Time To Waste

Chapter 01: Old News

Jenna sat across the small table, watching as Chris chewed on his pierced bottom lip and then sighed with resignation. "I don't like it." His brown eyes were full of emotions, mostly anxiety. 

"You don't have to like it." Her brown eyes beamed positivity, radiance; he felt trapped under her spell of assurance. "Besides, what is he going to do to me, Christopher?" The fact was fairly-simple: the man that she was planning to visit with was her ex-lover, and she had known him for far longer than she had known the man sitting across from her. She loved her current boyfriend deeply, but his paranoia about her ex was becoming a turn-off in this moment.

Her current lover shrugged his shoulders, continued to chew on his pierced lips. "I know what you're saying, implying, but I still don't like it. That guy is an asshole!" He sipped from his glass of soda and sighed with frustration. "I don't like this at all."

Her brown eyes were full of love as she reached across the table to grasp his chin in her delicate hand. "He's not going to hurt me. I'm with you now and I love you! So, relax, please."

He sighed again and placed a gentle kiss on her knuckles. "I love you."

Jenna touched his pierced bottom lip and winked. "When I get back, we can celebrate."

Chris smirked. "I like celebrating!"

* * *

He sat at the high-top table in the crowded bar, grooming his beard anxiously, hazel eyes darting everywhere and anywhere. He drummed his tattooed hands across the table top, waiting. Counting. Wanting this to be over and done with as fast as humanly possible. While he missed her terribly and wanted his lover back, actually seeing her with another man was torment. Torture. He hated watching them together in the corner booth, grinning at one another like school kids discovering their first love. When he snapped himself out of his frustrated recollections of her body, he realized that she was approaching the table.

She smiled nervously, and, for her, it felt fully awkward to be nervous around this man. She knew him so well, had known him for years, two decades. She knew his mannerisms, his favorites, his dislikes. She even knew the topography of his body. Why was she nervous?she wondered. Realizing that it had to be the residue of Chris' paranoia, she tried to shake it off as she slid onto the chair beside her old friend and touched his warm, tattooed hand. "Hey."

Trying to quiet his own concerns, Ben glanced up into those all-too-familiar, comforting brown eyes and grinned. "I've missed you!"

Her smile warmed. "I've missed you, too!"