Chapter 31
Silence reigns in the car until we reach the highway and have blasted past a few of the Garden State Parkway’s green exit signs. Then my well of self-control runs dry.
“Your sister isn’t marrying my ‘fucking friend’? Last I checked, they’re consenting adults. And they’re in love. It’s romantic.” I conveniently leave out my own qualms about the relationship.
“It’s not romantic. It’s a mistake.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that. Care to elaborate why you think Avery isn’t good enough for your sister?” I glare at his profile. Just hours earlier, I had my hand on his thigh and was pulling that mouth to mine. Now I want to wrench off the steering wheel and smack him with it.
Jack shakes his head. “This isn’t about Avery. It’s about Anna. She’s done this before. If you knew her goddamn track record… He’s a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, but the thing is, her ego never stops bleeding. If you care about your friend, know that he’s going to get hurt unless I stop this.”
“You don’t know that! Her past is the past, Jack. This time might be different.” I’m not sure the pleading edge to my voice isn’t because I’m trying to convince myself track records aren’t crystal balls.
We don’t speak again for two and a half hours.
I stare out the window, watching the tree-lined highway give way to town views as we near the bridge to New York. I’m worrying the nail on my thumb. I force myself to stop.
“You don’t think Anna’s capable of making her own decisions? Just because of her past?”
I hope the long drive will have given him time to cool down, to let his blood pressure drop. Instead, he nods curtly and says, “Yes. That’s exactly what I think.”
His words initially pinched like a beesting, but the more I roll them over in my mind, examine them, the more the ache grows. Those words, a familiar criticism, echo inside me, taking a wrecking ball to the fledgling hopes I’ve been nurturing.
We stop at a gas station for a bathroom-and-coffee break, and in the ladies’ room, I manage to shoot Avery a warning text that I am en route with a pissed-off Jack.
Jack is waiting for me at the car. I make to pass him by, but he pulls me to him gently and gives me a soft kiss, holding my stiff frame to him. It’s the only semblance of affection he’s shown me since we left Stone Harbor. My eyes well.
“This has nothing to do with you and me,” he says.
“Jack, Avery is the Mother Teresa of my group of friends—the best person I know. He’s perfect for your sister. Give her a chance to prove she—”
Jack pulls away woodenly and opens his car door. The warmth in his eyes from a moment ago is gone, his gaze now cold and glazed over. “I’m not rehashing this.”
I follow him into the car. My tears are gone. Instead, I find myself trying to relax my clenched jaw. “Well, I am. Your shitty attempt to be an unwanted white knight is possibly jeopardizing my friend’s happiness. It’s fucked up.”
Other than the visible tension in his own jaw, I wouldn’t have known he heard me.
Jack keeps pinching the bridge of his nose, his go-to when he’s stressed. And at one point, I see him pull out the migraine pills I spied in his apartment once upon a time. I feel a twinge of sympathy, but not enough to forgive his attitude toward his sister…or me.
We cross the bridge, and Jack expertly navigates the darting traffic to get us to our apartment building in good time. He parks us in a garage near our building, telling the attendant he’ll be back for the car in an hour. As we walk to the building, Jack finally speaks again.
“I need to know where they’re going. What time?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“Penny. Stop.”
“No, you stop.”
I run up the front steps and plug my key into the lock, then rush into the lobby. Jack follows.
“Anna is rebounding, and—”
“And what? Avery is a dick to swoop in?” I ignore that I warned Avery against doing exactly this, and I look over at him as he pulls alongside me, keeping pace with me on the stairs.
“I didn’t say that, but if the shoe fits.”
A vein is bouncing in my temple. We reach our landing. The door to my apartment is a few feet away. Home base. I need to get away from him. I fumble with my keys.
“Penny.”
I take a deep breath and turn to face him, looking up at his handsome face.
My heart lurches. I just want him to say the right thing.
To see it. To prove that he’s not someone who’ll wade into my issues and decide the water’s too hot.
