To Be Alone With You

John was unhappy – that was glaringly obvious. More than anything, he felt lost, buried beneath all my social responsibilities and the masses of homework that plagued us both. Though while I decided to wade through mine, he blew his into the wind, deciding to go to band practice instead. Band practice was just about anything he did anymore.

Only two things made John O’Callaghan happy at ASU. Me and his music. And that was a daunting feeling.

It was a daunting feeling to be a man’s entire world, that every time I couldn’t hang out, he would sit in his room instead. That every time I was busy with a Kappa event, he would go home and see his band mates. That every time I was working with the Society of Professional Journalists, he was skipping out on Intro to Biology. It was daunting to be his day in and day out. It was daunting to be his everything.

But when the sun rose and the light from the window filtered across his sleeping face, I couldn’t help but cuddle up next to him and miss a class or two. Sometimes I couldn’t tell the difference between my love for John and my hindrance because of John.

I suppose I walked that fine line for some time.



“Josselyn?”

It was a voice I hadn’t heard in person for years. And though I was hearing it through a door, it was making my blood run to an absolute frozen halt in my veins. It was a voice I’d heard first heard before I was even born, a voice that raised me, a voice that talked me through every major event until about two years ago. It was the voice of my mother. And she was standing outside Kennedy’s door, looking for me.

Just minutes after I’d gotten home from the grocery store, she called my cell. It wasn’t that all those years she had lost my number or was fearful to call, the way I was with Casey. She had just chosen not to. She respected my wishes to run away, to get away from everything, her included. And though it tore her up inside, she let me go. But the minute she knew I was back in town, she was bound and determined to find me again.

Kennedy gave me the house for the afternoon for when he went to help Austin out with some various items. Taking care of everything that I never quite understood about being in a band. They needed an awfully large amount of ‘bro time’ to make an album, that was for sure. So while he was out, I told her that it was okay that she came to visit. But with her presence just on the other side of the door, I was beginning to consider running in the other direction.

“Hey Mom,” I greeted softly upon opening the door. My heart swelled in my chest, eyes choking on tears.

She looked old. Beautiful as ever, but old. Like all the things that happened to us, to all of us, aged her somehow, deepening the lines around her eyes and between her brows, drawing the elasticity out of her skin, the color from her lips faded to a pale pink. But when she laid her eyes on me, it was like we were young again – her chasing me around the living room while Casey laughed from the sofa. Her eyes had some sort of spark in them.

“Josselyn,” she repeated in a deep sigh, crossing the threshold and taking me in her arms.

I melted. And so did she.

I felt her body shaking around me, the tremors of tears rocking her every limb. That was it for my sense of togetherness, because when my mother cried, I cried. That was part of the reason I had to leave Tempe for good. For a while, none of us could keep it together.

“Why didn’t you call?” she whispered into my hair, the tears dampening the spot her shoulder rested on my shoulder. I assumed mine were doing the same to hers.

“I’m so sorry,” I replied, holding her tighter than ever. “I was afraid. I didn’t want to be a failure for coming home. I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

“Disappoint me?” my mom asked in confusion and disbelief, still refusing to let go. “What do you mean, disappoint me? What happened?”

Finally I pulled away, drawing myself out from her vice-like grip. Her hair, blonde like Casey’s, was matted with my tears, eyes wet from hysterical sobs. It was like the prodigal son coming home, I’m sure. The sheep that ran away and finally found its way home.

“Come sit down,” I murmured. “I have a lot to tell you.”

And though I didn’t really plan on it, I sat down and told her everything that happened to me. And though I had planned on avoiding it, on avoiding her, on avoiding everything here at all costs, I couldn’t help myself. At the sight of her, it all tumbled out. The way things always seemed to tumble out with her.

Seeing her brought out a lot of the pain I felt when leaving Tempe. Graduation, moving across the country from the ones I loved, seeing John that night at Austin’s, among so many other things. It was like reopening a deep, sullied wound and gently rubbing salt into every crevice. Even the sound of my mom’s voice reminded me of everything that happened.

But Merrill Stevens was a kind woman, and she always had been. She was a saint to raise rambunctious twin girls without a father, to put them through school, to let them both go the way she did. It was hard enough when Casey moved to FIDM, but when I went to New York, she could have easily let it kill her – the loneliness. That was my fault for abandoning her, I suppose. But home became toxic after everything happened, and that was something that I couldn’t live with anymore.

“That bastard,” she seethed furiously upon hearing out my story with Rick. No mother wants to hear that their daughter was sexually harassed at their dream job. I swear I saw the fire of God in her eyes that afternoon, threatening to strike Rick Salamancas down where he stood.

“It gets more complicated though,” I sighed, rubbing at my temples with my forefingers. “The NYPD called yesterday. He’s being held for serial rape in the state. Can you even believe that?”

“Serial rape?” she questioned. “I didn’t even realize that was a thing that happened. Jesus, what kind of sick fuck…”

“Mom!” I exclaimed, taken aback at her words. It had been a long time since we’d been together, and I guess my furthered sense of adulthood brought out tones in her that she hadn’t expressed before. As in, a language that she had kept hidden from Casey and me as children.

“Tell me it’s not true,” she commented flatly. I shrugged in defeat. She was right.

