3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
K ade sits at the bar and hardly touches his beer. Last night hadn't gone as planned, and he can't believe he forgot Jess knew where the key to his place was. He also can't believe he didn't think she'd be the type to use it to bring him soup because he said he was sick. Her sweet gesture makes it worse, not better.
Never in a million years did he expect her to walk into his place and find him with Lena. Especially not in the manner she had. No matter how he felt about someone, he would never want to inflict that kind of pain on another. He may be an asshole, but he's not generally a total douchebag.
The conversation needed to happen long before last night, and that was not the way he wanted to have it. He knows it, but he was selfish. The last thing he wanted to do was lose Jess because he knows she will have an issue not being exclusive. And he has an issue committing himself to just one person. After the last experience, he'll never do that again. No matter how much he likes the person.
He also knows he should have reached out last night, but he couldn't. What the hell does he say after everything that happened? Oops? But guilt kept him from sleeping all night, and he texted her during his lunch break asking to meet up tonight. To his surprise, she agreed. Even though he knows it's about to end, he still has a little bit of hope she'll surprise him and say she's cool being together while seeing other people.
"Meeting someone tonight?" Tim asks from behind the bar.
Tim and Kade have become fairly good friends, but he knows the man doesn't approve of his lifestyle choices. He’s never said anything, though, because Kade tips ridiculously well. He also doesn't know Tim's last name, and unless Tim’s checked out his credit card, he doubts he knows much more about him, either.
"Jess is meeting me."
The front door opens, and she walks in wearing her work clothes. Normally, she goes home to change first before meeting him, which tells him this isn't a good sign. Not a good sign at all.
"Light beer for her, man."
Knowing the drill, Tim nods and grabs the bottle. This isn’t the first confrontation he’s had here, and Tim learned a while ago that it's best to give them a bottle of beer rather than a mug when Kade's about to end things with a woman. It's harder to toss a drink in someone's face from a bottle, and there's less to clean up for Tim. He just has to hope the person doesn't decide to use it to knock him upside the head with it. It hasn't happened yet, so fingers crossed it stays that way.
Jess walks up to the bar rail, and his stomach drops. She didn't cry at the house when she saw him with Lena. Lena had, which surprised him almost as much as getting caught had, but Jess didn't shed a tear in front of him. Seeing her swollen eyes, he knows she held it together to cry in solitude. Part of him feels grateful because he doesn't think he could handle seeing her cry, but the other part hates himself for doing this to her. He can also tell there's zero hope of keeping her in his bed, and he doubts he can keep her in his life now, too. It’s the reason he put this off for so long.
"Let's go over there," Kade says and takes both of the bottles by their necks. "It's a little more private."
Following him to the table, she doesn't say a word and sits with her hands in her lap. She doesn't touch her beer, which is another bad sign.
"I don't know what to say," he says, suddenly feeling uncomfortable and tugs at the corner of the label on his beer bottle.
"You asked me here to have a conversation without a plan of what to say? Do I really mean that little to you?"
His eyes look up to her face, but she won't make eye contact with him. She stares around him, never quite looking directly at him, and it makes it even worse. "I feel like such a jerk."
"I hope you aren't expecting any type of objection from me."
Her tone isn't angry. It holds no disdain. Nothing but sadness. "Jess, look, I'm sorry. I didn't expect you to walk in on that."
"That's what you're apologizing for? Me walking in on it, not the fact you were sleeping with someone behind my back? You're sorry you got caught."
"Wait," he says and holds a hand up. "I never cheated or went behind your back."
Her eyes finally snap to his, and he sees a flicker of something. Anger, maybe. "If that's what you need to believe to make yourself feel better, fine."
"We never talked about what we were or what we expected from each other. Had I known what you thought, things would have been very different."
"Excuse me?"
"I like you, Jess. I really do. But I thought we were keeping things casual and having fun."
Her eyebrows crease. "Casual?"
"Yeah."
