The Years Between (8 page)

Will smirked. “I would love to see anyone try to tell
you
what to do. You’d probably punch him in the gut. Not how I picture Lindsey.”

“I pictured someone fun and nice and wonderful. Like you. I mean, she did have a crush on you, right? That’s how I got you for my rescuer.” She slid a glance his way with her eyebrows raised.

Will groaned. “It was one time!”

“One time you kissed my sister, you mean?”

Shockingly, Will actually blushed. Pink rose into his cheeks. “She kissed me. And one time.”

Jessie laughed. “At one time, it nearly sent me over the deep end trying to deal with my jealousy that you liked her. But seriously, I pictured her finding someone like you. Extremely good and stable and upstanding. Not that creepy, crawly, cold fucker who watched her like he wanted to make sure she performed in a manner acceptable to him. And what a snob! Why is he in the Army? I can’t imagine him getting his pretty man-hands dirty. Will, I’m serious; I guarantee he probably had a
manicure in the last week.”

Will cringed. “He’s not a fucking soldier, that’s for sure. He kinda reminds me of Fuck-face.”

Jessie sighed and stared out the window. “I know. I thought that too.”

Will took her hand. “Lindsey married him. It’s her decision. She adored Fuck-face. You know that. It’s maybe, not that surprising she’d marry someone who has his kind of cold, domineering demeanor.”

She shuddered. “I just didn’t expect it. But you’re probably right. Thank God, no one can be as bad inside as Fuck-face.”

“I don’t think Elliot liked us very much.”

Jessie nodded in agreement. “I don’t think he liked us at all.”

She stared out the window. Nothing ever stayed the same in life. Lindsey seemed different. Moving on from her, Jessie sighed. It twisted her heart to imagine. She didn’t want to go back to their mean, cold relationship of old. She wanted the warm, sister-love they shared now. But Elliot most obviously didn’t like her or Will. “Maybe he’ll grow on us.”

Will made a strangled sound. “Yeah, baby, I doubt that.”

“Me too,” she said with a sigh.

He reached over and took her hand and squeezed it. “You okay?”

“Yes, I just feel like somehow I’ve lost her a little bit. Which is normal. Sisters get married, grow up, and move on. But she’s been so much more to me than my sister for the last few years. I would not have survived those two years when you were gone without her.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “But I’m here now. You’ll survive with me.”

She turned in her seat. He slid a quick sweet smile her way before
staring back at traffic. “You make up for pretty much everything.”

He made a face. “Even I’m not that good. But I’m glad to see you’re coming around.”

She laughed. Only Will could make her feel like laughing after the evening she just had.

****

Will watched Jessie at the stove in her little apron that covered the pretty slacks and blouse she wore. Her hair was combed shiny and her makeup fresh and sweet. Like every other night. She was serving up mashed potatoes, gravy and steak. He appreciated it, he really did.

But… he didn’t know what was fucking wrong with her; and he didn’t know what to say to ask her. It was, of course, good she was being so freaking nice to him. So pleasant. Her smile never left her face. Her voice always well modulated and even. Never too loud. Never too forceful. Never too opinionated. She asked about his day. His life. How he was feeling. She accepted what he could or could not tell her. She accepted anything he said or did.

It was almost like living with a freaking mannequin. It was driving him nuts. Jessie was never polite, mannerly, well modulated or without an opinion. He was tired of perfect, smiling, well-behaved, new Jessie. But how could he criticize her after living with the evil, nasty, awful Jessie? He didn’t want that again, of course, but he didn’t want this either. How could he say that to her? How could he explain she was being too nice?

He just wanted her to be
Jessie.

Now she was wearing an apron? He glanced around. Everything was
perfect. The apartment was always clean, organized and spotless. He was crazy neat and clean. She was not. Why now, was she?

He sighed as he sat down to her china and perfectly matched, strangely formal dinner for two that had become their daily evenings now.

Finally, after a month of her odd niceties, he found her in tears when he came in from a run. He left right after dinner, needing a little less fake happiness.

“Hey, hey,” he said coming up behind her, “What’s wrong?”

She held up his once-white shirt, now turned a kind of bluish tinge. “A blue pen got in the load of laundry.”

“Okay, that sucks. But why are you crying?”

“Because I ruined a load of laundry.”

“Uh, no, I probably had it in my pocket. So I did it. Lord, Jess, not really worth tears.” He browsed through the pile of fresh-smelling clothes she’d strewn over the bed. “The jeans are fine, blue to blue. The shirt’s a waste and I can wear underwear turned blue. Only you see them.”

She didn’t even crack a smile. He sighed and moved aside the laundry. “This has to stop.”

She frowned and wiped at her eyes. “What has to stop?”

“You acting like this.”

“Like this? It’s the first laundry I’ve ever ruined.”

“It’s not about the laundry, it’s that I haven’t seen the real you in weeks. Stop it. I know what you’re doing. That holding pattern thing you told me about with your mom and Fuck-face. You’re trying to make it all perfect while I’m here.”

She set the shirt that started all the tears down. “Well, shouldn’t it be good? We were separated for almost two-and-a-half years, with a four-week break in between. If it isn’t good now, when will it be?”

“But that doesn’t mean you having to smile and wear all the pretty, perfect clothes and being so freaking cheerful that I’m afraid to comment on anything. I can’t do this. I can’t be fake anymore. We might have our faults as a couple, but we’ve never been fake. Why are we doing that now?”

“You’re mad because we’re getting along?”

He gritted his teeth in frustration. “No, I’m mad because you’re not acting like yourself.”

