I’m not stingy, okay?
Anyway, shoes in my purse, I start walking. And walking and walking, and eventually, I stop walking and start jogging. Despite the five pounds and the back-slide I’ve started to my previous, less fit self, I can keep up a strong pace with little issue. So I keep going, careful to dodge broken glass and big rocks in my bare feet and trying not to think about how much gravel hurts to run on. Damn the pedicurist and her expert callous-filing techniques. If only I had a little bit of roughness on my soles, I might be okay.
Jogging along, it doesn’t take long at all for me to find myself in the parking lot of Tom’s Workout World. Noah’s car is there, as I knew it would be, facing the front doors of the gym. Heaving for air, I lean back onto his hood to give myself a moment. I rub my sore feet until the throbbing subsides and then slip on my gorgeous shoes once again.
I wince for the first few steps, remind myself that beauty is pain, and march forward with determination in my gaze. I don’t need to waste any more time goofing around. I know who Jennifer Smith is now and I know what she wants.
And if he doesn’t want me back, well… I’ll deal with it in due time.
Instead of dwelling on the “what ifs” as I might have done before, I decide not to think about it, concentrating my energy on making only one possibility a reality. Still, facing him is harder than I expect. When I push through the front door and find him packing up for the night, I almost lose all my resolve and run away.
“Jen,” he says, startled. “What are you…”
“Hi,” I interrupt him, my nerves jolting me forward through the door. I try not to fidget with my skirt too much or trip on my own feet as I cross the gym floor. Dressed like this, I’m sure I look pretty ridiculous in a gym after hours.
“You look great.” He states it simply, so it’s hard to read anything more or less than a comment on the truth. ‘You’ve been keeping up with your workouts?”
I nod, embarrassed to admit to finding success on my own. I don’t know why that embarrasses me. Maybe I just feel guilty for taking our special connection and destroying it with my own self-reliance. Which is completely ridiculous.
“That’s great,” he says, his mouth forming the slightest smile. “I’m really proud of you. I always said you didn’t need me.”
I wince, stung by his comment.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he says immediately, wincing himself. “I just meant that you always had it in you and you didn’t need me playing the motivator, barking orders at you all the time.
“I know,” I mutter, careful to look away instead of betraying my relief. He can read me like a book no matter what I do, but I have to try at the very least. “But I did like having you around. It was nice to have a run buddy, you know?”
“Well, I’m just closing up,” says Noah, master of the obvious. He adjusts the strap of the bag higher up onto his shoulder, hitting the switch on his way by. A single row of recessed lights illuminates the front of the gym now, sending a cascade of glittering light out from my sequined top. Like I’m a giant disco ball or something. He walks toward me, making his pathetic small talk all the way but I’m interested. “So, I guess, I’ll see you later? Are you going to start coming back to the gym now or have you been going somewhere else?”
I don’t want to let this charade go on anymore. There’s too much here that needs to be said, and I’m going to start saying it.
“Can we talk?” I say boldly, stepping in front of him.
His mouth forms a tight line as he considers me.
“Please, Noah. I have… Some things I’d like to say.”
Wordlessly, he sits down on the nearest bench and waits for me to speak. After the horrible things I’ve said to him, I know I’m lucky just to get his attention. And then, once I realize the magnitude of powerful stare on me, I can’t remember what I meant to say anyhow. He looks at his watch, just obviously enough to make me nervous, so I stutter right into my opening line.
“Everything that’s been going on in my life, these past months… This whole semester, really. I mean, Sean and Olivia, Claire, the project, the fighting… Everything,” I pause, and his eyes lift to meet mine. “It was all fake. All a game. I let it take over me and it did things to who I was. I—”
“Don’t try to make excuses, Jen,” he warns, though gently. “You said that stuff, not Olivia.”
“I know,” I say, a bit defensively. “I’m getting to that, okay? I did say those things and for that, I’m truly sorry. I just wanted you to know that, in all this time, I should’ve appreciated the one thing in my life that was truly real.”
He blinks at me for a moment, saying nothing.
“You, Noah. None of that other stuff was real at all, but you always were. You might’ve had your reasons for meeting me, but I’m lucky that you did. Because of that, we found something together. And even though I didn’t see it at the time, I do now. I’m sorry.”
I give it a moment, letting the words echo in the empty gym around us. But eventually, I just can’t stand the silence anymore. I need to hear something from him, anything, even if it’s not positive. Finally, I look over to him and find a thoughtful gaze, but nothing behind those eyes that I can interpret as good. I decide to save my dignity then and I walk out, not daring to look behind me.
I just turn on those spiky heels and walk my little butt right out of that awkward situation.
Outside and alone, I really regret not taking a cab down here, not because I’m too tired to walk home but because my feet are ready to stage an anarchy at any moment. Conscious that Noah might still be watching me as I toddle my way across the parking lot, I leave the shoes on my aching feet, forcing myself to practice Claire’s walk all the way out of his line of sight.
