Jake had the lasagna on the table, which was set with plates bordered with olive, orange, and gold tulips, mismatched plastic cups and paper napkins from Dunkin Donuts.
“Dinner is served,” he announced solemnly. I sat across from him and watched as he shoveled an enormous amount of layered pasta onto the plate.
I took a bite and closed my eyes. “This is amazing. I had no idea you were such an awesome cook, Jake.”
“I was thinking about shaking up my weekly dinner menu a little. But maybe I have to make a little less next time. I think this lasagna will last a whole month.” He motioned to the enormous dish in the center of the table.
We laughed and joked through dinner, and I helped him portion some of his delicious lasagna to freeze for later. We did the couple of dishes we made side by side at the sink and had a soap sud fight that left us breathless and necessitated getting out the mop.
“I should invite you over more often,” Jake commented as I sopped up the last of the water. “Awesome dinner and a spic and span kitchen?”
“The dinner was all you. And I only mopped because I feel bad about how totally soaked you got. I didn’t want to be a sore winner.” I shrieked when he came at me, his fingers bent to tickle my sides.
When we were done in the kitchen, it was only eight.
“Wow.” Jake stretched and yawned a huge fake yawn. “I’m ready for bed.”
I felt a sudden flurry of nerves. “Um, you want to go to bed?”
He started down the hall backwards and crooked his finger at me. “Yep. C’mon. It’s chilly. I need you to warm me up.”
I swallowed hard. “What if your father comes home soon?”
“Pool and darts tonight. He’ll be in after midnight, and he’ll go straight to bed. C’mon.” He was at the door of his room now. He crooked his finger again, and I followed like I was connected by a string.
He shut the door and we tumbled back on his bed in his dim room.
“What do you usually do on Friday nights when we don’t go out?” I ran my fingers through his hair.
“I wait for you to call me. Or I play video games.” He looked at me and smiled. “Wanna play?”
“Okay. But I don’t want you to be a big baby if you lose.” I sat, cross-legged, and waited while he flipped on his PS3 and opened a dresser drawer full of games. He took out one and held it front forward, his face serious.
“This is Little Big Planet. Have you ever played this game?” I shook my head. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “This game is the most amazing game in the world. This game will change your life. Are you ready to play this game? Brenna, stop laughing. Are you ready?”
I smoothed my mouth out and tried to be as serious as I could. “Okay.”
He put the game in, set up the remotes, and explained the directions. Which weren’t all that specific, since the point of the game was basically to create worlds that you could play in. Our Sackpeople flipped and whirled through cities and around fantastic gardens of our own creation. We engaged in friendly battles, met other Sackpeople, and explored the graphics and world possibilities. Jake and I made an amazing team; he was careful and thoughtful, I was experimental and fearless and our world grew and expanded like an amazing Wonderland. We got so sucked into the game, I had no clue at all how much time had gone by, but I couldn’t contemplate stopping. Before we knew it, we heard the roar of an engine outside, and Jake’s father was home. I froze, and my Sackgirl’s menacing high kick fell short of Jake’s Sackboy’s karate slash.
“No worries.” Jake rubbed a hand on my arm. “He’s not even going to stop in here.”
I heard his father put his keys down in the kitchen, then listened with dread as his heavy boot-steps echoed down the hall, closer and closer to Jake’s door. I was positive he’d stop and poke his head in, especially since the light from the television was still on, but he didn’t. The master bedroom door opened and snapped shut.
I let out a huge breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding in.
Jake put an arm around me. “He wouldn’t care if he knew. I swear.”
I felt a hot prickle when I realized that Jake was saying it because he was positive about it. Because he’d had other girls over and his father hadn’t cared.
Jake put the controls away, flipped the TV off, and put an arm around me again, but I brushed it off. “Don’t be so worried,” he crooned in my ear.
“I’m not.”
