“Hey, Jess.” Jaylen pokes his head into the living room, and when he sees me sitting on the couch he comes in and sits beside me. He leans back and smiles. “Good news. Malcolm said you can stay with him when he gets back, for however long you need to.”
“Are you sure he wouldn’t mind? I don’t want to be in his way. In anyone’s way, for that matter.”
Jaylen chuckles and starts playing with my hair by twisting the longest strand in the back around his finger. This always calms me down. “He’s cool with it, Jess. Just relax.”
“When am I going over there?” I ask.
“When he gets back. In about four days.”
Suddenly, my stomach growls, and I realize I haven’t eaten since this morning and it’s almost five now. I stand up and walk into the kitchen. “Do you want anything to eat?”
“You cooking it?” Jaylen asks in mock horror.
“Yes, I’m cooking it,” I say, placing my hands on my hips. “What do you have here to eat?”
Jaylen shrugs. “Look in the fridge.”
I look inside and find a pack of chicken and a pack of pork chops. Either one will do for tonight, but I grab the chicken, figuring chicken will still taste good even if the skin ends up a little darker than anticipated.
I place the chicken on the counter, but it’s still a little frozen, so I go back and sit next to Jaylen on the couch. “So what were you up to before I got here,” I ask him.
“Just working out. Nothing much.”
I lean back and close my eyes. I open my eyes a few seconds later to Jaylen staring at me, and my heart starts beating faster. “Hey.” I breathe, fighting back my heart attack.
“Hey,” he says in a low voice. “You tired?”
I shake my head. “Nope. Just thinking.”
Chapter 4
I walk around Jaylen’s apartment trying to distract myself while he’s working at his bar and the chicken fries in the skillet. I pace back and forth down the hallway that separates the kitchen and living room from the rest of the apartment. I finally decide to plant myself in one of the kitchen chairs and rub my cell phone between my hands while listening to the chicken sizzle.
I tap my foot against the floor and try to keep thoughts of Chris out of my head. I rub my sore arm not even wanting to think about how bad my back hurts from being slammed into the entertainment center twice. A bath would be nice right about now.
It isn’t until after I have started the bathwater that I remember the chicken. Sure enough, when I flip them over the other side is burned. I shake my head. This is embarrassing. I watch carefully as the chicken cooks on the other side, and then I take it out and place the pieces on a plate and paper towels I laid out. I collapse back in the kitchen chair and wonder what excuse I’m going to tell Jaylen about the chicken. I stare at them on the counter, half black and half golden brown, and wonder if I could fool him if I set all the chicken golden-side up. Maybe I should cook something else with the chicken, like mashed potatoes or corn or something. I stand up again and start to search his cabinets, then grab a simple box of mac and cheese.
I grab a pot from the dish rack and start filling it with water. As I watch the water fill the pot, I suddenly remember my bathwater is still running and drop the pot spilling the water all over the floor, the counter, and a little on the chicken. I ignore it and sprint toward the bathroom. I shut the water off just as it reaches the rim of the tub.
I let out a breath and sit beside the tub, staring at the pink-and-white bubbles. I stick one finger in and pull it out, realizing the hot water was going full blast the whole time. A hot bath would be relaxing, but I don’t want to boil.
I check the clock in the bathroom that hangs above the toilet. It’s nearly six o clock, and Jaylen should be back any second. I stand up and walk back to the kitchen. I wipe up the mess I made before fixing Jaylen a plate of the least-burned chicken and setting it on the table. They still look burned, but that’s the best I can make them look right now. I stare at the plate I made for him and remember I still need to make the mac and cheese.
I’m cleaning the pot I dropped, when the door opens and I hear footsteps. I spring around sharply, and Jaylen is standing there with his hands up in surrender. Then he laughs. “You gonna knock me out in my own house?” He’s staring at the pot in my hand.
I place it on the stove before I smile. “Yeah. You fuck with Jaylen, you fuck with me.”
Jaylen nods approvingly as he walks into the kitchen and stares at the chicken. “You made this?” I nod. “Looks good.”
