How to Love

“Do you think Gordon Ramsay ever just watches his shows and sits around and masturbates to how awesome he is?” Jake asked as we were sitting on the couch together watching TV on Thursday evening. “Because if I were Gordon Ramsay, I would totally do that, like every single day.” Since deciding that he wanted to pursue a culinary career, Jake had suddenly become obsessed with (and by obsessed, I mean developed a big, fat man crush on) Gordon Ramsay, the British chef with all the different TV shows where he basically just screams at people.

“Are you positive you’re straight?” I shook my head, chuckling a little. “Because I’m beginning to wonder. We’ve been watching Kitchen Nightmares for like two days now.”

“You can’t tell me you don’t like seeing Chef Ramsay yell at people,” he insisted, pausing the episode we were on. My dad had decided that since I had gotten a Blu-Ray player and Netflix for my birthday, he also needed to get a Blu-Ray player to have access to my Netflix account, so luckily we had it through the whole house now. “I mean really, if you were a forty-something year old British man, you’d be like the exact same person.”

“I don’t say fuck that much,” I countered. “And I’ve never called anyone a Panini head. Although, if I ever get the opportunity to now, I’ll probably take it and say it to Matt or Alexander.”

“You know where we should try to send Chef Ramsay?” he asked. “Jocko’s. Because besides terrible management and crappy profits, the kitchen was always crazy disgusting. I mean, just flies everywhere. I think I’m the only person that ever cleaned anything.”

“Remind me to never go back to Jocko’s again,” I said with a sick frown. “Ever.”

Jake pressed the play button and our episode resumed, and after a few moments, Gordon was on another yelling rampage. “Literally. My hand would be down my pants all the time if I were him.”

“I hope I heard that wrong,” I heard my dad mutter as he shuffled behind us, Jake laughing as he did so. He was shaking his head hesitantly and then opened up the family room closet, moving things around like he was looking for something.

“No, you heard that right, sadly.” I sighed. “What are you looking for?”

“My suitcase,” Dad answered sounding somewhat distracted. “Do you know where it is?”

“Top shelf, behind the stack of pillows,” I replied automatically. “Why do you need your suitcase?”

“I told you,” he said in a tired voice, “I’m going to that funeral directors convention in Columbus tomorrow. I’m back on Sunday.”

“I don’t remember you telling me this.” I crossed my arms.

“I remember telling you Tuesday afternoon.” Luckily, Monday was the only day over break that I’d been sick. After Jake had brought that soup over and I ate it, I felt almost instantaneously better. I’d suggested he try to sell it as a miracle healer, though Jake had only laughed in response.

“Tuesday…” My mind searched, trying to remember exactly what I did that day. When I remembered, I frowned. “That was the day Cheryl was here.” And as usual, Cheryl was walking around criticizing anything and speaking to me in a very condescending manner that made me seriously consider making a voodoo doll of her. Instead I’d settled for banging my head against the desk for a solid three minutes after she’d left. “You know you can’t tell me anything for at least two hours after Cheryl leaves. I need time for my brain cells to recover.”

“Yeah, I hear you there,” Dad said sympathetically. “Why, you don’t care if I go, right?”

“Not at all,” I told him. “You go right ahead and enjoy.”

“You didn’t want to go, did you?” he checked, finally finding his suitcase and bringing it down.

“Not at all,” I repeated. I couldn’t think of anything that I’d want to do less than go to the funeral directors convention, though I felt that would be rude to tell my dad. “When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow morning around nine,” Dad answered, opening all the pockets of the suitcase to make sure he didn’t have anything in there from the last time he’d used it. “I’m back on Sunday around six. I’m putting the phones on forwarding for the weekend to 65th, so you won’t have to worry about them, and you can hang the sign on the door that says there’s no funeral director in the building so no one tries to stop in. Congratulations on your three days off.” He re-zipped all the pockets and started to walk out of the room. “I’m gonna go pack.” As he walked by Jake, he lightly smacked the back of his head and warned him, “Just make sure you keep your hands out of your pants, or I’m gonna have to revoke your Netflix privileges.”

