Off Book

18. Jade

18

JADE

“For you, in my respect, are all the world.

Then, how can it be said I am alone

When all the world is here to look on me?” Act II, Scene I

When I wake up, I’m unexpectedly trapped. Ian’s arm is heavy on my side, his chest warm against my back. My first instinct is to get away—to sneak off while he’s asleep and nurse my vulnerability hangover with a big cup of coffee alone in the kitchen. But Ian’s hand is splayed out over my stomach, and when I weave my hand in his, curling my fingers around his, and he shifts, snuggling against me, that instinct feels a little less strong.

Sleep clings to me, begging me to go back under. I fight the urge to doze for another hour. I have to check on my mom. I’m surprised I slept at all, much less as soundly as I did. I’ve had countless sleepless nights in this house, worrying about my mom after episodes less violent than this, and the nights I did fall asleep, it wasn’t without tears. And tears or no tears, sleep or no sleep, I’m always alone. Even with my grandma here, I fall asleep alone, and I wake up alone.

For the first time ever, I’m not alone. I wasn’t alone last night either. And this time, when the events of last night play on a loop in my head, I don’t just replay the moment I found my mom. I replay the moment Ian appeared in the doorway to the bathroom. The way he went to work cleaning up. The way he didn’t ask a single question. The way he didn’t pass a single judgment. The way he listened as I spilled my guts and held me through it all.

My heart pools in my chest like ice melting in the sun. I recognize this feeling. It’s a crush. It’s more than a crush. It’s that thing between liking and loving, and it’s usually the warning sign I’m in too deep.

I twist my head just enough to get a glimpse of him. He’s sound asleep, fully relaxed, as peaceful as I’ve ever seen him. I shift carefully so I can face him. He barely stirs, even when I stroke a finger across his forehead, which is free of wrinkle lines. I drag a finger down his cheek, and he doesn’t stir even then.

This is not how this was supposed to go.

We were supposed to be scene partners and maybe friends, two people thrown together in circumstances outside of their control, just making the best of it. I wasn’t supposed to feel anything for him but the bare minimum. We would part ways at the end of the semester, and I’d barely think twice about Ian Davidson ever again. He was not supposed to worm his way so deep into my life that he’d be here at one of my lowest points, holding me together, taking care of me.

A noise in the kitchen sends a jolt of panic through me. I bolt from the bed and down the hall to my mom’s bedroom, but she isn’t there. I knew she wasn’t there, but I needed to see it for myself. I fly back down the hall and down the steps, panic choking me.

Heart racing, I don’t stop until I’m in the kitchen staring at my mother stirring a whisk around in a bowl. She looks up at me, and I know immediately she’s a little drunk. Her eyes aren’t clear, and they lack the brightness of sobriety. Is she still drunk from last night? Or . . .

Panic clenches my insides when I realize I didn’t dump the alcohol last night and she might have woken up this morning and started drinking again.

“Good morning, Jade-bear,” my mother chirps, her voice raspy like she hasn’t spoken today. She’s standing at the kitchen counter mixing a batter. “I woke up this morning with just the most specific craving for cinnamon chip pancakes, and don’t you know? We actually have cinnamon chips in the pantry. That never happens, you know. You have a craving for something and it’s never there when you need it to be.”

Her movements are a little sluggish even if her words have some energy. If I had to bet money, I’d say she’s still drunk from last night, not fresh drunk. If she’s had a few drinks this morning to stave off the comedown, I can barely tell. Relief floods me, and I lean against the counter and make a noise to acknowledge her cinnamon chip rant.

But now that I’m not trying to figure out how drunk my mom is, I can really take in the state of the kitchen. Cereal boxes, probably in varying degrees of emptiness, decorate every surface. Between the fast-food wrappers, half-eaten microwave meals, empty and half-empty liquor bottles, beer cans, receipts, and chip wrappers, it looks like a tornado came through here. I didn’t register any of this last night in my search for my mom.

I start to tidy, gathering as much trash as I can carry in my hands. I work around my mom, who is completely oblivious to the mess as she scoops pancake batter into a hot pan. Even at her most sober, she’s not the tidiest person and usually has a cleaner in here once a month. She’s obviously been low since she called me worried Rob was going to break up with her. This isn’t just a couple hours of mess.

