I smoothed my mouth out and tried to be as serious as I could. “Okay.”
He put the game in, set up the remotes, and explained the directions. Which weren’t all that specific, since the point of the game was basically to create worlds that you could play in. Our Sackpeople flipped and whirled through cities and around fantastic gardens of our own creation. We engaged in friendly battles, met other Sackpeople, and explored the graphics and world possibilities. Jake and I made an amazing team; he was careful and thoughtful, I was experimental and fearless and our world grew and expanded like an amazing Wonderland. We got so sucked into the game, I had no clue at all how much time had gone by, but I couldn’t contemplate stopping. Before we knew it, we heard the roar of an engine outside, and Jake’s father was home. I froze, and my Sackgirl’s menacing high kick fell short of Jake’s Sackboy’s karate slash.
“No worries.” Jake rubbed a hand on my arm. “He’s not even going to stop in here.”
I heard his father put his keys down in the kitchen, then listened with dread as his heavy boot-steps echoed down the hall, closer and closer to Jake’s door. I was positive he’d stop and poke his head in, especially since the light from the television was still on, but he didn’t. The master bedroom door opened and snapped shut.
I let out a huge breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding in.
Jake put an arm around me. “He wouldn’t care if he knew. I swear.”
I felt a hot prickle when I realized that Jake was saying it because he was positive about it. Because he’d had other girls over and his father hadn’t cared.
Jake put the controls away, flipped the TV off, and put an arm around me again, but I brushed it off. “Don’t be so worried,” he crooned in my ear.
“I’m not.”
“What’s wrong?” He put a hand on my chin and rubbed it gently with his fingers. “Brenna? Tell me.”
“Was she here? Did she stay over?” It was stupid to ask. We were trying to forget that it had all happened, not keep dragging it out over and over. Especially since I was the one who broke up with Jake and fooled around with Saxon.
“Do you want me to answer that? Really?” Jake’s voice was hard with frustration.
“I guess you already answered.” I looked around his cramped, bland room, so foreign in the dark. It was weird to think that this was the exact place Jake sat when we had our marathon phone conversations. I decided to focus on those thoughts and how generally good the night had been instead of pointing fingers. Especially when I really had no business pointing out anyone else’s mess ups. “It really doesn’t matter. I’m ready to go to sleep now.” I smiled.
Jake’s return smile was cautious. “Do you need to wash your face and all that?”
I nodded and grabbed my overnight bag, feeling weird and shy suddenly. “Okay, I’m going.”
“Okay.” He laughed and fell back on the bed. “I’ll be right here.”
I changed in the bathroom and spent a long time washing my face and brushing my teeth. I snuck back in the room and found Jake dozing. I poked him awake, and he stumbled across the hall. I snuggled under the covers while he was getting ready, and his pillow felt uncomfortable under my head, but smelled perfectly familiar, just like Jake.
He opened the door softly and closed it behind him. He pulled off his shirt and let his jeans drop, then yanked off his socks, balled them all up and threw them in the hamper in the corner of his room. He stood for a long minute, so handsome in just his boxers, in front of the bed, then slid in next to me. His body was long and warm next to mine, and I rolled into his arms, where I fit snug and tight as a key in a lock.
He looked down at my face in the dim flow from the streetlights that shined in his window. “I love how you look when you have no makeup on.”
“What? I spend a lot of time getting makeup on when I know I’m going to see you! I won’t do it anymore if you’re going to be unappreciative.” I leaned up and kissed his chin.
“You look great no matter what, but I love you without makeup on. You look so beautiful and, I guess I feel like I get to see you in a way no other guy gets to.” He pressed his mouth to mine.
“I love you so much,” I whispered when he pulled away.
“I love you.” His arms clamped around me tight. “More than anything in the world. Don’t forget that. I know I tried to be all cool with it, but it broke my heart when I thought I lost you.”
I held him tighter. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.”
He held me close and whispered. “Forget it. It’s just you and me, no problems, doing this thing together. We’ll be unstoppable.” His voice dropped off sleepily. A few minutes later, he was snoring softly, and I was still locked safe and sure in his arms.
Chapter Eighteen
After that night, life went back to something like the normal it had been before Jake and I broke up, but it wasn’t exactly the same. For one thing, my cross country glories meant that our team kept going and going, and the season stretched out all the way to states. Once Mom gave her okay for me to run again, I was as fast as ever. I had been a little nervous that with no craziness to worry about, no stresses to work out on the track, I’d just stop running. But that didn’t happen. In fact, I ran faster, the buzzing in my head gone and replaced with calm focus.
Jake made every big meet with my parents. He and Mom had come to an uneasy truce.
“Bren, don’t you think that dating a little more would be a good thing?” she had asked the night before I went back to school.
I’d said it before, and I would say it again; my mother was the best mother on earth, but she was no dummy. She had seen most of the whole sordid thing unfold right in front of her eyes, and she was dead set on milking the momentum of it.
“I will,” I said honestly. “If I meet someone great, I will hang out with him. I promise. But, Mom, I have to say this; Jake is awesome. It sounds like the biggest teenage clichй, but you don’t understand what he’s like.”
Mom sighed a long, tortured sigh. “Jake is a great guy,” she said with no real conviction. “But that doesn’t mean you two have to be joined at the hip to be happy.”
“I hardly see him,” I protested. “We only see each other for a few hours in school, and he works a lot. Plus that I have cross country, and I’ve been seeing Kelsie more.” Kelsie and Chris decided to spend more time with friends, since they’d been practically living together and getting on each other’s nerves. I was glad that she reached out to me. “I’m not exactly weeping every minute I’m not with him.” Though I did get sad without him. Especially when the panic of our breakup rushed over me once in a while.
“I just want you to keep your options open,” Mom said, and then she said a few more things that were basically along the same line of the first statement, and I listened respectfully, but as soon as we were done talking, I gave her a kiss and when she left my room, I called Jake. I did not tell him what Mom and I talked about.
Because things with Jake were still a work in progress, which I liked, but had to be careful with.
Like I had to balance what ‘freedoms’ I wanted with what might hurt his feelings. Hence, no direct hanging out with Saxon. Who had, since our last meeting at my sick-bed, been in and out of the pants of a half a dozen girls, at least that could be confirmed. That didn’t really creep me out; what was weird was the kinds of girls he was picking; brains, cross-country runners, and artistic girls, all types that in some form or another I liked, respected, and felt a definite connection with. He only ever commented on it once, in Government.
We were viciously trying to capture more blue states in a geeky bid to control Sanotoni’s U.S. map. I said something random, and he laughed. That wasn’t that out of the norm; I had a fair ability to crack Saxon up.
He looked leaner, a new set of tattoos peeked out from under the sleeves of his Blondie t-shirt, and his hair was cut in a low mohawk. He also had a lip ring, which he moved with his tongue incessantly. Now he was laughing and the silver hoop around his bottom lip gleamed. “You’re damn funny, Blix.”