Chapter 15. Jude
I've been standing on Ford's stoop for eleven minutes.
I know this because I've checked my phone six times, and each time the screen lights up with its accusatory little clock, I think about turning around and walking back down the street and into the nearest bar, or into traffic, whichever presents itself first.
I had texted him. "Is it okay if I come by? I need to talk to you."
He answered not long before with a simple "yes."
Good enough. Maybe better than what I deserve.
The wind finds every gap in my jacket. My fingers are numb. My nose is running. I look like a stray dog who's shown up at the one door in the neighborhood that might feed him or might call animal control, and the odds feel about even.
I was last here semi-conscious and covered in my own vomit. A real Cinderella story.
I ring the intercom.
The wait is horrible, and it feels like forever, but it isn't. Ten seconds, maybe fifteen, and then he answers it.
"Yes?"
I don't know what to say for a second, but I force myself to produce words.
"Hi… Ford… it's… it's me."
"Jude."
"Can I come in?"
He doesn't answer but after a moment, the door unlocks.
I go in the ridiculously fancy lobby. It smells like money.
No one is here, so I just cross it as fast as I can, not staring at the artwork on the walls which probably costs more than me.
The elevator bank is a fucking cathedral of chrome, my reflection caught in those doors like a mugshot.
When the car arrives with a soft chime, I lurch inside and my finger trembles over the penthouse button, the highest number.
His floor has only one door, black and imposing.
Less than ten seconds later, it opens, and Ford fills the frame.
He's in a black fancy sweater that probably costs more than my rent, and dark jeans.
It's so casual it hurts my heart. His silver hair is slightly less disciplined than usual, as if I've caught him in the middle of being human.
His feet are bare. For some reason, this does something to me.
He studies me for a beat. His eyes move from my face to my hands, which are shaking a little, and then back to my face. He steps aside.
"Come in," he says, and I try to analyze his voice, but I can't. He's just serious. Maybe a little disappointed.
Everything is in its place. Books arranged on the shelves. An orchid on the kitchen counter, white and perfect.
He doesn't ask me to sit. He leans against the kitchen counter, arms folded across that broad chest and watches me with patience that I don't deserve. I question if I even deserve being here at all.
"I'm sober," I say first, because it seems important to establish. "Completely. Four days." Four days isn't a lot. Four days is what normal people call Tuesday. But for me it's really, really good.
"Coffee?" he offers.
"No. I… no." I push my hands into my pockets, then pull them out again.
I'm wearing a silly American Eagle white hoodie and sweatpants.
I look like a fucking kid next to him. There's nowhere to put myself in this kitchen that doesn't feel like standing on a stage.
"I need to say something to you, and if I sit down or drink coffee or do anything normal, I'm going to lose my nerve and make some joke about your orchid and leave. "
The corner of his mouth twitches. He says nothing. He just waits, the bastard.
"What I did at BratWorld was inexcusable.
" The words come out rough. I can't look at his eyes.
"The screaming. The scene I caused. The…
all of it. I was cruel to you, and you didn't deserve it, and I'm sorry.
I looked like an amateur in the scene, and not only that, like someone who should get a lifetime ban.
I apologized to Glynn as well. I even feel like I should do some kind of volunteer service there to make up for it.
And that's not…" I swallow hard. "That's not the part that's hard to say. "
His expression doesn't change, as if he's saying go on.
"The hard part," I continue, and my voice has gone thin and strange, "is that the reason I did all of that is because I've developed feelings for you.
Not only like 'I want to play with you.' Real ones.
The kind I don't know what to do with. And when I don't know what to do with something, I destroy it.
That's…" I laugh, and it comes out broken. "That's sort of my whole thing."
I can feel the heat climbing up my throat. I stare at a point just past his left shoulder because looking directly at him right now would be like looking at the sun.
"If someone's going to leave, I make them leave on my timeline." I pause, my chest heaving. "But that doesn't… I know that doesn't justify anything. I know it's an explanation, not an excuse. I'm sorry. I'm just so…"
Broken, is the word I can't say.
