JORGEN
I don't hear from Jessie from the time I set foot off the plane to the time I put my feet back on it a day later. Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday morning. I text her, I call, I plan to pick up the phone for our normal late night talks while I'm on the road and none of it comes.
The only thing I do hear from her is Monday afternoon.
JESSIE: just heard from my mom. No need to worry.
JESSIE: i need a little time with it.
I'll admit that it didn't do anything to ease the worrying and I slept not at all well, barely enough to even get me through the game. I was high strung enough that Nico walked into a room behind me and I about punched her for scaring me.
JORGEN: are you alright?
JORGEN: please get back to me, i'm a little worried
JORGEN: a lot worried, actually. I just want to know if you're alright after that. And if Connor's okay if you're not doing well with it.
JORGEN: I'll be home wednesday morning and we can talk then about what we need to do, if its something drastic
I manage to catastrophize it in my head enough that I'm almost expecting them to be gone back to Chicago by the time the plane hits the ground again in Regina. Expecting Jessie to be off somewhere and Connor alone in the house though she'd never do that. Expecting both of them to be missing, or dead, or running away or anything.
I don't expect her to be sitting in the parking lot of the rink, my truck idling and an old crewneck of mine over her shoulders, dwarfing her.
She looks exhausted as I approach, purple circles under her eyes, hair fuzzy and messy. The sweater is an old green one I got from god knows where, a little logo on it from something, maybe a development camp I med watched a few years back, that might be it.
I swallow down nerves, walking toward the car, my bag slung over my back.
The door clicks as I pull it open, setting my backpack in the back seat before tugging open the driver's side, ready to face it, face whatever I need to face.
I end up looking down at her and the wrinkle of exhaustion between her eyebrows, the hoodie falling slightly and showing the strap of her bra and nothing else, making me think she must be cold or something.
"Jess," I breathe. "I haven't heard from you in days I thought, you, I-"
"I'm sorry," she mumbles, dipping her head to look away from me. "I was going to text or call or say something but it... I had gone so long without talking to you I thought it was going to be weird and..."
"Hey hey," I slip my hand around her cheek, pulling her eyes back up to mine. "Don't apologize for something knocking you off balance, just, please, god, tell me next time. Don't leave me with two texts alright? You had me really freaked out."
"I'm sorry," she manages again.
"No, no," I shake my head. "Don't apologize, it's over, I'm more worried about you than irritated about not hearing from you. Are you alright? What did she say? Please don't tell me she made you agree to something or that she's taking us to court or-"
"Jay?"
"Yeah?"
"Can I ask you do something?" Her voice is so shallow that I'm convinced she's going to ask me to shut up, or worse, I don't even know.
"Anything."
"I'm going to tell you about it, alright," she wipes her cheek off on the heel of her hand. "And then I want you to drop it and never bring it up again. I'm done with it. I've had a few days to process it and I never want to think about it again, okay? But I need you to know, everything, I need you to know everything, I just never want to think about any of it again so you can't, you can't bring this back up."
"Of course," I manage. "Anything you need from me."
"Okay," she breathes in. "get in."
I wait, fidgeting, while she drives, ducking off the highway and stopping at a little gravel parking lot overlooking a lake. It's cute, but snowblown and looks cold enough to give someone hypothermia due to the wind and the way it's in a little basin.
She shuts off the truck, looking over the lake, lost look in her eyes, confusion on her features for a moment, then sorrow.
"My mom was never very nice to me," she breathes out.
I stay quiet.
"She used me as a second try for her life. She built me, ground up, to be a better version of herself to play puppet with. To redo what she was never given the chance to. She controlled my diet to keep me thin. She controlled my studying to keep my grades up. She controlled the sports I was in, my hobbies, my friends. She made me popular, she made me perfect. The model catholic school child. She picked the men I was allowed to be around, picked Evan for me before I even finished elementary school. She never let me be my own person, kept everything strict so I couldn't stray from it. She picked my college to be the one she dreamed of but didn't get into when I told her I wanted to go somewhere else, then, when I got pregnant with Connor, everything came crashing in on me. She realized she couldn't puppet her way through it and keep her views the same, so she made me carry it through when she knew that it was going to destroy me. I don't have an opinion either way on it. I would've been in a different spot in my life if I hadn't had Connor, I'd be a little healthier, I'd have a job, a career, a college education, and much different experiences. With him, I've experienced a lot of adversities that have made me stronger but I got very ill and it destroyed my chances at a career like the ones I wanted when I was younger. It's two different lives and I cannot compare them. That's not the point, though, I'm here now and she made sure that I kept him."
