I got into my car and unfolded the paper again.
It wasn’t a request, and he obviously knew where I lived. George’s was within walking distance of my house. I wanted answers, but I wasn’t sure he deserved a chance to explain himself.
On the drive home, my mind went back to that last night in Ohio.
When the police had come up to us near the creek, I didn’t yell out so they could find us. I’d run. I’d run until the bottoms of my bare feet were bleeding. I would have run all the way to fucking Mexico with no shoes on for Jase. He had been the one who had eventually given up.
We had spent that night huddled together in a cornfield, shivering, until he had finally said, “I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can. We can. We can do anything together, remember?” I had argued.
I had convinced him to walk a few more miles with me. By the time dawn had arrived, Jase was carrying me on his back. We had found a main road and a convenience store, and he had told me to hide by the Dumpsters while he went in to get us food and to see if they sold at least some cheap plastic flip-flops. I had known he’d only had a few dollars. I had known it was the end. But I had followed his lead anyway.
The police had found me hiding where Jase had told me to wait. My feet had been raw and bloody, and I had been shaking as they led me to the police car. Jase was in the back of a different police cruiser, and when I had walked by, he mouthed the words I’m sorry and then started to cry. I had known he had turned us in. I had tried to fight my way out of the cop’s hands and run to him and bang on his window and sob so he could see how badly he was hurting me.
As they had pulled me along, I’d screamed, “How could you do this to us?” He had just dropped his head and cried even harder.
That was the last time I saw him. And then I was shipped off to live with Cyndi and Sharon.
All of the therapy I’d had, all the talking about my problems, had somehow minimized the love Jase and I had experienced to a childhood crush—something more manageable for me to deal with. I was so heartbroken after he turned us in, but reframing our relationship allowed me to move on from the nightmare of being neglected by my mother, my father, and then, finally, by Jase.
But reliving what we had gone through within the pages of his book brought everything back . . . both good and bad. And I was feeling it all again. My heart was growing right alongside the pain, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. It’s impossible to really hate someone if you don’t love them at least a little.
I ripped up Jason’s note and threw it on the floor of my car.
10. Reading Between the Lines
By the time I got home, I only had a couple of hours before I had to meet Trevor, so I read and read and read. I had only three chapters left when I finally stopped.
Everything after Jax and Emerson were caught was totally made up. Emerson goes on to live with her aunt but has a terrible experience in California, while Jax becomes a distant memory. Emerson struggles to get over her past and ends up marrying a guy right out of high school who turns out to be an abusive alcoholic, just like her father.
I didn’t know if I should be relieved it hadn’t gone that way, or if I should be even more pissed at Jase for tarnishing the good parts of my story. Those chapters made Jax and Emerson suddenly feel like characters in a book, not fictional embodiments of me and Jase, and it made the dirt road seem far away. Maybe what Jase said at the bookstore was right. Maybe this really was just a book.
I got ready for dinner with Trevor and then rushed past Cara at the breakfast bar. “See ya!”
“Where are you running off to now?”
I paused at her choice of words. “I’m going to dinner with Trevor.”
“You’re not going to tell me about J. Colby?” she asked, her eyes wide with concern.
“I told him hello, it was nice to see him, and that was the end of it. He found success, so good for him. I just want to move on.” In other words: run far, far away from him. “See ya.”
“Wait, what?” But before she could continue that train of thought, I zipped right out of the apartment and down the stairs in ten seconds flat.
I met Trevor at a tiny Italian restaurant we went to often. He was sitting at a small two-top table in the middle of the dining room, facing the front door. I walked up and pulled my own chair out and sat down, leaning over the table to kiss him as I shrugged my sweater off. “Hi.”
“Hey,” he said. “Are you in a better mood?”
“I’m okay.” I searched his eyes. “I read some more of the book and realized it’s really not about me.”
“It’s not?”
“Nope.” Trevor looked relieved. “I have a couple of chapters to go, but basically it’s rounding out to be your run-of-the-mill unrequited love story.” I huffed.
“Romeo and Juliet, huh?”
“Something like that.” No, nothing like that.