“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I finally told him.
“I can see why you’d feel that way, but I think I have something here that will shed a little more light on everything, and I don’t feel right keeping any of it from you. You deserve to know.”
I’ll admit, I was intrigued as I slowly reopened the door and allowed him space to enter my apartment. He glanced around, no doubt noting that I had cleaned up since the last time he was here. He sat in one of my armchairs while I took the couch. Then he opened the canvas bag he had dropped by his feet and dug out a few notebooks. He stood long enough to slide the books into my lap before taking his seat again.
“What are these?”
“Lindsay’s family asked me to go through her things at the apartment and send them what I thought they might want and get rid of the rest,” he explained. It was another reminder that they had been living together as a couple before she had died. “I think you need to read them,” he went on to tell me.
“You read them?” I asked, not able to believe he would invade her privacy that way. They were obviously her journals.
“She’s dead,” he stated matter-of-factly. “She’s not coming back to be pissed off about her journals being read, and besides, after I found out about her lie, I needed to know if there was more. There was.” Those last two words cut deep because I thought of the seed that had been planted in my head by Cody.
“I’m not sure that I should,” I admitted.
“I’m positive that you need to,” he countered. Those words unleashed an icy finger of unease to crawl up my spine and tingle along the back of my neck.
“Okay, well,” I started as I set the notebooks aside. “I’ll do that then. Thank you for bringing them,” I told him as I stood and got ready to lead him to the front door so he could leave. He glanced up at me from underneath thick, sooty eyelashes before I watched his blue-gray eyes twinkle in the light as a smile played across his plump lower lip, the top getting lost a little in the mustache that needed a good trim.
“I’m not going anywhere, darlin’.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, Christina. I’m not going anywhere.” He nodded toward where I left the notebooks. “I know what those things say, and I’m not leaving you alone to read that shit without someone to be here for you.”
“Well, I’ll just call someone else then,” I insisted.
“Okay,” he told me as he remained perched on my chair, and instead of getting up, he tossed one booted foot up on a jean-clad thigh. He was getting comfortable instead of leaving.
“I said I’d call someone else.”
“I heard you. I’ll just wait here until they show up.”
“Ugh!” I growled out as I threw my hands up in the air in frustration and stomped my ass to the kitchen area to get a drink – a strong one. “I don’t’ understand why I’m suddenly your responsibility.”
“Honey, I took responsibility for you years ago in that cemetery, only when I turned around to make sure you had a ride you were gone. I still never figured out how you disappeared so damn quickly. I looked away for just a moment and you weren’t there any longer.”
I laughed then. “I hid behind a tree,” I admitted for the first time after all these years.
“You hid behind a tree?” He asked incredulously. “Why would you hide behind a tree?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I thought you might be coming to yell at me for creeping on you while you were grieving.”
He shook his head back and forth slowly. “Seriously? That’s what kept me from knowing who you were for two years?”
“I guess so.”
“Damn. Things might have been so different.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I muttered.
“Come sit down and read through the journals. I think you might see things a little differently once you do.”
“Fine,” I conceded. “Is there anywhere specific I should start?”
“They’re dated. I think the blue one is where you need to start though.”
I picked up the blue one and opened the first page to see Lindsay’s familiar scrolling writing style with all her flourishes and loops.
Sept. 4, 2006
How could this be? The minute he walked through the door I knew. Jesus, it hit me in the gut that this man had been made for me. Of course, that sounds like some romance novel crap, but I swear it’s true. I felt a sizzle in the air, the hair on my neck and arms stood on end, and when our eyes met, I swear he was feeling the same thing. You would think this would lead straight to happily ever after for me, but it couldn’t. It was my best friend that was finally introducing us, and they were married. Yes, you read that right. They were married to one another. How could this be? I feel shattered, and I still have to look her in the eye every day, see him with her, and know the whole while that he’s supposed to be with me instead.
I tore my eyes away from the entry and glanced over at Jay. When my vision of him was swimming, I knew he had been right to stay and not go. Jesus, I hadn’t even been able to get through the first entry without my heart being trampled on. “We had been dating for two years then,” I told Jay as he sat and listened. “We got married at 18 because I didn’t have anyone else in my life, and we were in love. At least, I thought we had been.”
“The affair didn’t start then. That was just what Lindsay thought,” he informed me.
“Maybe you should just tell me the gist of it. I don’t think I can handle reading her first person account.”
Jay shook his head as his sad eyes met my own. “I wish I could make it easier on you, but I think you should read it all for yourself. It will answer a lot of questions you probably had, and some you didn’t think to ask. I don’t want to skim over something that may have been more important for you to know.”
I understood his logic, even if I hated him for a little bit.
