“Nate? What are you here for?” His eyes narrow, and I struggle for composure.
“Um, Nate came to…” Jessie says slowly, her voice going up a few octaves. “He came to…uh…help me. Move…furniture?”
Kyle looks from Jessie to me and back to Jessie again, the lines in his face spelling out ‘unconvinced.’
“Why are you moving furniture? It looks the same in here as last time I saw it.”
“I just…” Jessie continues, her voice so nasal and high-pitched now she sounds like she might take off.
“It’s okay, Jessie,” I say, my tone serious and heavy. “We should tell him the truth.”
“Nate,” Jessie snaps quickly, before making a threatening face at me.
“What truth?” Kyle asks, his voice booming with indignant power.
“The truth about why I’m here.”
“Nate! For fuck’s sake! Shut up!”
“It’s alright,” I say, holding my hand up. “He’ll find out eventually anyway.”
“Oh God,” Jessie says, covering her face with her hands.
“Find out what?” Kyle growls, on the verge of anger now as his eyes dart back and forth between us.
“I’m not here to help Jessie move furniture,” I say, regaining my calm. Jessie lets out a mumbled ‘no’ through her hands. “I’m here to protect her from her ex-boyfriend.”
“What?!” Kyle shouts, turning to Jessie, who drops her hands away in order to stare daggers at me. “Is that true?”
“Uh…yeah,” Jessie says through gritted teeth, her eyes conveying the revenge she wishes to take out on me later.
“Turns out you were right, Kyle,” I say, puffing up my chest a little. “That guy she was seeing turned out to be another loser. Another no-good jerk. I spoke with Jessie – like you asked me to – and she decided to take your advice and break up with him.” Jessie tightens every muscle in her face, her eyes shooting full-on laser beams at me. “He didn’t take it too well, and Jessie got a little scared, so I’ve been coming over to make sure he doesn’t show up. And if he is stupid enough to show up,” I end the sentence by punching a fist into my palm and nodding.
“Good looking out, dude,” Kyle says, smacking my shoulder as he walks past me, dragging his luggage into the living room.
Taking advantage of the brief second we’re alone, Jessie casts me one more devastating look that says, ‘did you have to make me take the fall?’ I shrug back a gesture that says, ‘it got us out of it, right?’ and turn back to join Kyle in the living room.
“So what happened on the trip?” I ask, as Kyle drops back onto the couch.
“Ah,” he replies, waving the question away, “it was a shitshow. The client fired me. I’m not in a mood to talk about it.”
“Fair enough,” I say, “I should get going anyway, now that you’re here. Hoops on Sunday?”
Kyle shrugs and smiles. “Nothing better to do, now. See you then.”
I step back into the hallway, where Jessie is standing around gathering her senses.
“Bye Nate,” she says, her voice high and pretty for Kyle to hear, but her face taut and anxious at the weirdness of it all.
I want to take her in my arms, make that expression disappear and replace it with the smile that’s driven me crazy for the past few weeks, but now’s not the time. Now reality’s just burst in through the door in the form of a two-hundred pound best friend and brother. We knew it would end, but not like this, cut short and somewhat unresolved.
I try to look at Jessie with my old eyes. The eyes that saw her as a young girl, an annoying tagalong, and eventually a real friend, but it’s hard. She’s become something else now, and I’m not sure I can ever look at her like I used to.
“See you around, Jessie,” I say, somehow managing to turn away from her and close the door behind me.
15
Nate
“And that—” Kyle shouts, as he shoots, both of us watching the ball spin in the air and catch nothing but net, “is twenty-one!”
I scoop up the ball and follow Kyle as he walks backwards off the court, grinning smugly and shooting imaginary pistols at me.
It’s evening, that hour where the sun casts an ember glow through the L.A. smog, when time stops for a little while, the work day far in the past, the adventures of the night way in the future. Here at the courts, kids shout and teenagers flirt as Kyle and I go back to our bags at the benches to the side and allow our bodies to cool off.
