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Jay held her with all the strength he had.
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~oOo~
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“Do you think that stillfits?” Jay’s mother asked.
She stood in the doorway of his bedroom, watching as he pulled his one suit from its zippered bag. He’d worn it twice: once for a funeral, and once when Terry Capewell—rest his soul—had gotten married in a big, loud church wedding. Years had passed since then, but Jay was still the same height he’d been since he was seventeen, and he’d never been good at putting bulk on his frame so ... “One way to find out,” he said and slipped the jacket off its hanger.
He’d be standing at Petra’s side tomorrow when her father was buried, and he meant to look as respectful as he could.
Nearly a week had passed since her father’s suicide. In that time, he’d skipped all his shifts and had been at the clubhouse only enough to talk to Eight and let him know what was going on. He’d spent nearly every moment with Petra, helping her make arrangements, listening as she worked out what kind of service, who to tell, all of that.
They’d also gone through all those papers and shit on the dining room table and sorted them into piles of ‘shit we have to deal with right now’ and ‘shit that can wait.’ Among all that preparation was not a single word about his preference for his funeral. So Petra was mainly using her mother’s funeral as a template.
Jay had never been deeply involved in planning a funeral before. He served primarily as moral support and phone-call assistant. Petra was holding her shit together pretty well so far, but she broke quickly when she had to talk to the funeral director, or any other bureaucrat. In her father’s case, there was an extra ration of bureaucrats. He’d been due in court two days after his suicide, and expected to be taken into custody from there. Turned out, it took a lot of phone calls, and far more patience than Petra currently had to spare, to convince the criminal justice system that a dead man hadn’t ‘failed to appear.’
It had been a long, dark, bleak week. But Petra had turned to him again and again, in ways minor and major, each one significant. She’d needed him, and he’d been there for her. And somehow in that, she’d been there for him, too.
The jacket seemed to fit fine. A little snug, but not too bad. Jay turned and closed his closet door, so he could get a look in the mirror hanging there.
Mom came into the room and stood behind him, smoothing the wool across his shoulders. “You could do with as much as an inch of give in the shoulders.”
He shrugged. “Too late to do anything about that. It’ll be fine. Looks okay, right?” he asked her reflection.
After a critical look, Mom nodded. “Yeah. Looks good. You look so handsome in a suit.”
He grunted. He hated suits, but Petra came from a different world, so he understood, without being told, that it would give her some comfort if he were dressed like a normie.
“Pop and I are going to come tomorrow, unless you think that’s a problem.”
Surprised, Jay frowned at his mother in the mirror. Petra had met Mom this past week, when she’d come bearing a bag of clothes for Jay and a stack of plastic containers of food, but that had been a brief visit. His parents didn’t know Petra. He had no doubt that there was talk about her and Jay in the clubhouse, what with Simon and Duncan helping that day and knowing in detail what had happened, but nobody really knew Petra yet, much less her father. And Petra didn’t know them.
“You don’t have to do that,” he answered.
“Yes we do,” Mom countered. “Our son is in love, and the woman he loves is burying her father. Family shows up for family.”
Jay’s eyes itched suddenly—and then, before he knew it was going to happen, before he had any chance of stopping it, he was crying. Just tears falling out of his eyes, but fuck. Why was he crying? It wasn’thisfather who’d offed himself.
And then he was crying even harder. What the actual fuck?
“Oh, baby boy,” Mom said and pulled him into her arms, drawing his head down to her shoulder. “My sweet baby boy.”
Jay got his shit together as fast as he could, but Mom held on even after he was calm. His mom’s hugs were magic, so he settled in and let this one work its spell.
“Do you remember,” Mom said softly, “how when you were little you used to come home all the time with some animal you thought needed a home? A puppy or a kitten, or an old broken-down dog, bunnies from the yard, baby birds, fuck, even a baby cottonmouth once—which just about gave me a stroke. Sometimes you’dkidnappedthe animal because you didn’t like that they were kept on a chain, or you thought they were too skinny, or you’d heard somebody yell at them. One time you brought a feral mama cat in who was in the middle having babies right then. Bundled her and the babies she’d already had in your good coat and tried to hide them in the guest bathroom. Do you remember that?”
“Sure,” he said on her shoulder. He didn’t know what that had to do with Petra or her father, but he was too tired to ask.
He didn’t need to. Mom continued, “You have trouble with people, sometimes, but you’ve always been so good with animals. With all needy beings, really. Your heart is a huge, soft, wonderful thing, my boy. You’ve been afraid of it since you were about ten, worried caring so much meant you weren’t strong, trying not to care at all. But Jakey, my god. I knew when you fell in love, when you found someone you needed more than you needed to protect yourself, it would bebreathtaking. I know we don’t know Petra yet, and she doesn’t know us. But I know she is a very special person. Because you love her. So I love her, too. Family is there for family. She’s hurting. You’re hurting for her. And we’re hurting for you both.”
Finally understanding why he was crying, why he’d hurt so much all week and why he’d felt powerful, too, Jay hugged his mother and let himself feel everything.