Jake immediately threw his hands in the air in surrender. “Jeez, I’ve got more class than that.”

Dad chuckled and exited, leaving Jake and I alone with Chef Ramsay again. I leaned against Jake’s shoulder and he put an arm around me, never once taking his eyes off the screen, though he smirked to himself when Chef Ramsay started having another meltdown. I nudged him, trying to get his attention. “So what time are you gonna come over tomorrow?”

He gave me kind of a surprised look. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to want me to or not.”

“Of course I want you to,” I said. “Think about it; we have this entire place to ourselves for three days. Undisturbed. No one else around to bother us.”

Jake smiled in response to this, but then a worried look flashed across his face. “I feel like this is a trust test that your dad is putting us through, and if I agree to come over here, he’s going to burst in here with a flame thrower and kill me or something.”

I shook my head, rolling my eyes and grinning. “You’re an idiot, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. I mean, if you don’t want to come over, you don’t have to. I just thought you would want to, that’s all.” I almost felt embarrassed for bringing it up. Yet again, I’d wrongly assumed what he’d wanted or expected.

“No, no,” he rushed. “Trust me, my ass is gonna be right here for the whole three days. You’re probably going to get sick of me, honestly.”

“Impossible,” I told him, attempting to kiss his cheek, though he turned so that I caught his lips instead. I smiled against him. “So what time are you thinking tomorrow?”

“Probably like five, five thirty-ish?” he suggested. “My grandma needs me to fix something for her, and then she wants me to take her to the bookstore. I’d say earlier, but I don’t want to rush her.”

“That’s fine,” I told him. “Sounds perfect, actually.”

“Maybe we can grab dinner and see a movie,” he said, trailing off slightly, “and then come back here.”

I kissed him again. “That sounds even better.”

I stayed cuddled up next to Jake until he decided to head back home, but not before watching two or three more episodes of Kitchen Nightmares and my dad complaining about us being on the couch since he wanted to go to bed. I slept pretty soundly that night and got up early enough to say good-bye to my dad and wave him off to Columbus. I enjoyed being able to hang out by myself for a little while, though by lunchtime I was a little bored. I asked Liz if she wanted to grab something to eat on her lunch break, but she was at a doctor’s appointment and then had to go back to school, so I ended up doing a whole lot of nothing until four, which was when I started getting ready for my date with Jake. I threw on one of the tighter black skirts Michelle had talked me into buying and a pair of heels that she had assured me would look amazing, along with a white and black one shoulder top and some of the sexy underwear Michelle had also encouraged me to buy. By the time I was done putting on my makeup, Jake texted me from the parking lot letting me know that he was there.

I headed downstairs, locking the front doors behind me, and went out to meet Jake. Luckily, he had his car back after getting his window fixed. It was nice to see him behind the wheel of his car again, and not behind Clay or Michelle’s. I climbed in the passenger seat and he kissed me hello. “You look really nice. I feel like I need to be taking you on a fancier date than I’d had planned.”

“Whatever you had planned is fine,” I told him, smiling. “You know I’m happy with whatever. What did you have in mind, anyway?”

“Possibly a movie, if that’s what you want to do, and dinner at Red Robin,” he responded easily. “I’ve been in the mood for a good burger lately, but we can go somewhere else if you don’t feel like going there.”

I nodded and told him that that all sounded good to me, so he pulled out of the driveway and onto the road towards the movie theater I’d gone to with Matt and Liz the night of our first double date. “So what did you end up doing all day?”

“A whole lot of nothing,” I answered, laughing a little. “I said goodbye to my dad and just hung out, mostly. I wanted to get lunch with Liz, but she had an appointment with her baby doctor and had to go back to school. What about you?”

“I got up early and went running with Alexander,” Jake began, “and he insisted on a four mile run through the Metro Parks, which made me want to kill him a little bit since it’s still not that warm out and I was caught somewhere between freezing and sweating my balls off.”

“I thought you liked running,” I commented, shaking my head a little at Alexander’s logic.

