Chapter Text
When Jacob Hill is seventeen years old, he drifts out of his room, deposits himself on one of the stools at the kitchen island, threads his fingers together, presses his folded hands against the cool, shining marble of the counter, and watches his mother cook. His father hasn’t gotten home yet. He might still be at the office, or he might be out with friends. Jacob wouldn’t know.
Jacob’s mom was in court all day, and yet she’s still here now, cooking. Something about societal expectations. Jacob’s learned all about those, and he’s still learning. Too slowly, sometimes.
She doesn’t say anything to him, only throws a brief, distracted smile over her shoulder before going back to making the meal that Jacob, whose appetite is non-existent lately, will guiltily mostly throw away. His dad definitely won’t eat it, because he always gets food before coming home, except on the days Jacob’s mother doesn’t cook.
Either way, they’ll probably fight.
Jacob wishes they’d get divorced already.
He clears his throat. He opens his mouth. He closes it. He usually has something to say, even if it’s not the right thing.
He talks a lot.
It’s hard not to, sometimes, when he feels like he doesn’t exist if he isn’t talking about it, when at least the sound of his voice can drown out the nauseating confusion in his head, when he can make his thoughts leave him in a row of sentences instead of abandoning them to swirl around in his brain.
Lately, though, he’s been swallowing his own words. He keeps wanting to say things about how he feels, and the things he feels are horrible, so he can’t.
Except.
Except now, because Jacob’s not sure he can live like this anymore, and the internet says that a way to combat toxic masculinity is to talk about feelings, and everything is so unbearably toxic in Jacob’s life, he might as well try to cleanse one thing.
“Mom?” he says, voice delicate.
His mother pauses in stirring the spaghetti sauce. She cocks her head to the side. She’s listening, though she can’t manage to actually look at her son. Jacob can relate.
Sometimes when he looks in the mirror, all he wants is to break it, shatter his own face, wipe himself off the earth because everything is so useless and when he was little he wanted to change the world and now he thinks he might not get the chance because he’s a fucking loser and—
It’s probably easier this way.
Without her looking at him.
He says, voice pressured and small but no longer hesitant, “I want to die.”
His mother’s shoulders tense. Jacob feels like he’s going to puke. He wants to not have said anything. He wants her to hug him and tell him it’s going to be okay. He wants her to look at him, to see him. He didn’t want to bother her, but he also misses the days when he felt he had a future, and there is help and hope and healing, that’s what the public service announcements say, that’s what the assembly they had at school today said, and Jacob needs that.
He can’t live like this anymore. He’s so done with it all. He wants life to be tolerable again. He wants to have fun again. He wants to believe he’s worth literally anything.
His mother says nothing.
He breathes shakily, trying not to cry. His head hurts, his stomach hurts, everything hurts, he feels like he’s going to be sick all the time, he hates every part of himself for feeling this way but he can’t seem to stop and there’s something really messed up inside of him.
The silence stretches on and on until finally, dread writhing in his chest, Jacob whispers a word he hasn’t said in over a decade. “…Mommy?”
She takes in a sharp breath and then shakes her head. With a carefully even voice, she tells him, “Jacob, sweetheart, that’s not funny. Just…please don’t say things like that. It stresses me out.”
“Oh,” he murmurs, stricken, not sure what he’d expected or why he’d expected anything better, something that would make him feel less lost. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. Go do your homework, okay?”
“Okay,” he says faintly, and he drifts away like he came in, except even lighter than before.
Not in a good way.
He goes to lie on his bed, curling up on his side. He hugs the stuffed stegosaurus his dad wishes he’d throw away but that he’s had since he was seven to his chest, and he stares at the wall.
He already finished his homework like three hours ago.
He doesn’t know how he feels anymore except really, really tired.
His mom will be sorry if he dies, he thinks a little spitefully, but the idea of dying still scares him almost as much as it intrigues him, and he thinks it would be much easier to continue living if he could manage to want to be alive, if someone would help him, but all the future Jacob used to see in his mind’s eye has gotten blurred, painted over, and his head hurts really bad, and he doesn’t really have friends and his mom and dad barely talk to him because they’re so busy hating each other and he likes boys and not girls and he knows it isn’t what his parents wanted for him and he never seems to say the right thing and he has so much going for him but he still feels this way why does he feel this way you know there are children starving there are people suffering you are objectively in an excellent position you should man up and stop—
He sits up in bed, curling in on himself, and puts his hands over his ears as if that will calm his thoughts.
