Tastes Like Winter (9 page)

He follows my gaze, and he immediately jerks and leans forward to grab
his phone. Our legs separate.

“It’s late. I should probably get you on that train.”

I rub my hands together reluctantly. “Probably should, but don’t
worry, I can walk to South Station by myself. You don’t need to.”

“It’s my pleasure. Besides, I promised Martha I would.”

He ends with what I am learning is his signature wink.

I grab my bag and deposit my now-empty cup in the bin by the door.
South Station is a fifteen-minute walk away, and after covering most of the
distance in silence, I’m afraid weird Jake has returned. I don’t know what set
him off this time, and as I am about to work up the nerve and ask if it was
something I said or did, he speaks.

He stops himself, searching for the correct words, and for a moment, I
pray he is going to mention my mysteriously gifted book. Yet when he starts
again, he instead surprises me in a different way.

“Your mom reminds me a lot of my own.”

“You mean annoying?” I bite my tongue as soon as the words are out,
realizing how insensitive I sound. God, I’m an asshole.

“No.” He continues, unflinching, “Kind. Well-meaning. I was so angry
with her, thinking that it was all an act. I’m beginning to realize that it
wasn’t.”

His moment of openness gives me pause, but curiosity gets the better
of me. Since he is sharing tonight, I want to take advantage.

“What happened?” When he hesitates, I add, “I’m sorry. You don’t have
to talk about it if you don’t want.”

“It’s okay. I’ll tell you.” He stops, considering his words again.
“She and my dad died in a car accident. It was my fault.”

He stops, and I’m afraid he is done talking. I want to know him so
bad, not the surface things that make up our discussions so far, but the real
him, his past, his strengths, his weaknesses.

I can see him deciding to close himself off again, so I probe him
slightly before he has the chance. “You must know that it wasn’t actually your
fault, Jake.”

He shakes his head. “It was. I was a messed-up kid,
Em
. Still am. During their divorce, I turned into more of
an asshole. I was drunk or high all the time and often stayed out late. One
night, I didn’t come home at all. They were out together looking for me,
thought I’d gone too far this time and gotten myself in trouble—or worse,
hurt.”

He continues talking, but his eyes have shifted, and instead of
looking in front of him, he is inside of his head, reliving the tragic events.

“They hit a deer and wrapped around a tree. Those fuckers are always
sprinting across Shore Boulevard, and knowing my parents, they were probably
distracted, fighting about me. They were always fighting about me.”

His shoulders slump under the weight of the memory. “I was walking
home from a bonfire party up at Cliff Beach when I found the crushed car on the
side of the road. It must have just happened because there weren’t any police
or anything yet. I should have called someone for help. But at that point,
coming home from the party, I was three sheets to the wind and too fucked up to
have the sense to call anyone.”

“I’m so sorry.” I am filled with compassion after hearing his first-person
recount of the night. It sounds like too much pain for one person to carry, and
my heart swells as I realize how much I want to help shoulder his burden.
Instinctively, I reach my hand out to touch his.

He looks down, analyzing my hand before looping his fingers through my
own.

“Jake, do you still use?” I know it probably isn’t the best time to
ask, but I have to know.

“Never.” He shakes his head, and we cover the rest of the distance in
silence.

He doesn’t volunteer any additional details, and while I am desperate
to know more, I am too afraid to overstep any boundaries by asking. Jake
usually avoids talking about himself, and with his tendency towards being hot
and cold, I don’t want to push him too hard and give him a reason to turn on me
and close up again.

We approach South Station, and with the big stone terminal looming
before us, he stops me short of the doors. “Well, here you are, as promised.
Would you like me to walk you in?”

“I’ve got it from here,” I say, but I am reluctant.

He too delays in saying good-bye. His eyebrows scrunch together, full
of unasked questions. He looks like he is trying to make a decision, but what
he’s deciding, I am unsure of. I wait, filled with anticipation as he takes
another moment before leaning in. He curls his arms tight around me, and the
embrace covers my skin in goose bumps.