“I didn’t recognize the car in the driveway. Is your car okay?” she asks.

“It’s in the shop,” I say, grabbing the all-purpose cleaner and a paper towel to address something sticky under a box. “The car is Ian’s.”

“Hi,” Ian says, and my mom and I both turn to where he’s standing in the doorway of the kitchen, eyes bleary, still wearing my sweats from last night. His hair is mussed, and at the sight of him I have to fight an involuntary smile. God, he’s so cute.

“Oh, hello, Ian!” My mother rushes around the kitchen counter to greet him. She’s short, standing at just over five feet tall, but it doesn’t stop her from grabbing Ian by the neck and pulling him down for a hug. He bends his six-foot frame to meet her but makes eye contact with me over her shoulder. I mouth “sorry” at him. His eyes crinkle with a smile. He gives me a thumbs-up and pats my mom on the back.

She releases him and beams the brightest smile she can muster, like she has no idea he witnessed her passed out in a bathtub last night, soaked to the bone and out-of-her-mind drunk. And truthfully, she probably doesn’t have any idea. As far as she knows, she woke up dry and warm this morning in her bed.

“Ian, I haven’t heard a thing about you. Tell me about yourself,” my mom says, rushing back to her pancakes. She flips the ones on the griddle just a little too late, and they’re a shade of brown too dark.

“I’m a tech theater major at school with Jade,” he says, leaning against the doorframe, stuffing his hands into the pockets of my borrowed sweatpants. “Not sure if she told you we’re in the one-acts together.”

“She did not. That is so fun! You’ll have to tell me when the performance is so I can come see it,” my mom says.

She’s come to most of the shows I’ve been in, but never the one-acts. Never seemed worth the drive for her to watch me act onstage for such a short time. I won’t be inviting her to these either.

Ian glances at me, and I give him a subtle shake of my head.

“Well, it’s really nice to meet you, Mrs. McKinney?—”

“Ruby,” my mom corrects him with a big smile.

“Ruby,” he acknowledges. “But I think I’m gonna grab my clothes from the dryer, and I’ll come back down for some pancakes,” he says with a tight smile.

My mom waves at him as he walks away.

Arms crossed, I lean against the counter next to where she’s making the pancakes. She’s burned nearly all of them, and I’m going to take over if she burns any more.

“Jade! Your boyfriend is so cute,” she says, nudging me with her elbow.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Well, he’s a cutie.”

“Okay.”

“It was nice of him to drive you here.” She flips the pancakes, but again, she waited too long and they’re too dark. If I take over now, she might leave and go for some alcohol, so I squeeze my fingernails into my palm and restrain myself.

“Yep.”

I know she wants me to tell her everything about Ian, spill the tea, but I don’t talk to her about my relationships if I can help it. I had a high school relationship that she got really invested in. She and the girl I was dating got close, and when I broke up with her, my mom had a mini episode and didn’t speak to me for three days. The last thing she needs right now is to get invested in the nonexistent relationship Ian and I have. Or don’t have.

“Listen, can we talk about last night? You really scared me.”

My mom doesn’t say anything—she just starts pouring the next round of pancakes onto the griddle. Her silence is her way of letting me know she’s willing to hear me out at least. If she didn’t want to talk about it, she’d just run away.

“I don’t know if you know, but I found you in the bathtub when I got home. Passed out drunk. In an overflowing tub. The bathroom was flooded. The bedroom was half-flooded. You need to buy a dehumidifier?—”

“Why don’t you take my card and get Ian to take you to Walmart to get one?”

Like hell I’m going to leave her by herself today. She knows I won’t let her drink if I’m around, and she probably wants me out of the house so she can start on another bender. I ignore her suggestion. She’s skirting what I’m saying.

“That’s not the point. What you did last night was really dangerous, Mom. If I hadn’t gotten here when I did . . .” I trail off, not brave enough to finish the sentence, but she knows what I’m getting at.

Her body is angled away from mine, her shoulders hunched with shame.

“I can’t keep doing this forever,” I say quietly. “After I graduate, I?—”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” she says, and I roll my eyes. She always says this, like she’s not a danger to herself.

