26. Chapter 26
Chapter 26
A n hour later, while finishing a long swig from the bottle and reclining on the couch, I heard a knock at the door.
I froze. Who could it be? Should I answer? It seemed unlikely to be anyone other than Jack, since our building had decent security. Yet he hadn’t randomly stopped over here for weeks, so that seemed unlikely too. Annie might still have the entry code, but as far as I knew, we still weren’t talking.
I forced some meditative breaths to dispel the quickened heart rate and the tension wracking my body. I’d just stay quiet and hope that the visitor would go away quickly.
I couldn’t face anyone.
But I heard the sound of the door opening and then Jack’s voice. “Vivi? You here?”
No, no, no, no. This is not happening.
I debated whether to stay hidden, lying flat on the couch where he couldn’t see me.
“Vivi, are you home?” Jack called out again, taking slow steps into my apartment.
I sighed, using my hands to push myself up. “Jack. Hi. Did you need something?”
He walked tentatively to the couch, holding out a key. “I was just coming home and noticed that you left your key in the door. So I wanted to check—” he stopped then. “Vivi, what’s wrong? You look terrible.”
“Gee, thanks.” I looked away. “I’m fine. Just a bad day, that’s all.”
“And you’re drinking right out of the bottle this early in the evening? I think it’s been, oh, a decade since I’ve seen you do that?” When I glanced at him briefly, his face was wrinkled in concern.
“Drinking out of glasses is so overrated,” I said coolly, trying to hide the tremble in my voice.
He moved a pillow out of the way to sit down next to me. “What’s going on?”
I continued to look away and said nothing, wishing I’d hidden the traitorous bottle. Finally, I croaked, “It’s nothing. I’m tired. Thank you for letting me know about the key.”
“It’s obviously not nothing, Vivi,” he said as he touched my shoulder gently. “But tell me about this nothing.”
“Don’t you have, like, something more important to do with your time? Or someone more important to spend it with?”
“No. I’m here with you, Vivi. Right where I want to be. Where I always—” He cleared his throat suddenly. “Vivi, do you want to talk?”
After taking another swig from the bottle, I finally looked at him fully. I braced myself for his reaction, aware that seeing my face would reveal the full extent of my misery. Jack was no stranger to my ugly crying. Still, this time felt … different. In a voice barely above a whisper, I said, “I don’t think you really want to hear about this, Jack. It’s—it’s about someone you don’t like or respect. It will seem ridiculous … I will seem ridiculous to you.”
“Gregory,” he said, utterly still.
I nodded and looked away again, trying to stop the tears from falling.
He was quiet for a moment and then asked softly, “What … what did he do?”
I bit my lip and swallowed hard. Of course I wanted to confide in Jack as I always had in the past, but could I handle the humiliation this time?
He reached out and stroked my upper arms gently, tender concern showing in his eyes and soft words. “Please, Vivi. Let me help. I don’t like or respect him, you’re right. But I like and respect you, so that’s what matters.” He paused, his hands stilling and then falling back to his lap. “I’ll try to be—I will be the friend that I really haven’t been lately. The friend you deserve.”
I shook my head and raised my eyes to his pleading ones. “I’m sure I don’t deserve you. I doubt I ever have.”
After a long silence, I took a fortifying breath and told him the story.
The whole story.
It took a while, and it took some more tears, but I told him everything. Every mortifying detail.
When I finished, he was silent. His body was still, almost rigidly so, and his eyes were trained on the floor. Was he waiting patiently for me to say more or trying to decide how to react?
“So that’s all of it, Jack.” Wiping my eyes, I found it hard to look at him, especially after finishing the last part of the story, the most mortifying parts.
He raised his eyes to me slowly and cleared his throat. “Vivi, I don’t know what to say.”
I swallowed as the tears gathered in my eyes once again, all the devastation of earlier today rushing back in full force. “It’s OK. You—you don’t have to say anything. I know I was a complete fool. Am , not was. I’m not deluding myself anymore.”
“No!” he said sharply, his eyes flashing and jaw muscles clenching. “You’re not a fool. You’re a good person, the best , and he’s just … just an asshole.”
I gasped. “You never curse,” I said softly. It was one of his best quirks, I’d always thought.
“Well, what else can you say about such a person? I didn’t like the man, you know that, but I had no idea how wretched he was.” Jack shook his head as he clenched and unclenched his fists. I’d never seen him do that before; I’d so rarely seen him visibly upset at all. “Viviana, none of this is your fault. None of it. I know this feels … feels horrible, to say the least, I’m sure. You’re blaming yourself. But you did nothing wrong. You did not deserve it, any of it. You have to believe me. Please, Vivi.”
Averting my eyes again, I found it difficult to meet his intense gaze. “Maybe he’s a garbage person. I mean, I guess he definitely is. But still, I was dumb enough to fall for it, for him. Despite all the obvious signs that he was not into me. And all the signs that he was not a good person. I was an idiot. I am an idiot.” I paused for a long moment while trying to blink back more tears. “I can hardly even look at you because I’m so embarrassed. What kind of idiot would—”
He leaned forward then and pulled me firmly to his chest. I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing yet again, and I began to shake as I fell apart in his strong arms, tear-dampened cheeks pressed to his chest. Neither of us spoke or moved; he just held me firmly until I finally stopped shaking.
Minutes or perhaps hours later, I sniffled and started to pull away, looking down. “I’m sorry, Jack. I wish I could say I don’t need your pity, but I obviously do. Thank you for not making me feel like the total idiot that I am.”
He shook his head, placing one finger on my lips gently. “Shh. Don’t say that again. He’s the idiot.”
