Chapter 22
Jackson
If Maia had looked closer, she would have seen that Jill and I were looking through a CAD design book. She would have noticed that I was not at all interested in the blonde with me. But after sending her to bed last night, alone, I doubt that’s what she saw. I doubt that’s what she thought. I did, however, want to stab the asshole that tried to rescue the damsel in distress. My damsel in distress. I saw red when that athletic fucker looked at Maia the way he did. Thankfully I don’t think she noticed.
“Jackson?” Jill’s voice breaks through my thoughts.
“Mmm,” I answer absently. She eyes me curiously and for a moment I see a flash of what looks like annoyance. She covers it well though. “Hey, Jill, can we go over this stuff later?” I’m sure she wants to throw her vanilla latte in my lap, but she refrains.
“How about back here, later tonight?” Jill’s tone is hopeful.
“Yeah, maybe,” I answer before grabbing my books. “I’ll call you,” I call over my shoulder as I make my way to the counter to order a coffee to go.
This is such a f-ucking bad idea. I know it. My heart, which is stupid as shit, tells me that I can’t leave Maia thinking that I was replacing her with Jill. My brain is telling me to f-ucking run away until she has had a chance to calm down about last night.
I knock tentatively, and stand back apprehensively. I feel like a f-ucking schoolboy on his way to see the principal. How did we get here? Not so long ago, I was introducing Maia to the family, now she barely wants anything to do with me. A week ago I had her legs wrapped around me with no sign of ever letting go, and today I can barely get her to look at me.
Maia opens the door slowly and peers out through the crack. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to see me, so I hold up the white flag I brought, which happens to be a coffee. Obviously, her desperation for caffeine is an urge too strong to resist, and the door swings open.
“Should I take a guess and say that you and I are not in a real good place right now?” Were it not for the hurt in her eyes that betrayed her, Maia looked calm, way too calm.
“Thanks for the coffee,” she says simply. “I have a class to get to soon though.” So I guess she’s madder than I thought.
“Can I get a ride in?” my question is posed so hesitantly, I almost feel afraid for me.
“How’d you get here in the first place?” she asks quietly.
“Jill gave me a ride over. We’re doing an assignment together.” I reply, so timidly that for a moment I think I may be lying. I probably wouldn’t believe me either. But f-uck it, there it is. The truth. Not the whole truth. The whole truth would go something like, I hate not being with you, hate that this is awkward, we’re wasting time on this talking shit, and I’m slightly relieved that you were jealous this morning. But having testosterone means that men find it hard to lay all our shit bare like that. And I am no exception.
“Give me a sec,” she answers, before walking into her bedroom.
About twenty minutes later, we’re driving down the busy streets to the Brown campus.
“Maia, about last night…” I say after ten minutes of awkward silence.
“You don’t have to explain,” she says, cutting me off. “I was drunk. I’m sorry for throwing myself at you like that.” Her hands wring the steering wheel nervously.
“I do,” I reply. “Believe me, there is not one single part of me that doesn’t want you. But you trust me so little as it is. Do you really think I wanted you to wake up thinking that I took the first drunken opportunity I had to f-uck you?”
I sigh in frustration. My cold shower did nothing to calm me down last night after leaving Maia’s. Her eyes are fixed pointedly at the road ahead, as she expertly avoids my gaze. “Jesus, Maia, I barely got you to agree to be friends! And there is nothing going on between Jill and I.” My voice inches up a notch in exasperation.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me, Jackson.”
Maia has perfected the art of distancing herself. The girl sure can be stone cold when she wants to be. Our conversation comes to an abrupt halt when she pulls up outside my dorm.
The morning leaves me completely deflated. I admit that I had chosen to meet Jill at the Bean in the hopes that it would elicit some kind of jealousy from Maia. I didn’t count on her completely shutting down on me like this. I had hoped that proving to her that I was a gentleman last night would score me a few points. Turns out, I’m zero for two. Nothing happened as I had envisioned it. f-uck!
I pull out my phone and try one last ditch effort to fix this.
Can we at least talk tonight? My finger hovers over the send button. No man likes to send a message that they know is going to result in a firm f-uck off disguised as a no.
