by Penny Reid
No sooner did our waiter leave did I say: “Why did you cheat on me?”
It wasn’t the question I meant to ask. In fact, I didn’t really care about the answer. I was just stalling before confronting him with Kat’s evidence about his father’s role in my job loss. Also, for some reason, I was craving drama. I wanted to yell at someone.
“Janie…” Jon sighed, his head dropped, his shoulders slumped. “It was a mistake. It was the biggest mistake of my life.”
“Jon, I’d like to know.”
“This is going to sound crazy. You have to-” he reached out like he was going to grab my hands but then seemed to think better of it, “I’ll tell you but you have to promise me that you’ll stay- you’ll stay and talk to me after.”
“I asked, didn’t I? I want to know, I want to talk about it.” I winced at my own lie. I really just wanted to yell at him for being a liar and a manipulator.
“But you might not stay after I tell you why I- just, you just have to promise me you’re not going to shut me out after. I don’t think I could live with that.”
I pursed my lips and scowled, “Fine, I promise. I promise I will continue to talk to you after you tell me. Would you feel better if I attached a timeframe to the promise? Like I promise I’ll stay and speak to you for no less than one hour after you tell me?”
“Honestly, yes. It would make me feel better.” He looked relieved and a little desperate.
I blinked at him, incredulous but promised anyway: “Ok, I promise to stay and talk to you for the period of one hour after you tell me.”
He sighed again, nodding, and looked like he was going to be sick. He swallowed. He affixed his gaze to a spot on the table and began. His voice was so quiet I had to lean forward to hear him; “You have to understand, I’ve loved you from the very first moment I saw you. I just knew you were it for me. Do you remember?” He smiled sadly, still looking at the table, “You were arguing with our professor on the first day about using linear equations as an approximation of non-linear equations. You were so angry-”
“I wasn’t angry.”
He glanced at me, his green eyes, still somewhat sad, glittering with amusement, “Not every equation is solvable. If we didn’t use linear equations as estimates we would be left with chaos.”
I smiled in return and shook my head, “Na-ah. We’re not talking about this now. Besides, I don’t get angry. I was annoyed.”
The shadow of amusement faded from his expression; “But, it’s relevant. What you just said, you just said that you don’t get angry. This is true, you don’t. All these years we’ve been together I’ve never seen you more than one standard deviation from baseline. You’re never excited. I’ve never even seen you embarrassed. Even when you drank too much that one time when we were in the Hamptons, you were so calm. If you hadn’t thrown up I wouldn’t have been able to tell you were drunk.”
“I still don’t see the relevance.”
He cleared his throat, staring at the table again, “I did it to be closer to you.”
I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t I leaned further forward and folded my hands on the table, prompting him, “What? What do you mean you did it to be closer to me?”
He took a deep breath then met my gaze, his olive green eyes were ripe with sadness and regret and a touch of accusation, “I did it to be closer to you. Sometimes you are so-” his hand on the table balled into a fist, “so distant, almost apathetic about me, about us. It’s like you don’t care whether or not I’m there. Do you know how that makes me feel? I love you so- so much. I burn for you. I ache for you.” He reached across the table and gripped my hand, the force of the action startled me, “I just want you to feel something, just one tenth of what I feel. I can’t stop thinking about you and- damn it Janie-”
For the first time in maybe ever, Jon made my heart beat faster. His voice was filled with such raw emotion I imagined I could almost reach out and touch his words. At one point in my life I was convinced this was the person I was going to marry and with which I was going to have a dog and a house and 2.1 babies. I thought he was consistent and safe and reliable.
Now, suddenly, I was faced with passion.
There were, for lack of a better word, stirrings; something akin to when my leg fell asleep. The ‘stirrings’ weren’t pleasant or unpleasant. They just were. But, I had to ignore them; I needed sort through and comprehend the explanation for the cheating and the employment sabotage before I could focus on defining the depth of feeling which may or may not exist.
