what sounded like glass being tossed into the trash. The laughter died down when I assumed he went into the bedroom where he had stashed the lady friend.
Ten minutes later, Otis returned and handed me a bottle of water, and sat down across from me. In the chair Eric had occupied only hours earlier, he took a sip of the amber liquid in the glass he carried in with the water bottle.
“Where were we?”
“I am not Anderson’s girlfriend.”
He smiled at me over his glass. “Okay. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
I glared at him. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
“I’m here because I’ve been friends with Anderson since we were eighteen, and I have a key to his house.” He sat up and rested his forearms on his legs, waiting for my response.
“I hurt my ankle at the park. Anderson insisted we come here because it was closest. He went to the apartment I’m subletting and, well, he packed up all my stuff and brought it back here. Bu–”
“Yeah, you’re right. You definitely aren’t his girlfriend.”
“We haven’t talked about that.” My voice betrayed my desire to sound nonchalant.
“You’re here. Really, what more of a conversation needs to be had?” Otis’s voice was soft and oddly comforting.
“I don’t know. The conversation where we address the fact that I have nothing to bring to the table. He has everything. His family has more money than I can wrap my head around.” My hands waved in the air as if I released a juicy secret I’d been keeping inside.
“No one has the kind of money Anderson’s family money has. He started inheriting large sums of money when he was fifteen. Granted, when his parents pass, he and his sisters will inherit a lot more but, Jurnee, he already has a half a billion in the bank.”
Nodding, I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the back of the sofa.
“You know what,” Otis continued once I looked at him, “I think it has very little to do with his money. Something tells me you could give a shit about whether he has money. What’s really going on in your head?”
Stupid tears began to flow. I angrily wiped them away from my face. The emotions and pain from my ankle were too much. I tried to stop the flow of tears that accompanied the wash of embarrassment that flowed through me.
“He is just too much. Like he takes up all the space in my mind when he’s not around and all the oxygen when he is. I’ve been hurt in relationships that I felt nowhere near as overwhelming or powerful as when he looks at me. I’m scared he’s going to swallow me up and then realize he could do so much better. Let’s face it, he could. Don’t know if I’d survive him walking away.”
“Isn’t that what love is supposed to be all about?”
Staring at Otis, something besides his words hit me right across the face. It was a memory of a movie I’d seen years ago about a man that falls in love with a woman from the other side of the tracks. No, it can’t be him. Jesus, what was his name.
“Look, you aren’t the only one that has been hurt. Anderson may have all the money he could ever want but look at how he lives. He’s such a hermit, it’s shocking that you got him to the park. He’s had to deal with being one of the darlings of Page Six. He’s been on his own since he was thirteen when his entire family moved away without him.”
Otis’s words morphed into something close to Charlie Brown’s teacher’s, but I continued to stare at him, trying to place who he was.
“Just talk to him and understand that this is really new for him as well.”
Then it hit me, and I screamed way louder than appropriate. “Oh my God! You’re Jeffrey Otis!”
“I am.”
He sat back in his chair and took a sip of his drink. The distance between us was far wider than the room would reflect.
“You were in that movie about falling for a girl from the other side of the tracks.”
“I was. It was years and years ago.” He crossed his legs, “please tell me you seen one of my movies since that one.”
Shrugging, I squinted my eyes together. “I didn’t really love it. Sorry, I’m not a movie person.”
“You are the best, and we are back to normal.” He laughed to himself into the