by Mila Gray
For Venetia & Amanda
‘You only live once. But if you do it right,
once is all you need.’
Contents
1. Jessa
2. Jessa
3. Kit
4. Jessa
5. Kit
6. Jessa
7. Kit
8. Jessa
9. Kit
10. Jessa
11. Kit
12. Jessa
13. Kit
14. Jessa
15. Kit
16. Jessa
17. Kit
18. Jessa
19. Kit
20. Jessa
21. Kit
22. Jessa
23. Kit
24. Jessa
25. Kit
26. Jessa
27. Kit
28. Jessa
29. Kit
30. Jessa
31. Kit
32. Jessa
33. Kit
34. Jessa
35. Kit
36. Jessa
37. Kit
38. Jessa
39. Kit
40. Jessa
41. Kit
42. Jessa
43. Kit
44. Jessa
45. Kit
46. Jessa
47. Kit
48. Kit
49. Jessa
50. Kit
51. Jessa
52. Kit
53. Jessa
54. Kit
55. Jessa
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
1
Jessa
A whorl in the glass distorts the picture, like a thumbprint smear over a lens. I’m halfway down the stairs, gathering my hair into a ponytail, thoughts a million miles away, when a blur outside the window pulls me up short.
I take another step, the view clears, and when I realize what I’m seeing, who I’m seeing, my stomach plummets and the air leaves my lungs like a final exhalation. My arms fall slowly to my sides. My body’s instinct is to turn and run back upstairs, to tear into the bathroom and lock the door, but I’m frozen. This is the moment you have nightmares about, play over in your mind, the darkest of daydreams, furnished by movies and by real-life stories you’ve overheard your whole life.
You imagine over and over how you’ll cope, what you’ll say, how you’ll act when you open the door and find them standing there. You pray to every god you can dream up that this moment won’t ever happen. You make bargains, promises, desperate barters. And you live each day with the murmur of those prayers playing on a loop in the background of your mind, an endless chant. And then the moment happens and you realize it was all for nothing. The prayers went unheard. There was no bargain to make. Was it your fault? Did you fail to keep your promise?
Time seems to have slowed. Kit’s father hasn’t moved. He’s standing at the end of the driveway staring up at the house, squinting against the early morning glare. He’s wearing his Dress Blues. It’s that fact which registered before all else, which told me all I needed to know. That and the fact that he’s here at all. Kit’s father has never once been to the house. There is only one reason why he would ever come.
He hasn’t taken a step and I will him not to. I will him to turn around and get back into the dark sedan car sitting at the kerb. A shadowy figure in uniform sits at the wheel. Please. Get back in and drive away. I start making futile bargains with some nameless god. If he gets back in the car and drives away, I’ll do anything. But he doesn’t. He takes a step down the driveway towards the house, and that’s when I know for certain that either Riley or Kit is dead.
A scream, or maybe a sob, tries to struggle up my throat, but it’s blocked by a solid wave of nausea. I grab for the banister to stay upright. Who? Which one? My brother or my boyfriend? Oh God. Oh God. My legs are shaking. I watch Kit’s father walk slowly up the drive, head bowed.
Memories, images, words, flicker through my mind like scratched fragments of film: Kit’s arms around my waist drawing me closer, our first kiss under the cover of darkness just by the back door, the smile on his face the first time we slept together, the blue of his eyes lit up by the sparks from a Chinese lantern, the fierceness in his voice when he told me he was going to love me forever.
Come back to me. That was the very last thing I said to him. Come back to me.
Always. The very last thing he said to me.
Then I see Riley as a kid throwing a toy train down the stairs, dive-bombing into the pool, holding my hand at our grandfather’s funeral, grinning and high-fiving Kit after they’d enlisted. The snapshot of him in his uniform on graduation day. The circles under his eyes the last time I saw him.
The door buzzes. I jump. But I stay where I am, frozen halfway up the stairs. If I don’t answer the door maybe he’ll go away. Maybe this won’t be happening. But the doorbell sounds again. And then I hear footsteps on the landing above me. My mother’s voice, sleepy and confused. ‘Jessa? Who is it? Why are you just standing there?’
