"Justin!"
I snapped my head up from where I'd been staring at my feet. I hadn't even realized I'd been doing that until that moment.
"What?" I said, glancing up and finding Frankie Daphne "Daffy" Flores standing a few feet away from me.
"Do you see anything wrong with this picture?"
Frankie, or Daffy as I liked to call her even though she hated it, especially since she hated it, was nowhere near as delicate as her last name might lead you to believe. FYI, Flores means flowers, which is kinda ironic since she's allergic to them. Breaks out into these awful hives, has to get rushed to the emergency room, it's just not a good look for her.
Frankie's a punch first, ask questions later type of girl. I can't tell you the number of times she's gotten me in trouble when we were growing up. I was always the cautious, are you sure we should be doing this one, while she'd just laugh at me, tell me to stop being a little pussy and drag me along towards something that I'd always be hoping wouldn't end with the two of us behind bars.
And usually when a person is so tough all the time, it's because they're trying to protect their little gooey marshmallow center. Frankie doesn't really have one. The only soft spot she has really is for me. Took me a while to figure that out, but once I did it definitely made things more interesting. Not that I would take advantage of Daffy, I mean, I love the girl. We grew up together. We're good friends.
But soft spot for me, good friends, childhood memories or not, when it comes to dancing, Frankie is all business and right now I was the flaw in her routine.
"Perhaps," I started, avoiding her glare. I've been told I give a pretty mean glare at times, but I'm sure whatever look I give can't hold a candle against the way Frankie is staring at me now.
And if it had been anyone else asking me this, I might have allowed myself to get pissy in reply. But this wasn't anyone else, this was Frankie and she was the queen of pissy. So instead, I just looked around the room, only to find the rest of the dancers on the other side of the stage, leaving me alone on this side save Frankie who was impatiently awaiting my answer. "I wasn't exactly paying attention."
This wasn't the first day of rehearsals. This wasn't even the first time that she'd had to stop everything and come over to me like this. I was distracted. Being dumped on your ass after finding out that woman you'd been in love with for the last four years or so had cheated on you and was at one point potentially carrying your child but had not thought it necessary to mention this until less than a week ago, well I guess that can make a man's mind wander to things beyond learning his dance routines.
"Perhaps not." She sighed before adding, "And perhaps this isn't the first time it's happened."
"I know, I know. I'm sorry. I'm going to get it this time, promise." I said, crossing my heart and just as I was going to complete the gesture, she spoke again.
"Please don't finish that, with the way you're going today, I'd have a dead pop star on my hands because of it. And somehow I don't think the executives, your mom, or the crazy mob that is your fans would appreciate that very much."
When I all could do was manage to give a half-smile, she sighed and said, "Alright, let's take five, people."
"We don't have to." I said, but it was like I'd said nothing because everyone just continued to walk off in different directions, all murmuring over how long this would take to get through. They'd probably already taken bets out on it. "I said, we didn't have to."
There were just two of us now. Frankie said, "Yeah, we did."
It's amazing all the work you can get done when you stop procrastinating. Seriously, I've tried to stop before and it never worked, but this time it stuck. This time I was dead set on redirecting my attention. I figured the daily, sometimes more than that, calls to Julie and obsessing over the Justin thing wasn't exactly the most helpful thing in the world for me or her. Go figure. So in order to ensure the redirection would work, I've stopped calling entirely.
Cold turkey, sucked, but sometimes it's the only option. It had only been a week since I'd last talked to Jules, so it's not like my willpower is praiseworthy or anything, but I'm still proud of myself. And it wasn't just the calls about her brush with greatness that I was trying to get away from, that was just a part of it, just a snag in the yarn of a lot of built up resentment and jealousy I'd picked up throughout my friendship with Jules.
Holding it in had worked for the most part, but you can only hold stuff in for so long. We'd had a few, more than minor explosions due to that and even though I wasn't sure if this new jealous episode was going to be another trigger, I really just didn't want to find out. Julie and I knew too much about each other, so any argument of that level was bound to rip at wounds with salt covered claws--that was just the downside of letting people in. But it was a risk I'd learned was worth taking every now and then, lest I turn out like my dad. And maybe it's just me, but old, bitter and lonely just didn't seem like very compelling adjectives to have attached to yourself.
