Laid 2 Rest Two Halves of a Whole (5 page)

A basketball game was on. I wasn’t a big fan of the sport anymore since Jordan retired, but I was barely paying any attention to it anyways. I was a little too preoccupied watching the clock on the wall tick by and waiting for the sun to set behind the trees outside the window.

I will stay with him all night if I have to, in order to assure his safety. This was my plan… in fact, it was the only plan I had at that moment. I just prayed that it would be enough to make a difference.

“You want to come with me to pick up your present before we go to the movies?” he whispered as his slick tongue ran along the side of my ear.

“NO!” I screamed, startling him. “You’re all the present I need, babe.” I added sweetly after I saw the hurt in his eyes.

“But you’re going to love it. I can hardly wait to see your face when you open it.”

I cannot let the boy leave this bloody apartment! What to do, what to do, how do I stop him from wanting to go out? What can a girl possible do to make him stay put all night long?

Bingo!
The light bulb came on over my head.

“Can we do all that tomorrow, babe? I don’t want to share you with anyone else tonight. Can we just stay here and enjoy this nice, big…
empty…
space all by ourselves instead?” I purred in my most seductive voice, staring up at him thru my long lashes with my big, hazel, puppy dog eyes.

How could the boy resist? I had this look perfected by the time I was old enough to walk. No question about it, I had him wrapped around my little finger. There was no possible way he could refuse me.

Man, I’m a stinker!

“Well, when you put it that way… how can I ever say no? So tell me, love. What I can do to make all your birthday wishes come true?”

Oh yeah, he’s good too,
I reminded myself quickly, adoring the way he spoke to me as if I were the only woman in the world for him. “Hold that thought big boy. Let me call in my alibi first so that no one is hunting me down tonight. The last thing we need is my father showing up over here.”

Sifting frantically thru my purse looking for my trusty cell phone, it didn’t occur to me for some time that I didn’t have a cell phone, at least not here in 1990 anyways. I was so used to having all of that modern technology sitting in the palm of my hands that I didn’t even appreciate it until right this second. I think I might have carried a beeper back in the 90’s.

Yeah, tell me about it.
Technology sure has come a long way, hasn’t it?

Getting up, I was forced to walk over to his landline, where I punched the number to my parent’s house in manually. This number has never changed once in my lifetime.
Thank God
, so I had no trouble dialing it.

Holding my breath, I prayed for the answering machine to pick up
. It didn’t!
My little brother Joel answered it instead.

Hearing his voice crack sent waves of emotion through me. He was smack dab in the middle of that awkward puberty phase when his voice started to change and deepen. Lucky for me, my parents were still at the gym, so I left the message with him that I would be spending the night at Maya’s.

I automatically knew that she would cover for me if anyone decided to check out my story. Besides, how in the hell was I supposed to remember her telephone number to call her myself and forewarn her!

Thankfully, we had a system in place back then to handle these kinds of sudden disappearances and I knew she would not let me down, not tonight, because she was fully aware of what was at stake.

With my alibi in place and with the sun setting behind the trees, I plopped myself down on Jay’s lap a little calmer. Wrapping my arms securely around his neck, I asked, “How about a shower?”

A steamy, hot shower sounded divine to me as I looked forward to rinsing off all the sweat from this morning’s activities.
Not to mention that I loved any kind of playtime in the water
. Something about it took sex to a completely different extreme with me and it didn’t matter if it was a shower, a bath, a pool, at the beach… I loved it all.

Damn,
am I drooling?

I cannot recall ever taking a shower with Jay before. Shoot! I had even had sex with him more times in the past twenty-four hours than we ever had the entire time we were together back in those days.

I am a closet freak!

Who knew? I hope I wasn’t being too aggressive for him today. I’m supposed to only be sixteen years old.

Hey, I’m trying to save a life here, people
. If I have to sacrifice my body for the greater good… then so be it!

“You’re a wild one today, aren’t you?” he said licking his full lips.

Flashing my megawatt smile, I pulled him towards the bathroom. He seemed a little hesitant at first, not quite sure where or how to begin. Obviously, he’s
never
taken a shower with anyone before.

Excellent. This will be fun, I thought as I took full control of the situation. Having him first start the water so it wasn’t freezing when we got in (cold water is such a mood breaker), I proceeded to strip him out of his shirt.

Would you look at that chest!
Behind that thin layer of fabric, lay hidden a defined and sculpted torso from doing years of morning push-ups. A sight that caused me to automatically step forward… just so I could touch it.

Jay towered over me since I was half a foot shorter than he was, but I’m not complaining… no, I am
definitely
not complaining. I rather enjoy having to tilt my head back to look at him. However, pulling him down towards me just to be able to capture his lips with my own, always gave me a sense of power that set my body ablaze.

Slowly running my tongue across each of his nipples, a tremor ran through him as if he had been struck by lightning. His mouth suddenly came down hard on mines. In no time at all, clothes started flying every which direction.

He stepped into the shower first, testing then readjusting the water temperature for us before holding out a hand for me to join him.

I did mention before that he looked good naked, didn’t I? Well, add hot water streaming off his muscles and he was just about picture perfect. My eyes watched and followed the water as it ran off his face, down his chest to his waist, to revel that he was rock hard already.

Oooolala!

