An Autumn to Remember: A Novel (Elmtown Series Book 1) (11 page)

   “I’ve never seen this side of him before. Isn’t strange that he simply can’t trust me? It hurts, you know. It really hurts. I never had a boyfriend who didn’t trust me.” Tears filled her eyes but she didn’t cry. She covered her mouth to sneeze then wiped away her tears with the back of her right hand.

   “I’m sorry,” Amy said with a deep tone that carried meaning.

   “It’s not your fault. Hopefully he’ll realize how selfish this is and behave like an adult.” She sneezed again. It was getting colder outside.

   “Don’t do it anymore.”

   “I’m not sneezing on purpose,” Chelsea snapped.

   “No, I mean don’t date John anymore. Put a stop to it. He’s a scumbag.” Then she opened her mouth as if to say something but words failed her. Something was eating her up inside.

   “You don’t have to call him a scumbag to my face. I know he’s behaving like an idiot but he is still my–”

   “I slept with him,” Amy said quickly, as if the words burnt her mouth.

   “You what?” Chelsea’s eyes widened.

   “I slept with him Chelsea.” Amy had already started crying but she had to let it all out. “That night we went to watch Jamie sing. He asked me to come over to his place. That was why I left early.I didn’t plan for it to happen. I should have said no but I was flattered that he wanted me so we had sex. Then I realized how selfish and stupid I was for letting him.” She continued, “I called him yesterday to tell him we had to confess what we’d done to you but he told me to get lost and was going to deny it.”

   Chelsea began to shake her head. “Amy this is impossible. Tell me this isn’t true. You would never do this to me. We are BFFs.”

   “It’s true Chelsea. I did it. Wake up and smell the roses.” Amy went on as if she had to free herself, “Your BFF has always been jealous of you but you just never saw it because you have a good heart. You have a perfect life. You are beautiful. You have the type of boyfriend anyone would kill to have. I love you but I can’t deceive you anymore. I’ve been very jealous of you for a very long time, and...”

   Chelsea couldn’t hear anything Amy was saying anymore. You love me? she thought.
You love me but you go behind my back to sleep with my boyfriend? She wanted to pick Amy up and throw her down the building. Her head spun like a carousel on fast-forward. She turned around and went back inside before she did anything stupid that could lead to incarceration. She couldn’t hear it anymore. Amy and John slept together? They had crossed the red line.

14

JazzChat Inbox

Date: 10-31-2010

From: BoyFromElm

To: JazzyTee75

Hello JazzyTee,

It’s the last day of October and I’m still at chapter ten. I guess you were right all along; this is a book that refuses to be rushed by its reader. It’s incredible. I feel like buying a copy for every single person I know. I keep wondering if I am reading an autobiography centered on jazz or a book that challenges one’s life philosophies. As he succinctly put it in the beginning of this chapter, “To understand Jazz is to understand Life.”

Here is my take on chapter ten:

   Harmony in music involves combining different tones to form chords that are pleasing to the ear. I think that balance is what we are all trying to achieve in life, where everything is in synch. We want to be successful in our endeavors. We want to love and be loved. It’s this harmony that we are all trying to achieve. The question for me is this: is harmony possible in life? Is it possible to have it all together? I’ll look forward to what you think about it.

   So Chelsea’s birthday party was fun and interesting. We had a talk and she said that she regards her friendship with me as one of the most important things in her life which almost made me scream but I remained calm and played it cool. It really made me happy. I prefer to have her in my life in whatever capacity rather than not having her at all. My harmony is incomplete without her :).

How are you finding teaching at Allen City University?

Take care,

Jamie

   The next morning Jamie saw Chelsea on his way to the park for a run. It looked like she just drove into the driveway but she remained inside her car. When he got closer, he saw her face clearly, wet with tears, her eyes were red, her nose running and she was hyperventilating. Scattered all over the passenger’s side were pieces of used facial tissue.

   “Chelsea, what’s wrong? What happened?” He thought something really bad must have happened to her. Did she get robbed or something? He scurried to the other side and opened the passenger door, sat beside her and held her against himself. She cried against his shoulder, holding his arm, soaking up his jacket with her tears.