So I was learning to let go, partly thanks to my random decision to take a psych class as an elective this semester, which had caused me to diagnose everyone I knew with nearly every mental disorder I'd learned about, and partly thanks to Chris. Even though I'd still yet to tell him the full story with the Justin encrusted bits, I'd told him enough that he got it. He'd sat there for a while in silence and when I couldn't take it anymore, he finally just said, "Let it go."
When all I'd done was frown at him, he repeated, "Let it go." I frowned harder then, thinking somehow he'd missed an important part of the story so if I went over it again, slower, maybe he'd get it. But he'd already gotten it, so again he said, "Let. It. Go. Let it go, woman!"
Of course I wouldn't admit that he was right, so instead I told him, "Thanks for nothing. You can leave now."
And of course he didn't just leave. He had to laugh in my face first and when he was done with that and I was still frowning at him, he sighed, the last traces of his nearly constant smile fading away at the edges. "I am going to go now, not because you asked...."
"Told."
"Whatever. I'm going because you know I'm right and me staying here or not staying here doesn't change that. Plus, I can always come back."
I didn't hesitate to fall for the bait. "No, you can't."
He smiled at me, and leaned in towards me. I'd known he'd moved from the chair to sit on the bed with me at one point during the talk, but it wasn't until then that I became so acutely aware of how close he was and how good he smelled and how...oh, god.
I licked my lips and fought not to back down, not to scoot away like I wanted to, while simultaneously fighting not to scoot forward like I wanted to. He'd leaned in so close that I couldn't look at him without it being a strain on the eyes, but this kind of closeness was nothing about looking and everything about feeling, touching.
His lips hovered dangerously close to mine, so close one breath could have drawn either of us in. When he moved, I twitched slightly from the growing anxiety of trying to just hold still. He smiled at this, moving up towards my eyes, which I automatically close. This time he let those full soft lips of his brush my skin, grazing ever so slightly against my eye lids. His nose rubbed against mine for a moment as I was beginning to lose my grip on sanity and was leaning in to switch gears from the Eskimo kiss to one that was more satisfying, when he drew back and just watched me for a moment.
His lips were lingering by my ear as he whispered, "I think I made my point."
I was still working on trying to get my pulse to not feel like it was trying to make the cut it get onto an Olympic Track and Field team. He'd been nearly out the door and I still didn't have my heart rate back at a normal feel, but I couldn't just let him leave. Even if technically he was right and technically he had won, it always felt like if I at least got in the last word, at least then I didn't lose. Petty, nonsensical—that's me.
"Tell Raedel I said hi."
He just smiled and shook his head at me, making sure to close the door behind him. He'd been yelled about that before. And as I said previously, he's a fast learner.
"Was I a...bad..." I glanced up from my wringing hands to look into her brown eyes for a moment. "Was I bad for you when we were..." Waving my hands about I searched for the words that I wanted as if they were hidden in pockets of air. "When you and I were..."
"When I was young and dumb and thought that there was something about you worth falling in love with...?" She said, smiling at me before shoving me playfully when all I'd done in response was sit quietly, lost in my thoughts. "You're not so bad. You're just a guy with options. More options than most guys, so there's more temptation and you're fairly good at avoiding 'em...when you want to."
Her 'when you want to' was the four most bitter words I'd ever heard.
"I know you didn't cheat on me. Even though that's what you told me. I know you didn't do it. I didn't know at the time, but I found that out a few weeks later."
I was gaping like a fish out of water, my mouth just flapping wordlessly in the wind. She wasn't supposed to have figured that out. But then again, I was also supposed to have had the balls to tell her how I was feeling, or rather the growing lack thereof of feelings. And I was trying, honestly I was. I was trying to be the good guy and break it off before I did something stupid and careless and completely ruined any chances of her not hating me after we were no longer a we. But in the middle of trying to tell her, while I was staring into her brown eyes, it just donned on me that I couldn't do it.
