“Seriously, I hate school. I can’t wait until I can just give it all up and leave that fucking hellhole.”
Nodding sympathetically, I prop my head up with my hand. “I know exactly how you feel. I despised school and everyone in it when I was your age.”
“I just feel as though I don’t fit in anywhere, you know?” my sister Dawn complains, swishing an elbow length strand of highlighted light brown hair over her shoulder. “It’s like…I’m not popular, but I don’t qualify to be a total loser, because I do have friends.”
“So you’re just…in between.”
“Yeah.”
“Dawn,” I sigh. “School is the biggest bitch in the world. It’s oppressive, it can suck any vigor that one may have towards their life, and everyone seems to be that little bit better than you.”
“Exactly!” she exclaims. “I mean, it’s just crawling with this pretty, popular bitches who all wear Versace, have flawless hair, and even though they’re all as clever as they are modest, everyone still seems to love them!”
“Schoolyard politics: they suck,” I state simply. “It’s not a just or fair society in most high schools, but that’s just the way it has to be.”
“Will it always be like this?” she asks miserably, falling back into her seat in a slumped position.
I snort. “I can assure you that when those pretty, popular bitches leave high school, they’ll find that being prom queen and having a good looking boyfriend means shit all in the real world. Half of them will be pregnant and living in a trailer by the time they’re twenty.”
“At least they’ve got boyfriends,” she mumbles, picking up a lock of her long hair and idly picking at the split ends.
“Dawn trust me, you do not want to get heavily involved when you’re in high school,” I warn, shaking my head. “I know this all too well.”
“Cat, I’ve never even had sex!” she suddenly exclaims, looking up from her hair to give me an angered look.
“Good!” I reply. “The longer you can put off sex, the better.”
She rolls her eyes. “That’s bull. Everyone talks about how fantastic sex is.”
“Everyone’s full of shit,” I say bluntly. “Listen, I was your age when I first had sex and I can safely say that it did not benefit me at all.”
“Why not?”
“Because I started doing crazy shit like dropping out of college!” I justify, gesturing wildly with my arms as if to show how stupid I had been. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, because it’s not. Sex can make a good thing great, and it can really deepen your relationship. But, it introduces you to a whole new lorry load of worries that you never had to think about before, and it would just be better for you if you were at a more mature age to deal with those problems.”
“And what are those problems?” she says in a voice that tells me quite clearly she doesn’t believe me.
“Putting aside practical things such as pregnancy, sexual diseases and the chance you’ll wake up to the other side of the bed being empty; sex can make you doubt yourself to the extreme. Who am I doing this for, me or him? Am I doing this right? What if everyone thinks I’m a whore?” I shake my head. “It really isn’t worth it; not at your age. You’ve got enough to worry about.”
She throws her hands up in despair. “See? Everyone says that, and they’re all fucking patronizing me!”
“Dawn, I am really in no position to patronize; I’m just suggesting that it’s something you shouldn’t worry about at the moment.”
“But you did it.”
I roll my eyes. “Haven’t I ever warned you I’m stupid?”
She sighs. “It seems like everyone else is doing it except me; I’m just so boring, you know? I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t have sex…”
“Hold on a sec there, or I’ll start calling you Sandra Dee,” I grin, only to be met with an icy glare. “Sorry. But you shouldn’t look on the fact that you don’t indulge in teenage habits a bad thing. I know a lot of people your age are having sex and whatnot, and if that works for them, then great.”
“But I thought you said we were too young and immature,” she mumbles from her drooped sitting position.
“Well, a lot of the people your age probably are. I know I don’t regret sleeping with my boyfriend, but I regret what happened later, and I think sex intensified our relationship a lot and made me do things I wouldn’t have otherwise done. I don’t want to see you making the same incredibly stupid mistakes I did.”
Dawn lets out a frustrated sigh. “Well, nobody’s even remotely attracted to me, so don’t get yourself worried in the slightest. The chances of me having sex are about as likely as Christina Aguilera becoming a nun.”
I laugh and reach out to pat her leg. “You are so exactly like me when I was your age, do you know that?”
“Great,” she mumbles sarcastically. “You were a moody bitch.”
