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Chapter Five


Nick

I woke up during the night. Jaymie was asleep beside me, her head on my biceps, breathing deeply and soundly, her legs tangled around my left leg. On the TV screen, the colors blurred into shapes I couldn't distinguish. I stared at them, my heart rate accelerating as I tried to piece them back together, to comprehend them. My mouth felt dry and the longer I couldn't figure out what I was looking at, the more I panicked. It was the strangest feeling because I knew I was looking at words and pictures. And what's more is I knew that I knew what the menu said and what the pictures were. I knew I shouldn't be having this problem. But I was. And it scared the shit out of me.

I struggled to get away from Jaymie. I knocked her off the couch by accident in my rush to get away. She hit the carpet with a thump and I rushed to crawl over her, and hurried off to the kitchen without waiting for her to get up.

My feet thundered the stairs and down the hallway to the bathroom, where I grappled at the faucet, turned the water on and splashed my face. My heart was slamming in my chest like crazy. Calm down, I begged myself. I couldn’t end up back in the hospital with another heart attack. Finally, I pulled back and sat, shakily, on the closed seat of the toilet, breathing heavily. I closed my eyes. I felt Mulder rub his skin against the back of my leg. He must’ve been hiding in the cupboard under the sink, one of his favorite places.

"Jesus Christ, what the hell?" Jaymie asked, suddenly in the room.

"Sorry," I said. I looked up at her, framed by the doorway, her narrow body only just covered by my Buccaneers jersey, which she’d peeled off of her body earlier on the couch. Her long legs seemed to go on forever and ever and ever underneath it.

Sorry?” she asked, eyebrows raised, “That’s it? That’s all you have to say for jumping up in the middle of the night and running off like you’re fucking Paul Revere?”

“I would never fuck Paul Revere,” I said in as serious a tone as I could muster.

Jaymie stared at me for a long moment before caving. She rolled her eyes and let out a sigh that told me she was amusedly annoyed. “You’re insane.” And she turned away. I heard her feet padding down the carpet of the hallway.

I stood up and moved to look at myself in the bathroom mirror. My face was pale, my eyes red. I reached for a bottle of toothpaste and read the words on the package carefully - every one of them, even the ones I didn’t really know, just because I could. I closed my eyes and dropped the paste into the sink basin when I’d finished, holding in a plethora of emotion that I knew that, should I ever let it out, would never be capable of being bottled again.

It would mark the beginning of the end, I thought.

So I swiped away the tears that were forming at just the very corners of my eyes and took a couple deep breaths and headed downstairs.

On my way to find Jaymie, I paused in the doorway of the den and glanced at the TV. It was the Ghostbusters DVD menu that I’d been so perplexed by. Simple words like play and scene selection had seemed like foreign language, and the picture of Bill Murray as abstract as anything Picasso ever could’ve come up with.

Jaymie was in the kitchen. She’d put her sweatpants back on, I noticed. Outside, it was still dark over the ocean. Nacho was snoring in the little doggie bed by the sliding doors to the deck. Jaymie had started the coffee machine and was rooting around for cream from the fridge. I lowered myself into a seat at the bar counter and watched her for a long time.

“So. Did anything exciting happen while I was gone?” I asked finally because the silence was awkward.

Jaymie shrugged. “Not really.”

“How’s work?”

“Work,” she replied simply. I would’ve asked a more specific question, but I had no idea what the fuck Jaymie did, so I couldn’t.

“Me, too,” I said.

Jaymie turned, letting the fridge slam shut behind her, and put the creamer on the counter, then dug around for a couple mugs from the cupboard. She poured coffee, when it was ready, and pushed the creamer and a little jar of sugar at me when she’d handed me my mug. She stood on the other side of the breakfast bar, the Buccs jersey clinging to her boobs all perfect, and sipped her coffee, staring at me as I sipped mine and stared at her boobs.

“So,” she said.

“So,” I echoed.

Jaymie raised her eyebrows.

“I’m okay, if you’re asking without asking,” I said, my voice pointed. The last thing I wanted was Jaymie prying. Though I don’t know why it would’ve been so terrible if she knew. At least I’d have someone to tell, someone who wouldn’t tell the fellas because, well, none of them would talk to her, really. But, like being upset about it, telling someone would make it more real and I didn’t want that. Plus, that would be stepping over a huge ass line that we’d drawn in the proverbial sand years and years before.

“I wasn’t,” she said. But I knew she was lying. Sometimes, Jaymie did this thing with her eyes that was a little bit concern and a little bit a challenge, like she was daring me to try to cross the line. That was the look she’d given me just then.

I nodded and focused on my coffee.

She finished hers and washed out the mug and headed for the kitchen door. “Where are you going?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at her this time. “We still have a shit-ton of movies to watch, remember?”

Jaymie stood at the doorway, her hand on the knob. “Yeah, well. I’ll be back. You should be sleeping anyways,” she added, glancing at the clock.

“So should you.”

“I gotta do something,” she replied, “I’ll be back. Go to bed.” And with that, she slipped out the door, without giving me even a moment to say another word. Nacho looked up from the sliding deck doors, craning his neck to see the kitchen door from where he laid.

“She already left,” I told him, and I got up and poured out the coffee I had left into the sink and wandered back to the den. I turned off the Ghostbusters menu, thinking about what had happened, and by the time I walked up the stairs, I’d completely forgotten about Jaymie and her mysterious departure.




Jaymie


I was laying in the grass at the cemetery when the sun came up.

“I was thinking about getting a tattoo,” I said to the headstone. I was using some Kleenex I’d found in the car to pick dirt out of the letters, etched in the granite. “But then I was afraid Nick might ask what it was and I’d have to tell him about you.” I sighed. “That’s stupid, isn’t it? Being afraid of telling Nick about you?” I laughed sadly at the irony of that. Irony, because I’d spent most of the time I’d had with him, actively trying not to tell Daniel about Nick.

When I’d gotten all the dirt out of the letters, I pressed my cheek to the cool stone and closed my eyes.

“Excuse me,” a voice called out. I sat up and looked around. A guy was leaning out of the window of a car, pulled up behind mine on the pavement by the edge of the grass. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” I nodded. “Thanks.”

He nodded, too, and drove away.

I looked back at the stone. “Everyone always asks that but nobody really gives a shit. You know? Like it’s obligatory to say are you okay or how are you to people and nobody really, really gives a crap what the response is. As long as they fulfilled the duty of having asked.” I sighed. This was one of the mutual feelings Nick and I shared that had led to our regulations in the relationship we had. If we asked, we had to really care because it hurt too much when people just asked arbitrarily.

Of course, sometimes it hurts worse when they don’t ask at all.

“I think what I miss most of all is knowing you cared,” I said suddenly.

Silence.

“Anyways, I better get back. I’ll never hear the end of it if I’m out too long.” I got up and dusted myself off and grabbed the handful of tissues I’d used to clean the stone, then backed away slowly, staring at it. Sometimes, I thought, it was still hard to believe that such a stone existed at all.

I walked back down to the car and got in, tossing the dirty kleenex onto the passenger side floor. My cellphone had several missed calls and text messages. All from Nick.

ur takin forever
wtfffff where are u?
bring home milk when u come were out & mulder needs it
and also I need a new toothbrush

“You aren’t demanding at all,” I muttered as I texted back that I’d get the stuff and be home soon. I rolled my eyes and glanced back at the stone in the grass, one among a sea of stones. I was just one lonely person among a planet full of lonely people, I thought. And I drove away.