“I don’t understand, Jon. How could you cheating on me possibly bring us closer together?”
His grip on my hand increased and he clenched his jaw. He released a slow breath which whistled between his teeth before he confessed, “I slept with Jem.”
My jaw dropped, my lashes fluttered. I assumed I misheard him. My voice was a whisper, “Wha- what? What did you just say?”
I watched him swallow, his eyes seared me, his expression plain agony, “I slept with Jem. I slept with your sister.”
The beating of my heart reached a crescendo between my ears. “That doesn’t make any sense. Jem isn’t- Jem lives in…” I sighed. Jon’s mouth moved but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I thought maybe it was my name. I searched the table as though it held answers and said again, “This doesn’t make sense.”
His hand tugged on mine and roused me out of my internal indefinable state, he was mid-sentence when my mind engaged, “…called me and said she was in town. She said she wanted to surprise you so I met her.” His words were an avalanche, increasing in pace, the next more urgent than the last, “I hadn’t seen her since she visited us that one time in college and when I saw her I couldn’t believe it, she looked just like you. I mean, just like you. She is taller than she was before, she’s your height and her hair and her eyes are even the same color as yours. I thought it was you at first, from far away, but when I got closer I saw the differences and she doesn’t sound anything like you. She’s not anything like you, I know that now, but then… but then she was so interested in me, she seemed so like you but different- animated, uninhibited and I thought- I thought…”
We stared at each other for a long time, my mind playing catch up with his words. She looked like me. Her hair. The color of her eyes. It didn’t make any sense. Jem and I had always looked more alike than June and I, but Jem did everything in her power to change that. She cut her hair short, dyed it purple or bleached it. She wore contacts to change the color of her eyes. She had nose piercings and lip piercings and other piercings. It was true, the last time I saw her was going on six years ago; she’d been seventeen and I’d been nineteen. I looked basically the same.
The rest of his words fell over me: she’s not anything like me, interested, animated, uninhibited. When I thought of Jem I never thought of her as interested in someone other than as a means to an end and she was never animated. If possible, she was even more withdrawn than I was; I always thought of her as coldly focused. However, she certainly was uninhibited.
I sighed again. My forehead fell into my free hand. Jon took it as a sign to continue and I closed my eyes when he spoke:
“I drank too much but that’s not an excuse. I- I was drawn to her. She reminded me so much of you but it was different because-” he let out an unsteady breath, “I just wanted you. But you never seemed to want me like I want you, you’re always so detached. She- she acted like she wanted me and I-” he swallowed the last word.
I lifted my head and watched him. He looked truly undone. I cleared my throat and drew his attention to me, “Jon, why didn’t you ever say something while we were together? I never knew. You never told me there was anything wrong. You never said anything about me being distant.”
He licked his lips, “I tried. Really, I tried. At first, when we were first together, I just thought you would come around. I mean, I was your first boyfriend, I was your first… but then I thought maybe you just weren’t that interested in the physical st
uff. I thought I was ok with that. If it meant being with you I thought I could handle it.” he had to take another breath and when he next spoke he sounded choked, “But now, I can’t stop thinking about you. When I said I ache for you, I meant it. Every day it’s like I’m counting the minutes until I see you and I think, maybe today. Maybe today she’ll change her mind, she’ll forgive me.” His eyes were watery and red rimmed, “Janie- can’t we try again? Can you forgive me?”
A sudden thought occurred to me, “Is this what made you leave that night- that night when I introduced you to Quinn? Does he know about this?”
Jon silently considered me before responding, “Are you dating him?”
I thought about his question and answered honestly, “No.”
His eyes moved between mine, “Did you call it off or did he?”
I huffed impatiently, “Does he know? Does Quinn know about you and Jem?”
Jon shook his head slowly, “No. Not that I know of anyway.”
“Then why did you leave that night? What did he say to you?”
If possible Jon looked even more uncomfortable, “I- I can’t talk about it yet. I just told you-” he pulled his hand through his hair, “Can’t we get through this one thing? You haven’t answered me yet, can you forgive me?”