I knew that I wasn't in the right mindset to be in a relationship at the time. I knew that the more times I got approached the more likely that one of those times I'd take one of those girls back to a hotel with me. I knew that even though I loved her at the time more than I'd ever loved anyone, I was going to eventually fuck it up. I knew that. But I couldn't just say that. I couldn't just be that open and honest about it. So I lied. Said something quick and easy that I knew would push her away.
"I think..." She sighed, pushing out a long breath of air. "I think sometimes you get confused. About yourself. Who you want to be. Mostly you want to be the man your mama raised you to be. Respectable, faithful, dependable. But every now and then when you feel like the waters have gotten too still, you decide it's time to stir it up and you turn into the guy that tabloids love to write about.
"But that's too easy. Being a slut is easy. So you can't even stick with being easy, cause for some reason you like life when it's hard, when it's complicated, when you're walking a tight rope. If you're just with one woman, or you're just bouncing around...choosing to do one creates routines, so you do whatever. And it's when you get into the whatever mood that you're bad for me...or whoever you're with at the time, because that's when you're so close to not caring at all. And indifference is worse than hate."
"But I'm not..."
"I know." She nodded. "I've been unfortunate enough to be around you enough to find out that you're just an oscillating fan and don't even mean to be, so it depends when the new woman walks into the sway of your life to find out whether or not they get the man to fall in love with, the man to just fall in bed with, or none of the above."
She stared at her kicking legs, which were dangling off the side of the stage where we'd been sitting. She let her hair fall down into her face, covering her expressive eyes for a moment. And for a moment, she just watched me through that curtain of thick hair that she was always dying (it was red today). And for a moment, I saw that old Frankie. The pre-pubescent, awkward Frankie, who stared at her toes more than she looked anywhere else. The one I'd grown up with, living only three houses down from. The one whose window I still crawl into whenever we're both in town. It was the same house she'd grown up in. Her parents had planned on selling it when they'd decided to move down to their dream home in Florida to retire, but Daffy wasn't having any of that and had bought it from them, even though she rarely makes it back to Millington herself.
"So...in other words, you are saying I was a bad boyfriend."
She smiled, a slow upward curl of lips. Placing a hand on my shoulder, she gave it a gentle squeeze and said, "I wouldn't say bad. I could've always done worse than you."
For as cynical as Daffy could be sometimes, she was also a firm believer in fate and destiny and all that crap. So in the fourth grade when all the girls were playing with those paper fortune tellers that they loved to make, and she'd done it several times, each time with it coming up with the same result, that I was the one she was going to marry, she'd resigned herself to that fate and went out to get us matching ring pops.
When I'd used my elementary school wisdom and told her that that's not how it worked, that the man was supposed to get the ring and propose to the woman, we spent the next few hours arguing about what women were supposed to do and what men were supposed to do and whether or not I counted as a man back then or her as a woman. She'd ended the fight then like she always did back then, with a punch and a 'I said, you're wrong.'
Rolling my eyes at her, I said, "Thanks, and you have done worse." I smiled back. "Karl was..."
"...never to be mentioned again." She giggled, shaking her head. "But you know you can't even talk about my bad choices in men, your taste in women is usually questionable."
"I know, when I was dating you...I don't know what the hell I was thinking." I laughed, a second before she popped me upside my head and started laughing right along with me.
"We're joking and all right now, but on the serious tip, if you're serious about being done with Cameron and weren't just looking for an excuse to give up or looking for one for her to use to do the same, I think you need to have an honest moment with yourself and figure out if this is what you really want." She said, all traces of her previous smile and laughter washed away. Licking her lips slowly, she added, "Just because I was willing to make mistakes with you for a second time doesn't mean she will too."
We looked at each other for a long quiet moment. And for a moment I could have sworn that my tough girl Daffy was showing that she had a little gooey marshmallow center to protect just like the rest of us, and I'd been the one to scrape away at it. And just as I was about to fumble with words that could probably do more damage than the damage control that I'd be going for, she blinked, smiled, smacked me on the back of the head as she jumped to her feet in one fluid motion, and said, "Now that I've done my good deed for the day, I can stop pretending like I care. So now you gotta stop your belly-aching, cause I'm about to make you pay for all those earlier screw ups." Then she walked around behind me, bent down and pouted out her lip and waved goodbye to my ass. Literally. Before I could frown and ask, what the hell that was about, she added, "Oh and you might wanna say goodbye to the little thing too, cause I'm 'bout to have you dance it right off." She laughed, slapping it before she skipped away, barking at the others to come back in.