Just as I was ready to lash out with an insult, she grins to let me know she’s just teasing and stands up from the sofa, stretching from the sitting position we were in as we sat and caught up. Sometimes I feel so sorry for Dawn, all by herself with just our middle aged parents. At least I had Sophie to talk to, and even when she left for college she would come home and confide in me occasionally as I sat in my PJ’s, listening with wide eyes as she told me about the parties she’d been to or the friends she’d made. But Dawn is pretty much an only child since I left five years ago when she was twelve; Sophie’s got her family, and I’ve been in another state. It was really the worst time for me to leave, just as she was on the brink of the most crushing time of her life--her teen years.
But she’s alright. I know she’s at a horrible point in her life where she’s just finishing the transaction from child to adult, and right now her life probably seems as bleak as her mother’s funeral. I only hope I can somewhat inspire her to believe that she will pull through it. If I did, anyone can.
“You look good,” I comment, eyeing the flat stomach revealed by the riding up of her shirt as she stretches.
“Thanks,” she yawns. “I’ve started jogging.”
I cough in surprise. “What? Jogging?”
She shrugs casually. “Yeah, jogging.”
“But…why? And voluntarily…I don’t understand!” I smile, standing up and brushing off my pants.
She laughs. “Well, I’ve got prom coming up and I really didn’t want to look like a block of lard in my dress, so I decided to shed a few pounds.”
She says it as though being a block of lard is a bad thing. “I’ve been thinking about losing weight myself, actually,” I say, pinching at my hips. “Justin really wants to take one final vacation before his album drops, and knowing him it will be somewhere like Hawaii where beautiful women are as common as those garland things that they put around your neck.”
“You mean leis?”
I roll my eyes. “Whatever. Anyway, I want to be able to wear a bikini or at least a swimsuit without looking like a giant ball of dough.”
Dawn smiles. “You could wear a bikini now and you look just fine.”
I shrug. “I probably could, but I would feel too uncomfortable. I actually think I may be pregnant--there is no other explanation as to why my hips seem to have expanded so much.”
Stifling a laugh, she shakes her head. “Well, you must look half decent naked if you’re bedding Justin Timberlake.”
“True…” I agree, letting a smug grin creep onto my face. “But it’s a bit depressing when your boyfriend’s got a smaller ass than you do.”
She giggles and links her arm through mine. “You could always come running with me. I like to drop into the bakery on the way back and pick up a muffin,” she laughs. “Why burn off those calories if you’re not going to replace them with other ones?”
“That is so true,” I muse, letting her lead me out of the house and into the sparkly new car my parents’ unwillingly bought her for her seventeenth birthday. “Where are we going?”
“Shopping,” she replies, stepping into the silver jeep.
“But I hate shopping.”
“But I have to prepare a welcome home party for dad,” she mocks. “And plus, I kinda…I kinda like talking to you,” she adds shyly. “I don’t really have anyone else to speak with about this stuff,” she shrugs, putting the keys in the ignition.
“Well, I’m not sure if I’m the best person to come to for advice,” I laugh.
She smiles. “You’re okay. I was worried you’d be all Hollywood when you came back, but you’re still the same.”
“And how is that a good thing?” She giggles. “I’m just kidding, I like talking to you too. It must be hard being left with just mom and dad.”
She rolls her eyes and reverses. “Don’t I know it. Mom would completely freak out if she had an inkling that I even knew what the term sex meant.”
“Hence the reason mom still thinks I’ll be wearing white to my wedding,” I grin.
“Speaking of weddings, thrill my virgin ears and tell me how things are with Justin,” she asks, running straight through a red light.
“Dawn, slow down,” I order, gripping at my armrest as the jeep speeds past an old lady looking to cross the road. “And we’re fine, thank you.”
“Just fine? I thought you guys were on the brink of marriage.”
“Why is everyone saying that?” I huff, rolling my eyes. “We’ve never even talked about marriage.”
“Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it, though,” she grins mischievously, halfheartedly looking to the right to make sure there are no cars coming before speeding on. “Have you ever seen yourself when you mention his name? You go all wistful and start whimpering about how great he is.”
“Do I?” I ask in a surprise. If I’ve turned into one of those ‘isn’t he dreamy?’ girls I may have to gauge out my own eyes with cutlery just to stop some sort of longing expression I possible have when I talk about my significant other. It’s so annoying when people do that; you just want to give them a harsh slap to bring them down to earth.
