Time To Waste

Chapter 12: Ghost

Devin guided Jenna out of her room and away from the commotion of earlier, down the hall to the left, and then three doors down. He produced a key card from his pocket and smiled warmly. "It's alright, you're fine." Propping the door open with his boot-clad foot, he gestured her inside. "Ladies first."

Frustrated and feeling like she had surpassed her wit's end, she tossed herself onto the bed nearest the door and made a noise like a growl and a laugh combined into one tormented entity. "I don't know who I am anymore," she offered, sniffling and burying her face into her small hands. "This is a nightmare!"

Seating himself on the bed closest to the window, Devin stretched his long legs toward the bed where she lay, then crossed them at the ankles. He stifled a yawn. "Do you need me to tell you who you are?"

At the sound of his offer, she found herself sitting up quickly and meeting his gaze. Hanging on a thread of hope, she whispered, "Can you?"

His blue-green eyes beamed as he brought his hands into his lap and began to fidget with the zipper on his black AFI hoodie. "Your name is Jenna," he began in his soft-spoken and reassuring voice. "You met Chris roughly four weeks ago, kind of accidentally while we were in town to play a show. I don't really remember the exact details, but you were both in the same place at the same time. You held the door for Chris and Ryan when they were coming into the building behind you, and then you started talking to Chris while waiting in line. The two of you became fast friends and, after a week of nine-thousand very lengthy phone calls - which the band hated, by the way - you drove out to meet up with him at another show, and you both fell in love."

Jenna shook her head emphatically at this, her raven hair bouncing around her shoulders. "He doesn't love me. He choked me! He wanted to kill me!"

He knew this was coming, so he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "He was very upset, Jen. Do you understand why he was so upset?"

"No," she admitted, crestfallen.

Devin patted the space beside him atop the heinous burgundy bedspread, urging her to sit and relax beside him. In a strange contrast to the other men, Jenna actually liked this: he was soft-spoken, kind, patient. His eyes beamed with an unspoken promise that things would somehow work themselves out, that she would remember who she was and how she had ended up here with all of these unfamiliar faces. In short, Devin was not like the others who were always yelling and screaming obscenities at her left and right.

"He loves you, Jenna," he continued, unable to hear the monologue occurring in her thoughts. "You are the first woman that has loved him back in a healthy way, not expecting or asking anything of him. Or, well, the first woman who has done this in a very long time. You've asked absolutely nothing of him, and that's really a breath of fresh air for a guy like Chris. His career leaves him to often be tugged in twenty directions all at once, always in demand somewhere by someone. The fact that you are patient and kind, that you let Chris be Chris, that's very different from what he has had in the past. I've known him for nearly a decade now, so trust me when I say this!" He sighed then continued. "When he walked into that room and saw you on top of Ryan, his bandmate and his friend of over a decade, how do you think that made him feel?"