Starting Over (A Linstead Story)

Chapter 3

After work, Jay and Erin had parted ways to go home and prepare for their dinner date. Jay's preparations hadn't taken long – a shower, a shave, and putting on some smart pants and a new shirt. That was all it took for him to feel at his best.

With still more than half an hour to kill before he needed to head out to pick up Erin from the apartment she had just moved into, he had time to call Jess and apologise for the way he had spoken to her that morning. The more he reflected on that, the worse he felt about it. He had given a very poor account of himself, so he wanted to make amends. His plan was to apologise, then offer to meet her for coffee or go out for drinks sometime, assuming she still wanted to talk to him at all.

The piece of paper with her number on was still in the pocket of the jeans he had worn to work. He went and fetched it, then added Jess Sutton into his phone's list of contacts. It felt odd typing her name in while thinking that she was his sister. His brain still hadn't processed it properly. It probably wouldn't until they started to get to know each other, he imagined.

Sitting down on his bed, he took a deep breath for confidence and tapped the icon to call the number. He didn't get nervous often, but he could feel it in his stomach as the ringing sound started.

"Hello?" Jess said.

"Jess, this is Jay."

"Oh, hi," she said, sounding surprised. Her reaction hadn't seemed negative, so that was good.

"How are you?" he asked awkwardly.

"Okay, you know. How about you?" The awkwardness was mutual. Jay decided to get the apology done, figuring it would help.

"Uhm... I wanted to say I'm sorry for how I reacted to you this morning. When you told me you're my sister, all I could think of was my dad cheating on my mom and it made me really angry. I took that out on you, and that was wrong. What my dad did is not your fault, obviously. No doubt I came across like an aggressive asshole, and I'm neither of those things, so I'm very disappointed with myself. Could we maybe... start over?" he suggested. Starting over really was a theme lately. Overall, he felt like he had delivered the apology and explanation quite well. But his verdict wasn't the one that mattered.

"Thank you for the apology," Jess said sincerely. "You did go off at me, but at the same time I did show up at your job and drop a bomb on you out of nowhere. Unfortunately I had no other way to contact you. When I left, although I was upset, I hoped you would change your mind and call me. You have, so I'm happy. Starting over works for me."

"Great," Jay said, smiling. "I wonder, would you like to meet me for coffee one morning, or go for drinks in an evening at some point?"

"Sure. How about tomorrow night?"

He didn't have any plans that clashed with that. "Tomorrow night works actually. You can pick the place. Drop me a text and let me know when and where?"

"I'll do that."

That would have been an opportunity to end the conversation if Jay wanted to, but now that he was talking to her he wanted to continue. "Sounds good. So, are you doing much tonight?"

"Working on a project at the moment. Taking this call has made me take a much-needed break."

Jay felt intrigued. "What do you do for work?"

"For my actual job, I'm a crime scene cleaner. I also run two YouTube channels. I'm working on a video right now."

It all clicked into place for Jay. He knew where he had seen Jess before. She worked on the city's crime scene cleaning team. Intelligence would call them in from time to time, for example when they busted a drug lab. Trained in hazmat, the crime scene cleaners would come and remove any and all dangerous chemicals and substances from a location before completely cleaning it until all traces were gone. Only then would the location be handed back to its owners. Of course, Intelligence were long gone by then.