In Too Deep (27 page)

“All right, well, how about this…is there any chance you can come back to school a couple days early, like Wednesday instead of Friday? Tell Noah it has something to do with one of your classes and you can’t ride back with him. We’ll work out a plan while you’re here. Then you don’t have to do it alone.”

“That sounds perfect.” The sweet hush of peace fell around my shoulders.

“I think I know someone who could share some living space for a couple of days. Sam is gone until that following Monday. You know how he waits until the very last minute to come back after Spring Break.”

My heart skipped a beat. Staying with Jake for five days with no one else around sounded like Heaven. I wanted his full attention, the freedom to let go of all my worries and pain without worrying someone would walk through the door or interrupt our conversation because they needed a ride somewhere.

“I’ll drive myself back and my parents can drive my car back home when they come up for Parents Weekend. A Jake stay-cation. It sounds perfect.”

“Looking forward to it.” I could hear the smile on his face as he breathed out the words.

Forty-Seven

“Gracie, tell me again why you need to go back early?” My Dad’s head was under the hood of my car. He always checked my oil and topped off my windshield washer fluid when I was headed somewhere far.

“It’s for a class, Dad.”

He ducked out from under the lifted hood and turned around slowly, wiping his hands on the rag he pulled from his back pocket. “You going back to be with Noah or Jake?”

My mom was apparently keeping him up to speed on my drama, but I knew the assumption he just made was his own. He was no dummy. I should never have lied.

“Daddy, I’m going back so Jake can help me figure out how to break up with Noah once and for all. I’ve tried so many times, but I can’t seem to get him out of my life for good.”

“A swift kick in the ass would do. Let me know if Jake needs any help with that portion of the plan.” He walked over and kissed my forehead.

I loved how protective he was of me. It felt good to have men in my life who loved me to the ends of the earth.

“So, Jake will be there. Your mother seems to think you were planning on being there alone.”

“Jake will be there. I told him I was coming on Wednesday, but I thought it would be fun to surprise him and show up a day early.”

“Guess I’m going to have to meet this Jake.” He flashed an all-knowing look my way. It was a
don’t ever think you’re gonna pull one over on me
look.

I raised my eyebrow and shook my head. Fatherly instincts. He could see Jake written all over my face.

I left for Knoxville with my music blaring. I was so excited to be alone with my thoughts for a couple hours. I wasn’t sure if Jake would be at the apartment when I got there, but it didn’t matter. Somehow my old apartment building had been calling to me like a mythical siren. I was just hoping the shipwreck that once was my life would all be washed away, and I could walk into the building just excited to see Jake and not reminded of the pain I endured there.

I worked through a lot in my mind as I drove alone. My iPod and I were getting pretty serious, it was the second best support system I had. I blared my music with the windows down and not a care in the world…well, I pretended I didn’t have a care for those five hours. Eddie Vedder, Adam Levine, Anthony Kiedis, and Billie Joe Armstrong propelled me forward over hills and into valleys. The air was fresh. I was smiling because Jake was at the finish line. And it was so much fun that he didn’t even know it.

I could barely contain my excitement as I parked my car, grabbed my bags, and ran into the building. The smell of newly cleaned carpet welcomed me and awoke my soul. I stepped onto the elevator and pushed the button for the fourth floor. I was smiling so wide my cheeks ached. That’s when I realized the memories of my last two weeks of the semester with Jake had risen above the shitty memories that had happened first. The moment I knocked on Jake and Sam’s door, I stopped breathing. Nothing. He wasn’t home.

A guy I only vaguely recognized was suddenly next to me. My obvious elation had kept me from hearing him come up and out of the stairwell.

“Hey, Gracie.”

“Hey…” I couldn’t remember his name to save my life.

“Malcolm. From downstairs.” He smiled.

“Oh, right. Malcolm. Sorry.”

“No worries, just dropping off a speaker I borrowed. You need to get in?”

“Actually, yeah. I’m surprising Jake and just assumed he’d be here.” He reached above the door frame for the extra key I completely forgot about and swung the door open.

“I really have to pee,” I bent at the waist, my bladder begging me to run. I called back to Malcolm through the door, “Nice seeing you again, Malcolm.” My pee dance was soon followed with happy foot tapping in the seated position. I was so excited to be there.

I washed my hands, fixed my hair, and took a minute to breathe as I looked at myself in the mirror. Could other people see what pain I carried on the inside just by looking at me? I could see it. I smiled into the mirror to see how genuine it looked. It could probably fool most people into thinking I was carefree and happy. But I would have to push the envelope to fool Jake. But I didn’t have to pretend for him. He wouldn’t kick me to the curb. I took my hair band out and let my mini ponytail fall into the now long bob.

