Worth the Fall

by Mara Jacobs

  “I know. But it’s the truth this time. It was great. And it opened my eyes to some things about me that now make sense. But Petey, you must know there can never really be anything between us.”

  “No. I don’t know that.”

  She reached out to him, pushed his hair back from his face and then stepped away toward the door.

  “Al, seriously, why not?”

  She sighed, a sudden sadness taking her over.

  “You know why,” she whispered and left the room.

  Fifteen

  When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.

  ~ William James

  Eighteen Years Ago

  “Thanks for meeting me,” Alison said to Petey when he slid into the front seat of her car.

  He nodded, not quite meeting her eyes. “Sure thing,” he said and shut the door of her little Accord. He glanced at her quickly, then stared straight ahead, taking in the view.

  She’d called and asked him to meet her at the Quincy Outlook, a scenic viewing area that overlooked both Hancock and Houghton.

  Theirs were the only two cars in the lot, but later in the day tourists on their way to Copper Harbor would pull over, admire the view and probably take some pictures. It was a great view year round, but in the fall it could take your breath away.

  But Alison could barely see beyond her dashboard. She certainly couldn’t enjoy the beauty laid out before them.

  “Um…” she started, then stopped. She tried to remember the little speech she’d rehearsed over and over in her mind for the past four days. She looked at him, and her mind went blank. He was so gorgeous. Even in profile. Maybe especially in profile. His black hair still had a little sheen from wetness—he must have just showered. He towered over her, even sitting down, and took up not only the passenger seat, but part of her space, too. His wide shoulders were only inches from her.

  Shoulders she’d wrapped her arms around five weeks ago. One night only. Her first. And they hadn’t been alone together since. And had barely spoken to each other when in a group since that night in Katie’s basement.

  She wanted to reach out and run her fingers through his hair as she’d done graduation night. It was so soft, she hadn’t touched it nearly enough that night.

  “Umm…” she tried again. She wanted to throw her arms around him and burrow into that broad chest that was already so much more a man’s than the a boy’s.

  She’d watched him at the beach when he wasn’t looking. She’d been on a towel only a few down from him. Part of the group, and yet now the dynamic had changed. God, how she’d wanted to follow him into the water and wrap her legs around his waist, have him hold her up in the water and feel the slick glide of their skin on each other’s. She wanted him to touch her like he had that night. To whisper the words of encouragement and desire that he’d whispered to her then.

  “Umm…” She saw his shoulders fall in defeat. He knew. He knew why she’d summoned up her courage, called him and asked to meet.

  “Just say it,” he said in a whisper. She wasn’t sure if he even knew he said it out loud.

  “I’m pregnant.” His whole body deflated at that. His chin dropped to his chest.

  “Fuck.”

  ***

  He tried to rally. He thought he did it pretty quickly, but honestly he had no idea how long it’d been between her dropping the bomb and him swearing. He pulled his body up, bracing like he was about to get checked into the boards, and turning to face Alison.

  “What should we do?” he asked. A tiny tremble of what looked like relief shimmered through her tiny body. A body that wasn’t going to stay tiny for much longer.

  Shit, his dad was going to kill him.

  He did some quick calculations—easier to do since Alison still hadn’t answered him. They’d done it the night of graduation. He still considered it the best night of his life, even if she’d blown him off afterward. So, she’d have the baby around February. Right in the middle of hockey season. Right around Winter Carnival.

  She’d have to stay here, of course. No way could she be in the dorms at State with Lizzie and Katie and her big baby belly. But she could go to Tech for at least the first semester. It wouldn’t be a problem for her to get in at this late date—universities had been breaking down her door to offer her academic scholarships. She could have gone to any Ivy League school free of charge, but she’d decided to go to State with her girls.

  Kind of like him. He’d been recruited at several schools and been offered athletic scholarships at every one of them but had decided to stay here and play for Tech, even though he wouldn’t get the exposure he would have at a larger school. He and his dad had weighed it all out at the dining room table that’d been littered with letters from colleges for most of the year.

  Exposure from a larger school versus being the big fish in a small pond. And his parents being able to see him play. He had to admit that one had him in knots, both for and against.

  But ultimately he’d decided on Tech. Maybe it was meant to be. With him here, it would make it all easier—they’d have his parents and her parents for help when the baby came. He’d have to call Coach and see about switching from the dorms to married housing. Thankfully they’d both have scholarships. They’d never be able to swing staying in college any other way.

  She still wouldn’t look at him. She would marry him, wouldn’t she? He knew she was embarrassed that they’d slept together and had basically ignored him all summer.

  But she couldn’t ignore him now.

  And yeah, he was scared shitless about the idea of becoming a father so young, but some deep, caveman gene was screaming that now he’d have Alison.

  She may be ashamed that Ms. Genius had the hots for Mr. Dumb Jock, but there was no denying how good they’d been together.

  It wasn’t going to be easy, he wasn’t naïve. But damn, he did like the idea of waking up with her every morning.

