It’d been like two hours since Chelle stormed out of the house; I could hear the fight from downstairs as I began to cry in my bed. Immediately I jumped out of the bed, pulled the bed sheets off the bed, and tossed them in the corner to be later thrown out. I didn’t want to sleep on the sheets that I had betrayed my best friend with.
The two of us have been through so much together, even if the friendship didn’t start until we were in college. We knew so much about each other: our thoughts, dreams, nightmares and fantasies, that I knew I was in for the biggest bitch-out imaginable.
I heard a soft knock on the door, and I knew who it was. If it had been Chelle, she would have come flying in here with her fists out, so it had to be Nick. He was truly the last person I wanted to see at the moment.
"Jana? Can we talk for a second," he said, sticking his head around the door before coming in.
"Yeah, come in."
He cautiously moved towards the stripped bed, his eyes widening as he saw the sheets in the corner and the comforter at the foot of the bed. Taking in my bag halfway filled, my laptop sitting beside it and me buried in the closet; he could tell what I was planning.
"Where are you gonna go?"
Standing at the doorway to the walk-in closet, I perched my arm on the frame and stared at him.
"Well, I can’t very well see myself living too long while I’m here and she wants to kill me. So I’m going to do the both of us a favor and take a little vacation to the Marriott hotel downtown. Until she calms down and wants to see me again to talk. If I know her, it’s going to be awhile until she feels she can see me without wanting to beat the living shit out of me. So I’m packing to head down there, they have a room waiting for me."
"What do you think I should do? She’s kinda mad at me too," he said.
I rolled my eyes at him; boy, he was QUICK.
"You don’t say? I don’t know what to tell you, I have no clue what she wants to do to you. Other than probably rip your balls off and feed them to the dogs. But I know if I stay here, it’s only going to complicate things for you two and then me and her, so I’m just going to save a headache, and head down there now."
"Okay…"
"I left my phone number and room number down on the refrigerator if either of you need me. Plus she’ll figure out that I’m not here and probably want to know where I went, so she’ll have that if she wants to talk. Trust me, this is the best thing for this situation. And just for your reference, this (waving my hand to the bed) will NEVER happen again. I should have never done it the first time, and the second time obviously was a HUGE mistake. I should have known better. I think I might have just ruined my friendship with the one person who knows and understands me. All because I wasn’t thinking logically at all. Look where it got me," I said.
"For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry about this. It was a joint decision, and I wasn’t thinking with the right head. I think I ruined something very special too, just because of curiosity. I really didn’t mean for all of this to happen…but it did. But…" he trailed off.
There was a wicked twinkle in his eye as he walked slowly around the bed, his eyes never wavering from mine for a second; he closed the distance between the two of us. Standing barely six inches in front of me, he leaned in towards my ear.
"I gotta have one more, so I can remember how good it was with you…" and slowly his lips met mine, gently easing the breath from my body, and then he roughly thrust his tongue into my mouth. I tried to pull away at first, but there was no getting away from him. His arms clamped down on mine and he pulled me close to his strained body. His erection stood firmly pressed against my abdomen and slowly he ground his pelvis into me.
"See what you do to me? God, you affect me in a way… I feel horrible that I’m doing this to the both of you, but I don’t think I can have just one of you right now. Not ‘til I sort things out. I don’t know what I’m going to do when you leave today…" he said as he pressed me into the frame of the closet.
"If I wanted to, I could have you right here, right now. But, since I don’t know where she is, I’m not going to risk her walking in on us again. You’re just going to have to do without…"
"I’M GOING TO HAVE TO DO WITHOUT? I think you are sadly mistaken on that. I’m not the one who can’t make up his mind on who he wants to fuck more. This is not my problem. I KNOW I can get over you, in fact it’s already started. I may be weak around you, but I’m not fucking stupid. I’ve already almost lost my best friend for a quick fuck; I’m not about to bury the friendship. You need to get your head on straight; THAT’S why I’m getting out of here now. I need to build up my defenses to you so that you can’t get away with this shit anymore. Now I suggest you get out of here before I do some damage to you. Now GET OUT," I yelled, pointing to the door behind him.
