Scared of Beautiful (6 page)

Rubbing my temples with my thumb and forefinger, I turn towards her. “Just now? I haven’t got a fucking clue. Although it may have something to do with your presence in my bed,” I reply. “Wait. That means she doesn’t know that you’re…” I continue.

“No!” Jade exclaims cutting me off. “She doesn’t know, and you’re not telling her until I decide to.”

“Don’t you think it might be relevant, considering that she now thinks that after I dropped her off, I spent the rest of the night fucking you?!” I raise my voice, slightly irritated. “Besides I thought you two were friends?”

“We are.” Jade answers, looking down at her hands. “But you know how I feel about telling people about me. You remember high school, don’t you?” I do remember high school and walk over to her, immediately sorry for raising my voice, and sit next to her on the bed. “What happened last night?” she asks again.

“I didn’t sleep with her, Jade. I just kissed her,” I say, annoyed that Jade still thinks of me in the same way that I was in Atlanta. Jade has this crazy idea that I’m going to spend the rest of my life replacing Shana with empty sex with random chicks who I pick up at clubs. And because that’s what I did for a while, she might have had a point. “Why is it so hard to believe that I may be different since you left home?” I ask her dejectedly.

She puts a hand on my leg and looks up at me. “I didn’t say I don’t believe you. I’m just saying she’s an all right chick, so don’t screw around with her feelings. I don’t want to have to make the choice between two friends again.”

She slips her feet into her shoes and walks out the door. And I wonder why it is that no matter how hard I try, I seem to have this uncanny ability to keep fucking things up.

I text Maia twice over the course of the day, and try calling her once, all with no answer. Since she’s doing a Psychology and English double major, and I study Engineering, our classes never cross over. Hell, I even walk to class on the opposite sides of the campus. Jade texts me to say that Maia hasn’t been back to the dorm room since this morning, and she assumes that she’s either in classes or at the library. I swing by the library; no Maia. Short of stalking the girl, I figure that I’ll go to her dorm room to talk to her later in the evening. When I try that, all I find is Jade sitting on her bed reading a big ass textbook on Music Management.
Fuck, this chick really knows how to disappear.
In a last ditch effort to find her, I decide to take a drive over to the Clever Bean to see if she’s there. On the way over there, I wonder what the fuck I’m actually doing. I have no idea where her parents live, or who her friends are, and I realize that she could have gone to be with any of those people. All of a sudden I feel foolish, but the foolishness is nowhere near equivalent to the need I have to see her today.

Keys in hand, I stand at the doorway of the Bean and look for Maia’s familiar long brown hair. My heart sinks when I discover that she isn’t not anywhere on the lower level. I jog up the stairs to the galley level, and almost jump for joy when I see her curled up on one of the sofas, reading.
Now that I’m here, what the fuck do I say?
Suddenly I’m nervous as shit, and this all seems like a bad idea. But I spent the day looking for her, and the last thing I’m about to do is turn around and walk away like a punk. I approach her and stand next to the sofa.

“This seat taken?” I ask casually. She barely glances up at me before shrugging her shoulders. I sit next to her on the couch, but she doesn’t bother to look up from her book. Fair call, I did ask her if I could sit, not whether I could actually talk to her.
Note to self: next time, be specific.

I open my mouth to say,
something
, although I have no idea what. Before I have the chance, she shuts her book and looks up at me. I scan her face for an idea as to what she’s feeling, whether she’s pissed or hurt, and come up with nothing. She doesn’t let a hint of what she’s feeling slip though her robotic façade. Where I’m from, if the girl you were seeing caught another woman in your bed, the first thing you’d be doing in a situation like this one is protecting your shit, ‘cause those bitches would waste no time in chopping it off! I find it bizarre that I don’t feel the urge to cover my crotch.

Maia stares at me intently before saying, “You know you don’t owe me an explanation for this morning.”

“Then why have you been avoiding me?” I counter.

“I’m not, I just happened to be in different places to you today,” she replies. “Look,” she says turning her body to face me. “You met me three days ago, so you don’t owe me anything. Last night was fun, but it is what it is. No explanation necessary.” She sounds like a fucking guy. Like she’s trying to play the game before she gets played.

“You don’t really think there’s something going on with me and Jade, do you?” I ask incredulously. I guess for Jade and I, the idea of us together is ridiculous, but to those who don’t know us, maybe it’s not so unlikely.

“Well, she didn’t come back to the dorm last night, and this morning I found her in your room. I don’t think I need a very high IQ to figure out what happened,” she deadpans.
And there it is; I knew she was jealous
. I saw it in her eyes this morning.

So I decide to take my chances and play the asshole friend card, since I can’t explain myself without telling Jade’s secrets. “Guess there’s no fooling you then,” I respond sarcastically, and begin to stand.

“What!” She practically catapults out of her seat. “You’re not even going to try to explain?” she asks incredulously.

“Nope,” I say standing and smoothing out my jeans. “You seem to have it all figured out. Tell you what, why don’t we just be friends then. Friends with benefits, if you’d prefer?” I wink at her, grin, and turn to exit the Bean, leaving a slack jawed Maia standing in my wake.

I walk casually out of the café, but as soon as I’m out of Maia’s line of sight, I bolt towards the Mustang; just in case I lose the nerve it took me to walk out, and march back in there and wrap my arms around her.

Now it’s time for Plan B. Maia would never believe me if I told her where Jade really was last night, since Jade has never told her the truth. So Jade is going to have to fess up. All I need to do is convince her that Maia is nothing like the assholes at our high school. Which seems simple, except that Jade is the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met. Although, after today, one’s thing’s for fucking sure: she has some serious competition in Maia. I smile as I drive back to Brown. Maia is beautiful any day, but she’s a whole different kind of sexy when she’s mad. And when I eventually do get her into my bed,
I hope she’s fucking angry
.

