Page 43 of Breaking Free

“Are you upset?” he asks. He’s standing in front of me now, looking at me hopelessly with those gentle, blue eyes of his.

“Is she gone?” I ask him.

“Yeah. Rach, I’m sorry. I meant to tell you about her. I just…I didn’t.”

“I know that I shouldn’t be upset about her,” I say. “But I am upset. I am upset that you didn’t tell me about her. How long were you together?” I ask the question, but I know that I definitely don’t want to know the answer.

J.R. is uncomfortable. He shifts on his feet, and he digs his hands deeper into his pockets.

“Rach, I never loved her. It was just…”

“I swear if you say it was just sex, I will scream,” I snap. “Also, she looks nothing like me.” I fold my arms across my chest. I’m being slightly childish. I know this.

“That was kind of the point. Ashley wasn’t meant to replace you. She wasn’t you, Rach. She was just a distraction. She’s dense. I only enjoyed spending time with her when she wasn’t talking.”

“Well, that makes me feel better,” I reply sarcastically. “I was doing the math. She’s been gone for three months. That’s about the time I showed back up. Did we just miss each other? Did she just come in and out as she pleased? Your own personal booty call?” It would have been horrible if I had come back to find J.R. with her. I’m not sure that I would be sitting here right now if things had happened that way.

“Rach, it was never anything serious. Okay? She’s gone now. She’s not coming back.” His voice has raised slightly.

I stand up from the swing. “I told you everything, J.R. Right down to the night I tried to kill myself. And you couldn’t find a moment to tell me you had a girlfriend? You couldn’t stop asking me if I had been with anyone, when all the while, you had Ashley in the back of your mind.”

“She wasn’t a girlfriend!” he shouts. “I didn’t think that there was anything to tell. Not right now, anyway. We are trying things out again, albeit slowly, but I didn’t want to mess that up. I had intended on calling her, telling her, but I just…didn’t.”

“You didn’t think she would show up eventually?”

“Honestly, I didn’t think that far, Rach. And maybe I thought she would call first.” J.R. puts his hands through his hair, and he’s frustrated.

“Is there anyone else you want to tell me about?” I ask.

J.R. looks at me. His blue eyes are soft, and he walks closer to me. “Rach, there’s never been anyone else. It was always you. Even when you were gone, you still had my heart.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “I’m sorry, okay?”

J.R. is impossible to stay angry with. I have a weakness, and it’s him. I feel myself grow calm again, and then I hide a smile. “Did you two do it in our bed?”

He hears the joke in my voice. “Shut up.”

He takes my face in his hands and pulls me into a kiss.

I can’t seem to stop thinking about Ashley. It’s been a few hours now since we last talked about her, but as I lie here in bed trying to go to sleep, my mind keeps wandering back to her. I guess I’ve allowed myself to be a little obsessive, but to think of J.R. with another woman makes me sick.

Truth is, when I left J.R., I never thought about the fact that he would move on and be with someone else. My mind froze J.R. right where I left him. I didn’t allow myself to wonder what he was doing, and I never allowed myself to think about his day-to-day activities.

To think that he spent time with someone else is a fact that I’ll have to adjust to. I think that I will have to accept the fact that J.R. is also attracted to tall, thin, tan, blonde women. I also wonder if he’s ever been attracted to Kelley.

“You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?” J.R. asks me through the quiet darkness. J.R has made a habit of sharing the air mattress with me in the music room before we part for the evening. It’s sort of fun. We keep ourselves distracted with conversation; but taking things slowly means that despite the things we want to do together—specifically things that are done in the bedroom between couples—we avoid. It’s not been easy, obviously, but I think we’re both making an elaborate effort to really do this correctly this time. Even if our intention in the beginning had been to move slowly, we got careless. We have Knox now. We can’t afford to get careless.

His voice startles me. I thought he had fallen asleep. I roll toward him. “It’s…it’s strange for me to think about is all.”

“Stop thinking about it,” he says, facing me.

“She was pretty.”

I feel his hand against my cheek. “You are the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“I’m not tall and thin,” I point out.

“No, but I think you’re perfect. Short legs and all. I love you, Rach. Ever since I saw you sitting there at that table all by yourself that night in May 2001.”

I smile. “That was a good night.”

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