The Light in the Wound (17 page)

“Did you know that he had James beaten up after you guys watched that play together?” Alex asked out of the blue one night.

“Alex, you really shouldn’t be listening to rumors. People just like to talk about him all the time.”

“James is a friend from high school. He told me that Jesse’s friends threatened to hurt him even more if he didn’t stay away from you.”

I nervously reached for the cigarette dangling from his lips and inhaled deeply. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? I seriously thought James just got annoyed with me about something. I never imagined Jesse would take it that far.”

“What was the point?” He sounded resigned to the fact that it wouldn’t have made a difference. He was right.

“A, please, please extend my apologies to James. I’m too embarrassed to reach out to him, knowing that I caused him so much trouble.”

About two weeks later, I stood outside the school waiting for my ride home. As I walked down the sidewalk searching for Bernard, I saw Alex sitting on the hood of his car, fidgeting with his phone. He looked up and hopped off with the most beguiling smile. As he walked a few steps toward me, it warmed my heart to see him there.

“Hi?” I asked with a puzzled look on my face.

Two college girls walked by and did a double take. Hot guy hopping off of a Range Rover.

“I told Bernard I’d take care of picking you up today. I had a meeting at the Taft Avenue office and thought I’d surprise you. I figured we’d grab a bite to eat on the way to your house,” he said as he walked over to open the car door for me.

“Oh, that sounds good.” I smiled as I got into the passenger seat. “I don’t have any homework, so thank you for coming to get me.” We were quiet for a while listening to music until I asked, “Do you wanna swing by to check whether they have anything new at Bergamo? I wanted to try out some of their vintage stuff but they’re so expensive. Maybe they have a sale,” I rambled.

“What about going to the GAP? They have some stuff out from their boutique collection, I saw them the other day,” he suggested.

“I feel like they won’t fit me well. The more expensive brands make me feel more confident,” I confessed.

“Isa, you look amazing in anything you wear. Old or new. Cheap or Pricey. It’s the way you carry yourself, your demeanor. Your fashion sense.” He turned to look directly at me as he said that.

“Eyes on the road, A.” I giggled, as I gently pushed his cheek to refocus his eyes in front of the car.

Ten minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot at Wal-Mart. “What are we doing here?” I asked, confused.

“Proving a point,” he said, as he exited the car and ran over to my side to let me out.

“You’ve been here before?” I wondered out loud, sincerely surprised.

“Isa, everyone goes to Wal-Mart. My mom likes to get her kitchen accessories from here,” Alex replied, obviously very amused with me. He took my hand and led me through the parking lot and into the store. I had never been in a Wal-Mart before. It was surprisingly well organized, despite being huge and overwhelmingly full of people. Alex never let go of my hand as we wove past aisles of stuff. I would tug him to stop every now and then, as I picked up a thing or two that interested me. When we finally stopped at the women’s section, he pulled out a few dresses and playfully handed them to me.

“What are we doing?” I asked, still confused about the point he was trying to make.

“Isa, humor me, try these dresses on. I’ll wait out here for you.”

I nodded my head in acquiescence. There were actually two or three pieces that I could actually see myself wearing. Inside the fitting room, I tried them on, until I settled on a pretty white, sleeveless summer dress that was held at the waist by a tan wrap-around belt. As I walked out of the fitting room, Alex grabbed my hand and shoved me toward one of the full-length mirrors. He mischievously checked my neck and arms. “No hives here. You’re not breaking out just because it’s a Wal-Mart dress.” He laughed.

“What is your point?” I asked, exhausted by all his energy.

“My point is that you look just as beautiful, just as sexy and just as well put together as you do every single day, no matter what brand you wear. This dress doesn’t define your loveliness.
You
do.” A moment of understanding passed between us as his gaze turned heated and his eyes swept over me from head to toe. I was familiar with that look, but he wasn’t the person whose eyes it belonged to. I knew just how to bring him back from his thoughts.

“Aww, you’re so sweet, A. Are you going to buy me this dress?”

“I don’t have $32.99 on me,” he quickly retorted.

We walked out of the store with that dress, two picture frames and a bag of Twizzlers.

Three months to the day Jesse and I broke up, I was in the teacher’s lounge in the College of Economics, performing a practice run of my thesis presentation. It was pretty late in the evening because I had to wait for my professor to finish with a 7:00 P.M. class. We worked together for a little over an hour and decided to call it a night. I was packing up my posters and shutting down my computer when Jesse walked into the lounge and stopped dead in his tracks. His face turned white as a sheet, like he had seen a ghost. I nodded and gave him the tiniest bit of a smile, while continuing to pack my things up to leave. There were still a few professors in the lounge, which made it easier for me to avoid any conversation and head out the door. He quickly turned on his heels and followed me out.

“Isabel, wait up.” His strides were so huge that he caught up with me in no time.

