by Amy Brent
“Justin, I have no idea how your sister even feels about me.”
“Then talk to her. The fuck you sitting here for? Go talk to her, man.”
“I’m here because we gotta clear the air between us. I hate this shit. I want my friend back.”
“I never left. I got pissed at you and all this bullshit flying around, but I didn’t leave. Not like you did. And I never will. But it’s time for you to put on your big boy pants, because right now you’re only playing the part of a man. You’re not actually being one.”
I locked my eyes with Justin as I pulled my phone from my pocket. I swiped at the screen and scrolled through my contacts as I watched Justin cross his arms over his chest. He leaned back in his chair as I dialed Jessi’s number, then I held the phone to my ear as our food was set in front of us.
“Chris?” she asked. “Is that you?”
“Hey there, Jessi.”
“How are you? I mean—are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry for leaving the way I did. I wanted to get together and talk with your brother while it was still on my mind.”
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Everything’s fine,” I said with a grin. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“Could we get dinner together tomorrow night?” I asked.
“Yeah. Sure. That’s fine. Any reason?” she asked.
“Can’t I take the mother of my child out for dinner?” I asked.
Justin grinned and shook his head as he reached for his sandwich.
“I—guess so,” Jessi said. “Let me call Marcia and make sure she’s free.”
“If not, I’m sure Justin won’t mind babysitting.”
Justin shot me a glare as a smile grew on my face.
“Let me call her, but I’m sure it’ll be okay,” Jessi said.
“Then I’ll pick you up tomorrow around six.”
I hung up the phone and stuffed it back into my pocket. Justin was still glaring at me as a chuckle fell from my lips. I picked up my sandwich and went to town, allowing the comfortable atmosphere with my best friend to return.
“Seriously? Volunteering me for babysitting duty? What if Roxy and I had plans for tomorrow?” he asked.
“You and Roxy got plans for tomorrow?” I asked.
“No, but that’s not the point.”
“Then consider it a gesture of me squashing this bullshit between us,” I said.
“Does this mean we can go back to getting drinks every Friday night again?” he asked.
“Depends on how things go with Caleb,” I said.
“Tuesday night?”
“Let me tackle one thing at a time and then we’ll get our beers back on schedule.”
“Hell, I’ll have them at your place if that’s more convenient. Your place is nice. I should know. I helped you put that shit together. That place sucked when we first found it.”
“It was a dump. But it’s not anymore,” I said.
“If things go really well with you and Jessi, you think you’ll move them in with you?”
I buried my smile at the thought of it as I took another bite of my sandwich.
“One step at a time,” I said. “We’ll figure it out as we go along.”
Chapter 37
Jessi
I was nervous. As I wrung my hands in my lap, my eyes darted around the restaurant. Chris had called asking if we could get dinner and talk. I was worried about what it was he wanted to talk about, but I was prepared for anything. I knew him and my brother had talked about something. Justin had called me about it. He wouldn’t go into specifics, but he did tell me he thought things were better between him and Chris. I think he meant to try and calm me down about us getting dinner, but it only made me curious.
Which fueled my anxiety.
I saw Chris walk into the restaurant and our eyes connected. I waved my hand at him as he approached me, his hands shoved into his pockets. I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I get up and hug him? Give him a kiss on the cheek? Stay seated and not touch him at all? I had no idea what was going on with us and I didn’t know where it would go after tonight.
All I hoped was that he wouldn’t try to take Caleb away from me.
“You look nice,” Chris said.
“You do, too.”
“The nanny with Caleb?” he asked.
“Oh yeah. Marcia was free tonight,” I said. “Why? Did you want me to bring him? I can go get him if you want me to.”
“Take a breath, Jessi. Everything’s okay,” he said.
“It doesn’t feel okay,” I said.
“Probably because I’m still upset.”
“And you have every right to be.”
“But you have a right to be upset as well,” he said.
“I do.”
“How much do you know about my family, Jessi?”
“I’m not following,” I said.
“Just—my family dynamic in general. How much do you know?”
“Not much,” I said, with a shrug. “I know your dad died when you were little and that your mom remarried. But that’s about it. Why? Has something happened?”
“It has to do with why I left.”
I felt my body lock up as I leaned heavily against my chair.
“You were right. I am being a hypocrite for getting on you about hiding Caleb from me when I’m hiding the reason I left,” Chris said.
“Why did you leave?” I asked, breathlessly.
