Scared of Beautiful (Scared #1)(12)
“Hey, is Jackson here?” I bolt out of my bed and walk over to the door.
Ben shoots one more glare in my direction, “I may be tired and pissed off, but I’m slightly jealous of you this morning,” he offers before he walks past Maia into the hallway.
“Hey,” I greet her, with maybe a little too much enthusiasm. She looks nervous as shit and I find myself wishing that the sexy confident woman that made an appearance last night would stop hiding from me.
“Can we talk?” she asks.
“Sure,” I reply, moving aside so she can walk into the room. As I’m about to ask Jade if I can catch up with her later, Maia sees her lying across my bed and immediately back pedals towards the open door.
“Hey, Jade,” she says, and I can hear that she is trying desperately to sound upbeat and casual. Epic fail on her part. She stares at me coldly and says, “I’ll talk to you another time.”
And with that, she turns and walks out the door.
I’m still staring at the space that Maia occupied before she walked out. Jade scoots to the edge of my bed and stares up at me. “What happened?” she asks quietly.
Rubbing my temples with my thumb and forefinger, I turn towards her. “Just now? I haven’t got a f-ucking clue. Although it may have something to do with your presence in my bed,” I reply. “Wait. That means she doesn’t know that you’re…” I continue.
“No!” Jade exclaims cutting me off. “She doesn’t know, and you’re not telling her until I decide to.”
“Don’t you think it might be relevant, considering that she now thinks that after I dropped her off, I spent the rest of the night f-ucking you?!” I raise my voice, slightly irritated. “Besides I thought you two were friends?”
“We are.” Jade answers, looking down at her hands. “But you know how I feel about telling people about me. You remember high school, don’t you?” I do remember high school and walk over to her, immediately sorry for raising my voice, and sit next to her on the bed. “What happened last night?” she asks again.
“I didn’t sleep with her, Jade. I just kissed her,” I say, annoyed that Jade still thinks of me in the same way that I was in Atlanta. Jade has this crazy idea that I’m going to spend the rest of my life replacing Shana with empty sex with random chicks who I pick up at clubs. And because that’s what I did for a while, she might have had a point. “Why is it so hard to believe that I may be different since you left home?” I ask her dejectedly.
She puts a hand on my leg and looks up at me. “I didn’t say I don’t believe you. I’m just saying she’s an all right chick, so don’t screw around with her feelings. I don’t want to have to make the choice between two friends again.”
She slips her feet into her shoes and walks out the door. And I wonder why it is that no matter how hard I try, I seem to have this uncanny ability to keep f-ucking things up.
I text Maia twice over the course of the day, and try calling her once, all with no answer. Since she’s doing a Psychology and English double major, and I study Engineering, our classes never cross over. Hell, I even walk to class on the opposite sides of the campus. Jade texts me to say that Maia hasn’t been back to the dorm room since this morning, and she assumes that she’s either in classes or at the library. I swing by the library; no Maia. Short of stalking the girl, I figure that I’ll go to her dorm room to talk to her later in the evening. When I try that, all I find is Jade sitting on her bed reading a big ass textbook on Music Management. f-uck, this chick really knows how to disappear. In a last ditch effort to find her, I decide to take a drive over to the Clever Bean to see if she’s there. On the way over there, I wonder what the f-uck I’m actually doing. I have no idea where her parents live, or who her friends are, and I realize that she could have gone to be with any of those people. All of a sudden I feel foolish, but the foolishness is nowhere near equivalent to the need I have to see her today.
Keys in hand, I stand at the doorway of the Bean and look for Maia’s familiar long brown hair. My heart sinks when I discover that she isn’t not anywhere on the lower level. I jog up the stairs to the galley level, and almost jump for joy when I see her curled up on one of the sofas, reading. Now that I’m here, what the f-uck do I say? Suddenly I’m nervous as shit, and this all seems like a bad idea. But I spent the day looking for her, and the last thing I’m about to do is turn around and walk away like a punk. I approach her and stand next to the sofa.
“This seat taken?” I ask casually. She barely glances up at me before shrugging her shoulders. I sit next to her on the couch, but she doesn’t bother to look up from her book. Fair call, I did ask her if I could sit, not whether I could actually talk to her. Note to self: next time, be specific.
I open my mouth to say, something, although I have no idea what. Before I have the chance, she shuts her book and looks up at me. I scan her face for an idea as to what she’s feeling, whether she’s pissed or hurt, and come up with nothing. She doesn’t let a hint of what she’s feeling slip though her robotic fa?ade. Where I’m from, if the girl you were seeing caught another woman in your bed, the first thing you’d be doing in a situation like this one is protecting your shit, ‘cause those bitches would waste no time in chopping it off! I find it bizarre that I don’t feel the urge to cover my crotch.