present day.
Waking up to the steady sound of a heart rate monitor and overhead lights beaming on me, here I am again staring at the same blank walls, the same itchy white sheets in the same baby blue hospital gown.
What the fuck happened to me?
Unwillingly so, I remember everything as if it were a film. The lost memories had this glaze over them in my mind, making them appear as if they were shiny and new. When you forget about your life as a whole for an entire year, it can come off that way.
My head hurts. Like there's thoughts in there pounding on its walls incessantly. Piercing into every nook and cranny, amassing a frenzy I can't seem to grasp, tearing my once-spotless mind to shreds. And I thought I was bad before.
Nothing could have prepared me for the mayhem I woke up to from a nightmare I could actually remember.
I lull my head to the side, stretching the strained muscles in my neck from being in the same position for however many hours I was out. There's a window showcasing the fresh sunlight pouring into the hospital room, maybe it wasn't all that long.
My heart skips a beat when I notice Beau sitting in the cushioned chair beside the bed. The heart monitor confirms it, so it isn't just in my head.
His eyes are on the floor but he isn't truly present. Not enough to notice me glancing at him. I'm sure there's so many thoughts in his mind. There's still that narrative of a prior night he has yet to tell me, along with many other questions I need to be answered. All of that can wait, there's too much going on in my mind already.
I notice a white bandage on his upper arm. I probably hadn't spotted it earlier today when I was too consumed in my own clueless misery. It's unmissable in his short sleeve shirt. Too big to be nothing.
"Beau," I whisper inaudibly. In a voice so quiet and so hoarse as if I'd spent countless hours screaming at the tops of my lungs. I doubt he heard me, I didn't say it with the intention of him hearing me, I only wanted to feel his name on my lips. Caressing my tongue like it's second nature. It felt like years since I said his name last. I needed to remember how it made me feel.
Surprisingly, he heard me. His eyes shift up to me in acknowledgment. For the split second that he thought he was only hearing things, there was a flash of hopelessness in his eyes. This sad brokenness that I wish I hadn't been the cause of earlier. But then Beau recognizes me gazing at him and that look soon fades. Despondency turns into shock with lingering hues of sorrow. "You're awake," he mumbles so softly. I focus on the way his lips move in order to ensure I heard the right words. He rises to his feet, approaching me with careful steps. As if I were a fragile piece of artwork he was afraid he'd ruin. "How're you feeling?"
Shaking my head softly, my slight movement cut off as he lifts his hand to my cheek. Initiating that move with great precariousness and precision because he didn't know how badly I was craving touch. Any form of warm, solidifying fingertips I ached for. That familiar feeling of his hand against my skin made it light up greedily. Soaking up every ounce of his warmth that I longed for.
"My head hurts," I whisper. I know I have to tell him I remember, and I sure will today. I just can't find the words to. It's a whole other part of my life, a half I completely left out when we were getting to know each other. Telling him about my past would be like learning who I am all over again, both me and him. Instead of realizing these things over the course of a few months, we'd both come to know them within hours at most. Such a short amount of time to learn who someone is.
I put my hand on his. My eyes move to the bandage on his arm. Did it happen while I was out? He has yet to tell me about London, what if it happened there? God, there are so many questions that need answering. So many secrets we're withholding from each other because we're afraid of how the other may react. "When you collapsed, you hit your head," he answers with a sad note in his voice.
"You were there?"
"I watched it happen." He sits back down on the bed beside my legs. I look down at our hands as they intertwine with one another. Dark purple bruises color the peaks of his knuckles, accompanied with smaller cuts. I lock eyes with him, prompting a truthful answer. Though I don't receive a lie, I don't get an answer at all. Instead, he continues on explaining the parts I can't remember, going on pretending he didn't see me looking at his hand.
"When I went upstairs to go check on you, I noticed you were hyperventilating. I tried calling your name but it's like you couldn't hear a thing." His eyes break from mine, possibly because it's difficult to recount such a memory. I offer his hand a light squeeze for reassurance. "You collapsed before I could get to you. Doctors said it was because your blood pressure dropped suddenly. We brought you here and you've been out cold for hours."
The exhaustion and redness in his eyes would have me believing I was unconscious a lot longer than a couple hours. Had he been crying? Drowning in worry? Had anyone come in here to check on us? So many questions... "Beau," I sigh, deciding I can't hold this in any longer. Answers have got to come and if it starts with me, so be it.
He nods, remaining silent.
"I," a heavy sigh passes through me, he needs to know, "I remember."
His brows shoot up in shock. "Remember what?" he asks a little too quickly. Raising suspicions of my own considering what happened last night is still up in the air.
Temporarily, I brush it off. I'm not saying last night's events aren't at all significant, but there's other things at hand. Things we still need to get to the bottom of. "Everything I forgot about. I remembered them," I elaborate in a near-silent voice.
