“Rach––”
“She deserved it. The bitch… I…” I should’ve told him. I wish I had done already, and then he’d understand. If I didn’t shut my mouth now though, I was going to lose him.
Judge, Rachel, think… What would a normal person say and do?
“I’m sorry. I’ll say sorry to her. Sometimes I just lose my head a little, and my patience, and––”
“It’s okay, just calm down … ”
But I knew it wasn’t okay, half the room was looking at me, again, because I’d made Lindy cry. I could see her in the far corner, wiping her eyes.
I pulled away from Jason. “I’m gonna go and apologize to her.”
I walked away, sensing him follow.
When I got over there, all Lindy’s facial muscles stiffened, and I noticed a couple of people near us drop out of the line dancing and hesitate.
“Hey, Lindy, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I was just being mean to get back at you. Ignore it…”
“To get back at me…” she whispered, wiping at her eyes again. “It’s not me that’s done
anything
… You stole the guy I’m meant to be marrying.”
She hadn’t given up on Jason then, not completely, not if she still talked in the present tense instead of the past. I knew she had no hope, now. “I didn’t mean to… It just happened, I’m sorry, and I can’t say any more than that.”
“Do you want me to stop hating you?” she answered. “I’m never going to stop. You’ve made me look a fool. You’ll never be welcome here.” With that she turned away and walked out, leaving the party, not just the room, as she said a loud goodnight to Jason’s mom.
Billy followed her.
When I looked up and met Jason’s gaze, it was dark and deep and soulful. He didn’t know what to do about all this any more than I did.
After they’d gone, he said, “Do you want to dance again?”
Not really, I wasn’t in the mood anymore. “I’m gonna get something to eat…”
“Okay.”
“Jason. What is going on?” His dad came over. I didn’t wanna hang around to face more anger. I headed for the food table, leaving Jason to deal with his father.
“Lindy insulted, Rach…” Jason whispered in a low pitch as I left them.
Maybe Jason was right. Maybe we shouldn’t have come here at all. The two of us were swimming upstream jumping rocks and dodging bears, like damn salmon, and just hoping it would all work out.
“Rachel.” Shit, what now? His cousin, Katie, gripped my elbow. “Can I talk to you outside?”
Fear gripped tight in my lungs stealing my breath as I had a sense of being lured into something dangerous, but these were good people from a small town in Oregon, not drug taking, New York City high-fliers. There wasn’t a pile of guys waiting to grab me in Jason’s mom and dad’s garden.
“Okay.” But even so my heart pounded as I walked beside her, gripping some fancy savory filled pastry thing.
Jason was still talking to his dad when we passed them and he looked at me his, eyebrows lifting. I hadn’t told him that Katie seemed nice.
When we got outside, she sat down on the top step of the decking like it was
the place
for all confidential chats. I sat down beside her and immediately felt the cold and damp seep through the cotton of my jeans as I ate the cheese and tomato thing I’d picked up.
Katie looked sideways at me when I rubbed the crumbs off my hands. “I saw something a few weeks back…”
Yeah, okay. What? I didn’t ask the question aloud. I didn’t know where this was going.
“I saw Lindy with Billy. She admitted to me they’d slept together then, but she made me promise to say nothing.”
My eyebrows rocketed upwards.
“I know, right? She’s been trashing you and Jason, when she slept with Billy ages before he met you…”
Oh. I ought to say something now, but no words came out my mouth.
“I’ve tried to get her to tell people, but she won’t, and I don’t want to ‘cause then they’ll think I’m being mean… Does Jason know?”
I shrugged.
Lindy and Billy?
The guy had had some nerve coming up to us in the diner. And as for Lindy. “I don’t think so.”
She reached over and touched my arm. “Are you going to tell him then?”
I breathed out. Would he want to know his best friend had done this? “I don’t know. It doesn’t really make much difference now…” But God, she’d just called me a slut.
“I guess not. I can’t believe Lindy did it, though… It’s not like her. I didn’t think she’d do anything like that.”
It felt like Katie had wanted someone to tell this to for ages.
I shrugged, again. “I don’t know her. I can’t judge.”