Then she sees. She peers through the window and I hear the intake of air, the ragged ‘no’ she utters in response. She too knows that a military car parked outside the house at seven a.m. can signify only one thing.
I turn to her. Her hand is pressed to her mouth. Standing in her nightdress, her hair unbrushed, the blood rushing from her face, she looks like she’s seen a ghost. No. That’s wrong. She looks like she is a ghost.
The bell buzzes for a third time.
‘Get the door, Jessa,’ my mother says in a strange voice I don’t recognize. It startles me enough that I start to walk down the stairs. I feel calmer all of a sudden, like I’m floating outside my body. This can’t be happening. It’s not real. It’s just a dream.
I find myself standing somehow in front of the door. I unlock it. I open it. Kit. Riley. Kit. Riley. Their names circle my mind like birds of prey in a cloudless blue sky. Kit. Riley. Which is it? Is Kit’s father here in his Dress Blues with his Chaplain insignia to tell us that my brother has been killed in action or that his son – my boyfriend – has been killed in action? He would come either way. He would want to be the one to tell me. He would want to be the one to tell my mom.
Kit’s father blinks at me. He’s been crying. His eyes are red, his cheeks wet. He’s still crying, in fact. I watch the tears slide down his face and realize that I’ve never seen him cry before. It automatically makes me want to comfort him, but even if I could find the words my throat is so dry I couldn’t speak them.
‘Jessa,’ Kit’s father says in a husky voice.
I hold onto the doorframe, keeping my back straight. I’m aware that my mother has followed me down the stairs and is standing right behind me. Kit’s father glances at her over my shoulder. He takes a deep breath, lifts his chin and removes his hat before his eyes flicker back to me.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘Who?’ I hear myself ask. ‘Who is it?’
2
Jessa
THREE MONTHS EARLIER . . .
‘Oh dear God, who in the name of heaven is he?’
Didi’s grip on my arm is enough to raise bruises. I look up. And I see him. He’s staring at me, grinning, and I have to bite back my own grin. My stomach starts somersaulting, my insides twisting into knots.
‘Kit,’ I say, half in answer to Didi, half just for the chance to say his name out loud after so long. My eyes are locked with Kit’s, and when he hears me speak his name he smiles even wider and walks across the living room towards me.
‘Hey, Jessa,’ he says. His eyes travel over me, taking me in, before settling on my face. He rubs a hand over his shorn head, a self-conscious gesture that makes the somersaults double in speed. He’s still grinning at me but more she
epishly now.
‘Hi,’ I say, swallowing. I’m nervous all of a sudden. I haven’t seen him in nine months. I wasn’t sure he was going to be here today and though I’ve run through this moment dozens – hell, thousands – of times in my head, I find I’m completely unprepared for it now it’s actually happening. In all those imaginings I never once factored in the way he’d make me feel – as though I’ve just taken a running leap off a cliff edge. I’m breathless, almost shaking, finding it hard to hold his steady blue gaze.
He looks older than his twenty-one years. His shoulders are broader and he’s even more tanned than usual, both facts well emphasized by the white T-shirt he’s wearing. I can feel Didi squeezing my arm with so much force it’s as though she’s trying to stem an arterial bleed, and I know if I turn around I’ll see her drooling unashamedly. She might go to a convent school, but Didi’s prayers centre around asking God to deliver her not from trespassers but from her virginity.
‘Happy birthday,’ Kit says now. He hasn’t taken his eyes off me the whole time and my skin is warming under his relentless gaze. I can feel my face getting hotter.
‘Thanks,’ I manage to say, wishing I could come up with a better response, something flirtatious and witty. I know I had something planned for this moment, but my brain has chosen to shut down.
‘Hi!’
It’s Didi. She has let go of my arm and now thrusts her hand out towards Kit. ‘I’m Didi, Jessa’s best friend. You must be Kit. I’ve heard a lot about you.’
