Unspoken (3 page)

“I’ll see you around then,” Jackson said as we got to the bakery after walking back from the wings bar. I stood at the door.

“Sure, come by whenever you feel like it,” I said trying to lean on something in case my legs gave in.

“I will. I wouldn’t miss your broccoli and cheese muffins for the world” he laughed immediately, one of our laughs. I laughed “ Yes, that sounded wrong,” he said shaking his head and giving one last wave. I saw him leave and went into the bakery but immediately ran to the kitchen where I leaned against a wall and lowered myself until I was seated on the floor and cried. Cried for everything that never was and for everything that will never be. I cried because I was stupid enough to go near him knowing that there’s nothing in this world that would prevent me from falling in love with him.

“Marion” said Alexa sitting down next to me as she shooed Greg to attend the front of the bakery.

“I’m such an idiot,” I said wiping my tears with the back of my hand.

“What happened?” she asked me.

“He is getting married,” I said the last part between a giant sob as I put my head on my bended knees.

“And what? The bastard is here for one last bang?” Alexa was ready to get up and kick some ass.

“No, he’s looking for answers. He doesn’t want to get married,” I shrugged. “He needs me as a friend.”

“Oh,” said Alexa and sat back down. “Then,” she put her hand on my shoulder, “I guess you should cry a lot, A LOT, because you are his friend.” I nodded silently.

“I never wanted to be his friend,” I sobbed harder.

“No, but you never told him that,” she said running her hand through my tangled waves.

Alexa was right, there were never promises or labels between us. We were friends, very good friends for the 4 months of summer and some weekends during 2 years. We were just friends.

For the next couple of days it was usual to find Jackson sitting at the bakery having breakfast and chatting up with Alexa or me. He’d reconnected with Connor so, as far as Alexa had told me, they had gone out for drinks a couple of nights and I’d bet Connor knew everything about his fiancé. I was trying really hard to stay busy in the bakery and with catering services that were due. Truth was that I would be over with everything work related really fast because of all the frustration that I was releasing, so, by the time I was over with work and baking I only had one thing to do: obsess over Jackson and all these feelings that had been long forgotten. Next day I would do it all over again. I was exhausted of everything.

One Friday night when I was coming back from closing the bakery, I found Jackson sitting on the front steps of my home. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs for a bit, took a deep breath and then went up.

“Lost?” I asked as I sat down next to him.

“Something like that” he sported a beautiful long beard now. It seemed this would be his ‘running away’ look. I loved it, like everything else he did, or had or wore. “You’re late,” he said and looked at my watch. 10 pm.

“I was baking for tomorrow. I’m catering a bridal shower.” He nodded. “Want to come in?” I asked and he nodded again.

“It’s different,” he said looking around the house. I had thrown down a couple of walls and let the bottom floor be one single space. You could only see that there was a kitchen because there was a mini island in the middle.

“Yeah, I had to make it my own,” I loved my grandma so much but I just couldn’t take her house and simply live there among her things. I had to change everything to really feel that it was mine. “Connor helped,” I said as I put my bag on of the couches in the living room.

”You kept the pantry,” he said looking at the huge pantry that we used to raid in search of ingredients for my experiments.

“Yeah, I love that pantry,” I said trying not to look at him. That pantry had a lot of memories including a make out session that lasted a long long time. I sighed.

“Want something to drink? To eat?” I said going to the kitchen and opening the fridge door.

“Do you have any Soda?” he asked leaning against the pantry.

“Sprite?” I asked and he nodded. I took two sprite cans and gave one to him. “Come,” I said and we both sat on the couch.

“It’s so fucking weird to be back,” he said shaking his head.

“It’s weird to have you back,” I smiled while I looked for some pills on my purse for the head ache that was starting to form.

“I missed this place,” he said and I immediately looked up to him with a couple questions in the tip of my tongue but I tried with all my will to keep them to myself.

“It’s a beautiful place to live,” I nodded while swallowing the pills and letting my hair down from the bun I wore at the bakery.

