☼ J A C K S O N ☼
I hauled the last bag of asphalt off the truck bed and onto the ground with a resounding thud, instantly feeling the strain lessen from my back. With a deep breath, I ran the back of my hand across the sweat on my forehead, and rounded the truck to grab my water bottle in the front seat. While I was chugging the remnants of the bottle, I heard someone call my name, and ditched the empty bottle in the passengers seat before turning around.
Tony took off his dirt stained hard hat and looked at me. "The trucks are all unloaded, Gaines. We should be ready to put down the asphalt tomorrow."
I nod in approval. "Perfect, we're right on schedule." I stretch back a little, trying to regain movement in my back, and then look at Tony again. "Does your back hurt, man? I swear to Christ, just lifting these goddamned bags for the past half hour broke my spine in half."
Tony, a big guy with a slight Southern drawl and a wife beater soaked in sweat from the heavy lifting today, just laughs at me. "You're the only architect who gets his hands dirty with the rest'a us. Maybe you should stick to overseein' instead of liftin'."
I take my own hard hat off and toss it in the passenger seat of my truck, running a hand through my sweaty hair as I squint to look at Tony. "You calling me a wuss?"
"Wouldn't dream of it," Tony tells me with a hearty laugh. "Go get a shower, would ya? Stinkin' up the place."
I shake my head and laugh with him. "I'll see you tomorrow, Tony."
He waves goodbye and heads to his truck, stopping to say bye to some of his coworkers. When I sat down in the drivers seat of my car, I immediately shoved the key in the ignition and blasted the AC to cool me down after a long day of manual labor. I hit the radio to turn it on and Life in the Fast Lane by the Eagles starts blaring through the speakers, and I grin a little.
We were working on a building on the outskirts of the city today, so it took me a half hour to get near my place on the East side of Center City. By the time I finally made it through the painful rush hour traffic, only a few blocks away from my apartment, my phone began ringing somewhere in the car. I blindly felt around for it before I found it wedged in between the cushions of the passengers seat, and turned the speaker down.
"Hello?" I answered gruffly, excruciatingly aware of how poorly I needed a shower.
"Hey man, can you do me a favor?" Brayden asks, and I can hear a lot of laughter in the background wherever he was.
It took me a minute to remember that he left for his business trip two days ago, and was sitting pretty somewhere in Florida as he schmoozed his clients. It had been two weeks since we had last hung out, which was consequently the night I got in a fist fight with Tommy at the bar. I was extremely busy trying to bang out the last few details of the building I was working on, and he was busy with work, too.
"What is it?" I ask as I roll through a yellow light, checking in my rearview to make sure there were no cops around.
"Sophie hasn't been answering my texts or calls," Brayden explains in a low voice. "I haven't talked to her since this morning, and she sounded pretty upset. Can you go over to her place and make sure she's okay?"
I catch my appearance in my rearview mirror: sweat had matted my hair back, there was dirt smudged on my cheeks and I knew my clothes looked the same, and the exhaustion from my day was written clearly across my face. Despite all of this, I passed my apartment instead of parking, and started driving towards Sophie's place.
"Yeah, I'll head over," I answer with a sigh. "I'll text you when I know what's up, okay?"
He lets out a breath, sounding instantly relieved. "Thank you so much, man. Drinks on me when I get back, alright?"
Even though I would've done it without the drinks as an incentive, I still agree easily. "Sounds good."
I hung up and continued driving toward Sophie's house, a little over the speed limit, and ended up getting there in seven minutes. Her car was parked in front of the building, so I took that as a good sign before I parked across the street and headed over. Based on the stares I was getting from passerbyers, I was acutely aware of how horrible I must look. Then again, I don't really give a shit what other people think.
I took the stairs and reached her room quickly, giving it a quick knock on the door before I tried the knob. Much to my dismay, it was unlocked, and I made a mental note to scold her for being so careless after figuring out if she was okay. When I pushed the door open, I heard The Rolling Stones blasting from somewhere in the house, and I stepped inside hesitantly.
"Sophie?" I call, but get no response other than the music. "Fee?"
I shut the door behind me and continue walking through the apartment. I checked the living room and kitchen and came up short both times, so I decided to follow the music, instead. It got increasingly louder as I stepped through the hallway, and eventually found her bedroom door cracked open. Carefully, I pushed it the rest of the way open, and saw no sign of Sophie.