“When my mom remarried, things went downhill quickly. My step dad pretended to like me when they were dating, but soon after they got married things changed. I was stuck in a lot of afterschool programs, and overnight babysitters on the weekends became my life. It’s why I hung out with Justin a lot on the weekends. I didn’t like staying at the babysitter’s house and your parents didn’t seem to mind me sleeping over all the time.”
I nodded my head as my fingers wrapped up in the fabric of my dress.
“He was a drinker. No one knew it because he didn’t drink outside of the house, but inside he was a fish. And he was angry. Which is never a good combination. There were many times that I watched him beat my mother. And if he tried to beat me, she’d jump in front of me.”
“Does Justin know any of this?” I asked.
“He knows a bit of it, yeah. Enough to know my step dad’s a shithead. But one day, I’d had enough. I got tired of watching him verbally and physically beat up on my mom. One day I came back from a job I had taken and found him pinning my mom to the couch. She was yelling and screaming ‘stop’ and he wouldn’t get off her. Kept saying things like, ‘what’s yours is mine now’ and shit like that.”
“Oh my gosh,” I said breathlessly.
“I yanked him off my mom and started beating him. Just—punch after punch after punch. I was in this—this blind rage. Mom was screaming and blood was caking my hand.”
“What happened, Christopher?”
“She took his side,” he said, with a snicker.
I sat there, shocked and rooted to my seat.
“What?” I asked.
“She took his side. Fed me some bullshit lie about how they were playing a game or something like that. That she was fully in control of the situation even though there was fear bulging from her eyes. I told her I was calling the police because she had enough bruises on her to put that asshole away for a long time, and she threatened me.”
“With what?” I asked.
“I called the cops anyway, thinking she was too rattled to know what she was talking about. But then she went into the closet and dangled this small baggie of—white shit in front of my face. Said if I didn’t get out, she’d plant it on me and tell the police I was dealing drugs out of the house.”
“What!?”
“It would’ve destroyed my career, Jessi. I told her she was crazy and that the lunatic she had married deserved to be in jail. You wanna know what her response to that was?”
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I felt a tear slide down my cheek as Chris’s eyes glazed over.
“She opened the bag of white powder and threw it at me. Coated my entire shirt in it.”
I shook my head in disbelief as my eyes continued to widen.
“It would’ve ruined my career, Jessi. I was standing there with my mom cradling that bastard, his blood on my fist. His drugs—coke or whatever—was all over my clothes. No one would’ve believed me with the way my mother was crying over that piece of shit. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Where’s your mom now, Chris?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I came back because I’d heard they’d moved out of the area. They were evicted from their house. At the risk of making you angrier, it was the reason I came back. L.A.’s always been my home, and when I heard through the grapevine that they were gone, I came back. I knew I’d built a stable enough career to endure the move, so I made it.”
“Where did you go?” I asked. “When you left, I mean?”
“Lots of places. Temporary places. Took a few gigs in Seattle. A couple in San Francisco. Went to New York a few times. I built a network of people I could use to dip into the L.A. pool when I came back. The plan was to always come back, just after they were gone. I didn’t know what those two psychopaths would do if I came back while they were still here.”
I reached out for Chris’s hand and took it within mine.
“I have no idea what to say,” I said, breathlessly.
“You don’t have to say anything. You deserved an explanation. You told me that. Justin told me that. I know that. So when I tell you I want to be a better father to Caleb than I ever had in my life, that’s what I mean.”
“Oh Chris,” I said, with a whisper.
I got up from the table and pulled him to his feet. I threw my arms around his neck, pulling his shaking body into mine. He held me tighter than I’d ever felt before. He buried his face into the crook of my neck. We stood next to our table as people looked at us with quizzical stares, but I didn’t care.
I ran my fingers through his hair as he sniffled into the crook of my neck.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“I can’t believe she took his side.”
“I’m so sorry, Chris.”
“How could she have taken his side?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know, Chris. But you’ll always have a place here. With my family. With the family we created.”
His grip tightened around my body as another tear leaked down my cheek.
“I love you, Jessi.”
I furrowed my brow as I pulled away from Chris.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I love you,” he said. “I always have. I’ve loved you since our first date, and I never stopped loving you. Not after I left. Not after I hopped from city to city. It never lifted. The hold you had on me never lifted, sweet girl.”
I felt my jaw tremble as his nickname for me graced my ears.
“I can’t let my anger towards this situation consume me any longer. I can blame whoever I want, but it doesn’t change what happened in the past. I want to raise Caleb with you. Not just as a co-parent, but as an equal partner. I want to do this, Jessi. I can’t lose you. Not again.”
I cupped his cheek as a smile crossed my face.
“I love you, too,” I said, breathlessly.
“You do?” he asked.
