This Kind of Love

18. Then Six Years Ago

Chapter 18

Then: Six Years Ago

"O h, Fucking Christ.” I wince in pain.

“It wouldn’t hurt as much if you held still.” Jase uses both hands to push me back down into the chair.

The tattoo artist assures me he’s almost done.

Almost done is not done, and I close my eyes to fight the pain, suppressing another screech as Greg turns the machine off.

“There we go. Sorry if it was too much. Typically, the shading hurts less than the outline.” Greg scratches his chin.

“Evidently, not for me.” I yank my arm back and instinctively massage my wrist.

Greg and Jase both stop me.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Jase says. “It needs to be wrapped first.”

I frown. “How come you didn’t scream?”

“I have a much higher pain tolerance than you do. Obviously.”

I grit my teeth.

“Y’all want a picture?” Greg pulls out his phone.

Jase wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me into him. “We sure do. Come on, Kay, be a good sport and stick your wrist out.”

No.

“Kay,” he begs. “For me, pleeease .” He draws out the word and bats his eyelashes at me, and I sigh.

“Fine.”

Jase puts his wrist next to mine under a desk lamp on the empty tattoo station one over.

“Perfect.” Greg takes one shot and crops the picture to get it right. “Want me to send it after we get these all wrapped up?”

“That’d be great,” Jase says. “I can settle the bill whenever.”

As he follows Greg to the cash register at the front of the shop, I drop my gaze to my left wrist. I blink to adjust to the new art on my arm under the plastic wrap and exhale. It’s cute. I can’t believe I let him talk me into this.

“Ready to go?” Jase holds up his right arm with his new mason jar and firefly. As matching tattoos go, they’re not bad, but it might as well be two names in a heart—my mama will have a heart attack all the same.

“My parents are going to kill me.” I bury my head in my hands as I come back to reality and feel the gravity of this decision in a whole different way.

“Oh relax, this is better than getting arrested … again.” He holds the door open for me.

I whack him in the gut as I pass him. “It’s not funny. I was grounded for months .” Glancing down at the small insect on my wrist, I mumble, “This will probably be about as long.”

“Puh-lease. For one, you’re eighteen, an adult in the eyes of the law … and court system.”

I give him a warning look. Still not funny.

He smirks. “Two: we’re moving to New York in a few months anyway, if your parents would rather spend time angry at you, I don’t get it, but they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do, which leads me to three: you can’t control their reaction.”

I squint. “I’m not sure they’re going to agree with your logic. It’s not that they’re going to yell at me for making a decision that impacts my body. It’s about having respect for my parents while I’m in their house. It’s a courtesy. I should have asked or told them.”

“I’ll never understand this immense guilt you carry around, but man, is that shit deep.”

I shrug. I want to fight him, but he has a point. The guilt of disappointing them is strong.

Jase takes his jacket off and wraps it around me as we walk home. “Here.” He adjusts the sleeves down past my wrist. “This should help.”

“Until dinner when Mama asks why I’m wearing a jacket at the table.”

He sighs. “Work with me here, Kay.”

“I’m just saying.”

Pop’s pulling into the driveway as we walk up. He steps out of his pickup truck and tips his hat in our direction. “Katie girl, Jase.”

“Hey, Pop!” I rush over to give him a wide hug while being careful not to directly rest my left wrist on his back.

He sniffs the air twice and says, “Hmm, smells like a couple of new tattoos.”

They have a smell?

“Yes, sir. Mine.” Jase covers.

“Uh huh, and the bandage on my granddaughter’s wrist is … for fun?”

I cringe and let go of Pop, looking down at my shoes.

“You know I was born a day, but it wasn’t yesterday.” His knowing eyes stare at me.

“Yes, sir,” we reply in unison.

Eric comes out of Jase’s house with a long apron on, a half-filled-out crossword puzzle in one hand, and a spatula in the other. “Oh good, you’re home. We’re having breakfast for dinner. How many pancakes …” He sniffs the air. “Does it smell like a couple of tattoos to you?” he asks Pop.

“Yes, sir,” Jase says.

“Ah.” One word. One syllable. No true reaction, and certainly not a bad one.

“Hey, Eric, you have some extra pancake batter tonight?”

His friend smiles knowingly. “Sure do. Come on in and wash up, kids.”

“But …”

Pop holds his hands out to me. “I’ve got this. You go.” He’s covering for me. Again.

“Thank you.” I hug him again.

