Finding Us (9 page)

Now, t
he Roman playwright Terence said, “The quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love.” Well, if that was the case, then El and I were renewing the hell out of our love at that point with a goddamned vengeance.

So tired of this shit and a
fraid I’d punch my fist through her wall, I put my hands on my hips, and dropping my head, closed my eyes, drawing in a deep breath through my nose to calm myself.

We seriously ne
eded to work this out. Now. Knowing she didn’t have to be to work for another hour (See? Total stalker here), I asked if we could talk so I could explain some things to her. She looked skeptically at me at first as if anything I had to say wasn’t going to resolve a damned thing, but finally agreed to listen.

I grabbed my t-shirt and hoodie, pulling them on as I followed her to the kitchen where she went to get herself a bottle of water, handing me one as she walked by me to sit at the table. I sat too, opening my water to take a long drink.

We sat in silence for a bit, me watching her every move, her not bothering to look my way, which made me want to g
o ballistic again. Instead, I practiced my deep breathing to keep from blowing up at her. After taking one last deep breath, I began. “I know you don’t believe me, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this the past couple weeks, and I do get it.”

She finally glanced my way, but again looked skeptical.
Damn.

“I know I made you feel
less than important, and I’m so sorry. I lost sight of what mattered the most.” I looked down at my hands on the table for several seconds before looking at her. “I fucked up, El. I know that. But I get it now. I should’ve been protecting you, making you feel wanted, needed, and I failed.” I stared down at my hands again wishing I could turn back time so I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

She cleared her throat making me look at her, but she was staring at her own hands on the table. Then she whispered, “You hurt me.”

Those three words sliced right through me and I literally flinched at the impact they had on me. I knew I’d hurt her, but hearing her say it tore me up.

“I know I did. And I’m so sorry.”

She looked at me then. “How can I ever trust you not to do that again?” A single tear ran down her cheek. “When you love someone, the world is supposed to look different. You’re supposed to feel different. And you do. And because you’ve given that person your whole, entire self, you put your trust in them that they’ll keep you safe. That they’ll do what it takes to keep you from being hurt.” There was a little hitch in her voice as she looked back down at her hands. “But when that person is the one hurting you, what then?” she whispered.

I bowed my head feeling horrible about how I’d treated her.

She sighed. “I know you probably think I’m overreacting to this. I mean, maybe I am. But you know what? My mom and dad have been married for over thirty years, and he’s not once made her feel that way. I asked her when I got back what made it work for them, how they’d been together for so long. And you know what she said?”

I shook my head somberly
keeping my head down.

“She said he’s protected her heart the whole way. That he told her before they were married that he knew she was giving him something precious, and he promised, vowed
, to keep it safe. She said he’s never once failed her in that. Not once, Jag.” I saw that several tears had now traced a path down her beautiful face when I looked up at her.

I took her hand in mine.
“If you’ll give me another chance, I’ll prove to you that I’ll do the same, El. I will.”

She gave me a small smile
, taking a breath and blowing it out before saying, “Can I ask a favor?”

I
smiled back. Okay, now we were getting somewhere. Thank God. “Anything.”

“Give me time to figure some things out
and I’ll call you when I do?”

Great. Of course, I’d give her time.
I mean, what else could I do?

And while I waited for her to get things straight in her head
, I’d just have to pray that Slade or that Jeremy prick weren’t the “things” she had to figure out, or that she realized one of them was the one she wanted while I was a no-good-cheating-according-to-the-tabloids bastard.

Fuck my life.

Chapter 9

Filming for the last installment of
the
commercial was to start in a couple days, so I’d have to go back to LA for at least three weeks.

I’d
originally planned that El would be coming back with me, but you see how that turned out. So I’d be going home alone and that just sucked.

My plan now was to let her have her time
to think things over then I’d return right before Thanksgiving, she’d tell me she’d made a horrible mistake in ever letting me go, and things would be back to normal. Hey, it was possible.

So o
ver the next three days, I spent time with my parents and the night before my flight back to LA, I caught a Blackhawks game with Ross and Tyler then we ended up crashing at Tyler’s place. Well, not after three very attractive women tried picking us up at the bar we stopped at after the game.

“Hey! Weren’t you in
GQ
a couple months ago?” one woman asked me, looking at me as if I were King God of the Universe, which I can’t say didn’t feel pretty damned good.

I smiled at her, thinking how easy it’d be to hook up for the night, but knew that’d never happen because I was in love with El.

Who didn’t know if she wanted me.

Who might be falling for another guy.

And, oh, how tempting it was to take the chick up on her offer.

Oh, I can hear the gasps now.