"You have two sets of clothes at my place, along with shampoo and body wash in my shower for the nights you stay over. I have an extra set of clothes, a toothbrush, and essential makeup items for when I stay over at yours. I have things in your shower, too. Are you telling me you have one drawer for me and others for other women, too? Do you just take all my stuff out and hide it to put Lena's stuff out when she shows up? Or how about Amanda or Molly or Brittany? Whatever the other girls' names are."
His stomach falls even further. Anger he can handle, but logic wasn't on his bingo card for the evening. "No."
"I guess I can't see the casual part of it, then," Jess says and shrugs. "How nothing meant anything to you. How I clearly didn't mean anything to you."
"I never said you don't mean anything to me. And what we have does mean something to me."
This isn't how the conversation should be going. Normally, by this point, there's shouting, screaming, maybe a slap or two, and basically anything other than the confused defeat she wears.
"If I told you I was seeing someone else, and that I couldn’t get together because I was on a date and planned to take him home with me, you wouldn't care? It wouldn't bother you in the slightest?"
A strange feeling swirls in Kade's chest. The thought of Jess with anyone else stirs something inside him that he hadn't expected, but he forces it down. He's not a relationship guy. "No, it wouldn't."
"I think that's where we're clearly on different pages because the idea of you spending time with anyone else like you do with me makes my heart hurt."
"Jess-"
"If you thought we were just casual, why did you lie to me about being sick? Why wouldn't you just tell me you were seeing someone else? Or even just saying you were hanging out with someone else if you didn't want to tell me you planned to have sex with her on the counter I set breakfast on in the mornings I stayed over?"
Damn her and her logic. "I guess I had a feeling you wouldn't be okay with it."
"Why Kade?" she asks, catching him off-guard. "Were you unfulfilled with me? Did the other girls do things I wouldn't? You always seemed happy when we were together, and you never seemed less than satisfied after we had sex. I'm trying to understand this."
Wait, hold on a damn minute. "It has nothing to do with anyone doing something better than the other."
"Then, why?" Jess's green eyes search his, and he hates the pain he sees there. "We seemed to get along so well together. Like we were happy. I was happy, but you obviously weren't. Help me understand what it was you needed from others that I wasn't giving you."
"Because I'm just not a commitment type of guy," Kade says. He hates how she seems to put this on her when it's not her fault in the slightest. It's all him. "I'm the casual type. I like to play the field."
She licks her lips and looks at the table. "I still don't get it."
Well, unfortunately, neither does Kade, it seems. "I don't know what else to say."
"Why didn't you just tell me this the night we met? Or any of the other nights we spent together over the past five months? Or even during the conversations we had when we weren't together? Can you see where I'm confused? You brought me to meet your family and join you for plays and concerts. Everything you did and didn't do reads as a commitment, not something casual."
Damn it. Her logic is solid again. "I didn't tell you because I knew you wouldn't talk to me again. And I took you to those things because I liked spending time with you."
"I would’ve talked to you if you’d been honest with me. If you said you weren't the commitment type, I would've respected it. I would've told you I'm not a casual type of girl, and we could have been friends. Hell, I could've introduced you to a few girls who like to play the field, too."
Jess would have hooked him up with her friends? This definitely took a turn he hadn’t expected, and he definitely feels like a douchebag now. "I do like you, Jess."
"Just not enough. I'm not enough. What I can't seem to wrap my head around is why you didn't just wait for me to leave that morning after our first night together. I woke up with a bad feeling when I found you gone, but then you walked in with coffee and breakfast. You could've taken your exit, and I wouldn't have blamed you for my first one-night stand because there was no expectation then. Just hope."
Hope? She really knows how to hit him where it hurts. "Because I wouldn't have just left without any explanation after sleeping with you. Especially because it was so great. Besides, I wanted to see you again. I like you. You’re fun and smart and pretty. Why wouldn't I want to spend time with you?"
