3 >> What's Wrong
It’s a rather tame Sunday afternoon, and I’m enjoying an awesome cup of green tea yogurt right outside Pinkberry in Beverly Hills. I’m with one of my closest friends, Lindsey Glueckert, and we’re discussing the Dodgers when my phone rings.
“Who is this,” I drop my cup to the table and begin searching through my excessively large purse for my iPhone. I pause when I finally find it and see Talis’s face staring back at me.
“Who is it?” Lindsey asks when she notices that I’m frozen. I show her the Halle Berry-lookalike face adorning my phone and she scrunches up her nose. “What does that bitch want?”
“I dunno,” I say, looking down again. I have a split second to answer and actually find out, so I do. “Hello?”
“Hey Jess,” she says on the other end. “You busy?”
I am so tempted to hang up on her, but curiosity gets the best of me. “No, what is it?”
“Umm. I kinda need your help,” she breathes. “If you don’t mind.”
“Seriously?” I roll my eyes so that Linds can see my frustration, but press on. “What could I possibly be able to help you with?”
“Could you maybe go by Justin’s house and… pick up some of my things for me?”
“What?” I chirp. “Are you insane?”
“Listen, I know you hate me, as well you should,” she offers, “but my entire life is in that house, and I need some of it back.”
“And I’m supposed to do what exactly?”
“Could you just… I dunno,” she sighs. “Just pack up some of my stuff and I’ll meet you somewhere to pick them up?”
“Are you kidding right now, Talis? No,” I scoff. “Hell no.”
“Jess, please.”
“So you can keep running away from him? No.”
“Come on, all my clothes are there,” she pleads lamely. “All my jewelry, my makeup--.”
“And Justin,” I finish for her, a bit bitingly. “You better buy some new shit, because there’s no way I’m doing that for you.”
“Jess, I need my things.”
“Talis, if you want them that badly, you can take your ass over there and get them. There’s no way you’re gonna worm your way out of facing him,” I maintain sternly. “He needs some closure, and the least you can do is give it to him.”
“I told you I’m sorry, but--.”
“You left him,” I begin to yell, “not me!”
“I know,” she concedes. “But I just can’t face him.” Her voice is weak and her sighs are heavy. “I can’t.”
“Then I can’t help you.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if I just disappeared completely? So he can forget all about me?”
“He’s not gonna just forget you,” I retort. “He’s in pain; he’s in denial. He needs an actual ending from you. That’s the least you could do for him.”
“I just… I can’t,” she repeats sadly.
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. I just don’t have it in me.”
“That’s what doesn’t make sense to me,” I say. “This is not you, Tails. You’ve always been headstrong and confident and, as far as I know, completely in love with Justin. Why are you acting like this?”
“Jess,” she whispers, “please, just help me out here.”
“Whatever it is, please just tell me.” From the fragility in her voice, I can tell there’s something more that she’s not saying, but I can’t figure out what. There’s a long pause, and I wonder if she’s crying or just trying to gather the balls to tell me. “Talis?”
She exhales sharply. “Are you gonna help me?”
I don’t want to. I really don’t want to. Hell, I even hate the thought of having this conversation with her, because I’m most certainly Team Justin on this one, and there’s a huge part of me that still hates her for what she did. But, we’ve been friends since high school, and there are very few people in my life that are as close to me as we are, and I doubt there are many more to come. I can’t just say no. “Fine.”
“You are such a lifesaver,” she tells me. “Thank you, Jess.”
“Listen, if I get caught, I’m selling you out.”
She lets out a short chuckle and a sigh of relief. “I’m not picky about what you can get. Just so long as there’s some underwear, something to sleep in, just… whatever you can do.”
“I make no promises.”
“I know.”
“Hey, just out of curiosity,” I start to inquire, “where are you staying?”
“Umm. I’m at the Chateau Marmont.”
“You’re seriously staying right down the street?”
“Well where am I supposed to go?” she defends. “I mean, not that I can really afford to stay here much longer, but I mean… I dunno. I’m at a loss right now.”
“You’re a mess right now,” I say honestly.
“I know.”
There’s another long pause between us and I feel like her nervousness is radiating through the phone. I look at Lindsey cautiously before asking her, “Talis, are you pregnant?”