"I was just being honest…" he said, as he backed himself out of the room.
"OUT!"
Growling to myself about how much of a prick he was being about this awkward situation, I threw my hands up in the air in confusion. I mean, there was still the attraction, but I felt like I had been burnt. I knew that I was going to lose in this, there was no way that I’d get him or that I really even wanted him that much. I knew there were more things important to me than a good fuck, which he is by the way, such as my friendship with my good buddy. Who just happens to be the heartbroken one of our bunch.
Still with all that "logic" going on in my head, my body was still pulsing from his touch and his kiss. It’s amazing how much power he truly has over us both, and it’s really starting to suck having him know this. That’s just something men don’t need to know.
Packing the rest of my bag, I grabbed the discarded bed sheets and headed downstairs. I could hear the Play Station music disrupting the quiet house and I quickly darted past that room. Nicky scurried behind me, looking for an adventure, her tail wagging in excitement. Making my way towards the garage, I peeked out the back glass windows and saw Chelle staring out into the Bay. Her knees were pulled up to her chest and her cheek was resting on her knees. I felt absolutely horrible. The scum of the Earth. Deserving of all things bad.
I could see the tearstains on her face, and knowing that I caused it made my heart break for her. I turned and headed towards the garage once again, deciding that my exit of the house was the smartest move for me. I threw the bed sheets in the trash can and slammed the rubber top back on. I went back into the house and decided that I should tell her that I was leaving. If nothing more for her to celebrate me not being here and maybe making it a little easier on her.
Silently, I walked outside and around the pool towards her. I stood behind her for about a minute, trying to judge how she was going to react to me talking to her. It scared me a little bit, not knowing if she was going to turn around swinging.
"Chelle?"
"What?"
"I, umm, I just wanted to tell you that, umm, I’m going downtown for a couple of days. I’ll be staying at the Marriottâ ; I left my room number and phone number on the refrigerator. If you need anything, just give me a call or stop by. I just thought, umm, that I should tell you if you were going to wonder…"
"Fine."
I turned on my heel and headed back to my room to load up my car. Picking up my bag and laptop, I left the room with closing the door behind me. There was no goodbye, nothing, as I left the house. Tossing my bag in the back seat of my Focusâ , I got in and drove away.
~*~*~
Flipping through the channels on the television, I finally realized there was nothing on to watch. I thought about calling some friends to see if they wanted to go out tonight, but I then realized that it was only Monday night, meaning everyone still had to work tomorrow morning. Turning off the television, I decided that maybe a book would be my best bet of wasting time.
Slipping in between the cool sheets, I finally let down my guard and started to relax. Clad only in a pair of panties and a T-shirt, I was in heaven. Pulling the covers up to my chest, I grabbed my book from the floor and opened it to read. Continuing where I had last left off, I sank into my own personal world where only romance rules. ‘Obviously, not my life,’ I thought to myself.
After reading not one, but two steamy love scenes, I was about to pull my hair out. That was definitely not what I needed to get my mind of certain things. I marked my page, put the book back into my bag and headed into the bathroom for a hot soak.
After getting the temperature just perfectly, I stepped in and let the water engulf me. There I closed my eyes and began to think about the whole situation, from all points and perspectives, to see what was the best thing to do.
From Chelle’s perspective, I could see her hating Nick and me for the rest of our lives. I mean, the woman was entitled to that. She had been betrayed by her man and her best friend, it’s no wonder that she wanted to chop our heads off and feed them to sharks. Her heart was broken, and it was all basically my fault. I felt like the biggest bitch of the world.
From Nick’s perspective, hell, he’s a guy. He’s thinking with the most important thing to him: his cock. He had two chics drooling over him, who blames him for taking the bait and fucking them both? Still, he should have known better, but AGAIN he’s a guy. They don’t realize these things.
From my perspective, things were fuzzy. I mean, Chelle’s my best friend, we’ve been through a lot together. Never the same guy like this before, but we revel in new experiences. I don’t really know what I was thinking by doing this to her, all I know is that I didn’t sit there and go ‘This is going to hurt Chelle, go for it!’ It wasn’t like that; it was like she wasn’t even in the picture when Nick and me did this. All I could see was the two of us; there was not another person in the whole damn world as far as I was concerned.
