10 – Who did this to you?
Jessie
Sunday morning is the one morning I let myself have off. The day I get Eugene to open and man the shop for the day. He’s a good egg. I was originally skeptical because he didn’t read or really know anything about books. His one redeeming quality is that I’m pretty sure he can brew a coffee better than me. Not something I will openly admit to, but the little creations he can form with the foam are truly something else. So, I took the morning to sleep in, bum around the house. I finished the book I was reading and moved on to The Odyssey. Except, despite being perched in my reading chair, surrounded by books, the type of peace I usually spend daydreaming of, I can’t focus.
Instead of reading the words on the page, I see the tiny auburn flyaways at the base of Casey’s neck as I had held her tightly to my chest in the studio yesterday. I see the rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed heavily. We were pretending, and providing a demonstration, and yet, when she pulled me toward her chest it took every single cell in my body not to grab the neck of that ridiculous tank, tear it down to bare her perky breasts to me so I could devour her.
I shake my head and re-read the same sentence I have re-read for the last ten minutes. Except all I see are the same words on a loop in my head.
I can be your person.
Here was this kind, selfless woman, agreeing to befriend a lonely grump. Maybe it’s that I woke up at thirty-three and have never felt so lonely. It feels pathetic to be so desperate for a connection; it’s even more pathetic that I’m struggling to swallow my pride and just behave like a normal guy. But fuck, I can’t get her out of my head. Imagining her in all kinds of places, most of them naked and with me inside her, that blue bow tied around her delicate wrists so I could take everything I wanted. It feels forbidden, wrong, like a betrayal to Casey, me lusting after her when she had agreed to be my friend. Ugh, friend.
I aggressively turn the ring on my pinky for a distraction, trying to focus on the feel of it twisting on my skin, but I still can’t stop thinking about the way Casey re-emerged from the bathroom with a solid indifference. She chatted with her staff, we ran through a few more movements, and it was like the electricity I felt with her around was only one-sided, like I was imagining the whole thing in my head. Right?
I’m officially going insane. And it’s all thanks to a small chestnut pixie.
Thinking that she didn’t also feel this pull toward each other. That the moment we were in the same room, the air didn’t thicken and make rational thought impossible. I mean, of course she didn’t. There was no way she was attracted to the likes of me.
This infatuation was stupid, ridiculous, inappropriate, and perhaps that was why I decided on another distraction. I walked into my room and pulled out the manuscript. The one I wrote a year ago before promptly shoving it to the back of my closet. I pull it out and dump it on the reading chair, pacing the space before it, twisting the ring again as I mull it over. Ready to finally complete another edit. Maybe if I polish it again, I’ll feel ready to show the world?
No one wants to hear what you have to say.
Why would they? This book is just a tormented, fictional spin on the tragic story of a boy who had his heart torn from his chest by the sun of his sky.
No one cares about that story.
Another frustrated grunt as I run a frustrated hand through my hair. I spin, grabbing my keys from the counter, and leave the apartment, slamming the door behind me. Unsure where I’m going or what I’m doing. I forgot my coat, and the New York air is unforgiving, but the heat thrumming through my veins is doing its job so far in keeping me warm. The streets are busy with people in their activewear, their fashionable coffees in hand, walking their pets. But it all passes me in a blur, as though my subconscious has a one-track mind. Like I’d planned this, my insanity has taken over my motor skills and now I have somehow ended up at the Garcia building, standing in front of apartment 23A.
I raise a fist to knock and instead throw my head back in exasperation. “What the fuck are you doing, Jessie?” I chastise myself and turn to leave. But I make it four steps, then pivot, and before I think about it anymore, I raise my fist again and knock. Possibly heavier than I meant to.
The door opens a crack, and I see the warm auburn hair that I see in my dreams spilling over her shoulder as she leans through the gap. “Oh.” Her voice is softer than usual, something off in the way she speaks. She quickly closes it, and before I can protest, she opens it again, a smile I can tell is forced plastered to her face. “Hi, Jay, what… what are you doing here?” She tries to pretend, but I hear the wobble in her voice, see the stains on her cheeks and the way her lips have puffed slightly. She was crying.