Beau pauses for a second, unknowing of what to say or do. I mean I wouldn't know much either. There's so much going on already, this revelation couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time. "I-," he stammers, "Your past? All of it?"
"For the most part, yeah. I mean there's some parts I can't remember in the most explicit detail, but..."
His eyes bore sincerity into mine. Saying everything he can't put into words. It makes up for the lack of things he has to say, those eyes. "Do you want to talk about it?" The apprehensiveness in his voice is painstakingly clear.
I hate this whole distance thing. Even if we're more together than we have been in the last ten days, he may as well still be in London. The gap between us is so great, it's been that way since I got out of bed. Whatever is on his mind is eating away. And it's kept us far apart. It feels so cold here, so callous. I don't think he's fully aware of how much this is hurting me. The extent to which this pains me. What I'm also sure of is that this is tormenting him too. Whatever he's keeping from me he must be too afraid to voice it to me. We're both in pain and hurting one another in the process.
In the absence of words, I reach out to him. Welcoming him by my side. We make do with the small amount of space we have and accommodate the IV and heart monitor connected to me. We're not all that far apart from one another anyway. I roll onto my side, wrap my arms around his torso like this is the last time I'll ever hold him.
When I tell him about my past, it just might be.
His heart pounds beneath my ear, faster and faster with every stroke of my hand along his forearm. I loved how easily his body responded to me. I reveled in the way his skin warmed against mine, rserving as a reminder of just how much he loved me. For my delicate fingertips to brush his scars, he yearned for such a feeling. How our touch seemed to mend our broken pieces.
But this unraveling was too substantial to heal with a sole touch. We had to communicate. It was definitely something we had to work on or else this relationship would not survive. What better time than to start now.
"A few months after I turned twelve, Kat noticed something was wrong with me," I begin, "I wouldn't speak to anyone for hours, sometimes even days. I started having smaller gaps in my memory. I'm sure she told you this when you went to talk to her."
Beau nods briefly. "Yeah, we touched on the topic a little. Like I said before, I asked her to leave out most of it."
"So she must've told you I had dissociative amnesia," I say quickly, not wanting to face it myself. But in order for me to start seeing progress, I can't let myself forget these things again. I already witnessed what would happen if that's the kind of coping I resorted to. Never would that happen again. "I bounced around from therapist to therapist, none of them could get through to me. Until this one, she wasn't really a therapist, a school counselor more like and she knew all about what was going on with me. Long story short, she called in my parents and told them that I was showing signs of dissociative amnesia. She advised them to seek out a professional consultation and they did just that. Except a couple more months went by and no one else had gotten through to me, so them and my sister figured my best bet would be to forget. Then the issues I had wouldn't bother me, I guess."
Thinking back upon it, that's probably the worst mistake they had ever made. I love them all dearly, but making that call for me should have been out of their hands. In thinking that they were protecting me, they really only made the problems worse. A lot of things could have been prevented if the same mistakes weren't repeated over and over again and little did I know. I'm sure there was something a therapist could have done to break through to me, something that would have prevented things from worsening in the long run. Things happen for a reason I suppose. If I would have done better for myself much earlier on, I probably would have never left Melbourne. If I never moved to L.A., I would have never met Beau. And that is the worst possible thing to ever imagine.
"From when I was eleven all the way up to when I left Melbourne, I was bullied by the same group of girls. I had been friends with one of them, Gina, but then she met the other girls and I guess they'd become too popular to hang out with me. They spread these terrible lies about me, shoved me around, a couple of times they took it as far as beating me up. I could never say anything because their parents donated so much money to that school and the principal was so far up those girls' asses for it." It sickens me that even someone who fakes a righteous facade can be so downright corrupt for money. Our principal would overlook the cuts and bruises I'd come to school with almost every day for fucking money. Why did everyone sit back and do nothing?
Hell, if I couldn't fight for myself, what the fuck makes me think other people would? Beau hugs me a little tighter, cupping my jaw with one hand so I'd look up at him. "Why would anyone do such a thing?" he murmurs, silent tears in his eyes.
"I never knew for sure. Gina saw a way into the popular crowd and she took it. She had to bring me down in order to make herself feel superior."
Beau shakes his head in utter disbelief, "No, that shit was personal. To bully someone for years, make every day a living hell, she had something against you, Jo. I don't know about those other girls, they could have been going along with her, but whoever that Gina girl is had a reason."
I can't name a reason she might have had. Jealousy, maybe? I can't see one thing she'd be jealous of. She's far prettier than I am, a decent person to the lucky ones that weren't on her bad side, from what I heard she was in the top of our class and set to be the valedictorian unless someone came in and stole that from her. The same boys that went after her taunted me to earn some points in their favor. We were in two completely different worlds after we split apart. I can almost guarantee that if she'd never taunted me, we would have never spoken a word to one another.
