“I was in bad shape this morning. Thank you for making sure I got into bed last night.”
“Always,” he says with the kind of conviction that makes my heart flutter.
I take a deep breath and ask the question I probably shouldn’t ask, but am dying to know the answer to. “I didn’t…say anything last night, did I?”
Jackson huffs out a laugh, then rubs the back of his neck. “Uh…yeah. You were quite the talker.”
Oh god, that’s what I was afraid of. My cheeks heat with embarrassment, even though I don’t know exactly what I need to be embarrassed about. There’s something, I’m sure, especially given the fact that we’d kissed before I got completely drunk.
“Did I…was there anything I said about…” I’m not really sure how to phrase my question.
Jackson holds my gaze, his eyes intense with something that makes it difficult for me to breathe. The silence between us stretches on. I honestly don’t know if I’m hoping I spilled my guts about how much I still want him, or if I’m hoping I babbled incoherently.
“No, Bird. You didn’t say anything you need to be worried about.”
He’s lying, but I don’t really want to know the truth. He wouldn’t tell me even if I pushed, and his answer would probably mortify me anyway.
“Okay.”
“Should we talk about it?”
I feign ignorance. “Talk about what?”
“Me kissing you. You getting drunk hoping to forget it.”
I huff out a bitter laugh. As if I could forget that kiss. As if I would want to.
“I’m pretty sure I kissed you, too. And I wasn’t trying to forget about it.” I was trying to quiet my conflicted mind. I was trying to keep myself from doing it again.
He narrows his eyes like he doesn’t believe me. “We were at Ruby’s, everyone was having a good time, and it felt like we were back in college again. I got a little carried away.”
My heart unexpectedly sinks. “Oh. I’m sorry, I—”
“No,” he says quickly, shaking his head. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was that it was easy to forget everything that happened since. I don’t regret kissing you. I wanted to kiss you.”
“I wanted to kiss you, too.” God, the look on his face right now makes me want to hook my arm around the back of his neck and do it again.
He takes a deep breath, and the admission hangs between us for a few awkward moments.
“I saw you doing some writing earlier, down at your favorite spot.”
“Yeah,” I reply with a smile, grateful he changed the subject. “I made some progress today on something I’ve been struggling with.”
Jackson smiles back. “I’m glad. I read your book. It was really good; I was hoping you would write more.”
That’s about the last thing I expected him to say, and it leaves me feeling a little exposed. I used my writing as an outlet during our breakup, and funneled my thoughts onto those pages. The situations weren’t the same, but I definitely used that book to work through some of my feelings at the time.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know if you’d be okay with that, but I got curious and—”
“Why wouldn’t I have been okay with you reading it?”
He presses his lips together. “It’s not important.”
I’m so tired of leaving things unsaid. Every time Jackson’s tried to talk to me during this trip, I’ve walked away. I’m not going to walk away this time. I want to get everything out in the open, to put all my cards on the table so we can both move on.
“Of course it’s important, Jackson.” I sigh with frustration and focus on the softness of Sam’s fur beneath my fingers. I need something to keep me grounded, because I don’t want to yell. If we’re opening up old wounds, I want to give them the care they deserve.
“When we were together, we were good, right? We were happy, weren’t we? I didn’t imagine that, did I?”
Jackson’s brows knit together, like he can’t quite figure out where I’m going with this. “Yeah,” he draws out. “We were happy. You didn’t imagine it.”
I push myself forward until I’m sitting on the edge of my seat. “Right before we broke up, right before the—” I stop myself short of mentioning the accident, not wanting to bring up too many painful topics at once. “We were fighting a lot about some really stupid stuff. Not relationship-ending things, but like…surface-level, dumb things. You seemed annoyed with me more than anything and with some of the passive-aggressive comments you’ve made about my writing since we’ve been here, I’m starting to wonder if you weren’t as supportive of that as you seemed.”
At the time I’d tried to brush it off as school stress. Jackson would snap at me over something stupid, I’d snap back at him, then we’d make up and the whole cycle started again a few days later.
“Your book. What got published, was that what you were writing in college?”
I blink as I try to recover from my mental whiplash. “I wrote some of it in college,” I say, testing the waters. I have no idea what he’s getting at. “Some of it I wrote after, in New York.”
“You wrote it in your group with…Trevor? That was his name, right?”
“Yeah.” Jackson says his name so bitterly that I’m half expecting him to accuse me of cheating or something. The thought of that makes my blood run cold. “Why?”
“Did you show him the writing that made it into your book?”
“Some of it. And he saw things that never made it anywhere.” I’m really confused about the way this conversation has turned around on me. “What is this about, Jackson?”
He scrubs his hand over his face. “You let him read what you wouldn’t let me read,” he accuses. “And all those other people in your group you barely even knew. Strangers.”
This isn’t at all how I expected this to go. I’m on the defense all of a sudden and I don’t even know why. Jackson always seemed supportive of my writing. He encouraged me to make time to do it. I have no idea where this bitterness is coming from.
