Chapter 5 Jessie
Jessie
My dad wraps his arms around Rachel’s waist and kisses her until she’s arched back and giggling like a schoolgirl.
It’s the type of farewell that would be suited to an impending separation of a month or more.
It isn’t. This situation doesn’t warrant this type of display at all.
All that’s called for is a peck on the cheek and a, “See you later, honey.”
“They’re pretty gross, huh?” I say to Luke as they both drive off to work. I don’t know why I bother to say it. It’s not like me to try to make conversation with someone I have less than nothing in common with.
“I think it’s cute.”
Cute?
“Are you for real?”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. “I think it’s nice they’re happy. Most people spend their whole lives looking for what they have and never find it. They’re lucky.”
“I’m not saying they’re not lucky. I’m saying they’re gross.”
He shrugs non-committally. I’m kind of surprised. It’s the first time I’ve bothered to give him my opinion on anything. I expected him to back down and agree with me right away.
“Want to see something cool?”
Something tells me he’s using the term ‘cool’ loosely, but I’ll bite. It’s at least ten hours before either of our parents get home from work. It’s going to be a long day.
He takes me upstairs. We hang right at the top of the landing.
There’s a gallery wall en route to our parents’ bedroom that can’t be seen from downstairs.
There are eight perfectly spaced framed pictures of childlike drawings.
The colors are vibrant. I can imagine poster paint being laid out on a large plastic sheet, complete with a red paint brush for the red paint and a yellow one for the yellow, so the colors don’t mix.
Each picture is signed by a childish attempt to write the name Luke.
A wrong way around L on one, a simple Lu on another and the word Blue on two more.
Curiosity gets the better of me. “Why’d you sign your pictures Blue?”
“When I was little I thought people were saying Blue when they called me Lu. Thought it was my name. I liked it better. I was bummed when I found out it wasn’t what they were saying.” I give him a cursory hint of teeth. “Check these out,” he says pointing further down the hall.
There are eight more pictures on the wall.
Some in full color, the rest in black and white.
It’s an homage to my cartoon drawing phase complete with clunky early dialogue and rudimentary figures, all the way to one of the last things I drew; an angry half-man half-feline creature, splattering the page with rage and saliva.
I drew it on a receipt from a restaurant my dad took me to the last time he came out before the pandemic kicked off.
“This one’s my favorite.” He’s standing in front of the first character I serialized. The highly unoriginally named, Super Jessie. “Your dad says you were only eleven when you drew this. Can’t believe it. It’s so good.”
I give a minor grunt.
“Always wondered what his superpower was. Your dad said he couldn’t remember.”
Super Jessie’s superpower was the ability to make people happy. He could make anyone laugh. I shake my head, embarrassed at how silly that is. “He didn’t have a superpower. He was a wannabe.”
As we walk back downstairs, I pause at the photographs displayed on the landing.
There are photos of Luke and I, hung side-by-side, at all the expected milestones; learning to walk, first day of school, last day of school.
That’s not what stops me, though. There’s a photo of my mom and I at the wedding.
We’re talking to each other; it doesn’t look like we knew we were being photographed.
I must have said something amusing because she was smiling, and I don’t remember her smiling a lot that day.
Seeing her here makes me feel strange. I wasn’t expecting it.
There are no photos of my dad in her house.
I move on quickly, trying not to think about how it makes me feel to see her here, or be reminded of how I felt when I caught her cutting my dad out of our family photos on one of our first nights in the new place in Sydney.
Next to the picture of her is a photograph of Luke as a baby, swaddled in the arms of a man I don’t know.
“Was that your dad?”
“Yeah. That was my dad. I always feel weird seeing him. He died before I turned one. I don’t have any memories of him. It’s strange to think he should have been such a big part of my life and instead all he is, is a man in photographs and stories other people have told me.”
I’m not sure what to say to that. Luke’s disposition is so determinedly sunny, it’s hard to believe that anything bad has ever happened to him.