  But first they’d have to tell their parents and then their friends.

  Shit, his dad was going to kill him. Well, Lieutenant Dan was just going to have to suck it up.

  “I’m not going to keep it,” Alison said pulling him out of his imaginary, sure-to-come argument with his father.

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant.” Relief coursed through him, but she was still shaking her head. His gut clenched. “Not I’m not going to keep it. I’m not going to have it.”

  The emotions rolled through his body. Fear—that his parents would find out about it. Irrational he knew, since he’d just been imagining telling them they were going to be grandparents. Shame—that he’d be taking this girl to someplace out of town to…deal with it (shit, he couldn’t even mentally think the word). Regret—not about spending the night with Alison, he’d never regret that—but that he’d somehow put them both in this position. Sadness—for the future with Alison he’d just imagined never coming to be. And deep, deep sadness for the child who would not be.

  And relief. The sense of relief was overwhelming and it raised the level of shame tenfold.

  Could he talk her out of it? He studied her. She was such a strong, proud little thing, but the night they’d been together she’d clung to him, had looked at him with such passion and…something more.

  Did he hold any sway over her? Could he make her keep it? Make her marry him? He’d be off playing hockey, and she’d be stuck at home. He’d imagined her easy acceptance at Tech, but would she be able to keep up with a baby at home?

  He was destined for great things on the ice, he knew it. He had a good dose of humility, but he knew deep in his bones that he’d be a hockey star someday. Would having a baby derail that?

  How could it not?

  Alison was destined for academic greatness. She wanted to be a scientist and was bound to discover the cure for cancer or something else equally amazing. Would she be able to do that with a baby at eighteen?

  He pushed
the moral dilemma from his brain, too emotionally drained to even contemplate its weight right now. He would grapple with that later.

  She finally—finally—looked at him. Tears welled in her beautiful brown eyes. Eyes that seemed to take up nearly half of her pixie face. Eyes that held a world of sadness.

  His thoughts of trying to sway her in any direction flew from his over-taxed brain. All he wanted now was to take away her pain.

  Knowing he could never do that, he vowed to do his best to at least share her pain. He lifted a hand and slowly slid it along her jawline, coming to rest on her soft cheek. His hand was so big that it encompassed nearly the entire side of her face. His fingertips brushed the bottom of her ear. Her hair was so soft against his rough hand.

  He bent his head, brought his lips to her forehead and gave her the tiniest of kisses. He then rested his forehead against hers. “How can I help? What can I do?” he whispered.

  He saw the teardrops fall. With their heads at this angle, her tears fell straight down. They landed on her bare leg, just below the hem of her khaki shorts. The first one stayed there, a perfect drop upon the brown, tan skin. He wanted to reach down and touch it, smear it, wipe it away, like he wanted to wipe away this day.

  But he didn’t move. He just held her face in his hand, rested his head against hers, and waited as more tears silently fell. The tears landed on top of each other, eventually causing an overflow that seeped toward her shorts, wetting the fabric at the edge.

  He had no sense of how long they sat that way while she cried and he wished he could do something—anything—to help. Finally, she pulled away from him. He wanted to hold on, to ease her back to him, but her intention was clear and strong—she wanted to be away from him. She seemed to want as much distance from him as her tiny car would allow.

  It felt just like the first time they’d seen each other after that night, when they’d all been at Katie’s. He’d had her for one night. He had her for a few moments now while she cried.

  But he’d never really have her. She was too smart for that.

  “Would you…take me? Go with me? To Green Bay. I found a place.”

  “Of course,” he said with no hesitation. He’d do whatever she needed him to do. Help ease her pain in any way he could.

  He’d worry about his pain some other day.

  Sixteen

  Ice hockey is a form of disorderly conduct in which the score is kept.

  ~ Doug Larson

  The next morning, Alison listened intently to her patient. There was no tendency to daydream, and lord knew she had plenty of material for mind-wandering.

  But no, she listened closely to James—not only to what he said, but more importantly to what he didn’t.

  James had tried to commit suicide two years ago as a senior in high school in Wisconsin. He’d slit his wrists, but his mother—unexpectedly returning home from work with the flu—found him in time.

  Now a sophomore at Tech, he’d been seeing Alison, at his parents’ urging and encouragement, since his first week in the Copper Country.

  In some ways, the Copper Country was a good place for him—calm, peaceful, laid back. In others? Not so much. He was in a high-risk category: male in his early twenties, high intelligence, away from home.

  The isolation, the high academic pressure at Tech, and the long winters were all possible triggers for any setbacks with James.

  And there had been a couple.

  So, no chance to revel in memories of the night before. Which really was just as well.

  James made himself comfortable on the couch, sitting in the same corner as he typically did—the one nearest Alison’s chair. His hands, always in nervous motion, slid up and down his pants from thigh to knee.

  He took a deep breath and then another. Alison waited.

