dear all, this is the second part. the last part is already written and will come soon (after editing and a few small tweaks), and Sean and Flora will make an appearance there. meanwhile, i hope you enjoy Jake and Jessica's story x

∞  

When Jessica woke up again, she was still wrapped securely under the sheets with Jake. He had no proper food at his place, but she wasn't hungry for dinner and thought his presence alone could sustain her. After he tore open a package of peanuts, they resumed catching up.

"I didn't finish telling you about that visit back to Riverside High."

"Hmm," she said with a comfy sense of laziness, liking the alternating pattern of chatting and napping. When they were together, they could just be. There was nothing pressing to attend to. "Please continue."

"After giving our speech, Sean and I took a walk around campus and ended up on the basketball court. We played against the varsity team and beat the crap out of them, even though Sean's completely forgotten how to play basketball. I'm so good, Jess. Not my aim, I mean, that too, but I can see immediately what's wrong with the team and what they can do to improve."

"You aren't good, you're brilliant. I thought you were going pro."

"Yeah, I did, too, but too late for that now. I'm old and out of shape," he said dramatically, even though he was every bit of the hunk he'd always been. He'd told her before that his three-point percentage dipped his senior year, resulting in his failure to get picked in the NBA draft. It devastated him, and later his dad suffered from a transient ischemic attack, which made him forget about pursuing a professional career in basketball altogether. "Anyway, they like me there, so for some weird reason I agreed to coach them every Thursday evening."

"You. Are. Incredible. You're the star-player-turned-legend."

He shook his head. "I want to ask you something important."

"Go ahead."

"Do you think...um, do you think I'm one of those people that peaked in high school?" Without waiting for a reply, he rushed on. "Last week we had a 40-something guy in our bar who came in wearing his varsity jacket, and it made me sad."

"No..." Jessica started slowly. "You were awfully popular in college, too."

He sighed. "That's not—"

"Jake, you were the top one percent of high school athletes to receive a full scholarship to play Division I basketball," she said as she started to count off her fingers. "You graduated from a great school, took over the family business, and now you're the president of a budding company. You see your parents every month, you have the best relationship ever with your sister, you own a bar with your buddy, you travel with your best friends every year...you still do, right?"

"Yeah, sometimes it's only a weekend but the three of us do try to meet up every year."

"Honestly, not many people get to do that. Also, you get invited back to your school to give speeches and coach the team, you've got a spectacular place to live, not to mention you adopted the cutest cat to keep you company."  

Jake's lips stretched into a smile. "Well, when you put it like that..."

She pointed a finger dotingly at his temple. "You're so lucky and you don't even know it. Of course you didn't peak in high school. In fact...this sounds tacky but you're the winner in every stage of your life: voted Most Gorgeous every year in high school, star athlete in college, CEO and hot bachelor in your twenties...but put all the titles aside, you win at life because you remain this warm, sweet, funny, positive guy through it all. You make people happy, and you don't change at all." 

 He grimaced. "That's what I'm afraid of."

"It's a compliment. Please don't change."

"I guess it's seeing Sean engaged and so successful in NYC and Dylan with his family responsibilities..." He scratched the back of his neck. "Our little Dill Pickle is a father of two now, can you believe it? I feel nothing but happiness for them but when I look at myself...life's good in general, but it has to be more than this." He gestured at the empty space between them and his gaze fell on her.  

She wondered if Jake ever felt lonely. Seemed like the only thing missing in his life was a relationship. "Oh, I almost forgot to add," she said, meeting his gaze. Her throat constricted. "The girl you slept with at 18 is still here, because she can't get enough of you."

He stared at her lips, then he glanced down, grabbing both of her hands. He traced his thumbs over her knuckles. "I know I told you already, but I miss you so much."

She pulled out her hands from his grasp and used them to bring his face toward her. "Prove it," she said, and kissed him.

