Chapter Twenty-Five Mo and Jess
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mo and Jess
The following evening, Mo parked in his driveway after dropping Maddie off and took the few steps to his porch. Inside, his keys on the hook, he toed off his shoes. His “no-Maddie” ache was there to meet him. Even though it wasn’t as sharp as usual, the change was unpleasant. It felt like something heavier was weighing it down. He tidied the couch cushions and refolded the throw, putting it in its place. He would need to plan dinner soon, but thinking about food put an ashy taste in his mouth, which was very odd. He chalked it up to missing Maddie and went upstairs to take a shower.
That didn’t work. Out on the bathmat, drying himself, he got what was wrong with him. It was past time for Jess to have returned from Rockford. She’d only messaged him the day before to let him know that she’d arrived safely. Beyond that, he hadn’t wanted to disturb her while she was with her parents. Apart from a good night text and a good morning one, he’d given her space. Maddie had had a tough week at school, and he’d spent a good bit of energy trying to help her feel better. Now that she was with Diana, Mo became concerned about the radio silence from Jess.
“Hi there,” she said with a sigh when she picked up the phone.
“Uh, hey, m’lady, are you back home?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Are you all right?”
Jess cleared her throat.
“I’m okay,” she said.
She was not okay; Mo could tell. He didn’t want to press. Though he’d kicked himself the last time he hadn’t.
“Are you sure about that?” he asked.
“Sure?”
“That you’re okay.”
“Oh, sorry.” There was no “Jess energy” in her voice. “I should have called you when I got here. I just…I’ve had a lot on my mind since I got here last night,” she said.
“Last night?” The words shot out of him before he thought about it.
“Yeah. I…” She sighed. “The visit was…emotionally complicated.”
Mo felt slow and muddy. It seemed like her sadness was sticking to her, pulling her down as it hardened. When she’d called upset before, her energy had been more pointed, staccato. This felt more like…grief?
“Do you mind if I come over?” he asked.
He heard her swallow.
“Um, sure,” she said. “If you want.”
“Lemme take care of one or two things, and I’m on my way,” he said.
“Okay,” she said. “See you soon.”
—
Thirty minutes later, Mo rushed up her steps and rang the doorbell. He’d fought to push aside the sandpaper worry chafing at him on the drive there. No reason to get too far into his head before he could look into her eyes and truly see how she was doing. She opened the door, and his skin was instantly scored by a million papercuts.
“Hi,” she said, voice thick, eyes puffy and red. Her shoulders were slouched, her hair hanging limp and wet. She gave him a little smile.
“M’lady…” he said.
She let out a short, dry laugh.
“I know, I must look terrible,” she said. “Come on in.”
“Uh, no, I mean, thanks,” he said as he crossed the threshold, and she closed the door behind him. “You don’t look terrible. You look…really hurt.”
Her smile in response was larger than the one before, but sadder. She tipped her head at him. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said.
“Do? Oh.” In his shock he’d forgotten about the bouquet of flowers in his hand. “Here,” he said. “It’s my pleasure.”
“You always bring interesting ones,” she said, accepting them. “Never generic gas station flowers.” She gestured for him to follow her as she went into the kitchen to put them in water. Steinem walked alongside her, completely ignoring Mo. The cat knew his mistress wasn’t herself. “Do you know what kind these are?”
“Uh, yeah,” he said, stepping close to her. “The ones with the white petals are cranberry flowers. The purple ones are penstemon. Beardtongue.”
“They are beautiful. Great choice, Mo,” she said, arranging them in their vase.
He kind of wanted to tell her their meanings. But that would start a discussion about him, and he wanted her to be the focus right then. They could be a segue, though.
“I was hoping they’d brighten your mood because you seemed sad on the phone and like you could use a boost.” He ran a hand down her back. “Now that I’m here, it looks like I was right.”
