Ch. 14 - Solitude and peace, or the lack of

My head pounded with each tap that landed on my bedroom door.

"V?" I heard Jay calling from behind it.

I rolled over and pulled the cover over my head. I didn't want to see him, or more importantly, I didn't want him to see me.

I'd fallen into a profound, deep sleep as soon as I hit my bed after I got home the previous night, but was suddenly awoken, drenched in perspiration after only a few hours. I couldn't be sure if it was the remnants of a disturbing dream, of which I could only remember a loud shrill ringing, or if I'd simply outslept my tiredness. What I was certain of was that I had no wish to participate in, what was, my bleak reality. However, no matter how I tried, sleep continued to evade me. Thus, I'd simply tossed and turned for the remainder of the night, flooding my pillow with tears and the soft echoes of sobs that emanated directly from the depths of my heart. Needless to say, opening the door wasn't on my list of good ideas right then as I could only imagine the terrible fright that I must have looked at that moment.

I knew, however, that Jay wouldn't be put off easily.

He hadn't stayed out all night as he was supposed to. I can't be sure when he'd returned, but I had heard him teetering around my door a number of times during the night time, though he didn't try to enter.

I don't lock my door, we'd already agreed on a no-lock policy, but we'd never enter the other's room without permission or an explicit concern which I knew he had hence I gave my utmost effort to call a single, 'sleeping', when he finally built up the urge to knock.

Now that morning was upon us, it seemed he was trying, once again, to get my attention and permission to enter.

"V, I'm coming in okay? You can't leave me standing out here like this."

"I'm fine. Jay. Just leave me."

He didn't heed my order that time, and after a short few seconds, the door slowly opened.

"I made you a coffee," he said, holding it out as a peace offering.

I didn't answer, more concerned with trying to catch a glimpse of my face in my dressing table mirror.

"Are you feeling okay?" he asked as he placed my coffee down on my bedside table.

"Do I look okay?" I snapped and turned to glare at him.

My glare immediately softened as he looked back at me with a swollen right eye and bust lip, clearly looking worse for wear than I did.

"What happened?" I asked, gripping his face in my hand so I could inspect it closer.

He turned his head to pull it from my grip. "Ah, nothing," he moaned.

"Not nothing," I rebutted.

A small sigh left as I contemplated the possible reasons he would look like he'd just been in a fight, and there was only one obvious explanation.

"Please don't tell me you fought with Jamie."

Jay shrugged. "What did you expect me to do? He wouldn't accept that what he'd done was wrong and kept making up excuses and trying to make out like you'd overreacted," Jay rambled.

I straightened myself up and reached for some tissues, quite instinctively as Jay wasn't bleeding anywhere. My mind dwelt shortly on Jamie's reaction to me finding out, it didn't sound like the Jamie I knew, but then, who was the Jamie I knew? He wasn't even Jamie after all.

"Please don't fight over this. It happened, it's done now. Okay?"

"Two things," Jay said, pushing my hand away as I tried to dab his eye. "Firstly, would it make you feel any better if I said, his face is a lot worse?" He gave a small laugh that quickly resided when I frowned at him. "Guess not," he said.

I gave my head a quick shake to dispel the worries that Jamie's beautiful face was looking something similar to Jay's and uttered; "I guess he deserves it," which quickly put a smile back on Jay's face.

"The other thing," he said, his words coming out a little more deliberately. "I don't think it's done for him."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"You should have seen him. He wouldn't stop begging me to call you and telling me that he needed to explain things to you. I'm surprised he wasn't blowing up your phone."

My phone, I thought and felt an unsettling familiarity crawl through me.

My phone was on my bedside table, turned off and took a little less than a minute to restart so I could check my missed calls, of which twelve were from Jamie.

So that was the loud shrill ringing that had disturbed me last night, I recalled.

I swiped down the notification bar to see forty-two messages from Jamie. I didn't read them and instead swiped right to remove them.

"Delete his messages and block him please," I said, handing my phone to Jay.

"O .. K," he said, and gave an overly thoughtful look before adding, "Are you sure you don't want to read them?"

"Just delete them, Jay."

Jay scrolled through the phone, giving one last apprehensive look before finally handing the phone back to me.

"All done," he said. "If it's any consolation, I don't think Leon was playing you."

It wasn't, especially when Jay unwittingly used Jamie's real name.

"Why are you defending him now?" I asked, my annoyance clear.

"I'm not," he said swiftly. "I'm just saying. I think he did like you ... a lot."

"Just leave it, Jay. You don't know what you're talking about," or maybe I wanted to say that it felt better to think he was playing me than to imagine it might have been at least partially real.

"I don't," he agreed. "I just know he had a girl that he really liked, and he used to sit by himself sometimes texting and smiling and looking all in love, you know? Of course, I don't know if it was you he was texting, he never told us anything about her, but we knew she was older, obviously not that old, but …" Jay let out a small sigh. "I just don't want you to feel like you were completely taken for a fool."

Ouch, those last words hurt a lot more than I think Jay intended them to.

"Don't get me wrong, V," he said, possibly in response to my narrowed eyes that now glared at him. "I'm on your side. If you want me to kick his butt, I will. I'm just saying, we all saw it."

We all, another layer that Jay unintentionally added to my embarrassment as he absentmindedly reminded me that Brian and whoever else knew about it were all witnesses to my humiliation.

