Pieces (17 page)

N
AOMI WOKE TO THE SOUND OF HER
phone ringing. Ignoring it, she rolled over in bed, hoping to feel Jesse next to her, but his side was empty and cold. She opened her eyes and sat up, relieved to see his luggage still on the floor and his shoes by her desk. He was probably in the shower. She lay back down, smiling. Everything felt perfect, and then her phone rang again. Annoyed, she reached over and grabbed it off her desk.

Karen Jensen.

Swallowing a lump in her throat, she answered. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, sweetheart. I hope I’m not calling during your classes. You told me Thursdays are free in the morning.”

Naomi glanced at her clock. It was ten-thirty. “Yeah, I have class in an hour.”

“Oh, good.”

A long pause. Naomi stared at the ceiling and wondered when Jesse would get back.

“So, how are you doing?” her mother asked.

“Fine.”

“That’s it? Fine? How are your classes?”

“Fine.” Naomi stared at Jesse’s luggage on the floor. It bothered her that she couldn’t tell her mother about him, but he was right—it wouldn’t go over well. Her throat felt scratchy when she swallowed. She threw off her blankets as the room seemed to shrink.

“So,” her mother said, drawing out the word as long as possible, “I’ll see you in a week, then?”

Naomi slid out of bed, her body sweating as she stood in the middle of her room. “I’m not coming for Thanksgiving,” she said, her voice so weak it sounded like a twig about to break. “I’m sorry, but I have to ... I have to ....” She squeezed the phone and gulped. “There’s a guy here I want to spend some time with.”

“The one you were texting over the summer break?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s ... that’s great, Naomi.” Her mother’s voice wavered. “But are you sure? You always come home for Thanksgiving.”

“I know.” Walking across the room, she opened her door and peered down the hallway. The bathroom door was open, the room dark, so Jesse wasn’t in there. Becca’s bedroom door was cracked open, but it looked dark inside. That was expected since she left at seven every morning.

“It’s okay if you stay there for the holiday,” her mother replied, as if she had final say over Naomi’s decision, “but maybe you can drive up to Elizabeth’s for dinner on Thanksgiving Day. It’s only two hours away. Or does this boy have family in Cambridge you’ll be eating dinner with?”

Elizabeth lived in Maine. The last thing Naomi wanted to do was drive up the coast and spend time with an aunt she barely knew. She decided to stay away from that topic. “He’s not a ‘boy’, Mom. He’s twenty-nine.” Silence. Naomi stood at the top of the stairs, waiting. She wanted to hear her mother’s reaction to little facts dropped here and there about a man she had no idea was Jesse. If Naomi’s instincts were right, her mother would urge her to pursue any relationship outside of Jesse, even with an older man. That started an angry fire inside her gut.

“Twenty-nine is a good age,” her mother finally said, her voice slow and even. “I’m assuming he’s through school and has a career.”

“Yes.” Starting down the stairs, Naomi peeked into the living room and saw Jesse sitting on the couch, his back to her as he spoke quietly into his phone. In front of him on the coffee table was his laptop. He bent forward and scrolled down a page.

“Mom, I need to go,” Naomi said, trying to suppress the heat boiling inside her. Of course her mother would be okay with her dating a nice, upstanding twenty-nine-year-old with an established career.

“Alright, sweetheart, but are you sure about Thanksgiving? Elizabeth would love to have you up there.”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Or maybe we can fly out there to be with you. Then we can meet this man.”

Naomi tensed. “No, Mom, please. It’s not that serious.”

“Can you at least tell me his name?”

Wincing, Naomi took a few more steps down the stairs. By now, Jesse had heard her talking and looked up from his computer. He closed the lid and said something into the phone before lowering it from his ear.

“Good morning,” he mouthed, smiling warmly.

She returned the smile, even though she felt like puking. She wasn’t lying to her mother, but she wasn’t telling the whole truth, either. It made her uneasy, as if she was trying to keep a handful of threads connected to everything in her life, and they were all unraveling and snapping at a tremendous rate. She kept trying to tie knots in them, but it wasn’t working. Finn was gone. School was nearly gone. And the thread to her mother had fifty knots, each one twisting away until Naomi stood staring at it, waiting for the final break.