  He shrugged, his hands now pulling at the bottom hem of his grey sweater. “I don’t know. I guess I don’t have much to say today.”

  “That’s okay. Some days I don’t have much to say either. How is your roommate?”

  “Good. We went to a movie last Saturday night.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “The movie? Or the night out with Bryce?”

  “I meant the night, but either.”

  He went with the movie, describing the action sequences in far more detail than Alison needed, but she let him go. Just having him talk so freely was a good sign from when he’d begun seeing her two years ago.

  His IQ was off the charts, but his mind, oh that high-functioning brain, was sometimes his biggest enemy.

  She knew what that was like.

  “But it was good to hang out with Bryce, too. To go out, and not study for a night.” He looked up at her from his lap. “That’s good, right?”

  She nodded. “That’s very good. You need to be able to get away from the books—we talked about that. And you can never have too many friends.”

  He was nodding, but she could tell that his mind was already off in another direction.

  “What are you thinking right now, James?” He took a second too long, and she knew he was debating what to tell her.

  “Oh, just that it’d be cool if they made a sequel to that movie.”

  He wasn’t telling her the truth.

  Alison continued to ask him questions on how he’d spent the time since their last session. She was trying to lead him somewhere, but she wasn’t sure where he needed to go.

  His fingers now clasped and unclasped, as if he were trying to warm them, though he’d been inside long enough that any residual cold from the outside would have worn off by now.

  He talked about one of his classes he found interesting. It was a diversionary tactic, and usually she’d call him on it and get him back on track. Other times she sensed he wasn’t going to get back on track no matter how much she tried to corral his train of thoughts with pointed questions. She let him talk of things that seemed unimportant. She tended to think nothing James said was unimportant, even if he thought that.

  As they were wrapping up, she began the assessment of James’s current stability that she did every session. She began by softly asking, “James? Have you had any thoughts of suicide since we last met?” Which had been last week. They were at two sessions a week.

  “Not really, no.”

  “That didn’t sound definite.”

  “It’s not that I thought about…that. It’s just that I’ve thought about how nice it would be to just fall asleep and never wake up. But not necessarily die or anything. Just…”

  “Not wake up.”

  “Right. Just like one long nap.”

  Actually, that sounded pretty good to her, too.

  “I wouldn’t do it, though,” he added.

  “Do you currently have anything in your dorm room that could be used to hurt yourself? That would include pills.”

  “No, nothing. And the only pills are the meds Dr. Thompson prescribed.”

  “And you’re taking them?”

  His eyes darted away as he nodded. “Mmm-hmm. Yeah.”

  “It’s important to stay on them, James.”

  “I know,” he said, but Alison doubted him.

  “If you were to try to kill yourself, do you know how you would do it? Do you currently have a plan?”

  “Well, I’d obviously choose a different route,” he said, holding up his wrists, the scars from his previous attempt covered by his sweater. He then tried a half-hearted shrug/smile combination.

  She wasn’t going to let him off the hook with that.

  “Do you have a different route chosen, James?”

  He looked her in the eye and shook his head just slightly, his body quiet for a moment. “No.”

  She let out an internal sigh. “So, let’s get back to your idea of falling asleep forever.”

  He went on for a little while describing what sounded to Alison like a lovely passing of time, while also mentally filing it all away to think about later, as she made her notes on the session.


  She did some follow-up assessment questions and just barely got them in before James’s restlessness got the best of him just as the session was up.

  He rose, then moved to the other side of the room and started putting on his outerwear. He struggled with his boots, and Alison resisted the temptation to kneel down and lace him up like a mother would for a small child.

  James was not a child, and she was not anyone’s mother.

  After they confirmed she would see him in two days and James left her office, she moved to her desk to make notes in his electronic file. She typed for a good fifteen minutes, trying to objectively transcribe her thoughts on James’s mental health.

  She looked up James’s contact info, then picked up the phone and dialed. When a receptionist answered she identified herself and asked to speak with Dr. Thompson. Scott was a general physician in the area that happened to be the physician to several of her patients. Like most doctors in the area, he took his turn being on-call in the local emergency room. His offices also happened to be in an office park right across from the hospital, which was convenient.

  “Alison,” he asked when he came on the line. “What can I do for you? Is Petey okay?”

  Oh, right, Petey. She pushed all thoughts of the hulking jock out of her head—though the word “jock” made her mentally pause—and said, “Petey’s fine. Well, he was still sleeping this morning when I left the house, so I’m assuming he’s still fine.” She thought about how that sounded and quickly added, “At least, I heard him snoring as I walked by his room.”

  “That’s good. His knee obviously isn’t interfering with being able to get good sleep.”

  It wasn’t interfering with other activities either, but she kept that bit of information to herself.

  “Actually, I’m calling about James Jurgeson.”

  “Is he okay?” Scott quickly asked with concern.

  “Yes. I mean I think so. He just left a session. I wanted to check with you that he was still on his meds. I mean, as much as you could possibly know.”