By My Side, page 3
But he hadn’t only laughed at her, he’d mocked her too. He’d pretended to listen to her concerns, dramatically looking under the hood of his car and then crawling under it, getting oil on his shirt for good measure, in a cruel sarcastic manner and then…
And then the bastard thanked her. Twice!
“I wish I could meet him,” she heard Deanna say.
Alicia turned to her friend alarmed. “Why would you say that? It was awful. The wedding was a disaster.” She held up a finger in warning when Deanna’s lip trembled in amusement. “I’m serious. It was…” Alicia shook her head. “I read them both so wrong. I truly thought they were best friends. I’d never seen two people who seemed to get on so well and everyone else thought so…Wait are you writing this down?” she said stunned when Deanna started to furiously type on her phone.
“Just keep talking. This is good stuff. Great material. This Ray—”
“Trey.”
“He sounds interesting and his friend too, Jacob, right? I wish I had pictures.” She wiggled her eyebrows at Alicia. “You must have pictures.”
She did have pictures—ones she’d later delete—of the fabulous reception hall, the gorgeous cathedral and one which showed Trey and Jacob talking before the ceremony began. “I’m not giving you pictures.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll use my imagination. I’m sure it’s better than the real thing anyway. What are they? Medium height? A little pudgy?”
“They’re both six foot something, fit and very good looking.”
Deanna wiggled in her seat like a happy child. “Ooh even better. This sounds too good to be true.” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you teasing me?”
Alicia folded her arms. “I’m having an emotional breakdown, my business is ruined and you’re worried about me teasing you?”
Deanna looked properly contrite. “You’re right. It’s just that when you started talking about them I got this great idea for my next story. I’m sorry.”
Alicia sighed ready to forgive her friend. Deanna had few faults. She was smart, driven, ambitious, successful, kind, but she had one huge weakness. She was an unwavering fan of yaoi or BL (boys’ love) manga. She had rows of the books on her shelf at home, electronic versions for ready access on her phone and iPad and she not only consumed the genre, but also created fan fiction for some of her favorite series.
“Okay, I forgive you. Now I—”
Deanna held up a hand before she continued to type. “Just give me a minute. Who do you think would be the dominant one? Jacob or Trey?”
Alicia threw up her hands. “I don’t know.”
Deanna tapped her cheek, thoughtful. “From your description probably Jacob. Trey would be the submissive one.” She licked her lips. “Oh, this is going to be so good.”
“Why would you think that?” Alicia said then mentally kicked herself for asking. She didn’t want to be interested in her friend’s crazy obsession, especially about a man she quickly wanted to forget. But her friend’s logic made her curious. “Trey doesn’t look like he’d submit to anyone.”
Deanna snapped her fingers then pointed at her. “Exactly and yet he let Jacob hit him. Only a submissive would do that. And then later Jacob would…”
Alicia held out her hands. “Just stop.” She let her hands fall. “I’m having a career crisis I don’t want to deal with your BL fantasies right now. Put the phone away.”
“Just let me—”
“Now! Otherwise I’m telling Mark about the two stories you wrote about him and his mechanic.”
Deanna’s eyes widened at the mention of her long term boyfriend who still didn’t know the extent of her BL admiration. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Alicia flashed a sly grinned. “I can recite their first meeting by heart.”
“It was a moment of weakness. I haven’t done anything since.” Deanna quickly put the cell phone away. “But, you’re right. I got carried away with this and I’m sorry. I’m listening.” She rubbed her hands together. “So what are you going to do?”
Alicia looked down at her orange colored nails. “Go to work with my family.” She glanced up when Deanna started laughing. She gritted her teeth. She was getting really annoyed at people laughing at her. “What’s so funny?”
Deanna wiped her eyes then shoved her glasses back on. “It sounded like you said you were going to work for your family.”
“Because that’s exactly what I said.”
Deanna blinked. “You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“But you’ll hate it.”
“You’ve always wondered why I hadn’t done it in the first place.”
“That was before I got to know you. You don’t belong there. MedForm isn’t you.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe I never really gave it a chance. All I know is that I’m tired of failing.”
“You can’t give up.”
“I’m not giving up. I’m giving in. The signs are all there. It’s time to stop dreaming.” It was time to be the adult her family expected her to be.
Chapter Six
Sneaking out was always easier than sneaking in, but Jacob made it back to his bedroom in the family house without anyone noticing.
He could have gone to his apartment but he knew his family would have followed him there, so he opted to stay at the family house in the meantime while he played the broken hearted groom.
He flopped back on his bed and then texted his sister, Maya, who stayed at the family house while finishing her master’s degree, to let her know he was back. Moments later he heard a tapping on the door.
He used his arm to cover his eyes. “Come in.”
He heard the door open then close.
“Oh my God, Jacob,” she said.
He made a noncommittal sound.
“Where did you go?”
He shook his head. He wasn’t going to tell her. He wasn’t going to tell anyone.
He heard her sigh and knew she understood. “What the hell was that?”
He didn’t want to talk about the wedding either.
