Complement #56
Said to: Jed
Your bed is so comfortable I could marry it.
***
We spend the Saturday morning occupying the bed in Jed's room. All we do is lay on it, with Jed on his back, staring up at the ceiling and me curled next to him on my side. My head rests on his chest and one of his hands is around my shoulders, his hand buried in my hair, fingers toying with the strands. It is surprising how content I can be just laying there with him. I haven't been this relaxed in a long time, and I relish in this blissful feeling, trying to save it in my mind forever.
At least until Jed's question hits me like a speeding freight train.
"Is someone in your family a musician?"
I momentarily stiffen. My mind starts spinning twenty miles per hour, trying to figure out where that thought came from. Jed must have sensed the tension creep into my body because his fingers stop the slow action fo waving through my hair.
"What?" I ask, trying to keep the suspicion out of my voice.
Jed's hand begins to move again. "There's a piano in your living room. I was wondering if someone ever plays it."
Telling him the truth is not possible. Doing this I would share with him too much. I'm not ready for it, not yet. Therefore, I can't be completely honest with him. Or can I?
"I used to play it." I admit carefully. This much I can tell him. It won't tell him anything. "I don't anymore."
"Why?" As every other thing he says, the question comes out careless. Just an attempt to keep up the conversation, maybe with some load of curiosity behind it. I keep reminding myself he simply wants to get to know me better. Jed can't know how hard talking about it is to me.
"I haven't touched it since I came here. Never planned to. I don't even know why my parents dragged the thing all the way here from Scotland. All it does now is stand there and collect dust."
"Maybe they hoped you were going to start playing again." Jed suggests. "Musical talent is precious." He pauses. "I'd kill for one."
You can take mine, I want to say, but bite my tongue. That would sound bitter. I don't want to sound bitter.
"I never said anything about talent." I observe. "You don't have to be talented to play."
"Oh, but these fingers." Jed picks up the hand laying on his stomach and lifts it to his eyes. Turning it in his, he plays with my fingers for a while, watching his every move. "They radiate talent. I knew from the first moment I saw them they had to do something like making music."
"Did." I correct him. "They don't anymore."
Jed doesn't respond at once. Still not taking his eyes from our joined hands, he shifts my palm so that its underside is now resting against his. My fingers are small in comparison to his, their tips only coming up to his second knuckle. Staring at my hands intensely, I try to see what Jed claims to see - the talent. But no matter how hard I try, I don't. They're just regular fingers. There is nothing special about them.
"You know, this might sound creepy, but I have a thing for your hands." Jed says, smiling slightly. "Always did. I don't even know why."
My brows shoot up. "I thought you had a thing for my hair?"
"That, too." The hand still tangled in my unruly locks moves, tugging at the strands gently. I can feel him doing what seems to be like his favorite thing nowadays - wrapping my hair around his finger and unwrapping it back. "But your hands are also something to look at."
"I don't think they have a name for that." I respond. "But I guess it might have something to do with a foot fetish, just the other way round."
Jed's chest vibrates with his chuckle under my cheek. "I plead guilty." Jed says. "When it comes to you, nothing can possibly embarrass me."
I momentarily blush. Jed has a habit of saying things I don't know how to respond to. This is one of those things.
"So," Jed says when I remain silent for too long. This is another thing I've observed about him recently. Jed doesn't like silence. Whenever it threatens to fall for longer, he always needs to find a way to break it. "Have you played any other instruments?"
I sigh. Back to that. I think I would have been more comfortable with the silence.
"The violin." I simply say. "And sang a little. But just a little. Not much." I hope he gets the clue and changes the topic.
"Oh, right." Jed sounds as if he's just discovered a life-altering revelation. "You sang that day at Scottinson's right?"
"Right." I mutter, not entirely happy he remembered. "But it was nothing, really. I was just fooling around."
"Still, it was nice." My whole body lifts with Jed's shrug. "You should to it more often."
"I don't think I will." I murmur under my breath. I am really hoping to God Jed abandons this topic and moves on to something else.
"I mean, not should." He goes on, as if not having heard my response. He seemed thoughtful, lost in his own head. Like he had forgotten I was here and was talking to himself. "Not if you don't like it anymore. But if you feel like you miss it, then well... Why not?" He paused, thinking. "You're obviously good at it. Singing, I mean. And I have never heard you play but... I guess you'd rock my world if you did play for me some day. So if you ever feel like you miss it... Go for it."
Jed moves his hand, sliding his fingers between mine. I watch him watch our hands forming intertwined fists. "I've never had a talent like that. Not once. Not in anything. If you got it, it would be a damn shame to waste it. So whatever reasons forced you to stop playing, you should at least think if they're big enough to be worth abandoning what you had."
Suddenly, Jed blinks, as if clearing his eyes from something. Shaking his head slightly, his gaze travels down and meets mine. He has to lay his chin flat against his chest to do so, and I find it too adorable to my own liking.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to give you a sermon. It just... It just feels wrong that you'd let go of something that seems so precious to me. That's all." He says apologetically.
"It's okay." I tell him. It really is. Maybe I'm not the most comfortable with the topic - or even not comfortable at all, - but the way Jed said it... No one has ever approached it this way before. My parents, Ms. Brownstone, even my brother - they always had that accusing note in their voice whenever they started the topic of my abandoned music. They always seemed to be blaming me. That was not what I needed.
And Jed... With his piece of advice, the yearning in his voice - yearning for something I had but chose not to use and he never got, but wished to gain, - it all made it honest. Real. Frank. As if he was talking from his own experience and wanted to save me from the mistakes he or someone else he knew had made. It was as if someone finally understood me. Understood what I needed. Not blaming. Not pushing. Not ordering around. What I needed was compassion. And he gave it to me so easily.
