Jamie
Jamie was up earlier than usual, but he made himself follow his routine and waited to go shower. Mom’s room had the master bath, but the two guest rooms shared one, and somehow he’d ended up across from it instead of next to it. Either way it was kind of a pain, but in this house nobody so much as opened their bedroom door without being fully dressed. He had to take all his clothes with him, and heaven forbid Mom ever catch sight of him with a towel around his waist.
Some of his feelings about touching other people had to be tied up in all this weirdness about bare skin. He couldn’t say it was sinful, exactly, because Mom had never tied it to the Bible, but it was certainly shameful. Jamie didn’t know about Allan but he, personally, had only gone into Mom and Dad’s bedroom once in the middle of the night after a nightmare. Their absolute shock at the impropriety of crossing such a sacred threshold was enough for him, thanks.
He was also gearing up to tell Mom, hopefully in a casual tone but in a way that couldn’t be mistaken: Jo’s my girlfriend. It was best to tell her before she heard it from anyone else, and he didn’t want her brushing it off. And if the thought of simply telling Mom made his heart pound this hard, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to actually try kissing Jo, after all. Jamie didn’t have to worry that Jo would reject or dismiss him.
Mom, however, took all that off the table when she looked up from her phone, bright-eyed and almost giggly, to announce “Stanley Trevor Davis was shanked last night. He’s in the hospital. They’re not sure he’s going to live.”
It wasn’t like he disbelieved her, but Jamie paused just inside the kitchen to pull out his own phone, and yeah, Google filled in the rest of the news for him. Everything was a variation on how the universe decided Davis deserved the death penalty. Without saying a word to Mom, Jamie turned on his heel, grabbed his wallet and his keys, slipped his bare feet into his loafers, and dialed Jo as he went out the door.
Walk or drive? It wasn’t super far, but this seemed like a time when speed was of the essence. When was that announced? Did Jo have her phone set to ping her the way Mom did?
If Jo wasn’t answering, was it because she was on the phone with her parents or …?
Michigan was hands-free, and he’d never set up the Bluetooth thing in his car, so Jamie left a quick “Jo, I’m on my way” message and hung up. It was better to drive, to get there sooner even though he’d have nothing to do but pound on the door and maybe go around to peer in the windows, just to make sure …
What, to make sure Jo was okay? She couldn’t honestly be okay, but the panic told him that he realized there was a gaping chasm of how not okay she might be.
Jamie all but screeched to a stop in front of the customs house and threw his car into park as Amanda came out of the front door, hunched and hurried with a phone to her ear. She had a key ring in the other hand, because of course she had a key to Jo’s apartment, and Jamie quickly got out. “Amanda!”
She whirled and blinked, at first not recognizing him and then all but melting with relief. “It’s Jamie,” Amanda said into her phone, and it wasn’t just the fact that her hair was frizzy on its best days that made her look frazzled. She had crocs on her feet, which were most definitely not be seen in public shoes for Amanda Reed, and Jamie was pretty sure she had a pajama top on over her jeans. Amanda pulled the phone away from her mouth. “Mary-Beth. She’s really freaked out about something.” Then, in a whisper: “She’s scaring me.”
Okay, so Jamie wasn’t the only one worried about Jo. “Just let me in,” he told Amanda soothingly, trying to convey calm competence and not the vibes of a creeper who’d actually never set foot in there before.
There was a squawk from Amanda’s cell phone and she raised it up to her ear again before relaying, “Mary-Beth says she doesn’t have your number.”
Honestly this was just a delay, but Jamie got his phone out and asked for Mary-Beth’s. This time he just texted It’s Jamie and waited for Amanda to confirm that Jo’s mom got it.
“She’s like really worried,” Amanda added unnecessarily, but she went to Jo’s door and put the key in the lock. “I already tried knocking,” she tossed off as an afterthought, in case Jamie worried that maybe she was too free about entering—or at least opening—her tenants’ spaces.
Jamie just nodded, thanked her, and stepped inside. It was dim, but that wasn’t the only reason he shut the door quickly. He wanted his eyes to adjust, sure, but he also wasn’t sure what Jo in a self-destructive state would look like. He’d seen her in sundresses and there weren’t scars, but maybe she only picked hems of a certain length. At every game night she’d gone for the nonalcoholic punch, so maybe that was her coping mechanism. Isolating, binging, purging … if Mary-Beth Lewis was also worried, then it wasn’t just Jamie overreacting.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” a voice muttered, and though it was obviously Jo, there was something off about it. Not slurred, maybe, but …
Jamie moved a couple steps further inside. “Amanda was ready to burst in.” The gray blobs were converging into recognizable shapes, but she wasn’t on the couch.
Her humorless chuckle placed her in a ball on the floor between the couch and coffee table. “Amanda doesn’t know the whole story. Did you know,” she continued, slowly and maybe reflectively or maybe trying to hide an altered state, “that I was just thinking last night about how something was going to have to drag this out of me?”
Okay, she’d been crying. At least some of the strangeness was a stuffy nose, and there were three Kleenex boxes on the coffee table, a little trash can nearby, and a drift of white scattered around it. His phone buzzed in his hand, though, and he cursed, at least in part because it looked so bright in the dark room. It was a message from Mary-Beth, though, and he thought he had to pass this one on: “Your mom says you haven’t answered any of her texts or calls and she wants to know how much you’ve had to drink.”
This sound was more of a groan than a laugh as she shifted and started gathering up the escaped Kleenex. “Tell her I haven’t even had a white wine spritzer, and tell her I’m going to need your full attention for like two hours so …” She moved her own phone and it lit up, revealing a cluster of notifications. “She can text you all she wants, but you’re not checking your phone again until eleven. Okay?”
Jamie nodded, not sure she could see him. The blinds or curtains or whatever Amanda installed over the windows were closed. “I can do that.”
“And then,” Jo sighed, levering herself to her feet, “I don’t suppose you could DoorDash us some breakfast? I’ve seen the guy come into Babycakes.”
He nodded. “I can do that, too.”
“Okay. I’m going to shower, but, uh.” She shook her head a little. “If you want to babysit my razor, I’ll bring it out to you first.”
Shit, that was an honest offer. Jamie swallowed and tried to mentally force his voice to come out evenly. “I will if you need me to.”
This shake was more emphatic. “I had a friend in college who cut. She said she’d never pictured herself getting older, so she didn’t imagine she’d have to live with the scars and keep being reminded of the bad stuff.” She only had enough energy to shrug one shoulder, and it was heartbreaking even in near-silhouette. “I’m going to shower. If it’s going to take them a while, can you make some coffee?”
For the third time, he nodded. “I can do that, too.” Then he pulled out his phone to text Mary-Beth, making sure to include the Simpsons reference in case that was Jo’s way to reassure her mom it was really from her, before placing their order.
Chapter Twenty-Three – coming October 23
