Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky (Jensen/Jared RPS) -- 5/? (WIP)
Title: Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky
Characters/Pairing: Jensen Ackles / Jared Padalecki; Jensen Ackles / OFC
POV: Jensen Ackles
Author's Notes: It’s fiction. That means it’s not real, folks. Jensen and Jared are real people. So is Eric Kripke. The show “Supernatural” is a real TV show on the WB11. If anything else in this is real, I wasn’t aware of it.
I'm not going to say when or if the next chapter will be posted... I am writing on this, but really, it took on a mind/life of it's own, and it's sorta festering at upset!Jared and a Jensen who's entirely unsure what to do... So... read at your own risk. I would enjoy feedback, but I'll understand if you don't want to start reading a WIP with no end in sight or in the works. I really have no idea what's coming next here.
Summary: Jared’s girl (Sandra) breaks up with him. Jensen tries to help.
Spoilers: Vague for “Bugs”
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Chapter Five: The Thunder Rolls
Rating: NC-17 for graphic phone sex, language
Pairing: Jensen/Luanne (ofc-and ohgodIwrotemorehet) and Jensen/Jared (though still not yet, and it looks like there might be a rough road ahead…)
Word Count: 2,543
((…minor spoilers for “Bugs” in this chapter…))
The Thunder Rolls
I stay seated on the edge of my bed for what seems an eternity. I can’t feel my feet on the floor, or my thighs against the firm mattress. My hand still loosely curls around my phone, my forearms rest against my knees, but I can’t feel them either. I’m numb.
I stare at the phone in my hand, slowly coming back to reality from a daze where I found out my best friend would scream my name while having sex with his live-in girlfriend. That had to have been a dream, right? Sandy was just speaking out of anger?
She didn’t sound as though she was. She sounded calm. Calculating and taunting, and evil, yes… but not harried or angry.
My heart is in my stomach, and it feels like all the breath has been knocked out of me. My thoughts are going a mile a minute around in my head and I can’t think. This doesn’t make sense. I don’t want it to make sense.
Jared was going to marry her. I remember going with him to look at engagement rings.
I need to slow down. I need to think.
I need to talk to Jared.
“Jared!” I stand up and stalk down the hall, through the kitchen, to the dining room and out onto the balcony, where Jared sits in my wicker and cushioned lounge chair, sucking down what is presumably his third Molson-there are two empty bottles by the chair. He stares out at the blackened night sky, a peace interrupted only by crackling lightning and drumrolls of thunder, pounding rain on the roof above, and now, my voice.
He doesn’t turn to look at me as I close the sliding door violently behind me, and his voice is calm like that of a man who has nothing left to lose, or has already lost everything… or at the very least like that of a man who has drank himself into oblivion. It saddens me to think that both might apply to my friend now.
My friend. I pause to think on that a moment, staring out at the rain just as Jared does. I consider him a friend. Previously I might have even called him my best friend. We have more in common than our Texas roots… more in common than our chosen careers, our video games or… as I thought previously, our taste in women.
Jared tilts the bottle, pours amber liquid into his mouth and swallows, adam’s apple bobbing up and down beneath the taut skin of his throat.
Previously I might have called him best friend, a man I’d trust with my life. Now I’m not sure. That trust isn’t shattered completely, but it’s hanging by a thread.
“I talked to Sandy.” I say quietly.
Jared blanches, swallows thickly. “Jensen… whatever… whatever she said…” He stutters, falters over words. A flush rises in his cheeks that I can see even in the darkness, and is only more obvious against his whitened skin when lightning flashes overhead. “Wha… whatever she said… I can explain, Jensen… I can…”
“How can you explain screaming my name when you’re fucking her!” I yell, and almost immediately regret it. Tact has never been my strong point.
Jared’s face drains of all color, and he stares at me, with eyes that are wide, and threaten to spill as much water as the sky. “Jensen…” He whispers.
“’Jensen’ and ‘Sandy’ sound nothing alike, Jared!” I’m still yelling, and now I’m shaking, too. “How can you explain that!”
Jared stands slowly. “Jensen… I…” His voice is grainy like sandpaper, brittle like glass. It quivers and it grates in my ears. It sounds fragile, like it might break, like he might start to cry. He swallows, and moves past me suddenly, shaking his head. “I… I should go…I have to go…” As the door slides closed behind him, he’s still murmuring something to himself, his head bowed low, chin nearly touching his chest.
