I'm a firm believer in everyone gets the punishment they deserve.
I think that's why I'm okay with the guilt eating me alive. It's been 32 hours since we got home from the cabin. 32 hours of spending time with Beau. Hugging him. Kissing him.
And absolutely hating myself every step of the way.
"Jovie." Mom knocks on my bedroom door. "They're here."
Nodding, I look at myself in the mirror. The bags under my eyes are purple. I don't think I've gotten any sleep since being back. Part of me wants to run over and confess everything to Beau. To beg for forgiveness, but it's Christmas Eve.
He left for Texas this morning. Where he'll spend time with his family and friends and have a great holiday.
Heading downstairs, I'm tackled into a hug. "How's my favorite cousin?"
"Yo, asshole!" Gentry shouts from the kitchen. "We can hear you."
"Hi, Gabe." I smile.
"This is the part where you remind me that I'm your favorite." He whispers.
"That'd be a lie." Manny Sanchez slaps the back of his head. "Little Jo doesn't lie."
Vomit threatens to come up as I hug her. Little do they know.
"Merry Christmas, Jo." Drew holds his arms out and I run for the embrace of my oldest cousin.
"You're my favorite." I whisper.
"I knew it."
"Forget about the cousins." Gabe's mom walks in. "Who's the better aunt?"
"Aunt Callie, you know I can't pick." I tease one of my mother's lookalikes.
"Please." Aunt Hallie comes from the kitchen. "She loves me more because I birthed her favorite cousin."
Listening to my family bicker, I sit alone at the kitchen table.
"Merry Christmas, my little Joybug."
"Uncle Ricardo." I grin as he sits beside me. "I'm so happy you, Emmy and Manny could join us."
"We'll officially be family in a month." He winks. "Might as well get used to this chaos."
That gets a genuine chuckle out of me. Chaos is the perfect way to describe this.
Picking at the frayed placemat, I try to drown my sorrows.
"What's wrong?" His elbow nudges me.
"Nothing." I sigh.
"Jovie." He warns. Taking a cautious scan of the room, I hesitate, and he nods. "Let's go outside."
Getting up, we pass by my mom and aunts in the TV room, already on their second bottle of wine. My poor uncle's watch, listening to their hyena laughs.
"Ricky, where you taking my kid?" Mom demands.
"I got to smoke." He pulls the carton from his pocket. "It gets lonely out there."
For a second, mom scans me, and I offer my best smile. She shouldn't worry about me right now. This is the first Christmas we've spent with family in forever. Uncle Ricardo doesn't stop so I follow, feeling her eyes glued to the back of my head as we sit on the porch steps.
"Talk to me." He says.
Resting my head on my knees, I try to find what I want to say. "Have you ever made a decision that ruined you?"
"I've made a few." He admits, lighting a cigarette. "Be more specific." The words get caught in my throat and he taps my leg. "Whatever you say stays between us. Don't worry about me running to your mom."
"I made a decision that I regret." I sniffle. "I went on vacation and I kissed someone who wasn't my boyfriend."
"Oh."
Yeah, oh. "I kissed him the entire trip. I-I don't know what happened."
"He was there, and your boyfriend wasn't." He supplies.
"No, it's more than that." I wish it was that simple. "It felt so right, and I know, on some level it is right. But I fucked it up."
"How so?"
"I like messing things up because I'm scared." I admit. "It's not on purpose. I swear, it really isn't. I'm so convinced I'm going to lose this thing, that I'm afraid to take it."
He stays silent.
"Growing up, on the rare occurrence dad was in a good mood, I'd try to find a way to piss him off." I confess. "The boys always tried so hard to please him... but I thought if I got used to a dad who was loving and kind, that it'd hurt even worse when that version disappeared."
The instances were few and far in between, but that's when I was the most terrified of him. Life was unpredictable.
"I didn't like doing it. It stressed mom out, but I figured he hated me anyways, so it didn't matter. I already felt bad. It was my fault life was so difficult." It's crazy to imagine how much happier everyone would've been if there wasn't hospital bill after hospital bill. Special doctors and special, expensive food. All the medicine and it sickens me to acknowledge how expensive EpiPens are.
"The way your father acted was not your fault." He says and I want to cry. The only other people who have ever said that to me was Aspen and Jay.
"I know I can't afford to go to college, so I only applied to community colleges." I didn't even want to see if I could pull a scholarship. I didn't want to get excited for a future I couldn't have. No one else knows that. I guess it will come out soon enough when acceptance letters come rolling in.
Mom will be so disappointed. She'd do anything for me to go to my dream school and I can't let her do that.
"Jovie."
"The list could go on." I kick the ground. "Like I said, I ruin things. When Beau moved, I thought I could date him as a practice round."
