Chapter 36
THE TRUEST PART OF ME
JESSE
Missing Limbs by Sleep Token
Iturn into the driveway of Joey’s house and see her riding Townshend in the round pen.
The afternoon light catches her curls beneath her helmet, turning every strand gold. She sits tall in the saddle, hands steady on the reins, riding the horse who wouldn’t let anyone near him six months ago. She rides him like a song she already memorized.
I park and climb out of the car, staying near the fence. Joey glances in my direction, and even from this distance her body tenses before she refocuses on the horse beneath her.
I wait by the fence until she finishes, turning Townshend out to the pasture before walking toward me. She pulls her helmet off and her curls tumble loose, golden and untamed, and my hands ache with the memory of them wound through my fingers.
“I can’t believe you’re riding Townshend.” I shake my head. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
“All it took was time and patience.” She tucks the helmet under her arm. “All he had to do was learn he could trust me.”
I scratch the back of my neck and shift on my feet.
“What are you doing here, Jesse?”
“I needed to see you.”
She sets the helmet on the fence post and starts walking toward the path behind the property, away from the house.
I fall into step beside her and stuff my hands in my pockets to stop myself from reaching for her.
“I should have told you,” I say.
“Do you have any idea what it was like to find out Stella knew before me? To sit in your mother’s kitchen and realize I was the last person in your life you trusted with this?”
“Stella only found out because she caught me during a smaller episode. I had to explain. It wasn’t a choice.”
“But it was a choice not to tell me.”
“You’re right.” I swallow hard. “Telling Stella didn’t terrify me.
She’s my bandmate. If she walked away, I’d lose a friend.
If you walked away, I’d lose everything.
” I force myself to hold Joey’s gaze. “Every time I almost said it, I’d picture the way you look at me, and I couldn’t stand the thought of watching it change. ”
Joey stops walking, and we stand with the scrub oak and manzanita lining the trail, climbing into the hills behind the property. The wind carries the faint smell of sage and dry earth up from the valley.
“You decided how I’d react,” she says quietly. “You never gave me a chance.”
She stands with her arms loose at her sides, waiting. Not defensive, not closed off. Giving me room to speak, and somehow that’s harder.
“I should have trusted you.” I face her.
“When I was diagnosed at fifteen, it was the scariest thing I’d ever gone through.
I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and I didn’t have the language for it.
I couldn’t explain it to myself, let alone to you.
” I drag a hand through my hair. “You’ve always been able to see right through me, Joey.
And I didn’t want you to see me anymore. ”
“So you let me spend five years thinking I did something wrong.” Her voice is quiet, but it cuts. “Do you have any idea how many times I replayed that summer trying to figure out what I said, what I did, to make you pull away from me?”
The question guts me. “Joey—”
“Did you ever once consider what your silence was doing to me while you were busy protecting me from yourself?”
“No.” The word tastes like poison. “I didn’t.”
“You convinced yourself it was noble.”
“It was self-preservation.”
“That makes me incredibly sad.”
The sadness in her voice is worse than anger. A horse nickers from the pasture below us and the sound carries up through the still air. Neither of us moves.
“Every time we’d hang out and it was so easy between us, I’d remind myself why I had to keep my distance. You deserved someone whole. Someone stable.”
“Jesse.”
“And the distance didn’t make me want you less. It made everything worse. You were always there, at the edges of my life. Present and unreachable.” I reach for her face, the way I always have, my thumb almost grazing her cheekbone before she flinches and steps out of reach.
I’ve lost the right to touch her and it hurts more than anything I’ve ever felt.
“You didn’t have to carry this alone,” she says, her voice is steady, but her eyes are weary. “But you chose to. Every single time, you chose to.”
“I don’t trust myself in this, Joey. I don’t trust my own brain. How was I supposed to ask you to?”
“The minute we slept together, you should have told me.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “That was the line, Jesse.”
The words land and I exhale through my teeth, dragging a hand down my face.
“I know,” I say, my voice hoarse. “I knew it every time I was with you and didn’t say it. But losing you was the one thing I couldn’t survive, and every day I didn’t tell you was another day I got to keep you.”
“You lost me the second you decided I couldn’t handle the truth,” she says, and it guts me. “You lost me every single day you took me to bed and let me believe I had all of you.” Her eyes are wet and blazing. “That’s not love. That’s performance.”
Her words hit me in a way I can’t hide from. I press the heel of my hand against my eyes but it doesn’t stop the tears.
“My love for you was never a performance.” My voice breaks on the last word. “It was the truest part of me, Joey. The one thing I never had to fake. Every song I wrote, every lyric I couldn’t say out loud, they were yours. They were always yours.”
I step toward her and reach for her face, slow enough for her to stop me.
She doesn’t. My hands cup her cheeks and her breath hitches, and she lets me hold her.
Her fingers slide into my hair and grip as she presses her forehead to mine.
I feel her tears against my cheek. I hold her face and breathe her in and it feels like holding something I’m already losing.
“You need to be okay with who you are, Jesse,” she says.
“Those are your songs. Your lyrics. Your voice. None of that needed a mask. It belongs to you, and you’ve never let yourself believe that.
” Her fingers tighten in my hair. “And this diagnosis doesn’t define you either.
It’s part of you, but it’s not all of you. ”
She should hate me. Instead she’s pressed against me with tears on her face telling me I’m worth more than I’ve ever believed, and I don’t understand how someone can love like that.
Joey presses her palms against my chest and creates distance between us. I watch her rebuild walls right in front of me and I know I deserve them.
“I can forgive the lying, Jesse. I can forgive the years of distance. I can even forgive being the last person to find out.” Her eyes are full of tears and red rimmed. I hate that I did this to her. “What I can’t forgive is what you said to me on that beach.”