“Your dad is the only dad I’ve ever known,” he says lightly. He turns his gaze and fixes me with an overly intimate smile. “Thanks for sharing him with me.”
“Are those the new sunglasses?”
Well, they’re sunglasses and they’re on my face. You do the math, Einstein.
“Yep.”
He looks at me and blinks twice. “Wow.” He lets his mouth drop open. “That’s all I can say.”
Wow?
Fucking wow?
Is he for real?
Someone needs to talk to this guy. Someone needs to sit him down and give him the low down on what’s appropriate to say to other guys and what’s not. Someone needs to do it soon.
He throws himself back on a lounger beside me and starts prattling on about Chase and Gould and someone called Izzy. I’m getting the feeling I’m going to find out who they are with or without my consent.
“Might get a little shut eye.” Lying in the sun is making me sleepy. I slept way better last night, but it still took a while for me to fall asleep due to a particular step asshole’s unrelenting pursuit of self-pleasure.
“Good idea. I’ll hit the water.”
He dives in and starts swimming laps. I don’t end up falling asleep. I watch him, safe in the knowledge he can’t see my eyes following him courtesy of my new shades.
He swims powerfully. He moves through the water like something with gills and fins.
He’s more graceful in the water than he is out of it.
For some infuriating reason, I can’t stop watching him.
I can’t take my eyes off him. I watch him until I have his stroke memorized and I’m able to predict his next one with a horrifying degree of accuracy.
When he gets out, water runs down his face and his chest in slick gullies, splashing onto the ground as he walks.
His chest is smooth. Totally hairless. His skin is taut and tanned golden brown.
His swimming shorts cling to his thighs as he walks.
He shakes his head like a wet dog, sending a fine spray all over me.
The cold water against my sun-drenched skin is a shock that almost makes me sit up straight.
“Wanna go for a run?”
“Nah, thanks but I’d rather be bitten on the face by an Eastern brown snake.”
He laughs uproariously at that. I close my eyes and try to tune him out.
“…so the main thing to know about Gould is that he seems like a shit but he isn’t.
I mean, I guess technically he is a shit but once you get to know him, you’ll see he’s way less of a shit than you originally thought.
He never has a clue where his car keys or his phone are, but he’ll have your back, you know?
” I sigh heavily, closing my eyes and tilting my head away from him.
“Chase takes some getting used to. At first it’s hard to follow what he’s talking about, but once you realize that most of the time he’s talking about something that’s happening in a game as if it’s happening in real life, it’s a lot easier to understand where he’s coming fr… ”
“Please stop talking.”
He laughs again. He gets to his feet and whips his hands through his hair again, purposefully sending a mist of icy water all over me.
He has a great big smile on his face and an earnest look in his eyes.
Like he thinks we’ve just bonded or something.
He reaches down and taps my side playfully.
My skin burns hot and cold from his touch, erupting into a rash of gooseflesh where he touched me.
His hands were cold and wet and I’m hot from the sun.
Jesus. Chill.
He heads inside and I follow him in. Our first breakfast was light and I’m feeling hangry.
“How about some fruit and yogurt?” he says.
“Sounds good.”
I toss a handful of berries into my mouth straight from the carton and then tuck into my yogurt.
He gets a bowl out and arranges his berries neatly, topping them with oats and some nuts.
He opens his tub of yogurt, slowly pulling the foil lid back.
He scrapes the yogurt off the lid with a spoon like he did yesterday, savoring every morsel and then lifting the foil to his mouth and licking it slowly.
His eyelids drop to half-mast as he does it.
I feel intensely uncomfortable. Like I’m part of a voyeuristic fantasy I didn’t agree to be part of.
He licks it again. His tongue is broad and pink.
Wet. He twists his head as he does it, improving the angle to get what he wants.
I have no doubt about it; what I’m watching is tantamount to the seduction (and or sexual assault) of a yogurt lid.