I raised my puffy eyes to meet Jack’s and drew in a breath. His face was very close.
He rested his forehead against mine for a long time. With my eyes closed, I felt his warm breath on my face and then his hand brushing my cheek.
My stomach started to do some strange flips, and my cheek felt hot where he’d touched it. I was barely aware that I leaned in, ever so slightly. After a long moment, his breath ever closer, I felt a fluttering touch on my upper lip.
I inhaled and felt the light touch again.
Was it a breath or … a kiss? The sensation was fleeting. Had I imagined it? Jack pulled back slightly, still mere inches away, and when I opened my eyes, he was gazing at me intently with darkened eyes, a strange look I didn’t recognize in him. What was happening? I exhaled a shaky breath as my lips parted.
I didn’t know what came next, whether I leaned forward or he did, or both. But the next thing I knew, our lips collided, and it wasn’t so fleeting or tentative. The kiss was firm, yet achingly tender. Full of feeling, yet soft and slightly tentative. Patient, yet determined. I had no thoughts and, for the second time that day, could only feel , and feel deeply, with sensations unnamed and unknown.
His warm hands cradled my face as I threaded mine through his soft, wavy hair. When his lips began to trace a path along my jaw, I drew in another shaky breath and pulled him in closer.
With his hands on my upper arms, he pulled away with a suddenness that left me grasping the couch for stability, while he quickly retreated to the far end of the couch.
As we both caught our breath, we gazed at one another with dazed eyes. I was faintly aware of a sense of surprise on his face, or maybe it was a look of disbelief.
With our eyes still locked, he rose slowly to his feet as he opened and then closed his mouth several times.
“Vivi, I …” His voice was thick with emotion, and he cleared his throat. “This was … I’m …” He tore his gaze away from me, looking around the room. Finally, he took a long breath and met my eyes again. “I’m truly sorry. I should go. I mean, I will go.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat with some effort and opened my mouth to speak, but he had already turned to leave. And then I found, as I watched him leave, that I had no words.
Stunned, I remained on the couch, immobile. It could have been hours, minutes, or even just seconds in which I just stared at the closed door, touching my fingers to my slightly parted, still tingling lips.
Slowly, thought returned. I wrinkled my brow as confusion swirled in my brain, replacing the soul-crushing devastation of earlier.
“What was that ?” I wasn’t in the habit of talking aloud to myself, so I was startled when I heard my own voice, unexpectedly.
I tried to think about how the kiss had happened, replaying the scene in my head while trying not to analyze how it felt.
Think, Viviana, this is the time for thinking. Rational thought, I commanded myself .
But it felt good . No, kind of amazing, actually. Not even kind of. Like full-on amazing.
It was Jack though.
Jack, my friend of 15 years, the guy who took pity on me in high school, the guy who had always been there when I needed him, the guy who had been a steady friend , always that, the best of friends, but nothing more.
Our relationship just wasn’t like this. Ever. There wasn’t any sexual tension or romantic tension or anything like that. Ever. Not even drunken kisses. Or even drunken thoughts. The very idea was preposterous.
Well, I did have a tiny crush on him in high school, but that had been short-lived and meant nothing. I was 15 or 16 at the time. He’d thought of me as a kid sister back then and probably ever since, just as I’d always thought of him as an older, wiser brother type. Well, until today.
“What was that?”
The next questions came unbidden: Is Jack into me? Am I into him?
After a few seconds, I almost laughed, reminding myself that this was Jack. And me. We’d been best friends forever, never anything more. Like brother and sister.
But brothers and sisters don’t kiss like that.
As I took a much-needed swig from the nearly empty bottle, the truth hit me. I nearly dropped the bottle at the force of the realization.
It’s pity! Jack felt sorry for me. He was trying to make me feel like less of an idiot.
He was trying to soothe my ego. A fresh wave of humiliation washed over me, and I weathered the storm as best I could, gripping the couch cushion as the full, wretched realization sank in.
For the second time today, I realized that I’d never been more mortified in my entire life. My phone buzzed, and with some trepidation, I read the incoming texts:
Jack
I’m so sorry, Vivi.
Truly sorry.
My worst fears were confirmed. It wasn’t a moment of passion; it was sympathy. He'd been trying to make me feel better about myself, but now he realized he’d gone too far. The tears came anew, tears of shame, of devastation, of self-pity.
When the flood abated, I blew my nose and threw the tissue on the floor, not caring about any mess when I was the biggest mess of all. I tried to force myself to laugh at how ridiculous this was.
You’re being so overdramatic . It’s just a kiss. You’re not teenagers. And pitying yourself because someone else pities you is just … pitiful. Besides, you’re not even into him, so it doesn’t matter why he did it.
“Enough!” I said aloud to the ridiculous voice in my head.
My therapist’s voice inside of me was kinder, reminding me that beating myself up never amounted to anything useful.
I stared at a pot of fake flowers perched on a stand near the TV. I loved flowers, but keeping them alive was another story. The fake ones were just as beautiful.
And that’s when I knew: I would be OK.
Yes, today was terrible.
Gregory was terrible.
Kissing Jack was not terrible in itself, but feeling pitied was terrible.
But I actually let myself feel the things I needed to feel .
That in itself was kind of monumental. Allowing feelings to happen was actually the key to moving on from them. Of course, my old therapist had told me this a million times before, but the evidence had never been clearer than it was right now.
Despite everything, I felt a bit proud of myself for enduring today—because sometimes that’s all a woman could do—endure. Nevertheless, she persisted . Until the next day, the next week, or the next month, when I pick up the pieces and come back stronger. But today, I just had to endure.
I could do that. I had to.