Lost In Rewind (Audio Fools #3)

by Tali Alexander

I sit on my messy bed and inhale the imaginary faint scent of him still lingering on the sheets. Jeff feels like a mistake right now, but I needed to have that bond with someone. I got a chance to discuss my family with a man who cared enough to listen. I should be thankful for our time together and just move on.

  I hear movement on the line.

  “Kali, can you hear me? You still there?” Where else would I be? I chuckle to myself. “I have an hour before I need to go, but you deserve to hear the whole story.”

  A loud thump, as if a door closing, sounds in my ear. I get in my bed and cover myself as a stranger holds my heart strings on the other side of the line and continues to tell me a story I’m not sure I want to hear anymore.

  “Obsession” by Animation

  Emily Bruel calling to invite me over with the kids, while Kali waits on the other line has me reliving my nightmare all over again. I slide down with a bang as my body hits the hardwood floor of my bedroom, and I’m grateful that I won’t have to see Kali’s face when I tell her about the other life I’ve lived in secret. I won’t need to recall the look of disgust on this pretty girl’s face when she learns who I really am. I’m made up of two lives that were both rightfully taken away from me.

  I clear my throat and begin regurgitating the real past. “Do you remember when I told you I spent some time in New York City with Eddie Klein? It was right before we started law school, and right after I was convinced that Jacqueline didn’t want anything to do with me. She was also in New York staying with her folks that summer, and never once had she called to talk to me or answered any of my calls. I got her message loud and clear—I wasn’t good enough for her and her New York high society.

  “My reaction to her rejection was to party it up with my friends, go to the best nightclubs, and dance and flirt with countless girls. On one of the last nights before we were headed back to school, Eddie brought along his younger sister and her best friend to the club. He had to pay the bouncer to let them in, since they were both underage. Our job was to make sure that nobody touched or even looked at these two girls.

  “Eddie and his girlfriend, Michelle, wanted to step outside for a few minutes and I was left in charge of guarding the youth. I saw a few assholes trying to dance too close to Eddie’s little sister and her friend, and very gallantly, I proceeded to step in and make it clear those two were spoken for. Until that moment, until I came face to face with her, I’d never actually paid any attention to his sister, or properly been introduced to her. I’d been too busy trying to find a girl for the night to get Jacky off my mind, but for whatever reason, she made me take notice. His sister, this teen, did something to me … I don’t know, I guess she rattled a part of me that hadn’t been engaged in a while. She was just different than Jacky—taller, lighter hair, she had this smile that was angelic and mischievous at the same time. I liked how she looked at me. She was confident but still made me think I was in control. I didn’t feel inferior standing next to her. I felt like a man.

  “I didn’t like what my best friend’s little sister evoked in me, the curiosity, the desire to touch her and see her reaction to me. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her, but I knew it was wrong to feel anything. Even though I could sense she was all for it, she was still off limits. I’d imagined she was dancing just for me, taunting me, knowing I couldn’t have her for a list of reasons. I also had enough tequila that night to last me my whole life, and by the time I went back to crash at Eddie’s house, I’d become completely obsessed with her. In my intoxicated mind, I was convinced she was perfect for me. I couldn’t get her out of my head that night. It was impossible to sleep in the same house with her and not go talk to her at least.

  “Like a stupid, horny fucker, I barged into her bedroom in the middle of the night. I startled her, and when she looked at me like a deer in headlights, scared in bed, I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. I was just mad at Jacqueline; this young girl had nothing to do with it. I apologized and was about to leave, but we somehow ended up kissing. I can’t recall who instigated it, or how it happened. I don’t remember what I said or what she said, but I remember that kiss. She tasted different, new. I wanted to continue to kiss her all night, but then I realized that I was drunk and in bed with my best friend’s little sister. She wasn’t even eighteen, and she just offered to suck me off in an attempt to impress me. That whole night was ridiculous and I ended up running away before sunrise. I didn’t even wait until everybody woke up to say goodbye. I got my shit and left the Klein residence before I did more damage. It was a moment of stupidity and weakness, and I wish I could go back an undo it, but I can’t.”