He responded. His lips were salty from the peanuts they were eating earlier and warm as she remembered. It was worth it. All the sad, hard days apart were worth it, and she thought of the loneliest nights of the past few months where it was pitch dark aside from a solitary star overhead. She thought of poetry from the Tang Dynasty her mom made her memorize as a kid, poems about wars and the Yangtze River and autumn evenings and the sliver of moon over The Forbidden City, poems about family and yearning. A shiver ran over her skin.

Her hands traveled down his torso, and it jotted her back to the presence. There were no more images of ancient China and all there was left was him. The ceiling light washed over his back and she could only see the silhouette framed by his broad shoulders. He dipped down his head to kiss her but she kept her eyes open, not wanting to miss one moment of looking at him. Her hands wandered, liking the feel of him beneath her palm, liking the taut muscles along the path, when he grabbed her wrists and sighed. "Wait."

She flicked her gaze from the bulge under his sweatpants up to his face. "You don't want to?"

"Of course I want to. I've had a hard-on since you walked through the door."

She waited for an explanation, and then with great reluctance, he continued. "This confuses me. It gets worse every time...like am I your ex-boyfriend? A friend with benefits? Or..." He caught himself and stopped. "Never mind."

She withdrew her hands. "Or what?"

"Or a one-week-long booty call. You can't just come back and fuck me and then leave, sometimes without even saying goodbye."

Jessica closed her eyes as her heart dropped into a glacier lake. Here it was. That moment where he realized it had to stop. Her eyes snapped open and her next sentence came out like an accusation. "You weren't like this the last time."

The last time she met him, the first thing he'd asked was, "so let me get this out of the way...are we having sex or not?" She'd pretended she had to consider, he'd pressed her to give him at least a percentage of likelihood to work with, and five minutes later they were all over each other, as well as the whole week to follow, and he never complained once.

Heck, he'd even improvised and made up a pre-intercourse poem:

I miss a river

That doesn't flow often

Only in my dream

"Your poetic ability still astounds me," she had said. River was the theme because her last name Jiang meant river in Mandarin. "Is that...haiku?"

"Good spot, it is." He beamed. "With syllables of 5-7-5 in three lines. And isn't it supposed to be about love and dreams and nature and all that jazz?"

"You're a literary genius," she had said. "Please fuck me."

And of course he had gladly obliged.

But now he was averting her gaze, and she was offended as well as humiliated, especially when she could still feel the warmth of his touch on her breasts and the searing desire between her legs. Before she could stop herself, she opened her mouth. "It's not like you're miserable and bored without me here. I bet you get laid a lot as a bartender, right? Must be fun working in a bar."

He flicked back his gaze and she read the hurt all over his face. "That's not...it's not..."

"When was the last time you hooked up with a customer?"

He tilted up his head and let out a long breath. "Are you mad at me for having sex with other people? Because you encouraged me to when you broke up with me."

"What else was I supposed to say? That I can't be with you, but you aren't allowed any fun without me, either?"

"You are mad at me," he said, as if truly surprised by it. "I honestly thought...you even helped me get that girl's number when we went bar hopping that time...do you remember?"

"I told her if she was only to ride one dick this year, it'd better be yours. Then you left with her and I cried all the way home."

He stared at her with his mouth open, innocent as a cartoon squirrel. "But—Why? I thought you were okay with it. Why would you do that if you didn't want me to—"

"Because I wanted to feel like something was still within my control. Once you got over me, you were going to sleep with other people anyway. It made me feel slightly better that I was the one who drove it, like...like you were only doing it because I made you."

He stayed silent for a long time, then he said, "Jessica. Sometimes I don't understand you at all."

∞

Jake felt dirty.

Jessica wanted him to wait for her after all. Could he be any more stupid? He was simple as an amoeba but she obviously had a much more complicated mind, and he couldn't believe he was dumb enough to take anything she said at face value.

He had the audacity to whine about being a booty call, all while he was busy sleeping around the city. How long ago was it when Katelyn threw him out of her apartment, threatening to expose him to his nonexistent girlfriend? It was less than 24 hours ago.

Now he had irritated Jessica, and it immediately reminded him of the time when they broke up. The same cold fear ran through his veins, freezing him organ by organ, first clenching his stomach then stopping his heart.