“Yeah. It takes you five minutes to get back into the conversation.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“Well…I can’t help it!” I defend, feeling a grin tugging at my lips. “He’s just so…”
“Cat, please.”
“Sorry, sorry… But back to my point, who started this marriage crap?”
She shrugs. “Well, now that dad seems to be thinking he’s got to dish out as much insightful advice as he can in case he suddenly drops dead, he’s taken it one step further. And after you guys came up for Thanksgiving, everyone was buzzing about how in love you were, blah blah blah,” she rolls her eyes. “Ever since you have been in New York, people are saying you’re either going to break up or get married.”
“That’s what dad said,” I mumble, staring out of the window. “And who are these ‘people’?”
“Sophie, that prick that she married, mom and dad, Aunt Janice, that woman with the weird second name that used to live next door…basically everyone that you guys met at thanksgiving.”
“I hate it when people talk about my love life,” I whine. “It puts on way too much pressure.”
“Don’t feel too bad. They said you might get pregnant too.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “Oh, what a comfort.”
She grins and haphazardly parks the car in the parking lot of the mall. “I know.”
“I just wish people could just leave us as we are and not psychoanalyze our relationship. I worry and think about it enough for everyone. The last thing I want is people backing up my theories.”
“And what are your theories?” she asks, slamming the door shut and slinging her purse over her shoulder.
I shrug. “Well, sometimes with Justin I just…wonder. I mean, we’re both insecure in our own little ways, and we have completely different outlooks on life, we don’t really share the same interests…” I trail off and find myself in Old Navy. “And yet, I just can’t imagine my life without him.”
“How are you insecure?” Dawn asks, sifting through the sizes of a blue t-shirt with a flower design in the corner.
I snort. “How am I not? I get so paranoid and wonder what the hell is he doing with me? He’s a world famous obnoxious celebrity and I’m a judgmental, sarcastic normal girl. How can the two mix?” I sigh and rifle through my own rack of tops with plunging necklines. “Weirdly enough though, I don’t get worried about him with other women like he does with me and men. Well, apart from that emaciated producer of his, but that’s thoroughly justifiable.”
Dawn laughs. “So Justin’s a little jealous?”
“A little?” I laugh. “He seems to think that any man that comes within a two foot radius of me is desperate to sleep with me. And that, as much as I would love for it to be the case, is ridiculous. At the very mention of ex boyfriends he gets so menstrual and catty, saying stupid things like, ‘ugh, well, I bet they weren’t as good in bed as I am’.”
She giggles at my impression. “He doesn’t seem like the kind to doubt himself.”
“It’s only when it comes to me. Otherwise, he’s quite the Narcissus; he spent fifteen minutes staring at his stomach from all different angles in the mirror just so he could see how the light reflected on his abdominals.”
Dawn shrugs. “Well, he has got rippling muscles.”
I sigh and lean against the racks of clothing. “Yeah.”
Before I can completely dip into a delicious Justin-reverie, Dawn turns and slaps my arm. “Cat, wake up. He’s not here, you can fulfill whatever sex fantasy you have right now when you get back to New York.”
“I am not having a sex fantasy!” I hotly deny in a whisper. “You pointed it out, not me.”
She grins. “So tell me, how good does he look naked?”
I can’t stop the smile that swoops over my face. “I could try and get you a picture, if you want.”
Her eyes widen and she whips around. “Seriously?”
“No, but I could describe it in graphic, almost porn-esque detail if you’d liked.”
She smiles and pulls out one of the blue tops, grasping my hand and steering me towards the changing room. “That’ll do.”
“I mean, I guess I could marry him…” I ponder as she slips into a changing room, before shaking my head at myself. “What am I saying…of course I would. But I can’t help but think we must look ridiculous together. Kinda like Beauty and the Beast…and let’s put it this way, Justin isn’t no beast.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she calls out from inside the stall. “Everyone thinks you guys are great together. If they were skeptical of one of you, it would be Justin.”
“Why on earth would it be Justin?”
“Because you’re this high powered intellectual that hates people with an IQ lower than 120 and he’s this pop star whose spelling abilities are limited to his autograph. Or that’s how it may seem.”
“Justin’s quite clever,” I reply, opening the curtain and leaning against the side of the wall, looking at Dawn’s top. “He just doesn’t show it.”