Plenty of emphasis on the lot. I make a mental note to kill her later. Kit glances over at me, clearly struggling to contain his amusement, before turning his attention fully back to Didi. He shakes her hand, introducing himself properly, and it gives me a chance to mentally pull myself together and really get a look at him. He’s six foot but he seems taller, maybe because he’s standing so straight. I recognize the ink marking on his arm, poking out from beneath his sleeve. It’s the same tattoo that Riley has. A Marine Corps emblem. My fingers itch to trace it. Oh God. For months I’ve been telling myself to get over Kit, ordering myself to forget him. Didi rolls her eyes at me every time I mention his name. She’s even added my name on Urban Dictionary under the word pathetic. But now, as I watch Kit casting his spell over her, I can see she may finally be ready to cut me a break.
She’s firing questions at him like she’s a Chinese matchmaker, asking all about his job and his uniform. I wouldn’t be surprised if she starts asking him next how much he earns and whether he has a girlfriend. I would interrupt, but I’m still trying to gather my wits and formulate a sentence, and, truth be told, I’m kind of hoping she does ask him whether he has a girlfriend. Though another bigger part of me doesn’t want to hear the answer. Because what if he does? Taking a breath, I remind myself he’s been in Sudan for the last nine months living with a bunch of guys, sleeping in a room with a dozen other men, eating in a mess hall. It’s not like he’s been going to parties or out clubbing every night, so it’s highly unlikely he’s managed to find himself a girlfriend in that time.
Kit answers Didi’s questions politely, nodding and giving the standard issue responses that they’re trained to. In other words, no detail whatsoever. All I know is that he and Riley have been in Sudan along with the rest of their marine detachment, protecting the US embassy in Khartoum. That’s all. They only got back yesterday.
As I listen to Didi and Kit talking, Didi telling him all about how she only moved to Oceanside six months ago and how her big ambition is to finish school and move to LA (thankfully she omits to mention her other big ambition – to lose her virginity), I realize I’m fixating on Kit’s lips, imagining what it would be like to kiss him.
Nothing has ever happened between Kit and me, nothing ever could, so imagining is all I can do. He’s my brother’s best friend and has been since they were fourteen. We’ve known Kit since we moved to California when I was eleven. He and my brother have been inseparable since the day they met at baseball try-outs. It’s the kind of bromance you see in the movies. Not the Brokeback Mountain kind, luckily for me, but something I was always a little envious of. Kit and Riley have probably not gone a day since meeting without seeing each other. They’re closer than brothers. It’s a friendship that persists despite the fact that my father hates Kit and has tried everything in his not inconsiderable power to pull the plug on it.
I glance through the window out into the garden where my father and Riley are firing up the grill. As though operating on some kind of sixth sense, my father’s head snaps up. He was a marine sniper in his day and he has an eerie ability to sense whenever he’s being watched. He has me in his sights. Then I see him register Kit. A dark scowl passes over his face before Riley ignites the charcoal, sending flames soaring as high as the nearest palm tree, and my father turns back around to bark orders at him. Honestly, only in my house does a birthday party get turned into a military operation.
It’s never been exactly clear why my father hates Kit so much, but I know it has something to do with his father, who is also a marine, and who served in the same company as my father back in the eighties. It could also be that my father blames Kit for some of Riley’s more questionable life choices – namely signing up as an enlisted marine, rather than going to college and becoming an officer, which is what my father had expected him (read: preached at him from birth) to do. Then there was the time they burned down the garage while setting off fireworks. And the time they both streaked across the bleachers during a televised football game. Yeah, now I think about it, there are maybe a few reasons why my dad holds a grudge against Kit.
Kit’s father is now a marine chaplain, having found God after a long battle with grief and the bottle following Kit’s mother’s death. My father meanwhile climbed the ranks and is now Colonel, a role that he inhabits even out of uniform, probably even in his sleep. That could be why Kit is still in the kitchen with us and not out making fire with the men. Or maybe it’s for some other reason?
