Seeing Black (12 page)

Alexander let his forearms drop, and his weight was
now fully on Jill. “Fine. I’ll trust you if you start being more
considerate about my concerns. Tell me when you go and where.
Indulge me, Red. Just let me know. It’ll ease my mind.”

“Fine. I promise.” She leaned up and kissed him.
“I’ll tell you before I go, and you’ll be okay with it?”

“Yes.” She reached for his neck, pulled it down
towards her and gave him a sweet kiss on the lips. “Come on, I need
to catch up on some reading for class. You do too.”

Jill and Alexander lay in bed together each with a
law book in hand.

“You smell delicious.” Alexander said, still looking
at his book.

“We have to be ready for class tomorrow. No funny
business.”

“I just said you smell delicious. I didn’t say
anything about funny business.”

Using the hand between them, Alexander caressed
Jill’s thigh. She continued to read, and he continued to pretend to
read. He then grabbed the thigh closest to him and pulled it
towards him, causing her legs to part. He put his hand in between
her legs and continued caressing.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Her voice came out
a little husky. Flustered.

“Nothing. Keep studying.”

She did sort of. At least she pretended to. She
tried. She really did.

His hand moved slowly up her inner thighs, and his
thumb now grazed the seam of her panties. Her breathing hitched. He
closed his book and threw it to the floor and turned to his side.
He slid her panties to one side and began rubbing her slickness
with his index finger. He was driving her crazy. She closed her
eyes. The book she’d been reading fell to the floor with a loud
thump.

“You’re a terrible study buddy,” Jill croaked.

“I can stop, if you want.”

She grabbed his hand and held it right where it was
between her legs. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. You shouldn’t curse.” He slipped a
finger inside and tortured her with small movements. “I may need to
punish you. A lady shouldn’t talk that way to her loving
boyfriend.”

Her eyes were shut, and her breathing was all over
the place. She couldn’t have spoken even if she’d wanted to, and
she didn’t want to.

“You want me to punish you, Jillian?” His finger
continued its torturous exploration.

When she didn’t respond, he stopped. Her eyes shot
open.

“Answer my question, baby.”

“Uh. What? What question? Fuck, what are you talking
about? Please, just don’t stop.”

He shook his head and laughed. He put a second
finger inside of her and began moving again in and out. She was
writhing with pleasure. He placed his other hand on her shoulder to
hold her down. His eyes were open and staring at her. She felt them
burning into her.

“Open your eyes. I want to see you.”

“Alexander!” She groaned. “Don’t stop.”

“I’m not stopping. Let go for me, baby, but don’t
close your eyes.” He continued his assault until she couldn’t
breathe. She couldn’t think. Just as she was about to explode, he
stopped. She almost died. Literally, she thought she was going to
die, but a second later he was on her and thrusting inside of her.
She was so startled she gasped. He covered her mouth with his to
muffle the noises. It was sweet and beautiful lovemaking. Since the
island, Alexander and Jill had always been together. Inseparable.
That included a lot of sex. A lot. Rough, sweet, in the shower, on
the bed, on the floor. Anywhere and everywhere. But this time was
different, somehow. He was showing her how much he loved her. He
was staring into her soul, and it was beautiful. Her soul was awake
for the first time. Before that moment, she realized what a lonely
life she had been living and that Alexander was responsible for
bringing light back into her life. She had been in love with
Alexander for a long time, but right now, she was connected to him.
It was more. Spiritual. He stared into her eyes with such adoration
that she couldn’t keep the tears from sliding down her eyes to her
ears. He leaned down and kissed away the tears, first one eye and
then the other. “I love you, Red. So much.”

It was too much. The sensations. The love. When they
finally came, she felt as if she was floating out of her body and
flying away. He didn’t say much as he rolled over to her side and
took her into his arms. “That was—”

“Amazing.”

“Yes. Amazing. Unbelievably amazing,” he said. She
turned to see his face. She was on her stomach, her face turned
towards him. “Have I ever told you how much I love you?” Alexander
asked as he drew little circles on her lower back.

“You have.” She leaned over and kissed his shoulder.
“And I love you, so much.” After a while, their eyes grew heavy,
and they fell asleep.

