Jake Undone

  This wasn’t the type of guy you lived with every day. This was the type of guy who came out to play only at night in your deepest, darkest fantasies.

  Stay. Away. Nina.

  I was sweating, even though I had just showered. After a few minutes, when my hormones finally stopped doing the Macarena, I went back to bed and tried to focus on something other than my new roommate. Just when I had finally gotten my mind off of him, I looked over to my right and noticed something on my nightstand that I must have missed earlier.

  Oh my God.

  Someone must have put it there when I was in the shower.

  Someone. I knew exactly who it was.

  It was an origami bird made out of black construction paper, just like the ones Stuart used to make. But wait…it wasn’t a bird.

  It was a bat.

  I held it in my hand and covered my mouth to contain the stupefied laughter. I looked around as if someone was in the room watching me, but of course, I was alone.

  I unfolded the bat and noticed a message written underneath the left wing in silver gel ink.

  Welcome to the “House.” --Jake

  How’s Uncle Jesse?

  CHAPTER 3

  It was Saturday morning and Jake was already gone before I could thank him for my little gift. Like Ryan explained, he took off for Boston every weekend and generally came back on Sunday nights in time to work on Monday.

  The first thing on my mind when I woke up was the bat, how intricate it was and how Jake had now joined the bandwagon of people teasing me about my resemblance to the Olsen twins. At least I thought they were pretty and took it as a compliment.

  Ryan and Tarah were in the kitchen eating pancakes when I walked in.

  “Sit down and join us, Troll,” Ryan said.

  Tarah looked at me excitedly. “Nina, you and I should go shopping today. I took the day off.”

  “Really? Cool…I need to dress up my room badly.”

  She clapped giddily. “Perfect. We’ll have so much fun.” She handed me the syrup. “So, are you nervous about starting school?”

  “I am…mostly about the math requirement. I have never done well in math. I failed it in high school, actually.”

  Ryan pointed his fork at me. “You should get Jake to help you. He is a whiz when it comes to stuff like math and science.

  “I’ll pass. Jake seems a little busy for tutoring.”

  Tarah placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of me and said, “Seriously. You should ask him if you’re stuck.”

  “Okay,” I said, mostly to shut them up. I knew full well I would never ask Jake for help.

  ***

  That afternoon, Tarah and I went shopping at King’s Plaza. She helped me pick out a pink and gray comforter, a couple of canvas floral wall prints, a gray shag rug, and a pink accent lamp. My father had given me permission to use his credit card for some apartment items, but I knew this spending spree would be the last hurrah for a while.

  We stopped for frozen yogurt on the way home, and Tarah insisted on paying for me. We sat down at one of the tables to talk.

  “So, you and Ryan. How did that come about?” I asked.

  She closed her eyes briefly and sighed. “He is such a sweetie, isn’t he? We were friends for a while first, you know. We had been roommates for like three months before anything ever happened. One night, we had the house to ourselves and just stayed up ‘til all hours talking about anything and everything. All of a sudden, I looked at him and thought…huh.”

  “Huh,” I imitated her, laughing.

  Tarah took a spoonful of yogurt and continued talking with her mouth full. “I had always thought he was cute, but it was a gradual thing seeing him as something more.”

  Then, I stopped beating around the bush and asked the question I really wanted the answer to.

  I wiped my mouth and asked, “What do you make of Jake?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Jake. Hmmm. Where do I start?”

  I started eating my yogurt unusually fast. “What’s his deal?” I asked with my mouth full.

  Tarah picked a raspberry out of her cup, ate it and said, “Well, first of all, the obvious…he’s friggin’ smokin’ hot, right?”

  I was a little taken aback at her blunt comment and felt a twinge of jealousy but reminded myself that she was with Ryan and would have to be blind not to think Jake was extremely good looking.

  “He’s alright,” I said nonchalantly.

  “Jake is…cool. I mean, he likes to bust balls. We don’t spend a lot of time with him. He’s obviously got his own stuff going on, traveling back and forth to Boston on weekends and what not. He keeps to himself for the most part when he is home.”

  “Do you think he has a girlfriend in Boston?”

  “He hasn’t mentioned one, and I have never asked him point blank, but there is definitely something going on there. He has mentioned a sister and nieces that he’s really close to, but he goes back every single weekend, so it can’t just be for them. Jake doesn’t really open up, but that’s okay. He’s respectful, and we all get along. And boy, that dude can fix anything that breaks in the house. It’s amazing how smart he is. He’s got a rough exterior, but there is definitely somebody home upstairs,” she said pointing to her skull.

  “Yeah, he seems cool enough.” I decided not to tell her about the bat. I kind of liked keeping that to myself.

  Tarah leaned in. “Why were you wondering if he had a girlfriend? She paused and let out a huge smile. “You like him!”

  Was it just me or was it getting in hot in here?

  I laughed it off. “No, of course not! I mean, not in that way.”

  “Then, why did your face just turn as red as this raspberry?”