Listen. Men aren’t complex creatures. We’re pretty simple. We like to eat, fuck, and solve shit, and not necessarily in that order. We also have huge egos, and when our egos aren’t being attended to, well, it’s tough to be mature and not go out and find someone who’ll stroke said ego to make us feel better about ourselves. Look, I’ve already admitted that I’m a dick, so no one should be surprised that I actually pondered going home with the woman. But I’ll reveal a little secret—
all
men are dicks. And even if anyone thinks their man isn’t, he is. There, I said it, and now one of the great mysteries of the universe has been answered. You may return to your previously scheduled life.

But I kept it in my pants an
d only flirted a little with the woman at the bar, my ego restored to its former glory by the time we left. Thank God.

Upon landing in LA, I picked up my
luggage, got in my Camaro and called Logan, heading straight to his place for some surfing. There was something about being out on the water that relaxed me, even if I wiped out a hundred times. So he and I suited up and headed for the ocean once I got there.

By the time
we finished, my mind was rested after having been spared (for a couple hours, at least) the constant contemplation of whether El would see that we were meant to be and not allow an outside party in to screw shit up. See? Totally needed those couple of hours. Damn.

“Thanks, man,” I told Logan when I walked into his living room after changing clothes.

“No problem. So what’s on your mind?” he asked.

I sat down on the sectional in his living room and took a pull from the beer he’d given me before answering. “Same old shit.”

“I’m telling you, man. Women are fucking evil. You should do like I do. Date ‘em once, fuck ‘em, then fuck ‘em,” he said laughing.

Yeah, that sounded like loads of fun
… and STDs.

“Don’t you ever get lonely?” I inquired, genuinely curious.

He sighed and brought his right foot up to rest on his left knee from where he sat on the other end of the huge couch. “Yeah. But I had a girl once. Fucked me over but good. Found her in bed with the pitcher I caught for in Triple A. After beating the shit out of him and telling her she was a no-good fucking cunt, I decided right then and there relationships sucked balls and I wouldn’t go there again. And I haven’t. Let’s see, that was five years ago. I was twenty-two when it happened and I haven’t looked back.”

I watched him as I took another drink. He wasn’t fooling anyone. I could tell he was lying, that if the right woman came along, he’d rethink his position
. I just didn’t tell him that. I mean, who was I to tell him relationships were good when mine was as screwed up as it was.

We grilled out some steaks, shot the shit some over more trivial things ot
her than the state of our lives then I went home to enjoy (that’s sarcasm) the silence of my condo.

At least I got some bills paid and caught up on the episodes of
Justified
that I’d DVR’d. And wasn’t life just fucking grand.

“I think we need to go fully nude
for this scene,” Alessandra whined.

We were two and a half
weeks into shooting, and at her suggestion, I raised an eyebrow telling her I didn’t think so, and I made sure to let everyone involved know where I stood on it. Jesus. The third commercial involved us, once again, rolling around in bed together. We were almost finished with the whole thing, and I couldn’t wait to walk out of there never to return. I’d been told we needed two more days to complete it. Bring that shit on.

“
Jag can wear shorts again, like always,” the director said.

Thank God.

Alessandra pouted even more when she heard that. “But we’ve done this scene before. I mean, I’m comfortable with my body, I model underwear for crissakes, so being nude isn’t a big deal. I don’t see what the problem is for Jag. He has a fantastic body,” she protested.

I
shook my head at her suggestion, wanting to get this over yesterday.

The director
ignored her and instructed us to get into the bed that was on set, and this time I knew I’d be pushing it with El. This commercial actually had me kissing Alessandra, which sure wasn’t going to help my cause any. I just knew when El saw it, all bets would be off. But it was only to be a brushing of the lips and that was it, so I thought she could probably handle it. Or I hoped she could.

But
I was contractually bound (swear to God, if that phrase was thrown in my face one more time, I was gonna kick the shit out of someone), and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. But I now had experience with this sort of thing, and I wouldn’t be making the same mistake I had as a rookie if anything like this came up again. Fucking Dirk.

“Jag, why don’t we just make it official between us so this sexual tension will go away?”
Alessandra said with a giggle, fluttering her eyelashes as she looked up at me, once we were in bed and I was lying on top of her, my forearms holding me up so our bodies weren’t touching too much. She was attempting to be seductive, but her attempt was falling flat.

“You feel that, Alessandra?” I asked
, looking down at her, eyebrows raised.

“What? I don’t feel anything,” she answered
, looking confused.

“Exactly,” I
replied with a smirk.

She narrowed her eyes at me, pissed that she wasn’t making me aroused. Again. As usual.
And I chuckled at the hateful look she was giving me.

“Quiet on the set!” yelled the director. “Action!”

