by Tracey Ward
It changed everything.
Eventually I wrote her a letter. A snail mail, postage stamped letter written by my hand in my stunted words. Aside from my college applications, it was the first letter I’d ever sent.
And just to piss her off...
You wrote me in French?! she angrily texted me the day she got it.
I chuckled. Oui.
Ass!
Oui.
It’s summer! I’m not interested in doing homework.
Learning never takes a vacation. It’s an ongoing process.
Thanks, Yoda.
I think you mean ‘Merci, Yoda’.
You’re the worst.
Oui.
Three days later I had a letter from her. In French. It was spotty and a little confusing at times, but I got the gist of it and immediately turned around and sent her one in return. It was better than texting. It was slower, sure, but getting a physical piece of paper with her thoughts and handwriting all over it was a tangible connection to her, one I savored.
I should have manned up and gone to the house to see her, but every time I thought about doing it, I imagined running into Laney. I didn’t want to see how weird it would get. Not yet. I also didn’t want to find out if seeing her would change my feelings on the break up. Callum definitely thought it would.
“She’s got her hooks into you, dude,” he warned me one weekend when I finally dared to go visit him. His house was safer than the Monroe’s but Laney was still in the area. I had been looking over my shoulder all day. “I heard she’s not dating anyone else, like she’s waiting for you to change your mind.”
“I’m not going to,” I promised him.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”
“It’s over, man. The spell is broken. The fighting and shit was fine when we were kids but I’m going into law school this fall. I need to keep my head in the game and Laney is a constant mindfuck. I don’t have time to deal with it anymore.”
Callum shrugged, looking unconvinced.
That annoyed me.
“Whatever you say,” he told me casually, “but I had bets on the two of you getting married.”
I laughed, shaking my head in amazement. “No way. That was never on the table. Most of the time we weren’t even dating. We were fuck buddies at best.”
“She told everyone you two were in love.”
“If that’s love, Valentine’s Day should be more like a yearly funeral than a celebration. We were never going to make that situation permanent.”
“You were if you hear her tell it.”
“I bet. I never heard or said a word about it, though.” I looked around his parent’s house. At the boxes of stuff piled high. The empty walls devoid of all their art and family photos. “I don’t think I’ll ever get married.”
“Me either. Divorce sucks.”
“It looks like it. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t know exactly what to say after that, so Callum and I sat in silence staring at the TV quietly broadcasting from on top of an ottoman. The entire house was like this – in disarray. His parents were selling most of it and dividing up the funds evenly, then they were going their separate ways. His dad planned on using some of the money he would take from their split savings account to open a restaurant. Italian, I think. I wasn’t sure, because for a while it was Vietnamese, then Thai. He seemed to be having trouble nailing his new dream down. It was one of the reasons Callum’s mom was leaving him. She couldn’t handle the indecision.
I could sympathize.
I liked knowing exactly where I was going and what I was doing. I craved structure and plans. I loved having a path to follow, goals to meet, and a final destination in mind. I think that’s one of the reasons I got so frustrated with Laney. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with herself. She loved my plans for myself, but she never said what she wanted from life. Maybe she just wanted me. If that were the case, and it had seemed lately like it was, she needed to rethink her life. I wasn’t a star any girl should be hitching her wagon to.
When I left Callum’s house that night it was still pretty early. I had time to drive back home and get there before two in the morning, but something held me back. All day I’d been worried about being so deep in Laney’s territory, but suddenly as I hopped on my bike and cruised through the familiar neighborhood of Ranchos Palos Verdes, I got home sick. I knew if I didn’t stop by the Monroe Mansion on my way out of town and take a chance at seeing Jenna and Dan, I’d regret it for the next six hours. Probably for the next six weeks.
I pulled into their driveway slowly, worrying I should have called first. Maybe I should have texted Jenna and made sure Laney wouldn’t be there. Lights were blazing from the north side of the house where the kitchen was and music was pumping from inside. I could tell from the beat alone that it wasn’t Laney’s kind of music, so I took my chances.
I knocked hard on the door but I wasn’t surprised when no one heard me. I rang the doorbell three times, but no one answered. I pulled out my phone and tried calling both Dan and Jenna, but that too got me nothing. Finally, feeling a little awkward, I used my key to open the lock on the front door and pushed it open slowly.
“Hello?” I called.
Nothing.
I followed the music back through the dining room to the kitchen where it got louder and louder. Inside the white sanctuary was chaos. Aside from the thumping music, every surface was covered with dirty baking utensils, bowls, spoons, and cooling racks filled with different kinds of cookies. In the middle of it all was Jenna.
She was dancing slow and steady side to side to the music with her hands slightly raised, one holding a cream colored spatula. Her hair was down and loose. She wore a pair of dark yoga pants and a deep purple exercise tank with a racer back and plunging neckline. Her long, thin body moved fluidly over the floor, spinning and dipping in ways I’d never seen before. Some of it looked like ballet, but most of it just looked like freedom. Like sheer, personal comfort and joy. It was incredible to watch.
Suddenly her eyes snapped to my face as she spun and she screamed loudly.