“What’s wrong?” He put a hand on my chin and rubbed it gently with his fingers. “Brenna? Tell me.”
“Was she here? Did she stay over?” It was stupid to ask. We were trying to forget that it had all happened, not keep dragging it out over and over. Especially since I was the one who broke up with Jake and fooled around with Saxon.
“Do you want me to answer that? Really?” Jake’s voice was hard with frustration.
“I guess you already answered.” I looked around his cramped, bland room, so foreign in the dark. It was weird to think that this was the exact place Jake sat when we had our marathon phone conversations. I decided to focus on those thoughts and how generally good the night had been instead of pointing fingers. Especially when I really had no business pointing out anyone else’s mess ups. “It really doesn’t matter. I’m ready to go to sleep now.” I smiled.
Jake’s return smile was cautious. “Do you need to wash your face and all that?”
I nodded and grabbed my overnight bag, feeling weird and shy suddenly. “Okay, I’m going.”
“Okay.” He laughed and fell back on the bed. “I’ll be right here.”
I changed in the bathroom and spent a long time washing my face and brushing my teeth. I snuck back in the room and found Jake dozing. I poked him awake, and he stumbled across the hall. I snuggled under the covers while he was getting ready, and his pillow felt uncomfortable under my head, but smelled perfectly familiar, just like Jake.
He opened the door softly and closed it behind him. He pulled off his shirt and let his jeans drop, then yanked off his socks, balled them all up and threw them in the hamper in the corner of his room. He stood for a long minute, so handsome in just his boxers, in front of the bed, then slid in next to me. His body was long and warm next to mine, and I rolled into his arms, where I fit snug and tight as a key in a lock.
He looked down at my face in the dim flow from the streetlights that shined in his window. “I love how you look when you have no makeup on.”
“What? I spend a lot of time getting makeup on when I know I’m going to see you! I won’t do it anymore if you’re going to be unappreciative.” I leaned up and kissed his chin.
“You look great no matter what, but I love you without makeup on. You look so beautiful and, I guess I feel like I get to see you in a way no other guy gets to.” He pressed his mouth to mine.
“I love you so much,” I whispered when he pulled away.
“I love you.” His arms clamped around me tight. “More than anything in the world. Don’t forget that. I know I tried to be all cool with it, but it broke my heart when I thought I lost you.”
I held him tighter. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.”
He held me close and whispered. “Forget it. It’s just you and me, no problems, doing this thing together. We’ll be unstoppable.” His voice dropped off sleepily. A few minutes later, he was snoring softly, and I was still locked safe and sure in his arms.
Chapter Eighteen
After that night, life went back to something like the normal it had been before Jake and I broke up, but it wasn’t exactly the same. For one thing, my cross country glories meant that our team kept going and going, and the season stretched out all the way to states. Once Mom gave her okay for me to run again, I was as fast as ever. I had been a little nervous that with no craziness to worry about, no stresses to work out on the track, I’d just stop running. But that didn’t happen. In fact, I ran faster, the buzzing in my head gone and replaced with calm focus.
Jake mad
e every big meet with my parents. He and Mom had come to an uneasy truce.
“Bren, don’t you think that dating a little more would be a good thing?” she had asked the night before I went back to school.
I’d said it before, and I would say it again; my mother was the best mother on earth, but she was no dummy. She had seen most of the whole sordid thing unfold right in front of her eyes, and she was dead set on milking the momentum of it.
“I will,” I said honestly. “If I meet someone great, I will hang out with him. I promise. But, Mom, I have to say this; Jake is awesome. It sounds like the biggest teenage cliché, but you don’t understand what he’s like.”
Mom sighed a long, tortured sigh. “Jake is a great guy,” she said with no real conviction. “But that doesn’t mean you two have to be joined at the hip to be happy.”
