The Fear of Letting Go (10 page)

I clear my throat, hoping I'm telling the truth. I don't want to be stuck in an elevator five floors up during a tornado any more than she does, but I can't imagine any better company in the world. Jenna all to myself? I like the sound of that, even if these aren't the best of circumstances.

“Penny looks good, doesn't she?” I ask, wanting to get both our minds off the situation.

“Yeah, she looks amazing,” she says. Her teeth are chattering.

She wraps her arms around her middle again.

“Thanks for the sweater. I knew it was about to rain, but I couldn't find my umbrella, so of course I got soaked. The first thing I'm going to do when I get home is take a scorching hot shower.”

I swallow hard at the thought of Jenna in the shower. I can practically see the water cascading down her naked body. Suddenly, it feels very hot in here.

“Turned out to be crappy weather for spring break,” I say, trying to think of anything that will help take her mind off things.

“Makes Aruba sound a lot nicer, I imagine.”

I smile. “Perhaps,” I say. “One thing I learned growing up, though, is that the destination is never as important as the people you're traveling with.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Did your family travel a lot, while you were growing up?”

I nod. “We took at least one big trip a year as a family. We never spent much time with our parents, though.”

“Why not?”

I shrug. “They usually had meetings to go to, or what I call business social events where it looks like a party, but is really just about networking and greasing the wheels. I didn't realize it until I got a little older, but my parents have always put business first. If the CEO of a company my dad was courting, or working up some big deal with, was going to Bora Bora on vacation in December with his family, suddenly my parents were, too, and what a coincidence,” I say, a touch of bitterness in my voice. “They always booked two adjoining suites of rooms so they could have their own space separate from Penny and me. That way, they could host social gatherings in their part of the hotel without keeping us awake or having to deal with us at all. The nanny, Miss Claire, always stayed with us and took us to the beach and stuff like that.”

I look up and Jenna is staring at me with a strange expression.

“What?”

She shakes her head. “Hearing the sadness and regret in your voice when you're talking about suites of rooms in an exotic resort makes me feel so conflicted,” she says with a laugh. “On one hand, I'm sure it's tough to grow up feeling like your parents never put you first. Constantly being passed off to a nanny couldn't have been easy when you just wanted to spend time with them. But on the other hand, it's hard for me to sympathize with you when you're talking about having free rein of a luxury resort that probably cost more a night than what my parents made in a month.”

“I sound like a spoiled brat, again.”

She smiles. “A little bit,” she says. “But at the same time, if all you wanted was some attention from your parents, I'm sure those vacations made you sad, too. It's just so foreign to me. My parents' idea of a vacation was to take us down to the local spring. There was this tiny little pond that sat right on top of a natural spring. The people who ran it set up a beach area and rented out inner tubes and stuff. I think it cost about $1 to get in, back then, and that was a stretch for my family. A real treat was getting to go to the concession stand and buy a twenty-five cent candy bar and a soda,” she says with a laugh. She's picking at the red nail polish on her fingernails. “The water was cold as hell, but so incredibly clear you could see straight down to the bottom.”

“At least they spent time with you.”

She snorts. “If you call that spending time,” she says. “My daddy would always bring a cooler full of cheap beer and be passed out by noon and Momma, well, yeah, she spent time with us. She was too chicken to wear a swim suit in front of people, so she always wore these ridiculously huge t-shirts that went down to her knees.”

Jenna smiles like she's remembering some secret joy, and in that moment, she's the most beautiful person I have ever seen in my life.

“We should go there together sometime,” I say. “Take a road trip. I'd love to meet your family.”

She wraps her arms around her knees and lays her head against them. “No, you wouldn't,” she says. “Besides, the spring is all dried up now, from what I hear.”

This is the most I've ever heard Jenna talk about her family or her hometown. There's a sadness in her voice that seems bone-deep and still raw. I want to ask her more, but I'm scared to push her.

