Three is a crowd

Chapter 11

 "Hey," she said and Nigel smiled.

"Hey stranger," he replied and Jade smiled wistfully. "I want to talk about what happened today."

Jade stiffened against her will but she forced herself to relax.

"What do you want to talk about?" Jade asked feigning ignorance and Nigel scoffed.

"What's going on with you Jade? You're acting weird and funny," Nigel began and Jade feigned ignorance again.

"What did I do?" Jade asked stubbornly and Nigel scoffed again.

"Well for starters you're tensing in my presence. Since when do I scare you Jade?" Nigel questioned and Jade shook her head.

"I'm not afraid of you," she whispered defiantly but Nigel shook his head with a scoff.

Jade felt Nigel move closer to her, invading her personal space and she forced herself to remain still. The moment his hand gently touched hers however Jade recoiled from his touch and the hurt expression from earlier took over Nigel's features.

"What changed Jade?" Nigel asked, his voice almost breaking and Jade's heart sank.

'You have a girlfriend!' Jade wanted to scream but instead she looked aside and bit her lip to stop it from quivering.

She didn't know why she felt so terrible. She was over Nigel, had been for a while. So why did she feel so terrible hurting him unintentionally?

"I broke up with my ex-boyfriend just recently and I need a minute to think about what I want. I understand that you want to pick things where we left off but you moved on and so did I. We are not the same people anymore. I'm not a confused freshman anymore and you're a full-grown man. I just...I don't know what you spent the twelve months doing. You cut off all contact with me and that crushed me till I met Jack who mended my heart just a little only for him to break it.

"You asked me what the hell is wrong with me Nigel. I have trust issues now that's what the hell is wrong with me. I want to be all in, I want to hold your hand and kiss you but I don't trust you. That's the thing. I don't trust anyone."

Jade blinked back her tears. She had laid her cards out in the open, opened herself to vulnerability. Through her tear stained eyes Jade stared at Nigel and waited for him to spill everything about Amanda, to tell her that it was some sort of misunderstanding or something.

Unfortunately, Nigel didn't bare out his heart to her. Instead he said, "I care about you Jade. I would never ever hurt you. I know it's hard to pick up where we left off and I'm willing to wait. You're worth the wait. Just know you can trust me because I won't ever lie to you."

Jade's heart sank as she listened to him lie to her. She wanted to hate him so much but she couldn't bring herself to do it. She just wanted to punish him, to get back at him and play his game so instead of calling him out on his lies Jade smiled and took his hand entwining them with hers.

"I care about you, a lot, you know, that right?" she asked and Nigel nodded. "Let's do something fun then. We could go to your apartment and just Netflix and chill, you down?"

Nigel couldn't keep the grin off his face.

"Drive away my love," he said entering the direction of his apartment into the GPS as Jade backed out of the carpark.

***

Nigel now lived in a different apartment from the one he had rented before. This one was more modern but somehow still homey mainly because everything wasn't white like the previous one. This one had a total of four rooms; a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and living room.