Present
I ended things with Kade three weeks after Jace and I hooked up again.
There wasn’t much to end, honestly, but there was a time where I would’ve continued seeing Kade and loving Jace all to woo my ego.
With Jace, my world orbited around his.
No one could penetrate it.
Not even the nicest of guys, the kindest of hearts, the best for me.
I was addicted to hurting myself being with him, pushing aside all the things that made me whole and healthy.
I lost weight while we were together because who would want to be with someone heavier than them?
I stopped seeing Stacy because I couldn’t face the confrontation she’d give me, knowing I crawled back to the pain that put me there to begin with.
Carter and I were on the rocks since I decided to meet Jace for coffee again. It was his breaking point I think. I gave him every reason to break.
Fawn stuck by me, but she wasn’t happy. Like every good friend, even if they didn’t approve of your decisions, they wouldn’t leave you.
I would’ve left me.
I think the best parts of me did.
The irony, that the people you cared about most were always the ones to leave you in pieces.
A colleague from work, Marcus, was Kade’s proof-reader, and we’d gotten to know each other over the course of a couple weeks. Because he only had to work when Kade submitted his edits, he did some of the servant work like me sometimes.
On a coffee run, he’d asked me, “What went wrong between you two?”
The hot cups burned my palm. “I didn’t realize you two were so close.”
“I’ve been assisting Kade for months, Bee.’
Everyone at work knew me as Beatrice (or Bee). Blu only existed if Jace’s name followed suit.
I guess I morphed into someone new wherever I went, but that didn’t change who I was to the core. Not while Blu still lived inside of me.
“I got back with my…” Ex? He wasn’t my ex, we never dated. Even in the times that we spent with each other, we were never really together. To this day, I still had no idea what to call him, so I was grateful when Marcus interrupted my thought.
“Gotcha. Can’t compete with a good ex nowadays.”
But was Jace considered good? Did he treat me right? Or was I just patiently waiting for the day that he would?
“It’s not like that,” I added before I could shut my trap. “It’s complicated.”
“Well for what it’s worth, thank you for not bringing that complication to Kade. He’s a good guy.”
“Why don’t you date him?”
He snorted in amusement. “Believe me, Bee, I’ve tried.”
After that conversation, I decided to approach Kade with a sincere apology. Never in my life did I feel like I had to do that, but hurting people became uncomfortable. Maybe because I was hurting, and I knew how it felt. No one deserved to be the second option.
I wish I realized that sooner.
“Can we be friends?” I suggested, though I knew it was a long shot. His answer was just as I expected.
“We weren’t serious, Bee. It’s okay.” He even chuckled. “No hard feelings.”
No hard feelings.
Meaning no feelings.
Because how could there not be hard feelings if he didn’t fall hard?
That conversation led me to one with Jace, where I sat on his lap after he’d fucked me senseless, and whispered, “Do you think there were hard feelings between us when we ended the first time?”
He furrowed his brows. “What do you mean?”
“Like, were you upset or…”
“I mean,” he raked his fingers through sweaty hair, “Yeah. For a bit. Nothing I couldn’t get over, though.”
Nothing I couldn’t get over.
Because he was capable of getting over me.
I took a few days of space from that conversation, but over the duration of a few weeks, we’d been getting into more and more arguments just like that one.
I don’t think I was happy.
I don’t think I ever was.
But if I made him care about me, then I did something right.
We’d been apart for over a year and he still came back. That counted for something.
I wasn’t forgettable.
I was worthy.
But over time, I realized that maybe, I was just a pawn in his life that he had complete control over. That every other person he seemed to care about – his cocky friends, his brothers, his dad – they all shelved him for rainy days.
Maybe I was his rainy day.
And that hurt.
That really fucking hurt.
Because where I carried clouds and wind and precipitation, he carried the sun, the stars and the sky.
Yeah, that’s what he was.
My sun.
And I was his rain.
I was his fucking rain.