In my head, I’m singing a chorus of ouches with every single step, and still I roll slowly from my heel to my toe, heel to toe, heel to toe. Sashaying, swaying, each step deliberate.
If I were Claire, I’d instead be counting down in my head to the moment I hear Noah call out my name and tell me to stop. But I’m Jennifer, and although I have newfound self-esteem, I’m not about to start acting like I keep men on a leash behind me. Noah can do what’s right for Noah, what he feels in his heart. I’ve said my piece and now I just have to wait for him to make up his mind.
He’ll find me when he knows what he wants… provided I’m even what he wants.
Somewhere around my twenty-fifth step away from Tom’s Workout World, I hear the door clang shut. That door doesn’t normally make any noise when it shuts, unless someone pushes it closed, wanting me to hear it. I turn and there he is, his hands on his hips.
“I promised you I’d make you hear every word,” he says, practically yelling. “And I’ll make you hear every noise too, if that’s what it takes.”
With two car lengths between us, I want to run to him. Two things hold me back: my dignity and these stupid, stupid shoes. Instead, I take my well-practiced steps back in his direction. He walks out to meet me halfway.
“Noah—” I say, out of breath with anticipation.
“No, it’s my turn now,” he says, in a more commanding tone than I’ve ever heard him use on the gym floor with a stubborn client. It commands attention. It’s totally sexy. “Of course it was wrong of me to approach you for the reasons I did. You’re not someone to be stared at and mocked, as you seem to think. Whatever happened to you in school, with other kids, none of that matters anymore, Jen. You’re a beautiful woman, smart and funny, with a slight disadvantage that you have more than overcome. It shouldn’t matter to you what got my attention in the first place, not when I feel the way I do about you now.”
I sniffle, wiping a rogue tear from my cheek. I don’t want to cry, so I bite down on my tongue and look him straight in the eye.
“I love you, Jen.” He brushes the back of his hand along my cheek. “And I don’t love you because of or despite one stupid detail. I love you just as you are.”
When he le
ans down to kiss me, the pain in my feet suddenly vanishes. My stomach does a back-flip inside my tensed body. I don’t know what to say or do, aside from letting him continue to kiss me. His gentle lips release mine, kiss me sweetly once more, and then move away from me.
“I’ve been such an idiot,” I sigh, wrapping my arms around his neck.
“Nah,” he laughs lightly. “You’re just too thick-skulled for your own good.”
“Have you been talking to my mother?” I chuckle.
“Nice shoes, by the way,” he says, craning his neck around to see them. “Nice and high.”
“You like that?”
“It means I could do this more easily.” He kisses me again, more deeply this time. I decide that I too prefer the added height and shall invest in a small army of such shoes just for occasions like this. His slow kiss grows more passionate, turning into a fury of short kisses up and down my neck. His hot lips send a chill across my skin, lighting that fire all over again. Like we haven’t missed a step at all.
Noah’s hands press me against him and I respond to his every touch, thrilled beyond words. As he starts to pull me towards his car, the only one in the emptied parking lot, I catch the glint in his eye. The naughty teenager out on a date, scouting out the perfect spot for a “parking” encounter. I let him lead me there, just as turned on by the idea as he seems to be, but then something stops me just as he opens the back door to his sedan.
“Wait,” I say, pushing away from him. “I didn’t… I have to…”
He raises an eyebrow.
“I love you, too,” I grin up at him.
Noah’s answering smile quickly becomes another round of kisses and, eventually, we find our way into that back seat after all.
EPILOGUE
My name is Jennifer Smith, but my friends and family just call me Jen. You can friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, or read my blog Confessions of an Alter-Ego, but you won’t be able to learn all there is to know about me there. Not unless you spend the time to get to know me in person.
See, online, you’d never know that I have a Master’s degree in Sociology with a focus on modern communication, or that I’d spent the better part of a year being two people at the same time. Or that I’d recently been two points in a complicated love square. That’s right: two points.
And while my relationship status on Facebook might reveal that I am “in a relationship” with Noah Wayland, it won’t tell you how totally and completely in love we are. Or that we’re planning to secretly elope next month to the Bahamas with just our closest loved ones. Facebook doesn’t even know about it… because then it wouldn’t be very secret at all, would it?
It will tell you that I have a sister named Claire, but not how much we mean to each other. I’m not sure that I can even put that into words, come to think of it. But after a brief time of not speaking to each other, I’m happy to report that Claire will be serving as my maid of honor next month. And she’ll also be bringing along a very special guy as her date—a man named David whom she met through an online dating service and who fell in love with her before ever laying eyes on her. Give them a little time, and they’ll be walking down the aisle themselves before you know it.
