Why Won't You Fall Into My Arms?

I stirred peacefully, feeling excess warmth run through me as if I was pressed to a heater. It was still pitch black and the clock I took a quick peep at told me it had only been an hour or so since I’d crept into Jack’s room.

There was a strong arm draped securely over the covers around my waist which certainly wasn’t there when I fell asleep. I eased it off me, cheeks flushing, as carefully as possible so as not to wake Jack. I prayed that he wouldn’t wake up. I didn’t want to have to face him yet when it wasn’t even morning.

“Where do you think you’re going?” a voice mumbled into my hair while I was prying the arm slowly off of me.

I spluttered in shock. He’d been awake. He’d been awake and conscious enough to know which parts of his body were holding mine!

“I see you decided to join me after all.”

“I had a nightmare,” I whispered, not able to say anything else. It was pathetic really how I couldn’t as much as look at him because I was so ashamed.

“What was it about?”

“Drowning,” I said truthfully “dying.”

I felt his flinch through my own body. Of course I should have lied. I should have made up something to do with failing an English test. Bringing up death when he’d just, rather accidentally, told me that his sister had died ten years ago wasn’t ever a smart idea.

“It sounds scary,” he sighed, the gust of his breath running through my hair.

I knew I had to face it head on and swallow my stupid pride, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn around. Just to see his face. I already knew how it would look. Broken and sad and vulnerable. Everything I had been telling myself Jack wasn’t. It was hard hating someone like that. The invincible Jack was easy to hate.

There was a silence settling around us, smothering me. It was like my nightmare all over again only now the thing tying me down was a heavy arm still coiled close to my waist. I didn’t even have the energy to move it away, or the willpower.

“Are you asleep Soph?” he whispered at last.

“No.”

“Oh,” he sighed again and made it impossible to ignore the heaviness in his voice. I was its cause of course and it shouldn’t have hurt me as much as it did.

So I finally shifted my body around to face him, his oversized baseball shirt falling in bunches between us. His arm shifted, his hand curling around the gap my moving had left so it was even harder to escape. With one swift movement he could have pushed me into him. He could have sandwiched us together into a place I certainly wasn’t ready for.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured “I’m sorry for what I said about your sister’s room and about how horrible I’ve been to you today.”

“Hey now, I haven’t been much of a gentleman either,” he said, eyes watching me intently.

I cringed into the soft pillow and wished he wouldn’t do that. The sooner he could accept my apology the sooner we could go back to being enemies, or at least being nothing close to friends. But he wasn’t saying it was fine and just rolling back over to sleep, He was staring at me as if waiting for me to say something else, as if I had anything more to say to him.

“Well…” I struggled with myself for a second “I had no right to be horrible about the room, and indirectly about your sister. I’m not usually so insensitive it’s just…”

There was no explanation for it. I was clutching at straws just to build back up the wall usually so steady in between us. Somewhere between my nightmare and now it had completely toppled over.

“Me,” Jack finished what I had started.

I groaned, hearing that it sounded ten times worse than when I had thought it, and buried my head into the pillow just so his smouldering eyes wouldn’t completely burn me alive. There was some truth in it though; something about Jack made me into a person I didn’t like.

“It’s not an excuse Jack, we argue and bicker and fight but I never meant to be a bitch. Especially about your sister. I didn’t even know… you never told me,” I bit my lip and chanced a glance up at him through the fluffy white.

Moonlight was the only illumination in the dark room and it fell slanted onto Jack. His highlights shone gold, surrounded by the rest of his dark hair, falling sparsely into those blue blue eyes. The covers were low enough for me to know he wasn’t wearing a shirt and low enough for the top of his abs to send hollows over the rest of his chest. I thought to myself how everything would be easier if he wasn’t so beautiful to look at.

“She died when I was eight years-old. It wasn’t something I really wanted to talk about, especially when you were always so collected about your parents’ deaths. I felt stupid for wanting to cry about my little sister when I’d never seen you even frown about them.”

His voice was loud amid the silence but the words were whispered softly to me. Everybody had known about my parents’ deaths. It was something easy to gossip about in the town and it explained why my grandparents’ always picked me up from school. Jack and his family had kept that all at bay though.

I hadn’t cried about my parents, or rather I had never done so in front of anybody. As far as I was concerned they had never been a part of the equation. They had been the unknown element that I hadn’t got but could never quite miss. I never talked to Jack about this because I never wanted to sound weak, especially when he was always so tough. It was strange imagining the tables turning, as me being the strong one.

“Her name was Annabelle, she was six when she was run down by a car just outside our house,” he paused. And took in a large gulp of air. I watched him flinch and imagine the scene as if it was happening all over again.

I frowned gently “you don’t have to do this Jack. You don’t have to tell me about it.”

He ignored me, the only thing giving away that he’d heard me at all was the arm over the cover, tightening slightly around my body.

“My parents always loved her more than me, I got that, she was cute and well behaved and their little angel. When she died it was as if we all did too, our family died. They keep her photos up in the lounge; they keep her bedroom exactly as it was, because they’ve never moved on. She’s still the favourite child even if I’m the only child they have now.”

I breathed out, only realising after he’d stopped that I had been holding my body rigid. Waiting. It was worse than I had imagined, it was far worse than I had ever thought. Jack Adams’ baby sister had died and, even if he couldn’t see it, his parents weren’t the only ones still in mourning.

“I wish I had introduced the two of you,” he half smiled, the moonlight casting it into more of a grimace. “She would have loved you.”

“Maybe not, I’m not good with kids,” I replied softly.

“She would have loved you,” he said again, firmer.

We lay there, facing each other, neither one moving more than a few millimetres to breathe. I watched him and his sadness. I watched his eyes usually so mischievous slope down in the sadness, in the tears he wouldn’t let fall. I hadn’t thought of Jack as anything but indestructible for years and to see his mask crack was like having the wall between us break down. I wanted it back up but there was nothing I could do. I was powerless.

“It’s pretty late, isn’t it?” his voice brought me out of the daydreams his eyes had pulled me into.

“Very late.”

“Well then…” Jack shot me a small smile, not a smirk, and rolled over onto his back taking his arm with him. The loss of it should have made me happy, glad. Instead, it just made me feel cold.

“Goodnight Sophia,” he murmured into the air.

I watched his words sink around us before closing my eyes too. I knew there would be no more nightmares, not for me at least, and I would be here if Jack’s memories became too much for him.

I had decided that tonight didn’t count. Just because he had almost cried and I had said sorry and come crawling into his bed, didn’t mean we were friends. Because we weren’t.

I opened one eye a fraction to see Jack’s portrait relaxed in sleep. Rolling over onto my other side, I raised up a hand to cover something akin to a smile. And I fell back asleep.