Justin stands up. “Thank you Officer. Do you need anything else tonight? Jenna is pretty tired and I’d like to help her clean up before she gets to bed.”
Officer Hardy shakes his head. “That’s all for tonight. I would also get the locks changed first thing tomorrow. I’ll have someone posted nearby to keep an eye out.” He looks at Justin and then at me and says, “You won’t be alone in the house tonight, will you?”
Justin steps forward. “I’ll stay with her tonight.” I look at him. “Until her brother gets home.”
Officer Hardy nods. “Good. Here’s my card. Call me if anything happens.”
“Thank you,” I say, and walk him to the door. Justin and I watch him go back to his car and drive away.
“Where do you keep the trash bags?” Justin turns to me and asks. I lead him over to the kitchen and show him under the sink where I keep all of the cleaning supplies. I grab a few bags and we go into the front room and get to work.
“I guess I’ll just dump all of the DVD cases in an empty box since they’re useless,” I say as we’re cleaning. Together we manage to pick the bookshelf back up and lean it against the wall where Devin and I had originally put it. “On the plus side, I have a whole lot of new shelf space.”
Justin pauses in his cleaning up the broken glass from the window and looks at me. “Jenna, you really don’t know what the person was looking for?” He sounds skeptical, and I’m taken aback. “Or who?”
“My only thought is maybe someone Jack owed money to,” I say, but there’s doubt in my voice and in my mind. “Maybe they didn’t get the memo that he’s dead.”
“Oh, that’s actually not a bad thought,” Justin says, looking relieved. “But why didn’t you mention that to Officer Hardy?”
I shrug and stoop to start picking up the large pieces of a broken lamp and put them in the trash bag I’m holding. I wonder if we have a dustpan anywhere. “I actually just came up with it.”
“Well maybe call him in the morning and tell him about that,” Justin tells me. “But for now, let’s clean up and get some sleep. You must be exhausted.”
“You probably are too,” I say to him, pausing and reaching my hand out to touch his face. It’s slightly scratchy from his five o’clock in the morning shadow. Actually, it’s just past 3:00 am. Justin smiles at me and puts his hand over mine and leans in to kiss me. My heart flutters a little bit and when we pull away, I suddenly remember something. “I never called Devin.”
“I called him and got his voicemail,” Justin says. “I told him to stay for his shift and come home in the morning. We have it under control, right?”
“We do,” I agree. I survey the room and see we’ve made a ton of progress. “Did you get a good look in Devin’s room to assess the damage?”
“Actually,” Justin says. “I checked and besides the ruined paintings, it’s not that bad.” We both give each other a glance but don’t say anything, but something is weighing heavily on our minds. My mind in particular. No one does damage like this in my life except Kate, except when could she have gotten away. And where was Devin during all of this?
Chapter 13
We had planned to have a housewarming party but need to postpone it another two weeks so that we can take care of cleaning up and replacing damaged items. We change the locks right away. Devin is horrified about the entire ordeal, which draws my suspicions away from him and back to someone who has been in the back of my mind for a few weeks. Drake.
Justin and I are what normal people call “dating”. I have no idea what to do with myself. I’ve never had a man who wanted to take me out and spend time with me outside of the bedroom. In two weeks we’ve gone to see an Improv show, horseback riding, kayaking along the Chicago River, roller skating over by the place we used to go as kids and to two movies. I’m gaining weight from all of the places Justin takes me, which he says is a good thing because apparently I could use a few extra pounds, though I believe he’s plotting with Devin to make sure I can’t set foot in a strip club and be hired. We frequent “Sally’s” diner, which is a greasy Chicago fast food place that’s walking distance from the house where they serve greasy French fries coated in sugar in giant taco shell bowls. I become addicted to the “Confused Chicken”, which is a chicken Philly cheese “steak” and chicken chili cheese fries. It sounds disgusting and it tastes like heaven. Even though Justin is busy photographing summer weddings he makes sure all of his free time is spent with me. I have nothing but free time since I have put off getting a job or enrolling in school. Devin is becoming inpatient with me but I claim that I am traumatized about the break in and want to spend time watching the house. The truth is that being at home alone scares the shit out of me now. But my limited time by myself is uneventful and I mostly spend it sleeping since Justin and I don’t do much of it when we’re together. Every waking moment that we’re not in public is spent talking or making love. I can’t even begin to describe how amazing it feels to be with him, but it’s not how I thought things would be with anyone before in my life. We talk about anything and everything and then he’ll kiss me in the middle of a sentence and things always get carried away. We spend some more time in his painting studio together coming up with “projects”. One involved rubbing paint on each other with our hands and then making love on a giant canvas that he’d stretched out on the floor. It looked wild and insane when we were finished, which is pretty much how he’s making me feel all of the time.