  ***

  The weekend came and went as I busied myself stocking the refrigerator with my favorite foods and setting up my room. Tarah and I spent Sunday night hanging out in my newly decorated space, waxing our eyebrows and painting our nails.

  That night, I tossed and turned, stressed about starting classes the next day.

  It was about midnight when I heard the front door open, followed by footsteps passing my room and heading down the hall. I knew it was Jake returning from Boston. Immediately, the butterflies that lay dormant all weekend in my stomach came to life and kept me up most of the night.

  CHAPTER 4

  It was a rainy early September day in Brooklyn, but the five block walk from the apartment to the main university building on the corner of Flatbush and DeKalb was a breeze.

  This semester I would be taking Psychology, Anatomy and Physiology, English Composition and Finite Math. I was fairly certain I would be able to handle the material in all of the courses with little difficulty, except for math, which had always been a nearly impossible subject for me. Unfortunately, the math class was a requirement for the nursing program, and if I didn’t get at least a C average, I was screwed.

  Math was the final class of the day, and I wanted to cry when I saw the syllabus and skimmed through the textbook. Professor Hernandez seemed like a jerk on top of that. Listening to him lecture as he wrote out problems on the dry-erase board, I started to sweat. Select a number “n” multiply it by 4, add 10 to the product, divide the sum by 2, and subtract 5 from the quotient. Heh?

  I hated math, plain and simple. My brain just wasn’t wired to understand numbers. But so much rode on this class, and I was determined to find a way to get through it. My parents were certainly not going to continue to pay for nursing school if I couldn’t pass my classes. I owed it to them to try as hard as I could, despite the current lack of faith in myself.

  Feeling defeated, I walked home from the university in the rain. I was already stressed about the small amount of homework I had received for tonight and a math test scheduled for Wednesday.

  I was one block away from the apartment when a van drove right into a puddle next to me, causing what seemed like a tidal wave of water to hit me. I was now drenched and looking like a drowned rat.
>
  Arriving at our front steps, I noticed the woman who lived on the second floor peeking out of her window watching me approach the building. She looked to be in her sixties.

  Still standing on the sidewalk below, I waved. “Hi, I’m Nina Kennedy. I just moved upstairs.”

  The woman looked at me and said nothing. She wore a scarf wrapped around her head and didn’t look happy at all.

  It was awkward, but I gave it one more try. “You live on the second floor?”

  The woman squinted her eyes and looked angrier by the second. Finally, she leaned a bit more out of the window and in a strong Jamaican accent said, “Go fuck yourself!”

  My heart started beating fast. “Come again?”

  “Go fuck yourself!” she repeated and then abruptly shut the window.

  I stood there in the rain stunned, not knowing whether to run into the building or away from it. This was definitely not my day. I opened the door and was panting as I ran up the stairs past her apartment to the third floor.

  What was wrong with her? Why did she say that to me? What did I do?

  I entered our apartment and slammed the door behind me, leaning against it breathing in and out heavily. That encounter shocked me so much that it took me a few seconds to notice Jake standing in front of me eating a banana.

  “What the hell happened to you?” he asked.

  I kept panting and then said between breaths, “I was attacked…verbally…by the woman on the second floor.”

  He nearly choked as he began to double over. He was laughing so hard that no sound came out of his mouth.

  He stopped just long enough to ask, “Did she try to drown you too?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, that was something else.”

  Jake continued to laugh uncontrollably. He gripped his abs as if in pain and smacked the counter, then said “Now, you are officially part of this household.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve just been Ballsworthied.”

  “Balls, what? Excuse me?”

  My reaction seemed to make him laugh even harder now. My body stiffened when he walked over and pulled me into a quick friendly hug then patted me on the back. It sounded the alarm to the butterflies in my stomach. “It’s okay. You’re good. She’s harmless.”

  I shivered. “What the heck is wrong with her?”

  “That’s Mrs. Ballsworthy. No one knows why the fuck she is the way she is. Some days she’ll tell us to go fuck ourselves, and other days, she’s perfectly fine. One time, I shit you not, she baked us a chocolate cake. It said ‘Fuck You All’ on top. It was the most delicious fuckin’ cake I have ever eaten. She could have put shit in it. I still would have taken another bite. That’s how good it was.”

  That story broke my funk, and I started to laugh at the absurdity of it all. I wiped my eyes. “Are you pulling my leg again?”

  “No, actually. Even I couldn’t make that shit up if I tried.”

  He and I both cracked up simultaneously, and when our laughter dissipated, I stared into his emerald eyes for a few seconds. His eyes then moved from mine to my mouth and back up to my eyes again.

  “Seriously, you look like you had a tough day,” he said.

  I shook my head. “You have no idea.”

  Jake walked over to the fridge, popped open a beer, took a swig and handed the bottle to me. “Enlighten me.”

  I took a long sip, and the fact that my mouth was now where his had just been was not lost on me. “Thanks.”

  He pulled up a chair, sat on it backwards and listened as I vented.

  “I am just really up shit’s creek in school. There is this finite math class I have to get at least a C in, since it’s a requirement for the nursing program, and I have never been able to understand math. It’s like a brain deficiency I have.”

