“I won’t. I told you, this needs to end. I’ll call you later and let you know how she handles the news.”
After swift goodbyes, Kevin hung up the phone and stared blankly at the house in front of him. Jazz had moved from a one bedroom apartment in the city to a two bedroom house inthe suburbs. It was a quaint place with a little garden in the front. He walked to the door and knocked. He hadn’t told her he was coming, and surprise was written all over her face when she opened the door. Wide Jasmin eyes and her mouth dropped open.
“Kevin!”
“Hi.” His voice was already weighed down by the nervousness of what he needed to say.
“What are you doing here?” She threw her arms around him and he pulled away before he got too lost in the smell and feel of her. Looking sexy as all hell in skimpy denim shorts and a tight white tank top, he already didn’t feel like talking. But he needed to stop thinking with his dick because the first item on his agenda was having a good, long chat with her.
She immediately noticed something was off and looked up at him. “Is something wrong?”
There was no point in beating around the bush and he was anxious to have this discussion. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Okay.” The excitement on her face was replaced with wariness as she stepped aside and allowed him to enter.
She led him to the living room and everything he saw just screamed Jasmin. Purple walls with big pink flowers stretching out from ceiling to floor. Most of the framed pictures had something to do with nature—forests, rivers and even a very large one of the Grand Canyon. There were also pictures of the two of them lined up on the television cabinet and somehow seeing them made him more nervous.
“What did you wanna talk to me about?” she asked, taking a seat beside him on the couch.
He’d practiced this conversation many times in his head, but now with her sitting right next to him, he couldn’t seem to find the words. He was faltering under her scrutinizing gaze and thesight of her toned legs and supple cleavage was an unnecessary distraction. Forcing himself to look away, he decided to just blurt it out. “This whole…arrangementwe’ve got going on isn’t working for me anymore.”
His words were like a slap to the face, and after a small brain-drain twitch, she smiled. “How long have you been feeling this way?”
“Months. I thought this whole long distance thing could work, but…it isn’t.”
Anger flashed in her eyes. “So you’ve been feeling this way for months and you’re only telling me this now? It’s not like we haven’t seen each other, Kevin. You flew all the way over here to decorate the Christmas tree with me, then I spent Christmas with your family, I came to your graduation, we went on holiday together fortwo weeksand not once did you mention this to me.”
“I was trying to push past it, but I’m so tired of this now. I don’t want the phone conversations and video chats. And don’t get me wrong, phone sex is great, but it’s not…the real thing. Every now and then I want more than just my hand.”
That instantly set her off. “Who is she?”
“What?”
“It’s that girl from that class you took in your last semester, isn’t it? Yourlab partner?”
“Jasmin—”
“That ho! That tramp!” She stood up and walked to other side of the room. “No, you’re actually the tramp!”
“She’s not a ho. She’s actually a very sweet girl. Besides, you know how I feel about cheating.
I told you we were just studying together.Nothingelse.” This was a serious conversation and he tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t help it. “Wait. Did you just call me a tramp?”
“Yes!” she shouted and she seemed more infuriated that he was taking this so lightly. “How could you do this to me, Kevin? You’re such an asshole!”
“If I was an asshole, I wouldn’t have wasted my money on a plane ticket. I would have broken up with you over the phone…but I’m here.”
“Oh, so I should be grateful that you came all this way to do it in person? Fuck you! You know, you told me you would never hurt me again…you told me you love me, and like an idiot, I believed you. But you’re a fucking liar! You were stringing me along for months when you didn’t even want to be with me.”
He’d always had a knack for drawing unwanted emotions out of her and she no longer tried to suppress them. She was raging and he needed to take control of the situation. “Okay, enough with the name calling. You’re clearly misunderstanding what I’m saying.”
“How am I misunderstanding? You said this relationship isn’t working for you anymore.”
“I didn’t say that. I said the long distance isn’t working for me anymore.” He stood up, walked towards her and pulled her into his arms. “Newton’s Law of Gravity. The force between two objects is stronger if the distance is smaller. I know you don’t believe in it, but I do. You’re not just one in one hundred for me. You’re my soulmate, Jasmin. Of course, I still wanna be with you…I just wanna eliminate the distance.”
She immediately calmed down, but still looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
“I applied for a job here in Chicago…and I got it.”
