Chapter 22
Jasmine
He hasn't answered…all day.
I know because I’ve checked my phone four hundred times since I sent the text, a number I would be embarrassed by if I had any embarrassment left. I used the last of it in my father's office, frozen, while the best thing in my life walked out the door.
I don't sleep.
I sit on my apartment floor with my back against the couch, and I do the thing I'm good at. I make a list. Except this time the list isn't reasons not to. This time it's a plan. For once, the list isn't a fortress. It's a door.
I write three things.
One: find out if he's really gone or just needs a minute.
Two: save the Carolina contract he set himself on fire for.
Three: stop being a person things happen to.
The next morning, I drive to his apartment, because I have to know which kind of gone he is. His truck isn't in the lot. I have a key now, because he gave it to me a week ago without either of us making a thing of it, and I let myself in, and the place is so empty it knocks the wind out of me.
The fridge, unplugged, the cord still coiled on the counter.
The second plate in the rack, washed and set beside the first. The one cardboard box he finally cracked open, books mostly, stacked straight on the floor because he never got around to a shelf.
A guy who has lived out of boxes for so long started setting things down in this one, on purpose, like he meant to stay a while.
I know I'm the reason. I know exactly why he did it.
There's a sticky note on the dead refrigerator, in his blocky, left-handed handwriting. SUGAR'S IN THE CABINET, it says. THE GOOD KIND. And under it, smaller, like he wrote it and couldn't help himself: in case you ever just need a place that's quiet.
He gave me a key to a quiet place. That's everything that Caleb Adams is right there.
He held off telling me he loved me for weeks, but he said it in everything that wasn't words, and my pathetic ass stood frozen in an office and let him walk out the door believing none of it had counted for anything.
I peel the note off the fridge and put it in my pocket, next to a bent paper clip I never did give back. Two pieces of junk worth half a cent between them, but the two most valuable things I own.
I lock the apartment behind me on my way out, and as the lock clicks, the gravity of what’s just happened hits me.
Caleb didn't leave because he hates me or stopped loving me. He left because he loves me, and he’s never once in his life been shown that love is a thing that stays.
His father taught him to run. My father taught me to disappear.
We are two people handed the exact same lie by the exact people who were supposed to know better, and we found each other anyway, and then, unconsciously, we both did the only thing we were ever taught to do.
I'm done doing the thing I was taught to do.
I drive to the rink, and I don’t go to my quiet six a.m. ice. I go to my father's office instead, and I don’t knock.
“We need to talk about Caleb's release,” I say.
My father looks up from his desk, tired, older than he was yesterday. “Jasmine”
“As your compliance officer, I'm telling you the release won't hold.” I set the conduct agreement on his desk. I’ve had it memorized for weeks.
“Section four. A reportable incident requires a documented threat, physical contact, or property damage.
Caleb raised his voice in a closed-door meeting.
He didn't touch anyone. He didn't break anything.
He told the truth too loud in a private office, and if you try to end his eligibility over that, any review board in the country overturns it, and you know that, because you're the one who taught me to read these the way I read them.”
He stares at me. “You're defending him? To me? With my own rulebook.”
“I'm doing my job. The job you gave me because you trusted me to be objective.” My voice doesn't shake, and I notice it doesn't, and I let myself be a little amazed by it.
“Objective.” He almost laughs, stunned more than mean. “There is nothing objective about this.”
“No, I guess there isn't. I lied to you for weeks, and I would do it again, because your rule that says I'm not allowed to love him is a bad rule.”
“You could lose your job. Your standing. Everything you built.”
“I didn't build anything here. I hid here.
There's a difference.” I don't stop. “And, Dad, if you call Carolina and torpedo that contract out of spite, I will be in the room for every second of the appeal, on his side, with my name on the paperwork, in public, where every single person can see exactly whose daughter I am and exactly who I'm choosing.”
He pauses for a moment, looking torn about whatever he’s about to say.
“Did you have sex with this kid, Jasmine? Did he take advantage of you? Did he…force you?”
“Dad…I’m not comfortable talking to you about my sex life.”
“Sex life?”
“Yes, sex life! I’ve had sex before. I’m not a child.”
He exhales a deep breath, and he offers me a look that’s a mixture of pity and sadness.
“Jasmine, he’s just a kid about to go to the pros. These guys are rolling stones. They don’t stick around. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
He thinks I’m a sucker and that one stings, but I’m determined to fight for what I want, no matter what he thinks.
“I’m willing to take that chance.”
“What about your career? Are you willing to risk that too?”
“This job is not worth more than a person. You taught me that lesson, too, you just never meant for me to use it on you.” I lean on his desk.
“You spent my entire life keeping me invisible so nobody could hurt me. And it worked, Dad. Nobody could. Nobody could even find me. I understand why you did it now, but you have to know that I’ve never been more alone in my life.
I know I’m complex. A sometimes inconvenient, fixated, but brave person.
And the first guy who ever saw all of that and still loves me for it is out there right now believing I let him go. ”
My father is quiet for a long time.
“You're really going to do this,” he says. “Out loud. In front of everyone.”
“Out loud. In front of everyone.” The most terrifying sentence I have ever said, and I mean every word of it. “Watch me.”
He picks up the conduct agreement and looks at section four like he's reading it for the first time.
“You sound like your mother right now,” he says, shaking his head.
I’m not sure what he means. “Not the leaving. The other part. She used to fight me like this, before you, back when she still thought we could do it. I forgot you had it in you.” He pauses.
“I think I needed you not to have it, so I made sure you never used it. It was safer that way…at least for me.”
“He's not what the folder says,” I tell him. “He's the oldest of four. He's been feeding them since he was nine because his mother checked out on them, too. Did you know that?”
My father doesn’t answer. I guess he didn’t know or didn’t care to know about Caleb’s home life.
“The temper you’ve heard about or saw is the same thing that made him stand up for me yesterday.
It isn't separate from the good parts. It is the good parts, sometimes aimed at the wrong people. He’s not a robot.
He’s a human being who’s allowed to react to the world the way he’s been wired to.
You of all people should understand that. Look at me.”
That one lands. He doesn't argue it.
“He really sees you?” my father asks, hopeful for the first time in this conversation.
“All of me,” I say, and my voice finally breaks, just a little. “And he thinks I’m amazing just the way I am. He wouldn’t change a single thing about me.”
He sets the agreement down. He doesn't say sorry. My father doesn't have that word in him, not yet, maybe not ever. But he says something I’ve never heard out of him before.
“Tell me what you need me to do.”
I almost break down in tears, because it turns out that's the sentence I've been waiting my whole life to hear.
“Don't make the call to Carolina,” I say. “And stay out of my way.”
“And Jasmine.” He stops me at the door. “Whatever you're about to go do. I'm not going to like it, am I?”
“Probably not.”
“But I'm not going to stop it either. That's the best I've got, kiddo.” He says it like each word is being pried loose.
“Cool,” I say.
It’s not exactly an apology, but I’ll take it anyway.
Then I go to find a man, my man, who is sure that nobody ever stays, to prove him wrong in the loudest, most public way a girl like me can find.