Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
jade
I’ve never been busier.
I bust my ass at work; I have a new Spanish tutor, Luis, whom I see three times a week; and I’m up late every night planning Spain to death: filling out applications, looking at housing, researching towns, and budgeting every cent I’ll earn between now and the day I fly out of here.
Senioritis? Not Jade Kelly. I look like I’m crushing fall semester.
It’s great because it leaves me no time to cry about Reeve.
Except maybe in the bathroom between classes.
And the middle of the night when I wake up from another dream about him.
And Saturdays when I watch his games on TV and think about how badly I wish I was the one he was going home to all bruised and tired and happy afterward.
It had to end. Circumstances would never let me and Reeve have the relationship we want, and the longer we would’ve gone on—the more pieces of my heart I handed to him—the more it would’ve hurt.
But the way it ended feels sickeningly wrong.
The memory of all hope draining from his eyes haunts me day and night.
A gentle knock sounds at my bedroom door, and Lenni pokes her head in. “Morning, sweetie.”
This is our daily ritual since Reeve and I fell apart. She wakes up and checks on me, then lets out a big sigh of relief to find my self-hating ass has lived to see another miserable day.
“Morning. Is Cam still here?” There’s a distinct chill in the air between me and Cam since the breakup.
“He just left. Want me to make some breakfast? I was thinking blueberry waffles. I bought this gourmet syrup yesterday. Twenty bucks for a thimble-size bottle, so it has to be good, right? Or I could do bacon if you want?”
I smile. Phase two of our ritual has begun: Lenni enters indulgent mother mode and serves up 8,000 calories’ worth of comfort on a breakfast plate. “I can eat cereal. And Lenni, you can sleep at Cam’s, okay? You don’t have to babysit me.”
“I’m not, I just hate thinking of you alone at night. The nights are the worst.”
“Oh, that’s not true. The nights are the same hellfire the days are. So don’t worry, I’m not going to off myself when the sun goes down.”
She plops onto the bed. “You look a little better this morning.”
“Didn’t cry myself to sleep last night. Sadness seems to be giving way to guilt.”
“Because . . .” she prompts.
“Because I owed him better. I let him walk away without telling him what I really feel.” Shame comes over me to realize what a liar I am, when I’ve always prided myself on being brutally honest. Turns out I’m only honest about other people’s faults.
When it comes to my own, I’ll do anything to hide them, even hurt the best man I’ve ever known.
“I can’t let that be the end, that horrible breakup on the street.
Once I finally pull myself together, I’ll find a way to tell him I’m sorry. ”
“Or you could do it now.”
“Now?” I scoff. “I’m a mess. I’m talking about when I can get through a conversation without breaking down and crying.”
“What would be so wrong with that? Let him see you raw and crying, Jade. That’s how he’ll know you feel something for him. Not some tidy, rehearsed apology.”
“That’s not how you get over a man. You don’t break down and sob and tell him too late that you love him.”
“Then what do you want to tell him?”
I consider her question. Maybe I do want to tell him I love him.
I can’t pretend I don’t feel it, and I can’t wish it away.
Reeve Dalton of all people, and I love him so much it makes me realize that what I had with Sam was nothing more than attachment and an addiction to being wanted.
If I had known Reeve could change me so deeply, I would never have let him kiss me.
But that’s not really true. Didn’t I know on some level from the first time his lips touched mine that something was different? Didn’t I feel it?
I want to let those words out into the world, make them real, and see whether they light up his eyes the way they light up my heart. But I can’t drag us backward. “I just want him to know that I’m his,” I tell Lenni. “That some part of me always will be.”
That evening I’m at work early. Reeve has changed his schedule, so I never have to worry about seeing him anymore. It’s another tiny stab in the heart.
Cecily is in the office squinting at her computer screen. She barely looks up when I walk in, but she waves me over. “Jade. Just the gal I wanted to see.”
Uh-oh. Am I about to get fired? Just when I was sure Cecily would never find out about the time Reeve and I had sex in the parking lot. “Oh?”
“You’ve got the hang of the server thing,” she says as she taps away on the keyboard. “I’m wondering if you want Tuesday and Sunday nights from now on?”
I hesitate. “Those are Reeve’s shifts.”