Sept. 15, 2006
It’s been almost two weeks since I first met him. It’s like Christina knows, and she’s keeping him from me or something. That all changed today though. I ran into him at the campus bookstore. He was there to buy her a book since she didn’t have time between classes. I knew he was a sweetheart, but honestly, it was wasted on her. I still believed he was supposed to be mine.
I moved in close to his back and leaned over to whisper in his ear while he was crouched down trying to pull a book off the bottom shelf. “Hey there, handsome!” He jumped up, nearly knocking me over. The reflexes on the man were amazing, because he managed to grab and right me before I toppled over on the ridiculous heels, I’d worn that day. I smiled brightly at him as his brows furrowed in puzzlement for a moment before recognition kicked in. I have to admit, I was angry for a moment. How could he not have known who I was?
“Hey, Lindsay, right?” He asked me. I knew then he was playing a game, making sure we didn’t get caught in public. He was far smarter than me. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“There’s a ton you can do for me, to me, whatever,” I suggested as I batted my eyes at him. Any other man would have fallen at my feet with that line, but he appeared stricken. It only served to make me angry all over again.
“Lindsay, I’m married to your best friend. That’s not funny.”
I poked my lip out in a pout. “It’s not fair that she gets the man that was meant to be mine,” I told him. He stood there for a long time just taking in what I said.
“I’m not going to mention this to Christina because it would devastate her,” he told me before turning and leaving.
He had just sealed the deal on our secret affair, which made our soul-deep love that much more fun to pursue. I couldn’t wait until I got to see him again.
“Oh my God! She sounds crazy here,” I hissed.
“She does,” Jay admitted. “I honestly don’t think there was anything from his side at that point. It was all in her head.”
“At that point?” I questioned, leaving Jay to wince at his ina
dvertent foreshadowing. “If it makes you feel any better, my friend Cody made the suggestion to me recently that it had been Lindsay who Steven had been cheating with. It’s not like this is a new theory. I mean, it is new – as in a couple weeks old – but not I’m just realizing this today new.”
“That’s good,” he whispered and nodded his head to the notebook.
I skimmed over a couple of months of her being pissed off that he was rebuffing her advances, or that she hadn’t seen him. It was disturbing to see the number of entries about him. Half the notebook had been about all the times she caught sight of him, but didn’t get to talk because I was there, or because he was running off so fast. In her mind, Lindsay equated this to him trying to do the right thing by me after seeking her out to watch her. I didn’t think that was the case at first.
Finally, I skimmed ahead until I got to the point where things turned. Lindsay had come to the place that Steven and I had rented together. I wasn’t there because it was a new semester and our schedules were pretty much opposite of one another.
Mar. 18, 2007
I knew she’d be in class for the next three hours since Christina had a lab this afternoon. I watched their place until I saw him walk up and then I waited until Steven got inside before I went to knock on the door. He let me in when I told him I came to get a shirt that Christina had borrowed from me. She had done no such thing, because she didn’t like feeling indebted to people. If he really loved her, he would have known I was lying.
Instead of going to get the shirt from their bedroom like I told him, I went to get undressed. I knew Christina had said they weren’t really having a lot of sex because she had been having some issues and he was being patient, but I figured, he just didn’t want to cheat on what we were starting. Once I was undressed, down to my sexiest, red lace lingerie, I moved back into the living room to find him sitting sprawled out on the couch with his eyes closed and head leaned back. I didn’t waste a moment. I went and climbed right into his lap, straddling his thighs and rubbing my panty-clad crotch against his khaki covered bulge.
“What the hell are you doing?” He asked as Steven grabbed my arms and tried to push me away. He wasn’t really trying though. I could see the lust in his eyes as he feasted on my barely covered tits and hardened nipples. I moved his hands from my arms to my breasts and forced him to cup me there, squeezing until I moaned in pain-tinged pleasure…
I skimmed the rest. According to Lindsay’s diary, it had been the first time they were together intimately. I also remembered that time, because I’d been having trouble with lengthy, extremely heavy periods and hadn’t felt up to sex because I hurt, and it was gross. I was depressed because I kept bleeding, and the doctors weren’t much help in the beginning. I also remember that our spring break trip to Florida the following week was cancelled by Steven. He told me he couldn’t get away after all. He was hardly home the week we were supposed to have gone. Now, it was obvious why. The next entry in her diary explained it in detail. He was wracked with guilt about cheating on me, and having a hard time facing me and looking me in the eye knowing he had betrayed me. Then again, according to Lindsay, she had been helping his assuage his guilt whenever he felt it.
I tossed the blue book across the living room and slumped forward so that my body lay across my legs. I wound my hands around the bottoms of my legs and just hung on like that for a minute. I’m not ashamed to admit I was trying to hide the hurt and tears I felt overwhelming me from Jay. Not that my attempts mattered. He moved from his spot on the chair to sit beside me on the couch. His hand rubbed up and down my back as he spoke softly to me.
