Page 53 of Inevitable Love
“Come on. As much as I’d like to sneak out and spend the rest of the night buried inside of you, there’s still a party you have to be involved in.”
I groan at the reminder. This sneaking around, as heady as it was not twenty minutes ago, now feels shady and cheap. Why haven’t we just come out and fessed up to Alice?
Jackson whips the door open, and there’s an audible gasp from the other side.
“Jackson?”
Oh shit. It’s Alice. Alice is here, and Jackson has sex hair, and I definitely look rumpled and well-fucked. Not to mention…
“Why does this room smell like sex?” Alice demands.
There’s that too.
Poor Jackson is frozen in place. Seriously, does he freeze like this on the job?
Too late, he goes to block me, but Alice sneaks her hand under his arm and pushes the door open.
“Oh. My. God. Did you two hook up in here?”
“Alice…” we both say at the same time. She holds a hand out to stop us.
“You know what? I can’t deal with this right now. I came looking for a phone charger. Had no idea I’d be walking in on my brother having”—she flips a hand around in our direction—“whatever this is.” Pressing a hand to her forehead, she closes her eyes. “I can’t believe you guys kept this from me.” Hurt laces her tone, and I can’t meet her eyes.
What have we done? How badly is she going to kill us?
I expect her to rage, to yell at me for using her for her brother. Instead, she marches across the room, snatches her charging cable from her purse, and stalks out of theroom without another word, avoiding my gaze the whole time.
“That went well,” Jackson quips, like it means nothing that she basically walked in on us. “Thank god she wasn’t five minutes earlier.”
I punch him in the arm. “Don’t be a jerk.” It’s easy for him to shrug this off. He’s leaving in a matter of hours, and I’ll be the one left to sort out this mess.
I’ll be the one Alice cuts out of her life, and then I’ll be the one left behind. Alone.
Still, he takes my hand, and I follow him out of the frying pan and into the fire.
In the banquet room, everyone is facing the stage, and Alice, who has been hovering in the periphery all evening, is nowhere to be seen. A large screen has been lowered into place, and sappy music plays over the loudspeaker. Too late, I remember her warning about the memorial.
I glance at the big screen and see a montage of photos from the year before Jackson graduated. Like a highlight reel of each year’s seniors, there’s representation of every big event from each class being honored tonight.
The montage switches to Jackson’s class. There’s a set of photos from when the football team won the state championship that year. One from the science bowl and the debate team.
And then there’s a picture of prom night. And a random—bad—photo of me and T.J. dancing at prom. I didn’t even know this existed, but it looks like a group shot, and it’s been cropped and edited until all you can see is the two of us.
Tears prick my eyes. That night was as blissful as I remember it, based on the smiles on our faces. I haven’t allowed myself to think about that night in a long time. For a while, it just hurt too badly. The emptiness of loss and griefwas the only thing I knew after being so head over heels in infatuation with T.J.
And then with time, the hurt lessened. And I grew from that grief and lived my life because he couldn’t. And I honored him in the only way I could… by chasing my dream. In my heart, T.J. has always held that special place, not because we were super close, but because we had potential.
The video cuts to the after-prom party, and the group of seniors all lined up, arms around shoulders, getting ready to take that stupid plunge. I can’t stop the tears that fill my eyes. The realization that I’m looking at the last moments of his life.
Maybe if I’d had a larger friend group or hadn’t immediately withdrawn from the world, I would’ve seen these before tonight instead of being blindsided by them now. I’m grateful Alice tried to give me a heads-up.
But as the screen fades to yet another group shot, what strikes me is seeing Jackson talking to T.J. in the background, as T.J. looks worriedly into the abyss. Jackson freezes beside me.
“Oh man, I forgot you were the one who pulled him out and did CPR on him,” someone nearby says. I glance over to see a man I don’t recognize addressing the statue at my side.
This has to be a mistake. Surely, this guy is wrong. I know I was detached and built walls around myself to deal with my grief, but how was I so blind? I don’t want to believe that Jackson withheld information from me, and this guy is full of shit. But instinct tells me he’s not, and an ugly, vile rage bubbles up inside me.
Jackson swallows thickly, eyes a little too wide, gaze a little too frantic.
