Broken Road (16 page)

“God, I hope not,” said Jarrod.

“Call her and find out,” Alec said as he leaned back and made himself comfortable on Jarrod’s bed.

“Do you mind?” Jarrod said with raised eyebrows and a scowl upon his face.

“Not at all. Go right ahead.” Alec fluffed up the pillows and made himself even more comfortable.

“Go!” said Jarrod.

Alec slowly stood up, making sure to first take the time to stretch his arms exaggeratedly and yawn deeply, dust some invisible particles off his pants, glance out the window to watch the birds take wing from one tree to another, take a sip out of Jarrod’s day-old soda can, and then finally walk slowly out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Jarrod listened for a moment and then said loudly “Get away from the door, Alec.” A moment later, he heard the mumblings of what sounded something like “Whatever,” and then heard footsteps as they faded away down the steps.

He picked up the phone and pressed Contact List. The first name to appear was Angel’s. He pressed the dial key and it began to ring.

Two miles away, Angel was busy folding and packing her clothes into a suitcase. She was scheduled to leave that night on an 8:15 p.m. flight departing out of Newark Liberty Airport. She stared at the ringing phone and debated whether to answer it or not. It was him. Who else could it be? The number shown indicated it was a local call. Aside from Morgan and Aunt Helen, no one else from this area had her number. Well, he certainly did take his sweet time. She decided not to answer and let the call go to straight to voice mail.

“Hi. This is Angel. I’m not available to answer your call at the moment. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks for calling!…beeeeeeep…”

“Um, hi, Angel. This is Jarrod. Jarrod Wentworth. We met at my friend Evan’s party last week. I hope you remember me…anyway, I’m sorry it took so long to call. It’s just that I’ve been busy…I’ve been going to physical therapy every day and it sort of wears me out. I still tire easily. Anyway, I was hoping we might be able to get together before you head back to Florida. If you can, give me a call. Well, I guess that’s all for now. Hope to hear from you soon. Bye.”

Jarrod hung up and just stared at his cell phone for a bit. He had wanted to take things slow, but perhaps he had taken it to the extreme by not calling even a day or two sooner. He truly hoped he hadn’t messed things up.

Angel waited for the phone to signify that a message had been left. When she heard the alert, she retrieved and listened to the message Jarrod had left.

He sounded sincere
, she thought. But then again, he had sounded sincere last week. Why was she happy to hear he was feeling well enough to go to physical therapy every day? Morgan had mentioned in passing that he was a good athlete with a lot of promise before the accident. Why should she care that he wasn’t giving up on his dream like so many others would have? Perhaps physical therapy was just an excuse he came up with for not calling sooner.

Oh, how she wanted to call him back, but she knew she couldn’t. Morgan was, after all, her cousin and her loyalty lay with family. But what if he didn’t want to be with Morgan? What if he was interested in her like she had hoped? Or perhaps he wasn’t interested in either one of them and was just having some fun via payback? Once again she was developing a headache from so much thinking. Rubbing her temples, she tried convincing herself that things would be better once she was back in Florida. She needed to get away from here, although she would miss her Aunt Helen terribly. Nonetheless, it would be better for her to separate herself from this situation.

Morgan walked into the bedroom unnoticed. She stood in the doorway and watched as Angelise listened to her message and then stared at the phone after pressing the End Call button.

“Need help packing?” Morgan asked. Startled, Angel dropped the phone on the floor, immediately bent down to pick it up, and then nonchalantly tossed it into her handbag.

“You scared me,” said Angel.

“Sorry.” She couldn’t have cared less.

“Thanks for the offer but I don’t need any help. I’m almost done.” Angel continued packing the few remaining items and then closed the suitcase. She went over to the desk and grabbed her ticket, which she placed in her handbag. She looked at Morgan, who was still standing in the doorway, and motioned for her to come in and close the door, which she did.

“Morgan, we need to talk,” said Angel.

“I agree,” Morgan responded and then sat down on the bed. “Who starts?”

“I will, if you don’t mind,” Angel said and sat on the bed beside Morgan and faced her. She looked away from Morgan’s eyes and began to trace with her finger the outline of one of the flowers on the floral comforter she knew her aunt had purchased specifically for her visit. “I’ve thought about what you told me the other day, and I’ve made a decision. I’ve decided not to…not to…encourage a relationship with Jarrod. I won’t call or see him.”

“Thank you so much, Angelise,” Morgan exclaimed as she leaned forward to eagerly embrace her cousin.

Forced to stop tracing, Angel returned the embrace and said, “But…if you’re going to pursue some sort of a reconciliation with Jarrod, then I highly recommend you end things with Tim first. One, Jarrod will never take you seriously if you still have Tim dangling on a string, and two, it’s just cruel to string Tim along like that. He is a nice guy and deserves better than that.”

“I know you’re right, but what if Jarrod doesn’t want to get back? If I give up on Tim now, then I might end up with neither.”

“I think it’s a risk you will have to take,” said Angel in a clear-cut tone.

“You’re right. I’ll have to find a way or rather, find an excuse, to give Tim for ending things. Maybe I’ll just use the same one I used on Jarrod.” She chuckled.

Angel frowned at that comment and said, “What excuse did you give Jarrod?”

Realizing she may have just committed a blunder, she quickly answered, “I just told him we were growing apart, and it would be best for us to go our separate ways.”

“Okay, so that was the excuse you gave him. Now, what’s the real reason you ended things?”

Morgan just wanted the conversation to be over before she gave away too much information, so she hurriedly responded, “It doesn’t matter. All that’s important is that I’ve changed my mind and now I have to fix things. Angelise, thank you again.” She leaned over and hugged her again and threw in for good measure, “I’ll miss you.” She then left the room.