  I stop and adjust my ear against the phone. Kali hasn’t said a word. I hope I haven’t put her to sleep with my trip down memory lane.

  “I’m still here. What happened next?” I hear her soft voice filter in. Her voice makes me smile, but her question reminds me of all the mistakes I’ve made and the lives I’ve damaged.

  “Once law school began, Eddie and I became roommates. Jacqueline and I went back to our normal arrangement as if nothing happened, as if my world hadn’t been turned upside down by some girl I had no right kissing. I couldn’t look at Eddie without thinking about his beautiful little sister. I tried to pretend that kiss meant nothing. I tried to pretend she didn’t have permanent residence in my dreams. I tried to pretend I wasn’t using her to feel wanted, and I tried to pretend I wasn’t dying to see her again—I became the great pretender. If I had been smart, I would’ve asked Eddie questions, but I felt guilty for kissing and touching her that night, and I couldn’t trust myself to say her name without my body betraying me and giving my intentions away. So I kept her buried inside.

  “Jacky and I were back to our usual friends with partial benefits status. I got to lose myself inside her on the nights we got buzzed, and she got to wake up the next morning and pretend we were just friends. She seemed content with our arrangement, and who was I to complain? Eddie was happy I was getting laid while spending a few nights a month somewhere else, so he and Michelle could have some privacy, and I was happy that Jacky still let me be with her. I had two girls—one imaginary and one fictional.

  “I tried to conceal my ridiculous feelings for my roommate’s sister. I had zero contact with her after that night we kissed in her room. It wasn’t until about a year later, Eddie was heading to New York to attend a big party his family was having. He mentioned it was his sister’s birthday party. I thought about her so much that in a way I felt close to her, like I knew her. He asked if I wanted to drive back home with him to keep him company since Michelle couldn’t make it, and I jumped on it. I was going to New York to a swanky party to wish the girl I’d been having X-rated fantasies about a happy eighteenth birthday. She was finally legal, and maybe I’d let her do what she’d offered to do to me the year before in her room that night after the club. It was a great plan, but there was just one problem: his sister wasn’t eighteen, or even seventeen … she was sixteen! I came to her fucking sweet sixteen bash like some kind of a molester. She didn’t look fifteen that night at the club, nor did she sound fifteen in her bedroom. Could you imagine I’d been jerking off to the image of a fucking fifteen-year-old girl?”

  Kali gasps, “Jeff, that doesn’t sound good? But at least you didn’t actually do anything but kiss her. Could you imagine if you’d slept with her?” She’s one hundred percent right and that was exactly what enraged me.

  “I was livid. I had a need to yell and scream at her. I don’t know why I blamed her. She never told me her age and I never even asked—I just assumed. We never spoke to each other about that night, or that kiss, or her blowjob offer, or how in the morning we were supposed to talk about possibly hooking-up. We didn’t speak at all. It was all make believe. I was a good boy and waited for her to grow up, but when I came back to see her, I got a good dose of reality.

  “Thinking back, I had no right to take her to the side and yell at her that night, considering this was my doing—she didn’t
owe me anything. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to speak to her or freaking kiss her again that night. I shouldn’t have asked her to grow up and wait for me, so I could make all our fantasies come to life, because all I did was ruin us both.” I open my eyes with the memory of Sara lingering in front of me. I’ve spent more time with Sara in my head than in the real world.

  “Why did you kiss her again, after you found out she was only sixteen?”

  Her question is filled with anger and confusion. She’s angry because I kissed an under-aged girl. Wait until she hears the rest of my story.

  “I was mad at her … and myself. I felt humiliated for how I had allowed her to make me feel, and I acted childish, wanting to punish her. But when I looked into her eyes, as much as I wanted to make her feel what I felt, I couldn’t. I felt sorry for her. The guilt of my actions sobered me up, and I realized that all I wanted to do was protect her. I didn’t want anybody else to touch her or hurt her. I wanted her to just be mine. She was the most angelic, untainted thing I’d ever seen. She looked innocent, but the things she said sounded like she was a grown woman, like she was experienced, but she wasn’t.

