JAAN
Now
Jaan couldn't shake the feeling that he was dreaming. It took him hours to walk back to his apartment and all he could think about was their last time together.
In the fall of their senior year he had done a stupid thing. A thing he thought could get her to wake up, or admit her feelings or... something. The truth was, he had wanted to fuck Katey. Not just because she was hot (which she was) but also because he wanted to hurt Santos. He was young and self-centered and upset that she never paid him the attention that he wanted. Especially when he felt he spent so much time, thinking, and pining after her, a girl, who, it seemed most of the time, was totally oblivious, or couldn't care less.
Katey was always there though. She went to his games. She sat in the row front row behind the team. She cheered the loudest. She smiled at him, giggled with her friends and pointed at him. She was tall, and thin, with beautiful perky breast that she showed off in tank tops and tight shirts, and long silky deep red hair.
Other guys on the team drooled at the sight of her, perplexed as to why Jaan hadn't taken her out on a date yet. She was a sophomore, and she followed him everywhere. She found excuses to find him outside of classes, or to skip class and ride with him to lunch off campus. She was beautiful and attentive, a little funny and Jaan perceived, that when she wasn't pretending to act dumb to make him feel good about himself, very smart. All this was great, perfect even, the thing was, she wasn't Santos.
He couldn't explain it. Even after he had tried to break away from her after he asked if David was her boyfriend, even after he had slept with those other girls, he still found himself sneaking into her room at night, holding her and panting into her skin. Asking her to tell him something, anything. He still watched her closely in the hallways, her locs tangled in a short ponytail, or laying wild around her face. He found himself hard at the mere glimpses of her skin, which she usually kept fully covered in jeans and extra large t-shirts.
They spent 4 weeks away from each other the summer before their senior year, while she and her brothers visited family in Martinique. During that time Jaan thought he would lose his mind. He spent those weeks riding his bike from court to court around town looking for pickup games to join, reading his mother's books, and catching up with friends, distractedly, while he thought about what she might be doing or seeing while she was away. She came back more obtuse than ever, quiet in his presence and wanting him to fuck her roughly, like he hated her almost. Things had been off between them ever since those 3 weeks he spent trying to forget her. It seemed, to him at least, in the time since then, he had become more open. His heart, his emotions bare to her. He told her he wanted her frequently, while she withdrew deeper into the sex, becoming needy to his touch but saying less.
At the beginning of the summer Jaan had had a lot of night games, so he saw her less, and then she went away. And though they had sex, and she still laughed around him and told stories, Jaan could feel her drifting from him, scared of something, and reluctant to say anything to him that wasn't a joke or a command about how to fuck her.
Katey came in at the right time. Santos never went to a single game, especially now that her brother was off at college, it seemed she had no reason to be there. She'd quicker traveled the 4 hrs to see one of her brother's games on a Friday night then to stick around and watch Jaan play. He understood that was her brother and all, but she could at least come to one game. On the evenings that she went to Jaan's house to do homework, the night usually ended with her giving him, what Jaan perceived as, a lackluster blowjob, whatever she could do to get Jaan from pawing her all night or she initiated sex by sliding her hand into his lap and holding him, though Jaan knew, at times, she just wanted to touch him there.
His entire problem was that he was so deeply in love with her it made him sick. He had no idea what to do with his emotions, pouring them into her just seemed to make her pull away and trying to run away from her just made him even more devoted. He had no idea what to do except to make her jealous. And there was Katey, ready and willing, waiting for him to just say yes.
So, he said what he said, and waited. He figured, after a few weeks, she'd crawl back to him, show up at his doorstep with her backpack in hand and ask for his help with homework. Or finally, go to one of his games and watch him. But that hadn't happened at all. Instead she became a stranger. Jaan couldn't even catch her gaze in the hallway. It was like he didn't even exist, actually, it was worse than that, she looked at him like she didn't even know him. Not with contempt, or emptiness, but with a total and complete blankness that belied the extent to which she knew every part of his being. It was like their nearly 2 years together had never happened.
So he made a show of Katey. He kissed her in the hallways near the classrooms where he knew that Santos took classes. He purposely started going to the library and taking Katey with him. Strategically placing himself at tables that were far enough for it to not be obvious that he was there for her, but close enough to be in her line of sight. When she stopped going to the library for lunch, he stalked the lunch periods to see which one she ate during. When he figured out she started eating during D lunch, he convinced Katey and the entire Basketball team to start eating D lunch, just so he could make out with Katey and make as much noise as they could in the lunchroom. She sat off to the side with a few other kids, including David Otebenga and she steadfastly and completely ignored Jaan.
This lasted months. And while she withdrew further from him he continued to date Katey, and occasionally fuck other girls, in hopes that eventually she would call a truce, and crawl back to him. But he wouldn't go to her. He had groveled and dragged his heart across the earth for her love already and he wouldn't do it again. She had to commit.
It wasn't until Spring Break, when he visited Sanchez, who was home for the holiday, that it occurred to him that she really might have forgotten him.
He sat with Sanchez on stools at the island of his kitchen, drinking tea that his mother had made for them, though it had to be nearly 80 degrees outside. Sanchez was vibrant. He was playing on the A-team at his university and it seemed he had somehow gotten even more beautiful in the time he had been away, his teeth whiter, his skin clearer, his eyes brighter. Jaan remembered how close they had been while he was still in high school, before his obsession with Santos began.
Jaan heard her before he saw her, her feet shuffling down the hardwood steps, her footsteps light and heavy at the same time. It was Sunday morning. Jaan was visiting relatively early because he was playing in a summer league and practice had already begun. They were brutal early morning practices that started at 6:30 and went until to 9. He had driven over after practice, a drive that he could do in his sleep from any point within 20-mile radius of their house, he always knew the quickest way to get to Santos.
On the drive over he paid attention to his heartbeat, it seemed to beat faster the closer he got. He was going there to see Sanchez, he knew that, but it would be the first time in months that he would be back in the Brown house, and there was always the chance that he might see her. That she might finally acknowledge him, that maybe this dry spell, this crazy vortex that he had been in would finally, finally end.
