9:03am:
Hope you’re not in too rough shape.
6:37pm:
Still haven’t heard from you. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried. Why don’t you just send me a text to let me know you’re okay.
--------------------------------------
Sunday February 3, 2013
--------------------------------------
6:38am:
Okay, it’s official. I’m definitely worried about you now.
6:40am:
I hope you’re okay, Christine.
6:43am:
Please check in when you have a minute. If it’s something I said or did, I’m sorry. Just let me know that you’re not hurt...
6:49am:
Miss you.
9:59pm:
Christine? You there?
10:08pm:
I thought I would take matters into my own hands. So I got on a plane and here I am, in Toronto.
10:12pm:
I’m sitting in the lobby of the Delta, a little shaken up. I was upstairs just a few minutes ago where I stopped outside the door to your room. I just wanted to see if you were okay and I was fine with walking away if you didn’t want to see me again.
10:16pm:
So when I heard some, uh, moaning coming from inside, I turned and walked away. But after a minute or so, I turned back. This woman was really enjoying herself. Anyway, I thought it was you, and I wanted some closure. I wanted to hear it from you that we are through. So I hammered on the door.
10:18pm:
The noises stopped. Someone yelled at me to fuck off.
10:21pm:
Maybe I was a little crazy with jealousy because in hindsight, even the woman didn’t sound like you. I hammed on the door again. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I kept banging on the door until a guy who could have easily been a biker, opened up and asked me what the fuck I wanted.
10:23pm:
I started to ask to speak with you - okay, I can see now that I really have gone crazy! - but then I saw the woman he was railing, and, well, as you have probably guessed, she wasn’t you.
10:27pm:
It’s a funny story, right?
10:33pm:
But what’s not so funny is that these people were in your room. So while I can laugh at how I nearly got my head bashed in for interrupting some biker’s five minutes of ecstasy, it still doesn’t solve the problem that led me to Toronto in the first place.
10:34pm:
Namely, what has happened to you?
10:43pm:
Christine, I’m literally sick to my stomach, worried like hell about what’s going to happen next.
10:57pm:
Please send me a text when you can. I will be in the hotel lobby until they make me book a room or until you show up, whichever comes first.
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Monday February 4, 2013
--------------------------------------
8:48am:
To say I am still worried would be an understatement. Where have you gone?
8:51am:
I am going to take the subway to your office. I hope I find you there.
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8:56am:
Go home, Jake.
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8:56am:
Christine! I’m so glad you’re okay.
8:57am:
Where have you been all weekend?
8:58am:
Where do you live now? Did you know there was a biker and a prostitute making a mess of your room?
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9:00am:
I can’t talk now.
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9:01am:
Did I do or say something to upset you?
--------------------------------------
9:01am:
You need to go home.
--------------------------------------
9:02am:
Please tell me what’s going on.
--------------------------------------
9:06am:
I bumped into Peter on Friday night.
--------------------------------------
9:06am:
???
9:07am:
I literally can’t breathe right now. Tell me what is going on.
--------------------------------------
9:09am:
I spent the weekend with him.
9:12am:
Jake, I need you to go home and leave me alone.
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9:23am:
Fuck you.
9:31am:
I’ve wasted my time, money and love on you?
9:32am:
Bullshit. Pure fucking bullshit.
--------------------------------------
III
An alarm jolts me awake. The clock tells me that it’s 6:30 in the morning. And the sound, oh that sound is just awful. It’s not coming from my alarm, this tune is different and it’s loud and possibly the most annoying sound I have ever heard. I wonder who is waking up so early when nobody else living here has class until later in the morning, and then I blame Chad for dragging some freak-show freshman home. The tune pegged her as a pink-loving, former cheerleader who changes boyfriends with menstrual each cycle. I hate her already and- and then it hits me. The annoying tune is coming from the white iPhone that I found yesterday. It’s not one of Chad’s pet projects after all.
I frantically grab the iPhone, thankful that the screen is not locked, and silence the alarm once and for all.
“Come on, Katie!” Chad calls from his room two doors down.
