Chandler helped Jaymes out of the back seat of the vehicle and into his apartment. Carrying him over to the couch, Chandler watched as Jaymes slumped down into an awkward position, mumbling incoherently. Chandler’s apartment was a spacious one bedroom. The living room housing only a single davenport hide-a-bed, an entertainment center situated across the room from the couch. Two end tables occupying each side of the couch, and the kitchen was a small narrow room, where a table sat with two empty chairs. A sliding glass door opened out onto the back area where a barbecue grill stood covered and unused.
“Get some rest ol’ friend.” Chandler said, uncuffing Jaymes. Jaymes began to snore rhythmically.
“Jay…Jay?” Her voice was tender as he looked to where she is standing. She is wearing a pair of tight jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt. Her hair falling around her shoulders. “You’ve been drinking again?” she questioned looking over her shoulder toward him.
“I know baby girl. I know…I’m truly sorry. It just hurts.” He drank her in for a moment before settling down next to her. She rested her head on his shoulder. “I’ve missed you so much these past few months.”
“I…I…I’m truly sorry,” she replied softly. “You must trust me, Jay.”
“I’ve always trusted you baby girl. I…it’s just…that I’ve failed you, and that’s why you had left me.”
“Jay…” She paused, turning to look deeply into the depths of his caramel eyes. “Jay, I’m not coming back.” He took her into his arms, feeling the warmth of her body in the coolness twilight evening.
“What do you mean?” he questioned, a lump forming in his throat. “What do you mean that you’re not coming back?” He held his breath, holding her as if it is the last time he would ever hold her. “You did come back to me once before.” A sense of emptiness flooded him, deep in the pit of his soul. Emotions brewing like a storm. The same familiar feelings he battled when she had left him to work things out with her husband.
“This isn’t supposed to happen like this…I know. None of it makes any sense right now.” She clung to him.
“El, I’m lost without you. You mean a lot to me, I need you and I don’t want to lose you,” he spoke as she buried her face in his neck. The wetness of her tears warming against his skin. Ellyn softly kissed his neck, tasting her tears on him – bittersweet.
“I love you so much, Jay…please trust that and understand that.” She pulled away from him, kissing his full lips softly, feeling the softness of his trimmed mustache. The two enjoyed the intimate kiss. “You have dreams…big dreams, Jay.” She whispered in his ear softly after pulling away from the tender kiss. “We’ve talked about them. We talked about many things. But, the one thing I know is that you will pull through this. You will never forget about me, I know that. I know that here in my heart.” She took his hand in his, pressing it against her chest. He could feel her heart beat.
“El, I lost you once…I don’t want to lose you again,” he protested “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you in my life. The past six months of not seeing you, not hearing your voice, not having my best friend there to support me was too much for me to bear,” he said
“But Jay, you pulled through that. You managed to get on with your life. This…this is different. I will be here for you, but not like before. I will be right here, here in your heart.” She touched his chest, feeling it rise and fall.
“Baby girl, what are you saying?” Jaymes asked, confused, as he looked her over as she stepped away from him.
“Don’t leave me El, I need you. Please, I am begging you. Don’t leave me.” He clasped her hands tightly in his, pulling her into his arms.
“Jay…” She pulled away from him, “…you must look deep into your soul. You must try to understand. I know it is something hard to ask of you right now, but Jay, promise me. Promise me you will do what you can.” She looked into his eyes again. He could see there was something she wanted to tell him. Something that frightened her terribly, a truth she wanted to share. “Jay, remember how you always kept telling me that sometimes things are not as they seem, and that sometimes looks can be deceiving?” she asked him softly.
“Yes, I remember, I think it was because I got tired of those other women I dated after you left me when you went back to Jacob.”
“Jay, keep that in mind. I want to tell you something, something important.”
“What is it baby girl?”
“Whatever you are told what happened to me, don’t believe it for one minute. You know deep down inside what happened and the reason why.” She then stood and turned from him, walking away. The next thing he knew she was approaching him, holding the hand of a child, a beautiful young lady with golden locks of hair cascading over small frail shoulders, cool innocent blue eyes. “Jay, I wanted to tell you I was pregnant. I wanted to share this with you on our anniversary…this is Abby.”
“Abby, our daughter? El, please…” Jaymes tried to reach for her, but Ellyn and Abby faded as he could hear his name carry on a distant wind.
“Jay…! Jay…! Jay…! Jaymes! Chandler’s voice drew him out of his sleep.
“What?” Jaymes, startled, almost jumped up from the couch. Disoriented for a moment, he noticed Chandler had jumped back a bit because Jaymes had come up out of his sleep with clenched fists. “Jesus! Chandler!” he relaxed, gathering his bearings.