Agitation surges through his body, a sudden, desperate aggression threatening to overtake him before he starts rocking back and forth even though his parents hate it when he does that, but there’s no one here to see.
There’s no one who sees him.
Tomorrow is another day.
The thought is devastating.
+
But that might as well have happened a million years ago and to someone else, because Jacob is better now. Jacob is a happy person.
Ahem. He’ll try that again.
Jacob is a happy person! Jacob has a good life! Jacob adores his job and he is starting to maybe be good at it! Jacob has friends who love him and friends who like him and friends who tolerate him and a boyfriend who he is in love with and who loves him back! Jacob uses exclamation points when he thinks, because he is just! So! Full! Of! Enthusiasm!
Jacob has to get out of bed!
…Jacob doesn’t want to get out of bed, though he needs to go to school soon.
It’s not really good for growing minds, school starting so early. Jacob’s read papers about that.
Usually Jacob is fine with it, though. Usually he wakes up at five in the morning, which gives him ample time to get to school at an appropriate hour.
He likes to keep a routine.
Lately, he’s forcing himself to keep it, because he has this very uncomfortable feeling that he’s teetering on the edge of a cliff and he is trying to ignore it—the periodic lowering, the way melancholy tugs at his organs and drags them down.
The cliff is a metaphor for depression, though that isn’t a word Jacob likes even thinking when it’s attached to him, especially now, because he’s not supposed to be depressed. What does he have to be depressed about?
He’s under stress, but so is everyone. The holidays are coming soon, but a lot of people have a tough time with the holidays, and his own complicated relationship with them is at least a ready made explanation for Zach for why he doesn’t want to go to Pittsburgh with him.
This is all in his head, so he can make it go away just as easily. Right?
Jacob needs to get to school soon, but he doesn’t want to get out of bed. He wants to stay here, warm under his sheets, curled up next to Zach. He wants to go back to sleep and wake up when this is over.
But he has responsibilities in his very happy life, so he gets to his feet, which is a relief.
If he can get out of bed, it means he’s going to be okay. He’s having a low day. Everyone has them. He can forgive that in himself. It’s healthy to forgive himself some of his faults, and tomorrow will be better.
Tomorrow is another day, and it will be better.
Except tomorrow is another day that he wakes up and still doesn’t want to get out of bed. Bad sign. An even worse sign than all the other signs he’s been trying to ignore.
It’s an even worse worse sign that the idea of facing the day only makes him exhausted. That he thinks about going through the motions and the first thought that flits through his mind is: what’s the point?
He needs to teach, he reminds himself. He’s a good teacher. He’s not perfect, he’s still learning, but he’s lasted this long. He has fun sometimes. He’s pretty sure the kids get something from his class. At worst, he’s a warm body who isn’t ruining anyone’s life.
Besides, when he goes in he’ll get to see Janine and the others, and so many things happen in a day, it’s hard to focus on the encroaching misery.
He doesn’t have time for it or space to feel it, because at school there’s the cameras and if there are no cameras there are children and if there are no children there are colleagues and often there are all three plus some crisis or another.
Jacob’s not excited about any of it, and for someone who has been told many, many times to stop interacting with the cameras so much, right now the last thing he wants to do is get caught on film.
He rolls out of bed.
As usual, he very briefly wakes Zach, kisses him on the cheek, says I love you and goodbye. Zach works from home today, so he gets to wake up later.
(Zach has his shit together. It’s a very attractive quality. That Jacob had his shit together, or relatively together, was an attractive quality to Zach too.
At the beginning of their relationship, it was something that brought them together.
They’re not at the beginning anymore, but Jacob can’t be worse than he was then. It feels like false advertising.)
When he gets to school, he preps his first class (well, he’s already prepped his first class, it’s more like he’s going over it) as he watches the news with Barbara and Melissa, and it all crowds some of the uglier thoughts, the ones he’s trying so hard not to think that he can’t even parse them, out of his head.
He’s okay.
Everything is okay.
Except then he wakes up feeling like his veins are full of concrete instead of blood, and his stomach hurts so bad he’s barely able to choke down half a smoothie.
That’s around the point where Jacob starts to panic, anxiety churning through his whole body as he tries to search through his mind for how this could have happened so fast.
