I Know You've Got Your Life In Place But I've Yet To Take The Hint

Lisa’s POV

I jumped almost a foot into the air when my phone vibrated. As of late, I’d been feeling more and more guilty, thus making me act more and more suspicious. I looked around before I flipped open the phone and checked the text message. It was from Alex. I sighed. He wanted to know if I was really leaving tomorrow.

My eyes watered. It’s not like he really cared. He was too nice to tell me that he really wanted me gone. But I could read it in his body language, the way he was guarded when he talked to me, and the way his eyes didn’t quite meet mine when he tried to be nice to me. I knew he blamed me for all the fights he’d been having with Jack. He thought that I hated Jack, but I guess it was more that I envied him. He had a secure spot in Alex’s life, which was the main thing. He could act however he wanted and people still loved him, where if I acted a certain way, I was a fake, or a slut, or stupid.

I sat there, not knowing what to say to Alex. I really didn’t want to leave. On the All Time Low bus, with the guys, it was where I felt safest. Even though their lack of respect and friendship was evident, I knew that they’d never let anyone hurt me.

On the other hand, they’d hurt me themselves if they knew what I’d done.

Flashback, about 4 months ago

The lights were burning my eyes when I pulled myself out of bed and towards the shower. I could smell the coffee brewing in the kitchen and the smell of eggs and bacon also came wafting in. My stomach heaved, and I immediately dropped my head into the toilet, letting the all too familiar sensation wash over me.

When I was done, I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my robe and felt my way around for some mouthwash. I didn’t feel good; I barely had any strength, and knowing what I had to do next was making me feel even worse.

I sang quietly to myself while I showered, and continued to sing while I got dressed and did my hair.

It wasn’t long before the door banged open and my singing came to an abrupt halt. He’d been drinking again; I could see it in his eyes and smell it on his breath. He was half dressed, his belt dangling from his hands. I bit my lip as I looked at him.

“Hi,” I said softly, not wanting to anger him. It was best to just start with a soft hello and wait to see what he had to say before deciding what I had to do – defend myself or placate him.

“Good morning, beautiful.” he said, the tone of his voice surprisingly normal. “I heard you singing again, I still don’t see why you don’t try and make something of it, it would be far better than selling yourself for money.”

I hated when he said that. I lowered my head in shame. “I don’t sell myself for money,” I said firmly but quietly.

He laughed. His laughter was cruel and cold and I hated it with a fiery passion that came from the depths of my soul and surprised me with its intensity. “Quit fooling yourself, sweetheart. You know as much as I do that model is just a cheap way of saying prostitute. Because let’s face it, if it wasn’t for all the horny guys who bought magazines and stuff with pretty girls like yourself in them so they could get off, you wouldn’t have a job. If no one cared what you looked like, they could use the average chick from down the road and be done with it. Let’s face it, hon, sex sells, and you’re sex on legs, there is no denying that.”

I threw my head up and glared at him. “I hate you, you asshole. I don’t know why I had sex with you in the first place, you’re disgusting.”

He smiled, his teeth gleaming at me. “I’m only disgusting on the inside, and let’s face it; it’s the outside that counts.” He moved forward and ran his fingers up and down my skin. “Or maybe it’s just the fact that I’m a man. What young lady doesn’t like being with a big strong man? That boy toy of yours isn’t half the man I am.”

I resisted the urge to shudder. “Leave Alex out of this,” I said, but couldn’t meet his eyes, and the words came out a mere whisper, compared to the scream they’d been in my head.

“Leave Alex out of this,” he mocked me. “And why should I? What’s stopping me from telling him everything you do with me? Does he know you enjoy it from behind? Does he realize that you’re best suited on your knees? Has he ever made you scream, Lisa? Tell me, can he make you scream like I can?”

“N-no”, I stuttered. “No one can make me scream like you can.” I stepped forward and wrapped my legs around him and prepared to kiss when, but was surprised when he shoved me backwards and I landed on my ass on the floor beside the toilet. I looked up, shame and embarrassment coloring my cheeks, and my eyes watering.

“I don’t like when you keep secrets from me, Lisa.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” I asked, knowing full well what he meant.

My suspicions were confirmed when he threw the pregnancy test at me. The little box with its cheerful pink plus sign was far from a good sight for me. I had thrown up for hours after I read it, whether it was from knowing I was going to have a baby or knowing that I’d made a baby with a monster.

“When were you going to tell me that I was going to have the pleasure of being a daddy?” he hissed at me, his eyes narrow.

“I-I-I I wanted to tell you, but it might not even be yours. I didn’t know for sure and I didn’t want to alarm you for nothing, I didn’t … I couldn’t …. I’m sorry.” I ended my rant when I saw the way that he was looking at me.

“Don’t be a fool, Lisa. It is mine; you and I both know it. In fact, I planned it. Does that reassure you any?” he smiled, drumming his fingers on the counter.

I was in shock. “You … you planned it?”