“No, I know, but just don’t let people get to you, because she isn’t the perfect person they all think she is, is she?”
“No.” I really didn’t know what to say. “But anyway I wouldn’t worry about me. I’m not the family type. I don’t get involved.” But as I said that, there was a longing that unraveled inside me that wanted to be. God I craved the normal life these people led; a life that never included being used or scared. People defending you whole-heartedly, believing in you, being loyal. I would love to fit in here. I just didn’t believe it could happen. “We better go back in. Otherwise people will wonder why we’re talking…” I didn’t want Katie caught up in the fight.
“Thanks for listening, Rachel. I’d like to be friends. I’m glad Jason’s found someone else too.”
I smiled. A friend? Jason was the first friend I’d had in years, and now his cousin Katie wanted to be friends too. She was nice. But all his family were nice really, they were just trying to protect Jason.
When we went back inside Katie walked off to talk to her sister, and I returned to Jason, slipping my fingers into his. He gripped them tightly as his dad looked down, and then his dad turned and walked away.
“What was Katie talking to you about?”
I sighed. The past was gone. There wasn’t any point in telling him. It didn’t matter. “She was just making friends.”
“Really?” His lips hitched in a smirk of disbelief.
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s a novelty. My whole family should be making friends with you. Odd that it takes the youngest of them to do it.”
I just smiled at him. He smiled too, like he understood, but he didn’t.
~
I was surprised when people went home just after eleven. But Christmas wasn’t New Year; these people had family and friends coming over the next day, and the kids wanted to get home so Santa could call.
Next year, I’d have a baby. I might have learned the right things to do from watching other people, but I’d learned the wrong things to do from my mom. I was going to do the opposite of everything she’d done. We’d decorate and have lights everywhere, and we’d sing carols and have a pile of presents beneath the tree, like these people.
I watched Jason’s mom and dad start saying goodbye to everyone.
This was so weird for me; I had no memory of a family life to compare to, and my Christmases for the last few years had been lonely, sitting inside, watching old movies and eating popcorn or potato chips. I’d never had a normal Christmas. Though I’d spent a couple of Christmases in bars over lunchtime and then in bed in the afternoon.
Last year I’d waited half the day for Declan to call. He’d been with his family. He hadn’t called. In the afternoon I’d gone out and walked aimlessly around Central Park.
I’d been looking forward to this Christmas. I still was. I was with Jason. It was less than an hour away. Expectation simmered inside me; burgeoning eagerness running through my nerves.
Once people started leaving, I began clearing up to give myself some outlet for the nervous energy I was brewing, leaving Jason and his mom and dad to say goodnight.
In the kitchen once I’d cleared the leftovers away, I started filling the dishwasher. I’d done a good bit of it by the time his mom came in.
“You needn’t do that,” she opened when I looked back.
“I thought you could do with the help to get everything tidy, Mrs. Macinlay.”
“No, thank you, we can manage just fine. I suggest you go to bed.”
Out of the way, like I just shouldn’t exist.
I left a glass on the side, and then turned toward the door where she stood. “Okay, if that’s what you want. I’m just trying to help.”
“Well you aren’t helping,” she said as I walked toward her.
I couldn’t imagine her ever liking me.
“Jason?” He was in the hall.
His dad was locking up.
“You going to bed, Rach?”
I didn’t want to, but there was nothing else to do, I felt too awkward to sit down here watching his parents tidy up.
I nodded.
He smiled and tapped me under the chin before kissing my cheek. “See you in the morning.”
“Yeah.”
It was about half an hour before Christmas day.
I went upstairs.
As I changed and used the bathroom, I heard Jason talking to his parents downstairs.
She was letting
him
help. God, I couldn’t describe the amount of longing I suddenly felt, it was intense and painful and like something physical and sharp pressed through my ribs and shot downward, piercing through my chest and then down into my belly. I wished I’d had a mom who would so resolutely protect me. If I’d had a mom like his mom, my life would have been entirely different.