In some ways I felt like the “sophomore me” and the “junior me” were two different people. Sophomore Gracie was hopelessly in love and quite intimate with a boy who brought excitement and sometimes reckless abandon into her way too boring life.

Now Junior Gracie stared back from the mirror. She wasn’t my favorite person. When I looked into her eyes, I knew the pain she carried. I knew what Noah stole from her. I knew how much of herself she gave up for him and what she put up with that no one else knew. Some of it, not even Jake knew. I saw worry in the fine lines by her eyes. Her future was uncertain, and for a girl who once took everything day by day and lived life flying by the seat of her pants, she felt like she was being held against her will. Even after she ended it with Noah, she worried he would continue to have a grip on her heart.

Could I ever freely give my heart and soul to another man? Would I cheat someone wonderful out of knowing and being loved by my whole self? Shaking my head, I realized I no longer recognized the tired girl staring back at me.

The sound of the apartment door slamming shut broke me out of my little pity party, and I immediately said a prayer it was Jake. I looked back in the mirror and wiped away the shadows of mascara smudged under my eyes. I fluffed my hair, but resigned myself to pulling it back up again. I leaned against the door trying to hear his voice.

Please let him be home.

“Malcom. Shit. I thought you were Gracie.” Jake sounded out of breath. He shouldn’t have been expecting me.
Malcolm, please remember it’s a surprise.

“Dude, thanks for the compliment, but she’s got way nicer legs than me. I was just dropping off your speaker. I would tell you if she was here.” I could hear mumbling but couldn’t make out what was said.

I slowly opened the door and heard Jake say, “Dammit, the whole way up the elevator I thought I smelled…”

The door squeaked and startled him out of his sentence. His face exploded with joy when he saw me standing in the bathroom doorway. He grinned and walked toward me with open arms as he finished his sentence “…her perfume.”

“Surprise,” I whispered as I melted into him and turned my face into his neck. His scent was like a nepenthe for my soul. I could stay in this one spot for the rest of my life and be happy.

Forty-Eight

“So, you want to tell me what went down with Jessica?” I couldn’t believe they broke up. I wondered who broke up with whom and why he seemed so chill about the whole thing.

We sat at our favorite table at
Mitchell’s
, a fun little bar around the corner from our apartment building. I couldn’t help taking him all in as he looked around for the waitress and pointed for her to hook us up with another round of Rolling Rock. I reacquainted myself with his strong jaw line, his kind face and honest eyes. He really was beautiful inside and out. My eyes wandered along his short hair that curled a little on the ends. My eyes moved across his strong shoulders, hard muscle peeked out from under his short sleeves. For a few wonderful seconds, I wasn’t aware of my surroundings because my eyes were drawn swiftly to his hands. Gentle but strong hands. Hands that had done things to my body….

“We broke up right before she left for Louisiana to finish her program.”

“Did you guys fight?”

“Not at all. We were excited to see each other. We celebrated a little, but it fizzled quickly.”

The ever so slight exaggerated curve of his eyebrow told me I had no interest in knowing
how
they celebrated. A pang hit my heart. I coughed so Jake didn’t see the reaction I was having on the inside. I wasn’t the last person to touch him. It felt like the lights dimmed and the room started to spin. I had staked my claim and didn’t even know it. But looks like we both had a lapse in judgment.
Does that make us even?
That’s when I realized there would be no scorekeeping with Jake. The result of that revelation was my release from the hold Noah had on me. I was ready.

“You still didn’t tell me why you broke up.” The curiosity was killing me. I didn’t know what I wanted him to say, but I needed him to say it.

“Gracie—”

“Jake Rockwell, I tell you everything. I lay my broken heart down and ask you to help me put it back together. Why don’t you want to tell me?” I whined a little but held a playful smile.

“It’s complicated, Gracie. I don’t want to add anything to the pile of shit you’ve already got going on. Let’s just—”

“You have spent most of the time we’ve known each other putting yourself second and me first. For once, I want to be able to do that for you.”

He growled and threw his head back. “Gracie Ann, you don’t know—”

“Jake!” I stomped my feet under the table and watched the corner of his mouth turn up,

“You are so freaking adorable.” He reached across the table, pushing beer bottles out of the way and wrapped my hands in his.

“
Jake, what
don’t I know? I
know
you’re my best friend and I
know
you need to hash out what’s going on inside your head and your heart. And I
really
know I will kick her in the tits if she broke your heart.”