"I don't want to talk about him again, okay?" I said in an attempt to cut off thinking about it and allowing Jay and his apparent foot-in-mouth problem to cause any further damage.

Jay nodded and continued to talk a little more about the rest of his night, or at least the parts that didn't include Jamie and then we made the deal that if he promised to clean up the kitchen I'd at least eat some of his breakfast.

The promise served its purpose, which was simply to get him out of the room and give me some solitude where I could continue to mope before he called me down to eat.

There was no use thinking about whether or not Jamie had meant to hurt me. The truth was that it was probably better that he had, at least now I could feel justified in my anger towards him.

I lay my head back and braced myself for the upcoming transition. A transition from basking in the glow of love, convinced I'd stumbled upon 'The One,' to confronting the stark reality of being completely alone and the realisation that no such thing existed.

My phone beeped then, in the midst of my sombre revelation, and stirred no interest or motivation in me to check it.

On the third beep, I slowly grabbed my phone and raised it to eye level. It was Kimmie. Most likely wanting to know how my evening had gone.

Terrible, I muttered to myself. Absolutely terrible.

* * *

The weekend crawled by at a snail's pace, yet I was no nearer to feeling up to work by Monday morning and called in for a sick day, which eventually turned into five sick days.

I never took sick days, so I deserved a few as I got my mental and emotional well-being back into order; if that was possible anyway.

Kimmie called several times, but I feigned tiredness and got away with a short conversation. That was until Friday when she turned up at my house with a basket of fruit.

"You don't look as ill as you were letting on," she said after we'd sat down in the front room.

"Yeah, I'm feeling a lot better today thanks," I answered, trying to keep my voice light.

"Well, that's good at least. I was quite worried you'd gotten so ill so quickly."

Well, that did bring forth a small feeling of guilt, but I'd already lied to her for the whole week so what more would an hour or two do?

"I hope Jay's been looking after you," she said, taking a look around the room, which was immaculate enough after the thorough tidying up I'd given it in preparation for Jamie's visit last week.

"Of course," I laughed.

In actuality, I had been avoiding Jay as much as I could simply from the embarrassment of it all. I mean, I was the one who usually gave the lectures about being careful about who he spoke to and not taking everything at face value, and there I was falling for a guy who, now that I thought about it, had acted pretty much as old as Jay and his friends.

Subconsciously, my head dropped as I realised I had ignored so many indicators that something wasn't right.

"What is it?" Kimmie asked, her head tilting in thought as she watched me.

"Oh, nothing," I faked. Geez, I'd forgotten she was here!

"Veronica, what is it? I can see something's wrong."

Of course, she can, I mused. When does anything ever get by Kimmie?

I let out a short breath and talked her through last Friday night, stuttering and stumbling and fighting tears the whole time. By the time I'd gotten to the end of my story, Kimmie was beside me with her hand rubbing tenderly on my back.

"God, I …" she stammered. "That's so …" Kimmie let out a long sigh, clearly not knowing what sentiment to express.

"Are you really stuck for words?" I said. That was something new. "I guess that just highlights how much of an effed-up situation this is."

"I'm sorry," Kimmie rushed. "It's just … you guys have never ... you know?"

"No. God! Of course not."

"I know, I know. Just checking. Wow. I don't even know what to say, except I hope you gave him a great, big slap."

"Yeah, and then be charged with attacking a minor," I said miserably.

"Better than being charged with sleeping with one."

"Kimmie!" I shouted and gave her a not-too-gentle shove. "You're not helping."

"I'm just saying," she laughed. "I would have slapped him."

I let out another long breath and rested my head against Kimmie's shoulder. "Maybe I should have just taken that exchange and left with George."

"You had better not even think about leaving me here on my own," Kimmie said, giving me a hard squeeze on my shoulder.

That would be regretful, she was my best and practically only friend, but starting new was really starting to feel like a good idea now, and I was seriously considering contacting George to see if any placements were still open.

"Yeah, I guess. Maybe this will just blow over," I said, though I already knew I had fallen in way too deep, and the pain I was feeling wasn't planning on blowing over anytime soon.

* * *

I closed my laptop and stretched my arms out, flexing my fingers in front of me. We had another big project at work, and I had nothing better to do than work so I was keeping myself on top of the tasks.

It had been a month since that night with Jamie and, although I hadn't heard anything from him, it still hadn't gotten any easier.

So this is what a broken heart feels like, I mused and rested my head back on the sofa.

The most beautiful glow came through my front room window at sunset, and it had recently become customary for me to lay here and enjoy it in peace while I waited for Jay to return from school.

That day, earlier than usual, I heard his key in the door.

Oh well, I told myself and straightened back in my seat.

"How's it going?" I asked when Jay finally entered the front room, looking sheepish and even a little suspicious.

He walked over to stand between me and my sunset view, his eyes cautiously watching me as he fiddled with his fingers.

"What is it, Jay?"

"Look … umm … I kept saying no, but he's really been bothering me and …"

"What is it, Jay?" I said, my voice raised slightly. I had just been savouring my sunset in, what was almost, complete tranquillity, but I can sense that is about to change. "Just say what it …"

I didn't need to complete my sentence as Jay's eyes abruptly shifted back to the doorway with my gaze following just as Jamie stepped through the doorway and into full view.