by Ace Gray
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Great. Just enjoying the morning.” The morning in which I realize how many red flags I ran past to get into your arms.
“Even about Jenna?”
“You mean, about us?” It’s easier to swallow if I think about it like that. In terms of him and I. I can comb back over the past weeks, I can remember the feel of his fingerprints and see the marks of his kisses. As I list off those things, I almost am okay with it.
“Well I’m glad you’re good about us, but that’s not what I asked.” His eyes grow a little wider and his hands go rigid where he’s still just picking at his food. “I asked if you were okay with her coming?”
And just like that, my stomach bottoms out.
The thing about sitting across from the man who makes up my world while he destroys it is unsettling more than anything else. Sure, it hurts, but suddenly up is down and left is right, and I’m left standing on water where before it was solid rock. I don’t understand how we got here.
I don’t understand why.
And what’s worse is I can’t ask him. I can’t get upset. If I do, the whole damn planet I’ve decided to stand on might implode. James will wonder why I don’t trust him and if I ever will. He’ll question whether I’m worth the effort. And with Jenna, the embodiment of his past, as a reminder I’m convinced that today the answer will be no.
I’ll lose him and I’m not ready for that.
So, I haul my smile into place and think of puppies and kitties and The Sound of Music so that it maybe, just maybe looks even remotely real.
He studies me for a minute but says nothing. A lone, long finger reaches across the table and brushes my hand. My heart warms but it also sets the dread inside me to simmer.
“Are you? Okay?”
“Course. Can’t wait.”
“At the end of the day, she’s one of my oldest friends.” His finger brushes against mine again.
“Sure.” One of his oldest friends that he didn’t even feel the need to tell he was moving. Halfway across the country. Why would I not be okay with that?
He goes to say something—I know the shapes of his mouth so well—but my phone buzzes and silences him. I lunge for it, for anything that would cut the awkwardness now existing at the table with us.
It’s just a random calendar alert, a reminder to call in my orders. But… I take it. And I use it.
“It’s work. They need me to go in.”
“Really? On a Sunday?”
I shrug. “My job never stops.” Nor apparently does my descent into Hell as I continue lying to him. “I can call you later? Supply a raincheck for this morning?”
He nods but he’s not really looking at me. If I had to guess, he isn’t really here anymore than I want to be.
“Probably gonna go play some disc golf.” His voice is a million miles away.
“Yeah, you should enjoy the sun.”
I turn for the to-go lids and take a deep breath. I don’t feel good about myself, but this is self-preservation. With James, my every move has to be. Doesn’t it? Or is Courtney, the voice of relationships past, tainting how I see the now? Is Jenna? The answer is maybe and I dunno and probably and also no way all at once.
The only real answer I know is that I need space. And selfish or not, I’m taking it.
“You want a lid?” I ask, holding it out across the table.
“I want to know if you’re running,” he answers, still not really looking me full in the face.
“Just down the street to work.” I shoot him a smile and set my offered lid down, aiming for charming rather than no-ball pussy loser.
“Mina, she doesn’t mean anything.”
That flares something in my chest. I don’t know what answer I was hoping for, but she means nothing isn’t it. She’s been around for eight years, she better mean something otherwise he may be the sociopath furious me accused him of being so often. But if he cares too much…
I can feel the veneer of my smile cracking.
“James, I’m not running. I’m not anything. I’m just going to work.”
“Liar.”
Anger and hurt flare in my chest and the crack down my facade breaks.
“You know what? Sometimes you are too.”
“Working on a Sunday?” Courtney’s voice is smaller, softer than it’s been in a long time.
“Yeah.” I make mine match as I turn around in my office chair to face her.
“Everything okay?”
“Would you want to hear it if it wasn’t?” I shoot an eyebrow in her direction.
“Of course,” she says earnestly as she comes in, hands me a cup of coffee, then perches on my desk. “I’d like to say that I take it back, but I don’t.”
“I can’t do this today, Court.” I lean my elbow on the armrest and my weary brain on my pointer finger as I watch her.
“That’s how I felt the other day. I lost a client, my washing machine broke, and then he’s here, being him…”
“Courtney,” I warn.
“I lost it okay? I didn’t put a pillow down to break your fall before I pushed you and for that I’m sorry.”
“I love him.”
She nods then her eyebrow lifts. “But…?”
“I really don’t want there to be a but.” I sigh.
“What is it this time?”
“Jenna.”
“Jenna?” she shrieks.
“Yup.”
“Like Jenna, Jenna from the parties and the ski vacation. Jenna who’s nice enough but the reason we all had to walk on eggshells after nine pm because she’s always the first to leave the party.”
“See, I think of her as the Jenna who both used and got used by James.” I turn my head and let it fall into my open hand. “What if that’s what we turn into?”
I fully expect her isn’t that what you already are? but it doesn’t come. Instead, she stays silent, and when I twist to look at her, she just gestures as if locking her mouth and throwing away the key.
“I know, I know.” I sigh and let my eyes fall to the floor. “And I know what I want the answer to be, but I can want that—want him—with my whole heart and it still not turn out well.”
