@LindsayRacen

Jake sat on the dock just staring. He blankly studied how his cabin’s lights reflected on the mirrored water and the way they were morphed by the ripples that danced to the beats echoing from the wings of a nearby dragonfly. He was 25 years old, still young by many standards, but he felt double his age already as a divorcee with a seven-year-old girl sleeping inside. 

He glanced up at the window where his daughter’s bed stood just behind the glass and listened closely. He didn’t hear a peep so he took a sip of his beer, laid back on the wood planks, and focused his attention on the sky. He loved the fresh air, silence of the mountains, and the way the sky brought a million diamonds out to play. It’s a sight that no one in the city could ever imagine and one that his ex-wife could never appreciate. The thought of her broke his brief moment of peace and turned it into a mix of irritation and nostalgia.  He remembered the first time he met her… 

“Can I sit here?” Cassy asked. And he just stared. It wasn’t until she already plopped her backpack down on the table, settled down, and opened her English book that he was able to blurt out “uh YEAH… of course!” an octave too high than any guy should use past puberty. And that was it. That was the moment that changed his life forever. It wasn’t when his daughter was born, or even when he found out that Cassy was pregnant, he was already lost by then. Nope, it was that moment in the library, his terribly pitched voice, the ribbon in her hair, that skirt, and the look she gave him as he twirled her hair and said, “Hi! I’m Cassy!” 

She smelled like vanilla dipped in strawberries. He stared at her for a long moment, probably looking like a complete idiot or a fly trap with its mouth wide open then finally forced out the words, “I…I’m Jake.” She smiled. Or was it a laugh? He could see her high cheekbones defining and the corners of her eyes starting to curl upward and he gave her a weak smile back. She was clearly wearing lip gloss, more of a deep red than the strawberry scent, but it also gave off a new smell…cherry maybe? This chick was a fruit basket, and he felt like a basket case! He couldn’t figure out what to do next so he went back to his book. 

After what felt like an hour, Jake found himself staring at the same line of his text he had reread at least 52 times before he realized that he was spending far too much time at the same exact spot on the same exact page he had been on when she got here. It wasn’t even convincing at this point so he turned to the next. Cassy must have noticed because she glanced over with the corner of her eye and tried to hold back a laugh. 

Soon it was the classic game of keep away, but with eye contact not the baseball that his brother and his friends used to throw over his head in the trap of pickle. Back and forth, back and forth, begging to be caught but avoiding same time. He found himself looking at other parts of her than her face and a warm tsunami rushed through his veins. She noticed immediately and asked him the obvious, “are you blushing?” “No” he said, “It’s just hot in here.” Damn. She just called him out. But then it got worse realizing that she was now focusing on him and he turned a blotchy sort of almost purple. 

Jake cringed as he thought about that familiar feeling and it shook him back into reality. He listened for his daughter again, took a sip of his beer, and focused on finding Sagittarius in the sky. Looking back to that fateful moment, as indelible as the ink they signed the papers with, he realized that it represented his entire relationship. She always called him out and made him feel that same blotchy sort of almost purple, but at the time he didn’t mind much, especially knowing that she was clearly out of his league from day one. He always questioned why this picturesque cheerleader that every girl wanted to be, and every dude wanted to bang, was with a guy like him. A flash of irrational jealousy poked at him as he remembered the party they went to the night that they met…

“Jake!!! Come over here!!” Cassy yelled from across the Kappa Alpha frat house. It’s a miracle the “brothers” even let him in, especially since it was crystal clear that he didn’t belong there, although he was getting the feeling that the guys would pretty much do whatever this chick said. The place smelled like a cornucopia of old booze, moldy pizza, and fresh axe spray failing miserably to mask the scent. As he walked toward her he had to shove his way through an even thicker crowd than he saw when he mentally mapped out his original path to her location. It was as if these guys were trying to keep him from reaching her and one dude practically fell at his feet because he was so wasted. 

Luckily she was standing on a platform near the double doors waving so he was able to navigate this way through the bodies. As he came closer he caught his breath. She was wearing the tightest gold dress that barely covered the important parts of her body and it shone so brightly that even without a reflective ball hanging from the ceiling he still saw glittered confetti falling from above. Her long blond hair fell perfectly in front of her shoulders and framed her face just right. He was clearly blown away but this is exactly why he practiced not turning into a complete moron at the sight of her a hundred times that day. He had to do his best to be cool. 