“And you’re quite sexy, but you don’t show it,” she retorts, looking at me in the mirror.
“I’m not sexy,” I snort. “I couldn’t seduce a cucumber.”
She laughs, turning around to look at her reflection from all sides. “Of course you are. You’ve got great boobs.”
My hands instinctively reach up to my chest. “Really?”
“Sure. You should show them off more.”
“I don’t think so, Dawn,” I reply shyly, blushing slightly and looking at the floor.
“Don’t be so prude, Cat. See, you’ve got quite a small waist too. You should wear corsets or something.”
“What?” I exclaim. “Corsets? This is the twenty first century, Dawn. Not the eighteenth.”
“Maybe one of those thingies from Victoria’s Secret. You know, give Justin a little surprise.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” I snap, my blush deepening, glancing out of the cubicle in case anyone might have heard us.
“But you’d look good.”
“I would look absurd.”
“Don’t you do that kind of stuff for him?” she asks, twirling around.
“What stuff?”
“Sexy underwear, little outfits…I thought all couples indulged in games like that.”
I raise my eyes heavenward and shake my head. “Not exactly. Sex is not quite the whole, ‘Naughty Nurse and Frisky Fireman’ playful outfits that everyone with a fantastically rampant sex life has in the movies.”
“So what’s it like?” she murmurs quietly, looking down and picking at the hem of her shirt.
I smile. “You’ll just have to see for yourself.” Suddenly, years of preaching slapped me in the face and I hurriedly continue. “When you’re older, I mean. And using protection. And not doing it because your friends told you to.”
She laughs. “And in love.”
I grin. “That too.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m cheating on Cat.
It’s true. I, Justin Randall Timberlake, am cheating on Catherine Grace Saunders, and I don’t even feel the tiniest ounce of guilt. In fact, I couldn’t be happier.
My intense love affair with my cell phone started exactly five days ago, when Cat first left. I have grown to worship that phone more than my new album; I’m surprised I haven’t built a shrine to it in my basement or joined some cult venerating the wonders of modern communication. Every day, at seven thirty two precisely, the little silver gadget that always seems to be banging against my leg as it lays in my pocket, starts to rings frantically, and I lose multiple cool points to pick it up hastily. Amber and Trace know not to speak to me, not to touch me, not to even make eye contact with me as soon as that phone greets my ear, but to just leave me alone as I whine into the phone how much I miss Cat.
I hate this. I loathe being one of those guys that becomes the bitch in every situation because they’re just so head over heels for their girl; they let down their guard and forget that they’re supposed to be macho. The sooner Cat gets back, the sooner I can return to my usual, rugged manliness, because I know I’m quite a masculine person by nature. When I tried to tell Trace this, he started to laugh quite hysterically. I wonder why?
“So technically repeating this beat on the hook would--”
“Excuse me,” I quickly interrupt as the shrill ring of my cell phone resounds in the room. It’s time. “Can I take this?”
Amber obviously swallows her frustrated sigh and nods, her layered hair bouncing. “Of course.”
Grinning at her, I quickly snap it open and exit our recording room, shutting the door behind me. “Hey baby.”
“How did you know it was me?” her voice laughs.
“Caller ID. But also you always seem to pick a time to call when Amber’s about to launch into some intricate sermon about music. It really pisses her off.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I always thought I was her sunshine, her only sunshine, making her happy when skies were gray.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “When are you going to let her upbeat surname go?”
“When she changes it.”
“Anyway, how are things?” I swiftly move on, knowing that if I let Cat continue, and I really wish I could, she would point out every single one of Miss Sunflower’s flaws in such an amusing fashion I would never be able to look at Amber with a straight face again.
Cat’s good at that. During one of her hilarious anti-celebrity rants, she was saying something about how ridiculous Hugh Hefner was, and then put in the rather amusing image of him dying on top of one of his exploits in my head. Needless to say, when I passed him in the hall a few weeks ago at a business meeting, accompanied by a bevy of beautiful blonde women of course, I had to bite my lip with brutal force to stop laughing.
“Good. I just put Cameron to bed, and I got to spend some time with Dawn today, which was great.”
“Cool. What did you two do?”
“Just sister things,” she says happily. “Went shopping, talked about men and sex. Girl stuff.”
