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Just Another Reason I Could Never Forget You

Twenty-Seven.

It was a cool, fall morning in Texas when I awoke and I found myself at ease. I didn’t need to open my eyes as I curled further into the body next to me, Alex’s arm still draped around my waist as it had been while we slept. I smiled to myself, contentment washing over me as it always had when he and I were together; I felt like nothing had changed.
I heard him chuckle and I nuzzled even further into his bare skin, just begging to be closer to him as always. My stomach dropped as I realised it wasn’t Alex but John who I was clawing at. The guilt welled at the thought but I shook it from my head, knowing it had been the familiarity that had confused me.
"You’re even more cuddly now that you’re allowed to be, you know that?” He asked. I looked up at him, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth and I forgot all thoughts of Alex, the content feeling washing over me once more as he looked at me with love in his eyes. He always seemed to and yet, today, I felt it in my bones, and it wasn’t a bad thing.
“I’ve always been a cuddler,” I pouted. “But your girlfriends didn’t like me hanging around and I got you in trouble that time.”
“You’re worth the trouble and you know it, sweetheart.” I beamed up at him, the fluttering in my chest returning as I kissed him. I sighed as I parted from him, curling back into his side.
“Do you think the guys are going to give us trouble when we get up?”
“Definitely,” he replied. “But I think we’ll survive and I think they’ll get over it.” I hummed to acknowledge him, agreeing, but not wanting to move to tell him so. “I need a smoke,” he chuckled, staring up at the ceiling of the bus. I glanced at the windows, grateful that it seemed like they unlatched a little. I grabbed my jeans from the floor, pulling out my almost flattened half box of cigarettes and throwing them at John and laying next to him, though not returning to my previous position.
“You know,” I started as he began to light up. “I’ve never actually smoked after sex, or any of that bullshit cliché.”
“You have,” he replied, taking a drag as he paused, passing it to me as he exhaled.
“I have?” He hummed as if to say ‘yes’, the pair of us still staring at the ceiling.
“I thought you remembered,” he replied. “You were way less wasted than me and I had a vague recollection.” “Honestly, I try not to remember,” I admitted. “Not in a that-was-disgusting way or anything, just that it always made me feel like a shitty person.” “You were a shitty person,” he joked, taking the cigarette from my hand again. “But I liked you like that anyway.”
“Funny, O’Callaghan,” I retorted, biting back my usual retort of “bite me, asshole" purely because that was the one kind of interaction John and I had never really connected on.
“So, not to be crude or anything,” John muttered a few minutes later, leaning back against the headboard, his arm draped around me as I rested my head on his chest, our joint cigarette finished and put out in a glass we had found. “But how many guys have you, you know, slept with?” I could feel myself tensing at his words, not sure exactly how to answer. There was no thought of lying to him and playing like he was the latest on a very short list, but how did you answer a question like that without backlash? I knew John’s ‘number’, I had for a while, having met most of the girls in question during the last couple of years, but every time the question had been directed anywhere near me, I made an excuse or kept it vague as hell. “I’m not pushing you or anything, it’s just I’m all but positive you haven’t been with anyone but me since Alex, but last night was a completely different side of you.”
“I know,” I frowned. He was right. Last night had a very Jasey edge to it, which John hadn’t even seen the first time we’d slept together. That had been the product of loneliness and he knew that. “It’s more than you,” I told him, not even absolutely positive I definitively knew the answer to this question. It’s not like I wanted to go through the list in my head and count it out on my fingers.
“As in, one or two more, or double?”
“All I have is a ballpark,” I told him, trying not to laugh at how badly that could be taken. “I’d say more than thirty, but less than sixty.”
His silence didn’t tell me anything and I didn’t want to look at him. He was either calmly accepting me as I was, or silently judging me. I didn’t want to find out it was the latter. It was the main downside to John and I becoming closer these last few weeks. I could feel myself opening up to him, even beginning to fall in love with him, and yet there was so much about me that he didn’t know. I wanted to tell him but there was only so much he would be able to hear without his opinion of me changing.
