Lost In Rewind (Audio Fools #3)

by Tali Alexander

  “Because it’s my duty.” An ache squeezes me from inside as I open my eyes to see the elderly nurse shaking her head at me.

  “You’re a good man, Mr. Rossi. Take care of yourself. She doesn’t need your blood.” She pats my cheek while directing my face with a bit of force toward a glass of orange juice by my cot and then leaves.

  I gulp down the sweet beverage and try to sit up again. This time the room stays still. I fish my wristwatch from my pants’ pocket and almost pass out again when I see the time. It’s fucking ten o’clock in the morning! I was supposed to call Kali at eight. The acidic drink burns my throat as it comes up, and my lightheadedness is replaced with nausea. I can’t get anything right. I ruin everything I come in contact with, and without a doubt, this poor girl thinks I’m playing games with her head. I find my phone in my back pocket and call Kali at once. It rings and rings and rings and rings. I hang up and call again, still no answer. Shit. I type out a message reading it twenty times before I hit send. I hold my breath and wait for her response—but nothing.

  I read over my text again and again.

  -Kali, I’m sorry I didn’t call. Something out of my control came up. Please pick up and let me explain-

  I imagine how disappointed she must feel if she won’t answer or text me back. I may have to go and explain to her in person that I’m an idiot. I usually don’t faint from giving blood. I have bad thoughts coming and leaving my mind at a steady rate as I conclude that this is fate stopping me from talking to her.

  My phone vibrates in my hand with her sad selfie appearing on the screen. Elation is an understatement. I exhale in relief and take in a deep breath through my nose and answer.

  I say, “I’m sorry,” before I even say hello and begin rambling off a defense. “I fainted this morning when I was giving blood. I slept like shit and haven’t been eating well for months and I must’ve blacked out. That’s the only reason I didn’t call you. I swear.” I wait and listen.

  “Why were you giving blood?”

  I smile and close my eyes upon hearing her familiar voice with her peculiar sweet accent, thankful as hell that she’s still talking to me.

  “I’ve been giving blood regularly every fifty-six days for the last six months. I promise to tell you all about it.” I collect my things and walk out of the hospital. “Is this a good time for us to talk?” She makes a sound that I accept to mean that it’s as good a time as any. Fresh air coupled with her on the other line is a gift. Across the street I sit at the first empty bench I spy and get ready to spend time talking with a woman that hasn’t escaped my thoughts in days. I still feel a little woozy, but there’s no way I’m hanging up with her.

  “Talk, we’ve danced long enough. Now you need to talk to me.” She sounds defensive and who can blame her? I need to win her trust and show her that us talking is important to me. She can’t think this is some kind of mind-fuck. I get comfortable and begin like the lawyer that I am, painting a picture for my jury of one. I’ve won hundreds of cases in my career but assuring Kali doesn’t despise me at the end of my life story narration somehow feels more significant.

  “Okay, but before we start, I’d like to explain to you that you’re about to hear the first part of my story. The part of my story that everyone thought they knew. It’s the good, simple part.” I close my eyes and shut off the noise of New York City around me as I begin to describe to Kali how a boy once accidently fell in love with his best friend.

  “When I was twenty-one years old, I realized that what I had always perceived as a horrible genetic mutation was actually my best asset. It attracted a special girl, so I ran with it. I’d never been a ladies man, never popular, average on all accounts—until I met Jacqueline Boyd. We were accidently matched up as roommates in our junior year of the pre-law undergraduate program at Brown. When I walked into my new dorm room and found my roommate’s bed made up with pink girly sheets and motivational posters covering the walls, I almost pissed myself. It turned out to be a glorious computer glitch where they accidently registered Jacqueline as Jack Boyd—who was her father and happened to be an alumnus of Brown University.

