“No,” she agreed with a look of understanding. “No, it really wasn’t. She’s pissed at the wrong person. But I’ve been there, and I was pissed at the wrong person too, so I get it.”
“Wait,” Jacob interjected, his interest peaked. “You’ve… been cheated on?”
“Twice, actually,” she answered plainly. “It took the second time for me to realize that I was pissed at the wrong person the first time,” she scoffed, shaking her head at herself.
Jacob shook his head, too. His mind wandered back to Sarah, and his irritation started to rise. “I don’t get why people do that,” he said. “I mean, if you don’t want to be with someone, why can’t you just man up and tell them the truth instead of leading them on?”
She gave him an agreeing nod, but didn’t say anything. The longer the silence dragged on, the more he stewed in his frustration.
“I mean seriously, how hard would it be to just say ‘I’m not interested in you anymore, I’ve moved on, and I’m engaged to someone else’?”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he could feel Jenna’s eyes on him, appraising him as they pulled up to another red light.
“Or...,” he began, trying to pass his irritation off as hypothetical, “or ‘I’m seeing someone,’ or whatever.”
They sat in silence for a moment as Jenna stared at him and he tried to avoid her questioning gaze. The light changed, and she placed her eyes back on the road.
“I just...,” Jacob started. “I just don’t get it, I guess. That’s all I’m trying to say.”
“Yeah,” she shook her head, giving him a small, sympathetic grin. “I don’t get it either.”
Jacob nodded, meeting her gaze for a moment before turning his eyes back to the window. He cleared his throat and decided it would probably be best to keep his mouth shut for the remainder of their drive. He gazed idly out the window at the passing cars, hoping in vain that Jenna hadn’t detected how personally the topic had afflicted him. The drive went on in silence for several minutes before she spoke again.
“So, who’s the girl?” she asked.
He kept his eyes on the road. “There’s no girl.”
“So, what, she cheated on you or something?”
“No, it wasn’t like that,” he said.
She smirked. “Oh, so there is a girl?”
He opened his mouth instinctively to object, but nothing came out. He sighed, and she peeked at him, waiting patiently for elaboration. “It’s just this girl I used to know,” he shrugged.
“And… you two were… what exactly?” she inquired.
He huffed a breath and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Nothing, really.”
Jenna let out a small chuckle, and Jacob looked at her. She turned her smirk to him and he raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“Well, I mean, you can’t really cheat on someone you weren’t dating,” she said.
“I never said she cheated on me,” he replied.
She looked at him for a brief moment, and her smirk faded as she read his eyes.
“Oh,” she said, turning her attention back to the road.
Jacob waited for more, but she kept her eyes on the road. “What?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“No, what?” he demanded.
She glanced at him. “You’re in love with her,” she stated confidently. He took a deep breath as he turned away from her gaze, blushing in the darkness of the car. “So... I will respectfully keep my thoughts to myself,” she added.
They were entering the parking lot of the school, and he kept his gaze safely out the window as she pulled into a parking spot and turned off the engine. They both sat, unmoving, in the darkness for a long moment.
“I don’t want to be,” Jacob muttered at the window, mostly to himself.
“Then don’t be,” she answered, like it was that simple. After another moment, she asked, “When’s the last time you saw her?”
He ran a hand across the back of his neck, stopping when his fingers ran over the chain of his necklace. He returned his hand to his lap. “Couple weeks ago.”
Jenna thought about that for a moment. “Ah,” she said. “So ends the mystery of ‘sad kitchen boy.’”
Jacob let out a chuckle, meeting her gaze again. She was smiling warmly, leaving the intense conversation behind, for which he was grateful.
“Well, thanks for inviting me tonight,” she said, leaning between their seats to grab her purse from the back and giving Jacob a pleasant whiff of her coconut shampoo. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve had such a...,” she paused, searching for an appropriate term, “PG Saturday night.”
Jacob laughed. “I hope we weren’t too boring for you.”
“No,” Jenna interjected with a wide grin. “It was actually fun. I had a great time. I mean, aside from the whole girl drama thing.”
“Well, you’re always welcome,” he offered.
Her smile faded into a thoughtful grin as she answered, “I’m not sure your friends would agree with that. But thanks.”
He gave her a nod. “So, are you going back to your room?” he asked, pushing the car door open. “I could walk you.”
“No, that’s okay.” She stepped out onto the asphalt. “I actually have some work to do in the library, tonight. Kinda been trying to get my life together, lately. Again,” she rolled her eyes.
He smiled. “Aren’t we all,” he said as they met at the back of the car, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “Um... I guess I’ll see you around, then,” he said.
“Yeah, definitely,” she answered, pulling her sleeves down tightly and crossing her arms over her purse strap. “See ya,” she said with a wave, backing up toward the library.
“Yeah,” he replied, watching her as she turned around and put in her earphones as she walked off. “See ya.”
WHEN JACOB’S POCKET CAUGHT on the handle of his bathroom cabinet the next day and ripped a hole in his jeans, he was confronted again with how severely he needed a job. Whenever the subject arose in his mind, he couldn’t help but curse all of the lovely tales of kind, helpful parole officers he had heard over the years, coming to the aid of their parolees and taking their rehabilitation so seriously. Some would even go so far as to offer letters of recommendation to potential employers, to help provide a good impression.
After he had spent a good twenty minutes lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling and sulking over his poor luck in parole officer assignment, he got up with a grunt, picking himself up by his bootstraps and preparing to conquer the task.
That day, Jacob was going to go out and get himself a job.
He looked at himself in the mirror one last time before he left, and frowned at the new hole in his pants. As if he needed any more factors working against him. But given that his one pair of black slacks had been balled up in a pile of dirty clothes on his bathroom floor for a while, collecting wrinkles, he decided he had no better options and headed for the bus stop anyway.