  “I couldn’t hide my feelings; she knew how much I wanted her, and she was angry, too. She began to infuriate me, mock me, by speaking about being with other men. We were set on driving each other crazy from day one. When I stopped listening to her vulgar words and just looked into her eyes, I realized that she was just a pretty little pretender, like me. I asked her point blank how many men she’d been with. She responded with, ‘Too many to count.’ That’s when I knew—there were no other men. I was her only man. Her words meant nothing, because her eyes told me everything—I had been her first kiss, and at that moment, I wanted to be her first everything.”

  I stop talking to give Kali a chance to ask me questions. But we’re both silent, allowing my words to settle. I glance down at my watch. We don’t have the luxury of silence; our time is running out. I have meetings, I need to be at court today, and I promised Emily I’d come with Juliet and Jacob to her house for dinner.

  “Can I go on with my story?” I inquire to make sure my judge is still paying attention.

  “Yes, of course, go on.”

  There is no anger or warmth in her voice, but then again, why should there be? She’s bracing herself for the storm that’s about to descend her ears.

  “I went back to school and back to Jacqueline’s bed as if nothing had happened. She didn’t notice a change in me, and truth was, nothing really happened. My job was to study and become an attorney. I didn’t waste my time chasing pussy like the rest of my friends. I was content. I got to make love to my best friend, a girl that was perfect in every way—just too good for me. So what if she was embarrassed to tell the world I was her boyfriend? I didn’t need a title or a sign. I didn’t care, because when it mattered, she always ended up in my arms. I was never a pig; I was always respectful of our relationship. From the first day Jacky and I started having sex, I may have flirted or joked with other girls, but I never slept with anybody but her, until … well, until I did.

  “I spent years working my ass off with my nose pressed inside books to ensure a future once school was over. I didn’t have a rich daddy to make sure I had a career when I graduated. I was conditioned and focused, spending half my life in the library studying. I only allowed myself a few distractions. After exams, once a month, I’d get drunk and call Eddie’s little sister to hear her voice and make sure she knew I was thinking about her, and then I got to go and sleep with the girl I loved.

  “Maybe if I hadn’t kept calling his sister she would have forgotten about me, maybe she would’ve found a nice guy to love, but I couldn’t help myself. I had this scenario all worked out that I’d go back to see her on her eighteenth birthday and fuck the fantasy out of both of us. Finally give her what she’d asked for on that night in her room. I’d dreamt about being the first man to touch her, take her virginity, and teach her what pleasure was about. I loved pretending that she was obsessed with me and waiting for me. Being denied or held back from having something can create an artificial demand that maybe isn’t really there. It was all premeditated in my mind, but then something happened.

  “About a month before all my dirty dreams with my best friend’s little sister were to come true, my worst nightmare came to be. Like I told you before, I found out from Michelle that Jacqueline, my Jacky, was suffering and battling cervical cancer on her own. I was angry. I couldn’t understand why she would withhold something as serious as cancer from me—me, of all people? Did she think so little of our friendship that I wasn’t even worth the truth?

  “Her weekly trips to the city to see her parents started making more sense. At one point, I honestly thought she had a real boyfriend in New York, someone her parents had approved of, not some guy she fucked in school in secret. I spent a whole month following her into the city every weekend to see for myself that this wasn’t some kind of horrible joke. She would go by herself into the hospital for treatment for two whole days every week. I remember waiting for over thirty hours on a park bench across the street from the hospital for her to come out, just to make sure I didn’t miss her. I couldn’t let her do this on her own. The cheap, decrepit, five hundred-square-foot studio I’d rented was by the hospital where I could keep an eye on her from my window. All it had in it was a clean mattress and a pillow. It had no fridge or a kitchen, just a hot plate for boiling water for coffee. That’s when I stopped putting milk in my coffee. Sugar and lemons don’t spoil as fast as unrefrigerated milk.”

