On The Floor (Second Story) (23 page)

I smile, even though it’s totally fake. “Sure do! And it’s not just a music school. It offers degrees in all areas of the arts.”

“What type of artsy thing do you do?”

“I sing and play the piano, but I’m getting my degree in musical education. I want to be a high school music teacher.” Asshole. I want to say that out loud, but I settle for saying it in my head.

“That’s nice,” he says.

“Sure is!” I say before looking over at Jake. And what I see breaks my heart. He looks sad and disappointed. I think he might have been expecting his dad to act differently around me. He catches me looking over at him and I smile. He smiles back, reaching down to squeeze my knee.

“How are Jill and the kids?” Jake says, asking about his step-mom and half siblings.

Greg starts to talk about his other children and wife and it is the first time I have seen him actually interested in something today. Even more than his phone. But only barely. He is all smiles and love as he spends ten minutes telling us about Howie’s and Harry’s baseball games, and Jill’s scrapbooking, and Katie’s horseback riding competitions.

I am shocked. Jake’s father is not the same father that Howie, Harry, and Katie know. He is probably not even the same man that Jill knows. No. It seems that Greg only reserves the worst version of himself for his eldest son.

The fact that Greg has the capacity to love and care for his family, but chooses not to do the same for Jake makes me incredibly angry and incredibly sad.

I look over at Jake to see a sad smile on his face. “It’s really good to hear that they are all doing so well,” Jake says. “Do you have any pictures of the kids?”

Greg pulls out his phone and proudly shows Jake some pictures of his kids and as Jake looks at them I can tell his smile is genuine. He cares for his brothers and sisters, even though they don’t even know that he exists. They sit and look at pictures while I finish my meal. Jake looks content.

Even though the lunch hasn’t been perfect, it hasn’t been absolutely horrible. But when Greg starts to put his phone away things start going downhill fast.

Because of me.

Because I can’t just leave it alone.

Because the way that Greg treats the man that I love,
his son
, is intolerable.

“Hey Greg, before you put that away, do you want me to take a picture of you and Jake?” I ask, a small smile on my face.

“No thanks. Don’t need one,” Greg says, tucking his phone into his jacket pocket.

“Excuse me?” Asshole, I add silently again.

“Rachel…” Jake says quietly. I turn to look at him and he is looking down at the table trying to mask the hurt that is still written all over his face.

“I said no thanks. Why would I want a picture with him?” he says, checking the time on his watch. He doesn’t even have the decency to look at me when he responds.

“Seriously?” I deadpan. “Why would you want a picture with Jake?”

“Beg your pardon?” Greg asks, finally looking up at me, anger and embarrassment clear in his expression.

I take a deep breath and think about what I want to say to him.

Because: He’s. Your. Son. Did you know that? Because based on the way you’ve treated him today, I would think that you thought he was a bill collector. You’ve shown almost no interest in what is going on in his life. For goodness sakes, he brought his girlfriend here to meet you. And nothing! He is a wonderful man, and you don’t know that because you don’t care. He doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment. Especially from his father.

Silence. I look over at Jake and his fists are clenching, his eyes are down. Greg’s eyes are on me looking angry and annoyed.

And my eyes are darting between the two of them as I realize that I just said all of that out loud. Very loud. Loud enough for the other people around us to hear me.

"Oh my god," I whisper to myself before I clear my throat. “Excuse me,” I say before getting up and leaving.

Greg doesn’t say anything. Jake doesn’t follow me.

When I get outside, I walk around the corner of the building and lean against the wall. I take a few deep breaths to try to calm the shaking from all the adrenaline that is running through my veins. I think I just channeled Jenna back there. There is no way Rachel Harris would ever go off on someone like that. Especially in public.

I’ve completely lost it.

If I could go back to that moment, I would change it completely. I would keep my mouth shut. I would turn to Jake and hold his hand. I would tell him that I love him. I would stand up and start doing jumping jacks.

I would do almost anything else other than what I actually did.

I stay against the wall for a few more minutes before I hear Jake’s voice. “Rachel! Rachel!” He’s getting closer, when I feel my phone vibrate. It’s Jake.