“No,” she states definitively. “No, nothing like that.”
“Well then what is it?”
“When can you meet me?” she blatantly avoids the question.
I’m out of options, so I just give in. “I’m not sure. He’s spending time with his mom right now, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to get over there for a while. I’ll call you.”
“Jess, you have no idea how much I appreciate this.”
“Bye, Talis.” I end the call and give my friend a bored look. “She wants me to bring her some of her stuff from Justin’s.”
“Why the hell can’t she get it herself?” Lindsey demands, frustrated with this as much as I am.
I shrug and shake my head. “There’s something going on, but I just don’t know what it is.”
“That’s not your issue,” Linds comforts me. “And neither should be getting her shit. If she wants it, she needs to go over there and face him.”
“I know. But she won’t, and I’m not gonna let her do that to Justin.” I take a look into my cup of melting yogurt and then stare into the street ahead of me. “I feel so bad for him,” I sigh.
“He’ll be all right, Jess.”
“I know. I just worry about him because that’s what I do.”
“What do you think he would do without you?”
“I guess… I don’t know,” I blink.
“He’d get by,” she assures me, resting her hand over mine. “You cannot protect him from his own life, no matter how much you’d like to.”
“He needs me,” I attempt to convince her, though it’s quite possible I’m more about convincing myself.
“Says who?”
“Says… Well he told me to never leave him,” I reason.
“Fine. Be there for him, be his friend; but no matter what you think about how he’ll be affected, you have to let him hurt.”
I know she’s right, as much as I hate to admit it, so I stop defending myself. “I saw him laughing the other night,” I eventually proclaim. “He met a friend of mine at the thing at Karen and Michael’s,” I go on to explain. “And since he’d been so upset, I kept my eye on him most of the night. I don’t know what she said to him, but… shit. He couldn’t keep a smile off his face,” I recall. “And there’s a small part of me that was kind of… jealous, maybe? I just “ I wish I’d been able to do that. I’d been trying so hard all week, and then five minutes with her and he’s laughing and smiling and, like… Why couldn’t I do that for him?”
She gives me a look of pity. “Jess.”
“I know it’s stupid. I mean, I’m glad anything could make him smile… but it stung a little bit,” I acknowledge. “So yeah, maybe you’re right. It’s not my place to save him.” He won’t let me.
“Just… try and take a step back,” Lindsey advises. “For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve put him before yourself. Maybe it’s just time you rearrange your priorities.”
“Yeah,” I agree, looking down. “Maybe so.”
>>>>>>>>>>
Justin’s mother, who lovingly insisted on spending the entire day with her son, sat at his kitchen counter, watching him at the stove. “Justin, are you okay?”
He turned around and gave her a smirk. “I’m fine, mom.”
“I know you keep saying it, but you’re being so quiet. It’s not like you.”
“The house is quiet. I’m being quiet with the house.”
She sighed and began to pick through the red grapes in front of her. “I worry about you,” she said honestly.
“Everybody does, apparently.”
“It’s because we love you.”
“I know, mom.” After placing the last salmon croquette in a pan of oil, he wiped his hands on a dishtowel and turned to face his mother. “But I’m okay. I’m not great,” he admitted. “I cry every now and then, I get angry, I go through my brooding moments,” he chuckled at his use of the word. “But I’m in repair. I’m not happy yet, but I’m getting there.”
Lynn smiled at her sons’ positive attitude. She knew there was a good chance that he wouldn’t take this very well, being that she’d seen him through some pretty rough moments, and they were never easy. When he was depressed, it usually meant that everyone around him was too, and she’d prepared herself for that inevitability. But this? She wasn’t sure what to do with. He was making it so easy “ maybe even too easy.
“Have you talked to her?”
“I haven’t,” he sighed, leaning against the counter. “But I haven’t tried to call or anything. I think it would fuck me up even more when she didn’t answer the phone.”
“Have you talked about it?” she reoffered, staring at the top of his lowered head. “With Trace, or Jess, or… anybody?”
“A little bit.” He went back to the stove to quickly check his food, but really, he wanted to avoid the discussion. “Not much to say, though.”
“I know… but--.”
“I just wish I knew why,” he added, abruptly cutting off his mother. “I mean, there’s all this mystery and drama surrounding it, which is what drives me insane most. Why couldn’t she just talk to me?”
