It Takes Two, page 15
She stops talking to halt the jumbled thoughts that have just started tumbling out of her mouth. She probably already told him half of this before when he had come over that night all those weeks ago to make sure she wasn’t trying to harm herself.
“What kind of an internship do you have to do?” Glen asks, not looking at all weirded out by her slightly-panicked interlude.
“It has to have something to do with my major. But I don’t know anywhere around here that would offer that.”
She doesn’t really want to tell him that even if she did find a place, she’d be too terrified to apply.
“Well,” he starts, sitting up from where he had been leaning across the couch, “all you have to do is start researching what places are offering what you want.”
“It also has to be approved,” she informs him.
“Have you asked what could be approved and what won’t be?”
“... No.”
He gives her an amused, yet understanding smile, his eyes going over to where her laptop is sitting on the coffee table in front of them.
“Here,” he starts, leaning over and snatching it up before opening it and setting it on the cushion between them. “We just have to find somewhere that looks good, and then you can ask. You want to work in a library, right?”
“There’s none around that are hiring,” she protests as he pulls up a search engine.
“Let’s just take a look.”
They start by seeing what libraries are near and what they offer, starting with the one that is within the most reasonable distance and going out from there. They end up finding only one that is actually hiring, and it is of course the one that is furthest from her. But as Glen clicks onto the website and looks around, Jazzy begins to think it could actually work. She’ll have more time in the summer anyway for long bus rides.
“Great!” Glen exclaims when she tells him this. “Now all you have to do is email them and tell them you’re interested. Then you let them do the rest.”
“But I… I can’t,” she argues, her eyes scanning over the job qualifications list. “I don’t meet half of these, how could I ever—”
“That doesn’t matter,” he insists. “Trust me, most people don’t meet any qualifications and they get the job over hundreds of people that do. They really don’t care about what software program you can work; they care if you sound eager and hard-working. And I can show you exactly how to come across that way when you email them. Which we are going to do right now.”
Even once they have finished her very professional-sounding email and click send, it feels almost unreal. But… in a good way. She feels like everything could be okay, if she could just get the stress of this internship out of her way. And surely Glen helped her to sound more professionally enticing and less… well, less like herself.
“You see?” Glen grins as Jazzy’s hands go to her face and she can’t contain the smile of disbelief and slight adrenaline that comes over her. “Now you can relax and wait for them to get back to you, as easy as—”
Without thinking, she practically throws herself over the laptop and into Glen’s arms, kissing him firmly on the lips.
Even he looks shocked as she pulls away, and she feels her face go red as she realizes what she just did. But Glen just places his hands on either side of her face and pulls her right back against his lips again and holds her there for a while, making her heart pound harder than she thinks it ever has before.
“I’m off this Saturday,” he tells her once they’ve finally pulled apart and Jazzy tries getting her head back down from the pleasant daze it had been sent into. “We should go out somewhere. Blow off some steam from all this stress.”
She nods in agreement, but pulls him back in again for another kiss.
“When do you turn twenty-one?” he asks the next time they pull away. She’s so out of sorts, she actually has to think for a moment about the answer.
“The end of next month… How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
Twenty-five. She never even thought to ask before. Twenty-five seems so scarily close, and miles away at the same time.
“Is it weird I didn’t know that until now?” she asks him as his hands drop down to hold her waist.
“I don’t think so.” He laughs. “But it is weird that you’ve waited so long to kiss me yourself.”
***
By the time Saturday arrives, Jazzy is happy because the library they emailed got back to her and asked her to send them her resume, and Glen is just happy to be with her and that she’s happy, so they are both looking to celebrate.
The club they go to is enormous, the dance floor stretching out yards and yards, filled with people jumping and shouting along to the lyrics of the music, multicolored electric disco balls scattered over the high ceilings raining down a flurry of moving lights.
Jazzy begins dancing as if she were alone in her room with nobody else around, almost moving too fast for Glen to catch up to her as she dives into the crowd as soon as they enter the club. She moves her hips and flips her hair in a way that looks as if she is physically pushing the stresses of the week away, and puts Glen in awe.
Her body moves with more freedom than he’s ever seen from her before. She has suddenly become a completely different person, unafraid of anything as she dances to the beat of the loud pop music thundering through the room. She moves closer and closer toward the center of the madness, attracting the attention of some guys nearby that she is completely unaware of in her blissful little world. Glen is sure to move closer to her so that the other guys see him too.
It’s hot and sweaty but it feels good. And Glen starts to realize how attracted he is to Jazzy’s body as well as everything else. She is sheathed in nothing but a tight-fitting crop top and dark-red-colored shorts, the flashing strobe lights glinting against the bare skin of her arms and torso as she moves and dances in an incredibly sexy way against him. Well, more of a sloppy and slightly goofy way to be honest. But it’s sexy to him.
