Want You Bad.

I thought having Jaime move in would mean seeing her a lot more, but she was almost as elusive as she had been when she was with Joker. I had helped her move things from her car to the bedroom she would occupy but, after that, I mostly just caught glimpses of her; wisps of her hair as she headed out the front door or shut the door to her room.

When I did see her though, I could tell something was wrong. Sometimes she’d join me for coffee in the morning before Matt and Ryan woke up and we would sit and chat or she would sit with us for dinner. She would smile and laugh, but it sounded hollow. It wasn’t that she didn’t have a right to feel bad after what had happened but it just made me worry.

Then I just didn’t see her anymore. Sometimes the sound of a motorcycle would wake me up a little earlier than I normally got up or I would hear the door unlock and open in the early hours of the morning, just for her to be gone again by the time I was up only hours later. Where was she going? The motorcycle unsettled me. Who was always picking her up? My biggest fear was that it was Joker.

One day I was loading the dishwasher when I realized we were missing a couple glasses. I raided most of the house and came up empty before my eyes slid to her closed door. I bit my lip and walked over to it, opening it silently even though I knew with certainty that I was the only one home. A thick blanket had been hung over the window to keep the light out so it was dark and nearly impossible to see. I flicked the light on and eyed the room. Dirty clothes were scattered on the floor and her bed was a mess. I spotted what I had been searching for on her bedside table so I went to retrieve them. Under one of the glasses was a black notebook, “Quinn’s Journal” scrawled across it in silver sharpie. I stood staring at it for too long before I set the glasses down and reached for the book. I glanced at the door for just a moment before flipping through the pages, my heart threatening to pound out of my chest. I stopped on a page toward the end of where her writing stopped.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time with Jack Rabbit. I know he likes me and I feel sort of bad for leading him on but it feels so good to get the wind therapy I need. It gets my mind off everything. On the back of his bike, I forget about how I gave up on and abandoned Harvey. Sometimes the guilt is just too much… But that isn’t where the guilt ends. He and I have barely been apart for a month and I already am starting to get an attachment to someone else.”

An attachment to someone else? As far as I knew, she was only around us. I couldn’t lie that I felt a little jealous when I would go to record new videos and leave her with Matt and Ryan; I would hear her laughing and joking with them. Matt would flirt with her and they seemed to spend a little more time together than what I got and that was what brought it out more. I felt bad but I knew I was starting to take some of my jealousy out on him; I was being short and demanding to him, rude. He didn’t deserve it and I didn’t blame him for flirting with her. I guess I just didn’t want to put her in that situation, knowing what I knew. I wondered if Matt and Ryan knew. I wondered if Matt was who she was talking about.

“That’s another reason for my wind therapy… I know I’m not his property anymore and I have nothing to feel bad for but I can’t help feeling like I’m betraying him. I know I need to get over that, to get over him, but it’s hard. We’ve been together for almost three years so it’s hard to just… let go. And I don’t know what I want from my new interest. Just a rebound? The best way to get over someone is to get underneath someone else. He’s a good guy and I don’t want to use him like that.”

Either way, that made me glad to read. It would hurt Matt to be used like that. He was still young and pretty naïve. I’m sure he would’ve appreciated it too, if he ever found out. I would leave that to Jaime, though. I jerked my head up at a sound in the house and prepared to chuck the book and run, but I quickly realized it was just Chica walking. I took a deep breath, chuckling a bit at my jumpiness, and looked back at the words scribbled in smooth black ink.

“That’s why I’m going out with Taurus tonight. If I’m just looking for a rebound, he’s the perfect candidate. We’ll see how I proceed from them… I need to focus on getting a job but my head isn’t in the right place. I feel bad for bumming around the house like this but I’ll make it up to Mark. Like I said, he’s a good … And he doesn’t deserve what I would put him through. What I’ve already put him through.”

I swallowed hard. It wasn’t Matt. It was… me. I closed the notebook quickly and set it back in its place. I grabbed the cups and left the room, setting the dishes in the sink. My heart felt like it was pounding even harder. I sat on the couch. She was out with another biker on a rebound. I tried not to imagine what that involved. I needed fresh air. Getting off the couch, I called for Chica and headed to the back yard. What was going on?

I had been outside for over an hour, cleaning the pool and playing with Chica; just trying to get my mind off what Jaime had written. That had been unsuccessful so I tried to think about it logically. Yes, I was attracted to her. But what were the pros and cons? I saw what kind of relationship she was in before and I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t do that to anyone. What did she want? My blood pounding through my veins and giving me a headache made me want a drink.

“Spring cleaning already?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin and whipped around to look at her. There were dark circles under her eyes that suggested a lack of sleep, her hair pulled back in a high, sloppy bun. She smiled tiredly at me as she sat cross-legged in a chair. She held up a rasta colored glass pipe, “Do you mind?”

I furrowed my brow but shook my head. “I didn’t know you smoked.” Not that it bothered me she did; I just had never seen her do it or heard her talk about it. It caught me a bit off-guard.

With a shrug, she held the flame of a lighter to the herbs in the bowl. She coughed for a minute before she spoke, “I’m not some stoner girl who wears cannabis leaf print on everything and constantly talks about getting high. How would you’ve known?” She smiled tiredly again

There was more to her than I knew. I pondered on that. She was probably a dangerous venture, someone that had more layers to her personality than I had even an inkling of. That was hard to be convinced of as I watched her silently examine her pipe, looking like she was just as innocent and tired as any other young woman getting by. But what did I really know about her? Maybe she was a black widow, magnetic and beautiful, and maybe I was too entranced by her to notice her wrapping me in her web.