“You’re not on your game, dude,” Kyle says, handing me a water bottle, “I mean, you’d lose anyway, but not by that much.”
I snort a laugh and suck down the cool liquid.
“Something’s up,” Kyle says, after eyeing me for a few seconds, “I can tell. Your mind’s somewhere else, dude.”
I shoot him a confused look.
“Nothing’s up.”
“Sure it is. Something happened while I was in London. You didn’t even make any videos.”
“I put one up last night!”
“Right, but you went over a week without one, too.”
“I don’t know. Slipped my mind, I guess.”
“Bullshit!”
I shrug and laugh.
“What is it?” Kyle says, his eyes shining with curiosity. “You got a girlfriend?”
Suddenly I choke on the water, spurting it out and bending over double as I wheeze and splutter. Kyle laughs and smacks a broad palm on my back.
“Jesus, Nate!”
“You think I got a girlfriend?”
“Come on! I’m not that stupid,” Kyle says, opening his thick arms wide.
“Neither am I.”
He laughs and slaps me once more on the back, this time for support.
“It was just work,” I say. “I had this weekend business trip, and then a bunch of stuff to do when I got back, everything all piled up. Didn’t have the energy to talk to anyone when I was home – least of all a webcam.” I also hadn’t checked my Bad Boy email in days, not to mention ignoring all the pleas for help and advice that were probably stacking up in my video comments, and which I normally tried to respond to. “I haven’t had much time to myself.”
“I get it.” Kyle nods sympathetically. “Plus you were keeping an eye on Jessie for me, and I know she’s a handful,” he adds, his tone deeply appreciative.
“Yeah,” I mumble, trying not to think about just how much I’d been keeping eyes on her.
“I got to thank you for that, dude.”
“It was nothing. It was…uh…cool hanging out with her. Been a while.”
“Did you notice anything wrong with her?”
I turn quickly to glare at Kyle, then try not to look as anxious as I feel.
“No…should I have?”
Kyle looks out over the courts where a couple of teenagers have started a game, and even from the side you can see the tension in his muscles, the piercing aggression in his eye.
“Something’s going on with her,” he growls slowly, his voice filled with suppressed frustration. “And I’d bet money that it involves one of her fucking loser exes.”
“What makes you say that?” I ask, sounding a lot more nonchalant than I feel.
“I just know. It’s the way she acts. I just wanna know what asshole it is.”
I watch the game for a minute, waiting for Kyle’s mood to change, but when I look back at him the ferocity is still there in his face.
“You know…people could easily say we’re assholes, too,” I say, gently probing.
Kyle laughs loudly then looks at me.
“We are assholes!”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Kyle looks at me like I just said something both incomprehensible and disgusting.
“Dude, Jessie’s better than us. She deserves better than us. Someone who’ll take care of her.”
“Right,” I shrug, “but that doesn’t mean she can’t make mistakes in the meantime.”
“Nate,” Kyle says, like a
father explaining life, “you don’t get it. You’re so far on the other end of the spectrum you’re, like, from a whole different planet than Jessie. You hate marriage, hate anything long-term – shit, you’ve never even had a committed relationship. All you want to do is fuck around, and I’m the same. No bullshit, no lies, no pretending to be anything more. But Jessie needs something real. Do you know how many times she’s had her heart broken by guys like us? Guys who just wanna fuck around? Guys who tell her they want more when all they care about is getting what they want from her?”
I shake my head.
“Every time. Every single time. And I can’t let it keep happening. She deserves more than another asshole who just wants to get his dick wet. Dude, what we do is easy; banging hotties on a weekend, hooking up with chicks who just want a good time and no worries. Any idiot with a gym card and a few lines can get that, but Jessie’s not like us – she should have something proper, someone who’ll care about her, support her, help her achieve her dreams.”