Perhaps then, I would’ve met a nice guy long ago, and not done so many bad, stupid things. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have felt so bruised inside. God, it was only now I felt that bruising. I hadn’t even known it was there until today––until this good family had shone a light on my bad.
Before I clicked out the bedside light, I lifted my right hand and looked at the ugly red scar on my palm. It was the only outward one, but inside… God there were hundreds and they lived as images and feelings inside me, which randomly flashed through my thoughts. Dangerous moments, when I’d misjudged my safety and ended up with men just doing whatever they wished to me, and even acting like I was enjoying it, like I was a fucking porn star or something. At the time, I hadn’t really cared, I’d just let it happen. My body was just a body.
God, I remembered Jason, sitting in the bath telling me that my body was a precious thing.
I remembered crazy, embarrassing moments, when I’d chosen to do stuff with no regard for the people around me, or the impact of what I’d done. I’d done stuff in busy parks. I’d taken cocaine with complete strangers. I’d smashed windows and stolen things just for fun. I’d played fucking porn star for Declan for nearly a whole year. He’d liked tying me up as well as hitting me, and communal sex was his favorite thing. One time, he’d nearly strangled me; I’d felt my lungs constricting, desperately trying to get air past the grip of his hands on my neck while he’d fucked me and his friends had watched. But I’d still come, because my crazy head had even managed to find excitement in that danger.
God. I didn’t like that person. Not anymore. How could I have been happy with her? But then, as Jason had once told me, I had never really been happy, only chemically when adrenaline and other endorphins kicked in. Not physically. Not until the moment I’d met him.
I clicked the light off, throwing the room into complete darkness until my eyes began adjusting.
I could hear him downstairs, not his words, but his voice, speaking to his parents as he helped.
The bed was cold without him, but I clung to the thought that this was the bed he’d slept in all his life, ‘til he’d come to New York and found me.
Sighing, I slipped the duvet over my shoulder and settled down, as my thumb ran over the scar on my palm. I drifted into sleep.
“Goodnight, Dad. Mom.”
“Night, Jason,” his mom, said.
“Jason,” his dad, echoed.
Their voices woke me. But I’d only really been slipping in and out of sleep.
I looked at the clock. Half past midnight. It was Christmas.
I lay there, listening to his parents get into bed and waited.
I didn’t want to spend tonight alone.
Once it had been quiet for about twenty minutes I got up without putting the light on, and tiptoed to my case, barefoot. I got Jason’s presents out and then tried to open the door without making a sound.
It clicked, I held my breath.
There was no responding sound from across the landing.
I crept outside.
A floorboard creaked.
I stopped, again, waiting for his mother’s voice.
There was no sound.
I held my breath and crept on, feeling the soft texture of their deep pile carpet beneath my feet, trying to be as quiet as possible. When I reached the bottom step of the stairs I felt my heart leap with relief and joy. I’d got away with it. I was going to spend the night with Jason.
I didn’t knock on his door, afraid his parents would hear. I just opened it, and once I was in, whispered into the darkness, “Jason.”
I heard the covers stirring.
“Rach.”
It was a husky whisper, he sounded like he’d been asleep.
I hurried toward the sound and when I felt the edge of the sofa bed, crawled onto it. “Happy Christmas. Santa’s come.”
I felt him turn sideways.
The light clicked on.
He was leaning up on one elbow, half turned back; his arms, shoulders and pecks above the covers.
He looked gorgeous. I felt like I hadn’t seen him naked for a year.
I straddled his legs, throwing his presents toward him.
He was smiling.
“I snuck down here. Your mom didn’t wake.”
His hand gripped the back of my head and then he kissed me, pulling me down onto him, so I was lying over the covers, while he lay beneath.
I broke off the kiss after a bit, breathless with love and longing, but I wanted him to open his presents. “Here,” I reached for the first one, the largest. “Open this first.” Then I sat up still straddling his thighs, while he put another pillow behind him and sat upright in front of me, distractingly bare-chested.
“Thanks.” He scrunched it a bit and then said, “Let me guess; clothing.”
I smiled and nodded. It was just a shirt, a dark navy shirt, that I knew would look good on him. I’d seen it and just thought,
that’s him
.