by Mila Gray
Riley clears his throat and looks around at the expectant crowd. ‘I . . . we . . . have some news to share,’ he announces.
There’s a ripple of noise, a Mexican wave of chatter that skips right over his dad who continues to glare at the two of them.
‘Jo and I are getting married.’
There’s a moment’s pause. Everyone seems to be waiting on Jessa’s dad’s response before they react. Riley ploughs on into the silence. ‘And we’re having a baby.’
The silence stretches a moment too long and so I let out a whoop and start clapping loudly. Thankfully everyone follows suit. The women rush forwards to surround them, but I look over at Jessa’s dad, no longer the king surrounded by sycophants but a lone statue standing on the periphery. He’s staring at Riley with a look of total disgust. I watch him set his glass down on a table and march towards the house. Jessa, frozen at my side, watches him too.
Well, at least he’s not causing a scene, I think to myself. It could be worse. But then Riley looks up, scans the crowd, and seeing his father walking away he strides after him. Fuck. What is he doing?
‘You got nothing to say?’ Riley asks, grabbing his father’s arm and stopping him mid-stride. ‘Nothing at all? Like maybe “Congratulations, son, that’s wonderful news”?’
I feel like walking over there and dragging Riley away. It’s like watching a kid at a zoo poking a lion through the bars, but for some reason I can’t move.
His father turns to him, the look of disappointment so clear on his face that it makes me want to run in front of him so I can shield Riley from it. ‘What is there to say?’ he snaps. ‘You seem determined to screw up your life at every opportunity.’
The crowd has fallen silent. This is what they want: drama. The beady-eyed wives turn to watch, biting their lips with glee. This is going to give them weeks of gossip fodder. Riley stands face to face with his father, his jaw pulsing, his nostrils flaring. He looks ready to throw a punch, and I finally take a step towards him to pull him back, but Jo’s already there. She walks up to him and slips her hand into his, drawing him away with more dignity than I know I could muster in the same situation. Riley gives his father one last look so filled with hatred that I flinch and take a step backwards, and then he turns around and starts following Jo.
‘Come on,’ I whisper to Jessa, jerking my head towards them. I want them to know that we’re on their side. I want to shield them from all the stares and gossip, and I know Riley’s going to need someone to rant at. But Jessa stalks right past me in the opposite direction. I turn and see her stopping right in front of her father.
‘Why are you such an asshole?’ she asks him in a voice that cuts through the crowd. Everyone turns around, anxious for round two.
Oh shit, I groan inwardly. Jessa, what are you doing?
‘What did you just say?’ her father asks in a voice that rumbles like thunder.
‘I asked why you have to be such an asshole,’ Jessa repeats.
There’s a communal inhalation of air. I’m stunned into silence along with everyone else.
‘Get inside,’ her father spits, his face turning red.
Jessa shakes her head at him, her own eyes flashing dangerously.
‘Get inside NOW!’ her father roars.
Someone gasps. Someone else drops a glass. The waiters are standing frozen, trays hovering in mid-air. Jessa’s mom makes a sound that’s something between a whimper and a sob. Shit. I need to do something. I step forwards and put my hand on the small of Jessa’s back.
‘Let’s go,’ I whisper under my breath, trying to steer her away. But Jessa’s body goes rigid at my touch. She’s breathing fast, fury setting her mouth into a line.
‘Get your hands off her,’ her dad hisses at me under his breath. There are two bright spots of fire on his cheeks. He’s struggling to keep his temper. I know that if there weren’t three dozen witnesses right now he’d probably go for my throat.
‘Get inside,’ he orders Jessa again. ‘Go to your room.’
Jessa just glares at him, her body vibrating like a tuning fork. She seems stuck. She can’t speak but can’t move either. Her dad lifts his head, sees everyone staring at him and takes hold of Jessa by the arm. She lets out a muted cry. Straightaway I’m between them. Without even thinking I pull his arm off her and step in front of Jessa, my blood pounding like a drum in my ears.
