by Rue Volley
I leaned back and tossed my hamburger at him. He let it hit the bag as if it didn’t matter. “I wasn’t trying to get stupid, Jack. I was—nervous.”
He looked over at me. His cold expression never changed. “Nervous, about what?”
I laughed. “Seriously? You’re kidding me, right? At the restaurant—you, your brother, that rude blonde. All of this.” I waved my hand around the car, and he turned toward me and scooted up until his knee was touching my own. He placed a hand on my face as I looked down. I was forced to look at him as he leaned down and brought me back up with him, baiting me with his eyes.
“You don’t have anything to be nervous about, Abigail. I told you that I would never do anything to you that you didn’t ask me to do.”
I shook my head. “Jack, I didn’t ask you for anything.”
He lowered his hand and moved back from me. “You’re right, Abi.”
I swallowed as he used my nickname, the first time he had, and I didn’t like it at all. I loved to hear him use my name, all of it. Just as I enjoyed him consuming all of me.
“Take her home,” he said as he called up to the driver.
I looked down and then back up at him as he stared out his window. His fingers rested under his chin as he refused to say a single word to me.
We stopped in front of my apartment building and he didn’t move, he didn’t turn to say anything to me. I bit my lip as the driver opened the door and I got out. I looked back in and Jack didn’t even turn to look at me. The driver closed the door and I stood there, like a cat being dropped off at the edge of a farm. Abandoned and alone. Discarded. I felt a heavy weight in my chest. I reached forward, my fingertips inches from the black glass and the limo pulled away, taking my reflection with it and a piece of my heart.
CHAPTER TEN
CHERRY RED MUSTANG
I sat at my window and stared at my diploma. I had graduated and yet I didn’t celebrate it. Four years of my life and none of it seemed to matter. The only person I truly wanted there was him, and he was nowhere to be found.
It had been three months since I last spoke to him. The last words being my admitting to drinking and taking Valium and his aggressive reaction to it. Three months. It was torturous.
I had gone over the entire night in my head so many times that it almost seemed as if I had watched a movie. It didn’t even seem as if it was my life. Jack had so effectively removed himself from me that it made me second guess whether he had been here at all. If it weren't for the small pale scar on my finger—well, if not for that, then it could all be a dream. But no. He remained, branded on me, inside and out. The monster in my closet, the same one that would crawl under my bed at night and keep me awake as I could hear him clawing below me. Begging me to scream his name. I wanted to; I wanted—more.
I was pulled from my thoughts as I heard Avery’s voice, the words unclear until I allowed them to be heard. I daydream a lot now; I don’t mean too. It’s like I am not even here. Not really. When he left, he seemed to take everything with him. My spark, my love for life, my ambitious nature and competitive need to achieve more. The only thing that kept me sane was the memory, and yet the memory was slowly driving me insane. The ultimate double-edged sword.
I know that my time with him was brief. But it isn’t always the time but the quality of that time that leaves lasting impressions in your life. Jack had entered my world by saving me, teased me into exposing who I truly am and the dark sexual desires that I have lurking in me. Then he abruptly removed himself and set me free as if it never mattered to him. It pained me and not in a pleasurable way.
I wanted to forget him. Everything about him. I did, but it was nearly impossible. He changed me forever, and his lingering memory ruined anything that could rise to replace it. I didn’t know if I could ever get over him, and I think that is what scared me the most. But I am not going to him this time. If he wants me, he will have to come to me. My begging for his attention has passed.
“This is the last time I am offering, Abi. I leave in two days.”
“What? Sorry.”
Avery held up her hand, and it looked like she was giving me the peace sign. “Two days.”
I smiled at her, it was small and not like me. I tried to look happy, but I wasn’t. I just couldn’t seem to pull myself out of it. I held my coffee in my hands and blew on it. The smell rose up and offered a bit of comfort to me.
