Author's note: I apologize for the delay. I wanted to get this right. Thanks for your patience. -dkc
Are you available tonight? the text read.
Jane stopped what she was doing and stared at the phone. Given how her last two one-on-one interactions had gone with the woman, including the night she had spent drinking with Jacqueline in the office and her brutal honesty had hurt the woman badly, she couldn't believe she was getting a text.
Yes? she finally responded.
Four Seasons, east 57th. 8:00?
"What the actual fuck?" Jane blurted out.
Sutton turned round and raised an eyebrow at her friend from the living room couch. Seated in the kitchen, Jane was still staring at her phone.
"Jane?" Sutton asked.
Getting up and taking her phone to Sutton, she handed it over without saying anything.
"The Four Seasons?!" she shouted. "She wants you to meet her at a hotel?"
"I have no idea where this is coming from. I was terrible to her. I behaved like a child. A drunken child. I took responsibility for blowing up her life."
"You're the size of a child," Sutton snickered and received a pillow to her face.
"Hey, you're the one who said you were a child!"
"Sut..." Jane turned serious. "I don't know how to do this."
Sutton put the phone down and opened her arms to Jane. The brunette collapsed on the couch, letting her friend wrap her up.
"Do you not want to go?" she asked.
"If I don't, I will wonder. But I have no idea what to expect."
"Honey, it's Jacqueline. She isn't going to ambush you. You trust her. You..." Sutton stopped herself.
"What?" Jane sat up.
"You love her. I know that it's complicated. God, I know it. We are all complicated. Love is messy. You have been vibrating with energy since all of this started. Even now you are different. You're heartbroken, yes. But Jane I've known you long enough to know you don't get heartbroken over just anyone. There was no heartbreak after Ryan or Ben. This is different."
"It killed me to sleep with her knowing it was over. I won't do that again," Jane wiped tears from her eyes. She heard everything Sutton said and didn't feel a need to respond to it all. She didn't want to say she loved Jacqueline. She still couldn't. "What if that's what she wants?"
"You know better than that. She is not emotionless, Jane," Sutton chided her. "Have you not noticed her the last few days? She can't possibly be sleeping. She's heartbroken, too."
"Her marriage is ending, Sut."
"Look at me and listen very carefully because I'm only going to say this once," Sutton waited until she knew her friend was taking in what was being said. "She loves you. If you can't see that, then you have other issues we need to address. I know you see it, though. Do you think Jacqueline would have taken this leap into the unknown without love pushing her?"
Tears were now streaming down Jane's cheeks. Sutton wasn't wrong.
"Come here," Sutton pulled her tight, letting her cry. "What are you going to do?"
"Go," she said through tears.
"Can I help you choose what you're going to wear?" the blonde was unable to hide her glee at the thought.
"I wouldn't go if you didn't."
...
Jane stood outside the hotel room door in the sleeveless belted trench dress Sutton had picked out for her. It was short enough to show off her legs, as most of her wardrobe did, but not so short as to appear she had come with expectations. She had no expectations. She had absolutely no idea why she had been asked here.
She finally raised her hand and knocked.
"Jane," Jacqueline opened the door barefoot. "Come in."
Stepping into what she soon realized was a suite, Jane looked around and noticed several items of Jacqueline's. It was readily apparent that this is where the woman was staying. That realization made her heart sink.
"Would you like something to drink?" the blonde had followed Jane's eyes around the room and was awaiting comment.
"Why am I here, Jacqueline?" she was impatient and floundering.
Looking at Jane reminded the older woman of a dream she'd had the night before. Her heart had been racing when she woke. It may have been a nightmare. She'd been trying to talk to Jane, but there was no sound. She tried screaming to no avail.
"Can we talk?" she motioned for Jane to sit on the plush sofa.
Unable to relax, Jane sat awkwardly and became tense when Jacqueline joined her. She had no idea where this was going and it scared the hell out of her. She didn't know if her nerves would make her say everything or nothing at all.
"God, I don't even know where to begin," Jacqueline ran a hand through her blonde waves. She was fighting the urge to tell Jane how much she had been missing her. What would it accomplish? That wasn't the place to lead from. "I should have talked to you about everything. I should have told you about my marriage. You shouldn't have had to learn about my filing papers from anyone else. But most of all I never should have let this end…without sitting down with you and telling you why."
The way the woman had paused at 'never should have let this end' made Jane's pulse race. She may not have had expectations when she arrived, but some part of her still had hope. She had hope that their time together would not be bookended by such heartache. She had hope that Jacqueline would give her the chance to talk her out of it.
