Jumanji - A new beginning part 3
Days went by and I got almost daily updates from Spencer. He told me he and Martha was finally a couple, and that Fridge was yet again the best friend he had during childhood. Fridge was working hard on one of the classes he had failed, but since he had both Spencer and Martha to help him I was going great. Bethany was not that into schoolwork herself, but she was cheering him from the sidelines.
Every few days I would get text from Fridge and Martha as well. Everyone except the one I longed for. But, the texts from Spencer was filled with information about all of them. Spencer wrote to me how the people around them was all surprised by their changed personalities. Mostly those around Bethany.
Nowadays she was not carrying her phone around as if she would die without it. She respected the teachers, well mostly, and was trying to convince her best friend to go camping with her. The four of them would hang around each other during free time at school. Some of their original friends had some problems with that, but none of them cared.
In reply I told Spencer about my life these last few (twenty) years. Not all of it of course, who was I to tell a teen younger than me that unlike him I had never had a girlfriend. And of course I never told him why.
I nagged about my job, and the responsibility of being a grown up.
One evening, in one of the few phone calls between myself and Spencer he told me about how they all remembered my father and my house. Unlike everyone else the four of them remembers how I had been missing for twenty years and how my father had changed into a strange, sad, old man. How the house I was living in had been described as a haunted house.
I am a man enough to admit I began crying when I imagined my father left alone in this big house, not knowing what had happened to me.
The next time me and dad had a father and son evening in front of the fireplace with our beer in hand I told him about my conversation with Spencer. We both began crying while hugging each other, imagining how depressing that life must have been.
Before going to bed that evening I told dad that I loved him. He replied with a "I love you too, son". That night my dreams was not filled with Bethany, og nightmares from my time alone in jumanji. It was filled with the sad life my father had experiences in another reality.
The next morning I had troubles opening my eyes because of all the tears I had cried during my sleep.
oOoOo
Everything changed yet again with one small text.
As I sat at work in front of my computer my phone made a small sound, signaling a new message. When I opened the message my heart stopped.
"I miss you". Three small words, sent from Bethany.
I had no idea what to reply, and therefore let the phone lie on my desk for hours as I tried to finnish today's tasks. When my workday was over I had hardly done anything except to think of those three small words. Honestly I wanted to call her in order to confess how I had missed her for over twenty years. But I could not make myself do so. It was not right.
The message followed me during the whole day. Out shopping at a supermarket. While trying to decide which milk to buy, a small whisper in my head, I miss you, distracted me. Sharing dinner with my aging father, the words kept on distracting me as he talked. In the end dad stopped talking, having realized I was not listening.
After the meal I helped him clean up. I might have told him good night as I went up.
As I stood in front of the bathroom mirror looking at my aged face I could not comprehend how someone could miss this, miss me. There was nothing special about me.
Lying in bed that night the words cept on flowing back and forth. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.
No getting a wink of sleep I gave up when the clock bicked four. Sitting up in my bed against the headboard I grabbed my mobile from the nightstand. No longer having the energy to resist what I wanted, I typed in a few words and pushed the send button. "I miss you too".
I waited a few minutes for a reply, but when nothing came I concluded she was probably asleep.
At least I felt a inner calm having managed to send off an reply and therefor fell asleep.
oOoOo
The next day I woke up with my phone still clutched in my hand.
No new message.
On one hand I was disappointed, on the other I was kind of relieved.
She was still a teenager and therefore nothing good would come out of it.
Days came and went. No new message from Bethany.
Like a weak man I searched online for updates on her Facebook profile and her Instagram page the next weekend. I just needed to feel close to her in one way or the other. Since that time when she and the other three teens had helped me and my father decorate our Christmas tree I had visited her pages more than I felt comfortable to admit.
When I logged on and found her profile this time I was met by a shock. Most of her pictures was gone. All of the sexy ones had been removed and instead there was pictures of a smiling girl surrounded by friends, or pictures from nature trips she had taken these last few months.
Like me, the experience from jumanji had probably changed her view on life as well.
Considering how jealous and excited I had been by those pictures I was glad they were gone. Nonetheless I missed them. They were a way for me to see her when I could not do so in real life. A way to still my hunger.
Without thinking about it I sent her a text message asking her why she had deleted her photos.
Before I could put down my phone again it beeped, signalizing a new text. It was a reply from her. She wrote "I do not feel like they represent who I want to be any longer." Not even giving me an opportunity to reply she sent another text "Why? Do you miss them?"
How do I answer something like that without sounding like the perverted man I was?
Of course I missed them, but seeing her in so little cloates was not something she should advertise online where everyone could see them. Selfishly I felt like they should be for my eyes only.
Acting more my age than I felt right now I relied with a "I think you made the right choice, somethings should be left in private." Her next text made my blood flow south "Do you want the private pictures?" Hell yeah, I wanted to send back. Instead I had to act as the grown up out of the two of us and wrote back, informing her that it would not be right for her to send those pictures to a man twenty years older than her.
Her next reply almost broke me "What if I want you to see them?" Oh, how I wanted to see them.
With sweat running down my face, and shaking fingers I typed, and retyped a message again and again.
In the end I just wrote back "It is not right." With those words I did not lie to her, I just told the truth. Luckily, for my health, she didn't text back.
oOoOo
An: little short, but I thought it was a good place to stop for now.