A.E. Janes

Sitting in her car that was crookedly parked in front of a streetlamp by her hotel, Joy cried in frustration as she dialed the phone again, trying to get Jenna to pick up for the fifth time. Joy had been holed up in a hotel room for what would be two weeks come the 28th. Her apartment flooded—Marty, the landlord, had offered to pay for half of her stay. Jenna sometimes came to stay the night but it was a battle to get Jenna to come to Joy. There was no logical reason for Jenna to be as inaccessible as she was. Joy and Jenna were friends first, if anything, and one would think a friend should be easy to reach whenever they were needed.

"I'm late for work. Can I call you later Joy?"

Joy sighed again, this time with more frustration, "No Jenna, I need to talk now. You didn't call last night. Why?" She huffed. 

"I dunno. I was tired. I'm sorry."

Joy and Jenna paused the short conversation, if what they were doing could be called a conversation at all. The rustling of clothes on the other end of Joy's line stopped. Joy heard Jenna sit down on her bed which made a distinctly warm creak as it sunk under the weight of anyone who dared to so much as touch it. 

"I'm tired of begging."

"Hm?"

"I can't remember one time recently where I wasn't put in a position to ask for a chance. I'm asking you to try Jenna—to take a chance with me and try. Don't you want to?"

It is especially difficult when one wants someone else to try something they're unwilling to try. It is especially silly to think feelings can be projected, planted, or procured from an unwilling human being. 

"Jenna? What are you thinking? Please, can't you just tell me what's going on in your head?"

Jenna took a sharp breath in, it was a reaction to the cold air that hit her on the way out the door, nothing more. She walked down the street in the cold. Her car wouldn't start in this kind of weather. Jenna's jacket zipper had broken in the washer at some point during the long winter. She held the two sides of its front tightly against her body to keep some of the wind away. Street lamps along the walk to work had small, prickly icicles hanging from them. 

"You're stubborn," Jenna said sternly, "You keep putting me in this position where I feel guilty because I'm not doing exactly what you want me to do when you want me to do it. You're a lot to deal with sometimes and you can be a real pain, Joy. And you know something? Your moods have changed a lot lately, it's really noticeable, and this isn't what I thought I was getting into with you. I'm tired of trying, I've been doing it for too long and I don't want to do it with you. It's like you realize what the next logical steps for us are and the thought of going along with what wants to happen is sickening! Just let it happen."

"That's not true," Joy spat. 

"If you want to leave me, then go."

"I'm not saying that at all."

Joy said nothing.

"You want me to try? Give me the chance to just let things play out. You're so shallow that you can't even see all of the good things about us or what you already have, you just focus on the things I'm doing 'wrong'. It's your shallowness causing this—stunting the growth of what we could be."

"So then, is it my stubbornness that makes me pursue you more than you'd like?"

"That isn't what I said."

Joy was quiet, she shifted uncomfortably in the driver's seat. Jenna breathed heavily, her lungs cold from the wind which Joy heard hitting Jenna's head and subsequently her phone which was tightly pressed to her ear. 

"I need to go," said Joy after some time.

"Alright. I'll talk to you later."

Jenna hung up before Joy had a chance to respond. Joy had begged, Jenna didn't understand what for. There was no need to beg. Jenna had no intention of losing Joy. She liked the way that Joy made her feel about herself on their best days. Jenna liked the idea of simplicity that came with Joy. 

Joy, however, was appalled that Jenna had hung up the phone instead of fighting. The thought crossed her mind that maybe Jenna didn't care enough to fight. Had she pressed Jenna more, Joy could have used the speech that had been prepared and now forgotten. Joy's car which had been idling in the parking lot sounded as if it was in a similar kind of pain. Joy put her phone away, far away; she tucked it into her purse which she then got out to lock in the trunk of her green sedan. 

It is important to get things straightened out as soon as one can. Joy liked to do so on her own, preferably out loud. 

"You know what Jenna?" Joy said to her windshield as she pressed harder on the gas pedal, "I feel like you would love me if you tried. You would love the person that I become when the situation demands it—you would laugh at my anecdotes; you would like the comfort I gave you when I held you close without so much as an indication needed to tell me that's what you wanted; you would grow to love the way I can't make full sentences after I've just woken up or how it takes me an hour to get to the point of any story; you'd laugh at how I bring home small, stupid things that remind me of people I love; you would look forward to hearing my music leak out of my earbuds as we fell asleep. If you just tried, you would love me."

"But let me try, let me try, you never let me try!"

That's such shit and she knows it. She won't even let herself try to love me, she tries to have a relationship with me but she doesn't try to love me. I love her. 

"She shouldn't have to try," Joy whispered to herself, tears welling in her bloodshot eyes. She wondered if her tears were genuine that time. 