“Headache?” he asked and I nodded while disentangling my hair. I’ve always had headaches so taking pills for them was usual for me. “I miss this the most,” he said reaching for my hair and running his hand through it. I froze on the spot. I thought that maybe, since we weren’t young and hormonal, we wouldn’t be so responsive to each other’s touch but the way he was looking at me now and the way I was feeling by the simple touch of his hands on my hair told me that we were far from unresponsive.

“Jackson,” I whispered as he kept on moving his fingers through my hair.

“What?” he asked with that smile that always reminded me that what we were doing was dangerous for me but it was also unavoidable.

“This is dangerous,” I said gathering all my courage and standing up walking to the kitchen.

“Is it, Mar?” he asked from the couch.

“Of course it is,” I said putting my hands on my face and then looking out the window from where I could see the mini pool in the house. “It has always been this way with us,” I shook my head and turned to look at him. He was already on the island in the kitchen and still smiling.

“What is so dangerous about that? It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” And to me! I wanted to scream. I wanted to hug him and tell him that I had never ever been able to feel the way that he made me feel, the way he was making me feel that same moment but…. But I couldn’t, I shouldn’t. So, I didn’t.

“You are engaged, Jackson,” I said pleading with my voice for him to stay away because I saw him walking towards me.

“I know,” he kept on walking until we were inches apart,”but I can’t be standing here and not be near you” he finally closed the distance and he was pressed up against me and I was cornered by the counter in the kitchen.

“We can’t,” I said and he put a hand on my cheek.

“But we should,” he whispered. I wanted to scream,
Fuck it
and have my way with him on the kitchen floor but I couldn’t.

“It’s not fair to me,” I said and I felt his lips on my forehead, “or her.”

“I know,” he said with his lips still against my forehead, “but I still can do this,” he said passing his arm around my waist “can’t I?” could he? I didn’t know but this closeness was something I had to do with. It couldn’t go further but still I craved his touch, I would enjoy whatever I was allowed to.

“I missed you too,” I said with my hands on his chest. He was everything. I felt a little part of myself brought back to me when he came back. It was as if the adventure of life was no longer present in my every step the moment he went away. I missed that and being here with him I felt that. I felt excited to live; that I could do anything. I could invent crazy recipes, walk around the world and jump from a plane but only if he was here.

“Tell me what to do, Mar” he said still pressed up against me, still with his lips on my forehead. Was he trying to absorb my thoughts? He was kissing me in the wrong place because I couldn’t think. All I could do was feel.

“Only the right thing, Jackson.” Yes, I was a fucking martyr. I wanted him to be mine but I didn’t want it like that.

“I don’t know what that is anymore,” He finally stepped back a little and put his forehead against mine. “Can we be friends?” he asked with his eyes closed.

“Of course,” I said feeling my heart break in two more pieces. It was already broken but I could clearly feel a new piece falling down from the puzzle that was my heart.

Seventeen

Alexa was next to me and was probably flirting with the guy that was next to her, Connor went on and on about the upcoming football season with the guys and all the girls were bored to death talking to each other. We were at a party at some guy’s place and we were sitting on a picnic table at the beach. I wasn’t paying attention to anything that was going on around me because for the past 30 minutes Jackson and I had been looking at each other, smiling or laughing, communicating in that language we had created. We both knew the party was boring, that Connor was trying to impress a girl at the table and that Alexa was about to grab her things and meet the guy next to her in some room in the house but we never said it, we just looked at each other and smiled or laughed.

Jackson seemed unable to convey certain message because soon he was grabbing a paper and a pen from somewhere on the table and wrote down something and gave the paper to me. I grabbed it without looking at it and his smile told me that what I was about to read was good. I opened the paper in my hands and read:
I’ m going to kiss you now
.

