When the girls stopped outside their flat I felt quite jealous. Considering they were both in their final year at university and we actually had jobs, it didn’t seem fair. Of course we weren’t going to be allowed in but I guessed it would all be tidy and smell nice and the walls probably wouldn’t be leaking. It wouldn’t even have to be much to be my very own Aladdin’s cave. I considered proposing to Sandy right then just for a nicer place to stay.
We then head back to our own place while James went on and on about how much he liked Alice, how much they had in common and all the other boring things that smitten people go on about after a successful evening. He went on for almost the entire walk back to our flat, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I was paying absolutely no attention to what he was saying at all. It wasn’t until we actually reached the entrance to our block of flats that he turned to me and finally decided he should probably ask how my evening was.
“So you had a good time?”
“I suppose.”
“See, I told you, it is possible to move on, doesn’t matter that Jessica is living down the hall from you in a dead end relationship. You just got to throw yourself out there. We’ll see the girls again, separately next time. Just make sure you give Sandy a call. This’ll be good for you. All you need is a bit of sex to make everything okay again.”
“Have you been talking to my dad? That was one of his.”
There are enough problems living a flat away from your boss without you being in love with them. Not only could she easily check if I was faking when I called in sick, but she could also casually drop in and ruin my evening by talking about one of the many arguments she had had with her distant boyfriend. So, as sarcastic and non-committal as I was about the evening and Sandy in general, I did begrudgingly get the feeling that maybe he was right. Maybe all I needed was a new girl and I could forget all about Jessica once again, despite her being right down the hall from me. Whether I actually could or not, I liked Sandy and that meant it was certainly worth a try.
My optimistic smile only lasted until we reached the hallway our flat was situated on. Looking down the hall I saw the last person I wanted to see. I had not met Ross before but I had seen him in pictures and now, seeing his smug face in real life my hate for him – and my love for Jessica – just intensified. I made my excuses why I couldn’t sit and talk with them and went straight into my flat. I had completely forgotten that this was the weekend he was coming down. Now that I knew I seriously considered ringing my dad up and finally accepting one of his offers to run someone down. I probably would have but it only would have disrupted his therapy.
Ross was visiting for four days and these four days could easily have been split down the middle and called the two “bliss days” and the two “nightmare days”. Nightmare for all involved or anyone, anywhere near the couple during their decline that was. In fact the difference between the two halves of the four-day period Ross was down was so great that no one saw it coming. I was so sure these two were going to drive me mad all weekend that I made a massive error in judgement and once again seemed to screw up all chances I had with Jessica.
At the beginning of day two I was forced to visit Jessica’s flat to meet Ross (she had made me promise). When I arrived they were sitting in one chair, practically having dry sex for all to see. How anyone was supposed to prepare food, let alone eat it, with that going on was beyond me, but then, I suppose she lived on her own so it was okay. Luckily my arrival was enough to stop the live porn and Ross, clearly wanting to make friends with Jessica’s friends, made the grave error of coming over to talk to me. This wasn’t something I was going to let him get away with.
“Hey, my name’s Ross.” He said, holding his hand out, a hand I did not take, he continued regardless, dropping his hand. I just glared at him, sizing him up. Annoyingly he was bigger than me and I could see that girls would probably find him= handsome. He was clean-shaven with piercing eyes I wished I could steal and harvest for myself. His fingernails were clean and that seemed like something girls would be pleased with. Plus he was tall, and girls dig tall guys. I hated my average height. It seemed he was getting uncomfortable with me staring at me as he continued like we were friends: “Forgive me, I didn’t catch your name . . .?”
“I didn’t throw it,” I said and turned quickly away so I could smile at my clever retort.
“Hey that’s funny,” Ross said with a small laugh that was so fake it was practically insulting. I stayed facing the other way and started to make breakfast, forgetting that this wasn’t my flat and that could be considered as rude, I purposely poured my coco-pops into the bowl from as higher point as possible, just to make enough noise to drown out any other pretentious comments that he might make. By this point Jessica seemed to have noticed my somewhat cool reception to her boyfriend and was coming over to try and save the day.
“Hey Ross, can you get my glass from my room please,” she said with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. I’m sorry to say that neither of them were directed at me. He gave a confused look, which was directed at me, and then left the room.
“What are you doing?”
“I was making breakfast and now I’m about to eat it.”
“Don’t be smart with me.”
“I’m a post-grad, being smart is kind of a pre-requisite.”
“You know what I mean, please don’t be difficult. Ross is a perfectly nice guy, I’ve told you all about him. So why, now that he’s here, are you being all horrible to him?”
