Chapter 12

If you fall I will catch you
I will be waiting

Jack’s hands shook from the cold as he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He offered Kathy one out of habit and she shook her head, scrunching up her nose in that cute way she had.

“I’d thought I’d forgotten about it, you know – about that night,” she said softly, pulling her legs up, wrapping her arms around them and resting her chin on her knees.

“I don’t think I ever remembered it,” he admitted. “I was kind of messed up.”

“You don’t say.” She laughed softly but she was staring at the ground, her mouth drawn into a frown. She looked small and alone and Jack inched a little closer to her on the couch. She leaned to the right, letting her shoulder rest against his. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Jack shook his head. “Kathy, you have nothing to be sorry about. I fucked up. I fucked up big time.”

“I should have stood up to her.” Kathy hooked her finger in her shoe lace, twisting it around her finger.

“Huh?”

“My mother. I should have stayed your friend. Maybe …”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have worn that shirt to prom,” he said lightly, hoping to make her smile. It didn’t work and apparently there was no way to avoid the big fat elephant in the room that had plopped its ass down into the middle their night. “Maybe I wouldn’t have fallen apart in high school?”

She shrugged and nodded, hugging her legs tighter and shivering slightly. Cursing himself for not thinking of it sooner, he shrugged off his leather jacket, draping it over her shoulders. The cold air seeped through the thin army surplus jacket and t-shirt he had on underneath, but the cold sharpened his focus and he figured he’d need all the focus he could get to make it through the conversation they were about to have.

He studied his cigarette for a minute, watching as the embers slowly ate away at white paper, inching closer to the filter, leaving ashes in their place. He flicked them onto the sidewalk, watching aimlessly as they drifted onto the snow, melting into the white until they disappeared completely. He’d felt like that in high school – shit, he’d felt like that his whole life – like someone had struck a match and lit a slow fire that ate away at him until there was nothing left but the ashes and the ghosts of a broken childhood.

“Kathy, I was falling apart long before I met you.” He hated how his voice trembled slightly, betraying his need to sound nonchalant about the whole thing. Maybe she didn’t notice, but one thing he’d figured out that night was that no girl had ever known him as well as Kathy did.

She looked over at him and he could see the pain in her eyes. “No, you were just a –“

“Kid?”

He remembered when Kathy first came into his life. He’d been with Evelyn for a while, felt safe and protected. Felt like he had a chance at a normal life for the first time in a long time. He wore it like a costume - the façade of the typical kid with the usual set of problems and worries and hopes and dreams. He pretended that passing math and finding enough change in the couch to buy a pack of cigarettes were the biggest hurdles he had to overcome in his life. He was so good at pretending and fooling others that he began to believe it himself and he started to forget.

But at some point, it was like someone had jerked the steering wheel out of his hands and crashed him headlong into a wall and everything he’d thought he’d put behind him came spilling out. He sucked at handling it – the feelings and memories too real, too raw. So he did the only thing he could think of, the only thing that made sense at the time – numbed his mind until he didn’t give a damn what his past, present or future were. All that mattered was that floaty, hazy nowhere that he escaped to with alarming frequency when he hit senior year.

“You were lost,” she stated simply, summing it all up perfectly. “Maybe if I’d been there for you …” her voice trailed off.

“I would have hurt you, Kathy. More than just being a jerk at the prom. We wouldn’t have this.” He waved his hand at the snow covered sidewalk, nearly empty because it was growing late. Christmas lights twinkled in a few windows, some were strung in the trees lining the street, dotting the night with stars. Everything was quiet, unnaturally so. It was like the night was holding its breath.

“You’d hate me,” he said, wrinkling his brow, tossing his cigarette onto the ground, half finished.

She shook her head, glancing up at him, her eyes red from unshed tears. Her smile was wobbly. “Never.”