“She’s not having sex, is she?” I exclaim, somehow not linking the shy, slightly star struck girl I met at Thanksgiving with a cosmopolitan-drinking sexual temptress.
“Sorry, but I can’t break the sister’s rule of silence by telling you that.” She suddenly giggles. “No, she’s not. She was mainly asking things she can’t ask my mom.”
“Mmm, and did you reflect on your own experiences?” I ask slyly, raising my eyebrows.
“Yes, I did. That’s why Dawn has taken a vow of celibacy and has promised to never engage in sexual pleasure with a man, even if his nickname is Trousersnake,” she says, and I can hear the grin on her face.
“Excuse me, but before you were with me you were not having--”
“Justin!” she quickly interrupts. “I was kidding. I said it was a mind-blowing experience and that your admirable prowess was a sexual awakening for poor, virginal me.”
“Really?” I beam.
“No.”
“So how are things with Sophie?” I continue.
She groans. “Complicated. Malcolm’s called her, and I think they’re going to meet up and talk things out, but I’m not sure. I need to take care of Cameron if she leaves.”
“But Cat,” I draw out slowly. “I really want you back here. I need you back here.”
“Why?”
“The press are sort of slowly ebbing away, but they’re still there and okay, I admit I may have given the finger to a few of them…”
“Justin! That is so low class.”
“Don’t pull highbrow crap on me, baby. They are so fucking annoying!” I exclaim, kicking the wall in frustration.
“I understand that, but you’re just provoking them.”
I’m silent, before a whiny, “Caaat, stop being logical!” crawls out of my throat. “It feels good to flip them the old birdie.”
“And I’m sure it feels good when they get an unreasonable sum of money to sell pictures of Justin Timberlake acting like a wannabe hard ass nineteen year old.”
“I am not a wannabe,” I reply quickly. “I really am a hard ass.”
“Of course you are, Justin. And I’m really Mother Theresa reincarnated.”
I laugh. “It’s possible.”
“How’s recording going?” she asks politely. “Come up with any ingenious rhymes such as love, glove and dove today?”
I chuckle. “No, today it was you, blue, and true.”
“Oh, wasn’t there a Madonna song like that? ‘True blue baby, I love you!’,” she sings.
“Yeah, but mine runs along a much deeper, profound line,” I grin. “My philosophical and heartfelt words come have been the poetic creation of Shakespeare himself.”
“And they are?” she asks slowly.
“I love you, so don’t be blue, to you I will always be true,” I make up instantly on the spot. The sad thing is, it really does sound like something I might sing.
A silence falls on the other end of the line. “You are joking, right?”
“Cat, it’s almost as though you’re saying my song lyrics are overused or insincere,” I reply in a shocked voice, trying to hold back my grin.
Another silence envelops her. She always teases me for rhyming stupid words together or writing cheesy lyrics, but if she thinks I’m being serious then she’ll say it’s the best thing ever written. “No, no of course not. I didn’t mean it like that at all, I just meant that lyrics can often contain words that have nothing to do with each other, but people just use them because they rhyme…not that yours do, of course. They’re great, it’s going to sound wonderful, I’m sure…” she rambles, much to my amusement.
“Don’t worry baby, I was just joking,” I smile, hearing her sigh of relief. “My songs are yet to reach that level of crapness.”
“Sorry, did you not hear that God song?”
“That was a good song!”
She giggles and mutters, “I know, I’m just teasing.”
“And what are your plans for the rest of the evening, Miss Saunders?” I ask, leaning against the wall and smiling.
“Oh, it’s funny you should ask that. Well, when I was picking up Cam from a party today I ran into an old friend of mine and we arranged to go out for drinks.”
“Oh really?” I stretch and adjust the navy blue baseball cap adorning my curls. “That’s cool.”
“I know, I haven’t spoken to him in years. He used to be my fr--”
“I’m sorry, what?” I interrupt, my actions frozen as .
“What?” she mimics, oblivious to my concern.
“It’s a he?”
“Yes,” she says slowly, as though there’s nothing wrong with it.
“What are you doing with him?”
“We’re just having a drink, that’s all,” she replies defensively. “It’s not like I’m embarking on a rampant affair with him.”
“How can I believe that when I’m up here and you’re down there, all alone, I might add, with some asshole!” I snap into my cell phone.
She lets out an exasperated sigh of disappointment. “Are you being serious?”
