Chapter 28
“Oh boy.”
Jenna heard her daughter’s voice and looked up from her computer screen. Blake was standing in the doorway of her bedroom with the uniquely judgmental look of a fifteen-year-old.
“What?” Jenna asked.
Her daughter sighed, walked in, and plopped down at the bottom of her bed dramatically. “It’s worse than I thought.”
Jenna wasn’t in the mood to decode her teen talk. “What is?”
“You.”
“Me?” Jenna replied defensively, touching her chest with her hand.
Blake lunged forward and spun the computer screen towards her.
“Hey!” Jenna snatched it back.
“I knew it!” Blake announced accusatorially. “Dawson’s Creek. Again.”
“It’s my comfort show. You watch Gossip Girl and The Office constantly.”
“No.” Blake sat up straighter and waved her hand up and down over Jenna’s bed like she was a spokesmodel. “That is not what this is. This is different.”
“Blake, I’m allowed to relax. It’s not against the law.”
Blake stared at her and didn’t say anything. “What is going on? What happened in Oregon? Do I have to kill Deacon?”
“What?!” Jenna sat up straighter in her bed and shut her laptop. “No, why would you…what? No! Why would you say that?”
“You’ve been back for ten days, and I’ve been trying to give you space and mind my own business. I know you’re an adult, but I promised you after Bree, that backstabbing bitch, and James, the cheating piece of shi—”
“Blake.” Jenna didn’t love that her daughter cursed, it wasn’t the end of the world, but she didn’t want to celebrate it.
“What? They are,” Blake defended her use of profanity.
Jenna shrugged. That was not the parental hill she planned on dying on, at least not when she had zero energy and just wanted to curl up in the covers and put her show back on.
“Anyway, I promised you that I would talk to you if I was stressed or worried about anything, and I am.”
“You don’t have to stress about Deacon, nothing is going on between us.”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean why not?”
“I mean, he’s clearly obsessed with you, so why don’t you like him? Is he a creep or something?”
“A creep?”
“Yes, did he pull some creeper stuff in Oregon?”
“No, he’s not a creep, not at all, he’s… great.” He was better than great, he was perfect. His mom, his long-lost mom, was perfect. They are all perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.
Selma was in Hope Falls over the past weekend with her husband to meet Tabitha and had wanted to see Jenna, she’d wanted to meet Blake, but Jenna lied and said she wasn’t feeling well, just like she’d told Deacon since they returned ten days ago.
“So why are you so sad? What’s wrong? Every night you’ve just been coming in here and watching Dawson’s Creek and eating ice cream, you didn’t even do that after you found out about James and Bree.”
Jenna could see her daughter was really worried about her, and she knew she needed to get her shit together. Honestly, she hadn’t even thought Blake would notice that she’d been retreating to her room every night after dinner since that was exactly what Blake did herself.
“I’m just tired.” She wasn’t lying, she was tired. Was that exhaustion tied to the knowledge that the absolute perfect man was basically gift-wrapped on her front porch for her to open, and for some reason she was too broken of a human being to accept him? Maybe. But still, she was tired.
Every time she thought about calling or texting Deacon to maybe try and see if they could be together for real, her entire body froze. She didn’t go into fight or flight, she went into emotional freeze tag, and there was no one to tag her out of it.
She was terrified. No, that wasn’t a big enough word to describe how she’d felt falling asleep in Deacon’s arms after spending the day with him reuniting with his mom.
Something flipped in her, a panic switch that just told her to get out.
To run. To save herself. Or to save him.
Or save Blake. Or to save Tabitha. Save all of them.
But run from what? Terrified of what? She didn’t know. All she knew was every time she thought about texting him, or being with him, her chest got tight, she got dizzy, started hyperventilating, and went into a full-blown panic attack.
So why did she miss him? Why had she cried herself to sleep almost every night?
Why had she read every text he’d sent, about a thousand times, even the dirty ones?
Because he was sending those again, and she wasn’t reading them for the fun reasons like getting off, she’d just read them because he’d sent them.
Why did she wish she had gone to see Selma and meet Selma’s husband? Why did she wish Selma had met Blake?
What was the disconnect between her body, heart, and head?
Even her customers were noticing, which was an absolute taboo for her.
No one wanted to go sit in the chair of someone who brought in their personal issues.
She’d been doing her best to fake it, but that was taking everything out of her thus coming home and watching Dawson’s Creek—every second that she wasn’t at work or eating, or showering, or sleeping.