***

Riddled with sleep, they were both startled awake by
Alexander’s ringing phone.

“Fuck,” he groaned.

“Who would be calling you at this time?” Jill
yawned. “You should get it.”

Alexander saw who it was and mumbled something that
sounded like “shit.”

“Hello?” He said a few jumbled things into the phone
that didn’t make sense to Jill since she couldn’t hear the other
side of the conversation and she was still mostly asleep.

“Damn it!” He hung up. “Babe, I gotta go,” Alexander
said, jumping out of bed and looking around for his clothes.

“Wait. What? Who was that?” Her brain had yet to
catch up with reality.

“Just an old friend. I’ll explain later. Gotta run.”
Alexander scrambled around, sliding one leg into his jeans and then
the other. He bent down and kissed Jill’s forehead before bolting
from her apartment. Jill was left sitting on the bed,
dumbfounded.

“What the hell was that?” She whispered to herself
before falling back onto the pillow.

***

Jill spent the next day cleaning up the apartment,
studying, and preparing for the upcoming mock trails during spring
break.

“Hey, I’ve been calling you all day? Where are you?
You okay? Please call me back. I’m starting to get worried.” It
must have been her fifth call to Alexander that day. Since his
abrupt departure the previous morning, he had not called.

ALEXANDER: Hi. Sorry I haven’t
called back. Miss you. Call you when I can.

A text?

Cryptic. Short. Strange.

What the hell was going on?

***

Jillian felt an all too familiar sense of recognition
as she drove, something akin to déjà vu. All day, Jill had had a
bad feeling, but now, as she got closer, she felt tense and an
unusual feeling of foreboding. Since that wonderful day on the
island almost a month ago, she and Alexander had been inseparable.
They had fallen into a routine. If Jill wasn’t spending the night
at his apartment, he spent it at hers. Alexander always gave her
reason to think she was on his mind, even when she wasn’t around,
so the fact that he had been distant and secretive was very out of
character. It had been exactly a week since he stormed out of her
house. He went to class and was sweet, but as soon as class was
over, he’d bolted out and told her he’d call her later. Later. That
was all she had been hearing for the last week. Later. I’ll call
you later. I’ll see you later. Fuck later. She remembered that he
did tend to disappear, but that was pre-island. Pre-kissing Oliver.
Pre-deciding on Alexander. Pre-island Alexander would go weeks
without speaking to Jill. Hell, he had gone years without speaking
with her. Mostly, it was from his drug abuse, but she was certain
that wasn’t the case anymore. He had told her he hadn’t touched any
drugs since Helen’s funeral almost five years ago, so that couldn’t
be the problem.
Or could it?

As soon as Jill rounded the corner of Alexander’s
street and saw his apartment, her heart plummeted. She felt it fall
to the floor and begin to splinter into a million little pieces.
The yellow VW bug that she had seen so many times months ago sat
right there, in plain sight, for everyone to see, taunting her. She
knew that on the other side of the door, Alexander was in there
with a beautiful blond bombshell.

“Oh, God,” she said to herself, suddenly placing all
the pieces together. The familiar woman that starred in the vision
she had had a few weeks ago at the club was the yellow VW girl. She
had forgotten all about her. Her vision was about to come true, or,
perhaps, it had already come true, and this was just Jillian
confirming what she had already seen.

As she saw it, she had two options. Option one:
leave. And what? Pretend she didn’t see the car? Just let it go?
Trust him to explain? Ha! As if she could just let anything go.
Option two: Jill was a rational woman. She could just go inside and
see with her own eyes that nothing was going on. Trust that
Alexander hadn’t slept with VW Girl. Trust him. Ignore the
premonition she had earlier—something that had never been wrong.
There just had to be a reasonable explanation why the man she
loved, who happened to disappear from her life every now and again,
and who had abandoned her in the middle of the night for a gorgeous
blonde and was now “later-ing” her, had VW girl in his house.

Jill took a glance at her reflection one last time
before exiting, choosing option number two. The problem with option
number two was that Jill really wasn’t such a rational woman and
there was probably not a single explanation in the world that would
seem reasonable. Jill knocked on the door. Hard!