“I’d like to be able to travel after?—”

“Then travel, Jadey! You don’t need to?—”

“I’d feel a lot better if you started going to AA meetings.”

“Oh, pfft. I don’t need that,” she says and waves her hand at me while pouring more batter onto the griddle.

“You do. You always do this after a?—”

“You know what, Jade-bear, I just remembered I left my phone upstairs. Can you watch my pancakes?” my mom asks in her sweetest voice, interrupting me and handing me the spatula. She drops the scoop back into the batter bowl, and without a second glance at me, she slips out of the kitchen.

My teeth grind together, and it vibrates my skull. This is what happens every time I try to bring up AA. Every time I try to talk about her drinking.

If my grandma were here, she’d probably remind me I can let my mom make her own decisions, and that managing and mothering her isn’t my job.

But it feels like my responsibility. And that is very hard to let go of.

“Jade-bear?” Ian asks, appearing in the doorway again.

“Oh, you heard that, huh?”

“Sorry, one sec, I’m just changing your name in my phone to Jade-bear.”

I shake my head, fighting a smile, and pick up the spatula. I flip the pancakes Mom just poured, turning down the heat. They’re a golden brown and near perfect.

“Your mom seems okay,” he says.

“She’s . . . still a little drunk. She’s probably going to start looking for the alcohol soon, so we need to dump all the alcohol in the house.”

Ian gives a nod, acknowledging that he heard me. “Pancakes, huh?”

“Always. I don’t know why. It’s her comfort food, I guess. We ate them a lot when I was growing up. There’s probably bags full of pancakes in the freezer.”

Ian takes the empty coffee pot from the cradle, rinses it in the sink, places the carafe back into place, and checks the basket. There are old grounds in there, and he dumps them.

I direct him to the fresh filters and coffee beans as I spoon more batter into the pan, the sizzle of frying batter as familiar to me as everything else in this house. The smell of coffee and cinnamon chips fills the kitchen, mingling with the all-purpose cleaner I used before. The stale stench of trash and old food has slowly started to disappear, replaced by more pleasant scents. I shift and something under my feet crunches. There’s more cleaning to do, but it’s a start.

The coffee percolates, and while Ian waits, he moves to the sink, donning the bright pink gloves hanging over the faucet. He turns on the water, pumps soap onto a sponge, and starts to chip away at the pile of dishes in the sink.

“You don’t have to do that,” I say.

“I know,” he says, but he doesn’t stop.

I scrape the batter bowl clean, making the last of the pancakes, and hand the bowl to him. He washes it, stacking the last of the dishes on the rack next to the sink. While I throw the warmest pancakes onto two plates and find some syrup in the fridge, Ian prepares two cups of coffee and brings them to the kitchen island, sliding one over to me without adding anything to it.

“You know how I like my coffee?” I ask. When did he learn that?

“I know how you like your coffee,” he confirms without revealing any more. He looks at me in a way that makes my heart trip.

“When we’re done, we need to dump all the alcohol in the house,” I say as I slide a plate of pancakes over to him.

Ian nods and douses his pancakes with syrup. “I thought I’d run to the store later and get a dehumidifier,” he says, and the fact that he thought about this without us ever having a conversation about it just about does me in. I try to swallow my pancakes, but my throat is too dry.

“You’re welcome to leave tonight if you want. I don’t know if you have any Monday classes, but don’t feel like you have to stay,” I say.

“I’ll stay as long as you need me.”

“You don’t have class?”

“I don’t have anything that’s as important as being here for you,” he says.

I know he means it, and that’s what scares me. Words like that are easily spoken and just as easily forgotten. But Ian is the kind of guy who keeps his word. Tears prick the backs of my eyes, and I force them away with a gulp of coffee.

I’m not alone.

Ian reaches out and rubs my back—small circles that feel so comforting that the tears spring back into my eyes. I lean on him, tired of resisting the urge to let myself be taken care of. Tired of fighting the impulse to trust this man in particular.

He plants a kiss on the top of my head. A boyfriend gesture, but I don’t mind. Not today. Not right now. Not while I’ve got bigger fish to?—

“Shit,” I say, realizing my mom never came back downstairs. My coffee spills as I practically drop it on the counter. “My mom.”

“Go,” Ian says. “I’ll clean up.”

