Chapter 8
JAKE
“THIS IS YOUR pick-me-up?”
“Absolutely,” Alana says through a smile, her voice light as a cloud. “Ice cream for good days with bad moments. Alcohol for bad days that need good moments.”
“Ah,” I muse. “She has a system.”
“Works like a charm,” she says, licking around the base of her cone before the melting trail reaches her fingers.
I spoon a bit of ice cream from my cup, pretending to focus on it, but my eyes are glued to her.
Her grin is fixed as she joyously eats her way through her cookie dough filled waffle cone.
A tiny bit gets on her nose, and she laughs quietly when she catches me looking, our feet never stopping their slow stroll to nowhere.
Though the ground is still wet from the afternoon rain and the leaves have begun to change color with the mid-November air, this feels as easy as a breezy summer day.
She takes another bite, humming contently, and I swear, it’s the happiest sound I’ve ever heard.
There’s something about watching her in her carefree, unguarded spirit that quiets the static in my head.
All the white noise I haven’t been able to get rid of becomes a clear tone at the very thought of her.
She takes another bite, a soft hum slipping from her throat as if the taste alone could fix the world’s problems. My mind wanders seamlessly, wanting to know if the taste of her would have the same effect. I bet it’d be better.
“What?” she asks with an innocent smile.
I stop midstep and she does the same. I can only stare at her, my eyes falling to the ice cream on the corner of her full lips for a beat before rising to her stormy eyes.
Her smile falls a little, as if she can feel exactly what it is my mind is thinking—if her lips will feel as soft as they look.
If they’d still be warm even after being pressed against a near-frozen temperature.
If the touch of our lips would zing the same way my jaw did from the touch of her hand.
“Is there ice cream on my mouth?” she asks, then wipes her lips with the back of her sweatshirt’s sleeve. My hand moves before I can stop it.
“You missed a spot,” I murmur as I drag the pad of my thumb over the outline of her bottom lip. Of course, she didn’t miss anything. There was nothing there in the first place. I just… I couldn’t resist the chance to touch her.
It only lasts a moment—a second, maybe less—but the sensation of it sears into my body like a branding.
My heart pounds against my ribs, the sound deafening in my ears, and I swear the world around us stills.
The wind stops blowing. The leaves halt their colorful metamorphosis.
The remnants of rain don’t even drip from the leaves that hang above us.
Her breath catches. Her eyes flicker from my mouth and back like she’s fighting the same war I feel right now.
“Jake,” she whispers with a trembling voice.
I swallow hard, but my throat feels tight. “Yeah,” I answer as if I know, but I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Not anymore.
Her tongue grazes her lip where my thumb had just traced, and it sends another sharp pulse through me, prickling every inch of my skin. It’s a foreign feeling, one I don’t know how to name, but it’s addictively satisfying.
A silent moment passes before she looks away.
She starts walking again, and I ignore the desire to pull her into me as I follow closely beside her.
We don’t say anything for several steps, cooling in the come down of whatever it was that just happened.
When she finally breaks the silence, I’m immediately brought back to reality.
“Did you hook up with Macey Bromwell?”
“What?” My stomach curls inside itself. The question catches me so off guard, it nearly gives me whiplash.
“It’s none of my business.” She shrugs. “I’m just asking. I heard Nate ask if whatever he’s doing with her is okay with you, so it made me wonder. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
I don’t want to.
I don’t want to discuss the mistakes I’ve made or the emptiness I’ve tried to fill. I don’t want her to see those parts of me, but in the same breath, I can’t bring myself to lie to her. And for a second, I hate that just as much.
“Yes,” I admit.
“Yes, you don’t want to answer, or yes, you hooked up with her?”
I take a deep breath, stopping again to look at her directly. She turns to face me, and the sickness that hits my gut when her eyes land on mine is revolting.
I don’t want to tell her about the drunken one-night stand I disgustingly participated in with the campus jump-off.
I know she’s not the kind of person to judge, but it was an act that was out of character for me, and although I feel like I’ve known this woman my whole life, I also know the reality is that we’re very much still getting to know each other.
And, God help me, I want her to know me—the good parts I used to believe in and the parts she makes me believe could still matter.