“Hey.” Pop shrugs. “At least y’all didn’t get arrested again.”

“Told you.” Jase grabs my hand and pulls me into his warm, welcoming home for dinner and understanding.

Breakfast for dinner is one of Jase’s favorite meals, but I’ve never been a fan of eggs, so I’m grateful Eric has options. I skip the scrambled eggs and instead opt for an extra serving of French toast casserole and a pancake.

I take my seat between Jase and Jack at the table, and Jase pours himself a glass of orange juice.

He leans over and points to the casserole. “You know that has eggs in it, right?”

“I’m sure, but they’re not staring at me, so…”

He rolls his eyes and picks up a big bite of potatoes on his fork. “You’re weird.”

I bump my shoulder into his. “But I’m your weird.”

“Yeah, you are.” Jase bumps back.

Jack pretends to gag. “You’re both weird and gross.”

“Leave ‘em be, Jack.” His mama scolds him and sets a glass of wine on the table, smiling over the glass at me. “Nice of you to join us tonight, Kate.”

She’s always been sweet as pie. I smile back. “Thanks for making room for me.”

“You know there’s always room for you. Go ahead and eat up.”

Dinner at the Coles is normal. Everyone takes turns talking about their day. Funny stories are shared because they’re welcomed. Laughter echoes through the room like it belongs—and it does. It always has.

After dinner, Jase’s mama does the dishes, and his dad dries them. The Coles excuse Jase and me to rest our tattoos, and Jack heads upstairs to ‘work a paper.’ Though we all know by ‘work a paper,’ he means texting Lindsay Harris.

Carrie turns the sink off after she passes the last dish to Eric, but instead of drying it, he places the still-wet plate on the counter and pulls his wife in close. He spins her around the kitchen like they’re on a dance floor at a Firehouse. There’s no music playing, but they don’t need it. They’re humming along to the same tune and gazing at each other with love as sweet as a sugar high, even after they’ve been married for twenty-five years.

“I want that,” I say to Jase, staring at his parents move in sync. “I want that kind of love.”

He places a kiss on my hand and squeezes. “I want this kind of love.”

His smile lights up the room, and I lean into him. “You have this kind of love.”

Jase pulls me in tighter, and I listen to his heartbeat in sync with my own as I drift off to sleep. This kind of love. Our kind of love. Forever.

The next morning, I wake up in my own bed, wondering if the matching tattoos were a dream, but when there’s a clink at the window, I look down at my wrist still wrapped and know how real it is.

I unlatch the window. “Yes? May I help you?”

“My fair maiden.” He bows. “Wondering if you’ll come down from your high tower to get coffee with me?”

“Coffee, you say?” I place my hand on my chin.

“Oh yeah, turns out I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

“We weren’t even out late.” My messy ponytail flips from one side to the other animatedly.

“I was worried about you and what would happen if your parents found out about …” He wiggles his brows. “You know.”

“Shhh!”

“Your mama and dad already left for work.” He shrugs.

I check the time. “Shit, it’s later than I thought.”

“Where do we stand on the coffee?” Jase wiggles his brows.

“Meet you down there.” I grab my wallet and keys and run out of my bedroom door and down the stairs.

The silence is unsettling, but I owe Pop a big thank you for covering for me and the reprieve it’s brought.

Java House is hectic for a weekday afternoon, but Jase sashays up to the counter like he owns the place, ordering a vanilla latte for me and a cappuccino instead of his normal black coffee.

We take our drinks to go, and he mentions a pitstop on the way home. Instead of making the right turn to go home, we move left toward the high school and walk down the field full of dandelions.

Jase leans down and picks a handful to give me. “My lady.” He bows again.

“Not that I don’t appreciate it, but where did this Shakespearean thing come from?” I wave my hand over him.

“Blame the exhaustion.” He stretches and lays down on the grass.

I plop down next to him and point out dinosaur and dog shapes in the clouds.

He traces them in the grass, and we laugh about peak fatigue until he gets serious and asks how my tattoo’s feeling.

My eyes shift to my wrist. “Okay … if I don’t touch it. How’s yours?”

“Feels okay, too. I’m glad we got them.”

I smile, admiring the detail in Jase’s design. “Kind of ties us together, doesn’t it?”

“In the best way. So … I was thinking.”

This gets my attention, and I turn toward him. “Oh?”

He pulls out a folded-up piece of paper from the pocket of his basketball shorts.

