by Nicole Thorn
“No,” she squeaked. “I just thought… I messed everything up. I didn’t think you would forgive me for this. For the things I said.”
It hadn’t occurred to me to break up with her because of this because, to me, I could never leave someone for something like this. Short of murdering my sister, Jasmine probably couldn’t do anything to make me want to leave her.
Carefully, I reached for her face. I held her cheek and it only made her cry more, hot tears spilling onto my hand. “I’m not going anywhere,” I repeated. “You fucked up, but we all fuck up. We all stumble. This one day doesn’t erase a thing.”
“Yes, it does. I was sober, and now I’m not. All that time I was clean, it’s gone.”
“No,” I said. “You were sober yesterday, and you’ll be sober tomorrow. One day in hundreds. Just one. Don’t let one day steal the rest from you. You’ll get up in the morning, you’ll go to sleep at night, and you won’t touch another bottle.”
More tears touched me before she pulled my hand from her face. She held it on her lap, her fingers moving back and forth on my palm. “Everything hurts all the time. Those things Eros said to Juniper, he said we’d never get away from it.”
“You have. Verin was right when he said you have. Those ghosts are never going to come back into your life, and all you have is a future you can do anything with. But you need to get a handle on yourself. You need to be better than the gods you’re turning into. I can’t imagine what it feels like to have all this power when you came from having none at all, but I know it’s tempting to let it intoxicate you. You can’t let it. Don’t let anything steal your soul from you.”
Jasmine covered her mouth with her hand. “I can’t be this anymore. What happens when I’m not the person you fell in love with?”
“Not possible.”
“But it is. On the days where I’m sad and don’t have anything to drink to make me shiny, to make me smiley and fun, I’ll just be sad then.”
“And?”
“And that’s all I have. Colors. A smile. Wooing. All of that. What happens when I can’t be shiny?”
I squeezed her hand, shoving my own tears to the back of my mind. “Be whatever you’re feeling, whenever you feel it. There are days for wooing and colors, and there are days where we’re allowed to be sad. You don’t have to be the sun all the time, because no matter how dark it is, you’re always going to be the very brightest thing I’ve ever had. If you feel like crying, then cry. If you feel like hiding in the hallway to jump on me, then do it. But don’t ever feel like you have to be something you’re not. I don’t love you any less right now than I do when I walk into our room to find a hundred teddy bears on our bed and you wearing those plastic angel wings and a halo.”
She laughed, sniffling again. “I looked good in those.”
“You looked damn good.” I reached up to wipe new tears off her face. “The past is dead, but that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt once in a while. One day, we’re going to be so far away from this moment that we won’t remember what we said. Just the feelings we had. So, feel today and don’t let this happen tomorrow. It’s all we can do.”
She nodded, then laid in bed again. I sat with her in silence, smoothing her hair as her eyes closed. It was amazing that my hands didn’t shake. I could barely breathe, and the edges of my world wobbled when I dared to look away from Jasmine. I always expected something bad to be around the corner, but this had sideswiped me. I just needed Jasmine to be okay. If she was okay, then everything around us could be okay again.
When she fell asleep, I got up from the bed. I walked off-kilter as I made my way to Jasper. I still couldn’t really breathe as I stood in the doorway with him.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What? Why are you sorry?”
I swallowed. “I walked away from her. If I’d stayed and talked things through with her, then this wouldn’t have happened. She would be sober.”
“Zander, I’ve been dealing with this for a really long time, and no, it’s not on you. Jasmine made this choice. You can’t… you can’t put something like this on yourself. You could have talked with her today and she might have stayed sober. Or, she would have found another time to slip. She’s an addict.”
I knew that, but how could I not blame myself? I saw myself walking away from her, leaving everything uncertain and terrifying. “God, she thought I was going to break up with her.”
“Are you blaming yourself for that one too?”
I probably couldn’t find a way to make sense of that. “If I had stayed and made her not feel that way, then she wouldn’t have wanted to drink.”
“Maybe.”
“I made her feel alone.”
“Her behavior made her feel alone. Jasmine made choices that got us to where we are right now. It’s not your responsibility to keep her sober. It’s up to Jasmine to make the right choice. Today, she didn’t.”
I was gutted again, feeling like someone had stabbed me in the heart. Everywhere I looked, a fire burned. I wasn’t fast enough to smother them in time, and this one got out of hand. Jasmine and I clashed at every turn, and she had gotten drunk as a result. She was strong, but I didn’t know how much that strength would help her in the future. She could say fuck it and drink again. She’d broken once already, so maybe she would use that as an excuse to do it again. Then we would be right back to where we started. I couldn’t do anything to make this stop. Only Jasmine could fix this.
Jasmine
A t some point, I passed out. When I woke up, I wished that I’d passed out again. My insides felt like they’d been pulverized, every bit of life drained out of me. And that just covered how I felt physically. Emotionally… I couldn’t even think. Everything felt painful, to the point that I could only think in those emotions. Sad. Hurt. Disgusted.
