Chapter Twenty-Six #2
He wouldn’t have put it quite like that.
Over the last few weeks, and especially the weekend away, he has felt them growing closer as they’ve analysed his book and compared it to other works of literature.
He’s always felt like books are a great way into someone’s personality.
There’s a reason why book clubs are so popular, why people who attend the same one often find themselves becoming close, feeling they are kindred spirits.
For a while, in DC, he’d found one of his own to join – a co-ed group, as they say over there, men and women together.
He’d long been jealous of his sisters’ and girlfriends’ book clubs; he had never come across one that welcomed guys.
The spirited discussions, the wine and the cheese, even the occasional weekend retreat – it had been delightful, and a great way of making friends and having discussions about the real stuff of life – the deeper questions, the things that keep him awake at night.
Under the table, Alex’s feet find Jess’s.
He wants to communicate warmth and connection, make sure Jess does not feel this slowing down as a rejection.
She smiles at him, a little sadly, and nods.
‘We should get started on the book,’ she says, and they find their rhythm again over the next couple of hours.
In companiable silence, she reads his first drafts of new scenes; he reads hers.
He is, frankly, impressed with what she has done.
She has learned his style, his turns of phrase, the rhythm of his sentences, and written in his voice, but with additions of humour and light-heartedness.
Exactly, he suspects, what Nathan was hoping for.
Not for the first time, he is sorry he ever doubted her.
In contrast, his first drafts are nothing to write home about. He is almost embarrassed about them.
‘These are good,’ he says, when he’s finished reading and looks up to find she has too, and she is watching him. ‘Really good.’
She bites her lip, maybe suppressing a smile. ‘You think so?’
He searches out her eyes, makes sure she is locked into his. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m glad,’ she says, and then, to break the tension, or hide a grin, or maybe go and do a secret celebratory dance, she offers him a tea and disappears back into the kitchen. Which reminds him of earlier, when she came back sad after speaking briefly on the phone.
‘Were you okay earlier?’ he asks when she’s back in the room with a couple of mugs. ‘When you left the room to take a phone call? You didn’t seem quite yourself when you came back.’
‘Oh, that. Yeah.’
He waits, giving her space to say more, if she wants to. He hopes that she does.
‘Just my mum calling. She’s always off doing something fun. Never has very long to talk on the phone or to really ask how I’m doing. I wanted to tell her about us – well, about our book – but I didn’t get a chance.’
Inside, Alex is cheering the fact that Jess is proud of their book, but he tries to focus on what it is she is not saying, what’s between the lines. The unsaid thing that, as is the case with so many unsaid things, holds a key to who Jess is, what life has moulded her to be.
‘Has your mum always been like this?’
Jess bites her lip. ‘Yeah, pretty much. She left me with my grandparents a lot when I was little, to go and have adventures.’
‘What kind of adventures?’
‘She didn’t always tell me, and I didn’t always ask. Travels, nights out with friends. Things like that.’
‘That must have been hard.’
She shrugs and seems to swallow forcefully.
‘Not really,’ she says. ‘I love my grandparents, and they were cool – always took me to fun places, played Scrabble with me, made me delicious meals. And my mum was always happy when she came back, and really glad to see me. She’d have gifts, hug me like she never wanted to let me go again. ’
It sounds like love, but it also sounds like guilt.
What had Jess said about the plane crash in the book?
Just because they all survive doesn’t mean they don’t have issues.
‘Still,’ he says. ‘Being left behind is hard.’
‘Yeah,’ she says, her eyes dropping to the table, and then into her mug when she takes a sip of tea – a sip that seems longer than necessary, perhaps trying to compose herself, half-hidden away.
‘But I guess your mum was left behind too. When your dad—’
‘Yeah. That’s why I never minded, not really.’
He wants to say, But you did mind, and you buried it.
He wants to say, too, that she was the child in the relationship, that she deserved to come first. But they’re not there yet, in their friendship or situationship or relationship.
He can tell that she’s not there in her emotional journey.
The way she’d denied that her mum leaving her was hard – that in itself spoke volumes.
The first step is naming and acknowledging our emotions.
That’s what his therapist says, twiddling his greying moustache like a cartoon villain.
Alex isn’t very good at it yet, but he’s learning.
Still, it makes sense now. Jess’s escapism into the fun and guaranteed happy endings of romance novels, into the laughter of romantic comedies.
It’s not that she’s unrealistic about the world, or that she’s never experienced pain and thinks the world is candy-coloured, all rainbows and puppy dogs.
It’s the opposite: she knows all too well that it isn’t, and that’s precisely why she needs that escapism.
Her chin is trembling, and he is glad she has shared this with him, but also sorry that he brought up this pain.
He feels protective of her, sad for her and for her younger self.
Not for the first time, he feels chastised, too, for the judgement he had rushed to when they first met.
He reaches out for her hand, strokes her palm with his thumb.
‘Thank you,’ she says, meeting his eyes. And then, ‘Where were we?’
Moving on quickly – her survival instinct. He follows her lead and turns to the next page in the book. One day, they will deal with this together. But this is not that day. Not yet.
Lily: I thought you might be exaggerating about how hot he is.
Jess: He saw that, you know.
Lily: Sorry not sorry
Jess: Humph
Lily: Well, did it lead to – you know, anything?
Jess: No. He pretended not to notice and I pretended not to notice he was pretending not to have noticed.
Lily: Seems much more complicated than it needs to be
Jess: The building tension helps us do our best work. That’s the theory, anyway
Lily: Whose theory?
Jess: Mine, originally. And believe me, I am regretting that.