“Thank you,” I say as I run out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

I find my mom curled up on the floor of her bedroom, clutching her phone, sobbing. I push away the guilt at playing house with Ian while she was up here for god knows how long like this.

She obviously can’t be alone right now, so I spend the next few hours with my mother watching reality TV and letting her cry all over my shoulder. My window of opportunity to talk to her about getting help is gone, and all I can hope is that I get another chance tomorrow. If I don’t convince her to get help, I don’t know how I’ll feel okay enough to take the opportunities after college that I actually want to take.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the last shows that I’m costume- and makeup-designing at MPC, and it’s got me feeling all kinds of ways about the idea of not doing it again. I love makeup, but there’s something really special about being part of bringing a show to life with costumes that doing makeup for social media just doesn’t fulfill. Even if I don’t do it forever, traveling around the country doing regional theater would be fun for a while.

But it would be impossible with my mom the way things currently are. I try to put it out of my mind, but I spend most of the morning dancing around solutions and possibilities, having the conversation with myself in my head that I need to have with my mom. Of course, I’m entirely reasonable, so the conversation always goes well.

Around lunch, before I even have a chance to think about making something, Ian knocks on the door with two bowls of some gnocchi soup that must have been in the freezer. I can’t help myself—I follow Ian out of the bedroom for a quick kiss in the hallway before he goes back downstairs.

The rest of the day goes exactly as days like these normally do. My mom and I don’t leave her room, watching trash TV all day. Except this time Ian is around, popping in and out to bring me a Diet Coke, to set up the dehumidifier, to bring some snacks. I can barely concentrate on the TV shows, knowing he’s in the house but not in the room, and every time he does walk into the room, I feel my heart pitch backward down my spine, like a diver taking off from the highest beam.

I didn’t feel anything like this for Anna, Greg, or any other person I’ve dated or fucked or fooled around with. But how could I? I’ve never let anyone in the way I have Ian. And I don’t know that I let Ian in so much as he sort of . . . wandered his way in. Maybe he took a wrong turn somewhere.

When eventually my mom takes a sleeping pill, I go downstairs. She won’t need me again until she wakes up and she won’t wake up for ten hours at least. She once took a sleeping pill and slept through a thunderstorm so violent, it downed three trees in our backyard.

I’m not sure where Ian is, but I have one more task to accomplish before I can call it a night, so I beeline for the kitchen to get started.

The kitchen is both empty and immaculate. Ian is nowhere to be seen, but he’s obviously been in here. It’s been cleaned, swept, mopped, and the trash and recycling have been taken out. It looks as though a professional cleaning service has been here.

“Holy shit,” I mutter to myself. I send off a quick thank-you text to Ian, not sure where he is at the moment, but it doesn’t even begin to touch the depth of my gratitude.

Ian Davidson is too good for this world. And he is definitely too good for me.

When I’ve composed myself, I use a folding chair to get into the cabinets above the fridge—her first hiding spot. There isn’t much left, but what is there is full and unopened. I crack it open and turn it upside down in the sink.

“How’s your mom?” Ian asks, his voice from behind startling me.

I jolt and press my hand over my racing heart. “Fucking hell, Ian. Warn a girl. She’s fine. Dead to the world now. Took a sleeping pill that might as well be a bear tranquilizer.”

“Wow. Any chance she’s willing to share?”

“She might be, but you’ll have to ask her tomorrow afternoon when she rises from the dead.”

Ian chuckles. “Want a hand?” He gestures to the sink, where the bottle has finished emptying.

“Can you check under the sink? There should be more there.”

“I dumped what was under the sink this morning.”

“Really?” I ask, turning my gaze up to his, my eyes wide.

He just nods, a serious look on his face. “You said we needed to dump all the alcohol in the house.”

“So you’re telling me you cleaned my kitchen to perfection and then dumped all the alcohol under the sink?”

“I also dumped the alcohol in the fridge and the garage fridge. I assume there’s more spots, like that one”—he points to above the fridge—“that I don’t know about. But if it was on the first level of the house or your bedroom or bathroom, it’s gone.”

I almost tell him I love him. I don’t love him, but what he’s done is so kind and thoughtful and good that if I were capable of loving someone, I’m pretty sure this would be a good reason to do so.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask.

