by Kelly Rimmer
Jess finishes her toast, and everyone raises their glasses, then she says sweetly, “Jake, did you still want to add something?”
I glance up at her, and she flutters her eyelashes at me. I rise, lift my glass, tilt it toward my brother and his lovely bride-to-be-again as I say, “Paul, Izzy, I’m just so happy for you both. Not much to add to Jessica’s wonderful speech, other than to say...welcome back to the family, Izzy. I couldn’t be happier for you both. To Paul and Izzy.”
As I sit, I glance at Jess and find her smirking. Yeah, she definitely won the “battle of the speeches.” There’s open triumph in her eyes. As the others start to chat again, she leans forward and whispers, “That was for pretending you didn’t see I needed champagne.”
“If that slurred, rambling word-vomit was any indication, more champagne is the last thing you need tonight,” I whisper back. Jess looks like she’s about to leap across the table and rip my face off, so I turn to Isabel and try to slip into her conversation. She’s laughing with Paul about how “lucky” it was that they ran into one another at the vacation home six months ago. I catch the undertone but don’t understand it, so I ask in surprise, “Was that not luck? Did you go out there to catch him on purpose?”
“Oh, no,” she laughs, and then she flicks a meaningful glance to Jess. “It’s a funny story, and you won’t believe it—but it turns out it was all Jess’s doing.”
All roads lead back to Jess Cohen. Of course they fucking do. The woman has a finger in every pie.
“How so?” I ask, but my tone is resigned. I glance at Jess briefly and find she’s smirking at me again.
And then Izzy tells me all about how Jess engineered for her and Paul to arrive at their vacation home for the same weekend away, and how they were both too stubborn to leave, and by the time Monday came around, they were in love again.
“Jess had a hand in us getting together, too,” Abby sighs happily from across the table. “I was pretty determined that I wasn’t in love with Marcus until Jess tried to set him up with one of the programmers from work. Nothing’s quite so effective in curing self-denial as hardcore jealousy.”
“Brave of you to intervene in your friends’ life like that,” I murmur to Jess, and she lifts one perfectly arched eyebrow at me.
“Brave?” she repeats.
“Either situation could’ve worked out very differently.”
“I knew it was worth the risk in both cases,” Jess says, then she leans back in her chair and begins to study her immaculately polished fingernails. Something about her lack of concern at my observation irks me even more, and I lean forward just a little.
“But either scenario could easily have turned to disaster,” I say. “Did you ever think about that before you went about playing God with your friends’ lives?”
“Playing God?” Jess repeats. Her tone rises just as her eyebrows disappear into her hairline. This is exactly the rise I was looking for.
I shrug and say casually, “Some people might consider what you did in both cases to be...manipulative.”
I’m pretty sure no one was listening to us a minute ago, but in a heartbeat, all of the chatter in the room has stopped. Four shocked sets of eyes are now on me and Jess—and Jess is glaring at me with such intense rage that if I was just a little smarter, I’d be looking for something to hide behind.
Sudden, brutal regret grips me. I can’t believe I let this escalate—but just as I’m trying to figure out how to undo the scene I’ve just made, there’s a sudden shift in Jess’s expression.
Holy shit. And now her big blue eyes shine with the unmistakable gleam of tears.
Jess turns sharply and reaches down for her handbag, which had apparently been resting below her chair. She withdraws her phone and begins to press the screen frantically as if she’s texting. She’s blinking rapidly, but a smidge of moisture leaks out anyway, and she swipes at it—accidentally smudging her heavy eye makeup in the process.
No one says anything. Perhaps the rest of our friends are in shock, just as I am.
“Izzy, I am so sorry,” Jess says, raising her gaze. “I forgot I had a date.”
The silence has been fraught, but in an instant, it becomes incredibly awkward.
“A date?” Isabel says hesitantly.
“A date,” Jess says, as if this is the most normal thing in the world. She picks up her phone again and begins to madly press the screen. “But we’re done here, aren’t we?”
I suppose we are done. The plans have been discussed, the food has been eaten, toasts have been made. It might even be fine for Jess to leave now, if it weren’t so painfully obvious that she’s not leaving because we’re “done.”
The problem with revenge is that it’s never as satisfying as you think it’s going to be. I wanted to get a reaction out of Jess, to dig the knife in and to twist it a little, because she hurt me and I wanted her to feel bad. I got exactly what I wanted, but it feels disgusting. I just don’t know how to fix this without embarrassing Jess even more...and an embarrassed Jess is likely to be a dangerously unpredictable creature.