He takes a long drag of his cigarette and I feel the judgment.
"It sounds horrible, but we're young. I thought we could have a cute, short-lived high school relationship. He is cute and nice and genuinely took an interest in me. I was so desperate for it to work. For once I didn't want to ruin it." I dry my eyes. And somehow I still did.
"He really did treat me like trash." I admit what I've known all along.
"So everyone was right?"
They were. "He forgot about my allergies after weeks of me explaining them to him. It's hard to remember, I know, but he tried kissing me after eating peanut butter and didn't even consider mentioning my allergies to his mom." And that's just the tip of the ice burg. "He made me feel like everything I hated feeling like."
The way I look. The way I act. The way he viewed my family. Nothing was the way he wanted and I let him treat me like that.
"Then why did you date him?"
"Because I was scared of the real relationship I could've had." I finally say it out loud. Years of running and panicking and I acknowledge it on my front porch to a middle-aged man. "But it doesn't matter because I cheated on him and that makes me the bad guy. I'm the one who used him. I'm the one who betrayed him, even if he picked fights and insulted me."
Our entire relationship was horrible, but I did the unforgivable.
"Why am I like this?" The tears finally overflow, and Uncle Ricardo pulls me in for a hug.
"You're a kid." He kisses my head. "You make bad decisions, but you're not a bad person."
"How can you say that?" I hiccup.
"Because you feel bad for what you did." He taps my head. "No bad person would be consumed by half the guilt you are."
"It doesn't make it right."
"It doesn't. It makes you human." He relents.
The tears keep pouring out and I can't stop them. I don't know what to listen to. My head that screams I'm a horrible person, or Uncle Ricardo who just downplayed everything I've done.
"Here." He hands me a wadded-up napkin. "Let me tell you a story."
Managing to calm down, I contain the tears to a light trickle.
"When I was your age, I was in love."
"You were?" It's hard to imagine Uncle Ricardo displaying any emotion.
"I was." He nods. "She was amazing. Funny, smart, a little scrappy, never afraid of a new adventure. She learned how survive with nothing and that made my heart sing."
I raise a brow at his description. "She sounds wonderful."
"She is." He smiles.
"What happened?"
"We were young and stupid." He says, confirming all of my fears. "We got so caught up in life. We were too scared to confront what we had."
"Did you date her?"
"No. I got someone else pregnant." He shakes his head. "I was so convinced that I needed to do the right thing, and then one kid became two. I let the perfect girl go and look at what it got me."
"Two kids." I guess.
"Two kids who grew up without a mother because I made mistakes." He puts his cigarette out. "I love my kids and I wouldn't change a thing, but I regret how I handled things with the perfect girl. I gave up a lifetime of happiness because I was too afraid to take that leap."
Understanding his message, I study the stars. "What should I do?"
"Be honest." He says seriously. "And no matter how he reacts, break up with him for your own good."
"I can do that." It's what I deserve. Getting curious, I rethink the story he told me. "Uncle Ricardo, do you still love that girl?"
"I do." He sighs.
"Are you disappointed you never got a happy ending?"
"Who said our story is over?" He winks. That's a very solid point. Look at Uncle John, he's about to get married.
"Is there anything else you want to come clean about?" He joins me in studying the stars.
"I'm scared of my dad." I blurt out. "He's gonna come back and I don't think he's gonna waste his opportunity."
"That man won't touch you." He promises like he can do something about it.
"Steve tried saying the same thing but it doesn't matter." I shrug. "He was watching the house not too long ago."
"What happened?" Ricardo tenses.
"It was the anniversary of the great knife incident." I say and when he feigns not knowing I roll my eyes. "Cut the shit, I know my aunts tell you everything."
"You always were a smart cookie." He teases.
"I got worked up and couldn't sleep. Aspen insisted on coming over, so I let him in. I got a text about needing a protector. It was him; I know it." My gut just knows. "If he wants to kill me, I don't know why he just doesn't try it."
"Jesus Christ." He whistles. "You really are your mother's daughter."
"Sorry."
"Don't be." He hugs me again. "It makes you honest. However, I promise you nothing bad will happen."
He doesn't know that, but I let myself pretend his words mean something.
"What's going on out here?"
Twisting our heads, we find mom watching us.
"Just having a chat with my favorite girl." Ricardo ruffles my hair. "A little boy talk never hurt the soul."
"God." Mom laughs. "If teenage Ricky could hear you now. The macho man would die."
"Keep in mind, I raised Carmen." He stands up. "I spent years hearing about how annoying Drew was. Then he became cute, and I almost had to kill him."
"Yo, Sanchez, you talking shit about my son?" Aunt Hallie demands, more than a little wine drunk.
"No, I believe I was shit talking my own child." He smirks.