Something tightens within me, like a wrath and an urgency. I want to simultaneously save her from her woes and destroy the perpetrator all at once. Whoever made Casey Baker cry or feel sad was going to meet a painful demise, and I’ll be damned if it wouldn’t be by my hand.
I push the door open wider, stepping right up to her, planting my hands on her face. “Who?” I practically growl at her. She looks shocked, but after a few tense seconds, she melts and leans into my touch, lowering her eyes to her feet. I urge her with my hands to lift her gaze to mine. If she won’t tell me with words, I’ll get them through her eyes. I don’t care. “Ace, tell me. Who made you feel like this?” I try to soften my voice, try to dim down the rage while I map out the ways I’d ruin someone for hurting her.
“Me,” she says on a whisper and big sad tears drip slowly down her pretty pink cheeks before she squeezes her eyes shut, releasing a sob. Before I know what I’m doing, I pull her to my chest and wrap my arms around her, walking her backward into the apartment and kicking the door closed behind me.
She wraps her arms around my waist and just cries. I feel strange, a mix of rage and pain. I want to make it stop. Make her not hurt, but at the same time, I selfishly take pleasure in her coming undone in front of me. That she is letting me comfort her, allowing herself to lose a little bit of that control she holds onto so tightly.
It dawns on me then that I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t know how to comfort, I’m not good at helping heal or talking through emotions. I pray to God she doesn’t want to vent. The only emotion I’m well acquainted with is anger. And I feel like that won’t do much use here.
I use a hand in her glowing reddish-brown locks to gently massage her head, a firm hand between her shoulder blades, and we stay standing near the entryway of her apartment like this for minutes.
She breathes in, then steps out of the embrace, leaving the safety of me, and taking with her my sanity in not being able to cure her unhappiness. She self-consciously wipes her cheeks and turns and heads to the kitchen. I can’t even help it; I follow her like a lost puppy as she finally speaks. “How come you’re here, Jessie?”
She isn’t mad, but she is embarrassed, and I hate that.
“Well… I was feeling like shit.” I shrug and subconsciously twist the ring on my finger. “I was going to see if you wanted to… hang out or something,” I mumble because I feel like an idiot. The only reason any of these honest words are coming out is because when she is in the same room, I seem to lose all sensibility.
She turns and looks at me, a quick sight of shock, before reaching and grabbing a glass to fill with water at the sink. “Oh, you wanted to hang with me? ”
A lot of responses come to mind. None of them make it past my lips. When she looks up to me, she must find the answer she was looking for and a soft smile replaces the pain she held previously. She brings her thumb to her mouth and chews it again.
I step back into her space. Gently prying her thumb from her mouth, I run a soft finger through the line formed between her brows. The rarity of the imperfection only adding to her magnificence. Operating on autopilot, and this suddenly desperate need to take away any pain she feels, I twist and slide my grandfather’s ring off my pinky, sliding it onto her thumb. She looks at it, a pink blush covering her cheeks. “Now, every time you go to bite your nail, you’ll see the ring and remember to stop.” She breathes heavily for a moment, then blinks rapidly and shakes her head.
“Why?” she whispers.
“Because doubt and worry are two things you have no business entertaining. I can see you feel them when you bite your nail. But you’re exceptional. You don’t need to give in to those bullshit emotions.” I tuck her hair behind her ear because I can’t help it, but I manage to restrain myself from running my thumb along the sharp line of her cheek or pressing my lips to her puffy ones. I’m a man, not an animal. Yet.
I decide then that earth shattering attraction and desire aside, perhaps we both need this. A person, a friend. If she was easily so willing to be that for me, I sure as hell could do that for her.
“You know, Ace, if you need a person, too, I’m here.”