I looked up and smiled, letting him know that I needed that too. In that same second we both stood up and reached for each other faces across the picnic table and kissed. In front of everyone we kissed and opened a door to something that we wouldn’t be able to close. We broke apart and looked into each other’s eyes smiling. Yeah, we both knew this was going to be good.

We sat back down and when we turned to look at everyone they were all looking at us like we were the main event of the night. We hadn’t thought about everyone seeing us kissing, or that we were giving a show. I blushed and looked down at the paper that I was still holding in my hand.

“What?” he said in between laughter. No one said a thing. “just a couple of friends kissing,” he said reaching for my hand and giving a quick squeeze “right?” he asked me and I looked up at him and smiled.

“Sure,” I said nodding and then everyone went on with their conversations. Including us, we went back to our private communication.

I woke up at 4 am ready to start a new day in the bakery. I sat on the bed and put my head in my hands as soon as I saw Jackson sleeping in the sofa bed in my bedroom, well, my top floor because just as I had done with the bottom floor, I’d thrown down walls and now my bedroom resembled a loft.

Jackson had slept over because right after I accepted to be his friend, this time knowing that I had agreed that we were friends and also knowing that it was all bullshit because I could feel us both shiver every time we touched, he asked me if he could sleep over.
I don’t want to be alone
he’d said. I warned him he wouldn’t be sleeping in my bed because there was no way in hell that we would keep our hands to ourselves so I set up the sofa bed.

Now that it was a new day I just hoped that this didn’t turn into something common for us. I sighed and jumped into the shower. I peeked in to check if it was safe to run out on my towel, like he hadn’t seen everything before, but he was still asleep. I put on my black pants, white shirt and grabbed a sweater. I put one or a thousand hair products on and grabbed my bag. Jackson was sound asleep and I didn’t have the heart to wake him up. I wrote down in a post-it that I would be in the bakery and that I would see him around, I pasted it in the sofa bed where he could see it and left.

It was close to opening time when I heard the front door open and then “Good Morning”. It was Jackson. I turned around and saw him giving Alexa a side hug, “Good morning, ass,” she said calling him her nickname for him. I quickly turned around to appear busy with whatever I had in my hands.

“Mar,” he said going into the kitchen and I just nodded while decorating an apple pie that I was going to put out that day. “Good Morning, Jackson,” I said trying to sound cool and probably failing.

“I woke up and you weren’t there,” he said and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I know I blushed, because I blushed at anything slightly uncomfortable and nodded “I had to come to work,” I smiled at him. “Go, grab something to eat,” I said nudging him in the stomach and he smiled and went to the front to pick something for his breakfast. When I turned around Alexa was looking at me with a murderous stare.

“What?” I said as I went back to the apple pie.

“It’s happening again,” she said coming closer and I shook my head “C’mon, Marion,” she said giving me a half smile.

“Nothing happened. He came by last night we talked, we ALMOST kissed or something else but we didn’t it. I put a stop to it,” I said with my hand in my hip with a sense of pride. I nodded and went on “he didn’t want to be alone so he slept over on the sofa bed. Same as Mika when he sleeps over,” Mika was Alexa’s son.

“Why didn’t you let something more happen?” she asked with a cryptic smile.

“He’s engaged,” I said putting the pie in the oven.

“He’s here,” she said still smiling.

“I don’t want to give him my heart again and I know the moment I let something happen he will have my heart and I will die whenever he leaves again,” I shrugged and went to change my baking apron for the black one and to change the net on my hair for a bun.

“What if he never leaves?” she asked me following me around the kitchen.

“He will, he always does,” I said and went out to the front.

“What will you have this morning?” I asked Jackson and he chose a cinnamon bun and a coffee.

“Will you be around today?” he asked while preparing his coffee.

“I have that bridal shower. I might go out tonight with Alexa, she’s got a babysitter today,” I crossed my fingers.

“Cool, I’ll see you around then,” he said and I nodded as I saw him leave. Seeing him leave was always the hard part of our friendship. He always promised between kisses that he’d be back soon. He always did, until he didn’t.