Finally Her Turn

Chapter 14: John

To my surprise, the first thing Serena does is take my hands, moving them around and looking them over as if she’s examining them.

“Nope, doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with your hands and your thumbs seem to be intact,” she says, giving me a pointed look.

Call me slow, but it takes me a second to figure out where she’s going with this.

“I figured you must have broken your hands or something, considering how difficult it seemed to be for you to pick up your phone and do something as simple as text me,” she complains bitterly, and it finally clicks what she was doing with my hands.

Way to be dramatic, Serena, but I kind of knew this was coming. And yet, I’m too stubborn and bull-headed to just lead with an apology like I know I should.

“I did text you,” I argue, even knowing that it will just make her angrier.

But she surprises me again by not exploding at me. Instead, she calmly reaches for her phone, pulling it out and clicking around on the screen for a moment.

“Yep, here we go,” she says. “Here are those texts you sent me. They’re an impressive bunch, considering that you were gone for six days.”

She holds out her phone to show me, and now that I’m looking at it from her perspective, I do feel pretty guilty. Three short texts, that’s all I sent her, and it took me a couple days to get around to it. I think it was Sunday night before I bothered, and I haven’t texted her at all today. But in my defense, I haven’t really had much of a chance either. Uncle Ben hates cell phones, and he didn’t want us using them in the car.

“Serena, I’m sorry. I do feel bad about it, but you have to understand that I've had a lot going on. Do you know what it’s like standing in a room all day with literally nothing to do except watch some old people bicker? And not just bicker, not the entertaining sort of bickering anyway. The boring kind. The Elders do it politely, taking turns and using formal titles and everything. It’s exhausting, even though it doesn’t seem like it should be.”

Her harsh, angry expression softens a bit as she seems to be overtaken with sympathy for what I’m sure does sound like a horrible way to spend a week. And I’m not lying, not really even exaggerating either, though I’m also not being entirely forthcoming. I may not have had the urge or the energy to text Serena after those long days, but it certainly didn’t stop me from talking to Marissa.

“I know you’re mad, and you have every right to be,” I continue, seizing the opportunity to get through to her while she has her defenses down a little, stepping forward and gently grasping her by the arms, “but I did promise that we’d talk when I got back, and I fully intend to make good on that promise. How about after I go home and get unpacked and see the family for a bit, we can go to dinner and catch up?”

I’m also attempting to win myself a chance to text Marissa before I have to meet up with Serena again. But to my disappointment, Serena seems to want to come with me to unpack, and I figure I probably shouldn’t brush her off again when I’m trying to patch things over with her.

Will likes to tease me for still living with my parents, but really, I live in the apartment over their garage and pay them rent for it. He can mock me all he wants, but I’m not embarrassed to be living well within my means while still managing to have a fair amount of privacy and personal space.

And yet, as soon as I trek up all the stairs and am finally back inside my own space, my first thought is of how I need something bigger now that I have Marissa. This will work for now, but this is no place to raise a family. Every bit of it screams bachelor pad, from the sleek, dark décor to the emphasis on gaming consoles and my big-screen television in the living room. There’s nothing warm and inviting about it, not for anyone who isn’t impressed by flashy, top-of-the-line electronics anyway.

But my second thought is of how badly I’ve screwed this up with Serena. She’s already starting to take her clothes off once the front door closes behind us, and I’m starting to panic. I’m also strangely turned off by the idea of her getting naked for me, which has never happened before. I’ve always appreciated her soft, subtle curves and her eagerness to please. But now, I feel compelled to rush over and put a stop to her stripping in my living room, scooping up the shirt that she already shed along the way.

“Serena, no. That’s not why we’re here,” I tell her gently, holding out the shirt for her. “Put this back on. I want to unpack and maybe go freshen up a bit, and then I want to head over to the house and see my family. That’s it.”

She stands there giving me a look of surprise and I would even say horror before snapping to action, snatching her shirt from me and tugging it back over her head in irritation.

“Who even are you anymore? I don’t recognize you,” she complains, her cheeks still red with anger and probably even a touch of embarrassment.

“Well, this is why I was hoping to come here alone and then meet you for dinner after a bit so we can talk. Things have changed,” I hint at my news, still partly hoping that we can put off the mate talk until later, but also realizing that it might need to happen now.

