Chapter 35: Twenty Four-1

11:13 AM want to believe him. Everything in me wants to believe the promise of a future only one of us can see. I wrap my arms around his waist, and bury my face in his t-shirt, soaking the fabric through my tears. He pulls back only enough to frame my face in his hands, his brow drawing down. "Lola. Please. Get out of your head for a second, alright? We are here, in this moment, this time." He tilts his head down so I cannot get away from his gaze. "This time. You. Me. That's all it needs to be, that's all it's ever going to need to be." "Nothing bad happens?" An alarming spider-web of foreboding takes shape. Horrible thoughts of Jackson being ripped away from me in some cruel twist of fate is weaving its way through my brain, settling in to every conscious thought. I feel another sob make its way through my body, leaving as a gasp. "Jax?" Heated lips press to my forehead. "Nothing bad happens, Angel." "Promise?" I want him to promise. I want him to swear that what he says now is true. His thumbs brush the surface of my skin, across my cheekbones, wet from tears. "Course I do. I think you're overtired and overthinking. Come on, Angel. Let's get you to bed." I want to cling on to him right now like he's my anchor to this time. Like if I can hold him hard enough and long enough, I'll never have to let him go. The very pit of my stomach insists that something is wrong but I cannot force Jackson to tell me what it is, not if he doesn't want to. I straighten my shoulders, resolved to the fact that I have no choice but to take him at his word and head to the back of the beach house, to Jackson's bedroom. I crawl into his bed, leaving the covers down until he takes the spot next to me. Resting myself in the crook of his arm, I lay my head to his chest. The thrumming of his heartbeat eases my worry for a second and I want to allow myself to believe that it will always beat like that for me. Jackson's hand stretches to the top of my head, where his fingers loop themselves in my hair. "I can't lose you," I tell him. "You're not going to lose me, Angel. Now close your eyes," he whispers. "I'll tell you a story." I close my eyes and focus on my breath and his. "What kind of story?" "A love story," he says softly. "I love love stories." He keeps playing with my hair while he continues, "I know you do. It's about a lost boy." "Peter Pan?" "Stop talking," he chides. "Just listen. Once upon a time there was a little boy. He was a trouble-maker, constantly getting in shit for throwing rocks and pulling all the little girls ponytails. He had a sister once but she died when they were five." My eyelids are heavy. "This doesn't sound like a love story, Jax," I murmur. "It sounds like a tragedy." "Enough talking," he says. I press my lips together firmly and he lowers his voice, as if to use it as a weapon against my weariness. The low timbre vibrates his chest as he speaks on and I do suspect I may succumb to sleep. "He grew up in the Midwest and for the most part had a relatively normal existence. His father worked, his mom stayed at home, a regular American dream. Normal as it was though, the boy walked around most of his life, incomplete. He finished high school and went to college. Took a whole lot of computer programming. Spent the nights in his dorm room living on ramen noodles and watching shitty DVD's. He slipped into a depression. A morbid, awful kind of sadness he couldn't seem to shake. Felt like he was suffocating, drowning, numb." I fail to see how this is a love story, but I don't interrupt him this time. "Then one dreary day he decided that if there was nothing more to life than ramen noodles and shitty DVD's that there was really no point in continuing it." I sit straight up. "What?" Jax tugs me back down. "He made a deal with himself. He left the room for the first time in weeks-determined to get a good caffeine high and find a reason for living. Maybe he was chicken shit, maybe it was fate, who knows but he gave himself one day to find a reason to go on." "Who does this love story belong to? Jax. Is it you? Us? You had a sister?" My eyes are closed but I can feel him give a slight nod of his head and whisper, "So many questions, Angel. Go to sleep." "I'm sorry. I'm trying." I press myself closer to him. "What happened at the coffee shop?" I already know the rest of the story, at least I think I do, but I'll never get sick of hearing it. "At that coffee shop," he says, "I found you, Lola. My reason for living. In one small sliver of time. Like God himself revealed you to me at exactly the right moment." "Why me? How did you know?" "Because, just like Tolstoy said, when I first laid eyes on you, I didn't know where I ended and you began. You took my breath away. My heart raced for the first time in years, so fast I could hear the blood hammering in my ears. That damned place could have caught fire and I wouldn't have noticed. The only thing I could see was you and I knew from that very moment that I wasn't broken anymore. That I'd only ever see you. Suddenly, everything in the world made sense." I know he's told me to close my eyes, but I open them and shuffle myself up enough to kiss him. "I can't bear the thought of you sad. It breaks my heart." "I've not been sad a single day since then and that is the point of the story. Our story. Now, go to sleep." "What happens in the future?" Jackson kisses my forehead. "No more questions," he says. "Time to sleep. Roll over, on your side." I flip myself around so I'm facing the wall instead of him. His body is behind mine and his arm wraps protectively around me, his elbow at my belly, his hand placed just below my chin. I feel safe. I think he says he loves me right before I fall asleep. I wake sometime later. The numbers on his alarm clock say 6:37 PM. I'm foggy from sleeping the day away and am very aware of the fact that Jax's side of the bed is empty. I've somehow rolled the covers into a cocoon around my body. I'm exceptionally warm and as I become more cognizant, the smell of garlic permeates the air. Reluctantly, I leave the cocoon, but I keep the blanket wrapped around myself and pad down the hallway to the kitchen. Jax is standing at the stove, armed with a wooden spoon that moves to stir the contents of a frying pan. He turns. "Feeling better?"