Jacqueline's eyes were glistening by the time she took a breath. She looked to Jane to know if she should stop or if she could continue.
"I should have been a better person, a better..." Jacqueline had no idea how to label what she had been ever briefly to Jane. Boss? Friend? Lover? Girlfriend? It had been too brief to define.
The writer waited for a label to be placed on their relationship and it never came.
"Can I ask you a question?" Jane stared at her hands.
Turning even further toward the brunette, Jacqueline noticed the flinch as Jane's thigh was touched by the blonde's knee. It hurt deeply.
"Did you think I was going to run?" she whispered. "Did you not tell me what you were thinking about the future of your marriage because you thought it was too much and I would run?"
A sputtering exhale and then silence followed, suggesting Jacqueline was choosing her words carefully not that she was at a loss for the answer.
"I didn't want you to feel trapped," ignoring the earlier flinch the older woman put her hand over Jane's. "How I feel about you is complicated and scary. It's hard enough for me to grapple with. You were under no obligation to go down that road with me."
Jane heard every word out of Jacqueline's mouth, but she fixated on the present tense utilized. 'Feel about you' is a different animal than 'felt about you.'
"Whatever road you needed to go down, I would have followed you," she paused and put her other hand on top of Jacqueline's. "Whatever road you need to go down, I will follow you."
Tears fell down the editor's cheeks and she couldn't look at Jane. She had messed up badly. She had handled all of this poorly. Despite having spent her entire life in the communications and media industry, her ability to communicate recently had been severely compromised. Jane had left her indecisive and strangely introverted. Everything she had been feeling was overwhelming, crippling so, and the way she had handled it was by not talking about those feelings.
"Jane..." she sighed.
"Please," the girl was begging. "You do not owe me an apology. You do not get to carry all of the responsibility. We did this together remember? We jumped in together and we washed out together. We should have talked about it, yes. But this isn't on you and you alone."
The vein at the side of Jane's neck was visible, her jaw clenched.
"I miss you," Jacqueline breathed.
The younger woman's stomach did a flip and tears fell down her own cheeks, a drop landing on their hands.
"I need to know everything," the writer asked this knowing that some of it would surely hurt. She didn't care. She had spent too many nights lying awake staring at the ceiling thinking about this woman. If they were done, that didn't mean her night's lying awake were over. Jacqueline Carlyle isn't a woman you get over. No, she leaves a lifelong impression.
"My marriage was simple. Our routines were set, our life easy. Ian is a good man."
Jane felt terrible as Jacqueline said this. She knew she had hurt Ian, too. And she genuinely liked him. Whether or not he knew with whom Jacqueline was having an affair, she didn't know. Truthfully, Jane was of two minds. If Jacqueline hadn't told him, maybe it was to protect Jane or to shield her from fallout. If she had told him, maybe it was to hurt him further because Jane was his polar opposite.
"I had always wondered what it said about my marriage that I could be so hopelessly drawn to you. Long before you and I talked about our attraction I had considered this. And then when I was willing to grab your hand and take that leap into the unknown, I knew exactly what it said about my marriage. No matter how charming, beautiful and brilliant you are, I wouldn't have jumped if there hadn't been cracks."
The way Jacqueline's hair shined under the chandelier and the way her blue eyes always lightened with tears left her more gorgeous than Jane could ever remember her. And yet she was tired, surely stressed and her heart was clearly broken for more than one reason.
"Does he know its me?" Jane whispered.
Jacqueline shook her head emphatically.
"When all of this started you were showing up early and staying late at the office. You hadn't been sleeping much. Ian?" the writer asked.
"Yes." The rush of air Jacqueline released was in some ways lifting a weight from her. She had refrained from telling Jane any of this because she didn't want Jane to think she was attracted to her and making these decisions for any reason associated with her dying marriage.
"I've missed you, too," Jane sighed as she wiped her wet cheek with the back of her hand. "It hurts to see you here, to know why."
"My marriage broke long before you, darling. I chose this. And this," she looked around the room, "is only temporary while we make arrangements for the boys."
"What do you need from me? I will give you as much space as you need. I will hold you up when you can no longer stand. I've told you before that I will go somewhere else to make work less of an issue, now more so than before when I offered," Jane asked.
Putting an arm on the back of the couch, her fingers unable to stop themselves from touching Jane's straight brown hair, Jacqueline noted the way Jane's eyelids fluttered shut only to slowly open.
"And if I don't want space and I don't want you to go anywhere else?" Jacqueline's voice was low and soft, Jane's breathing quickened. "If you left Scarlet because of me, it would kill me, but if you left Scarlet for us, I would eventually follow."
