Eye Candy

by Jessica Lemmon

  I fill the pot with water and pour it into the machine. “I was wrong. Maybe she was right and she was my rebound. Maybe she’s better off with Jaundice.”

  I punch the button and the brew starts. Only then do I realize that Davis is leaning on my kitchen table, hands gripping the edges, a look of uncertainty on his face.

  “Jackie-O was a rebound,” he states flatly.

  I shrug, my heart shredding, but it’s only been a few days. It’ll heal. I healed from Leslie and we were married for years. Jackie and I only had sex a few times.

  “I’ll be over her soon,” I say, as if I can also erase the memory of her being my other best friend for the past few years.

  “How you planning on getting over her?” he asks. “By turning into me? Reentering the singles scene, this time with your callused heart so you can continue sleeping with women who mean absolutely nothing to you? Forgetting their names? Forgetting yours? Just empty sex to fill the void because you’re too much of a coward to tell Jackie how you feel?”

  “Sounds like you’re talking about you, bro. And to answer your question, yes,” I decide, because decision making gives the pretense of control when in reality my life is spinning out of it. “When the time is right, I may do that. I’m not a coward because I saw the end coming from a long way away. I didn’t see the end of Leslie and me until it was too late. I don’t care to repeat that disaster. And you’re one to talk,” I add. Angry and decisive feels so much better than unmoored and sad. “You didn’t see the end of you and Hanna until it was really too late.”

  I half expect him to walk out of my house cursing my name as he goes, but instead he nods solemnly. “You’re right. I didn’t. Continue in your misery, Carson.”

  He pushes off the kitchen table and ambles to the front door. I follow, feeling guilty that I sniped at him, because this wasn’t his fault at all. “Davis. Wait.”

  He faces me, maybe because he expects an apology. He’s not getting one.

  “You’ve had six years to work through this thing with Hanna, and I’ve been friends with you the entire time. I never walked out on you, and trust me, you’re a pro at wallowing.”

  His jaw tightens along with his fists.

  “Give me that same courtesy. Are you staying for coffee or not?”

  He marches to the front door and slams it behind him.

  “Not” it is.

  Great. Now I’ve got no girl and no friend.

  Good thing I have plenty of things to do.

  “Siri!” I shout at my phone sitting on the coffee table. “How the fuck do you spell ‘eunuch’?”

  Jacqueline

  I’ve been cleaning nonstop since eight this morning. I’m in cutoff sweats and an old T-shirt, and I haven’t showered. I ate a doughnut for breakfast and drank coffee for lunch, and I’m considering eating a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos for dinner. I did brush my teeth today, which qualifies as a win.

  I’m not expecting anyone, so when the knock comes at my closed front door, I semipanic. A figure stands on my doorstep. The FedEx guy has seen me in disarray before, but it’s not a delivery guy. I part one curtain and blink in surprise. Davis?

  He nods from his position on my stoop.

  “Jackie-O,” he greets me when I open the door. His hands are in the pockets of his suit pants. He’s not wearing a tie or jacket today, but his ever-present button-down shirt is there, open at the collar. Davis is tall, a little taller than Vince, so I have to look way up at him.

  “I wasn’t expecting company.” I self-consciously tug on my worn OSU T-shirt. There’s nothing to be done about the hair. I don’t even bother straightening the bandanna serving as a headband. “What are you doing here?”

  It’s not like him to show up unannounced—or announced, for that matter. Davis and I know each other through Vince, not personally. I’m not sure how he knows where I live. He steps toward me in a presumptive manner. Curiosity wins. I let him in.

  “Know what’s worse than being left behind?” he asks, strolling into my living room. He doesn’t wait for me to guess. He turns around and states, “Nothing.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” I ask with an incredulous snort.

  “It messes with your equilibrium,” Davis continues. “Makes you do dumb things. Makes you seek the next thing and the next thing because the current thing has the potential to hurt you all over again.”