‘Calm down,’ I hiss at him.
‘Get your hands off me,’ he spits back, the colour rising in his cheeks.
I look down and realize my hand is locked around his arm.
‘Not until you calm down,’ I answer.
He throws off my grip with a violent shrug of his shoulder. ‘Get out of my house,’ he says. ‘Who even invited you?’
I stand there, my feet glued to the ground. My anger’s a living thing, coursing through me like electricity. Suddenly it’s just me and Kingsley facing off against each other, and everyone else fades into the background. It’s the zone I drop into when I’m on sniper duty. I feel eerily calm.
‘Kit.’
It takes me several seconds to realize Jessa is calling my name. She’s behind me, her hands on my arms, pulling me backwards. ‘Kit,’ she says again in a low, urgent voice. ‘I think you’d better leave.’
Her words sting me, shaking me out of my calm. She’s ordering me to go? While I’m doing my damnedest to protect her? I turn, confused, to face her and am struck by how terrified she looks. Over her shoulder I catch sight of her mom, a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, her eyes watery and vacant, staring around like a lost kid at a carnival, while a ring of other faces stares at me in utter shock. Shit. Jessa’s right. I need to go.
‘Sure,’ I say, my voice catching in my throat. ‘Wouldn’t want to cause a scene.’
I shrug off Jessa’s hands. I’m angry. Not just at her father, but also at her, for treating me like I’m the one who’s in the wrong here. Holding my head up I make for the door.
‘And don’t ever step foot in this house again or let me see you talking to my daughter,’ her father mutters to me as I pass. ‘You’re no good, just like your father.’
He could have said anything about me and I could have taken it on the chin, but insulting my father pushes me over the edge. I spin around: ‘My father’s worth a hundred of you,’ I growl.
With relish I see the look of surprise that splashes over Kingsley’s face. I step right in front of him, realizing that I’m the same height as him and that even if he has ten ranks on me I no longer care. ‘At least my father owned his demons. At least he fought them. At least he doesn’t claim to be a better man than anyone else when clearly he’s not.’
Kingsley’s face turns from red to white as the blood sluices from it. I know I’m acting recklessly, I know I’ve stepped into the danger zone, but I don’t stop, can’t stop. I’m on a roll, and seven years of taking his shit and watching him terrorize his children while I stand by in silence has finally taken its toll.
‘He doesn’t make his wife and daughter terrified to be around him,’ I shout. ‘He doesn’t look down on his son and make him feel like he’s never good enough. He doesn’t control his daughter and make her feel like she has to walk on eggshells around him. He lives his life trying to make amends for all the wrongs he committed, trying to honour the memory of my mother, trying to be the best parent and grandfather and man he can.’
I take a breath. Faces – aghast, open-mouthed – blur at the edges of my vision, but I blink them away. Kingsley’s my only focus.
‘And here you are,’ I say, gesturing at him. ‘You have this amazing, perfect family. You have a son you should be fucking proud of because he’s the best man and the best soldier I’ve ever had the honour to know, and a daughter who’s so beautiful and so incredible she takes my breath away every time I look at her and who I’d walk over hot coals to see smile. And you don’t even notice her. You don’t do anything to make her smile. You don’t even know what makes her smile.’
> With satisfaction I see Kingsley’s mouth dropping open and then closing as each of my words slams into him with the force of a bullet.
‘Do you see how scared they are of you?’ I say. I shake my head, disgust edging out my anger. ‘You don’t deserve them.’
Finally Kingsley gathers himself. ‘Get out!’ he roars.
‘Kit, just leave. Please.’
I glance around. Jessa is standing there, eyes downcast, tears rolling down her cheeks. She can’t look at me and it’s only then I realize that instead of being her champion, her knight to the rescue, I’ve just done the worst thing possible. I’ve humiliated her in front of an audience. Shit. Shit. Shit. I scan the faces surrounding me – see the delight, the wonder, the shock, the utter train wreck I’ve made of the party. And there – there’s Jessa’s mom, a quivering mess in the middle of it all.