But looking at her right now… I could never be anything but honest. Even if it means I’m digging my own grave.
“Yes, I hooked up with her.”
Disappointment coats her expression, and I instantly want to take my words back. I want to scoop them up out of the air and force them back down my throat. More than that, I want to go back in time and take the entire night back. Just hit a full rewind and erase any record of it at all.
“It wasn’t a good choice,” I start, but she cuts me off.
“You don’t have to explain,” she says. “It’s really none of my business.” She pauses a moment before she continues. “I mean, everyone hooks up with Macey, anyway, so…yeah, I get it.”
A strange aching need to apologize to her begins to rise in my throat. It’s odd because I obviously didn’t know Alana when this situation occurred, nor should it be something that would affect her in the least, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve let her down. Once again, I hate it.
“Is she…a friend of yours?” I ask awkwardly.
“Oh, God, no,” she scoffs. “I actually loathe her on account of her being a royal bitch to me our entire first year at UT—all because our performing arts professor complimented my ‘effortless grace’ while telling her she could use my help, but whatever.”
“Yeah,” I breathe. “That sounds like her. I’m sorry she wasn’t nice to you.”
All she says is, “Are you?”
“Am I…?”
“Friends with Macey?”
“Oh. No, we just…happened to cross paths a few unfortunate times.”
“Unfortunate, huh?”
“Like I said,” I repeat. “It wasn’t a good choice.”
Alana nods in understanding. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. I think she’s single-handedly working her way through every hot guy on campus before graduation. It must be, like, a goal of hers or something. Maybe she takes a picture of you naked and keeps it as a trophy for her shrine of hotties.”
A chuckle escapes me. “Her what?!”
“What?” she asks through a defensive smile. “I’d have one.”
My brows cock up. “You’d have a shrine of hotties?”
“Absolutely.”
“You’d take naked pictures of all the hot guys you’ve slept with, print them out, and have a designated place of worship dedicated to their nude photographs?”
She tilts her head before sighing. “You’re right. That’s weird.”
I laugh again.
“Well, what do I know about what people do! I’ve only ever been with one person and that was, like, the summer after high school. I mean, yeah I’m still on the pill and stuff, but it’s not because I have a ton of experience in this department.”
Her cheeks tinge the slightest shade of rose in embarrassment, and I can’t help but notice how utterly perfect she is in every way.
“That’s a good thing, Alana,” I say, pride blooming in my chest at knowing she hasn’t shared herself in a way I desperately want to know her. “Your brain landing on a shrine of hotties, on the other hand…”
“Shut up.” She smiles, nudging me in the shoulder.
“Anyway,” she swallows, “I’m not a saint or anything.
” She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“My life has just been so full lately, I haven’t had a chance to date.
It’s not…intentional.” She looks up at me through long lashes, and the touch of pink returns to her cheeks.
“Not that I would sleep around if I weren’t busy! I just mean… I wouldn’t… Like…”
A smile appears on my face. She’s adorable when she scrambles like this. I laugh a little before calming her nerves. “Hey, it’s okay. I know what you mean.”
She takes a relieving breath. “Okay…yeah. It’s just… Thank you.”
I nod.
She tucks her hair behind both ears. “And thanks for saying it’s a good thing,” she adds.
“Admittedly, my standards are super high, so I’d probably never sleep with anyone here anyway unless they were, like, I don’t know, superhot and nice and all that, but it’s not like I even have the time to notice.
Being too busy for boys has its perks, I guess. ”
“You’re not too busy for me.”
“You don’t count,” she says with an eye roll.
“Oh, no?” I smile down at her knowingly.
“What?” she asks, eyes flicking to my grin. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
My smile deepens. “I’m just remembering a few seconds ago when you called me hot.”
“What, n-no.” She trips over her words. “I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did. That's two times now.”
“No, it’s not. I’ve never said—”
“Uh-huh. At the bar, you said I was attractive and stuff right around the time you called me adorable—I still think about that, by the way—and now you just said you’d steal my naked picture and keep it in your tabernacle of hotties because I’m hot.”
“That is not what I said.”
I shrug. “It’s basically what you said.”
