7. TAKE ON ME
7
TAKE ON ME
A-HA
DINAH
“You’re Jack?” I repeat like a broken record.
“Yes,” Jackson answers, hands stuffed guiltily in his pockets.
“And Jackson?” Again, nothing makes sense to me.
“That’s how a split personality works, Dinah. Yes.”
I shake my head. I don’t mean to be coarse, but I’m feeling a little blindsided by the news he was essentially coerced into telling me by his parents. And I don’t particularly like Jackson/Jack’s attitude at the moment.
Like I’m the crazy one.
Not that he’s crazy. I’m not blaming the guy for how his brain works, but I do feel more than a little ridiculous right now.
His parents have since retreated to the safety of their business, while I try to wrap my mind around the fact that Phlegm —and yes, admittedly, Rugged Ken— is also the put-together Dreamboat Ken standing in front of me now. “I just… I need some time to…”
“I get it.” He nods, crossing his arms and looking a bit more like Jack as his eyes grow a bit stormy. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“You weren’t going to tell me?” I mean, I know it’s a first date, but I feel like the I have a split personality and one of us is REALLY into you discussion should have been at the top of conversational points if Jackson wanted this thing to work between us.
“I mean, I would have. Eventually.” He flips his cap off and runs his hand through his hair before placing it back on his head. “That guy isn’t me, though, ya know? He’s… just not me. I didn’t think you’d want to date me with him attached to the equation, and I really want to date you, Dinah Belle. I like you.”
“You get how confusing this all is, right?” I mean, I like the guy. It’s weird. The whole thing is like something out of a movie, but it doesn’t diminish the attraction I feel towards him.
“Yeah. I do.”
“But,” I admit, “I like you too.”
Jackson sighs and takes a seat on the bench next to me again.
“Has Jack always been… there?” It’s strange to ask the question as if Jack isn’t sitting next to me, but I need to understand this thing before I move forward in any direction.
He shakes his head. “No. A little over three years ago, I went to Owen’s season opener. It was at home. Our whole family was there… Half the town was there.
“The game was goin’ great. Owen pitched a near-perfect game, and the Badgers were up by three in the bottom of the ninth.”
“Jackson, I have no idea what that means.”
He chuckles and bumps my leg with his. “They were winning.”
“Got it.” I nudge him back. “Please continue.”
“So, I was havin’ a good time with everyone, ya know, and got distracted. We all did. I turned at the perfect time and caught a pop fly to the temple at about 80 mph.” He whistles and uses his hand as if it were the ball smacking him in the side of the head. I can’t help but flinch when it makes contact. “I was in a medically induced coma for a few days, and when I woke up for the first time, I was him. Jack.”
“That must’ve been so hard.”
He shrugs, broad shoulders tightening against his baseball tee before falling again. “I don’t remember any of it. My family had to rehash everything for me then. And now, when Jack’s Jack , it’s the same.”
“So you don’t remember anything when you’re not you?”
He shakes his head again. “No. Bits and pieces, but not really. It’s like I’m asleep when he’s awake. Could be a day. Could be a week. It’s not an exact science or anything. We leave notes for one another, but we essentially live separate lives.”
I want to be sensitive here, but I don’t know the right and wrong of asking questions in this situation. “Will you ever—”
“I don’t know,” Jackson interrupts me, anticipating what I would say. “Traumatic brain injuries are all unique. There are some telltale symptoms, of course, but my medical team doesn’t necessarily have black and white answers for what my life will look like tomorrow, let alone a year from now.”
“Oh.” That's all I can think to say. I feel for him. Living this way must be so confusing and frustrating. The unknowns. The loneliness. The blips in time where he isn’t himself. I reach out my hand for his. “I’m sorry, Jackson.”
And I really am. Disappointment weighs heavy in my heart. He’s, by all accounts, a wonderful man. Kind. Considerate. Charming. Easy on the eyes. But his life must feel so limited under the circumstances. I don’t know what this means for the two of us. If we’ll go out again or even if we should, but I want to be there for him. At the very least, I’d like to be his friend.
He shrugs his shoulders again and looks at me like, What are ya gonna do ?
“It's a pretty great first date story, though, right?” The hint of his bright smile blips across his face. When I agree, he runs his thumb along mine.
“Oh, it’s definitely a first.”
“Think you'll consider a second?”
I give his hand a squeeze in return. “Let’s just take it one day at a time.”
“You’re lying!” Emory does a spit take, losing half the gulp of hot coffee she just drank and spraying it across my t-shirt. I hope it burned her mouth before it made its way to my chest.
“Why would I lie about something like this, Em?”
Molly sips her hot cocoa, and unfortunately I don’t catch onto her intentions before she does a spit take of her own, spraying hers all over Emory. “Liar, liar pants on fire. Stick your pants on a telephone wire.”
She giggles hysterically but quiets when she sees the look on her mother’s face.
“Run, kid.” I push her off her chair and gesture to the napkins on the counter. “Grab some napkins. Save yourself.”
She releases a tentative laugh and skips over to retrieve the napkins, dropping them in both of our laps. “Sorry.”
“Mmhhmmm,” Emory hums.