Was there something he didn’t notice?
Something he didn’t take seriously enough?
Something he didn’t remember?
What did he do wrong?
+
The best thing he can think to do to protect himself from the feelings he may or may not be having is detach. He puts himself on autopilot—he’s a born performer, so he has a lot of practice creating a convincing facsimile of himself to show the world—and watches reality, jumping in when necessary.
Autopilot is supposed to make things easier on him, and it does. It feels hollow and faintly confusing, but easier, even though whenever he comes back, he finds his battery is still drained. Maybe it’s pre-drained at this point. He doesn’t know how to recharge it other than sleeping, and he has been sleeping quite a bit, but he hasn’t been sleeping well.
It’s like he’s running on empty, but the only choice he has is to keep running.
+
Jacob is lying awake, wondering why the hell he can’t sleep when half of the thoughts in his head when he’s required to actively exist have to do with how tired he is, staring at the ceiling and trying to breathe in spite of the crushing weight on his chest. He stays absolutely still, even though he knows he could toss and turn and Zach wouldn’t even notice. Zach sleeps like the dead.
But Jacob doesn’t really have the strength to toss and turn right now anyway, though during the day he burns with agitation, bouncing and swinging his legs and talking talking talking. At least it looks like regular enthusiasm to everyone else. He hopes.
During the day, he burns.
He feels so hollow and so heavy and he’s fully on fire but it doesn’t exactly hurt, and not only because it’s a metaphor.
A lot of things hurt, but not the being on fire, that’s just a fact, he’s on fire and he should stop, drop, and roll but who does he think he is, walking around on fire when his life is so easy? When it doesn’t bother him enough to keep him bedbound? When he can still smile through the heat, still speak?
He’s less and less likely to try to salvage a conversation when he’s rejected, but maybe that’s just him growing up, maybe he’s not as corny as he used to be. That’s probably a good thing.
(He used to have fun.)
Jacob’s entire body is on fire, and he’s going to suck it up until it goes out by itself, because that’s how these things work. Everything ends. This too shall pass.
Jacob is lying next to Zach with his brain a zillion lightyears away and he’s looking up at the ceiling and thinking in circles: tomorrow I’m going to have to wake up. I’m going to have to pretend I am the same man Zach met. I’m going to have to be Mr. Hill or Mr. C or whatever they’re calling me now. I’m going to have to be myself and pretend I don’t notice all the worst parts of me better than ever. I’m going to have to be alive.
Genuine panic starts to rise in his throat, and he scrambles for an appropriate coping mechanism, landing on the one Zach always uses, counting backwards to calm himself down.
Ten. It’s been days now, hasn’t it? Nine. Possibly over a week? Possibly over that? A month? Over a month? Please not over a month. Eight. Since this all started, he means. Seven. Since he started really feeling this way. Six. And he’s still feeling this way. Five. Whatever way this is. He doesn’t exactly want to interrogate it. Four. And he didn’t even notice the days going by until like. Now. Three. He can’t remember anything that happened today, which is bad. Two. Does he even have to go to school tomorrow or is it a weekend? One. Either way, he’ll have to wake up and keep going and he doesn’t fucking want to, this is intolerable and he wishes he’d just die!
Oh.
Jacob wants to die.
His mind goes blank. His stomach hurts. His brain is giving him a headache. He wants to die. Stop it, he tells himself. Don’t think that.
He hasn’t thought it so plainly before, but now it’s right at the front of his mind as if it belongs there, but it doesn’t. It shouldn’t.
There’s absolutely no reason to want to die, wasn’t he just giving himself all the reasons for why there’s no reason to want to die? It’s nothing but an intrusive thought, Jacob can admit that he’s kind of an anxious person and sometimes anxious people have intrusive thoughts and this one has nothing to do with how miserable he is because he’s not miserable because he has no reason to be miserable and he wants to die!
Shut the fuck up, he tells himself, internal voice impatient and severe. Perish the thought, Jacob Hill. Perish the thought.
Okay.
Where was he?
Did he already finish counting?
+
When Jacob was in his junior year of high school, he had a teacher named Mrs. Gonzalez. She taught AP U.S. History, which was his favorite class. It was also the first class of the day, and she noticed Jacob was often late, that Jacob was short with the other students where he was usually enthusiastic about sharing knowledge, that Jacob’s voice was louder and his words emptier.