He’s always thought she was pretty of course and loves the taste of her lips when he kisses her and when they lay together on the couch. But this is different. This makes something under his skin race with a feeling of attraction that is so much more than he’s felt before.
Something is different with Jazzy. It always has been. The feeling she gives him is not at all like what he has felt with the girls he’s been with before, casual or not. The feeling he gets even when he watches her in the slightest of movements, grinning with delirious exhaustion as she reaches her arm up to brush her fingers through her short hair that hangs almost as wildly as his around her face, makes him want to take her into his arms and not let go. It’s as big of a rush as the deafening noise of the music and the crowd.
When they get back to the apartment building, Jazzy is pulling Glen along with her down the hallway to her room, the both of them laughing breathlessly.
“What on Earth has gotten into you?” he asks, nearly stumbling to try and keep up with her as she keeps a firm grip on his hand.
Before she can answer however, the two of them almost trip over each other as they crash to a stop after nearly running right into someone who had just stepped out of their apartment.
They both stand frozen in the middle of the hallway, silence suddenly ringing quite loudly around them as Liza folds her arms in front of her, shaking her head as she smirks at the display in front of her. Glen thinks she looks much like a villain in a Disney movie, a dark presence that seems to almost comically cast a shadow down over them and the entire hallway.
“You know, I really didn’t want to think that Amanda was telling the truth,” she says in a tone that has become all too familiar to Glen. “But I should have guessed that the reason I suddenly haven’t seen either of you for a while is because you’ve been hopping down the hallway to fuck each other for the past two weeks.”
Normally, Glen would teasingly ask her if she has been keeping such close track of him that she notices how often she sees him. But now feels like not the greatest time to try and lighten the mood.
“Did you think I was just never going to find out?” she continues, her glare focused entirely on Jazzy, as if she were the only other being in the hall. “Were you planning on tiptoeing around me and acting all sweet and innocent to my face while you fuck around with my jackass of an ex-boyfriend? Who, by the way, I believe I expressed quite clearly is the bane of my existence.”
“Liza,” Glen starts gently but she cuts him off with a sharp glare, her eyes narrowing in a way that makes it look as if she is looking at a misbehaving child.
“I don’t even want to hear it from you!” she shouts, her voice ringing against the walls. Her eyes sweep over him as she leans back, a careless look coming over her face mixed with intense disgust. “I should expect nothing less from you anyway.” Her glare focuses back on Jazzy. “I don’t know what he told you, but he doesn’t give a shit about you. He just wants to see what you’re like, and if you’ll fall for his bullshit.” She pauses, looking Jazzy up and down. “You’re too frumpy for him, trust me.”
Before anyone can say anything else, Glen feels Jazzy grab his wrist firmly before stomping forward, pushing right past Liza to march toward her apartment. He follows behind her, slightly stunned.
“I am so sick of this,” he hears Jazzy mutter to herself as she stops just as they reach her door. She turns back, taking a couple steps out into the middle of the hallway, her glare suddenly more than matching Liza’s.
“I am an adult!” she shouts back to her, though keeping her voice impressively level with only a slight hint of shaking anger beneath her words. “I don’t have to answer to you or to anyone about who I choose to spend my time with!”
Liza and Glen both stand in silence until Jazzy unlocks the door and shoves Glen inside before her, glancing back at Liza one more time before following him in.
“And by the way, I’ve been fucking him for a month.”
She slams the door closed behind her before Liza can reply.
Glen is standing paralyzed in the spot he had backed into as Jazzy locks the door behind her before throwing her things down onto the floor. Paralyzed, and very more than slightly turned-on.
“I’ve had it with letting everything stress me out,” Jazzy exhales, her hands going up to her head, her fingers running through her tangled hair. “Can I not have control over one fucking thing?”
Glen doesn’t know whether to try and comfort her or congratulate her on standing up to Liza, which is a fairly frightening thing to do. But he hardly has organized his thoughts before she is running forward to him and throwing herself in his arms, kissing him deeper than she ever has before.
His hands reach up to run up her back, his eyes closing as his lips caress against hers, but as much as he is only growing more turned-on by Jazzy’s sudden and ever-growing confidence, he pulls away.
“Is everything okay?” he asks her as she reaches her hands up to curl in his own tangled and slightly sweaty hair.
“Yes.” She breathes heavily, but it at least looks like her anger has quickly faded. “No… I mean, yeah. It is. Sorry I pushed you.”
“I didn’t mind. That was… really hot.”
They somehow find their way into her bedroom without turning any lights on. She presses herself against him and he touches her all over, every inch of bare skin that his hands can find. His jacket had been discarded before they had crossed the doorway, and now his fingers work to unbutton his shirt, changing his mind halfway through and going to help her out of her shorts.
She lays back on the bed, her body lit only by the glow of the lights outside streaming in through the window.
Glen leans forward, his hands and knees resting on the mattress as he moves forward until he is hovering over her, dipping down to kiss her again before his hands move to the straps of her top.