“Yes. You see, you’ve became nothing but a damned nuisance, and I wanted to be rid of you. But I can’t trust you, you see, to keep this affair a secret. My wife wouldn’t approve, my family, my co-workers, I’d lose their respect. You could say I forced you, and your little boyfriend would back you up, and BAM, I’d be finished. But, knowing that I knocked you up, you have two choices, really. One is to tell everyone, to have everyone know that your baby is going to be a bastard, and worse, have a bastard for a father, or two. Make Alex think it’s his, and both of our lives will get back to normal.”

“B-b-but Alex isn’t ready for a baby. I’m not ready for a baby! Damn it, you asshole, I fucking hate you!” I leapt to my feet and clawed at his face, kicked him, slapped him and pulled his hair. When I finally pulled away, his face was bleeding and the look he gave me sent frissons of fear racing up and down my entire body.

“You’ve just crossed a line, Lisa dearest. Now, you don’t have a choice. Either you go and tell Alex that he’s going to be a daddy, or Alex might not live to his next birthday. Maybe that little baby won’t, either. It’s too easy for a pregnant woman to fall down the stairs, or get hit by a car.” He looked at me, his eyes as cold as the ice in his soul. “What will it be, Lisa?”

End flashback.

I was bawling by the time the flashback came to an end. I hated myself more and more every day for being such a coward. I just couldn’t face any of this. He was a mean son of a bitch, and I didn’t doubt that he’d try to hurt Alex, or me, or the baby. I wouldn’t have any of it. I still loved Alex, as a friend and as someone who’d been a part of my life for a long time. And the baby … she was my chance to start over, to be the person I wanted to be instead of the person I’d been roped into being.

So for months, I’d hid my secret well, hiding behind walls, cowering around corners. Every text message that came to my phone had the potential to be from him, every man’s shadow could be hiding his, every cruel laugh on the streets made me hang my head in shame and walk just a little bit faster.

I knew I needed help, but first, I needed someone to confide it. Someone who’d understand what it was like to be scared for someone else’s sake, someone who understood what it was like to be alone in life and trying so desperately to cling onto that one piece of humanity that still managed to bloom in the frigid winters of an icy heart.

I cried for Alex, I cried for Jack, and I cried for the person I used to be. I didn’t notice anyone had come in until a hand on my shoulder startled me into looking up.

“Lisa?”

I looked into Jack’s eyes, and then collapsed onto him, crying.

Jack’s POV

When I walked into the living room with the intention of talking to Lisa, I hadn’t seen it going anything like this.

She had collapsed into my arms, her body shaking with the intensity of her sobs. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never seen cool, collected Lisa Ruocco act like this. Sure, she’d lost her temper now and again, especially with Alex, but even then those had been poised, classy bitch fits, nothing like this passionate display of emotion happening right in from of me.

“Lisa, talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.” I said softly, running a hand over her hair and trying to calm her down. “You can tell me anything, Lisa, I promise I’ll listen.” I held her for a few more minutes and she finally stopped shaking and I could feel her breathing return to normal. I made a move to pull away from her but she stopped me.

“Please just hold me, Jack. I’m so scared.” Her voice was raspy and a mere whisper. She clung to me like I was the very oxygen that gave her the power to live. Her eyes, though, were lifeless. Bland, limp, and lifeless.

“Lisa, you’re scaring me. Please tell me what’s going on.”

She sniffled. “I can’t tell you, you’ll tell Alex. Alex can’t know. Alex isn’t safe if he knows. Please don’t make me tell.” She said this like she half expected me to start beating the information out of her, or at the very least threatening her until she did what I wanted. Did I want this? Really? Did I want to know something that could hurt Alex? Fuck. I struggled with indecision for a few moments, and then looked down and saw the broken girl in front of me, and my mind was made up.

“I’m going to make you tell me, because I’m worried about you and I need to know what’s going on if I’m going to be able to help you.”

Her eyes watered. “You’re an amazing person, Jack. I’m so sorry I never treated you even close to how you deserve to be treated You give me hope. How you can still look at me and say you’re worried about me and mean it after everything I did, is just amazing. I just want to make sure you know that I don’t hate you, and you deserve Alex far more than I do.”

Hearing Lisa say these things to me warmed my heart, but there was still ice inside my veins as I tried and failed to figure out what she was going to tell me next. She accurately judged my silence as my need to know, and took a deep breath and started to speak.

“The first thing you should know … is that I’m not pregnant with Alex’s baby.”

My eyes almost fell out of my head, but I found I couldn’t speak.

“Obviously, I’m not faking the pregnancy, because, well, just look at me,” she waved a hand at the protruding baby bump and smiled wistfully. “What I’m trying to say I guess is that I cheated on Alex, I got knocked up, and I decided to make him think that it was his.”

I swallowed a few times, reminding myself that there had to be more to the story than she was telling. “Lis, don’t hide things. I know there’s more to it than that.”

She bit her lip. “I underestimate you, Barakat. I figured you’d kill me and not give me a chance to explain. Okay … truth is, the person I was with was nice at first. But then he showed his true colors bit by bit and by the time I knew the truth, it was too late for me to back out because I was already pregnant. I’d been with Alex a few weeks before, when I flew in to surprise him, but I knew it wasn’t Alex’s. And then, the guy, I’m not going to name him, told me he got me pregnant on purpose because he wanted to have a way to blackmail me. Well, I didn’t take it well and lost my temper and after, he said that I’d just dug myself a deeper hole. Now I didn’t have a choice to make Alex think it was his, or he’d hurt Alex, me, and the baby.”