She shouldn't have to try to love me. 

Joy drove in silence now. 

Joy was mostly sorry that a part of her wanted Jenna to love her back because everything else had gone wrong and she wanted to feel something good. She was sorry that she didn't want anything else other than the pleasure of Jenna's lips because Joy imagined that she might keep feeling something with each kiss. Nothing Joy had thought or said was entirely out of desperation, rather from her intuition which screamed at her to do something about Jenna because she was what Joy needed. There was no need to run into things with the expectation of forever like Joy had promised herself she would do with the next person she met and loved. Instead, Joy wanted to take things in a meandering way which took everything—every breath, smile, touch—in stride because that was the only way to make Jenna comfortable enough to give into what Joy wanted to occur. 

Doesn’t she realize that there aren’t any other set of circumstances that would’ve let us meet? Shouldn’t that cause her to try with the same dignity and perseverance that I do with her?

Joy let out a scream, loud enough for other cars that drove by to hear, loud enough to beat out the sound of rain that was starting to come back down with a hollow thump on her car roof. Her hot breath fogged the windows as it mixed with cold air which leaked through the hairline cracks in her windshield. 

Kelly Creek was dark; the streetlights lining it hadn’t worked all winter. 

Jenna took her usual turn by the edge of its deep lake. She looked out onto it with curiosity. Her grandpa would talk about how Kelly Creek became a lake after the flooding year after year. He’d reminisce on times when the lake was innocent rather than something which routinely killed without apology. The water was angry and tempting year-round, but it was especially pleasant looking in the cold. Wind bounced off the glassy surface, slick with a layer of thin ice which was easy to break under the lightest weight. Cracks healed themselves quickly, freezing over after taking the sunken thing it took home. Jenna pushed her gaze back down to the gravelly sidewalk beneath her feet. 

Joy drove quickly still, her foot heavy on the gas, begging her hand-me-down car to go a little faster on icy roads. There wasn’t much Joy looked forward to every day; she dreaded the task of waking up. Jenna was something she’d get excited about, but the days themselves didn’t feel like ones worth looking forward to. 

Joy swerved to the side of the road, her car’s tires giving out a little under the weight of her car and ice underneath worn treads. She threw open the driver’s side door, and with her key, unlocked the trunk and threw the contents of her purse out on the side of the road without any hesitation. She grabbed the phone from the ground and ran back inside her car. She turned the engine over three times before it started and as she started to drive again, dialed Jenna. The goal was to leave a voicemail, not to have Jenna pick up the phone. If Jenna picked up all effectiveness of a strongly worded voicemail would be lost. 

Jenna’s voicemail played, Joy waited for the beep.

“You make me feel like the reality of being with me isn’t good enough, that I’m someone who’s only allowed to see you or talk to you from time to time. My only purpose is to make you feel the type of happy you’re convinced you aren’t ready to feel and then you push me away.”

She slammed her phone shut, Why doesn’t she treat me with the gentleness she said I deserve?

At work, Jenna counted the hours until she got off in indignant anticipation. Before she walked back home she’d likely take a meal from the back room and eat it slowly, savoring every greasy crumb that touched her thin pink lips. She would slump a little as her jacket weighed her down. And on the walk home she would think of something nice to say to Joy, who always demanded a good mood out of her. It was difficult to be sad or talk about how she really felt most of the time—Joy made everything in Jenna’s head feel worse. 

As anticipated, Jenna ate her greasy food and put on her heavy jacket and as she left work, she decided she would tell Joy that she appreciated how dedicated she was to understanding things. Jenna crossed the street at Kelly Creek and Barbara’s Way. She heard the shrill siren of an ambulance that had quickly turned the corner Jenna was about to cross and pulled up by the deep end of the lake. It was so dark outside. The days that winter were shorter than the ones Jenna could remember having in years before. Jenna stopped to see what was happening. She squinted and could see something unnatural jutting out of the water. It bobbed, she heard it creak and gurgle as it was consumed by the cold icy water where dead fish bobbed just below the thin layer of ice and saw the frozen bodies of ducks whose legs had gotten stuck as they waited for the ice to quickly thaw them out of the lake. This type of thing happened once or twice every winter: Someone would take the blind corner on the highway too quickly, ignoring the black ice which water that spilled over the sides of the lake and onto the road. Jenna watched as the paramedics and firefighters gave up on dragging the car from the lake like they always did—there was no saving whoever was in there. Cars were too heavy to drag without a crane which wouldn’t come until the morning. 

Jenna turned her back to Kelly’s Creek to finish her walk home. A brisk gust of wind brushed her cheeks. She pulled out her phone and mindlessly dialed Joy’s number, letting it ring

And ring

And ring

And ring

Until the line simply disconnected.