“I hardly see him,” I protested. “We only see each other for a few hours in school, and he works a lot. Plus that I have cross country, and I’ve been seeing Kelsie more.” Kelsie and Chris decided to spend more time with friends, since they’d been practically living together and getting on each other’s nerves. I was glad that she reached out to me. “I’m not exactly weeping every minute I’m not with him.” Though I did get sad without him. Especially when the panic of our breakup rushed over me once in a while.
“I just want you to keep your options open,” Mom said, and then she said a few more things that were basically along the same line of the first statement, and I listened respectfully, but as soon as we were done talking, I gave her a kiss and when she left my room, I called Jake. I did not tell him what Mom and I talked about.
Because things with Jake were still a work in progress, which I liked, but had to be careful with.
Like I had to balance what ‘freedoms’ I wanted with what might hurt his feelings. Hence, no direct hanging out with Saxon. Who had, since our last meeting at my sick-bed, been in and out of the pants of a half a dozen girls, at least that could be confirmed. That didn’t really creep me out; what was weird was the kinds of girls he was picking; brains, cross-country runners, and artistic girls, all types that in some form or another I liked, respected, and felt a definite connection with. He only ever commented on it once, in Government.
We were viciously trying to capture more blue states in a geeky bid to control Sanotoni’s U.S. map. I said something random, and he laughed. That wasn’t that out of the norm; I had a fair ability to crack Saxon up.
He looked leaner, a new set of tattoos peeked out from under the sleeves of his Blondie t-shirt, and his hair was cut in a low mohawk. He also had a lip ring, which he moved with his tongue incessantly. Now he was laughing and the silver hoop around his bottom lip gleamed. “You’re damn funny, Blix.”
“I’m glad I can amuse you.” I rolled my eyes at him, but I actually meant it.
“It’s not as easy as you’d think,” he confessed. “I know I have a short attention span, but that’s only because I’m hard to amuse, not easy. You were the only girl I’ve ever met who kept my interest.” He grinned, a tight, angry slash of his mouth. “But you and Jake deserve each other. Don’t you?”
I looked busily down at my paper. “I’m not answering that,” I said quietly. The good mood was gone and we were back to business.
Other than Saxon, Jake and I tried to spend more time with other people, friends and in groups. My tshirts, the fairytale ones, sold as quickly as the ones I had made for Frankford’s up-and-coming band, Folly, had, and without an awesome group of musicians to push them. Kelsie encouraged me to bring them to some local art fairs, and I was doing really well selling them and meeting fantastically cool people.
Like the guy who made knee-high leather boots by hand. Apparently Steven Tyler from Aerosmith had three pairs. I met a lady who made bark baskets based on an ancient Native American template. I also met jewelers, instrument makers, weavers, and wood carvers. It was like this whole other community within a community.
And Jake was mostly cool with it. “I want you to do your thing,” he said, as he glared at the young drum maker’s apprentice with dreads and a big smile for me and Kelsie. “I trust you.”
And that was the truth. If nothing else, Jake knew I was honest. Even if I couldn’t tell him right away, Jake knew I’d always eventually come clean. Even if my compulsion to always tell the truth had so much more to do with my inability to deal with any bottled-up emotions than a truly good spirit.
Not that that was easy. Once Jake and I had lounged around kissing and laughing for an entire afternoon, I made him tell me. Everything. I came clean too, because I thought it was important to do it. Even if it sucked. Which it did.
Apparently the condom wrapper on the bed hadn’t been a prop. Nikki hadn’t been anyone he particularly cared about, but that hadn’t stopped him from sleeping with her and easing into a casual dating relationship. Which added one more intimacy to his already overlong list.
And even though he’d slept with Nikki, he had no problem being incredibly pissed that Saxon and I had fooled around. We had found a spare, quiet afternoon to just be together in his little boring room. But we got to talking, and talking turned into arguing. Mainly about why my few sessions fooling around with Saxon carried more weight than his sex with Nikki.
“But you liked him,” he argued, his face rigid with anger.
“But you screwed her,” I said coldly.
