender,” he finally uttered. “I don’t know about surrendering fully to Jesus. I want to, but I still have issues. Free will is a strange thing, but without it you can’t have love. I never realized how much I loved myself until I tried to love Jesus.”

“So you don’t love Jesus?”

“I’d like to think I do. I mean, I’m seeking Him. I study the Bible, and I come to worship here on a regular basis. But I still have issues.”

“What kind of issues?”

“Deep-seated sin.”

“Belle tells me repeatedly that Jesus accepts me just as I am,” I told him.

“So have you fully surrendered to Jesus?”

“For where I’m at,” I said shrugging. “But I’m brand new at this stuff. The way I see it, I’ll always be growing and learning. I’m already infinitely better than I was a week ago at this time.”

Brock smiled warmly at me. My heart thumped a little faster.

“It’s funny,” he said. “You’ve been seeking not even a week while I have for almost a year, and yet you seem ahead of me already.”

“It’s not a competition, Brock. If we keep talking, you might not be thinking that for very long.”

He nodded. “I want to clarify something. When it came to looking at porn, I only viewed the stuff you were in. To be honest, I became a little obsessed with you. I suppose our shared incident had a lot to do with it.”

Now I went from feeling relief to feeling a little paranoid. Was Brock the stalker type? Was he maybe stalking me the night I was almost raped? Is that how he had been there to help me? The thought had crossed my mind before from time to time, but I always returned to my image of Saint Brock, my dream guy.

“There was just something about you,” he said a little dreamily. Then he paused, his eyes leaving mine, and roaming down my body. My dress had hiked up over my knees, and I quickly pulled it down and pressed my legs together. Brock laughed. “Like that.”

“Like what?” I asked with a puzzled frown.

“Your act wasn’t entirely an act. You’re the ultimate good girl next door, who gave into temptation.”

My dream guy seemed to be infatuated with me. Yet this frightened me more than it intrigued me. Groping for something to say, I said “I’m hardly a girl, I’m going on thirty.”

He seemed to perceive that I was starting to get creeped out as he gazed solemnly at me with those calm light brown eyes. Oh how I loved those eyes! They erased the creepy road he had started down. He emitted a humorless chuckle, and said “I’m sorry.”

An awkward silence ensued so I asked “How did you end up here? I know you had mentioned a book that Pastor Samson wrote. But surely you didn’t move to eastern Iowa because of a book.”

“No, I didn’t,” he affirmed. “It was a few things that all came together. I was on vacation, and driving from Florida to Minnesota. I thought I would stop and check out Captain Kirk’s church. As you can see, it’s rather quaint and appealing, and he’s an excellent preacher.

“Plus, a guy I worked with was from Iowa, and his brother lives only about ten minutes from here. He fixes up old cars and motorcycles out in the country on an acreage. He had quite a demand. So when he found out I liked turning wrenches, he invited me to not only come to work with him, but room with him in the big old farmhouse he lived alone in.

“I thought about it all through my vacation. When my R and R was over, I went back to Miami, gave notice, and put my condo up for sale. I went from a condo in walking distance to the Atlantic ocean, to an old farmhouse surrounded by a sea of corn. But I grew up on a small farm outside the Twin Cities, so I don’t regret a thing. I love the peace and solitude where I live.”

His eyes settled on mine, and for a long moment, we just looked at each other. It was then I realized that I was probably staring dreamily at him. I could feel a little smile my face. He wore his own far out expression as his lips parted, and his face inched a little closer to mine. Was he going to kiss me? Was I going to let him? My own face seemed to move ever so slowly toward his when we were both jolted back to reality.

“Hey, kids,” my Aunt Belle greeted as she walked up to us. “Sorry to interrupt, but we have a little surprise in the dining room. Can you two come up?”

Brock and I looked at each other, then back to Aunt Belle, and we both said “sure” at the same time.

As we walked into the church’s dining area, a dozen people shouted, “Happy birthday!”

“Thanks,” Brock and I said at the same time. Then we both looked at each other with a puzzled frown.

“April 23 is your birthday?” Brock asked me.

“Yes, yours too?”

“Yeah.”

“What year?” I asked.

“1983,” he replied. “You?”

“1988.”

“This makes sense, then,” Brock said, waving a hand at the festivities.

“What does?” I asked.

“I was wondering who could have known it was my birthday today,” Brock replied with a big grin. “This was actually all for you.”

Brock and I had the same birthday. We ended up at the same church in Iowa nine years after we had last seen each other in Minneapolis. We also both appeared to have a thing for each other. It seemed like, what do they call it, synchronicity?

Forgive me for being a pessimist, but I thought that something was bound to go out of synch.  My feelings proved to be right.