Harper's Rules 1 & 2

Chapter 12: Harper

"Almost there, Wilshire Boulevard," I murmured to myself as I saw the ten-mile exit announcement for UCLA's campus off Highway 405, the most ridiculous parking lot impression of a highway I'd ever seen.

The air between my car's hood and the white Toyota Prius twelve inches ahead of me wavered from heat as I absently watched while two small children batted their hands against each other in the back seat while the Mom chirped away on her phone.

Fuck, that's never gonna be me.

I'll rip my own uterus out with my bare hands before that happens.

"Exit fifty-five, I'm begging you," I pleaded with the standstill traffic, then shifted my car into park and stretched the nearly numbed calf muscle in my right leg.

A quick side glance on my right showed a couple who filmed some kind of seated dance routine video in their car, horribly by the outtakes then subsequent accusations they threw at each other, which I groaned at quietly. Unfortunately, a left glance showed an older man in a business suit with his eyes already focused on me, eyebrows wagged suggestively, and his tongue gently ran over his parted lips.

Fuck no.

With a sigh, I rested my left elbow on my door's interior. My middle finger had just lifted against my temple when, thankfully, Mom's Prius lurched ahead. The relief was short-lived and, for the next forty-fucking five minutes, I alternated between a game of which lane moved the slowest. While my body was completely relaxed like always after I had sex, I still shook my head at the last Jake Harrison billboard that advertised the nearest exit for USC games.

I exhaled a string of curse words by the time exit fifty-five appeared and, with no ounce of shame, pulled onto the shoulder and crept around the slowass traffic.

Thank God. If I see one more Jake Harrison billboard, then I'm driving this car through it.

Each billboard I'd seen, seven in total, grated on my nerves more and more.

I'd felt a mix of emotions after Jake had left my bedroom along with my dignity that Saturday morning before our senior year of high school started - embarrassed, used, angry, somewhat. But more than anything, I felt empty, abandoned, and rejected. The taste of how he'd made me feel for just a moment, that dangled threat of an emotional connection, felt like he'd ripped a hole in my chest and carried my heart out with him.

After this realization, the typical rom-com story emotions flooded out of me like a hormonal dam had been blown open. Jake was the dynamite that had burst open my emotional blockage and I was powerless against anything other than how I rode out the floodwaters after he left.

I cried, I screamed. I cursed. Boy, I sure cursed.

Once these emotions settled down, I washed away my snot and tears in a scalding hot shower that left most of my skin warm and pink. While I patted my hair absently with a towel, inside I was an even more empty, shallow vessel of my former self. With one look at the dull, lifeless gaze that reflected back in my bathroom mirror, I made some decisions.

Never again.

Jake's charisma, charm, and magnetic personality had managed to set the bar high for any other potential boy in my life, but he'd also knocked the bar right off once he'd left me at rock bottom. He hadn't quenched my desire to be with someone though. There was, and always would be, something about that initial spark, that interest, that thrilled me psychologically as well as physically.

Ironically, when love had been placed so close to me where I'd almost tasted it, Jake helped me set up boundaries so I'd never feel that open and vulnerable ever again.