I nod along as Kyle speaks, in full agreement even as I realize that this dream guy Kyle’s talking about, the one he wants his sister to end up with – I’ll never be that guy.
He goes on, “She’ll never get what she needs with assholes like us. All she’ll get is another fucking war-wound and the idea that she doesn’t deserve better.”
Kyle’s eyes meet mine, big and raw, like two open windows revealing the hope and faith he has for his little sister. I try to meet his gaze, try to offer the sense of brotherly solace and support that would have been easy a few weeks ago. But I can’t. I look away, back at the courts, back at the laughing teenagers. Ashamed.
I drive home with a sense of guilt so big you could start a religion with it. Almost twenty years of friendship, so strong you could build a house on it, and I’m risking it all for…for what? For the thrill of forbidden sex? For something I can get as easily as a candy bar?
Jessie’s amazing, there’s no doubt about that. She’s got something no other woman I’ve ever met has, and though I don’t know what it is, it drives me wild. Just hearing her name thrills me like a boom of thunder, and knowing I’m about to see her makes my body hot and restless in anticipation.
But it’s wrong. It can’t go on forever, and I know she deserves better. And if we don’t end it properly, it’ll end messily, and then all three of us will end up getting hurt – in more ways than one in my case.
Engrossed in the darkness of my own thoughts, I barely bother to check the constant pings that come from my phone. I get out of my car and walk up to my apartment feeling like I might not even have enough mental energy for the shower and sleep I desperately need.
When I see Jessie waiting by my front door, however, my fatigue disappears and I suddenly feel like I could go the whole night.
“Hey,” she says, timidly.
“What are you doing here?”
“I know it’s weird, me, standing here, waiting at your door like this.”
“It kinda is. Just the slightest bit psycho.”
She smiles a little and hangs her head, hair falling over her face in a way that makes me want to pull her close.
“You didn’t answer my messages.”
I sigh a little and step forward, unlocking the door and going inside. Once I’ve dropped my sports bag in the hall I turn around and look at her. She’s dressed in a thick hoodie and boyfriend jeans, as if trying to hide how hot her body is, but even the baggy clothes can’t hold back her intense allure.
“Yeah,” I say, forcing a smile. “I’ve been kinda busy today.”
Jessie steps past me confidently, scanning my apartment with the curiosity of someone planning to buy one.
“Ooh, so this is the infamous cave,” she says, poking her head into the rooms and glancing back quickly to make a funny face.
I follow her somberly to the front room, where she walks around the edge, studying the photos on the wall and trailing her finger over the furniture. I use the few moments she’s engrossed in her inspection to consider what I’m going to say to her.
Suddenly she stops and turns to me, a look of semi-serious disappointment on her face.
“You know, this place is kinda weird.”
“Weird?” I say, momentarily distracted from the obligation I feel to steer the conversation.
“Yeah,” she says, looking around once again as if to make sure, “it’s like…the same feeling you get when you go inside a model home.”
I frown at her.
“I like to keep the place clean.”
“So do I,” she says, frowning too, only with a little more humor. “But not like this. It just feels like the kind of place nobody actually lives in.”
I toss my keys onto the table.
“I’m thinking of moving anyway. I work too much to care about how this place feels. As far as I’m concerned this is just where I sleep, shower, and occasionally eat.”
Jessie smiles and sways her shoulders a little.
“And fuck, right?”
She takes a step forward and I step back.
“Right,” I say, as Jessie detects my reticence, the playfulness disappearing in an instant. “But not to have a relationship.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she says, wary and defensive now.
I take a few deep breaths and let the tension leave my face enough that I can look at Jessie in the eyes.
“I saw Kyle today. He can tell something is going on with you.”
Jessie shakes her head like I’ve misunderstood something.
“It’s Kyle. Something is always ‘going on’ when you’re as paranoid as he is.”