An hour later, when Angel was in the shower, Morgan quietly slipped back into the room, pulled Angel’s phone out of her bag, and listened to her voice-mail message. When she was done, she deleted the message and his number from the received calls list and gently placed the phone back in the bag.

She smiled as she walked away, knowing that even if Angelise changed her mind about getting together with Jarrod, she would not be able to get in touch with him.

She was walking down the steps, humming happily, when horror struck. She suddenly remembered Jarrod and Angelise would both be attending the same college. What if they were to have some of the same classes together? What if they were to bump into each other on campus? What if Jarrod called her again? She hadn’t thought of that when deleting the message. There was no way of preventing that from happening. Hopefully he would get the message that Angel wasn’t interested when she didn’t return his call, and he would give up. But that would be too easy and nothing ever came easily for Morgan. More than likely, Angel would cave and call him. Damn. This was going to be more difficult than she had thought.

Chapter Fifteen

A
ngel sat on the plane next to a short, portly old man who, based on the amount of perspiration emanating from his body, was quite nervous about flying. Directly to his left sat a young, stressed-out mother nursing her newborn, colicky baby. It was going to be a long three hours.

To pass the time, she tried perusing through a magazine, but soon found herself comparing all the young, hot-looking male celebrities to Jarrod. Unfortunately for the celebrities, they kept coming up short.

Bored out of her mind and with nothing to do, she leaned her head against the small window beside her and stared absent-mindedly at the clouds. Suddenly what normally appeared to her like huge puffs of white floating cotton balls or whipped cream undeniably had taken on the appearance of either baseball gloves or bats.

Finally she gave up trying to not think of him and just let her thoughts succumb to their fantasies. She imagined him holding her in his strong arms, lifting her face toward him, and gently placing a kiss on her lips. He would start slowly, deepening the intensity as the passion grew stronger and more heated.

Then she imagined them strolling along a deserted, palm-lined Caribbean beach. They would be holding hands as they walked in silence, and then he would slowly stop, turn to face her, take her face in both his hands, and gingerly place a soft, tender kiss on her lips.

She even imagined their first argument. It would be about which movie they would go see. She wanted to see a romantic comedy starring Channing Tatum, filled with tenderness, relationship dilemmas, obsession, and passion. Lots and lots of passion. He, in turn, wanted to see a recently released action war epic jam-packed with shooting, explosions, guts, and blood. Lots and lots of blood.

She would argue he just wasn’t romantic, and he would counter her argument with the allegation that she was not willing to make an effort to do the things he enjoyed doing. They would go back and forth bickering for a bit, and then they would compromise and agree to see a mystery film where the man saves the woman he loves while steadily dodging bullets and bad guys along the way. Afterward, as he bid her good night, Jarrod would press his body up against hers, lift both her arms up, and wrap them around his neck as he kissed her hard and long. It would be the kiss of all kisses, an unsurpassable kiss that would leave all other kisses in the history of the world lacking and wanting. A kiss so intense…

“Excuse me, miss? Miss?”

Angel was abruptly brought back to reality and responded, “Yes?”

“I need you to fasten your seatbelt,” said the pretty, young flight attendant. “We’ll be landing in Tampa in approximately ten minutes.”

“Sorry…thank you,” said Angel as she did as requested and let out a soft groan of disappointment that she would have to wait until later to see how that fantasy ended.

She looked to her left and the portly old man smiled mischievously at her. She returned an unsure smile, wondering if she had in any way given indications of what she had been thinking while she had taken her short trip to fantasyland.

As soon as she landed, she checked her cell phone and found Jarrod had called twice during her flight, but had only left one voice mail message. As she listened to the new message, she felt slightly despondent over the fact she could not return his calls.

“Hi again, Angel. It’s Jarrod. I’m sorry to be bothering you by calling so often, but I promise to stop hounding you if you call me back. I hope everything is alright. Call me, okay? It’s my cell number, so don’t worry about calling late and waking anyone up…bye.”

She loved the sound of his voice, although he did seem a little less animated this time around. He must be getting the message. She hated being rude by not returning his calls, but then again, if there was any truth to what Morgan had said about him using her to make her jealous, she shouldn’t be concerned about his feelings. He obviously wasn’t worried about hers.

She placed the phone back in her handbag, looked toward the mass of people gathered behind the security checkpoint, and saw her father waiting and waving. She smiled and waved back.

As they sat in the car during their drive home to Bradenton, Willie Skyler asked his daughter how her trip had been.

“It was fine,” responded Angel, staring out onto the dark highway.

“Anything exciting happen?” her father asked.

“No, not really. Aunt Helen seems fine. A little tired, I think. She works really hard.”

“Yes, she does. She’s had a pretty rough time of it. It can’t be easy raising a child alone with no support from the father,” he said as he took a sip of the coffee he had purchased at the airport. He offered Angel a sip, but she declined with a shake of her head.

“I’m sure. She does try hard, though. I just wish Morgan wasn’t so…so…”

“So what?” her father asked, his curiosity peaked.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. She just wants so much and is so demanding and is never grateful for anything anyone does for her…she wants everything done her way and expects everyone to bow down to her…she treats everyone like she’s better than—”

“Whoa. Hold on, killer. I’m detecting some animosity here. What exactly happened in New Jersey between the two of you?”

“Oh, Daddy. It’s so complicated.” Tears began to well up in her eyes and she found herself desperately trying to quell them. As she fought against the tightness in her throat, she explained to him in detail everything that had happened since her arrival. Beginning with a simple shopping expedition that turned into a fiasco due to Morgan’s incessant negative comments about every item Angel selected and ending with the sad situation involving Jarrod, Morgan’s ex-boyfriend.