"I could never ask her for the truth," I say softly, guilt-ridden.
"Why?"
Rather than answering the question, I continue. He can't know that part without knowing the rest. "A little over a year ago, Kat brought me to a party with her friends. I never went in, I was trying to forget something and well, you know how that goes. I practically shut down. Anyway, I ended up at Gina's house. She was hosting a party and back then alcohol would soothe my mind. That's why I always found myself at parties, I wanted to feel better."
Curling his lips into his mouth, he acts as though that doesn't sound familiar. For my sake he withholds any comment he could make in regards to the fact that that hasn't changed up until recently.
"I wanted to get back at them so badly that night. I wanted them to feel what I felt for years. I was drinking so that didn't make matters much better." I tear my eyes away from him, fidgeting with the sheets in anxiousness of how he'll react to the night that took a turn for the worst. "I was outside looking for them and this girl, Aimee, pulled me into the middle of a circle. There she and the other girl, Avalon humiliated me in front of everybody. They drenched me with water and my clothes were white, put two and two together and..." I stop there, not wanting to get too graphic with it. He'll get the gist.
Stopping my anxiously fidgeting hands with a singular grasp, Beau mutters, "I'm so sorry that happened to you, baby. Those girls were terrible."
I shake my head meekly, "It wasn't the worst thing they'd done."
A moment of silence passes. He strokes the back of my hand with his thumb, our signature thing when we can't find the words to say to one another. It isn't lazy at all, it's helpful and comforting. He isn't getting out of anything by simply stroking my hand, instead he's reassuring me that he's here and that is all I need.
I intake a deep shaky breath. This is where things get complicated. This is where he could very well be justified in distancing himself from me completely, heart, mind, body, and soul. This revelation will ruin what we held so dear, our first time together. Now tainted by my past and everything in it that I forced myself to forget about. "I wanted to go home. I was so fucking sick of those girls and everything they were doing. I was going to walk back to where Kat was and tell her that I could handle going back home on my own, that she should stay and enjoy herself. As I was heading out, Aimee's boyfriend came up to me. Brandon and I had been friends before the bullying happened. It was when we entered grade nine that everything changed. I trusted him though at one point."
"He saw me covered head to toe in water and he led me upstairs to one of the bathrooms. We talked for hours. Catching up, I guess. When it was time for me to go, that vengeful voice came back." My voice unmistakably cracks. The gentle strokes of his thumb stop entirely. "It was telling me that it was my chance to get back at Aimee. We hooked up and got caught by her. After that he never said a word to me. At school he pretended I didn't even exist." His heart picks up again, I can feel it pounding into my cheek. There was no room to allow my heart to do such a thing or else it'd be put out there on the heart rate monitor for him to hear.
Being vague on purpose leaves the floor open for question. Beau doesn't beat around the bush when it comes to asking his. "Did you have sex with him?"
The sound of pure defeat in his voice drives a stake through the center of my heart. A quiet sniffle rips through me. Beau's a straightforward person. He prefers straightforward answers, in spite of how much they'll hurt him. It won't do him any good to sugarcoat the facts. I didn't lose my virginity to Beau, but another boy I didn't even come close to loving. "Yes," I let out a discontinuous sob.
He sucks in a harsh breath like I'd single-handedly slapped him in the face. The truth can do that to you sometimes. I try to find his eyes again, but they're focused on the wall straight ahead of us, far away from me. "Did you have any feelings for him? At all?" he utters in an even more vanquished tone.
I'm quick to shake my head. "No, no, it was strictly to get back at Aimee. That sounds incredibly shitty, I know, but that night I wasn't able to comprehend the significance of what I was doing. The connection that goes along with having your first time. I wasn't at all prepared for it to hit me as hard as it did afterward."
"Did he, did he take advantage of you?" He stumbles over his words, bearing a question too heavy even for him to know the answers to.
Unsure of what to say, I simply answer, "I initiated it. I don't know if that would really count as being taken advantage of." I said yes to Brandon every time he asked me if sex was what I truly wanted. Plus, I'm almost sure that all the liquor I had to drink was well out of my system by then. I don't think regret coincides with being taken advantage of.
His deep sigh rattles in his chest. "Think about the way you are with me. Has there ever been a moment where you weren't sure about what we were doing?"
I think back to when we were intimate last. Even then after everything Leo had done to me finally unfolded before all of my closest friends, I still didn't hold a single reservation as to the sex Beau and I had at the party. Even if I had, we've had enough talks about being safe and responsible during sex that I would have felt comfortable enough to tell him to stop. "Never," I answer clearly.
"And with this guy, did he check on you at all? Make sure that you were okay?" It was a one night stand. Everyone accepts the bare minimum. I didn't expect Brandon to fall in love with me after that night, but a little reassurance that I wasn't being completely used would have been nice.
