Page 89 of Until I Find You

“See, it sounds so fucking stupid when I say it out loud? I’m not a grown man jealous of hours-old–” Jack scrubs a hand downthe lower part of his face, his morning clean shaven interrupted by bristles of hair. “I can’t shake the feeling I wasn’t wanted like that. I’ve felt it my whole life, and I thought the grief would go away with time, but it’s just gotten harder, the older I’ve gotten.”

“Your parents love you, Jack. I know your relationships are complicated, but they love you.”

“Because they’ve been forced to. Because the alternative is, what?”

Getting rid of you,I think. Which isn’t fair to my birth mom or to him. There are so many elements to having a child, and while I can recognize I was afforded so much more opportunity and privilege growing up with my white parents in Nebraska, I know that unwanted feeling too, a popcorn kernel in my chest that heats from time to time, threatening to burst. “Look, I know what it’s like to have been an accident.”

The corner of his lip pricks up. He leans back in his seat, spreading his legs enough for me to nestle in. It’s a hospital. People in desperate times do weird things to comfort others. I’m sure hospital staff has seen weirder.

I take Jack’s hand. “Talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking. Or else I’ll bribe you with Skittles.”

Jack chuckles. “Give me a few of those and then I’ll see how I feel.”

We crack open the bag and each eat a few Skittles. Despite the circumstances, the silence is comfortable between us. It sneaks up on you, how comfortable you get with people. And given the past couple of months, it only makes sense that Jack and I are comfortable in silences like this. It warms my heart in a profound way.

Jack sighs. “So, my parents were never married, right?”

“Right.”

“And they were together a couple years, but then it just wasn’t working so they broke up. And then Dad met Abigail’s mom and Mom met Geoff. So, I was sort of this after thought already. Then Kelly and Winston were born and living with Mom became totally impossible. It was just…” He holds his hands out. “Babies come first. I get that. But I was definitely forgotten about. She doesn’t want to admit that.”

“Oh, Jack.”

“It’s okay.”

I shake my head. “It’s not. You know it’s not.”

“Well, it had to be to survive it, right?”

I engulf his hands in my own and squeeze.

Jack takes a few measured breaths, then lifts his chin to continue. “After a couple years, I couldn’t take it. I became a teenager and being surrounded by diapers and babies and all the shit that comes with that was driving me nuts. I don’t feel that way now, but–”

“You were still a kid. It makes sense.”

He sighs. “Yeah. I was. Although it didn’t feel like I was a kid.”

No wonder he’s so mature and so put together. He’s had to be.

“I got to a point where I started asking my dad if I could live with him. He was single again and–well, maybe that’s why he was hesitant. Didn’t want a teen cramping his style.”

“I’m sure there was more to it than that.”

Jack shrugs. “Maybe. But every time I talked to him or saw him, I’d beg, and he’d say that he’d think about it, or it wasn’t a good time. He worked a lot. Up until he met Sonia, he’s been a workaholic, so maybe it was that, but–”

I hold up the bag of Skittles and shake it.

He smiles and holds out his hand.

We eat a couple more Skittles. Jack drinks his water. Revitalized, he launches back into the next part of the story. “Things came to a head eventually. How could they not, you know? I was ungovernable at home with my mom, and she was exhausted with two toddlers and a total mess of a teenager. And Geoff couldn’t tell me a damn thing. We definitely have always had that ‘you’re not my real dad’ kind of relationship.”

I giggle. “I’m sorry, it’s–”

“It’s okay, it’s funny.”

“It’s hard to imagine you as the brooding teenager.”

“Well, that was me. You should have seen the playlists I made. All the emo music. The pop punk.”

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