“Oh, no, I’m fine really. I just—”
“Don’t lie to me.” I grip her chin and force her to look into my eyes. “Stop pretending to be okay. Be strong enough to exist in your shit. If you can’t do it for yourself…, do it for me.” I fail to tamper down the anger, but it’s hard when I watch her put up this fa?ade. When she changes who she is to ensure other people are comfortable, to keep the peace. Her eyes search mine and a blush rises from her neck to her cheeks as her lips part on a breath. I use every ounce of control within my soul to keep my eyes on hers and my face not within kissing distance. She nods and grabs my wrist, not removing my hand, but instead leaning into the touch. I small twitch of my cock at the passing thought that she likes it firm.
I quickly step away and shake my head, and she breaks the silence.
“So… you wanted to hang out? What did you have in mind?”
“Well, what do you usually do when you have… these feelings?” I gesture and mutter as I stalk for a seat at the kitchen counter, trying to put solid objects between me and the walking temptation.
When I look back to her, her smile has grown. The light I usually find in her eyes is back, and she looks every bit as beautiful as always. “I bake.”
“Well, then I guess we’re baking.”
Casey’s baking playlist fills the kitchen, Zach Bryan singing Holy Roller setting the soundtrack to the way I watch Casey float through the motions. She looks truly at peace when she bakes. The sadness and sorrow from earlier but a distant memory, and I’m selfishly glad Rosie was called into work today because I get the real Casey. She isn’t putting on a show, there are no fake smiles, and she doesn’t pretend to have her shit together.
Watching Casey exist in her feelings, though, makes the echoing heartbreak from Jenny ring harder in the back of my mind. The bullshit I buried and refused to deal with. Our departing words and the way she just left.
But this new leaf is meant to be forgetting and moving on. If Casey is willing to give me the time of day, well, I’m holding onto it until she realizes that she is slumming it with the likes of me.
“What now?” I ask her from the stove. I’m stirring some kind of sauce mixture while the cakes bake in the oven. Casey is behind me at the kitchen island beating cream and she turns it off, leaning around me to look in the pot, she dips a finger in and my heart lurches in my chest, “Case, that’s hot!” I go to grip her hand, but she instead licks the sauce mixture from her finger and moans with her eyes closed.
Jesus Christ. A new kind of urgency wraps itself tightly around my chest.
I watch in silence, and when her eyes meet mine, there is mischief and joy floating in their depths. She smiles brightly, and the air leaves my lungs. She nods. “You’re good. Turn off the heat and set it aside. Once the cakes are ready, we can pour on the sauce and the cream and we’re good to go!” She claps and goes back to the cream mixture.
I do as instructed, and when I turn back to her, I want to give her a taste of her own medicine. All the teasing smiles, little puffs of breath and moans she throws out there, having no idea the number of men she could bring to her knees with just a look. This walking, talking temptation needs to understand that two can play this game.
I slowly stalk behind her, placing a hand on either side of her body, caging her into the bench. Her body goes rigid, and she turns her head to the side. “What are you doing?” Her breath is short, and she tries to eye me.
I reach a hand into her bowl of cream and drag my finger through it, bringing it to my mouth and licking it, moaning as she had done. Except I leave my eyes open so I can see her delicate neck work as she swallows and licks her lip, see the blush that races up her neck and hits her cheeks. “Just taste testing,” I tease her, dropping my voice. Satisfied the cream tastes sweet enough, I place my hand back to the counter and lean down. I test the waters even further, dragging my mouth past her ear and inhaling that intoxicating scent of flowers and soap. “Delicious.”
She gasps and turns so she now faces me, and fuck, I want to throw caution to the wind, throw her on this counter and really get it messy. The air between us pulls taut, the tension unprecedented as I watch her chest rise and fall to the rapid rate of my heart.
Backing up a few steps and leaning against the stove, I cut the tension as best I can. “Have you made these before or first time?” I place a bored expression on my face, one I’ve mastered over the years, and hope she can’t see through it.
She is far too good for me.