As a kid he used to dream about acquiring a superpower. It used to change every couple of years. At seven he wanted to fly. At ten he wanted laser vision. Twelve it was speed. By fifteen he pretended that he didn’t care, though he secretly wished he had the mind power of Professor X. Now, at thirty-two, he wished he had the ability to time travel and make sure he never said ‘yes’ to the hot woman flirting with him at an art gallery he shouldn’t have gone to in the first place. He’d make sure not to convince himself he was in love with her, that she was in love with him. He’d definitely make sure he wouldn’t convince himself that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
But he didn’t have a superpower so he had to deal with this present hell.
“Did that really just happen,” Maya said, “or did I just drop down into some parallel universe where Trey acts completely out of character?”
Jacob ran a hand down his face and shook his head, “You—”
“No wait! What if it’s some sort of alien invasion? That would be amazing. I mean Trey would never do something like that. What if they have the real Trey locked up somewhere and—”
“Enough,” Jacob said with a tired sigh. He usually could take his sister’s strange theories, especially when she was on a role. They usually amused him. Instead, this time, they just depressed him more.
Trey had done the unforgivable in front of everyone and all for the dumbest of reasons. But he didn’t want to think about that right now.
Jacob sat up, looked at her then quickly covered his eyes. “What the hell are you wearing?”
“Grayson’s got some ideas for a new painting he’s working on and I’m his muse. He wanted some pictures.”
“In which he needs you to wear a polka dot bikini in the middle of autumn?”
“The house isn’t cold.”
Jacob groped for his tuxedo jacket then threw it at her. “Put this on.”
She slipped the jacket on and pulled her face into a pout. “Grayson says I look beautiful.”
Maya wasn’t beautiful, not in any conventional sense (his family liked to joke that he got the looks and she got what was left over). To a critical outsider’s gaze her eyes were too small and her lips too thin, she wasn’t elegantly petite, she was just short and stocky with brown highlights in her shoulder length black hair.
But to him, his younger sister was one of the dearest people in his life; someone he thought deserved to be respected and treasured. Not squeezed into a bikini that was too small and didn’t compliment her curvy figure. But it wasn’t something he’d ever say. Nor would he ever tell her that he didn’t particularly like Grayson.
Maya’s artist boyfriend was the reason why Jacob had ended up at said gallery where he’d met said fiancée. If he could time travel his sister wouldn’t have met Grayson at the Folklife Festival in Washington DC, instead she’d fall for Trey as Jacob originally hoped and all would have been perfect.
Maya buttoned the jacket then held out her arms. “Better?”
Jacob looked at her and couldn’t stop a smile. “Not by much.” His jacket nearly swallowed her up, making her look like a five year old playing dress up. He pulled out his cell phone. “Trey needs to see this.” He stopped before he took the shot. He sighed and let the phone fall to the bed. Trey was no longer part of his life anymore.
Maya sat on the bed and took his hand in hers. Her eyes searched his. “Where did you go? Did you see him? You’ve got to tell me what happened.”
Jacob pulled his hand away. “You saw what happened.”
“I can’t believe he’d do that.” She shook her head. “Not Trey.”
Jacob swallowed. He couldn’t tell her the truth. There was too much at stake. “What’s going on downstairs?”
Maya folded her arms in surrender, giving him a chance to change the subject. “Do you want the long or short version?”
“Short.”
“Appa refuses to speak. Eomma is still in a rage, crying and having a one sided conversation with God, and Halmeoni is fielding all the phone calls. But she’s been giggling. I think she’s the only one enjoying this. I don’t think she ever liked—”
“I know.” His grandmother had barely hid how she felt about Beth.
Maya fell silent then asked in a quiet voice, “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Jacob looked at her feeling helpless. Everything had been planned. His future, his life, had been set on a path that had been derailed. He’d never known such freedom before. It was liberating and terrifying. “What am I supposed to do?”
Maya stared at him speechless, which was a rare thing.
He swore. If she didn’t have anything to say, that meant it was really bad. The family liked to joke that it would take another Ice Age to freeze her tongue in place.
Obviously not.
“Did it really just happen?” she said again and this time he knew she wasn’t trying to be facetious. He felt the same way. It all felt surreal. Only six hours ago he’d been worried about the amount of bags Beth had packed for their honeymoon. He had prepared himself for his life changing. But not like this.
“I warned you,” Trey had whispered before Jacob punched him. Trey didn’t flinch. He took the full brunt of his anger. He didn’t make any apologizes or excuses. Everyone else would see Trey in one way, but Jacob knew the truth. A truth he couldn’t tell anyone. Not if he wanted to survive. Not if he wanted to make Trey’s sacrifice worth it.
On the drive home, his favorite aunt and a cousin started to say horrible things about Trey, but he stopped them cold. “This is between Trey and me. If you have to say anything, don’t say it within my hearing.”
“That’s the trouble with you,” his cousin told him. “You’re too nice. That’s why you get taken advantage of.”
Jacob’s brother, the smart one, smirked. “Still going to stand up for him? Then you’re dumber than we all thought.”
“Shut up, Yong,” Maya said, ever his protector.
Yong rolled his eyes. “How many space invasion scenarios have you come up with?”
