Page 154 of Jesse's Girl

“But why all this?” I ask, touching the half-crumpled note still stuck to his shirt. “Still not Katie?”

“Turn it over.” His teeth skim over his bottom lip.

I peel it off his chest.

On the back are two stick-figure people with a big heart between them and the word now underlined three times inside it. There’s an arrow pointing at the one with longer hair with the word you in capital letters.

I can’t tell whether I’m laughing or crying. “Jesse, this is…” I start. The words are barely a whisper. Then I do start to laugh—and turn the drawing around to face him. “I mean, what the hell is this?”

He squeezes my hip, laughing with me. “Hey, I’m not the artist, here.”

“Seriously. All the notes… This. Why?”

His smile is soft. “Last night, everything was so rushed. And harsh. You deserve so much more than that. That’s not how I wanted to tell you how I felt—how I feel: just shouting at you like an asshole. I wanted to show you.”

I gaze down at the stick figure drawing still clutched in my hand. “This is really the most…” I pause, touching my fingertips to the crumpled note before meeting his eyes, “… pitiful little drawing I’ve ever seen.”

He pulls back and glances at his wrist like he’s checking the time. “You know, I think I can still make that flight,” he deadpans.

I swat his arm. “Shut up. I love it.”

With a smile, he circles his arms loosely around me, tucking them under the hem of my hoodie to rub my back. “Every note… each one is a moment when I fell more in love with you.” The emotion is thick in his voice. “Ada, I haven’t felt like I was home in eight years. My family fell the fuck apart, the house I grew up in got sold off, and this town felt like it was pushing me away every chance it got. And in Oz… I was always “the American”. Always foreign. People would comment on my accent and shit. It was never the same. It was never home.” He stops to brush a stray hair out of my face. “And then… you.”

“Me?”

He smiles and shifts his gaze away, almost embarrassed. “This is gonna sound so fucking cheesy—you’re never gonna let me hear the end of it.” But the look on my face must be enough to coax him to continue. “It’s like I could finally see clearly again, after years of everything being blurry. I could see what home looked like. And all I could see was you, Ada. It’s you.”

35

JESSE

Ada has a thousand questions. We stand under the shower spray as I explain everything, exhaustion soaking deep into my bones. I lose track of how many times she asks if I’m sure. The truth is: I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.

“Time to grow up, you know?” I explain. “I gotta deal with what I’ve been avoiding all these years. And I know I haven’t really… done this relationship thing before. I have crap to work on. But I promise to do the work. I’ll go to therapy. Sort my head out.”

I should probably talk to someone about what went down with my dad, for starters.

I step in close, taking her face in my hands and pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I’d do anything for you.”

She pulls back, fixing me with a serious look. “Hey. If you go to therapy and work on your shit… do it for you, okay? Not me.”

I nod, rubbing my thumb over the furrow of worry creasing her forehead. Her brow smooths out under my touch. She’s right. If I want to keep showing up for her, I need to start showing up for myself.

“I should go too,” she says, her voice quiet. “To therapy. I mean, clearly, what happened with Pascal fucked me up a bit.” She looks down at her hands on my chest. “And all the shit with my parents.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Although, maybe we’ve turned a corner. Remind me to tell you later about what my mom said at the wedding.”

“Okay…” I’m not sure what she means just yet, but something like hope touches her features when she mentions her mom. That’s new.

“Anyway, what I’m trying to say is: I’m sorry for blaming you when it was my own bullshit. I don’t want that to get in the way of this. Us.” She lifts her gaze to meet mine, her lips curling in a wry smile. “You sure you’re not regretting sticking around for this huge pain in the ass?”

I chuckle, tugging her in close. “Hey, I knew what I was signing up for.”

Her amusement falters as she searches my face. “What’s wrong?”

Now I must be the one frowning.

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