“Jenna, it’s m—“
She threw the spatula at my face. It was a good shot. I was just able to dodge it without taking the slatted surface in the eye.
“Dammit, Kellen!” she shouted, seeing it was me. “What the hell?!”
I bent down the pick up the spatula. “That’s what I was thinking! Why are you throwing things at me?!”
“Because you scared the shit out of me!”
“Can we turn this down?!” I asked, glaring toward the hidden speakers in the walls.
Using the remote, her face still adorably sour, she turned the volume down to nearly nothing.
“What are you doing?” I asked, surveying her mess.
“Rotating my tires. What does it look like?”
“It looks like your mom is going to be angry.”
“She’s not home.”
“Where is she?”
She held out her hand for the spatula.
I eyed her suspiciously. “If I give you this, is it going to end up in my back?”
“Don’t turn your back on me and you won’t have to worry about it.” I handed it over and she continued, “She’s on a trip with dad. They took a cruise to the Mediterranean. Dad had a really ugly case recently and he needed a break and mom wasn’t about to miss a couple weeks on a cruise ship.”
Even though she was seventeen, I doubted Dan and Karen would leave Jenna completely alone for weeks. That had to mean Laney was there somewhere.
I glanced around nervously. “Was it just them or…”
“Laney is out for the night. Party.”
“You’re here alone?”
“Yep, just me.”
“You should have had the alarm system on.”
“The door was locked.”
“I know, I used my key. But you’ve got the alarm system. You should use it.”
She shrugged, unconcerned. “I’ll turn it on when I go to bed.”
“You should have it on whenever you’re alone in the house,” I reminded her. Just because she grew up in a good neighborhood didn’t mean robberies didn’t happen everywhere. I knew for a fact there was plenty of stuff in this house worth someone’s time breaking in for. I didn’t want Jenna here alone if that happened.
She rolled her eyes at me. “Alright, Kel, geez. Do you want me to turn it on now?”
“Just promise me you’ll turn it on when I leave.”
Her face fell. “Are you leaving already?”
“I don’t know,” I muttered.
It felt like I should. I’d been alone with Jenna thousands of times before, but something was different tonight. Her parents weren’t just at the store or at work, even in the other room. They were in another country and definitely not coming back that night. And then there was Laney. She wasn’t there, who knew when she would be, and we weren’t together anymore. Jenna and I being friends when she was a kid was no big deal. This woman standing in front of me now, though, that felt strange. It was like me being single suddenly made her more of a woman. Or maybe it made me more aware of it, cognizant of it in ways I hadn’t been allowed before.
“Don’t be stupid,” she told me lightly. “You drove all the way down here. Sit down. Have a cookie.”
“What kind are they? Chocolate chip?”
She sighed heavily. “You don’t like chocolate chip.”
I snorted. “Everyone likes chocolate chip.”
“Everyone but you. You think they’re too sweet. Here, have a peanut butter crisscross.”
I stepped farther into the room, careful to keep the island between us, and bit down on a cookie. It tasted like peanut butter and was probably the best damn cookie I’d ever had in my life.
She shifted her stance, reaching for a cookie for herself, and I saw black lines on her chest that disappeared into her tank top. It looked like a tattoo.
“What is that?” I asked slowly.
“A cookie,” she answered with a smug, satisfied smile. “You like it, don’t you? You’re welcome, although you’ll forget you like it by tomorrow and think chocolate chip is the only cookie on the planet.” She bit into a cookie as well, talking around the sugary sweetness in her mouth in a way that would have made Karen cringe. “You have a terrible food memory.”
“Food memory isn’t a real thing and that’s not what I’m talking about.” Staring at the lines intently, I came around the island to get a closer look. “Did you get a tattoo?”
Her face registered surprise as I reached forward and tugged gently down on her shirt to expose the drawing on her skin. It was a simple compass rose. It was a little rough around the edges, but it was so Jenna that it made me wonder if it hadn’t always been there. It looked like she was born with it.
“It’s just a drawing,” she answered quietly, her voice near my ear making me realize how close my face was to her body. “It was practice for the one I want to get.”
“I didn’t know you wanted one,” I said softly, tracing the lines of the black pen ink with my fingertip. It was really good work and I wondered if she was the one who’d done it. It seemed like a hard thing to do yourself.
She nodded in my peripheral. “I’m surprised you don’t have any.”
“I’ve never had the money lying around to get one.” None I felt very comfortable touching. “Every extra penny has always been spent on boxing. Why a compass?”
“So I remember to trust myself. That no one knows me better than me.”
“So you remember to follow your own path.”
“Yeah.”
That was so very Jenna. She was the only person I knew who was a hundred and ten percent sure who the hell she was and what she was doing in this world.
“You’re an old soul, Jenna,” I told her, taking a step back and grinning at her. “You’re too together for your age. You’ve got too much figured out already.”
She chuckled, sounding oddly nervous. “Tell that to my mom.”
“I’m guessing they don’t know about this.”
“No. Or about college.”
My heart sunk in dread. “You’re not thinking about skipping out on college, are you?”
