“I won’t let you let me down so easily.”
Jessa suddenly felt uncomfortable
sitting in the passenger seat of Jared’s car. They were on their way to a birthday
dinner for one of her friends downtown.
She and Jared had been seeing each other for months. She thought the next natural step was to make it official, which is why she had asked him the question in the first
place.
“I just don’t know how to introduce you to my friends,” Jessa tried to explain.
“Just say, ‘This is Jared,’” he replied with a laugh.
Jessa felt herself getting upset. “I just feel like I must be doing something wrong,” she said more to herself than to him.
Jared made a left-hand turn. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean, I don’t know what else I can do, Jared. We see each other 2-3 times a week, we stay over at each other’s apartments, we cook each other dinner and breakfast. Why can’t I just say you’re my boyfriend?”
Jared pulled into a metered parking spot and cut the engine off. He turned to her. “I’m just not ready for that yet, Jess.” He put his hand to the side of her face. “And it has nothing to do with you. This is my shit, so please don’t take any of it personally, okay?”
Jessa nodded, biting her lip to stave off the tears now welling in her eyes. “Okay,” she replied.
“Thank you,” Jared said and leaned forward to kiss her.
At dinner, Jessa tried to focus on her friends and their conversations, but her mind kept wandering. She wanted to believe Jared. She took a deep breath, trying not take what he’d said in the car personally, but something about him and this whole situation felt just too familiar and absolutely personal to her.
* * *
Jessa had found dating in the new
millennium impossible. There was enough
contradicting advice and reading material to make her head spin.
“Don’t act too needy or clingy too soon,” one friend advised over coffee.
“But guys are clueless, so if you don’t tell them you’re interested they will never figure it out on their own,” said another.
“But play hard to get. If he asks you out, say you’re busy.”
Later, Jessa would click on an article on her FaceSpace news feed that more or less read something like this:
You
deserve to be treated like a princess and men are human, so you don’t expect
them to be perfect and be able to read your mind. Also, expectation is the first step toward
disappointment. So, know what you’re
worth and if you don’t like what he’s giving you, move on, sister.
Men love
it when the girl is the one who asks him out, but don’t make him feel
emasculated. You have to let him be the
man, but also be an independent woman who doesn’t rely on anyone else because men
find that kind of confidence sexy.
It seemed the gender roles had
gotten so mixed up over the last fifty years that being a housewife in the 1950’s
almost seemed like a dream to Jessa. At
least back then, people knew what they were supposed to do.
Jessa was excited about the date she
had with Zach. She had met him a few
weeks before and the chemistry between them was off the charts. Every time he looked into her eyes and kissed
her she felt tiny exploding fireworks everywhere in her body. She had put up with a lot of shit with guys
in the past, but she knew meeting Zach was God’s way of making up for all of
that.
“I just feel like things might be moving a little fast, Jess,” said Zach a little later when he called to cancel their date. “And rest assured it’s not you. It’s me. I’m the idiot and I’m just not looking for anything serious right now.”
Jessa hung up the phone. This felt like the hundredth guy in a row to tell her he wasn’t interested in a relationship with her. The first fifty times she took it with a grain of salt, accepting that they were telling the truth and that they just weren’t ready. But with every following rejection, Jessa found it harder and harder to ignore the fact that the problem might not be with them and that it could possibly lie with her.
* * *
“I’ll call you when I’m off work tomorrow,” Jared said, dropping her off at her place after dinner.
“No, don’t,” replied Jessa. Her brash response startled the both of them.
“Okay…are you sure?”
Jessa opened her car door and nodded. “Yeah, good-bye, Jared.”
She barely heard him say, “Bye,” as she shut the door. She heard him drive away.
Jessa walked into her empty apartment and leaned up against the door. What was wrong with her? On nights like this when she was feeling her lowest, all she wanted to do was curl up on the couch with a pint of ice cream and wallow in her own self-pity. Shaking her head, she made her way to her closet. She pulled out a sexy piece of red lingerie and put it on. She stood in front of the full-length mirror that hung on the backside of her bathroom door.
As she stood there, looking at her two perfect breasts, round hips, and smooth legs she was absolutely dumbfounded. Why wouldn’t Jared want to claim this beauty for his own? she wondered. She went to the stereo and turned it on. The song “2 Wicky” by Hooverphonic came on through the speakers. Jessa started to moving slowly, seductively. She ran her hands along the sides of her body, up around her neck, and then up into her beautiful long hair.
Jessa would understand if she were just being
shallow. She knew there was more to a
girl than her looks, but she also knew she was a complete package. Not only on the outside, but on the inside
she was sweet, caring, intelligent, had a sense of humour, and she could take
care of herself as well as others and still – nothing. Jessa went to her phone and picked it
up. With a few pushes on the touchscreen,
the phone began to ring to another end.
Jessa put the phone to her ear.
“Hello?” said a man’s voice.
“Hello? Brandon?” she said with a deviant smile. “It’s been a while.”