I stared at the wall with avid interest until she took my face into her hands and forced me to look at her. “I don’t blame you if you want to hate me, Jack.”

“I can’t hate you for being scared and wanting to protect the people you love, and let’s face it I can’t even hate you for cheating on Alex. We all knew that you guys weren’t going anywhere, but Alex wouldn’t break it off because he felt like he owed you something. I can’t even begin to imagine how it feels to know someone’s only staying with you because they feel like they have an obligation. I just wish you would have told us, Lis. We’d all sleep easier if the truth had gotten out from the start.”

She said nothing, just buried her face into my chest.

“Oh, Lisa. I’m so sorry. But can’t you just tell us the guys name, we’ll go talk to him and tell him that we don’t intend on making this public and –“

“No. Alex would never understand. He’s not you, Jack. Please, promise me you won’t tell him. Promise me, Jack.”

And when her watery eyes looked up into mine and searched my soul, it took everything I had in me to lie to her face.

“I promise, Lisa.”

Alex’s POV

The phone rang when I was in the middle of going through my clothes. It took me a few minutes to locate the phone because as it turned out, I’d buried it under a pile of clothes. I finally freed it and answered with a cheerful hello.

“Alex?”

The voice on the other end of the line was distorted, the sound of tears reaching through the phone and grabbing me by the heart. Despite the long distance, despite the cries, despite the simple whisper, I knew who it was and I knew something was wrong. My stomach heaved and I pressed a hand to it, and sat down on the floor.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

The voice on the other end choked, and tears immediately welled up in my eyes. Something was really, really wrong, or my mom would never have called me like this. We talked to each other pretty much every night, but she never called during the day unless it was a special occasion, we’d missed each others calls for a few days, or she knew I would be busy at night. None of these things applied right now, and even if they had, she wouldn’t have sounded so positively broken.

“Alex, are you sitting down? I need to tell you something and I need you to be sitting down. Is anyone there with you? I don’t want you to be alone.”

Just as that moment, Jack came into the room. He took in my tear splattered face with a horrified look and immediately sat down and wrapped his arms around me.

“Yeah, Mom, Jack’s here with me. He’ll take care of me, just tell me what’s going on.”

I could hear her soft smile through all of the pain. “Jack’s a good boy, Alex. The best friend you could ever have. Tell him I love him, will you, Alex?”

I nodded even though she couldn’t see me, and looked over at Jack. “My mom says she loves you, Jack.”

Jack’s eyes were watery now too and I could feel him shaking. Or maybe that was just me. “I love you too, Mrs. G,” he said to the phone and blew it kisses.

“Jack is blowing you kisses, Mom,” I said, almost predicating her answer.

“Oh, that little rascal, he never changes,” my mom said with a slight chuckle. After the chuckle came a bit of wheezing, and when the wheezing turned to gasping, I clutched onto Jack in alarm.

“Mom, what’s wrong? You’re having trouble breathing, what’s wrong!” I almost screamed, panic taking control of my voice. The room started spinning and I had to shut my eyes. Tears seeped out from under the closed lids and I could feel my lower lip shaking.

“Alex … I’ve been keeping some things from you because I didn’t want to alarm you. But around two months ago, I started having chest pains, and was losing feeling in parts of my upper body at random times. The doctors sent me for a bunch of different tests but didn’t rush them because of the history of bronchitis in our family. But … it’s not bronchitis, Alex. It’s cancer. I have lung cancer.”

My whole body just shut down. I sagged against Jack. “How long?” I asked dully.

She didn’t even question what I meant. “About six months. Alex … this is why I must ask you … my dying wish is to see you marry Lisa. I want my grandchild to have a proper home.”

My body went into convulsions just then. I starting shaking and couldn’t speak. I dropped the phone. I heard my mother’s voice somewhere from the ground, but it was tinny and distant and broken. I brought my fists onto the floor, pounding them until my hands were red and Jack was holding both of them. He pulled me into his arms and some of his strength slowly seeped into me. The heat of his body warmed my frozen limbs, even though nothing he did could ever get rid of the chill that lingered in my heart.

Mechanically, I reached down and picked up the phone again. “Okay, Mom. I’ll do it.” I hung up the phone with a click and looked at Jack, the love of my life, whose eyes were swollen with tears and whose pulse was trembling under my touch.

“Jack … my mom’s dying, Jack. She has cancer.”

Jack’s eyes were filled with the disbelief I hadn’t had the time to feel. My body had immediately gone into a numb acceptance. Tears streaked down his face and we leaned forward, holding each other.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at him as I delivered the next piece of news. “Her dying wish is for me to marry Lisa and give our baby a good home.”

In the silence that followed, even our breathing was quiet. Despite the layers of fabrics, I knew the exact moment that his heart broke. It was the same moment that mine simply stopped existing.