Jolie

I tie my yellow apron around my waist in the employees’ room of the Happy Bunny. Trisha, my fifty-something-year-old colleague, coughs in my face, cigarette smoke drifting from her mouth.

“All I’m sayin’ is, don’t let a man fool ya. They’re all the same, hotcakes. They will use you and leave you if you let them. Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free? See what I mean?” She gathers phlegm and spits it into a trash can, her fire engine red curly hair littered with white cigarette ash. I pretend to fluff her mane when really, I’m just making sure she doesn’t lose all her tips and her job by sprinkling ash into people’s food like a Tinkerbell from hell.

“Yep.” I smile at her, not entirely sure why we’re talking about this. I haven’t told her a word about Sage. I was actually trying to strike up a conversation about the weather. Trish leaves the darkened room to yell at our manager-slash-diner-owner, Travis, and I immediately fish out my phone, texting my best friend. The one I left hanging.

The shift passes by in a blur. I don’t think I’ve ever made such great tips, even though I pretty much work on autopilot. I don’t feel tired or stressed or anxious. I’m just excited to see Sage at the end of my shift. Or maybe I’m doing such a great job because business is slow. Five hours into my shift, Travis saunters across the checkered black and white linoleum floors, braces one forearm over a red-hot booth, and slaps Trish’s ass with a loud smack. “Trish, Jol, take the rest of the night off. Split the tips in the jar. This place is deader than my old man. And he’s dead, all right. Has been dead for two decades now.”

Insert: awkward polite smile.

We nearly jump up and down with excitement and jog our way to Trish’s piece-of-trash car (her words, not mine). She calls her old puke-green Ford Aerostar Bob after the asshole who ran away from her when she was eight months pregnant with his kid. Luckily, Bob’s son is now seventeen and applying to colleges. A very different guy from his deadbeat dad.

“Where to?” Trish asks me when she gets behind the wheel, immediately lighting up a cigarette. She fluffs her hair, staring at the rearview mirror, and between us is an ashtray with enough cigarette butts to fill a bucket. I start giving her my address before realizing that Sage is not going to be there yet. So I give her the address for Barnie’s, a converted barn turned into a sleazy bar all the jocks frequently hang out in.

“Aw, Barnie’s. I have so many memories from that place. Most of them consisting of broken condoms and Bob, but still.” Trish sighs, starts her car, and we’re on a roll.

All the way to Barnie’s, I’m answering questions about college when really, I’m an anxious mess. The idea that I nearly pushed the one guy I wanted more than life itself away sits heavy in the back of my head and slowly opens a well of dark thoughts. Then I remember how sweet he was when we texted and take a deep breath.

By the time Trish’s car comes to a stop in front of the old red barn with the Arctic Monkey’s “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” leaking from between the door and windows, I’m sweating like I jogged here.

“Go ahead. I have a phone call to make. I’ll wait for you in case he’s already left.” She cranes her neck, as if she’s trying to see Sage through the windows. I didn’t text Sage because I wanted to surprise him. I haven’t even mentioned I was meeting a guy here, though Trish is that kind of woman. One who can smell men from miles away.

“Thanks, Trish. You’re the best.” I squeeze her into a hug and hop out of the car. My knees are shaking as I make my way to the door. No one gets carded at Barnie’s, because the place is in the middle of nowhere. It’s almost underground. I could walk in there with a newborn and no one would bat an eye. No one would also try to rub themselves all over me, so maybe I should consider walking in with a baby if I ever feel like a drink but not like swatting off horny college boys.

“Jolie!” I spot Sage’s teammates in the corner of the bar. Michael is the one who perks up the most, removing his arms from the counter he was plastered over and waves for me to come close. “Over here, pretty lady.”

I also spot Tom, Mark, and Dre all sitting beside him, so I’m guessing the party is very much still alive and Sage should be nearby. I walk over to them, the smile on my face at odds with how I feel about wearing my orange and yellow, Happy Bunny uniform of buttoned-down mini-dress and black stockings. Tom whistles as I go, and Mark smacks the back of his neck. My smile fades as I realize Sage is nowhere to be seen. I stop by the bar, my shoulder almost brushing Mark’s, and he takes two large steps back and frowns. Weirdo. I know he’s with Chelsea. Does he really think I’m going to hit on him?

“Where’s Sage?” I ask in everyone’s general direction, parking my forearms on the counter. Michael raises his eyebrows silently, his lips pursed. Tom looks the other way, Dre actually whistles as he pretends to text, and Mark is the only person who clears his throat and has the decency to make eye contact with me.