When my cell phone went off, I didn't even bother to check the ID. I was so sure it was Chris calling for the umpteenth time that day. "Chris, you really need to stop acting like you're getting my number confused with those phone sex hotlines. You call me one more time talking crazy and I'ma..."
There was just laughter on the other end of the line. I was about to frown and considering just hanging up, when I recognized the snort filled giggles. "Julie?"
"If you're so tired of talking to that boy, why don't you ever get rid of him?"
"Short of putting a hit out on him, don't you think I tried?"
"No," she said. "You haven't. That's the point. Yeah, sure, you act a little bitchy to him every now and then, but when you think it's him calling you still pick up, when you look out the peephole on your dorm door and see his goofy ass standing outside, you still open it. Or you just leave it unlocked and in he comes."
"You know I don't leave it unlocked for him. That's just a bad habit of mine."
"Yeah, but you're not trying to change it. So he keeps getting to come back."
I was really not in the mood for this. Sighing, I said, "What do you want? Hopefully, this wasn't why you called."
"You go from calling me everyday to no calls for a week and you ask why I called? I was starting to wonder what had happened to you."
"Nothing happened to me. You should know that nothing ever happens to me, good or bad."
Her end of the line suddenly went quiet and I began to wonder if she had hung up on me, tired of me complaining. Just as I was about to ask if she was still there, she spoke again.
"I was wrong. I'm sorry."
What in the hell is she talking about? Frowning, I said, "What?"
"You know." She sighed, as if it was going to be some kind of hassle for her to explain.
"Really, I don't."
"Me and Justin. I was wrong...so, I'm sorry."
My frown was just growing and growing. "Why?"
Pffting, she said, "Because..."
I had to laugh at her well thought out reasoning. "He's not mine."
"In your delusional head he is and as your BFF I was supposed to honor your invisible ties."
I ignored her BFF comment, I'd tried a long time ago to get her to stop speaking like that. And though she was saying less of the oh em gee's and LOL's than she once had been, it was still no stopping it entirely. "No, I should've been happy for you."
"Why? I knew how much you liked him, LOVED him and then I turned around and decided at the last moment to brag about it instead of simply telling you. If I were you, I would've made a special trip across the country just to kick my ass."
Laughing, I said, "That would require me to find it first."
"Justin seemed to have found it alright," was her quick smart ass answer.
When I chose not to respond to that, she said, "Sorry. It's just..." She sighed.
"What?" I said, holding back a sigh of my own. I had a bad feeling this was all leading into the type of conversation that we usually had once a week about how she'd just found the newest love of her life (and the love always came after great sex), which was the reason I'd been avoiding talking to her for the last week or so.
"He's..."
The annoyance was on the tip of my tongue this time. "What?"
"The main reason I wanted you to stop bringing him up is because I was trying to stop thinking about him my damn self."
Got-dammit! See! Do you fucking see?! I just knew it. I just knew this shit was going to happen. Of course you can't just have sex with Justin Timberlake; you have to fall in love with his ass too. And now I've got to try to be the good friend who puts aside her crazed fan feelings, who's not jealous and listens to her bitch and moan about how hard life is post-Timberlovin'.
"You still there?"
"Yeah, I was just looking online for a cheap ticket to Cali to come kick your ass." I said. "Girl, please don't tell me you had sex with him one night and now you think you're head over heels."
"Wouldn't you be?"
Uh-duh!, I thought laughing. But that's beside the point. Me having wild, crazy sex with him and falling in love with him—that's good, that's great, that's goodly great. Her having wild, crazy sex with him and falling in love with him...
"He's just so..." She trailed off, her voice dissolving into semi-erotic moans and groans. "amazing."