It was during summer, before the senior year of college started. Jessica had come back from Brown and he from University of Connecticut. Their schools weren't too far apart, but during the semesters he got to see her far less often than he wished to. As a division one basketball player, Jake's schedule was like adding a full-time job on top of school. He often had to train at sunrise and the weekends weren't any easier, packed with games, traveling, and making up on the school work he'd missed.

Summer vacation allowed him to spend more time with her, and that thought alone added a spring in his steps. Aside from that, summer held a certain significance to him. She'd agreed to be his girlfriend (his first and only) the summer after high school graduation, and those first days together, he taught her how to drive while she forced him to sit through a bunch of Chinese art house films. The next summer, they had their first real fight over something so petty he couldn't even remember, but when she cried in his arms, her hair a mess and her face stripped of makeup, he was surprised at how stunningly beautiful she was, the kind that made his heart hurt. He said his first "I love you" right then and a tinge of fear grasped him, as he realized that it was the end of me and the start of us. He was a goner. The third summer, they went to India with Sean and Dylan, a trip that smelled of samosas, mint drinks and the beach of Goa. His friends spoke so highly of her, of course they did, and he never felt luckier to be surrounded by his favorite people.

So this was how being in a thriving relationship felt like. It was better than anything he could've imagined.

Now that they were onto their fourth summer, Jake was smitten with his Jessica and more in love than ever. One afternoon (the afternoon that would come to torture him later), he was lying in bed and Jessica sat a few feet away, holding a sketch book in one hand and drawing him with the other. She was every bit as artsy as he was sporty, but the difference in their hobbies was never an issue.

"Do I need to take off my clothes?"

"Obviously," she replied, barely glancing up.

Jake pulled off his shirt. He positioned himself as Rose from Titanic, stretching across the mattress with one arm held over his head. The other hand brushed at the tip of his hair, which had gotten long over the semester. He pursed his lips into a pout and glared sultrily at her.

She laughed. "Get rid of the duckface."

"You don't find me sexy?"

She smiled and ignored him. It took her a long time to fine-tune her drawing, until his elbows were sore for not moving. When she was finally satisfied, she turned her sketch book over to show him.

It was a drawing of the lamp on his nightstand. One of his fingers made it onto the page.

He gasped. "What was I doing naked on the bed then?"

"For my personal pleasure?" Jessica smirked. "I like the view."

He dove toward her and she jumped up. It didn't take him two seconds to catch her, pull her onto the bed and pin her underneath him. "Well, I like this view, too. Time for my personal pleasure."

She giggled, wrapping her legs around his waist to draw him in. It could just be the Jo Malone body lotion she used, but she smelled so good. When she roamed her hands over him, different parts of his body lit up in turn like he was a string of light bulbs, with the biggest, most flashy one down there. There was something inexplicable about Jessica that he couldn't get tired of.

There had been other temptations in his life. Too many, in fact. Jake may be narcissistic, but he didn't imagine the effect he had on girls (and some guys). He was hit on regularly despite never responding. Jessica once read the messages on his phone when he showed it to her, and even she was amazed at how forward some of these people could get.

The only text he'd ever replied to was a revealing selfie from a girl in his class, who had on a cream-colored lace cami and was bent forward with half of her boobs hanging out. This wasn't the first selfie she sent him, but this time he couldn't resist because he had a photo of Jessica in the exact same outfit (only she was classy in it). He hit send on impulse, with the message "look my girlfriend has the same top" underneath.

Evidently Jessica was twenty times hotter, no caption needed, and the girl never bothered him again.

He didn't delete the texts. Not because he was interested, but he saved them as proof so he could brag to Jessica about what a good boyfriend he had been. Looking back, this mindset seemed awfully juvenile, but perhaps his subconsciousness wanted to be rewarded for his loyalty.

