Page 10 of Cross To Bear

“How about some of this?” Jesse appeared at my shoulder, pointing to the cheese and carrot salad I’d always loved as a kid. I blinked, then frowned up at him, wondering where the hell this came from. “I know you always like this salad.”

“I do.” I felt a rush of relief, that he’d actually fucking noticed something about me for once, nodding sharply.

“Well, I’ll get you some.”

He put one spoonful on my plate, then another, a small smile forming as he created an orange mound that threatened to topple over. I was forced to tilt the plate to stop carrot going everywhere, right as he went back for more.

“No more!” I gasped, finding myself smiling despite myself. “I like it, just not that much.”

“That’s what you always say.” He plucked the plate from my grip and set it on the table, before pulling me into his arms. That warm, woody scent of his filled my nose, as he moved closer, his lips brushing the top of my ear. “Right after I’ve made you come. ‘No more, Jesse. I can’t…” He rocked me against his hard body. “But you can. You always can. I start real light and tease you into it and then you’re there.” He tilted my chin up so I met his eyes. “You’re there with me, eyes wide and staring, lips open and letting out those cute little pants. Like you’re shocked each time I can make you feel that way. I fucking love that look so much, baby, because it’s then I know you’re mine.”

Mal always asked what I saw in Jesse.

“It’s his dick, right?” she said. “He has a heinously large dick.”

He did have a big dick, though that wasn’t it, and I couldn’t explain it to her. I’d said Jesse was like the sun and that made sense. During the depths of winter, the constant grey skies and drizzling rain gets you down, the chill leaching the heat from your bones. Then the sun comes out, just for a little while, and you go and stand in a pool of sunlight to feel it. The sun doesn’t realise it’s doing it. It doesn’t send its waves of radiation through the galaxy just to warm you through, and you enjoy that feeling despite that. Of feeling warmed through, shit, even hot for once, in what felt like a long, cold winter.

The only problem is, a cloud shifts over, covering the sun and leaving you somehow colder than you were before.

I pulled away and picked up the plate.

“I’m going to sit down and eat all of this carrot salad, apparently,” I told him.

“Cool.” He planted a kiss on my forehead. “You do that and I’ll be over in a sec. I need to grab a beer and have a chat to Micko about something.”

Yep, I was cold, cold, cold, I thought, as I sat down in a chair next to Kara’s mother, Linney.

“Hello, Maddie. How are you, love?” she asked, looking up from her plate with a smile.

“Mum, I’m going to see Jesse,” Kara said, jumping out of her seat and rushing off before she had permission.

“Kara…” Linney shook her head with a smile. “She loves that boy.” We watched the little girl collide with Jesse’s legs and then wrap her arms tight around him. “He’s so good with kids. He’ll be an amazing father.”

She and several other women in this corner of the party looked at me expectantly.

Linney had no way of knowing the ice-cold knife she’d just stabbed into my chest.

“The two of you would have beautiful babies,” another woman gushed. “With your lovely pale skin and his blond hair.” She turned to the others. “Can you imagine what their little girl would look like?”

“Or a big strapping boy. Maybe twins,” another woman said, nodding my way. “We have a lot of twins in the community. Jesse might not have a bear, but he’s got good genes. You could have a pair of boisterous bear cubs on your hands, like my boys.”

She nodded to her sons down the table from us who were pushing and shoving at each other until their dads intervened and made clear they needed to eat their food.

“A little girl and some boys,” someone else said. “You’ve got good child bearing hips, Maddie. You’ll be spitting them out no problem.”

And then what? I wanted to shout. What would happen when I had this brood of children? What would I be doing? What would Jesse be doing? But I knew, I just knew, because you couldn’t spend three years in a relationship with someone and not get to know them like that. People always asserted that men changed after becoming a father, though I had clear evidence that wasn’t the case. My father had been a difficult man before me and he was now. If I was the ocean that was supposed to crash against the cliffs of his disinterest, eroding it away, I’d failed utterly. While human beings were always capable of change, relying on someone else becoming someone different was stupid.

When people show you who they are, believe them. I’d read that over and over when I trawled through relationship forums on Reddit, somehow finding people’s tales of relationship woes compelling reading.

That’s when I looked up to see Kara was on Jesse’s back again. He was careening around, pretending to be a bear, not noticing when someone’s drink got kicked across the concrete, nor when someone else was forced to jerk out of their way or when one of his baby cousins toddled into his path. The father saw what was about to happen, roared something at Jesse, then swooped in and grabbed their child, holding the squirming baby close to their chest.

“What the fuck are you doing, Jesse?”

This was the moment when he realised the damage he’d nearly done, when he apologised profusely, right? He’d nearly knocked a small child over, for Christ’s sake. It happens, but damn, the only right response was to be as apologetic as hell. Instead he straightened up, hitching Kara higher on his back, and I saw a familiar expression on his face. One of stubborn anger.

“You want kids, don’t you, Maddie?” someone asked me, having missed what was going on.

“No,” I said finally, something I should’ve said from the moment I woke up. “I don’t think I do.”

---