“I appreciate it, I do. I mean hiking in Europe? It sounds unbelievable, Avery, but I have an interview coming up. I need to get a job. You know—eat? Pay bills?”
She laughed at me. “I told you; I got this. You have plenty of time to find a job, Abi.”
“I don’t squat for free. I can pay for my own things. I want too; it’s unfair to you.”
I knew she was just being generous and wanted to help me out. I should be grateful, but the bitterness would rise in me and spew out, without my control. I would blame him for that, but it was me. I controlled it or should I say; it controlled me? I’m so sick of thinking about the game and the effect that it had on me. If this was it, then I would be happy to shed it all.
She sighed. “I know that, Abi.”
I looked down and then back up to her. I stood and walked toward her, giving her a hug and speaking calmly next to her ear. “I’m sorry, just ignore me.”
She leaned back and touched my chin. “I know, listen. You have to get out of this apartment.”
I sighed. “I am tomorrow. I have to buy some clothes for this interview.”
“Just get in my closet.”
I shook my head. “No, I need to buy them myself.”
“Fine, but go out and take a walk or something.”
“I have to take a cab to the stores.”
She shook her head; her faint smile floating to the surface of her pink lips. “You know what I mean, Abi.”
I did. I knew exactly what she meant. I had become a hermit. Closing myself off from every other human being on the planet—besides Avery, but even to her I was foreign now. I couldn’t help it. Jack took a part of me that I just could not find. I had tried, but as the nightmares of watching his limo roll away woke me in a sweaty panic at night, I found that his strange nature had consumed my life. He had wrapped me up and pulled me to him, as deeply as I had ever been pulled into anything before. When I say consume, I mean devour, as a snake does his prey. He lingered everywhere on, and in me. Is this love? I hope not because it’s torturous.
I ran my thumb over the scar on my finger as I sat back down on the windowsill. I drew my legs up and stared out at the city. So alive, with millions of people to meet and possibly befriend, but I didn’t care. Not at all. I couldn’t even imagine meeting someone new, no one would impact me as Jack had. No one. He had ruined me and yet I had never felt closer to who I truly am.
“Abi. I’m serious. Listen, I am having a small get together at the pub tonight. You know, McNally’s?”
I nodded to her as she went on. “Anyway, it’s just a small thing, nothing significant at all, but I want you there. I’m going to be gone until the end of summer and, well, I’m going to miss you so much!”
I grinned and took a sip of my coffee. “Of course, Avery. I’ll come.”
Her face lit up, the first real bit of happiness I had seen thrown in my direction since I became the creature I was now.
Avery walked up to me and moved my hair behind my ear. She leaned down into my face.
“You have to go on, Abi.”
I closed my eyes and then reopened them as she studied my expression. “I am.”
She shook her head. “No, you aren’t. When he left, he took you with him, a part of you anyway, and left me this.” She pointed at me. “A shell of what you once were, it’s crazy.”
I drew in my breath. I knew how I felt, but I didn’t know that it was so transparent to her.
“I’m sorry, Avery. I just—I think about him every single day. There isn’t anything that I do that doesn’t stir up a m
emory, something he said, the way he…” I trailed off as I thought about him.
Avery snapped her fingers. I blinked a couple of times. “I could just beat him senseless; I swear, Abi. This is just—it isn’t healthy.”
I stood up and grinned. Forcing one, of course. It wasn’t happiness, but she deserved something from me. Much more than what I had given to her in the past three months. I was just grateful that she hadn’t given up on me. I can’t say that I would have stuck around for this type of depressing nonsense.
“I’m going to come out and I am going to drink and beat you at pool.”
She laughed at me, tilting her head. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah, really.” My eyebrow rose, showing off a bit of the Abi-who-once-was.
She squinted her eyes. “Okay, you said it, so it’s now law.”
I smiled. “What time do you want me there?”
“Nineish.”
