Chapter 41 #2
"I’m not going to pretend I understand how you felt," he says.
"But you were brave. Braver than I could ever be. You put yourself out there just because you wanted to be seen. To be loved. What he decided to do with that was not your fault." He stops. “Just don’t make excuses for him anymore, Rhys. Please. It’s not your fault,” he repeats, and that last one is what gets to me.
Jamie is looking at me like a door cracked open just a tiny bit somewhere inside him. I hope it doesn't close. I want to keep it open.
After a while, he starts talking again. "My dad," he says.
Eyes back on the ceiling he loves. "He had a very specific idea of who I was supposed to be.
What I was supposed to want. How I was supposed to want things.
" A pause. "He didn't believe in soft. Didn't allow it.
My mom wasn't allowed to comfort me when I fell down, when I was upset, when I needed it.
You get up. You keep going. Nobody makes a fuss.
" He's very still. "I barely got to talk to her outside of hockey games, even when I was little.
She was just, gone, always in her head at home.
And I spent most of my life trying to be exactly what he wanted.
Giving him everything I had. And I don't think he ever once told me I got there. He didn’t let me—he made me feel like—like who I wanted to be was wrong. "
I look at him. At the lump in his throat. At his hands flat and still, clutching the duvet. At the set of his face that is not careful right now, not even close, and I don't think he knows how much he's showing me. Or even cares anymore.
"Jamie," I say.
"It's fine."
"It's not though. You were just a kid. You needed love too."
A beat. Longer than the ones before.
"No," he says. So quiet. "It's not okay."
"I wish I'd met you when we were kids," I say. "Like six years old. Before any of this. When we both started playing hockey." He looks at me. "I think things would've been different for you. If I was there."
"Yeah?" he asks. Hopeful in a way that breaks my fucking heart.
I look at him. "I would've been really annoying, though,” I tease.
"You're really annoying now."
"Yeah, but, you would've been used to it by now. Completely immune. Life would be so much easier for you."
"I would've liked that anyway." He doesn't laugh.
Just stares at me with this new look in his face.
Like the idea of it — of having someone in his corner to protect him before everything, someone who cared about him and would have been soft with him — landed somewhere very real. "I think I would've looked for you."
Everything in me goes still.
"What?"
He shrugs like he didn't just say something completely insane. "You always find me now. I would have found you then."
My heart actually stutters.
Jamie doesn't seem to notice.
I just lie there and look at him in the midday light and think about a version of Jamie Nash who grew up with someone showing up for him. Who didn't have to build all those walls. Who maybe laughed a little more and flinched a little less. Who was happy.
Who could love me.
I think about how much I would have liked that kid.
How much I like this version anyway. Even with all the walls still up. I just need to get better at climbing, because the view up there is so wonderful, so beautiful, it’d be worth it a million times over.
We don't say anything after that.
The early evening light moves across the ceiling slow and golden and outside someone is laughing about something and in here it's just us and two people who have let their guard down at the exact same time and are both done pretending they haven't.
At some point he gets up and orders food.
Real food, an actual meal, which means Jamie Nash downloaded a delivery app today and used it for me.
We eat cross legged on his bed with the TV on low, something playing that neither of us is watching, our knees touching in the middle because it's a small bed and neither of us moves away from it.
We talk about nothing for a while. Easy nothing. The team. Blake.
At some point the TV gets louder and we actually start paying attention. Some action movie. Not a good one. The kind where every problem can apparently be solved by driving a car through a building. We make it maybe twenty minutes before I start talking over it.
"No chance that guy survives."
Jamie glances up from his food. "It's a movie."
"He should literally be dead." The guy immediately crawls out of the wreckage without a scratch and I sit up and point. "See?"
Jamie doesn't even look surprised. "You're getting really worked up about this."
"Because he exploded, Jamie."
A few minutes later the same guy jumps from one rooftop to another.
Then another.
Then another.
I pause the movie and Jamie sighs.
"Rhys."
"No."
"You can’t just pause in the middle of a movie."
"I absolutely can."
"Why?"
"Because nobody else in this movie is asking questions. He just fell off a roof."
"It's fine."
"Jamie."
"What?"
"Be serious for one second."
Jamie pinches the bridge of his nose.
I point at the screen. "Look at his knees."
"What about them?"
"They still work."
The corner of Jamie's mouth twitches and I catch it before it evolves into a smile.
"There it is."
"There what is?"
"The smile."
"I'm not smiling."
"You literally are."
His expression immediately flattens. "Well now it's gone."
The movie keeps getting worse and by the end we're both making fun of it. Jamie tries to hold out longer than me, but fails, spectacularly. One line is so bad it catches him completely off guard and he laughs, so hard he’s grabbing his stomach.
I can't stop smiling.
Because that's it.
That's the sound.
The one I've been chasing for months.
And now that I've heard it once I think I'd do just about anything to hear it again.
The laugh is even better than the smile.
Later, when the movie ends, I get up to throw the trash away and end up wandering toward his desk. There's a single framed photo sitting there.
I pick it up and Jamie immediately notices and tenses up.
"Don't."
I look down and immediately understand the panic. He's maybe twelve. Missing a front tooth. Hair sticking up in every direction. Holding a hockey trophy almost as big as his torso.
A full smile.
The kind of smile that takes over his whole face.
I stare at it. Then I look at him. Then back at the photo. Then back at him. "Who the fuck is this?"
Jamie groans. "Put it down."
"No."
"Rhys."
"No chance." I hold it closer to where he can’t reach it. "Look at you."
"Give me that."
"You were adorable." I laugh so hard I nearly drop the frame. Jamie drags a hand down his face, completely mortified. Which only makes it funnier. "I've never seen you smile like this, Jamie."
His eyes flick away. "That was a long time ago."
I look back at the photo, at this kid who looks happy.
Really happy.
Before everything.
Before walls.
Before all the things that made Jamie Nash become Jamie Nash.
I don't know why it hurts.
But it does.
Just a little.
You know what's weird?" Jamie asks.
"Dangerous way to start a sentence."
He ignores me.
"When you transferred here, I thought you were going to be a problem."
I gasp. "A problem?"
"You were."
"Wow."
"You still are."
I shove his shoulder, but he barely reacts.
"You came in so loud. Argued with me constantly. Couldn't follow directions to save your life."
"I was charming."
"You were exhausting."
Then he adds quietly:
"But the first day you weren't at practice, I noticed."
My heart stops and the grin slips.
"What?"
He shrugs. "You got sick. Missed one practice."
I stare at him. "That was like three months ago."
"I know."
"How do you even remember that?"
Jamie looks away, like he already regrets saying it. "I don't know. It just feels different when you’re not there."
I know exactly why he remembers.
Because he notices me.
The same way I notice him.
The same way I always have.
And suddenly all I can think is that maybe this has been happening to both of us for longer than either of us wants to admit.
And for a while it feels easy.
Like we've somehow stumbled into a version of us that never had to hurt first.
At some point the food is gone and the TV gets quieter and the room gets darker and neither of us moves to turn a light on.
I lie back first.
He follows my lead and lies back too.