   “You’ll be alright. You’ll be alright,” he kept reassuring her without even knowing why she was crying. He just wanted to ease her into feeling better.

   “I’m sorry,” she said minutes later. She sniffed and cleaned her nose again, then tried to catch her breath.

   “Do you wanna go for a walk?” Jamie asked. He hated seeing her cry like that. “Let’s go get you some fresh air.”

   “I’d love that,” she said.

   They got out of the car and as they walked away from the house, Chelsea pressed the lock button on the remote car key and held Jamie’s hand.

   They walked around the block and headed for Jefferson Park.

   “Do you feel better? You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”

   She nodded and held tightly to his hand.

   It was after they got to the creek behind the park, after watching the ducks for about twenty minutes that she finally told him she broke up with John. He was as shocked as Chelsea was that Amy slept with John behind her back. Amy was like a sister to her, or so she thought.

   “Have you spoken to Amy since?”

   “No I don’t want to. I’ll just get more upset right now. I mean how could she? Of all the guys she could have slept with in this world. She wasn’t even thinking about her own boyfriend either. I mean how can someone be so selfish? Just going about doing things to hurt people you claim you love? Honestly, I don’t want to talk to her because I don’t want to know the details. How it started. Who initiated what. I don’t want to know any of that.”

   “I know, I know. It must really hurt. Being deceived by someone you love is not a pleasant thing. Will you be OK though? That’s all I’m concerned about right now.”

   “Yes,” she said and smiled for the first time. She thought that Jamie was such a good listener. He knew how to make her feel better without saying much. Just being there, looking at her with those caring beautiful eyes. “I’ll probably just cry for one week and I’ll be fine. He was turning out to be a jerk anyway. And to think I was willing to keep trying. I kept telling myself that no one was perfect, you know. But honestly, I don’t want to be with someone who thinks the whole world is about them. You know what I mean?”

   “I do,” he said nodding. “Go ahead and cry for one week but don’t let it go past that. I don’t want it to affect your productivity so you have to find things to distract yourself. Bury yourself in school work, go out with friends as much as you can.”

   “I don’t really have that many friends here anymore except you and Amy. Well I guess it’s just you now. Most of them have left Elmtown. My other friends who came for the party all work in Allen City now.”

   “Ok I’ll distract you then,” he said and held her. “I’ll take you to all those places I talked about. Don’t worry we’ll have fun.” He managed to draw a smile from her with his wink.

   So for the rest of the week, they walked to school together, studied at the library together and then went bike riding on Tuesday evening. They went to a bar at the Elmtown pier where they shot some pool, went to Jamie’s jazz nightclub on Thursday night and then took Tyler to the movies on Friday night to watch
Step Up 3D
.

   The only time of the day Chelsea cried was when Jamie wasn’t with her, which was mostly at night in bed. When they were together, everything else fizzled into nothingness. He was like a light that cast her worries into the background like shadows; they didn’t matter when he was around. She wondered how she would have coped with all her schoolwork if he wasn’t there for her.

***

   Two weeks later, on a Saturday afternoon, Jamie revealed the math exercises he wanted Tyler to attempt from page sixty-five through seventy-five of the eighth grade math textbook. Tyler started doing well at school since he came to an agreement with Jamie. One hour of math lessons twice a week earned him two hours of basketball coaching, either on Saturday or Sunday depending on Jamie’s schedule. Tyler really wanted to be good at basketball so he could get on the team at school.

   Teresa peeped into the library and asked, “Would you guys like something to drink?”

   “No Mom, I’m good. Maybe Jamie wants something?”

   “Thank you Mrs. Braithwaite. I already had a glass of water.”

   “OK, just let me know if you guys need a snack or anything. I’ll be knitting in the living room.”

   What she really wanted to say was thank you. Mrs. Robertson from Tyler’s school called two days before. Teresa’s first thought was that Tyler had probably been in another fight or hadn’t done any of his homework, skipped classes or something like that. But she was wrong, it was to inform her of the pleasant changes they were noticing in Tyler. It was almost like a complete one-eighty-degree turnaround.