“How do you only know it’s more than one number but less than double that?” I bit my lip, finally looking up at him. I didn’t see judgement in his eyes, but I could see that he was blindsided. The Holly he knew would never have had that kind of ignorance. She was the kind of girl who only slept with people she loved and knew well. She wasn’t Jasey.
“Put it this way, my relationship with Alex started as a one-night stand gone awry, very awry.” I sighed, moving myself so I could look at him comfortably. “I didn’t want to be tied down and neither did he. Anything you’ve heard about his reputation holds true for what mine used to be. I hooked up with a guy, left, then ignored him in the halls on Monday.” I didn’t like bringing Alex up as I lay here naked with another guy (especially after my bleary confusion earlier), but it felt like the only way I could fully explain myself. “The only thing that changed that was that I accidentally slept with my best friend’s best friend. And, well, you know how that one ended.”
“That… that doesn’t sound like you,” he responded, a brief frown crossing his features. I wanted to deny it. I wanted to say that girl wasn’t me anymore, but I missed her. I wasn’t the good little girl I’d been playing for the last two years. I thought John saw through her, to what I hid from everyone else, and yet he saw none of this coming? What did he see in me? Some girl who kept to herself, who had no ambition, who was always there when you wanted to hang? Jasey had ambition, she had confidence, she was mysteriously aloof but still there when she was needed. What was so wrong with that?
“Just because I made a point of not dating anyone the last two years doesn’t make me any less that girl than I was three years ago. You should know better than anyone that if I don’t want something, it isn’t happening.” The last sentence slipped from my mouth before I could think it over. I knew what I’d been trying to say and that wasn’t the way I wanted it to come out. I wanted to point out the one part of me that hadn’t changed, and I’d immediately brought up the one bit of pain our relationship had had. “I’m sorry,” I said immediately. “That’s not—I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s okay,” he shrugged, though he began to move away from me, grabbing his boxers and shuffling into them. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“No, this is exactly what we should have talked about a week ago,” I told him. “When I said I wanted to talk to you about my old life, I meant we needed to. There’s more to me than this broken girl you’ve known. I thought you knew that.”
“It’s okay, Holly,” he tried to assure me, but his eyes had lost the spark that had me so enthralled when we had woken up. “We should get up though. The guys are probably waiting and I could do with stretching my legs.” He pulled the rest of his clothes on as he spoke and started to edge toward the door. My heart sank and I watched him back away from me, unable to understand the things I had told him or look past the way I muddled my words and got things wrong like I always did. “You coming?”
I shook my head, not trusting my voice not to break as he began to leave. I had never been this girl and I hated it, but as the door closed behind him I felt like my heart was on the verge of breaking. I hadn’t felt this way since I walked away from Alex that day in Baltimore, and I hadn’t thought in a million years that I had been this close to falling for John. It terrified me, the thought of allowing myself to depend on someone so much again, and yet I’d thought that, out of everyone, John would have been my safest bet, my harbour in the storm.
I allowed myself to fall back into bed as the door clicked shut, my tears falling with me.

Notes

Look at me, updating twice in one week.
Again, point out any and all formatting errors because copying from my tablet is a nightmare.

Comments

@settle for me.
Two words. Character Development. SHES SO SHALLOW RIGHT NOW. I've met people like her and they make my blood boil and skin crawl.
I'm not one to talk about stories being too long... it's difficult.

@gamble with desire.
I'm not sure Jasey knows what she wants to be honest. :')

@aweirdkindofyellow
I always forget how much you dislike her. But, you'll have to see how this goes! I need to cut a load of stuff I already have written because it doesn't fit in a chapter in a way that makes sense and I don't want to go on too long. The first time I wrote this sequel it was like... 17 chapters long, and now I'll be lucky if I finish under 50.

Ooooh yay she’s hitching a ride with Alex! I’m not happy John hurt her by breaking up with her, but I’m kinda glad he did it because he’s just been weird this whole time. And Jasey really wants to be with Alex, I can tell!

@settle for me.
I'm scared that Holly will get back together with Alex. I'm scared that she will continue to be a brat. I'm scared that she only cares about herself.