Facebook also can’t tell you how much I’ve learned about myself and humanity in general, thanks to this little experiment. People like Olivia, Tom, and Sean really do exist. They’re out there. And when you do meet them, you may think they’re as cool and as perfect as any people can be. The truth is, you never know who they really are inside, not when they’re putting on such a good show. And if you let yourself get swept away by one of them (or by something like a soul-crushing sociological experiment), you’re only hurting yourself in the end.
So yeah… I might have the world’s plainest, most boring name. I might not be scorching hot like my sister. I might have to wear hearing aids just to function like “normal” people. And I might not exactly have lost that last ten pounds… yet.
But I know who I am and I love that person. I wouldn’t trade being Jennifer for anything in the world.
###
About the Author
Stephanie Haddad is a full-time mom by day and a writer by naptime. She lives in the Boston area with her loving husband, precocious toddler, and cuddly dog... with a new baby on the way! Visit her website www.stephaniehaddad.com for more information on her other titles or to learn about forthcoming titles.
Discover other titles by Stephanie Haddad at Smashwords.com.
###
Read on for an excerpt from THIRTY OR BUST, the next novel by Stephanie Haddad!
Coming Spring 2013 to eBook and paperback wherever books are sold online!
An excerpt from
THIRTY OR BUST by Stephanie Haddad
Coming Spring 2013
Chapter One – Cecile’s Big Idea
When we were children, the sixteen minutes between our birth times was my sister’s time to gloat. Sophie was once proud to be the first-born twin—eternally older and wiser, as she often reminded me. Now that our childhood has become a distant memory, however, those minutes between our births are all mine.
“So what’s it like, Sophie?”
“Don’t,” she says through gritted teeth. Our private night out has been clearly wearing on her all evening. Not one of the Cosmopolitans I’ve been putting in front of her has touched her edginess.
“What? Remind you how old you are?” I bat my eyelashes at her across the tabletop then clink my glass against hers. Bad mood or no, I have a civic duty to uphold. “I just want you to scope out twenty-nine and let me know how it is.”
She checks her watch, avoiding my eyes. “Well, Cecile, you have exactly ten minutes and forty-two seconds until you find out for yourself.”
“All right, you win,” I slump into my high-backed chair. “This isn’t any fun when you’re being an old fart.”
“Not funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny, Soph. I’m serious. You’re the worst birthday girl there ever was.” I check the wall clock above the bar counter, careful to avoid the eyes of the sketchy guy who’s been watching us since Sophie was twenty-eight and mostly sober. I still have over eight minutes to be the nagging kid sister, so I stick out my tongue at her.
“Well, what exactly do I have to be celebrating?” Sophie gestures widely about, her arms precise with her usual controlled frenzy. “There’s no party. There’s no one wishing us a happy birthday. It’s just me and you, still cramped together like we were in the womb. Nowhere to go, nothing to do.”
“That’s not fair. We have jobs. We have Brent!”
“Who ditched us to pick up some guy he met at Best Buy. Honestly, Cec, we can do better than this.”
Midnight hits and it’s now my birthday—yes, we’re a pair of the lucky twins born on separate days so we each have our own birthday. With six minutes to go until I turn twenty-nine myself, I need to take drastic action now or else listen to this pity party for the rest of the night. I slam my hand on the table, startling my sister and sending her drink splashing against the side of her martini glass.
“That’s it! I officially declare this sticky bar table a whine-free zone.” Sophie looks at me, mouth agape. I clearly have her attention for the first time in weeks. “If you’re going to complain, you’re going to come up with solutions. Got it?”
She nods silently, holding her forgotten drink a few inches from her mouth.
“So we’ve got one year to thirty, right? A whole new decade. A whole new us.”
“Don’t be cliché, moron. Everyone does this—makes a promise to themselves to check off some stupid bucket list before their life begins again at thirty. How many of them actually do half of that stuff?” Her voice has reset to its snarky default tone. She’s right, of course, but I’ve got to make this the last birthday we spend trapped at a bar table, fending off men who’ve just been released from prison.
“So we’ll do our own thing. Let’s make a bet, you old fart.
In these, my final few moments of twenty-eight, I would like to make a wager.” I pause for dramatic effect. Radio silence. “We fix it. All of it.” Excited, I’ve sprung from my seat and now lean across the table, inches from her face. “We have one year before a brand new decade. A decade where we’ll live life instead of watching it go by.”
“You’re insane.”
“Listen to me. Fix your job, your relationship status, pick out a new eye shadow—I don’t care what it is as long as it moves you toward a life you enjoy. We promise each other right now this is the last pathetic year of our lives.”
“Okay…” Skepticism oozes from her narrow lips. “And what if I take you up on this? This lame wager? What happens if we turn our lives around?”
Socially Awkward Page 20