Imperfectly Bad (6 page)

To calm myself down, I thought about hanging out with Emma. Things sure had been different since she and Shane had made the big move. It had taken us all a while to adjust, but things were still the same anytime we saw them. It wasn’t always easy but we made a point of getting together whenever our schedules allowed. We were all too important to each other to let our friendships just fall to the wayside.

It had been too long since I’d seen Emma. It must have been last month, when she’d tried to talk to me about relationships. Yeah, there it was—my reason for avoiding her these last few weeks. Not unlike a dog with a bone, once Emma got her teeth into something she very rarely let the issue drop. To counteract this I’d simply avoided her calls, choosing to text her back and apologize for being busy. I hadn’t felt too bad because, with Felix, work, and now the pregnancy, she’d been busy too. But truth was, I missed her. Which brought us to coffee in SoHo.

The cabbie pulled up in front of the Starbucks and I quickly handed him his money. I grabbed my briefcase from the floor, and looked up to see Emma standing in the entryway. That was all it took for my bad mood to melt away. I fuckin’ loved that girl. She was like a sister to me, and seeing her so happy, with her suddenly more rounded stomach, made me happy. If anything was love, it was this. Caring about someone so much that you just want to see them happy. That nothing else besides their happiness mattered.

Yeah, that. That’s what I called love.

“Jesus, Em,” I called out from the sidewalk, pulling my jacket tighter around me to shelter myself from the biting wind, “you could have gone in and waited for me inside.”

“No, it’s fine really. I’m so flippin’ hot all the time it was nice to feel the breeze. The cold barely bothers me.”

I pulled her in close for a hug and her belly bumped into mine. Stepping back slightly, I readjusted my body. “Where did that come from?” I teased.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve popped overnight, and now this thing is constantly in the way. I’ve told Shane this is it. Pregnancy is not for me. After this one, I. Am. Done.”

“Well, you look great.”

And she did. Emma rocked pregnancy like nobody’s business. She was as gorgeous as ever, probably even more so. Happy looked good on her for sure. But Emma wasn’t like most girls, and I’m sure she was tired of all those pregnancy symptoms and rules cramping her style. “Let’s go inside. I’m not knocked up, therefore, I’m fuckin’ freezing.”

She laughed and nudged me with her elbow. I held the door open for her and we made our way into the busy Starbucks.

“So, how the hell are you? What’ve you been up to?” she asked as we took our place in line.

“Ah, I’m fine. And you know, the usual.”

Emma wagged her eyebrows at me. “Please tell me you’re wrapping it?”

I put my arm around her shoulder and pull her into me, placing a quick kiss on her temple. “Always. In fact, the last couple of times, I
double
bagged it.”

“You’re terrible.”

I laughed. “Tell me about it.”

I checked my watch. It was late by New Yorker standards, but the line was still rather long. “Is this normal?” I asked. I’d never been to SoHo for coffee with her before so I didn’t know if it was usually that busy.

“No, most of the time it’s pretty dead in here,” she started rifling through her purse. “But there is some event going on down the street. Lots of tourists are in town.”

As her wallet fell out of her open purse and onto the floor, I crouched down to get it for her, knowing that if she tried it herself she’d be down there forever. I tapped her on the arm and handed it back.

“I’m paying, no arguments.”

Thankfully, I’d caught her in one of her rare placid moments and so she simply nodded and tucked the wallet back inside her purse.

We chatted casually as the line got shorter. It was crazy, but I’d forgotten how fun being around Emma was. There was a reason why she had been the only girl that I let in since…

Yeah. Not going there.

By the time it was our turn to place our order we were laughing about Emma’s lack of bladder control. Before stepping up to the counter, I starting digging through my wallet looking for my card. The fact that it wasn’t in its usual place had me worried that I might have lost it at the bar the night before.

“Hey, Emma, the usual?” a voice asked.

“Yeah, thanks, Jenny.”

I continued digging.

“Rob, what do you want?” Emma asked.

“Ah, found it!”

I pulled the card from my wallet and looked up, straight into those unmistakable blue eyes. Her long hair, still carrot orange, framed her face perfectly, and her nose and lip rings caught the light from above.

I held my breath, because I was staring straight into a face I hadn’t seen in over twelve years. The increasingly awkward silence continued as I struggled to find words, but eventually I was able to get myself together.

“Jenny.” It wasn’t a question because there was no mistaking her.

She pulled her lip ring between her teeth and I knew she was nervous. That was her tell. Or at least it had been twelve years ago.

“Robert.”

Emma looked between the two of us, confused and trying to figure out how we knew each other. I hoped she would just chalk it up to some drunken fling. I wished her luck with that, because she just didn’t have a freakin’ clue.

After a few moments of total uncomfortable silence, a look of realization swept of Emma, her eyes wide with shock. “
Ohmigosh!
” she squealed, piecing things together in a spectacular coming together of fate and my sheer fuckin’ bad luck. “You’re
the
Jenny!”

Fuck.

Way to go, Captain Obvious.

“I’ve been coming here for years and I never knew. This Jenny is
your
Jenny!”

“You gonna order?” some asshole behind me huffed.

“One fuckin’ second,” I grumbled. “I’ll have a…”

What the fuck do I want?

“Shit, I’ll have a…”

For obvious reasons I couldn’t focus, so I just went with whatever came out of my mouth. Which went something like, “Jesus Christ, Jenny what the hell are you doing in New York?”

“Living. What are you having, Rob? My boss is watching. I can’t talk to you about this.”

Jesus Christ. Twelve years with no word, no contact. I had so many questions, and all she could say was, “I can’t talk to you about this”?

Hell no!

“Fine, I’ll have a venti caramel machiatto. Seriously, where have you been? You fell off the face of the earth.”

