Too Much

[ Jasey Rae ]

“I understand if you don’t want to be here Jasey; it’s alright if you go home.” Jewels placed her hand on my shoulder and examined my face for the millionth time. I sighed and placed my hand on top of hers.

“I’m fine Jewels.” I repeated the words with a bit more force. “Stop worrying about me. It’s your birthday and I wouldn’t dare miss it.”

“I already had Jack deliver the message to you-know-who that he’s been uninvited.” Jewels statement told me she didn’t believe me. She was trying to protect and spare me from any more hurt. What she didn’t know was that I’d let all of my hurt go yesterday. I let it go out to the ocean before I came home.

“Well then you should text him and tell him to come.” I rested my hands on my hips as she looked at me like I was crazy. “He’s like a brother to you and I’m sure everyone else is wondering where he is anyway. I’ll be fine with him here.” She opened her mouth, probably to protest more, but I held my hands up. “Listen. He has every right that I do to be here. I promise I’m not going to cause a scene and shout or even throw cake at him. I’m over it.”

Jewels gave me an uncertain look but then a smile slowly took over her frown. “Where did this whole new Jasey attitude come from?” She bumped into me as we slowly started to walk back towards the party.

I shrugged. “There are just a lot of things that have changed, in a very strange but good way.”

“Did Damon have anything to do with these changes?” Jewels raised her eyebrows suggestively. The odd resemblance between her and Jack showing itself quite clearly made me snort as I tried to hold back laughter.

“No, actually I quit this morning.” I smiled brightly while her eyebrows now scrunched up in confusion.

“But I thought,” she started and then stopped, unable to put her thoughts into the right words. I decided to answer before she had a brain spazzum.

“There was nothing really ever between Damon and I, besides his huge crush for me. I just kind of shamelessly used him to make Alex jealous and get a ruse out of him.” I admitted and watched as Jewels eyes widened when I said his name. “And as far as the job goes, well, it was going nowhere. Nowhere that I wanted anyway. I’ve been thinking about maybe sending some of my work to a gallery; try to get in the arts again. Or maybe even go back to school, you know I always wanted to go to Pratt in New York, and now I have the time.”

“Wow, Jasey.” Jewels mumbled as she locked arms with me. Her small smile was steadily getting bigger. “That’s big, really big. I mean, going to school and stuff, just wow.” She shook her head and I saw her eyes flash. “You should come to MU!” She shouted and gripped my arm as she started to jump up and down. “Then we could go to school together, like old times!”

“I don’t know about that,” I giggled and tried to pry her death grip off of me. “We don’t tend to study too well when we’re at the same school, remember?”

Jewels shrugged as the party group got closer. We were just about to enter into the area of conversation when she stopped and pulled me back. I gave her a concerned look, but my nerves quickly quieted once I saw she was only curious. “What is it that did bring this on?”

I swallowed hard and then smiled. “Alex.”