I open my mouth to say something to Jessa – to apologize, to beg her forgiveness – but my brain blanks. What the hell have I just done? I thought I was making things better and I’ve made them a thousand times worse.
‘Just go.’
It’s Riley this time. He’s glaring at me, though under the glare I sense both an apology and a warning. ‘I got it, Kit,’ he says tersely. ‘You can leave.’ He nods towards the door and then lowers his voice to me. ‘You’re only making it worse.’
I look back at Jessa, my heart tumbling to a standstill, aware the whole time of Kingsley breathing heavily right in front of me, the anger beating off him in waves. But there’s Jessa, still staring at her feet, her shoulders shaking. I can’t just leave her like this. ‘Come with me,’ I say, the words spilling over my lips before I can stop them.
She shakes her head at me. ‘I can’t,’ she says. Her eyes are red-rimmed, almost glassy with confusion, as though she can’t believe I would ask that of her.
I stare at her, willing her to understand I was only trying to help, that I love her, but she drops her gaze and it feels like a judge’s gavel slamming against a block. With my heart dive-bombing in my chest, I swivel on my heel and march towards the door.
36
Jessa
There’s a silence as thick as snowfall, obliterating everything. My ears sing with static until a waiter rests his tray down and the glasses clink, and as though it’s the signal everyone’s been waiting for the whispers start back up. I can tell everyone thinks this is just the interval between acts. There’s a humid anticipation in the air. Everyone’s eyes stay locked on my father, waiting for the thunderclap that will announce the next act.
I can’t move. My breathing is coming in small, broken gasps, and my focus is fixed on my father. If there were no witnesses I know he’d explode right now. Furniture would fly, curses would rain down and my mom and I would duck for cover. But with so many eyes on him he’s having to keep a lid on it. It’s like watching a bubbling pan. His face has gone all shades of red and sweat beads around the edges of his hairline.
He gives a grimacing sort of smile and holds his hands up to the crowd. ‘Well, I guess the show’s over, folks,’ he says with a forced laugh. ‘He was a gatecrasher anyway. Who invited him?’ He looks jokingly around at the crowd and there are a few guffaws that sicken me. That’s his response? To turn it into a joke at Kit’s expense?
Suddenly all that Kit just said hits me with the force of a clanging bell, vibrating through me, making me unsteady on my feet. He just stood up to my father. No one has ever done that before. And he put his job and his life on the line to do it – to stand up for me and my brother and my mom. And I just told him to leave. What the hell did I do?
I start running towards the back door.
A hand grabs me around the wrist and yanks me to an abrupt stop. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
It’s my father. The forced smile still on his face makes him look deranged.
‘I’m going to find Kit,’ I say through gritted teeth, trying to tug myself free.
My father frowns briefly at me, his grip tightening. ‘You walk out that door now, don’t bother coming back,’ he says.
I stare at him. His words take a moment to sink in. He can’t be serious? The smile fades, and for the briefest of moments the shades pull back and I see a glimmer in his eyes that I can only describe as despair, and a splinter of terror too. It’s as if he’s staring down over a precipice into a black abyss, and it startles me to see my father look so vulnerable and so scared. For a moment I waver, but then I remember the way he just spoke to Kit and something inside me comes undone. All the invisible chains I’ve been wearing slip from my shoulders and crash to the ground at my feet.
‘It’s not just his father who’s worth a hundred of you,’ I say.
I wrench my arm from my father’s grip and run inside the house. I slam the back door behind me and race through into the hallway, expecting at any moment to hear footsteps stampeding after me. As I make for the front door, through blurry vision my eyes snag on the sight of my dad’s car keys hanging from their hook.
I snatch them and run outside. Kit’s truck is nowhere to be seen. Shaking now, adrenaline finally catching up with me, I stagger to my dad’s car parked in the driveway and race around to the driver’s side. It takes me a frustrating thirty seconds to figure out how to move the seat forward and how to drive with only two pedals, and by the time I ease off the handbrake the front door has flown open. I stamp on the gas but someone steps in front of the car and I have to emergency brake, my head almost smashing into the wheel.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
It’s Riley. He gestures at me to wind down the window.