“Jay, you were talking in your sleep.” Chandler moved cautiously over to the couch and sat next to him. “You were saying something about your daughter, Abby.” He paused, a confused quizzical look on his face. “Something about Ellyn and your daughter…” Chandler continued, “The only daughter I know is Dakota…” He studied Jaymes’s expressionless face for a moment.
“I just had a dream about Ellyn that is all.” Jaymes rubbed his face. “But it was really weird. It was as if she really was here, talking with me and I swear…” Jaymes swallowed hard. “I swear she was telling me she was pregnant and we would have had a daughter, named Abby.” He attempted to moisten his cottonmouth. “Ellyn never told me she was pregnant.”
“Maybe the doctor at the hospital said she was pregnant, did he say anything after she passed on?”
“He may have, I don’t know…I was so much a mess then, I don’t think so…” Jaymes sighed heavily. “Chandler…was she pregnant?”
“Jay, according to Desiree, that was the reason why Ellyn had called her to come up to Washington. Could Ellyn have told you this and you just don’t remember?”
“I don’t think so, Chandler.”
“Well…” Chandler started thinking for a moment.
“Well what? If you know something Chandler, please tell me. Don’t hold anything back.”
“Jay, I just don’t want you to go half-cocked and doing something you may regret later. Besides, I don’t think it’s true for that matter.”
“What is not true?”
“Jay…” He paused, searching for the right words. “According to Desiree when my partner had talked with her…” Chandler paused not wanting to continue.
“Yeah…I know, Desiree found Ellyn half-dead.” Jaymes controlled his tone. Jaymes then remembered Chandler telling him that Ellyn and Desiree were expecting company, and that he didn’t want to tell him right away when they were at the scene. “Chandler, you said Ellyn was supposedly expecting someone, as per Desiree’s statement, who was she waiting for?” he asked.
“Jaymes, please, let’s not go there, you’re emotionally vulnerable right now, and I have seen you like this many times before, it’s an ugly side that I don’t want to wake. Let it lie,” Chandler offered politely.
“Chandler, don’t start keeping things from me. Who was she expecting? Maybe he had something to do with Ellyn’s death and you don’t want to reveal it for fear I may go after him myself.”
“Jay…listen…”
“Dammit, Chandler, who was she supposedly expecting?”
“Jacob!” Chandler blurted. “Desiree said that she was supposedly waiting for Jacob, her ex-husband to come over and visit with her. Desiree tried to talk her out of it, but Ellyn insisted, saying she needed to talk with Jacob.” Chandler sighed, searching for a cigarette and found one in an almost empty pack. He then tossed a smoke to Jaymes and lit his smoke, then lit Jaymes’s cigarette.
“Ellyn wouldn’t have Jacob over at all, she can’t stand him after what he had done to her. She made damn sure Jacob would never find where we lived, nor had anything to do with him, why now? Why on our anniversary. Not possible. You have to be kidding me. That Ellyn was supposed to be waiting for Jacob to come over, which I don’t believe, nor understand. Ellyn would never have anything more to do with Jacob.”
“Yeah…” Chandler paused, trying to find a way out of a no way out conversation.
“What are you not telling me, Chandler?”
“Jay, look…I still don’t think right now is the time.”
“Why?” Jaymes attempted to hold back his emotions as much as possible. “I lost my wife, and that she possibly was pregnant…and…and you’re sitting there keeping secrets, for what?” Jaymes stood, pacing the room.
“Okay…okay…Desiree claims Ellyn wanted to tell Jacob she was pregnant. That was why she wanted to see him.”
“Why would she want to tell Jacob she was pregnant…unless…oh shit!” Jaymes fell into the couch, the springs giving way to his dead weight. “You’re not going down that road and telling me that Ellyn and Jacob?” Jaymes tried to read Chandler’s face. Jaymes clenched his fists until his knuckles whitened as he pounded them against both his knees.
“I’m not saying anything, nor making any false implications. And I don’t think it’s even true, for that matter.”
“Yeah, well it’s not like I could go home and talk to my wife about it because she is dead…” Jaymes stopped, his expression frozen as the realization of her death seeped into his soul. Realization sinking into him. “She isn’t coming back is she, Chandler?” he asked in a softer tone. Chandler just watched him, his face changing expressions. First, anger, then confusion, then complete lost. “I failed her…I failed her as a husband, and there is nothing I could do to make it right because she is gone.” Jaymes emotionally broke down, Chandler just sitting silently, wishing to take this pain from him.
Recent Comments