“No, it’s not,” I admit despite myself. “It’s burned on the other side.”
Jaylen gives me a weird look before he turns one of the pieces over. “Oh, I see.” Then he laughs. “How do you burn chicken?”
“I was distracted,” I say, staring down at his floor again. I wonder how smooth it will feel beneath my socks tomorrow morning. “Daydreaming I guess.”
“About what?”
I look up and see his brown eyes poring into mine. “About today, I guess. Mostly.”
Jaylen nods before walking closer to me. “It’s gonna be all right.” He wraps his arms around me and pulls me in tight. I can’t help but deeply inhale my favorite cologne. I sigh and melt into my best friend’s arms. “He will never hurt you again. I promise,” Jaylen says.
I nod even though in my heart I can’t help but think how difficult stopping Chris from hurting me would be, especially since I’m still in love with him.
Chapter 5
I lie in Jaylen’s guest bed facing the ceiling wishing I could see the stars, but I’m feeling too sore right now. The bath helped a lot, but I had to get out earlier than I wanted to, since the chicken didn’t sit too well with Jaylen’s stomach.
I close my eyes, but see Chris so quickly I reopen them and realize it’s going to be a long night. I wish I can get my mind off him, but all I can think about is the girl I saw him with in the car. What does she have that I don’t have, other than a nice car?
It’s breaking my heart to think about him telling someone else he loves them. Maybe he would say it just to make love to them. It doesn’t make it better, though. I turn onto my side to stare at the wall. As I stare at the wall, I see it from the corner of my eye. It’s crawling on the headboard, and before I can act my age and grab my shoe, Jaylen bursts into the room wearing only his boxer shorts.
“What the hell you screaming for?” He scans the room, and then looks out the window. I didn’t even realize I’d screamed.
“There’s a spider right here by my head,” I say, rolling over in the bed so he can kill it.
Jaylen has the most pissed-off look on his face. “You called me in here for a spider?” He walks over to the wall and picks up my shoe and kills my roommate.
“I didn’t hear me call you,” I mumble. “But thank you, though.”
“Jess”—he plops down beside me and pats my bare thigh—“you have to let Chris go. I know that’s why you can’t sleep.”
“I’m trying to. It’s not that easy.” I pause before I continue. “I can’t stop loving someone just because of the mistakes they’ve made. It’s going to take some time.”
“I know that, Jess. I just want you to keep moving forward and not look back.”
“I am, but sometimes I feel like I’m in the middle. I feel like . . .” I stop. I don’t want to finish that sentence as much as I thought I did. The truth is I feel that Chris and I can still work things out and be together. Maybe even be a family one day. I’ve invested two years of my life with him, and I would hate to throw it away to start off brand new with someone who I might break up with in the end anyway. I guess I’m not a real positive thinker, but that’s honestly how I feel. It seems stupid. Sometimes I think even my love for Chris is stupid, but it’s like loving the nerd in school. Just because no one else likes them or understands them doesn’t mean you can’t be happy with them and make a great team.
Jaylen is quiet. I smile at him. “I be
tter get to sleep. I’m going to try again.”
“What if you still can’t sleep?” he asks.
“I’ll come sleep in your bed.” I shrug.
Jaylen stands up from my bed and smiles at me. “I’ll hold you to it,” he says, then leaves.
#
The next morning I wake up to Jaylen’s deep-brown eyes staring into mine. I close my mouth sharply, afraid I will disgust him with my morning breath. “Good morning. I’ll let you go back to sleep if you want. I just wanted you to know that I’ve made breakfast for you.”
I lift my head up, feel the pain shoot up my back, and collapse back down. Luckily, Jaylen doesn’t question my behavior. He rises and starts walking back to the kitchen. “I’ll save you a plate.”
I make a low sound that says I agree. I lie in bed looking for a clock or my cell phone so I can figure out what time it is. It’s probably around seven since Jaylen normally goes to his sports bar called Miller to check on everything before it opens at eleven o clock. Jaylen is the owner and founder, and Malcolm is the manager. The bar was all Jaylen’s idea, and he set up the whole thing and did all the hard work himself. I was in college at the time, and Malcolm was working at a mechanic’s garage and cutting people’s hair on the side. Jaylen and I entered college together, and we both dropped out. He dropped out to start a career, and even though I dropped out for the same reason mine didn’t turn out the way I planned.