Fingers that had been touching Jane's hair were now on the back of her neck. The gentle pressure seemed to be asking a question. Leaning toward the blonde, tears were now streaming down Jane's face. Jacqueline's hand had gripped her petite shoulders.
"How does this work?" Jane whispered in fear.
"We take it slowly," the older woman was attempting to reassure herself as much as Jane. "It can be whatever we want it to be and we get to choose what we don't want it to be."
This was the first time since Jane had recognized what she was feeling for her boss that she could see a time when neither Jacqueline's position nor her marriage would be calling the shots in their relationship.
"And if I stay at Scarlet?" her dark eyes held contact.
"We'll figure it out. You can answer to Lauren or, if we get a new digital editor, I can put you on digital full time."
Jane let out a shaky breath.
"But you make me a good writer. It's you that I work my ass off for!" she now had tears of anger. "Is that what the choice is? Be with you or write for you? Because I find that to be a really shitty choice."
"Jane?" she smiled. "Take a breath for me."
Doing as she was told, the writer felt how wound tight she had become and welcomed the relief that came with a deep breath. Her eyes darkened before fixing on Jacqueline.
"You're serious?" she still doubted. "Please, Jac."
Understanding the fear in Jane's tone, she gripped the back of the girl's neck, slid closer and pulled her into a heated kiss. What Jacqueline was doing with her tongue eventually pried the younger woman's attention away from her own fear. When she began responding fully, Jane was all in. Her own hands were in blonde waves. The kiss was like starlight, light rising from a place of infinite darkness.
When they broke for breath, Jane's tears had turned into a whimper and then sobs. Jacqueline held her and let her cry. The blonde's own face was soon damp with tears.
"I didn't think I'd ever kiss you again," the words came out in fits and starts as she tried to rein in her tears.
"I didn't think you'd ever look at me the way you have—with such admiration, attraction and affection—again," Jacqueline murmured as she placed a kiss above Jane's ear.
"And love," the brunette looked deeply at the woman she had fallen so ridiculously in love with.
Jacqueline raised her eyebrow in response to the statement. This was a look Jane had come to expect. It was as predictable as the sunrise. Though this time instead of asking a question, as it often did, that perfect eyebrow was forewarning Jane.
"I should have told you sooner," Jacqueline shook her head.
"Told me what?" came the timid reply.
"That I love you."
It was Jane's turn to shake her head. For the first time a smile touched her face and she stopped doubting what was transpiring.
"This better never turn up in an article," the editor baited.
"Don't send me dirty pictures and then break up with me." Jane took the bait.
"Oh, that will never happen," Jacqueline said before kissing Jane beneath her ear, making the young woman moan.
"Which?" she hummed.
"Wouldn't you like to know."
…
Walking into the apartment, Jane found Kat and Sutton sitting on the couch like parents waiting up for a child who had missed curfew.
"What are you doing here, Kat?" Jane played dumb.
Both girls were on the edge of their seats.
"How was the Four Seasons?" Sutton teased. She could tell from Jane's face that she didn't need to be gentle. There were signs of prior tears, but Jane appeared lighter than she had in days.
"Is there wine?" Jane smiled.
Kat got up and poured her friend a glass.
"Spill, babe," Kat refused to hand over the glass until Jane started talking.
"I told her," she rolled her eyes and Sutton squealed.
"Told her what? What did I miss?" Kat was clueless.
"I told Jacqueline that I love her. I told her that I miss her."
Kat's jaw was on the ground and Sutton had a giant grin on her face.
"And?" the blonde pressed.
The writer blushed and looked at the floor.
"You didn't!" Kat accused.
Shaking her head as she sipped her wine, Jane would have liked to say that magic happened in the bedroom at the Four Seasons, but it would have been too much given the weight of their talk and the intense feelings that came from talking about a future—their future.
"We're taking it slow."
Sutton stood from the couch and wrapped her arms around her small friend. Kat couldn't resist joining the hug.
Both girls were extremely relieved that Jane didn't go to that hotel room to have her heart broken all over again. They were also relieved that they wouldn't have to suffer through more of the mopey Jane of late. The question of how everyone would interact with the boss remained in the air. Like Jane's relationship with Jacqueline, they would take it slowly.
"Guys, I'm exhausted," she said, though muffled by an arm on her chin.
As she broke from the suffocating hug, Jane finished her glass of wine and headed for her bedroom.
"We're joining," Kat said as she walked into the bedroom behind Jane.
They were too happy for their friend to leave her alone.
To be continued…
[Song inspiration: "Never Let You Go" by Ron Pope]