by Quinn Loftis
Chapter 7
Jacque’s eyes snapped open at the revelation that was now causing her to hyperventilate. Fane! The voice was Fane! Once he had answered her she had believed without a doubt that she wasn’t just hearing a voice made up by her subconscious, nor was it a dead relative trying to haunt her. It was someone real, tangible, and well, hot! Not that him being hot is important, Jacque thought to herself, but, seriously it didn’t hurt, right?
No longer able to lie still, Jacque got up and went over to her window. She opened the blinds and looked across the street at the Henry’s house wondering what Fane was doing. Wondering if he was wondering about her and what she was doing. “Oh, good grief,” she told herself, “you just met him, you don’t even know him, and you’re wondering if he is thinking about you? Do yourself a favor, Jac and get a Kit Kat and give yourself a break.”
She closed the blinds, turned around and leaned back against the wall and shut her eyes. Taking a deep breath she decided she needed to do something to keep herself occupied until Sally and Jen came back over. There was a pile of dirty clothes on the floor next to her closet, she grabbed the empty laundry basket, filled it and carried it downstairs to the laundry room. Still not operating on all four cylinders she didn’t even bother to sort them out, she just threw in her whites and colors together and tossed some detergent on top of them. She shut the washer lid and headed back into the living room.
“Okay,” she said out loud. “What next?” She turned in a complete circle letting her eyes roam over the room. The only thing she could see was that the living room needed to be dusted. She went into the kitchen and got the dust cloth and dusting spray from under the kitchen sink and headed back to the living room. Trying to drag things out she sprayed each item, big and small and carefully wiped them with the dusting cloth. By the time she was done, Jacque was sure the living room had never been so dustless since they had lived here.
She put the dust cloth and spray back and by that time her clothes were ready to go into the dryer.
When she finally looked at the clock, she moaned as she realized it had only been an hour since she had come downstairs. What was she going to do now? I could go over to the Henry’s and see if they were done with mom’s dishes, she told herself. Yeah Sherlock, that wouldn’t be obvious at all.
Jacque headed back up to her room, wracking her brain for things she could do to keep her mind off you-know-who, at least until Sally and Jen were back. When she shut her bedroom door behind her, her hand brushed up against the bathing suit she had hanging on the door knob. “Okay, sun tanning it is,” she told herself.
Jacque grabbed the bathing suit and went to the bathroom and changed, she ran a hand down her legs and decided they were smooth enough for just laying on a towel in the back yard. She looked in the mirror at herself, pleased enough she supposed. She was a little on the short side at five foot one and a half inches, slender and muscular from playing on the girls tennis team. She wasn’t Beth from “Dog the Bounty Hunter” in the chest department, as Jen had so nicely pointed out, but she wasn’t Grace of “Will and Grace” either, she figured a C cup wasn’t anything to complain about. Her hair was her favorite thing about herself, auburn, curly and wild, most the time she didn’t attempt to tame it, but for sun bathing she decided to put it up in a pony tail.
The bathing suit was a bikini that she had let Sally and Jen talk her into, though she did get her two cents in by buying a mismatched bottom and top. She figured if she liked two different bathing suits why not buy half of each? With that reasoning it was no wonder she was hearing voices she told herself.
“Over all,” Jacque thought, “I don’t look too shabby.” She slipped on her pink flip flops, grabbed her cell phone, ear phones, a towel, and her sunglasses and she was out the back door.
Her backyard was very simple, just a square, and it didn’t even have a fence around it. Her mom and she didn’t really need a fence. They didn’t have a dog, or little kids to corral in, so when her mom had bought the house without a fence her mom had never bothered to have one built. There was a single tree growing smack dab in the middle of the back yard, so depending on the time of day Jacque either had to lie on the left side of the back yard or the right side.
“The right side it is.”
Jacque took her towel and laid it in the grass. She had already put her ear phones in her ears and had set her MP3 player to shuffle; Pearl Jam was the band playing at the moment. She put her sun glasses on and turned to sit down on her towel. It was when she turned that she realized that in choosing the right side of the backyard and since there wasn’t a fence, she was directly in front of the Henry’s house. “Wait folks, it gets even better; it’s the side of the house where Fane’s bedroom window is.”
