Chapter 3
Jess
“Dammit!” I dropped a box on my foot. I wanted to decide what to keep and ship back to Savannah. I found a few dusty boxes shoved under the spare blankets in the small closet and decided I should try to sort through them.
Truthfully, I didn’t want to see Charles. I woke up in his arms this morning. He was still asleep, and I slipped out before he woke up and realize I was sprawled all over him like I owned him. I loved the feel of his hard chest slowly rising and falling under me, the hard bar of his morning wood pressed to my inner thigh where my leg was stretched across him. His hands resting on me, one around my shoulder, the other on that same leg that was mistakenly on him. The heat of his body against mine was seared into my mind. I dreamed of waking up with him like this for the whole time we dated, but my grandma’s rules said no boys as overnight guests. At the time, I hated it and thought she was a tyrant, of course. I realize now it was a very reasonable rule. That didn’t stop me from dreaming of this. That dream had come true, but all I could feel was anxiety creeping up my spine and my heart rate picking up.
I had to move.
I had to get out of here.
I couldn’t handle this.
So, I ran away like the coward I was.
The shower was large, and I spent entirely too much time in there trying not to panic before cold water forced me out of my sanctuary. Charles was bringing an armload of wood into the house when I walked out of the bathroom, and I darted into the bedroom and slammed the door closed. Nothing in the terms of the will stated that I had to actually speak with Charles during this time, or spend time in the same room as him. Not that there were many places to go or things to do in the tiny cabin.
Which is how I ended up with a box landing on my foot because I was desperate for some way to keep hiding from Charles. Maybe if I hid long enough, all my problems would just go away.
“Jess, you ok?” Charles called from the kitchen. He had insisted on cleaning up after the breakfast he had also insisted on making, and I was more than happy to let him do it.
“Fine,” I called out quickly so he wouldn’t join me.
Too late, it seemed. He walked through the door just as I called out to him. “You don’t sound fine.” His tone was kind, and it broke my heart, just a little.
I wished he wasn’t kind, and that he didn’t have that stupid, handsome face.
“I said I’m fine.” The words came out more aggressively than I wanted, but I couldn’t seem to stop whatever was happening to me. “I just dropped a box on my foot.”
“Let me help.” He moved towards me, and I snapped.
“I don’t need your help!”
“Okay.” He stopped where he was and put his hands up in a placating gesture. I deflated immediately. Whatever my personal feelings, he didn’t deserve to be yelled at.
I should have apologized, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, I bent over and picked up the box so I could carry it over to where he was standing. “I’m just looking through the boxes my grandma left.” It was as close to an apology as I could manage right now.
He took the box from my hands with a small smile, and I knew he understood and accepted my apology. “Let’s see what the wily Charlotte left behind.”
“Wily Charlotte?” I asked with a laugh. “Yes, that fits. She was wily.” I grabbed another box and sat next to him on the bed to look through it.
This box had photos of my grandparents through the years. Most of them were taken right here in this cabin or the surrounding woods. From the looks of it, they had been coming to this place for decades before my grandfather died. They looked happy and free, and so young it was shocking. It’s weird to think about my grandma as a young woman in love, but I supposed everyone is young at some point.
“Look at this one.” I passed the photo over to Charles. They were at a lake. My grandma had on what was likely a risqué swimsuit for the time. The photo was slightly blurred, and my grandpa had grandma in his arms. She was looking at my grandpa with the most devoted look I have ever seen anyone wear. “The way she looks at him. Like he’s her whole world.” A part of me yearned for that kind of love, and I let myself believe, for just a moment, I could have it with Charles.
Charles said nothing. He had moved closer to look at the photo, but I hardly noticed until that moment. I looked up at him, and my heart ached with what I found. He looked a little sad and lost, but his eyes never left me. That look wormed its way into my chest, burrowing down deep where I couldn’t excise it without hurting myself. That wasn’t good.
“Anyway,” I said, glancing away, “I wish I knew my grandpa. I’ve seen pictures of them and heard her stories, but I never got to see it for myself. It just seemed like they were so in love.”
I put the picture to the side and looked through the box to see what other treasures it held. At the bottom was a vaguely familiar box, and I brought it out for a closer look. It occurred to me I shouldn’t recognize any box here, but this one had flowers that were tickling my brain. Then I realized why it was familiar. This was my box. I hadn’t seen it in a decade, but it was definitely mine. There was even a moon sticker from when I was ten and obsessed with space.
I ran my hands over the top of it like I was greeting an old friend. “What are you doing here?”
I was almost afraid of opening the box, like something was going to jump out and bite me or destroy my sanity. I’m not sure which one would be worse, or more likely.
“Are you going to open it?” Charles’ voice was low, something in my demeanor must have tipped him off to the direction of my thoughts.
