Jace and Kate

Chapter 10

Jace

I don’t know what made me act the way I did around Kaat. When I was around her, I didn’t act like the me everyone knew. I acted like my normal self. The me I always wanted to be. It felt good to be able to do it, especially around someone. But when we kissed? Don’t even get me started. I just know that I want to keep doing it, all the time.

When we are together it’s as if I’m just a normal guy. Not some rock star that everyone knows and loves. It feels really good to be myself and not hold anything back around someone for a change instead of being guarded all the time.

I thought all of this while I was walking back to my apartment. Of course I had put my hood back up and had my sunglasses back on but I still felt somewhat like a normal guy. My phone made a little beep in my pocket. I pulled it out at saw that it was Lee. I held the phone up to my ear.

“Hey.” I answered.

We hadn’t talked in a while and I felt bad that I had neglected my best friend but I was sure that he was fine on his own. He probably had another girl to try to swoon (and fail miserably).

“Hey man, what are you doing Friday night?” he questioned.

“Um, nothing that I know of. Jackie hasn’t called me to tell me what is on my plate so I must be free.” I trailed.

“Good. I’m having a party on Friday and I need you to be the entertainment.” He said getting to the point.

“So your wanting to use me?”

“Yeah, isn’t that what friends do?” he asked.

We both burst out laughing.

“Alright.” I agreed.

“Cool. Thanks man!”

“Yeah, but you owe me!”

“Yeah yeah, what ever dude.” he dismissed and hung up.

Once home, I tried to figure out what I should do. I had nothing scheduled, it was my day off. I stripped out of my sweatshirt and put my sunglasses back on the table by the door. I took three more steps into my apartment before noticing that there was something weird about this place.

There was the smallest hint of peaches in the air, my dirty dishes were washed and put away and my clothes were picked up off my floor and put in my basket. I quickly walk into my living room area and find Brooklinn sitting on my couch.

She turned around at the sound of my feet scuffling across the dark hard wood floor, a stronger scent of peaches traveled under my nose as her hair swished around. She smiled at me and got up off the couch to show off an incredibly short dress, showing off her almost stick thin legs. She walked from behind the couch and I saw that she was also wearing heels.

“Brooklinn, what are you doing here?” I asked in a rough tone.

“Don’t get too excited.” she snapped.

“Oh, I’m sorry for not showing common courtesy but you’re the one who helped herself into my apartment, so you pretty much forfeited that luxury.” I snapped back.

“It’s not my fault I still have the key.” she said holding it up.

I stormed up to her and snatched it out of her hand. She stuck out her lip and made a pouty face at me like she was hurt.

“Do I really have to ask what you’re doing here again?” I asked already getting tired of this conversation.

“Can’t a girl come see her boyfriend?” she asked innocently.

“Ex! You always forget the ex in ex- boyfriend.”

“Oh, darling. No relationship is over until I say it is.” she said with her stupid smile still plastered on her face.

“Then hurry up and say it is over so that I can politely kick you out.”

“I’m not going to say it. I still love you, Jace.” she said in a slithery voice.

Brooklinn walked up to me, and she placed her hand on my cheek, running it down my face and neck to the collar of my shirt, tugging it down a tad. Her finger started making slow circles on my collar bone. She looked up at me with her dreamy eyes, and I almost fell for it, but then I thought of Kaat.

“Then I’m going to have to kick you out the mean way.” I said after regaining my cool.

I grabbed her arm, and dragged her to the apartment door. After opening the door, I push her out and slam the door in her face. My stress out of sight for now.

I walked back into my living room and plopped down in a chair. I turned the television on and tried to forget about the most recent event, no such luck.

Seeing Brooklinn shook me up a bit. I hadn’t seen her since she left for Prague six months ago, and I haven’t heard from her in eight months. I tried to remember if I had given her that key or not. I remember that I did but I thought I got it back from her in an envelope in the mail.

I guess it doesn’t matter if she gave me the key back in the mail or not because I have the key now. And who does she think she is, coming back into my life after not contacting me for almost a year? Then she has the audacity to say that I’m her boyfriend and that the relationship isn’t over until she says it is?!

She is the one who left me! She left me! She left me standing in the rain outside of the restaurant, where I had just proposed to her, just staring at her cab as it drove away to a destination I didn’t  know about. I had to hear from the tabloids two months later that she had left for a modeling job in Prague, and I didn’t know when she was coming back. In that eight month period, I never so much as heard from her. She never called me or texted me or wrote me. She didn't even give me a reply to my proposal. She just walked off, doing what she does best.

I guess I could understand that she was busy but I was her boyfriend, she should have at least have made time to write me a short little something saying where she was and that she loved me or something. But communication was cut off completely. And now she is expecting me to take her back like nothing ever happened?! Just like that, we’re back together? Yeah right.

Just thinking about this got me all hot and bothered. I turned off the television which had been turned to some chick flick movie. Obviously Brooklinn had been waiting here for a while. I went into my room and searched through my dresser drawers, which had been conveniently sorted, for my basketball shorts and a t-shirt so I could go to the gym and work off this anger.