The way his fingers are laced together in a white-knuckled grip—a habit he has when he’s nervous—I can tell this is something he’s kept bottled up for a long time. I just can’t figure out why he’s so concerned with Trevor all of a sudden. Jackson was never a jealous guy.
“I don’t understand this. You were never that kind of boyfriend. You were never that guy who was worried about what I was doing. You always trusted me.”
“I did trust you. I do trust you. This…it’s not about trusting you, it’s about you trusting me.”
What? I let out a frustrated sigh. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why on earth would you think I didn’t trust you?”
“You spent a lot of time with your writing group, and it was obvious that you loved it. I’d see you after your meet-ups, and you were so happy; your whole demeanor changed.”
“I don’t see how that’s a bad thing.”
“It’s not a bad thing. But you’d come home—after—and we’d talk about what happened during your group. I’d ask to see what you’d written. You’d always downplay it or tell me you weren’t ready to share.”
I do remember that. And then he completely stopped asking.
“I wanted to be a part of this thing that you loved so much—that you spent so much of your time doing—in whatever way that I could. And Trevor, he came up to me one day on campus and he said, ‘Aren’t you proud of Birdie?’ Of course I was, and I told him so. I was always proud of whatever you were doing.
“Then he started talking about this short story you’d written that had gotten selected for publication in this magazine, and how prestigious and huge it was for you and how promising your talent was, and I just nodded along like an idiot because I had no idea about any of it. I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe you’d just found out and you hadn’t had a chance to tell me yet. Then I came up with some stupid, transparent way to ask him when it had ha
ppened. And it had been two fucking weeks!”
I roll my shoulders to defuse some of the tension that’s making my shoulders feel like knots. “You got busy with baseball and hanging out with your friends, and you stopped asking about it. I thought you weren’t interested anymore.”
“Not interested?” he says with a bitter laugh as he shakes his head. “I was trying to give you the time you needed to work on your writing! I had no idea what you were doing and you wouldn’t let me see any of it because you kept saying you weren’t ready to show anyone. But then I find out that not only were you showing other people, your work was getting published by other people, and you never even told me! So…yeah, I felt left out and angry. And jealous. I loved you, and you were off spilling your guts on paper and letting everyone else but me read it. And if what you wrote back then was anything like what it was in your book, well…”
He sighs, looking completely defeated. “Writing was such a big part of your life,” he says with a helpless shrug. “I wanted to be a part of the things that mattered to you. I felt like you were hiding the important parts of yourself from me. I felt like I didn’t know you like I thought I did and that maybe…maybe you didn’t want me to.”
I drop my head, my throat tight as tears prick behind my eyes.
“But I was so in love with you, I was willing to wait forever for you to be ready. I was waiting for things to turn around or…I don’t know. But then the accident happened, and…and that was it.”
I fell into writing headfirst at JMU, and I loved it from the beginning. It was something I’d always kept close to my heart, and I’d met Trevor in a creative writing class that I took to push myself, to get out of my comfort zone. He encouraged me from the get-go, but I was so unsure of myself. I was too nervous to really be open about it with anyone I cared about because I was afraid of what they would say.
Now that I’ve been published, I’ve developed a thicker skin, but back then? Back then the people I shared with were few and far between. Trevor hadn’t been able to convince me to send my story into that magazine, so he submitted it behind my back, without permission.
I didn’t know how to feel back then. I was proud, I was angry. And I kept it all to myself.
I stand and try to work out some of the tension in my neck. I’m not sure how to handle the revelation for that as much as Jackson had hurt me, I’d hurt him too.
Badly.
And I had no idea.
“I thought you lost interest. You stopped asking.”
He shrugs helplessly. “I didn’t want to pressure you. I thought you’d share on your own eventually. I hoped you would, at least.”
I rub my temples. The headache I had this morning feels like it’s threatening to come back full force.
As if the universe senses that we need a breather, Jackson’s phone rings. He ignores it until it stops, then it starts up again.
“You should take that,” I tell him.
He sighs, shaking his head. “I’m not taking a call right now, Birdie.”
“You should. I’m…I’m gonna…I need to go for a walk.”
Sam’s ears perk up at the word, and Jackson looks like he wants to argue. I don’t blame him. It looks like I’m trying to run away again.
“Just to clear my head,” I explain quickly. “I wasn’t expecting this; I had no idea it was an issue. I just need a few minutes, okay? I’ll take Sam with me.”
“Okay,” Jackson replies quietly, looking down at the floor.
I stand and open the screen door, calling for Sam to follow me. The two of us leave Jackson behind so I can have some time to think.
Halfway to the trail, Jackson’s phone is still ringing.
Chapter Ten
Sam and I make two passes around the property before we wind up in the gazebo. I’m sitting on the creaky old swing, and Sam is going to town on a bone I picked up from the kitchen in the main house. He’s gnawing away in the shade with his tail wagging, totally content.
Meanwhile, I’m over here upset and unsure.