“He’s suspicious,” I insist. “And anyway, I can’t even look him in the eye anymore. This feels too wrong. Maybe we should just…take a break from each other. Until we’re just friends again.”
Jessie’s lips stiffen as she directs a tough, almost possessive glare at me.
“And what if I don’t want to be ‘just friends’ again?”
“Then we’ll be strangers. But we can’t be…whatever we are right now. Not anymore.”
She snorts derisively before folding her arms and walking away a few steps, as if unable to face me. I watch her in a silence so complete I can almost hear her breathing five feet away. My stomach twists, but I convince myself it’s the feeling of indignation, and a little anger. What was she expecting to happen? She knew going in that this wasn’t serious.
Eventually she turns her head and looks at me over her shoulder to say, “Are you really that scared of Kyle?”
“I’m not scared of Kyle.”
“Yes you are,” Jessie says, stepping up to me again, “you’re scared he’s going to beat you up. That’s really what it is, isn’t it?”
“No, Jessie—”
“Of course it is.”
“But it’s not. If Kyle wanted to beat me up I’d let him, ‘cause I deserve it,” I snarl, before looking away in order to calm myself a little. “I am scared, though, in a sense. Not of that. But of losing him – both of you – as friends. That’s more important than anything we’ve been playing at the past few weeks.”
Jessie smiles condescendingly, as if I’ve let her down, as if I’m half the man she thought I was.
“Look,” I say, pushing forward, unable to resist the urge to prove I’m more man than she’ll ever have, “I really need to take a shower and get to bed. I’ve got work in the morning. Please, Jessie, just go. We’re done.”
I take a step towards the bedroom.
“Wait,” she says, the fire in her eyes replaced by soft wetness now, “just…wait.”
“What? There’s nothing more to say, Jessie.”
“There is. I want to know something.”
I look at her and try to keep it together.
“Okay.”
“Forget Kyle,” she says, her voice trembling. “Imagine he didn’t matter. That it was just you and me. What then? What would happen between us?”
I l
et out a deep breath, put a hand in my hair, and rub my scalp. For what feels like hours I think about it, trying to untangle the knot of my thoughts. It’s a question I never even asked myself, let alone had to answer for someone else, and now that I am, it feels like very dangerous territory.
“We’d probably fuck a few times and then get bored of each other,” I say, finally.
Jessie’s smile is dark, conflicted, and tinged with a taut anger. “You don’t really think that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“The fuck it is.” Her tone is low and cold now, dangerous, somehow more alarming than her hot anger and raised voice ever was.
“What the hell do you think would happen, Jessie?” I shout, exploding with frustration. “Do you think if it wasn’t for Kyle I’d be down on my knees right now proposing? Jesus Christ! You act like you don’t know me!”
“Oh I fucking know you, Nate,” Jessie responds, rising to my anger and stepping closer to stand defiantly in front of me. “Better than you know yourself, I think. You’re all about one-night stands,” she continues, voice heavy with sarcasm, “all about fucking random girls and having fun and never committing to anything. It’s all so fucking easy for you, isn’t it, Mr. Big Dick Alpha Male. No strings attached, no second dates, no fucking problem, right?”
“Yes!” I shout, my fury and self-righteousness stoked by the way she’s making me feel. “That’s pretty much it!”
“Well if it is,” Jessie replies, lowering her voice as if lulling me in for the sucker-punch, “then why have you spent the past few weeks all over me? It wasn’t a one-night-stand with me, was it? It was every night. You knew being with me would be a problem, you knew we’d have to face up to it eventually, and you still did it, over and over again. You could have picked up one of your bimbos at any point if it was just sex, but you didn’t. You kept coming back to me. Hell, last Wednesday you left your after work drinks to drive all the way across L.A. through rush hour traffic just to be with me for a few hours. So think about that and tell me again, Nate, do you really believe yourself when you say it’s just sex? Or are you just too much of a coward to admit how you really feel?”
Confessions of a Bad Boy Page 15