After a prolonged moment of savoring each other’s warmth, he loosens
his grip and brings his hands to rest lightly on my shoulders. My heart pounds
loudly in my ears, the force of blood through my veins gently rocking me back
and forth. I have to struggle to keep myself standing.

He looks me in the eye, and I know he is reading my thoughts. My eyes
drop slowly to his lips, and I am focused and anxious. I struggle to swallow,
to breathe. He is going to kiss me, and I squeal
inwardly at the thought. I move in. My jaw trembles slightly with
anticipation.

He comes closer.

Closer.

But, in the final second, he shifts his weight to dodge my kiss. His
lips graze my forehead for the briefest second instead. He wraps an arm around
my lower back and cups my head gently in his other hand. I bury my face in his
neck, the soft stubble of his chin scratching lightly against my cheek while I
breathe him in.

He lowers his lips to my ear and gently whispers, “Don’t fall for me,
Em
.” Quieter, he adds, “I don’t deserve it.”

His hands slide slowly and painfully down my arms, leaving a trail of
ice behind as he separates us. His pinky brushes my inner wrist, and the
sensation causes me to snap my eyes shut.

I thought we shared something tonight, but I must have misunderstood
him. I feel like a fool. I’m afraid if I open my eyes a tear might leak out,
and I don’t want him to see me weak, so I keep them closed.

Softly he breathes his good-bye, and the air shifts and empties as he
turns and walks away. Safe now, I blink into the empty space.

I don’t understand why he is intent on fighting the feelings between
us. Maybe I’ve over-thought things again and exaggerated our connection in my
head, but I was sure it was clear that we have a connection, both mentally and
physically. My thoughts move between scolding myself for being a stupid child, reading
too deep into things, and angrily arguing that it must be Jake who is for some
reason intent on denying me, denying us.

I keep coming back to his last words. What did he mean when he said he
doesn’t deserve it? Is loving someone a matter of deserving, and what has he
done to not deserve me?

I purchase a ticket at the automatic machine and walk languidly to
Track 11, quietly continuing to doubt what I felt so confident in moments
before. Tonight, for the first time, Jake opened up to me. Sharing that story
about his parents couldn’t have been easy, and maybe it was too much for him.

But I did everything I was supposed to. I let him talk. I listened and
held his hand. Even if the memory left him shaken, he shouldn’t have brushed me
off and pushed me away in our last seconds.

Maybe he is purposefully toying with my emotions and the push-pull is
another part of his game, but tonight he was serious, and I can’t quite make
that explanation fit. He is clearly carrying a lot of guilt over his past, over
his parents’ accident. If his display of emotion tonight was genuine, as it
appeared to be, maybe his issues go further than I understand. Maybe I never
will, and he won’t ever fully open up to me.

I board the train and take a window seat, pressing my forehead against
the cool glass, happy now for its cutting burn. The train departs the station
for home, and I watch silhouettes of towns pass by through the darkness, my
mind racing, replaying every moment of the evening for some sign of my wrongdoing.
I make it home, trying not to be obviously silent with my mother in the car,
but she sees through me.

“You all right, Emma, darling?”

“Yup. I’m fine. Just tired.” I don’t want to talk to her about Jake.
My relationship with her is still rocky, and I’m still hurt. It doesn’t feel
right sharing my feelings about Jake, not yet. Not that I know what those
feelings are.

What happened tonight? The question repeats in my mind.

When I get into bed still without an answer, sleep doesn’t come, and I
spend all night staring at the ceiling, searching for one.