God, things were just so damn confusing. I didn’t know what Chelle wanted from me; an explanation, an apology or a fight. I certainly wasn’t going to fight for him; to me, he wasn’t worth it. Unfortunately it was a tad too late for that realization to do much good for us now, but I was going to have to do something about it.
I know that I need to apologize, but I really don’t know how to do that. I mean, I do, but this is something that’s going to take more than just a simple "I’m sorry" to cover it. This was the above all, end all for friendships. You don’t just sleep with her man and then expect it to blow over. Something’s bound to happen that isn’t very good.
As the water turned cool, I decided it was time to get out and head to bed. I pulled the plug on the drain and wrapped the terry cloth towel around my body. Walking out into the bedroom, I shivered from the cool air coming from the air conditioner. Turning down the bed again, I dropped the towel and climbed nude into the bed. A restless sleep soon followed.
~*~*~
I slowly crawled from the fog of my sleep to the sound of someone knocking on the door. Shaking my head to clear it quickly, I got out of bed and threw my robe on. Shuffling to the door, I peeked out the eyelet and saw bloodshot eyes meeting mine.
I unlocked the door and pull it open to see Chelle standing there. Wordlessly, she told me that something had happened with Nick.
"Come on in. I just woke up, so I’ll order up some coffee to wake my ass up."
Silently, she followed me into the room and plopped down in one of the oversized chairs facing the bed. I sank back into my pillows on my bed and pulled the covers over my bare legs to fight off the chill. For awhile, we just stared at anywhere else in the room that wasn’t the other person. Finally, room service knocked and I got the coffee and bagels that I had ordered.
"Dig in. A few sips and I’ll be raring to go. I take it that you’re here to talk about Nick, so I’ll be all up for it in just a few seconds," I said.
We munched on our bagels, sipped our coffee and stayed silent. After I had my first cup, I placed my plate on the bedside table, leaned back against the pillows, crossed my feet at my ankles and folded my arms against my chest.
"Are you going to continue to stare at the lovely carpet, or are you going to tell me what happened between the two of you?"
Slowly she put down her plate and lifted her tearstained face to look me in the eyes.
"I went and saw him over at AJ’s today. We talked, and we decided that we would go back to being friends, and then maybe work into something more. That was after I bitch slapped him, he cried, I tried not too and we talked. God it’s been an emotional day," she sighed.
"I can imagine," I said.
"And I haven’t even dealt with you yet. God, for some reason I feel like the parent, going around punishing the kids involved in breaking the neighbors window, not yelling at my best friend and my boyfriend for fucking each other behind my back. Why couldn’t you have just left him alone? Was he that much of a temptation for you to keep your hands off of? I know that you thought that he was hot, but I thought that when him and me got together, you understood that he was MINE. Not yours to share."
"Chelle, I swear, this entire thing has confused me more than you trying to cook. I don’t know what the hell came over me. I mean, from day one, we both have been attracted to him. We fought the first day about who wanted to jump him first. I swear, when it happened, you were not involved in any way. I wasn’t out to get back at you for having him first. I don’t think I even realized there was another person in the universe at all. It was just…" I trailed off, not being able to explain what happened.
"It was just what?"
"Dammit, I don’t know. I can’t describe what happened. I didn’t think about what we were doing until after it happened. I swear I didn’t mean for it to happen, it just DID. If I could go back and change it, by not doing it, I would. But I can’t."
We both just sat there, not speaking, for at least two minutes. The only sound were our sighs of discontentment, echoing from the walls.
"How could you?" She whispered, looking up at me with tears in her eyes.
Well, shit. I made her cry, AGAIN. This is killing me, I feel like the worst person alive.
"Chelle, I promise you. I didn’t do it because I sat there and premeditated it. It JUST happened. We both obviously weren’t thinking straight, either time. I was tired, he had just woken up, things happened. God, I hate myself so much for it. But I can’t do anything about it now. Just pray that you’ll forgive me for it, and believe me when I say that it won’t happen again."