Spinning me so that the water was now running down my back instead, I tilted my head backwards to make my long hair wet. I purposely let it run down my face to give him the full effects of having a hot, wet, naked woman in front of him. I could practically feel the weight of his bulged eyes upon me, as he looked me up and down.

You best believe I looked damn good naked back then as well. We were the perfect pair. Turning myself sideways, I drew him in front of me so we could both share the water as I reached to grab the soap and began lathering him up.

Jay hadn’t stopped smiling yet. You would think that it was his birthday today instead of mines and in many ways, it actually was. Today was the start of his new life. I had been given the chance to spare him from his own untimely death…
he just doesn’t know it.

Stretching my upper body lazily, I opened my eyes, blinking away the tiredness while staring at the blank wall before me. My hand reached out behind me searching, searching… but came up empty. Rotating my body to the right just to be 100% sure, I found myself looking at the Sandia Mountains right outside my bedroom window.

That can’t be right
.

This morning, I was back home in my house, in my bed, in New Mexico, in 2009. Darn!

I laid there a minute actually disappointed. Was that all really just a dream then? It couldn’t have been because it lasted over 24 hours.

I swear I can still taste Jay’s sweet lip and feel his hard body on mines as if I had soaked him directly into my skin. I could even remember making love in the shower and then moving to his bed to make love over and over again. How many times can a couple have sex in one day
?

We must hold some kind of a record.

Getting up and wandering downstairs, I powered up my computer. September 24th the date at the bottom of the screen read. That’s odd. It has to be the 25th since I was here on the 23rd. How was an entire twenty-four hour trip to the past, squeezed into just a few hours of sleep?

It hadn’t been real after all, I sighed.

Not able to shake the nagging feeling that I was wrong, I typed in Jayden Bishop and hit the search button because I was curious.

And… there he was, all grown up staring back at me. He was even more handsome than I remembered now that his features were more mature and defined.

I hadn’t realized I was crying until I couldn’t breathe thru my nose anymore. Instant relief flooded my body as the tear in my heart began to close as the guilt I carried around with me all these years over his death washed away. I felt years younger as the heavy burden was lifted from my shoulders.

I did it
… Laughing, I began to understand. I saved him. My wish came true; I was blessed with a redo. I went back in time and changed the past somehow. I couldn’t believe it; I could barely contain myself… a life redo.

I changed the past, but why?

Shit, who cares!

Jay was alive and well. Obviously, things hadn’t worked out between the two of us seeing how I was still stuck in New Mexico married to Diego’s dumb ass, but really, who gives a damn! Jay wasn’t dead anymore.

What else did it change? Stopping suddenly as my skin turned ice-cold, I wonder…

Each step I took closer to my bedroom, I dreaded to discover what I may or may not find up there. Once I reached the dresser that my wooden jewelry box sat on, I just stood there staring at it. My hand trembled slightly as it hesitated on the lid before finally finding the strength to lift it. I shut my eyes tight, afraid to see what was inside.
Be brave,
I told myself. Breathing in a lungful of stale air, I slowly opened one eyelid.

Well, everything looked to be in order, I thought while shuffling some things around the inside cavity of the box, but suddenly there it was, staring innocently up at me.

There hidden underneath some old watches was a fuzzy little purple velvet box.

Lifting it out carefully as if it were a king cobra just waiting to strike me, I went over and settled myself down in the middle of my queen size bed in case I fainted or had a sudden heart attack. Gripping the lid tight, I pinched the box open.

Staring up at me were gold studded earrings that dangled half a dozen loose raindrops on the ends. They were beautiful and perfect. He knew that I would adore them simply because
Rain
was my middle name and I loved all things affiliated with water.

Staring down at them, I watched as they danced in the sunlight as it streamed in from the bedroom window. I never dreamt I would ever set eyes on these again. His mom had given them to me right after the accident, explaining to me that she believed with her whole heart that her son would have still wanted me to have them.

I took them reluctantly. I knew that a piece of me would die every time I looked at them and that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to bring myself to actually wear them.

During his wake, I had slipped them inside his casket, wanting a part of me to be with him always. In the little purple box, I enclosed a final love letter and a picture of us taken at one of those cheesy photo booths in the mall, along with the earrings and placed them under his jacket, right over his heart where they would remain for all eternity.

I don’t know what made me do it, but before I could stop myself, I had slipped the raindrops into my ears, wearing them for the very first time. “Happy Birthday,” I told myself.
Better late than never
.

Where was he now, I wondered. Are we at least still friends? Checking my cell phone contacts only to learn that sure enough… his number was now magically in there somehow.

I studied it; still in the L.A. area, I realized quickly, recognizing the familiar 661 area code. Should I call him? What am I supposed to say exactly?

Now is not the time to be a bloody chicken, Jazz!

After what I just went through (I don’t time travel everyday you know), I deserved to hear his voice at least once… don’t I?

Counting to three, my thumb tapped the call button.

He answered on the first ring. Mid-ring in fact. “Love, you read my mind… I was just about to call you,” he said with a delighted ring in his voice.

Love??? He cannot still be calling me that… could he? “Huh! You were. You do know this is Jasmine, right?” I said skeptically.

“Of course I do. Are you kidding me? I’m in town and wanted to see if I could stop by real quick… ummm, to drop off some pictures.”

“By in town, you mean New Mexico, right? What are you doing out here?”

“Well, I would say that I was here on business, but that would be a huge lie. Never mind that right now… I’ll explain later. So what do you say, can I come over?”