She asked if he wanted to eat lunch with her some days. If he wanted to help her staple papers. And he was gnawingly lonely and afraid of being alone, afraid of what he’d do if he was alone, and it was simple, so he said yes.
Some weeks after his disastrous attempt at a conversation with his mother, as he continued to fade away, Mrs. Gonzalez finally asked if he was well.
For some reason, or maybe because she was a teacher and he trusted teachers and she’d asked and she looked like she cared, he told her. Not in as few words as what he’d said to his mother, but the general idea. He even showed her the plan he’d started creating in his notebook to make the whole thing as neat and easy and tasteful as possible.
A few hours later, his parents were in the guidance counselor’s office, wondering why he hadn’t said anything.
That was how Jacob ended up in therapy and on medication and, for a brief moment, hospitalized. He didn’t talk much to the therapist, and the hospital was scary, but the meds helped, even when he broke up with the boyfriend he’d had all through college, and it wasn’t too hard to taper off of them before Teachers Without Borders, and he was lucky. His life got better and he got better and that was the end of it, until now.
Was it this bad last time? He knows it was different in some ways, though maybe those ways all boil down to who he was then vs. who he is now.
Jacob doesn’t want to remember. He’s always hated that part of his story, though he can at least forgive it as the folly of a child coming of age, a tired story and the kind his students might scoff at (yeah, but what’s his problem?) but a coherent one nonetheless.
But now?
Now it’s just pathetic. He doesn’t have real problems, so his stupid brain made some up. He isn’t getting the attention he craves, the accolades he wants to deserve, so he’s trying to entice himself to take his final bow, one that will truly make him a star, at least for a little while.
No.
Perish the thought.
He stares at himself in the bathroom mirror at school, wondering when he got here, wondering what day it is, wondering what he’s doing wrong.
+
It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to go to a therapist or something at this juncture, or even just poke at the Employee Assistance Program, but the thought is so humiliating—what’s he supposed to say? I’m unhappy because my brain said so?—that he bludgeons it to death every time it ambles along.
He was cured. He had a crisis one time when he was still a kid, and then he got better, and that was supposed to be that. Just a low day every once in a while, and some exercise and distraction fixed that right up for him.
Distractions still work, kind of. He jumps headfirst into any that come along, listens to a million podcasts to drown out his own thoughts, watches every TV show he lays eyes on, reads any magazine he can get his hands on, creates a patchwork of other people’s thoughts for autopilot-Jacob to regurgitate, tries to ignore that he’s not sure whether any of what he’s doing is actually bringing him enjoyment.
He doesn’t need to enjoy things. He needs to be engaged.
His intensity is at some moments maybe too much, but he’s discovered that he’s been too much for a long time and he’s always been partial to being too much rather than not enough.
He is more than too much during Christmastime, his oversensitive mind immediately on edge when it becomes clear that Melissa doesn’t want him at dinner, but he fixes it, sort of, even if he had to say things he didn’t want to, even if he fucked up.
He doesn’t go to Pittsburgh after all.
He tells Zach he’s going to visit his parents.
“Are you sure, honey?” Zach asks. “If it’s going to hurt you, you don’t have to. There’s a place for you at the table, and back-up bells are fun!”
Jacob can’t help but laugh at that. “No, babe, I’m okay. I’ll be okay.” I’m lying anyway.
“Well, then good luck and I’m proud of you no matter what. Call me, okay?”
Jacob smiles gently. “Thanks, Zach. I love you. I hope you know I love you.”
There’s a brief pause on the other line, a moment of confusion that makes Jacob wince.
“Of course I know you love me, Jacob. I love you too.”
“Just wanted to make sure,” Jacob says, trying to inject some perkiness into the words as he realizes that he was using his true voice, the one that’s gotten a lot softer lately.
Zach chuckles. “I can’t wait to see you again.”
Jacob swallows down tears he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t feel anything other than the crushing weight of a quietly, inexplicably miserable existence, which he’s pretty sure isn’t actually a feeling. Why would he cry?
“Bye, Zach. I’ll be here when you get home.” He’ll keep that promise. He will.
He doesn’t visit his parents. He calls them on Christmas, and they have a stilted conversation that feels drastically different from the one he has with Zach and the one he has with Janine later on that same day. Even different from the texts his other friends send him, the well wishes.