“No? Is that— I’m sorry, should I?—?”

I drop the empty bottle in the sink. Taking his face in my hands, I crush my lips against his, cutting off his words with a kiss. It’s all I can think to do. “Thank you” just doesn’t cut it. I don’t think any words will at this point.

When I break the kiss, Ian’s eyes are full of longing.

“Is there more alcohol to dump, or can I kiss you again?” he asks.

“One more spot,” I say, but I give him a quick kiss anyway.

My mom thinks I don’t know all her hiding spots for her booze, but I was an overburdened teenager who liked to party, so I found her secret stash years ago.

Ian follows me into the living room, where I open a small coat closet. I locate a box at the back and drag it out into the open. It’s just a cardboard box, and if anyone else saw it, they might think it held old shoes or purses. Instead, there’s a six-pack of beer and a few fifths of vodka.

Ian grabs a vodka bottle and the six-pack and takes them to the kitchen. I follow him with the other two bottles, and after filling the recycling bin, the house is free of alcohol.

My mom won’t leave the house again until Tuesday at the earliest, and by then, the danger will have passed.

“Thank you,” I say as we walk back into the kitchen. I close and lock the garage door and then lean against it as a familiar tiredness overtakes me.

For just a second, I rest my eyes, head propped against the garage door. Ian comes in close, boxing me in, his Old Spice scent filling my nose. He rests his hands on my hips.

I slide my hands up his arms and rest them where his neck meets his shoulders. It’s mere inches of skin on skin, but it satisfies the touch I’ve craved all day. I’ve spent the day thinking of what tonight might look like once we’re alone, and now we’re here, face-to-face, locking eyes for the longest stretch of time we’ve been able to steal today, with his skin warm against my fingers.

“I’m sorry,” Ian says, his voice raspy like he’s talking for the first time today. He clears his throat. “About the whole job thing with my dad. I was being an asshole, and you . . . you were being you. Which is to say that you were being brave and caring and . . . God, Jade, I’m so fucking in awe of you.”

No one has ever seen me as clearly as Ian has. It stirs up such potent emotion in me—some stormy mix of gratitude and longing and vulnerability and desire.

It starts behind my eyes, and then it’s in my throat, clogging up the path for words to escape. It travels down my throat and into my chest, spreading like wildfire through me. It’s in my blood, rushing to every limb of my body, winding around my bones and anchoring me to this spot in the kitchen. The only thing it makes sense to do in this moment is slide my hands to the back of his head and bring his mouth to mine.

I don’t know what else to do with these feelings, but Ian seems to know. He kisses me like he’s been waiting all day for this. He doesn’t just move his lips with mine, unearthing the rhythm of our kiss that is entirely unique to us; he takes all the things I’m feeling, named and unnamed, and makes them his own. He mirrors them back to me with every touch, his hands sliding under my shirt, his fingers dancing along my curves. His hips pin me to the door, his hard length straining against his jeans, pressing into me, and all of it says everything I’m not saying out loud.

I want you. I want you. I need you .

I don’t know who I was trying to kid by telling myself this was just a crush. That Ian was just my friend. Ian is so much more. He is the first person I think of in the morning and the last thing I think of at night. When he’s not around, I want him to be. When he is around, I want him to be close to me. And now he holds my most guarded secret within him. He’s seen the darkest parts of me and he’s still here, kissing me, touching me.

Ian is everything.

Speaking it out loud would make it real, and I don’t know if I’m ready for that. Right now, everything I feel for Ian is safely contained in my heart.

But maybe I don’t need words to tell him how I feel.

With only the shortest break in our kiss, he lifts me. I wrap my legs around him and find his lips again. The ache to be with him—physically, intimately—it drives me. When he sets me on the kitchen counter, he tries to deepen our kiss, leaning me back, but I push him away. His confused look only lasts a second before I lift his shirt up and over his head. In the dim kitchen light, his lean body is accented by the shadows, highlighting lines of muscle and bone.

Fuck, he is so hot.

His eyes dart between my lips and my eyes, and because he’s speaking a language I’m fluent in—the language of bodies and longing—I know it means he wants more than just to kiss again.

But I kiss him again anyway.