My phone buzzes back a few minutes later and surprisingly the answer is simple: Okay. There is a God after all! Come by later.
The rest of the day moves painfully slowly. I barely register my presence in any of my classes and only just manage to keep up with my lecturers. The thought of seeing Maia this evening dominates every minute of my day. I receive a text from Jill asking about studying later, which I don’t hesitate to reply to with a resounding, yet slightly more politely worded no.
My phone rings late afternoon and I’m sure it’s Maia calling to cancel. “Hello?” I answer. Maia’s voice doesn’t greet me on the other end, but one that I miss equally does.
“Forgetting your friends?” the voice asks sarcastically.
“Not at all, Jade,” I quip. “How you doing?”
“Missin’ you and Maia, otherwise okay,” Jade replies casually. “But I called to give you a heads up about something.”
“What’s up?” I ask, my curiosity definitely piqued.
“Word around here is that Emmanuel has something big in the works, big and probably very bad. Supposedly, he’s calling in all his favors for this. He’s real mum about it all. I can’t get anything through the grapevine, but apparently he’s joining the big time. Says you owe him a few favors, too.”
“Pfft,” I laugh dismissively. “I don’t owe Emmanuel shit, and after the massive f-uck up he caused with Maia, he better not even think of dialing my number.”
“Hey, hey now, don’t shoot the messenger, just giving you a heads up is all,” replies Jade swiftly.
“Good looking out Jade,” I respond with complete sincerity. “How you been, anyway?” I ask, initiating a quick subject change. “I’m lonely without you here.”
“Doin’ okay. Enjoying not being on that uptight college campus for a bit. Still planning on coming back, though. I thought I had found true love a little while ago, but she ended up getting knocked up by that Timmy kid down the road so… Anyway, why are you lonely? Maia not agreeing to keep you warm yet?”
Typical Jade, her whole life story and the probe into mine, all in one swift movement. “No,” I sigh, suddenly feeling quite deflated. “The more I try to fix things, the more I seem to f-uck them up. I don’t even know what I do wrong half the time!”
“Don’t give up,” Jade reassures me. “Maia can be a stone cold bitch sometimes, part of why I love her, but she’ll come around. You know she’s complicated. Anyways, I gotta go, call me sometime.”
Jade hangs up, and I think back on how I ended up at Brown in the first place. I came here to avoid complication, get away from the drama in my life. And here I am, chasing the very thing I was trying to run away from.
I’d give up right now if I weren’t absolutely sure that Maia is worth every minute of complication. As I make my way over to the Bean, a whirlwind of trepidation engulfs me. There’s so much that I want to say to her, but it feels like whatever I do say just pushes her back into the bubble that she has created for herself, further out of my reach. I’m not going to lie, this friends thing is hard as f-uck. The thought of seeing Maia puts a spring in my step, and unfortunately for me, also an ache in my groin, an itch that no one else, myself included, can scratch.
I park the Mustang off on a side street, in the event that I stay the night. The thought is almost laughable, but still, my dick is hopeful. As I round the corner, the first thing that catches my eye is the last thing that I want to see. The silhouette of Maia’s frame standing outside the Bean in her skinny jeans, with tendrils of her hair floating weightlessly in the breeze that’s picked up, causes my heart to beat erratically and almost uncomfortably in my chest. That’s the thing with us guys, take something away from us, and we want it a million times more.
The smile that has made its way to my lips, however, quickly dissipates as I see that she’s laughing animatedly with same douche that she nearly scalded with coffee this morning. With any luck, he’s pissed and she’s convincing him not to sue. But I doubt that. Every fiber in my being erupts in a searing, heated rage, and the first thought I have is to walk over and f-ucking deck the prick for even talking to her. More so, after the issues that Maia and I have had, truthfully, I want to f-uck him up because he has no right to be making her smile like that. It takes every ounce of self-control I have to root myself in place on the sidewalk in an effort to calm the f-uck down. I watch in abject horror as he leans in to say something and she ducks her head away in a shy smile. f-ucking asshole. Not that I know him, but he’s f-ucking asshole all the same. I let the scene play out for a few more seconds before I purposefully make my way over to the Bean.