I'm Never Falling In Love Again

Chapter 1: I Will Love You Forever

Five years later.

"Happy birthday!"

I heaved a great sob. In the history of the world there had been sobs, but this was the greatest of them all. This was the Armageddon of sobs.

Jack's face fell. The flowers he held in his left hand were dropped pathetically to his side, the small cake he had in his right, wobbled precariously on his arm. "What's wrong?" he asked me immediately, his face no longer in a brilliant congratulatory smile.

I swung open the door and allowed him to enter, then held my hands balled into fists in front of my mouth. I had been crying solidly for the past hour and I couldn't even tell if I still was.

Jack came into my apartment, lay the cake down gently on the first table he came across, which stood adjacent to the door, and tossed the flowers right there beside it. He didn't even take off his jacket before he'd pulled me intuitively into his arms.

"Don't you think you're overreacting a bit?" he asked me softly. I could almost hear him smiling, unable to physically see him because I'd shoved my face tightly against his body and he held me there, his chin resting comfortably on the top of my head. "It's only a birthday. Twenty-seven isn't that old, Chlo."

I cried harder. Unable to correct him. I took a deep breath, trying to regain control on my tears and the phlegm that was seeping rapidly out of my nose and onto his red cashmere sweater.

Suddenly, I felt his body stiffen and he pulled back, grabbing my arms down on either side of my shoulders and forcing me away from him until we were half an arm's length apart. He stared at me intently, looking into my eyes and using his natural ability to read my every thought. All it had taken was a shaking snort and a bit of snot on his favorite sweater for him to know that something was very much not right.

Or possibly it was that he'd noticed the pink lacy thong I still had clutched tightly in my hand.

His eyes darkened, not black, but no longer his customary mushy brown. "What did he do to you?" he asked me stiffly, rage already rolling off him despite the fact that the fiend in question was nowhere in sight.

I held out the thong, letting it dangle from my index finger, hanging between the two of us like a sprig of mistletoe. "Guess," I sobbed, squeezing my eyes shut, unable to bear the sight of the offending object any longer. "I'll even give you a clue: It's not mine."

My eyes remained closed, but even without looking I knew exactly what Jack's face would look like. His face would be tight, his jaw clenched tightly, and his eyes soft and wide in shock. I'd known Jack since I was a baby. I knew his face almost as well as my own. I could even tell that his left eyebrow would be slightly higher than the right one; that was his biggest tick. It told me that he was stressed. I slowly opened my eyes to confirm, more tears leaked out as I did so, and I immediately recognized this almost minute quirk.

Jack's hands continued to grasp my shoulders with the bitter intensity of a Kate Nash song, and his eyes focused on the pair of panties swinging threateningly in the air. I pulled them down as if plucking an orange off a tree, and balled them up angrily in my fist.

"Do you know whose they are?" he asked me, shooting a cursory glance at the hand that held the panties and then locking into my eyes, once again reading me like Jodi Picoult novel, looking for answers in my broken soul.

I didn't bother to answer; he could see in my forgotten expression that I hadn't a clue. I pulled out of his tightening grip, forcing myself away from his worried touch. I stumbled, hazarding my way to my home stereo and searching precisely through my well-organized CD collection to the song of solace for the evening. I quickly shoved my old Sara Bareilles album into the slot and jabbed the search button angrily until I got to track six.

I listened intently to her tale of tortured princesses and the forgotten parts of the stories.

Cinderella's on her bedroom floor
She's got a crush on the guy at the liquor store
Cause Mr. Charming don't come home anymore
And she forgets why she came here

"Fairytale." She's right. They're fiction.

I turned to Jack, whirling from the CD player as if it had burned me. "Do you know the name of this album?"

Jack shook his head slowly. I'd made Jack listen to more than his fair share of records. Unlike me, he could hardly distinguish one from the next, finding his refuge in words; no matter how many times I'd asked him why lyrics couldn't qualify as words.

"'Careful Confessions.' It's brilliant from a poetic point of view. You have the alliteration, what poet doesn't love alliteration? Then you almost have this entire story behind it. It's like Ernest Hemingway flash-fiction."

"For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn," he murmured quietly under his breath, not wanting to interrupt what could only be a raging monologue. He really needn't have said it. He'd only quoted the damn story to me a million times since he was twelve and nowadays it only hit closer to home. But I'd forgive him because I knew it was his favorite.

"Yeah well, the same way you're left there wondering what the hell happened to that baby, that's how you get to feel about this girl, Sara. Why the hell is she so careful that she can't bare her soul? And then you hear this song," I gestured to the CD player as it continued to belt its bitter anthem, "and you know it's because she's been hurt." I took a deep breath, Jack merely watched me as my rattling wound to a screeching halt.

