Chapter 11 Becca
Becca
Cleaning is my favorite de-stressor.
I’ve thought about hiring a cleaner, but it gives me too much satisfaction to know everything is done the right way.
Plus, Jimmy would just have a list of reasons why that would be pointless to spend money on, so I’ll save that battle for another day.
Maybe after we have kids, even though I can’t decide if I actually want to or not.
But for now, I love to dive deep into cleaning every crack and crevice when my mind is racing. Does it always have a reason to race as often as it does? Nope. But the smell of bleach seems to help.
In the kitchen, I sort through the mail that has gathered in the box to get rid of the pieces that don’t need to be in there anymore. The invitation to my reunion is one that goes to the trash pile since I already bought the tickets.
It still bothers me that Jimmy changed his mind so quickly after seeing her. I want to believe that those two things are not related, but it’s one of the things my mind is racing about at the moment.
My husband has always been attractive, long before we started dating. In high school, he was the guy that everyone knew of, even if he didn’t know them. There wasn’t a single girl who didn’t want a piece of him, yet he was seemingly untouchable because of her.
She was everywhere he was, and no girl wanted to deal with that. The few who thought they could just have him failed.
I didn’t go to parties often back then, but I remember one specifically. One that the two of them were also at.
It was after an early-season football game, like the first or second one of the year.
Our team had beaten a rival that normally beat us, and everyone was elated about it.
I was there because a friend of mine at the time was dating one of the players, who was hosting the party.
She was just as antisocial as me, so she begged me to keep her company.
Most people were outside enjoying the warm evening, but we stayed in the house, enjoying the quiet and avoiding the impending chaos. At some point, we heard splashes and realized people were jumping in the pool. Clothes were all over the place, with no telling whose was whose.
“You want to get in?” Hayley asked me.
“Absolutely not.”
She laughed, surely expecting me to say something along those lines. “Jesus. Look at those two.” She said and nodded towards the end of the pool.
The two she was referring to? Jimmy and Autumn getting ready to join the other swimmers. He was watching as she undressed, and in just that brief moment, it felt like the rest of us should be in another room.
“Just friends, my ass.” She mumbled and rolled her eyes. She liked him and would’ve buckled the second he gave her attention, but I didn’t care as much. Sure, he was hot, but I was more interested in my junior year GPA than hooking up with the same guy everyone else wanted to hook up with.
“Wasn’t he just with Kristy?” I asked.
She snorted. “Yeah, they dated for like two months and just broke up last week. Now look at him.”
She wasn’t wrong. They definitely looked more like a couple than friends. And he didn’t look like someone who was getting over a break-up.
I continued watching them move together through the pool, never more than a foot apart.
It wasn’t jealousy that kept my eyes on them at the time, but rather just that they were both so attractive, it was hard not to stare.
All the girls’ eyes were always on him, and the guys’ were on her. You just couldn’t help it.
They didn’t seem to realize or care, though, as they carried on as if they weren’t half-naked in a pool full of other half-naked people.
Before long, they were even closer than a foot apart, him holding her piggyback style with her arms slid up under his, her hands resting on his chest. Her face was close to his, and he leaned back to say something to her.
From another angle, it probably looked like they kissed.
She threw her head back, laughing at whatever it was he said, and they continued like that until getting out of the pool.
“Seriously, though. How many times do you think they’ve hooked up?” Hailey asked, obviously still staring too.
Besides to gossip, I didn’t care about the answer then. They were just classmates, probably doing the same thing that everyone else was doing.
But now, ten years later, I can’t help but obsess over that same question, wishing I had gotten the answer then.