When she looked up, she saw Jesse. He was stability and strength, a hand held out to her, thicker than any thread. He wanted to take care of her, simple as that. He wanted to make her happy. He didn’t make her feel obligated to finish school. He didn’t make her feel upset about her unresolved emotions over the kidnapping. He wanted her just the way she was. If she asked for help, he would give it without judgment. That was more than her mother was trying to do. It was more than anyone could ever do.

“His name is Finn,” Naomi lied, feeling like crap.

“That’s a nice name.”

Naomi couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not. “I’ll keep you posted,” she mumbled.

“Alright, I love you, sweetheart.”

“Love you too, Mom.” She hung up and walked the rest of the way down the stairs.

“What was that about?” Jesse asked, standing to pull her into his arms as she reached him. Hugging him, she trembled with a mixture of fear and sadness and anger. It was a wicked concoction. Bitter.

“My mom will never understand,” she said. “She won’t be happy until I’ve graduated with honors and married some perfect man who can make me forget about you.”

Jesse pulled her away and looked her squarely in the face. “Do you want to forget about me?”

“Never,” she answered, meaning it with every ounce of passion left inside her. “Sometimes I think you’re the only person left in the world who understands every single part of me. I’m tired of everyone manipulating me. I see it happening, but I’m too scared to do anything about it. I’m tired of avoiding choices and situations and people. I want to live. I want to move on.”

He brushed some hair away from her forehead. “And Italy is the perfect place for all of that,” he said, leaning in to kiss her.

She breathed him in until she felt drunk on his words and his mouth and everything he did to hold her together in one piece.

“Italy,” she whispered.

T
HANKSGIVING DAY
, Naomi packed her last bag and stood at the open front door to wait for her and Jesse’s taxi to the airport. Becca had left a few days ago to be with her family, so the house was quiet and felt empty with all of Naomi’s belongings boxed up and sent to a storage shed in Cambridge. She had paid in advance for a year of storage and figured after that she could deal with getting rid of everything or paying for a longer period of time.

“You’re sure about this?” Jesse asked, coming down the stairs with the last of his things. He approached her from behind and wrapped his arms around her waist. She snuggled into him and glanced down at the two bags she had packed.

“We’ve paid for the tickets,” she said calmly. “I’ve sold my car, paid out my lease, cashed out my bank account, and told the school I’m not coming back. You’ve accepted the job. There’s no way I can change my mind now. Everything is settled.”

Jesse slid a hand down her side and took hold of her fingers. “You’re white as a sheet and your skin is cold.”

Swallowing a bitter taste in her mouth, she looked out the window as cars drove down the street. “I’m excited, I promise. It’s
Italy.”

“Uh-huh.”

She tensed and let out a sigh. “I’m nervous, okay? Scared out of my freaking mind.”

Squeezing his hand, she focused on a maple tree in the front yard. Most of its branches were bare by now. The yard service had long since bagged up the leaves and taken them away. “In fact,” she whispered, “I’ve never been so scared in my whole life, even when I woke up in that motel room with you watching me. You had that poetry book, remember? I thought that was the weirdest thing Id ever seen—a kidnapper reading poetry.”

Jesse let out a grunt. “I guess that would seem odd. I’m sorry, Naomi.”

“For what? Reading poetry?”

“No, for the motel room. That day. When you woke up, I wasn’t sure what to do. You’d been unconscious for two days. You’d woken a bunch of times, but only for a few seconds, then you were out again. Seriously, it freaked me the hell out. I thought for sure you were going to die from internal injuries or something. I didn’t want to be responsible for your death.”

“I don’t remember that. Maybe a tiny bit. Maybe.” She shook her head, trying as hard as she could to reach the memory, but it was all so dark, like puzzle pieces made of shadow.