I nodded to her as she walked away from me, and I turned back toward the window and watched the traffic on the long bridge off in the distance. “Okay, Abi. Get it together.” I whispered to myself as I took another sip of my coffee and tried to enjoy it instead of just using it to help me pretend that I wasn’t sleepwalking through life.
I sat at my laptop and watched the blank screen. I typed in a few words. Quickly erasing them and biting my lip. I had his file open, but it was impossible to add to it. I tried to write Jack, as he was to me, but no words seemed to capture his true form. It all eluded me. He eluded me. My feelings were greater than anything I could string together on the screen. It would cheapen it, somehow sullying the memory for me. Perhaps I was selfish. Maybe I wanted to keep it buried, deep inside. Letting it pulsate through me as Jack did.
As he did. The past tense hurt me, cutting deep. I could barely stand it. I closed my laptop and tapped my fingers on the top of it and then narrowed my eyes as I re-opened it. I went online and typed in his name and, as usual, a million things popped up in Google. He must have had at least forty pages on him if not more.
Articles, headlines. Business ventures. All of it was so sterile. All of it had told me nothing, nothing at all about him. I had read through so many, and it was cold and calculated. A construct built to only show what remained on the surface for him. Just as, I would guess, he wanted it to be.
Picture after picture. Jack with a faded smile, Jack with his arm around someone, Jack with a thumb to his lip. I paused and stared at the screen. That was the man that I knew. The seducer. But even in the picture, it was not the same look, the same intensity as he had shown me. It made me feel special and isn’t that what we all seek? To feel as if we are someone’s entire universe? And that is the problem that I have with Jack. He made me feel that way, as if it all revolved around me, so when he left he took that gift with him.
I clicked and clicked and then accidently went a bit further than I ever had before. Not that it shocked me. If I was going to go further with anything, it would involve him. I read the headlines and then I stopped as I saw something strange.
“Accident claims the life of one and leaves a girl severely injured.”
I opened it up and nothing. The screen was blank, so I backed out and tried it again. Nothing. I took a sip of coffee and read the small headline again, seeing half a word. Mirror Gaz…
I knew exactly what paper it was. A medium sized one on the outskirts of the campus, so I gathered up my phone, sliding it into my back pocket and then slipped my mukluk slippers off and replaced them with some boots. I grabbed my coat and headed out the door with my curiosity ablaze and feeling more like myself than I had for over ninety days.
I stood in front of the large building and stared up the front of the exterior. I had never visited the Mirror Gazette before. It was the paper to get on for students, but I wasn’t a lit major. I wrote as a hobby. My major was business. Finances, to be exact, and perhaps that is why Jack intrigued me. I was interested in how it all worked, but I never even thought about the perks of it. I just loved numbers and promotion. That was a leftover fetish from high school. I excelled at math while most cringed at the thought of it. To me, it was a puzzle, and puzzles always fascinated me. I couldn’t get enough of them.
I headed toward the revolving glass door and got hit with it as a woman came pushing her way out in a hurry. I rubbed the side of my head as she ignored me and ran toward the cab that I had just abandoned. I scowled as I looked back at her, fingering the side of my head and feeling the tender spot where she had attempted to kill my use of a couple of words and maybe my freakin’ sixes.
“Jerk,” I whispered as I stepped in and was taken aback by the grandeur of the interior.
Everything was white and shined to perfection. So much so that your eyes had to adjust as you stepped from the world of color into this one. It had multiple levels; I could see them all as I looked up and watched a clear elevator rise from the middle of the floor. Who knew that this place was so swanky? I know that I didn’t. Maybe that’s why students clamored to come here, well, that and getting the experience, of course.
I walked toward a large desk and stood there, rocking on my heels as I looked at the blonde with the headset on. Seriously, this place looked like it could be a spa, not a place for journalists. Not even close to it.
She spoke in a quiet tone to whoever it was that was chatting it up in her ear. I grinned as she spoke calmly, her eyes inspected me, and she held one finger up toward me as she wrapped up the call and then said “Yes.” Not so much a question as just a direct word to me. I swallowed and then pulled the small piece of paper from my coat pocket. I looked at it and then back up to her.
