by Mia Ford
“Brilliant idea, guys,” I say, voice flat.
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Ethan wheedles.
“Maybe,” Kyle says, suddenly sounding as fed up with this ordeal as I am. “People are already staring.”
He’s right. Ethan and Kyle are wearing their Roughshod Rollers jackets, and they’re getting several disapproving looks.
“Let them,” Ethan says loudly before turning firmly to the girl at the counter. “Can I get three passes please?”
We rent our shoes quickly before heading to alley fourteen, one of the few alleys free. On one side of us is a family of six, the kids throwing the balls enthusiastically down the lane. The mother gives us a frightened look and whispers something to her husband. On the other side is a young couple. From the look of their score, they haven’t thrown the ball in some time, too happy to sit on the bench and kiss for now.
“You’re up first,” I say to Ethan, resigning myself to the ordeal.
I won’t admit it, but I discovered quickly that throwing the ball down the lane with all my might is oddly cathartic, even more so when it hits the pins with a resulting clash. Before I realize it, my shoulders have loosened and I’m throwing each bowling ball with as much enthusiasm as Ethan, turning it into a competition between the two of us.
Poor Kyle, on the other hand, is absolutely hopeless at the game, and most of his balls end up in the gutter. He laughs good-naturedly at himself, though, and admits that he’s never been very good at the game.
“No worries, man,” Ethan grins. “You can thrash me at air hockey later.”
The grin Kyle gives at this is almost frightening; he’s incredibly good at air hockey.
It’s when I’ve finally relaxed, however, that my two friends pounce, having waited for me to let down my guard. I’m reluctantly impressed.
“So?” Kyle asks casually. “What happened last night?”
I almost throw the ball wrong. I carefully line up the shot and shoot it down the alley, hitting all the pins in a clattering strike, before turning to face Kyle.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say.
“Please,” Kyle snorts as Ethan steps up for his turn. “First, you drop that glass when Allison and Jessica enter. Then you spend the night at the bar? And when we arrived, you looked like you were happy to stay on that couch forever. Come on, I’m not fucking stupid, something happened.” He looks at me, scrutinizing my expression for any clues. “Is it because Allison’s friend’s name is Jessica?”
I almost laugh. Kyle thinks I’m upset because Allison’s friend has the same name as my ex. He’s going to flip when he finds out that Allison’s friend is my ex.
“It’s not about her name,” I say truthfully.
I wish I had shown Kyle a picture of Jessica before now. He might have recognized the woman and prevented Allison from dragging her to my bar, of all places. But Kyle knows very little about Jessica, other than the name and that we dated before breaking up three years ago. I’ve been very careful about what to say about her. Even as little as it is, Kyle and Ethan know more than anyone else.
“You can talk to us, you know that, right?” Ethan says.
“Yeah,” I say with a small smile. “Thanks.” I hesitate and then decide to just go for it. Maybe it’s about time that I speak about this. “Allison’s friend is Jessica.” They look at me blankly. “My ex.”
Kyle’s mouth falls open. Ethan blinks wildly.
“I definitely didn’t expect that,” he comments. “Are you serious?”
“As serious as can be,” I say with a nod. “Her hair’s shorter, but I still recognized her. She recognized me, too. It’s why she stayed back last night; she wanted to talk to me.”
I grimace. Though talking is the last thing we ended up doing, and she was gone this morning, so we couldn’t have a conversation then, either.
“Just talk?” Ethan asks shrewdly.
“Probably not,” I sigh. “She kissed me.”
“You pushed her away?” Kyle asks, frowning; there’s a dark look in his eyes, a fierce protectiveness that I recognize from the other month, when he was trying his hardest to protect Allison.
“Not quite,” I say with a lopsided smile.
“Fuck that,” Kyle huffs. “You should have kicked her to the curb.”
I eye Kyle curiously. I haven’t told him much about Jessica, but he’s apparently empathetic enough to pick up on the issues I was having anyway, which has resulted in the glare he’s wearing at the thought of my ex.
“Maybe,” I agree.
“What even happened between the two of you?” Ethan asks, frowning. “It must have been pretty bad for her to walk away for three years, and for you to be so bitter every time you mention her.”
I sound bitter? I guess I can’t help that.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “One minute we were fine, and then we weren’t. We got into a stupid argument that escalated quickly, and then she was gone. About a month or two after that, I moved too so I could get a single apartment for myself.”
I look up at the board. It’s Kyle’s turn.
“You should go get your gutter balls,” I tell him.
He rolls his eyes. “You just watch me come from behind and get a strike.”
“I don’t think you can catch up even if you get all strikes from here!” I laugh.
He huffs and strides over to the lane to throw the ball. It doesn’t end up in the gutter, but it only brushes two pins, knocking them down quietly. Kyle scowls as Ethan and I laugh uproariously, and takes his second shot. This one manages to knock down three pins.
“Five!” Ethan says in mock awe as Kyle returns. “Is that a new record?”
“Fuck off,” Kyle says, rolling his eyes.
It’s my turn now, and I leave my friends to their bickering. I toss the ball down the lane, striking all the pins down in one hit.
