Add in the criminal element, and they got insanely hard. Maybe they were too hard, regardless of how much I liked him. I looked at the mountain of uneaten cupcakes on my coffee table, packed them up neatly, and put them in my fridge before I made my way to my bedroom. I went to bed and tried my best to go to sleep, but it was hard to get to sleep as I thought about Jody.
I still managed to drift off, and for the rest of the week, I felt like I was asleep as I worked through every shift. I couldn’t focus on what was happening right in front of me, and could only think of Jody.
Of what was going to happen with him.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. He didn’t update me, but I expected that the police had paid him at least one visit. His phone number hadn’t changed, but he barely got in touch with me, and his checkup texts were the only time that I heard from him.
They were always short messages, to the point, simply saying good morning and good night. I knew that he was letting me know that he wasn’t in prison, but we never really talked about it like that. That would’ve made it real. I didn’t think either one of us wanted to be real.
It wasn’t until about a full week had passed that I decided I needed to speak to him in person. The tension was getting to be too much. I needed to know what had happened, but I also didn’t want to speak about it over the phone. It might have been too paranoid, but as far as I knew they had tapped it, and they were listening to his conversations. It sounded ridiculous when I thought about it, when I really thought about it, but this was an entirely new playing field for me.
I didn’t know what was ridiculous and what made sense. I didn’t know anything related to his criminal lifestyle, and that put me at a huge disadvantage.
It was late on a Thursday afternoon, and for a change, I didn’t have to go to work. I texted him, asking him what he was doing, but he didn’t get back to me. After about half an hour, I decided to call. He answered almost immediately.
“Hello?”
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“I’m a little bit busy right now, can we talk later?” he asked. I could hear the sound of people in the background, and wherever he was, it did seem like it was busy.
Instantly, my stomach sank. I didn’t want him to keep any secrets from me, but we were in the very early stages of dating, and I couldn’t ask him to account for his whereabouts all the time. Hell, I couldn’t ask him to account for his whereabouts at all. In reality, it was hardly any of my business, and I needed to be okay with that. It was difficult, though. Both our long history and the length of our new relationship made things a little trickier to navigate than they would have been otherwise, I thought to myself, as I took a deep breath and told myself not to take it personally. “Yeah, sure,” I said. “We can talk whenever you want.”
“Wait,” he replied before I could hang up. “You’re not upset, are you?”
I bit down on my lower lip. “No,” I replied. “No, not exactly upset, I’m more…”
“What?” he asked when I trailed off.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Worried. I’m worried about you.”
“Why are you worried about me?” he said, though I could hear the smile in his voice. “Honestly, I can handle myself.”
I laughed, a little dryly. “Maybe I’m the one who can’t handle any of this,” I said. “I might just not have the personality to deal with it.”
I heard him sigh deeply. I could hear his footsteps as he moved away from something or someone. His voice dropped to a whisper before he spoke again. “I’m—listen,” he said. “I’m, like I said, a little bit busy right now, and I might not be available for a little while. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hang out. I don’t want you to think that I’m neglecting you or anything, I just…”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You can tell me what’s going on.”
He sighed again. His voice was strained when he spoke. “I didn’t want to get you involved more than I already had.”
“That’s not fair. We talked about this; you don’t get to just decide things like this.”
He waited for a second before he answered. “Fine. I’ll tell you what’s going on, but I want you to know that you can’t talk me out of it.”
“Wait, what are you doing?”
“You are going to try to get involved, and that is not what I want.”
I shook my head, feeling a headache coming on as I licked my lips. “What are you doing, Jody?”
“I’m going to the police.”
“What?”
He sighed again. “I’m doing it. They got a hold of me, and apparently, they have quite a bit of evidence.”
“So—does that mean you’re giving up your accomplices?”
