Tessa opened the closet door looking for the blouse and skirt she wanted to wear for Duncan that night. The closet was sparse, nearly bare of all clothes. She didn't have many clothes to start with but the bulk of what she did have was now residing in Duncan's closet. Tessa lifted a rueful brow. It wasn't just the contents of her closet at Duncan's house.
Most of the things in her bathroom were items she usually took when she traveled since her regular toiletries were in Duncan's bathroom. There was nothing worth mentioning in her fridge. She suspected that what food she did have in there turned to penicillin a while ago. Her cupboards were also bare.
Why didn't she move in with Duncan, she wondered. It wouldn't be very hard. The only things left to move were furniture, electronic equipment, some dishes, and a few odds and ends she hadn't taken over there already.
"Are you listening to me?" Jessie impatiently asked from her perch on Tessa's bed.
"No," replied Tessa. She scratched her chin and started thinking about the pros and cons of moving in with her boyfriend, drowning out her friend's incessant chatter.
Jessie had followed her from the Junior High softball diamond, to the high school game where Tessa had stood in as coach for one of her sick friends, and finally back to her apartment. The whole time Jessie chatted away about her feelings, thoughts, and questions concerning Danny. Tessa stopped listening when Jessie started to become redundant. The woman went round and round, circling over the main problem, yet not landing on it.
"What do you think?" Jessie's question brought Tessa back from her musings again.
It was the fiftieth time she asked that question. Tessa had long since reverted to shrugging half way through the high school game when the answer "marry the man" didn't work. It started to make Tessa think the question was rhetorical, but she decided to throw out a different answer this time. Simply because she was sick and tired of listening to Jessie's constant jabbering about a situation that was ridiculously basic. It was Jessie's stubbornness that made it difficult.
Taking a deep, fortifying breath she turned to her friend and said, "Jessie, you're afraid to say yes even though you desperately want too. He hurt you badly in the past and you don't want to revisit that pain again if he decides to up and dump you again." Tessa sat beside Jessie on the bed and continued, "If you set aside that sense of betrayal you feel, you'll see that you still love him - have loved him all along. Why else would you still be wearing the fire truck charm he gave you? If you don't fight for love, then it's not worth it. I told Danny the same thing."
Jessie turned wide eyes to her asking, "You talked to Danny about me?"
"Of course I did! He asked me for advice. There aren't many men willing to do that. I think it shows determination. It shows that he means forever this time." Tessa gave her friend a companionable nudge with her shoulder.
Laying back on the bed, Jessie stared at the ceiling and said, "There's nothing I can do but to give him a second chance. I don't want to let him go and there's no reason to keep fighting with myself...other than stubbornness."
Tessa let out a snort of laughter. "Stubbornness is your middle name. I'm not surprised you're trying to fight your feelings for Danny. It's annoying having to listen to the two of you."
Jessie looked around the bedroom for a clock and found none. "What time is it?" she asked.
Lifting her arm, Tessa read her wristwatch. "Looks like half past five."
"I think Danny's waited long enough. Time to tell him the good news!" Jessie hopped up and started for the front door.
"Good for you! Have fun with all the sex!" Tessa yelled after here.
When she heard the door close, Tessa dubiously eyed the blouse and skirt hanging in her closet. The last time she wore women's clothes Jessie was there to help. Since she's currently taking care of her own problems Tessa was on her own.
She thought it was a good thing that Duncan made no mention of make-up and shoes in his demand. Jessie supplied the make-up last time because Tessa didn't even own a tube of lipstick. As for shoes...
Tessa looked down at her bad knee. The swelling had gone down considerably. Instead of a watermelon, her knee looked rounded like a softball was lodged between her calf and thigh. She could bend it at a ninety-degree angle, but not all the way back. Even after all the progress she wouldn't be able to walk around in high heels for another day. Duncan would have to live with her flats.
--~~--
He wasn't there. Jessie came back to her house expecting Danny to be impatiently waiting for her. Instead, she came back to emptiness and a clean kitchen.
Anxious to tell him her decision, she left her house and had gone to the firehouse looking for him only to find everyone out on a call. Even though it was his day off, he could have gone out with the unit when the fire alarm went off. Ted was lurking around the back of the brick building. Jessie suspected he was hiding from his wife and kids again.
She cornered him and asked if he'd seen Danny. He had not. Jessie sighed her dismay. She thought to go over to his place and see if he was waiting for her there.
When her hand hit the doorknob to the front door, she realized she had no clue where he lived. She doubted that he lived in his old house since it had been sold to a family five months after his family moved.
Jessie used to go by his empty house constantly like an obsessive stalker with nothing but the subject's remains to stalk. She stopped her late-night reminiscent drive-bys the day the house was sold. Her forehead hit the wood of the front door with a loud "thud."
She damned herself and her insistence on having their liaisons at her house. It was her need for control -- albeit a false sense of control - which demanded everything sex related was done in an environment that she could manage. If she had misread any of the men she propositioned, they could have easily overtaken her even in her own home. Jessie admitted that she wasn't as muscular as Tessa, nor did she have her friend's formidable height.
It was daunting acknowledging a brutal truth about herself. The drama queen persona she had adopted the day Tessa was injured was nothing but a ruse, a mask to fool the people around her. She had been doing it for so long that she even started to believe it herself. Until now.
Jessie realized she was still the dreamy teen Danny had left behind. She had held onto that charm in the desperate hope that he would come back to her. It was a symbol that others might take of her body, but they would never claim her heart and her soul because Danny owned those.