He eased to a stop in front of a red light. “I do, and I like running outdoors more than I do indoors. But what I don’t like doing is going on a four mile run when the most I’ve done all winter is a mile and half at the rec center. Are you aware of how fast your brother can run?”

“He does the mile in like five minutes,” I said.

“Slightly less than that,” Jake corrected me. “Anyway, I got back from running with him, took a shower, picked up my car, fixed my grandma’s sink, and then I just dropped her off after going to the bookstore.”

“Did you get anything?” I asked him, peering in the backseat to see several Barnes and Noble bags and one overnight bag.

“I bought all the Gordon Ramsay books I could find,” he answered as the light turned green, which made me roll my eyes a little bit. “I’m going to see if I can order the rest off of Amazon.”

“It looks like you spent a small fortune,” I scoffed.

“Yeah, pretty much,” he agreed. “I can’t even tell you exactly which books I bought though, so don’t ask me that.”

We talked a little more in the car and then arrived at the movie theater. Picking out a movie was much easier with Jake than it had been with Liz and Matt, and so I was pretty thankful for that. We ended up seeing some action movie that he wanted to see that I didn’t exactly have high expectations of, but turned out to be pretty good. We headed in the direction of Alexander’s house after, since he lived pretty close to Red Robin. I teasingly asked Jake if he wanted to invite Alexander to meet us, but he just gave me a tired look with a sigh and shook his head.

Despite having fairly slow service, we had a nice dinner together and I was kind of thankful that it took so long. While I was really anxious to head back to an empty house with Jake, I also felt nervous about it. I wanted to be with him that way, to make love with him, but my experience with Ryan lingered in the back of my mind. My first time was pretty disappointing, to put it bluntly. Sex wasn’t everything that I’d built it up to be and it kind of sucked and it was uncomfortable. But I hadn’t loved Ryan either, and so with Jake, I was hoping things would be different. And I was also hoping that he wouldn’t notice that I didn’t have any clue as to what the hell I was doing. With Ryan, I’d kind of let him just do his thing, but with Jake, I wanted it to be more than that.

So when the bill finally came and we headed out to the car to drive back, I could feel a ball of nervousness growing denser and denser in my stomach. On the ride back, I let him talk about some cooking videos he’d found of Gordon Ramsay and how he was excited to try them out. I mostly just nodded and commented at the appropriate times, not wanting to interrupt his stream of excitement. Finally we got back and he pulled under my dad’s usual spot beneath the canopy beside the garage, putting the car in park and shutting it off.

“So about this empty upstairs…” Jake trailed off. “You’re positive that your dad’s not going to suddenly come back and interrupt us?”

“Completely positive,” I nodded. “He’s been in Columbus for hours now.”

“Good,” he said simply. “That means we won’t be interrupted while we marathon Kitchen Nightmares.” My face must have fell a little at that, since he smirked and started laughing. “I’m totally kidding.”

“You’re a jerk,” I chuckled, playfully trying to shove his chest, but he caught my arm and pulled me towards him, pausing for a second before kissing me tenderly on the lips, the kind of kiss that has a way of just stopping your breath. One of his hands rested on the nape of my neck as he continued to kiss me, the other trailing slightly down my collarbone.

He stopped hesitantly, like he was waiting for my permission to go further. “Do I get a sneak peek of this lingerie you bought this week, or do I have to wait until we get all the way upstairs?”

“Who says that’s what I’ve got on?” I asked coyly.

“There’s really not any need to tease like that,” he protested. “That’s just Goddamn cruel.”

I laughed at that, obliging him and moving one side of my shirt downward slightly to reveal a slight glimpse of my lacy strapless bra. “That’s all you get.”

“Remind me to thank my sister for convincing you to buy that,” he muttered, pulling me even closer and going right back to kissing me, though it now felt more urgent and passionate, and I found myself getting lost in what he was doing and felt less and less nervous. Things started getting a little too heated for the car, so we headed up through the side door, all the while continuing to touch and kiss each other. By the time we’d reached my room and he’d laid me down on my bed, if I hadn’t been one-hundred percent sure about Jake, I was now; I wanted Jake Damon and I wanted to experience every part of him.