He reached out and brushed his hand through her hair, trailing his finger down her cheek, his chest tightening in a way he couldn’t explain. He liked seeing himself through her eyes – in her eyes he was something special, almost golden. He didn’t have the tarnish of being a bad kid with a sad life – she never saw him that way. He liked having one person out there in the world who didn’t judge him – even Evelyn had that sadness in her eyes when she looked at him, that drive to fix him, to help him. He loved her for it, loved her more than anything in the world, but sometimes he just wished he could be “Jack” – no past, no pain. Clean slate.

His finger grazed her chin, his thumb tracing the bone beneath her skin and he took a deep breath. “I don’t think I could live with myself if you hated me,” he admitted, meaning every word.

She leaned into him, tilting her chin up until their lips met and she gave him the gentlest kiss, a kiss full of forgiveness and hope. He’d never been kissed like that. Sinking into her, his hands finding their way under the jacket he’d draped over her shoulders, skimming her waist, he pulled her closer, deepening the kiss.

Warm. She was warm and soft and sweet and he didn’t want to let her go. His fingers tangled in the fuzzy sweater she had on. Normally, he’d be working his hands up her back, reaching for her bra, trying to hurrying things to the next step. But that wasn’t right with Kathy – he wanted the moments, wanted to stretch them out as long as possible. Kissing her made his brain itch to write a song, something quiet and beautiful.

He wasn’t sure how long it they’d been kissing before they finally pulled apart, just that it had started snowing at some point. She had snowflakes in her hair and a dampness on her cheeks. She’d been crying. He reached out to touch her cheek but she ducked her head, her breath hitching. “We should get going,” she said quietly.

XxXxXxXxXx

They walked back in silence. Jack had his shoulders hunched, trying to ward off the icy breeze and Kathy burrowed deep into Jack’s leather jacket. It smelled like him, like leather and cigarettes and she just wanted to wrap herself in it. She couldn’t believe she’d kissed him … again. And she couldn’t believe she’d stopped it from going further.

Her brain was all in a jumble, with one thing sounding through the white noise loud and clear – he was leaving. Not just soon, not just in a week or two, but that morning. The more she held onto him, the harder it was going to be to let go, but she had to. She had to let him leave. People like her didn’t upend their lives in the span of hours, not over cups of hot chocolate and stolen kisses in the snow.

He was going to leave. She would be a memory as soon as the train pulled out of the station and she would be left with a hole in her heart, an aching that she would never fill. She couldn’t let that happen. The night had to end now before she dug herself in deeper, before she lost herself completely.

Steve was waiting outside the bar for them when they arrived, her coat tucked under his arm and Jack’s guitar case propped up on the wall behind him.

“Thought I was going to have to send out the National Guard to find you guys,” he said with a grin. His face was red from the cold and Kathy felt a twinge of guilt for making him wait.

Reluctantly, she took off Jack’s jacket and gave it back to him, replacing it with her much warmer parka. She instantly missed the weight and feel of Jack’s coat, it was like she was closing a door on their night by taking it off.

“You guys bury the hatchet?”

Kathy blushed and looked at the ground.

Steve laughed. “Well, I guess that answers that question.”

“Shut up, man,” Jack said steadily, the first thing he’d said since they started walking back.

All three of them stood there awkwardly for a few minutes. A few stragglers left the bar, glancing over at them, drunkenly nodding at Steve and Jack as though they knew them.

Steve rocked back on his heels, glancing between Jack and Kathy. “So -” he started.

“I should take a cab,” Kathy interrupted.

“I’ll walk you home,” Jack said but she shook her head.

“You have to go and get your stuff and get off that leg for a little while.” She shrugged, trying to pretend her heart wasn’t screaming out to take him up on his offer. “It would be silly to walk me home when I can just get a quick cab ride.”

Jack reached out and took a hold of Kathy’s elbow, guiding her a few feet down the street and away from Steve. “Kath,” he said, looking intently at her, his expression confused.

She pulled on her orange hat, pushing the pompom out of her face with the back of her hand. “Jack,” she said simply, looking at the ground – she was really starting to appreciate the sidewalks in New York and the intricate ways in which they cracked and disintegrated.

“I could stay,” he said, though she could tell he really didn’t mean it.

