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At two months old, Sophie didn’t have much to say in reply beyond squirming and yawning before settling back to sleep. “Don’t think she heard you. All good.”
“There’s much more important stuff to talk about, anyway.”
Three pairs of eyes turned to me. Ally’s, dancing mischievously, her dark curls bobbing around her head. Zara, much more serious, her blue eyes pensive, but also curious. Lucy’s green-eyed gaze was filled with concern. She, more than anyone, knew Jake’s and my history. Not all of it, I’d never told another living soul about that day and what Jake had said to me. Told anyone about the look on his face. But Lucy knew something had gone terribly wrong between us.
“Yeah, spill. What gives?” Ally asked.
“Nothing, honestly, there’s not much to say. I’m a professional nurse, it makes sense for me to check on Jake from time to time. That’s all.”
“I call bullshit.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, Lucy.”
“Yeah, and I do too, because that’s not what Gabe says.”
Frowning, I looked at Ally. “Really? WhatdoesGabe say?”
“That his brother is ridiculously hard-headed, and even if something is in his best interests, he’ll do the exact opposite if he takes it into his mind to do so, no matter how much everyone argues with him. Except for you. He’ll listen to you. It’s made this whole thing so much easier to deal with, because he takes his meds, gets his rest, eats enough, stays hydrated. We can’t imagine what a nightmare it would be if you weren’t there, making him do it.”
My frown deepened. “I don’tmakehim do anything.”
“Okay, but he listens to you. I wonder why that is.”
“Just old habits dying hard, I guess?”
“Maybe,” Zara said thoughtfully. I felt like she was letting me off the hook a bit and I smiled gratefully.
“As long as you’re okay with it. It can’t be easy.”
Now it was Lucy’s turn to get a grateful smile. “I am.” In fact, I was more than okay with it. I liked it. I couldn’t wait to see him again. Talk to him. Feel his nearness. Even if it was just for now, while he was weak, I was pathetic enough to take the little crumbs that fell my way and be happy about it.
Zara’s eyes filled with kind concern. “Can you tell me and Ally a bit about you and Jake? Only if it won’t upset you, of course.”
I chewed my lip, turning it over in my mind. It had been a taboo subject for so long, and I’d buried the memories so deep, that I barely even knew where to start, how to tell the story. Not knowing what else to do, I started at the very beginning.
“We were friends when we were kids in elementary school. Not best friends or anything, but we liked to hang out together. I was good at skateboarding and Jake liked that. So we’d do that around the neighborhood together sometimes. Nothing much. Then his mom died when we were twelve, and he obviously had a really hard time of it. I felt sorry for him, because all the kids at school were just so weird about it. Gossiping behind his back, not knowing how to talk to him properly to his face. One day, I just went up to him and straight up said I was sorry about his mom. He said thanks. I asked if he wanted to talk about it, he said not really, but did I want to go down to the river and skip stones? So we did that, then he asked me again the next day. Bit by bit, he started talking about his mom.”
I paused to draw in a deep breath, trying to push past the tight squeezing of my heart. “So that made us better friends, closer, and we started hanging out more. Outgrew the skateboards and skipping stones, upgraded to milkshakes at the diner, with the money from our part time jobs. He kissed me in the diner carpark when we were sixteen. I’d never kissed anyone before, but I knew I liked it. Him kissing me, I mean. A lot. He asked me to be his girlfriend and I said yes. He told me it was the first moment of proper happiness he’d had since his mom died.” I stopped again, lost in the memories of that day. And the deliriously happy days that followed. Until…
“You can stop if you like,” Lucy said gently.
“No, it’s fine. It’s good to talk about it, actually. So, anyway, things were great for quite a while. You’d never guess it now to look at him, but Jake had a wild streak back then. Loved to live on the edge. That got worse when Dante moved to town. Sorry, Luce.”
“No sorry required. It’s the truth, and something that has tormented Dante ever since.”
“Awww, Luce, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
Lucy shrugged. “We’re working through it. Sophie helps. Him realizing what an amazing father he is has restored his faith in himself.”
That made me smile, and I lifted Sophie to press a kiss to her sweet little head. “You’re one lucky girl.”
“She sure is. But anyway, back to you.”
“Okay. So. Jake and Dante were always acting like complete hooligans, speeding in Jake’s car, drinking even though they were underage. I didn’t like it, but he was never like that around me, never sped when I was in the car, never got drunk when we were together. I think that was why I didn’t realize how bad things had gotten. Until one day, I was driving back from New Bern, on a side road because the highway had been blocked off for some reason. Jake and Dante were coming the other way, veering all over the road. It scared the living shit out of me. At the last minute Jake realized he was heading straight for me, and skidded off the road, right into a tree.” My heart was thudding hard at the memory.
“Holy fuck,” Zara breathed.
“Yeah, it was pretty awful. He was a mess, and Dante was in a daze. I obviously wasn’t a nurse yet, so I had no idea what to do. There was blood everywhere… Honestly, at first, I thought he was dead. Anyway, he wasn’t, I called an ambulance, he was taken to hospital, and that was that.”