With the urgency that had been between us as we made our way upstairs, I was a little surprised with Jake’s demeanor while making love, though it was a pleasant surprise. He was quick to learn my body and to aid me in learning his, and he was sweet and gentle about the entire thing. If I had to dream up my perfect first time, it wouldn’t have even come close to how things were with Jake, and I felt like kicking my fifteen year old self in the face for letting Ryan be my first time and not waiting for Jake. But at the same time, it didn’t matter; I had him now, and it was wonderful. I loved him, and it was as simple as that.

For as perfect as the moment was, still, there was one thing on my mind that had been bothering me since I’d gone out with Michelle the previous weekend, So while we were lying next to each other, me with my head on his chest, I felt compelled to ask him about what Michelle had described as his hard time after high school.

“Come on, this is perfect,” he sighed, sounding slightly annoyed when I’d asked about it. “I really don’t want to ruin it.”

“It won’t be ruining it,” I practically begged. I wanted to know, and if we could be physically intimate like that, I felt that it was only fair that we be that emotionally intimate, too. “Look, I’ve told you the worst things about me, and you didn’t run screaming like I thought you would.”

“The worst things about you don’t really compare to the worst things about me,” Jake said, rubbing my shoulder.

“You already told me about the drinking and the sleeping around,” I said. “I could handle that. I promise I’m not going to judge you, whatever it is.” He was quiet at that. “You know me better than that.”

“If I tell you, will you please promise to never bring it up again?” Jake asked, sighing yet again. I nodded and promised him that I wouldn’t bring it up again, so he launched into his story. “It has to do with the drinking and the sleeping around. Right after I graduated high school, I met this woman named Maria at a coffee shop, and I don’t know, we just kind of clicked.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad so far,” I commented briefly, letting my hand continue to rest on his chest.

“No, not so far,” he agreed and then continued, “but that’s the easy part of everything. Maria was thirty-one and married.”

“Oh,” was all I could brilliantly come up with.

“Looking back on it, it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and at the time, I knew it was stupid, but I did it anyway.” Jake seemed to be ignoring my comment. “While we were having this whole affair, I barely even stopped to think about the fact that she was married. I mean, from the way she described it, she and her husband were far from happy and she was kind of looking for an escape, which was where I came in.” He stopped talking for a moment, like he was trying to figure out how to phrase everything. “We saw each other for about eight months or so. She’d make up excuses to supposedly go out of town and we’d spend the weekend in a hotel holed up somewhere, and I paid for everything and ended up blowing a lot of my money on her between hotels and gifts and shit, which is why my parents check my bank statements, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

I nodded against him, letting him continue. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting his big secret to be, but it definitely wasn’t this.

“I thought she was charming and intelligent and interesting,” he went on. “And like I said, she told me that she wasn’t happy with her husband, and I didn’t have any reason to think otherwise, and I ended up falling in love with her.” That was a little hard to swallow, but I didn’t say anything. “I know it sounds stupid. Saying it out loud feels even more ridiculous. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt like more of an idiot in my life than when she told me she was pregnant.”

I felt my breath stop at that. I silently pleaded with whatever higher power existed that he wasn’t going to say what I thought he was going to say. Oh, by the way, I have a kid.

“The baby wasn’t mine,” he rushed out. “I know where your mind’s going, so just cut it off right there. I was always careful about everything, always, so there’s no way. But the second she said it was her husband’s and that she didn’t want to see me anymore, I almost wished it was mine. I’d never really been dumped before, so I wasn’t quite sure how I was supposed to take that. So I ended up going on a three day bender, sulking in my room. Then three days turned into five, and so on, and pretty soon, I was shaking if I didn’t have a drink in my hand within about forty-five minutes of waking up. It was like the more I thought about Maria and her husband and the baby, the more I thought about how serious everything that happened was. I mean, if I’d slipped up one time, that kid could’ve been mine. And I could’ve ruined both their lives. I’m pretty sure I did, either way.”

“Are they still married?” I asked slowly. It was a lot of information to take in, and it was not information that I was prepared for in the slightest.