After a long pause, she shakes her head and goes along with my distraction. “Yes, this one is a favorite for Ads and Rosie. I make it often.” She is breathless, and it brings me a special kind of satisfaction to know she is as affected by our chemistry as I am, despite the fact we can’t act on it. Casey and I don’t make any sense and it’s best we don’t cross those lines.
“Can you tell me why you were crying earlier?” I lean forward, casually resting my forearms on the counter next to her, and assess her from this distance. She looks back into the whipped cream bowl and scrapes at the sides mindlessly.
“It was just needed,” she says quietly, and I crane my neck to get her attention.
She looks up at me and rolls her eyes, trying her best to smother a smile, but she fails and turns to the stove, her back now to me. “I try my best to keep everything under control. I don’t like to think I am someone who feels things on the surface because I’m stronger than that. But you know… sometimes it’s just hard. So, I give myself a scheduled time of the month to exist in my feelings. I stay home alone and I cry. I watch silly rom-coms, read sappy romance books, and I cry. Then I bake and eat my feelings. I sleep for nine hours and wake up fresh and ready for another month of being my best.” She says it all, rehearsed, practiced, and certain. She holds no shame at her emotions, and I admire her so deeply because of it.
“That’s…” I can’t find the word, but try, anyway.
“Lame?”
“Lonely.” I straighten as she turns back to me. Her head is tilted like she didn’t believe I’d say it. My chest tightens out of frustration. Frustrated that she has all these big feelings, and instead of feeling safe to embrace them in the moment, she holds on to them. Because she feels undeserving of them? Because she feels responsible for ensuring she doesn’t burden others? I get the feeling it’s both and I can’t work out why that makes me even angrier.
“You should stop that. Stop pretending like you have to be on all the time. You’re as entitled to feel shit as the next person. You can exist in your feelings when you get them.”
“But I can’t, not really. People rely on me. How can I be there for them if I’m too wrapped up in myself?”
“And who is there for you, then?”
“What do you—”
“Don’t bullshit me, Case. If you spend all this time looking out for others, who is looking out for you?”
“I don’t need to be looked out for. I’m a functioning adult. I can look out for myself.”
I nod, but I’m not convinced. “How do you feel right now?” I ask.
She tenses her shoulders and drops them, letting go of a breath, and I can see it. The way she is taming herself, calming and centering herself to react in a way that she believes she should. “Better, now that I baked.”
“Liar.”
She has the audacity to look shocked at me calling her out and her brows draw together. Something about it gets my heart racing, and I stand straighter as she fully turns from her position at the stove and stalks up to me.
“Okay then, hot shot, tell me. How am I supposed to feel right now?” she questions, anger I’ve never heard from her before laces her tone and it makes me smile, makes me want to coax more from her and have her unleash the real Casey, even if it is just for me.
“You’re just supposed to feel whatever it is that is actually in here.” I raise a finger and point to her chest, at the area holding her heart. “You’re not supposed to hide, not here in your home. Not here with me. Don’t hide. Just be you.”
“Rich coming from you, Mr. ‘ I hate emotions’. ”
“Well,” I pause briefly, trying to spit the words lodged in my throat, “maybe we can both be better at being real.”
She searches my eyes, whatever for I don’t know, but she finds something because that crease between her brows disappears and a soft smile forms on her face. Exhaustion evident in her eyes, and she rolls them before she groans and leans her head against my chest. “You’re a dummy,” she mumbles into my clothes, and something soothes the tightness I previously felt at how comfortable she feels around me. That she can fall into casual affection without blinking. A rough laugh releases from my chest as I wrap her in an embrace.
“I’ve spent too long around people who lie and pretend. If you want me to be open, then I’m going to need you to be real,” I say, and she pulls her head back and narrows her eyes, pursing her lips like she was listening to some hidden message. I raise an eyebrow at her inquisitive stare, and she wraps her arms back around me too, a heart-stopping smile spreading across her face, and she nods.
“Deal.”