One Last Touch Read online

  My memory wasn’t serving me very good and I didn’t have a clue what happened. I knew that this was getting out of control though and something had to give. We had to get out of here. I didn’t have a job to get back to. I’d been fired naturally because of my own mistakes. What a pair of shits we made.

  I tried calling Mariss again, but she hadn’t been answering. I figured she wouldn’t answer this morning, but she did.

  “Hey Mariss. I’ve been trying to reach you for days.”

  “I know. I see the missed calls. We’ve been busy.”

  “We?”

  “Me, Anna and Eve. The girls.”

  “Where are you?”

  She lowered her voice. “Myrtle Beach. Anna wanted to see the beach, so we’re staying in a villa. This is such a mess, she’s a mess.”

  “Well so is Jesse. I don’t know how he is going to get through this. We need to get them back together.”

  “Like hell we do. He cheated on her and the girl announced it in front of everyone that Anna knew at her wedding. They better not get back together. I will make sure that she never thinks about that loser again.”

  “Damn Mariss, that’s kind of harsh.”

  She made a huffing sound and I knew then that I should end the conversation. It was crashing and burning. This wasn’t our shit, but right now we were in the middle of it. I didn’t want to be, but I was. There was nothing that I could do about it.

  “It’s not harsh enough. I can’t believe your friends with him.”

  “I’ve been friends with Jesse a long time. He made a mistake. That’s it. Everyone makes mistakes.”

  “Well that’s true, everyone does. But that doesn’t mean that the other person must forgive them. He messed up and Anna is trying to move on. I’m not going to let anything get in the way of that. It’s not going to happen.”

  I could tell that she wasn’t giong to budge. I didn’t know all the facts but didn’t think that it should involve us.

  “I don’t want to argue with you Mariss. I just missed you and wanted to hear your voice. I’ve been babysitting him to make sure he doesn’t anything to stupid, though I don’t know if I’m doing a very good job or not.”

  “Me too. Anna is not thinking clearly. She gets this way sometimes and it’s been interesting. I just get worked up thinking about it because I hate to see her upset.”

  “Well, I don’t want to get into it with you. I just wanted to know that you were okay. I hadn’t heard from you and after what happened. I thought that things would be different.”

  “Right now, things are complicated.”

  I started to agree, but then there was a loud knock on the bathroom door I’d escaped into and one of the girls asked me if I was going to be long in the bathroom. I covered up the receiver part of the phone and told her to fuck off, but I knew it was too late.

  “Are you serious?”

  That’s all I heard before she hung up. It didn’t take a genius to understand what she thought. She thought I was with a woman, which I did have them in the room, but I hadn’t touched any of them. Now I was in the doghouse too and I hadn’t done anything wrong. What the hell?

  ***

  “Fuck, fuck!”

  “What’s up man?”

  Jesse was sleepy eyed and when he looked at me I could see they were bloodshot.

  “I got to go Jesse. I’m sorry, but your shit just became my shit and I can’t do this anymore. You fucked up, she left. Fix it and grow the fuck up. I’m not losing her again for no one.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Mariss.”

  “You met her once a long time ago, what is with you and this chick?”

  “I don’t know. I just know that I don’t want to be without her. I know that I don’t want to mess it up and I think I already have. One of your skanks said something while I was on the phone to her, so now she thinks that I’m sleeping around like you.”

  His face screwed up a little and I thought he was going to get mad. Then he just kind of sighed loudly and apologized. “I’m sorry Cal. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I don’t have a job anymore. I called and quit the next day. I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking or what I’m going to do.”

  “Have you tried calling her?”

  “She’ll never answer. I’ve lost her for good.”

  “How can you give up so quickly?” I should feel the same way, but I couldn’t make myself do it, no matter how hard I tried. I wanted her and that was that. I wasn’t willing to give her up.

  “If you love her, you can never give up Jesse.”

  I needed to listen to my own advice. I started to gather up my things. I wanted to clear the room, but Jesse wasn’t ready for it. He wanted to continue in his downward spiral trajectory and I was just going to have to let him. He was pulling me in and that wasn’t going to work either. I had to find out what was going on between me and Mariss, but I didn’t know how to find her. I didn’t think that Anna was going to help me out. She probably thought I was the devil right now. She already thought I was a bad influence on Jesse, so maybe in her eyes it was all my fault.

  And if Anna felt that way, it wasn’t going to be long until Mariss did as well. I had to get to her before that happened.

  Chapter 20

  Mariss

  “Are you thinking about him again?”

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  “And then you’d be reflecting.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So, are you thinking about him right now?”

  I told Anna that I was. I didn’t mean to mind you, but I did think about Cal way more than I should have. Just like I knew that she thought about Jesse more than she would have liked to. It wasn’t anything that we could do to change what happened though, so I didn’t really think about too much more than regret. I missed him and then at the same time I hated myself for missing him. It was all very confusing and I thought it best to just leave it lie. It seemed to be the best solution.