“Oh yes,” I said. “More than I was ever willing to admit until the last time we spoke. Seeing you with Caleb in your arms. Seeing the way you were with him. How—how happy he is when you’re around. How happy I am when you’re around—”
My eyes danced between his as my thumb caught a tear running down his skin.
“I have something to admit,” I said.
“What’s that?” Chris asked.
“You’re really going to hate me for it,” I said.
“More than I hated my mother for choosing my step father’s side over mine?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
The two of us sat back down and I cleared my throat.
“When I saw you at that runway show we did together, I was shocked. But mostly, I was angry. I wondered how long you had been back in town and whether or not Justin knew. And then the first time you invited me over and you told me how Justin helped you restore that beach house— it made me crazy. So I sort of—concocted this plan.”
“What plan?” Chris asked.
“I wanted to hurt you like you had hurt me,” I said.
I watched him sink into his chair as he snickered.
“That’s why you didn’t tell me about Caleb,” he said.
“I was going to lead you on and then cut you off. Hurt you like you hurt me. In my mind, I thought I was protecting other women from you if I could somehow show you what you’d done to me. But after that first night we spent together at your place, it screwed things up.”
“How so?” he asked.
“I was nowhere willing to admit it, but being with you that night reminded me of all the reasons why I’d loved you in the first place. I left that first night feeling more confused than ever because of my want to get revenge versus my need to be loved by you. I spent more time with you hoping I could show myself I wasn’t in love, merely clinging to the idea of what we had before you left. But it didn’t work.”
My gaze fell to my lap as I picked at my nails.
“The more time I spent with you, the more I realized I loved you. Rather, I realized I never stopped loving you, though I probably should have. And it pissed me off. And made me feel vulnerable. And made me hate you more. But I craved you like I had all those years ago. I started dreaming about you again and waking up wishing you were next to me. When we were together—”
“It was like I’d never left?” he asked.
I whipped my gaze up to his and saw him scoot his hand across the table. He offered his hand to me, waiting to see if I would take it. I placed my shaking hand in the palm of his and watched his fingers curl around my skin.
Then we both watched as goosebumps ricocheted up my arm.
“I’m done being angry at this situation,” Chris said. “It’s too much, and it won’t be good for Caleb. So, I’d like to propose an idea.”
“What kind of idea?” I asked.
“A blank slate.”
“Okay—?”
“Everything is out on the table. Right?” he asked.
“I don’t have anything else to say, no.”
“Good. Because I don’t either. But if we’re going to raise Caleb the way we both want to, then we need to start fresh. The past is in the past, and that’s where it has to stay.”
“I agree with that,” I said.
“So from this point forward, it’s us. Right now, with our son.”
“You’re really not upset?” I asked.
“It’s a waste of energy to continue being upset about this stuff. We can’t change it, but we can acknowledge that it happened. I love you, Jessi. And you love me. So—let’s focus on that.”
“Okay. Then—what do you want to talk about?”
“Remember the second date I took you on?” he asked.
“Uh—are you talking about the second dinner we snuck out to? Or the second time we were alone together?”
“The second time we were alone together. When I came knocking on your window?”
“We made out on my parent’s rooftop while you rattled off the wrong names to all sorts of imaginary constellations,” I said, with a grin.
“Hey, you were into it at the time,” he said with a chuckle
“What about it?” I asked.
“I’d like to take you stargazing again. And this time, I won’t rattle off incorrect constellations.”
“Okay. Where do you want to stargaze?”
“On the beach in front of my house. Maybe this weekend? Friday night, maybe?”
“I can’t do Friday night. I’ll be exhausted from my photoshoot.�
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“Then Saturday night?” he asked.
“I’ll talk with Marcia and see what I can arrange,” I said.
“So what photoshoot is Friday?” he asked.
“This Curvy Leggings partnership opened some doors for me here in L.A. I’ve got another decent clothing line that wants me to be the face of their product.”
“Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”
“Nope. Curvy Leggings is just leggings. This clothing brand specializes in dresses a girl can tailor to herself. They go online and it walks the customer through how to take their own measurements. Then the find a dress they like, plug in their measurements, and send it all off to be custom tailored.”
“That’s—actually a really cool concept.”
“Yep. They had me try the service out last week and the dress I got back was stunning.”
“Could I see it sometime?”
“You’re looking at it,” I said with a grin.
Chris helped me up from my seat and twirled me around. He gave me a low whistle as the fabric billowed out from my legs. I giggled and smiled up at him as he wrapped his arm around me, then our eyes met as the rest of the restaurant fell into the background.