Just a month for Jenny

Submitted into Contest #89 in response to: Write a story that spans a month during which everything changes.... view prompt

4 comments

Contemporary Fiction Funny

We should probably start at the beginning, or somewhere close to it.

Jenny found a body.

Don’t worry, it wasn’t dead.

But one doesn’t often find their sister’s boyfriend in their bed.

Most people at least.

Luckily for Jenny not many people really knew her.

At least she felt lucky.

One thing for sure, he didn’t know her from Marry, Jona, or the Whale.

That she knew when he called her ‘Molly’ upon waking up. 

She went about her morning by herself, while he of course ran back to her sister, like a loyal puppy.

She’d call her sister later, and meet with her.

Of all the things they talked about during this time, she wouldn’t mention her little tryst. 

Or even how often things like this happened between Jenny, and the men around her.

Not to say she wasn’t frank, or even explicit about her more beguiling tales, it was much simpler that way.

There was something beautiful in being a woman easily seduced.

To fall in love easily, and rarely stay that way.

This was Jenny’s forte, and people generally forgave the indisgression, so long as she played the perfect lover when she did it.

That sounds like a lie doesn’t it?

It doesn’t quite matter does it? She thinks, as her sister tells her about the sweet, loyal, fool of a lover she’s found.

Young and curious she found it unlikely that Clara would keep her silly pup of a boyfriend too long.

Jenny had learned long ago what you reveal, and what you don’t.

Much longer than the time it had for her dear sister to, and apparently longer still for her lover, if the dread spread out on his face was to be believed.

She’d swat at him to quit it, but as it was now, it was unlikely to benefit her.

Clara was simply happy when she didn’t pick at him, knowing Jenny’s affinity for young men she didn’t blame her.

Jenny would be much less annoyed by this if the man in question didn’t act like an injured puppy anyway.

Lewis for his part was upset with her, for not spilling the beans like a raunchy twelve year old.

Jenny was frankly disinterested in his half-assed guilt, and was unwilling to become a casualty of his incompetence.

He hasn’t told her, Clara remains ignorant of his… our infidelity.

Clara hasn’t broken it off either, too far gone with her thoughtless and sweet Lewis to even think about it.

Wasn’t any of her concern, she’d already found her way sweetening the next fool.

That is until Lewis had the temerity to darken her door, all over a perceived slight at a barbeque party a week before.

Now this was a perfectly ordinary if heated interaction, the normal entitled knitwit pity party, that is until her idiot escalated the entire thing.

Rick, as chivalrous as a petty thief, involved himself in the situation still drunk from the night before.

Jenny backed away from the affair, fully expecting the argument to become physical.

She, being relatively disinterested in their pantomimed duel, closed and bolted the door.

Jenny made coffee for herself, as she watched Rick chase Lewis around with a cheap plastic weathervane.

It had only been a little while since Rick broke her weathervane on Lewis’s butt, which he was still very sorry about.

Little did he know it was a freebie from the last tenant, she couldn’t decide whether to tell him, or make him pay the fifty-bucks for it.

Though to be fair, she also wanted to thank him for the best carafe of coffee she’d had that year.

Lewis was pretty thoroughly embarrassed by the entire incident, and didn’t tell anyone about it, which was a good thing, as Jenny didn’t know what Clara would do in revenge for her boyfriend’s butt.

It was good to know what kind of drunk Rick was in any case, since she was probably gonna skate a year or two off him anyway.

Rick was trying to avoid his ex-wife; she could expect at least a year off him, if she didn’t outright chase him off.

Jenny decided to have a weekend with Clara and her Mom, since mother's day was just around the corner.

She was happy to buy wine for the occasion, Fancy and Box, while Clara would bring the movies.

They would be carpooling for a small shopping trip, before settling in for all day snacking.

It was the kinda thing that made more sense to do when everyone was single, but was more fun when you weren’t.

Clara spent the entire time picking on her boyfriend for the wild morning the week before, Jenny brought up the altercation that Rick had, though she did change a few names.

Their Mom got somber about family history, She had gotten a lot better since the divorce, but she still had emotional upheavals like that.

All together it was easier to forgive her for everything when they were younger without her husband screaming from the other room.

Jenny came home to Rick halfway along with his ex-wife, who at that point was about to become livid before Jenny broke her out of the response.

You don’t generally cuss out your ex-husband’s roommate after all.

They had coffee of course because Jenny didn’t just let other people screw in her house, she made them pay for it.

She had the feeling that his ex was a might bit more polite than most, and Jenny liked her alot more than most people she’d found defiling her abode.

Which to be fair was rather easy.

They talked for hours, while Rick just about shriveled in his Chair.

It was a rather interesting nightcap to go along with her mother's day weekend.

The more Jenny looked at her life, the more she started to recognize her own disinterest.

She liked Rick, but she could only ever like Rick.

Rick’s ex was his ex, but she cared more then Jenny did.

Even Lewis who she only rolled around with once seemed to care more than her, about it.

Rick moved out after that, realizing how little they were to each other.

Jenny would’ve been fine with him staying, but that would’ve been weird.

There was something beautiful in being a woman easily seduced, to fall in love easily, and rarely stay that way, but it didn’t feel right anymore.

Jenny never felt close, no one really knew her and she used to feel lucky for it.

But it’s not even that no one knew her, it’s that it didn’t matter.

She could look away, and no one cared.

She’d be judged either way.

April 16, 2021 06:04

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4 comments

Jessica Chaos
00:32 Apr 21, 2021

Love this. Rhythmic and visceral. Well done

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Kathleen `Woods
12:19 Apr 21, 2021

Thanks, I was trying for a composite-cousin type, if that makes any sense.

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Rose Quartz
23:10 Apr 19, 2021

This was actually really engaging! Very Nicely done!

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Kathleen `Woods
12:16 Apr 21, 2021

thanks, I'm glad that Jenny had pull.

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