Discovering Us (2 page)

And that was when I knew. I knew I was going to marry Jagger Knox Jensen.

We stayed that way for a long time with neither of us speaking. We stayed that way until the doctor came out and told Mom and Dad that Robbie was going to be okay, it’d just take some time for him to heal. The relief was palpable in the room and different kinds of tears flowed then as everybody hugged.

“Thank you,” I whispered to Jag through my tears as I looked into his startling blue eyes.

He squeezed my hand in answer then continued sitting beside me for what seemed like hours, both of us still silent. The next thing I remembered was being put into my bed by my dad.

“Is Robbie home?” I asked sleepily.

“No, honey. He’ll be in the hospital for a while, but he’ll be home soon. You go back to sleep. Mom will be here with you.” He kissed my forehead and left the room to go back to stay with and keep watch over his youngest son.

I was still awake when Mom came in to check on me. “Is Robbie okay?” I asked.

“Yes, baby. We’re very lucky.” She tucked my soft comforter under my chin.

“How did Jag get there?”

“His parents came as soon as they heard. When they were leaving, Jag refused to leave you. I told them we’d take him home. He never left your side,” she said with a smile, sweeping the hair back off my forehead as she bent to kiss me there.

“He’s a good guy,” I muttered sleepily.

“Yes, he certainly is.” She kissed my forehead again then left my room as I drifted off.

Jag was there the next morning when I came downstairs for breakfast, checking to make sure I was okay. He stayed and played video games with me to keep my mind off things, I figured out later, then went with us to the hospital to see Robbie.

That was the scariest time in my life up to that point, but Jag was there throughout it all. And I knew.
Knew
we’d be together forever.

Chapter 4

I was eleven when Jag broke my heart for the first time.

“Oh, man! That’s the coolest skateboard I’ve ever seen!” Jag said in admiration, turning the page back in the magazine he was looking at and shoving it in my face, showing it to me.

“That
is
pretty cool,” I replied.

We were sitting on the front steps of my house drinking root beer floats, our favorite, and taking a break from skating. Jag had shown me earlier how to do a nollie kickflip and I’d been working on it for an hour in the driveway but not quite getting it right. I’d gotten frustrated, but I had to give it to him. He had an infinite amount of patience when it came to teaching me board tricks. Well, if you tuned out his yelling at me to stop being such a girl and do it right.

After that day, I’d saved for the next eight months to buy the skateboard for his thirteenth birthday, putting away my own birthday, Christmas, and allowance money to make his dream come true.

On the day of his party, I was so excited to give him his present I could hardly stand it. The skateboard had come in the week before and I’d wrapped it immediately after the postman had handed it over. I just knew Jag would love it. I’d hinted to him, aka tortured him, for months that he was going to love his gift and he’d been pretty excited about it, even putting me in a headlock telling me if I didn’t stop teasing him about it he’d choke me out. And if that’s not true love, I don’t know what is.

At the party, the first boy-girl one he’d ever had, he’d invited almost his entire seventh grade class. Because we were in different schools, I didn’t know any of the kids, but that was okay as long as I had Jag. When he opened my gift, his face split into a wide smile and he yelled out, “Sweet, El!” I was thrilled that I’d made him happy. He came over and punched me in the arm, putting me once again in a headlock, telling me I was the best friend ever. When he let me out of his grasp, I couldn’t help but grin back at his excitement.

Who knew that’d be the last time we’d talk for years?

When he opened his next gift, a crappy Hansen CD that had that ridiculous song on it whose title had way too many consonants, he then smiled widely at Marie Jackson, those gorgeous eyes of his beaming in her direction, telling her thank you, like she’d bought him Nirvana tickets or something. Then he went to her and shyly kissed her on the cheek. Um, what?  I stood there in shock, watching them looking at each other all googly-eyed. Again, what?

