Double Crossed

“Jenna! Jenna, oh my god, where are you?” I can hear Tay yelling from the family room, so I slip out of the bed as quietly as I can, making sure Michael is still asleep. I shuffle out of the room, looking back just before I shut the door. Michael is laying on his back with one of his arms above his head, his hair is a complete mess(more than usual) and he’s lightly snoring. I shut the door as quietly as possible before turning and jogging out to where Tay is.

“Tay!” I whisper shout, grabbing her shoulder. We’re standing in the middle of the family room, right in the middle of all the wreckage. Tay spins around and throws her arms around me, pulling me into a tight hug.

“Jenna! I’m so glad you’re alright!” she yells before freezing and pushing me backwards, still holding onto my shoulders, “You are alright, right?”

“Perfectly fine,” I say,looking her up and down. She has on a pair of dark skinny jeans, a white tee shirt and a navy blue blazer rolled up to her elbows. Tucked into the blazer is her scarf, part of which is wrapped securely around Tay’s neck, covering the skin. “Why?”

“Umm, have you seen our house lately?” she shouts and I nearly smack her with my hand, muttering a shh. She looks confused but switches to a whisper anyways, “I thought someone broke in!”

“No one broke in! It was just, um, Michael,” I don’t like telling her this, especially because it makes me feel like I’m blaming Michael. Which I’m not, but Tay won’t fully understand that. I can already see the way she’ll look at me, when she tells me he’s a bad influenced. Like I’m some sort of child.

“Michael? Who is Michael?” she asks, frantically looking around the house as if at the mention of his name Michael was going to jump up out of no where. I shake my head at her; she should know who Michael is, considering he’s her coworkers brother. She’s the one that introduced us.

“Ever’s younger brother,” I say and this time she nods before shaking her head again.

“Wait so why is our house messed up?” She asks, quirking her eyebrow and cocking her head to the side. I shrug and lean on one of my legs, popping my hip out.

“Oh you just...Michael,” I say. She stares at me and then gestures to all of the mess when I don’t continue, “He kind of had an episode.”

“An episode?”

“Yeah like, he was really mad about something with his ex-girlfriend and then he started to rearrange the house.”

“Rearrange the house? You call that rearranging the house? Jenna he destroyed our family room! What is his problem? I mean normal people can get mad without taking it out on the furniture! What makes him think this is okay?” she begins yelling. I hate the way she’s talking about him; like he’s some sort of freak. I wasn’t lying before; he does feel like a little brother to me and I feel like I have to stand up for him. Even to Tay.

“He’s Bipolar,” I say, stopping whatever rant she was about to start, “And he hasn’t slept right for a while, which is why he is currently asleep in our bed, so I would really appreciate it if you would quiet down.”

“He’s Bipolar? As in certified, takes medication, bipolar?” she asks, while I just nod my head. I can feel what she’s thinking, see it on her face. I clench my hands into fists at my side and dig my nails into my palm, “Jen...do you really think it’s the best idea for you to be hanging out with him? Especially if he is so prone to...episodes?”

The thing is, I know she’s only looking out for me. I know she just doesn't want me around someone she thinks will trigger anything in me or set me down a certain path. But I hate the way she talks about it. About mental illness. Like it’s contagious. As if I’ll catch bipolar disorder just from hanging out with him. And I hate that in turn that ostracizes Michael, because he doesn’t deserve that.

“Tay, trust me when I say it’s okay. Plus, I really like hanging out with Michael, you know, with someone that understands what I’m going through,” I say, stepping closer to her, with my arms crossed at my chest. She smiles and loops her finger underneath the hem of my pants, tugging me a little bit closer.

“Well maybe me or Alex would understand if you would just talk to us,” she says, using her finger to poke my nose lightly. I scrunch it and shrug again.

“It’s different. It’s nice to hang out with someone who understands without me having to explain it to them. He just knows,” I say. She smiles again and begins rubbing her hand up and down my arms.

“Okay. Just don’t let him destroy the house again,” she laughs a little and goes to move back, but her scarf snags on my hand. Her laughter immediately stops as her hand flies up to fix it back around her neck.

It’s only a second. A second of exposed skin. But I saw it. Right where the scarf is covering, a small hickey has formed. Either that or a baby punched her in the neck. For some reason I find the chances of that happening quite small. It’s dark purple and round, the small kind that only last a few days. My stomach clenches and it feels like all of the air has been forced out of my body. I can feel an ache start to form in my body, one that twists with worry.

“You know I love you right?” I want to reply; to give some sort of indication that I heard her, but my tongue feels dry and my stomach is wrenches so tightly I think it might crumble into dust. Instead I nod and try to force my lips to upwards but it feels awkward and and useless so I drop it and turn away. My legs feel shaky as I walk to the kitchen and I try my hardest not to seem too skittish.

“What do you want for dinner, babe?” I ask, standing in front of the pantry, reading labels that I already have memorized. I don’t need to read the nutrition facts for the only box of noodles we have in our pantry, but I need something to do. Something safe to think about.

“I already ate,” she says, walking in to the kitchen behind me. I turn around, frowning at her.

“Yeah? What’d you have?” I ask, curious. Tay didn’t generally like eating out; she was messy and lazy and liked to take naps after she ate, which didn’t really coincide with going out. She shrugs, as if this is something she does all the time.

“Olive Garden, nothing special,” she has her hands on her hips, standing in the middle of the room. I bite my lip and scrunch my eyebrows; she makes nervous. And not good nervous where you get butterflies and your heart races and you feel excited, but the kind of impending doom nervous.

