Loose (20 page)
Authors: Coo Sweet
So why did she feel so lousy every time she pictured herself creeping down that hallway? If the boys were feeling any remorse about their questionable tactics they sure didn’t show it. The two of them passed the paper between them like it was Willie Wonka’s golden ticket. Sage in particular was about to explode from the excitement.
"Ma!" he called across the room.
"Yes?" answered Nadine, from inside the restroom.
"Could you come here, please? Quick!"
Nadine rushed through the door, wiping her face with a paper towel.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"Nothing now," said Sage.
He extended the paper to her. His olive branch. Nadine scanned it.
“Okay. What’s this mean, Sage?” Nadine asked.
“It means Raven was pregnant before I ever had sex with her. She’s lying, Ma. That’s not my baby.”
“All this craziness is over? I’m not going to be a grandmother?” Nadine’s lips started to quiver. She pressed the paper to her chest and raised her head to the ceiling in a silent prayer of thanks.
Sage grabbed her in the best bear hug he could manage with one casted arm. Big grins were plastered across everyone’s face.
Peyton's had to be the cheesiest. He looked happier than a snaggle-toothed pirate on Halloween with a sack full of candy.
Happier than any of them would ever remember seeing him.
Chapter 21Sage slept fitfully the next morning. Every once in a while he’d get spasms in his arms and legs. His body would jerk in motions that almost resembled bizarre dance moves.
Nadine, with her face furrowed from brow to mouth, ran her hand over Sage’s creased forehead. She adjusted the covers he kept getting tangled in.
Inches away, on the other side of the room nothing stirred. Even the air seemed to just hang there, suspended in motion.
Peyton's bed was empty. It had been stripped of sheets and blankets. Just a lonely, naked pillow remained.
Jasmin burst through the door, out of breath. She froze at the sight of the vacant bed, clapping a hand over her mouth.
Nadine bolted to her side and hugged her. Jasmin sobbed in her arms.
"What happened, Mrs. Gentry? He was fine last night," said Jasmin. Nadine patted her back.
"I know, baby. It was something they missed on the tests. Damage to a blood vessel, the doctor said. Nobody picked up on it at the time. It happened so quickly. They tried everything to save him, but it was too late. Poor Gail is beside herself. I don’t even know what to say...how to comfort her."
“Oh, his mother. That poor woman,” Jasmin said. She sagged in Nadine's arms.
Nadine helped her to a chair and eased her down on to it.
Sitting there between the two beds, Jasmin finally noticed Sage. She’d been so upset earlier she’d barely glanced his way. The gravity of what losing Peyton would do to him slammed into her like a ton of bricks.
"And Sage! Oh, my god! He must be...what's he..." Jasmin sobbed.
That night, Jasmin got some of the answers she’d been waiting for. As she sat quietly near Sage’s bedside, she scanned his face for clues to what might be running through his head.
What Sage was thinking and feeling was that he had this obsessive need to talk about Peyton. It was like he was afraid if he didn’t keep memories of his friend fresh in his head, Peyton would be lost to him in more than just a physical sense.
He started by telling Jasmin the story of the boys’ first meeting--the fight over the pronunciation of Sage’s name. Then he shared things only a true best friend was privy to: how Peyton’s lust for life was born from his fear of dying young like his father; the fact that he had a hopeless fondness for insects—-especially ladybugs; Peyton’s habit of lighting up the entire house when his mother wasn’t home.
Jasmin laughed nervously at one anecdote after another unsure how much she should indulge Sage’s diarrhea of the mouth, yet scared to let him just simmer in a stew of painful memories.
“Isn’t it funny how you guys got to be tight as brothers? I mean considering how things started off with fists flying?” she mused.
Sage’s brow creased, and he picked at some imaginary flaw in his bed sheet. Jasmin could tell he was seriously turning the point over in his head before voicing an opinion.
“Yeah, it is. But I guess that was a good thing, because when we really needed each other the most, we were so solid nothing was strong enough to break that bond,” he said.
Sage went back to picking at the sheet. There was so much more he wanted to say. Needed to say. But now his mouth suddenly felt like it was full of quicksand, and the words just floundered around in there.
He parted his lips a couple of times--to free what he wanted to say, but even that didn’t help.
Jasmin stared at him with eyes full of pity. Lately she’d become quite the expert at burying feelings that were just too painful to introduce out loud to the world. Hell, dealing with her parents’ split had practically made her a Ph.D. in the field of numbing emotions.
She knew Sage had to have been struggling to keep his emotions from conquering him. Yet she also knew he’d feel so much better if he could find the strength to purge whatever was troubling him the most, so she continued to coax conversation from him.
“You mean the incident with Serenity?” she prompted warily, and to her great surprise, that was all the prodding Sage needed.
He smoothed the sheet then dropped his hands to his sides, palms up—-a classic sign of surrender.
“Uh-huh. If Peyton hadn’t been there with me, I don’t know if I would have survived that day. I loved that girl. I know it’s funny to say…I was only eleven, but I knew in my heart she was the one for me.” He paused to take a breath and plowed ahead.
