by Tara Wimble
No matter whether it is or not, Bella can’t do anything but follow the line she’s learnt. Blake can’t know anything working underneath her relationship to Jacque. He can’t know the truth. Or it’ll all come crumbling down.
*
It takes her a few weeks before she invites anyone back to her apartment. Her friends have no idea what’s going on so when she goes out to drink alone it’s for the purpose of drowning her sorrows and trying to-
Move on.
Except she’s not really that person. She’s not the person that hangs around in bars and clubs and tries to go home with someone. That person emerged when Bella came into her life. That’s the lie she’s lived for almost four years now. Sneaking around if she wants to have sex with someone incase her friends find out or she’s spotted.
The reason it takes a few weeks isn’t really to do with Bella. It’s more that she still has a ring on her finger and no matter who has the other one and why it’s there in the first place, it’s a commitment. One that she made to a friend. It’s her fault really that it just escalated from there. That it became more and ruined her.
She fights against every primal urge she has because she doesn’t think she can be this person, even after it all, and mostly because she still does wear the ring. Strangely this doesn’t deter people.
But it deters her because for those first few weeks she still does the stupidest thing she can do.
She has hope.
She hopes that Bella will still walk back through that door, carrying a few bags, apologetic look on her face and everything will go back to the way it was. Because damn it, it’s sad, but she’d take the sham at this point.
It’s better than nothing.
But no amount of fighting it, no amount of dreaming and waking up with an empty side of the bed will karma her way back into the life she wants.
Waiting for someone who won’t walk back through the door.
After that sinks in she focuses on a number. The number of days that it’ll take for her to get over this. The number of nights spent staring at the ceiling trying to forget walking in on Bella and Blake. The number counting down to the next time they’ll have to see each other.
And the number of women that she decides to sleep with to numb it all.
Three come and go in a cycle of guilt. There are no dates. No phone numbers exchanged or promises made. Jacque let’s little of herself slip into these trysts. She’s still wounded and trying to fight. It’s an uphill battle that she’s constantly falling from.
She never goes home with a blonde or anyone she meets at the gym. Jacque is so used to faking things at this point that no one ever guesses that she’s not happy. Her friends don’t see her disappear with number one or number two. They’re not even out with her for three, four and five.
Number six is the one that comes back to her apartment first. Number six whose name is Ashley and reminds her all too much of Allison and it hits closer to home when she thinks about what she’s doing. Ashley raked her hands down her back and Jacque felt her hair being pulled tight for days after but she’s the one that spends the most time on her back. Losing the control helped. So she saw her twice.
A bump in this comes when she hears from the CSA, when they announce that Jayce has resigned and they’re looking for her replacement. Sadie calls her the day of with such relief in her voice that Jacque connects to what’s going on for the first time in months. Her team is about to change again. That’s when she has to think about things again. About her life and the career she’s still trying to rebuild. Number six turns into the last counted number for a while.
She replaces sex with working out. Instead of collapsing into bed with women she collapses in exhaustion. She’s fighting for herself now. Bella clings to her legally for now and when they’re done she’ll stand on her own two feet and Jacque will be useless to her. But she can be of use to her team. She has to be.
Their next camp is scheduled for January, right before Olympics qualifiers, and Jacque starts counting to that instead of everything else.
In the midst of all the counting she almost forgets that Christmas is coming up. It’s not something that she dwells on once she remembers because it’s not like this year will be like every other one.
There’s no playful fight over whose family they’re going to see, no plane tickets or road trip to plan, just an empty apartment with a sad little fake tree and a voicemail full of missed calls from her mom.
A week before Christmas she gets a package left in front of her door, it’s pretty standard to receive things at this time of year so she doesn’t pay it any mind. Just carries it inside and puts it in the kitchen, forgetting about it while she does chores around the house.
But later when she’s done and she remembers she goes back to it.
The handwriting is large and loopy and girlish and Jacque grips just that much harder around the glass she has in her hand. For safekeeping she sets that down.
And then she does what any sane person would do. She shakes the box.
It sounds more like another box within the box and decidedly not a hidden stack of papers so Jacque grabs a knife from the block and slices open the cardboard. Her assumptions were correct and inside, perfectly wrapped in paper, is a smaller box with a gift card attached to the outside.
She doesn’t want to do this in here though because she has to eat everyday and she’s not going to let Bella ruin that too so she walks the smaller box out to the living room, grabbing her glass of water to take with her.
Setting it down is like setting down a bomb ready to go off. She places it and then sits back on the couch like something is going to spring out and detonate. Like Bella hasn’t already exploded in her face and obliterated any semblance of what she was before.
The gift card is placed face down because looking at the writing isn’t helping her think of the moment she gets those papers in the mail asking her to sign on the dotted line.
Jacque puts the glass down on the edge of the table and touches the rim of the box. Her stomach turns and she doesn’t want to open it because she’s spent weeks trying to move. Not move on or away but just move and put distance between herself and all thoughts and the hope that followed her.