When I turn again, Ethan and Kyle have stopped arguing, and they’re watching me with clear eyes. I sigh.
“There’s not much else to say,” I tell them. “We were together, something went wrong, and we grew apart. It happens.”
“How long were you together before she left?” Ethan asks curiously.
I don’t like thinking of that time. It just reminds me of all the times I could have noticed that something was wrong, yet I didn’t.
“Two and a half years,” I sigh.
“That’s a fair amount of time,” Kyle points out. “Something bad must have happened.”
“Yeah, well, you figure it out and then tell me,” I mutter. “I haven’t figured it out at all. After three years, it seems weird that she’ll suddenly show up again, though.”
“Three years?” Kyle suddenly says sharply.
“Yeah, three years,” I agree. “Didn’t I tell you guys that that was how long it’s been.”
“You avoided mentioning her as much as possible,” Ethan reminds me.
“Right,” I say, shaking my head. “Sorry. Yeah, we’ve broken up for three years. I know it’s a bit stupid, to be so hung up on her, but…”
“It’s isn’t stupid,” Ethan interrupts. He gives me a small smile. “It isn’t stupid at all.”
I smile at him. “Thanks.”
I glance at Kyle. He’s looking down at his hands. There’s a strangely conflicted expression on his face.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Well…three years… That’s…”
Kyle frowns. I’m suddenly very curious about what the problem is.
“Kyle?” I prompt.
“It’s just…” Kyle sighs. “It’s funny you should say three years. Because Jessica has a three-year-old son.”
I stare at him.
“What?”
“Jessica,” Kyle repeats patiently. “She has a three-year-old son.”
Just when I thought I had gotten all the surprises I could stand, Kyle drops this on me. I just stare at him, not sure what to say.
Because what am I possibly sup
posed to say to something like that?
Chapter Seven
Grant
I sit on the bench and watch Kyle and Ethan competing fiercely. They’ve managed to persuade one of the staff members to put the bumper bars up for Kyle (Ethan thoroughly embarrassed Kyle in front of the guy, who couldn’t help but laugh with Ethan), and they’re more evenly matched now, even if Kyle does make most of his shots by bumping the ball off the bars.
They asked me if I wanted another game, but I declined for now. I’ve got too many thoughts in my head.
The main one being around Jessica’s three-year-old son.
The longer I sit there, though, the easier it becomes for me to figure it out. Jessica must have been pregnant just before we broke up. Then there was her cagey behavior right before that. On top of that, we had barely had sex just before she left. Hadn’t I thought she was keeping secrets?
My mind clouds over. There’s only one possible answer that would explain the secrets, her sudden aversion to being touched by me, and the way she eventually disappeared on me.
Jessica cheated on me. And the boy is the son of whoever she cheated with.
The thought makes me angrier than I want to be. But all the pieces are slotting together now. Didn’t I wonder, over and over, what happened? There were times when I wondered what I could have possibly done that was so wrong.
But if Jessica cheated, then everything makes sense. She left me because she was carrying another man’s baby, and she didn’t want me knowing. Maybe part of her even felt ashamed, which is why she broke up with me so suddenly, no longer able to bear the double life she was leading.
I clench my hands on my knees. I can’t feel any sympathy for Jessica. She’s the one that cheated on me. She’s the one that left me to agonize for three years about what I’d done, when she knew full well that it was her own actions that caused our breakup.
What am I supposed to do now, though?
Maybe I need confirmation. At the moment, this is all speculation. I need to be sure before I call back up.
I need to talk to Jessica.
But how? I don’t have her number. I don’t know where she lives. How can I get in contact with her? It would take a miracle.
Or, I realize, eyeing a certain phone that got left behind. I can just find someone to help me find her. And I know who.
“Hey, Kyle, can I borrow your phone?” I call.
“Sure,” Kyle says, concentrating on his next throw.
I pick up the phone. It’s not locked, and I resolve to have a discussion about phone security with Kyle once all this over. I quickly find Allison’s number, and I save it to my own contacts. Once done, I put Kyle’s phone back on the tablet and call Allison.
“Hello?” she says pleasantly.
“Allison,” I say. My throat feels strangely dry. “I need your help. It’s Grant Johnson.”
“Grant!” Allison says, sounding delighted. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” I say non-committedly. “Hey, do you know where Jessica lives? The two of us need to talk.”
“Ha!” Allison says, sounding pleased. “I knew she was hiding something. Something did happen between the two of you!”
“Yeah,” I admit, knowing that it’s the only way I’ll get the information I want. “So, is it okay if I get her address…?”
“Sure,” Allison says. She rattles off an address, though she has to do it a second time when I can’t find anything to write with quick enough. I find a pen and a pad of paper at one of the tables, crossing off the scores someone had started to note on it, and I write the address down quickly. “Go get her, Grant!”
“We’re just talking,” I tell her.
It can’t be anything more than talking. I’m far too bitter, right now, for anything to happen. Maybe I still would have been, even if there hadn’t been a kid and a possibility of cheating on the table. After all, it’s been three years since I last heard from her, and I still don’t understand what she was thinking when she threw herself at me last night.