“Serenity was so different from me. She was never scared to take risks. She took everything life threw at her and tossed that shit right back,” he beamed at the memory of his young love’s tenacity.
“So what happened? Why’d you let her go?” Jasmin asked.
Sage swung his head up and glared at her.
“I didn’t let her go,” he snapped. “She left me. Somehow that girl lost faith in herself…in her ability to handle the tough things. So her crazy ass went and fished a clothes hanger around in her womb trying to get rid of a baby she hadn’t planned on conceiving. She died in the process,” Sage spat.
Jasmin’s entire body shuddered violently. Partly from the horror of his narrative, but more so from the amount of rage that colored the words he’d spoken.
Sage would have to have been blind to not notice the visceral reaction he’d caused. Some of the fire behind his eyes began to smolder. He relaxed his shoulders a bit.
“Sorry. I know it’s pretty gruesome. That’s what messed me up the most. That she would stoop to something so desperate, so dangerous. And for what? To save face? To keep people from looking down on her?” Sage said. He shook his head in disgust. “I would have helped her. I don’t know how, but I would have figured something out. Except she never gave me a chance…never reached out. I guess because I was just a kid like her.”
He lightly tapped the back of his head against the wall behind him. Angry, hot tears slid down his cheeks. Jasmin quickly moved to the bed and wiped his face. She placed her hand on top of his and eased the white-knuckled grip he had on the bed rail.
“Sage, stop beating yourself up! You’re not to blame. Serenity made the choice to go that route. You had no control over it,” Jasmin assured him.
“I know. But I kept letting her down, even after she was dead. I kept failing her again and again,” said Sage.
Jasmin looked at him like he had two heads.
“How, Sage? How did you let her down after she was dead?”
Sage, looking more lucid and confident than he had all night, didn’t hesitate to answer.
“I broke my promise to her, Jas. I vowed over Serenity’s casket that I would never love another girl. She was supposed to be my girl forever. And I couldn’t do it. I caved to temptation. Now she won’t let me forget it,” he said, with tears gushing from his eyes.
Jasmin rushed to him. She gathered him in her arms and squeezed him tight.
“Sage, you were eleven. A little boy. No one would have expected you to keep a promise like that. You should never have put that kind of pressure on yourself. It was impossible for you to stick to it. Don’t you see that?”
Instead of answering, Sage just stared at her. He couldn’t have summoned the strength to speak even if someone offered him a million dollars. The pain he felt inside simply left no room for anything but the crush of guilt that weighed down on him.
That night in bed, Jasmin couldn’t turn off the dialogue and images running through her head. She kept seeing Sage…no, scratch that…she kept seeing the tortured shell of what used to be Sage, raking himself over the coals for something he’d had so little control over.
The pain in his voice played over and over in her ears like a badly scratched disc. As much as she hated to admit it, the torment Sage was going through reminded her of her father. When they had last spoken, she heard the same desperation in Lance that she’d seen in Sage. And she worried about that—-for both of them.
What must it feel like to walk around carrying a load of regret so enormous that it threatened to smother all the joy in your life? How could anyone look forward to a future so bleak? What could she do to help? Hell…did she even want to try to help?
It took an entire night of tossing and turning in her bed to silence the chaos in her brain. When she crawled from between the sheets with the first crack of light shining through her window, she grabbed her phone and speed-dialed Lance’s number.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Lance croaked. “Did something happen?” He pulled himself upright and jammed the phone tight to his ear.
Jasmin bit her lip when she felt the first tears slide down her face.
“I’m fine, Daddy. I just needed to hear your voice,” Jasmin sobbed.
Lance’s brow creased, and he felt his breath quicken.
“You sure, Jas? Tell me what’s really going on there.”
“Nothing. Honest. I miss you, and I needed to hear your voice. I love you, Dad. And I’m sorry for leaving things so up in the air the last time we talked. That’s all. Really.”
Jasmin placed her hand over her heart to slow the beat that raced inside her chest. She let the tears flow freely just because it felt so good to turn them loose.
“Oh, baby…you don’t have to apologize. I put you and your mom through some awful mess. I’m the one who’s sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”
Jasmin squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled deeply. She blew the breath out with a heavy sigh.
“I can, Daddy…I have.”
That’s when Lance started to sob. Big, deep, gut-wrenching sobs. He swept a shaky hand across his face.
“Thank you, Jas. Thank you.”
Later, when Jasmin joined Sonnet for breakfast, there was little she could do to disguise her splotchy face and puffy eyelids, but the aura of serenity that enveloped the space around her more than made up for her ragged appearance.
Staring at Jasmin over the rim of her coffee cup, Sonnet raised an eyebrow at the flesh-and-bone contradiction that had just floated into the room.
“Morning, Mom. How’re you?” Jasmin went straight to her mother’s side and planted a kiss on her cheek.
Sonnet set her cup on the table. She placed an arm around Jasmin’s waist and peered into her daughter’s eyes.
“I’m fine, sweetie, and you?” Sonnet drawled, with a tinge of angst in her voice. Jasmin beamed. She wrapped an arm around Sonnet.
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