Jess
One Day Later
It was the kind of week that made me wonder just why the hell I was giving serious thought to moving.
Even aside from my ongoing interest in Phoenix and our building toward something with that, work went well, the Fallen Saints stayed away from my apartment, and tensions remained low. I think at one point, a fight broke out between the Fallen Saints and Black Reapers, but the noise was so distant that it could have just as easily been bikes revving to life as gunshots erupting.
And as it was, as fucked up as it might have sounded, I was so used to gunfire and skirmishes breaking out in this town that when one wasn’t almost literally outside my front door, I just didn’t think much about it.
All of this, indeed, made me wonder why I wanted to move.
It certainly wasn’t to move toward something. I hadn’t even figured out where I was going to go—hell, I hadn’t even figured out which direction I wanted to go, north or south or east.
So, if I didn’t know what I was running toward, that only meant that I was running away from something.
But from what? The danger of this town? My past?
Myself?
In an ideal world, I would know myself enough to know that answer, but the funny thing about being a runaway at age fourteen and having to fend for yourself is that survival doesn’t really allow much room to “learn about yourself.” Having to work jobs to literally make ends meet, to have enough cash and only enough cash to pay your rent and put beans and rice on the table, and to make it to the next day didn’t allow for much psychological reflection.
All I knew was that I had a date on Sunday that I was excited about. The rest was one big mystery to me.
So why not start with what you ran from in the first place? Start with the person that caused you to run off. See if you can find something more stable there.
Standing out the window of my second-floor apartment, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was really a good idea. My father had driven me away, and even his attempts to bring me back in felt more like a half-hearted attempt to not live with a heavy burden on his conscience than an actual attempt to make things right. But...
If it was that simple, why did I think about him constantly? Why did I think about how I had answered Phoenix’s question about him so much?
Maybe it just wasn’t as easy as I thought it was. Maybe it was something I had to address.
I pulled up my phone and waited for it to unlock. I didn’t need to go to my contacts page to pull up my father’s phone number; I had it memorized from my childhood days, and it had never changed. I dialed, my breath hitching when I made the call.
“Jess?” he said in surprise, but not a pleasant kind of surprise. “What are you calling for?”
Well, that’s a way to start a call.
“I...”
I actually didn’t know. I mean, I knew why I’d picked up the phone—to try to move toward something, toward a better relationship with my father. But once I was on, what was I supposed to do? Just ask how he was? Try to do small talk first? Or jump right into the big stuff?
I had given this no thought, and it was showing pretty obviously right now.
“I just... wanted to see how things were,” I said, but my voice was too weak to suggest I really wanted to know.
“Oh, well, things are great!” my father said with a laugh. “Still working at the Walgreens here. Dating a new waitress in town. Real cute girl. Great—”
“OK, Dad, that’s, that’s great,” I said before I learned more than I ever would have wanted to. “How are you, though?”
That’s it. Just push him on it a little bit.
“I mean, like how are you. Not the things you’re doing. How are you?”
“Me?” he said, the hesitation painfully obvious. “I told you, I’m great! What could you possibly mean otherwise?”
I sighed. There was no getting through to my father on this. I guess maybe running away from something worked if the “something” wouldn’t want you any closer.
“Tell me what you are up to, my little Jess,” he said. “You don’t need to know about me. It’s all boring and nonsense over here anyway.”