“Anyway, thanks, I appreciate that,” I say. “Hey, any chance you know where her kid is?”
“He goes to daycare on Saturday afternoon, more to give her some time to herself than anything,” she says. “He’ll probably be there by now.”
“Hopefully,” I agree.
“Well, good luck,” Allison says cheerfully.
I hang up, feeling a little bad at that manipulation. Poor Allison has no idea of what’s happening, and I just manipulated her into giving me Jessica’s address. Hopefully Jessica won’t be too mad at her.
I glance at the address. It isn’t too far from here. Part of me wonders if I’m doing the right thing. It would probably be more sensible to leave this in the past, where it belongs. What’s the point of chasing after Jessica for answers now? It won’t give me any closure, not after so long. I’ll just be reopening a wound that I’ve been doing my best to hold closed.
But, on the other hand, I need that answer. Even if it just causes more pain, in the end, my need to know what happened hasn’t changed at all.
Sighing, I stand up and gather my jacket.
“You going, Grant?” Kyle calls out.
“Yeah,” I say as casually as I can. “I got somewhere else to be.” I manage at my two friends, appreciating them and their effort to make me feel a little better, even if it didn’t work the way they hoped. “Thanks, guys.”
“Anytime,” Ethan grins.
I wave goodbye to them and leave them to their squabble over the scores, shaking my head at them with a fond smile. When I leave the building, however, my smile falls and I straighten my shoulders. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I get to Jessica’s place.
But, somehow, I’m going to figure out what’s going on.
Jessica’s place is a ground-level apartment in a quiet suburb. There are a handful of kids biking up the street, and I stupidly wonder if one of them is Jessica’s before I remember that the child would only be three.
Will the kid be there? I’m not sure I can handle seeing him, but I need to do this now, before I lose my nerve. If her kid is there, I’ll just be more careful about what I say; I don’t want to frighten him because it won’t be his fault that his mother betrayed me.
I take in a deep breath, closing my eyes for a moment, and then march into the building, quickly finding the door marked with a three. Then I knock firmly and wait.
There’s no movement, at first, and I wonder if I’ve psyched myself up for nothing because Jessica isn’t actually home. Then I hear quiet footsteps coming toward the door and I stand up straighter, hoping I’ve wiped all indication of irritation off my face; I don’t want to scare her off inviting me in, and I don’t want to argue with her in the hall, where all her neighbors would be able to hear us.
The lock clicks open and the door swings on its hinges to reveal Jessica standing there, confused about who is at her door. The confusion quickly changes to shock and horror when she sees me, and I can’t help frowning.
“Jessica,” I say, trying to loosen my clenched fists. “We need to talk.”
She just gapes at me, struck dumb by the realization that I’ve tracked her down and am now standing on her doorstep. She blinks wildly at me.
“How did you know where I live?” she asks blankly.
“I tricked Allison into giving you my address,” I told her. Then, because I can’t bring myself to care for her comfort, and there’s a small part of me that needs this petty bit of revenge, I add, “It involved confirming we slept together, so be prepared for that.”
Jessica’s face drains of color. She grips the door frame tightly. She hasn’t yet slammed the door on me, though, so I’ll count this as a win.
“We need to talk,” I repeat. “We can either do it here, where everyone can hear us, or you can invite me in.”
“What if I just shut the door?” she challenges, though her voice is shaky.
“Then I’ll shout what I have to say t
hrough the door,” I tell her.
It’s a calculated risk. I’m not about to shout to her through a closed door, nor will I begin this conversation in the hall. If she calls my bluff, I’ll be forced to leave. From the frightened look she gives me, however, before relenting and stepping aside, Jessica believes, right now, that I would do either of those things.
I refuse to feel guilty about that. Jessica has a lot to answer for, and I’m going to talk to her, no matter how hard I have to manipulate her into a conversation.
“So?” she asks, crossing her arms.
There’s a tight expression on her face that doesn’t feel like it belongs there, highlighting the tired lines around her eyes. There’s more fire in her, though; then I remember. While Jessica was never a pushover, she was never one to speak her mind, either. She’s always been the type to stand back and listen, even if she was prone to jumping to conclusions very quickly.
I wonder if having a child was what changed that. Remembering the kid, I look around with narrowed eyes.
“Where’s your kid?” I ask bluntly.
The little color she had left fades away, leaving her white and trembling. She wavers a little, and I’m half afraid that she’s about to collapse.
“How do you know about Owen?” she asks. Then she closes her eyes. “Let me guess; Allison.”
“No,” I snort. “She wouldn’t tell me about a kid if it would hurt your chances of having a relationship with me. Kyle told me.” I give her a hard look. “He told me after I told him who you were.”
She sighs. “If Kyle knows, Allison will know soon. She’ll be upset that I lied to her.”
I laugh bitterly. “Seems like that’s a common theme with you.”
Jessica, who has been leading me to a small kitchen, stops and looks at me. Her expression is stunned.
“How…?” she asks, and then her shoulders slump. “You guessed.”
“It was easy enough,” I scowl.