I pick it up. “Hey.”

“Rachel? Where did you go?” he asks, sounding worried.

“I’m just on the side of the building. I’ll meet you at your car,” I say before hanging up the phone.

I head over to his truck and when I get there he is already sitting inside. I open the passenger door and sit down, buckling up before turning to look at him.

And when I look at him, I’m not sure what I see. His face is blank. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t say anything. He just starts the car and pulls out of his spot. He turns onto the street. He gets on the freeway. He drives back to campus. He parks.

All without saying a single thing. Without changing the look on his face. Without a glance in my direction.

We sit for a few more minutes in silence when he finally turns toward me. I have tears in my eyes. I am about to break down. Did I just break
us
?

He opens his mouth to say something and what comes out is absolutely not what I was expecting.

“Can I borrow your calculator? I have some math to do before we go to dinner with everyone tonight and I can’t find mine.”

“Um… sure…” I pause. “Look, Jake…” I start, but before I can say anything else Jake gets out of the truck and comes around to my side to open my door. He holds out his hand, helping me down and then closing the door behind me. We head back to the dorm in silence, but he holds my hand the whole way.

When we get to my room he follows me in. I go to my backpack to grab my calculator, but it’s not there. “I can’t find my calculator. Help me look for it?”

He nods as I go to my bookshelf. “Check the desk,” I tell him.

This is so awkward. I can’t take it anymore. We’ve both had time to stew over my outburst and I think we need to address it. Now.

I turn around to see him looking around on top of my desk. It’s a bit of a mess, so he has to sort through some piles of books and papers.

“Jake?” He pauses the search and looks at me. “About what I said to your dad…”

He sighs. “Rachel… it’s okay,” he says before going back to searching my desk. He opens my desk drawer and begins to move things around as he starts talking. “You didn’t say anything that Greg and I didn’t already know. He knows he treats me like garbage. I know it too. It’s just that…” The conversation halts and his face goes blank and he doesn’t finish his thought. “Found it,” he says pulling my calculator from the drawer and closing it. “I’ll be right back.”

He leaves, presumably to go put the calculator in his room. I don’t know why he couldn’t just wait until we were done with this conversation, but maybe he needed a few minutes to sort through his thoughts. And since I was the one who messed up and practically yelled at his dad, I decide not to push him.

He comes back a few minutes later. I give him a small smile and he returns it with one of his own, but it looks off. Forced. He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks down at the ground.

“Jake? Is everything okay? I hate that I said that stuff to your dad. I didn’t even mean to say it out loud. I just couldn’t stand the way he was treating you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Rachel. And I hate to do this right now, but Toby just sent me a text. He asked if we could meet earlier to go over some stuff for the show on Saturday,” he says, still looking down at the ground, only glancing up briefly.

“Sure. Just give me a second to change into something more comfortable.” I had stupidly dressed up for lunch with Greg. I could have worn a trash bag and I don’t think he would have noticed.

“It’s okay. I thought it was a group thing, but apparently it’s a guy thing tonight. Maybe hang out with Jenna?” he says, still not looking at me.

“Uh, sure Jake! Have fun!” I say, trying to sound chipper. I think it comes out sounding psychotic.

“Thanks. Call you later.”

I walk up to him and lean up touching my lips to his, trying to show him how much I love him through this kiss.

He gives me nothing back. I feel like I’m kissing a robot.

He steps back, taking his hand out his pocket to wave before turning around and walking out of the door.

“Bye Jake,” I say before he closes the door behind him. My voice is shaky as I try to hold back tears. How did I fuck that up so bad? I was supposed to be at lunch to keep things positive. Keep things good.

And I
totally
fucked. That. Up.

Since Jenna was supposed to go to dinner with us, I text her with the change of plans and ask if she wants to hang with me.

Jenna:
Sure babycakes! ;) Girly time!

Me:
Yep

Jenna:
Be down in a few!

A few minutes later, Jenna walks into my room without knocking. I’m curled up in the bed, near tears.