‘I’m going to find Kit,’ I tell him.
‘Since when do you have your licence?’ he asks me.
‘Since yesterday,’ I answer.
Riley looks stunned. But then he steps aside. ‘OK, fine. Are you OK?’ he asks.
I nod vigorously. I’m suddenly more than OK. I’m free. ‘Are you?’ I ask Riley.
He gives me a weak smile and rests his hand on the roof of the car. ‘When you find Kit, tell him – ’ he pauses, frowning – ‘thanks from me.’
37
Kit
I slip my key into my front door, the voice in my head yelling at me so loudly about what a dick I am that I barely hear the engine roar of a car, and it’s only when I hear the screech of brakes that I turn around.
Jessa’s dad’s car slides to a halt at an angle, the front wheels mounting the sidewalk. Crap. He’s followed me. My heart rate spikes as adrenaline floods my system, but then Jessa throws open the door and starts running towards me. She throws herself into my arms, crying and out of breath.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbles against my neck.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say at the same time, pressing her close, unable to believe that she’s here, that she followed me. Thirty seconds ago I was sunk in a dark pit of misery and despair, and now I’m standing in the sunlight again.
‘I was a dick,’ I say, the words flooding out of me. ‘I should have kept my mouth shut.’
‘No. You stood up to him. For the first time, someone stood up to him.’
‘You stood up to him first. You called him an asshole.’
Jessa wipes her tears away with the back of her arm. ‘Well, he was. And he just kicked me out. Which makes him twice the asshole.’
‘He kicked you out?’
‘He said if I followed you then I shouldn’t bother coming home.’ Her eyes brim with tears again.
Fuck. I stare at her. She followed me anyway? I pull her against me again. ‘It’s OK,’ I reassure her. ‘You can stay here. Everything’s going to be OK.’
Her fingers dig into my shoulders, her body trembles.
‘You want to come inside?’ I ask her, turning towards the door, my mind spinning with everything.
Jessa shakes her head at me. ‘Can we go somewhere? Anywhere. I don’t care where. I just want to get away from here.’
I nod and take her hand, pulling her towards the tr
uck.
We drive mostly in silence, Jessa leaning against my arm, and there’s a comfort in the silence, in the knowledge that words are unnecessary, that we know exactly what the other is thinking and feeling without needing to speak. With just twelve hours left before I have to report to the base, every second is weighted, shot through with longing and sadness.
When I park, in almost exactly the same spot I brought Jessa to on that first date, the sun is sinking heavily beneath the ridge and the sky’s going up in flames. I grab the blankets I have stashed in the back and lay them out on the flatbed of the truck, taking Jessa’s hand to pull her up alongside me.
We lie down in each other’s arms and watch as the sky fades to black and the stars switch on one by one.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ Jessa whispers. ‘The first night we were here I didn’t really notice them so much. I was too nervous.’
I grin at her. I didn’t notice them much either.
‘Come here,’ I say, pulling her towards me. While the stars are beautiful, I’ve only got twelve more hours to drink in this girl. I tip her chin up and kiss her slowly, loving the way her body relaxes instantly against mine and her hands run through my hair.
In silence we start to undress. I watch in silence as she rises up on her knees and undoes the buttons on her sundress, slipping it down over her shoulders and shimmying out of it. In the starlight she gleams like something otherworldly, or like the phosphorescence I saw once on the ocean. She helps me off with my shirt and pants and then, naked, we burrow beneath the blankets.
Pressed together, our legs entwined, our lips find each other and we kiss. I’m desperate to memorize every taste and every sensation and it seems like she is too. Her fingers skim my shoulders, my chest, my arms, and with every sigh she makes, with every moan, as my own hands and lips trace their own path along her limbs and over her hips and waist, the blood pumps faster in my veins.