  I hear Kali take a deep breath, which reminds me of our distance. I need to stop. I’m already late to my first meeting.

  “Why are you so far away from me? I have things I need to tell you and real life keeps catching up. If I hang up to go be an attorney for a few hours, will you promise to pick up the phone when I call you back? I won’t take lunch today, I’ll call you as soon as my meeting finishes and I’m on my way to court.” I hold my breath for her reply.

  “You don’t have to apologize or ask permission to speak with me. I need to know what Joella said to you more than what I can offer you back by hearing it. We both should get back to our lives and talk later.”

  “Kali—,” I’m about to tell her that she’s becoming a huge, important part of my life, but then I stop myself. Maybe it’s not wise to engage her with intimate words until she fully understands who I am and what I’ve done. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

  I agonize over Kali’s reaction to my affair with Sara by milking the revelation, but it’s inevitable. If I crave any sort of a normal relationship with this woman she ultimately must accept me, including all my mistakes. My involvement with Sara wasn’t a mistake, since our union produced the most beautiful children in the world, but the way I kept Sara waiting indefinitely with the hopes of us having a real life, was.

  The meeting I’m in slowly drags on for hours with back and forth behind-the-scenes negotiations between our clients. I’m thankful my assistant is vigorously writing it all down because I have a different kind of negotiation afflicting my mind. I have a drawn-out countdown led by my heartbeat swimming through a suspended sea of tension until I hear her voice again. I won’t be able to fully take in a deep breath until we speak.

  I excuse myself, no longer able to wait and return to my corner office down the long hallway. I instinctively touch my chest to feel the key but it’s gone. I don’t dwell on the absence of my talisman and quickly fish inside my suit pocket for my phone. I sit comfortably in my oversized executive chair, but it feels wrong. I abandon my desk and relocate to the couch, and that feels wrong too. I look around my office with the New York City skyline wrapped around it like a postcard closing in on me from every direction and proceed to the windowless bathroom. I lock myself inside, but it’s inane since I’m not sure who exactly I’m locking myself from.

  I settle on the bench facing a mirrored wall and dial her number. She answers before the line even ring
s and I swear her voice is better than any painkiller I’ve ever taken.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi Jeffery.” The way she pronounces my name is indescribable.

  “I don’t remember where we left off,” I lie. I could recite and transcribe our conversations verbatim.

  “You enlightened me on why you drink sweet black coffee with a slice of lemon during the time you were coming into the city to be your future wife’s guardian angel, and now I think you’re about to tell me about your friend’s sister.”

  Her perception of me being Jacky’s protector reminds me of my wife’s letter. She also believed I was her savior, but truly she was mine. I don’t let myself get too philosophical and dive right back to the task at hand—the truth.

  “During that time, I’d almost forgotten all about Eddie’s sister. I had so much on my mind that I didn’t need to occupy space with a silly fantasy or some girl I knew practically nothing about. I’d started getting closer to Jacky, sitting next to her in all our shared classes, studying together like we did when we first met, hoping our proximity would force her to tell me about her condition, but she didn’t. She kept it from everybody. Her silence drove me crazy and I felt lied to, I felt unimportant. I actually wished she had a real boyfriend she ran to on the weekends and not cancer, because another guy I could fight, but I couldn’t fight cancer.

  “Eddie hardly ever mentioned his family or his sister, and at that point, I hadn’t spoken to her in months, but obviously, the curiosity was still there, buried under the harsh reality I’d found myself living with. The day after his sister’s birthday, I questioned him about her as nonchalantly as I could. I remember him freaking out about forgetting to call and missing his sister’s eighteenth birthday. He was worried that his parents had been too busy with their own bullshit and may have forgotten her birthday as well, and that he was the worst fucking brother on the planet. I felt awful. What if everybody had forgotten her birthday? Why didn’t I call her? I remembered, and I had promised her I’d call. I wanted to call her, but I didn’t have the time or the balls to hear the disappointment in her voice; after all, it was Friday evening and I was headed to the train station, right behind Jacky, to go into the city and make sure she was okay.