Chapter 17
I ran again, to another town. Another life. Because I couldn’t trust what Benjamin offered me. All this time I wouldn’t write his name. Now it’s all I can do. I didn’t want to hope. But now I’ve let fear take the best thing I’ve ever had away from me.
Jessie cried all the way home. And she couldn’t even say why. They were sticking to their agreement. So what was she supposed to say back to him?
It was going to be over after the election. She knew that. She had known it the whole time. There was no doubt about it. There was no question. There was no reason to be upset.
But it hurt.
Because being with him felt like it was something different. Had felt like it was something different for days now. Maybe even weeks.
But he had just said he needed time alone.
And you just left.
Of course. Because pushing back would mean dropping her mask. Because pushing back would be opening up her chest and revealing truths she wasn’t even certain of herself.
She pulled up to the front of her trailer and curled her hands tightly around the steering wheel. She was in love with him.
No. She didn’t want it to be true. She didn’t want to be that big a cliché. She didn’t want to be that sad.
She loved him.
How long had she loved him?
Well. Not all that long. She hadn’t known him before.
Maybe she’d had a crush on him, maybe she’d been attracted to him, but the love thing …
That had built over the course of the last month and a half.
When he had surprised her at absolutely every turn by being a more wonderful, sensitive human being than she’d ever imagined him to be.
He was smart. He was just wonderful.
He was great in bed. He taught her how to be herself. Gave her the strength to do it.
Except today, when she had needed to do it most, she had faltered.
She had not stood her ground.
But she had been doing so much of it lately.
Campaigning for office and fighting. Finding ways to be herself in public and not feel she had to put on such a show.
But this felt like a bridge too far. It felt like too much. Like too big an ask.
What should she have done? Looked him right in the eye while he was telling her he didn’t want her around and tell him that she was in love with him? That it wasn’t a show for her. That it was real. That it was everything.
She had stopped herself from admitting it before because she hadn’t been sure of what she wanted.
She knew the answer now. She wanted him. However that looked.
She had never really thought much about getting married. Having children. She hadn’t imagined her future taking the shape of anything so traditional.
She had worried, when she ever did think about marriage, that she might be bad at it.
But she had been finding her way with Flynn, hadn’t she?
She didn’t just have to be a reaction to her parents—she could be her own person. She could be the woman she had become. She could shape herself around him, just as he would with her if …
If he loved her. But he didn’t.
Or maybe he needed her to say it first.
And that brought her back to the fact that she was just too afraid to reveal her feelings.
Because she had been rejected already. She knew what it was like to want something, to know it was out of reach.
Why did she have to open herself to rejection again?
She thought about his family.
His father was dead, his mother didn’t want him. He didn’t have love. And she did.
She hadn’t been lying to him when she had said that Michael’s harsh words had given her something to think about.
Because her own parents were different, and they had done things that had messed her up, but they did love her. And she would rather have that than a seemingly normal family that disdained her.
She put her truck in reverse, and she found herself driving toward her parents’ home. More specifically, straight to her mother’s archival trailer, where she housed all her collections.
There was a light on in the living room, and she could see Lucinda standing in front of the bookcase, shuffling things around.
She got out of the truck, walked up to the door, and knocked.
It took a moment, but Mom came to the door and opened it. “Jessie.”
If she was surprised, her tone didn’t betray it.
“I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Sure.”
She stood away from the door and gestured for Jessie to come inside.
She did, and as her mother closed the door, Jessie looked around the space.
It was filled with curiosities. Display cases with spurs, crystals hanging from the ceiling in front of the windows; she knew that during the day when the sun came, the whole trailer sparkled.
There were potted plants everywhere—the place awash in greenery.
Books and little origami figures. Little things everywhere.
She suddenly remembered what Dad had said about Mom.
About how easy it was to give her what she wanted.
Jessie suddenly thought all this was beautiful.
Because these things were little pieces of her mother’s heart, on display for everyone to see.