I shake my head in silence.
"Well, whoever this fucker was should have been a little more considerate." His words get sharper along their edges, their syllables cutting off angrily.
I bite my lip nervously. I expected him to react somewhat harshly. But it's better than withholding this information until a later date. "Are you mad at me?" I query, a tear rolling down my cheek.
"No," he says in alarm. Meeting my eyes finally, he places a warm, loving hand on my cheek, "God, no, baby. I'm not mad at you for anything. And this doesn't change anything. I still love you so fucking much. I don't see our first time as anything less than perfect. How could I hold you to something you couldn't remember?"
His words lift one of the heaviest burdens off my shoulders. I didn't know what I expected to happen when I told him this, but it sure as hell wasn't for him to be so understanding so quickly. Yes, he can be the sweetest boy in the world, but when it comes to these kinds of things, I thought he would be more hurt. "It doesn't bother you? You know, the whole virginity thing?" This feels too good to be true. The universe is holding something over my head, a catch maybe. There's no way this can go this smoothly.
Or maybe it is and I'm only being paranoid.
"It's the 21st century, baby, the whole idea of virginity doesn't bother me one bit." I swear I was holding in one big breath until those words came out. "We told each other we loved each other that night, you trusted me with your body, no one's gonna get the chance to ruin that for us."
It's far too early to celebrate, I know that much. But with our first obstacle tackled, I think I owe myself a bit of a reward. I cup my jaw in my hand and steal a gentle kiss. "I love you so much," I whisper against his lips.
"I love you too, baby," he promises, "Question the significance of our first time again and I won't hate-watch a single episode of Gossip Girl with you ever again." His playful threat brings a lightheartedness into the room we so desperately needed. It brings the first smiles of hopefully many onto our lips. For the time being at least, I want to appreciate the warmth of a smile.
"That's cruel," I pout.
"Is that all?" he asks warily.
"Far from it actually," I give out a meek laugh, "Aimee saw us together. I thought she would try to keep the whole thing under wraps, but instead, she had twisted the entire story around to make it seem like I had led him up there to take advantage of him. Of course, the entire school believed that narrative and I got a lot of shit for it."
"He didn't try telling anyone the truth?" Beau sits there, puzzled as to how not one but two people let such a nasty rumor go around when they both knew what the truth entailed.
I gave him a clear no. "He never tried telling anyone anything. He was friends with the people that were making my life a living hell, he watched me get pushed around every day and never said anything."
"Dick," he mutters under his breath.
"Gina, Avalon, and Aimee made sure I paid the price for it," I continued, disregarding his comment, though there is truth to it, "The week after that all went down, they made me suffer more than usual. Kat only knew about everything that was going on because after the party I went to her and told her about what happened. I came home with a new bruise or cut every day, she was able to put two and two together from there."
"That weekend I had gone out for a walk to clear my head. Gina and her friends pulled up beside me and took me to this abandoned warehouse party out of town. We got into an argument there and left." To be able to say that Beau would see me the same after what I told him next would be a goddamn miracle. "Aimee...she had a knife to my throat," I felt myself choking up just talking about it, seconds away from being overcome by the same feelings I felt that very night of the accident, "She told me that if I didn't do what she ordered me to that she'd kill me right then and there. So I drove down that deserted highway, making all the turns she asked me to."
"We got to these hills, mountains I should say, where there were all these sharp turns and potholes. It wasn't a safe road. She demanded that I drive faster, way too fast to be making those turns safely. At some point I blacked out. I just heard the girls screaming for me to stop. I-I couldn't move, Beau. I was trapped in my own mind."
My hands begin to tremble, tension ridiculing them. My eyes shut carefully, fighting the urge to wish this all away like before. I could not do that. "Jo," he shakes me gently, "Hey, it's okay. You're safe, just breathe, baby." His voice is calm, cool, collected. Something that his racing heart couldn't reflect.
Reluctantly, I continued. I need to tell someone about this. I couldn't internalize it all like I always have. Beau told me once he didn't want me to burden myself with every ounce of my pain and suffering. That he was willing to take it on for me, share it with me so it becomes a little lighter. "I didn't know what I was doing, Beau. I lost control of the wheel a-and," I choke up, trying to keep a steady breath but it's too hard. Everything feels like it's closing in on me, so much weight crushing down on me. Like the car accident all over again.
"Take your time," he whispers.
"We got into a really bad wreck. When I woke up, I could barely move. I couldn't see for a bit, it was too dark. I looked to the side of me," a sight I'll never forget, "and Gina was bleeding. The glass on the passenger side had broken. S-she was dead on impact. Avalon too. I was so stupid, I called their names, trying to get them to wake up. Eventually, I realized I had to get out of there, with or without them. At least to call for help, you know? The car wasn't too far from the road, i-it had rolled onto its side from the sharp turns. So I forced my way out of my seat and walked back to the road, where I found Aimee just sitting there in shock. Neither of us said a word. We looked on at the wreck, realizing what we both had done, and we sat there for god knows how long."