  He squinted his eyes in disagreement. “Bullshit. No such thing. You just need the right teacher.”

  “Well, the teacher, Professor Hernandez, is not a happy person to begin with, and as far as his teaching style, he might as well be talking Chinese to me. He just reads out of the book and doesn’t explain anything.”

  Jake grabbed the beer from my hand, took a sip, handed it back, and stared into my eyes. “Like I said, you need the right teacher.”

  “But my teacher sucks!”

  He let out a slight burp. “No, he doesn’t. He is awesome.”

  “What do you mean? Have you not heard anything I have said?”

  “I mean…he is awesome. Because…he…is me.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be your teacher. I’ll tutor you. Math is easy as balls for me.”

  “You…tutor me…”

  His eyes widened, and he gave me a menacing look. “Yes. Unless you want to fail,” he said firmly.

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  “Okay, then.”

  I scratched my head. “When is this gonna happen?”

  “We’ll do it a couple of nights a week, set up a schedule.”

  “Why would you want to do this for me? What’s the catch?”

  I was about to take a sip of the beer when he yanked it from my hands and downed the rest of it. My eyes fixated on his lips wrapped around the bottle before he slammed it down. “What…people can’t do things for other people without there being an ulterior motive?”

  “I guess. But seriously, you don’t have to.”

  “I don’t have to. You’re right. I want to. I wouldn’t have offered otherwise. I told you, math is easy for me. The hard part is gonna be getting you motivated.”

  “Motivated?”

  “Yeah. See, people are capable of amazing things when they’re motivated.”

  “Isn’t not getting kicked out of nursing school motivation enough?”

  He smirked and shook his head in disagreement. “No, it’s not. I can tell that’s not enough for you. You need something that will really make you want to pass, like your life depends on it.

  I rubbed my temples. “I am not following you.”

  “I’ll explain then. Okay, so…I’m gonna tutor you, right? If you get an A on every exam, fanfuckingtastic! I’m doing my job because you should be getting an A on every exam. If you get lower than an A, then there should be consequences.”

  “Consequences?”

  He nodded slowly with a mischievous grin. “Consequences.”

  “Like?”

  “Like…when I first met you, you said you were afraid of a lot of things. And from the look on your face, I could tell it was more than just a slight fear. You need to get over that, Nina.”

  I shuddered at the seriousness of his tone and the fact that for the first time, he said my name.

  “I am not following you,” I said.

  “Let me explain. I tutor you. But for every exam grade lower than an A, you will have to face one of your fears.”

  I felt a rush of panic creeping in, and my heart started to pound. Without saying anything for several seconds, I just stared at him before asking, “Can you be more specific?”

  “Don’t get all freaked out on me. I’ll be there with you. We’ll do something that scares you, that you’ve been avoiding, but you won’t know what it is until we get there. It’s better that way, so that you are not building up anxiety anticipating it. We’ll expose you to it, until it doesn’t scare you anymore. See, from what I can tell from your body language, I am making you really fucking nervous right now. And that’s a good thing, because it means you are going to work your ass off to ace those tests. But either way, you win. You just might not see it that way.”

  He had to be kidding me. I barely knew this guy, but he could read me like a book.

  “What if I don’t want to participate in this bet?”

  Jake got up and threw the bottle in the recycle bin. “Then, you’re on your own, chica.”

  I felt like throwing up, not because I was about to fail math but because I knew I was about to agree to his terms. It scared the living hell out of me, but at the same t
ime, I felt a bittersweet excitement like never before.

  He stuck out his hand. “Deal?”

  I hesitated then shook his hand as he squeezed mine tightly. “Deal.”

  Gosh, if my body reacted like this to just the touch of his hand, I couldn’t imagine what it would do if he were to—

  “You want to start tomorrow night?” he asked.

  “Okay.”

  “Give me your phone,” he said.

  I looked at him strangely.

  “Give me your phone,” he demanded again.

  I didn’t ask why and just handed it to him. To be honest, with the way I have been reacting to this guy, I probably would have done anything he asked me to at this point.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  He walked away down the hall to his room with it, and that made me extremely nervous. I didn’t want him looking at my browsing history or text messages, even though there was really nothing incriminating.

  I shouted. “What are you doing with my phone?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I heard him yell from his room.

  “Can I have it back please?” Why was I listening to him and staying here in the kitchen like an idiot?

  A few minutes later, he came back down the hall and handed it back to me. “I programmed my number in. So, if for some reason, you have to reach me for anything, you have it. I’ll also call you if I am running late from work tomorrow night before we study.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “Don’t be scared. You’re gonna do fine.”

  I nodded silently, wondering how I got myself into this.

  Jake grabbed a banana, then his jacket and laptop from the couch. “I have to get back to work. I just came home because I forgot my laptop. I’ll catch you later.”

  “Okay. Catch you later. Oh, wait…Jake?”

  He turned around. “What’s up?”

  “I never thanked you for my bat.”

  He said nothing, just smiled, winked and stuck out his tongue in jest. For the first time, I noticed it was pierced too.