Close-lipped, she nodded. After placing the vase in a prominent spot on the counter, she took his hand and led him to the couch. As soon as she tucked her legs to nestle into one of the corners, Steinem leapt onto the back, stretching himself to lie against her shoulders. Jess squeezed Mo’s hand and then let go so she could rub her own as he sat as well, close to the middle, but careful not to crowd her. Her rubbing stiffened Mo’s resolve to tell her what Mrs. S had said, but he wanted to start closer in time first, to what had happened the day before at her parents’ house. Just as he took a breath to speak, it struck him that Jess wasn’t looking him in the eye. She hadn’t at all after letting him in. That fact flipped a tiny switch of worry, but he couldn’t really assess it. The slow, heavy energy he’d picked up on over the phone was much stronger. Much deeper. Even the way she’d spoken when he’d arrived was just not Jess —too much space between words, her tone a little cold.
“What happened yesterday?” he asked.
She sighed and stopped rubbing her hands. Rather than reach for him, she curled them in her lap. He folded his together loosely in his own.
“We had a fight. During lunch,” she said. “I had been biting my tongue, stuffing down my frustration pretty much from the moment I stepped out of the car. My father made one of his trademark hurtful comments, and things snowballed. I think…” She stopped and ran a hand down her face. There hadn’t been any tears. She seemed to have tried to wipe away heavy frustration. “I think I have a better idea of why my mother was so…inert when it came to Cassie’s situation. But it’s…more than I can handle right now. Suffice it to say, I felt even less at home than the last time.”
Mo hated seeing her so defeated. And he was disappointed that things had gone poorly.
“I’m sorry, Jess. I’m really sorry that it was so difficult.” He couldn’t put his arm around her shoulders with Steinem in the way, so he scooted closer, rubbing her crossed legs and forearm. She smiled a little, but her gaze was unfocused, toward the coffee table. She sighed.
“Then, I went to see Cassie, and I couldn’t keep it in any longer, and Stephanie is probably right, and maybe even my mother is right, and I can’t keep doing this because it’s going to hurt and be bad.”
Mo wasn’t sure where to begin to make heads or tails of everything that had rushed out of Jess just then. That was the fastest she had spoken since he’d walked through the door and even with understanding each word, their meaning all together was lost on him. She looked him in the eye, and her eyes were redder than before and full of tears. She took another deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Stephanie had gotten really upset because she thinks that I’ve been having the pain and the stomach problems because I’m refusing to grieve,” she said.
“That’s what Mrs. S said, too,” Mo said. Jess looked at him sharply, squeezing the air out of his lungs. He returned his hands to his lap.
“Mrs. S?” she asked.
Mo swallowed hard. He’d wanted to bring up his discussion a little more delicately, but if her friend already had, maybe Jess would take it well.
“I was worried,” he said. “You seemed to be running away from pain. Either through seeking physical pleasure when your mom upset you, or by ignoring your physical pain and being angry that your doctors wanted to investigate further. So I did some research into grief. And I asked her because she lost her husband of forty years. She knows something about it.”
Jess narrowed her eyes at him, but she didn’t move. He tried to push the billiard ball down his throat again and kept talking.
“She told me that either we choose to grieve, or our bodies force us to do it.”
His heart thudding and cutting off his air supply, he shut himself up to see what she would say. It was impossible for him to find the origin of the tight band around his chest—he was too stressed to take a breath, but he could tell that she wasn’t really breathing, either. He might have been sensing her tightness.
“So you did feel like I used you,” she said, her eyes marginally softer.
“What?” he asked.
“?‘Seeking physical pleasure,’?” she said flatly. She was stockstill. Her hands hadn’t budged from where she’d curled them, arms and legs in the exact same position. Not a single strand of her hair had shifted from where it had come to rest when she’d sat down. There was something about that utter stillness that Mo did not like, but he couldn’t understand what it was communicating.
“Not at all,” he said. “I, um…I had been concerned about you. Where your mind and emotions were. It was just tough to bring it up because I didn’t want you to think I was doubting your ability to know your own mind.”
She crooked an eyebrow. Mo had wanted to move forward and hug her, but the flash over his skin held him in place.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“I’m sure,” he said. “You just said that your mother was right,” he added, needing to get the focus off him. “What do you mean?” He took the risk to take her hand gently.
“She said I bottle things up, stuff them away, refuse to deal with them,” Jess said, returning her gaze to the coffee table. “Another way of saying I refuse to grieve.” Fat tears began to roll down her cheeks. Mo dared to squeeze her hand. She didn’t squeeze back.
“Cassie…said I should grieve, too. It’s okay for me to do it. I’m not accepting a life without her just because I let myself grieve,” Jess said. “So, I’m going to.”