I pressed my lips together in a firm line before asking him again, “What did you and Quinn discuss last Saturday? Why did you leave?”
Jon shook his head, seemingly unwilling to meet my gaze.
But I knew. I was suddenly certain.
“It was about my job, wasn’t it? The one you had your dad fire me from.”
Jon closed his eyes and leaned back in the booth. His head hit the back of the leather cushion and I thought I heard an expletive whisper from his mouth. He looked wretched.
I tried to swallow but confusion layered with viscous emotion made my throat feel thick. “How-” my throat worked again to swallow, “how did he know? How did Quinn know that your dad had me fired?”
Jon shook his head, his eyes still closed, his voice very soft, “I don’t know. He just knew.”
CHAPTER 16
“Quinn recruited you, didn’t he?”
I blinked at Olivia a few times, confused by her abrupt question but then recovered quickly, “Yeah, you could say that.”
It was Friday afternoon. The Friday before the big business trip to Las Vegas. The big business trip to Las Vegas that I was now dreading. The Friday of what was turning out to be the strangest week ever and I was trying to function on two hours of restless sleep.
I wasn’t tired when I arrived back to the apartment earlier that morning even though it was past 2AM. Elizabeth was asleep, I could hear her soft snoring so I stealthily removed my boots and closed her door so as not to disturb her slumber or incur additional wrath.
My mind was active, I felt unsettled but strangely numb. I checked my email, suddenly curious about Jem, wondering if she’d replied to the message I sent last Saturday, wondering whether she’d been in town this whole time, wondering why she slept with Jon.
I navigated to Gmail; there were no new messages.
I thought about emailing her again but everything I wanted to ask, despite my mostly ambivalence towards Jon and the end of our relationship, would likely come across as crazy-town jealous ex-girlfriend. My life was coming dangerously close to resembling a Jerry Springer episode; all that was missing was a question of someone’s paternity.
I started typing: Hi Jem, I was just emailing to ask you if you are in town. Jon mentioned something about seeing you a few weeks back. In your last email you said you wanted to see me. Do you still want to meet up? -Janie
I hit send then stared unseeingly at the screen until it began to blur.
Jon was right, about so many things. I avoided emotional intimacy. I hated relying on others. I wasn’t good at it and I turtled any time I encountered a difficulty. Because of this I bent on things that mattered to me or, using Jon as a case study, abruptly broke off relationships. I also entered our relationship with extremely low expectations and, as long as I kept my expectations at a minimum, I was able to justify marginal personal investment in him. It hadn’t been fair to Jon.
Regardless, he cheated on me with my sister then, when I broke up with him, asked his father to pull some strings so I would be fired. His motivation, his desperation did not justify his actions. I could not and would not forgive Jon.
And then there was Quinn…
“How did you meet him? It seems like you two know each other pretty well.” She raised her eyebrows at me expectantly.
Olivia and I were meeting to tie up loose ends before our departure on Monday for Las Vegas. She had, thus far, been somewhat unhelpful- but not unhelpful in a specific enough way for me to have a valid complaint. We were finished with our meeting but she hadn’t left yet; I wanted to scowl at her and tell her to get back to work; instead I said:
“Why do you say that?”
Olivia shrugged, her pale blue eyes watching me a little too closely, “Keira said he’s called for you, like, three times today and you haven’t taken any of his calls. Anyone else would be fired.”
When I got home early this morning I turned off my cell phone without looking at it. I tried not to obsess about how oblivious I’d been or about how obvious my obliviousness must have been to him. I didn’t want to think about it, so I didn’t.
Likewise, when I got to work this morning I set my phone to automatic voicemail. When Keira arrived at my door, indicating that Mr. Sullivan was on the phone, calling from New York, and needed to speak with me, I told her I was just about to go into a meeting and promised to call him back. I’d done this three times.
