Chapter 4 #2
SOPHIE RETURNED HER car to its spot and looked at the boxes in the backseat. She refused to unpack, but she did return to her dorm room, allowing Jesse to accompany her.
They were silent until they reached her room. She gestured for him to enter after her before silently shutting the door.
Her mother and father would have fit if they knew that she had a boy alone in her room. If anyone saw him leave at this point, it would appear as though he’d spent the night.
“Do you want to explain? Can you even explain?” Sophie crossed her thin arms under her small bust.
Jesse sighed. “I can try, but I doubt that you'll believe me. Can we just leave it that people like you and me have some enhanced senses?” he asked hopefully.
“No,” Sophie decided. “We cannot just leave it like that.” She found herself shaking.
This was the bravest she’d ever been around someone, not backing down, not simply looking to hide and avoid.
Adrenaline made her body quiver imperceptibly and the heat in her stomach and lava behind her eyes was back.
“Why do we have enhanced senses? Is it something that comes with the skin? Do we have a lack of pigment and an abundance of auditory nerves?” Sophie fired off as she paced in a tight circle, trying to find an outlet for the excess nervous energy.
The handsome face lit up as though he was ready to seize upon that explanation, but the look faded. “I honestly don't think that's it. I don't know if that's how it works for you. Have you ever had medical testing that proves... anything?”
Sophie bit her lip to keep in the harsh shout of hysteria that wanted to come out.
“I’ve had a whole lot of testing that proves a whole lot of nothing!
What about you? Did you get ‘tested’? Do you have something so obscure, so rare that all the doctors I’ve ever seen missed it?
” Were they always right? I’m diseased, deformed, not just different?
She expected him to get angry, get defensive. It would be fair since she was sure her tone had turned into something accusatory or patronizing.
Jesse shrugged, a rueful smile on his face, masking a hint of bitterness in his eyes. “I haven’t had a medical test in years. But I'm perfectly healthy for someone like me.”
“Someone like me?” What was that supposed to mean?
Her annoyance rose another notch at that phrase.
It bothered her, like Jesse was using some secret terminology that she didn’t know.
No, it wasn’t just that she minded the ignorance, it was the nagging feeling in the back of her mind that if she did know what he meant, it would answer all of her questions.
“Do you believe there are things that can’t be explained by medical science?” Jesse asked suddenly.
“I—” the question caught her off guard. “Yes. I guess. I’m one of them, right?”
“Right!” he said eagerly. “Uh—no! That’s not what I was trying to—”
“But I believe that things eventually have an explanation. We learn more and then questions are answered, old myths turn into new facts,” Sophie said staunchly.
Science overcoming fears was a big deal for her dad, who lived in a part of the world where tradition had sometimes led people to refuse new medical treatments or try new production methods.
repeating something her father had drilled into her
“Does everything have a scientific explanation? What about— love? As an example!” Jesse quickly held his hands out, palms up, as if to ward off any misunderstandings.
“Science can say that men like women who look a certain way or who act a certain way, women like men with thick necks and big muscles because they’ll be good protectors or hunters, whatever hangups we have from the old caveman days, right?
But— but then there’s no reason to stay with a person when they get hurt, lose their sight, lose a limb, aren’t fertile, or whatever.
Evolutionary instincts and ‘science’ would say that there’s nothing worth staying for. ”
Infertility. The reminder hit home like a hammer blow.
She remembered hearing her mother sob through the thin walls of their apartment, mourning the inability to provide a sibling for Sophie, mourning another negative home pregnancy test after spending all of their savings on another new fertility treatment with a new miracle doctor.
Her father would not leave her mother unless God Himself ordered it by way of an exit from this earthly plane, but in the traditions of his culture, an infertile woman was not much of a woman at all. “Love defies explanation.”
“But it exists, right?” Jesse led.
Sophie’s pale cheeks flushed and the anger cooled, leaving her exhausted. “Yes. With only a partial scientific explanation.”
“Let’s go with people like us aren’t... scientific. Yet.” Jesse’s eyes shifted away as if he knew more explanation than he was giving her.
Sophie stared at him. As mad as she was, there was something that she honestly found appealing about him.
The fact that he spoke to her like... She searched her mind for a word, and she realized she didn’t have just the right one.
It hadn’t happened to her outside of her family.
Even her kindest teachers and therapists had this aura of patient and deliberate kindness and understanding.
This was like the television shows she’d eventually stopped watching, where the group of friends are always and forever randomly in each other’s houses or meeting every day in a coffee shop or every night in a bar, perfectly at ease.
Their conversations flowed without awkward pauses.
Their conversations went deep but didn’t leave a stabbing pain.
Friends. Jesse spoke to her like they were friends.
“Friendship doesn’t have a logical explanation all of the time.” Jesse tilted his head.