“So I was thinking since it’s a Thursday and I don’t really want to go out, we could do movie night! I brought some of our favorites.” She sets two bags down on my desk. “I brought popcorn and chocolate and you can even pick th…” And that’s when she turns around and sees me.

She must not have noticed the state I was in before, because her smile fades and she puts on her crisis mode face. And that’s when I lose it. I start crying. Big, drippy, ugly, snotty, crying.

She lies behind me and becomes the big spoon to my little spoon. When I start to calm down a little, she knows it’s safe to start talking. “Rachel, what happened? Did it not go well with his dad?”

“It...” I say sniffling, “it went horribly.” I go on to explain what happened at lunch. What I said to his dad. And what happened after I said it, all the way up until I sent her the text.

“Greg sounds like a real ass.”

“He is.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah…”

She pauses, taking a big breath. “Now I have something to tell you. It might make you feel worse. No. It will
definitely
make you feel worse, but I think you should know.”

My heart starts pounding. What could she say that would make me feel worse? “Okay…”

“He lied to you. Toby didn’t text him and tell him that just the guys were going out tonight.”

“What? How… what?” I ask confused as I wipe the tears from my face.

“When you sent me that text, I had just finished having a conversation with Nate about where we were going tonight.” I turn to face her and she looks like she is about to break my heart.

“Okay… maybe Toby hadn’t called him yet…”

“So I called Nate back telling him to call Toby since the plans had changed.” She pauses. “He said he was sitting with Toby and that the plans hadn’t changed. So I told him that Jake must have gotten confused by the message and that he thought it was a guy thing tonight. He said Toby never sent a message to Jake. Then I heard Jake's voice in the background before Toby and Nate said hi to him and sounding surprised. Nate told me he would call me back and hung up. A minute later I got a text telling me that never mind, it was a guy thing.”

In my emotional state, I’m a bit confused about what Jenna is trying to tell me. “What? I still don’t understand, Jen…”

“Rachel, I think that Jake wanted tonight to be a guy thing. Not Toby. Maybe he just needed some time.”

I try to take a deep breath, but it feels like I have an elephant sitting on my chest. “Some time… Jenna, what? I don’t… you’re freaking me out…” I feel like I might start to hyperventilate.

“Don’t freak out, Rachel,” she says trying to soothe me. “The relationship with his dad sounds complicated. He probably just needed to get drunk with his boys. He said he’d call, right?”

“He did.”

“Then he’ll call.”

He never called.

Chapter 17

This whole mess with Jake’s dad couldn’t have come at a worse time. I want to be able to talk to him about everything, but this is the Friday that I am going home for family therapy. I’m staying overnight at my dad’s house so if we don’t talk today, we won’t get to talk until sometime on Saturday.

He never called last night and didn’t respond to any of my voicemails or text messages. And now it’s thirty minutes before Jenna and I are supposed to leave to drive home and it is still radio silence.

Jake and I were supposed to see each other before I left, so I decide to send him a text reminding him.

Me:
Hey! Jen and I are leaving soon. Come to my room when you get back from class.

Jake:
Sorry, babe. Can’t. My prof needs to talk to me.

Me:
That sucks :( I’ll miss you.

Jake:
Yep

Me:
Call me later?

Jake:
Yep

Yep
? I hate texting.

Jenna sends me a text telling me to meet down at her car. I take a shaky breath, hoping that this isn’t the end for me and Jake, before I grab my bag and lock my door. When I get down to Jenna’s car, I load my duffle bag into the trunk and go sit in the passenger seat. Jenna is going to visit her family while I visit mine.

I can’t wait to see my family. I only see Dad and Monica every other month. And even though Chad and I live in the same city we don’t get to see each other very often. He’s very busy and I am too. My mom would hate that we don’t see each other more often.

She would sit us down and have a conversation about how family is everything and no matter what we always need to put each other first. She would tell us that you never know when we may not have the opportunity to see each other every day. I’m pretty sure she would have been talking about me going to New York and Chad being on deployment. Not the type of permanence that comes along with death.