I unlock the door and peek in, finding my dad asleep with my mom on the couch, the TV still on. It’ll be hard to have a conversation with Jackson in the living room with them there. We tiptoe inside and head straight to my bedroom, and Jackson closes the door behind us.
“I swear my parents have their own room,” I say. “My mom just likes sleeping on the couch from time to time.”
Jackson doesn’t reply. He takes in my room, starting with the framed photos of you on my bed. Outside, stories of you with him can prick and stab me. But here in my room, where memories of you are leaping off the bed and shelves and walls and desk, we’re on my turf. I can use our history as a weapon if I want to. Except I don’t. I’m not going to take your death out on him, especially not with you watching.
I can’t watch him.
Jackson moves over to my bed, hovering over the photos before finally picking up the one of you smiling at me from the bench. “What was the occasion?” he asks quietly.
“My parents’ anniversary, couple Aprils ago,” I say. “They’ve been together since they were seventeen, I think. I don’t know, my dad claims sixteen and my mom says seventeen, but I think they’re counting different anniversaries, if you get what I’m saying.” I shouldn’t look at that photo with Jackson here because I might crack, but I miss seeing your smile outside my memory, so I join him. “That was a chill afternoon.”
“Your parents have a good marriage?”
“Yeah, they’re great. I get confused sometimes when I walk into a room and find them talking and laughing. I figured they would’ve said everything that’s to be said by now, you know? Nope. They never shut the hell up, and I love it.” Only then do I realize he’s asking because of his own parents.
Jackson sits down on my desk chair, shrugging in his big coat. He glances up at me, clearly bummed out, then looks back at the wedding anniversary photo. “I’m not even going to pretend you haven’t had the same dreams as me. I know you loved Theo like that, too.”
Love. I love you; this isn’t a past-tense love.
He doesn’t wait for me to say anything before he goes on. “But people don’t take me seriously, like I’m not allowed to be destroyed over Theo and love because I’m not even old enough to legally drink. My dad actually had the balls to tell me I have the rest of my life to fall in love again.”
“Sounds like you need to skip some weekend visits when you’re back home.”
Jackson sneers. “He won’t notice or care. He works for the airline, so it’ll free up his weekend to either stay in another city and meet women at bars or—sorry, I’ll shut up.” Not entirely sure what he’s apologizing for, but he’s always saying sorry for something, right? Now he’s staring at me. “Do you feel defeated, too? It reminds me of this race I was in where I was in the lead and fell and busted my knee, and everything I was running toward was done.”
I hope this isn’t his sly way of telling me he thinks he was winning you over. If there was ever a time for him to be apologizing over something, it’s now. “I was running the same race, Jackson. And you weren’t in the lead.”
“I wasn’t talking about you, I swear. I just never counted myself worthy enough to score a dude like Theo. That’s what I meant about being in the lead,” Jackson says.
I avoid his eyes. “Sorry.”
“I get it. You and Theo grew up together and were each other’s firsts for pretty much everything. But you do get that I loved him, too, right? And he loved me, even though I sometimes had trouble believing it because of you. I don’t know why it matters so much to me, but I wish you wouldn’t write off what he and I had, especially since every couple has to start somewhere. You just beat me to the punch.”
I think I’m supposed to say something here. But I can’t.
“You’re pissed, aren’t you? Look, talk to me. Whenever Theo and I were disagreeing about something, we always talked it out immediately. If we let it build up, it would turn into something far worse than it had to be. Please talk to me, Griffin,” Jackson says.
Shutting up and shutting down have always been what I do best during confrontation. You called me out on that. Still, I’m trying much harder than usual not to say something unforgivable. It’s your forgiveness I’m gunning for here. Keeping my mouth shut about my problems with you is something I planned on being better at when we got together, especially after you told me how talking through stuff was working for you and Jackson. It’s not that I didn’t want to resolve any issues; I just didn’t want to do it in the heat of the moment, when there was a chance I’d say something undercooked and hurtful.