Page 102 of Give Me a Shot

Thirty minutes later, Mo rushed up her steps and rang the doorbell. He’d fought to push aside the sandpaper worry chafing at him on the drive there. No reason to get too far into his head before he could look into her eyes and truly see how she was doing. She opened the door, and his skin was instantly scored by a million papercuts.

“Hi,” she said, voice thick, eyes puffy and red. Her shoulders were slouched, her hair hanging limp and wet. She gave him a little smile.

“M’lady…” he said.

She let out a short, dry laugh.

“I know, I must look terrible,” she said. “Come on in.”

“Uh, no, I mean, thanks,” he said as he crossed the threshold, and she closed the door behind him. “You don’t look terrible. You look…really hurt.”

Her smile in response was larger than the one before, but sadder. She tipped her head at him. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

“Do? Oh.” In his shock he’d forgotten about the bouquet of flowers in his hand. “Here,” he said. “It’s my pleasure.”

“You always bring interesting ones,” she said, accepting them. “Never generic gas station flowers.” She gestured for him to follow her as she went into the kitchen to put them in water. Steinem walked alongside her, completely ignoring Mo. The cat knew his mistress wasn’t herself. “Do you know what kind these are?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said, stepping close to her. “The ones with the white petals are cranberry flowers. The purple ones are penstemon. Beardtongue.”

“They are beautiful. Great choice, Mo,” she said, arranging them in their vase.

He kind of wanted to tell her their meanings. But that would start a discussion about him, and he wanted her to be the focus right then. They could be a segue, though.

“I was hoping they’d brighten your mood because you seemed sad on the phone and like you could use a boost.” He ran a hand down her back. “Now that I’m here, it looks like I was right.”

Close-lipped, she nodded. After placing the vase in a prominent spot on the counter, she took his hand and led him to the couch. As soon as she tucked her legs to nestle into one of the corners, Steinem leapt onto the back, stretching himself to lie against her shoulders. Jess squeezed Mo’s hand and then let go so she could rub her own as he sat as well, close to the middle, but careful not to crowd her. Her rubbing stiffened Mo’s resolve to tell her what Mrs. S had said, but he wanted to start closer in time first, to what had happened the day before at her parents’ house.Just as he took a breath to speak, it struck him that Jess wasn’t looking him in the eye. She hadn’t at all after letting him in. That fact flipped a tiny switch of worry, but he couldn’t really assess it. The slow, heavy energy he’d picked up on over the phone was much stronger. Much deeper. Even the way she’d spoken when he’d arrived wasjust not Jess—too much space between words, her tone a little cold.

“What happened yesterday?” he asked.

She sighed and stopped rubbing her hands. Rather than reach for him, she curled them in her lap. He folded his together loosely in his own.

“We had a fight. During lunch,” she said. “I had been biting my tongue, stuffing down my frustration pretty much from the moment I stepped out of the car. My father made one of his trademark hurtful comments, and things snowballed. I think…” She stopped and ran a hand down her face. There hadn’t been any tears. She seemed to have tried to wipe away heavy frustration. “I think I have a better idea of why my mother was so…inert when it came to Cassie’s situation. But it’s…more than I can handle right now. Suffice it to say, I felt even less at home than the last time.”

Mo hated seeing her so defeated. And he was disappointed that things had gone poorly.

“I’m sorry, Jess. I’m really sorry that it was so difficult.” He couldn’t put his arm around her shoulders with Steinem in the way, so he scooted closer, rubbing her crossed legs and forearm. She smiled a little, but her gaze was unfocused, toward the coffee table. She sighed.

“Then, I went to see Cassie, and I couldn’t keep it in any longer, and Stephanie is probably right, and maybe even my mother is right, and I can’t keep doing this because it’s going to hurt and be bad.”

Mo wasn’t sure where to begin to make heads or tails of everything that had rushed out of Jess just then. That was the fastest she had spoken since he’d walked through the door and even with understanding each word, their meaning all together was lost onhim. She looked him in the eye, and her eyes were redder than before and full of tears. She took another deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Stephanie had gotten really upset because she thinks that I’ve been having the pain and the stomach problems because I’m refusing to grieve,” she said.

“That’s what Mrs. S said, too,” Mo said. Jess looked at him sharply, squeezing the air out of his lungs. He returned his hands to his lap.

“Mrs. S?” she asked.

Mo swallowed hard. He’d wanted to bring up his discussion a little more delicately, but if her friend already had, maybe Jess would take it well.

“I was worried,” he said. “You seemed to be running away from pain. Either through seeking physical pleasure when your mom upset you, or by ignoring your physical pain and being angry that your doctors wanted to investigate further. So I did some research into grief. And I asked her because she lost her husband of forty years. She knows something about it.”

Jess narrowed her eyes at him, but she didn’t move. He tried to push the billiard ball down his throat again and kept talking.

“She told me that either we choose to grieve, or our bodies force us to do it.”

His heart thudding and cutting off his air supply, he shut himself up to see what she would say. It was impossible for him to find the origin of the tight band around his chest—he was too stressed to take a breath, but he could tell that she wasn’t really breathing, either. He might have been sensing her tightness.

“So you did feel like I used you,” she said, her eyes marginally softer.

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