What Connects Us: Jessica and Jeremy

Fragment Twenty-Two

So I guess I've finally updated...

I'm sitting here with a bowl of cereal dust next to me wondering how I could apologize for the extreme delay. Well I could blame it on college. This course was the worst course I've ever had in my past three and a half years of college. The worst. Of course that wouldn't be enough but maybe my updating would clear things up? 

I, too, hope I would update more often. 

Now how's that for a New Year's Resolution? ;)

***

Get him back?...thought Jessica. She darted her eyes across the bland kitchen walls in search of an answer. Why would a man, whom she once had thought was interested in her to a certain extent, want to help her get her ex-husband back?

 "Get him back?" she said, uttering her first thought. 

"Well, yes," he said with a slight crease of his eyebrow. "Isn't that what you want?" 

Jessica smiled, but his answer was not the answer she had been hoping for. 

"It-it is, yes, but it's different I guess. He's not who he used to be."

"So? Make him the man he used to be," he said with a shrug, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

Jessica crossed her arms on the tabletop and leaned forwards towards him. "Let me guess; show him pictures of our past, play a little melody of our 'song', which by the way does not exist. Tease him with its and bits of what he's missing on and mostly let him remember why he married me?" she said with an obvious note of sarcasm in her voice.

"Exactly," he said, unfazed by her sarcastic response. "The last bit, anyway." 

"Let him remember why he married you in the first place," he quoted her, and a small smile crept his lips. "Let him get a taste of the hell he put you in."

Jessica smiled at his offer. "I'll try my best," she said.

She bit her lip before starting again. "I'm sorry but I don't understand why you're trying to help me get him back," she said, and immediately regretted stating her thoughts that were originally to be stashed in her mind and her mind only.

Mark shrugged and smiled. "Ever since I saw you at the diner you had that sad look in you, and even after I had run into you it never went away. So, someone's ought to do something about it, and I figured the people here were idiots so I might as well do it," he said with a wink and a chuckle.

Jessica smiled again, "well it's nice of you to help me, so thank you."

Mark smiled back and stood up from the kitchen stool.

"I guess I'm going to have to leave now, I'm gonna be late for dinner with my father. I'll see you soon, yeah?" he said, as Jessica followed him to the main door of the inn.

"Yes, definitely," Jessica said as she opened the door for him. "Diner tomorrow?" she suggested.

"At around seven thirty?" he completed her request.

"Perfect to me, I'll see you then," she said with a nod.

"I'll see you," Mark said as he stood outside the threshold as the light summer breeze blew at his dark hair. 

"Oh and Jessica?" he said as he turned on his heels. "I'm expecting updates," he said with a wink. Jessica nodded and smiled. 

She closed the door and turned around, only with a slight gasp as she had realized Jeremy had been standing by the stairs the whole time, and the fear that he had listened to her plan with mark struck her right in her already-wrecked heart.

"Jeremy!" she exclaimed. "You scared me there," she said as she cleared her voice.

"Updates of what?" Jeremy said, ignoring Jessica's exasperation.

"Oh nothing important, just some dessert recipe he taught me in the kitchen," she lied, hoping it would get him to stop asking more questions.

She studied his face, but it bore no expression. His eyes, a cold blue, stood as a barrier between them, in her case, anyway. 

"I have something to show you," he said, changing the tense air between them. Jessica nodded with a quick sigh of relief as she followed him up the stairs. She followed him into his suite, which was even cleaner than Jessica's suite. He made good use of the coffee table by adding his collection of yacht magazines, a lifetime passion of his. 

She followed him to his study, which was right next to his bedroom, and all the way to the fox-blood desk sitting by the window overlooking the pool. Jessica's cheeks turned rosy red as she remembered her encounter with Jeremy, him gazing at a rather indecent Jessica swimming in the pool. 

Jeremy sat at the desk with a stack of papers in front of him and a iMac at the side. 

Of course...Jessica thought as she placed a hand on the desk, what would he show me other than office-work?...

"I've gone through all the case studies of Jameson; something doesn't seem right about the company. For one, their numbers are all too good to be true, especially in a small town like this," Jeremy said. 

Jessica creased a brow. "What do you mean? What are you suggesting, anyway?" She leaned on the desk to see the papers, her body a bit too close to him for business partners, but it was rather unintentional. 

"I don't know if I want to get through with this investment we're doing. I'm contacting Father as soon as I get a hold of him, but in the mean time I want to put things on hold and just wait to see what the company's intentions are."

Jessica moved back a step, "Jeremy, are you saying they might be scammers or something?" 

"Not necessarily but they might be playing dirty. I don't want Mark coming to the Inn again."

Jessica scoffed, "he's a friend, Jeremy."

"I didn't think it was anything more, if that's what you're saying, but I wouldn't really trust him if I were you."

Jessica crossed her arms, 'I'm sorry but who are you to talk to me about trust?"

Jeremy rolled his eyes, which was the most informal expression he had done since his return. "So we're back to square one, aren't we? If you want to go there just get out, please." 

"Well maybe you should be careful with your words because they always lead up to square one," Jessica suggested. 

"Or so you think," Jeremy said. "By the way, there wasn't anything to do with trust. How did I break your trust?" 

"You were supposed to be loyal to me!" Jessica said.

"I was. Can we drop this now?" he said with obvious annoyance in his voice.

"How can you live with it, Jeremy? Especially with me as your next door neighbor for the next couple of months?"

"Couple of days if I don't figure out the matter with the Jameson’s."

"I'm really hoping it'd be a couple of days," she spat out, but truly there was a small part of her that wanted them to live there forever.

"But then you'd lose your friend Mark, wouldn't you?" he retorted. 

"He's just a friend, for God's sake," Jessica exclaimed, nearly shouting across the room. Her face turned cold as soon as she came to an observation.  "Wait, why? Are you jealous of him?" she asked as she crossed her eyes.

Jeremy scoffed, and a smile crept on his lips. "And what would I be jealous of, exactly?"

Jessica leaned her body on his desk once again with close proximity to him. She could smell his Armani fragrance wafting through their short distance, a sweet smell to cover up the tension between them. She moved her eyes towards his face, studying the ice in eyes, wondering if she could ever break them, return him to who he was. She studied the way his lips were so beautifully shaped, and remembered how perfectly their lips locked together in a kiss. 

She looked at his eyes again, but they were still a solid blue, and Jeremy hadn't moved. She dipped her head in the air with a racing heart, and planted a kiss on the lips she had missed most.