I stand there, thinking that maybe him leaving is for the best.
His words don’t quite register until later, their levity doesn’t quite occur to me until hours later, when I’ve calmed down sufficiently to consider talking to him like a rational adult about everything that’s recently transpired.
The storm hasn’t abated. Rain still pelts the windows, sluices down slick glass like a clear curtain of water, shimmers like diamonds and gold and the things of engagement rings when lightning illuminates the velvet sky. Thunder rolls in the distance, closer, crashes overhead and scares the neighbors’ dog.
I snap the blinds closed as I head inside and lock the sliding glass door. There’s a light on in the kitchen, and one down the hall as well. There are three more beers missing from the icebox when I retrieve one for myself.
I sink onto the couch in the living room and stare at the blank screen of the television. Rain. Thunder. I’m not far from the highway, but there are no cars out tonight.
I realize I’m squeezing the beer bottle when my hand starts to hurt, force myself to relax, and take a few deep breaths, massage my temples with my other hand.
I try to think, but the only things that keep coming to mind are ‘Jared’, and Sandy’s voice, low and knowing and malevolent ‘did he tell you how it was always your name he screamed when he came?’, and me throwing it in his face-‘ How can you explain screaming my name when you’re fucking her?’-and the tears I tried to ignore in his clear turquoise eyes as he’d pushed past me, and the way his shoulder burned into mine. Because he’d never meant to hurt me? Because he was sorry I’d learned the truth? I down half the beer in one swallow.
I can’t begin to understand what I’m feeling. I’m angry… upset… shocked… betrayed. All of those things in part because of what I found out, and in part because of how I found out. I’m not a homophobe. Jared would still be my friend regardless of his sexual orientation. I thought we were close enough that he would feel comfortable telling me something like that… something that important about himself.
I remember filming ‘Bugs’, the two scenes at the picnic…wonder if Jared liked it when I smacked his ass. It had been ad-libbed on my part-a joke between straight friends. I wonder if I’d have done the same if I’d known then that Jared was gay.
I wish he’d have told me. When I think about it, I can understand why he might not have. We spend so much time together on the set, and in such close physical proximity, he might have thought I’d be less comfortable around him if I knew… Maybe he thought I’d have second thoughts about filming some of the scenes we’ve filmed in the past… some of the ones we’re scheduled to film in the future-maybe he thought it’d affect how I play Dean, how I portray Dean’s compassion towards Sam.
Maybe he was right. When I think about it now… I don’t know how I’m going to react now, being that close to him on the set. Maybe it’s just how I found out… but I don’t know that for sure. All I know is that the idea of Jared touching me now has me thinking a whole other set of ideas, and none of them are exactly PG-13 or enticing. And knowing that he used to scream my name during sex with his near-fiancee? Sorta gives me the willies.
I pick up the phone and call Luanne, the latest female to grace the satin of my sheets. The weather’s too bad for her to come over tonight no matter how badly I’d like for her and her long dancers legs and perky playboy playmate breasts to be in my bed-she lives more than twenty miles away, to the south, and the storm’s heading her way-but it’s good to hear her voice, sweet and thick with honey and roses over the phone. She’s too soft, too gentle and emotional for me to think about a long term relationship with, but she’s great in the sack, and she doesn’t mind a one-night stand with no emotional attachment from time to time.
“You sound like you could use some TLC, honeycakes…” Barely a whisper, her voice floats through the phone, interrupted only by static. This is going to be a short conversation if the satellite doesn’t cooperate.
“Heh. You don’t know the half of it, sugar.” And I’m not about to tell her, either. “Man… I don’t know why I’m calling… it’s not like you could make it over here in this shit.”
“I could try, but you’d be crazy to ask me.” She’s right, of course.
“I’d never ask that, sugar…” I lower my voice to a growl, slouch lower into the cushions of the sofa and slide my palm over my tee, down to the waistband of my pants.
She already knows. “Are you touching yourself, Jen?” Her breath catches. “Are you thinking about me… my breasts, pressing against your bare chest? Can you feel me? Hot against your skin? Sliding my hands down… I’m tugging at your treasure trail… your hair is so soft and curly, Jen… golden… lower… lower…”
Her voice slides over me smoother than my satin sheets, lighter than silk, and I can feel my jeans, pressing tighter and tighter. I work my fingers past the button of my jeans, into my boxers. My cock is hard, and I’m already leaking pre-cum.
