Chapter 17 Jessie #2
We head out to the street to wait for Chase, shouting goodbyes to our parents as we walk down the path along the side of the house.
We stand on the lawn and look down the street.
It’s quiet and dark. I look back at the house.
It looks different than it did when I first got here and stood in this very spot.
The lights are on, making the whole place glow warmly.
My dad is packing the dishwasher and Rachel is standing to the side watching him.
He must be talking because now and again her chin dips down and little lines at the corners of her eyes crease and fan out.
I haven’t seen the house from here at this time of night before but that’s not why it looks different.
It looks familiar now. I know how it smells and feels inside.
It looks like the kind of place it doesn’t feel crazy to call home.
“Jess, I’m sorry about before. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just thought you should know.”
The streetlight hits the side of his face, casting shadows in his eyes that highlight the concern in them. I feel bad about the way I reacted. The way I overreacted. Obviously he wasn’t trying to hurt me. He didn’t do anything wrong.
“It’s fine. It wasn’t your fault. I just, like, I just really can’t handle it when people say bad things about my mom. I don’t know why, it’s a trigger for me or something.”
“I get it.” He’s quiet and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s considering what I said, or if it’s because he’s moved on from the subject. I could tell if I looked at him, but I don’t want to right now. “Do you only feel that way about your mom, or your dad, too?”
What?
“Well, Luke, I don’t love it when people talk shit about my dad either. Obviously not. I mean, who would? But…I guess the rage, trigger-y thing only really happens with my mom.”
He’s quiet again. I can feel the cogs of his mind spin beside me. They move fast and then they come to a stop. I hope to fuck that the end of it.
He’s Luke, so it isn’t.
“Why do you think that is?”
I feel myself launch into a familiar reaction; a burst of heat, a quick escalation and a complete inability to control my response.
“Because, when people say bad shit about my mom,” I spit, “I know it’s true.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
What the fuck is up with today and the truth bombs detonating around me.
He slides his hand into mine and squeezes hard. The thick flesh of his palm melds with mine, making it buzz with a warmth that radiates up my arm.
“Let go of my hand!” I whisper, even though our parents are well out of earshot.
“No,” he says simply.
“They’ll see!”
“They’ve gone to the media room, they can’t see us.”
“Well, Chase is on his way. He’ll see.”
There’s an urgency in my voice that seems reasonable and justified.
What doesn’t seem at all reasonable or justified is the fact that despite the strength of my objection, I’m not making the slightest effort to pull my hand from his.
In fact, I’m holding on just as tightly as he is.
I don’t let go until I see the headlights of Chase’s car rounding the bend to our street.
“Classic Gould!” he says by way of greeting, throwing the front passenger door open for Luke.
“I went all the way to his house only to find he wasn’t ready.
Hadn’t even showered yet, and you know what he’s like.
Told him I’d double back but if he’s not ready when I get there, I’m leaving him. Seriously. I mean it this time.”
Luke makes a series of sympathetic sounds, and we head back to Gould’s place for a second attempt at picking him up.
There’s something a little off about Gould’s house.
It’s on an affluent street and it’s clearly very well-to-do judging by the size and architecture.
It’s mostly in darkness, someone obviously forgot to turn the lights on, and it has the echoey feel of a place people moved into and never got around to fully unpacking their things in.
We wait in the dim, cavernous entrance hall and watch as Gould makes his way down the stairs.
He has a drink in his hand and pauses dramatically at the landing to take a couple of swigs.
“Do you mind?” says Chase. “We’re all waiting for you. You’re thirty-five minutes late.”
“Geez, sorry Dad.”
Chase forces a loud breath out of his nose and glares at Gould, who has the decency to take the last few steps two at a time.
When he gets to the bottom of the stairs, he says, “Holy shit, Lukey. You brought your A game tonight.”
Then he wrestles Luke into the type of hug that looks a lot like an attempt to tackle him to the ground. My body temperature rises by at least four or five degrees.
“Shotgun!” cries Gould when he releases Luke.
“Luke already called it,” says Chase.
“That was for the last trip, you all got out of the car, the laws of shotgun clearly state…”
“I don’t mind,” says Luke, “I’ll ride in back with Jessie.”