“Eric was out selling what we’d stolen,” he continued, “so I was trying to pass the time reading poetry since it always relaxes me. Then you woke up, this time a lot more alert than before. You kept asking where you were. You wouldn’t shut up, so I told you flat-out you were kidnapped and we weren’t going to let you go—not that you seemed to hear me, but maybe you did.”

She tensed in Jesse’s embrace as something clicked in her mind. For years she had tried to piece together the first few days she had been captive. There were only a few snippets—pictures in the fog, telling Brad she could walk home on her own, the parking lot, the headlights coming at her. Then blackness, the smell of leather, and finally Jesse.

“I must have heard you,” she whispered, “even though I don’t remember it. All I remember is opening my eyes and seeing you there. Everything was fuzzy in my head, but somehow I knew you had kidnapped me and you weren’t alone. There was something about you—the poetry—it was all I could hold on to.”

His hand tightened around hers. “You didn’t come out of it completely until I started asking you to remember things. Eric and I wanted to feel justified in taking you. That’s why I kept asking what you’d seen that night.”

Before now, Jesse had never spoken so frankly about kidnapping her. It sent a strange feeling down her spine, as if her muscles were tying themselves into complicated knots. She kept her focus on the bare branches outside.

“That’s all over,” she whispered. “It’s over and this is my choice now—to be with you. You aren’t forcing me to do anything. Eric is in prison. I’m not ... I’m not kidnapped anymore.”

Jesse let go of her hand and turned her around to face him. He almost looked angry, the way he lowered his eyebrows and clenched his jaw. “Of course you’re not kidnapped,” he said, emphasizing each word. “Why would you say that?”

She looked down at her luggage. “I don’t know.”

“Naomi, answer me.” He took her face in his hands and forced her to look at him. “Tell me why you’d say that. I need to know if there’s any way I can help.”

His eyes were so green, so intense. She thought of every counselor she had ever spoken to, every lie she had told herself about feeling free, every disappointed look her mother had given her. She thought of every time she had imagined the bedroom and the locked door and Eric asking her if she would stay—and how she could never tell him no.

“Because,” she said, her voice cracking, “I’ve never felt free since that day you took me. I’ve felt lighter, more in control, but never free.”

His hands dropped from her face, confusion and disappointment filling his expression.

“It’s not you,” she cried, “it’s not you. It’s something deeper I can’t shake, no matter how many counselors I talk to, no matter how many times my mother tells me I should be over it ... I can’t do it.” Her body shook with her sobs now, each one so strong she thought it might bring her to her knees. Jesse wrapped her in his embrace, not squeezing, and she sensed he knew she might break into pieces if he did.

“Italy,” she said, calming herself down enough to speak again. “That’s where I can start over.”

Jesse kissed the side of her head. “I hope so,” he said as Naomi heard the taxi pull up. “I hope so.”

XVI

“T
RASTEVERE IS THE HEART OF ROME,” JESSE
explained to Naomi as she stepped out of the Italian taxi. “It’s one of the untouched cities, they say.”

She looked up at a towering apartment building covered in limp ivy. Across the narrow street a similar building stood. Everything seemed old here, almost crumbling. A few shiny bicycles leaning against the buildings were the only things that made her believe she hadn’t been transported back in time.

Blinking from the light drizzle of rain, Naomi wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. This was not how she had imagined Italy—cold and ancient.

“Heart of Rome, huh? Well, it’s beautiful,” she said, giving Jesse the warmest smile she could despite the cold. It was at least fifty degrees, but the rain and thick, humid air made everything seem colder. Despite all of that, she liked that Jesse had rented out a place in a part of Rome almost untouched by modern architecture and changes. It almost felt medieval.

“I already love it here,” Jesse said, sweeping her into his arms and kissing her. She laughed and let him twirl her around until the taxi driver cleared his throat and opened the trunk. He said something in Italian and Jesse let go of Naomi to help unload the bags. When everything was unloaded and Jesse had paid the taxi driver, Naomi grabbed what she could and followed Jesse to the door, where he pressed a buzzer and said his name. The door clicked and he opened it wide for her to walk inside.