That's just what I needed to hear—her going into a recount of their "amazing" sex with relived orgasms. Trying not to encourage that line of conversation, I said, "That's what I've been trying to tell you all these years."
"I get it now. I've got it."
"And now you want to get with him in a more permanent way?"
Say no, say no. Just say no, bitch!
She sighed. "I dunno. I mean, he has someone."
Before I could stop myself, I said, "Hasn't stopped you before."
"Make me wish I didn't tell you all my business." She scoffed.
"And most of the time I wish you wouldn't."
We fell into another trapdoor of silence. I glanced at the clock, then at the door. It had been two whole hours since the last time Chris had pestered me with a visit. New record.
"You know, my mom used to always compare me to you." She said, finally breaking into the mounting silence. "Always telling me how I should be more like you."
An eyebrow raised at this, cause my mother had said the same thing once to me on a Friday night when I'd taken over the family room armed with enough sugar to send me into a diabetic shock and as many old school slasher flicks I could find. Mom and Dad had wanted "alone time" and I had wanted to puke at the thought of what they'd be doing on that couch if I'd been more like Jules and was out somewhere partying.
"And what's more like me?"
"More head in the books, less giggling over boys."
"You make it sound like I was a nerd."
"Hey," She laughed, softly. "I'm only calling it like I see it."
"So what if I enjoyed a good book every now and then."
"And so what if you got straight A's every year, ran track at a varsity level for three years and was also first string violin in orchestra."
"And while I was doing that, you were dating cutie after cutie. Got to go to all those exclusive parties that even if I was invited to, my dad would've never let me go. And the more popular you got..."
"The more excuses you gave as to why we couldn't hang out as much."
I shrugged at this. "Your cool new friends didn't like me."
"How do you know?" She scoffed. She always got hyped up if I as much as implied that her friends were snobs. Go figure. "You never were around them for more than a minute or two."
"It doesn't take hours to know that you're not wanted."
"But I wanted you there."
Pushing out a long breath of air, I said, "We've had this argument before."
"It's not like after high school everything changed though. You do the same thing in college."
"Just because we're friends doesn't mean all your friends are going to be my friends or vice versa."
Silence filled the line again and I began to wonder if switching the topic back to her supposed new love of a certain Prince of Pop would be less annoying to me than this.
"I think," she started again. "I think your problem is that you like not fitting in completely. So you find it hard to be around people who do." She paused for a moment, and knew in that hesitation that a detailed account of her and Justin's fuckfest would have easily been the better way to go. "And you weren't always like this; it didn't start happening until after..." She trailed off; she always trailed off at that point when she was close to bringing up my mother.
So I helped her out. My voice completely deadpanned, I said, "After my mom died."
"Yeah."
I glanced up at the ceiling for a moment, before staring out the window. Birds were chirping. People were walking to and fro laughing and chatting and making plans for the next time they'll get alcohol poisoning via the next keg party they'd happily attend. And me, I got to talk about my dead mother. I said, "It's hard to be all sunshine and roses, when you feel like your heart's been ripped up."
"That's when you need a best friend the most. I could've..."
"You couldn't have done anything more than what you did. You didn't understand and the only way to understand is obviously something I wouldn't want to happen to you."
She went quiet again and I rolled my eyes at the silence.
"I'm really sorry about those earrings."
"I've told you a million times to stop apologizing. I'm trying to let the past be the past."
"So you've really gotten over that?"
You don't get over it. You fall down and stay there, until staying there gets pathetic. Then you hang around for a bit more and then you begin to pull yourself up and try to become someone other than the one who's so short-sighted that they can't see past the past. Try to become the person you keep claiming to be. The one who forgives and forgets. Or at least genuinely forgives and lets it go.
So I'm letting go.
"Not quite. More like trying to take a running leap at it, whether I get over it or not, I'm not sure, but the point is I'm trying now. Really and truly this time."
My mother and I was never buddy, buddy friends. We didn't giggle or smoke a joint together. I didn't tell her all my secrets. Sometimes I didn't even like being around her very much. But we were close, as close as a mother and daughter can get without becoming friends. And even though I didn't run and tell her everything, I told her a helluva lot more than most teenage girls would tell their mothers.
