47. Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Seven
Silas
J ackie stops in her tracks when she sees me. And at first it looks like she’s about to cry. Which can’t be good. I hadn’t planned for that. At all.
But then her lips open into the most beautiful, full-face smile and I know they’re good tears and I breathe again.
“Oh my gosh, Silas! You’re here! You’re— how are you here? I thought you were still in…”
Then her voice trails off and she runs toward me, wrapping her arms around my torso in a hug that almost cuts off my circulation. I hadn’t planned for this either. And I like it.
“I lied,” I tell her, grinning. “I got out last weekend. I wanted to surprise you.”
“I can’t believe it!” she cries. “I am so happy! This is the best surprise ever! ”
Note to self: Jackie Delaney has low standards when it comes to surprises.
“I can’t believe you got out last weekend,” she says. And suddenly I feel self-conscious.
“Yeah.” I stare at a framed picture on the wall just beyond her right shoulder. “I wanted to be out a few days—without telling anyone for a bit where I was, just to… you know, just to see how it feels. To get my sea legs or whatever.”
“That’s really smart,” she says. Of course. I should have figured Jax would get it. She’s a planner. She’s a cautious girl. And she knows everything about me—what I’ve been battling. She and Richard are the only other people who know about the rehab thing, besides Maggs and Credence. I really don’t need to worry about how Jax will react to me being out.
But I do .
I want to be a better person for her. I want to prove that I’m moving on, and moving forward, just like she is. It’s one of the things I respect the most about her, and I want to be more like that.
She looks at me for a second. Skims her eyes over my body and then my face, like she’s assessing me, looking for changes or something.
“You look good,” she says. And she looks like she means it. “I’ve been thinking about you so much…”
She flings her arms around me and squeezes again.
“Gosh, it’s good to see you!” she whispers. But her mouth is so close to my ear that I still hear every word.
Man, I like this girl.
“You too," I say, pulling her back against my chest, peering over her shoulder to make sure Richard or Meryl aren’t standing anywhere nearby. They know about me and Jax getting… closer this summer. But I’m not exactly eager for them to walk in on me with my hands pawing her body.
“I was scared you wouldn’t want to see me,” she says, still in a voice that’s barely above a whisper. I can hear the chatter and laughter filtering through the screen door somewhere in the back of the house.
“Why the hell would you think that?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Just…” she shrugs again. “I’m not sure. I was just worried, that’s all.”
Probably because I’ve been so hot and cold with her for the past two months. I don’t blame her. And I also don’t try to explain it to her—the control that the liquor had on my moods. I didn’t even realize it myself at the time. It’s one of the million-and-one things I learned in rehab: that so many of the moods I attributed to other stuff were all part of the addiction. I thought it was the nightmares that controlled me—and it was at first. But then it became more about the need to have a few drinks in order to fall asleep. The belief that liquor was some miracle potion that kept all that bad stuff away. And then it just became a physical addiction that I masked as something else .
I don’t explain it to her, because I want to show her. I want to prove to her over time that the moody guy from the summer is not who I really am. I’m not innately a total asshole.
“Of course I wanted to see you,” I tell her instead. “I missed you… A lot.”
Her eyes do that saucer-round thing, and she leans back to take in my face.
“You did?”
Does she really not get how much I like her? I don’t get close to anyone. Ever. And I got close to her.
At least I got one thing right: I picked the right girl to get close to. Because Jackie Delaney… she’s something else. She’s one in a million.
She always has been.
“I’m so glad you forgave me,” Jax says. “For telling Richard… and going to rehab and everything.”
This girl. She’s killing me.
“Yeah, about that…” I say, looking down at the floor, where my pride has probably slipped and shrivelled up into a ball. “I’m sorry that I made you feel bad. I was the one with the problem. Not you. I just…”
My words trail off as I struggle to find the right way to say this. I’m not even sure there is a right way to apologize for something like that.
“I just needed someone else to blame. All I cared about was getting my next drink… and you were making it really hard. Then you cut me off completely as soon as you told Richard. And in that moment, I couldn’t see beyond that. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than that.”
“It must have been really hard,” she says. “Rehab, I mean.”
“Meh. Piece of cake,” I shrug. And we both laugh.
“You two doing alright out here?” Richard’s voice calls from down the hall. He steps out of the kitchen and I can tell he’s trying to be relaxed about the situation, but his eyes take everything in, scrutinizing how close we’re standing.
I take a step back, because I’ve got a lot of respect for this guy. I never thought I’d say that, but I didn’t realize it until recently. The way he went out on a limb for me over the past few months, several times—when I probably didn’t deserve it. Hell, he even tried looking out for me when I was a kid, when he really had no reason to.
“We’re good,” Jax calls, practically beaming. “We’ll be out in a sec!”
Richard nods. His eyes meet mine and he smiles. He’s trying really hard to trust that I am not an asshole. I don’t think he’s the kind of guy who would just stand back and shrug it off if an asshole was standing this close to his pride and joy. He’s not the push-over I thought he was.
I smile back and shove my hands into my pockets for good measure, and he disappears back into the kitchen. We hear the screen door open and then close again.
“Come meet my friends,” Jax says, placing her hand against my chest.
It’s just her hand. On my chest. But man… it makes it really hard to concentrate on what she’s saying.
“I already met your friends,” I manage to say. I’m not smiling anymore though, because I’m not exactly excited about having to become buddy-buddy with a bunch of dudes who had me up against a wall and physically threw me out of some girl’s house just a few months ago.
Oh yeah, and that girl, the one whose house I was thrown out of… with the two-hundred-thousand-dollar lump of glass I broke—she must be one of Jackie’s friends, too. So that’s another fun meet-and-greet in my future.
But I’ll do it. For Jax.
And I have to assume that a girl like her wouldn’t be hanging out with these people if they were really a bunch of douche bags. I need to be open to the idea that not all preppy rich kids are necessarily douche-bags.
It’s possible. Not likely—but still, possible.
“I hate to burst your bubble,” I tell her. “But your friends are gonna hate me.”
“My friends don’t know you.”
“Pretty sure that scene I made at the party was enough for them to form an opinion.”
Jackie rolls her eyes. “That doesn’t count. And anyway, they’ve probably forgotten about that whole thing.”
I guarantee they haven’t.
“Please…” She brushes a strand of hair off my forehead. “Just come out for ten minutes.”
I might as well get it over with. Rip off the band-aid and just apologize to these guys. Because I need to suck it up and face the music at some point, if I’m really serious about wanting to make this thing work between me and Jax.
And I am serious about wanting to make this thing work. More serious than I’ve ever been about anything.
“Sure,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
And I take her hand and follow her down the hall.
- THE END -
I hope you enjoyed Jackie and Silas' story! Read on for the first two chapters of Caroline and Sebastian's story, Even In The Rain , available now on Amazon here
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