“Hey Cassy,” said Jake. Her smile brightened and he could smell her lip gloss just as vividly as that moment in the library thinking only that he wondered what it tasted like. “Ohhhhh Jake I’m so glad you came! Meet Chad and Brad they’re my twins from my Fall Greek rush class. We share the same big bro.” Jake had no idea what that really meant, and although it seemed platonic enough he couldn’t help but notice how they were holding on to her waist as she threw her arms on each one of their shoulders. The twins just nodded their heads in greeting and Jake couldn’t help but imagine them with little propeller hats on the top of their head as tweedle dum and tweedle dee. Cassy broke his mental image and yelled over the music, “The keg’s inside, and the bar has all the hard stuff and mixers.” 

Trying not to sound too awkward Jake asked, “What are you having?” “Vodka Red bull!” she nearly screamed and he strained to hear her. “Need a refill?” he questioned, “sure. I’ll come with you,” she responded. He never drank before and he tried not to show it. He couldn’t help but notice that the bottom of his shoes practically peeled off the floor with every step and he wondered what kind of rancid materials were layered on the floors. The counter was overflowing with mixers and bottles, and he searched around for the key ingredients. Cassy spotted them first and leaned over to grab them before handing them to him to pour. He tried not to look at the bottle and can as if they were aliens landing on a foreign planet and didn’t let himself think and simply poured too glasses with half of each liquid. 

She looked him straight in the eye as they tapped plastic red cups and he studied her face without trying to look like a creeper. Her eye shadow wasn’t shadow at all, in fact it was almost the exact shade of mined gold that was sprinkled all over her dress and tinted her green eyes the exact shade of the famed Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz. He kept his eyes locked on hers as he took his first swig, not wanting to lower his glass until the exact moment she did, which was apparently several gulps later. The vodka tasted terrible but the Red Bull hid the worst of it and when she finally paused she shook out her blond hair and sighed in satisfaction. Before he got a moment to say another word she took him by his hand and pulled him out on the dance floor. 

The rest of the night fell away. Jake remembers bits and pieces, jumping to the beat of the base with the crowd, a few more trips to the bar, then nothing. Cassy was a goddess, he felt lucky just to be in her presence, and the next morning when he woke up with her naked in his tiny twin bed reeking of vodka, she even jokingly pointed that fact out to him. Jake laughed at her comment but then fell back into his head and ran through all the insecurities he had been struggling with throughout high school. Puberty was tough on him. Most of his life he had been the shortest kid in class which came with its own social frustrations of ridicule and jokes, then add the bottle thick glasses, dense curly hair, and rolling backpack that your mom made you use to avoid scoliosis and you look like a side-show freak. He wished he grew up in today’s world where those damn backpacks are not even questioned and glasses are actually trendy. It honestly made no sense to Jake, especially since he heard that hipsters who don’t even need glasses actually buy the frames for fashion purposes rather than to help them see clearly. Why did he have to go through all that hell and now it’s all completely acceptable? 

He shook off the image of his former self and looked down at Cassy cuddling next to him. He regretted that he didn’t quite remember how she had landed next to him, and his head clearly was punishing him for it, but it must have been an amazing night by the looks of it. After a few moments of falling in-and-out of sleep, Cassy looked at the clock on his desk behind them, casually shrugged, and said, “Oops, looks like I missed Mr. Collin’s class,” and settled her head back on Jake’s shoulder. He looked at the clock and noted that he had a few more hours until his art history class and didn’t dare move from her side. 

The next few months flew by and he felt like he was on some sort of intense drug, despite the fact that he had never even tried any at that point in his life. Yeah he got his homework done but he found himself not caring nearly as much about getting a perfect 4.0 GPA. With Cassy there his life fell into whirlwind of sex, alcohol, sorority mixers, and house parties. He went to every class, even on the toughest mornings where the hangover was just too painful to breath, and she floated through those she surprisingly made it to by rotating between nerds a few weeks before each test. 

Parents’ weekend soon arrived and both Cassy and Jake were on cloud nine when they introduced each other to their parents. His parents were taken back by her beauty just as much as he had been the first day they met, and her parents liked him a hell of a lot more than the “hoodlums” she dated before him but clearly looked down on his family’s humble economic status. Overall though, the families took to each other fine, but the two were happy when they headed home and left them to their new liberating college lifestyle by the end. 

It wasn’t until right before they left for winter break that they came down from their high. Cassy hadn’t been feeling well for the past week or so, and although he brought her any and all remedies upon request, she mostly stayed to her bedroom in the sorority house. He packed up and was prepped to say goodbye for the short break when he opened his door and there she stood. Something was wrong. She was hiding that smile and body he loved so much and although she still looked beautiful her eyes were red and she stepped deathly into his room and shut the door. 