“Um—I was wondering if I could speak to the person who covered this story, it was attached to Jack Landon.”
She paused as she held her hand out to me, and I placed the paper into it. She eyed it and then handed it back to me. “You don’t have a name?”
I sighed. “No, when I pulled it up on Google, the screen went blank, it did that a few times and I just couldn’t read it. So…”
“So you traveled here to ask the person who wrote the article?” she asked as I stepped back and decided to stay the course.
“Yes, I did.”
She looked me over again, making me feel a bit underdressed and I knew that I was. I am sure that my standing here in this place made my crazy owl t-shirt, cracked up on coffee, and jeans stand out something terrible. But I wasn’t leaving.
“Why do you need to talk to someone about this article?”
I bit my lip and then stepped up to the counter, tapping my fingers on it and looking a bit suspicious. “I—I’m a student and I am doing a paper on the Landon family, Jack, specifically.”
“Mmmm.” She said as she tapped her earpiece and spoke quietly. I waited and hoped that she wasn’t calling security to remove me from the building. I flinched when I heard a voice behind me.
“Can I help you?”
I turned and paused as, standing before me, was a man who looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place him. “Yes, I, ah, I need help researching an article that I found online.”
“Abi?” he said to me as I narrowed my eyes.
“Yes?”
“Abi Watson, right?”
I nodded to him. “Oh, wow. Abi, you look great. You really do.”
I paused and then looked him over. I didn’t mean for it to appear rude in anyway, but I just had no idea who he was. “I’m sorry—I, where did we meet, again?”
He smiled as he stepped up to me. His height making me shrink before him. He had to be at least six-foot-two, maybe two-and-a-half. I am not exactly short in nature, but my five-foot-seven frame could not compare to his.
He smiled as he leaned into my face. “I can’t believe you don’t remember me, Abi. Senior prom, my red cherry Mustang?”
I stepped back as I blinked at him. “Sam? Sam Quinn? No way—no way!”
I looked him over; he was gorgeous. This could not be the same Sam that I went to prom wi
th, who had braces, thick rimmed glasses, and a bit of acne. No way in hell was this him. I was stunned, I mean shut-my-mouth-and-almost-fall-out stunned.
“Yes way, Abi.”
“Wow—you, you look good.”
He laughed as he glanced back at the receptionist who turned to act as if she wasn’t listening to us.
“It’s amazing what six years can do, and getting your braces off, contacts, and working out.”
“Yeah, man. Well, Sam. It’s great to see you.”
He smiled at me. His teeth straight and white. The truth was I didn’t know him. He asked me at zero hour, out of what could have been desperation, to the prom, and I was flustered and said yes. Sam excelled in math as I did; he was also in my chemistry class, and that was the extent of what I knew. Well, that and the fact that I drank two wine coolers and let him slide a hand between my legs in the back of that cherry red Mustang. He didn’t finger me, but do you remember that near-sex experience I mentioned? Well—here he was, in all of his shined up, hot glory. I couldn’t believe it.
“You look great, Abi.”
I looked down at my clothes and laughed. “I could do better, but thank you.”
“Well, yeah, I—sorry, it’s just a shock to see you—blast from the past.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and then went on. “What can I help you with?”
I parted my lips as I stared at his light brown eyes. I couldn’t believe I didn’t even know what color of eyes he had. The boy who almost popped my proverbial cherry if anymore wine coolers had been involved that night. Well, that and there was just something about him that was comfortable. Not sexual, but comforting, if that makes sense.
“I—sorry, you kind of took me by surprise.”
He smiled and reached out to me, touching my arm. His touch felt nice. Since—well, Avery had given me a few hugs, but they didn’t compare to the intensity of Jack. I pushed my stray hair behind my ear and remembered my mission, steering back on course.