Worry 'bout the maiden though you know
She's only waiting spent the whole life being graded on
the sanctity of patience and a dumb appreciation
But the story needs some mending and a better happy ending
Cause I don't want the next best thing
No, no I don't want the next best thing

We listened, standing there in silence, waiting for the song to end. Jack took a step closer to me. "I think she has every right to be careful then," he said softly. "Sometimes you shouldn't make a confession if you know someone will get hurt in the matter."

"What do you know about being hurt?" I snorted with absolutely no trace of humor. His eyes softened in repressed and baffling pain. I snapped my neck to the left and looked away, unable to bear to look at him at the moment. The way the alien pain crept across his face only served to remind me of Tommy. It was the same face Tommy made every time I wriggled away from his touch, or hesitated before I replied to his sweet nothings.

"Does, does Tommy know that you know?" he asked me suddenly, either changing the subject or getting back to it. I couldn't remember. What were we even talking about?

I sighed. There were so many emotions coursing through my body that I couldn't have labeled a single one of them even if I'd tried. I only registered a minor moment of confusion, before it too fell into the swooping sea of sentiment. Had Jack just stuttered? I think that was a first. Even as a child Jack had been the most eloquent of beings, never hesitating over his precious words.

I pointed to the door on the other side of our—or was it just mine now?—sitting room. "Go see for yourself," I said, practically spitting at the accursed door. Every time I saw it, all I visualized was my husband and a faceless chit tumbling around on my Egyptian cotton sheets.

Jack too stared at the door, staring at it with dumbfounded wonder and his two dark eyebrows pushed closely together. "Chloe?" he asked me slowly, still watching the door intently, "he's not still in there is he?"

I rolled my eyes. I could only have expected such a reaction. "Of course he is," I replied obviously. Wasn't the chair shoved blandly under the door handle clue enough? "What did you think? I'd let him out?"

Jack looked back at me. "Is she in there too?" he asked me slowly, cautiously.

"What? Do you think I'm crazy?" I replied in exasperation. He made a gesture to suggest as much. I wiped my sticky, salty cheeks. "Of course she's not in there," I bit. "I found the underwear in the sofa. He says they're from Friday. Apparently it happened while I was in New York last week." Like that makes it any better, I wanted to add.

Oh shit. I was crying again. It hardly occurred to me to care.

"So what's he doing in there?" Jack asked, looking at the door with mild curiosity.

I glared at him. He seemed far too interested in Tommy's whereabouts and situation. Sure Tommy had been his roommate in college and he'd been Tommy's best man at the wedding, but he was my friend first. He wasn't allowed to take Tommy's side. "He's supposed to be packing," I grunted, my eyes heavy with even more tears. I was losing Tommy in this whole ordeal; I could not handle losing Jack as well.

Jack looked back at me, suddenly amused. Sure he hardly bothered to show it, but I could perceive a slightly derisive quirk to his lips. "You're mad that I care," he pointed out, reading my mind and mocking it.

"I'm a lot of things right now," I replied, grinding my jaw. "You shouldn't mock a woman in distress."

Jack nodded once. "It will never happen again," he apologized genuinely, quickly losing the quirk of his lips, but raising that left eyebrow ever so slightly once again. He was stressed? Or was he just torn between his two best friends? "Would you hate me forever if I go talk to him?"

I stared at him, my mouth slightly agape. I couldn't believe him! He was going to side with Tommy. Tommy who'd broken my heart a million times over!

"I'm not going to take his side," Jack suddenly protested. Jack had always had a knack for saying the right things at all the right times. "I was your friend first, nothing could change that."

I sighed in relief. Great relief. As long as I had Jack I'd be okay. As long as he was on my side, I'd be able to survive.

"Then why do you want to go in there?" I asked, my jaw chattering slightly, biting my lip to hold it still.

"I just want to make sure he hasn't jumped out of the window," he said. "That way, I can push him out of it."

We both smiled slightly, in evil satisfaction.

"Okay. You can go in."

Jack went to the door and tugged at the chair from all angles, trying to dislodge it from under the door handle. I wouldn't have been surprised if he wasn't able. I'd jammed it up there with all my might.

He finally managed to shake it loose and tug it out with a great squeal of wood against the wood paneled floor. I winced, hoping he didn't gash the floor.

"Don't actually kill him though, Jack," I sighed begrudgingly before he could actually open the door.

Jack smiled pathetically, but still reassuringly, and nodded. And in the span of time between when he'd opened the door and when he'd closed it, I managed to catch these words from my husband: "Jack! You have to tell her to forgive me!"

Oh happy birthday to me!