I watch her, keeping track of everything I can, the waver in her voice, the way her hands are wringing together, the way she's just staring at the lake, everything that could possibly give me a clue to what she's feeling.
"I kept him but her opinion toward me changed. I was no longer perfect and she made sure to tell me that. It was fine when she thought it was Evan's. She was fine with watching me suffer through it thinking I was going to get married to Evan the second it was all said and done. She even had it set up with his parents. But she called me names and she didn't help me, even in my lowest of moments through it all. I got sick, so sick. I was too small to handle it, and too underfed for my whole life, it wasn't pretty. I'm fairly certain the only reason I made it through was because my father made sure to be kind to me through all of it, he fed me extra, kept me out of her way, treated me with kindness.
"When the day came, I knew it, and my dad took me. My mom followed. It took almost forty eight hours and I was too exhausted and too sick and too injured at the end of it to process too much. They had me on oxygen, a whole bunch of things I don't remember. But they set Connor on my chest and I hated him from the moment I saw him. My mom saw it all, his skin was so dark at first and his hair was curly and brown from the moment he was born all the way until now. She realized then that he wasn't Evan's and called me a whore to my face, while I was trembling and barely alive."
My mouth is dry, begging for an emotion to send me to tears but I can't manage anything but shock and hurt, every part of me cursing myself for not being there. For not being involved, for not having her side through that. For not keeping her safe in that moment.
"I hated him," she breathes, closing her eyes. "For so long. And she made it worse, she hated him then, hates him now, call it the racism, the reminder that her perfect puppet girl isn't as perfect as she wanted, the fact that she never did like kids, any of it. She never liked him. And for a long while, I didn't either. He was a reminder that I'd ruined my life. My mom had convinced me I'd ruined my life. And then I realized that it was just a baby, he was just a little kid that liked it when I picked him up and liked tugging on my hair and didn't deserve any of it. He never did. He didn't deserve me treating him in the same way my mom treated me, so I was nice. And I still am. I raise him with all of the soul my mother never gave me and it's my mission to make him feel as loved as I possibly can. Through loving him, I started to heal myself from everything she said and," Jessie stops, her voice cracking. "And you've helped me finish it out, it's obviously a long process and it's going to take longer but you've taught me things that I didn't realize I needed to change, you taught me to say no and to not just be alright with my body but like it again and you've taught me that scars only tell a story, not the whole narrative and I'm here now. I made it here."
She takes a breath, still not looking at me, not noticing that I've got my head back against the headrest, trying to get the tears to sink back into my eyes instead of dropping out across my cheeks.
"She told me that she expects you to break my heart, to sleep with other women, to do a whole bunch of other things and she told me that she can't wait for the day I come crawling back to her. I want with everything in my heart to make things okay with her because it's how she raised me to be but she told me she doesn't want to hear from me until I need her and I won't ever need her, I refuse to need her, so I think that's it. I think that's the last time I'll ever talk to her."
I squeeze my eyes shut, refusing to cry when she hasn't let her voice do anything but waver a little. I can't make it awkward.
"So now I'm here," she taps her hands against the steering wheel. "And now you know."
I choke out a little noise, looking back over at her, fitting all the pieces together in my head, "I should've known."
"No, Jorgen," she looks in my direction, locking eyes for just a split second before looking away again. "You couldn't have known, I forced it so far down and numbed it out so much that nobody would've noticed."
"No, I should've known because you were so skinny and you looked so tired and I should've been there when Connor was born and you didn't deserve an-"
"I know!" She stops me, the raise in her voice catching me off guard. "I know I shouldn't have been treated like that. I don't care. I care that I'm here now and I care that you and Connor are in my life and I care that we make his life as good as we can and I care that I have another shot at everything and I've made it this far. Okay?"