She shrugged as she wrote on my cup. “I kinda had to. You want whipped cream on that?”

“No I don’t want fuckin’ whipped cream!”

Emma slapped my shoulder, reminding me that we were still in a crowded coffee shop. A faint blush crept across Jenny’s cheeks, clashing with her hair.

“Where have you’ve been for the last twelve years, Jenny? I tried finding you. I looked everywhere, but you vanished without a trace. Not so much as a word from you, or your fuckin’ family.”

She passed the cups to another barista and pressed some buttons on the register. “That’ll be $10.96. And I told you, I can’t talk about this right now.”

Angry as hell, I handed her my card.

“So what, you gonna run away again, Jenny?”

This shit was down right ridiculous. The least she could do was give me an answer. Some explanation of what the hell had happened. Where she’d gone. After everything, I had a right to know.

She sighed, seemingly annoyed that I wasn’t about to let it go. She slid my card across the counter along with the receipt.

“Fine. But can you give me, like fifteen minutes?”

“Been waiting twelve years, Jenny, another fifteen minutes wont kill me.”

She rolled her eyes and looked past me to the grumpy asshole who was next in line, urging him to place his order. It wasn’t hard to see that she was pushing me away, but I didn’t fuckin’ get it.

Without warning I felt my body lean to the left. Emma had grabbed my arm and was pulling me toward the waiting area.

“Holy shit.” She let out a deep breath. “What was that all about?” she asked, still dumbfounded.

“That right there, is the fuckin’ reason why I am such a goddamn mess.”

Emma looked at me and narrowed her eyes. After a moment or two she said simply, “Looks like you got some ‘splaining to do, Robert.”

The game was up. I’d known I would eventually have to tell them all what had happened, and I’d actually gotten away with it for a lot longer than expected. Sighing, I dropped my face into my hands, scrubbing my palms over my face.

“Okay,” I said.

But where the hell did I start?

Fourteen minutes I’d been standing in the alleyway. I flicked the butt of my fourth cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with my heel. Shortly after we’d got our coffee orders, Emma had taken off. It didn’t take a genius to sense that today wasn’t going to be that great of a day for us to catch up, and so she’d graciously given me a rain check. It was strange to think that just a short while ago I’d been complaining about the cold. Now the temperature felt insignificant. Not just because my mind was on other things. In part the rise in temperature was due to my anger.

Right on cue, exactly fifteen minutes since we’d last spoken, the side door opened and Jenny came waltzing out. She looked way more relaxed than I felt. Her hands were shoved deep into her coat pockets, and her orange hair caught the faint sunlight and offset her pale skin perfectly. She was just as beautiful as the last time I’d seen her. In fact, she hadn’t changed a bit. If I hadn’t been so angry, I bet she would have taken my breath away.

“Hey,” she said, leaning back against the brick wall.

“Hey?
Hey?
That’s what you have to say after all this time?!”

I didn’t want to be pissed, but I was. I mean, Jesus Christ, she’d fallen off the face of the planet without a word. And now she was back, just miraculously falling back into my lap, and I was supposed to remain calm?

No way.

“So, how do you know Emma?” she asked, ignoring the greater issue at hand.

I scoffed. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew she was attempting to make small talk and divert my attention.

No dice, Jenny. No dice.

“She’s one of my best friends. I should be asking you the same question.”

“She’s come in here pretty much every day since I started working here.”

“Which was?”

“Coming up on four years ago.”

My heart palpitated in my chest with such ferocity I thought it might actually burst a hole in my shirt. I was so angry.

Four years? Four fuckin’
years
? Unbelievable!

“You’ve been in New York all this time, yet you never thought to look me up?”

“I didn’t know you were here.”

I called bullshit, and said as much to her.

“I didn’t, Rob. How would I? I have no connections to Jersey anymore. Mom and Dad cut all ties with me after—”

“Bullshit!” I cut in.

Jenny pushed her hand to her forehead, rubbing back and forth like she had a headache. “God! You’re just as infuriating now as you were back then.”

My blood boiled. “It’s all we were ever good at anyway, right, Jenny?” I looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Always fighting, or fuckin’.”

“We were just stupid kids,” she added.

I scoffed. “I loved you, and you damn well know it. You broke my fuckin’ heart.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice now, did I?”

“Where did you go?”

She shook her head. She wasn’t going to tell me anything. I guess I couldn’t really blame her, but it still infuriated me no end. I wanted to scream.

God, she was driving me crazy.

Again.

Within twenty minutes of laying eyes on her, she was making me feel like I needed to be committed to the nearest nut house.

When I was younger, I was never any good at controlling my temper and it seemed some things never changed because, without thinking, I turned and punched the wall.

Yes, the same brick wall she was leaning against.

My fist connected and Jenny flinched. There was a resounding
crack!
and I was immediately hit with an onslaught of pain.

“Fuck!” I screamed, cradling my knuckles with my good hand.

And just like always, somehow Jenny managed to keep her cool.

“Pull yourself together, Rob. You’re acting like a little bitch.”

With hindsight it probably wasn’t the most mature thing to do but I was in the midst of a fit of rage when I leaned into her, my face just inches from hers, and yelled, “AAAHHHHHH!”

This time she didn’t flinch. Instead, she stared at me with sad, dead eyes.

As my hand started throbbing I looked down at my watch. I still had a while before I had to report to court, but being here with her wasn’t doing me any good. I needed to get out of there.

“Obviously, I can’t do this right now,” I muttered as I turned away from her. What I really needed was a hospital, but it would have to wait. I didn’t have time to sit in an Emergency Room.

“This isn’t over, Jenny. I’ve gotta go to work, but mark my words, I will be back to finish this conversation.”

“Off to your big fancy job,” she seethed. “Must be nice. I’m glad at least one of us was able to make something of themselves.”