Page 52 of Don't Hate the Player
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. Is she . . . ?”
“Jesus, your face.” Jake laughs, which is a good sign. “I just realized how that sounded; my mom’s not dead. She doesn’t have custody. My parents divorced last year. That’s why I had to transfer schools. They sold the house, and she lives in Jackson; I stayed with my dad, and we moved into the apartment in Hillford West’s district.”
That story, while not exactly happy, is a whole lot better than his mom dying and me bringing it up like an asshole.
“Oh, right. I was kind of wondering how you just showed up when you weren’t here for freshman year.”
“Yeah, that’s why.” Something seems off about Jake’s voice. He tucks into doughnut number two. “You should drink your coffee before it gets cold. I put the sugars in.”
“Thank you. Can you open it for me? Driving, hands.”
“Yup.” Whatever Jake’s feeling, he’s still down to be my breakfast concierge.
I don’t taste any sugar in my first sip, which means all of it has floated to the bottom and will be waiting for me there in a gross brown sludge. I don’t think I have any space to complain; it’s still better than a bright green matcha monstrosity.
“Actually,” Jake says after I put the coffee back in the cupholder, “that’s sort of the thing I blew up. The one I was talking about on Wednesday.”
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been thinking about that since we met in Crystal Cathedral. Jake hadn’t brought it up again, so I assumed it was something small that he felt outsized guilt over (I may have been projecting on that), but knowing he’d narced on someone before did bother me a little. I still trusted him with my secret—didn’t have much of a choice—but I had wondered what the deal with that was. Now that he seems ready to talk about it, do I really want to know?
“You blew up something with your parents? You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“Eh, may as well. We have a long ride.”
“It’s, like, half an hour.”
“I talk fast.”
“Well, I’m listening.”
“Okay,” Jake starts, then takes a sip of his black coffee to steel himself for the telling. “You know how you, like, never ever want to see your parents having sex?”
Sweet Christmas, where is this going? I turn to give him a frightened look, but he’s deadass about this being the way he wants to start this story. I swap to a more neutral expression. I don’t want to make him think that I’m laughing at something he doesn’t think is funny.
“I do . . . know that.”
“Yeah, so the only thing you maybe want to see less than your parents having sex is see one parent having sex with someone who isnot your dad.”
Now I see where this is going.
“I was fourteen, so this is early last year. Came home sick from school one day. And to be fair, I didn’t, like, see anything, but I heard it from the front door, and when I walked into the living room there was, you know. Not Dad and Definitely Mom kind of . . .”
“You don’t have to paint the whole picture.”
“Yeah, you get it. She told me not to tell my dad. And I didn’t want to tell him because, honestly, my dad is kind of a dick? He hates me.”
“I’m sure your dad doesn’t—”
“He doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m weird and not smart . . . ? A lot of it is gaming stuff.”
I pile Jake’s constant self-deprecating comments about how “dumb” he is on top of his issues with being ignored. Maybe every TV therapist is right, and everything really does start with our childhoods.
There’s room in the conversation for me to come out with another “you’re not dumb, Jake,” but at this point I think he knows it’s implied.
“I sat on it for a while, like a month. It started feeling really weird and wrong in the house, though. My dad was being an asshole, and I knew she was cheating on him. I didn’t even blame her for cheating, but the lies and stuff kind of messed me up.”
“Keep going. I just want to say it’s insanely fucked up that your mom put that on you. Like, beyond.”
“I know. Anyway, long story short, I told my dad what I saw. He flipped out, threatened to bury her—”