  I can’t tell if he’s talking about me, Vince, or himself…or the three of us simultaneously. He stops pacing long enough to pick up a figurine on a nearby shelf. My sister bought it for me after the divorce. It’s a unicorn, head thrust up proudly, one hoof in the air. The plaque attached reads BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.

  It’s cheesy, but after the divorce that was the exact sentiment I needed.

  Davis puts the figurine down without comment. “I’m overstepping my boundaries by being here.” I’m opening my mouth to agree it’s inappropriate to barge in on me when he says, “Vince is my best friend. I should be at his place getting drunk with him. Again.”

  It might hurt to hear that Vince is hurting if I hadn’t spent the past few days swimming in a bottle of wine myself. “Why aren’t you?”

  Davis fastens his gray stare on me. “Because he’s lovesick and miserable and I hate seeing him like this. I can’t fix it. But you can.” He takes a breath and says, “When he told me Leslie came over, I thought for sure a confession that he slept with her would follow. Like, in a fit of nostalgia or desperation or sparked by some memory of what they used to have together. I told him as much. Know what he said?”

  “I hope he said no.”

  “He said no. And he looked at me like I put a poisonous snake in his pants when I suggested it. He was appalled. And not because sleeping with Leslie is an appalling idea—she’s hot.”

  I grimace. “Thanks for that.”

  “Keeping you honest,” he says. “He was appalled because you are the only one he wants to horizontal mambo with, honey. You.” He points and then walks his pointing finger to me. “He’s gone for you, sweets. It’s obvious. And yet you two are avoiding each other when you should be screwing each other’s brains out.”

  Davis is a lot of things, but eloquent isn’t one of them.

  “I appreciate you coming here, Davis, but you’re wrong. I made a mistake and Vince didn’t forgive me. One snag and he was done.” That’s on him. It doesn’t make being without him any easier, but at least it wasn’t me who gave up.

  “I’m not wrong.” Davis casts a look around my house before sitting on the sofa and resting his elbows on his knees. The next words he says are spoken to his hands. “You know my story. How Hanna wrecked me.”

  I do know it, because Vince told me about it, not because Davis talks about it. Yet here he is. Talking about it.

  “You don’t get over something like that.” He rubs his thumb on the palm of his other hand in a nervous gesture before he turns the tables and starts in on me. “You wrecked Vince. He let down his guard and was about to step toward you in a big, big way when you snatched away your trust. You compared him to Lex, who he hates, by the way.”

  “He doesn’t hate him. He hates J.T.”

  “He hates them both. Men always hate the exes of the women they love.” He lifts his brows. “Like you hate Leslie.”

  Fair point. If I’m being one hundred percent honest, I do kind of hate her.

  “He didn’t sleep with Leslie. They didn’t make out or talk about how they wished they still had each other. Yeah, they may have traipsed down memory lane, but only in relation to you. He was starting to have permanent feelings for you that were more than him just getting his rocks off.”

  I let out a tiny laugh. “Did he put it that way?”

  “Probably not. He’s better than me. He’s a better person than me. He has boundaries. Knows what’s right. But lately? He’s been reminding me a lot of me. I can’t have that. I can’t have him turning into Davis from six years ago and ending up like Davis right now. That
’d be devastating for all of us.”

  I don’t want that for Vince either, but I don’t know what Davis expects. So I ask.

  “He’s the one mad at me. What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Swallow your pride and tell him how you feel,” he answers without hesitation.

  “Shouldn’t he be the one coming to me?” I bark, because what Davis suggests is terrifying. It involves me creeping onto a very narrow ledge when the wind is just starting to pick up speed.

  “Do you love him?”

  I press my lips together as my shoulders fold forward. I love Vince so much I’m having trouble staying upright.

  “That’s what I thought.” Davis stands, but as he passes by, he squeezes my arm and lowers himself so that he can look into my eyes. “Don’t give up on him, Jackie. He’s hurting and it’s not your fault. It’s Leslie’s, Lex’s, and partially J.T.’s fault. Are you going to let the three of them come between you?”