Her phone buzzed, and she picked it up.
Deacon
I hope you’re feeling better
my mom was sad she missed you and didn’t get to meet Blake
Chuck’s nice, btw, he seems like a good man
let me know if you need anything friend w/ or w/o benefits.
“I saw my name. Does he need me to babysit?”
“No, he was just…his mom came down to meet Tabitha and she was sad she didn’t get to meet you.”
Blake gasped happily. “She wanted to meet me.”
Jenna nodded.
“Why couldn’t I meet her?”
Because your mother is broken.
“I wasn’t feeling up to going over there.”
Blake’s eyes narrowed. “Is that why it looks like a florist in our kitchen? Because you lied about being sick so we couldn’t go over and I could meet Tabby’s grandma?”
“I didn’t lie.” Fuck. Now she’d just lied again. To her daughter. Someone she’d promised herself she’d never lie to, at least not about important things.
Blake waited, just staring at her mom. It was the same move that Jenna pulled on her. Her own daughter had played an emotional Uno Reverse card on her. She had no choice but to be proud.
“It’s complicated,” Jenna finally said. “But Deacon is not a creep. He’s not. He’s…perfect.”
She thought Blake was going to tell her that she was being weak or dumb or that it wasn’t complicated at all, but instead her daughter just wrapped her arms around her neck and squeezed. An impromptu hug from her near sixteen-year-old was a rarity, and she treasured it.
Once she pulled back, she figured Blake would hop up and head to her room to go text her friends or ask if she could go hang out with Noah, instead she crawled under the blankets, pulled the laptop between them, and pressed play on episode 23 of season 3 where Joey leaves on True Love to sail away with Pacey and snuggled up beside Jenna just like she used to do when she was a little girl.
“We can watch something else.” Jenna put her hand on the mousepad.
“No.” Blake stopped her.
“But you don’t like Dawson’s Creek.”
Blake pulled Jenna’s hand back as she shrugged and nuzzled her head into Jenna’s shoulder. “But I love you.”
Jenna’s mom-heart exploded, but thankfully years of preteen and teen training had prepared her to not show too much emotion, otherwise, this epically sweet moment for the Mother-Daughter Exchange Hall of Fame would be ruined, so instead of bursting into tears, pulling her daughter into her arms, and sobbing, she simply kissed Blake on the top of her head and said a quiet, “I love you more, Peanut.”
After watching four episodes together, before she and Blake both fell asleep, Jenna promised herself tomorrow was a new day and she was going to snap out of whatever was going on with her and get on with her life. Starting with no more Dawson’s Creek. Okay, two episodes. Cold turkey was crazy.
Deacon stared down at the text he’d just sent Jenna.
She hadn’t liked it or responded. The message above was a thank you for the flowers.
Just that, literally, thank you for the flowers—five words.
Before that was the message saying she didn’t feel well so she and Blake wouldn’t be able to come over to see his mom and meet her husband.
Most of the other responses were just one or two words, the absolute bare minimum. She’d been so distant ever since the night in the hotel. Something shifted after they had sex. More walls came up, which really sucked because for him it had had the opposite effect.
As he stared at his phone, his best friend’s five-year-old face came on the screen as a Facetime request. He used Cillian’s kindergarten photo as his contact photo.
Cillian thought he did it to be an ass, but he really did it because it just reminded him of a simpler, happier time, when their biggest worries were finding the best tree to climb.
The summer Cillian moved to the neighborhood was the best summer of Deacon’s life. He hadn’t had any friends before that, just the gardener’s son, and he was twelve, so that really didn’t count. Marco came to work with his dad, so it wasn’t like they really hung out.
But then Cillian showed up on his doorstep, introduced himself, and probably because his father wasn’t home, Deacon’s mom allowed him to go outside and play. They rode bikes, skipped rocks, and hung out in Cillian’s tree fort in his backyard. After that, they were inseparable.
If it weren’t for Cillian, Deacon didn’t want to think about what his childhood and school life would have been like. Everyone loved Cillian, and since Deacon was Cillian’s best friend, they accepted him, it didn’t matter that he was rich or different.
“Hey man,” Deacon answered as his friend’s adult face appeared on the screen. “How’s Leanne? How are the girls?”
“Good. Everyone’s great!” Cillian enthusiastically replied, and he meant it.