Cecily finally takes her eyes off the computer and looks at me over the rim of her glasses. “He quit,” she informs me. “Aren’t you and Reeve a couple? He ought to have told you he was quitting.”
“Well . . .” I quickly think how to play this. I don’t think Cecily gives a damn what her employees are up to as long as the customers are happy, but technically workplace relationships are against the rules.
“C’mon, now,” she says impatiently. “It’s obvious to anyone with eyes you two are ga-ga over each other.”
This is news to me. I never thought about how we looked to the rest of the world. “We were together. Not anymore.”
“Ah.” She nods, not taking her eyes off me.
It’s . . . awkward. I edge my way toward the door, but she stops me just before I’m free.
“Jade, c’mere a minute.” She takes off her glasses.
“As someone who’s been divorced twice, let me tell you something.
At your age, it’s easy to fall in love hard. The world is just opening up to you.”
“I never said I was in love.”
Cecily looks taken aback. “Oh. Well, if not, then you clearly missed your calling as an actress. Anyway, my point is I know what it’s like to be cheated on, but trust me, you get over it.
When I was your age, I was quite a looker if I do say so myself.
” She winks. “It didn’t take me any time at all to find someone new.
My only advice is to be wary of the gorgeous ones.
But I guess you learned your lesson with Reeve now, am I right? ”
I realize I’m staring at her, my jaw slack, and I shake myself out of it.
“Right. Thanks.” I should let her assumptions lie, because we’re veering into some seriously bizarre boss/employee territory here in the back office, but I feel the need to defend Reeve.
“But, actually, he didn’t cheat. I’m the one who ended it.
” I’m insulted by how utterly shocked Cecily looks at this news, but I guess that’s fair, because it’s not entirely true.
“Okay, actually, that’s not really true.
We both sort of wanted out at the same time, even though—”
“Okay, let me stop you right there. Look . . .” She rubs her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but woman to woman, believe me: It’s totally normal for young guys to be crappy lovers. You have to be the one to teach him.”
I almost die. “No, no,” I say quickly before she starts offering detailed instructions. “It’s nothing like that.”
She stares at me expectantly. “Well? Now I’ve gotta know.”
Really? Even Reeve himself probably doesn’t know what the hell happened to us, but I’m about to explain to my fiftysomething boss who hates me all the ways I’m so damaged that I can’t accept love when it’s dropped in my lap?
“We’re too young for commitment. We both have big plans in the next few years and didn’t want to be tied to one person.
It was just supposed to be fun. We knew that going in. ”
“Sounds mature.” Cecily nods, but I can’t tell whether she’s impressed or skeptical. “You got what you wanted.”
“Right. I got what I wanted.”
Some victory.
The next afternoon I meet Luis at one of the basketball gyms on campus.
Luis isn’t just a patient tutor and student president of Shafer’s Community Committee, he’s incredibly persuasive—not only did he convince me to spend the next four hours sorting and packing food donations for the Community Committee’s Thanksgiving food drive, but he got Lenni and Cam to sign up with me for the sole reason they were standing in the same room when he asked me.
Luis sets me up at a table, sorting nonperishables, which would be easy if not for the fact that he labeled the sorting boxes in Spanish, and I have to translate the labels every time another volunteer comes by wondering where to put the cans of yams and green beans, bags of marshmallows, and boxes of stuffing.
“Repetition is key!” Luis says cheerfully, this bit of wisdom amplified by the acoustics in the gym.
When Lenni and Cam show up, Luis assigns Lenni to my table; then, after a look at Cam’s cut biceps, he orders him to carry and stack the filled boxes of donations. Cam seems relieved to be working away from me.
Luis is a spark plug when given command over others.
He’s always bossy during tutoring, but today, with forty-plus volunteers at his beck and call, he’s in overdrive, barking orders, looking over people’s shoulders, loudly counting how many items they’ve sorted and packed in a disapproving tone.
His charm is that the more critical he is, the more animated he becomes, dancing a jig, breaking into song, shouting out lyrics to Top 40 songs from decades ago.
“It’s how I make friends and still get away with being a boss bitch,” Luis told me during our second tutoring session after he boldly shushed Shafer’s top basketball center in the library, then topped it off with a brief clip from a song about the power of silence.