She finally dragged her eyes off the ground and looked at him, his expression more open and earnest than she had ever remembered seeing it before. She smiled sadly. “You have to get home and see your family. They miss you.”

“I know, but --”

“The drum set won’t be nearly as funny without you there to watch Jerry’s reaction to it.”

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah, I know.”

“I can’t go,” she repeated for what felt like the hundredth time that night, though she was getting less convincing with each time.

“This isn’t a test. This isn’t about staying strong and beating your mother.”

That cut deeper than it should have and she took a step back. He followed her and took her hands in his. “You deserve to be happy. I have no idea what’s been happening between us tonight, just that it feels wrong to end it outside a bar with Steve watching.”

“Hey,” Steve called out from behind him and Kathy bit back a sudden giggle that bordered on a sob.

Jack managed to grin, tightening his grip on her hands. “See?”

Kathy stepped forward, wrapping her arms around him. He hugged her back and rested his chin on her head. “I’ll think about it,” she said, her voice muffled against his jacket. She knew she was lying, but she thought it was what he wanted to hear.

“Promise?” he asked, his voice rumbling through his chest. She nodded, a tear running down her cheek. She sniffed and pulled back from him, looking up as she swiped her gloved hand over her face.

“I promise.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” he said with a crooked smile and then he kissed her again and she could tell he knew it was goodbye.

A cab pulled up to the curb but she didn’t want to let go. Jack broke away first, staring at her like he wanted to memorize her. She suddenly wished she wasn’t wearing a goofy orange hat. As if he could hear her thoughts, he grabbed the pompom and dusted it across her glasses and over her nose.

“Merry Christmas, Kathy,” he said as she took a step back toward the waiting cab.

She opened the back door and looked back at Jack, her smile at odds with the way her heart was breaking. “Happy Holidays, Jack.”

XxXxXxXxXx

Kathy sat on her couch, wrapped from head to toe in a blanket as her cat batted at her hand, begging for attention. She stared blankly at the TV, the anchor for the local early morning news droning on about the weather. She’d been up for an hour, after a futile attempt at falling asleep had resulted in her tossing and turning, feeling tangled and trapped in her sheets.

The weather had been replaced by reports of Christmas travelers and she wanted to change the channel, but Horatio was blocking her path to the remote. Sighing, she started at the screen, not listening to the woman as she interviewed people coming and going from the airport and train station.

Kathy glanced around her apartment, taking in the twinkle lights she had thought made everything look so cute, the little tree that she thought looked perfect in her apartment. Now they just seemed sad, inadequate. Like she was trying to put a bow on an empty box.

She wracked her brain, trying to remember what was so important in her life - just why she had to stay. The presents for her family were scattered about, half wrapped and forgotten. The stack of papers that needed to be graded as a favor for her professor were in the spot she'd left them in, untouched. And she had articles to write, deadlines looming. She couldn't just drop all that and run away on a silly whim. Her life wasn't a romance novel. She was practical and reliable and she had people depending on her. People who had lives of their own and weren't sitting at home alone, two days before Christmas with no one to celebrate it with but an ornery cat and a half frozen turkey.

She gripped the mug in her hand, the coffee already having gone cold as she forgot she even held it. Suddenly the perfect little life she'd carved out for herself didn't feel so perfect.

XxXxXxXxXx

Jack leaned his head against the window, watching the people pour onto the train, struggling with luggage and bags of wrapped presents. It was barely dawn, far earlier than anyone should ever be expected to be awake.

He scanned the crowd even though he knew it was lost cause. She wasn’t coming.

The conductor came around, asking for tickets, punching holes in them. He had to fish for his, finding it in the pocket of his battered duffle bag. No one sat next to him thanks to his guitar taking up a seat and he was grateful for that. No need to make senseless chitchat and act like a human for the next dozen or so hours.

The train pulled away, leaving New York behind them and he slouched down in his seat, watching as the familiar buildings faded into the distance. His mind kept playing last night over and over again in his head. He couldn’t shake Kathy from his thoughts.

So there he was, on a packed train, on his way back home to his family, and he’d never felt more alone in his whole life.
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