“I wish I knew,” she replied sadly.
“I just feel like there’s nothing in this world so big or so bad that we couldn’t have fixed. I just don’t get it.” He looked to his left to see Jessica’s brown and blonde ponytail approaching the back door. “We’ll talk about it later,” he told Lynn.
He went back to his cooking just as his friend entered the house. “Hi,” she announced meekly, giving Justin a wave. She went directly to his mom and offered a hug. “How are you?”
“I’m good,” Lynn cooed. “How are you, sweetie?”
Jessica nodded, placing her purse and keys on the counter. “Can’t complain.”
“We were just talking about your friend,” she revealed. “Have you spoken to her lately?”
“Who’s my friend?” Jess inquired, taking a seat next to Lynn. She figured that they were referring to Talis, but she wasn’t going to bring it up if no one else did.
“Talis,” Justin inserted, turning back around. “You don’t have to act for my benefit.”
“I’m not acting!”
“You know who she meant,” he chided.
Jess laughed with a roll of her hazel green eyes, but continued to avoid the question. “Whatcha makin’ over there?”
“Just some salmon cakes and wild rice. You want?”
“I’m good,” she declined. “It’s nice to see you in the kitchen, though.”
“That’s what I told him,” Lynn inserted. “I haven’t seen him cook since Christmas.”
“I’ve cooked plenty of times since Christmas, mom.”
“Well, not for me you haven’t.” She smiled and picked herself up from the stool, excusing herself from the room. “I’ll be right back, y’all.”
Jessica watched Lynn leave and then turned back to Justin’s silent form at the stove. She wondered what he would say if she told him that Talis had called. He’d been doing pretty well for the past couple of days “ not great, but good “ and the last thing she wanted to do was piss him off. She figured it was inevitable, but she just didn’t know whether to do it now or later.
“I feel like I need to start working on another album,” Justin eventually broadcasted to her. “What do you think?”
“What?” she sputtered, taken by surprise.
“An album,” he repeated, turning to join her at the floating counter. “I feel like I’m ready to go back into the studio.”
“Seriously?” She studied his eyes for a moment, trying to find signs of anything abnormal “ panic, confusion, sadness. But he seemed relatively placid. “Are you bored with the whole producing thing?”
“Not at all,” he retorted adamantly. “I love it, and I think I’ll probably produce a lot of my own album, actually. I just “ I feel like I’m ready to get back to making music for me, you know?” She nodded quickly, but bit her lip nervously, which caused Justin to take notice. “Jess, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing! I think that’s great…”
“But what?”
“I just wonder if you’re ready to do that.”
“Why wouldn’t I be ready?”
“You’ve been through a lot, Jus. I don’t know…” She sighed and gave him an obligatory smile. “You’re not rushing this, just a little?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“It’s only been a few days since… everything.”
“Which is exactly why I feel like I should get back in the studio,” he explained excitedly. “The best music, the purest music comes from raw emotion.” She nodded again, but he still wasn’t convinced. “Okay Jess, seriously. What’s wrong?”
“I just don’t want you to rush anything. You’re gonna go back to the studio, Jive is gonna be on your ass, trying to figure out what you’re doing, because like you said, they always are, and you’re gonna be stressed out. Remember when you were making the first one and you used to say how ridiculous they were being?”
“I was, what? Twenty-one back then? I was bitter and stupid,” he laughed. “Wasn’t I a lot better with FutureSex?”
“Not really,” she chuckled. “You’d call me from the studio at six in the morning, Jus.”
“But only because I didn’t wanna leave. Not because I was being held hostage or somethin’.”
“I just think it’s too soon.”
“Okay,” he reconsidered, looking her in the eye. “Today is… what? October…”
“Nineteenth,” she finished for him.
“All right. October nineteenth.” He began counting days and numbers in his head. “How about if I wait until December?”
She was thinking more like summer, but she knew he would never wait that long. “How about January?”
He shook his head at her worrisome ways, but agreed. “Fine. But if I come up with anything good before then, I’m going in.”
She smiled in accordance. “Fine.”
“You’re going in what?” Lynn returned from the restroom just in time to catch the tail-end of their conversation. “What’s he up to now?”