  He straightens and I turn around and ask the question I have to know the answer to before he goes. “Why didn’t you have this conversation with Vince? Shouldn’t he ride over here on a white steed and confess his feelings?”

  “Yes. He should. But Vince is in drown-the-sorrow mode and he’s a few months out from that epiphany. Maybe longer. I didn’t want to wait, in case things really went south. Like maybe one of you decides to Band-Aid that pain by sleeping with someone else. Or rekindling what you had with the guy who runs by your office window every weekday.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” I mutter, my pride stinging as much as the blood rushing to my cheeks. “J.T. and I are…I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Trust me, Jacqueline, you’d be surprised what the right kind of pain can make you do.” There’s a pregnant pause where neither of us says anything. “You want to be with Vince? Why not start now? One of you could be hit by a car later this year and die and you’ll have lost months of mind-blowing sex.”

  “That’s macabre.”

  Davis sends me a tight smile. “Think about what your pride’s worth, and then tell me I’m wrong.”

  He salutes and steps off my stoop, and I do as he says.

  I think about it.

  It’s all I think about.

  Chapter 30

  Vince

  In Kayla’s office I stop speaking midsentence when movement outside her window snags my attention.

  Remember that part from Terminator 2 where Sarah Connor witnesses the apocalypse and is powerless to stop it? I feel kind of like that, only without the chain-link fence to hold on to while the world is annihilated before my eyes.

  Jackie’s outside, talking to J.T. in a scenario scarily like the first time I was standing in here and watching her tackle her fears, he stops to talk to her and she fiddles with the water bottle in her hand as my heart incinerates to ash.

  Kayla silently watches with me.

  Jackie waves and J.T. nods, but not before he smiles and runs off again. I can’t bear to see the thumbs-up she might give, or her smile when she turns around, so I pretend to search for an email on my phone.

  “She did it,” I mumble.

  Kayla sighs in resignation, and that sound doesn’t give me much hope for my and Jackie’s future together. Kayla and Jackie were in here whispering last week. I don’t know what was said, but they left together. It’s not hard to guess that Kayla has chosen a side and it’s not mine.

  I can’t blame her.

  “I’m sorry, Vince” is all she says, and that feels like the felling blow.

  “Yeah. So am I.” I turn to leave, numb and wishing I’d brought a flask to work. I don’t always pour whiskey into my coffee, but now seems like a prime opportunity to start.

  “Vince?”

  I turn, hoping Kayla has a brilliant idea of how I can reverse my assery and win back the woman I love. If she does, she doesn’t tell me what it is.

  “What did you need when you walked in here?”

  “Oh. Um.” I lift my phone, which I forgot I was holding, and scroll through the email that propelled me in here in the first place. “Just a question about the meeting later…” I settle into the chair next to her desk to discuss, but I don’t hear a word I’m saying.

  The three o’clock meeting comes and goes.

  Jackie and I were exempt from running it. We sit silently at the boardroom table and jot notes on the pads in front of us. Or, well, she jots. I doodle on the edges of the paper.

  I call this series Stick Figures and Their Various Demises. This one went in the obvious hangman scenario. This one, knife through the heart. The one I’m drawing now is about to be run over by an oncoming car. He’s resigned to his plight, as you can tell by the daisy he’s clutching to his chest.

  Stupid daisies.

  Jaundice won Jackie. After my slotting him into the role of douchebag and my working hard to convince Jackie I was the one for her. None of it mattered. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe in spite of him banging some other girl he is the better man for her.

  I liked being angry and sort of drunk guy better. This abject misery stuff is ugly.

  The meeting adjourns and I stand with my pad and empty coffee mug and shuffle with the crowd, my mind light-years away from work.

  “Going to McGreevy’s?” Ronald asks me. He’s on our sales force and a helluva nice guy.

  “McGreevy’s Pub?” I ask, wondering at the odd invite. We aren’t buddies and never do anything socially together, so the request is strange.

