To Be Alone With You

Josselyn Stevens,

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Kennedy’s flowers were lying in the street. Kennedy’s hands were on John’s jacket lapels. Kennedy’s voice was so loud it was shattering my eardrums.

“What the hell kind of best friend do you think you are, John?” he was shouting in John’s face, a thin vein of stress popping in his neck, blue as a swelling river. I stood frozen just inches from them, my limbs unable to move at the shock of it all. What did Kennedy think he was doing here? Why wasn’t John trying to fight him off? His face was a stony quality, eyebrows knitted but not combative, lips parted but unprepared to speak. What the hell was going on?

“Kennedy, stop!” I was shouting, but I couldn’t feel the sound leaving my vocal cords. I was screaming, begging for him to stop, but I couldn’t entirely feel like I was perfectly there. “Kennedy, get off him!”

“Did you think you could steal her back from me? Is that what you’re trying to do here?” Kennedy accused boldly, now letting go of John’s jacket and shoving him challengingly on his shoulders. “Telling me she’s poison to try to get me away from her so you can swoop in and turn back time.”

“Kennedy!” I begged, my voice more hushed this time. It was late, in my mom’s old neighborhood with all the old neighbors. It wasn’t good to cause a scene. I was still trying to maintain some sort of low profile. And by the looks of it, Kennedy wasn’t slowing down any time soon.

“You’re being ridiculous, Ken,” John muttered finally, his voice low. “Josselyn called me over here because she was having a bad day. Which I understand has something to do with you acting like this. If you knew the first thing about Josselyn, you’d know she’s nobody’s girl.”

Nobody’s girl.

Kennedy wasn’t going to swallow that one well. I’d been dancing around the subject for weeks by then, keeping my distance just enough to not be his girlfriend but just enough to be next to in love with him anyway. I liked Kennedy. I liked him so much. But while most girls would kill to have a guy fight for them, it disgusted me. It scared me. It pushed me away.

I had to move out, it had to happen.

“Nobody’s girl?” Kennedy seethed. “You think she was nobody’s girl when she was sleeping in my bed? Making me breakfast? Kissing me good morning with a fucking cup of coffee?”

“I’m standing right here!” I cried, grabbing at his wrists, the anger rising in me. “I’m standing right fucking here and I have a say in this! Did that ever occur to you?”

Kennedy turned to me with a clip of anger in his eyes, fiery in their undertones. “Yeah, it occurred to me when you moved out of my house with absolutely no warning,” he quipped. “Thanks for that. But right now this isn’t between you, it’s between me and John.”

“Dude – ” John started, but I drowned him out.

“No, it’s not between the two of you, because neither of you fucking own me!” I yelled, my eyes welling with tears, my fists balled at my sides. “John, go home! I need to work this out with Kennedy myself!”

Suddenly, my mom appeared on the front porch, in her robe and a pair of slippers, eyes exhausted from a long day of moving and working her second job. Her gaze glanced between the three of us, resting on John for the longest – it was the first time she’d seen him in four years, jettisoning her far into the past, a place she didn’t want to go, I could tell.

“What’s going on out here?” she questioned, her tone hesitant.

Kennedy took a step back from John and smoothed out his jacket. “Nothing, Mom,” I sighed, gulping back my tears. “I’m sorry for waking you up. We’ll keep it down.”

“Are you sure?” she asked pressingly. “Maybe these guys should go home, deal with it in the morning.”

I gave her a weak smile. “It’s fine, Mom. I’m a big girl. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Just get some sleep.”

“Alright,” she muttered, shrugging her shoulders. “If you say so. But I have no problem calling the police if you can’t all keep it down.”

She paused for a second, her eyes returning to John’s sheepish figure. “It’s good to see you again, John,” she murmured. “You look good. Take care of yourself okay?”

And as she went back inside, Kennedy sighed heavily and rolled his eyes, ready to get back into it. “Don’t you dare,” I threatened, raising my finger in defiance. “John, go home. I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I’ll call you later.”

He scoffed, crossing his arms across his chest. “You really expect me to leave you here with him when he’s acting like a lunatic? You’re joking.”

