Jake Undone(35)

The same word replayed in my head until I eventually fell asleep: stunning.





CHAPTER 11





I had received two more A’s on the subsequent exams in November and now held a B average in math overall. Jake was happy for me but somewhat bummed each time, because apparently he was really looking forward to his next planned fear-facing exercise that kept getting put off by my stellar grades. Who knew this would become a problem?

With each A, I baked Jake something special to thank him for helping me. He didn’t seem to enjoy the banana bread as much as the Bananas Foster but still ate the entire loaf in one sitting with his eyes closed. The second time, I made him a chocolate banana cream pie and his response to that was nothing short of orgasmic. Seriously, he was mumbling things I couldn’t even understand. It was truly entertaining to watch.

During Thanksgiving break, I had bragged to my parents about my nerdy roommate who was helping me get through math, and they said they couldn’t wait to meet him and thank him. I would deal with picking my mother’s jaw up off of the ground when the time came.





***





There was only one exam left before the end of the semester. A couple of weeks prior, Jake and I were busy studying in his room early one Thursday night, and as usual, he was keeping things strictly business.

But that was the night that everything changed between us.

At one point, in preparation for a math problem, he went into his drawer and grabbed something, throwing it front of me. It was a pair of dice.

He looked at me intently then pointed to them. “You’re going to tell me how many different outcomes are possible. Then we’re going to have you figure out how many ways you can get a sum of five.”

Looking down at the dice, something came over me as an old memory of playing Yahtzee with my brother Jimmy came to mind. The object of that game had been to score the most points by rolling five dice to make certain combinations. Even though it was based on pure luck, Jimmy would always beat me. I could hear my brother’s voice, clear as day, “Yahtzee!” And that’s what did it. Yahtzee. That was the word that made me burst into tears for literally the first time in years. Looking down at the dice, I cried while Jake watched, horrified.

“What…what the hell is going on, Nina?”

I covered my face to hide the tears that wouldn’t stop falling.

Jake had been at the desk but moved over to where I was sitting on the bed and turned to me. “Nina?”

I wiped my eyes and looked over at him. “It’s my brother. Those dice…for some reason, they triggered a memory for me. My brother and I used to play the game Yahtzee to pass the time, while he—”

“What?” He blinked in confusion.

“It was one of the few things we were able to do together…before he died.”

Jake looked at me silently, his eyes blinking rapidly in an attempt to absorb the bombshell I had just dropped.

“Nina…God…I am so sorry. This is the brother in that picture in Ryan’s room?”

I nodded and sniffled. “Yeah. Jimmy was my only brother, my only sibling.”

“What happened?”

“He had leukemia.”

He looked down at the floor and sighed. “I had no idea. You never said anything. I just assumed—”

“I know. Ryan and I don’t really talk about him anymore. It’s just too painful sometimes for both of us. It surprised me that Ryan even had that picture displayed, because I know he gets really broken up over it.”

He closed his eyes briefly looking off to side then back at me again. I had stopped crying but was still shaken by the memories of my brother’s last days. Those were images I tried hard to fight on a daily basis, and two little dice managed to completely unravel everything I worked so hard to bury.

Jake startled me when he put his hand on my knee. “Why don’t you want to think about him?”

It was hard to admit the true reason that it was so difficult to think about Jimmy, and I never talked about it. Never. But I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell Jake because I trusted him, and he had always made me feel like he wouldn’t judge me for my faults.

He kept his hand on my knee, and I used the dragon tattoo on his forearm as a focal point to gather my thoughts. “Toward the very end of my brother’s life, I couldn’t bear to watch him waste away. It was just too painful. He was only a year and a half older than me. We were so close. He was nineteen when he died. I was a senior in high school.”

When I started to tear up again, he squeezed my leg harder and said, “It’s okay. Take your time.”

I moved my gaze from the dragon back up to Jake’s eyes and could see my own reflection in them.