We stared each other down until Jake nodded. “Fine. Can we call a truce?”
“I don’t know. Can we?”
“I want to.” He pulled me back into his arms and kissed me soundly. “Are we done driving each other crazy for a while?”
“I think so,” I said. And that was the truth, too.
And it was the truth that it felt good to be back with him. I loved to hear the rumble of his truck, which now pulled right into my driveway; I didn’t want Mom and Thorsten not knowing, and they were surprisingly cool with it. Mostly because February and March were so cold they made your stomach clench when the wind blew, and the thought of me in Jake’s always-warm truck was comforting to them.
It was on the way to school one random day in March when Jake brought up the one thing I hadn’t imagined him having any interest in.
“So I have junior prom this year.” He flipped radio stations.
“Oh, yeah? Do you have a hot date?” I snuggled next to him.
He laughed. “Maybe. Maybe not. My girlfriend is smoking’, but she’s this wild liberated woman. I’ll ask her, but she might shoot me down.”
“Don’t you think a wild, liberated woman might want a poufy dress and some body glitter and a corsage?” I was already getting a little rush just imagining it all.
“Are you saying you’ll go with me?” Jake asked.
I leaned over and kissed his neck, smooth and hot-skinned and perfect. “Of course I’ll go with you. You’ll dance with me, right?”
He blushed a little. I loved it. As I salivated over his reddened skin, he looked straight ahead wildly. “I want to. But my spine is pretty much soldered directly to my hips, Bren. I’m not really good at dancing.”
“I’ll teach you,” I promised. Not that I was world class, but I had a few moves. And the point of a prom was dancing. “And I’m not going to be able to go to the shore or anything after prom.” Speaking of the point of the prom.
He laughed again. “Do you really think I was expecting to weasel your virginity away on prom night? Do I look like that much of an uninspired jackass?”
“Don’t ask,” I teased. “You can go back out with your friends after you drop me, or Mom can give me a ride home.”
He shook his head. “I know you try to be all fair-minded, but give me some credit. I’m not going to split after prom without you, and I’m sure as hell not asking Mom to come pick you up.” He shivered. “That just gave me a chill. Like, an actual chill down my spine.”
“What? The idea of leaving me after prom?”
“No, the image of the evil shooti
ng from your mother’s eyes when she finds out that someone is ditching her little girl.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “I have no defense against that kind of pure angry woman power.”
“You have no defense against any woman power.” I grinned.
“Hey,” Jake said as Frankford came into view. “Today started out pretty awesome. Let’s skip, I’ll take you to the new Christian Bale movie so you can squeal over him and then I’ll take you back to my place and you can calm my bruised ego. Eh? Eh?” His gray eyes were crinkled up with his smile.
Who could say no to that? My heart felt big and warm and blooming. “Let’s do it.”
Christian Bale was delicious. Almost as delicious as the mozzarella and tomato sub with extra oil and vinegar I ate after. Then we did go back to Jake’s house. We’d been taking it reasonably slow since we got back together. Part of the whole reconciliation thing involved me getting over the fact that Jake’s wrongs would just have to be more extreme than mine. I was furious that he slept with another girl, but we were completely broken up at the time. I had gone as far as I’d gone with anyone with Saxon. I didn’t love it, but I understood that making peace meant I had to let it go as best I could.
But the giddiness of the whole afternoon made us even giddier in bed. Jake stripped down to his boxers. “C’mon. Skivvies time,” he added, shaking his hips in what I know he thought was an alluring way. It made me laugh so hard, I almost couldn’t breathe.
“I hate that word,” I gasped out when he finally stopped gyrating in front of me.
Winded, he fell on the bed next to a fully-clothed me. “What word?” he panted.
“Skivvies. Doesn’t it just sound kind of gross?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think it was an old-fashioned word for men’s underwear.”
“Well, that makes sense then. There’s nothing grosser than men’s underwear.”
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