“Deadly serious, Cat. I don’t want you to go out with him.”
“Justin, I’m not going out with him. We’re just having a drink together and catching up, that’s all.”
“That’s what it may seem to you, Cat, but to him, it’s the perfect opportunity to fulfill his high school fantasy. Can’t you see he‘s just trying to get you drunk so he can take advantage of you?”
A high-pitched giggle travels down the line, and I roll my eyes. She’s laughing? She’s laughing? Would she laugh if I were locked in a house with girls running around in little cotton panties? Don’t think so.
I can see it all now; Cat walks into some seedy bar, clutching at her purse, her eyes darting around self-consciously. Some dark brooding man sitting in the corner waves her down. She slides in next to him, and he orders her a double shot of vodka before she can explain she doesn’t really like vodka all that much. Two hours and eight shots later, an inebriated Cat is taken back to the stranger’s home and in his sleazy little shack in the middle of the forest, he does the unthinkable: he takes my girl.
“What is so funny?” I snap.
“Justin, you are too cute. Obsessively possessive, yes, but cute nonetheless.” She sighs. “I have no idea exactly how you’ve managed to conjure up a steamy affair within a two second time allotment, but I can assure you it’s ridiculous, not to mention impossible.”
“Is it?”
“Of course!” she laughs again. “Look, what do you think he was doing at a kid’s birthday party?”
“Probably seducing some young girl with pigtails--perhaps he likes them young.”
She laughs again as my face remains in its stony frown. “Close, but no. He was picking up his son. He’s married, with two children.”
My mouth clamps shut and I raise an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yes,” she giggles. “And if you had waited for me to finish my story, I would have told you he used to be friend’s boyfriend and how we all wanted her to dump him because he wasn’t the best looking guy. Honestly Justin, you are just so melodramatic.”
“I am not melodramatic,” I scoff, scowling and shifting my hat again. “I’m just protecting what’s mine.”
A gasp escapes her lips. “Excuse me? What’s…yours?”
“You know what I meant,” I roll my eyes. “Look,” I groan, preparing an unwilling apology, “I’m sorry I pounced on you. But I just miss you so much, I can’t help if I’m a little…”
“Crazy?”
“Thanks,” I snort. “It’s just…you’re all by yourself down there. If something goes wrong, I can’t protect you.”
She sighs and is quiet for a moment. “Why would I want anyone else when I have you?” she says softly.
“I miss you,” I mumble, digging the toe of my black sneakers into the floor. “I want you back home, where I can keep you safe.”
“Justin,” she moans, and I can hear her running a hand through her hair. “Don’t make this any harder than it already is. You know I want to come home.”
“When will you, then?”
“You know I don’t know the answer to that.”
“Okay, I’ll back off,” I murmur. “But just to be on the safe side, be careful with your friend. Don’t leave him alone with your drink--he might slip some pill into it.”
She giggles but abruptly stops. “Affirmative, Mr. Timberlake.”
“And make sure you take a cell phone with you in case of an emergency.”
“Of course. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Okay. Love you, baby.”
“Love you too, Justin,” she says with a sigh.
I click the phone shut with a moan, and tilt my head back, banging it against the dark red wall of the recording studio.
When is she coming back?
-----------------------------------------
I’m going to die.
Or perhaps I’m already dead, and my sins have placed me in hell. Damn, I wish I had never stolen that candy bar from the grocery store when I was eight.
The hard concrete of the sidewalk greets the pad of my foot, one after the other, sending a jolt through my leg each time. And because life is the biggest bitch in the world, every time I stop moving a sharp pain runs the bones in my legs; starting at my ankles and finishing at the top of my thighs. My breath comes out as short gasps for air, as though there are a million little hands trying to grab at some form of oxygen to keep my body going.
The sun that seems to have suddenly sprouted from nowhere breaks through the misty dark clouds, slowly pushing them away and shining down onto the back of my neck. The hasty ponytail that my hair was pulled in as I woke up swings irritatingly to and fro, dancing between my shoulder blades. If I had a knife, I’d probably just chop it off. Or perhaps kill myself.
I fucking hate jogging.
“Dawn…” I pant, my feet plodding endlessly on the gray sea of asphalt. “Dawn!” I shout with more vigor.