“Did he know you were coming?”

“No, why would he…” I begin to ask, when a high-pitched voice pierces through the air, that’s heavy with warm, stinky alcohol and men’s aftershave. A girly voice. I swivel my head on an instinct and watch Sage standing in front of one of the sorority girls Chelsea approached earlier this afternoon at the library.

The blondest one.

The prettiest one.

The one with the whitest, silkiest cardigan.

The one who called me a slut.

I want to see him tell her that this can’t happen. That it will never happen. I want him to turn his back to her and walk over to me, like in the movies. I want her to chase him, and I want him to block her. These thoughts are not kind or noble, but they’re coming from my deepest, most intimate part. The part who’s seen him playing around with so many girls from the sidelines, wishing he’d just give me a chance. But, to my horror, he doesn’t do any of those things. She’s the one running away toward the door, and he’s the one chasing after her.

“Amber, no, please!” he calls.

Amber.

No.

Please.

Sage never begs. Sage never pleads. Not to me and not to anyone.

He chases after her. I stay rooted to the floor. I watch the door swinging back and forth with the force of Amber’s push. He’s trailing behind.

He catches her.

He’s holding her.

He’s hugging her.

Their images are blurry through the dirty, cloudy windows. I see their shapes dancing together through the dull glass and the mist of tears on my eyeballs. The way Amber pushes him away. The way he keeps on moving toward her. The sheer desperation in his body language. And that’s when I feel Mark’s hand on my shoulder.

“I don’t know what it’s about,” he says, his voice quivering slightly, “but give him the benefit of the doubt.”

A lonely tear escapes my right eye and runs down my cheek, free-falling into its end and splashing on the tip of my Chucks. I hear the guys shuffling and talking behind me, but can’t distinguish what they’re saying. My legs carry me to Amber and Sage. To the girl who called me a slut and to the guy who said I was in his blood but ran after someone else.

They’re standing outside the barn. She’s yelling at him. He looks miserable. The only good thing about this shitshow of a situation? Trish’s car is still parked at the non-existent curb near the hay, the engine purring, as she talks on the phone, smoking a cigarette and staring at herself through the rearview mirror.

“Oh, great. Now your new girlfriend is here!” Amber shrieks, throwing her arms in the air on an eye roll. Then she huffs. I think I made my opinion about huffing clear. I narrow my eyes at the not-so-happy couple. Sage turns around instantly, his eyes growing wide.

“What are you doing here, JoJo?” The words struggle out of his mouth.

“Standing in your way, obviously. Don’t worry, Sage. I’ll make myself scarce so you can go back to your…” I frown at both of them, standing so close to each other, “business.”

“No, wait. There’s no business with Amber. No business at all. You don’t understand…” He charges after me, but I take hurried steps toward Trish’s car, swing the passenger door open, slide in, and nudge her to start driving. She does. She throws the lit cigarette out the window and pushes the gas pedal like we’re on a police chase. I’m not sure I want to know how she mastered these escaping skills.

“Trouble with the boy?” Her voice is exceptionally cheerful, like she just proved a point. I shake my head, crossing my arms over my chest. I want to move out. I need to move out. I hate him. I want to kill him. I want to kiss him. I love him. I don’t know what I’m feeling. Everything is wrong and twisted and final. Or maybe nothing happened at all and this has a very simple, logical explanation. I’m confused. I need to drink. I have to think about this sober.

Goddammit.

My phone starts pinging with messages as I see Sage’s burgundy truck careening after us. Well, that’s just dandy.

“Where to?” Trish asks, lighting her four-hundredth cigarette for the day as we speed towards an intersection. She nonchalantly passes a stop sign and I’m about to pee my pants—yeah, despite all the Pilates.

“Slow down, Trish.”

“Did he cheat?” She ignores me, getting all worked up. “It looks like he’s been cheatin’ on ya. This kinda thing doesn’t fly with me. Bob cheated.”

“It’s complicated, but…” I don’t want to die. Not even over Sage.

“Bastard!” She hits the accelerator so hard my head swings back. Meanwhile, the texts flow like cheap alcohol at a frat party.

“You have to stop.” I swivel my whole body toward Trish.

“Like hell I will!” she exclaims with an evil laugh. Dude. Okay. Trish might be a little on the psychotic side. Plus, she is plucking out another cigarette from her magical, never-ending pack. I grab her shoulder and squeeze lightly so she doesn’t do something reckless in an attempt to gain her full attention.