"Why do you need to spend time with other women if you like me so much? I mean, okay, I saw Lena. I kind of get what she has that I don't, but you make it sound like you genuinely enjoyed my company. And the sex wasn't terrible. You didn't quite jackhammer me like you did her, but she seemed to enjoy it."
Good God, if he thought the conversation was uncomfortable before, he had no idea what he was walking into. "I do enjoy your company. I don't compare women, and you and Lena have different personalities and attractive qualities. There was never a moment I was with her thinking about anything she had that you don't. And our sex life was more than 'wasn't terrible' as you put it. I'm not really sure what to say about the jackhammer comment, though. That's what you think I did?"
Jess shrugs. "Maybe it's because you never wanted to have sex with me in the kitchen. Why did it take you so long to reach out? Did you try and smooth things over with Lena first? Because she seemed pretty unwilling to talk to you, let alone give you the time of day after she left. Good for you, though. She was kind of out of your league."
"Ouch."
"You were out of my league, so who's the real loser here?"
"Jess, stop."
"Did you talk to Lena first? Is that why it took you so long to text me? Am I just the consolation prize?"
Lena wouldn't have answered if he tried calling. Not that he really wanted to. Besides, what could he really say to come back from the fact he told Jess she was his cousin? There's really no chance at redemption with that one.
"I haven’t called her. I didn't reach out to you right away because I kind of had my dignity stripped from me. The last thing I expected to happen is what did. On top of that, I used a pot to cover as much of myself as I could. Turns out, it wasn't a clean pot, either. I used it after you were there, and I was too lazy to clean it. It was great. Really fit the situation."
The comment doesn't elicit a smile like Kade hoped. Guilt plagues him yet again.
"You don't even feel remorse about it, do you?" Her hands move to rest on the top of the table, and he braces for liquid to hit his face.
When he doesn't feel anything or see her move for her beer, he relaxes. "I hate that I upset you. The last thing I want is to ever intentionally hurt you. I never would."
"But you don't feel anything about the fact you slept with other people without telling me where you believed we stood."
"We never talked about this, Jess. We should have, and I realize that now. Maybe I was avoiding it because I knew we wouldn't be on the same page, and you'd want to end things with me if you knew it, too."
Her hands tap the top of the table. "How many others were there?"
"Excuse me?"
"Over the past five months, how many others did you sleep with? Because I've been driving myself crazy thinking about it in my head all last night. I can't figure out when you had the time because we spent so much time together. And then we were talking constantly when we weren’t physically with each other. When you were running late, was it because you were with someone else? Then met up with me for round two? Or maybe I was round three for the day. I suppose you could’ve met someone over lunch."
Lena was the only woman other than Jess since the night he met her when she looked helpless on what appeared to be the world's worst date ever. He hadn't planned to see anyone else until it hit him one day just how serious they were getting when he put her toothbrush away after a night together. It scared him, and he did the one thing he knew he could do to remind himself of just who he really is.
"Jess, it's not like that."
"You have to choose, Kade."
"Choose?"
Her eyes finally lock with his again, and she sighs. "Do you want to continue seeing me, and me only? Or do you want to see other women?"
"I don't want to stop seeing you," Kade answers honestly. "But I can't commit to just one woman. I'm sorry, but it's just not who I am."
"I can respect that."
Hold the damn phone. "You can?"
Jess nods. "Yeah, I can. I don't like it, but I feel like you're finally being honest. Which is why I have to do the same. Casual dating isn't in me. I want a relationship, Kade. Someone who wants me and only me. I deserve that much from someone."
She's right. "You do."
"So, this is goodbye."
The words sting worse than if she'd reached over and slapped him across the face. "I guess it is. Goodbye, Jess."
Pulling out her wallet, she stands and places a ten-dollar bill on the table for her untouched beer. She went Dutch.
Without a word, she leaves, and his chest aches. Why the hell does this hurt so damn much? It's not a breakup since she was never officially his girlfriend. But if that's true, then why does he feel like he just ripped his own heart out of his chest?