The rest of the party has become a blur in my mind—I’m pretty sure my little pre-pubescent self shut it all out, pulling a Sybil or some shit—and I hardly remember helping Mrs. Jensen clean up or skating back home afterward. But I do remember running inside and calling Rebecca, and through my tears telling her what had happened. She got her dad to drive her over immediately. She stayed the night and then proceeded to tell me that there were other fish in the sea, even though we didn’t quite know what that meant, but she’d overheard her older sister telling it to a friend when a guy had broken up with her, so we figured it fit the situation and went with it. Rebecca said that Jag Jensen was a jerk and that he’d be sorry one day for what he’d done to me. We giggled for the longest time about all the mean things we could do to Marie Jackson, including sneaking into her room and short-sheeting her bed or pulling a Fifty-Two Card Pickup
times two
on her (hey, we were eleven), until Dad stuck his head into my room and threatened to take Rebecca home if we didn’t get quiet. We drifted off to sleepy snickers and whispered visions of Marie’s having to pick up every card in both decks.

I managed to cry myself to sleep each night thereafter for the next month. My heart hurt because I knew that something had changed in Jag’s and my relationship. Maybe it was the fact that he was kissing other girls. Duh. Oh, and it also could’ve been that every time I’d ridden my skateboard over to his house during that time, he was either gone or Marie was over doing homework with him. The few times I had caught him at home, he’d made up some lame excuse that he had something important to do.

I was devastated. Thank God Rebecca had been there for me or I don’t know what I’d have done. Probably most definitely pulled a Sybil and developed multiple personalities. That or turned completely girly like Marie, trying to catch Jag’s attention. Oh, what fun that would’ve been.

Chapter 5

I was sixteen when I fell in love with Jag for real.

By that time, I hadn’t talked to him for five years.

Five years.

And, God, had it hurt.

Of course, I’d kept tabs on him during that time, but it’d only added to my heartache. I’d discovered that he and Marie Jackson had lasted a good two weeks, which in the seventh grade is the equivalent of an adult year of dating you know, but after their breakup, he was off and running, seemingly “dating” every hot girl in his grade and even a few eighth graders, which took him to celebrity status amongst his peers. As the years passed, I’d heard of the relationships he’d had with several of the most beautiful girls in school including the homecoming queen, the cheer captain, the head of the debate team and the yearbook staff editor.

All of which broke my heart in two.

I’d seen him pitch when I’d gone to baseball games, but never had the nerve to tell him afterward that he’d done a good job. Catching glimpses of him here and there over the years either in the neighborhood or at school was particularly painful. Oh, he’d wave from afar whenever he saw me, which just seemed to make things worse, and I’d wave back if he’d caught me looking, but what usually happened was I acted like I hadn’t seen him and just carried on.

The hallways at school were even worse, seeing him with his arm thrown around the shoulders of whichever hottie he was dating at the moment, observing how the girls looked so smug walking beside him as if they were the queen of the world, like they’d staged a coup on the previous girlfriend to win him over, which probably wasn’t far from what’d happened.

And, oh, how I’d wished I’d been in their place.

Our verbal drought continued until a day in late March of my sophomore year when I was sitting on a silver-painted rail in the parking lot after track practice waiting for my mom to pick me up since my car was in the shop getting the windows tinted. A rowdy group of sophomore and junior boys was hanging around, all of us just chatting it up, when Jag drove up in his dusk blue ‘69 Camaro with white racing stripes on the hood, most kickass car ever, and asked if I had a ride. I almost fell off the rail when he’d spoken to me. Then I had one of those
look behind me to make sure he was actually talking to me
moments, then pointed to myself to confirm I was who he’d meant to address. You know what I’m talking about, like the scene from
Sixteen Candles
when Jake pulls up to the church and Samantha doesn’t know he’s there for her, one of my top ten favorite romantic movie scenes ever by the way. Anyway, yeah, that was me. When I finally got my wits about me, I told him my mom was coming to pick me up, but he told me to call her and let her know he’d take me home.

I looked at him for a couple seconds before making up my mind. Hm. Wait for Mom or get a ride from the hottest senior in school?

My fingers couldn’t dial her number fast enough. I waved at the group of guys as I got in Jag’s cool-as-hell car, noticing the look of awe on their faces as we drove away.