“Trish, you’re spinning. Stop the car or I’ll take all your tips,” I threaten, and the car pulls over so fast my head is swimming again. We’re on the shoulder of the highway, in the pitch-black, and Trish leans over my body, throws my door open, and points outside.

“Get the hell outta my car, girl. If you’re taking this cheating bastard back, I don’t want to hang out with you no more.”

That escalated quickly. I grab my stuff and hop out, Sage already pulling behind her with his truck. No matter what happened between him and me, I still trust him more to get me home safe. Wherever home may be. He gets out of his truck and walks toward me, chest puffed up, eyes ablaze, just when Trish hits the gas pedal again and leaves us in a thick cloud of exhaust smoke. We’re standing one in front of another. I don’t say a thing. Neither does he.

He pulls his phone from his pocket and texts me, his brows serious and furrowed. I stare at him like he’s an absolute lunatic.

* * *

The drive back is soul crushing, no less. The silence hangs in the air like a stench. When we get to the apartment, I kick my Chucks against the wall and walk over to my room. A big hand grabs me by the waist and spins me around. I swat it away, feeling all the humiliation, anger, and sadness I’d felt at Barnie’s returning, burning in me like a red-hot wrath.

“Get off me, Sage. I mean it. All this bullshit about me being in your blood didn’t feel so true when you ran after Amber, begging.”

“You are in my blood!” he screams in my face, raking his fingers along his thick, lush blond hair. I look away so he won’t see the tears. My cheeks are wet, and my heart is pounding loud enough to hear from across the room. “You’re in my blood, in my veins, in my fucking soul. You’re in my heart and in my fingertips and on my fucking lips like a prayer. You’re fucking everywhere, Jolie Louis. Always have been, always will be.” He pushes me to the wall. My back slams against it. I growl, pushing him away. He lets me. We’re angry. We’re desperate. We’re frustrated. We’re burning alive together, and we’re so connected, even when we’re completely torn.

“That Amber chick called me a slut today. You ran after her! Pleaded for her to stay when you thought I wasn’t there. How do you think that makes me feel?”

“I don’t want Amber,” he says, his lips pursing and his eyes thinning into slits. “I don’t want anyone else. I only want you.”

“You have a funny way of showing it,” I huff—oh, God, since when did I become a huffer?—turning my back to him and walking toward the hallway. He pins me against the wall again, this time bracing his arms above my head and locking me in. I can’t run. I can’t hide. I have to stay here and see this through. His eyes are burning. My body is heaving. There’s an impending storm between us and we’re both exposed.

“She just had a miscarriage,” he snarls into my face, his breath laced with beer and cinnamon gum. “We hooked up a few months ago. The condom broke. She wanted to keep it, and I couldn’t exactly tell her not to. She found out about the miscarriage last month, and she is a mess about it. That’s why I was running after her. She just found out about us at the library.”

I swallow a bitter lump of tears. Oh, my God. Poor Amber. Poor, poor Amber. And poor Sage. I’ve been so focused on how I feel, I forgot that there were other people around me.

“Sage.” I cup his cheeks with my palms, my chin quivering. He holds my wrists, keeping me close.

“I’ve never wanted anyone but you, JoJo. Not truly. Not wholly. Not obsessively.”

Sage steps closer to me, his body flush against mine, his leg between my thighs, his lips on mine as he speaks these words. “You want the truth? Here’s the truth: I asked you to be my fake girlfriend because Mark wanted to make a move on you. And it occurred to me, out of fucking nowhere, that I’d rather die than see you with someone else who holds the potential to give you the things that you need. It occurred to me that I would never be able to be happy for you if you married someone else. It occurred to me that I can’t even think of being with anyone but you, and when I do have a child, I want it to be with you. I love you, JoJo. But you already know that. I’m also in love with you. Crazy about you. Can’t live without you.”

I kiss his lips to shut him up and to give him everything he needs, my fingers running through his hair, his hands on my waist, pulling me close. We’re one entity. Whole and broken. Happy and sad. Lost and so unbelievably found.

“I love you so much,” I breathe, the words pouring from my mouth in a rush. “I’ve always loved you. From that day in the meadow, when the rain knocked so hard on our bodies I thought we were going to go back home with bruises on our skin. I loved you ever since, and I never stopped loving you. Even when I tried really hard. Even when I dated other men.”

He hoists me up, my legs wrapped around his narrow waist, and carries me to his bedroom. Not mine—his. It’s a statement. I very rarely wander into his bedroom, and only after I ask and only when I need to take something specific. He lowers me to the bed, ever so carefully, his mouth on mine. Never leaving mine.