The open window caught my attention, and I neared it slowly, glancing around her room at the mess. There were pieces of crumpled paper almost making a trail to the window, and there were pastels sitting in a box on the ground beside a bunch of expensive looking pencils. When I made it to the window, I could see Sophie sitting on the fire escape with her knees drawn to her, and a sketchpad resting atop her knees.
"Sophie?" I say, this time quieter, and she looks up at me.
Her eyes are red and cheeks tearstained, surprise written all over her face. I frowned at her, the distress on her face as plain as day, as well as the residual evidence that she had just been crying. My eyes glance down at her sketchbook and I catch a glimpse of a drawing- an incredible one, at that- of a girl looking out of a window with rain sliding down the pane, before Sophie slams her book shut.
"W-What are you doing here, Jackson?" She asks, sniffling midway through her sentence, and then wipes at the dried wetness on her cheeks.
Something inside me changed when I saw her look at me with such big eyes, to see her cheeks streaked with old tears, to know that Sophia was hurting for some reason. Instead of answering, I climb out of the window and join her on the tiny fire escape, looking right into her red eyes.
"What's wrong, Fee?" I ask gently, my voice coming out in a murmur without meaning to.
"I-I-" She starts, and then more tears pool in her eyes, and she drops her head on my shoulder.
Almost instinctually, I wrap my arms around her small frame and pull her toward me, trying to give her the comfort I knew she needed. The sketchpad fell from her knees onto the bottom step, but neither of us paid that any mind. Instead, I held her close to me as her shoulders shook with silent sobs.
I murmur quiet "It's okay"'s and "Just let it out"'s while I rub her back in a circular motion, something my mom used to do for me when I was upset. And, after a few minutes, the sobs start to slow, and I know that she had calmed down. I keep rubbing her back slowly, almost unconsciously, until she lifts her head up from my shoulder.
"I'm sorry," She mumbles, wiping at her cheeks and looking away, down at the city beneath us.
"I should be the sorry one," I tell her, hoping to lighten the mood. "My shirt is dirty and I'm not the best smelling company."
Sophie's lips twitched into a smile, and she looked back at me. "I'm the one who just cried all over your shoulder, and you're apologizing for your state of being?"
My lips slowly curl into a lopsided smile, before it fades and I ask the obligatory question. "What's the matter, Sophie?"
Any traces of her previous amusement faded, her expression darkened, and her gaze shifted out to the hustle and bustle of the city, watching dully from the fire escape. "I saw my friend from school today, Leslie. I don't know if you remember her, but she was in a lot of my art and photography classes in college."
"I think you introduced us a time or two," I answer evasively.
"Well, I saw her when I was walking out of work, and we got coffee. She told me about her life, about how she landed a job at National Geographic magazine. She's getting paid to travel and photograph the most incredible views. She showed me some pictures she's taken. It's what she's always wanted to do: to be paid as a traveling photographer." Sophia tells me, her voice full of so much emotion.
She stopped speaking for a moment, her eyes glazing over with a fresh set of tears, but I didn't pry or ask her to go on. I let her continue letting her gaze sweep across the city for a moment before she finally turned to look at me again, the emotion from her voice firm in her gaze.
"I always thought when I was in college that I would end up doing something that I loved, something with art. I thought that I would wake up and be excited to go to work or excited to sit in my studio all day getting lost in my art. I thought that my life would be so much different than it is now." She tells me, her voice hoarse, her eyes searching mine. "But I work in a cubicle for an accounting department and I absolutely fucking hate it. I hate my boss, I hate my coworkers, I hate what I'm doing in life. And I had to give Leslie a fake smile and tell her that I'm happy that she's doing what she's always wanted to do, then tell her about my bullshit job."
Sophia opens her mouth to continue speaking, but shuts it again after her eyes search my face. She shakes her head and looks away again.
"I'm sorry," She mutters. "Forget I said anything. I'm just being an unrealistic-"
"Sophie," I interject, and she stares hard at a tall building off in the distance before finally looking at me. "I remember leaving the library one day and taking the back way. You know, around those huge mirrors, with the window seat? I saw you with your sketchpad, leaning against the wall and looking out the window, drawing yourself on the window seat. I stopped and watched you draw better than I've ever seen anyone else draw like it was second nature to you. You had so much passion for what you did in college; I know how much art means to you. You shouldn't settle for a job you hate when you deserve so much better."
I had let that memory slip, but I didn't care. I just wanted her to feel better. She stared at me with her big blue eyes, almost in awe of what I had said, and I finally saw the hardened distress on her face fade away into a sort of wonder.