"I noticed a fire sparking up at the bottom of the car. I thought nothing of it and neither did she. We waited and we waited for one of those girls to climb out. The fire started to grow and it just clicked. There was alcohol in the car, gas, a lighter too I'm sure. We were too close not to get burned. I told Aimee we had to get away. She was still in shock, but she listened to me. When she heard the explosion, everything hit her all at once. The emotions, the weight of what we'd done, the fact that her two friends were dead. It all piled up on her and she started crying. Calling out to God, pleading for a sign. I hadn't known she was anywhere near religious until that night."
Beau is a silent statue, just as we had been that fateful night.
"She snapped out of it and realized that if we waited there any longer, we'd get into some huge trouble. We were both fifteen at the time, we didn't know what the hell we were dealing with. She called Brandon and told him what happened. He took the back roads so no one would spot him leaving his house. When he got to us, he had crafted this plan to get us all out of it. The fire had destroyed all the evidence. He would say that he and Aimee were together all night and I had to get Kat to say that I was with her the entire time. The police didn't have anything besides a bottle of alcohol that flew out of the car. Security footage didn't catch what was inside because the windows were too tinted. We got away with it, but even then it didn't make things any better. That's why I felt I had to forget because I was too weak to face the grief and the guilt. I killed two people, Beau."
Wracked with sobs, I can't go on any longer. I was barely holding onto my words by a measly thread. When that thread snapped, all I was left with were the shambles of who I thought I could be and who I actually was. Responsible for two young girls' death, too weak to face my problems, proven to be as much of a liar as the rumors said I was. The guilt resides in me once more, as it rightfully should. I don't get to feel the way I once did. I don't get to just forget what happened. Those girls whose deaths I was responsible for deserve better than that.
"Listen, you did nothing─"
"Did nothing?" I repeat, "I killed those girls."
"No, you didn't. Hey, hey, listen to me." He grabs my face in both of his hands and bids me to look up at him. "You were driving the car, yeah I get that, but you were in fear of your own life. Aimee had a knife to your throat, you did what you had to do to survive. Those girls were horrible to you."
"That doesn't make it okay!"
Beau, startled at my sudden outburst, resorts to grabbing both of my shaky hands and splaying them out on his chest. "No, it doesn't make it okay," he agrees. I can't tell if he;s only saying that to get me to stop or because he actually believes it. I'm not sure which one I'd prefer. The version where he's only saying these things to calm my mind, or the version where he believes these things for himself and now thinks of me as a killer who couldn't own up to her mistakes. "Nothing about your situation is okay, you can't keep seeing things in black and white. Okay, you were in an accident that killed those girls."
"I killed them," I interrupted him yet again to correct him.
This time it's him that snaps back at me. "Jo, listen!" His voice is desperate rather than angry. Desperate to get through to me. Desperate to make me see that I'm not at complete and total fault for this. "Those girls were in that car as their friend threatened your life. Did they do anything to stop her? No. They knew what they were doing going down those roads as fast as they were telling you to. They obviously knew what the road was like if they intentionally brought you to it."
He's got a point, a fairly good one at that. However, I shouldn't have gotten away with it that easily. I should have paid for what I did. Fuck, I didn't even attend their funerals or the vigil the school organized for them. I watched people cry over their loss knowing damn well I was the one behind the wheel. "I should have faced some sort of consequence. What if I go back and turn myself in? Do you think I can do that? God, Beau, I should somehow pay for this." If he weren't holding my hands, I just know I'd be tearing at my hair, tugging at it from its roots. This is too much at one, countless years of accumulation hitting me all at once.
"And you think you haven't paid already? It's been over a year of you tearing yourself apart from the inside out. Night terrors and having your mind running a mile a minute isn't enough punishment?"
Another good point. Since when did he get so smart? "It's not right that I didn't think twice about it until now," I murmur, hiding my face in his t-shirt, "It's not fair that I get to live."
"Don't say that," he warns.
"It's true! It was my life that was at stake that night, not theirs. They shouldn't have had to die, not like that." My sobs subside, my racing heartbeat with it. Now there's only sniffles that come in to replace them and the steadier thrum of my heart. I sort of miss life before I remembered all of this. At the very least I could have processed all these events one at a time. Not like this, not so relentlessly.
"You can't twist fate around. You can't change anything that happened then, but you can still change what happens going forward."
"I need help," I mumble out in broken pieces. "I'm sorry to dump this all out on you."
Encircling my body in his arms, he hugs me tightly to his chest. "It's what I'm here for, love. To help you overcome these challenges. You shouldn't have to do it alone. I'm proud of you, so fucking proud of you."
"How can you be proud of me?" I whimper.