I moan into the phone as I wriggle my jeans and boxers down to my thighs, freeing my erection. “Tell me, Luanne… what are you doing…” Another great thing about Luanne… she gives good phone sex too, and I don’t have to say a damn thing about what I’m doing to her. She talks, I touch, and life is good.
I don’t need to understand the words, just the sound of her voice, silky and slow, sensual and smooth… Thankfully the static is mostly gone, all I can hear is her voice.
I close my eyes, settle my grip on my cock, and start sliding my hand up and down, slowly working myself into a rhythm, increasing the tempo to the sound of her … moans? Groans? It doesn’t matter what she’s saying, or if she’s saying anything at all. I’m pretty sure she’s got three fingers up her pussy and is just about as coherent as I am at this point.
Some words come through, my name, and some ‘oh God’s’ mixed in for good measure I think, though I’m pretty sure she’s not Christian and I don’t feel like a good one at the moment.
I slide my middle finger into the cleft between my balls, stroke lightly with the pre-cum collected from the tip of my cock, and murmur into the phone. I think about the weight of my cock in my hand, think about how the thick vein on the underside throbs as I stroke harder, faster… That I’m thinking about it, paying attention to it, makes me harder, I feel dirty… I blame it on her, and as if on cue, I can hear words again…
“How does it feel, Jen… your hot, heavy cock in your hand…”
I flush red, and squeeze, stroke faster than before. My palm glides over my girth, I try to imagine her mouth, gentle suction at the tip of my dick, thrust my hips up at the vivid thought.
“I’d take you so deep, Jen… suck you so hard… I can feel your cock in my mouth… in my throat… so hot… Come for me, Jen…” And I can see her lips, pouty and pink and swollen, abused and raw from my cock in her mouth, hear her voice begging for more.
I’m beyond feeling badly about doing this in my living room with Jared possibly able to hear me moaning her name through the thin walls of my apartment. For all I know, he’s jerking off to it. I push that thought from my mind as I come hard to Luanne’s sugary-sweet urging, finish my business and put my dick back in my pants. I don’t need Jared walking in and seeing the family jewels.
What I do need, however, is to talk to Jared. I may not be one for talking, but even I know that this is something that can’t be left alone. I push myself off the sofa and head for my bedroom after grabbing another beer from the icebox. I clean myself up, change my pants, then head back to the hall, and knock on the door to the guest room.
“Jared!” I pause, wait for an answer that isn’t forthcoming, and try again. “Jared?”
When I get no answer the second time, I push the door open slowly. “Jare?” I try his nickname, hoping to at least get a response of some kind. A grunt, a muffled ‘go away’… anything.
Jared’s not there.
The room is empty. I even check under the bed and in the closets, though it would be nearly impossible for his six-foot-five frame to fit in either of those locations easily.
I run through the rest of the apartment-it’s not a huge space-even check the bathroom and behind the shower curtain. No Jared.
And the words he uttered as he pushed past me on the deck come back to me. “I… I should go… I have to go…”
“Shit!”
I check the small table by the door for my keys, and when I find them there, breathe a sigh of relief. He didn’t take my car. At least he’s not stupid enough to be on the road. And I don’t have to worry about him skidding off the road and totaling my Mustang in this storm.
I head out of my apartment, and downstairs, figuring he couldn’t have gone too far. It’s crappy weather-he’ll get sick, or worse-and I need to have it out with him, regardless of the result. We still have to work together. Something has to give.
Staying under the overhangs of apartment balconies, I wander the perimeter, calling his name intermittently. I try calling him on the cell, but it goes into voicemail after ringing five or six times-he’s not picking up.
“Jared! Come on, man. Come inside!”
How ridiculous do I sound?
After another lap around the complex, I’m sufficiently soaked and chilled, despite trying to stay out of the rain. I head inside, figure Jared’ll come back on his own, or I’ll find him tomorrow.
I shower, a long, hot shower with a loofah-something one of my ex-girlfriends got me hooked on-and head to bed, again curled under the warm and heavy quilt grandma made me years ago. I leave the apartment door unlocked in case Jared wanders back late, and eventually fall asleep to the heavy pounding of rain against my windows, the rolling of thunder in the blackened sky above, and the thoughts I can’t quite push away of Jared, dripping hair and shaking body, cold and alone.