I close my eyes and try falling back asleep but the others are awake. I hear them moving around and their movement in the house makes me a little restless too. Not quite ready to get out of bed, I grab the phone to see where I left off before I passed out last night.
Oh, right. Christine went missing after partying with her work buddies, living it up cougar-style in the Toronto clubs when out of nowhere she allegedly ran into Peter. Like Jake, I felt like someone sucker-punched me when I read that one!
And then when Jake told her that he’s been so worried that he jumped on a plane and spent the night in her hotel lobby…
What a dream of a guy this Jake is turning out to be. Despite the golden stars and halo hovering over his head, Christine still had the balls to actually admit to spending her weekend at the wife beater’s house?! It infuriates me that she could do this to Jake...
Worse yet, it seems incomprehensible that I fell asleep at all last night, but sometimes a little crying will do that.
According to the texts, it was only February 3; there’s plenty of time, two months of texts between these two soulmates, for there to be a happy ending in all of this mess. I just can’t imagine how it will work itself out. I wonder where the texts will lead them through the rest of February and into March and whether Jake is now the most-eligible bachelor in New York City. I secretly hope that Christine is truly as much of an idiot as she seems because Jake deserves better. He deserves someone who could love him the way he loves Christine, this stranger for whom he has moved the earth to please and satisfy. Well, I’m right here waiting if he wants me. But the problem is that I don’t know where HE is.
I consider sending him a text from Christine’s phone to set up a time and place to meet. He’ll wait only so long for Christine, not knowing that she will never show up, and after five minutes or so, just when it looks like he might give up and go home, I’ll swoop in and seduce him into my bed. The rest will be history.
That devious plan didn’t come lightly.
Within minutes, I smell breakfast – despite his inability to hold down a long-term relationship, Chad sure knows how to cook a great breakfast. And Ellie can sell her steak recipes to the Keg and make a killing. So that leaves lun
ch for me to take care of. It’s not hard to throw some meat between two slices of bread, but the reality is that no one of ever ate at the apartment during the week, so my cooking duties are pretty light. Maybe Chad and Ellie planned it that way on purpose.
The delicious breakfast smell lures me downstairs. Chad and Ellie both look tired from being awakened so early and, to my surprise, Chad didn’t bring anyone home last night. Just the three of us, like old times.
“Good weekend?” I ask, surprised by the lack of company.
“What the hell were you up to last night, Katie?” Ellie asks me.
“Aren’t you going to introduce him to us?” Chad chimes in from the stove.
I don’t know what they’re talking about.
“Where is he, Katie?” Ellie persists, her voice anxious yet quiet. “Anyone that can get you making noises like that, I have to meet for myself.”
I glance over at Chad, who peeks up from his culinary work and gives an unfortunate nod. “You’re normally pretty quiet. And single.”
“There’s no one here,” I assure them.
“Bull, Katie,” Ellie says. “I know your alarm and that garbage that dragged me out of a dream with Nick Lachey, that’s not yours.”
I contemplate telling them about the iPhone I discovered in the cab yesterday, but even as I prepare the words in my head, I know it sounds pretty lame.
“No, I was by myself last night,” I tell them. “Must have had the same dream as you, Ellie.”
“Now that’s hot,” Chad pipes up from the stove. “How come I’m never invited to these parties?”
Ellie reams Chad out for being a perv while the last pieces of breakfast come off the stove and onto our three plates. We eat in relative silence and then Ellie invites me to walk with her to campus for our fist lecture.
I politely decline, lying about how I’m going to skip the lecture in favor of polishing my paper on cell mutation. Telling the truth about being engrossed in a romance I uncovered on an iPhone would make me out to be certifiably crazy. I am independent, intelligent and earmarked for a mid-six figure salary by the time I graduate; romance and emotion is outside my job description. Anyway, a lie is a lot like a pair of yoga pants, it fits a little better than the truth in this case.
After washing the dishes and seeing my roommates off to class, I set off on a sprint back to my room, almost knocking over the hallway table as I go. After shutting the door and taking a deep breath, I reach for Christine’s iPhone.