Jake smiled just before his head dropped and hung between his shoulders. I wasn’t sure what that reaction was for so I just waited. He lifted his head and positioned his bright blue eyes directly in front of mine so I could see nothing else. He squeezed my hands in his and took a deep breath. I was hanging by a string holding my breath.

“The moment I saw Jessica at the airport”—he squeezed his eyes and shook his head a little—“I fell harder and further and deeper in love than I’d ever been. That’s when I knew.”

“What? I don’t get it.” I had no idea what would make him walk away from that kind of love.

“Gracie, I fell harder for
you
the moment I saw her. I knew I had to tell her the truth. And she let me go.”

Once again, he had left me speechless. He pulled my hands up to his mouth and kissed my knuckles. He let go of my hands and ran his through his soft curls. He rubbed the thought lines on his forehead and slammed the last of his beer. I wondered how many of those lines were because of me.

“But,” he let out a long hot breath, “I’m fine. It’s only tough because we’ve been together for so long. It just seems strange to not ‘be’ with someone. I really am okay, just trying to get used to remembering what it is like to be single.”

He loves me.

He smiled and raised the beer the waitress just dropped off for him. I raised mine. We clinked the bottlenecks.

“Here’s to being single.” He winked when he said it. Something about that wink made the floor of my stomach clench. I recognized that feeling, but this time it was stronger. I knew I should say something in response to what he just told me happened at the airport, but I was still speechless.

The thought of being single usually made me sad, but in that moment sitting across from a beautiful—single—soul and feeling a couple beers running through my veins, it was actually exhilarating.

Jake and I went back to the apartment to grab a blanket and a cooler with more beer so we could spend the rest of the day in the Allen Street Park, a virtually unknown grassy knoll just outside campus limits that had the best weeping willow I’d ever seen. I thought about my mom’s strict judgments on lying down with boys. I smiled and shook my head, thinking about what taking naps with your best friend leads to. I guess she was right.

Forty-Nine

I used Jake’s chest as a pillow and we made a giant letter T with our bodies on a soft plaid blanket. I picked apart dandelions as we talked and laughed about everything that didn’t have to do with Jessica or Noah. Back when Noah was pledging, Jake and I spent all of our time together talking. We didn’t watch TV or movies. We just talked, for hours upon hours. We had the most random conversations. They were fun. It’s how we found out most of what we knew about each other. But not long ago our question sessions morphed into a warring game that could happen at any time. There were no limits to what you could ask, you had to answer honestly and you couldn’t pass. It was funny how the rules just evolved over time. We recently renamed it Buckshot Questions because the subjects that came up were all over the place.

“When and where was your first kiss?” I initiated the unannounced game. I turned my head enough to see Jake’s smile. It made my heart beat faster.

“In fourth grade. On the playground.”

“Wow, you slut!”

Jake chuckled and tapped his temple like he was having a hard time thinking of something he had never asked before. “What was your most embarrassing moment?”

I cringed just thinking about it. “Gym class. Sixth grade—”

Jake interrupted my answer with laughing, on the verge of howling. “You. In gym class. I can’t even—”

I rolled over and slapped him so hard on the stomach that he grunted and folded at the waist. He sat up and turned onto his side which made my neck bend at a ninety-degree angle and my head fell to the blanket. So, I spun around and mirrored his position with less than twelve inches between us.

“If you would have let me finish… The embarrassing part was that I ripped my pants in gym class. And why did you automatically associate embarrassing with the image of me in gym class?”

“Oh, no reason.” He rolled his eyes dramatically. “It’s your turn, ask me something.”

“What’s something you regret?”

He rolled over onto his back and folded his arms behind his head. I scooted over on my stomach and rested my chin on his chest.

“Wow, you jumped right into the big questions. Usually we start off small and work our way up. You sure you want to get heavy already?”

“Who said you had to answer with something heavy?” I winked and touched the crook in his arm where it bent. It was moist in the crease from the warm weather. Touching his sweat jolted my mind back to his sweat-beaded body hovering over mine. It hadn’t been that long but seemed like forever since we had made love. Probably because of Jessica’s visit and all the shit with Noah piled up. It made it difficult for me to jump that hurdle to get back to my intense memories of that morning in Jake’s bed.

Damn Noah.

Not only did he haunt me with the pain he had caused, but now his shit was piling in front of the only beautiful thing left in my life. There was a new vibe between Jake and me that, no doubt, went deeper than friends. Spiritually deeper than I ever thought we’d go. But I wasn’t sure either of us was ready for a new relationship. Were we?