  “Yes, I am. I can’t help it. It’s because I’m still around here.”

  “I don’t want you to go home yet. You should stay with me for a while. You can paint stuff here.”

  I told her I would still stay a little longer, but I didn’t know if painting was on my mind. I wanted to get away again and if I knew that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea, I would have asked her if she wanted to go travel some more. But Anna wasn’t into traveling now. She had for a couple of weeks, but now she was back home, and she was trying to get on with her life after everything that happened. To me, she was brave. Every other day there was still things coming in the mail about the wedding or a gift that was late. It would make her tear up, but now it was getting better. At least she didn’t feel the need to break everything anymore. That was a fun stage of grief.

  So, I decided to stay for a little while longer, but my mind repeatedly went to Cal. Where else would it be? I knew that I shouldn’t want him and miss him, but I did. There was no telling what he was doing right now, but the truth was that I didn’t really care. All I cared about was the fact that I couldn’t have him. That’s what kept me up at night. I wondered how things could have been different.

  ***

  Finally leaving Anna’s, I went back home, hoping the change of scenery would help my mood. I wanted to get back to my life, the one I loved not too long ago, and I was determined to put all the mess that happened with Cal behind me.

  Eve was there to help me. She knew what happened, but it still wasn’t enough to get me out of my funk. I was starting to think that nothing was going to be enough and I was going to feel like this forever. I didn’t know if it was true or not, but I knew that I wanted to feel better.

  Some things started to happen though. I started to get sick all the time and of course, I thought it was allergies or some bug from all the traveling. Planes were known to be gross and I was sure that it was just something I’d picked up on the last flight.

&nb
sp; That lasted a couple of weeks before Eve brought something up that I wouldn’t have thought about. It was the last thing, very last thing from my mind.

  “What if you’re pregnant?”

  I didn’t even want to think about that. It was literally the worst thing that I could think of happening because I knew whose it would be. That was not someone that I wanted to see, let alone go up to him and tell him that I was carrying his child. Would he even care? I doubted that he would.

  “I can’t be. I haven’t had that much sex in a long while. Maybe once in the last few months.”

  “Well, it only takes one-time Mariss. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that you are definitely knocked up.”

  I didn’t want to hear it. I was sure that she was wrong, but then I started to do math and realized it had been that long since the wedding and there was missing that I hadn’t thought about. It wasn’t like I didn’t know I hadn’t had my period, but it wasn’t something that I thought about much more than in passing.

  Now I was thinking about it and I hated to think that she was right. That would complicate everything, and it was not something that I was prepared to process, I just couldn’t.

  “I hope not. What the hell am I going to do if I’m pregnant?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I didn’t know what I meant, and I dropped it. I wasn’t going to talk about it and let it take my peace until I knew what was really going on. I could be freaking out and stressing out over nothing at all. I was going to have to wait and see what was real and what wasn’t. I can’t fret over something that may not even be real. I refused.

  When I left Eve’s new place, I wasn’t fretting, but I was certainly mulling it all over. I knew that it wasn’t going to matter how I felt about it, if I was, I was, and I was just going to have to deal with it. I was financial going to be fine, but emotionally it would be a lot. It wasn’t something that I ever saw myself doing.

  So, to spare me the agony of wondering, I went and got a pregnancy test. I’d never had to use one before because I was always so careful. I didn’t let it all go to my head like I had this time. This time, I’d lost my mind and the consequences may be more than I’m willing to pay.

  I had never been so nervous in my life as I was waiting for a line to appear on a little stick. I had a gut feeling that I was in fact pregnant, but that didn’t mean that I was okay with it. I wasn’t. I couldn’t be pregnant. This was not supposed to happen. Not like this. I wanted to be married and in love when I had children if I ever did.

  I called the one person who knew how bad I was going to feel because she had her own dealings of an ex. Anna had found out she was pregnant a couple of weeks after the wedding was called off. I hadn’t been able to believe it, but the whole time, I might have been pregnant myself. None of it made any sense.

  The line had showed up and I was in the same boat. I couldn’t believe it and I was still in shock as I heard the phone ringing. When she picked up, I didn’t know what to say for a moment, but then it all came out. There was no time for pleasantries, or anything like that. It was strictly time to get it out.

  “I’m pregnant Anna and it’s Cal’s.”

  “What?”

  She sounded as surprised as I was.

  “You heard me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sitting here looking at a stick right now. I don’t want to believe it, but it’s true. I haven’t had a period in a couple of months and I’m getting sick every morning, well all day really.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know why they call it morning sickness. It’s not morning sickness, it’s you feel like shit all day sickness.”

  “Well I’ve got it and I got an extra pink line on this damn test.”

  There was a silence and I didn’t know what to say and apparently Anna didn’t either. Eve didn’t get it. She was trying to get pregnant. She was in love. She was everything I wasn’t. Anna had to understand because she was in the same boat.