“Well, the best part of going on vacation was getting to spend time with Penny,” I say. “I wouldn't trade that for anything. By the time Penny and I were about nine or ten, our parents let us take some friends with us each time, which made things a lot more interesting. Especially as we got older and knew how to get into more trouble.”

I laugh, remembering all the craziness we used to get into when we were teens.

Jenna smiles. “Like what?”

I search my memories for the worst of the stories. Or best, depending on how you look at it.

“Oh, okay, so there was this one time, we were spending two weeks in St. Lucia. My parents had strictly forbidden us from leaving the resort, but they were so busy with their meetings they had no idea what we were up to. At this point, even though Miss Claire was technically still supposed to be looking after us, she was getting older and liked to take these really long afternoon naps.”

“How old were you?”

I shut one eye and glance up at the ceiling, trying to remember. “Maybe about fifteen, I think. Could have been sixteen,” I say. “Of course as soon as her head hit the pillow, we left the resort to go explore. It was Mason and Penny, her friend Summer, and me. Have you met her yet?”

“Is she the one with the crazy colored hair?”

I smile and nod. “I think it was teal last time I saw her.”

“Yeah, she's been in the restaurant a few times,” she says. “I haven't talked to her much but I know who she is. She seems cool.”

“I think you guys would get along,” I say. “She's a rebel like you.”

Jenna gives me another look, but I ignore it for now.

“Anyway, so we head off-resort and end up at one of those scooter rental places, you know the type where you can rent a death-trap for about a hundred bucks an hour, no helmet?” She gives me a blank stare. “We rent four and head all around the local villages, shopping, getting ice cream, whatever. So then Mason has this crazy idea that we should ride up to check out the volcano.”

Jenna's mouth drops open. “There was a volcano?”

I laugh. “Yes. It's on the far side of the island and took us about an hour on these scooters just to get there. We were definitely not supposed to be taking them out that far, but we were kids, we didn't care.

“We get to the tourist area of the volcano when Penny spots this side road that's marked ‘Do not enter'.”

“So of course you enter.”

“Of course,” I say. “And this narrow road takes us all the way up around to the opposite side of the volcano. The area where tourists are definitely not allowed to go. There were no paths or anything, but we got off the scooters and walked up as close as we could get to the edge. The bottom of our shoes were literally burning by the time we got up to the top. It was insane,” I say. “But it was also one of the most intense and beautiful views I've ever seen. Mason pulled out a joint and we sat up there at the top of the giant active volcano and smoked a joint. We were almost finished with it when the police arrived.”

Jenna's hand rises to her mouth and she gasps. “You're kidding me?”

“I wish,” I say with a laugh. “Oh, my God, we were so stoned. We could not stop laughing. They kept yelling at us in French, telling us we weren't allowed to be there. They actually put me and Mason in handcuffs,” I say. “Penny fell on the way back down the mountain and burned her leg, though, and they ended up having to call in an air evac to get her off the mountain. She was in the hospital for like three days. Still has the scars to prove it.”

“Holy shit, I can't believe that,” she says.

“Yeah, it was crazy,” I say. “We totally lost those scooters, too. By the time we got back down to them, they were gone. Probably stolen. I thought my parents were going to kill us. I don't even want to know how much it cost them to get us out of that mess.”

“So, you weren't arrested?”

“Not officially. Once my parents intervened, everything was fine,” I say. “After that, you would think they would have kept closer tabs on us during vacations, right?” I shake my head. “I did end up getting arrested in Paris that following Christmas for getting drunk and throwing an empty bottle of wine off the top of the Eiffel Tower. So stupid. I did a lot of dumb things back then.”

“Did your parents get you off the hook that time, too?”

“Always,” I say. “But it was less about what would happen to me and more about how an official arrest would reflect upon them and the family name.”

“Must have been weird to grow up knowing you never really had to deal with any consequences,” she says. “I can't imagine it. I probably would have been dead by now if I wasn't scared of getting thrown in jail.”

I laugh. “Did you get into a bunch of trouble when you were younger? I have this very clear image of you as a young, rebellious teenager.”