Maia

For the first time since coming to Brown, I have driven the BMW. I never had previously because it was my special way of delivering a silent, yet significant
fuck you
to my father. He likes proving that he can buy anything and anyone. Just not me. But the more I walked everywhere and caught the bus, the more I realized that I was cutting off my nose to spite my face.
What exactly was I proving in the end?
I must say that the feeling of independence that driving gives me is one I’ve always loved. As I pull the car into a spot, I think back to Jackson and his behavior at the Bean. I cannot believe that the asshole had the balls to suggest that we be friends with benefits
after
I caught him in bed with my roommate. Well, maybe ‘in bed’ in the sordid sense is not exactly accurate. Still, they may as well have been ‘in bed together’. I wasn’t so much angry as I was jealous as hell. I wanted to be laying in Jackson’s bed, with my head on his pillow, inhaling the cologne that smells like an ocean breeze, Preferably with him lowering himself on top of me.
Whoa girl!
I will myself out of my fantasy before I totally lose it.

Jade looks startled as I walk into the dorm room. She’s on her cell, and whomever she’s talking to is clearly not telling her something that she wants to here. She whispers as I walk into the closet, and I catch fragments of her conversation. “Just because you think…no…I’m not doing it…don’t you dare remind me…don’t even fucking pull that card…fine!” I hear her phone snap shut. She staring at the door expectantly, waiting for me to walk out of the closet. “We need to talk,” she says ominously.

“Are you sure you want to talk?” I ask. I get the distinct impression that that’s the last thing she wants to do.

“Okay, talk then,” I say when she doesn’t answer, and sit cross-legged on my bed. I’m not mad at her about this morning, mainly because she had no idea what happened last night. Unless she did, in which case I’m furious. But for now, I decide to assume that she didn’t.

“So, Jackson tells me that you think that he and I fucked each other last night, or this morning or whatever,” she lays it out there, just like that. Not sure why that surprises me. Jade is straight up like that. I avert my eyes, and suddenly feel like there’s nowhere to look, mainly because I really don’t want to get into this with the only friend I care to have on this campus, but also because I have really been trying since this morning to block the image from my mind.

“Jade, really, you don’t need to…” I start, but she cuts me off.

“I do. I didn’t sleep with Jackson. I have never slept with Jackson. We were friends because he dated my best friend in high school. But we, him and I, have always
ever
only been friends. He seems really into you. So for him, I’m going to tell you why you can believe him.”

I want to stop her, because she looks uncomfortable as hell right now. But I don’t, because I’m curious. “He thinks,” she continues, “that no matter what he or I say to you, you’ll think the worst, therefore I’m going to give you a completely valid reason as to why you should believe us.”

She stops and takes a deep breath, and I resist the urge to tell her to spit it out already. “I don’t sleep with Jackson’s type,” she finishes.

I raise my eyebrows curiously. “And what type is that?” I ask.

“The type with a dick,” she deadpans. “I don’t sleep with people like Jackson because Jackson is the wrong gender. I am not attracted to people of his gender. I’m attracted to people of your gender. And mine.”

“Oh,” I say quietly. Jade looks at me expectantly, and I struggle to answer because too many thoughts race through my head at once. I’m mostly relieved about this morning’s situation, but more so I’m confused as to why Jade has decided that this was something she needed to keep from me.
What better way to find the answer than to just ask, right?
“Why haven’t you told me until now, obviously only because Jackson asked you to? Is that who you were speaking to just now? Did you really think I would judge you?”

She plays with a long strand of hair, which I know is a nervous habit of hers. She sighs and looks directly at me, and I can see gratitude in her eyes, as if she expected me to react very differently from the way I am.

“The only people who knew in high school were my best friend Shana and Jackson, her then boyfriend. They didn’t care; but in middle school I was a tomboy, dressed like one, hung out with the boys. Shana was a blonde bombshell, and everyone loved to be around her. By the time high school started, Shana and I were as close as sisters, and I admit, I borrowed some of her popularity. I had filled out in all the right places. and my hair had grown longer. Shana taught me how to curl it, and hey
presto
, I wasn’t the weird. boy-looking sidekick anymore. I was popular, because to be popular, all you needed was the right look and the right friends.” She says the last sentence laced with sarcasm.

“Shana wasn’t your typical mean girl. She was popular, but very sweet. One day at a sleepover, I admitted to her that I thought I liked girls. I expected her to throw me out. She didn’t. She told me that I was the same person she met in middle school, and that she didn’t care.” Jade’s face softens as she remembers Shana’s kindness. “School went on as usual. Shana kept my secret, apart from telling Jackson, because there was very little if anything that she didn’t tell him. Shana left town before I could tell my parents. They both cried at first, but Jackson was there with me.”

I listen quietly as Jade speaks; it seems the respectful thing to do. I think back to my childhood and know how insanely difficult it would be to open up to anyone about how I felt, or what I went through with my parents.

“Anyway,” she continues, “I figured that since my parents and Jackson accepted me, the rest of the world would. Senior year I decided to date publicly, thinking that no one would care; only they did. The girls I was on the swim team with waited for me to leave before showering after practice. Friends that Shana and I had kept for years became suddenly distant. I would overhear the guys at school comment about how hot it would be to catch me naked with another chick. Jackson was the only one who didn’t change.” She exhales as she reaches the end of her confession, looking at me expectantly.