It’s there, eating at her, the urge to argue with me, to say she’s the reason for not only this decision but for all of his decisions this week. Instead, she snuggles closer.
I twine her hair around my fingers. “Can I tell you something good?”
She gives me a bright smile. “I love good things.”
“My dad called after the game. He got a job.”
“Garrett! That’s amazing!”
“Mhmm. That’s not all though.” I trace the length of her nose with the tips of her hair, watching as it scrunches. “The job is here.”
“Oh my God.” She tears the blankets away and climbs to her knees, nearly hammering me in the junk in the process. “They’re moving to Vancouver? I get to meet your parents? Your little sisters? Oh my God! They’re gonna terrorize you on the daily, and I’m gonna help!”
Laughing, I reach around and give her butt a swift smack. “Give it a try and I’ll tie you to this bedpost.”
She rolls back into me, arms around my middle. “Note to self: help Garrett’s sisters terrorize him.” Her face nuzzles my chest as I turn off the lamp, the dark night settling around us. “I’m so happy for you, Garrett. You’re going to have your family here.”
Jennie drifts to sleep in my arms, and I know I already have my family right here.
But the feeling is short-lived, because when I wake up, my arms are alarmingly empty.
It’s not even seven in the morning, the ass crack of dawn just beginning its creep into the sky, and without Jennie clinging to my body, I’m cold. I toss on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, padding down the hallway, and stop short when I find her sitting beneath the window in the living room, clutching Princess Bubblegum, shoulders shaking with her quiet cries.
Jennie is a lot of things. She’s bold and loud, confident and fierce, quiet and soft. She’s strong and resilient, persistent. She’s got a big, sensitive heart that feels everything. But she’s not fragile. She fights for everything. She pushes herself and comes out on the other side, always, even if it takes time.
This version of her, so broken and lost, makes every inch of me ache for her. I don’t know how to make this better, and I hate the incompetency.
I go to her, pulling her into my lap, and she curls into me, trembling as she sobs.
“I hate this,” she weeps into my chest. “I hate this so much.”
“I know, baby.”
“I miss my brother. I miss—” Her mouth opens on a gasp that steals the breath from my own lungs. She clutches at her chest like the words hurt. “I miss my dad. I miss him so much, Garrett. Everything feels so heavy and dark.”
“Your brother and your dad both love you, Jennie. Carter will always be here for you.” I cover her heart with my hand. “And your dad will always be here. You’re never alone.”
“He’s so mad at me. What if he never forgives me?”
“Hey, look at me.” Cupping her face in my hands, I sweep at the tears that keep falling. “He’s going to forgive us. He’s going to see how much we love each other, and he’ll understand.”
“What if it’s not enough? What if he holds onto this for so long? What if I lose Olivia? Cara?” Her blue eyes flit between mine, doused in agony. “What if I lose my niece or nephew?”
“That’s not going to happen, Jennie. I promise you.”
She shakes her head, climbing to her feet. “You-you can’t promise that. You can’t, Garrett.”
“I absolutely can,” I tell her with certainty, following her. “I can, Jennie, because Olivia and Cara love you.”
She spins away, one hand on her forehead, the other on her hip, and her pink bunny falls to my rug. “They love me because of Carter. Because it’s convenient. That’s what I am, Garrett. Convenient.” She gestures toward the door. “Four floors below you, how much more convenient could I get.”
Darkness curls inside me. “Don’t you fucking say that. I love you for who you are, not because of your brother, and sure as shit not because you live four floors below me. You could take that job in Toronto and I’d still love you, and I’d keep loving you for the rest of my life. Because I love you, Jennie.”
“Do you even know who I am? You love the confident me. The snarky comebacks and the bold girl who says everything that comes to her mind. But what if this is me? What if this broken, shattered version is what’s real?”
“You’re allowed to feel things, Jennie. You’re allowed to grieve. You’re allowed to be uncertain instead of confident. Those things don’t make you broken; they make you you.”
“None of you would have ever found me if it weren’t for Carter.”
My heart squeezes for her, the way she’s convincing herself that she’s losing more than just Carter, that without him, she has nothing to offer. How someone as self-assured as Jennie can, at times, be so unsure of what she brings to the table is gut-wrenching. I wish for five minutes she could see herself from everybody else’s eyes, see that even on her darkest days, she’s always been enough, not just for us, but for herself.
Jennie’s always been like the sun rising after a black but starless night spent driving alone. You’re a little lost, a little off track, but you keep going, searching for that light, and when you find it, it shines so bright, guiding you home. But when she stops herself from shining, everything is bleak and gray, dull, like a foggy, misty morning in the middle of nowhere. When she stops herself from rising, I can’t find my way home. Not without her.
“So what?” I finally say. “Maybe we found you because of Carter. That doesn’t mean you’re not the reason we stay.”
Her gaze stays on mine for a quiet moment, like she’s weighing the truth behind my words. When I stop in front of her, her mouth opens, hanging there like she’s not sure if the next sentence is the right one to speak.
“Maybe I belong in Toronto.”
Panic knots in my stomach at the thought of losing her, but before I can say anything, she continues, broken.
“Maybe I have been standing in Carter’s shadow.”
“You shine way too fucking bright to stand in anyone’s shadow, Jennie.”
She blinks once, slowly, and tears cascade down her beautiful, heartbroken face. “I can start fresh. Maybe I’ll…Maybe I’ll learn to stand on my own. And you…You get your friends back, your team. You play the position you earned, the one you deserve, because I’m gone, and your family comes, too, and…” She sniffles, wiping the back of her wrist across her nose. “And everything is better.”
Fury climbs my chest like a vine, and I step into Jennie, gripping her jaw, keeping her gaze locked on mine.
“If you stay in Toronto, you do it for the right fucking reasons. You stay because you love it, because the job is your dream, more than owning your own studio, than teaching kids to love dance the same way you do. You stay because you feel at home there, and you fall in love with the city, and it feels wrong to be anywhere else. You don’t stay because you’re standing in someone’s shadow; you don’t even stand in your own. You don’t stay because your friends came from your brother. Those friends are the family that chose you, that keep choosing you, day in and day out. And you sure as shit don’t stay to learn to stand on your own, because you already fucking soar without anyone’s help.”