And when she passed away, it was the most surreal thing. I didn't even cry. Not once. Still haven't cried. My dad stuck me in years of counseling because of it. Death is a hard thing to grasp. Didn't matter that I wasn't five and didn't need to be told that my mother had gone on to a better place. Or that she was an angel watching over me now.
I knew my mother and she was no angel. And even dying in car crash, after being hit by a drunk driver wasn't going to change that.
I was a freshly turned seventeen and I knew that people died and knew that death was a permanent thing. But there's something about your lively, always laughing or yelling mother being suddenly silenced and shoved away into a wooden box that's hard to wrap your mind around and I don't care what age you are when it happens.
When it happened, I was spending the night over at Jules' house. While the reason I was breathing was taking her last breath, I was arguing over whether or not it was possible for a guy to be hotter than Brad Pitt. When I got home later that weekend, my father didn't even tell me what had happened. He'd shut down. I'd had to find out from a neighbor who thought I already knew and wanted to send her condolences for our lost.
As I listened to the second or third hand version that Mrs. Yagger had heard, I didn't cry. When one of my aunts finally told me the real version, I didn't cry. When I stared into the open casket, I didn't cry. When I sat in the pews and listened to my father sobbing, I was a rock. I was cold. I didn't cry.
When Jules about a month later did what she always did, borrow something of mine, but of course without asking for permission, I didn't even notice the earrings were gone at first. I didn't look in my jewelry box every day. I wasn't all that into jewelry, diamonds weren't a best or even good friend of mine; we were acquaintances at best and Julie was just doing what she always did, taking my stuff as if it was hers.
It pissed me off and she knew it, but that had never stopped her before and these earrings were no different, even her losing them was no surprise. The problem was they were my mother's earrings and the only thing I had left from her other than a few pictures. My mother hadn't liked getting her picture taken that much. And now, thanks to one Julie Drules, I had only pictures and memories.
It wasn't like Julie knew that it was my mother's earrings. I hadn't told her much about that part of my life. Even best friends aren't privy to every corner of your life and this was one that I only went to when things had gotten beyond bad and I always went alone. Sometimes just knowing I had it around was good enough, but now I didn't even have that. Julie had apologized so many times after finding out that those weren't just any ol' pair of earrings to me that it had gotten to the point that I'd nearly banned her from saying the word sorry around me.
And even then, I waited for the tears. I waited. I just stood there in the middle of my room and waited to fall apart. Even then I couldn't cry. Though according to my former shrink, that should be phrased as wouldn't cry, but I swear to the God that must not like me, that I tried. On that day, I honestly tried.
It took my shrink another two years to figure out what I already knew, that I wasn't benefiting from the hour long weekly interrogations. So eventually, he ended them, concluding that I was only going to deal with this when I was ready to.
Thanks Dr. Hensley, glad the money that had been saved for my college education went towards that insight.
"You know if I didn't have such a high tolerance for headaches, I would've ditched your ass a long time ago."
Jules giggled herself into a snort-fest. I laughed too for a moment, before re-directing the conversation towards the light and fluffy. And I knew that she'd know I was doing it on purpose so I wouldn't have to talk about everything I'd been trying not to even think about for years now, but I also knew that she'd back off the subject for now.
She'd learned a long time ago that pushing me to talk never wound up in heart to hearts. If you backed me into a corner, at least figuratively so, I only had one reaction. Fight my way out.
She tried to kill me.
I've never felt so sore in my life. Frankie wasn't joking when she said she was gonna have me dancing my ass off. And the thing that really bugged me about it was that while the rest of us were half dead after rehearsal, her ass was still smiling and bopping around like it was nothing.
It's a good thing I'd still managed to limp my ass over to my car and drive home. Just can't wait to come home every day now since Cameron's moved out.
If that didn't translate as sarcasm, let me assure you it was. I mean, it's my house, but somehow without her it just doesn't much feel like my home anymore. You know what I mean? It's like a chair is still a chair, even when there's no one sittin' there; but a chair is not a house and a house is not a home, when there's no one there to hold you tight. And no one there that you can kiss goodnight.