  “Congratulations Mariss.”

  “That’s not what I expected you to say. You’re pregnant too and the creep isn’t in the picture. We’re going to have these babies without dads. How can that be a good thing?” I just didn’t get how she could be so calm about it. Last week she wasn’t so calm about it at all. I needed that Anna back.

  “I don’t know Mariss, I just know that everything happens for a reason. You used to always say that.”

  I didn’t remember saying that, but she could very well be right for all I know. Something was going on and I wanted to know what it was. I could feel it in my bones and I wanted to know what had changed with her. I hadn’t been back home that long, maybe a little over a month.

  “What’s going on Anna?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re acting strange and now all of a sudden you don’t hate Jesse anymore.”

  “I never hated him, I was just hurt.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. There was a reason that she didn’t hate him suddenly and I had a feeling that it was because she had changed her mind about some things. Was she back with Jesse? When I asked her, she paused long enough for me to have my answer.

  “Oh, come on Anna? Are you serious? You are back with him?”

  I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t, but there was a small, quiet part of me that knew it gave me the opening I needed to get back with Cal. I wanted the same thing to happen and now I knew that it could. It didn’t mean that me and Cal would get back together, but it certainly put the thought in my head for it to.

  “I don’t know Mariss. It just kind of happen. We ran into each other and he found out that I was pregnant. I didn’t tell him, he just knew. I was barely showing, but he knew.”

  “So, then what happened?”

  I was trying to figure out how they got from that to back together. How was this even possible?

  “We just got to talking and I missed him Anna. You know how much I love him. I didn’t want to go on without him. It was just too hard and the baby…”

  I sighed to myself, yes, the baby…

  Chapter 21

  Cal

  “I don’t really want to pick you up there. Can’t you just come outside, and I’ll wait in the parking lot?”

  The idea of seeing Anna in the flesh was not something that I looked forward to. She never had anything nice to say to me and I could almost guarantee that she didn’t have anything nice to say now.

  “Come on, it’ll be okay. She isn’t mad at you. You didn’t do anything wrong, though she may try to stab me as I sleep, not sure. She gets that look in her eyes sometimes.”

  I chuckled a little, but it was forced. I don’t know how the hell he it did, but Jesse had gotten her back. When I asked him how, he said something about she made his face a prune. Still I wasn’t sure, but I had some ideas.

  Getting off the phone, I cursed him and made my way to the man’s door. He was going to be a few minutes and we had a couple of jobs that we had to bid on. Instead of worrying about getting a job, we’d decided to try and go into business for ourselves. That was going well until he got back with Anna and I was expected to be around her. It was strange, and I didn’t want to.

  Knocking on the door, I hoped that she was in a good mood. I was a little shocked when she opened the door because it was obvious that she was pregnant. Jesse hadn’t told me about that and I was a little out of my element.

  “Hey Cal, why don’t you come on in. Jesse is just getting out of the shower, so he shouldn’t take too long.”

  I thanked her and moved inside, still waiting for her to hit me or something. I’d gotten a lot of hate after the scandal, like I’d done it too. I had to Marsha, so that really hadn’t helped my case. We’d both been scum to most involved that knew the story. I hadn’t tried to fight the title, figuring there was no point to.

  “I have some coffee going if you would like some.”

 
“Thanks Anna, I think I would.”

  The house was quiet and for a moment I wondered if Jesse wasn’t tied up somewhere. I still couldn’t believe that Anna would somehow forgive him. It just didn’t seem possible. I was at the wedding and I saw for myself how much of a freak show it turned into. It was like the scene from a movie and I’d thought there was no going back. How did he do it? Maybe I was the one that needed some pointers about getting and old flame back, but my old flame wouldn’t even talk to me, so there was nothing much that I could do.

  “So how have you been? I see that there have been some changes.”

  “Yeah, Jesse didn’t tell you?”

  “No, I bet he wanted me to find out this way. He likes to shock me.”

  Anna smiled. “Are you shocked?”

  I nodded that I was. I didn’t even know that Jesse wanted kids. How was this going to work out? Was this the reason that they were suddenly back together? That wasn’t something that I could mimic. I couldn’t go get Mariss knocked up, no matter how badly I wanted her back in my life. There had to be another way.

  “Well, it’s what happens.”

  “Is that why you guys are back together? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you are, you know how much Jesse loves you, but I didn’t think it would happen.”

  “I didn’t either Cal, but you know, things work themselves out.”

  I agreed, but I wanted to ask more. I wanted to know how this happened, but not just that. I wanted to know how her friend was doing. I know that Mariss had left some time ago, but I didn’t know how she was or what she was doing. I didn’t know anything and that bothered me more than I can really say. I wanted to see her, and I wanted everything with her to be good. I missed her.

  “Is there something you want to ask me Cal?”

  “Huh? Why do you ask that?”

  She shrugged and told me that I just looked like I did. I don’t know how that is, but I knew that she knew more than she should.