Her hands jerk up suddenly, catching his, and pushing him away as her whole body freezes. He leans away, looking down at her face which is still heavily shadowed, but he is easily able to make out the alarm in her eyes.
“I don’t want to have sex,” she says, her voice filled with the same terror that’s in her eyes.
“That’s okay.” He pulls his hands away and awkwardly places them on the mattress on either side of her, wondering if he should probably sit up and give her some space. Is she afraid of him?
“I don’t want… to stop,” she tries to explain. “I just…”
“Me too,” he assures her and thankfully, this seems to calm her down again.
Their lips crash together again, until Glen eventually reaches back down to finish unbuttoning his shirt and throwing it to the floor. Jazzy touches her fingers against his bare skin now, and he shudders at the sensation of her fingertips trailing along his chest.
After a few more moments, she lets him unzip her shirt. He can immediately see that she had probably panicked because she has nothing on under the form-fitting crop top. He can also tell how instinctually wrong she feels at first, her arms going up to cover herself as Glen puts the article of clothing aside. He wraps his arms around her body, leaning down to kiss along her neck, until eventually she brings her arms away from herself to reach around his shoulders, bringing him closer to her.
They curl up together on the bed, sinking away to a place where they can begin shutting out everything else but each other. Just for the night.
Chapter 17
Glen is hard at work cleaning props in the studio when he overhears one of the interns in the next office over excitedly telling someone that he has been hired on to a project the company is taking to be filmed in Los Angeles. An extremely professional job that is teaming up with a very professional production company.
Glen knows he can’t be jealous because the intern had perfect attendance and stayed late and came in whenever he was asked. Glen on the other hand has been distracted as of late, and happily so. Still, he’s not exactly looking forward to getting back to hitting the job search once this project is finished, and it nearly is. The pay is good here, and he loves the environment, so he’s not quite ready to leave yet.
At the end of the day, however, just as he’s finished putting the last plastic replica coffee mug back in the prop box, Jessica has marched over to him in her loud low-heeled shoes, asking to speak with him privately.
“There’s a larger budget project that’s being filmed locally over the summer,” she tells him, hardly giving him a chance to take a seat in the tiny chair in front of her desk. “Same company, more hands hired on. We need as many assistants as we can manage, and I’d like you back on right away.”
Hardly able to keep his composure, Glen nearly jumps out of his seat.
“Yes, absolutely,” he eagerly agrees, not masking the relief in his tone. “When do you need me to—”
“It’ll be longer hours,” she goes on, her tone laced with warning. “Everything is being filmed on location between June and July, then we’ll move back into the studio for the last two weeks. It will be down at the pier; all your transportation costs will be handled.”
Glen can feel his heart begin to pound excitedly in his chest as he realizes just how big of a deal this is. Maybe nearly as big a deal as Los Angeles. Maybe.
“That sounds fine with me,” he assures her. “I’m free all summer.”
“Good, because we’ll need you all day and moving fast. You work well with others and that will be key to have this all running smoothly; that’s why I’m deciding to bring you on.”
“I’m ready,” he assures her.
“And also,” she continues, handing him a folder of papers that he has to grab with both hands, so they won’t all tumble out, “we’re in dire need of extras. If you know anyone who is willing to work for low wages, bring them with you.”
***
Jazzy wishes she could have carried her fiery spirit that had suddenly ignited Saturday night with her all the way to Monday morning. But by the time the week has begun, she feels as if she is going about in a daze.
It has been days since she sent the library her resume, and she has heard no response. That is all it takes to make her feel thrust right back to where she had been, hopeless and defeated. Her jittery contentment quickly becomes a long-lost memory.
Through all the exhaustion and drain she feels heading back up to her apartment at the end of the day, her shame for how she had acted in the hallway with Liza on Saturday night rings more loudly than it had before. Maybe she deserves to be feeling like this, after that whole display. It would be well-deserved Karma for her not to have everything work out as she so cockily assumed it would have.
As if the world had read her mind, she steps out onto her floor to see none other but Liza herself walking to her apartment.
Obviously hearing the elevator, Liza turns her head to see Jazzy standing there like a fool, her mouth slightly agape, an armful of books she had gotten from the school library clutched at her side, and her face completely red.
Liza does nothing but give her a blank stare, and Jazzy knows this is her turn to make the first move. So, taking a deep breath, she walks forward as quickly as she can, speaking before she can get scared and run off.
“Liza, I’m so sorry about what I said the other night,” she begins, her head spinning so much that she can’t even tell what reaction Liza has to her lousy apology. “I feel so awful about being so rude to you, and I know you’ve done nothing but be nice to me and I was completely awful and I—”
“Okay okay, don’t hurt yourself,” Liza stops her, raising her hands and, to Jazzy’s surprise, with a hint of her usual quippy sarcastic tone.