Ross re-entered the room at that point so I didn’t have to make any excuses. I just gave them both my best fake smile and head out of the room. I didn’t even notice that I hadn’t put any milk on my stolen breakfast until after I had set the bowl down in my own kitchen. They were of course inedible without milk but I couldn’t go back, it would have undermined my point, and we didn’t have any milk in our flat. I poured away the coco-pops and resigned myself to a day with no breakfast.
I decided the only way to retaliate against Jessica would be to invite my own partner around. If I had Sandy present then at least we would be even, she wouldn’t be able to hold the whole Ross thing over me. Unfortunately Sandy was busy that day and said she couldn’t come around until the following evening. I didn’t really like the idea of waiting to take my revenge but I didn’t have a choice either, I had to accept that for another day I would have to deal with the loved up couple across the hall while I sat alone in my room, sorting myself out.
Like I said the change between bliss and nightmare was incredibly sudden. I went to sleep to the sounds of sex, and woke up to the sounds of fighting (and I live in a whole different falt). Verbal fighting that is. I couldn’t hear him hitting her although knowing Ross as well as I did I was sure that given the chance he would have a pop. It made me sick just to think about it. Still, now that they had been fighting Sandy could be an even better weapon. As made up as they were the argument would be fresh in their mind, and when I came in all happy with my girl, oh that would really hit Jessica hard.
This hypothesis was of course based on the theory that within a couple of hours Ross and Jessica would have made up and would be in their annoying sexy loved up stage again. In actual fact as the day progressed and the screaming continued it seemed less and less likely that they were going to reconnect sometime soon. This all culminated in Ross leaving the flat, slamming the door behind him, at around and 6:30pm and Jessica ending up sitting in my kitchen, crying. This was around the time that I started to worry that I may have shot myself in the foot.
Still, with Jessica crying in my flat, all I could do was comfort her. However I felt about her I went out there with a genuine worry for her. Jessica and I really had become close over the last couple of months and I didn’t want to see her sad. I went out into the kitchen and simply sat there, arm around her, waiting for her to say something. Partly because I guessed that was what you were supposed to do, mainly because I would have no idea what to say.
“I guess you were right about Ross.” She finally sniffled as her tears started to subside. I struggled to remember if I had actually voiced any opinion about Ross, I had merely not been very welcoming of him. She must have drawn some conclusion from that.
“Yeah,” I finally said, “Is that it then? You and him?”
“He’ll come back tomorrow to get his stuff but for now he just wanted to go. I wanted him to go. We’re no longer together and he’s a total prick.”
“I know. I know.” I actually didn’t even know his second name, let alone anything about him or his personality, but he was gone now and I felt perfectly confident smashing his previously good name to pieces if Jessica was going to prompt it.
“We’ve both changed I guess. I think he’s been cheating on me.”
“Wow, that must suck.”
“It doesn’t, that’s the worst thing. The problem is, I don’t think I love him anymore. I think we’re just too different. I was so desperate for it to be okay but it isn’t. It really isn’t.”
“You can’t force something to be good when it isn’t,” I said, desperately trying to think of something both deep and insightful to say, “it may be upsetting but if you don’t feel the same anymore than it’s probably best for you to cut it off now. You know what I mean?”
“Were you jealous?”
“What?” I was shocked; the question caught me off guard. Okay so I’d been overtly off with Ross but I didn’t expect her to pick up on any jealousy, I really didn’t want her to see that. Unless of course she felt the same, and that definitely seemed like a possibility, I had known there was chemistry right from when she walked back into my life.
“Earlier, you really didn’t seem to like Ross, but you hadn’t even met him before. Was it because you were jealous, or did you know something that I don’t?”
“I . . . uh.” I really didn’t know how to answer. Did I lie and say that I wasn’t jealous? I could say I just didn’t like the look of the guy. That had the definite up side of there being no chance of me being rejected. I didn’t think I could take a knock back from the same girl twice, especially now that I knew my love the first time was true. Or I could lay it all out, tell her that I had been jealous, and tell her that I loved her and all I wanted was to be with her and that was why I hadn’t like Ross.
“Well . . .?”
I went with the safest way of telling her I could think of. “Maybe . . . I was . . . Just the tiniest bit . . . jealous . . . It depends, what would you think about that?”
She didn’t answer my question as such but she did lean in and kiss me and in many ways, that was much better than any answer she could have given me. Besides the kiss was so perfect that I soon forgot the whole conversation we had been having, I forgot about everyone else in my life. It just felt as though this was the kiss I had been waiting for my entire life, ever since I had first seen Jessica when I was five. I felt like that Princess in that Disney film being given the kiss of life except that I’m a guy version. It was so perfect. So of course someone had to knock on the door.