I can feel his gaze seeping into me from above with unfaltering adoration. I genuinely wish I could pry into his mind and see myself the way he sees me. See why he would carry so much faith in me after all I've done. His love is too good to be true. "You're the strongest person I know," he whispers, kissing the top of my head.
Forcing out a chuckle, I refute, "You clearly don't know very many people then." To share the same subtle affection he gifted to me, I press my lips against the back of his hand, feathery and fleeting.
"You're the strongest person I've ever known, and trust me, I've known a lot of people in my life," he repeats, leaving no room for denial. "You've been through so much in only sixteen years. You've gone through the worst aspects of life in that time. It's about time you stop letting guilt weigh you down and start working towards the happy parts. Can you let yourself do that?"
"I'm going to need a lot of therapy to make that work," I retort.
"And if that's what you decide to do, I'm here every step of the way. If you're open to advice, I think you should."
I think that would be best. I've already explored the possibility of what happens when I try getting through things on my own and it's far from pretty. Today is definitely the push I needed to seek out actual psychiatric help. Ignoring that isn't even an option. "Fine, I'll go see a shrink," I roll my teary-red eyes.
"They call them therapists now, babe. And I think I'll go for a few sessions myself."
I sit up a bit to be able to look at him, showing him the mild shock taking over my features, "Really?"
"Yeah," he grins softly, "It's no surprise I can't get a grip over my anger. Along with some other shit, I think if you're going to be making progress, I should be practicing what I preach."
"Going to therapy together, goals am I right?" I can't help but smile. We're taking a step in the right direction. Jokes aside, I do feel really hopeful about this. This will be good not only for us as a couple, but us as individuals. We're getting better for one another, growing together. Setting ourselves up for, possibly, an even brighter future.
"I really am glad we're deciding to do this," he admits.
I nod in agreement, "Me too." It was a long time coming.
All of a sudden he moves to get up. I'm not ready to let go of him just yet, so my hug gets tighter. "Where are you going?" I say in a needy whimper. I'm not ready for him to leave me alone. I'm not all that confident that I won't do something stupid. What that thing may be, I'm not sure I want to find out. Indefinitely, my thoughts would come pouring in all at once, given the silence. His delicate touches and equally soft words prevent that from happening.
His smile grows a little wider at my open longing for him. He can tease me all he wants, I can name at least a dozen times in this month alone that he spent a good ten minutes begging me to stay in bed with him. Beau's more on the clingy side than I am, I should catch a break. At least for today. "Thought I should let someone know you're awake. Like a nurse or something," he explains with a shrug.
Yeah, that's not a good enough reason. I squeeze my arms around him, encircling him in a bear hug so he can barely move without taking me along with him. "No, then they're gonna kick you out of the bed," I whine. I love having him so close. It made this hospital room a little less depressing, solely because he was here with me this time around.
"You're cute when you're clingy, you know that?" His hand gives my shoulder an endearing squeeze as his lips gently brush my temple.
A year ago, I never would have imagined this for myself. I mean, sure, I fantasized about having someone who really, truly cared about me. Someone that I could rely on to be there for me when things got hard. A person who I could share all my secrets with and who would love me regardless of all those muddled thoughts. It was something too good to be true back then. Something unattainable that I only allowed myself to read and watch. Never experience for myself.
If somebody told me I'd be happy sooner than I knew, I would have laughed in their face. Gina had me convinced I wasn't worthy of happiness, or love, much less respect. She brought my self-deprecating thoughts to an all time low over the years. So maybe the accident was simply karma catching up to her from all the torment she put me through. I however could not see it that way.
No matter how horrible a person was while they were living, they shouldn't deserve death. Sue me for thinking even the worst of people could change. Gina and Avalon had so much of their lives left ahead of them. At the tender age of 15, you're still figuring out who you're gonna be. What kind of person you aspire to be is still in the hands of the years to come. Those girls I killed didn't get that chance, they were robbed of their lives before they even began. They never got the chance to right their wrongs. They never got the chance to learn and grow. They're just gone.
"Hey," Beau shakes me gently, only enough to bring my focus back to him, "you're in your head again?" As if he has to ask.
I nod, pushing out a deep sigh. "Sometimes I wish I could know why you haven't given up on me yet," I murmur.
"It's a simple explanation really. You'll never guess," his words are laced with sarcasm prompting me to roll my eyes, "It's because I'm insanely in love with you."
A warm blush floods my cheeks, noticeable to the naked eye. Beau sees the faint hue coating my face and brushes his calloused thumb carefully across my cheekbone. "You're too kind to me."
He shakes his head in denial, "Not nearly enough, darling."
