Page 57 of Yours to Lose
“Hey,” Jo whispers, wrapping her arms around my waist and running her hand up and down my back as my heart slams against my ribs. “It’s okay, J. It was the truck across the street. They let the loading platform down too fast.”
She tips her head back to look at my face, but I close my eyes, trying to get my shaking body and churning stomach under control. I lean forward to press my forehead to hers, taking a ragged breath, breathing her in. Cupcakes and coffee and a hint of cinnamon.
Jo.
She’s here.
She’s okay.
She’s safe.
Jo cups my face in both of her hands and strokes her thumbs along my cheekbones in a soothing rhythm. When I finally open my eyes, I expect to see questions and concern. Instead, I see patience and understanding, and my heartbeat starts to slow.
“Sorry,” I mumble, taking one more deep breath and letting it out slowly, my eyes dropping closed again.
“Jordan.” Jo’s voice is steady and firm, and when I open my eyes again, I see both softness and a steely determination in hers. “Don’t apologize. You don’t ever have to apologize to me. Not for this.”
I don’t understand how she can know whatthisis, but somehow, I know she does, and my stress level lowers. I take a step back, glancing down at the sidewalk. “Can I apologize for the broken coffee mug?” I mean it as a joke, but my voice is weakened by the low hum of residual anxiety.
Jo shrugs. “No big deal. Anyway, it’s the one I stole from you the other day.” She studies me closely. “Do you want to talk about it?”
My knee jerk instinct is to say no and lock the last few minutes into the box labeledTrauma,where I keep most of the last two years of my life. But there’s something else telling me to take this out and examine it. To explain it to Jo, knowing she is a safe place to put my secrets. I nod.
Jo holds out her hand to me. “Let’s get bagels and take them to the park. I know a place we can go.”
I know she’s saying it to give me some more time to calm down and collect my thoughts, and I’m really fucking grateful for it. So grateful that I slide my hand into hers, lacing our fingers together, and I don’t let go all the way to the park.
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
JORDAN
“So do you want to tell me what happened before?” Jo asks.
We’re in a gazebo by the Central Park Lake, both of us sitting sideways on a bench so we can face each other, the remains of breakfast spread out between us. It’s early enough that there aren’t rowboats out yet, so the lake is calm, the sun reflecting off the glassy surface.
Tucked away on the bank of the lake, surrounded by a blanket of trees, it feels like we’re the only people in the city. I take a long breath in and let it out slowly. “I’ve never told anyone this.”
Jo brings her Converse-clad feet up onto the bench, wrapping her arms around her legs and resting her chin on her knees. “You know there’s no pressure, right? You don’t owe your secrets to me or to anyone else. But I also hope you know that whatever you tell me stays between us. That’s always true, but it’s extra true right now. I’ve always thought of this part of Central Park as sacred. Like whatever you say in one of these gazebos stays right here.”
“Have you spent a lot of time up here?”
Jo grabs her iced coffee, taking a sip. “I went to college in the West Village, but whenever it got too loud and crowded for me down there, I used to jump on the C train and take it straight here. I would walk through Strawberry Fields and then wind my way to this gazebo where I could watch the lake.”
“It’s hard to imagine anything ever being too loud and crowded for you.”
She looks at me thoughtfully. “That’s mostly true now, but I didn’t have the easiest time in college. I told you finding friends has always been hard for me, and while it’s not something that bothers me now, it did back then. It felt like everywhere I looked there were groups of girls making these forever friendships, and it was never something I could seem to find for myself. I loved all my classes and learning all the things, but sometimes being the weird girl who was always a little too much of everything for anyone got hard, and that’s when I would come here. Something about being here reminded me that it’s okay to always be myself. That I don’t have to change who I am for anyone.”
Jo’s eyes bore into mine, and I hear what she’s not saying. She brought me to her most sacred place in the city to remind me of the same thing. To tell me without telling me that no matter what, I can always be who I am with her. That she likes me for who I am, scars and trauma and all. It’s an unbelievable gift, and it has me opening my mouth and spilling all my secrets to her.
“I wasn’t with Allie when she died.” I blurt it out and then inhale sharply, rubbing a hand over my chest where it aches, like just saying the words takes something from me. But then Jo reaches across and takes my hand, looking at me with only compassion and understanding. It fills the empty space that those words left behind. “I was upstairs in the surgeons’ lounge, and Molly had to come tell me she was gone.”
Jo squeezes my hand, and it gives me what I need to keep going. “I went over it in my head a million times for months. What if I had gone down to the ER with her when she had that consult so she wouldn’t have been waiting for Molly alone? What if I had convinced her to pass the ER consult along to someone else since her shift was already over? Maybe she would still be alive, or maybe she wouldn’t, but at least I would have been with her when she died instead of what actually happened, which is that she died alone, without anyone who loved her. Grief takes your mind to some really dark places. There were times during the first year when the what ifs and the guilt were so intense and overwhelming, I didn’t think I would survive it. It slowly started to get better, and I can be a person in the world again, but there are times it still takes me over, and I can’t shake it.”
“Asking me to wait for you inside the hospital instead of outside.” It’s a statement, not a question. Jo’s voice is quiet, and I can hear her put the pieces together.
“Yeah.” I sigh out the word, grateful I don’t have to make her understand because she already does. “Logically, I know nothing will happen to you standing outside a hospital on the Upper West Side of Manhattan at eight in the morning, but knowing it and making my brain accept it are two different things. And then when I heard that crash on the street while we were walking…” I trail off, not knowing how to say it in a way that Jo will comprehend.
“Your instinct was to protect me in a way you weren’t able to protect Allie.”