He liked his role of being taken, unavailable, yet nevertheless desired. During the first two years of college, while Dylan was falling in love every two months with a new soul mate—their souls must reside inside their double D-size bra, judging from Dylan's singular taste—and while Sean was living up his reputation as the fraternity star and the legend everyone wanted to get a piece of, Jake enjoyed his new-found power, the power of saying no. At school where varsity athletes ranked above all in terms of social status, since he was both the best and the best-looking player on the team, it was clearly a question of he wouldn't rather than he couldn't.

His teammates took part in the immature game of competing who scored the most with girls, but Jake didn't deign to their level. Granted, he had exchanged cringey locker room talk with Dylan in his adolescence and had said (many) things he wasn't proud of, but he thought everyone grew out of that phase once they turned adults. He was wrong. This was part of the reason why he didn't keep in touch with most of the dudes he acquainted in college, because they were horrible people.

But more on that later.

"I forgot to tell you," Jessica said, gazing at his face. "I'm going to Bangladesh."

She was so casual, at first he thought he heard her say, "I'm going to the bathroom." Jake stared as he tried to register the meaning of the sentence. He wasn't exceptionally bright to begin with, and the orgasm ten minutes ago seemed to have sucked away the rest of his brain power.

His mind went blank, aside from the one burning question he didn't dare to ask; where is that?

"For 12 weeks." She pulled up the quilt to cover herself. "It's like the volunteer program I took part in last year. You remember. After the Ebola crisis, lots of businesses closed so we went there to help create employment and provide enterprise training. You know, help young people acquire the skills they need to improve their lives. I found out yesterday I've been placed in Bangladesh this time. Oh, and I have to leave in three weeks."

"Wait. Slow down." He put both palms on his forehead and willed himself to calm down. "You've been placed...that means you applied—when did you apply?"

"A while ago."

"You're going in summer, during university holidays. I'm guessing these placements are popular and you have to apply well in advance. How long ago is a while?"

"Four months," Jessica muttered.

"Fuck."

The word hung in silence for the next few seconds to follow. Jake exhaled. "You've had four months to tell me but you wait till now."

"I put it off because I knew you were going to get upset about it. It's not like I'm leaving you here to go party—"

"God, Jessica. I'm not upset about you doing volunteer work. But I hate how you tell me these things in an FYI sort of way, like, for your information, here's my summer plan and you don't have any say in it."

"I'm sorry," she said, her face softening. "I'm truly sorry, Jake. That wasn't my intention. I mean, of course you have a say in it."

He appreciated the fact she said it, even though she was lying. When she decided on something, it was decided. Telling him was simply an act of informing.

"It's just that you were so worried about Sierra Leone last time, and my parents kept trying to dissuade me, and everyone was saying how dangerous it was...I don't want to hear any more negative comments. I'm going to chicken out if I do. I need someone who'll encourage me, someone who'll say, just do it. Just go, because you've found what you want to do and that already makes you luckier than most people."

As the end of her sentence lingered over his head, he started to feel sad. He understood the sub context between her lines: he wasn't supportive enough of her dreams. He'd like to think he was, but in all honesty, he'd prefer it if Jessica stayed and spent the summer in his bed instead.

It was only 12 weeks, though. He was going to be fine. They had been dating long distance for 154 weeks already, and after this one last year of school, they could finally share an apartment somewhere. Right now Jake didn't get any choice about his housing and had to live with the team. He hated them.

Feeling slightly relieved by the thought, he moved in to peck her on the lips. "Alright. Just do it. Just go. I'm glad you're going because you've found what you want to do and...what's the rest of the sentence?"

She laughed. "Not important."

He slid his arm across her still-naked body and dove under the covers. With eyes closed, he printed kisses on her shoulders and along her collar bone. "Since you're leaving me in three weeks, I guess we'll have to start working overtime now."

"I'm a workaholic anyway. I don't need rest."

He smiled, moving his hand along her waist. Her skin was so smooth. "Seriously, I hope you have a very rewarding trip," he said, his mood brightening. "Last chance before graduation, and then you're going to have a boring life running your dad's hotel."

When she didn't answer at once, he thought she was swooning over his kisses, until she said, "Jake, I'm not going to work for my dad."

His eyes snapped open. 

