Blayne

 

The smell of fresh brewed coffee and bacon wafted through the house.

The purity of an early morning right after a rainy night played on my senses, making everything a little more beautiful and a little more intense.

The bed I was in was different but the room was the same. Somehow, I didn’t panic to find myself in a man’s clothing.  The shirt came well below my thighs and the shorts were to my knees.

I followed the smell of bacon to the spacious, airy kitchen. Everything in here was bright and colorful.

A man’s figure stood hunched over a pan and it was a good figure.

“Jason?”

The figure turned to look at me with a smile every bit as bright and sunny as the house.

“You’re up,” he said, turning off the knob and bringing two large plates of breakfast to the dining table. “I was about to wake you.”

“If you get bacon within ten feet of my nose, I assure you that I will be awake.”

He held out a chair for me and I sat across from him and stared at the coffee pot that he hadn’t touched.

He realized his error and apologized. “I’m sorry, I’m not much of a coffee drinker,” he said, walking up to the coffee machine, and filling up a big cup. “I made this pot for you.” 

“That makes me happier,” I said, when he set the cup down next to my plate. “Because I would be glad to drink coffee for the both of us.”

He grinned. And I remembered again why I’d fallen for him before. He was still gorgeous. I bet he got women without trying too hard.

“You look well rested,” he said, biting off another strip of bacon with his fingers.

“I can’t remember the last time I slept this well,” I just blurted this out without thinking. I could hear how pathetic that made me sound.

“Do you want to talk about it?” his eyes were so gentle and calming.

“I didn’t know you were such a good cook,” I had no clue where it came from. I wasn’t lying, the food was great but the way I’d blown him off wasn’t.

He just stared at me.

“Wow, I did not handle that segue so well,” I said. 

He went back to his food and plain water. “Don’t think about it,” he said. “I’m sure you’re under a lot of stress.”

“Jason, I wanted to thank you for helping me last night, I was in a really bad place.”

He placed his hand on mine. “Hey, you don’t have to thank me, we’re friends.”

“Yeah.”

“Blayne, it’s just I found you passed out in the middle of the street. Anything could have happened. I saw those bags and your initials were on them. If I hadn’t been there… Blayne there are so many predators out there.”

“I know that was stupid. But the only person I know who would still want to be in touch with me is Chloe. And I couldn’t reach her.”

“You could have called me.”

I lowered my gaze to the eggs. “I don’t have your number.”

He looked a little surprised. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry, the way you left things…”

“No, I get it. I was a jerk to you, I deserve it.”

I was wondering what I should say next when Jason stood and cleared up the table. “Look, you can stay here as long as you want.”

“No!” I stood and wondered what I was doing. “I mean, I have to be on my own you know, figure some things out.”

He didn’t look convinced but I didn’t leave him a choice. “Where will you go?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I lost my phone, all my numbers were in it. Do you think maybe you can help me look for someone?”

“Sure. Who do you need to find?”

“My friend Chloe. Maybe you can find her on Facebook.”

“Chloe Bradley?” he said. “From our high school?”

“Yeah, do you think you might be able to give me her number?”

“I can do better,” Jason said. “I know where she lives.”

“You guys are in touch, she never told me.”

“I used to date a girl who was friends with her. We had a ton of double dates and partied a lot.”

“Yep, that sounds like Chloe. Party a lot is her sacred mantra.”

It was good to see him smile again. I knew he had questions but he was being a great friend by not asking them. “But there’s a slight problem with that plan,” he said and took out his phone and showed me Chloe’s Facebook. Lots of pictures in bikinis. “She’s on vacation. Her flight is scheduled for tomorrow it seems. She doesn’t have a phone until then.”

Okay so that was extremely unlucky but it did explain why she wasn’t answering her phone.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel so alone. There was a part of me that still missed Nick but I wasn’t allowing myself to think about it.

“I knew I could rely on Chloe.”

“You can rely on me too,” Jason said.

I was truly grateful for that but I couldn’t tell him how I felt. I couldn’t explain to him that I felt this deep disdain for the male population that surpassed whatever feelings I might have had for them.

Nick had managed to make such a mockery of the word love that I’d come to despise it.

I know it’s awful to think that all men are the same so let’s just think more rationally and say that all the men I tend to attract are the same.

With Jason, there was nothing sexual going on but I even felt the same way about the man who started it all. If it wasn’t for Jason, I wouldn’t have had to suffer Nick. I wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get engaged just to prove something. But discussing all that would be petty and frankly, useless. It was my parents who wanted Nick and his family. Not me.

  It’s not like I wanted this to go further. I’d stopped thinking of Jason in those terms. I didn’t think of him in a future tense. Whatever we had was in the past. This random encounter wasn’t going to change that.

“I can’t let you walk away, Blayne.”

I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. There was something about that face, those eyes, they put me in a trance.

I felt powerless.

Even now I couldn’t forget the way he looked under the street lights, under pouring rain, innocent and pure. Except for that darkness. That was also a part of him. To be with him would be to live with the darkness too.

And yet you can think you can tame it.

No. There wouldn’t be any taming. Not again. I couldn’t let him get to me I couldn’t deal with another Nick. So why can’t you stop thinking about him?

“Blayne? Is everything okay? You seem a little lost.”

I wanted to tell him I was more than a little lost.

That a part of me wanted nothing more than to find peace, and a bit of support even if it was from Jason. But there was another part that was restless being this close to him.

Maybe it would take me a while to return to my old self.

“Can I please get my clothes back?” I said and Jason looked visibly disappointed.

“Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

I nodded as diligently as I could. He left me waiting in the kitchen and went to get my clothes.

I stood and cleared up the kitchen put our plates in the dishwasher.

There was the sound of a song being played deafeningly loud and I realized it was Jason’s phone. I tried to ignore it but it wouldn’t shut up. I was just going to turn it to silent, when I saw the name on his display.

NICK.

There was no last name. I almost picked it up when Jason barged in.

He was holding my clothes and they were no longer wet.

“Why’s Nick calling you?”

He looked perplexed and I didn’t know if it was an act but he picked up his phone and looked at it.

“Blayne, that was a different Nick. Trust me. Why would I be talking to your fiancé?”

I didn’t trust him but I didn’t have to. “You’re right, I’m being paranoid…”

I heard the front door open. I’d been in this house enough times to know that the sound of footsteps belonged to more than one person. If it was company or a girlfriend they wouldn’t walk about so quietly. The only reason a person had for not announcing their presence in a person’s home was if they were planning an ambush. 

Jason was pretending there was nothing going on and being overly calm. I smiled and did the same. “I’ll go to your room and change,” I said. “Maybe you can drive me to a hotel.”

“Sounds great.”

I went to his room and closed it from inside. There was a reason I chose this room for my escape—Jason always hated living in closed spaces so his bedroom was basically three walls and a veranda. No one used it as an exit because the front door was more accessible but there was a backdoor that led to the outside.

The footsteps were inside the house now and I could hear voices.

Nick’s was one of them. You live with someone that long you can pick their voice in a million voices. My heart was pounding and I couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

I grabbed my handbag because there was no time to carry any more weight. I crammed the dress into it because there was no time to change my clothes either.

And then I ran.