Page 101 of Finding Jack
As evening wore into the deepest part of the night, I admitted the hardest truth: I’d seen this pattern of running from the hard things before. In my mom. I’d watched it play out and wreak havoc on people who hadn’t deserved the pain. Like my dad. Like the many who had come after him. I hadn’t known how to fix it then, but I’d sworn never to make their mistake.
I had, though.
Now I would pay for it.
***
I’d set my alarm for 6:00 AM so I could be on the road at first light, but it wasn’t the alarm that woke me. It was the warm, heavy weight of an arm across my waist. An arm with Jack’s watch around its wrist.
Jack had obviously come in at some point and kicked off his shoes before crawling onto the bed next to me. I glanced down to where he’d thrown his leg over mine too. I couldn’t believe I’d slept through that, but I’d been up late, staring into the dark and trying to solve an unsolvable problem before I’d fallen into an exhausted sleep. Maybe it wasn’t such a surprise that I’d slept through his arrival.
I moved to slide off the bed, but his arm tightened, and he nuzzled his face into my hair, murmuring my name on a soft sigh.
“Jack,” I whispered. “I need to go.”
He lifted his head to peer down at me. “Where are you going? Stay. I’ll make you breakfast.” He leaned down and kissed me.
I shouldn’t have let him do it. It would only make leaving more difficult, and not just because we were completely tangled up again. “I need…” I tried before immediately losing my train of thought when he murmured an agreement and claimed my mouth.
I ran my hands down his shoulders, still in the shirt he’d been wearing yesterday, lost in the heat and hunger.
“I missed you,” he said softly when he pulled away before shifting his attention to my earlobe which he caught with a light nip of his teeth. “I shouldn’t have left,” he said as I slid my hands through his hair.
It was the feeling of the long strands in my fingers and that last sentence that finally broke through the fog, and I let go of his hair to press my hand against his lips.
“No.” I pushed against him and squirmed away, remembering why his hair was so long in the first place. I slid off the bed and found my feet. “No, you don’t get to sneak back in here like nothing is wrong.”
He dragged himself up until he was sitting with his back against the wall. “I know I shouldn’t have left. That’s what I’m saying.”
“I mean, bonus points for coming back, I guess, but it’s not nearly enough to make up the difference,” I muttered as I scanned the floor for my shoes. It was light enough to see now. I’d make it back into town without any problem. I’d shower at my hotel, change into fresh clothes, and drive back to Portland. The need to get back home, to where I understood everything happening around me and controlled every bit of it, overwhelmed me, and I hunted for my shoes with greater urgency. I needed to get out of here.
“Can we talk about it at least?” He ran his fingers through his hair which looked like he hadn’t brushed it.
“I don’t know. Can we? Because it actually seems like we can’t. One step forward and two steps back isn’t going to get us anywhere, and that’s what keeps happening.” I finally located the black leather booties I’d paired with my skinny jeans and slid one on.
“You mean two steps forward, one step back.”
I straightened and stared at him. “No, I don’t. I meant it exactly how I said it. Every time we get a little closer, you push me away again, but it hurts worse every time. I know I’m not a relationship expert, but that’s not good. In fact, that’s a fatal program bug.”
I walked out to the living room and snatched up my purse to rummage for the keys. Jack was right behind me. “So that’s it?”
I spun to face him. “If by ‘it’ you mean how I’ve spent months trying to coax you to open up, and then I flew up here to surprise you against every ounce of common sense I have, and then it turns out that I never should have come but at least I know that now, so hey, that’s a thing that I learned, then yes. I guess that’s it.”
“You’re just giving up?”
“I’m not a quitter! YOU are.”
He stepped back like I’d slapped him. I reached out, maybe to snatch back the words, but he flinched, and I let my hand drop. I didn’t want to hurt him, but the words were true. “You’re hiding, Jack. You’re hiding up here when Sean says you can easily find someone in semi-retirement to take over the clinic. You’re letting other people fight your battles for you at your old job because it got too hard.”
“That’s easy to say for someone whose job stakes are whether a program will get a bug or not.”
I bent to put on my other boot, and to compose myself. “I will never understand what it’s like to lose a patient. But I know quitting when I see it. And so should you, because you’re right. I quit this. I can’t be a part of this half-life you’ve made for yourself, and I can already tell you’re not going to try to become a part of mine.”
“That’s not fair,” he said.
“Am I wrong? Have you been thinking lately about how you’re finally ready to join the wider world again?”
He wouldn’t meet my gaze. Instead, he crossed his arms and kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “No. That’s not going to happen because I didn’t run away from it. I found a different way to help, and it’s here. Look.” He walked over to the large, sleek monitor I’d seen in the background of so many of our conversations. “This is the only thing Icando,” he said flipping it on. A minute later, a series of photos filled the screen. “This is why I learned to Photoshop.”