"I should also apologize to you, Jude," Ford says and I can't believe his words. "I kept pushing you away but not really. It was irresponsible and I promise I won't do it again."
I let my mouth drop open and then feel tears in my eyes. I'm such a crybaby.
"You don't need to apologize. You're so good to me."
"No. I was mean to you several times. You don't deserve that."
Now I chuckle and he looks at me softly. "I like it, silly."
"Well, not if it's not consensual and previously discussed."
"I want to ask you for something," I say, quietly. It's hard to speak and much harder to look at him.
"Say it."
"I need… consequences." I feel nauseated. "For what I did. I need… I want you to punish me. I know we're not… I know there's no dynamic, no anything. But please. I need someone to hold me accountable, and I need it to be you. I mean… only if you want to."
Something crosses his face then. He looks dangerous. I can see the desire in his eyes. His jaw sets. His shoulders roll back, and he seems to gain two inches without moving.
"Good," he says, simply. "Because I'm done pretending I don't want to."
The air is dense, my heart is going insane, and my stomach is flipping. He said yes.
?
"Here's what's going to happen," Ford says, and his voice sounds just like when he told me I wouldn't sit for a week.
It lands somewhere primal inside of me, and I shiver.
"You're going to spend one hour in the church vestry.
On your knees. In silence. And you're going to write a letter.
A real one, Jude, not your usual performance, about what you feel and why, and you're going to ask for forgiveness. Not from me. From yourself."
I expect something physical. A belt, maybe. His hand. But deep down, I know it wouldn't be. This is worse. It is really a punishment. He knows I enjoy pain, no matter how hard he makes it. But sitting with my thoughts for an hour?
"Okay," I whisper.
We drive to the church in his car. The seats are heated.
My hands rest on my thighs, palms down, and I focus on the sensation of the fabric beneath my fingers because if I focus on anything else, on the man beside me, I'll die.
He doesn't speak. Neither do I. The city scrolls past the windows like a film.
The church is dark when we arrive, the parking lot empty. Ford produces a key, of course he has a key, of course the church yields to him the way everything yields to him, and lets us in through a side entrance.
The vestry is a small room off the nave.
It smells of wood and beeswax, the tang of incense, and candles burn in iron sconces along the walls.
The light catches on the faces of painted saints in their wooden frames, their eyes downcast and merciful, their hands raised in gestures.
A crucifix hangs above a narrow table, the Christ figure twisted in familiar agony, and I stare at it for a moment longer than I mean to.
Ford places a kneeling cushion on the stone floor. It's thin but merciful. He sets a pen and several sheets of cream-colored paper on the low table beside it. He arranges these objects the way a priest arranges the elements of communion.
"One hour," he says.
I hesitate. The saints watch me from their frames with their flat, compassionate eyes.
I feel weirdly disconnected from my body, which is tingling.
Then I lower myself to my knees on the cushion, and I realize how much one hour in this position is going to ache.
A dull, constant pain, different from the pain of impact.
The pen is fancy, expensive, and heavier than I expect. I uncap it and hold it above the paper and nothing comes.
Ford sits on a wooden bench near the door, just within my peripheral vision.
I write: I don't know how to do this.
Then I cross it out and start again, terrified that he's going to read it and judge it all.
I'm afraid of…
But I don't write anything else. I don't know how. I feel so small, so vulnerable… so submissive. Tears are hot in my eyes again.
"Focus," Ford says, strict and firm, from behind me. My spine straightens. My pen touches paper.
I write about Emmett. Of course. It's always him.
I write about how pathetic I felt that I loved him so much, that I gave everything that I had.
Every little drop of myself. I thought of him every moment of my day, of serving and pleasing him, being close to him, of the things he did to me.
But he was always half there. Answering my devotion with lust only.
He never loved me. He enjoyed me, at most, while I poured my heart and soul into a cup that he later shattered.
I write about how I can't forgive myself for giving so much to someone I knew would go away eventually.
And how it's not even his fault really. He always told me he'd go away.
That he didn't know how long that dynamic would last, urging me to stay in the present moment and not worry about the future.
But the future came, and he wasn't there.
And what I was wasn't there anymore either.