Four Score

Ten

“Why?” Jase asks me.

It’s late. He just walked in the front door of his apartment, hours after I got back from the hospital. I’ve been sitting at the counter, waiting for him to get back, knowing he’s probably going to be pissed.

“Why what?” I respond to his question, making him frown.

“You know what I mean,” Jase growls. “Why’d you go to the fucking hospital today?”

I shrug, avoiding his eyes. “I wanted to see the bastard laid up in a coma.”

Jase snorts, shaking his head. “Nice move on his hand, too. Really subtle.”

I actually laugh, which is totally inappropriate given the serious look Jase is leveling at me.

“Oh, come on,” I say to him. “He deserves every bit of pain I can give him.”

“Of course he does,” Jase says angrily. “But Julz—you’re getting a bit fucking careless. A bit fucking obvious.”

My face falls as I realize he’s right.

“Jesus,” I whisper. “That was pretty stupid, huh?”

Jase spreads his hands out, a gesture of surrender. “Yeah, well,” he says. “You’re lucky I was there a few hours later and took the goddamn blame for it.”

I hang my head. “Thanks,” I mumble.

He does something totally unexpected then. He comes over, smiles devilishly, and pulls me from my stool into a massive bear hug, squeezing the breath out of me.

“Whoa,” I say when he releases his grip. “What was that for?”

He brushes a stray hair from my face, a cheeky glint in his eye. “You’re crazy, you know that? You’ve got no fear.”

Something about those words stab into my chest painfully. “Believe me, I’ve got plenty of fear,” I reply glumly.

“Are you still afraid of heights?” Jase asks.

“Why?” I ask slowly. “Want to take me base jumping or something?”

“Not quite,” he says. “Remember when we used to go up on the Ferris wheel?”

“Yeah,” I say, flashing back to when we were teenage sweethearts at Santa Monica Pier.

“Grab a jacket,” he says.

I frown, looking at the digital clock display mounted on the front of the oven. “It’s almost ten at night,” I protest.

Jase shrugs. “There’s got to be some upside to being a Gypsy Brother, right?”

Sure enough, the security guard in charge of looking over the Pier waves us in without hesitation. I’m still reeling from the abrupt change of mood Jase showed when he got home, and I’m afraid to say, a little suspicious that there’s something he isn’t telling me.

“I thought you’d be angry with me,” I whisper as Jase hurries me along the wooden pier.

He stops, and I almost collide with him as I continue striding. He turns and catches me by my shoulders, steadying me.

“I’m not angry with you,” he says, squeezing my hands in his. “I’m scared out of my fucking mind for you. For both of us.”

“Everything will be fine,” I whisper, but a little voice inside of me is screaming for attention. Demanding answers to those questions that keep plaguing me.

Why are you still here?

Why didn’t you kill them years ago?

I block them out, because who knows how much time we have left together? I don’t really want to ask those questions of him, because I don’t know if I can bear the answers.

I don’t know what answers would satisfy me, anyway.

He gives me a weird look, takes one of my hands, and continues dragging me along. A moment later, he’s lifting me up into one of the passenger cabins before clambering in himself.

“It’s not going anywhere,” I point out.

Jase shrugs, wrapping his arm around my shoulders as we sit side by side in the darkness of the empty pier, the only noise the waves crashing onto the sand below us.

I can’t help it. I have to ask.

“What … happened to you afterward?” I ask him in a voice barely above a whisper. After I died.

He immediately stiffens, his arm around me rigid. “Nothing,” he says quickly.

“Jase,” I press. “You can trust me.”

He sighs. “It’s not about trust, Julz.”

“Well, what then?” I ask.

He relaxes his arm again, and I can tell it’s taking every ounce of self-control he possesses to act casually when something is burning him inside.

“Jase,” I say plainly. “Why didn’t you leave?”

He rips his arm away from me so quickly I don’t know how to react. My mouth falls open as I watch his forced casual manner shift into rage.

“Nobody saved me,” he says bitterly. “Nobody whisked me away into the night and faked my death. So, yeah. I had to save myself. Or die trying.”

“What does that even mean?” I ask him, suddenly cold without his arm around me. “Jase, I’m not trying to be a bitch. I’m just trying to understand.”

He balls his fists up angrily and stands, leaping out of the stationary passenger cabin. “I don’t give a fuck if you understand or not,” he seethes, dumbfounding me. “There are some things that we don’t talk about.”

“Jase—” I try to say …

“Do you want me to ask you what it’s like to fuck my father?” he demands. Holy shit, he’s really worked up. I’m so stunned I can’t even be offended by his question.

“What do you think happened, Juliette?” he asks me, like I’m the stupidest person in the entire world, and it takes everything within me not to cry. “Don’t you think I would have left the first chance I got? That I would have killed every one of them for what they did to you?”

My heart sinks as I imagine what he must have suffered through as he watched them defile me, and after I died.

“I’m sorry,” I say desperately. He kicks at the ground, refusing to look at me.

“Yeah, so am I,” he says.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I blurt out, immediately regretting my choice of words.

“No,” he says bitterly. “I don’t want to talk about it. Ever.”

The spontaneous Ferris wheel trip ruined, we walk home in pensive silence, Jase charging along as I scurry behind him, taking two hurried steps to his every one. Once we’re inside the apartment he goes straight to his bedroom and closes the door in my face, leaving me alone in the hallway.

Alone with my morbid curiosity. What the hell happened to him after I died? I’ve never thought about the details, always too wrapped up in my own despair. Fuck. I can’t believe I’ve been so blind to the pain he’s carrying inside like a grenade, ready to explode at any second. I never stopped long enough to imagine his loss. His fear.

Nobody saved me.

His words tear at my heart.

Nobody saved him.

I wait fifteen agonizing minutes before I knock on his door gently. When I don’t get a “fuck off,” I open the door slowly and look around. Jase is lying in the middle of his bed, arms tucked behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He glances in my direction before resuming his ceiling stare-off contest.

I decide to go for the straight-on approach, jumping on the bed and straddling Jase’s hips before he can push me away. He meets my gaze, clearly unimpressed.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “It came out wrong. I didn’t mean it like that.”

I press my palms to his chest and am surprised when he grabs my wrists and yanks them hard, causing me to topple forward so that my chest meets his.

“Yeah, you did,” he says quietly. “I’d ask the same question if I were you.”

I don’t say anything, just chew on my lip as we survey each other warily.

“I can’t go there,” he says, his face etched with the pain of his past. “I’ll just say this. Three years I went without seeing sunlight. Three years, and I was convinced I was better off dead with you every single day. ”

Three years without sunlight? My mind spins at what he’s inferring.

“You mean—”

“You saw Emilio’s place,” Jase says with difficulty. “You didn’t see what’s underneath it.”

My imagination fills in the blanks. “They kept you locked up in a basement for three years? What the hell did they do with you for three whole years?” I whisper, as tears prick at my eyes.

His eyes cloud over with pain.

“Forget it,” I say quickly. “Don’t answer that.”

He looks relieved. But I’m far from it. I’m sick over what those three years might have entailed, and how the worst event of my life had lasted a few days in comparison.

“Shit, Jase,” I say, wrapping my arms around his neck as I bury my face in the warm spot between his ear and shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

He doesn’t answer me, but in my head his words go round like a Ferris wheel that never stops. Nobody rescued me …