“I’m going back to the studio in January,” Justin told his mother.
“To work on your own stuff?” she questioned hopefully.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “You know I’m at my best when I’m going through hell.”
“You know what I always say. ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going,’” she laughed sweetly.
“Exactly,” Justin chuckled as well. “I already have some things written down; I think it’ll be interesting to see where I go with this one.”
“Just don’t go after Talis too badly?” Jess suggests.
“Come on Jess, you know me.”
“Which is exactly why I’m putting in the request now.”
>>>>>>>>>>
“Rie, you really didn’t have to come with me, sweetheart.” Tina, Rie’s mother, took the passenger seat of her daughter’s Jeep, and they headed for the Cedars-Sinai OCC.
“I know I didn’t have to,” she glanced at her mother. “But I wanted to. I’ve been avoiding this shit like the plague, but I just need to suck it up and do it.”
“Don’t kill yourself over there,” Tina chuckled tiredly. She’d been in and out of chemotherapy for the better part of summer and fall, and it had taken its toll on her. “I’m glad you’re here, though. I hate sitting there alone.”
“I’m sorry, ma. I’ll come more often,” she promised.
“Rie, it really is okay. I know you usually have your weddings on the weekends.”
After entering the highway, Rie gave her mother a caustic look. “I think I’m gonna quit the wedding photography business.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s just not for me, ma.”
“Making money isn’t for you?” she questioned, staring at the side of her daughter’s face. “You’ve made a great living doing that the past few years, I don’t know why you would want to leave it behind.”
“It’s just not in me to serve other people,” she shrugged. “I never wanted to do it my whole life. It was just something to do out of college.”
“And you’ve made it a great business. I wish you would learn to stop quitting things just when they’re getting good for you.”
“There’s a difference between good for you and right for you,” she responded rationally. “And after a while, I can’t settle anymore. I have to find what’s right.”
Tina shook her head in pity and wrapped herself further into the red blanket Rie had knitted for her the previous Christmas. Her daughter had many talents, but it seemed that none of them included commitment. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do with you.”
“I’ll be fine, mom.”
“What are you doing for money?”
“I’m not broke,” she laughed. “And I have a few freelance jobs lined up with some big magazines, so I’ll get by.”
“This is the worst time of year to be looking for a job, you know.”
“Mom, seriously.” She began to switch lanes as she spoke, “I don’t know what my next move is, but I’ll figure it out.”
“I know, I know. You always do,” she finished for her. “Just do me a favor please? Before I die, just please, commit to something besides yourself?”
“You’re not gonna die, ma.”
“Well I sure as hell ain’t immortal, sweetie.” She let out a fairly jolly laugh, especially considering her miniscule size, and looked out the window to the roads of San Bernardino. “I don’t mean tomorrow, but just… one day “ preferably soon “ just try it on for size and see how you like it.”
“I already know I won’t,” she rolled her eyes and smiled. “But for you mom, love of my life, I will try to do that one day.”
“That’s all I ask,” she replied. “And maybe think about cutting your hair, girl. It’s getting unruly.”
Rie’s purple and black locks stretched all the way down her back, stopping just above her behind. It was the way she liked it. “I like unruly,” she grinned. “You know that better than anyone.”
“That I do,” Tina sighed. “That I do.”
>>>>>>>>>>
“Jess, thank you so much,” Talis greeted her long-time friend, opening the door to her Chateau Marmont bungalow. She took the large box Jess had been toting from her arms and placed it on the floor before bringing her friend into the room. After shutting the door, she pulled Jessica into a long, tight embrace.
Jess was wary of her, but still, she hugged her back. “Talis.”
Finally letting her go, she stood back and stared at her. “You look good,” she noted.
Talis, on the other hand, did not. She’d always been the pretty one in their friendship, if there was a comparison. Talis Nixon was nothing short of perfect, and everyone knew it. Perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect bone structure, perfect hair, perfect body. Their entire high school class referred to her as Halle Berry, because she resembled her so closely in, not only appearance, but demeanor as well “ articulate and sexy, but deemed nice enough to be approachable. No one wondered why Justin was so in love with her.
But lately, she had been anything but perfect. Somehow, she’d fallen out of touch with who she was, and her looks went along with it. Her skin was pale, eyes reddened and puffy, her short curly hair matted and uncombed, and she’d been wearing the same outfit of William Rast jeans and a hoodie for almost three days.