Kit turns back to face me and takes a deep breath. Behind him I catch sight of Didi making a ‘phwoar’ face. I try not to laugh.
Just then my mother comes bustling through from the kitchen carrying plates laden with food.
‘Kit!’ she exclaims delightedly. My mom doesn’t hold the grudge towards Kit or his father that my dad does. In fact she’s almost as fond of him as she is of me and my brother. She treats him like her second son. Whenever Riley and Kit come back on leave it’s like the Second Coming. My mom throws off the depression that she’s been shrouded in since they left and buzzes back to life. I know that no matter how proud she is of them she hates the fact they’re marines as much as I do. I’ve always suspected too that she’s trying to make up for my father treating Kit like he’s some sort of pariah. It gets kind of embarrassing at times. Like now.
She sets a couple of bowls of salad and marinated chicken down on the table and grabs Kit into a fierce hug. She only comes up to his shoulder but he looks like he couldn’t prise himself free even if he tried. Which he doesn’t because he’s far too polite and I think he secretly likes the fuss she makes of him.
Didi takes the opportunity while my mother is hugging Kit to sidle up to me. ‘Oh man, I didn’t even recognize him from the photos. He’s so much hotter. I want to see him in uniform. Just imagine. If this is how hot he looks in normal clothes.’
I ram my elbow into her ribs. I’ve already seen Kit in uniform. And Didi’s not wrong. It rendered me speechless.
‘Or naked,’ Didi whispers. ‘Actually, yes, forget the uniform. Imagine him naked.’
‘Shhh,’ I murmur, not admitting to her that I have. Many times.
‘He is so into you.’
‘Shuttup,’ I mutter as my mother lets Kit go. My pulse spikes, though. Is Didi right? Or is she just saying that because she knows it’s what I want to hear?
‘No, I’m serious, he can’t take his eyes off you,’ Didi says, covering her words with a cough as Kit turns to stare at me a
gain. ‘See.’ Didi swings towards my mom. ‘Mrs Kingsley, do you need a hand?’ she asks in an exceedingly loud and exceedingly obvious voice.
My mom looks up, flustered. ‘Oh, that would be great, thanks Bernadette.’
‘Didi,’ says Didi abruptly. She hates anyone calling her by her given name. She grabs for the chicken and heads for the doorway where great wafts of smoke are billowing thanks to the lighter fluid accelerant my brother has just thrown on the grill. She shoots me a look over her shoulder as she goes – eyes bugging, head tilting in Kit’s direction. From this I deduce she’s telling me to go and talk to Kit.
The trouble is I’ve never had to force myself to make conversation with Kit before. It’s always come naturally. Until now. For some reason my throat suddenly feels as though it is stuffed with rocks. I can barely think a coherent sentence, let alone speak one.
‘So, Jessa, how you been?’ I hear Kit say just behind me.
I turn around, my heart shooting like a rocket into my rib cage.
‘You know . . . good. Fine. OK.’ Waffling. I’m waffling. He’s laughing at me. I can see the way he’s trying not to smile, biting his lips together. His lips. OK. Focus. Don’t stare.
I take a deep breath. As no one but Didi knows, I’ve liked Kit for years, have had a crush on him since I was about fourteen and he was seventeen, but the last time he was back on leave was the first time I felt it might be reciprocated, maybe, possibly. Possibly not. It’s this maybe, possibly, possibly not that has kept me awake most nights for the last nine months. I kept on replaying the interactions we’d had over and over until the memories were so worn I wasn’t sure if I was patching them with invented events, imagining things that hadn’t happened. Had his fingers lingered in mine that time he pulled me to my feet? Did he hold me extra close when he hugged me goodbye? Did he look at me with burning intensity because he was imagining kissing me or because I had food stuck in my teeth? We’ve emailed each other regularly while he’s been away and the emails have been light-hearted, veering sometimes into flirtatious before just as quickly scooting back onto more solid just friends ground.