Teen Idols And Happy Meals

Coke and Cameras

Jacen’s POV

I didn’t know why I did it and I didn’t want to know. I’d tried - tried to understand why on Earth I would take the rap for this random girl – this stranger. But I couldn’t. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t rationalize it. So I’d stopped trying and just resigned myself to the fact that it had happened.

The best thing for me now would be just to forget about her. To push her out of my mind. But it seemed the harder I tried to push the thought of her away, the harder the image of her fought to stay in my brain.

She was nothing special, I told myself. Skinny, kind of short, offensively pale. Her unruly hair had split ends in it and her front teeth were kind of crooked. She had freckles all over her cheeks and blackheads on her nose. Her eyebrows were three shades darker than her hair and she seemed to have perpetual shadows under her eyes.

She had a lot of flaws. But . . . That was the weird thing. I’d noticed all those flaws. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d studied someone with so much attention to detail. Usually with women I looked at them and then decided if they were pretty or ugly; and that was it. Case closed.

But with this girl . . . It was different. When I’d first met her I’d been sure she was nothing special. Kind of cute yeah, but nothing new. But then . . . Up in that tree – when we’d been face to face, I began to rethink my earlier evaluation.

She was pretty, I’d realized. Not in the traditional way though. Not in the Rosalyn way. Not the kind of beauty you noticed across a room – across an ocean. No . . . She had the kind of face you had to look at for a long time before you could decide for sure. Before you noticed how pretty her eyes were . . . Or how nice her smile was . . .

But it wasn’t just her looks . . . It was something else. And this was the part that really tripped me up. Sure, I’d never thrown myself under the bus for a pretty girl before, but lots of other guys were always doing stupid shit like that – maybe it was just a matter of time. But I knew that wasn’t it. I’d seen much prettier girls before, and never, ever had I considered doing for them what I did for Jane.

Jane . . . It was such a simple name. But it invoked such complex feelings inside me. She’d been different, somehow. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. Something about her just seemed undeniably and inexplicably . . .  real.

I groaned, throwing my arm haphazardly over my eyes. Here I was, sitting in jail, obsessing over some girl. I was no better than that idiot Romeo or the guy from Titanic. This was what happens when you help damsels in distress. You drink some poison thinking she’s dead, you freeze to death before the lifeboats come, or your ass ends up in jail. Moral of the story? No good has ever come from helping women.

“Hey rock star,” came a gruff rumbling voice. I knew immediately I was the one being addressed, even though I was, in fact, not a rock star nor did I have any affiliation with the music industry.

I removed my arm from over my eyes and sat up. I’d transformed a metal bench into a rather uncomfortable lounge, hoping to get a nap in. But apparently it was not to be.

I made eye contact with the officer, regarding him with defiant, lazy eyes. “You rang?” I quipped.

He grunted at me in a manner that resembled a snort. “There’s someone here to see you,” he informed me, glancing over his shoulder.

I followed his gaze to see Rosalyn strutting in, dressed to kill as usual. Red silk blouse with the top few and the bottom few buttons undone, low rise jeans, the edges of black lace panties visible against her hip bones.