For years I’ve operated under the belief that I was the wronged party, that Jackson was the antagonist in my story. Apart from the immense pain I knew he felt after the accident, I never gave any thought to the possibility that more was at play in our breakup. I’d brushed off the annoyances and spats leading up to it as school stress that would go away once we’d graduated. Now I’m beginning to understand how good Jackson is at keeping things bottled up.
It never occurred to me that I was hiding anything from him. I was insecure about every word I wrote, reluctant to let anyone see them. Trevor was always critical but kind, and his suggestions were always coupled with compliments. He coddled me, and his critiques were gentle.
So, he was the only one I ever shared with.
It wasn’t because he was special, it was because he was safe.
I understand now how Jackson could’ve read that situation differently.
Now that I know I had a hand in my own misery, I have no idea what to do with all this hurt and anger I’ve been carrying around with me for years.
I’m just about to go looking for Jackson to give him my side of the story when I spot him walking on the trail a few yards away. His hands are in his pockets, his brows all scrunched together like he’s deep in thought.
He smiles at his dog who’s munching away happily on his bone, completely ignoring Jackson’s presence.
“Thank you for taking care of him.”
“You’re welcome. He’s such a good boy, it’s easy.” A beat passes. “Did your call go okay?”
“I didn’t take the call, Birdie. I just wanted to give you the space you asked for.”
“Thank you for that,” I reply. “I’m surprised anyone was able to get hold of you. Your phone is always either missing or dead.”
“A lot’s changed in four years, but that hasn’t,” he says, huffing out a laugh. “Today’s a good phone day, I guess. Is it okay if I sit?”
I steady the swing and slide over to make room for him.
The two of us rock back and forth as the sun starts dipping below the tree line. The lake is still, the birds are chirping, and the flowers are bright and beautiful in the fading sunlight.
“I’m glad Ayanna bought this place,” he says, breaking the silence. “I’m glad it’s staying in the family so to speak. When she told me she put in a bid and we talked about the improvements she wanted to make, I never dreamed it would end up looking this good.”
Jackson’s a contractor. Of course Ayanna would’ve talked to him about renovations. Of course he would’ve helped her. I feel like an idiot for not putting that together until now.
“You did all this work?”
“Some of it, not all of it. My company didn’t wind up putting in the winning bid. I asked Ayanna if I could do some of the work myself, and she agreed.”
“What did you work on?”
He smiles. “You’re sitting in it.”
I slide my fingertips along the swing’s white-painted wooden slats as I take in the new railings and the freshly built floor.
“You did a beautiful job.”
“Thank you. Audrey helped me paint it. She said the ceiling was her own personal Sistine Chapel,” he says with a laugh.
I look up at the filigreed design she painted up there in light pastels. It’s gorgeous.
Suddenly I’m struck by how much I missed these past few years, at how much time my anger at Jackson cost me with my friends. Everyone had a hand in making this place into what it became, but I wasn’t around. I offered to come down and help, but Ayanna told me she had it covered, probably because she didn’t want to put Jackson and me in an awkward situation.
I ran away from my life, and this is the price I’m paying for it.
I hitch my leg up on the bench, turning so I can see Jackson better. I think we should have this talk face-to-face.
Jackson does the same.
I take a second to gather my thoughts and figure
out how to start this conversation. I fiddle with the hem of my shirt and take a deep breath, delaying the inevitable.
“I missed out on a lot of things because I was hurt, angry, and sad,” I admit, tugging on a loose thread. I look up at Jackson, who’s watching me intently. “I don’t want to miss out anymore. I don’t want to be hurt, angry, or sad anymore. I don’t want you to feel that way either. I think we need some resolution. Some closure.”
Jackson nods. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” I tell him. “I’m sorry I made you think that I was hiding anything from you. I don’t want to make excuses for myself, but I’d like to explain if you’ll let me.”
“Of course,” Jackson replies. His hand moves as if he’s going to reach out for me, but he places it on his leg instead.
“I was insecure about my writing when I first started. I still am sometimes. Trevor only saw what I’d written because our creative writing professor forced us to pair up for critiques. I had to show him. He was kind about it, and some of the other people in my class weren’t. I got comfortable with him.
“I second-guessed everything then. I loved writing so much, but it was still so new. I was sensitive and insecure. Because of that, I was scared that if someone didn’t like something I’d written, that I’d quit. I was especially worried about your opinion, because it mattered to me more than anyone else’s. So I made excuses for myself when you asked to see what I’d been working on. When you stopped asking, I felt relieved, like the pressure was off.”
Jackson inhales deeply as he takes in what I’m telling him. “Did I do something to make you think I’d hate it?” He looks truly heartbroken at the thought.
“No,” I say emphatically. “That was probably one of the more irrational parts of my fear, but still…it was a fear. I’d write a ton, but I only ever shared what I wrote with Trevor, because I knew he’d sugar-coat things. I did myself a disservice in the long run. Getting my book published introduced me to how…blunt people can be, but at the time? I needed sugar-coated criticism.
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