Ask Jake (Book One of the Whisper Series)

Twenty-Five: Visitors

Adam

Chicago in the spring is just as amazing as New York. The view from my hotel room is astounding. If Gillian could see this view she would put words to its beauty and make it even more beautiful.

I can't stop missing her.

"You are quite a sight standing there," she says from my hotel bed. "I like the smile on your face."

Madison is covering her alluring body with my sheets. A few mornings ago, we bumped into each other at a deli. Her beauty caught my eye and by the end of our brief encounter she slipped her business card into my pocket. After my meeting with Whisper's distribution center, we ended up going to dinner, and back to my hotel suite.

"Why don't you come over here and look at this with me," I say, looking at her for the first time this morning and noticing how pretty she is with less make-up.

Leaving the sheets behind, she saunters to me and stops in front of me, sharing the view with me.

"Look how beautiful spring is in Chicago," I say to her, looking out at the trees in bloom with white, and pink, green everywhere. "If you were to put words to that view what would they be?"

"Ummm," she says, "I don't know. The flowers are kind of pretty, I guess." She turns to look at me, "Who cares about flowers? I have something better in mind." Her eyes glisten as she runs her hand down my belly and into my boxers.

A brush of depression rolls over me as she puts her mouth on mine. She is not who I want to share this view with, she is not the one I wish to hear describe it. However, she is the one I will have sex with, again, hoping it will take away some of the emptiness.

Gillian

The day at the beach has been, interesting. This is the same beach where Tristan and I spent many, many, hours, hanging out, playing volleyball, laughing and looking at the stars. It would have been his twenty-ninth birthday in a few days. He was always so cute about celebrating birthdays, making sure everyone he knew felt special on his or her day.

There are so many things for which he influenced me. Photography, for one, he made me minor in photography because he thought I was so good at it. Ravioli's. He made homemade ravioli's once and now I eat them whenever I can. It was Tristan that made me realize how rude it is for a waitress to use cleaner to clean a table next to us, while we are eating. These are just some of the ways that sharing my life with him has changed me. Tristan will always be with me because there are parts of him in me.

I need to learn to move on, not by forgetting him, but by embracing the memories. How am I just coming to this conclusion? It seems so simple.

My Adam journal stares at me from my beach blanket, begging to be written in. I find it easier to write to Adam, some of the time, rather than about him. Today, I write to Adam about all the ways Tristan influenced my life, and how he will always be a part of me.

The heat rising from my sunburnt skin is amplified when I settle behind the wheel of my mom's sweltering car. Two applications of sunscreen would have been smarter, as well as cracking a window in the car. I allow the heat to escape the cabin while I dig the keys out of my beach bag. My phone rolls into my hand, revealing several missed calls from my mom. She left a voicemail, but I call her back instead of listening to her message. "Hey mom, I saw you called. Did you need something?"

"Yes, you have a visitor at the house," she says and it sounds like she is smiling.

Adam? Did Adam come to Florida?

"A visitor? Who?" I ask, hopeful.

"Kellan," Mom says, shocking me. "Gillian, he called about two hours ago and he just arrived. I tried to call but you did not answer."