Teach Me(52)

I’m still buoyed up by the memories when I reach Jack’s house that evening. I don’t bother to knock, just step right inside and head for the kitchen, all thoughts of my classwork and the other stuff I’ve been dealing with throughout the day driven from my mind. I want a repeat of this afternoon. I want him to touch me again, fuck me again. I want to feel his skin against mine, and his lips on mine, like the cure for everything that could possibly ail me.

That is, until I cross the threshold into the kitchen, and find Jack staring at the wall, almost catatonic.

It takes him almost a minute to wake up, to realize that I’m there, and who I am. Finally, his eyes focus on me, and I guess what’s coming even before he says it.

“My father just died.”





Jack




They say cancer is like that. Slow at first, then suddenly deteriorating in leaps and bounds at the end. The doctors gave him two months since they detected it on Saturday, but he barely lasted four days.

I don’t know how long I zone out after getting the phone call from Kat. All I can think about is the last time I saw him, the anger in his eyes as he told me I’ve been doing everything wrong, that my entire life is a waste. I don’t believe him; I never have, never will. But Kat was right. Now that’s the last memory I’ll ever have of him: Knowing exactly how much I disappointed him, right up until the end.

Next thing I notice in the real world is Harper shaking my shoulder, her worried face the first thing I’m able to truly focus on in what feels like hours. Maybe it has been, I’m not sure.

“My father just died,” I tell her, and it sounds so mundane. Like something somebody else would say or a line from a movie. That’s not really happening to me, is it? And if it is, should I care as much as I do? I never visited home if I could help it, ran down here to Oxford the first chance I could get to escape him—mostly him, because let’s face it, Mum wouldn’t think half the things she does if not for his influence.

Maybe that’s what I always hated about their emphasis on marriage, kids, settling down into a practical job and a practical, quiet life—they seemed too close. Like they lost their individual personalities when they started to date, and now I can’t tell where Dad ends and Mum starts. It’s scary, to trust someone that much. How does Mum know that Dad was the right person to let inside her life like that?

And what’s going to happen to her now that he’s gone?

Harper’s arms close around me and I grip her tightly, fiercely. So tight I’m sure it hurts, yet she doesn’t complain, only draws me in closer, sitting on my lap so she can wrap her whole body around me, which is good, because suddenly I realize how much I need her right now.

I don’t know how long we sit like that, just listening to each other breathe, feeling one another’s heartbeats through our chests. Maybe if getting close to someone, if trusting someone, feels like this . . . maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Except then I think about losing her, the way Mum just lost Dad, and it knocks the wind out of me. I pull back just far enough to look her dead in the eye, those soft, baby blue eyes, so beautiful, so clear and honest and full of emotion right now, emotion for me, because of me.

“Harper,” I say. “I would like to date you. But I need you to promise me something.”

She blinks, once. I can tell she’s startled by this. We haven’t talked about anything like this yet. About a future, or a plan for where this thing we have is going. Part of me is afraid she’ll say no, that she isn’t thinking along the same lines that I am.

A bigger part is afraid she’ll say yes.

Her teeth edge around her lip, a flash of white against her peach pink lips. “What?” she asks, and I adore her for that—for not just saying Anything, the way some people would, when they don’t really mean it at all.

I smile for the first time since Kat called earlier today. “Promise me that if we wind up together, you’ll let me die first.”

She smacks my chest with the back of her hand, bursting out a startled laugh that’s somewhere between amused, relieved, and annoyed. “What a morbid thing to say. Neither of us is going to die, Jack.”

“Someday,” I point out. “So I just need to know that I’ll go first.” I tighten my arms around her waist. “Because I can’t live without you.”

She lets that ring in the air between us a moment, her eyes wider and fuller than ever. When she leans in to kiss me, it’s gentle, not so much a kiss as a promise we’re making to each other. “You won’t ever have to,” she murmurs, finally, when we break apart.