A few hours later, I wake up again and roll over trying not to rekindle the fire in my back and arms and legs. I hate it that I forgot to pack PJs when I was rushing to leave Chris’s place, but thankfully Jaylen loaned me his gigantic white shirt. I sit up and slide my legs one at a time onto the floor. My leg stings when I stand up, but I know the pain is worth it to get to Jaylen’s cooking.
I walk in the kitchen and see a white index card on Jaylen’s table. It reads, “Gone to work. Angela is coming over around six when I get off, so be in your bedroom for the night by then. Thanks. PS. Your eggs are in the fridge.”
I walk over to the stove and pull out the plate he left for me. It has two link sausages and two strips of bacon. I open the fridge to get the eggs and notice my favorite cheese and bacon omelet sitting on a paper plate.
After stuffing myself silly, I get up and wash the dishes. Jaylen doesn’t have a lot of dirty dishes—just a few plates and the pan he used for the eggs. I wash them quickly, then wipe the table off with a rag I find in one of his dish drawers.
I wash off the stove and clean the inside of the oven. It makes me feel productive and needed. I set out to clean the refrigerator, empting out its contents before scrubbing the shelves inside with soap and water. I restock the fridge in a nice order for Jaylen. I put the meat products on the bottom, butter and cheese at the top, and miscellaneous foods like leftovers in the middle.
I look around the kitchen for anything I had missed, and when I don’t see anything I stroll to the living room. I start straightening up in there before I bore myself with just sitting on the couch. I throw away some notable trash before hunting down the vacuum. I walk down the hallway and open the linen closet. All the shelves are full of towels and cleaning supplies but no vacuum. I search the laundry room and find the vacuum leaning against the wall. The laundry room is a nice touch for this apartment and holds a washer and dryer, a bunch of dirty clothes, and the vacuum.
I am about to walk out, when I see a pile of female clothes in the corner of the floor.
I leave the room but move at a slower pace. My mood has changed, and even though I hate to admit it, I know it’s true. I’m jealous. I’m jealous of the love Jaylen and Angela have. Angela and I aren’t the best of friends—acquaintances at most, really—but I know she’s good for Jaylen. The few times I interacted with her she acted irritated with me. She knows Jaylen and I practically grew up together, but I don’t think she really trusts him alone with me, but I’ve never given her a reason not to.
I start vacuuming the living room and move on to the hallways and my guest room. I’m about to shut the vacuum off and roll up the cord I have plugged in, when I think about cleaning Jaylen’s room. I shrug and open his door. The room is spacious and uncluttered. The floors are free of clothes, and the bed is already made up. The dresser is the only thing unorganized with watches, money, and a few other miscellaneous items scattered about.
Once I finish the floor, I shut the vacuum off. I turn to leave, when a picture on his dresser stops me. It’s a picture of his parents when they were still together, and it makes me smile. His parents divorced around the time Jaylen turned thirteen.
Neither Jaylen nor Malcolm took the divorce too hard. They still saw their father after the divorce, but not too much after they moved here to Chicago. The two of them stayed more in contact with their mom, Sheri, who was like a mother to me. I smile, looking into Sheri’s deep-brown eyes in the photo. That is really the only trait passed down to her children. I look to the man beside her, and he is the forty-five-year-old version of his sons. The males apparently have the dominant genes, and the man is definitely Jaylen’s father.
I look around the dresser and see another picture in its frame of Jaylen when he was around sixteen. He’s in his suit and standing next to his prom date, a girl from our graduating class named Kelly. They were together at the time, but he didn’t love her, and they only lasted about a month or so after the prom. Jaylen had to have been the most attractive and popular person in our senior class. I was a junior, and Malcolm had already graduated and was trying out college. Even though Jaylen gave me a ride home every day from school, I was never popular myself. People just knew me as the girl with the long hair or Jaylen’s friend, but I was never mistaken as his girlfriend.
