31 #4
“I don’t know what I was going to do,” Jem said.
But his face was shiny with sweat, and he kept pulling up the collar of his shirt to cover his mouth.
“God, that’s such a fucking lie. I was going to hurt him.
” He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling.
“I was going to fuck him up. And the scariest part was like it wasn’t even me anymore.
I knew what I was doing. I’m not saying I didn’t.
I’m not saying I’m not responsible. But I didn’t feel like me.
I felt like I was just—just watching, and I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I was so—” And Tean heard, in the tiny caesura, scared. But Jem said, “—angry.”
“What did you do?” Tean asked.
Jem blinked, as though Tean had startled him, and he dropped his shirt.
“Nothing. Zeb was there. Oh shit, I haven’t even told you about that.
” And then Tean had to hear about the fight, and about Wendell being killed, and Jem’s attempts to establish an alibi, and it was all he could do not to start spiraling right then about how bad things might be.
“That’s why I was so fucked up,” Jem said.
“Chaquille’s shit was strong, and I was having a seriously bad case of the scaries, and when you told me you got hurt—” He stopped.
He smoothed his hands down his shirt: blunt nails, the fine gold hair on the back of his hands.
He stopped at the bottom and gripped the hem.
“I understand,” Tean said. “You were upset.”
But Jem started shaking his head. “No. It’s—” He blew out a breath, cranked his head to one side, and laughed.
“Okay, I honestly think I’m going crazy.
But I’m going to say this anyway. I…might have some unresolved shit.
About having, you know, a family. And a home.
And some of that is my mom. And some of it is going through care.
And some of it, even though this sounds weird, is Wendell.
I was so excited when I saw his house. I thought I was going to be there forever.
And then I fucked it all up.” He stopped, shock on his face.
He opened his mouth and closed it again.
“Jem,” Tean said softly. “You didn’t fuck it up.”
“I know. I know.” He was clutching the hem of his jacket more tightly now, and his voice was strained when he said, “I know that.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Jem nodded. He blinked rapidly.
“You were a child. He was going to hurt you. You were defending yourself.”
Jem cleared his throat. He started to say something and then stopped. The first tear fell.
Tean got to his feet and crossed the distance between them. He took Jem in his arms. The muscles in Jem’s back were taut. His spine was so stiff it was almost arched. Tetanic. “My love,” Tean whispered. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“They sent me to LouElla’s,” Jem said. His voice was husky, but the words were clear. And then he pressed his face into Tean’s shoulder and shook once.
Whatever had happened at that woman’s house, Tean only knew part of it—Jem being trapped in the basement with a crazed dog, Jem being whipped across the back hard enough to leave a scar, Jem trying to protect the other children until he was too much trouble, and then he’d been sent to Decker.
For a while, Tean stood there, arms around Jem, holding him up.
“I’m okay,” Jem said when he finally raised his head. “Sorry about that. I’m okay now.”
“You don’t have to be okay,” Tean said. When Jem didn’t respond, he asked, “Do you want to sit down? Do you want to walk?”
“We can sit.”
They sat, and this time, Tean’s leg was pressed against Jem’s. He didn’t take Jem’s hands again because Jem sat with his arms folded, his shoulders angled in classic defensive posturing. But he sat as close as he could.
“I’m not okay, actually,” Jem said in a low voice. “I mean, obviously. That’s the fucked-up part.”
Tean waited.
“Like I said,” Jem said, “I’ve got all this shit going on in my head.” He hesitated. “I think that’s why I was having such a hard time with the vows.”
“We don’t have to do vows, Jem. We don’t have to get married.”
“Are you kidding? Of course I want to get married. You think I’m going to let you get away?”
In that moment, he sounded so much like that old Jem that Tean found himself smiling. “Well, we don’t have to rush into anything,” Tean said. “I’m sorry I was putting so much pressure on us. We can slow down.”
“I’m going to have to work on some stuff,” Jem said.
“It’s scary. It feels like—like someone’s going to take it away.
And then I start thinking it’d be better if I left first, before that happens.
” He fell silent. But then he said, “My whole life, I’ve been taking care of myself.
But Tinajas was telling me— Well, she helped me see I might have some stuff I need to work on.
Not just about the wedding or us or anything.
But, like, dealing with what happened to me when I was in care.
It just shows up sometimes, she said. Like you walk around a corner, everything’s normal, and then there it is, and your life changes.
And then you have to deal with it. I think maybe it was seeing Wendell.
Remembering what happened. And I’m a lot older now, so I kind of know what happened in a way I didn’t when I was a kid. ”
Tean nodded. But what he didn’t say was that part of it, too, was that for the first time in his life, Jem had someone who wanted to take care of him.
And for a man who had defined himself as a protector, who had built that identity as a way to survive abuse and neglect and the horrors of a youth correctional facility, the hardest change might be learning to see that he, too, had been a victim, and that sometimes, he might need someone to protect him.
All he said was “Do you want to talk to someone?”
“No,” Jem said. And then with a wry grin that exposed his crooked front teeth, Jem added, “I don’t know.”
A soft laugh escaped Tean. “You don’t have to talk to someone right now. Not if you don’t want to. I think it could help, though.”
“We had to talk to people in care,” Jem said. And then, with a moan that even Daniel would have been proud of, he added, “It was the fucking worst.”
Tean laughed again, his chest looser this time.
“It was,” Jem insisted. “They didn’t care what you said. They told everybody everything. And it was a different person every time. It sucked.”
“It would be different now. But if you don’t want to, that’s okay too.”
Jem’s shoulders came down. He slid his hands along his thighs to cup his knees.
“I was thinking—” But then he stopped. Color rose in his cheeks, and he ran his thumb along the seam of his jeans, his eyes fixed on the movement.
“I was thinking maybe it would help if I could write about it. Just get it all out of my head.”
Tears stung Tean’s eyes. “Of course.”
“Like that letter you wrote me. You know?”
“I know.”
“And if I had any questions, I could ask you. You don’t have to read it or anything. I just might want to ask you questions about how to get better at writing.”
“Anything, my love,” Tean said. “Always.”