Suddenly I remembered Sandy. She had been due to arrive about five minutes ago and I had completely forgotten. At first I was just annoyed she was later . . . we had agreed a time and she should have been punctual. Then I realised that should be quite low done on my current list of worried and started to panic. Once again the thought that God hated me was reaffirmed in my mind. I had finally got everything I ever wanted and now it was going to be ripped away from me by a girl with a stupid name. I couldn’t allow that to happen. I kept the kiss going, just hoping that Jessica wouldn’t notice the knocking.
“We should probably get that,” she said with a smile pulling away from me. I wanted to grab her and pull her back but I didn’t think she would take that too well.
“We don’t have to. It’s probably nothing important, when is it ever anything important?” I was desperately trying to think of any escape route. I considered just beating both Sandy and Jessica to death with a saucepan but I imagined that would raise more problems than it would solve. Besides, Jessica was already getting up to answer the door and the saucepans were in my cupboard on the other side of the room. I’d never be quick enough.
“Don’t worry,” Jessica said, as if that would reassure me, “it won’t be Ross, he won’t come back, and if he does, I’ll just tell him that I don’t want to see him anymore. He’s not a very good fighter anyway, I’m sure you could take him.”
“I’m not worried about it being Ross.” Although now I was a little worried about it being Ross, saying I could take him was like implying that he was likely to fight me when he found out I’d been kissing his girl. I was a terrible fighter and I doubted I could take him at all. Jessica was clearly either overestimating his weakness or underestimating my strength. The fact that Ross would even show up at my flat showed he must have a problem. Either way, now I was worried about it being Sandy or Ross.
“Look!” I shouted and she turned around at the door, I then realised I had nothing to point at and instead softened my approach, “look, I really like you and I had no idea you and Ross were going to break down. I mean, I can’t be blamed for this; a man’s got to move on. I completely forgot she was even coming. It was your fault. You kissed me. You and your lips.” This was getting worse by the second and I could see shouting was not helping. She was about to answer my front door which seemed a bit off, surely that’s illegal.
“What are talking about?” She said and I realised I was babbling. Instead I just stood in silence, paralyzed, which quite frankly wasn’t any better. If anything it was worse, at least when I was babbling she wasn’t reaching for the door which she did the moment I fell silent. She opened it up and revealed Sandy standing in the doorway.
“Heya, I’m Sandy. I’m here for my date.” Sandy said with a big smile. Then she saw me and bound straight past Jessica, rushing up to me and kissing me on the cheek. Jessica looked part way between bemused and upset at this recent development and turned to me for an explanation.
“I was going to tell you,” I tried, weakly, “look I completely forgot, like I said, I had no idea you and Ross were going to break up. I’m sorry.”
“What have you got to be sorry for?” She asked, a hurt look in her eyes, “enjoy you’re date. Lovely to meet you Sandy.” She disappeared into her room and I just stared at her door, stuck, not knowing what I was going to do. Jessica had been everything I’d ever dreamed of getting and finally when I had got her, it was all gone. It was all Sandy’s fault, the thoughts of murder floated to the top of my mind again. With Sandy gone there would be no one to get in the way of Jessica and my happiness.
“What’s going on?” Sandy asked, confused.
I’m not proud of how I handled things with Sandy. She was a really sweet, pretty (ish), kind girl and if it wasn’t for the events of that day, for Jessica and Ross breaking up, for Jessica kissing me, we probably could have had a great relationship. But the moment Jessica and I kissed it wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to make the mistake I had made with Daisy. I knew I wouldn’t be so lucky again and if I slept with Sandy I would definitely have no chance to get back with Jessica.
Instead I was quite blunt. I told Sandy exactly how it was, how I had invited her round to try and make Jessica jealous, how I had only gone on a date with her in the first place to help out my friend, how Jessica had kissed me and how it was Jessica I really wanted to be with. For that little speech I got a load of bad words thrown at me followed by a slap, all of which I fully deserved. After that Sandy stormed out and I was left all alone.
I knocked on Jessica’s door a few times but she wouldn’t answer. Instead I was forced to head back to my room where I lay on my bed, alone, staring up at the crack in my ceiling and thinking about what to do next. Despite this set back Jessica had kissed me, I was there, I was sure. I now knew that she liked me and whatever had happened I wasn’t giving up.
Jessica and I. We were going to be together.