"You mean to tell me that this happened more than once?"
"Ummm, you mean he didn’t tell you?"
"NO!"
"Well, damn, the time that you caught us was the second time. I swear that was all. The first time happened that morning that I ended up staying up all night trying to finish my paperwork for the office and the meeting the next day. It just happened. He came into my room, it was completely innocent, and we just started up the teasing that we do so well. It kind of got out of hand, and one thing led to another. The second time, the time that you walked in on us, that was just stupid. I don’t even know why we were together. I really didn’t want it, but I guess that he did. He came to me, with those damn puppy dog eyes, and it just killed me. Those things are lethal, and he caught me at a bad time. It’s no excuse, but it seems like the only explanation I can come up with," I said, not looking her in the eye.
"You mean, you, you guys did it TWICE? Behind my back? Oh god, this is worse than I thought. HOW COULD YOU?"
By now, there were tears streaming down my face as the full realization hit me of what we had done. One time was bad enough, but when it recurred, that was just unforgivable.
She was ranting around the room, anything in her path being thrown various other places. The comforter was off the bed, thrown over the back of one of the chairs. That chair had been overturned. The phone was off the hook, lying beside the bed, upside down. The tray holding all the food was now overturned, grapes running across the floor. When she turned to look at me, there was a look of pure hatred in her eyes.
"I thought you were my best friend. We told each other everything. We shared everything. Everything, except for ONE THING. You KNEW to keep your hands off of him, but yet, you just couldn’t do it. You just couldn’t see me having something that you didn’t. So you had to go and ruin that too. You just had to prove to him that you were better than me in ONE MORE THING. So how did it feel? Did it feel good when he fucked you? Knowing that he had probably fucked me earlier that morning? Was that some sort of psycho turn-on for you? TELL ME!"
I was sobbing at this point. I didn’t even want him, yet the way that she was making me feel was below human scum. There was nothing I could say to make it any better of a situation. Things were never going to be the same again.
"TELL ME, YOU BITCH! How could you just fuck him, knowing that he meant the world to me? That I LOVED him. How could you…" she cried, sinking to the floor weeping.
I crawled over and wrapped my arms around her.
"I swear, I didn’t mean to do it. It was never about you Chelle, ever. God, I promise, it’ll never happen again. I swear on my life. Never again. He’s not worth it. I’m so sorry. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Just please, don’t hate me anymore. I can’t take it. He wasn’t even that great of a fuck to fight over. Please, Chelle…"
We sat there holding each other sobbing for the longest time. She was silent as I begged for her forgiveness over and over again. Nothing was more important than our friendship. No guy was worth it. Unfortunately, my judgement had been clouded those two times that I slept with him. Obviously, I wasn’t thinking with the right head.
As the sobbing subsided, laughter began to bubble from her. I pushed her away and quizzically stared at her, trying to figure out what she was giggling about.
"What?"
"You realize, we are fighting about a piece of ass. A very fine piece of ass, but still. We’re fighting…*gasp* over the Ghetto Booty Boy. Who would have ever thought he would come between us?" She giggled.
As it dawned on me that we had done what we always swore would never happen, especially with a guy who had the nickname of "Ghetto Booty Boy", I had to laugh too. It was a welcome relief from the screaming and ranting from before.
"Does this mean that you’ll forgive me?"
"I’m still extremely pissed that you even did it in the first place, but I know that our friendship is worth a whole lot more than just fucking some guy. Are you going to keep your paws off of him from now on?"
"Of course it does. Hell, I don’t want him anymore. I can’t stand to see you as mad as you just were, that scared the shit out of me!"
"Good."
We made up, ended up staying in the hotel to discuss the matter and then to rekindle the friendship that we had lost for about a day. A day too long.
We picked up the room as best as we could, and I packed my stuff up. We headed home together to figure out how to deal with Nick, whether or not he liked it. Things were going to be discussed and we were going to come to an understanding.
Together, we overcame the obstacle and maybe even had our friendship even more strong. Nothing like this was going to come between us again, no matter how ghetto the booty was.