He went to hug her as he began to say, “What’s wro –.” But before he could finish she blurted out, “I’m pregnant,” and he stumbled back. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing and he didn’t know whether to comfort her or question her for certainty. Then with the air between them as frozen the iceberg that sunk the titanic, she simply straightened up, wiped her tears, forced herself to grin and said, “I’m going to handle the situation, I just wanted to let you know. I’ll call you when I get to my parents.” The entire moment lasted a whole minute and a half at best, and she was gone. 

Cassy clearly didn’t want a baby and shamelessly expressed how “it would ruin their lives and her body,” not to mention how she couldn’t imagine something hanging off her boob like some animal for months.  Jake on the other hand, although he was well aware that they were not prepared and knew the timing was terrible, he couldn’t help but toss around baby names in his head and wonder if they were going to have a girl or a boy. He hoped that whatever it was he would get Cassy’s good looks. And there it was – hope. He realized that he really wanted this baby no matter how scary it was. After the same debates, fights, and true terror that all teenagers have with the “Right to choose,” in the end they decided to keep the baby.  Jake ultimately convinced Cassy of a “happily ever after” together, and his parents were traditionalist anyways, whether she wanted the baby or not they would do everything in God’s power to let that child live. So they got married, moved into family housing when they got back to Mizzou and had their daughter Jade. 

In the early days they were happy again for a brief period of time. Cassy looked gorgeous holding their daughter and simply could not imagine his life without the two of them. He studied while feeding the baby, determined to finish his degree no matter how difficult. Instead of story time, he would read her his textbooks, often animating the details as if they were exciting characters out of a fairytale rather than digital brushstroke techniques. Every time he had a new project in an art or graphics class he would talk to Jade as he brainstormed ideas for his grand visions and she would smile at him with the same charm his mother had that day in the library. 

Every moment he caught his daughter’s smile he looked at her mother, trying to find that same smile he fell in love with, but all he saw was disappointment behind her eyes. He did everything he could to make her happy, make dinner, handle the house chores, and feed Jade at night so she wouldn’t have to wake up. But of course, although she may be oblivious to it at times, ultimately when he would forget the smallest of tasks, she would always call him out on them. Although he was flush with exhaustion he still picked himself up, told himself he should have remembered that, and moved on to reconcile the misstep.  

He had truly tried everything but as time went on Cassy started to get angry at Jake without explanation and would leave without notice of where or when she’d be back. Jake understood that this was hard. Hell he understood it the most considering he was doing all of the work, but he gave her the benefit of the doubt and figured she just needed to blow off steam. Until one night when she didn’t come home at all. 

Jake texted her, called her a million times, even reached out to her parents, who by this time hated him more than those “hoodlums” they had been so happy he was not when they met him at parents’ weekend. Nothing. It wasn’t until a week and a half later that she woke him up from a nap he was taking with Jade to tell him that it was over. He slowly slid out of their bed and gently moved Jade to her crib his parents bought her at Cassy’s baby shower. He turned on the baby monitor, not that he needed it in their tiny apartment, cracked the bedroom door just in case, and followed Cassy to the living room.  

She looked good, and although he was relieved that she was okay he felt this intense anger toward her, especially realizing that he didn’t want her to look amazing, he wanted her to look like an explanation that consisted of unfortunate events that prevented her from making it home. But before he could open his mouth to yell as loud as he could at her in a whisper so Jade wouldn’t wake up she spoke, “I met someone.”

Like that first night with her at the frat house the rest of the conversation was a blur. The bits and pieces Jake caught went in and out….He was one of her frat twin’s brothers….They met at a party the first night that she didn’t come home….an invitation to Paris where his family was flying out to the next day….a café on the river… And then she was gone. He almost didn’t realize it until the door closed behind her and the light through the window caught the tiny emerald of her wedding ring that sat on the table. Just then he heard Jade’s cry break the silence that Cassy left behind, turned toward the bedroom, and blinked. 

When he opened his eyes he was back on the wood-planked dock outside his cabin and part of the diamond sky was missing from his vantage point. There was a shadow that fell over him from someone blocking the dim lights coming from the cabin. He turned around to find Jade standing a few feet away, hugging her teddy bear and blanket that she clearly dragged through the dirt to get to where Jake was. 

“I can’t sleep daddy,” Jade said in a small, tired voice. Jake sat up, reached out to his daughter and said, “Come here baby girl,” and the once sharp and bitter memory fell away the moment Jade took three tiny steps toward him. He wrapped his arms around her as she settled into his lap. Jade had her mother’s green eyes and blond hair but had his curls that always fell in front of her shoulders. She was wearing her favorite color – purple, complete with spots of dried milk that she spilled on her onesie before she went to bed. He was reminded in that moment of what he realized many times since that day Cassy left and he turned toward the bedroom when Jade cried – his favorite color was a blotchy sort of purple.