“So.” Jag looked over at me.

My face flushed. What was there to say after five years? I had no idea.

So I rallied.

“So?” I tugged the hem of my track shorts down a little. Damn. Had they always been this ridiculously short? Jeez.

“So how’ve you been?” he asked, obviously noticing my nervousness as he smirked, glancing down at my hands.

“Um, good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” We drove in silence for a few minutes, the guy singing on the radio telling us to hate him today and tomorrow.

Wow. This wasn’t awkward to the max at all.

“I, uh, saw you race the other day. Not bad, El.” He smiled over at me.

El. He still called me El after five years. 

Five years
.

Did he still deserve to get to call me that? Of course he did. He’d been with me through a lot. And I was sure he had no idea how much our not talking had devastated me since I’d never let him in on my complete and utter adoration of him. That or our impending nuptials, of course.

“Thanks.” I pushed some hair that’d fallen out of my ponytail behind my ear. I was sure I looked fab since I’d just gotten out of practice. Yeesh.

But, God, was he hot. He was now eighteen and had bulked up nicely. He was well over six feet tall, and although he was still kind of lanky, the muscles in his arms were quite nice to look at. His chest had filled out too and I could see the outline of his tight abs through the baseball shirt he wore. I could also see the definition of his thighs through his white uniform pants. Wow. His jaw had squared, which cast a damned movie star aura about him. His eyes were just as astonishing a blue as they’d always been and I saw that that one shock of his dark hair still hung adorably in them. 

I’d grown up a lot too—my mom had made sure to feminize me some once my brothers had all left for college by making me wear a little makeup—and even though I was still thin, I’d actually developed boobs that I never thought I’d get. At 5’8” I was taller than most of my friends and my long, brown hair had developed auburn highlights from my being out on the track in the sun after school each day. My tanned skin made my green eyes stand out more, but a consequence of spending so much time in the sun was the stupid freckles that dotted my nose. Running hurdles had made my legs stronger, so I guessed I looked okay, or at least some of the boys yelling, “Nice legs!” at me when I wore shorts or skirts to school and the whispers I heard in the hallways about my being hot—this made me crack the hell up they’d say that about me—made me think I was at least passable.

Sitting there in his car with Jag was so surreal, that when he asked if it was okay if we stopped at a fast-food place where a lot of the kids hung out, I just stared at him.

“El?”

I snapped out of my haze and asked, “Huh?” because I was smooth that way.

He smiled back at me before turning to watch the road again. “Care if we stop to get a float before going home?”

“Float?” I couldn’t grasp what he was saying, like being in his presence stripped me of all cognitive ability. And I couldn’t stop staring! Gah!

“Yeah. You know, root beer float?” He grinned over at me as he shifted gears on the car probably thinking I was mental.

“Oh, yeah. That’d be fuper.” Oh, dear God.

“Fuper?” He muffled a snicker, looking over at me confused.

“Yeah, I, uh, meant to say ‘fun’ but then ‘super’ snuck its way in there too.”

Yep. I was officially an idiot. I turned my head to look out my window, bringing my left hand to shield my face so he couldn’t see me as I rolled my eyes and shook my head at my stupid self. Ugh. Kill me now.

“Fuper it is,” he said with a chuckle, reaching over to pull my hand away from my face. I looked over at him to see him wink at me before smirking again which only made me want to put my hand up to cover my face again. Jeez.

Despite my dumbass tendencies, I was thrilled to be hanging out with him again, and not because he was hot, though that didn’t hurt matters any, but because he was Jag.
My
Jag. And he was back. At least for now.

We stopped at a little fast food joint and went inside, sitting in a booth. There were a bunch of other kids there from school, and I thought that for him to actually take me there and not be embarrassed to be seen with a sophomore was pretty cool. When the waitress came by, he ordered our customary root beer floats.

A few of the guys in the place came up to talk to him, smiling and saying hi to me. Some even knew my name. Huh. When the waitress brought our drinks, they left, telling Jag they’d see him at practice the next day.