“Coming,” a woman’s voice responded. Jill braced
herself. The thought of a woman—this woman—answering Alexander’s
door, as if it were her own home, was enough to throw any semblance
of
rational
straight out the window.

A few moments later, VW Girl opened the door. A
towel was wrapped around her head and another one around her body.
Nothing else.

VW Girl leaned against the door frame. “Yes?” she
said, one eyebrow arched upward.

“Where’s Alexander?” Jill asked, moving past VW Girl
and into the apartment.

“Excuse me? Where the hell do you think you’re
going? You can’t just barge in here.”

“I’m Jillian,” she said, as if that alone should
have explained everything.

The look on VW Girl’s face said it all. She had no
idea who Jill was, not a glimmer of recognition. After an eternity
of awkward silence, she said, “Listen, I don’t know who you are,
but you need to leave. Alex is sleeping. We’ve barely slept all
week, and he’s exhausted. I’ll let him know you came by. Jillian,
you said?”

Stumbling back a step, her hand pressed against her
breastbone, Jill stuttered, “Yes. Jill. I, er, I guess I’ll
leave.”

“Good idea. He needs to rest. He has some school
thing tomorrow.”

I know, bitch! We have mock trials tomorrow
is what Jill wanted to say, but all she could say was, “I’m sorry.
I didn’t catch your name.”

“I’m Miriam, his girlfriend,” VW Bitch said with a
smirk as she closed the door on Jill’s astonished face. Before she
had a chance to turn around and begin to walk to her car, tears
flowed down her face.

Somehow, Jill managed to make it to her apartment.
The feeling of betrayal was too much to bear. It was
suffocating.

From the kitchen, she heard Heather fumbling through
drawers. “Hey, is that you?”

“Yes. It’s me.” Jill responded, an arm around her
midsection. She was in actual physical pain.

“Good. I wanted to talk to you. I’m making
dinner.”

“I’m not really hungry. I was going to take a shower
and go to bed.”

“But it’s only four—” Heather rounded the kitchen
and must have seen the disheartened look on Jill’s face. “Oh my
God. What happened to you?” She rushed towards Jill, oven gloves
still on her hands.

“He has a girlfriend.” Jill said a tightness in her
chest was making it hard to breathe.

“Who has a girlfriend?”

“Xander.”

“Yes, sweetie.” Heather chuckled. “You.”

“No. Not me. Some six-foot-tall, blue-eyed, blond
super model named Miriam.”

“I’m sorry. What?”

“You heard me. Alexander Jacobs, the guy who pursued
me for months, who flirted with me for years, the guy whom I
jeopardized my friendship with Oliver for, the guy whom I love and
who I thought loved me, has a fucking girlfriend!” She yelled the
last two words. Her arms wrapped around her stomach.

“Hon’, I’m sorry, but that just can’t be. You must
be mistaken. That boy adores you. It’s kind of sickening.
Chocolate-cake sickening, remember?”

“No. I saw her, Heather, with my own two eyes.” Jill
slammed the door to her room shut.

Without knocking, Heather walked in, right behind
her. “What did you see, exactly?”

Jill recanted what happened the previous week when
he rushed out and what had just transpired with Miriam. “And I saw
it in the club a few weeks ago. Vision, remember.”

“Okay, fine. It looks bad, but there must be an
explanation.”

“Heather, I appreciate your concern, but I obviously
have a terrible track record with men. Look at Paul and now
Alexander. I’m so stupid. Why can’t I see these things coming? This
psychic shit sucks. I see what I don’t want to see, but what I do
want to see—nothing.
Nada
. I wish I had
already learned whatever my father says he can teach me. Maybe I
would have seen this coming.” Jill threw herself on the bed.

“I know this is a bad time, but I wanted to talk to
you about Oliver. He asked me out next weekend before he took off
on his trip. I wanted to see if it was okay with you. The only
reason I’m bringing this up now is because I can ask him about this
Miriam chick.”

Jill sat up. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Oh. Okay.” Heather looked down. The disappointment
was written all over her face. She turned and slowly started making
her way out of the room, shoulders slumped forward.