***

The days pass by, and before I know it,
Christmas break has arrived. Unlike Thanksgiving, I insist on working during my
time off of school. Since it is between semesters, Jake is home too, an added
benefit. He texted when he got back into town, informing me that he plans on
spending a lot of time working during his break, and if I want to get together,
I could ring him up anytime. I was surprised by the invitation, considering the
way we left things in the city that night. He hasn’t mentioned the evening, and
the events have begun to take on a dreamlike quality in my memory, blurring
around the edges as if I might have made the whole thing up. To spare my
fragile ego any additional trauma or risk shifting the patterns of his behavior
once again, I too keep my lips sealed and refrain from bringing it up.

While at Starbucks a few days after my evening in the city, I recounted
the events of that fateful evening to Genna while we enjoyed our first peppermint
mocha lattes of the season. She spent much of our coffee date tirelessly lecturing
me and maintaining that I needed to ask him about it and set the whole thing
straight. I am long past the days where she is simply happy for me.

“If you can’t stand feeling like he is playing mind games with you,
why do you keep letting him? It makes no sense! You have to call him on his
shit. Don’t let him tell you a sad story then get so caught up in feeling bad
for him that you won’t set him straight.”

But I stick to sipping my latte and trying to focus on the chocolaty
coffee goodness in front of me instead of the truth I hear ringing in her
words.

While it’s proving more and more obvious that I am a glutton for
punishment, Friendly Jake is back this week, and right now, Friendly Jake is
more important to me than sorting all of that out. Our relationship has even
progressed as we spend more and more time together at the shop over break.
Sitting at the counter talking, while I play with his shoelaces, has become a
routine thing over the past week. We even went so far as to friend each other
online a few days ago and have begun expanding our daytime conversations to
nighttime online chats. Our Internet conversations range from the involved
discussions like we have most days while we are working to smaller “Hey, what’s
up’s?” that don’t go anywhere.

But isn’t that the way the Internet works? You can’t read too much
into all of the pauses. If he doesn’t respond right after saying “Hi,” well, he
probably went downstairs to fix himself a sandwich, right?

Anyway, our work conversations these days more than make up for the less-than-stellar
online messages. We’ve started using downtime at the store to play a new
bookish game I created. It goes like this: When it’s your turn, you select a
book from the shelves. Then, the other person has to try to figure out what
that book means to you and why you choose it. I was hoping it would be a good
way to learn more about Jake.

Since our night in the city, he has closed down on talking about
himself again, and I am desperate for him to open up to me so that I can
continue learning and unraveling his mysteries. Secretly, I hope he will pick
up Ethan
Frome
one of these days, giving me the
opportunity to challenge him on it. Too much time has passed at this point to
randomly bring it up in conversation, myself.

My game choices include a lot of nonfiction and travel books, which
never surprise him. After my first few picks of this sort, I asked what he
thought of my selections. He replied simply, “I get it, kitten. You’re an
explorer at heart.” I never thought of myself that way, but after he said it, as
if it was the most obvious thing in the world, I adopted the title happily.

His picks, on the other hand, leave me dumbfounded more often than
not. Sometimes, I spend a half hour debating the plot of the book he is holding
out and various connections I can hypothesize on that made him choose it, and
his real reason is something dumb like “This one is green and that’s my
favorite color” or “I like sharks!” while he points to a picture of a
hammerhead on the cover.

When he picks up a book of poetry and I
comment that I am surprised he has selected an insightful choice, he responds, “I
can be when I want to be.” And I’m left stumbling again.

But today is not an insightful day, and today we are not playing that
game. Instead, I’m sitting at my desk, waiting for a reply that I don’t think
is coming. He must love sandwiches this time of night.

I finger the inked lion head Jake sketched earlier yesterday evening
on the front pocket of my bag. I voiced some weak pleas during his moment of
vandalism, but he didn’t stop until the drawing was complete and he was
satisfied with his shading of the lion’s wild mane. I didn’t know he had artistic
tendencies, but the doodle, while simple, was nicely drawn. I like having a
piece of him on my bag to carry around with me. I have already taken to
carrying around the books he’s given me, plus my copy of Dante that served as
the opener for our first real conversation together.