It takes me gesturing wildly at my wet shirt before Emory catches on and throws a hand over her mouth, apologizing through it. “Whoops. Sorry Dinah.”
“Mmhhmmm,” I echo.
We all settle back into the girls’ living area overlooking the farm from the floor to ceiling windows. The spot offers an unbroken view of the gals, as we call them, alpaca-gossiping as they hang in the field in front of the house.
“Molly, why don’t you go chat with the gals for a bit. Let me and Aunt Dinah have some big girl time.”
Molly immediately sulks, glaring over the rim of her mug. “I am a big girl. Right, Aunt Dinah Belle? That’s what you always say.”
“Duh, yes.” I roll my eyes at her mom like I can’t even . “I get it, obviously. I mean, we have an exclusive club and everything.”
“And mommy’s in the club?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “Course. Girls only. We’re makin’ t-shirts and everything.”
Emory raises an eyebrow.
“They’ll have unicorns on ‘em and say, Party in the streets, magic in the —”
“Molly, outside, please!” Emory shrieks as I erupt into laughter.
“Beats, Emory. I was gonna say magic in the beats . Right, Molly Dolly?”
I do my best beatboxing to really sell it, and Molly nods because she is all about solidarity. She hugs us both and skips out to talk to her alpaca friends. Pam and Phylis greet her first, and she jumps into instant conversation, giving them pets and animated entertainment.
“So,” Emory returns to our conversation. “What do you think you’re gonna do? You can’t date him… or them? Do you say them? Can you date them both? That’s weird, right? I mean, I have so many questions. If you fall in love with one, have you fallen in love with the other? Who do you think is the better kisser?”
“Um.” I stare back at her, catching my breath. “I did not expect you to be so chatty about this.”
She points at herself like a cartoon character. “You didn’t think I’d be invested in a guy with a TBI who is gorgeous but has two very different personalities and doesn’t know who he’ll be every day when he wakes up? Do we even know each other? I’ve only watched every episode of every TV medical drama that has ever been created. This is like living in Gray’s Anatomy or ER . It’s fascinating.”
“It’s not fascinating, Emory. It’s his life. And it’s… romance,” I add. “You hate romance.”
“No.” She points her finger in the air and shakes it. She looks so much like our mama right now it brings a pang of grief, one I’m able to smile through. “No. I don’t like your romance-y books. They aren’t realistic. So much fantastical junk happens in those, yet there's always a happy ending? I don’t think so.”
I splay out my hands in front of me. She has to see the irony in what she’s saying, right? I want to argue she’s cynical, but it's a moot point for us. She lost the love of her life before they ever really got a chance to live it. I don’t know what that feels like. She has Molly, and that is more than enough, but it isn’t the full happily ever after my sister dreamed about.
Emory rolls her eyes. “I said I’m interested to know who’s the better kisser, Dinah Belle. Not that it would lead to a white wedding, ya know? I don’t see this going anywhere. Not really. How could it?”
“I don’t know.” I sip my coffee and pout into it. I’ve been wracking my brain since my date with Jackson ended with a friendly, albeit semi-awkward hug at my doorstep. It’s a lot to process, and when push comes to shove, he wasn’t honest with me about it from the get-go. I don’t know how long he would have kept it from me, but the fact that he didn’t start there is a bit of a red flag. The fact that the rest of our crazy, chatty little town managed to not spill the beans is a whole other story.
But when I try to put myself in Jackson’s shoes, I’m not sure I would have jumped directly into the split personality conversation either. So where does that leave me? I want to be his friend, but I’m not really sure that we can be more.
“Have you talked to him since your date?”
I nod. “He invited me to visit the church his family goes to in Sugartree. I went this morning before coming here. It was nice.” I sip my coffee and wait for Emory’s retort. Her relationship with her faith and the Church has been complicated in recent years. I try to leave space for her to talk about it when she wants to and to make sure she knows I’m here.
Today isn’t the day, though.
She laughs sardonically and pulls her socked feet up to rest underneath her on the couch. Only at home does she ever look this relaxed. “Only in the South does someone go on a second date to a church service.”
I shrug. She’s not wrong. “There was no meal and very little conversation, so I'm not sure it can’t be considered a date.”
“What? No Sunday potluck?”
“Nope.”
“And you certainly didn’t wear your new club t-shirt to service.”
I pop up, excited, with a new slogan idea. “Oh! Horns up top, party won’t stop!”
Emory pinches her lips and shakes her head. She knows good and well I will be brainstorming these from now until forever. “I don’t think you’ll win a beau with that one, Dinah Belle.”
“Anyways…” I continue. “Not much chit-chatting this morning about our future endeavors or my”—I wiggle my eyebrows—“undergarments.”
Emory sticks her finger in her mouth and faux gags.
I laugh. I knew I’d feel better about this whole thing, no matter how outlandish, as soon as I had a chance to download with her. “I’m not sure when I’ll see him—”
“Jackson.”
I nod. “Yes, Jackson. Again.”
“Ya know,” Emory sighs wistfully and settles deeper into the couch with her coffee nestled between her hands, “Meredith Gray had a whole lotta fun with a brain doctor once upon a time.”