It’s mostly because we never acted like boyfriend and girlfriend for people to assume we were. We acted more like family, and I swore people probably thought I was his cousin twice removed or something. Jaylen and I always got along, and we always understood each other. From the outside looking in it would make sense that we would go together, but, I don’t know—it just never happened. It’s not that I don’t think he is handsome, because Jaylen’s the most attractive person I know. Everyone has their taste of what they like, and Jaylen has everything I would want in a partner. He’s tall, smart, motivated, strong-muscled, but not too ripped that veins show on his neck, and has my favorite sexy face.
I smile for half a second. No one knows this but me and him, but Jaylen was my first time. I was thirteen years old, and Jaylen was fifteen and self-centered back then, but I didn’t care. I wanted to know what sex was like, and I didn’t trust anybody else but him.
It was the summer before my eighth-grade year, and I excused myself from the girls I was playing jump rope with to find Jaylen sitting on his porch. He knew what I wanted, but we couldn’t do it in the house. We went behind his house and behind the garden Jaylen’s mother kept in the backyard. We ducked down low past the open window, where his mother was preparing Southern fried chicken, corn, and mashed potatoes—a dinner I was always informally invited to if my grandmother had plans. We went behind the old red shed, which held a rusted sports car from Jaylen’s dad’s younger days, and other useless junk. It was there that we both had our first kiss. It was there that Jaylen saw me without my shirt on. I had no breasts at all, but Jaylen didn’t care. He told me he thought I was pretty, with my chubby cheeks and skinny body. His body was also forming out with deep abs and strong, thin arms that wrapped around me, and held me close as he lifted me up on his father’s car.
Our sex was interrupted by both a shout from a girl indicating it was my turn to jump rope and Jaylen’s mom calling him to eat, but we were somehow satisfied.
I’ve never had sex with Jaylen since that day, and the “what ifs” are now playing in my head. I rub my hand against Jaylen’s face in the photo, and then look away trying to get the thought of how I lost my virginity out of my head. I never really thought about the possibilities of me and him being together, but it seemed th
at whenever I was single he was taken, and vice versa. Even now Jaylen has started a relationship with Angela, whom he met four months ago, and it’s already serious. I sigh and look away.
I leave the room and grab the vacuum to take it back to the laundry room, when my phone starts ringing. I walk over to my room and am about to answer, until I see Chris’s name on the caller ID screen. I swallow hard and listen to it ring. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d come here to get me. When I left him after finding out about him cheating on me, I came here, and he probably thinks this time is no different. I look toward the door of the room and think about the front door. Did Jaylen lock it? I know I didn’t. My heart starts racing, and my head starts throbbing.
Finally, the phone stops ringing, but it starts again three seconds later. I drop my phone back on the bed and decide to go peek out the front window. Even if Chris knows there’s a high chance I’m here, there’s no way to actually prove it until he sees me, but that’s not going to happen.
I walk out of my room and peek out the window behind the couch. The window view looks out to the street, like Chris’s apartment. There are hardly any cars on the street, and none of the cars belongs to Chris. Not even the blue Accord I saw him in last night is outside. I close the blinds and take a deep breath. My phone in the room also stops ringing. I don’t know if he’s going to show up here or if he doesn’t care about me anymore, but I’m not stepping one foot out of this place with that asshole on the loose.
I look up at the digital clock above the TV that reads 3:12 p.m. I still have a lot of time before Jaylen comes home with Angela at six. I let out a breath and sink into the couch. As soon as my body meets the soft fabric, all the day’s labor finally catches up to me, and I feel a lot more tired than I thought I was.
I sit up for two minutes, and then move to leaning on the armrest, and somehow, two hours later, I wake up lying out flat on the whole couch with the armrest as my pillow. I look at the time and realize I have about forty-five minutes before Jaylen comes back. I spring up but regret it after it makes my head spin and the soreness of my body wakes up. I start heading to my room, when I hear my stomach growling. I grab a soda, bag of chips, and put together a ham-and-cheese sandwich.
When Love Hurts Page 2