SKIPPING TIME

Chapter 20.5

                 

Cacee watched Jess's face go from anxious and doubtful to smooth and untroubled in the course of about eight seconds. She wondered what he was thinking and, for the first time since he promised to tell the truth, a shadow of distrust stirred inside her. She pushed it back, determined to give him a chance. He promised.

Jess started talking haltingly but picked up speed as he went until he was practically jumbling his words together in his haste to spit them out. It was about twenty minutes before he abruptly stopped, and she realized he was done. There was silence as she digested his words. She didn't know why he'd been so scared to tell her. Yeah, he'd done some off-color stuff, but she only felt compassion and pity. Her brain rifled through the story he'd told her.

It sounded like something that could be on Lifetime—an alcoholic father who taught him to steal when he was a little boy and then forced him to grow up panhandling and pick-pocketing, always afraid to get caught, always afraid to bring his father's wrath down on he and his mother. A mother that ran away with him in the middle of the night and promised him a better life that never came.

By then, he'd been entrenched in his habits. It had been too easy to steal when she didn't have money to feed them, too easy to fight when things were going badly at home. His mother finally decided she needed to make some changes, so she joined the Army and left him in the care of her sister. Now he lived with people who loved their own son, Peter, more than they'd ever love him. Still, it was some kind of security, and he'd been trying to get his life together since moving in with them.

She covered Jess's hand with her own. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

For the first time since he started talking, Jess looked her in the eye. "Everything about my past is bad. I--" His voice turned vehement, "hated being that guy. I didn't want to be him anymore. So I created a guy who would impress a girl like you. I never meant for it to go as far as it did. It never occurred to me that we'd get so close."

She looked at him worriedly. "That guy, the one you hated being? You're still him."

He shook his head. "I'm not. I've changed."

She knew he couldn't actually change by denying every part of who he was. He needed to accept himself first, like himself at least a little and work his way from there. Before she could try to explain that, Jess said, "This year, having you around, it made things better."

He looked at her sideways, his dark hair in his eyes, his hands knotting and unknotting a string that hung off the blanket. She'd already deduced that she was his first friend. He'd mentioned being beat up a lot as a kid for stealing food out of people's lunchboxes because he was hungry. That was how he learned to fight. He'd tried to stop fighting when he moved in with his aunt, but ended up getting so stressed over Peter's health problems that he screwed up again. He looked pathetic now. He was trying so hard to seem like he didn't care what she said.

He still needed to understand this couldn't happen again. She angled herself towards him.  "I don't like being lied to. You should've told me the truth months ago."

Jess nodded but kept his head lowered.

"Look at me, Jess."

He raised his eyes.

"I mean it. I can deal with a lot of stuff. Just not that. I have to be sure this won't happen again. It's the only way this will work. If you can't trust me, you shouldn't be with me."

He held her gaze throughout but dropped his eyes before saying, "I know."

Unease flickered through her and she clarified, "You won't lie to me again? You swear?"

Jess tensed and she saw his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. In the back of her head, a warning bell clanged. But when he looked at her, his dark eyes were full of sincerity. "I swear, Cacee. No more lies."

She relaxed and nodded. "Okay. We don't have to talk about this again."

"Really?" He sounded astonished but immediately corrected in a normal voice, "I mean, okay. Yeah. That's cool."

Her heart twisted. Did he have any idea how much he got to her?

He asked, "So, everything is still the same between us? Like, exactly the same?"  He glanced up at her, his smile self-conscious.

She smiled back, "Yes."

He tucked her hair behind her ear, letting his fingers trail down her cheek. She wondered again how she would handle kissing when the lightest touch from him threatened to dissolve her into a puddle.

Clearly unaware of his effect on her, Jess said, "I'm gonna go grab that shower, okay?"

She nodded.

"Will you still wait up for me?"

"Yes."

He smiled and walked away but turned back. "Cace?"

"Yeah?"

As he walked back to her side, he slipped off the necklace she'd never once seen him without. He let it dangle from his fingers as he said, "It seems like I've been fighting a lot since we got here. So I thought it might be safer to leave this with you."

He paused before continuing in one rapid rush, "It's probably a good idea for you to hold onto it when we go home too. That way, I'll still seem like your boyfriend while I'm gone. If that's what you want, anyway.  I mean, it's cool if you don't. But, if you do, that would be good. I mean, for me. I'm good with that."

For once, his face flushed. He immediately got busy studying the clasp on his necklace. A surge of intense emotion caught her off guard and she found she needed to look down. Blinking rapidly, she nodded and said in a slightly quivering voice, "That's good for me to."

He was still looking at the necklace, but she saw him smile and lifted her hair for him to clasp the small medallion around her neck. His lips brushed her cheek and her heart thrummed so fast it became a continuous vibration running through her body. He stood, relief in his eyes. "I like seeing it on you."

She reached up to hold his necklace, "I like wearing it. Thank you." Jess just gave her his necklace and called himself her boyfriend.

He gave her a smile that bordered on shy and nodded.

She smiled back. "Now go shower and hurry up."

His smile turned mischievous as he winked at her. "Don't worry. I will."

She watched him walk away and closed her eyes, trying to assimilate how it felt to finally admit the truth. She'd been so scared of this. She'd told herself she wasn't old enough, that it was only a crush. She'd told herself she'd get over him. And then they came here and he almost died and, somehow, it no longer mattered to her that falling in love at sixteen wasn't in her plan. Some things were bigger than any plan, bigger than anything in the world. Jess was one of them.