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Characters/Pairing: Jensen Ackles / Jared Padalecki; Jensen Ackles / OFC
POV: Jensen Ackles
Author's Notes: It’s fiction. That means it’s not real, folks. Jensen and Jared are real people. So is Eric Kripke. The show “Supernatural” is a real TV show on the WB11. If anything else in this is real, I wasn’t aware of it.
I'm not going to say when or if the next chapter will be posted... I am writing on this, but really, it took on a mind/life of it's own, and it's sorta festering at upset!Jared and a Jensen who's entirely unsure what to do... So... read at your own risk. I would enjoy feedback, but I'll understand if you don't want to start reading a WIP with no end in sight or in the works. I really have no idea what's coming next here.
Summary: Jared’s girl (Sandra) breaks up with him. Jensen tries to help.
Spoilers: Vague for “Bugs”
-------------------------
Chapter Five: The Thunder Rolls
Rating: NC-17 for graphic phone sex, language
Pairing: Jensen/Luanne (ofc-and ohgodIwrotemorehet) and Jensen/Jared (though still not yet, and it looks like there might be a rough road ahead…)
Word Count: 2,543
((…minor spoilers for “Bugs” in this chapter…))
The Thunder Rolls
I stay seated on the edge of my bed for what seems an eternity. I can’t feel my feet on the floor, or my thighs against the firm mattress. My hand still loosely curls around my phone, my forearms rest against my knees, but I can’t feel them either. I’m numb.
I stare at the phone in my hand, slowly coming back to reality from a daze where I found out my best friend would scream my name while having sex with his live-in girlfriend. That had to have been a dream, right? Sandy was just speaking out of anger?
She didn’t sound as though she was. She sounded calm. Calculating and taunting, and evil, yes… but not harried or angry.
My heart is in my stomach, and it feels like all the breath has been knocked out of me. My thoughts are going a mile a minute around in my head and I can’t think. This doesn’t make sense. I don’t want it to make sense.
Jared was going to marry her. I remember going with him to look at engagement rings.
I need to slow down. I need to think.
I need to talk to Jared.
“Jared!” I stand up and stalk down the hall, through the kitchen, to the dining room and out onto the balcony, where Jared sits in my wicker and cushioned lounge chair, sucking down what is presumably his third Molson-there are two empty bottles by the chair. He stares out at the blackened night sky, a peace interrupted only by crackling lightning and drumrolls of thunder, pounding rain on the roof above, and now, my voice.
He doesn’t turn to look at me as I close the sliding door violently behind me, and his voice is calm like that of a man who has nothing left to lose, or has already lost everything… or at the very least like that of a man who has drank himself into oblivion. It saddens me to think that both might apply to my friend now.
My friend. I pause to think on that a moment, staring out at the rain just as Jared does. I consider him a friend. Previously I might have even called him my best friend. We have more in common than our Texas roots… more in common than our chosen careers, our video games or… as I thought previously, our taste in women.
Jared tilts the bottle, pours amber liquid into his mouth and swallows, adam’s apple bobbing up and down beneath the taut skin of his throat.
Previously I might have called him best friend, a man I’d trust with my life. Now I’m not sure. That trust isn’t shattered completely, but it’s hanging by a thread.
“I talked to Sandy.” I say quietly.
Jared blanches, swallows thickly. “Jensen… whatever… whatever she said…” He stutters, falters over words. A flush rises in his cheeks that I can see even in the darkness, and is only more obvious against his whitened skin when lightning flashes overhead. “Wha… whatever she said… I can explain, Jensen… I can…”
“How can you explain screaming my name when you’re fucking her!” I yell, and almost immediately regret it. Tact has never been my strong point.
Jared’s face drains of all color, and he stares at me, with eyes that are wide, and threaten to spill as much water as the sky. “Jensen…” He whispers.
“’Jensen’ and ‘Sandy’ sound nothing alike, Jared!” I’m still yelling, and now I’m shaking, too. “How can you explain that!”
Jared stands slowly. “Jensen… I…” His voice is grainy like sandpaper, brittle like glass. It quivers and it grates in my ears. It sounds fragile, like it might break, like he might start to cry. He swallows, and moves past me suddenly, shaking his head. “I… I should go…I have to go…” As the door slides closed behind him, he’s still murmuring something to himself, his head bowed low, chin nearly touching his chest.