“Who’d you go with?” I make sure not to sound accusatory because I don’t want to start a fight. I just want to know what she was doing; why she’s acting so weird. She throws her hands in the air, sighing loudly.

“God damn Jenna, what’s with the interrogation?” she almost yells and I can’t help but stare at her for a second, shocked. My eyes widen as I take in the apparent anger on her face, “Am I not allowed to go out without you?”

“This is what you call an interrogation? I asked you three questions!” I say back. She nods her head furiously, raising her eyebrows at me.

“Why do you need to know everything about my day?” she asks.

“I don’t. But we’re getting married in less than a month; we shouldn’t be actively hiding things from each other!” I run a hand through my hair, pulling it out of my face.

“I’m not hiding anything from you,” she says, but she twitches her nose, something I learned she only did when she was lying. I sigh and turn away from her, already so over this argument.

“Whatever Tay, just go take a shower or something,” I say, opening the fridge and grabbing a soda. She sighs again and I shouldn’t feel like this is my fault because I didn’t do anything wrong, but I do. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything at all, but what kind of relationship would that be? She stares at me for a moment before storming out of the room. I lean against the counter, dropping my head in my hands. We’ve never been this bad, ever. Even when I was bad, we weren’t bad. Two arms wrap around my shoulders, pulling me upright.

“It’s going to be okay,” Michael says from behind me. I turn around in his arms and burry my head in his chest. And I don’t mean for it to come out, but tiny sobs rip through my throat. Michael rubs my back and pets my hair while whispering that everything is going to be okay. “Do you want to go talk about it?”

Honestly, I don’t. Not even a little bit. But I also don’t want to be standing in this kitchen anymore. So I nod my head and lead him upstairs, dragging my feet to the guest bedroom and hopping on the bed. MIchael climbs in after me, sitting criss cross at the bottom of the bed. For a while we just look at each other before he sighs.

“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” he asks, reaching over to grab my hand. I shrug my shoulders and look up at him. He just raises his eyebrows at me and continues to stare until I sigh.

“It’s just that...well, I think...” I trail off before beginning again in a whisper, “I think Tay is cheating on me,” Michael’s eyes rake over my face, taking in everything. For a second, I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m joking, but when he realizes I’m serious he bites his lip.

“Fuck her.”

“What?” I ask, snapping my head up at him.

“Fuck her,” he repeats, scooting closer to me, “If she wants to play it like that, then fuck her.”

“And what if she’s doing it with your sister?” I ask. His expression doesn’t change and it dawns on me that maybe he genuinely doesn’t like her either.

“Fuck her too. If they want to act like assholes, we’re going to treat them like assholes,” he says without a second thought. I laugh, my stomach doesn’t feel quite as tight anymore. Instead I just feel hungry.

“Do you want to order some pizza?” I ask, changing the subject because I really, really don’t want to talk about this anymore. Michael laughs and pushes my shoulder.

“Duh. Do I seem like the kind of person to turn down pizza?” he asks. I smile and shake my head, grabbing my phone. We spend the rest of the night eating pizza and playing Super Smash Bros in the guest room. As it turns out, I am terrible at it and Mike is like the king of video games. I think he was cheating because there’s no way he was that much better than me. At around one in the morning Tay stalks into the room wearing my spandex shorts and sweatshirt(the hood conveniently covering her neck) with her hair in a bun and glasses on her face. Michael and I pause the game to look up at her.

“Are you coming to bed?” she asks. Her eyes are rimmed with red and there are dark circles beneath them. I almost feel sorry for her, part of me wants to go with her back to our bedroom and sleep until she doesn’t look so dead. But then I remember the lip shaped bruise on her neck and a whole new wave a rage washes through me.

“No,” I snap back, staring hard at the ceiling in front of me. I feel like a teenager rebelling against my parents after they’ve pissed me off, “I’ll probably sleep up here tonight.”

“But we always sleep together,” she whispers. I look over to see her frowning at me, sniffling slightly. Then I look at Michael from the corner of my eye. I expect him to be look kind of awkward because I know that’s how I would be if we switched places; instead he glares at Tay outright. part of my wants to punch him for looking at her like that while the other part wants to laugh. It doesn’t matter though because she doesn’t bother looking at him, instead choosing to stare at me.

“I guess things change,” I reply, facing forward again. I don’t bother looking at her to see how she reacts and I don’t say a word until I hear her shuffling away. Michael scoots closer to me and pushes my shoulder gently.

“Did you see that on her neck?” he asks and I want to scream because yes. That’s all I see. That stupid fucking hickey on my stupid fucking fiance that stupid fucking me did not give her.

“Yeah,” I whisper and I will not cry again. I will not. Instead I pick up my controller and ask Michael if he wants to be on a team or not. We don’t talk about it further, just continue to play video games until we’ve both fallen asleep.

I wake up to the sound of a loud thud and groaning. I look over to see Michael sprawled out on the floor with a blanket clutched to his body. His snores start up again within seconds of falling so it must not have been that bad. I reach over to press the off button on the tv and then resume my sleeping place at the end of the bed. I can hear shuffling downstairs but I ignore it, squeezing my eyes shut and shoving my head into the pillow I had grabbed earlier. The door opens lightly as someone makes their way into the room.

“Jenna?” Tay whispers from above me, nudging my shoulder lightly. I don’t respond because maybe if I just pretend to sleep she’ll go away. She sighs above me and then reaches over, tucking one arm underneath my shoulder and placing the other under the crooks of my knees. She picks me up, carrying me back downstairs and into our room. She gently places me on the bed, tucking herself beneath the covers with me. One hand grabs hold of my waist while the other threads itself in my hair, “I love you.”

“I’m so sorry, Jenna. I’m so, so sorry.”