“Uh oh.” I rest my head in my hand, elbow on the grass. “Should I be worried when you start pulling out lists?”

Jase answers without hesitating. “Yes.”

“What do we have here?”

Jase folds the paper closer to him and mumbles about patience. “We’ve been talking about life after Sloane, about going to college, finding new jobs, and living in New York …”

“Mhmm?” My stomach starts to turn.

“I’ve been writing down the ideas we’ve had and crunching numbers, and I have a plan.”

“Oh?” I sit up.

Jase winces preemptively. “I’m not the planner, so you’ve got to tell me if you hate it.”

“Jase, are you kidding? I’m sure I’m not going to hate it.” I hold back the tears. He came up with a plan for us.

I lied. I hate it.

Well, I don’t hate the plan. I hate that it means we’d barely see each other because we have nowhere near what we need to be able to afford a tiny studio apartment on the outskirts of New York City while going to community college part-time and working full-time.

“How is it that expensive?” I grab the paper with his carefully outlined facts and figures.

He shrugs. “I’ve run the numbers multiple times. You’re still waiting to hear from Ithaca, right? They have a good writing program; maybe scholarship money could come in … maybe we get something a little further out of the city to get started, and maybe we bring up Lily—she’s better on gas than my truck.”

Maybe. Pulling out my cell phone, I look up the distance between Ithaca College and NYC and cringe. “It’s more than a little out of the city …”

“Maybe more affordable?” Jase offers.

I shrug. Maybe. Living in upstate New York isn’t the same as living in New York City.

Jase puts his hands on mine. “Hey, what’s the most important thing in all of this?”

“That we’re together and we’re safe.”

“Yes. We will be, Kay. No matter where you want to go, I’ll go with you. Taking this detour could be better in the long run. It could open doors we can’t imagine now.”

I process what he’s saying. Going to a great school with a great writing program could be better than hoping and praying writing on my own will take off without any formal training or connections. He has a point.

“You’re right.” I sigh. “Ithaca’s not New York City, but it’s not Sloane, either. If it means we can afford to put food on the table, then it’s all worth it.”

“There you go.” Jase pulls me in. “Though, I didn’t say anything about being able to afford food … we’ll have to re-crunch the numbers when your acceptance letter comes in.”

“ If,” I correct.

“ When ,” he affirms.

Jase has always had my back. He’s always believed in me, even in the ways I don’t … especially in the ways I don’t. He’s never doubted, never wavered. Not like I have.

“Here.” Jase tears the stem off a dandelion and wraps it around my ring finger, tying it carefully. “Until I can get you a real one, let this serve as our promise ring. When you get into Ithaca, we’ll move to New York and start our life together.”

It’s a stem from a weed he picked in a field full of weeds, but this moment warms my heart more than a real ring could. Dandelion or not, he made a promise, and Jase has always kept his promises from the very first day we met. So, when he holds his pinkie out to me, I loop mine in his, believing every word.

Jase’s phone rings, and he mouths: Sorry. He picks up. “Hey, Mama, I’m out with Kay.” His tone changes, and he says he’ll be right there.

Panic sets in, and the world spins. Endless possibilities circle my mind.

He hangs up and helps me stand up. “Come on, we have to go.”

I run close behind and lose my dandelion ring in the process. “What’s going on?” I ask, breathing heavier than a runner should.

“There’s been an accident.” He doesn’t slow down to wait for me.

He jogs straight home, and I follow, ditching what’s left of my coffee in a trash can by the park when we pass. My skin grows clammy, and my heartbeat thrashes in my ears.

The closer we get, the faster he goes until he stops in the driveway staring at his house. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. Please be okay.

The door is gaping open. His mama’s wailing can be heard from the street. Police cars line the driveway with their lights flashing, the officers split between the front lawn and inside.

My mama and dad come outside right as Nana and Pop pull up. They rush to Jase, who’s frozen in place.

“Jase, go see your mama,” my parents say in unison.

“I’ll go with you.” Pop puts his hand around Jase’s shoulders and walks him inside.

“What’s going on?” I ask Mama as Jase and Pop step inside.

“There’s been a terrible accident, sweetie. His dad …” She doesn’t finish her sentence, and she doesn’t need to.

From the corner of my eye, I see Jase collapse on the ground, screaming. Jack pulls him in for a hug on the floor, holding him to help with a pain I can’t understand.

His dad—his hero—is gone.

In that moment, part of Jase is, too.