“No, I’m going,” she said wearily, “but they don’t know where I’m going to go or what I’m going to study. Mom thinks I’m going to be a business major.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Art. I want to study art.”
She left the room and returned with her sketch pad. She flipped it open with purpose, then laid it out in front of me.
It was a series of basic tattoo designs that looked like one was mimicking the other, as though someone was teaching her.
“This is what I want to do,” she said with breathless excitement, her face lit up like summertime. “I got a job at a tattoo parlor in Bakersfield. I’m going to work there on weekends this year then hopefully he’ll give me an apprenticeship while I go to college. Then I’ll get certified and I’ll do it on my own. Maybe I’ll work there or somewhere else. Someday I want my own shop, but for now this is what I have to do.”
“This is what you want to do,” I corrected.
She grinned wildly. “Same thing.”
I smiled at her before turning back to the drawings. I flipped through the pages slowly, always ready for her to tell me to stop or pull it away. Her drawings were sacred to her. Personal. Her handing the sketchpad over and letting me flip through it, that was like opening her diary and letting me read pages at random. It took a lot of trust, a lot of faith.
“What do you think?” she prodded quietly.
“What do I think about you becoming an artist?”
“Yeah.”
“I think it’s what you were meant to do,” I told her honestly. “I’ve always said you’re talented, Jen. I’m glad you’re going to do something great with it.”
“You think me becoming a tattoo artist is great?”
“If that’s what you want, then hell yes.” I pointed to the compass on her chest. “This is something you designed, isn’t it?”
She touched it almost protectively. “Yeah. Bryce, the guy at the shop, he helped me fix it but yeah, I designed it.”
“It’s perfect.” I stepped closer and took her face in my hands so she couldn’t ignore me. So she’d hear me and hopefully my words would mean something to her when she faced her mom with this news and her dreams were shredded in front of her. “You’re perfect, Nonpareil.”
Her eyes welled with tears, then she smiled with relief and shoved my hands away so she could hug me tightly.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered as she buried her face in my shoulder.
I squeezed her tighter. “Me too.”
I closed my eyes as I held her and I breathed her deeply. The way she smelled, the way she felt, the way she held me as much held onto me – it was new for us but it was familiar too. It reminded me of the first time she’d hugged me in this same kitchen on Thanksgiving years ago. It was Jenna. My Jenna. The only girl I’d let anywhere near the real me with all the flaws and fault lines. She didn’t see all the cracks because I didn’t let her, but I knew it wasn’t because I didn’t trust her. It was because I wanted her to stay. Forever.
And holy shit, I’d missed her. I missed her in ways I shouldn’t. In ways I’d never known her, but the longing had been enough; strong enough to create its own memory of nothing but my imagination and desire.
Enough to make me feel like I’d lost something I’d never had.
Eventually I noticed that her breathing shifted. It became low and long, a pattern I recognized. One I knew very well. It was a precursor to other things. Things Jenna and I had never been before and I noticed my hand on the skin of her back, warm and solid.
I pulled my face back slowly to look into her eyes and see what she was feeling because I knew she’d tell me. Jenna always told me everything with pure, open
honesty.
She was looking at me with longing. With want. With so many things I’d never seen in her eyes before but now I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t let her go, and I had never wanted to be whole more than with her looking at me like that.
I dipped my head down to hers, my hands on her back pulling her to me tightly. I kissed her once, just barely. Just to test it and see if she wanted it. To see if I could handle it.
I immediately wanted more.
She stood up taller and took my mouth with hers, taking control and telling me without a doubt that I wasn’t alone in this.
I detonated with the sugary sweet taste of her, the impossible soft feel of her. The very essence of her. Of Jenna. Of everything.
She was everything I wasn’t. Everything I wanted. Everything I needed.
My tongue glided across her lips, making her sigh. Making her open. Making her mine. I took hold of her hips, pulling her body away from mine, lifting her onto the kitchen island, and then yanking her back to me.
Hard.
Hot.
I trailed my lips across her mouth to her chin, to her long, graceful neck. I licked her skin lightly, tasting her, wanting to devour her. To take her in. To let her fill the empty corners inside of me the way I knew only Jenna could.
Her pulse beat wild in her neck against my lips, against my tongue, and her hands drove into my hair, pulling. Aching.
I traced my fingers up insider her shirt, making her shudder. The flat surface, the tight warm skin of her stomach - it quivered under my fingers and made me weak. I hesitated, scared. Worried. Too afraid to touch her, really touch her. Afraid to make her gasp, make her moan. To taste a drug that could ruin me.
One that could heal me.
Impatiently, she forced my face up, taking my breath as hers, my mouth with her tongue, taking hold of my body and clenching it hard against hers.
I raised my hands higher. I ran my thumbs whisper soft over her breasts and she shivered and whimpered and it was almost too much. Her nipples peaked instantly and I took her in my hands, moldering her body to my palms as she pressed into me, encouraging me. Guiding me. I pulled her hips to me harder, grinding her warmth against me until she moaned, the sound like heroin hitting my veins.