I stand there, thinking that maybe him leaving is for the best.
His words don’t quite register until later, their levity doesn’t quite occur to me until hours later, when I’ve calmed down sufficiently to consider talking to him like a rational adult about everything that’s recently transpired.
The storm hasn’t abated. Rain still pelts the windows, sluices down slick glass like a clear curtain of water, shimmers like diamonds and gold and the things of engagement rings when lightning illuminates the velvet sky. Thunder rolls in the distance, closer, crashes overhead and scares the neighbors’ dog.
I snap the blinds closed as I head inside and lock the sliding glass door. There’s a light on in the kitchen, and one down the hall as well. There are three more beers missing from the icebox when I retrieve one for myself.
I sink onto the couch in the living room and stare at the blank screen of the television. Rain. Thunder. I’m not far from the highway, but there are no cars out tonight.
I realize I’m squeezing the beer bottle when my hand starts to hurt, force myself to relax, and take a few deep breaths, massage my temples with my other hand.
I try to think, but the only things that keep coming to mind are ‘Jared’, and Sandy’s voice, low and knowing and malevolent ‘did he tell you how it was always your name he screamed when he came?’, and me throwing it in his face-‘ How can you explain screaming my name when you’re fucking her?’-and the tears I tried to ignore in his clear turquoise eyes as he’d pushed past me, and the way his shoulder burned into mine. Because he’d never meant to hurt me? Because he was sorry I’d learned the truth? I down half the beer in one swallow.
I can’t begin to understand what I’m feeling. I’m angry… upset… shocked… betrayed. All of those things in part because of what I found out, and in part because of how I found out. I’m not a homophobe. Jared would still be my friend regardless of his sexual orientation. I thought we were close enough that he would feel comfortable telling me something like that… something that important about himself.
I remember filming ‘Bugs’, the two scenes at the picnic…wonder if Jared liked it when I smacked his ass. It had been ad-libbed on my part-a joke between straight friends. I wonder if I’d have done the same if I’d known then that Jared was gay.
I wish he’d have told me. When I think about it, I can understand why he might not have. We spend so much time together on the set, and in such close physical proximity, he might have thought I’d be less comfortable around him if I knew… Maybe he thought I’d have second thoughts about filming some of the scenes we’ve filmed in the past… some of the ones we’re scheduled to film in the future-maybe he thought it’d affect how I play Dean, how I portray Dean’s compassion towards Sam.
Maybe he was right. When I think about it now… I don’t know how I’m going to react now, being that close to him on the set. Maybe it’s just how I found out… but I don’t know that for sure. All I know is that the idea of Jared touching me now has me thinking a whole other set of ideas, and none of them are exactly PG-13 or enticing. And knowing that he used to scream my name during sex with his near-fiancee? Sorta gives me the willies.
I pick up the phone and call Luanne, the latest female to grace the satin of my sheets. The weather’s too bad for her to come over tonight no matter how badly I’d like for her and her long dancers legs and perky playboy playmate breasts to be in my bed-she lives more than twenty miles away, to the south, and the storm’s heading her way-but it’s good to hear her voice, sweet and thick with honey and roses over the phone. She’s too soft, too gentle and emotional for me to think about a long term relationship with, but she’s great in the sack, and she doesn’t mind a one-night stand with no emotional attachment from time to time.
“You sound like you could use some TLC, honeycakes…” Barely a whisper, her voice floats through the phone, interrupted only by static. This is going to be a short conversation if the satellite doesn’t cooperate.
“Heh. You don’t know the half of it, sugar.” And I’m not about to tell her, either. “Man… I don’t know why I’m calling… it’s not like you could make it over here in this shit.”
“I could try, but you’d be crazy to ask me.” She’s right, of course.
“I’d never ask that, sugar…” I lower my voice to a growl, slouch lower into the cushions of the sofa and slide my palm over my tee, down to the waistband of my pants.
She already knows. “Are you touching yourself, Jen?” Her breath catches. “Are you thinking about me… my breasts, pressing against your bare chest? Can you feel me? Hot against your skin? Sliding my hands down… I’m tugging at your treasure trail… your hair is so soft and curly, Jen… golden… lower… lower…”
Her voice slides over me smoother than my satin sheets, lighter than silk, and I can feel my jeans, pressing tighter and tighter. I work my fingers past the button of my jeans, into my boxers. My cock is hard, and I’m already leaking pre-cum.