"Old man, I heard that." Manny sticks her head out the front door.
"Carmen, don' t think you're too old for me to bust that behind." He warns, nothing but pure affection shining in his eyes.
"Ha, good one." She sips her glass of wine. "Don't call me that."
"That's the name I put on your birth certificate." He counters.
Glaring, she pulls her jacket closer. "Leave and let me talk to my little Jovie."
"You okay?" He asks and mom waits for my answer.
"Yeah, I think I am." I assure him.
As the real adults move back inside, I'm left alone with a wine drunk 23-year-old. "What's stealing your pretty little smile?"
"I'm okay." I inform her.
Taking another sip, she studies me. "I don't have sisters, you know that."
"Emmy does sound like a girlish name." I joke, half expecting her brother to come out from stuffing his face in the kitchen to complain.
"It does." She grins. "I don't have sisters, but I have you and Scarlett."
Just the thought of Scarlett Rhodes and her perfect relationship is enough to damper my mood.
"I was there when she was born. We were neighbors. I babysat her. I did her prom make up." She offers, listing all these things I never got to experience with her.
"Scar's great."
"She is, but so are you." Manny taps my shoulder. "We didn't get all those things, and it makes me sad because pretty soon I'm gonna say those two little words that make us legally family. I wasn't there to be your big sister, but I'm here now."
"Thank you." I whisper. Growing up, we were always kept away from them. I was always jealous of Scarlett for getting all the attention. We were close in age and she just seemed to flourish. That wasn't her fault though.
"Anytime, kid." She empties her glass. "Ask me anything. I'm a walking guide of what to not do."
Actually laughing, I voice the one thought I've always wondered. "Why didn't you date Drew in high school?"
"Hm?"
"You guys waited until college." I remind her. "Why?"
"We jumped straight to the hard-hitting questions." She whistles. "Drew was Drew. He was scrawny, shy, could barely string a sentence together in front of people. He knew the answer to every question, even when he should've stayed quiet."
"That's a family trait."
"It is." She laughs. "We grew up together. Your aunts always babysat when my dad was busy. In a way, I felt like it was my duty to stick up for him when kids gave him a hard time. I knew he wasn't as bad as they thought."
"He probably was." I love my cousin, but damn, is he proud of that brain.
"He was." She nods. "God, it was probably our junior year. One day he no longer needed my help. I was pissed."
"Why?"
"I was pissed he stopped harassing me. I was pissed he suddenly got a defined jawline and sprouted a few more inches. Most importantly, I was pissed I thought he was hot." She gets a far off look in her eye. "It was so hot watching him stand up to the kids who gave him a hard time."
"Gross." Maybe she was the wrong person to ask. Drew is so not hot. "Get to the point."
She snaps out of memory lane. "I'm a very aggressive person." She says like I didn't already know it. "I thought the best way to deal with my newfound feelings was to be angry at him. We went over a year fighting like cats and dogs." Why does that not surprise me? " In between fights, he helped me. When my mom reached out, Drew went with me to meet her. He held my hand as I hyperventilated during the car ride. He ripped her a new one when she treated me like trash. He hugged me as I cried my eyes out in the car after."
That's how we know he's a part of my family. We protect those we care about.
"The things he said that day, completely changed my life. I realized I'd been fighting the one person who actually cared about me." She rubs her eyes. "He saw me and thought I was beautiful, thorns and all. Plus, he wasn't afraid to prick his finger trying to get me."
"That's beautiful." I offer, completely at a loss for words. I want that.
"By that time, we had started freshman year at Belmont." She says. "We spent so long bickering, that we missed some good moments. I bawled when I realized how stupid I was."
"What did I tell you?" Drew asks, joining us on the steps.
"That our best memories are ahead of us because we are making them together." Manny makes a face. "God, that still sounds cheesy."
"Shut up." He rolls his eyes. Focusing on me, he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. "Don't beat yourself up about the past, Jo, the best moments in life are waiting."
"Thanks." I hug him. "You should write fortune cookies."
Manny busts into a fit of giggles as I stand up. Feeling lighter than I have in years, I head to my room.
I may feel like hell right now, but I'll survive.
I always do.
*****
I bawled my eyes out in this chapter. Could not stop. Jovie holds such immense darkness inside of her and it kills me. So much more pain is waiting.
For a second, I panicked and thought this book was close to being over but honestly, I don't think so anymore. ITE is so special to me because Jovie is so flawed. She isn't perfect but her potential astounds me.
Also, I thought Uncle Ricaro's little story was cute, wonder who he was talking about 😏
Also, Also, I'm dying to get the time to write a few chapters about Manny and Drew because I mean, after that little story all I can say is AWE!
Go read LiH, LiL, & LiB