As much as I would love to hunt down Jake, get him to fall in love with me instead of Christine and claim him for myself, I realize that something just doesn’t add up. Before accessing the jAppe application, I close my eyes in an attempt to figure this all out – Christine went home with a man who abused her, a man she took excessive measures to never see again.
Yet she spent the weekend with him? After trying so hard to avoid Peter, and after meeting and falling in love with Jake (who was clearly the most perfect man any woman could meet) why would she have done that?
Thursday February 7, 2013
--------------------------------------
10:32am:
Jake. We need to talk.
--------------------------------------
10:43am:
No thanks.
10:44am:
I’m getting rid of this phone at the end of the month.
--------------------------------------
10:45am:
Jake, I’m sorry.
--------------------------------------
10:47am:
Sorry? For what? For fucking your ex? The one who beat you six times and threatened you six thousand? Or has the count gone up since the weekend?
10:48am:
What exactly are you sorry about?
--------------------------------------
10:49am:
Sorry for lying.
--------------------------------------
10:50am:
I’m sorry too.
10:51am:
I’m sorry for believing you were my soulmate and not some cheating, bored battered-wife.
--------------------------------------
10:52am:
You *are* my soulmate, Jake.
10:52am:
I had to lie on Monday. I’m sorry for that. Everything was *not* okay.
10:53am:
Peter will literally kill me if he finds out what you and I have been up to, and that we’re planning on spending the rest of our lives together.
10:54am:
I didn’t know what else to do except lie. For my safety, of course, but also for yours.
--------------------------------------
10:56am:
Bullshit.
10:56am:
You could call the police. That would put an end to it.
--------------------------------------
10:57am:
LOL. That’s the Jake I know!
10:58am:
Mr Funny Man is back!
--------------------------------------
10:59am:
You think this is funny?
--------------------------------------
11:00am:
Funny? No. But it is absolutely *hilarious* that you think a call to the police will really put an end to *this*.
--------------------------------------
11:01am:
Why? Is Canadian culture really that messed up?
--------------------------------------
11:03am:
It’s no different than in the US, Jake. He needs to be beat the shit out of me before I have any evidence that he actually touched me. And then an underpaid prosecutor has to prove that he’s dangerous enough to lock away.
11:05am:
And if you’ve forgotten, the last time he laid hands on me, I was hospitalized so I’m not exactly looking forward to him giving me the evidence I need.
--------------------------------------
11:06am:
Why didn’t you put an end it that last time?
--------------------------------------
11:07am:
I tried.
11:09am:
But here’s the thing. I say he hits me, he says he doesn’t. He has no record of violence. He promises he did nothing wrong, but agrees to probation, anger management courses, therapy, whatever it takes to prove he would never hurt me.
11:11am:
And what do I do? Until that last time, I didn’t even have my own bank account. I had to return to him.
11:12am:
So tell me, Mr Funny Man, what happens next?
11:13am:
Here’s a hint for you: 5,999 life threats is what happens next.
11:14am:
Now that you know the *reality* of what this is all about, tell me something. Should I call the cops?
--------------------------------------
11:23am:
No, you’re right.
--------------------------------------
11:23am:
Of course I’m right. Not just a pretty face, remember?
--------------------------------------
11:25am:
So I suggest you keep smiling, stay happy and continue fucking him and keeping him satisfied so he doesn’t hurt you anymore.
--------------------------------------
11:26am:
Maybe that doesn’t work for me.
--------------------------------------
11:28am:
It worked all weekend. It worked so well that you couldn’t even send me a text before I spent seven hundred dollars on a flight to Toronto only to sleep in the lobby of a hotel.
--------------------------------------
11:29am:
Jake, I said I’m sorry.
11:29am:
And whether you like it or not, I’m coming to New York next week.
11:30am:
I’ll give you yo
ur space. You think about whether this connection of ours is worth saving.
11:32am:
I’ll be waiting to hear from you.
11:33am:
Love you.
--------------------------------------
11:35am:
You’ll be waiting a long time.
11:36am:
Goodbye, Christine.
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Textual Encounters (The Christine + Jake Affair) Page 12