“T, what are you doing to yourself?” Jess questioned with sympathy in her voice.
“I don’t know,” she stated honestly. “I totally fucked this one up, and I have no idea how to make it better.”
“But what did you do?”
“I left him,” Talis announced, as if Jess didn’t already know. “I left… the perfect man.”
“Why did you leave?” Jess pried. This bothered her more than it did Justin, it seemed, but as the person who introduced him to Talis, she felt a bit responsible for this whole situation. She needed to know why.
“It’s complicated,” she told her.
Jessica walked past her friend to sit down on the long couch of the hotel room. “Explain it to me.”
“Okay, it’s not that complicated,” she reconsidered with a meek smile. “I fucked someone else, Jess.”
“That’s a joke, right?”
“I wish it were,” she answered sadly. “At the bachelorette party, there was this guy “ the bartender I told you about…”
“The one with the dimples?” Jess recalled him looking a lot like The Rock.
“The one with the dimples,” she confirmed. “I took him into the bathroom at the party and we had a little ten-minute quickie. Then we met back at the house, of all places, and did it again.”
“You did it in Justin’s house?”
Talis began to cry as she shook her head in shame. “I couldn’t marry him that way,” she croaked out.
Jess couldn’t deny that she was a little stunned. Not only was Talis a model citizen, but she’d been cheated on in college, and it was the worst ordeal she’d ever been through. It was just something she didn’t at all condone. Still, it was Hollywood, so Jess wasn’t completely shocked. “I don’t think it’s that horrible,” she finally told her. “I mean, you were wasted, you were nervous, you--.”
“I wasn’t drunk,” she corrected her. “I didn’t wanna get married with a hangover, so I drank very little. I was very conscientious of what I was doing.”
“Oh…”
“In fact, I cried all the way through the second time,” she admitted hoarsely. “And… I have not stopped crying since.”
“Even so, T… it’s Justin. He would forgive you in a heartbeat.”
“But he shouldn’t! That’s the problem,” she cried. “He deserves so much better.”
“Look, I dunno if you’re such a perfectionist that you really believe you’re not allowed mistakes, or what,” Jess began to lecture, getting up from the sofa, “but this does not have to be the end of the world. Was it stupid? Yes, incredibly. But one bad move does not make you a bad person. It does not negate the other five years and some-odd days that you put into that relationship. And Justin, of all people, is not gonna condemn you for one moment of weakness on a day where you were feeling all kinds of fucked up anyway.”
Talis just kept shaking her head, as if to say there was no way that could be true. “If I’m fucking another guy the night before my wedding, I’m not ready to be married. And Justin deserves more than that.”
“Now that’s true,” Jess agreed. “He deserves much more than what you gave him. Running away from the wedding, leaving him to take the blame, the humiliation, with no real reason? That was so much more unforgivable than your cheating.”
“I know. That was horrible. But I just couldn’t face him after that.”
“Well, doing it in his house was pretty fucked up,” Jess added a bit sarcastically. “But, I mean, he wouldn’t throw away you guys’ whole relationship because of it. I can’t believe you don’t know him any better than that.”
“Jess, please don’t make me feel any worse about this.”
“No, you deserve to feel worse. You completely screwed him by being too selfish to even own up to this,” she fired back, eyeing Talis. “You deserve to feel like shit until you tell him the truth.”
“I love him too much to hurt him like that.”
“You mean you love yourself too much.”
“Jess.”
“No, it’s true. The best proof of love is trust, and you clearly do not have enough of either of those for Justin if you can’t tell him what’s going on.”
“I can’t.”
“You owe him that, Talis.”
“I know, but I can’t!”
“Then we have nothing else to say to each other,” she finished. “Don’t call me unless you’re ready to talk to him, too.”
Author's Chapter Notes:
Eeep! I am so glad you guys are enjoying it. Thanks for all the feedback! I thought I'd put this one up before I head to the movies (Go see The Dark Knight everyone, it's fab!) but I'll be sure to reply to everyone's comments when I get back. Thanks again, y'all!
-Ash
-Ash
Story Tags: interracial unrequited boyfriendj love fiancej vulnerablej