“As far as I know, yeah,” Jake replied. “It took a long time to get through all that, though. That was pretty much when I decided that I needed to turn everything around and stop being an asshole. I just really hit rock bottom. I didn’t like looking in the mirror and seeing this sickly-looking version of myself, and I hated all the drinking, and I hated the way I felt. So I saw Michelle’s therapist a couple of times and got some direction on how to dig myself out of the hole I was in, and obviously, I got through it, not that it was easy.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say in response to all this. He seemed to take my silence as anger. “So do you hate me now?”

“No,” I said immediately, looking up at him and shaking my head. “Of course not. So that’s not your shining moment. People go through shitty stuff, and you either break down or you come out stronger. Obviously you came out a better person. So no, I don’t hate you for that, especially if it ended up turning you into the lovely individual you are today.” I wasn’t wonderfully thrilled with what Jake had told me. Honestly, who would be? Nobody wants to hear that before you came along, your significant other was having wild, lavish affairs with married people, or that they had a drinking problem, but it’s impossible to alter another person’s history any more than it’s possible to change your own.

He kissed the top of my head, pulling me even closer to him, which I had not even been aware was possible. “Thank you for understanding and not hating me.”

“I told you before you even started talking that I wasn’t going to judge you,” I said. “Do you still see her at all? Maria, I mean?”

“Occasionally,” he hesitated. “It’s not like I stop and say hi and talk to her or anything, but I’ll see her and her husband and their kid out sometimes. Ironically, that night I came into the gas station and met you, I saw her.”

“Was that what sparked your bad day?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said. “Seeing her wasn’t the only factor, but she had a lot to do with it. It’s not easy to see someone you share that kind of history with and not have it bring up old feelings, though she really doesn’t stir any positive ones, I’ll tell you that.”

I could see what he meant by that. The fact that Alexander was best friends with Ryan had been a major bummer after everything had happened between us, especially since I had to continually be nice to him despite the fact that he’d basically used me for sex and went on mostly ignoring me. Even when I went to Alexander’s house now, it was still a bit awkward and it still made me a little angry, and it wasn’t like we even had that kind of torrid and dramatic history that Jake did with Maria.

“I really can’t be irritated about seeing her, though,” Jake continued. “Because if I hadn’t seen her, I never would’ve decided, ‘Hey, I need a beer,’ and gone to the gas station and met you. So I guess all the puzzle pieces fit together, in a weird, dysfunctional way.”

“Kind of like destiny,” I smiled to myself, thinking about how a month earlier I’d completely refused the possibility of such a thing when Liz had insisted on it.

“Yeah, kind of like destiny,” Jake agreed, kissing the top of my head. “A lot like destiny, I’d say.”

“Can I ask you one more question?” I asked him, still wanting another answer or two.

“Is that your question?” he replied, smirking to himself like he was some kind of comical genius.

“Don’t be a smartass,” I said, kicking him good-naturedly.

“Go ahead,” he nodded, kicking me back.

“Was Maria your first love?” I questioned, biting my lip while I waited for the answer.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “She was. And I loved her for longer than I’d like to admit, but it just gets to a point where you have to move on and you outgrow those feelings.”

“I have one more question,” I hedged. I was a little scared about his answer to the next one, but I felt that I needed to ask it anyway. He gave me the go ahead, so I took a breath before asking. “Have you loved anyone since Maria?”

“Yeah,” he said simply, no hesitation whatsoever. “You.”

I felt my cheeks flush. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he repeated. “I thought that was fairly obvious, to be honest. I’ve been wanting to tell you, but I wasn’t sure if that would scare you off or not.”

I kissed his shoulder, since in the position we were in, that was about the farthest I could reach. “Not at all. I love you, too.”

“I knew that, too,” he sort of chuckled. “But it’s still amazing to hear.” He put his fingers under my chin and tilted my head up so that he could kiss me on the lips. “Quite possibly, I love you more, though.”

“Quite possibly, you might be wrong,” I replied, kissing him back.

“Quite possibly,” Jake said, laughing, “I don’t want to be that couple. So I love you, and we’ll just leave it at that.”