I shook off my ridiculous ideas about the box and unhooked the small latch on the front. It was still in excellent condition and opened easily.
My breath stopped when at what was inside. I wanted to slam the box closed, scream, throw it against the wall, run away. Instead, I sat there paralyzed. Of course. Of course, Grandma would put this here for us to find.
“Now that, I recognize.” Charles’ voice sounded like it was coming through a tunnel. He reached for it, and his action startled me out of the paralysis I had been experiencing. I almost slapped his hand away from grabbing it, but it was too late. Pandora’s box had been opened. Grandma’s stupid plan was going exactly as she had hoped, I’m sure.
Charles pulled a picture of us out of the box. It was large and glossy. We were dressed in over-the-top formal wear. My platinum blonde hair was teased and twisted and pinned into something that made my head hurt just looking at it. Charles was behind me and had his arms wrapped tight across my much smaller teenage body.
Prom.
The Prom.
The beginning of the end of us.
“I told you I loved you for the first time that night.” He didn’t seem to have the same problem I did. His voice was too even, too matter of fact, like that night wasn’t momentous. Like that night wasn’t seared into my memories as one of the best and, subsequently, one of the worst nights of my life. It was too much. I couldn’t breathe under the weight of that night.
I looked down into the box again, dreading what I would find next. It was a stack of neatly and elaborately folded lined paper. Letters. Most were in the shape of an origami heart and all of them held tightly packed lines of teenage devotion and love. Some were unfamiliar with a return address in California, but held my name written in his familiar tight handwriting. He must have written them while he was in basic training after we had broken up, and my grandma held onto them this whole time. Hiding them from me. Protecting me from them. The world frayed and blurred at the edges of my vision, stubbornly keeping those letters in focus. I couldn’t do this.
I wanted to burn the origami letters when we broke up, but when I asked my grandma for a lighter, she refused. The next time I wanted to torture myself by rereading the letters, they were gone. Eventually, the old wound of our break up smoothed into a scar and I didn’t even think about the letter most of the time. I had been devastated they were missing and then grateful they were gone. Their disappearance served the same ultimate purpose as burning them would have, minus the imagined catharsis that would have come with the fire. Now, I knew what had happened to them.
I stood suddenly, and the box clattered to the floor, spreading its contents all around. I barely saw the mess as I fled from the room.
“Jess!” Charles called as I ran. I had just enough clarity to grab my coat and boots before slamming through the front door and out onto the porch. My tears came hot and fast.
The snow was still falling heavy against the ground. I could see drifts building up all around us. Lightning shot across the sky, lighting the whole of it in brilliant white light long enough to see the dark clouds behind the silhouetted trees.
How dare she do this to me?
How dare she trap me here with these memories and this pain and no way out but through?
My chest was heaving and my breath mixed with the cool air in front of me, causing it to fog. I couldn’t feel it though, not the cold. Everything else I was feeling was too loud and immediate for me to register something as mundane as well below freezing temperatures. The hot tears slid down my face, providing a sharp contrast to the wind. I turned my face to the sky, hoping the cold would freeze my tear ducts, so I didn’t have to feel them sliding down my face. It didn’t work. I don’t know why I thought it would.
“Can you count right now?” My therapist would probably say if she were here with me. I took a deep breath and counted backwards from one hundred. This was too big to start smaller. By the time I got to the number one, my breathing had evened out and I could think again. The sun was setting, and the landscape was darkening as I just stood there, staring at nothing.
I wondered what Charles was thinking. I left him there with the remnants of us, with no excuses or explanations. He probably thought I was insane. Who would have such a big reaction ten years after something happened? A psychopath. Oh god, he probably thought I was a psychopath and now the snow had trapped him in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with me. He was likely wondering when I would kill him and if anyone would find the body.
Get it together, Jess.He’s a Marine, he can handle himself. No, wait, he doesn’t need to handle himself because I’m not a psycho and I won’t kill him. He has to know that, right? I was pacing now, my steps matching my racing thoughts. Some part of me knew this was just another way to panic about the situation we found ourselves in, but I couldn’t seem to stop it.
I lost myself in my steps. The snow crunched under my feet until the cold seeped through and overrode my feelings of insecurity and panic. I still didn’t know what I was going to do about Charles or the time I had to spend here with him, but at least my heart rate had calmed down and I wasn’t crying.
I gave in and went back into the cabin. The sun had long since set, and I was shivering. I grabbed a blanket and curled up on the couch. “I’m sleeping here,” was all I said before closing my eyes and pulling the blankets up to my chin. Sleeping next to Charles tonight was a step too far after my breakdown, and I didn’t want to deal with that step, not right now. Sleep came fitfully and in starts and stops. The couch dug into me in the worst way, and I quickly developed a kink in my neck from the angle of my head against the arm. I refused to get up and get a pillow from the room, however, and resigned myself to suffering through the rest of my time here.