I curled into a tighter ball, covering my head with my arms. My head pounded. I hadn’t thought I could get drunk anymore. No. I knew that ambrosia could do to me what alcohol used to do. I knew that ambrosia mixed with wine would be as potent as any drink that I had back as a human. I’d known it, even if I hadn’t admitted it to myself, and I still did this. Because part of me wanted to do it. As if I had to prove to myself that I wasn’t as invulnerable as I had pretended to be for a while.
I laid in bed for close to an hour before rolling over to look at Zander. But he wasn’t there. He had probably gone to get me something to eat, or just to clear his head. Tears sprang to my eyes. I didn’t even know why. I thought that I really… wanted to see him. To explain why I had done this and to tell him that I would change it if I could. That I’d make things better and do the entirety of the trials differently. That I’d be… better.
Swallowing past my dry throat, I pushed the covers off and climbed out of bed. The world tilted, and I had to close my eyes as my stomach did a couple of flips. Everything settled down enough for me to walk again. I went into the bathroom to shower but ended up staring at myself in the mirror. This felt familiar. My hair stood up on one side, my eyes had bags underneath them, my skin looked pale, my lips chapped. The hangover was aesthetic. Even a goddess couldn’t pull it off.
The thought made me wince. I didn’t feel like much of a goddess anymore.
I got in the shower, then pulled a dress on afterward. Something bright and colorful. Something that would help me cheer up. Only, when I had the dress on, I wanted to rip it off. It felt like it burned my skin. It felt like a lie. But I rallied behind the yellow dress, smiled at myself in the mirror until it looked real, wiped the expression from my face, and then walked out.
Zander still hadn’t come back, but I hadn’t thought that he would. He probably needed to clear his mind. Kind of like I did. It would be harder to do that when we kept crashing into each other the way we had been.
I left the room and then stood in the hallway, unsure of what to do, where to go. I ended up doing the thing I’d always done.
I sought out Jasper.
When I reached his r
oom, it felt like déjà vu. I thought of the vision that I’d had a few days before, the one that showed me doing this very thing. I couldn’t say if that vision had been accurate, or if I projected what I wanted onto it. Either way, I sucked in a breath and knocked on the door.
Jasper answered. He looked sad when he saw me, which felt like someone had stabbed me in the heart. But he didn’t hesitate to let me into his and Kizzy’s room. She sat on the edge of her mattress and wouldn’t look at me. I sensed her anger toward me and couldn’t say that I blamed her for that anger. I’d said some pretty terrible things to Jasper. I had believed them at the time, but it felt like a nightmare now. One that had led me down the path I’d taken last night.
“I’m sorry,” I said, immediately, then had to suck in a breath. “For everything. For getting drunk when I’ve been doing…” I stopped myself from saying ‘so good,’ because I didn’t know if I had been doing good. It felt like I had been, but it had taken so little for me to fall again. “When I had gone that long without taking a drink,” I finished lamely, shoving my fingers into my eyes. “And I’m sorry for the things that I said to you after your trial. I don’t even know why I said them.”
Don’t you?
I shoved that aside. “I’m just sorry.”
Jasper pulled my hands down. “I’m not angry with you, Jazzy.”
The look on Kizzy’s face said that she didn’t agree.
“I’m still sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he told me, pulling me into his arms. I felt safe there, just like I always had, but the feeling had changed. I knew Jasper would never hurt me, no matter what I did to him. Despite the lives we led, Jasper had always been a gentle soul, a smart one. When we had been human, he always let Kizzy do the fighting, understanding that she had been stronger than him, but that hasn't kept him from protecting me and Juniper. Even at his worst, even when he had to kill to survive, he did it with as much mercy as possible.
And I normally felt safe both physically and emotionally around him. I had lost the latter feeling, though. Standing with him, I couldn’t shake the thought that we wouldn’t be the same ever again.
I pulled away, wiping my face with my hands. I tried on a smile and knew that it looked real. “But, I got sober once, I can do it again.”
Kizzy let out a sound, got off the bed, and left the room, all without saying anything to me.
“What?” I asked, looking up at Jasper. “Did I do something?”
Jasper rubbed the back of his neck. “Kezia isn’t happy with you right now.”
“I know,” I said, deflating. “I understand why, too.”
“It has nothing with you getting drunk.”
“Oh.”
“You’ve been bad lately, Jasmine. You’ve caused a lot of heartache in the last few weeks, which isn’t like you. I’ve never seen you so callously rip into people the way you have been.”
I closed my eyes. “She’s still mad for what I said to you.”
“And what you said to Zander. About Juniper. She’d mad about a lot of things. I don’t know what’s been going on with you, but whatever it is, you need to figure it out. You need to do that before you take another drink, and that one doesn’t feel as bad as this one did.”
My heart tripped in my chest just at the thought. Not that I’d drink again, but that I’d relearn to like it. I’d taught myself how to hate drinking, and that had been the only thing that kept me going for so long. The belief that I’d hate it if I tried again. It was the only thing that kept my head screwed on straight right then.
I swallowed. “Where’s Zander?”
“You’re not going to try and figure out why you’ve been acting like this?”
I shrugged. “What’s there to figure out? I was turned into a god and I let it go to my head.”
Jasper just watched me, those mismatched eyes seemed to sear right through my chest, into my soul. I had to look away.