The obvious sadness in his voice while talking reminded me that there are still so many things about him I don't know, - and vice versa. What we're doing is crazy, knowing so little about each other and trying to me more than friends. But that's why we're here for, right? To get to know each other better. To ask the questions we needed to hear the answer to.
Suddenly, a thought occurs to me. Something Makena had told me some time ago. In the meantime, I have forgotten it, but now it came back, rooting itself in my mind.
"Jed?" I ask, lifting my chin to meet his brown gaze.
"Yes?"
I pause, not sure how to form this question. Remembering he asked one of his own - one I was not fond of answering, - I decide to ask mine, too. "Did you play football? Before I came here, I mean?"
Jed's hand continues to thread through my hair peacefully. "Yeah, I did." He confirms. "How do you know?"
"Makena told me. Some time ago. When you hit this guy... Carson?" Jed nods. "She said he used to be his teammate but things got worse when you quitted the team?"
He keeps silent for a moment. I give him time, knowing it made no good to push someone on issues like this one. "It's a little bit more complicated." Jed finally says. "It goes back to our sophomore year."
"You don't have to tell me." I rush with an explanation. "I just wanted to ask one question. It's okay if you don't want to talk about it."
"No. I want to tell you." He assures me, his hand squeezing my arm gently. "You told me about the music. It only seems fair if I tell you something about my past now."
I wait patiently.
"The first thing I did after coming to high school was enrolling to the football team. I've been playing since I was five and, well, it used to be the center of my life back then. Besides, I knew all the girls went for the football players. I couldn't miss it in the world." He flashes me a grin when I punch his arm playfully.
"Things were all good, we were good," Jed grows serious once more. "Carson and I used to be close. Mae was already my friend back then, too. She and Carson went on well, though they never were as close as the two of us. I knew he had a thing for her, but told him as a friend that he could stop trying because he simply wasn't her type. He had a hard time accepting it but finally relented and busied himself with chasing other girls." He pauses. "Or at least I thought so."
"There was this party at some senior's house, just before the end of the second grade. A graduation celebration or something. Anyway, being the party girl she is, Mae wanted to go there. I told her not to. Being in the team with the guys from the higher grades, I could hear this and that about what went on on parties like that in the locker room after the training." Jed snorts. "I didn't want Mae anywhere near them. Told her so several times, but she is stubborn."
I crack a smile. That she is. Jed stops his story for a moment, sighing deeply. I wonder if it's as unpleasant for him as talking about music is to me.
"You probably also remember that I don't... how do I put it... Get on well with Al, right?" Jed asks.
I nod, brows furrowing. Al? The shy albino guy whom I befriended at the beginning of the year? The one in whose defense I punched Jed in the face? Where does he fit into this story of football and parties?
"Well, he and Mae were already friends back then. I never understood why someone as vigorous as her became friends with someone as quiet as him, but I never questioned it. Makena liked him, so I left him alone. But everything changed on the night of the party." He swallows. "As you probably already guessed, she went there. Took Al with him. I don't know why. Probably to tell me later that she wasn't alone and had a guy with him. Problem is, Mae packs punches more forceful than Al. But this doesn't matter now."
The hand in my hair pauses and Jed's chest rises with a deep breath. "Okay, long story short." He says. "She went to the party. Carson was also there. Both drunk a little too much and bumped into each other. Things went a little out of hand too fast and before she knew it, he had her pushed against the wall in some dark corner, with hands in places he never deserved to touch. She was lucky I found them before it went too far. Otherwise..." He cuts off. "Otherwise, I don't want to even think what it would have ended like for her."
"You went there?" I whisper.
"Of course I went there." Jed sounds angry. "I couldn't just leave her alone. Or excuse me. Not alone. She had Al. I just wonder where he was when she was being pawed at in a damn corridor."
Understanding flashes down on me. Jed blames Al for not protecting Makena when he should have. And he hates Carson even more for what he had done to her. Suddenly, Jed's actions from before started to make sense.
"Well, he didn't stand a chance against Carson, don't you think?" I say gently. "If Al intervened, then Carson would have probably gotten what he wanted anyway, and you would have a fight, or rather beating, to add to the list of things that were wrong that night?"
"Maybe." Jed says. "But it's not so easy to accept, Fiona. I couldn't - can't, - care less if Al had gotten his face beaten. Hell, I almost did it for him. He wasn't there when she needed him. That asshole got his hands on her. And I am never going to forgive either of them."
I trace odd patterns on Jed's chest, wanting to comfort him somehow. It's obvious he cares for Makena. And I can... almost understand the level of hatred he has for the two guys. One of them I hate myself. The other... I still don't think he stood a chance against Carson, but I get it why Jed is still mad at him. And while Makena had told me something about the party, she never mentioned just how bad it was and, most importantly, who it was. She mentioned that night rather jokingly and went on to babbling about something else. I had no idea how hard it might have been for her.
"So I'm sorry for how I acted these two times." Jed says, his voice calmer. Quieter. "That one time with Al when you hit me, and the second with Carson when I... when I hit you." He drawls the last part. "I just... when I saw you with them, I couldn't stop thinking that the history was on repeat and that I didn't want it to make a circle. And even though I now know how different from Makena you are... I just couldn't let them touch you."
I nod, my hair sliding across his chest. I know it now. I wish I had known it back there, so that I wouldn't have to hit him. Jed's behavior seemed so irrational back then. I never thought just how... complex he might be.
"So you wanted to know about football." Jed sums up. "Soon after that, I quit. Never came back to it. Never will."
I wonder if whenever I talk about music, the bitterness I now hear in his voice can be heard in mine.