Her mouth dropped open. “I was—”
“Thinking that? Yeah. You and I will have to work harder to make friends, but once we do,” he licked his lips again, eyes suddenly darting to meet hers and then to look away, “it’ll last a lifetime.”
Sophie watched his sneakered feet shuffle, seeming to shift himself closer to the corner by the door. “But how did you— Never mind.” She’d almost asked him how he’d read her mind, but that would make her sound crazy.
Crazier.
“How did I know?” Jesse stopped moving backward, feet planted on the floor, even with his shoulders, his hands jammed in his pockets. If it wasn’t for the way his eyes were locked onto hers with an understanding gaze, she’d have said he looked almost dangerous.
“Y-yeah.”
“Because I haven’t made a friend in a long, long time,” he said softly. “When I saw that you were leaving, I didn’t want that to happen.”
Although her heart initially softened, her eyes flashed and her arms crossed defiantly across her chest. “I don’t know why. I talked to you a couple of times. We’re not ‘besties’.”
The intent blue eyes flickered with amusement that faded. “It’s hard for me to... be around people sometimes.”
Oh God, he was speaking her language. She could have had “hermit” tattooed on her forehead if she wasn’t deathly afraid of attracting MORE attention to herself. “I get that, I guess.”
“You do?” Jesse tilted his head skeptically.
“Well, duh! I hate the stares and the whispers. Although, I guess it makes me feel better that maybe people weren’t trying to be rude.
” She self-consciously ran a finger over the shell of her ear.
Great. Even the one part of her face she could easily hide under the long dark hair still managed to cause trouble.
“It’s not a bad thing. The hearing what other people can’t? I bet it makes you an amazing cellist.”
“Mm. Maybe.” Her shoulders lifted and fell. It was at that moment that she realized her hair was not its usual sleek curtain and her eyes were probably streaked with mascara from crying. She probably looked like a puffy-eyed, raccoon-masked disaster. “Uh. Thanks for stopping. I’m sure that you—”
At that moment, the rain unleashed hard enough to make her gasp, the spray of hard drops sounding like a barrage of bullets.
“Sure that I want to go out and get my second shower of the day?” Jesse smiled ruefully.
He sighed and raked his fingers through his still-damp hair.
“Look, I get that I’m not your ‘bestie.’ But I’d hate to see you leave town.
If people look at us differently, so what?
You’re still gorgeous, right? What the hell does it matter if they don’t know why you look like Snow White come to life? Heh. Could be worse.”
His tone had changed to something brittle, but Sophie didn’t hear.
Gorgeous.
“You d-don’t have to go,” Sophie suddenly blurted.
“I’ve intruded enough already.” Jesse continued to hover by the door.
If this is the kind of “friendship” we have, I don’t think I want it, Sophie suddenly thought. He’ll say something, then leave for days or weeks. It’s just keeping me dangling. “Go if you want.”
“I don’t want to go. I just didn’t want to push more than I already did. In most cases, I’m not a pushy guy. I’m just— You’re just special.”
Sophie smothered a disbelieving snort. “Not pushy” didn’t describe his efforts to get her to stay, but at the same time, being called special with obvious admiration in someone’s voice (someone who wasn’t her mother) softened her cynical armor. “Breakfast?”
“Yeah! Breakfast would be good.” Jesse’s face transformed from hesitant to beaming.
Damn. He was so pretty when he smiled.
IT FELL INTO A PATTERN. After orchestra practice or her final class of the afternoon, he was waiting. He walked her to Pettiford to stow her cello and books, then they walked back through town to go to Mila’s or pick up Chinese.
Today was a taco day, as yesterday had been Chinese. They ate the tacos at the scarred wooden tables from flat red and green baskets, laughing and mumbling in appreciation and playing a new game, eavesdropping on one line of someone’s conversation, then deciding to take the story from there.
“My feet are killing me,” Jesse began the game, gesturing with his head toward the man working the fryer.
Sophie angled her neck and saw the twenty-something cook shifting from heel to heel as if he wanted to do nothing more than take his feet off.
“Your line,” Jesse prompted, sipping his coke.
Sophie swallowed and moved a chip further into her little side container of salsa. “Little did he know, his feet truly were assassins from a distant planet and they indeed were sent to take him out.” Sophie lowered her brows, voice an ominous hush.
“A distant planet? How would they be attached to his body?” Jesse protested.
“Hey, I did my line. The next part is your problem.”
Jesse heaved a sigh. “The tiny nano-assassins who were masquerading as annoying but harmless toenail fungus decided they would leave the poor fry cook alone. Instead, they turned their malice at the frustratingly gorgeous brunette at table six,” Jesse growled.
“That was two lines,” Sophie demurred but her heart was fluttering. Gorgeous. Again, calling her gorgeous.
“You can have two lines, then. I’m not taking my last one back.” Jesse’s eyes seemed to sparkle into hers for a split second before he dropped them to his plate.
After two weeks, Sophie’s thoughts of leaving left.