“I won’t tell her,” he cuts me off. “Just like you didn’t tell me.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“As a last resort,” he mutters. Wow. He is really hurt. A heavy lump of guilt starts to form in my gut.
“Jake, I was going to tell you when you got back,” I tell him. “In my defense you’ve only been home five seconds. Was I supposed to announce it at your welcome home party? At the beach it didn’t feel like the time and I wasn’t about to swing by the station on your first shift and say ‘Hey have a good first day. By the way, I’m dying.”
“You’re dying?” He gasps.
“No. I mean, maybe one day if I can’t find a kidney, but not imminently. Right now I’m good.” I am babbling and he still looks positively stricken.Great Job, Terra.
We hit the lobby of his building and he digs his car keys out of the pocket of his jeans. “But this dialysis you do three times a week, it leaves you so incapacitated you can’t drive?”
“That’s a big word for you,” I joke.
“Enough with the snark, okay?” Jake pleads.
“I’m sorry. It’s a bad coping mechanism,” I admit, my voice softening as we make our way outside. “Everything sucks donkey balls in my life right now, and I’m not handling it well. The no driving thing is just a precaution. I’m always fine. I fainted once, but a couple hours later. At work. But truly, I’m fine. My arms are perpetually bruised and I get these gross lumps sometimes called fistulas which is why I wear long sleeves. It’s impressive you noticed, Sherlock. Maybe you should have been a cop instead of a fireman.”
“I notice you, Terra. Always have.”
His tone is serious and so is his face when I glance up at it, all golden and gleaming in the hot sun. Butterflies flutter through my abdomen and I mentally spray Raid on them by reminding myself that his ex-girlfriend is currently half naked in his apartment. “So Aspen…”
“I was at work all night so that rumpled air mattress you were side-eyeing was all her and Major,” Jake tells me bluntly. “We arenotinvolved again.”
“Sure. Whatever.” I open the passenger door and climb inside when he unlocks the Jeep.
“It’s the truth, Terra,” He says. He starts the engine and as soon as my seatbelt clicks, we’re driving out of the parking lot.
“I told them not to tell you,” I say as he heads towards the turnpike entrance. “Logan and Finn. When they visited you to go skiing in February, I told them not to mention to you that I was having issues. I threatened to disown them if they did. I just didn’t see the point in bringing you into this since you lived so far away. You had just won that medal and gotten promoted to lieutenant and I didn’t want to bum you out with bad news.”
“You guys love to exclude me and pretend it’s for my own good,” Jake snaps.
I stare at him. He looks insulted and I know this can’t be about just me. “Are you talking about the Logan thing again?”
“To start, yeah.” Jake pauses and I can see his jaw tighten as he grinds his teeth, like he’s trying not to say whatever it is he’s thinking. I learned these cues from my schooling.
“Jake, tell me what you’re feeling. No filter.” I prompt.
“My best friend hits rock bottom and you guys flew him to rehab out-of-state and handled all the fall-out and didn’t even tell me about it,” Jake says as we merge onto the turnpike. “You all acted like it was for my own good. I was away in Orono doing training and you didn’t want to ruin that for me. But the fact is, it was a family problem, and you don’t think I’m family. Because I’m not. But I had been thinking of all of you as family. It was a rude awakening. And FYI I still feel like there’s more about that story with Logan getting sober that even years later, no one will tell me.”
Wow. This wasn’t just a confession, it was a rant, filled with a lot of pent up emotions. I study his face. He is still so hurt, like this happened yesterday instead of three years ago. I hate thinking about the day Logan hit rock bottom and our family found out. No one talks about it much. In fact we purposely talk around it. The guts of it anyway. But looking at the pain on Jake’s face I decide I need to rip the band-aid off this.
“You were the first person I wanted to call,” I tell him. “But Declan told me not to because there was nothing you could do. Logan would be halfway to rehab in Florida before you got back from Orono. My brothers think of you as a brother, even Deck. And yes, there is more to the story than you know.”
His head swivels to take in my expression. My mouth is in a hard line and my eyes are pleading, begging forgiveness for what I’m about to say. “I told you what I could when you got back. What I was allowed to tell. I’m telling you now there is more, but it’s not my story, Jake. And Logan… he may not be in a place to talk about it. I’m sorry. I know that’s award-winning vagueness, but it’s all I can say. And that I’m sorry.”
His eyes are staring straight ahead now as we slog through the heavy but steady afternoon traffic and he eases into the right lane for the upcoming off-ramp. “One of the lieutenants leading that training in Orono that week was from King’s Rock. He told me they had openings, and I would have a better shot at advancing there than if I stayed in Ocean Pines. I didn’t even consider it until I got back and found out Logan was gone. I felt like, after that, maybe I shouldn’t be so attached to the idea I had reasons to stay in Ocean Pines.”
My jaw drops. “You left town because of that?”
“It was a big part of it. But there were other factors. I wanted… I had stuff to work out, and stuff to prove, and needed space to do it. I wanted people to look at me as more than a fucked up foster kid and the Hawkins twins’ sidekick and I didn’t think that would happen if I stuck around.”
“Why would anyone’s opinion matter more than your own? You know you’re more than that, don’t you?” I ask.
“That is for another time, Tink,” he mutters. I can’t decipher the expression on his face but I have to admit to myself, I enjoy staring at him while I try. He looks exactly the same as when he left three years ago, tall, dark and perfect. How one man has managed to push all my ‘on’ buttons since I developed turn-on buttons is insane to me. If there’s a Guinness World Record category for longest crush, I’m in the running for the title.
I decide to change the subject because he clearly isn’t going to elaborate on this one and his silence is creating anxiety in me, which is the last thing I need before a four hour treatment. “I’ve actually been incredibly successful at keeping my kidney problems on the down-low. No one in Ocean Pines has figured it out. Only family knows. And Tom.”
