“You really believe that?” Jay balks, God bless him.
“I’m her brother, I guess I have to,” he says simply.
I hear Jay blow out a breath as they exchange a few more words, Jay asks him how the golf practice is going, while I do another two rounds of sun salutations, and some idle chat about the weather before they hang up.
I’m on the mat in my child’s pose, taking a few deep breaths before I press myself up. There’s no way I can keep doing my yoga routine like everything is fine. Maybe I wasn’t meant to hear, but he knows I’m in the next room and he was on speaker. I can’t just leave him in there to figure this out on his own.
I pad to the bedroom, knocking quietly on the half-open door.
“Come in,” Jay says, looking up from the bed when I enter.
“Hey.” I try a small smile. “How did it go?”
“You didn’t just hear all that?”
“Well, I did. But I was being polite while I was practising.”
He looks a little ragged, if I’m being honest. His skin has paled, and I’m pretty sure he’s been ruffling his hair up with his hands. Anxiety shows in his features as his eyebrows knit together.
“I need to get some air and some space,” he says after a moment.
“Jay…”
“Please, Jade. This is hard for me. Those last couple of years before I met your family were hell on earth. I get it can’t have been easy for her when my dad left, but she made her choice, and that choice wasn’t to put my best interests first. I was a child.”
“I know. I’m here for you, that’s all I wanted to say.”
With a shaky breath, he rises off the bed and leans over to kiss me on the forehead. “I can’t do this right now,” he says. And I know right then it’s fear that’s stopping him with his mother. Rightly so. It’s like I can almost see it creeping its way upward and hitting him right in the heart, a place I know he doesn’t want to go with her.
“Whatever you need, JJ. I’m here.”
CHAPTER 32
Jay
I feel like that seventeen-year-old kid again as I swipe Jade’s car keys from the dresser and head out. I also feel like an ass for leaving her standing there, but I need to sort my head out for a moment. Putting any kind of faith in my mother again is a real sore point for me, and no matter what anyone says, I don’t have to be okay with it.
I’m not okay with it. Fucking yahoo, she’s found god or whatever and now she’s putting her life right again. The less stubborn part of me can see that’s a shit ton better than continuing the way she was going when I was under her care, not that she did much of that. But the stubborn part of me doesn’t give a flying fuck.
After she ran off with Gus and I went to Grandpa Ray’s, I barely heard from her for two years. She contacted me after I was drafted into the NHL, but I blew her off every time. The last time I saw her was on a visit home before Grandpa Ray died. She was in town visiting Leo, Gus was long gone by then, of course. I ran into her on the fucking street, of all places, and we justgaped at each other for a long while before she tried to make conversation.
I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, not wanting to make small talk because I didn’t see the point. She didn’t give a shit about me when she upped and moved from Fargo all those years ago. She never let me see Grandpa Ray when I wanted to. It hurt having to leave him and Uncle Ricky. Granted, she looked guilty, she could barely look at me, but not guilty enough for my liking. In the end, I said I had nothing to say to her and kept walking, as fast as possible. She called my name down the street, but by then I was literally half jogging back to Grandpa Ray’s pickup.
Cowardly, maybe. But she always evoked such strong feelings inside me, it was difficult seeing her face to face like that. I haven’t seen her since.
I haven’t wanted to, nor do I want to now.
So, I take off down to The Point. I haven’t been here in a long time, but somehow the car seems to drive itself and seems to know what I need. In no time, I’m pulling up at the lot at the beach. I jump out and head along the walking trail to that memorable cliff face, where I contemplated everything that was going on in my life at seventeen, both good and bad.
I’m standing right back where I started, looking down at the cracking waves below me. It’s not the same as it was years ago in the storm that night, but it’s definitely a place I can resonate with. There’s so many memories that stir up about that night. At least I’m not drunk, waving a bottle of whiskey around and wondering where the fuck I’m going to sleep tonight. That was so stressful as a kid.
Thankfully, there’s no crazy storm in sight, it’s just me and the clouds above, moving quickly as I watch them float over an endless blue sky.
It’s really hard to think about the last time I was standing here. There was no way I was ever going to jump, I realize that now. I’d been drinking way too much, and my mom had me on a very uneven keel with just about everything.
I glance down to the turbulent water, even on a calm day like this, the unforgiving tide still crashes towards the rocks like it’s angry. At the same point, it’s kind of beautiful watching the waves break and the white foam rise from the edge of each swell.
So much has happened since that day, and I’ve come so fucking far.