“Where’s Zander?”
“I think he went for a walk with Juniper,” Jasper said. “Juniper wanted to get his mind off things.”
My knees went weak and I ended up sitting on his bed. “Zander blames himself?” I guessed.
“Of course, he does.”
My teeth ground together as I closed my eyes.
“What’s going through your head?”
“I don’t want to say it. If I say it, then what’s really changed between today and yesterday?” Tears popped into my eyes.
“Maybe you should tell me what you’re thinking because otherwise, it might come out in front of Zander. He’s not doing well. He doesn’t need something else to knock him down.”
“I’m just tired,” I said, looking at Jasper. “I know he’s not doing well, but I can’t fix that. He’s not doing well, because no matter what happens, he finds a way to blame himself. I can’t fuck up without it being his fault. Which means I can’t screw up, because he’ll make me feel worse about it than I already do. And I can’t fix it, because I don’t know how to tell him that not everything in the world comes back to him. I know he’s not self-centered on purpose, but all he would hear is that I think he is. I can’t fix what’s wrong in his head.”
Jasper put his arm around my shoulder. “No, you can’t. But do you feel better now that you said it out loud?”
“Not really. Saying what I’ve been feeling out loud has gotten me in a lot of trouble lately.”
Jasper shook his head. “You’re not looking at it the right way. What you’ve been saying lately, is only the negative stuff, the stuff that hurts people. What you’ve just said is that you know Zander doesn’t do this on purpose, that you know he doesn’t want to be this way, and that you don’t want to hurt him. It’s all about how you present it.”
A knock on the door kept me from responding.
“Come in,” Jasper called.
Ellie poked her head through to inform us that we had to be down at the studio in fifteen minutes.
I pushed off the mattress, taking a deep breath. My head pounded for the effort, but I ignored it, trying to clear some of the pain away. Jasper went to find Kizzy, and about five minutes later, the rest of my family joined me in the hallway. I tried to catch Juniper’s eye so that we could talk on the way down to the studio, but Verin wouldn’t let me pull her aside. He kept his body between us and he’d glare at me whenever I stepped toward them.
Instead of trying to fight my way to her, I turned my attention to Zander. He looked about as bad as I did this morning when I woke up. I took his hand, feeling how massive it was. The way it dwarfed mine.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Are you?” he responded.
“You answer first.”
Zander looked down at me, his blue eyes bloodshot and his blond hair looking messier than I’d ever seen it. Even his shirt had wrinkles in it. This shouldn’t have caught my attention since Zander had never been particular about the way he dressed. But that didn’t mean he ever walked outside looking like he’d just been balled up and thrown in a corner.
I realized why Zander looked so intently at me about a second too late. He read my emotions to get a gauge on how he should’ve responded. He straightened out, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m doing okay. Not great, but I’m okay. Just worried.”
I didn’t know which part of that had been a lie, but I knew something had. “Don’t do that,” I whispered, tugging on his arm so that we’d fall behind the others as we walked.
“Do what?” he asked.
“Don’t read my emotions and then feed me what you think I want to hear,” I said. “Tell me the truth.”
Zander stared at me for a moment, and then anger flashed in his eyes. “I’m a mess. Is that what you want to hear? I’m a mess, and it’s not your fault. Setbacks happen. I assumed you’d have one from the start of you trying to get sober. But you’re so sad, and I can feel it, and I want to fix it, but I’m sad too and I don’t know how to fix that. And I’m scared that these trials are going t
o kill us before we come even this close to beating them.” He held his thumb and forefinger apart. “And I’m stressed, and I’m scared, and I’m worried about you. I don’t know what the hell is going to happen next, but I know that it won’t be anything good. And if these trials destroy us, the entire war might be lost, and that terrifies me. I’m a fucking mess. There.”
Tears had popped into my eyes as he spouted all those words out. “Yes.”
“What?” Zander said.
“That’s what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear the truth about how you’re doing. I wanted you to stop lying to me.”
We had reached the elevators, and all piled on. Despite the tension that had sprung up between us, Zander and I stood side by side against one of the elevator walls. The ride was tense, especially since the only person not upset with me was Jasper. And no one would have expected him to get upset with me. Jasper forgave too easily, and I loved him for it.
The elevator doors opened up. Before everyone walked out, I said, “I’m sorry. I wanted to say it to everyone individually, but we didn’t have the time before this show. If you’ll let me, I’ll still talk with everyone afterward, but until then, just know that I’m sorry. If I could fix everything that I’ve done, then I would. But no matter who is on trial first for the second half, we can do this. And I’m sorry if I made anyone feel bad before.”
Silence greeted my declaration. I didn’t know what I expected. Them all forgiving me? I didn’t think so. Maybe an encouraging smile? Nope, I didn’t get that either. In fact, only Jasper and Zander even looked at me for longer than a second. Juniper wouldn’t meet my eyes, but she looked more awkward than she did angry. That had to be a good thing, right? I had to be able to fix this, right?
I wouldn’t lose my family over this… right?
They stepped out of the elevators one by one, leaving me to exit last. The door slid shut behind me. I took one last deep breath before entering the pristine white stage to dead silence.