“Thanks for sharing, bro.”
“You’re welcome, but I was trying to be nice, so fuck you right back.”
Gabriel snickers into his coffee, and I feel sixteen again. We’ve stolen booze from our mother’s tiny stash and snuck out to the woods to drink it. Later, we’ll stumble home to find her already asleep in bed and wonder why we hiked so far to drink her cheap whisky, but there you have it.
I let the nostalgia take me for a while, leaving Gabi to shout at the hockey game he’s put on, but eventually, he shuts it off and gives me his full attention. “I was serious about you looking better. I thought you’d died again when I saw you a few days ago.”
“I never died in the first place.”
“Yeah, but it was the closest you’ve come that I can remember, so let me be dramatic.”
“You’re always dramatic.”
“And you’re always—” He stops himself before this descends into the kind of conversation two men pushing thirty have no business having. “Whatever. Let me in and I’ll stop being so annoying.”
“You’re not annoying. I am. I’m sorry, it’s a bad habit to be evasive. I’m trying to be better.”
“Youarebetter. That’s my point. You’re in good shape, in every sense. Has Jax really changed things so much for you?”
I think about it for moment, then shake my head. “Jax only changed things in the sense that I totally fucking love him. He didn’t fix me—no one could do that.”
“Not even me?
“Not even you, Gabs.”
He sighs. “It’s a real bitch you had to nearly die for us to have this epiphany.”
“Speak for yourself. I knew it all along.”
“Love you, bro.”
“I love you too. Did you bring more bourbon?”
* * *
Gabriel leaves before Jax comes home, and it’s the first time I’ve been alone since I walked out of the cabin to find Jerry on the doorstep.
I don’t like it, and not just because I miss Jax more than his three-hour absence truly warrants. My thoughts have been calm since the accident, as if my subconscious knows my brain has all it can handle right now. But Gabi was right about me feeling better. Ido. I can sit up without the room tilting, and stand without swaying. I don’t feel sick after a five-stride trip to the bathroom, and I’m pretty sure I could make it downstairs and outside without needing a nap.
It’s…something. But with my renewed wellbeing, my mind finds the time to wander to a reality that demands more of me than simply putting one foot in front of the other. Or maybe it doesn’t, and the concept isn’t as literal as I think. I’ve found a new place to swim, but I still need to keep swimming.
The analogy makes me think of sharks trying to eat Jax. I don’t like those thoughts. I get up to escape them and shuffle into the tiny kitchen area of Jax’s apartment. It’s spotlessly clean, naturally, and his refrigerator actually has food in it. I open the door and ponder the contents. We’ve eaten our supply of Eve’s mac and cheese, and I’m alert enough by now to the fact that cooking is the bane of Jax’s life. He hates it almost as much as he loves me. Which is a lot. I know it even though he hasn’t said it since he told me in the hospital.
I haven’t said it, either. Jax doesn’t need more heavy conversations. He needs me to get back on my feet, so I can be more to him than someone who lies in his bed and stares at his profile while he gets pissed at the camera angles inPlanet Earth. And I need—
Fuck. I don’t know. I need to make him dinner. I need to make a therapy appointment. And I need to turn my phone on and reply to the eleventy thousand messages Molly has sent me over the past several weeks.
I start with dinner. Jax has enough random vegetables and leftover ham in his refrigerator to make soup. I hack everything up one-handed, let it simmer, and return to the bed to find my phone. It’s hidden under a stack of clean laundry I have no memory of anyone doing. Was it Jax? Eve? Definitely not Gabi. He makes me look house-proud. At least, that’s what I’d always figured until I discovered he’d cleaned up the cabin. Now I don’t know what to think, and turning my phone on is more important than ever.
It needs charging. I plug it in and sit on the floor with it while it buzzes to life. More messages flood in: Molly, Rainn, Harrison, Finn. Too many to contemplate until I do the one thing I turned my phone on for. Distraction is killer, and I don’t want to die.
Not anymore.
Jax has left the business card the hospital shrink gave me on the nightstand by the side of the bed. I don’t know if he meant to, but I’m glad I don’t have to go looking for it. I punch the number into my phone and make the call. It’s less painful than I anticipate. And the therapist has space for me starting next week.
Damn. I’m ready. I hope she is too. It’s a call I should’ve made a long time ago, whether I could afford it or not, and the weight in my chest shifts as I hang up and stare at the blank phone screen Dr. Canon leaves behind. I’m not the same person I was before I made the call, but whoever I am, I need a shower, and I finally feel stable enough to take one without Jax.
After, I turn the soup off and pace his apartment, sporadically replying to the gazillion unread texts on my phone. Molly pings straight back with a bunch of new ones.