“That’s great,” Mo said, smiling.
She raised her head, meeting his eyes. But the distance in her gaze shot a foreboding, prickly chill all over his skin.
“Then I can’t do this anymore,” she said.
“Do what?” he asked, his voice scratchy. And then finally, she moved. She slipped her hand out from under his and pointed back and forth between them.
“This,” she said. “Us.”
Usually, Jess detested being wrong. At that moment, a deep loathing at being right wrapped itself around her, squeezing into her skin. She had felt like it would tear her soul to ribbons if she faced her grief, had walked into it. Looking at Mo, she knew she’d only scratched the surface of her pain.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
I don’t either, she wanted to say.
—
She’d made her way home the day before, collapsing on her couch as the sun was setting. The little spark of hope that had stuck with her after she’d cleaned herself up and gotten behind the wheel flickered out as she pulled into her driveway. Inside, the bawling had begun. Deep, wrenching cries as powerful as the ones that had thrown her to the ground in the cemetery forced her to run to her bathroom and cling to her toilet bowl. Once the retching had stopped, she slid to the floor, her gaze catching on a cracked ceiling tile. She’d understood that the path ahead of her was going to be ugly, embarrassing, and painful to live through. It would be even more so for a Highly Sensitive Man to experience by her side.
She drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around her legs and hugging herself tightly. Mo was watching her carefully.
“Do you remember, when you came over with the chorba?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said, eyes guarded.
“You told me you couldn’t eat any. Because I was upset.”
“That’s true,” he said, his eyebrows coming together.
She took a breath but couldn’t maintain eye contact with him. She let her gaze fall to his hands.
“Things are going to be difficult for a while,” she said. “Very ugly and difficult. I don’t want to subject you to that emotional ride. I don’t want you to get flooded with what I’m going through and have it impact you.”
“Isn’t that kind of my choice to make?” he asked.
“It could be,” she said. “But I know that I won’t be able to really commit to letting myself feel all the grief and the pain if I’m worried that you’re going to feel it, too. I’m not going to make you starve yourself so that I can heal.”
Mo didn’t say anything else. He shifted hard into the couch, like he’d been holding himself tight for too long.
“And even…” She cleared her throat and took a deep breath. This next part would be painful to say, she wanted to get it out in one fell swoop. “Even if I try not to run to you to avoid the pain, I may do it without realizing I am. Which might ruin any progress. Plus, I don’t know how to trust myself to be around you. What if I think I’m acting out of healthy motivations when I’m not? Until you said something about it, I wouldn’t have thought that I was using sex to escape. It’s better to remove the possibility so I’m forced to face the pain. And while I am, while I’m living it, I don’t want to harm you.”
Mo sighed, then looked up at her. The tears in his eyes clawed at her heart.
“But not being with you is going to harm me, too,” he said softly.
A hiccup-sob shot through her. She tried to take a quick breath to shove it down, but it was followed by another and another. A fight broke out inside of her—the desire to hold herself together, to take back what she’d said, to reach out and comfort him, the imperative to stop running away from her feelings—everything became a jumbled mess fighting to get out. She couldn’t breathe. She sat up a little straighter to help her lungs and caught the lightning-quick expression on Mo’s face: teeth clenched, eyes narrowed. He was in pain. And she was causing it. She jumped to her feet and went to the front door, a hand clamped over her mouth to hold in her cries. He sighed, stood, and joined her. Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her close, tucking her cheek against his chest. She let her arms wind around him and her tears soak his shirt.
“I’m a sturdy guy, m’lady,” he whispered. “I won’t break.”
That just made more tears fall. Even though she felt like a monster, she squeezed tighter, wishing she could burrow inside him and hide from everything. He stroked her hair.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” he said. “I understand that you want to protect me. It hurts, but I’ll respect it.”
She sniffed hard, gorging herself on the cedarwood, leather, and hint of anise. And him.
“I know you have to do some of this on your own. But the minute you’re ready for some help, the moment you need anything, I’m here, okay?” he asked, his voice rumbling through her. She nodded. He pressed a long kiss to her crown, gently released her, and left. As she closed the door behind him, a wrenching cry tore out of her and she sprinted to the bathroom, even though there couldn’t have been anything left to come up.