This being here, this being delivered to her now, is urging that hope back. Jacque is sick of the taste of bliss on her tongue and being denied the meal that should come with it.
Shaking hands rip off the wrapping paper and pull at the lid until the weak cardboard rips and comes off with ease. It leaves an uncomfortable texture on the pads of her fingers. Jacque looks in.
Then she leaves. She leaves with the picture of what’s in the box burnt into her skin like a brand. Hope meets despair and that taste fills her mouth and then it turns to bile.
Jacque strides back into the room, picks up the glass, and throws it against the wall.
The box sits on the coffee table in the middle of her living room. Mess lies all around it. Empty coffee cups, magazines, wrappers from candy and shards of the glass that she smashed when she read the gift card that came with it.
It’s her Christmas present from Bella and it definitely not the one she wanted.
*
It’s funny sometimes that she forgets the colour of Blake’s skin when it’s not covered by speckled and powdered flour. She’s gotten used to touching his rough face and her hand coming back whiter. The flour clings to parts of his unshaven face and the tips of the curls on his head. Sometimes she finds herself combing her hands through it while he just watches her with amusement on his face. It’s easier to do that without the ring on her finger pulling strands of his hair.
He makes note of it. The lack of ring on her finger. Never verbally but when they’re together he’s taken to, as the tan line from years of constant wear starts to fade, kiss her hand. Kiss the ring finger.
It always leaves a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach that she attributes to love. They love each other so much and this is his way of i
ndicating more. Indicating that one day he’d like his ring to be on that finger.
And it only intensifies that feeling and for a while she thinks it means that she’s falling even deeper in love with him. Every day. Every moment. The longer they’re together the stronger it grows.
They spend the most time with each other on weekends because he’s committed most of his time to the bakery. Bella figures out that he’s a part time manager which keeps him split between baking and running the actual place so weekends become their time.
Bella curls into his side on the couch in front of the TV. Some breaking news is interrupting the film they’re watching, and has been for the past fifteen minutes.
Blake’s legs are spread open so she’s sitting on her knees, in her own space, mumbling about the insanity that is the news. Something about the weather or the cold or boarding up windows that she doesn’t pay attention to because they’re over at his place and it’s far nicer than her tiny apartment.
It’s nicer and yet, she looks around at everything and it’s just so-
So Blake.
And that shouldn’t be a bad thing because he’s her boyfriend and judging by the way she thinks these things are supposed to work that means that at some point they’d live together. And his place seems like the logical choice for that, it’s not like they’d cram into her small space or find a new place of their own.
But she can’t see the space where she’d fit. And that’s the first warning bell.
She focuses fully back to the TV because that’s not a train of productive thought.
Bella blinks suddenly because the colours on the screen that she’d been squinting at as she lost herself in her imagination disappears. “I thought we were watching that-”
Blake puts the remote down and arches his back to stretch out the numbness from sitting still for so long. “They’re replaying it later. News is taking over the channel for now.”
A part of her thinks that she should be paying attention to whatever is causing the news to take precedent over her film but then Blake puts his arm around her and cuddles her into his side. He kisses her cheek, that stubble brushing over her face, and Bella laughs. “Oh, I see what this is.”
“Do you?” Blake comically starts to lower her onto the couch, grinning with her.
“Jealous of the movie?” Bella has to move her legs so that he can put her on her back. “Because it had my attention?”
Blake sobers up for a split second and Bella wonders when that became the wrong thing to say. Sobering becomes seriousness and Bella is the one who arches this time when he kisses her neck and asks if she wants to go to bed with him.
The question isn’t complicated yet the answer feels like it should be.
The sheets in his room are different again and Bella only notices for a brief moment before she finds a place on it. She’s ahead of the game on him as he keeps his boxer briefs on while stripping her off. It’s an oddness that she’s gotten used to since she came back from Germany. That he hesitates.
Bella doesn’t feel like they’ve differed though. It feels great with him, as always, yet she can see that thing again. That disruption in the back of his mind that has him kissing her hand and working his way up. There’s no room for change with something this delicate but Bella can see that he’s growing bolder the longer that they’re with each other.
In a way she wishes that he’d believe that she’s here with him. Even now when he fixes the sheets over their bodies to pull off his boxers, there’s a faraway look that has nothing to do with the fact that she’s lying naked underneath him.
If she’s here, why isn’t he?
He’s hovering over her now and for a brief moment there’s a flash of something indiscernible in his eyes before he kisses her. She melts into the kiss because regardless of any weirdness he’s still great at that.
She relaxes as the kiss deepens and then he’s inching downward. Kisses on her lips turn into ones on her jaw. Her neck.
But Bella does panic when she feels the rough stubble of his beard scratch against her stomach. She flips up the front of the sheets and sees his face. “What are you doing?”