“Breathe through it, darlin’. What they did to you sucks but remember it’s long in the past. They’re both gone, and neither of them can hurt you again.”
“That’s just it,” I told him. “They can hurt me. Reading that, her words, what they did, it kills me.”
“I know. I’m so sorry. If I could take the truth away, I would. What they did was shitty.”
“What they did was devastating. How the hell am I ever supposed to trust anyone again? That was my husband and my best friend, the two people in this world I thought would always have my back.”
He swallowed thickly, and settled in, pulling me into his side as his arm wrapped around me. “Can I tell you a story?”
“Sure,” I told him. He started into the story of how he came to meet his sister-in-law back when they were kids. He told me about the mistake he had made and how it snowballed into this huge ordeal that ended up costing him her friendship as well as that of his best friend’s before he was killed. I was devastated for him as he spoke. It was clear from the emotion he allowed me to see as he told his story that he had deep regrets for the situation he thought he caused.
“You know,” I finally cut in toward the end of his story. “Everything that happened wasn’t your fault. There were some pretty grown up men who made horrible decisions where that girl was concerned. Their behavior was deplorable, and they used what you did to justify their own actions. That really isn’t on you.”
He smiled at me as I spoke. “Ever told me the same thing recently,” he admitted.
“Well, she sounds like a smart girl. You should probably listen to her.”
“Yeah, I should.” Jay took hold of my hand and held on to it with both of his. “You should also listen to me, because it seems we have something in common.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“We both can’t see the big picture for what it is. In your case, you need to remember that your Steven was young. He was probably confused and wondering what he had missed out on by getting married so young. I’m not excusing his behavior at all. I’m just saying that if he hadn’t chosen the way out that he did, you may have come to understand and learn that it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t see the warning signs because he didn’t want you to. You didn’t know there was a problem, or that he was unhappy in some way because he wasn’t honest with you about how he was feeling. Are you a mind reader?”
When I failed to answer his question, he asked it again. “I’m being serious. I want you to answer. Are you a mind reader?”
I laughed at the ridiculousness of his question. “Of course not.”
“Well, people will only show you what they think you want to see until they can’t manage that any longer. You didn’t know. You couldn’t have known. You also can’t give up on living your life and finding happiness because one jerk in this world – two in your case – decided that they were going to lie to you, betray you, and make you miserable. They didn’t tell you what they were doing. You didn’t have the option to run away from them knowing what would happen. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start looking for something that is genuine and real.”
“That’s easier said than done.”
“I know it. Hell, I watched my brother and Ever live it. She didn’t trust anyone after what I did…” he started to say before I cleared my throat and furrowed my brows in a menacing way. Jay smiled at the gesture. “Right. After what the club did to her. She still managed to find her happy. I want what they have, some day. I bet you do too. We have to take risks in life to get there though. That’s something I learned recently. Think of all the good times you had with Steven. Would you trade those for anything? Didn’t they make you who you are? Eventually, you’ll be ready to risk a relationship with people again. You did when you trusted your friend Cody to see you through after Lindsay’s death, yeah?”
“I see what you’re saying. It makes sense.”
“I know it does. I’m a smart guy,” he joked. We sat a while in silence after that, and I noticed him rubbing over the tattoo on his forearm. It seemed to be a habit of his when he was in quiet contemplation. Knowing the story behind the words that were inked there, I understood why it would be.
“Do you think she truly forgives you for your part in everything?”
“I think so, but it took a really long time, and like I said, what I did was truly a
mistake that I didn’t try hard enough to rectify because I was young, dumb, and full of fucking undeserved ego. You were right though, what the others did was incomprehensible. They should have put me in my place and shut that shit down immediately. I’d like to think I learned from my mistakes. I can never make it right with my best friend, a man who deserves this life more than anyone I’ve ever known. I’ve only recently started rebuilding my friendship with Ever, and she’s a damn saint for speaking to me again as far as I’m concerned. Everything I put them through has caused me to reevaluate the things I want out of life and how I want to go about achieving everything.”
“What do you want?” I asked him, the words coming out soft as my shyness kicked in.
“How about we revisit that question when we’re in a better place so you can really digest the answer?”
I stared blankly up at Jay, trying to figure out what he meant. He couldn’t possibly be thinking of me as a part of his future, could he? We barely knew one another, and it sounded ridiculous in my own head, except that I had been painting his face for years. That had to mean something. Maybe, he truly had been just as enchanted by me as I had been by him all those years ago. Maybe it could lead somewhere. Maybe I was crazy for thinking all of this just two weeks after we buried my lying best friend and his crazy ex-girlfriend. Then again, I’d read some of the journals, and I didn’t think Lindsay deserved either of our loyalty any longer. According to the words I read in her own handwriting, she never did.
“You think it’s okay for us to get together, or be thinking of a future when Lindsay just died a couple of weeks ago?” I asked him in all seriousness.
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