Gould’s face falls and he looks from Luke to me and then back to Luke. We clamber into the car and Chase gives Gould another death stare as he piles into the front passenger seat and struggles with his seatbelt.
“What?”
“You can’t drink in a moving vehicle, Gould. There’s this little thing called the law. The actual law. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”
Gould makes a face and chugs the rest of his beer noisily. He crushes the can in his hands and then tosses it out onto his front lawn.
“Sometimes I don’t know about you, you know that, Gould? I really don’t.” Chase is up to here with Gould and it’s making me like him a lot more than I previously did.
“What’s the big rush anyway?” asks Gould.
“Izzy is already at the place. She’s been standing on the sidewalk waiting for us for half an hour. It’s late. It’s not safe,” says Chase.
“Well tell her to go in then, we can meet her inside.”
“She can’t. She has Jessie’s fake ID, if she goes in, he’s not going to be able to get in.”
“That would suck,” says Gould, looking back at me with a strangely expressionless look on his face.
“Is she okay?” asks Luke. “Is there anyone with her?”
“Yeah,” I answer, “She just messaged. She’s okay. She’s there with a couple of friends.”
“So, d’you like, message her a lot?” Chase tries and fails to keep his tone breezy.
“Not really.” I mean to leave it at that, but even from the back seat, I can see Chase’s jaw tighten.
It clenches and he pushes down a swallow.
It’s not rage. It’s fear, and it affects me despite the fact that I thought it wouldn’t.
“You might want to let her know you’re into her, Chase. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Um, she could reject me.”
“So, then you get back up and dust yourself off. At least you’ll know.”
He drives on in silence, as Gould cranks up the volume and drums both hands on the dashboard in time to the music.
“Say I did decide to let her know, how’d you think I should go about it?”
“Tell her you like her tits,” bellows Gould.
Chase slows the car down to ten miles per hour. “Do you want to walk? Yes or no, Gould, do you want to walk the rest of the way?”
Gould doesn’t answer, but he does stop talking.
“You could tell her she’s beautiful and…” tries Luke.
“She knows she’s beautiful. Everyone tells her she’s beautiful.” Chase shakes his head.
“Just dance with her tonight,” I say. “Stand close to her when you’re talking and when you say something that makes her laugh, look at her like you can’t believe she’s real. Then ask if you can kiss her.”
“Yeah, you should totally do that,” says Gould as if it was his idea.
The place is packed. The line for the bar is a mile long.
The ID Izzy got for me worked for the door, but I don’t love the idea of waiting for ages in line for a drink and then getting kicked to the curb.
The music vibrates through the floor and up my legs.
Strobes of alternating pastel light stain the dance floor.
“First round’s on me,” calls Gould and falls back into the crowd.
He returns surprisingly quickly with beers and shooters for all of us. Luke takes a beer but pushes the shooter away.
“Come on, Pookie, one little shot won’t hurt you.” He reaches over and tweaks Luke’s nipple through his tank. Before I even have time to start thinking about where I’d bury his body, Luke catches his wrist and holds it tightly.
“No,” he says, quiet but firm.
He lets go of Gould’s wrist and moves ever so slightly closer to me. Gould looks like he’s been slapped. His hand drops down to his side. He looks at Luke and me the same way he did earlier. Luke, then me, then back to Luke.
“Nice,” he sneers, leaning in close to my face, picking up Luke’s shot and throwing it back. “Fucking sweet.”
Luke shrugs and gives Gould an aw shucks smile. It’s the same smile you’d give a puppy that was struggling to house train. “Gouldie gets a little belligerent when he drinks,” he explains to me without a trace of judgement in his tone.
We chat as a group for a while, talking over each other and shouting to be heard over the music.
It’s far from a riveting conversation, but it isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
Chase is being entertaining and having Izzy around is good.
She resets the vibe, cutting through the bullshit and settling things down. The friends she’s with seem nice, too.
We head to the dance floor when we’ve finished that round of drinks and the next one.
Luke and Gould lead the way, bouncing energetically as they walk.
The rest of us follow, albeit a lot less enthusiastically.
I’m way too sober for dancing. Dancing is something that falls squarely into Shit-faced Jessie’s domain.