We spend almost an hour going back and forth about how kind he is to me and Beau denying that over and over again. I'm not exaggerating. A good portion of time is spent debating how incredibly nice he is. I have a feeling he's only so humble about how good he is to me because he's trying to uphold that silly tough guy facade. He doesn't have to be anyone around me, he's known that since the beginning of our relationship. I always asked him to be his true self around me and that was the guy I fell in love with. The sappy, clingy softie I can rely on to be there for me through thick and thin.
One time, a nurse did walk in to make sure that everything they were pumping into my system from the IV was all good. She had given us a wary look, deciding against telling Beau to resume to the chair if he wanted to be in here with me.
My body is in between his legs, my back pressed against his front. His arms are around my shoulders. The white bandage magnetized my eyes. "Beau," I say in a slight remark, "What happened?"
"With what?" he feigns obliviousness.
I point to the patch on his bicep. To my surprise, he moves it away. "What is it?" I query, looking up at him so whatever he says I know it's not a lie.
"It's nothing, baby. I'm fine."
"You're killing me with all these secrets."
He remains still and silent. Not giving me a truth or a lie. At this point, I'd rather hear a lie just so I wouldn't have the unknowingness of it all eating away at me.
Quiet knocking at the door cuts the conversation to an abrupt stop. Beneficial only to him. A few seconds later, my sister walks in, looking back and forth at the two of us like she's seen a ghost. "You're awake," she utters with a sigh of relief.
I have so many questions to ask her. So many things I have to say to her. She was there to witness everything in my past. Every nasty, horrible, dreaded occurrence that happened just over a year ago she knows about and helped to hide from me. I need to know why. I need to know everything. Kat's the only person I could talk to about this who'll understand to the fullest extent. She was there for as much as I was. If anyone's gonna know something, it's her.
Her eyes shift to Beau's, hesitance in her gaze. I can feel Beau tense. They both know something. That thing I don't know about that everyone's so fucking insistent on hiding from me. Could it be that bad? I'd never know because everyone around me seems to think they can decide what I'm strong enough to take and what I'm too weak to be able to handle.
"Beau," she clears her throat, "Could I talk to you?" Kat locks eyes with me again, "It'll only be a second, I promise."
What is everyone hiding from me?
Beau carefully moves my hips forward to allow himself enough room to slide out from behind me. With a quiet promise that he'd be back in no time and a fleeting moment's kiss, he follows my sister out into the hallway, letting the door fall shut behind him.
Leaving me in ringing silence. I would have liked to say that I thought nothing of it. That I was blissfully ignorant of the big secret. I wish I could have looked past it, so that way it wouldn't be tearing me apart at this very moment. Being left in the dark when everyone else you know is in the light is so fucking frustrating. From the brief conversation I remember hearing earlier this morning, everyone had made up their minds that it was Beau who was supposed to break the news to me. I've been waiting for that time to come and nothing. It hurts even more than I know Beau is the one that's going to tell me, meaning this entire time he's been thinking about how to do it. We've been conversing for over an hour now and not one part of the truth has slipped. His lips are so fucking sealed, I can't even read past them.
They both weren't lying when they said they'd only be a second away. Before I knew it, Kat opened the door to walk into the room and Beau lingered by the door, both of them glancing at me with pitied eyes. I want to snap at both of them and demand the truth, but my temper can only get me so far. I thought snapping at them this morning would help but look where that got me.
Jokes on me honestly.
My eyes move back and forth between the both of them. "What?" I ask, hoping to get some form of explanation. Or at least some actual reassurance and not 'It's nothing'.
It's obviously something if they're going to such extreme lengths to hide it from me.
"You need to eat something, Jo," Beau is quick to change the subject, again, my heart sinks.
"Can you tell me what's going on first?" I plead, looking both of them in their eyes, "Please, I can't keep doing this."
Kat comes around to the side of the bed, grasping my hand in hers. "Beau told me you remembered. While he's gone, we can talk, okay?"
What could I have said? It was an offer I didn't want to lose. It was half of what I wanted, a talk with a person who could somewhat comprehend what I'm going through.
I sigh in defeat. "Okay."
Beau leaves the room without another word. His eyes deepen, strenuous in thought. I only get so much as a mere glance before he turns away.
Looking back at the chair, Kat grabs both armrests and pulls it closer to the side of my bed. She takes a seat and studies me for a second. "How much do you remember?" she inquires. At least she's not wasting any time making unnecessary small talk. Asking about how I'm feeling, what have I been up to, those sorts of things aren't needed. I'm in a fucking hospital for fuck's sake, getting the gist doesn't take much observation.
"All of it," I answer, taking a deep breath, "Gina, her friends, the party, the car accident, all of it."
"You seem to be taking it well," she says with a hint of shock laced in her tone. If only she had seen me prior to Beau calming me down. I doubt she could have said the same thing then.
"Why did you let me get away with it?"
"What?"
"The accident," I elaborate clearly, "Why did you let me get away with it?"
