Recover

Chapter Fifteen

Everything is telling me to let Jake kiss me, but something deep down inside me tells me not to. My mind even tries to tell me that everything will be okay, that he isn’t Drake; he won’t hurt me or take advantage of me. I don't trust him yet and my mind is just trying to tell me that I'm healed from what happened. But that isn't the case, I know that but all of a sudden he wants to kiss me when only last week ago he was ordering me around. Plus he canceled the date and didn't give me a reason. I remember seconds ago when I looked into his eyes and saw that strange and unreadable emotion.

    The wheels turn and something clicks, connecting the sudden cancellation with the emotion in his eyes. My stomach drops and all feeling of wanting him to kiss me vanishes into thin air. He doesn’t want to kiss me; he wants to be kissing someone else right now. I swallow back slight tears, now I know how Eva felt, a replacement for someone who isn’t there. My hands find the gap between us and they softly push his chest away. My voice comes out in a heavy whisper, "Another thing about a first date: You don't kiss."

     Jake laughs dryly, "Tip received." He goes back to lying on his back like he wasn't just rejected. I'm surprised he took it so well; thought he was going to yell at me. "Hey Gen?"

     My mouth goes dry, "Yes?"

    "Anything else I should know about first dates?" He raises an eyebrow and his smile turns into a cocky one.

    This time I laugh, "Not that I can think of."  I take one more glance at the sharks and then get to my feet.

    "Whoa, where are you going?" Jake says confused.

    "I wanna see more than just sharks, come on!" I wave my hand for him to follow and I head off to other tanks. We looked all throughout the aquarium, top floor and bottom; seeing fish with names we couldn't pronounce, ones so bright you have to look away and a gatherings of exotic shellfish. As it turns out Jake knows more about marine life than you would think, "How do you know so much?"

    His response is hesitant, most likely, something makes me think, that it's something hard for him to tell me and I'm shocked that he goes on. "My dad would take me here all the time when I was younger," he doesn't look me in the eye but his eyes instead follow an angel fish. They're glazed over with pain, from past memories?

     "Mom would be out on a girls' night or something for the pack and Dad would want to watch me. He didn't want me to be raised by other members of the pack like most children of high status are because of their busy parents. He believed that a kid should be raised by a parent not a substitute for one. One day when I was six he asked me where I had never been or what I wanted to see," His face and voice begin to brighten as he stops and thinks about it, any pain that was there completely gone.

     "I told him that I wanted to go to the place where I could see sharks, something I had never seen and he took me here. We came every weekend to see them and it became a tradition, I came up with nicknames for all of the sharks too. I wound up learning a lot and I didn't realize how much I missed this place. . ."

     "Missed it? Why did you stop coming?" How could he have been so in love with this place and just stop?

     "After my dad died I couldn't bear to come anymore," he runs a hand messily through his hair as discomfort slips into those brilliant eyes. He looks over to one of the tanks before looking me in the eye, "But I'm glad that I'm here, those memories were good ones and I should be glad that I have them."

     I'm dumbfounded, it's the first time he has told me anything about his family or of something that wasn't crucial at the moment. I stride over to him and slip my arms around his back, giving him a loose yet firm hug. His figure stiffens, "It's just me okay? Calm down. . ." He takes a couple of deep breaths and relaxes; quickly giving me a slight hug in return.