So there I lay on top of Alessandra, looking at her wishing it was El who was under me, and I just wasn’t able to eighty-six the look of disgust on my face. But the funny thing was, when the director yelled, “Cut!” he praised me for the smoldering look I’d given her, and I couldn’t help but chuckle even more at that.

But I wasn’t chuckling for long when we started filming the next scene and I
had to kiss her, because the chick definitely took it way too far as soon as our lips touched, arching up under me, moaning like a cow in labor, her hand behind my head pulling me to down to her, as she pressed her lips hard against mine, trying to shove her tongue in my mouth. Christ. If this was any indication of how she was in the sack (and as a man, of course I’d definitely wondered; we’re all dicks like that, remember?), then God help the poor saps who’d experienced this for real, her writhing under them, emoting like crazy. I could almost guarantee that she’d faked many an orgasm.

When the d
irector stopped shooting the scene, Alessandra bit my lip as I pulled away from her, trying to be all seductive and shit, which totally wasn’t working. It only reminded me of one of the last times El and I’d been together before she’d left, and it’d been damned hot. But Alessandra, never in a million years, would be anywhere near as sexy as El had been that night. Or ever. There was just no comparison.

I continued pulling back until she let my lip go, almost laughing
in her face at the “provocative” look she was giving me, which actually looked as if she was constipated.

At my tipped up lips she huffed out, “What?” her brow wrinkling.

I shook my head, trying to keep my laughter in check. “Nothing. Let’s just get this finished.”

On the way home from the shoot,
Ross called.

“Hey, dude, g
uess what?”

“What’s up, bro
?” I replied.

“
Bec and I got our own place.”

“Yeah?
That’s awesome, man. I’m happy for you. Where’s the new place?”

“Closer to the city, about ten minutes from her old place.
Moved out the end of last week.”

“How’s El taking it?” I wondered if she’d get a new roommate now.

“She’s okay. Sad, of course, but she understood. She kinda knew it was coming since we’d been talking about it, so it wasn’t really a surprise to her.”

I
texted her later that night. It was the first contact I’d had with her since I’d left Chicago. I’d been waiting the past almost three weeks to see if she’d get hold of me, but since that wasn’t happening, I felt the need to make the first move. And now that she was living alone, I wanted to make sure she was okay.

Hey baby. How are you?

It was two hours before I heard back from her.

Now, here’s the deal. I knew she was busy with school. I knew I’d screwed up. I knew she needed time to sort out some things.
And I knew she was probably occupied with personalizing her apartment or whatever women did in that situation. But I also knew that whoever said, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” was a liar because we’d been apart for almost three weeks, and I’d heard nothing from her which meant her heart was doing anything but growing fonder. Stupid poets and their dumbass sayings.

So when I finally got a response, I
was slightly pissed that it’d taken her that long to text me back.

Oh. Hey. I’m good. How are you?

Good. I miss you…

Another twenty minutes went by before she answered and
now I was definitely pissed.

Oh…

All right. I’d had enough. Texting was getting us nowhere so I called her.

“Hello?” she answered in a half whisper
after several rings.

“What’s going on, El?”

I could hear people and a guy’s voice in the background fading as she must’ve been walking away from him.

“I’m out
.”

“Yeah? Who’re you
with?”

Update:
Royally pissed off now.

She cleared her throat nervously. “No one.”

I took in a deep breath through my nose and pinched the top of it, closing my eyes and clenching my teeth. “Is it Slade? No, it’s that Jeremy guy, isn’t it?”

“Jag, he’s just a friend. He’s been helping me a lot.
He’s a professor and he’s been helping me with everything. We’re just hanging out.”

I moved my hand from my nose and ran it
through my hair, pushing the one piece that always hung down out of my eyes. “Something I should know?”

She waited a bea
t before saying, “I-I don’t think so. But I’m really confused.”

Fucking
hell.

“What can I do to help you not be confused, El?” I asked
, trying to hold in my anger.

“I just need time, Jag. That’s it.”

“I’ve tried giving you time. Not working for me. So, is he what you want? Just say the word, El,” I cautioned.

“Jag…”

“Say the word.”

All right. To explain what was going on here, I’
m a guy. We’re competitive. We’re possessive of what’s ours. El was mine. That prick had no right being around her, especially when I couldn’t be. And wasn’t this situation just same song, second fucking verse, of our lives the past seven years? Anyway, all that aside, I needed to know what I was facing, like, was there a chance of her falling for this guy? Did she not love me anymore?

But e
ither way, I was getting her back.

I know, I know. Cocky. But I liked to
view it as being confident. Coach Martin used to tell us that the best offense was a good defense, and I needed to know where things stood so I’d be more prepared and could strategize better.

“I can’t talk right now. Can I call you later?”

I told her yes and we hung up as I decided what I was going to do next.