“Oh come on, John. You’re not still mad about the attitude I was giving you on Friday, are you? I already explained all that. And yeah, I’m sorry I was a b***h, but I still feel like it was justified. Especially after you ended up being gone for far more than the weekend, and barely talked to me the whole time. So, hey, I mean, I guess we’re even now. I’ll let all that go if you let the whole Friday thing go.”

“I’m not mad about that,” I assure her, dropping the handle of my luggage and leaving it for now so that I can turn and face her. She’s forcing the issue, so I guess the time is now. “Yeah, I was irritated, but I got over it. I really was quite busy and unavailable while I was gone. But listen, there is something I need to tell you, and I know you’re going to be upset, but –”

“You found your mate,” she cuts me off, jumping straight to the point. Her eyes are wide with horror, and I can tell that she’s waiting and hoping for me to tell her she’s wrong about that.

But I can’t, since she’s not. All I can do is sigh, pausing what I was saying to think of how to answer her.

“Goddess no, you actually did, didn’t you?” she asks, her voice turning harsh and demanding by the end of it as tears start pooling in her eyes.

“Yeah, I did,” I confirm, feeling surprisingly guilty to have to confess that.

“John, how could you!” she shrieks, and before I know it, she is pouncing on me and pounding on my chest with her fists. “You were supposed to be mine! We had a deal!”

Her anger pretty quickly shifts to grief as she starts sobbing and her knees give out on her. I reflexively reach out to catch her before she crumples to the ground, not really knowing what more to do or say as she’s still fighting me off and yelling at me incomprehensibly.

“You were almost mine,” she sobs again as I’m finally able to guide her all the way to the floor safely.

I get down there with her, and since she's no longer flailing around and trying to hit me, I'm able to embrace her and pull her closer to me to try and offer her whatever comfort I can. I don’t know if it’s better or worse that she seems to have turned to rubber now and is just sort of flopped against me as she cries it out.

It’s kind of breaking me to see her like this. She is my closest friend, and I’ve known her a long time. I never would have let us cross the line and add benefits to our friendship if I hadn’t genuinely believed that I wasn’t ever going to find my fated mate, although I guess it was also naïve of me to believe that whatever resulting feelings between us could easily be pushed aside if either of us did happen to discover our mates.

It seemed pretty win-win at the time, but now I’m realizing what I should have then. There is a loser in this situation, and since it was me that found my mate, it turns out to be Serena.

“Well, I guess that explains why you were ignoring me,” she comments after gaining a little better control of herself, though she’s still shuddering and sniffling every now and then. “You had her to talk to instead, and I didn’t even get the courtesy of a heads-up.”

I can’t even deny the first part of her accusation, but I can at least explain the second.

“I didn’t think you’d appreciate finding out over text. I thought it should come from me, which is why I kept saying that we’d talk when I got back.”

“Quite frankly, I don’t appreciate any of it. You should have just rejected her and come home to me. We have something good, and I can't believe you're so willing to just throw it away and cast me aside like this. I'm perfect for you, John, and you don’t need her. I wish you could see that.”

Ouch. That hurts in ways that I don’t even have words for. I’m trying not to let myself get upset about it because I know she’s hurting too and maybe even saying things that she doesn’t mean, but that’s incredibly selfish of her.

“She’s my mate, Serena, and no, I’m not going to reject her. Like you said, we have a deal. Part of the deal is that the deal is off if either of us finds our mates. Rejecting them was never part of it,” I remind her, fighting back my own anger and bitterness.

“So, you’re telling me that if it had been me who ran off to the other side of the country for a week and came home acting like a stranger and told you I’d found my mate, you’d just be happy for me and move on?”

“In time, yes. Would I have been disappointed at first? Of course. But ultimately, you’re my friend, and I care about you. I want you to be happy, and I want you to be with the best person for you. I know that’s not me because if it was, the Moon Goddess would have paired us together in the first place.”

“Well, to hell with the Moon Goddess then,” she seethes.

I can’t help the way that I instinctively suck in a sharp breath, shocked that she would even say that. She pushes me away and starts to get up from the floor, and I just sit back and gape at her. Speaking of people who seem totally different since I left on Friday.

“And you know what? To hell with you too,” she goes on ranting, striding across the room toward the door as soon as she’s on her feet. “You can take your dinner and shove it. I don’t even want to look at you.”

And with that, she turns and yanks open my front door, stepping out and slamming it behind her.