She keeps her lips closed but pulls them up into a sympathetic smile none the less.
“But Jenna coming here—”
“Jenna is coming here?!” Her outburst interrupts me and it’s my turn to change my flat lips into a weak smile.
“He didn’t tell her that he moved and apparently they need to exchange words about it in person.”
“I’ll kill him.” She spins on her heel and I only catch her belt loop at the last minute.
“I’ll be the first person they suspect,” I say through gritted teeth as I try to rein her back in.
“You have an alibi.” She braces her forearms on the doorframe.
“You’ll need help hiding the body and I’m the only one you can trust.”
The full-fledged pull against my grip eases and she turns. I move my hand to rub my temples as she resumes her post against my doorframe.
“You win.” She crosses her arms. “For now.”
“He says it’s nothing. That she means nothing,” I offer weakly.
“What do you say?”
“That the reality that she means nothing is almost as bad as it being a lie.” I round over my knees, my hand still massaging my temples.
“Explain.”
“It’s eight years—some of them romantic, some of them friendship, some of them wildly argumentative—but it’s eight years.” When I list it so succinctly it sounds like the shape of my life right now. “If he can’t care for her on some level, want some sort of resolution, face the lack of commitment head on with her, can he ever with me?”
She gently taps her finger on her chin, sloshing her coffee cup the slightest bit. A few dribbles escape and splatter on her chest. I reach for the stain wipes I keep handy in my office and hand one over. We swap, coffee for w
ipe and I wait while she attends to her shirt. When the stain is as good as it’s going to get, she keeps wiping. Looking a little too long for additional dots of coffee.
“Well?” I finally prod.
She blows out a deep breath. “Look, if it were anyone else—and I mean literally anyone—I would say, trust him. Give him a chance to be true to his word. The way you’re going at it, you’re setting him up to fail.”
“Wise,” I say as I hand her coffee back. “And surprisingly, I’ve heard it before.”
“Well they don’t know James.”
“Do you?”
“Do you?”
I lean back and cross my hands behind my head. “God, I want to.”
I shift on the top step of the staircase that leads to James’ apartment. I’m glad that no one lives underneath because the metal stairs are killing my butt and I can’t stop shifting, they creak with every single move. Colors start banding the sky and still James hasn’t come home.
Part of me wants to leave but I shift again and grip my stair. I am staying here. I am showing up for James.
I just wish I’d brought a book.
Instead I watch the sky. The sunset, so brilliant in its end and the death of the day. Would James and I be like that too? Beautiful in our destruction and demise. Or is this just the fireworks before the soft twinkle?
“I thought you ran.” That voice, that voice that is my own version of home, calls from the bottom of the stairs.
“Maybe a little.” I hold up the tiniest space between my fingers. “But I was always coming back.” I offer him a sad excuse of a smile. “And I really did need to work, I have been spending far too much time on recreational activities.”
That finally brings out his crooked smirk. He starts up the stairs with a hand tucked in his backpack. When he’s only a few stairs away he pulls a disc out and moves to whip it at me. I squeal and my hands fly to shield my face. My knee shoots up to guard my stomach and the whole thing sends me off kilter. I crash back onto the little barbs of his steps, my elbow taking the brunt of it.
“Oh shit, I’m so sorry, Mina.” James tosses the disc to the side and sprints up the last few stairs.
“Ouch.” I push up from the grate, and he’s immediately there, his arm around me as his other hand lifts my forearm.
“God, I hurt you. I’m such an asshole.” His bright eyes meet mine and I try to decipher what’s behind them.
Since I can’t, I just let my free fingers wander the length of his hand where it holds my wounded skin.
“Yeah but you’re my asshole.”
“I’ve never understood when people say that.” His smile is trying to break free again.
“It’s a joke, James.” I nudge him where I’m cradled to his chest. “And also, a way to remind you, you’re mine.”
His full, brash smile spreads across his face where it’s warmed by the hues of the sunset still happening around us. I move my fingers to his face, tracing the side of his lips and the line where the sunlight changes the hue of his skin from golden to firelight.
“Do you think that the sunset is a brilliant end of the day or just a way to start the magic of night?” I ask as my fingers slip from his face.
“I think they’re just molecules scattering light waves at a different angle than at sunrise or during the day.” He shrugs and I smile. That’s the James I fell for, practical and filled with random facts that make his view on the world so…unique. So James. But then he continues, “If you ask me, it’s who you watch them with that make them anything at all.”
I kiss him. Bloody arm and all.
“Jump up here.” James pats the counter next to his kitchen sink.
“You’re going to let me jump up on your countertop?” I eye him skeptically.
“You’re right.” His hands come to my waist. “Jump,” he commands, and I do as I’m told, sliding smoothly onto the countertop. “I’ve got a first aid kit somewhere,” he calls over his shoulder as he disappears into the apartment.
“I’m fine.” I look down at the still-bleeding scrape and wince. Fine might have been an exaggeration but I’ll get there. Once the bleeding stops.
I grab a few paper towels and hold them to the spots where James’ stairs bit me, then I take a moment to look around.
