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“For an apartment that he let you have without any credit score or anything else to your name,” Charlie spat. “All I’ve ever done is take care of you, and he thinks it’s unfair that I haven’t had the chance to go live my life yet because of it.”
Jess took a step back, like she’d been punched in the gut. “You—you think I’m holding you back from living your life?”
Charlie’s eyes went wide. “No, he said that, not me—”
“But do you agree with him?” she interrupted. “Do you feel like you haven’t been able to live your life?”
He hesitated slightly, then an explanation poured out of his lips. But the hesitation was all she needed. She ignored his words.
“I’m done,” she whispered.
“You don’t mean that,” he argued.
“No, I’m done, it’s over,” she said. “We’re done, Charlie.”
Tears trickled down his cheeks, but after weeks of breaking down in front of gas station pumps or hidden away in stock rooms, her thoughts on Dakota and how much they had grown apart, her eyes remained dry. The admission from his father, the truth of what Charlie felt deep down in his heart from that hesitation—even if he was afraid to admit it…Jess knew.
She looked around their apartment, feeling embarrassed by all of it. How long had he felt this way? Had he always felt the need to take care of her, to give up his life for her? Did any of this life she clawed at desperately mean anything to him?
He kept reaching for her but she slapped at his arms, warning him not to come any closer as she stormed up the stairs. She pulled her suitcases out from underneath their bed, covered in a layer of dust, and tuned out the sound of Charlie’s pleading. She ripped open the closet and started pulling her clothes off hangers, throwing them into the bag.
“Jessie, stop. Stop!” he yelled.
She paused her haphazard packing for a moment, then shook her head, not allowing herself to do anything for him anymore. “No. I made up my mind. Move to Garrison. You’re free of me.”
“You know it’s not like that,” Charlie said. “Please, Jessie, don’t go.”
“Go live your life, Charlie.” She moved on to the dresser and emptied out handfuls of clothes and keepsakes into an old duffel bag. “I’ll go live mine.”
He crawled onto the bed, trying to reach for her, but she swatted him away, the aggressive motion making the nightstand beside her shake. Her glasses fell and cracked on the hardwood floor.
Her small slap seemed to be his last straw, his begging switching to anger. “This is all pretend anyway,” he sneered. “It’s not like you have anywhere to go.”
She threw on an old stained tee and shimmied into a pair of jeans, then tossed her broken glasses into the bag in front of her and zipped it up. “Yes, I do. I’ve had a plan in the works for a while.”
It wasn’t like she’d been the one to make the plan, but her words did what she intended them to. She hated the way she reveled in the wounded look on Charlie’s face. She picked up her bags and carried them downstairs.
“But what about the rest of your stuff?” he asked, right on her heels as she entered the bathroom. “You’re going to leave it here?”
Jess popped in her contacts, then shoveled the rest of her toiletries into her purse. She snatched her uniform that was tossed on the floor from the previous night, then scanned the apartment. She shook her head, stuffing it in her duffel. “Nope, toss it for all I care. It’s all cheap crap anyway.”
Charlie gawked at her as Jess threw open the door and popped the trunk of her car, tossing the first few bags in.
“How could you do this to me?” Charlie asked, his words gravely with emotion as Jess grabbed the rest of her stuff from inside. “After all this time?”
She slammed the trunk shut and looked at him, really looked at him. In that gaze she saw the boy she fell in love with, with his sparkling blue eyes and the midnight-black hair she loved to run her hands through. But he wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a man, someone completely different from who he was nine years ago, and she was finally ready to admit to herself all of the ways they’d changed over the years. She couldn’t live in the past for the rest of her life, wearing the same clothes and doing all of the same things. It was time to grow up and be the woman she was meant to be.
“Do you really think it was going to work, Charlie?” she asked, her voice softer and gentler than before. “Truthfully, where did you think this was going? Did you see us ever leaving this apartment? Getting married, having kids?”
The last bit made her heart twist, thinking of Dakota. She pushed the thought of her family away. One disappointment at a time.
Charlie looked down at his bare feet on the sidewalk.
She wasn’t sure what made her do it, but she leaned into the small stroke of gentleness she felt in her heart and reached out to him, cupping his face for a moment. “Me too. We tried hard to hold on to something that was never really meant to be.”
She dropped her hand and got into her car, then pulled away from the apartment and the life she always thought she wanted, and toward something that felt a lot scarier: a life she never expected.
Jess stood on Calvin’s porch, listening to laughter inside, remembering it was Memorial Day. Of course this was the moment Calvin decided to break out of his shell, she thought. He was scheduled to work the night shift at Scoops that evening, and by the sounds of it, all the other Scoopers not working this afternoon were here as well.