“I am Anna, Jack. A damaged, no-good-at-relationships adult who has had a well-meaning yet controlling relation try and run my life for me. Can’t you see that?
If Anna and Avery are doomed, what about you and me? What’s the difference here?”
“The difference is me,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world. I wait for more, but he just stands there and blinks at me, as if I shouldn’t need to hear any more than that to be satisfied.
“Oh. Wow. So I’m a fuckup, but you’ll… What? Step in for my mom? Fix me? White-knight the—”
His expression hardens. “My relationship with my sister is nothing like yours with your mom.”
“You’re not a control freak? Didn’t you tell me that you vacuum every fucking day as a form of control?”
“Jesus Christ, half the time I was doing it to interrupt your conversations with your mother. And the other half… My vacuuming is a coping mechanism. That’s completely different. I vacuum so that when I put the vacuum away, I don’t need to control anything.”
“And yet right now you’re trying to stop someone from doing what they want because it doesn’t jibe with how you think their life should go. Sounds pretty familiar. Sounds like my mother.”
He runs a hand through his hair, and his ability to hang on to his temper is enraging. God knows I’m letting go of mine. “Look, Penny. Avery seems like he has his shit together. Mature. Anna is— She’s not. It can’t last. You don’t know my sister—”
“Actually,” I say, my upset making my voice wobble, “it sounds like I know her real well. Can’t keep a relationship going for long.
Unhealthy with guys. Too damaged to make her own choices, so she needs to have her life micromanaged.
About to enter into an unbalanced relationship that can’t last.” My voice goes up alarmingly at the end.
“Penny—”
I’ve found my deal-breaker. I need to let him go. The decision to end a fledgling relationship has never stung this much, but it’s better now than later.
“Penny, I don’t need to control anything here. But when things go south with Anna, I’m the one who has to pick up the pieces.”
It’s a testament to how much I am clinging to this that I find myself saying, “Technically, you don’t have to pick up the pieces at all!
She’s an adult. And so are you. You don’t have to prove your worth by being useful to your family, Jack.
Maybe it felt that way when you were younger, but you don’t have to fix things for others anymore. My mother—”
“I don’t have time to parse through your mommy baggage right now, but you’re not Anna, and I’m not your mother.” I make a scoffing sound, and he snaps, “For a start, I’m not a manipulative fucking mess.”
I rear back, eyes wide. I ignore the instant regret on his face.
“I’m sorr—”
“No, I’m sorry, Jack. This is over,” I say, the sharp stab in my chest nipping at my anger’s heels.
I want to double over and howl. I want to demand he tell me over and over that I’m not Anna until I believe it myself.
I want him to trust Anna to live her life so I can trust that he trusts me to do the same.
I want him to take back everything, the past three hours, rewind until we’re back in that hotel room.
My mom’s words, about this relationship ending, mock me.
He looks like I’ve struck him, and then his jaw firms. “I shouldn’t have said— No, you know what? This is your thing, right? Can’t get hurt if you never try and go the distance. Never give someone a chance. Run when it’s hard.”
“I gave you a chance!”
“It’s your decision what happens with us, so…
” He runs his hand through his hair again and turns away before swinging his gaze back to me.
“So, yeah. Fuck it. Your decision.” His gray eyes are wintry.
“I’ll try not to make things awkward, seeing as how we’re going to be neighbors for a very long time. ”
I laugh. It’s a tense, ugly, unhappy sound.
“You’re lucking out there. I haven’t gotten my raise yet, so I can’t afford to buy my place.
” I’m a wounded thing, lashing out, trying to inflict some of the pain I’m feeling on him.
“Maybe your next neighbor won’t be a relationship fuckup, so you can get with someone you actually respect. ”
Jack opens his mouth and closes it. I don’t slam the door on him this time. Instead, I close it slowly, still hoping he’ll pour the right words—the ones that will suck the venom out of this wound—through the opening before it shuts on us for good.