Don't Play With My Heart - A Jai Brooks Fan Fiction (Watty Awards 2014)

Chapter 19: When You Look Me In The Eyes

Jai’s POV

I paced around my room for a good half an hour before I could even contemplate what I was going to wear. For the last twenty four hours, I had been going out of my mind. After I left Tamara’s, all I could think about was how much I wasn’t prepared for this meeting at all. Yeah, I’d dreamt of this day for the last thirteen years but I never actually properly imagined what I would say or wear or anything. I was so out of my depth so I did the only thing a sensible man would do: call his girlfriend.

“Tamara, I’m having a meltdown. I have no idea what to wear and I think I may be having a minor panic attack,” I say as soon as she picks up.

“Jai, just breathe okay. I’ll be over in five,” she says calmingly through the phone before she hangs up.

I take in several deep breaths. While it doesn’t calm my racing thoughts, my body relaxes a little and so I decide to take this momentary peace to at least have some clothing options to choose from for Tamara. I panic again and basically pull out my entire wardrobe of clothes before she knocks on my bedroom door.

“Is it safe to enter….wow. I didn’t even know you had this many clothes,” she gasped, seeing the mountain of clothing sprawled across the bed.

“Aaaah, well I couldn’t decide so I thought I’d make it easier for you to choose?” I suggested hesitantly.

“Okay, Jai look at me,” she says as she takes my hands in hers.

I immediately feel her strength as she massages the back of my hands with her thumbs. I rip my gaze from her delicate fingers to her chocolate brown eyes.

“It’s going to be okay. I don’t know about you, but I have a good feeling about today. I just know somehow that it’s going to be good,” she says.

“How do you know for sure?” I ask tentatively.

“I don’t, but I do know that if we don’t start getting a wriggle on then we’re going to be late.”

She bustles her way around my bed that I had stacked high with clothing. I decide it’s probably best if I leave her to her devices, so I just stand there like a lost puppy while she busies herself with mixing and matching clothes. Finally, she chucks me a pair of black skinny jeans, a blue button-up chequered shirt and my favourite beanie. I head to the bathroom to change and freshen up while she starts folding and sorting my clothes as she waits. No matter what I did from now on, I would never deserve someone as amazing as her; just when I thought she could not get any better, she goes and tops it by being incredible and stunning and all those other things that she’s good at.

She’s waiting downstairs and it’s only now that my head is partially clear that I really see how beautiful she’s dressed for the occasion. She has her hair done up in a straightened pony tail and her simple blue dress complimented her eyes beautifully. Her face was flawless, as per usual, and with minimal, natural looking make-up.

“I have no idea what I was looking at before to not realise how beautiful you look right now. I know you look beautiful everyday but today you look absolutely stunning,” I gush.

“Well, now you look just as amazing. And we even match,” she said with her award winning smile.

I look between us and see the subtle similarities in colour tones in our outfits and smiled back at her.

“Shall we?” she adds and I loop my arm into hers.

We decide that it would be best if we took her car considering she had to drive over to my place to calm me down from my freak out earlier. I go to take the car keys from the bench with shaking hands but she places hers over mine to stop them.