It made it a lot easier to know her than Jessie had realized.
She felt a momentary surge of gratitude, especially in light of what had just happened with Flynn’s brother.
“I wanted to ask you about … Dad. And I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”
Her mom frowned. “Why would it hurt my feelings?”
“Because I just …” Oh, she was really going to do this.
Break the unspoken rule she and West had made all those years ago: to always pretend that everything was normal and fine.
She couldn’t anymore. She needed answers.
“You and Dad are really different. But you know that, right? That you’re different from other people? ”
Her mom blinked. “I would hope so. Everyone is supposed to be different from other people. That’s what makes you special.”
Jessie smiled slightly. “Well. Yeah. But I mean … unconventional.”
“Yes. We are.” Mom was so unbothered.
Jessie wasn’t sure what reaction she wanted, honestly. So she decided to just ask about love.
“Does that make being in love easier or harder?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like to be somebody else.”
“Okay.” Jessie almost laughed. Because her mother’s answers were so simple, and it was hard to believe it was that simple.
To just not compare yourself. To just be as you were.
“But I mean, when you were falling in love, did you have to fight for it? Did you feel there was a pattern you could follow, or did you feel you were starting from scratch? Did you … did you worry about losing him? Were you afraid for him to see all your collections? For him to see you.”
Jessie swallowed hard. “People don’t like me, Mom. Or they didn’t, not when I was little. They thought we were weird. And they thought I was weird. I got so tired of being rejected. I’m scared of being rejected again.”
Lucinda was silent for a long moment, and then she went over to her bookshelf and started touching the spines of the books.
In a rhythmic pattern, sort of a soothing motion.
“I was rejected all the time. But I never understood why I should hide myself. I wasn’t the one who was being mean or unkind.
People didn’t like it when I talked too much about the things I enjoyed, but I thought they were boring.
Why wouldn’t you want to talk about interesting things? But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”
Of course her mother had experienced a lifetime of rejection.
Of course she had. Jessie had felt protective of her multiple times in the present, but she had never thought about what her mom’s life might’ve looked like in the past. She had never realized, not fully, that of course her mom had been a kid who was often alienated from the people around her.
“But how did you find the courage to tell Dad how you felt?”
“I couldn’t hide it. No other man was ever interested in me.
But he liked the way I was. He never asked me to change.
He never asked me to talk about different things.
He likes things to move quickly, and he’s very brave—in ways that I’ve never been.
He’s different from me, but I don’t need him to be different from himself.
Just as he’s never needed me to be someone I wasn’t.
But yes, telling him how I felt was scary. ”
“Did you tell him first?”
She nodded. “Yes. I’ve never been very good at lying. And there was a point where I knew I wanted to be with him forever. So I thought I’d better just say it.”
“I’m just afraid. I love Flynn. I love Flynn, but I don’t know what he wants. I don’t know if he feels the same way. I don’t know … I don’t know. And I’m so worried that I’ll do the wrong thing and ruin it.”
“If it’s love, then saying the wrong thing won’t ruin it. It might be like a train that gets kicked off the tracks for a while. But it won’t be ruined.”
They were such simple words. And yet Jessie could feel a lot of wisdom in them. She and her mother weren’t exactly the same. Jessie had learned to hide herself. Jessie had learned to protect the woman she was in her deepest heart.
Her mom had never learned that. Instead, she had accepted rejection as an immutable part of life. Jessie wondered if in some ways her mother’s response was better.
Because the stakes felt so very high. Flynn was the first person to see her. He was the first person to really know her and like her.
She had given more of her real self to him than she had given to her family, and …
Maybe that was why it felt so frightening.
Because if he rejected her, it was the real her. The very real, very vulnerable Jessie Jane with her pink bedspread and her baked goods. With her squishy heart that just wanted to be accepted.
And maybe he should be the one to make the first move, except fundamentally, one of the reasons Jessie was so angry was that she felt she deserved to be accepted.
She didn’t know if Flynn believed that he did.