“I’m so sorry,” she continued, rubbing at her tear stained eyes. “I wish I could have ever known.”

“Mom,” I murmured, reaching out to her. “There was no way for you to have known. I never called you. And I should have. I just was afraid to let you back in after everything that’s happened. I forget sometimes that it happened to you, too.”

She nodded solemnly, glancing from my face to the face of her watch. In frustration, she exuded a deep sigh. “I can’t believe we’ve talked for so long,” she hummed. “Well I mean, I obviously can believe it. But I have to go to work and we’ve hardly even scratched the surface.”

“I’ll be here for a while,” I replied with a weak smile. “I don’t know how long. But we’ll have plenty of time to catch up.”

She looked up at me through a row of thick eyelashes, the same as mine, and smiled in return. “If you’ll have me.”

“Of course I’ll have you, Mom,” I confirmed. “I don’t think I can get rid of you anyway now that you know I’m in town.”

We shared a laugh, a laugh that the Stevens girls seemed to have shared for our entire lives. “I’ll walk you out.”

Saying goodbye to my mother for the first time since I thought I said goodbye to her forever was harder than I expected. I was in tears all over again, pressing my face into her shoulder like I was a toddler all over again. I hadn’t realized how much I missed her, so determined to leave the life I had in Tempe behind. It was so selfish of me. I hadn’t realized how much it had affected her – I had been so focused on how everything had affected me.

“Have you heard from Casey recently?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Not really. She was in a dream I had a while ago; we were at the beach at Santa Barbara, just a ways a way from her house.”

“Oh, that girl and her beaches,” my mom hummed with a laugh.

“I think she spends a lot of time there, for how busy she must be taking care of everyone and everything,” I added thoughtfully.

She smiled at me. “I think so too, honey. I think so too.”

She turned and headed out the door, glancing over her shoulder one last time, as if to make sure that I was real. “You know, Josselyn,” she said softly. “You’re always welcome at home.”

An offer that I was entirely not expecting, not a little bit, not what so ever. I had disappeared for great space and time and it was going to be as easy as talking to me for an hour or so and then offering me to come back into her home?

Of course it was that easy. She was my mother.

When I closed the door behind her, I immediately felt as though I couldn’t be alone. This was a feeling that was occurring to me increasingly often and it was completely unnerving. For a girl who had largely spent her time alone, aside from the companionship of Charlotte, it was weird to feel like I needed someone. But when my life was turned upside down, I felt like I just needed someone.

And right then, that someone was John O’Callaghan.

It felt strange, dialing his number for the first time in a long time. I worried as the dial tone rang out that he had changed his number, that a strange man may pick up on the other end and I would be left to my resources. I worried that with time, things would change, the way they had so clearly changed in Tempe.

“Josselyn?” his voice finally replied.

“John,” I breathed sheepishly, my heart pounding in my chest. “I… what are you doing right now?”

“Uh,” he paused, “nothing. Are you okay?”

I took a deep breath, questioning what I was even doing calling him in the first place – Kennedy was just as easily reachable. But something in my soul wanted John, something in my gut was willing me to pursue his assistance. Something told me that he would know how to make it all okay – he knew my mom, he knew how close we were, he would know what to say. He had to.

“I’m fine,” I muttered weakly. “Or I will be. Can you… would you… is it okay if I come over? I need to get out.”

There was a crackling silence on the line, everything between us splayed out with our phones as witness. I was reaching out to John for help. And I don’t think ever in a million years would either one of us expected it.

“I’ll come get you,” he offered, hanging up straight away.

I sat nervously on the front step waiting for him to arrive, the sight of his truck causing my pulse to skip brokenly, scuttling across the pavement between us. Wordlessly, he got out of the car and crossed that gap in a few, long strides – those damn legs of his – and took me in his arms. I stiffened awkwardly in his embrace, unsure of what to do. His sudden affection was more than I was prepared for, to say the least.

And after a moment, I softened in his grip, my face buried in his familiar chest. He still smelled the same, wearing the same cologne that I’d bought him for Christmas our freshman year of college. And when the heady scent of John O’Callaghan filled my senses, I crumbled even more. Struggling to fight back tears, I quaked in his arms, unable to keep it together anymore.

“I know, Joss,” he murmured comfortingly. “I know.”

We stood there like that for a while, for the whole neighborhood to see. Kennedy could have come home at any moment and seen us standing there in each others arms and World War Three would have began right on his door step. But I felt so safe being with John, for whatever reason that may be. Perhaps it was the familiarity. Perhaps it was timing. Perhaps I just was confused and alone and he was available. I don’t think either of us really understood.

“I have a question,” he murmured into my hair.

“What’s that?” I sniffled, finally pulling away from him to see his face. His eyes were mysteriously clouded by those stupid Ray Bans he always insisted on wearing whenever he walked out a door, hiding his intentions. But the telltale curve of his lips gave him away. It always did.

“Can I take you out tomorrow?” he asked confidently, that same confidence he always wore when he was truly unsure of something. “For dinner or something?”

“Why?”

He laughed in his choppy, dry laugh, pushing up the sleeves of his baseball tee. “Because…” he started, allowing his words to trail off absently. “I’ve been thinking about it. And I think we deserve a fresh start.”

A small smile appeared on my lips. “A fresh start. I like the sound of that.”