I watch the expression on her face, the twitch in the corner of her lip, the crease in her brows and I just know. And I just know. "Oh, Jess," I breathe. That's what does it, nothing about the rest of it, not a single thing that she recounted, just the quiet mumble of her name and then she's sobbing. "Come here, please, please," I open my arms and her seatbelt buckle smacks the side of the car as it releases, letting her leap over the center console and fall, tiny and gentle in my arms, curling into me, sobbing into the front of my shirt.
I think it's the first time she's ever broken down to me, let me wrap her up in my arms, let me hold her tight and warm. She's fought through everything, fought everyone, and she's never let down. Not until now.
"Sweetheart," I whisper into her hair. "You're alright, let it go, you're okay."
"I love you," she chokes out.
"I love you too," I kiss her forehead. "I love you so much. You're going to be okay."
"It hurts," she grips my shirt, pulling me tighter. "I want it to stop hurting."
"I know," I pull her closer. "I know the feeling."
"My whole life, Jay," she whispers. "She's taken up my whole life. She's ruined everything."
"Shh," I kiss the side of her head. "You have so much time left, you have so much to make your own."
"I wish I could redo everything with what I know now, I regret all of it, I just want to go and do it right,"
I breathe, "that regret will eat you from the inside out, let it go, you have the rest of everything to make it all right."
She's quiet for a long few seconds, just gripping me, trying to get closer, all of it, then: "I wanted you so bad the whole time, but you were away and I didn't want to freak you out and I s-should've called or something but I didn't... I didn't think I could talk about it again without you here," she mumbles into my sternum. My heart bubbles and melts into something hot and painful in my chest. "I didn't think I could talk to you without telling you and I knew..." she breathes in, hard and shaky. "I knew it would be like this and I-I just."
"Shh," I place little kisses on her head. "I get it, I get it."
"I love you," she curls tighter into herself in my lap and I take my fingers through her hair, tipping her head up so she's looking at me. I carefully brush moisture off her cheek, cupping her face in my hand.
"Do you want to talk more about any of it?" I ask, as quietly as I can.
"Not really," she blinks, looking away from me. "I'm just tired of it all. I'm tired of being freaked out constantly that she's gonna come back and haunt me, haunt all of us."
"She probably is," I pull her closer. "But there's nothing we can really do about that within our power right now. Maybe a few years down the line but now we just have to keep going."
Her head knocks to the side, settling against my chest, breathing out. "You're so good to me."
"I'm trying my best," I let out a little half snort and she cracks a weak smile.
"I hate getting emotional all over like that," she mumbles. "I try to shake it as fast as I can."
"I just observed that, yeah," I kiss her nose.
"It drives me crazy. People have always thought I was weak and little and I was but I'm tired of it."
"I've cried all over you on multiple occasions," I kiss her cheekbone. "Gross cried, even. You had snot on your shirt the night of the fire. Don't act like that wasn't messy."
"It was, but, it was you, and you'd gone through something I could never and-"
"You can be strong and cry," I stop her words. "You can do one and the other. It's completely and perfectly alright to cry. Healthy even."
"I just," she waves her hand. "It's not something I like doing, at all. And now I've just gotten snot on your shirt."
I smile, "it's alright. Just payback."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Anything you need."
"Does Ron..." she breathes in. "do like, walkins or, or does he have a friend that deals with things like this?"
My mouth goes a little dry, "um, I can check, if you think that'll help."
"I think it will."
"Then yeah, I'll ask him. I'm in tomorrow anyway so it'll be easy to remember."
"Great," she snuggles further into me. "I think I'm going to need more than a really nice hug and kiss to recover from this."
"Sometimes that's true," I settle my chin on her head. "You haven't gotten the kiss part yet."
"Oops, sorry," she picks her head back up again. "I forgot I'm allowed to do that now."
"No issue," and I let her kiss me.
***
up ten minutes early because i want to sleep
-rabid