“No, it is not,” she huffs. “I mean, obviously you are, but that’s like—wait.”
And there it is. That perfect shade of flustered rose that kisses her cheeks when she’s worked up.
She holds a hand up in front of her as if to stop time itself.
I stifle another chuckle, but my amused grin stays pasted on.
“You’re confusing me. What I meant to say was…
” Her eyes bounce all over me. I watch her, waiting for this defense she thinks she has.
And then, she sighs. “Okay, fine, you’re hot.”
My face splits into a toothy grin at her admission, and she blushes. My body shakes with the laughter I’m trying to hold in.
“Oh, shut up,” she exclaims with a wide smile. “Well, that was my point—you’re hot. Macey's hot. Hot people unite.” She nudges me in my shoulder again, and this time, I grab her hand and enclose it in mine, bringing it to my chest.
“It wasn’t like that,” I clarify, the playfulness in my tone gone. “I’m not that kind of guy.”
“You could be. I wouldn’t blame you if you were.”
“Yeah, but I’m not,” I defend. “It wasn’t a choice I made in a good headspace.
I was… It was a rough summer. I was drinking…
a lot. She hangs around some of the same people I do and had been on me ever since she heard about my breakup.
” I chew on my cheek, trying to finish my poor excuse without vomiting on the sidewalk.
Truthfully, her hand in mine is the only thing making this bearable.
“I wasn’t interested at all. I had pushed her away a bunch of times, but one night, she was just…
there. And I was… I don’t know.” I shrug, and the motion feels pathetic.
I let go of her hand. It feels wrong to touch her while discussing touching someone else.
“I just wanted to feel something so I could prove I was moving on. I was drunk and hurt enough to think maybe I would feel better if I just let it happen that night.” It sounds even more awful when I say it out loud.
I almost think it would have been better to lie and deal with the aftermath of that than the current stomach churning I’m enduring.
“Did it?”
“Did it what?” My voice is covered in guilt and disgust.
“Did it make you feel better?”
“No,” I sigh.
She doesn’t say anything right away. She just nods thoughtfully and nibbles on her bottom lip. She grabs the near-empty cup from my hand and tosses the last of our ice cream in the bin behind me. Then she starts walking again. I fall into step beside her silently.
“I didn’t think it would.” Her voice is light, forgiving. My eyes settle on the ground, tracing the uneven cracks of wet concrete.
“No?”
“No. You can try and numb the hurt, but…” She pauses.
“Pain doesn’t work that way. You can’t fill the void with meaningless action or barrels of whiskey and hope it’ll all go away.
Pain is something you have to feel. Loss is something you have to grieve.
Your soul has to go through the waves of it all, one aching step at a time.
And then, one day, you get to forgive yourself. ”
My eyes snap to her. “Myself?” I ask, confused.
I’ll admit, there were moments where I thought of forgiveness—something I’ve yet to find space for in the bitterness that fills me—but of all the times I’ve thought of it, never once was it toward myself.
“Mm-hmm.” She meets my gaze with a softness in hers. “For not being able to change what happened. For wishing you could. For holding yourself hostage in it all.”
Her words sink in slowly, like stones being tossed into a still lake. I can feel the ripple of them spreading through me, unsettling something I’ve worked hard to keep contained.
I swallow, my throat suddenly dry. “How do you forgive yourself?”
“That is the million-dollar question,” she says with a faint smirk. “But until you do, you’ll keep running from the moments that make you feel alive again. Hiding from them,” she says knowingly.
I stop walking, my chest tightening at the realness of her words as they cut deep.
The truth is I’ve hated myself for being so stupid, for missing all the signs, and then letting it all go without so much as an argument.
But the real truth is that it hasn’t held the same weight it used to.
Not since I found her.
Right now, in this moment, I feel more alive with her than I ever have before. It's as if I thought I’d been breathing all along, only to just now feel the air in my lungs.
There’s danger in that, I know. The risk it takes to admit this relief is something I’m not ready to jump into.
Because no matter how much she brings me to life, I know I’m still barely floating above the tide—and that’s the point. That’s what I want to avoid falling into ever again.
This part of me she’s bringing back is the same one I buried. I can’t forget it was for good reason.