roommates-slash-friends, with Jace , I hadn’t just been existing—I’d been living. I’d felt things. Some of the things had been good, some bad, some incredible beyond words, and some worse than I’d ever imagined. But I had felt them.
Right now, in this moment, I felt…nothing.
“Cat? Are you okay?” Jace’s deep voice sounded from behind me.
My body flinched as it registered the reassuring pressure of his palm flat on the small of my back as I stood facing my door. I felt the muscles in my neck move as my head bobbed up and down, nodding on autopilot, as I scooted away from him and closer to the door. When Jace touched me, I felt things, and that was a can of worms I did not want to open here.
Wrapping my fingers around the knob, I turned it and opened the door. As I stepped into my room, I noticed that our bags were both neatly sitting beside each other next to my large oak dresser. It was strange to see Jace’s belongings here, in my room. Other than my mother, Don, Rachel, and whichever stylist, publicist, or assistant happened to be working for my mother, no one had ever been in my room before.
I moved to the side and let Jace enter before shutting the door behind me and locking it. I knew that clicking the lock in place did not actually ensure my privacy. My mother, her agent, her stylist, and her publicist, as well as Rachel and Don, all had keys to my room, and everyone excluding Rachel and Don had no problem entering whenever they pleased with no regard for me whatsoever. I stared down at my fingers that remained on the tiny lock. Even though it was an exercise in futility, I still felt a tiny bit better with one more, albeit small and inconsequential, barrier between myself and them.
“Wow, Cat.” Jace’s voice sounded far away, like he’s spoken my name under water. Turning on my heels, I saw him standing in front of my floor-to-ceiling glass window wall. “This is…amazing.”
Moving across the room, I watched white crested blue waves crashing onto the golden sandy shores below. Gazing out at the horizon there was water as far as the eye could see. The sun, which appeared like a perfect egg yolk, hung low in the sky and filled it with a beautiful yellow, purple, and orange haze. Well, that effect probably had more to do with the smog than the sun, but either way, the sunset was beautiful. Breathtaking. One that I’d seen thousands of times in my life and appreciated every time. Jace stood beside me silently as I kept my gaze looking out the one-way glass and remained silent as well.
When I was growing up in this house, my room was my safe place. Sure, people would barge in, but they never stayed long. My mother very rarely came to this room; in fact, she rarely made it to this side of the house. My bedroom was the farthest room from her own, a fact that I had always believed was not an accident. When I was little, it used to hurt my feelings that I was so far away from my mother. When I got older, I appreciated the distance and didn’t really care what the reasoning was.
Now, having Jace here, I wasn’t sure if I would feel the same about this room. Or if I would just spend my time here feeling nervous about what he was thinking, what he was feeling, if this was all too much for him. I had no idea what to say, how to even begin to attempt to prepare him for what he would inevitably witness in the next few days.
Feelings started flowing through me. No longer was I numb. Nerves began bubbling up inside me as I tried to formulate the right words to create a picture that would adequately detail the force that was Angelica James. Part of me wanted to cry; another part wanted to throw up. Questions that, for some odd reason, had not presented themselves until now started flashing in my brain like neon signs. Insecurity, fear, and anxiety crashed into me like Mack trucks in a three way pile up.
What would Jace think of me after he met my mother?
After he saw how my mother treated me?
How
Mary Downing Hahn, Diane de Groat