Whoa...oh...oh...oh...oh...oh...oh...
Luther knew what I'm feeling. It's easier (cause it's not easy) to forget that we're not together anymore when I'm out and about, running around, but once I'm home and I get a moment to just sit...
"A room is a still a room, even when there's nothin' there but gloom
But aaaaa room is not a house and a house is not a home
When the two of us are far apart
Aaand one of us haaas a bro-ken heart."
She lied, she cheated, she potentially miscarried my baby. So her dumping me, or taking a break from me, whatever the hell she called it shouldn't have bothered me as much as it did. I mean, yeah, I know I cheated too, but I came clean. I didn't wait years after the fact to be like, oh, by the way, I fucked around on you awhile back, might have been knocked up with your child, but lost it, so it doesn't matter and see there's not much to get, I'm an asshole too, hehe.
A woman like that is supposed to produce Cry Me A River, What Goes Around tracks, not have me pining away, wondering where the hell she is and who's she with. I was getting too caught up in emotions, I needed to focus on the facts. And the fact is, she's not someone to be missed. I'm not supposed to be feeling like I need to come up with a plan to get her back. Fuck, when I had her, I was wondering if I even still wanted to be with her, and now...
"Now and then... I call your name
And suddenly your face... appears
But it's just a cra-zy game
When it ends, it ends in tears."
I just wanted to call her. To hear her voice on the other end of line. To tell her I miss her and then proceed to tell her to go fuck herself in as many creatively explicit ways as possible. But thanks to her little confession, I was the aggrieved now. And the aggrieved was suppose to save face as much as possible. The aggrieved didn't call first. The aggrieved didn't miss the aggriever. And most certainly, the aggrieved didn't go home and sing into a swiffer that was laying around, like it was my singer version of the end of every Dancelife episode, when they'd do a solo dance to dance away their thirty-minute packaged frustrations.
"Pretty little darling, have a heart, yeah baby
and don't let one mistake keep us apart
I was wrong and I know it, but forgive me honey cause...
I'm not meant to live alone, oh, n-n-nooo, turn this house into a home
When I climb the stairs and turn the key
Oh, please be there, sayin' that you're still in love
you're sho' in love with meeee, yeah..." I pulled my voice down as low as it would go.
Ohh....I'm not meant toooo live alone, turn this house into a home
When... I climb the stairs, reach out and turn the key
Oh, baby, please be there, still in love
I said still...in...oooh love."
Please be still in love…with me, yeah..."
Seemingly out of nowhere, the phone was in my hand now. I just stared at it for a long moment. Then the punk ass in me got the better of me and one by one, I began punching in the digits. I hesitated on the last one for a few breathes, before punching that in and pushing send.
"Are you gonna be in love with me?
I want you and need to be, yeah
Still in love with me."
It was ringing. Over and over again.
"Say you're gonna be in love with me
It's drivin' me crazy to think that my baby..."
Putting the phone down, I hit speaker phone and just backed away from it.
"...wouldn't be, my baby wouldn't be, my ba-ba-baby wouldn't be
Still in love with me."
It rang one more time, then her voicemail clicked on. I hung up.
"Are you gonna be, say you're gonna be..."
Before I could stop myself, I was calling back. Just to hear her damn message again. She hadn't changed it yet. It was the same corny ass one we'd done together.
"Still in love with me, yeah...
With me, oh...oh...oh...oh...oh...
Still in love with me," Pushing my voice down into those deep notes, I pulled and stretched it right back up to higher ones. "Yeah...yeah..."
I don't know how I'd wound up on my knees on the floor. Must've gotten too swept away in the song—good music does that to you. And of course when I'm really caught up in singing, trying to hit all those notes like Luther, suddenly I hear a slow clap that quickly picks up. Turning around, I see Trace first. Who's doing a horrible job of not laughing at me and before I can get my first few curses out at him as way of a greeting, I see her.
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FYI: the song in this chapter, in case you didn't know it (and shame on you if you didn't), is Luther Vandross "A House Is Not A Home." I wonder what Justin would really sound like singing this. Things that make you go, 'hmm.'