Her eyebrow rose. “How would you know what I am? You missed it all. Maybe this is who I am now. I try to be a good person now. I try to be pleasant,” she said as she started gathering up the scattered clothes. “I did so because you said. Do you remember that? You didn’t like me volatile and angry. You didn’t know how to deal with t
hat, so you called my sister. And your ex-wife. Now you don’t like that I’m trying to be who you want? Tell me, Will Hendricks, what exactly do you want in a woman? If it isn’t Gretchen, who you say you never really loved, and it’s not emotional, impetuous Jessie of old, then who exactly do you want?”

Her voice was still calm, low and rational.

He nearly groaned out loud. “You’re twisting that around wrong. That’s not how it is.”

“Am I? Then how do you want it?”

“I want you to simply be who you are. You’re twisting it around I want you to act natural. Not this fake way you’ve been.”

She took the wad of discolored clothes and slammed it into the trash
can next to her. “Well, what are you going to do about it? Call an intervention? Get Lindsey and Gretchen here to deal with me for not being natural enough?”

He shook his head with a scowl. “Come on. That was entirely necessary and different. Of course, I’m not going to call them. I only did that because you were literally on the verge of a mental breakdown. It isn’t the same as this squabble between us.”

“Oh, honestly, it’s nice to know they aren’t going to show up at my door and do our talking for us.”

He gritted his teeth. “You’re not being fair. You know why I called them back then. You know why I left you. And it’s anything, but the simplistic situation you’re implying it was. It was never just a fight back then. It was never ‘just’ anything.
You’re really not being fair, here, Jessie.”

She started to leave the room but suddenly
stopped dead and turned towards him slowly. “I’m not being fair?” She finally raised her tone. “You think I’m not fair? You don’t know the meaning of the word unfair. Let me tell you about unfair. Unfair is being raped by your father’s friends. Unfair is being kidnapped by someone your father paid to take you. Unfair is being tied to a floor while strange men have sex with you. Unfair is getting better for the one man you finally want, who turns his back and leaves yet again, because you can’t deal with his job. Because his job is so important, there is no way he could compromise it. Not for this girl, who tried to offer her entire soul to him. Still not enough.
She
isn’t enough. And now? Now she still isn’t enough? Then what is enough, Will? When will I be enough for you, just exactly as I am?” Her voice cracked before she nearly cried out, “Well let me tell you, that is what unfair is.”

She whirled around and started out the bedroom door. He went after her. He grabbed her elbow and turned her to face him. “Is that what this is about? I left because of the first reason you said. You are barely well, Jessie. It’s been all of three years since those things stopped happening to you. You know why I left you. I thought I’d do nothing but remind you of it. I thought all this, being here and still a soldier would do nothing, but send you reeling back to the emotional wreck I brought home from Mexico. Forgive me if I didn’t want that. Not for you. Not for my wife. I couldn’t stand the thought of you suffering more, which is how I often found you.”

“Well, now I’m not acting like that, am I? I proved you wrong.”

He stepped back, stunned. “That’s why you’ve been acting like this? You think you have to act a certain way so I won’t leave?”

She shrugged and shoved her hair behind her ear. “No. I don’t think you’ll leave. I just want to make sure you see I’m not who I used to be.”

“You’re angry with me. You can be angry. I deserve it. You don’t have to walk on eggshells around here or with me.”

“I thought you wanted me acting okay.”

“I want you to
be
okay and act natural. At this point, I’ll take you acting however, as long as it’s real. No one can sustain the level of perfection you’re trying to create here. But if you’re not okay, then I want to know, Jessie. I want to deal with whatever is real. Not this fake bullshit.”

“Funny. You usually leave when it gets real. I guess I was trying to make sure you didn’t have any reason to leave again.”

He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face, and backed up until his legs hit his chair, which he flopped into. “I told you, you were mad at me. I guess I deserved this. Fine, Jessie have your say. Or keep acting like a Stepford Wife on steroids. Just let me know when you’re done. I can’t change anything. Not what happened to you. Or how I reacted. I can’t change doing what I thought was in your best interest. If I was wrong, I’m sorry. But it seemed the right thing to do back then. It’s not like there was ever a damn road map to tell me how to navigate the emotional quagmire I found in you from day one.”

“You mean since you found me naked and chained to the wall?”

He shut his eyes at the images her angry words evoked. She wasn’t reliving them. She was flinging them at him in anger. Finally, he whispered. “Yes, since I found you. Only that wasn’t the first time I saw you. You forget sometimes, I think, that your emotional baggage, is mine too.”

She stilled and her entire body quit moving. Silence hung thick and heavy between them, like a physical thing that entered their apartment and blocked them. She finally let out a long, deep, body-releasing sigh and shook her head. “What am I doing? Why am I yelling at you?”

He rubbed his hand in his hair and stared at the floor in front of him. “Because you’re that angry at me. You’re angry I didn’t really save you. You’re angry I left you to Lindsey and Gretchen. You’re angry I left you in Washington state. You’re angry your father died, and he wasn’t your real father, and he paid men to do terrible things to you. You’re angry your life was ruined before you even got to live it. And the thing is: you have every right to be. I should have left you alone tonight. I’m sorry. I just want you to feel like you can be yourself with me and I won’t leave or get mad or do anything anymore. But I don’t have the right to do that to you.”

She came over and dropped to the floor in front of him, taking his hands in hers. “I don’t have every right to be angry at you. I mean sometimes, I guess, I am. In the moments when I simplify everything, and don’t go where the reality of our situation really is. You were technically right in everything you did.”

“But being right technically doesn’t make you feel better.”

“No, sometimes getting angry does.”

He smiled faintly. “Yes, there is anger there.”

“Except I think we love each other too much to stick with what we should have done. We should have separated and not been together. But you said it yourself, who cares how we started? It’s where we take it now. It’s us not letting it define
us.
And I have been acting weird. I worry so much you’ll decide this is all a mistake. I don’t think I could take you ever leaving me again.”