“I got into way too much trouble,” she says. She avoids my eyes. “The kind that's much harder to get out of.”

I study her. “What do you mean?”

She shrugs. “No one was ever there to bail me out when I fucked up,” she says. “If I got arrested, there were real consequences, you know? Of course, that didn't stop me from making all the wrong choices.”

“Like what?”

She takes a deep breath in through her nose and lays her head back on her knees. “Like, skipping school and doing drugs with my boyfriend,” she says. “I was fourteen the first time I got arrested for possession. My dad—”

She stops herself and the air shifts around us, as if some ghost of her past has returned to haunt her. The hairs on my arms stand up and my stomach twists.

“Your dad what?”

She leans her head back against the wall of the elevator and closes her eyes. “My dad was pissed,” she says. “Let's just leave it at that.”

“Did you go to jail or something?”

“Worse,” she says. “Had to enter a rehab program for juveniles and go to school at the juvenile detention center for most of my sophomore year of high school. It was rough.”

“I had no idea,” I say. I try to imagine what my life would have been like if my parents hadn't been there to bail me out of every single bad decision I made.

“You would think I'd have learned my lesson the first time,” she says with a laugh. “I got pretty messed up with drugs when I was younger. It got bad for a while, but I pulled myself out of it.”

The conversation has very quickly gone from a carefree sharing of a silly story I thought would make her laugh to some real shit about her own life.

“How did you get out of it?” I ask quietly.

Her eyes meet mine and there are glassy tears in them. “My boyfriend, Aaron, overdosed on heroin,” she says. “Christmas break our junior year. We were both out of our minds fucked up and he just went a little too far. I passed out at some point during the night and when I woke up the next morning, he was just lying there beside me, all the light gone from his eyes forever. That was a big wake up call for me. I've never touched drugs since that morning, and I never will again.”

My heart pounds in my chest. I have never been in a situation like that, and I have no idea what to say to her to tell her how sorry I am that she went through that.

“That sounds terrifying,” I say. “I'm sorry.”

“We were stupid,” she says. “We both knew we were walking the line, but we couldn't seem to stop ourselves. Every time we'd get high, we swore it was going to be the last time. We just needed one more hit and we were done,” she says. “We'd clean up our act for about a week, maybe two, and then be right back at it.”

“Addiction is tough.”

“You have no idea,” she says. “It's brutal. I would be doing okay, swearing I was done with that shit, but then something bad would happen and I felt like I needed it. I know you probably don't understand that at all, but it was so real to me. The smallest thing could send me back over the edge.”

I don't know what to say. She's right. I don't understand that kind of addiction, and there's so much desperation in her voice, it scares me.

“It was a coping mechanism,” she says. “A way to escape the shitty life I was living and get away for a while. I guess in some ways, getting high was my way of forgetting the consequences of my life, for a while. Forgetting reality. You had money to bail you out. I had drugs.”

She laughs, but it's a joyless sound.

I reach over and touch her hand. She looks up, surprised, but takes my hand and threads her fingers through mine.

“I have no idea why I'm telling you all this,” she says, a tear escaping down her cheek. “I don't like to think about those days, anymore. I don't very much like the person I used to be.”

She sniffs and leans her head over to wipe her cheek against her shirt.

“You must think I'm a real piece of trash,” she says, not looking me in the eyes.

Her words stab deeply. “Not even one tiny bit,” I say. “I was actually thinking how strong you are.”

She looks up, her eyes now overflowing with tears. “Strong? No way.”

“Yes,” I say, gripping her hand tighter. “Do you know how many people can never get out from under something like that? How many people would still be getting high every weekend and falling deeper and deeper into that hole of depression? But not you. You made a very difficult change and finished school. You're in college, working practically full time to support yourself, with no help from anyone else. I admire you, to be honest.”

She rolls her eyes and sniffs. “How could a guy like you, with all that you have, and all that you've accomplished, admire someone like me? I'm nothing,” she says.

I move closer to her and put a hand on her cheek. She lifts her eyes to me, and I make sure I have her complete attention before I speak.