Chapter 4 Bathroom Invader #2
That sounded bitchy, but it made me feel better about myself. He never had a problem trying to irritate me, and he deserved a taste of his own medicine, even if it was just a small dose. I could tell it had worked by the way his eyes followed me to the bathroom.
What I hadn’t expected was that he would take the words come find me so seriously, and so soon.
I was still pulling off my pants in the bathroom when he opened the door.
It scared me so bad I almost fell over backward, and to right myself, I had to step out of them.
So there I was in a T-shirt and panties, wondering what Jack wanted.
Strangely, he didn’t even seem to notice.
“I need to talk to you,” he burst out.
“Now?!”
“Yes, now.”
“Do I not have a right to privacy? Get out of here!!!”
“Let me get this straight. You move into my house, take over my couch, leave me hanging like I was no one, then I come in and the first thing I see is you hugging up on some guy in my living room!”
He had come closer and closer to me as he said this, and I tried to shout, “Ross, get out!” But he interrupted me: “What the hell is going on with you? Is this who you always were? Because the Jen I remember was a decent person.”
“Wait! I’m not a decent person? What the hell makes me not a decent person? The fact that I have a friend?! I need your permission for that now?”
“If you’re going to bring them to my house, you damn sure do!”
“Fine! From now on, I’ll go to his place instead.”
That was mean, maybe. Inappropriate, maybe. But I couldn’t help myself. And it was nothing compared to what Jack said next. Clenching his teeth, with a vein throbbing in his neck, he hissed, “Fuck you.”
“Fuck me? Have I said anything about you and your female friends? Did I ever burst in on you in the shower?”
“Oh, please! You didn’t even turn on the water yet!”
“Ross, I’m almost naked. Get out!”
Confused and angry, he looked me over and said, “It’s not like it’s anything I’ve never seen before.”
Now I was pissed. I could feel myself turning red as I grabbed my pants and threw them in his face. He ducked, and I screamed, “You have no right to invade my privacy, and you have no right to stare at my body without my permission.”
“Ross,” Will interrupted us. “There’s got to be a better time…”
“This is a great time,” Jack cut him off.
“It is not!” I reprimanded him. “Now get out! And for your information, if I want to hang out or date people or whatever, I’ll damn well do it, and I don’t owe you a single explanation!”
He hadn’t liked that. “Date? What do you mean by date?”
“JUST GO!”
I got him out the door and shut it behind him. Since I didn’t hear anything more, I assumed he’d left. But no. A few seconds later, he tried to open it up again, and in a reflex, I threw my whole body into it and felt it slam into something.
“Shit!” I called out, realizing I had probably hit him in the face, then opened it back up and told him, “I’m sorry! Are you OK?”
He was rubbing his forehead but he seemed fine. Not hurt, just angry.
“I don’t know, but since you fucking hit me, can you answer my question?”
I instantly stopped feeling bad for him. “Don’t talk to me that way. Now I need to shower. If you really have something to discuss, you can wait for me out here.”
I didn’t think he’d do it, so I took my time, soaped up twice, washed my hair, used conditioner. I emerged a good while later with a towel wrapped around me, and there was Jack, sitting in the hallway, arms crossed, legs outstretched, looking like a sulky child.
“You done yet?” he asked impatiently.
“No.”
I went to get my pajamas and shut myself up in the bathroom again. I took my time on purpose, getting dressed, putting on my glasses, combing my hair. Then I came out. He was in the same position but looked even angrier than before.
“Are you finally finished?”
I didn’t answer. Instead I walked past him toward the kitchen and saw that in the living room, everybody had stayed where they were sitting.
They were staring at me attentively. I walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer, but Jack, who had followed me, took it from my hand and slammed it on the counter.
When I protested, he told me he had done his part and waited, and now I had to talk to him.
“Has it occurred to you that maybe I don’t feel like it?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. He was hung up on that word date.
He wanted to know who I had one with and when.
I tried to dance around the subject, not because there was someone else, but because it was my right to live my own life, especially given how he was treating me.
At one point, Will burst in and the two of us snapped at him, and he said, “You’re both basically screaming at each other. The neighbors can even hear you.”
“Screw the neighbors,” Jack said.
“Ross!” Naya butted in. “It’s not a date. She’s just going to hang out with a guy from her class.”
“Oh, just a guy from class?” he said sarcastically.
“Yeah,” I shot back. “Is there a problem with it?”
“Do you like him?” Jack asked. Of course that was what he wanted to know.
I hesitated. I didn’t like Curtis. He was a friend, that was all.
I wondered whether I should tell Jack that, but before I had the chance to, he had to get a dig in at me.
“Are you going to tell him you love him too and then disappear for a year?”
Here we go. I was surprised it had taken him that long to get around to it. I looked away, ashamed, as he leaned in close. My fingers were tingling, and I clenched my fists.
He added, “Or are you just going to fuck him so you’ll have a new place to live?”
“Ross, take that back!” Naya called out.
Looking at him, seeing how anxiously he was waiting for a response, I could tell what he wanted was for me to lose my cool.
Maybe that’s what I wanted, too, because all the concern I’d felt the night before, all my hopes that we could get along, had gone out the window.