There’s a flurry of activity happening around the table. Abby and Isabel are trying to convince Jess to cancel this serious, last-minute, surprise date that Jess is now arguing she absolutely must go on. Paul and Marcus also appear to be trying to convince Jess that she should cancel her date, without actually telling her that she should cancel her date.
Probably because they’re trying to avoid poking the bear. Paul and Marcus are definitely both much smarter than I am.
I’m silent, watching all of this unfold, also now trying to figure out exactly what I said that got such a reaction out of her. Was it the manipulation comment? The “playing God” comment? The whole night of awkward tension had built up and up. Did something just get to her?
Maybe she’s sick?
Maybe she didn’t know I was coming tonight?
Maybe she’s been secretly pining after me for two years?
Well, that last one seems unlikely. It was her decision to end our relationship, not mine. I was all in—I had the fucking engagement ring in my underwear drawer, just waiting for the right moment.
I’m still sitting in useless silence right up until Jess leaves. And just as I suspected, the minute the front door closes behind her, all eyes are on me.
“What just happened?” Abby doesn’t say the words, she growls them. I clear my throat.
“I didn’t mean to upset her...” I say helplessly. I open my hands, because I read somewhere that if you expose your palms to an angry person, you’re showing vulnerability and they’ll go easy on you. The gesture does nothing to soothe the angry pregnant lady, who rounds on me like she’s going to body-slam me.
Isabel approaches me from the other side and says sharply, “You upset Jess Cohen. I didn’t know anyone could upset Jess Cohen. What did you do?”
“She didn’t manipulate us,” Abby says sharply. “She tried to help us, can’t you see that?”
“I know,” I say defensively, “I really didn’t mean to hurt her. She’s clearly oversensitive tonight—”
“Oversensitive!” Abby gasps.
“Jake, do you want them to kill you?” Marcus mutters, wincing. I stand, and I throw my hands into the air.
“She did manipulate you guys. I’m glad it worked out for the best, but what she did was pretty ballsy, and it all could have ended in disaster. I’m super glad you all ended up together, but what right does she have to interfere in other people’s lives like that?”
“If you knew her like we know her,” Isabel says, voice shaking with feeling, “you’d understand that her intentions are beautiful. She has a tough exterior, but beneath it, she’s one of the most caring, loving people I’ve ever met. And you upset her tonight, Jake Winton, so you need to fix it before you ruin our day tomorrow. I don’t know how you’re going to do it,
but you are going to fix it.”
And there, shimmering in the eyes of my sister-in-law, are the second set of tears I have put in a woman’s eyes tonight. I thought I could sit Jess down and have it out after the festivities tomorrow, but apparently, I lack the self-control to keep things civil until then. I sigh heavily, run my hands through my hair, and then I say, “You all know that Jess and I have always grated each other.” That’s the understatement of the century. We spent more than a decade clashing, four months fucking and now two years pretending the other doesn’t exist. Apparently, Jess and I don’t just run hot and cold, we can only exist in the same space as steam or ice. “I’ll go see her now, clear the air and say sorry. And I am sorry.”
“Thanks, Jake,” Paul says before he sighs. “Jess can be difficult, but so can I. And you get me better than just about anyone, so I know you can handle her.” He gives me a crooked smile.
“Sorry about this, Paul.”
“I get it. If I had a dollar for every time I said something awkward, we’d be living in a castle of pure gold.”
I slip my wallet into my pocket, scoop my phone off the table and load the app to call a ride share.
“Don’t you want to know her address?” Abby says sharply.
“Uh...”
“She bought a condo. Two years ago.”
Jess and I broke up just before she moved into that place, so she didn’t invite me to the housewarming, but we were definitely together when she was house hunting. I helped Jess pick that fucking apartment, and she actually lived with me while the contractors were remodeling it for her. Abby just has no visibility of any of that, and now I have to pretend I need Jess’s address, when I know it by heart because I actually figured I’d wind up living there with her one day.
That’s the problem with lies. You tell one, and the next thing you know you’re drowning in them. I never wanted to hide our relationship from these people in the first place.
But Jess was adamant that no one know we were ever together, and only in the last few months have I figured out why.
Copyright © 2020 by Lantana Management Pty Ltd
ISBN-13: 9781488085932
Unspoken
Copyright © 2019 by Lantana Management Pty Ltd
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