"This is what I want to do. After I graduate, I don't have to limit myself to 10 to 12 weeks of volunteering anymore. I'm prepared to go overseas for months on end."

"What?" He swallowed. "Going overseas twice isn't enough?"

"No. No, it's not. There's so much waiting to be done...I want to create a quality education system in developing countries. I want to design learning resources, and I want to ensure every child's access to education. That's not something I can do short term."

"I want to stay here and play basketball."

"I know. You should."

There was the numbness at first, then it gave way to the onset of a panic attack. Jake had loving parents, but having his birth mom walk out on him was something he'd never get over, no matter how deeply embedded the fear may be. She was someone who was supposed to love him but abandoned him. Jessica was supposed to love him, too, but she was also leaving him. 

"What's going to happen to us?"

She stared back at him as blood pounded in his ears. She didn't know.

She didn't care.

"But you hate camping and you hate nature. You're okay with eating canned food? What kind of place will you be sleeping at?"

"I'll be staying at the local YMCA campus. And I'm there to help people, Jake. I don't think of it as going camping."

The discussion strayed from there. Jake didn't remember half of the things they argued about, but it ended something along the lines of this:

"I don't understand you," he said. "I thought you wanted to be with me. You're the one who said—"

"I do want to be with you, I'm—"

"I can get any girl I want, do you know that?" he said, and in hindsight he wanted to punch himself for it. The way his brain processed hurt was staying out of it and letting his mouth take over. "I can literally sleep with someone different every week and I can go for years without running out. But I don't. Everyone else is partying and screwing around. I barely have a social life because I spend all my free time on you, but you don't appreciate—"

"I get it," she interrupted, her eyes flashing. "How admirable it is that you turn down women on a daily basis, especially since you're a star athlete at the top of the college social hierarchy. Bonus points for being white, too."

He blinked, taken aback. "Why are you taking a jab at me for being white? Feels like you're blaming me for something I can't control."

"I'm just pointing out a fact. The world would feel like a much unfriendlier place if you weren't born a straight, cis, white, attractive guy." She exhaled. "I'm sorry you feel like you're missing out on a lot of college pussies and that I can't give you as much attention as you want, when there are 47 million people living in poverty in Bangladesh."

There went a few minutes where they both said nothing, then he apologized. "I'm sorry, Jess. I said things I don't mean because I'm hurt. I love you. I feel like you're leaving me."

"Oh God, no, I'm sorry. I fought dirty. The awful things I said—"

"You were right, though. I can't deny I have a lot of privileges—"

"But bringing that up was going off topic, especially when I've had certain privileges, too. I grew up in a mansion with a chauffeur and had private school education." She shook her head. "That's not the point. I guess I was in a bad mood myself, about having to leave you soon, so I took it out on you. I love you."

Jake nodded. He pulled her in his arms again, and Jessica didn't resist. "I hate fighting with you," he said. "Next time we should at least put on our clothes first."

She chuckled, and for a moment there he truly believed everything was okay again. He held her in silence for a while. The only good thing about fighting was making up afterward, and he reminded himself to be more understanding and open-minded the next time they discussed future. It wasn't until he felt her tears on his arm did he realize that they were far from okay. 

"I'm sorry," she said, sniffling. "Jake, I really, really love you. I love you so much."

"What's the matter?" Alarmed, he brushed her hair back from her face and saw her eyes were red from crying.

With tears flowing freely down her cheeks, she told him she loved him again, with a resolution that scared him. When her tears dried, she explained calmly to him why they should break up. She said he should be allowed to enjoy his college life to the fullest while she pursued her dreams, without having to worry about him.

"This isn't like wanting to watch different movies," she said. "We want different lives."

When asked, Jake told people they broke up because they got tired of fucking each other. It was a better version for his ego. He didn't like to share the part where he tugged at her hand, promised not to complain anymore, said he would wait for her to come back whenever, as long as she didn't break up with him. He literally begged. He begged until his voice started to sound small and scared, until it sank in that nothing he said would change her mind again. 

Like everything else with Jessica, breaking up was a one-person decision. She simply did the act of informing.