  “Yes.” Jackie materializes at my left elbow. “When Faye wrapped the meeting, she dismissed us for the day. She invited everyone in this room out for a Friday-afternoon drink on the Brookdale Group.” She glances at the pad of paper pressed against my chest. “You must have been busy writing your to-do list.”

  It’s morbid to think of my stick-men deaths as my to-do list, but neither will I lie and say I don’t envy them that their pain is finally over.

  “Must have,” I answer, my voice devoid of emotion.

  “Ron, Vince and I have a few things to go over, but I promise to let him go ASAP. Save him a seat.” She smiles at him and Ronald waves and walks out. Just leaves me in here with her. Alone.

  Some friend.

  Before I can craft an excuse to escape the conference room, Jackie closes us inside and gestures to the wide table, a pair of chairs nearest us in particular.

  “Sit for a second?” she invites. “I need to set some ground rules for us working together.”

  A deep sigh works its way up from my gut. She’s probably right. Avoiding each other during our breakup hasn’t resulted in a well-oiled working relationship.

  I lower myself into my previously vacated chair and put my pad facedown next to my coffee mug. I consider flipping it over and adding a stick-man death by electric chair. Maybe later.

  Jackie sits across from me rather than beside me and opens her pad folio. Flipping a page, she reviews a tidy bullet list. She’s overthought this and I’m not surprised. I’m the one who doesn’t overthink. Hell, I don’t think.

  Maybe we were doomed from the start.

  “Item number one,” she begins. “If we’re going to continue sharing VP—and I’m not planning on stepping down. Are you?”

  I shake my head and dredge up a hint of the humor that has helped me survive many a terrible situation. “I’m planning on advancing to president, though, so we’ll only have to deal with one another as equals until my inevitable promotion.”

  Her smile is tolerant.

  “Right.” Her eyes go back to her list. “I thought we’d split the meetings so we aren’t attending them together all the time.”

  Ouch. That burning feeling in my chest is less likely from the hot wings I ate on autopilot for lunch and more likely because Jackie just cracked open my chest cavity. I can’t let the torture continue. It’s inhumane. So I blurt out what I’m thinking.

  “Because you and J.T. are back together, and it’s not kosher for you and me to see each other too much.�
� Makes sense. Relationships have no prayer of making it when outside parties are involved. I can’t help adding a petulant “I still think you can do better.”

  “Well, probably.” She draws a line through the item and looks up at me. “But you’re the one I’m in love with, so I guess I’ll have to make it work.”

  Brown eyes seek mine and I hold on to that gaze with such desperation, I forget to inhale.

  “I don’t think we should do too many meetings together because it’s obvious how much we love each other,” she tells me. “To avoid everyone being grossed out all the time, we should keep our desires reserved for before nine and after five.”

  I’m staring in disbelief, like if I blink she’ll vanish in a puff of smoke and I’ll realize I hallucinated everything. She stands and walks to my chair. I’m peering up at her shining eyes, my mind mush.

  “I saw you outside with J.T.,” I say, my voice hollow.

  “Yes, you did. And like when I saw you with Leslie, you have no idea what I said to him. Do you?”

  I guess I don’t.

  Jackie lowers herself onto my lap and my arms wrap her slim waist before I can warn them not to. God. I’ve missed her too much for words. It’s taking everything to keep from crushing her against me and putting my lips on her neck. Burying my nose in her hair and inhaling deeply.

  Her arms loop my neck as she regards me like she’s sad that I’m not very bright. “I asked him if he’d run a different route.”

  I must not be very bright because her statement makes no sense.

  “J.T.,” she clarifies. “When I was outside, I apologized for Bethany kicking him in the nuts, and I asked him for a favor.”

  My lips twitch with a budding smile. “Bethany kicked him in the nuts?”

  Remind me to buy Bethany something nice. Like a car.

  “She did. Anyway, I told J.T. I was in love with you—and that I have been since you kissed me—and that he needed to choose a different route to run because I don’t want to remember how stupid I was every day when he jogs by.”