And then suddenly everybody started screaming. And she was screaming. And just before her small body smashed into those spikes, where she would fall to a horrific death, she lifted her body upward in a hard jerk as if she was lifting it up from death itself, and opened her eyes.
She began to feel her body. She was drenched in sweat. But she wasn’t bleeding. She wasn’t wedged into spikes. She was in bed. Her own bed. And Kenny was on the side of the bed putting the last of his clothes in his suitcase. But that part didn’t register to her at first. That dream, and the way she woke up, did.
“Was I screaming?” she asked him.
He rolled his eyes. “What do you think? You’ve been dreaming those dreams for the whole time I’ve been staying here.” Then he frowned. “Yeah your ass was screaming like you always do. What else is new?”
Then she saw his luggage. “That’s a lot of clothes for a business trip.”
“I’ll come back and get the rest.”
Jayda looked from the suitcase to him. It still hadn’t registered. “What do you mean?”
It had been a week after he had promised Makela that he would end it with Jayda once and for all, but it wasn’t as easy as Makela thought it would be. Kenny wasn’t in love with Jayda at all, but he was in love with how good she made him feel in bed. That wasn’t easy to just give up.
“What do you mean you’ll come back and get the rest, Kenny? Why are you packing?”
“We’re playing house, that’s why, and I’m tired of it.”
“Playing?Who’s playing?”
“We are. We can’t keep playing these games.Ican’t keep playing them anyway. I want more out of life than this. You should too.”
Jayda knew a breakup when she saw one. She also knew that empty, lonely feeling she always felt when it happened. She lifted her knees up to her chin and folded her arms around her legs. She wanted to cocoon her heart. “Why would you think I don’t want more out of life? What’s that supposed to mean, Kenny?”
Kenny threw his shirts into his suitcase. “You aren’t up to my standards,” he said with bitterness in his voice. “That’s what it means! I’m a junior executive going places. Yes, I’m at a small firm right now. And no, the pay’s not so great right now. But that’s just the beginning for me. At least I’m going places,”he said again. “All you’re doing is delivering food on a damn e-bike.”
“Don’t even try that with me.” Now Jayda was red-hot too. “You know I got laid off. I was making just as much money as you are when I got laid off, so don’t you dare try that shit with me. I’m only doing gig work until I can get another job. And even doing that I still work my ass off and I still pay my share of the rent. But in this recession nobody’s hiring and nobody’s leaving their jobs and you know that. How is my being laid off my fault?”
“Because your ass unlucky. Good things never happen to you. And I don’t wanna be around no unlucky loser like you. That shit may rub off on me.”
Jayda felt a pang in her soul when he said those words.
But he kept complaining. “That’s how it’s your fault. You don’t have what it takes to be with a man like me. You don’t have what it takes, Jayda!”
Then he zipped up his suitcase and grabbed it. He looked at her. She was good in bed and he was going to miss that. No doubt about it. And she had that look, too. She had that special something that he knew men were going to want to try out. He didn’t like the idea of other men touching her, but that was a small price to pay to be rid of her. Even his boys were saying it.Jayda the JokeandJayda the Jinx, or whatever else nickname they gave her, was a drag on a man like him.
But he knew how to push her buttons. Because of the shitty way she’d been treated all her life, he knew her self-esteem was crap when it all came down to it, and he wanted his parting words to keep it down there. Because he also knew, even if she didn’t know it, that she had what it took to rise above him and do better than he’d ever do. She was, after all, making just as much money as he was making before she got laid off. She wastelling the truth about that. But what she didn’t know was that he despised her for it even then.
“Let’s face it, Jay,” he said to her. “Some of us are winners. And some of us are losers. You’ve been a loser all your life. Nothing’s ever gonna change for you. Not ever. And I want no parts of that,” he said, giving her a nasty look, as he headed for the bedroom door.
Although he hurt her to her core, and she knew it was his intention to hurt her, she was practical if she was anything. “Rent’s coming up. You gonna still pay your part of the rent, right, until I can find a roommate?”
He looked at her with disdain in his eyes. “What do you think?”
“I can’t pay this rent by myself, Kenny, and you know it!”
“Sounds like a personal problem to me. I’m not on that lease.”
“That’s because your credit was too damn bad. But you don’t have to be on the lease to live here. You live here too.”
“Correction: I used to live here. I don’t anymore. I’m out. All this shit on you now.” Then he smiled a smile that wasn’t meant to be joyful. “Couldn’t happen to a better loser,” he said, grinned, and then slammed the door just as Jayda was grabbing her pillow and throwing it at him.
“Asshole!” she yelled after him. But the pillow hit the door and then slid down to the floor. Besides: He was already gone.
But when that fear of being alone that always got her in trouble in the past gripped her, and she wanted to run after him and beg him to give her another chance, she stopped herself. He didn’t want her. And the way he talked to her and looked at her made clear he didn’t even like her. Why would she run after that?
She laid back down. There was no way she was going to be able to afford to pay full rent on gig work and the little she made in tips at her waitress job. There was no way.