Kennedy opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off. “John, go home,” I insisted flatly, deadpanning to maintain my impartialness. I wasn’t about to get stuck in between these two. I had bigger things to think about, bigger things I wanted to talk to John about, but that all was going to have to wait.

I watched as he walked back to his car, the glance he shot over his shoulder before he disappeared into the cab making my heart skip a beat. Something was there that hadn’t been before, a feeling that I thought I’d forgotten. John.

But then he was gone and there was Kennedy, the feelings I still harbored for him quaking nervously in my knees. He looked the same as he did when I first saw him, hair disheveled and eyes only for me. But instead of feeling tender towards him, I felt borderline violent. All I wanted was to move forward, but Kennedy seemed to be unable to let go of a past he was never a part of.

“What the hell is your problem?” I fumed through gritted teeth, taking a step back from him. “Attacking John like that? What has gotten into you?”

Kennedy sighed, running a hand through his hair in exasperation. “What has gotten into you, seeing him again?” he countered. “I come here to fix things with you and I find you in his arms? What the hell am I supposed to think?”

“What the hell are you supposed to care, Ken?” I asked, the tears returning to my eyes. “It’s between me and him, not between the three of us. I’m trying to move on and so is he. You know nothing of me and John’s relationship, nothing.”

“And that’s the fucking problem!” he wailed, warranting a harsh hush from my angry lips. “I don’t know anything about you and John, and that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out this whole time!”

I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach.

“What?” I breathed, my voice light as air.

Kennedy pounded his hand against his thigh in frustration, like he had said something he hadn’t meant to. Like he’d been bottling something up all along and suddenly he’d blown the cork on it all, the truth about to come bubbling up like a twisted champagne. I could feel the flood churning around my ankles, but I could never have prepared myself for what happened next.

“I saw your picture in his room once, after you’d broken up all those years ago,” he sighed angrily, stepping towards me as I took a step back. “And I thought you were so beautiful but Garrett made it clear that you and I could never meet because of John.”

My heart was clutching in my chest.

“And I thought of you a lot, like you were this perfect person I built up in my head,” he continued. “I needed to know you, I needed to figure out what the hell you’d done to John to make you so evil – no one would ever fucking tell me anyway. I was always convinced you were an angel.”

“I’m not an angel, Ken.”

He ignored me. “And then in New York I met you and you were everything I’d built you up to be all that time, and you liked me, and god damn you had me under whatever spell you manage to put guys under.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Again, he ignored me, his voice getting louder. “And then you moved in with me and put all these ideas in my head about us being together and filling out this fantasy life I had fucking planned with this girl I’d never met and John kept getting in the way and all I wanted were some fucking answers, alright? And you never gave them to me!”

Everything was wrong and I could feel it. The lights were flickering off in the neighbors’ houses one by one, the air was thick, and I found myself wishing I hadn’t sent John away. Suddenly, for the first time in a long time, I wanted to be with him again.

“What are you saying, Kennedy?”

“I guess I only wanted to know your story,” he muttered bitterly, his eyes cutting into me like a knife at my throat. “I only wanted to know how someone could possibly fuck John up as badly as you did and now I guess I see why.”

I gasped for air, like he’d choked me with his words. Tears spilled from my eyes against my will, trailing down my cheeks, burning me like he’d pressed a hot metal pole to my skin. Immediately, he shook his head, again stepping towards me with hands out as if I’d come back to him.

“Damn it, I came here to apologize and now I’ve fucked up, haven’t I?” he murmured, glancing over his shoulder to the flowers in the street before glancing back to me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

I shook my head furiously. “No Kennedy, I think you said everything just perfectly,” I gasped, wiping at the tears bravely. “I think you should leave. And leave me alone until I can figure out what I want to do with you.”

I didn’t even stick around to watch him leave. Instead, I turned on my heel, disappearing into the depths of my house. My room was my only solace, my suitcase half packed in the center of my room. What neither of them knew was I was leaving for San Francisco in the morning, having received a phone call just that morning.

What neither of them knew was that I had a decision to make.