Page 61 of Dirty Like Brody
For a while, I’d lost track of her. She was modeling a lot, she was in school, she had more friends her own age. I was busy managing the band and she was spending more time alone,writing.
And then suddenly all the evidence started adding up to the fact that she was spending more time with Dirty’s new rhythm guitarist and co-songwriter than she waswithme.
I never saw that shitcoming.
But I saw it happening right in front of me like a slow, slow, slow-fucking-motion train wreck with the force of a locomotive that I couldnotstop.
Since then, everything had been messed up and fuckinginsideout.
I searched for her all over the house, in a bit of a frenzy… pretty much resigning myself to the fact that I was a total piece of shit because she’d left the party and I hadn’t gotten my drunken shit together to apologize for being an asshole—when I stumbled out the back door and rightintoher.
She was on her way inside and we got kind of tangled up, mostly because I was drunk and she was trying to keep me from falling on my face, and I was holding on to her, not because I didn’t want to fall on my face but because I didn’t want her to leave. I was just so fucking relieved she was stillthere.
“Jessa,” I said, my voice all slurry and pathetic, “you’rehere.”
“Dance with me,” she said. She was still holding onto me. I was holdingontoher.
Then she burrowed her face in myshirt.
The Black Keys were playing on the sound system in the party room, the music pouring out the windows into the dark around us, but I just stood there like an idiot, wavering anddrunk. “What?”
“It’s my grad night,” she said. She peered up at me, her face still buried in my shirt. “I should get todance.”
“You didn’t get todance?”
She started to pull away. “Can you for once just not turn this into an argument, and dancewithme?”
I pulled her to me before she could get away, and I danced with her, really fucking slowly. We were barely moving at all, just sort of swaying to the music a bit and holding onto each other. Mostly because if I did anything more I might lose my balance and take her downwithme.
I just held her tight and nuzzled my face into her hair,smellingher.
Jessa.
This washappening?
Why was thishappening?
Why didn’t she get todance?
As her heart beat against me, her breaths warming my chest through my shirt, her hands clasped tight around the back of my neck, all I could really feel in my sorry-ass state wasjealousy.
Blistering, fucking festeringjealousy.
Because I could see Seth through the windows into thepartyroom.
He’d turned up about an hour ago. Looked like he’d been having a rough night, but I knew for fucking sure he’d never gone near Jessa, because I’d kept an eye on him since he arrived. More and more I’d had an eye on Seth, for various reasons; some to do with drugs, and even more to do withJessa.
She never said she was dating him, or dating anyone. And not like I expected her to. Jesse probably would’ve had a shit fit if she started openly dating Seth Brothers. For one thing, he was three years older than her, which was three years too many in Jesse’s books. For another, Seth liked his drugs—pretty much more than he liked anything else. But the girl had definitely learned over the last few years how to keep her brother off the “people in the know” list. If she was partying, drinking, or smoking up, chances were, Jesse was blissfully ignorant about it. I didn’t much care about that—until it seemed that I, too, was getting excluded from her go-tolist.
Seth clearlywasn’t.
Why she’d decided to let him, of all people, into her very secretive—and apparently, exclusive—inner circle was beyond me. Why she was hanging out with him so much, or dating him, or screwing him, or whatever the fuck she was doing, was totally fuckingbeyondme.
I liked Seth.Everyonedid.
I did not like him withJessa.
But how could I begrudge her the one thing she had in her life that seemed to be giving her some kind of comfort? Comfort that, apparently, I’d totally fucking failed toprovide?