She folded her arms and muttered something under her breath while Yong turned his attention to Jacob and said, “The truth is Trey was always jealous of you and now you know how much. Time to face the truth.”
The truth was Trey had been covering for him for years. When Jacob had first come to the new elementary school, a large building cradled in a Virginia suburb, he wasn’t sure what to do on the third grade history test so he copied the kid next to him.
Later, the teacher, a woman so tall that when she stood Jacob could see the dark hairs under her chin, called them both in during recess and scolded them. But that didn’t bother him. He’d grown used to getting in trouble since starting school back in Georgia where he’d moved from. His family had gotten used to calls from the school but he’d also gotten used to disappointing them too.
The teacher held up the two tests, which had the exact same answers wrong and what struck him was how neat this kid wrote his name: Trey DeVille. He’d never seen handwriting that neat before, it looked like it had been done on a computer.
She frowned and pointed a long nail bitten finger at Trey. “You should apologize for cheating.”
Jacob held his breath. He waited for Trey to deny the unfair charge and point to him as the cheater. He was the stupid one. The loser.
Instead, Trey looked at her and laughed.
Knee-slapping, tear wiping laughter. The sound of his laughter was so infectious Jacob had to bite his lip to keep from starting to laugh too.
The teacher glared at Trey, her cheeks sunk in so much and her red lips puckered in a way that reminded him of a fish. Jacob bit his lip harder and stared down at his shoes praying he wouldn’t start laughing. He squeezed his eyes shut. Please. Please don’t make me laugh. He took a deep breath before he looked up at her again.
“You think this is funny?”
Jacob shook his head; Trey nodded.
And then Jacob laughed.
As punishment she made them both write ‘I will respect others’ one hundred times.
It was only later that Jacob learned that the teacher had been a substitute and didn’t know that Trey was one of the smartest kids in the class. Because the real teacher hadn’t been there, Trey got in trouble because of him.
It took Jacob a couple of weeks to gain the courage to approach Trey to thank him for covering for him. Not only because he was afraid of Trey’s anger, but because of what the other kids said about the kid who always played by himself at recess.
One day, trying to gain the courage to talk to him, Jacob noticed Trey alone in the corner of the playground with his back to the rest of the kids looking at something in the dirt.
“Stay away from him,” his new friend, a skinny kid with spiky black hair named Louis, warned him, “He’s Haitian.”
Jacob blinked feeling stupid as always. “What does that mean?” he whispered, hoping no one else would hear him.
“It means he’s from Haiti.”
Jacob chewed his lower lip, feeling even dumber. He still didn’t understand. “Okay.”
Louis moved his shoulders with impatience and said, “He’ll put a voodoo curse on you.”
“A whoohoo what?”
Louis laughed. “A voodoo curse. Really bad stuff. He’s smart but he’s also scary.”
But he didn’t seem scary. Just really quiet.
After Trey hadn’t snitched on him about the cheating, Jacob’d kept his distance. He knew that Trey wasn’t someone to fear, instead he was someone he wanted to know. How could the smartest kid in class have no friends? He didn’t brag. He didn’t bully. He really didn’t say anything, except when he was called on in class and the teacher rarely did that.
It was a soggy spring afternoon when Jacob finally decided to talk to him. He ignored Louis’ pleas and the other kids’ warnings as he crossed the blacktop to where Trey knelt in the dirt.
He felt his heart pounding as he crouched down beside him. Trey didn’t say anything and Jacob wondered if he’d tell him to leave him alone. Instead, after a few seconds Trey said, “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
Trey pointed to an earthworm popping its head out of the soil. “That.”
He’d seen worms before and didn’t find them interesting. He started to stand and Trey didn’t move or ask him to stay. He began to turn then stopped. It was the way Trey was focused that intrigued him more than the worm did.
“Why do you care?”
“I didn’t think it was strong enough.”
“Of course it’s strong enough to move dirt.”
“I didn’t think it could move money.”
Jacob crouched beside him again, intrigued. “What?”
“Look.”
Jacob looked down and then finally saw what Trey had really been looking at: the earthworm was moving a dime out of its tunnel. It was quite a feat. That day began one of many where Trey showed him things that he’d overlooked. But at eight years old he wasn’t to know that the quiet kid was to become his best friend. Instead, he was a little afraid that he’d reject him when he apologized.
He moved some dirt with his thumb and said, “Thanks for not…saying anything about the test.”
“Hmm.”
“I’m sorry you got in trouble.”
Trey shrugged. “She’s stupid.”
Jacob dug deeper, feeling the wet dirt under his nails. “So am I.”
“No you’re not.”
It was the way he spoke—so certain, with such confidence—that Jacob almost believed him. Almost. Then he got a little angry. Was he making fun of him? He was only seven years old how come he sounded like an old man? And how could he say that when he didn’t even know him? “But I cheated.”
“You were scared. That’s what people do. That’s what my grandma says. But you don’t have to be scared. She’s not going to be here next month.”
Trey thought Jacob was scared of the teacher. But in truth Jacob was scared of everything, making new friends was easy, but tests and grades always made him nervous. No, they terrified him.