The walls are fairly blank, nothing except a few of the photographs I recognize as his dad’s are hanging. Two of them are the ones I was going to buy before… I drift away from them and from the past only to find it everywhere. In the rust and orange down jacket hanging by the front door, the hoodie draped over the couch. The same well-worn backpack he carried around every single day is propped up against his wall. Seeing the past in my present doesn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would. I want to run my fingers over those things, those things that mean James as much as his take on sunsets and PDA. They make him real.
And oh my God do I love real.
James comes back, his hat discarded, and his hair tied up in a knot. He’s shed his shoes, and I can’t help but watch his feet as he pads toward me through his apartment. I remember when the only thing I wanted was to see his bare feet. Not that I have a foot fetish or anything, but guys are always so weird about wearing socks and shoes, even in the middle of the night. Seeing James barefoot meant that he’d let his walls down a little.
Now I’ve seen so much more of him, but it still seems a certain type of intimate treat.
“What are you smiling about?” he asks as he grabs a rag and soaks it.
“I like it when you’re barefoot.”
“What?” He crinkles his brow and shoots me a look.
“I like it when you’re barefoot,” I repeat.
“No, I heard you the first time, I just don’t understand.”
“I dunno, just something about it being casual and relaxed. Like you’re comfortable with me.”
His face shifts and his smile softens, warm like the rag he presses to the cut on my forearm. “I am comfortable with you, Mina. As comfortable as I can be anyway.” He rubs a little on my wound. “Are you?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t think I didn’t hear you when you said you ran before.”
I wince and it’s every bit as much over his words as his first aid administration. I let him work for a minute or two as I think about what to say. How to say it. How to protect myself while saying it.
I decide for the truth.
“Of course I ran, James.” I sigh, and his fingers waver against my skin. “You unloaded this shit about a girl that you’ve been on-again, off-again with for eight years. Eight years,” I emphasize. “That’s not some fling, something that didn’t mean much. She’s a massive part of your life and she scares me because I don’t know if I am yet.”
“You are.” He opens two Band-Aids with his long fingers, peeling back the plastic ever so carefully. “More than you know.”
“And I want to believe you. So bad. That’s why I came back.” I lift his fingers from my skin and kiss the back of his knuckles. “Imagine if Tanner came back into the picture. How would you feel?”
He watches my lips on his skin from beneath his long golden-brown lashes. “I always liked Tanner, but I hated you two together.”
“That makes two of us.” I sigh.
He rubs over my Band-Aids once more just to make sure they’re sticking well then moves to the sink and washes out the rag. He spends far too long rinsing the rag before he shuts off the water and leans on the sink.
“I’m not that guy, you know?” His eyes dart to mine then fall away. “I can’t love you in some big, dramatic way. That’s not me.”
“Did I ever ask you to?” I let my fingers reach over and tangle in with his. “I fell for you, James. For all your simple smiles and despite your quiet flaws. This was never a fairy tale for me. This was always real. Bone-shaking, heart-breaking, messy, awful, and real.”
He slides from his spot at the sink to just between my legs, leaning his forehead on my chest.
“I think that’s why Jenna worries me. In the fairy tale, I know how it ends. In reality…”
“She never let me be. She always wanted me to change.”
I frown even though he can’t see it and the reasons I dread Jenna coming multiply.
“Please don’t ever change. Please don’t ask me to.”
“I worry I’m not enough,” he says it so softly as he nestles himself in my cleavage.
“I know I’m not.”
That snaps his head up. Something wild whirs in his eyes, and his hair slips from the knot he’d thrown up.
“You are. You always are.” He pushes hair behind my ear. “Even if we fuck this all to hell, you are.” I refuse to look him in the eyes. “Say it.”
I drag my eyes back to his even though I feel so vulnerable and the only thing harder than feeling vulnerable is letting him see it. I push a piece of his hair behind his ear just like he did for me, but my fingers are trembling while they do it.
“I really don’t want to fuck this all to hell.”
“I don’t either.” James lowers his hands to my hips and pulls them forward. “But if we do, I need to know, you’re going to recover.”
“And if I don’t think I will?”
I want to take the words back as soon as I say them. They’re too raw. They’re too real. Saying things like this will be what freaks him out. Saying things like this will cost me James.
But then he cradles my face ever so gently, “Then that actually makes two of us.”
September 3rd, 2020
From one wordsmith to another,
Who knew all I ever wanted from you was words? They pour out of me when it comes to you. I have hundreds upon thousands of words for you but now that I know you have them for me too…
See, I’ve always trusted your words. Simple, straightforward, strong, but they were never for me. They were your convictions on ethics and investing, on disc golf and German beer. They were excuses and sometimes hurtful but they were always you. Always honest.
And now that they’re for me?
Don’t get me wrong, I love the kisses and the way you handle my body. I love the ecstasy of my body against yours and the agony of you leaving. The way you feel inside me sends shivers up my spine and the way you make me come is…generous. Is there any higher, honest compliment than that? I mean I could say core-shaking too, but then again, you know that. You feel that when it happens.