She appears shocked to her core to say the least. How promptly I approach the situation, leaving no gaps for chit-chat or stalling. I need to get these answers before Beau walks in again. As soon as he does, there's no guarantee I'll get anything from her until the next time we're alone and I'm too impatient to wait around for next time. If I can know everything today, that'll be even greater. "You asked me to. The night of the accident, Brandon brought you home and you asked me to keep a secret and I did," she explains, training her eyes on the bulky pulse monitor on my finger.
"That didn't mean you had to listen to me. I was...I was scared and I didn't know what the fuck to expect if I turned myself in. I was being selfish."
"You were looking out for yourself," she corrects me, "That accident would have ruined your life, Jo. Those girls had already made most of your life hell. They didn't get to take away your future too. I helped you get away with it so you wouldn't be stuck paying for their stupidity for the rest of your life."
I see where she's coming from, I do. She's coming from a place of worry and care, which is normal considering she practically raised me. "But what about Gina and Avalon's families? Don't they deserve to know what happened?" I challenge.
Kat's eyes flit down to the ground, "As far as they know, one of them was drinking and driving and that's what led to the crash. It would do nobody any good to drag this accident back out into the open. For all we know, their families have healed by now. Bringing light to it again might cause those feelings to resurface. Would you wish that on them?"
"No," I sigh.
"I wanna know how you're feeling about it. Not just the crash, but everything else too." Concern rings in her voice. Ironic for someone who's keeping a destructive secret from me.
"It's honestly overwhelming," I confess with a long pause to try to put my thoughts into words. It's harder when there are dozens of thoughts coming in all at once. "I'm trying to sort it all out, the memories. They just keep pouring in all at once, I feel like I'm going fucking crazy."
"You're not," she replies with a slight shake of her head, "We should've told you sooner, but none of us had any idea where to start."
"Giving me bits of information little by little would have been nice. Having all of this information wouldn't have felt so...suffocating."
Kat leans forward, taking my hand in hers with abandon. Her eyes, in search of mine, encapsulate a sad look. Something I've gotten awfully used to in the last twelve hours. "I need you to know that you don't have to be one hundred percent okay all the time. Nobody is. There is no shame in saying you're not okay. You can let yourself dwell in this, sure, this is completely normal. It's when you start letting these memories bring you down and allow yourself to succumb to them that there's a problem."
"Just please remember you've got so many people around you that love you. I'm sorry we haven't been very clear about that recently."
Right then, Beau walks in. Instead of food, he's got a fluffy brown teddy bear with a 'Get Well Soon' balloon tied to it tucked in the crook of his arm. "I- uh-" he stumbles, noticing my sister holding my hand.
"It's okay," we say in unison.
He grins nervously, retreating to my other side. He hands me the teddy bear, a peace offering. "I went into the cafeteria and saw the shit they were trying to hand out as food, so I just ordered Jack In The Box. Hope that's okay."
Oh that definitely works. I profoundly remember begging anyone and everyone who came into my room to order me food. I couldn't stand the hospital food. It was cold, much like the building itself. My parents kept everyone who visited me from sneaking in junk food. Now, I'm glad I have Beau, who isn't that worrisome about getting caught handing french fries over to me. Too bad we were split the first time I found myself in here, the eternal visit might have been a little more enjoyable. "Believe me, that is more than okay," I gush. I take the bear from him and run my fingers through the soft fibers.
Kat counters, "How the hell are you going to bring fries into a doctor-infested building?" There's a sense of light humor behind her reprimand. Yeah, junk food kind of contradicts the whole place, but I'm hungry for something that isn't a stale-breaded sandwich and tap water.
"Don't worry, I got you something too," Beau chuckles. Immediately she backs down.
They stick around with me, keeping me company. Preventing my thoughts from running rampant as they have the tendency to do. We flick through the limited amount of channels on the TV, laughing at old sitcoms and taking turns catching curly fries into our mouths. This is a much lighter hospital trip than one plans for. Don't get me wrong, hospitals still give me the infinite creeps and I couldn't wait to get out of there tomorrow morning as the doctor told me.
I knew the only thing keeping my head up was them, my sister and my boyfriend distracting me. Otherwise, I would have been left in deathly silence. Left to reminisce on the past and wonder what's being hidden from me in the present. There are only so many times I can push it away, knowing that I'm sitting between two people who know what I don't. Before long, that secret will begin to tear me away, piece by piece. Until inevitably, some part of me will come undone and there's no telling how I'd take it out on them.
a/n
I'm here I'm alive! And if you don't already know, instead of posting the scheduled uh...painful chapter I had in store, for the sake of the holiday season I am giving you guys a Christmas one-shot set a couple of years from where they're at now. I know I know I'm practically spoiling the ending, but did we really expect these two to not spend the rest of their lives together? That'd be insane, so I'll spare the heartbreak and give some love and cheer instead 🥰