Old Friends (Janet and Toni Fanfic)

Chapter 10

Janet

I immediately regretted not putting on a shirt and crossed my arms over my chest. Even though he was wearing sunglasses, I could tell Kenny was nervous.

"She's in the shower right now, I don't know if you just wanted to come back later, or..." He looked down at his flowers. What was this about? Something stirred in the pit of my stomach: jealousy. Suddenly I didn't feel like showering with her.

"I, uh.. Yeah. I will come back later, but can you give these to her?" He pushed the flowers into my arms and turned around. With that, he was gone.

I waited until his car was out of sight before I went to my own. There was going to have to be some explaining.

As I came back inside, Toni was standing in the foyer clad in only her half-open  robe, waiting for me.

"I was wondering what was taking you so long, I-"

Her eyes fell to the flowers. "Jan, where did you get these from?" She asked, walking toward me. I just stayed in the same spot. "They're beautiful."

"Kenneth just dropped these off... He said he would come back later. Um, is there something you want to tell me?" I handed them over to her. I felt myself getting a little upset, but she looked just as surprised as I was. I didn't want to jump to any conclusions, but I couldn't help it.

She didn't answer me because she was too busy reading the card inside the bouquet. Toni's face relaxed as the realization clicked in her head. She sighed and set them on a side table.

"Toni," I asked again. "What are they for?"

"Can we talk after our shower?" She headed for the stairs.

"If we talk after the shower, it's no longer going to be OUR shower. What's going on with you guys?"

She looked down at her robe, doing anything to avoid eye contact with me. "The other day, when we were at the studio..."

"What about the studio? Look at me." I stepped toward her and fixed my eyes on her.

"It's nothing, actually. It's-"

"Obviously it's something, he's buying you flowers and shit. Now what happened?" I was getting angrier and angrier. Why did she feel like she couldn't tell me? This wasn't like her to hide anything from me.

"Janet, I don't really wanna talk about it. Can we please go back upstairs, my water is still running."

"Why? You don't trust me? You think I'd get mad or something?"

"Well you seem pretty pissed off now, I don't know." She raised her voice sarcastically. I knew this was not about to end well.

"Only because you're hiding stuff from me! You know I hate it when you don't tell me shit."

"I haven't gotten one phone call from you and ten years and you expect me to lay all my shit bare for you as soon as you come back?" She spat.

Low blow. I didn't say anything. "Yeah. That's what I thought. Because it's not like I didn't reach out to you when you went to New York. It's not like I didn't call, Janet. You just didn't make an effort, and it hurt. A lot."

"Ton, you know I would have called you-"

"Don't, don't do that to me. Please don't lie. You wouldn't have called me because you didn't want to. What happened, huh? I would have been there when all that shit hit the fan with the Super Bowl. I would have been there when Michael passed. Did you even know that I had to file for bankruptcy again? Huh?"

A silent roll of tears streaked my face as she spoke. She was so right, and nothing I said could bring back the ten years of genuine friendship that we could have had.

"Exactly. Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going to take a shower, and I think it's best if you go. I'll call you later." She didn't look at me, rather she fixed her eyes to the wall behind me as I sulked past her.

I went back upstairs to get my bag like a guilty puppy, making a note to leave my toys sitting on her nightstand; this wasn't over. I was going to fix whatever I had broken eventually, and what better way to do that than through sexual pleasure after it was all said and done? Makeup sex was my specialty.

"Thanks for coming over anyway," Toni muttered, holding the front door open for me. "It was fun while it lasted." Her parting words made me feel even worse; naturally, she didn't have a hateful or bitter bone in her body. I knew she wasn't so much mad at me (and she wouldn't be for long) as she was disappointed and hurt, and seeing her like that broke my heart, especially knowing I was the one who caused it.

Driving down her long driveway, more tears began to flow as I was left alone with my thoughts. It made me cry harder when the realization dawned on me that the person I would go to first in this kind of situation wasn't here anymore: Mike. It stopped me in my tracks as I tried to dial his number out of habit, knowing he wouldn't answer. It was getting harder to drive, the tears blurring my vision and the grief clouding my focus. For the first time in a long time, I felt completely alone.

Once I got home, I went straight for the ice cream in my freezer without even bothering to get a bowl, and took the container and spoon up to my room. I pulled my phone out and called the next person I could think of to cry to. It only rang twice before a familiar voice bellowed on the other end a warm greeting. I responded:

"Hi Jermaine, are you busy?"

Toni

I spent nearly two hours sitting on the floor of my shower, thinking about how everything was moving so fast between Janet and I as the water pelted my back. Even if we didn't have sex, I still was trying to run from the fact that it wouldn't be the exact same between us for a while, if that. Like she'd said, a lot has happened between the time we last spoke and the moment we locked eyes  at the show that night, and it felt almost like we were starting completely over, as much as I didn't want to. Us having sex, no matter how intense and beautiful it was, only made it more complicated.

I finally got out of the shower and got dressed in sweats. I felt drained physically and emotionally from all of the intercourse and confrontation. I needed a sandwich, a nap, and a drink.

I remembered the pizza that I ordered the night before that we never got a chance to eat, and brought the whole box plus a whole bottle of wine up to my bedroom, not even bothering to heat it up or get a glass. Passing the front door on the way upstairs, Face's flowers caught my eye. I decided to invite him back over to talk and see what he had to say, as well as apologize. I felt a little guilty for the way the I stormed off on him the other day, but if only he knew everything that was going on prior to our conversation, he would have understood. Not that anything has changed about my feelings for him, but he deserved a real response. Maybe I wouldn't tell him why we couldn't be together, or maybe I would. I had that mental war in my head all the way up until I heard my doorbell ring for the second time and was inviting him upstairs and to my room, feeling vulnerable and a little tipsy.