The sheet rests at the top of his hair and his shoulders, that her legs are now over, stick to her skin. He pants heavily as his hips push down against the bed but get none of the returning friction that he wants. “I thought,-”
The instant he opens his mouth Bella knows that this isn’t a conversation she wants to have. “No, Blak-”
“You were married to a woman.” He runs his hand over her hip. “I mean, I’m not exactly- I’m not incapable-”
Bella can’t even laugh at this. It’s turning her stomach because he’s doing this now. He’s lining up a nail head against a piece of glass and holding a hammer over the top of it.
“I get that it’s different to be with me and I just, I want you to-” Blake brushes his nose against her hipbone. “-I’m not her but I know that you have needs and I love you so-”
So he’s shattering the glass floor beneath them and telling her that he’s going to go down on her because he thinks that her fake wife did this all the time and that she misses something that she’s never asked him to do and never had someone do to her.
The communication has fallen through and Bella wants to scramble out from under him. “Blake, you really don’t have to-”
It’s good what they have. It’s great and she enjoys it. And never once has she expressed otherwise even as she’s seen the dimming light of insecurity come up between them in the last few months.
“-I don’t mind.” Blake smiles but it’s not as charming because she’s nervous about this. She’s nervous about how close he thinks he’s getting to winning or proving something to himself. That he’s here when he’s competing with a ghost that never was. “I want to.”
Bella’s nails dig into the bed underneath her and she’s tense. Her whole body is tight and even Blake kissing her stomach does nothing to ease that.
He’s competing with Jacque.
Bella could handle that. She can handle him kissing her hand and avoiding talking about the divorce and even the frustration when he struggles to stay hard when she convinces him to let her sink on top of him instead.
It’s those moments that he looks at her and he thinks about what he thinks she used to do. What life she had with Jacque and Bella can’t touch those memories without walking on the shards and getting cut.
But she’s managed to tape that scene up and carry on.
This is not something she can handle, and she knows it, even as she nods and Blake pulls the sheet back down.
Bella grips onto it because this is happening and it’s meant to be good. It’s meant to be great and she can feel him dipping his mouth between her legs. He’s hard and strong and eager.
There’s a baseline buzz of pleasure that builds in the pit of her stomach. It’s meant to be good with him.
Bella presses a hand over her eyes to cover up the ceiling she stares at. It’s not good. Not for lack of trying on his part but the nerves that started haven’t stopped because he’s doing this because of Jacque.
And that’s all she can think about now. Her not him.
“Fuck.” Bella whimpers. She’s in bed with her boyfriend and she’s close to crying because he’s made her think about how badly she’s screwed up. How much she’s lied and hurt people and how she’s lied to herself about how little it’ll all mean in the long run.
He’s going down on her and she misses her best friend.
It’s completely messed up that she’s doing this and he’s trying because he thinks this will make her happy and that this is something she enjoys and she can’t even bring herself to tell him otherwise.
Bella closes her eyes and darkens the bits of lights that seep through her hand. Her trembling lip is caught between her teeth and she begs off, she begs and hopes, that she doesn’t start crying.
But she does because she can’t contain herself anymore and it�
��s not quiet. He stops almost immediately.
Then Blake is there, swaying over her again and pulling the hand from her face. “Bella, Bell- are you okay?”
The sheet has slid down off them both and it’s almost strange how his body takes her by surprise. He doesn’t show it off to her, even when they’re together, so for him to forget about covering himself up shows how concerned he is.
“I’m sorry, I’m- god.” Bella wipes her eyes and an involuntary dry sob follows. “It’s not you, it’s not you-”
She has to say it because he’s thinking it anyway. His expression and his reacting body says it all.
“Did I do something- was it wrong or did I hurt you?” Blake’s eyes never waver from her face and it makes her want to cry all the more.
What can she even say? The truth would crush and grind the shards into sand and she’d lose him and then an uncounted manner of other things.
Bella covers her mouth and shakes her head. He waits. He waits for her to tell him that he wasn’t doing anything wrong, that it was fine and that she liked it. He waits for her to say that it’s not about Jacque and confirm that he doesn’t have to compete with her anymore.
He waits for hope.
Yet she’s looking back on it. She’s looking back on the ruin that she left behind and the hurt she caused in a hotel in Germany when she decided that selfishness was more important than solidarity. That getting what she wanted was preferable to friendship.
He’s waiting for her to say that she doesn’t miss Jacque and that she loves him.
Blake’s had her in more ways than Jacque had and in ways that she may have even thought of. The line is unclear between them now and Bella isn’t sure she has Jacque to call a friend anymore.
But here she is, bringing her knees up to her chest trying to put space between their bodies because it’s just hitting her that she may have made a huge mistake.
Her body is doused in a cold sweat and the impressions his mouth made are still able to be felt. She’s a contained mess. An implosion of realization. Albeit a sniffling and crying one. And he still waits for something that’s not going to come. Not anymore.