He fumbles with his jeans. I fumble with my mini dress. We kiss. We bite. We mess around like the two teenagers who wanted to so bad but never dared. I’m here. All of me. Every single part of me is in the present, and it’s raw and beautiful and everything I’ve ever dreamed about wrapped in a bow made of memories and sweet childhood moments. We strip down in silence, our eyes never leaving one another. We kick our clothes to the foot of the bed and his groin is on mine and our lips are kissing, biting, and caressing. My breasts pop free from my bra, and he takes one of my nipples into his mouth, closing his warm lips over it and circling the areola with his tongue. I arch my back.

“I love you.” His breath tickles my sensitive nipple, and he works his way down my torso, peppering feathery, wet, hot kisses all over my shivering body. “I love you, I love you, I fucking love you. No matter what happens in my life, you’re the constant thing I can count on. The shelter in the storm, the calm in my chaos.”

He bites my inner thigh, and I roll my head onto his pillow that smells of cinnamon and aftershave and him. His tongue meets my sensitive flesh, licking my arousal, but this time he is not demanding and starving. He is sweet and considerate.

“Jesus, Sage. Jesus.”

I can barely breathe. He is teasing me with his mouth to a point of tears before he slides a finger into me, curling it when he is deep enough to reach my magic spot.

“I love you.” He continues kissing my pussy. “And I love you, too, JoJo,” he says, and I laugh, swatting his head softly. My orgasm washes through me like an oasis. I shudder quietly before his corded, muscled body rises up and his lips meet mine again for a deep kiss.

“Love you. Have I said that lately?” He nuzzles into the crook of my neck, and I’m in heaven, I’m sure of it. I might even murder the person who wakes me up from this dream.

“Not lately.” I kiss his temple. “Better tell me again.”

“I love you, Jolie Louis. The kind of love that burns through the skin.”

Hmm. Is it bad that I want to tattoo this on my forehead?

We kiss some more while my hand trails down the dusty line of hair arrowing from his belly button to his cock. I fist it and move my hand back and forth. I could do this all day without getting bored. Admiring his body. Learning what gives him pleasure. After a few minutes, he raises his head and looks me in the eye.

“Not to sound dramatic, but, baby, I think I’ll die if I don’t fuck you right this minute.”

“So do it.” I smile. He reaches across his bed and fumbles for a condom in his dresser’s drawer. Then he rolls it down his cock as we both watch in awe, as if this is the first time for both of us—and in some weird, screwed-up way, it kind of is, at least for me. I’m not a virgin, but I feel like one right now, as he slides on top of me again.

“I love you.” It’s my turn to say. “Every part of you. The broken boy. The strong man. The lighthearted jock and the heavyhearted kid. Every piece of you is loved and cherished, Sage Poirier. Always remember that.”

He enters me in one smooth stroke, and I moan at the sudden sensation of being so full, not only physically, but also mentally. My back curls against the sheet when he starts moving in and out in a rhythm I’ve yet to experience with a man. His movements have no start nor ending. His hips roll back and forth constantly, like an erotic dance between two bodies, and we quickly find the pace that makes us both pant harder and faster. I’ve never looked in a man’s eyes when we had sex before. It felt too weird. Too awkward. But with Sage, I can’t help not to.

His eyes are an open wound.

Mine are a bandage that wants to make it all better for him.

This is it. This is everything I wanted. He and I. Fully and completely committed to one another. His movements become jerky. I begin to quiver again. I swear I came with this man more times than I did with all my previous partners combined, which really says a lot about his dedication, but also about men in the sack in general.

“I’m about to come, baby. Please come with me.”

I nod. Coming on command is the kind of thing that always made me snicker when I read it in books, but now I get it. It is doable when the person asking you to is the biggest turn-on you know.

We come in each other’s arms, with him moaning my name and me whimpering when his cock drills into me one last time, and part ways on a kiss. Both our bodies are covered in sweat. We look spent, happy, and so much younger than our years.

He rolls on his back and stares at the ceiling.

I roll to my side and put a hand on his abs.

“Shit,” is all he says. I throw my arm over my eyes and laugh. He’s been talking sweet to me for an hour, so it only makes sense he’ll be back to his old self now.

“That bad, huh?” I joke. He turns to me and pulls my arm from my face.

“That good. I never thought it could feel like this.”

“Like what?”

He takes my wrist and presses it against his pouty, perfect lips. “Like forever.”