  “I had transferred to Brown that year in the hopes of having a better chance at getting admitted to their law school. I’d only had one girlfriend, if you can even call her that, back home in Florida, and believe me, I wasn’t getting anywhere close to the action every college kid dreams of. This girl—my new roommate—was freaking gorgeous. She was everything someone like me never stood a chance with. When you looked at her, you knew she came from a long line of pedigree. Everything about her screamed refined class and sophistication. She was beyond my league—she was in a different stratosphere. But all my initial assessments couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, she was wealthy and came from a long line of respected attorneys, but she chose to live like a regular college girl. She was down to Earth, humble on all accounts, and never once made me feel like the loser I was.” I hear Kali stifle a laugh on the other end of the line. I smile to myself recalling how Jacky and I first met.

  I continue telling her about one of the happiest times of my life. “Jacqueline and I laughed for hours about our predicament, and after getting to know each other, we chose to keep the current boarding arrangement for as long as possible, since it could always be worse. I could’ve gotten some smelly guy, and she could’ve been paired up with a crazy wild girl. We liked each other right away, and so that’s how I met my best friend.

  “We made a decision early into our roommate-hood to keep our relationship platonic. We didn’t want to jeopardize our living arrangement since we actually liked each other, but honest to God, I was insanely attracted to her. After months of watching and secretly drooling over her, I finally got tired of jerking off in the communal toilet to the image of her assets every morning, and one day, I thought I’d take my ritual a step further. I locked the door to our room knowing that she had an early class and then a test later in the day. I got naked and climbed into her bed with one of her T-shirts and her floral covers spread around me. I wanted her smell on me as I wacked one off, and mid-jerk, maybe a few seconds before I was about to explode, I look up and see her standing there watching me, dick at hand.” I stop my story and wait for Kali to say something. I hope I’m not being too crude with my narration. “Kali, are you still there?”

  “I’m still here. I have a pretty clear picture of you in bed touching yourself. Keep going. I’m sure this is going to be an interesting story." I can hear the amusement in her voice.

  I swallow hard as I think back to the two of us in bed a few days ago. The thought of her naked under me makes me smile, too. I shake Kali’s naked image from my mind and continue telling her about my wife. “Jacky, sounding more hopeful than upset, asked me, ‘Jeff, why are you in my bed and is that my shirt?’ I decided that it would be fruitless to lie, and since most of my blood had traveled south to my dick anyway, I just told the truth. I told her that I wanted her smell on me. I said to her, ‘I’ll take whatever I can get of you, Jacky.’

  “It took her less than three seconds to frantically remove all her clothes and join me before she lost her nerve and changed her mind. She finished jerking me off with her mouth and the upgraded version of our roommate-hood began. My new roommate and I had so much sex that I made up for all my missed sexual opportunities growing up. I had a built-in sex partner. I distinctly remember us, like the two stupid lawyers in the making that we were, sitting down and negotiating the terms of our fucking at one of the tables at your grandmother’s bar. We naturally decided to keep sleeping together, but not complicate things by putting a label on us or being exclusive or public about our relationship. We also didn’t want the dorm advisor to catch wind of our fornication. Jacky convinced him I was gay and the worst thing would be to put me in a room with another guy, so he never changed our co-ed room status.” I hear Kali giggling on the phone and I love making her laugh. I wish I were telling her all this in person and seeing, not just hearing, every rea
ction come out of her.

  “She was the first girl that loved my eyes, and she called me perfect. It was straight out of my dreams—a refined girl like her finding a mutant like me perfect. We were voracious; endlessly explored one another. She was my favorite subject, and I ran back to our dorm room every day to study her and learn how to pleasure and escape into her.

  “I never imagined I’d have someone like Jacky allowing me to do anything I wanted to her, which in a way gave me the confidence to be more social, outgoing, open to things. I started looking people in the eye, willing them to not look away from me. She made me feel wanted, sexy, invincible—building my ego up like a false God. I stopped fearing rejection since she was always in my bed waiting for me. She made me reach beyond my means in everything. And like the stupid idiot that I was, I believed her when she told me I could sleep with whomever I wanted, and that she didn’t care, and our relationship wasn’t that serious. I told her the same, in a pubescent way to cover-up how I really felt about her. I convinced myself she wasn’t one of those jealous girls—she was progressive, confident. I never wanted to imagine that she would actually sleep with someone else, it just sounded cool to say that. But in reality, I monopolized her whole life. She physically couldn’t sleep with someone else; there just wasn’t time. We did everything together—we were even more than best friends. We studied together, we ate together, we shopped together, and we slept together. I met her parents and she met mine. And slowly, she became my family…my love.

