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Jess buries her face in her hands.
Already scraped raw, the last thing she needs is an audience. “I got this. Thanks.” I take the box from the manager, but I still can’t salvage my smile.
The woman glances at my girl one more time, then leaves us alone.
I tug the bottom of Jess’s sopping yoga pants, using the fabric to pull her foot forward. “Let me look.”
She tenses as I unwrap my shirt and gingerly check the wound.
“It stopped bleeding. And it’s smaller than I thought. No glass or gravel.” I slide my thumb across the top of her foot. And pretend her instant withdrawal isn’t a sucker punch. The first aid kit tucked under my arm, I stand and reach for her. “We should wash the cut before we bandage it.”
“I can do it.” She pushes off the couch, wincing.
It’s agony to watch her hobble through the wide arch toward the long counter with two widely-spaced sinks. I scoop her up to sit sideways on the counter, feet pointing toward the sink on the left. Tuning out her grunt of irritation, I flip on the faucet and make sure the water’s lukewarm before I set her foot under the light stream.
Pink streaks down the sides and into the drain. As soon as the water runs clear, she turns off the tap. She doesn’t speak to me, but we work as a team, drying and covering the cut with antibiotic cream and gauze.
The second I secure the length of textured stretchy wrap she retreats as far as she can without sliding into the second sink. Babying her bad foot, she draws her legs into her chest and tips her head to her knees.
I listen to the rain beat on the roof, my hand centimeters from touching the curve of her back. I want so badly to say—I’m so sorry. I didn’t know Kim was coming. I won’t kiss her again.But I promised not to lie, and there’s no good way to confess the truth.
Lifting a few of Jess’s wet curls, I rub them between my fingers. “Would it matter if I told you I didn’t kiss Kim, she kissed me?”
Silence.
“Or that all I could think about was that she didn’t smell like you or taste like you or feel like you?”
More silence. End-of-the-line silence.
I have to fix this. I will fix this. “Jess, please.” I tangle my fingers in the dripping ends of her hair. “Yell at me. Hit me. I don’t care. Just do something.”
What she does is uncurl her legs and scoot away. “It’s not okay to spend the night with me and then...” She shakes her head and glances up, blinking her eyes.
“I know.”
“Youdon’t.” She swivels to lean her back against the mirror and sit cross-legged on the counter. “Last night wasn’t a big deal to you. You hookup all the time.”
“I don’t hookup all—”
“But it was a huge deal for me.” She brushes away a few tears. “I don’t do stuff like that. You were the first guy I ever kissed. The first guy who ever touched me...” The regret in her eyes bottoms me out. “I thought I was special. I thoughtwewere—”
“Weare.”
“Then why would you let Kim close enough to kiss you?” Her washed-out voice teeters on a cliff of confusion and hurt, begging me to catch her before she falls.
But I can’t. Not the way she wants. “Because Kim’s in my contract, and I need my damn job back.” No way in hell is Jess going to understand. “Kissing Kim is a part I play. It means absolutely freaking nothing. It means less then picking up a Coke and drinking it out of habit when you don’t even like Coke.”
If Jess swore, she’d call me an asshat. That’s the look on her face.
“That didn’t come out right.” My fingers forming a compress-and-release vise on my neck while I pace in front of the three empty bathroom stalls. One. Squeeze. Two. Squeeze. Three. Pivot. Take the trip again.
“You should’ve told me.” A wall goes up in her voice. A wall shutting me right the hell out.
Frustration is a quick-start flame burning under muscle and skin. “You wouldn’t have understood,” I yell. “You don’t understand now.” Shit. Shit.Shit. I’m yelling at my girl when I’m the screw-up.
I slam my back against a partition between two stalls and force myself to chill the hell out—fist my hands, take deep breaths, ignore the blistering rage. It’s a battle to dial back the burn. “Mom’s quarterly bill from The Oasis is forty thousand. Coley’s tuition for next semester at SMU is staring me down. I have three car payments. Insurance. And taxes due on the house in December.” How did I get to be a freaking middle-aged man? “If I sell the house, my sister will hate me. And I’ll be getting rid of all we have left of Mom. I’m stuck. And it sucks that myonlyoption is the show.”
Jess pulls in her knees and returns to strangling her legs. “And when you go back to the show, you go back to Kim.”