“Yeah?” she responds, glancing back at me as her painfully long hair swings over her shoulder.
“There’s only so much lactic acid my body can handle,” I groan, stopping and bending over, placing my hands on my knees to steady myself.
“You’re doing great. I thought you’d be more unfit than this.”
I slowly raise my eyes to stare at her, hoping my stony glare is transmitting my “shut the hell up” message. My labored breathing echoes in the still morning air. Christ, anyone with half a brain is still curled up in bed. Why the hell am I spending a Sunday morning hitting the streets of Beachwood, Ohio when I’d rather be buried in the sheets of Sophie’s guest room, watching dreadful morning television?
“How can you do this every morning?” I moan, bring the back of my shin up and stretching my hamstring.
She shrugs and wipes the sweat from her brow. “I use prom as an incentive.”
“And what can be mine?”
She turns it over in my mind for a moment, before replying, “Victoria’s Secret corsets?”
I stare at her for a moment, contemplating a lengthy discussion on women’s independence and femininity, before shaking my head. “Let’s keep on going.”
“So, what time is dad coming back?” she asks, picking up a steady pace.
“Dunno,” I answer. “Three?” I see I’ve had to resort to fragmented sentences. Fab.
“S’at mean you’re going back to New York soon?” she asks.
“Probably,” I reply. “It’s been a week.”
“Oh…no,” she pants sarcastically.
Giving her a shove, I speed up. “Shut up, or I’ll tell Justin you used to call yourself Miss Nsync.”
“Don’t!” she exclaims, racing to catch up with me. “Don’t you dare!”
I manage a short laugh, before my lungs remind me that breathing has priority over jolliness. Finally, Sophie’s white brick house comes into view, and as much as I want to sprint over to it, my legs let me down and I plod pathetically through the brown picket fence to her front door.
“Well hello, my little joggers,” she snorts after opening the door, sipping a cup of coffee in her pajamas. “I was just about to fetch out my camera to catch you two in this wonderful moment.”
I glare at her and push past her to the bathroom, taking one glance at my horrible appearance and sucking in my breath. With my hair slicked back and my skin shiny, I look…vile.
“At least you’ve done a third of your exercise for this week,” Dawn says, leaning against one of the wooden stools in the kitchen and stretching.
“Christ, I am not doing this another two times,” I mutter, splashing some cold water onto my face and cursing the mirror. It’s clearly made me look ten times worse than I really do; yeah, that’s it. It’s the mirror’s fault.
The three Saunders sisters sat down at the table; Sophie ran her fingers over the rim of her cup, Dawn concentrated on her shoelaces, and I contemplated attacking some sort of chocolate pastry in order to replenish any calories I burned on my run.
“Oh, Cat, Justin called while you were out last night,” says Sophie, breaking the silence.
I smile. “What did he say?”
“Actually, he was calling to ask me who your friend was,” Sophie giggles. “Whether he was good-looking, successful, you know. He sounded a little jealous.”
I roll my eyes. “He’s a lot jealous. He always is.”
She nods and sips her milky coffee. “He seems very eager to have you back.”
“I know,” I reply softly. “We’ve never really spent more than a weekend away from each other before; we’re a little reliant on each other’s presence.”
“When are you heading back?”
“Whenever I’m not needed,” I reply, shrugging. “I do miss him.”
“Then why are you still here?” Dawn laughs. “Dad’s fine…Sophie, you’re managing, right?”
She nods and looks at me shyly. “I will be when Malcolm moves back in next week.”
I gasp. “Really? You’re sure?”
She beams and nods happily. “Well, you guys know we’ve been talking it out these past few days, and I think we’ve got things sorted. He was under too much pressure at work, as was I, we were never seeing each other…but we’re going to see how things go. After all, he really misses Cameron, and vice versa.”
“That’s great,” Dawn and I say in unison, reaching over to hug Sophie. I stifle the voice inside of me that says Malcolm is still a stupid bastard and congratulate her. After all, she loves him, Cameron loves him, and he loves them back. I suppose that’s all that really matters.
I also stifle the voice that brings out the party hats because…
I can finally go home.
------------------------------------------
Excitement tingles through my veins, lighting my body with nervous energy.
He has no idea.
Three days after my dad was home, Malcolm was back, and things had somewhat settled down into the weirdness that my home life always had been, I rang up the airline and proudly announced that I wanted to schedule my return to NY, New York City, The Big Apple…
Home.