  “You know how guys always complain about their girlfriends nagging them, being possessive or clingy? Well, I didn’t have that with Jacky. We spoke about everything except what we did with other people. She never asked if I slept with anyone besides her, and I didn’t, I wasn’t about to volunteer any information about the random girls I’d talk to or dance with at some party or in a bar from the rare occasions we were apart. I came home to her, and she to me, and that was enough.”

  “You guys were friends with benefits,” Kali concludes. But it was much deeper than that. I only wanted Jacky and her benefits, no one else’s.

  “You could say that,” I offer her back. It’s hard for people to grasp what I had with Jacqueline, but I need for Kali to understand. “We had our own group of friends that we collected along the way. Eddie Klein was my best friend besides Jacqueline. He was an amazing guy, and is still the kind of guy you’d want as a brother: smart, loyal, loaded, a chick magnet, funny as sin, and a heart of gold. We spent endless nights at BlackGod bar binging on those sinfully delicious shepherd’s pies and local beers. Eddie was the king of corny dirty jokes—Jacky loved him. I don’t think I’ve ever met a man or a woman that didn’t fall in love with him.

  “Jacqueline and I knew our bubble would eventually burst once we all got into law school. We would have to give up our sleeping arrangement or come clean to all our friends—who knew nothing about our sex-pact. And for the record, I clearly recall telling her that I wanted us to be a thing, since in my mind, we already were. It was perfect between us, and I swear, I believed we would eventually end up together. I didn’t like the feelings I had when she wasn’t in my arms at night. I didn’t want to pretend to be interested in other girls for the sake of our pretenses. She was always on my mind, and the possibility of her finding and loving someone else crippled me. She was mine, but she somehow always kept me at bay and slowly pulled away. I knew she cared and loved me as a friend, but she kept a certain distance between us when it came to publicly displaying our feelings. I guess you could say it was part of my own hang-up of not being good enough for her. So in my head, her rejection and decision to keep our relationship private was because I wasn’t refined enough for her family, or smart enough for her. My parents were simple folks, I didn’t have a trust fund … maybe even because of my weird eyes, I thought she was ashamed of me.

  “The summer before we all started law school, I spent a few weeks with my friends in New York—one of those friends was Eddie. We partied like college students should: visiting every club in New York City getting drunk and reckless. I want you to understand that I’d felt rejected by Jacky for a long time. It appeared to me that the girl I was in love with was embarrassed to hold my hand in public and be my girlfriend in the daylight. All I wanted was to validate my appeal and show her that other women in a similar socioeconomic class as her found me desirable—even if she didn’t think I was good enough for her. I wasn’t born into wealth and privilege. I had to work for everything. I was just a regular guy from Florida with creepy eyes.”

  “Your eyes are out of this world, Jeff. I haven’t been able to think of anything but your eyes for days,” Kali confesses, which only makes me long to be close to her.

  “Thank you.” I acknowledge her kind words and wish I could tell her just how much every part of me misses her, but I can’t get distracted. I simply continue narrating my tale of doom. “While I was visiting New York that summer, which by the way was Jacky’s hometown as well, she didn’t once call me, find me, or want anything to do with me. She was too busy for me in the real world outside of our bubble. I needed to prove to myself that Jacky wasn’t the only fish in the sea. The sea was actually overflowing with fish.” I get angry as I relive that summer. Back then I was pissed at Jacqueline, but now, thinking back, it’s me I despise.