   She went back to the living room, picked up her needles and the half-knitted pink yarn and continued knitting on the sofa. Tyler was doing fine. Chelsea was doing fine as far as she knew but the girl seemed a bit withdrawn lately. Is everything fine with her and John? Teresa wondered. She hadn’t seen him since the party.

   “Hi Mom,” Chelsea said as she entered the living room.

   “Hi sweetheart, how did studying go at the library?”

   “So so. I think I was too hungry to study properly.”

   “Why didn’t you just go get something to eat?”

   “The cafeteria doesn’t open on Saturdays.”

   “I see, I would have packed some lunch from home if I were you.”

   “I should have. What are you up to?”

   “Just knitting. Tyler and Jamie are doing math in the study so I thought I’ll do something productive too.”

   “Oh great. I was going to ask Jamie if he wanted to go to the movies tonight,” Chelsea said, then she went straight to the kitchen to find something to take care of her hunger.

   It suddenly struck Teresa. It was as if her mind just added one plus two and it all came together like a revelation. Something was up. Chelsea had been hanging around Jamie a lot lately, a bit more than usual.

   Five minutes later, she left her knitting material and went into the kitchen.

   “Honey how is John? I haven’t seen him here in a while,” she said to Chelsea who was just retrieving her bowl of oatmeal from the microwave.

   “He should be fine,” Chelsea answered nonchalantly. She opened a container and scooped few pieces of pineapple cuts into her oatmeal.

   “Is everything OK? Did you see him recently?”

   “I haven’t seen him since the party and don’t think I’ll be seeing him for a long while.”

   “Am I missing something?”

   “We broke up Mom. We broke up at the party.”

   “Oh my God. No. Why? And you didn’t wanna tell me?”

   “I just wanted to get over it properly first. The bastard slept with Amy. Can you believe that?” Chelsea asked with a plain tone that almost suggested she was getting over it already.

   “He what? You are kidding,” Teresa said loudly, rattled by what she heard. How could Chelsea sound so carefree about something so serious? Teresa wondered.

   “No kidding mother,” Chelsea said playfully and then ate a full spoon of oatmeal. “My goodness, these pineapples are so yummy.”

   “Oh no he didn’t.” Teresa came close to Chelsea. “I’m so sorry.”

   “Mom, it’s OK, I’m fine, you don’t have to look so distraught.”

   “That good for nothing back stabbing girl. I knew there was something off about her the first time you brought her home. You have to be careful about the kinds of friends you keep. She must have seduced him.”

   Chelsea chuckled. “How do you know it wasn’t the other way around? Why are you trying to blame it all on her. It takes two consenting adults to tango. They probably both wanted it so good for them.”

   “Honey, I know girls like that. They are like snakes. Coming here and acting all goodie goodie. That was her plan all along. She couldn’t be happy for her friend. Her eyes were set on John from the start,” she said. Still perplexed by the news, she figured this was why Chelsea had been spending a lot of time with Jamie, going out almost every evening. She still felt like Chelsea was unskilled in choosing the right friends. Is this why he’s teaching Tyler math and basketball? Just to get closer to Chelsea? First Amy steals John and now Jamie wants to take advantage of the situation.

   “Look honey, I know you’ll be fine but just be careful with people you choose as friends. And don’t jump into any relationship or anything like that. You’re young and have a lot of time to meet someone, OK?”

   “Hmmm, I hear you life-coach Mother,” Chelsea said in jest. “I’m definitely not going to be in a rush for a boyfriend.” She scraped the last bit of oatmeal and drank water from a tall glass. “But wait, that wasn’t what you were saying to me a month ago though. You kept going on about how John and I should get married as soon as I graduate. One would have thought you wanted me to ask John to marry me by December.”

   “Just take it easy. That’s all I’m saying. I don’t want you keep getting hurt.”

   Chelsea kissed her mother on the cheek and said, “I know.”