I didn’t want to leave Ohio like a bolt of lightening as soon as things had gained a semblance of what they had been before, so I hung around pointlessly for a few days, doing odd jobs like going out and buying my dad a chocolate shake and taking Dawn shopping for her prom outfit, which of course we never found, due to our conflicting wardrobe likes.
Two weeks is not a long time. It’s fourteen days, so that’s what…336 hours? Yes, about that. And it’s around a twenty-sixth of a year, if we’re talking fractions. A mere half a month, is another way of looking at it. So, in conclusion, two weeks is not a long time.
Or so I thought.
Being away from Justin certainly had its benefits; I didn’t have to hear his and Trace’s mind-numbingly stupid conversations that always seemed to begin with “You know what’s great about orgasms…” or one of their ‘worthy’ debates that run along the lines of “Oral sex is better than anything else: discuss”. I even got to walk down the street without even worrying a cameraman might suddenly jump out screaming, ‘you’re on candid camera!’ and then strew my face across every magazine cover in the country.
But these benefits…these reimbursements were meaningless when I would wake up in the morning and miss his daily praise of cereal, or would go a whole day without hearing him make some utterly stupid comment such as “You know, homeless people look really short. Maybe it’s because they’re sitting down”. I missed him, having grown so accustomed to his…Justinness. Having him suddenly yanked away from was like being told I wasn’t allowed to breathe anymore; it was just unfathomable.
Hearing the elevator bing its way up through the various storeys, my grin widens. Over the past few days, I’ve been deliberately ignoring his calls–I can never keep a secret and I desperately wanted to surprise. So, whenever the name ‘J-Dawg’ came up on my screen, I smiled and canceled the call.
He has no idea.
Finally, the long black arrow points towards the top floor–Justin’s floor. Almost shivering with excitement, I quickly step out of the elevator and slip my key into the lock, turning it as noiselessly as I can. I caught a flight early in the morning, so that I could catch him before he rushed off to the studio. Hell, if I have my way, he’ll forget the studio and we’ll spend all day together, being a saccharine sweet couple. I think I deserve it; I never even got to kiss him goodbye.
Creeping into the apartment, I lean forward, putting the weight on the balls of my feet, so that the heels on my plum-colored sandals don’t tap on the polished wooden floor. The apartment is oddly still: I don’t hear Trace whistling, or Justin singing, just silence. Glancing at my watch and realizing it’s only eight o’clock, I assume they’re both still asleep. That’s even better; I can think of interesting ways to wake Justin up.
Slowly, I set my bag down and smile, looking around at my surroundings. Things are still the same; in fact, surprisingly clean, seeing as Justin and Trace have been left to their own cleaning devices, as I was gone. I tiptoe into the kitchen, nodding approvingly at the washed dishes and cleaned counters. My boys have been good boys.
The large hanging calendar on the wall catches my attention, and I let out a gentle, girlish sigh at a large red X filling the day that I left. Of course, there was an equally large red arrow pointing to it, proclaiming that Justin was ‘gay’, but I shook my head at Trace’s handwriting and left the kitchen, smiling to myself.
My feet sink into the plush beige carpet on the stairs, and I quickly hop up them, biting my lip in anticipation. At the summit of the stairs, I tug at my tight fitting, ever so slightly cleavage-revealing top that Dawn insisted I have, and smooth down the black skirt that is just a little shorter than I’m comfortable with. Taking a breath, I smile excitedly, ready to cross the hall into Justin’s bedroom.
He has no idea.
As my right foot makes its move forwards onto a dark burgundy rug on the floor, my breath hitches in my throat. My stomach plummets to the floor painfully, and my heart does an agonizing display of acrobatics in my chest. It feels as though someone has poured burning wax into my heart and left it there to congeal and stain my insides forever.
Amber closes the bathroom door behind her carefully, letting it shut quietly. She gasps upon seeing me, and instinctively reaches to cover herself, although there’s little she can do in the large t-shirt I’ve seen Justin don on numerous occasions that hangs over a pair of black panties. Her short, auburn hair is tousled her eyes are bright; there’s no mistaking her radiant morning after glow. She's spent the night here and, even worse, she's spent that night having sex.
I had no idea.
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