“I have to go home.” I was breathless, not from walking but from being intoxicated by his presence.
I am an addict and he is my drug.
Even the tiniest bit of contact with my skin, the proximity of the hairs on his arm brushing against me … I was losing it.

He grabbed my elbow. “Isabel, please stop. Please talk to me.”

“Why now, Jesse? Why? What do you want from me?”

“Can we talk for a few minutes?” Those eyes. Smoky gray, pleading eyes.

I walked over to the stairway and sat on the top step. “Okay, talk.”
Oh my God. What a wimp I am. I’m going to cry, I’m going to start sobbing any minute now. Does he not know that my wounds are still raw? That nothing that’s happened in the past three months has helped stop the bleeding?

He descended backwards a few steps and remained standing, one hand on the rail and the other in his pocket as he leaned in close to my face. “You’re still so beautiful. I miss you so much. I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I am so sorry.”

I turned my head away. “Well, you accomplished what you worked so hard for, what you gave everything up for. Congratulations, by the way. Tell Katrina congrats as well.” He called her Kathy. She was Katrina to me.

“Please, Issy.”

“Don’t call me that. You can’t call me that!” I sobbed freely, swatting his hand as he tried to touch me. He glanced around nervously, making sure that no one was around to witness this scene.

He lifted me up, carried me over his shoulder, and kicked open a door right by the stairwell. Great. How convenient, a utility room. Why did it seem that Jesse knew every single secluded area in this school?

He placed me back down on my feet and backed me up against the wall. His breath was fiery hot, and I was hyperventilating. He gently held my face, his hands underneath my hair.

“Look at me. There’s never been anyone else. I tried to give you the time that you needed during the campaign. I was going to call you after we won the elections, but things were just so crazy. I didn’t want to ask you back and not have the time to show you how much you mean to me. You have to know that I am doing all of this for us. For you and me. For your family to respect me … and to assure them that I can take care of you. You have a future that has been set in stone from the day you were born. I don’t have that. There’s a lot of proving that I have to do for myself, for my family and for your family. Can’t you be with me through all of this? In the end, it will be you and me anyway.”

“But I told you I didn’t need any of this. That all I needed was
you
. And you left me for your ambitions. When will I make it to the top of your priority list, Jesse?” I cried.

“Isabel, you
are
my priority. Look at the big picture here. These are merely steps in getting to a future together.”

“Why would you assume I was going to wait?”

“I didn’t. It killed me every time someone mentioned seeing you. I tried not to care, I really did. Dane Williams once mentioned that you were the hottest girl in his advanced Macro class and Ryan had to hold me back from hitting him.”

“You can’t keep attacking everyone who wants to talk to me. You don’t own me.”

“But I want to own you, Issy. I want you to be mine. Only mine.”

I honestly didn’t know what to think, what to believe. I knew that I forgave him the moment I saw him in the teacher’s lounge. I was lost and he was the only sense of direction I had ever known.
Where would my roads lead if not straight back into his arms?

I want to be owned. Being owned means never being alone.

“What do you want, Jesse? What do you want from me?”

“I want you. I want you every day. I want to be with you. I want to be beside you, around you, in you. There is no one else.”

I let him kiss me. I missed his lips. His smell. His mussed up, unruly hair. His kisses started out tenderly and turned more urgent as his hands roamed freely across my body.

“Issy,” he groaned as he lifted my skirt and pulled down my panties. A tiny gasp escaped his lips as he knelt down in front of me. “Come back to me, Issy. Be with me. Let me drink you. Let me taste you. I live for your taste. Please, Issy.” And his mouth was on me, teasing me, sucking me. It felt like he couldn’t get enough of my wetness, which felt like an overflowing faucet at that point.

I cupped his face and pulled it toward mine.

“See how good you taste,” he whispered, as he kissed me hungrily.

“I want you, Jess. Please. Now.”

With that he lifted me up by my buttocks, pinned me against the wall and sat me on top of him. We moved in unison and I was filled to the brink with him and with love for him. He looked into my eyes, never breaking his stare.

“Fuck, Iss, you feel so good. I can’t hold on much longer, I have to let go!”

An hour later, we were home in bed together. We talked about the past three months and the things we missed while we were apart. I didn’t have much of an update — my life had been in limbo for pretty much the entire time. But not for him. In the three months since we had last seen each other, he had managed to get a job offer with a large multinational company with travel opportunities abroad during the first three months of his starting date.

“Congratulations, Jesse! I am so proud of you!” I leaned over to kiss him.

“Let’s make this work, Issy, okay? I love you,” he whispered as he started to undress me again.

“I love you too, Jess.”

I slept fitfully that night and wondered what it was that bothered me about him being there. Jesse held me tightly as he slept, the weight of his arms reminding me that he was mine. I was supposed to be at peace, my world was going to be complete once more. And yet I felt anxious and afraid, knowing that I would never recover if he ever left me again.