It was true, I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t know how to talk to him. In my sleepless examinings last night I realized that he’d never exactly lied to me about being my boss. But, he was the Boss and everything was now different.
I ignored the implication that I’d been dodging Quinn’s calls and I thought about how to answer Olivia’s question truthfully without including real details, “I met Mr. Sullivan at my old job.”
“Did he recruit you away from there?”
“No.”
“Hmm.” Olivia seemed to contemplate me for a moment with a sideways glance before she said, “Carlos hired me. I’m the only person at the company who wasn’t recruited by Quinn.”
“Oh? I didn’t know that.” I was distracted by all the revelations of the past week, tempted to succumb to the pleasant void of apathetic numbness, and just couldn’t seem to muster enough energy to feign interest in what she was saying.
“I think-“ she leaned closer to me and lowered her voice to conspiratorial whisper, “I think I make him uncomfortable.”
My brow lifted on its own accord and I regarded her with open confusion, “Who? Carlos?”
Olivia laughed lightly and flipped rolling sheets of chocolate brown hair over her shoulder, “Quinn, of course!”
I tried not to grimace when she used ‘Quinn’ instead of ‘Mr. Sullivan’. “Why do you think that?”
“Well, other than Carlos, haven’t you noticed that everyone Quinn hires is so… so…” she looked upwards as though trying to search for the right word, “you know, so plain. So ordinary looking.”
I didn’t miss her meaning; in fact, her words hit the bull’s-eye in my stomach. I was discovering more and more recently that I was not so immune to the scorn of pretty people as I thought. I blinked at her but said nothing; I wanted to say, “You are a nibling.”
Nibling being a new word I’d found on Urban Dictionary. I hadn’t yet said it out loud but I found myself liking the way it sounded in my head.
She continued, “Carlos has insinuated that Quinn is really a terrible flirt.” Her pretty mouth curved into a knowing smile, “I think Quinn purposefully hires women who are plain so he’s not distracted at work. At this point he must be desperate. I bet he’s even flirted with you.”
I gave her my
best imitation of a smile but was pretty sure it looked like a dog baring its teeth, “That’s an interesting theory.”
“Hm.” She said again, leaning back, “Has he flirted with you?”
I shook my head and looked at the portfolio on my lap, “Not unless you call kissing flirting.”
Olivia’s eyes opened very wide for a split second; then she laughed, “You’re funny!” she tapped my leg with manicured nails then flipped her long, shiny, straight hair over a slim shoulder. “Well,” Olivia audibly sighed, “it’s a good thing he’s not attracted to you otherwise he likely wouldn’t have hired you in the first place.”
I kind of wanted to stab her in the neck.
“Janie, are you two finished yet?” Steven’s form appeared at my door and I immediately jumped up from my seat, thankful for the murder-attempt-distraction and the chance to escape. I crossed to my expansive desk in order to improve the distance between Olivia and the pen in my hand.
“Yep. All done. I think Olivia has what she needs.”
“If I have any questions I’ll just stop by later and ask.” She stood from the table as well then gave Steven a friendly, toothy smile.
Steven shook his head; his lips were pursed; “Olivia, Janie doesn’t have any more time to work on this with you. She needs to get ready for next week and that report needs to be done by tonight. You better have all you need from her.”
Olivia’s eyes met mine and her smile widened, “Yeah. I think I got everything I need.”
~*~
I worked in the office over the weekend, enjoying the solitude. It allowed me the space I needed to avoid thinking about anything confusing and/or unpleasant
I didn’t really need to go into the office over the weekend. I could have accomplished just as much on my laptop in the comfort of my slippers at home. Though, in all honesty, avoiding Elizabeth was the intentional byproduct of my industrious two days away from the apartment. I hadn’t yet told her about Kat’s knit-night revelations or finding out that Quinn was the Boss or that Jem and Jon had engaged in colitis-extremeous. I didn’t know how to tell her and it just felt like too much and I didn’t actually feel ready to talk about it and I knew she would make me talk about it.