“Same thing I said to myself last night before you settled on that ridiculous car movie.”
“Herbie is a classic, Jay. Since you love cars so much, you should know that.”
He flipped the channel three more times before he settled on the first channel he had stopped on.
“Seriously? We could have been watching this half an hour ago.”
He winked and tossed the remote on the coffee table. “Told you today, you can never settle on your first choice until you go through all of your options.”
“Sounds like a philosophy of yours you apply to everything in life,” I mumbled.
“I think you’re talking about more than cars and TV, Del.”
I huffed and folded my arms over my chest. “Shh,” I muttered. “I want to watch whatever it is you settled on.” I had meant more than cars and TV shows. There came my odd jealousy raging back. He obviously used the same theory when it came to women. Though he had yet to settle on one.
He grabbed the remote, pointed it at the TV, and paused the show. “Time to talk again, Del.”
I looked over at him. “No, it’s not.” I focused on the screen of a woman awkwardly frozen and willed it to play again.
“You trying to change the channel with your mind?” he chuckled.
“Yes. Be quiet so I can try harder.” The TV turned off, and I blinked rapidly. “Hey,” I shouted.
“As soon as we talk, you can go back to trying to change the channel with your mind.”
I grumbled and turned to look at him. “You’re never going to be able to control the TV ever again.”
He shrugged and tucked the remote into the waistband of his pants. “Pretty sure as long as I keep the remote here, you’ll be wrong.”
“That’s hardly playing fair,” I complained.
“Talk, and I’ll let you grab it.”
Pfft. Of course he would let me grab it. It was almost tucked all the way into his pants. I was liable to grab more than the remote. “Talk and you take it out of your own pants.”
“Not sure how that is fun for either of us.”
I rolled my eyes and turned on the couch. I tucked my legs under me and rested my elbows on my knees. “What do we need to talk about?” Might as well just get it over with.
“Explain to me what you meant by I run through all of my options on everything.”
Of course, he would want to press that matter.
“You’ve been with a lot of women, Jay. I don’t go to parties often but I could tell just by the way you acted I wasn’t the first woman you decided to pick up.” I also knew from the things my mom had said about him, he was far from a saint.
“And yet you decided to let me pick you up.”
“You didn’t pick me up.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Are you being literal right now?”
“Yes,” I muttered. He hadn’t physically picked me up, and it was completely my choice to go to bed with him.
“You seriously confuse the hell out of me sometimes, Del.”
I didn’t know why. I wasn’t thinking or saying anything a normal person wouldn’t. At least, I didn’t think I was. “Then maybe we shouldn’t talk right now. I wouldn’t want to confuse you anymore.” I was determined to get out of talking about this. My jealousy over the fact Jay was with so many women before me was not high on my list of topics to discuss.
“Oh, we’re gonna talk about this, Del. I know it would bug the shit out of me if I knew you were with a bunch of guys before us.”
“There is no us,” I insisted. “For there to be an us, you would first have to remember the time there was an us.”
He tilted his head to the side. “I’m sorry I don’t remember that night, Del. I’ve laid awake more than a week trying to remember. I can’t, though. I would erase every girl before you just to remember that night.”
I flitted my hand toward him. That was one hundred percent the right thing to say, but I couldn’t let him know that. Not now, and not ever. Partly because I was afraid he was just saying what sounded right and didn’t mean any of the words. “Give me the remote out of your pants. We talked.”
“No, no, no. I talked, and you didn’t.”
“I’m not sure what you want to hear from me, Jay. I’m jealous?” I asked. I nodded. “Yup, I totally am. Is there anything I can do about it? No, because I can’t go back in time to undo us or this or anything that’s going on. Though, I don’t want to undo the baby.”
“Neither do I,” he said softly.
I laughed flatly. “I find that hard to believe. I just completely wrecked your world nine days ago, and you say you’re fine with it. I don’t think so. That is one lie I will not believe.”
He shook his head. “Never said it had completely sunk in, Del, but I know I don’t want to change it. I don’t want to go back and have us never meet. The only thing I want to go back and change is maybe drinking a few beers less so I could remember being with you.”
“I wish the same thing too, Jay, because you really don’t know how it feels to tell someone they’re going to be the father of your baby and they look at you like they’ve never seen you before, let alone had sex with them.” It sucked. It sucked more than anything in the world. I closed my eyes and tried not to feel my soul crush a little bit more. I had given this man my virginity and was going to have his baby, and he didn’t remember one single second of it.
I did well hiding my feelings, but when put up against them face to face, I couldn’t deny I was hurt. Even though Jay didn’t mean to forget it, I still hurt.
I felt him shift on the couch and then I was in his arms. “God dammit, Delaney. I’m so fucking sorry. I’m not trying to hurt you,” he said lowly. “Hurting you is the last thing I ever want to do.”
Being in his arms was nice. I knew this from before. I didn’t fight him. I didn’t try to act like I didn’t want him to touch me.
I had been wanting this since the first time we had sex. Before I found out I was pregnant, I had talked myself out of finding Jay because he wasn’t trying to find me either.
Jay lifted me in his arms and laid back on the couch with my body covering him.
“Don’t cry over me, Delaney. I’m not worth one of your tears.”
And that was where he was wrong. If he wasn’t worth them, then why was I crying them?
You only cry about things that really matter to you.
That was what my mom had always said.
If you cry, you care.
And dammit it all to hell if I didn’t care about this man who didn’t even remember me.
*
Jay
She slept.
Finally
She had cried in my arms for a solid twenty minutes before she finally relaxed. I had grabbed the remote to turn back on the TV and settled her back in my arms.
This wasn’t sexual.
I wasn’t trying to get to second base.
I was consoling a woman I had hurt, and I was silently dying inside with each tear that dropped.
For years, I had dated around, going from one girl to the next, looking for something. I didn’t know what it was I was looking for until Delaney had relaxed into my arms.