“I’m sorry. Do you know where she is?” It’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough. But I don’t know what else to say to him. I’m out of my depth with his accident and everything that came in its wake.
It strikes me as unfair that so many terrible things can happen to one person. That one human can defy the odds so thoroughly. That the universe couldn’t have sprinkled a little of Jasper’s pain over more people to make his burden just a little bit lighter.
His sister.
His mom.
His dad.
Now Beau.
It’s cruel, and it makes my heart ache for him—it always has. Those sad fucking eyes on that first summer day that I drowned in them. A dark blue abyss. Sometimes I feel like I sank to the bottom of that deep ocean and just took up residence.
I got lost in Jasper’s eyes and never left.
“She comes and goes. You know how she is. In the wake of Jenny’s death, she started self-medicating. And within a year, she was another person, living another life. One that took her from flophouse to flophouse. From prison to rehab. To . . . I don’t even know anymore.” He pauses, and all I can think is she became a person who broke her son more thoroughly than he already was. “It’s my fault.”
His words strike a heavy blow.
I’ve lived such a pretty and privileged life, one tied up with a shiny satin bow. I’ve never even been hit. Never lost a family member. Never experienced physical pain that wasn’t my doing. Sure, my parents have their quirks, but they’ve never set out to hurt me, or cared so little about me they would do something that might cause me pain.
But I imagine this is how it feels.
“It is not your fault.”
“It is. And I send her the money to atone for that.”
A quiet, groaning sound aches in my throat. Nausea roils in my stomach, and I can’t be sure if it’s the hangover or the topic of conversation. “You have nothing to atone for.”
“I d—”
“No,” I snap at him, clapping my hands firmly to cut him off. “Nothing. Nothing at all. I’ve told you before and I’ll keep telling you until the day I die. You were a child, she was a child, and it was an accident.”
His breathing sounds heavy, almost labored, as we both stare out the front window.
“I still remember the night I told you what happened. I remember you crying, which was even worse than saying it all out loud. Watching you cry . . . so young and na?ve . . .”
I did. I sobbed. I broke for him, wanting to take some of his pain and make it my own. If the universe wouldn’t help him share the burden, I decided that I would do it on my own.
That night, with only the moon as his witness, a devastated boy divulged his deepest, darkest secrets to the most inconsequential person he could find. A girl who never looked at him with pity, only adoration.
And he shredded his heart for her. Left all the jagged, torn pieces at her feet.
And I became the keeper of those pieces. I didn’t balk at the rawness of the moment. I don’t think I even really understood it, but I picked up every little scrap and stowed them all away in my heart for safekeeping.
With time I made sense of his story. I mulled it over. I became a part of it, inserted myself somehow. And those pieces became seeds. Seeds that I watered and tended to and kept safe for him.
But seeds grow and now the roots of him and that night are wrapped so tightly around my heart that I’ll never be able to extricate myself from Jasper Gervais.
There isn’t a soul in the world who can remove those roots and the stranglehold they have on me.
“I learned with my parents that no matter how fiercely I love someone it isn’t enough to make them stay. But you? I told you every dirty little detail and you could have hated me. But you stayed. You danced.”
“I could never hate you, Jas.” Tears prick at my eyes. I did the only thing I knew how to do. Under the light of the moon, in a field of lush green grass, I got up and let the movements flow through my body. The classical tune played in my head. The only real music was the hush of a suffocatingly warm summer night on the prairies.
And the only person in the audience was a beautiful boy with haunted eyes who watched my every movement and told me it was beautiful when I finished. Then he left. And I could only hope that he’d sleep. That he felt a little lighter.
He might have been an abandoned teenager and I might have been some na?ve, little kid, but that night we were just two souls with one secret. And after that, unlikely friends.
“I’m surprised you didn’t laugh when I told you.” He chuckles darkly.
I turn and punch his arm, feeling a little irritated with him for still being so goddamn hard on himself. “Shut up.”
“What are you gonna do about it?”
“Probably throw a water bottle at your face.”
A relieved laugh escapes him, and I watch his hands twist on the steering wheel, eyes still fixed on the road. “I didn’t throw it at your face. Not my fault your hand-eye coordination is trash.”
“Tell my nose that.” I rub it dramatically, even though it doesn’t hurt at all.
“The huge new bump on it suits you. Adds some character to that otherwise perfect face.”
He’s trying to divert back into playful, friendly banter. The kind we do so well. The type that cropped up between us once everything was out on the table. After that night, I never hesitated to tell Jasper anything. Of course, as we got older, things changed, but we had this foundation of raw honesty I could always fall back on.
I trust him, and I think he trusts me. I don’t know why he trusted me that night. Perhaps, he just needed to unload, and I was the puppy-love-riddled girl who was already up watching him, who just “happened” to be out for a walk.
Either way, it connected us. For life, it would seem. Because I don’t think he’s told another soul the entire details of that day. That he held his hand up in that signal. That his family fell to shambles in the wake of it. That he feels responsible. That Beau found him living in a car in a field behind the school because his mom was missing and his shithead dad had started a fresh life and failed to keep coming home for him at all.
The mention of perfect face brings a hush back through the cab, and with all the quiet, my mind wanders.
My curiosity gets the best of me when I ask, “You hear from him at all?”
He knows I mean his dad without even saying it. Harvey has filled that void for him the best he can, but there’s no getting over a parent who leaves you by choice. A parent who blames you for the worst day of your life.
He clears his throat, glancing at me from under the brim of his cap. “No.”
I nod, tamping down the rage that his biological dad always stirs up in me.
“I drove there once, you know. Just to see. Parked on the street and watched his house for an entire day. His wife. His kids. A fucking cat. I always wanted a cat, and he wouldn’t let me get one.”
“Did he see you?”
“Eventually.”
“What did he say?”
His throat works in tandem with his hands on the wheel, and he shrugs.
“I could kill him,” I mutter, rubbing my hand over my lips as though I can press back in the words I want to spew about this “man” who abandoned his only surviving child to start fresh without him. Grief twists us all in unusual ways, and I wish I could bring myself to be more forgiving considering what he went through.