Bad, Jacque thought, this is very, very bad. I can get up and go lay on the left side of the back yard…in the shade…which made no sense, or I can lay here and look like I totally planned to put on a bikini and plaster myself right in front of Fane’s window like a centerfold. “For the love of pig tails, could someone please throw me a bone?” Jacque’s mind screamed.
She sat there debating for a minute or two then threw her hands up and said “to hell with it. I’m already down here. He can get an eyeful if he wants and if he wants to know if I did it for his benefit he can just ask me.” With a decided humph, Jacque laid back on the towel, arms by her side, feet flat on the ground and knees slightly bent.
As she closed her eyes she began to feel the warmth of the sun seep into her skin and calm her. She took some deep breaths and focused on the lyrics to the song that was now playing in her ears. The song was “Untouchable” by Taylor Swift, she had heard it a couple times before but had never really listened to it, and now as she heard the words something inside her awoke.
Untouchable like a distant diamond sky
I'm reaching out and I just can't tell you why
I'm caught up in you, I'm caught up in you
Untouchable, burning brighter than the sun
And when you're close, I feel like coming undone
In the middle of the night when I'm in this dream
It's like a million little stars spelling out your name
You gotta come on, come on, say that we'll be together
Come on, come on, little taste of heaven
It's half full and I won't wait here all day
I know you're saying that you'd be here anyway
But you're untouchable, burning brighter than the sun
Now that you're close, I feel like coming undone
Jacque didn’t really understand how she knew it, but like her mom just knew things. She too knew without a doubt that her future was with Fane. She wasn’t sure how or why, or when, and at that moment he seemed very untouchable, and she sure as hell was coming undone.
The song stopped and her phone started vibrating and for a moment she was a little disoriented, then she realized she was getting a phone call. She looked at the screen on her phone and it was Jen calling.
“Hello?” Jacque asked.
“Got good news got bad news, won’t charge you for either so which do you want first?” Jen answered.
“Slap me first, pat me on the back last,” Jacque told her.
“Bad news it is. I won’t be back over to your house until at the earliest 9:00. My mom and dad are in one of their ‘we’re a family, we need to eat at the table together blah, blah blah’ moods. So naturally being the sweet little thing that I am I didn’t argue with them for twenty minutes, or slam my door and tell them how 1950’s they were being, nope not me, I smiled sweetly.”
“Jen, you don’t do anything sweetly, how did you manage a smile?” Jacque retorted.
“Oh, shut up. That was the slap, the pat is I get to come over, even after my little fit that I didn’t throw,” she said with smug satisfaction in her voice.
“Try to keep your mouth shut between now and then so that you don’t have to call me later with somethi
ng worse than a slap okay?” Jacque told her.
“Okay, okay, geez, who spit in your pizza?” Jen asked.
“I’ll give you the full details tonight but suffice it to say at least one piece has made its way into the puzzle.” Jacque thought about her words for a moment, and then remembered a question Fane had asked her when he was “talking” to her. He had asked where she got her odd way of speaking. Did she speak oddly?
“Hey Jen, do you think I speak oddly?” Jacque asked her.
There was silence for a moment from the other end of the line, Jacque assumed either Jen was thinking or she had found something more interesting to pay attention to, Jacque was just about to ask again when Jen answered, “You do realize who you are asking right? ‘Cause I just asked you who spit in your pizza and you knew exactly what I meant. So, I’m just saying, I might not be the best judge of any oddities you have.”
“True dat,” Jacque responded.
“I’ll see you tonight, try not to do anything to crazy without me, you know how I like to watch,” Jen said cackling at her own humor as she hung up.
Jacque shook her head laughing to herself about her friend’s sick, twisted sense of humor. She didn’t bother to turn her music back on; she just listened to the sounds around her. For the most part the only noises she heard where the occasional bird or a dog bark. Other than that it was a quiet summer day. As she felt beads of sweat run down her collar bone she thought, let’s qualify that, it’s a quiet, hot, summer day.
Jacque rolled over onto her stomach and closed her eyes and let the heat and the sounds run over her, before she realized it she had fallen asleep.