“Jesus. Get a room.”
He looks up, happy enough to offer me a smile, but he must be startled by my tone, because he drops the lid onto the floor.
“Oh, fffudge.”
My jaw drops. “Did you just say fudge?”
“Yeah, I try to watch my language.” There’s no embarrassment, no apology, in his statement.
“You called Gould a shit a couple of times out by the pool.”
“I know,” he smiles, “but when you meet Gould you’ll understand.”
“Fair enough, but FYI, you can’t go around saying things like fudge.”
“Oh no? What should I say instead?”
“You could try saying what you mean.”
He leans down and picks up the lid from the floor.
He looks at it with regret. If it hadn’t landed yogurt side down, I’m pretty sure he’d be launching a fresh assault on it right now.
He sighs softly, still looking at the lid.
He talks quietly. His voice soft and deep like always.
He draws out the first part of the word, trapping the sound between his upper teeth and bottom lip.
His eyes flick up at me as he releases the last letter on the back of a short, explosive exhale.
“Fuck.”
I step back. I feel shocked. Not by what he said but by the way he said it. He changed from sweet to something entirely different.
“W-what’s up with you and the yogurt anyway? Why’d you eat it like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re some weird fucking yogurt sex maniac.”
He smiles easily. His eyes glint. “I’m not a sex maniac.” He lowers his voice, tucking his chin to his chest conspiratorially, looking up at me with those big baby blues. He hesitates for a second, then says, “I’m a virgin.”
A loud, coarse burst of laughter bursts out from my chest. The sound chokes out of me before I can stop it.
“D’you think it’s funny?” Hurt traces light lines around his mouth.
“No,” I snort. “I don’t think it’s funny that you’re a virgin. I’ve got no problem with that. More power to you. What’s funny is that you think it’s necessary to tell me you’re one.”
“Oh,” he chuckles, shrugging good-naturedly, “guess you’re right.”
The topic is starting to make me feel weird, so I head to my room in an attempt to wrap it up.
“Hey, Jess,” he calls out after me, waiting until I turn around to add, “I’m not going to be one for much longer, you know.”
“One what?”
“A virgin.”
Against my better judgement, something about this stupid conversation is piquing my interest. “Is that a fact, huh? What are you going to do about it?”
“I’ve got options.”
Hearing him say that slices into my amusement and leaves me feeling oddly cold. “Well, good luck with that.”
Word on the street is that the infamous Chase and Gould are coming around to hang out.
He didn’t ask me before inviting them and I’m dreading it.
Fully dreading it. For one thing, I know there’s no way these guys are going to be anything other than the biggest dorks alive.
They willingly hang out with Luke; how could they not be?
So there’s that, but it’s not the main thing.
The main thing is this gnawing, low level of anxiety I feel when I think of being in a group of guys with Luke.
He’s so…soft. So sweet. So fucking earnest. There’s no way on Earth he isn’t the fall guy in the group.
The one who takes all the flack. The butt of the jokes.
I mean, no judgement here, I totally get it.
I can definitely relate to wanting to laugh at him rather than with him, but for some reason I don’t like the feeling of other people doing it to him.
It’s weird. Very unpleasant. Very unprecedented.
I kind of feel like I won’t feel comfortable letting other guys rag him.
I feel like I don’t want to see it and I might not be able to sit around and let it slide if I do.
I have no idea why I feel like this. I hate it.
It’s pissing me off big time. It’s making me feel anti-social and stressed out.
Luke looks up from his phone, “They’re almost here.” His eyes are shining, and he has this wide, buoyant smile on his face.
When I see him like that, I can’t help thinking that someone needs to protect this guy. Someone has to. He can’t go out into the world like this, wearing his heart on his sleeve, thinking everything’s good and nice and fair. Someone needs to protect him, or he’s going to get badly hurt.
Someone has to protect him.
It doesn’t have to be you, I tell myself over and over.