  “When we all got back to Rhode Island and back to Brown, she felt the change in our relationship. I wanted to make her feel the distance the way I felt it from her. I forced myself to go out any chance I would get. I would flirt shamelessly and hit on every girl that looked my way. If she was around me, I’d be Jeff the social butterfly to the tenth power, but she didn’t seem to care. She didn’t mind, which meant she didn’t really love me the way I loved her. We would only succumb to our old habits when we both got obliterated, usually after a big exam, and only when nobody was around. After not being able to hold her in my arms, being allowed to touch her was a gift, but at the same time, it made me get even angrier with her for not allowing us to be together.

  “I was just dumb and didn’t realize she was hiding something from me. I should’ve made her talk to me. All I wanted was someone to be as obsessed with me as I was with them, so I looked for love elsewhere.

  “I explored and allowed my heart to venture out and imagine a life with other girls, because I’d already given up the dream of ever being her real boyfriend. We continued with this charade for years until I found out from her best friend, Michelle—who was Eddie’s girlfriend—that something was very wrong with Jacky. And suddenly, everything started to make sense. I found Michelle crying in the room Eddie and I shared, and after an hour of intense interrogation, she finally told me the truth. She made me promise not to say a word, but finally broke down and told me that Jacqueline, my Jacqueline, had battled cervical cancer since she was twenty-three. Her being sick put my whole life into perspective, and she became my priority. I couldn’t question her about it because I promised Michelle, but I was dedicated to being around her at all times.

  “At this point, we hadn’t slept together in over a year, but were slowly becoming friends again. I began to reconsider her attitude, her behavior, and stopped letting my ego and my pride overrule my heart.”

  I pause and look at my watch, realizing that we’ve been talking for over an hour. Time seems to melt around Kali. I can listen to her breathing on the other end of the line all day, but I still have to get to the office and get back to running a law firm. We’ll have to pick this up tomorrow. I will make sure that nothing and no one keeps me from calling her at eight AM sharp!

  “I’m really sorry about your girlfriend having cancer. When people you love suffer, it changes your life, I know,” she adds and I assume she is referring to her own mother’s accident. I don’t know anything about this girl’s life, and the more I talk to her, the more I realize I need to—I want to.

  I hate to end our call on such a depressing note, but I have to go. “What are your plans today?” I ask in an effort t
o make this conversation sound marginally normal.

  She answers my question almost immediately. “You, listening to your story was the only thing I had planned today.” She then adds, “Could you text me a picture of yourself?”

  I chuckle. “What kind of picture?” I haven’t dated, which is not what we’re doing now, but I haven’t felt like a regular guy in quite a while. I don’t know what kind of picture I’m suppose to send.

  “Send me a picture of your face. I keep forgetting which eye is green and which is brown. I want to be able to look at you whenever I forget,” she clarifies.

  Her reply silences me. It can’t be a good thing if I miss her this much already.

  “Lost In Your Eyes” by Debbie Gibson

  I hang up and say goodbye to Jeffery, no longer confident if and when our next conversation will take place. He didn’t tell me why he gives blood every fifty-six days—more questions. My emotions are yo-yoing, and as usual, nothing makes sense. A few days ago when I met him, he was nothing more than a creepy stranger at the bar, but now, he is the furthest thing from a stranger. We may have just met, but it’s as if he’s always been a part of my life in some mysterious way. I want to know him—all of him—and his story more than anything. For the first time in my life, I actually got just what I wished for. I got to experience every part of him physically, and now he’s slowly giving me a taste of his past.

  I sit on the floor and I replay our phone call as I realize I may not be ready for his story, and all I really want is to give it back and pretend that he doesn’t have one—a life and a history with a woman he obviously adored and loved.

  I’m not even sure I should know the things he’s already told me. I’ve buried my head in a pillow in an attempt to shake off how every word he says affects me. I need to figure out a way to somehow disassociate my feelings and not make this about us. Just because he’s been inside me shouldn’t constitute a bias listener. His story has nothing to do with me. So why am I making a big deal of this part of him, anyway? This is merely a background into Jeff’s history for me to be able to appreciate Joella’s words—nothing more, nothing less. All I am is just the granddaughter of the fortuneteller he once met years ago. The only part of his story I ought to take to heart is the part where he meets and speaks to Joella Gitanos.