Our noses were practically touching, and I could see his dilated pupils and his bloodshot eyes.
Everything about him made me angry. Without thinking, I told him, “You’re a pig. ”
The whole thing was so weird. I almost wanted to punch him in the face. At the same time, having him so close did something to me. I was leaning against the counter then, and he reached around me, one hand on either side of my hips. “A pig?” he said. “Well, at least I’m not a liar.”
“When the hell did I lie to you?” I asked.
We were talking softer now, soft enough that our friends in the living room couldn’t hear us, not that I cared.
I could feel my hands slightly grazing his.
I had to arch my back to keep away from him as I played the last card up my sleeve: “If you hate me so much, I wonder why you’re so jealous. ”
“Fuck your date,” he said. “I couldn’t care less. I just thought somebody should warn the poor guy.”
Those words broke the spell, and realizing I was letting Jack push me around and intimidate me, I shoved him with both hands in the middle of his chest, surprising him. “Warn him of what?”
“Of who you really are!”
“Oh sure! Like you’re some saint!”
It was at that moment that Mike opened the door and walked in with a smile, shouting, “Hey, everyone!”
Jack and I went on arguing. This was the same guy who had confessed over beers one night to sleeping with God knew how many women, and he was seriously freaking out because I was friends with another guy?
He kept saying that was different, that was the past, and so on, and I called him a creep, asking, “What kind of guy barges into the bathroom when someone’s taking a shower? ”
I could see Sue across the counter motioning for Mike to join her on the couch.
“This is the best view,” she said. Not wanting to be a spectacle, I grabbed my beer, getting ready to go to the bedroom, but Jack snatched it away and held it up in the air over my head.
I told him to quit acting like a child. “You’re the child,” he said.
And I jumped up in the air as best I could before finally giving up and telling him, “Fuck you.”
I had admitted defeat and wouldn’t have my drink, but at least I’d gotten under his skin, and that gave me some consolation. I walked past him and sat in the living room next to Mike, crossing my arms and legs. Jack followed me soon after, and I felt the sofa sinking as he grunted, “Move.”
“Really, bro?” Mike said. “I don’t know what’s up with you, but why don’t you open a beer and we can…”
“Move, Mike!” Jack repeated.
Mike tried to stand, but I grabbed his arm and held him back. “He’s staying right here, Jack. You can go sit somewhere else.”
This went on, with Jack saying he wanted to sit next to me, me telling him I didn’t want him to, him telling me he didn’t care, and Mike trying to still the waters, until Jack and I were on the verge of screaming.
I shouted at him to shut up, he called me a child and blamed me for hitting him in the head with a door, I told him I hadn’t done it on purpose, and he went back to the subject of Curtis, which was clearly his real issue.
Jack tried to take his anger out on Mike, telling him to go sit in the chair, that it was his couch, his apartment, and so on, and we wound up yelling juvenile insults:
“Bitch!”
“Loser!”
“Narcissist!”
“Asshole!”
“Enough!” Will shouted, standing up. “I’m tired of this bullshit.
You’re both acting like children. I feel like you’re trying to outdo each other to see who can be less mature.
Well, it’s time to grow up! You, Jenna, go to your room and yell into a pillow or something until you can calm down.
And you, Jack, go grab a smoke and see if you can get your shit together. ”
That did the trick. Will was a sweetie, but he was a big guy and could intimidate anyone.
So we both walked off, slamming the doors.
When I was alone in the bedroom, I grabbed my phone and tried to entertain myself.
I slipped between the sheets and watched TikTok videos of people drawing. That helped me relax.
An hour later, though, I was hungry. So hungry that my stomach was growling.
I walked to the door and pressed my ear to it.
The only voice I could hear was Naya’s, and I decided to risk it, opening up the door and tiptoeing down the hall.
I felt relieved when I saw she and Sue were the only ones in the living room.
“The men are up on the roof,” Naya said. “Here, I saved you some pizza.”
“Thanks,” I said, grabbing the beer I’d left on the counter and sitting on the couch. “I was starving.”
I heard something coming from Sue’s corner of the room…was I crazy? That was my own voice. Sue chuckled, then noticed I had caught her and quickly tried to tuck her phone away.
“Are you serious? You actually recorded us?”
“It’s for one of my Instagram stories. I need content.”
“And you thought recording me in secret was appropriate?” I asked.
“What if Ross gets famous like the Kardashians?” she replied. “I need to get ready. This could go totally viral. I might be sitting on a gold mine. But whatever. I’ll delete it if you want. I’ve already got more embarrassing material.”
“Thanks,” I murmured. “Please keep me out of it, but if it’s just Jack, go wild. You’ve got my permission, after the way he treated me.”
“I don’t know,” Sue said, “we’ve actually made a lot of progress.
You may not realize it, but it’s been forever since Ross has opened up like that.
He’s barely spoken a word for the last two months.
I guess it would be better if he hadn’t gotten all jealous and made a scene, but still, it’s something. ”
Naya said talking was good, but he’d need to control himself in the future. Sue nodded along, and when I agreed, she offered to help out: “If he acts like that again, Jenna, just tell me and I’ll stuff his head in the trash can.”