"You actually noticed me in college?" Sophia inquires, her voice light as a breathless laugh escaped her. "I thought you didn't know who I was."
I have to bite my tongue from letting her know that I was painfully aware of her existence in college, and instead go for the more neutral, "I saw you around sometimes."
Her gaze flickers between mine for a second before she says decidedly, "You know I had a huge crush on you in college?" She blurts, then her cheeks redden a tinge. "I hope that's not weird to say, you know, because of Brayden."
It feels like a bucket of ice water was thrown over my head the moment the words escaped her. The girl sitting beside me, my best friend's girl, actually had a crush on me in college, when I had a crush on her. I felt like someone above was laughing bitterly at me, playing a cruel joke. I just stared at her for a moment before slapping on a grin and hoped it was convincing.
"Everyone had a crush on me in college," I try to say confidently, arrogantly, and she buys it with her signature eye roll.
Soph shakes her head and the somber look returns to her face. "Thank you, though, for saying that. About my art. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I need some time to think about it." She straightens up and gives me a sheepish look. "Do you think, um, you could maybe not tell Brayden what this was about?"
My brows knitted together as I ask in confusion, "He doesn't know about you hating your job?"
"No," She admits sheepishly. "And I never really wanted to tell him, either, because he's in a good place with his work, and I didn't want to be a burden."
Selfishly, for some reason, I felt a little happy that she trusted me with this secret instead of him. Maybe it was my younger self surfacing who would've killed for Sophia to choose me over Brayden in some aspect, but I was content being the only one to know about her problem.
"I won't tell him," I promise with a small smile.
"Pinky promise?" She prompts childishly.
I roll my eyes at her this time, and hold out my pinky so she can link it with hers. "Pinky promise."
Sophia grins at me before launching at me, wrapping her arms around my neck tightly, and pulling me close to her. "Thank you so much, Jacks," Before I can wrap my arms back around her, she pulls away with her nose scrunched up. "Wow, you're right, you do need a shower."
I chuckle, happy to see that she was already in higher spirits than before, but my phone rings in my pocket before I can respond. I pull it out of my back pocket and see Brayden's name sprawled across the screen, and Sophia seems to catch a glance who was calling me too, because she tenses up a little before shooting me a worried look. She was scared I was going to tell him about what happened, I was sure, but she didn't have to worry.
"Hey Brayden," I answer casually.
"Are you there? Did you talk to her?" He questions quickly, his voice still quiet, as conversation continues in the background of wherever he was. "You told me you were going over a half hour ago."
"I just finished talking to her," I tell him calmly, my eyes flickering over to her worried expression. "She was asleep when I came over."
"Did you find out why she sounded upset earlier?" He pries.
I smirk a little at Soph. "She said she dropped her coffee all over her this morning. Classic Soph, just being a klutz." She swats my arm and I stifle my laughter. "Everything seems good, though. No need to worry."
Brayden breathes a sigh of relief. "Okay, good. That's good. Are you still with her?"
I glance at Sophia to see if she heard his question, and she shakes her head, silently telling me that she didn't want to talk to him. I nod once and shift my gaze away from her. "I just left her place because she was heading back to sleep. I'm sure she'll call you later."
"Okay," Brayden mumbles. "Okay. Thanks again, man."
"Yeah, no problem."
I hang up and Sophia mentions that we should head inside, so I climb in through the window first, then help her back into her room. I felt a strange, undefinable feeling in the pit of my stomach as a result of the way she trusted me to talk about her problems instead of Brayden. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but it felt uncomfortable. Like I shouldn't be feeling it.
We walk out toward the living room area, and I turn around to say goodbye and head back to my apartment, but Sophie asks kindly, "Do you want to stay for dinner?"
I thought about the frozen dinner that waited for me at my own apartment as a direct result of not going to the grocery store and wanted to cringe, but when I looked at Sophia, that uncomfortable feeling returned, and I felt like I should leave. "I should probably head over to my place. I still have to shower."
I feel bad upon seeing the tiniest bit of disappointment flit through her features, but when my eyes zero in on her bottom lip, which she had taken in between her teeth, I realize that I was right. I needed to get out. I look away abruptly and, before she can answer, start walking toward her front door again.
"Thanks for checking up on me," Sophie says, her voice genuine. "Sorry for, uh, crying all over you and making you lie to your best friend."
I turn around to grin at her. "All in a day's work. I'll see you later."
And then I got the hell out of her apartment and shut the door tightly behind me, feeling extremely guilty for being so attracted to my best friends girl.