“Nothing, I guess.” Melissa shrugged her shoulders in defeat. “I just thought that maybe you wouldn’t need to talk to Jack in person to decide if he was lying or not.”
“But I do. Don’t you see?” I took a long breath. “I don’t trust myself when it comes to him.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll want to believe anything he tells me over the phone. I’ll hear his voice and turn into a stupid girly ball of mush.”
“This is about protecting yourself, isn’t it?” Melissa rested her chin against her hand and sighed.
I nodded.
“You think someday you’ll be able to trust the way a normal person does?”
“You mean blindly?” I laughed harshly before continuing. “Probably not.”
The sound of Jack’s ringtone blasted from my bedroom again, grinding our conversation to a halt. “Please go answer that, Cassie.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.” I winced before walking into my room and pressing Ignore once more.
My phone beeped with another voice mail alert, followed quickly by the sound of an arriving text message. This was going to be a long weekend.
Kitten, I’m getting worried. Please let me know you’re okay before I lose my fucking mind over here. I love you.
Part of me thought, Good. Lose your mind. Be worried. You deserve it. The other part of me breathed in with relief that he actually cared. I shook my head, disgusted at my conflicted emotions, and turned my phone off. I couldn’t deal with any more text messages or missed calls tonight. Not to mention the fact that I couldn’t stop wondering if Miss Thin Brunette would be making another appearance inside Jack’s hotel room later. The very thought made my stomach churn.
I heard Melissa’s cell phone ring, followed by the sound of her voice. “Cassie, get out here!”
I reluctantly walked back into the living room where Melissa held out her phone in my direction. “Who is it?” I whispered, afraid of the answer.
“It’s Dean. Get on the phone.”
“Hello,” I said, my tone irritated.
“Cassie, Jesus Christ, what the hell is going on? Jack’s calling me like a lunatic. He’s flipping the fuck completely flipping out. Says you won’t answer any of his phone calls or texts!”
“So what.” I pretended not to care.
“You gotta talk to him, Cass. You can’t ignore him like this when he’s on a road trip, it’s not fair.”
“Yes I can!” I screamed back into the phone. “He’s the one who had a fucking girl up in his hotel room, not me! So don’t tell me I have to talk to him, Dean. Don’t talk to me about what’s fair!”
The tears reluctantly escaped my eyes once more as Jack’s betrayal settled into my damaged heart.
“You’re so goddammed stubborn! He’s going fucking apeshit and you’re just going to let him?”
“I just can’t call him, okay? I can’t talk to him right now.” I pleaded with Dean for some sort of understanding. “Just tell him I’m busy with a project for school or something. He’ll believe that.”
Dean breathed heavily into the phone. “Fine. I’ll tell him. But, Cassie, he’s not stupid. He’ll figure out something’s wrong and then I don’t know what he’ll do.”
“What does that mean?”
“It just means that I’ve never heard him sound as crazy as I did tonight. He was literally flipping the fuck out because he couldn’t get a hold of you.”
“I guess he should have thought about that before he invited some whore up to his hotel room,” I snapped.
“You’re completely unreasonable, you know that?” Dean asked, his voice harsh.
“How am I unreasonable?!”
“Because you’d rather ignore this entire situation instead of put an end to it,” he snapped.
“I’m not ignoring it! I simply refuse to discuss it over the phone. So what?”
“See? Unreasonable and selfish.”
“Now I’m selfish too?” I shouted with a laugh.
“Sort of. You’re only thinking about yourself and your feelings. You’re not thinking about Jack at all. This isn’t just a game to him. This is his future. This is his career. He can’t fuck mess up. Don’t you care about that at all ?” Dean’s voice was pained.
“ None of that matters Not if he cheated on me,” I responded, my tone cold.
“But you don’t even know what happened. You don’t even know who that girl was. She could be an old friend of his…you have no clue because you won’t ask!” He sighed loudly.