I moan into the phone as I wriggle my jeans and boxers down to my thighs, freeing my erection. “Tell me, Luanne… what are you doing…” Another great thing about Luanne… she gives good phone sex too, and I don’t have to say a damn thing about what I’m doing to her. She talks, I touch, and life is good.
I don’t need to understand the words, just the sound of her voice, silky and slow, sensual and smooth… Thankfully the static is mostly gone, all I can hear is her voice.
I close my eyes, settle my grip on my cock, and start sliding my hand up and down, slowly working myself into a rhythm, increasing the tempo to the sound of her … moans? Groans? It doesn’t matter what she’s saying, or if she’s saying anything at all. I’m pretty sure she’s got three fingers up her pussy and is just about as coherent as I am at this point.
Some words come through, my name, and some ‘oh God’s’ mixed in for good measure I think, though I’m pretty sure she’s not Christian and I don’t feel like a good one at the moment.
I slide my middle finger into the cleft between my balls, stroke lightly with the pre-cum collected from the tip of my cock, and murmur into the phone. I think about the weight of my cock in my hand, think about how the thick vein on the underside throbs as I stroke harder, faster… That I’m thinking about it, paying attention to it, makes me harder, I feel dirty… I blame it on her, and as if on cue, I can hear words again…
“How does it feel, Jen… your hot, heavy cock in your hand…”
I flush red, and squeeze, stroke faster than before. My palm glides over my girth, I try to imagine her mouth, gentle suction at the tip of my dick, thrust my hips up at the vivid thought.
“I’d take you so deep, Jen… suck you so hard… I can feel your cock in my mouth… in my throat… so hot… Come for me, Jen…” And I can see her lips, pouty and pink and swollen, abused and raw from my cock in her mouth, hear her voice begging for more.
I’m beyond feeling badly about doing this in my living room with Jared possibly able to hear me moaning her name through the thin walls of my apartment. For all I know, he’s jerking off to it. I push that thought from my mind as I come hard to Luanne’s sugary-sweet urging, finish my business and put my dick back in my pants. I don’t need Jared walking in and seeing the family jewels.
What I do need, however, is to talk to Jared. I may not be one for talking, but even I know that this is something that can’t be left alone. I push myself off the sofa and head for my bedroom after grabbing another beer from the icebox. I clean myself up, change my pants, then head back to the hall, and knock on the door to the guest room.
“Jared!” I pause, wait for an answer that isn’t forthcoming, and try again. “Jared?”
When I get no answer the second time, I push the door open slowly. “Jare?” I try his nickname, hoping to at least get a response of some kind. A grunt, a muffled ‘go away’… anything.
Jared’s not there.
The room is empty. I even check under the bed and in the closets, though it would be nearly impossible for his six-foot-five frame to fit in either of those locations easily.
I run through the rest of the apartment-it’s not a huge space-even check the bathroom and behind the shower curtain. No Jared.
And the words he uttered as he pushed past me on the deck come back to me. “I… I should go… I have to go…”
“Shit!”
I check the small table by the door for my keys, and when I find them there, breathe a sigh of relief. He didn’t take my car. At least he’s not stupid enough to be on the road. And I don’t have to worry about him skidding off the road and totaling my Mustang in this storm.
I head out of my apartment, and downstairs, figuring he couldn’t have gone too far. It’s crappy weather-he’ll get sick, or worse-and I need to have it out with him, regardless of the result. We still have to work together. Something has to give.
Staying under the overhangs of apartment balconies, I wander the perimeter, calling his name intermittently. I try calling him on the cell, but it goes into voicemail after ringing five or six times-he’s not picking up.
“Jared! Come on, man. Come inside!”
How ridiculous do I sound?
After another lap around the complex, I’m sufficiently soaked and chilled, despite trying to stay out of the rain. I head inside, figure Jared’ll come back on his own, or I’ll find him tomorrow.
I shower, a long, hot shower with a loofah-something one of my ex-girlfriends got me hooked on-and head to bed, again curled under the warm and heavy quilt grandma made me years ago. I leave the apartment door unlocked in case Jared wanders back late, and eventually fall asleep to the heavy pounding of rain against my windows, the rolling of thunder in the blackened sky above, and the thoughts I can’t quite push away of Jared, dripping hair and shaking body, cold and alone.
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