Something broke between Jacob and his parents years ago, and he doesn’t know why he still pretends to try.
+
He cries the night before he goes back to work, head laid on his preparations for tomorrow’s back-from-winter-break classes.
He lets himself cry, for once, trying to bleed out the dread that’s settled in him at the idea that he’s going to have to continue being, the horrible thought that he’s going to have to take up space when he feels so small, so empty, so overwhelmed that he’s no longer overwhelmed, look at you not able to take it just like everyone thought.
He allows the sobs to take him. They won’t fix anything. There’s nothing to fix.
Once he finally runs out of tears, he picks his head up and continues his work.
When he gets back to school, he tells himself that what’s most important is to keep his head above water. It would suck if anyone knew he was in danger of drowning.
He interacts with the others because he knows he’s supposed to and there’s some part of him that’s still desperately lonely, that maybe always will be, but he’s not sure he’s making sense. His stories go wide like bad free throws and he can’t get them back on track. Lately, he’s relieved when he’s cut off, when people stop paying attention to him, dismiss him.
For so long, he was practically screaming please see me, just see me, enough that he decided to make his mark in a place where no one would have any choice but to see him. He didn’t want to admit that for a long time, didn’t even realize it for a long time, but it’s the shitty truth, and maybe it’s some kind of penance that he regrets it now.
Now, all he wants is for everyone to look away.
+
He feels like he’s trying really hard to be Jacob (the best Jacob he can be!), for better or for worse, but he guesses he isn’t trying hard enough, because Janine pulls him aside before lunch one day, takes a deep breath, and asks, “Are you okay? You’ve been kind of…off. You seem a little scattered. Or distant.” She frowns. “And…sad?”
Jacob’s heart clenches. His eyes hurt. None of the things his body is doing and none of the things he wants to do in response to these horrible words seem to be connected to emotions, but that’s only because he’s forgotten how to have them.
Jacob wants to hug Janine, he wants to thank her for asking, he wants to say that he’s suffering, but there’s no crying in baseball and by that he means there’s no suffering in school, you’re supposed to leave it at the door.
If Jacob is completely honest with himself for just a moment he can admit that he only has the energy for his students and the bare minimum of survival, he is shoving his pain down and he is going to get better and no one has to know how bad things are because things aren’t actually bad and he has been trying so hard to be the best Jacob he can be and how dare Janine see through that whatsoever?
(He doesn’t want to tell this story.
He doesn’t want to live it.)
“You know what? It’s really none of your fucking business, Janine,” he spits out, and the moment he does, he wants to take it back, because that was so mean, he doesn’t know what came over him, he didn’t want to explain himself and be faced with the polite reality that he’s being a wimp so instead he just hurt one of his favorite people in the world, because she is very hurt. He can see it through his swimming gaze.
I’m sorry, Janine, he wants to say. I’m an asshole now, it’s not your fault.
Is he an asshole now? That was an asshole thing that he just did, so. Maybe? And he was an asshole at Christmas. And he can’t really remember much of anything he’s done in the past few days, kind or cruel, but he does know he spends a lot more time when he’s teaching trying not to lose his shit about things that stopped bothering him over a year ago and that he never actually got angry at, not angry like he feels angry lately, like he wants to scream or break something. (Perish the thought.)
If he got mean at some point, he didn’t notice. He’s been so busy trying to keep smiling that the way all of the positive feelings he’s desperate to feel curdled inside of him like expired milk didn’t register.
He didn’t notice he was being distant either, or that he seemed sad, at least not at work where he’s tried so goddamn hard to not be those things.
Of course, it is Janine asking. He’s sure no one else here has noticed, no one else cares like she does and that’s nice, it really is, he hasn’t had a friend like her for a very long time, a best friend, the kind their kids have, but he’s too scared to have that right now, so he’s ruining things even though he doesn’t really want to do that either, his mind is working overtime but there’s nothing actually in his mind, only scraping gears and disjointed memories and jumbled stories.
Oh, shit, how long has it been since this began? How many times has he asked himself that question?
Jacob is digging his own grave.
Janine sucks in a wobbly breath that makes Jacob’s stomach lurch.
I’m so sorry, Janine, he wants to say, but there’s other things he wants to say along with that, other things he’s too afraid he will say if he opens his mouth: I’m losing my mind, I’m losing my will to live, I know what I have going for me but it feels like so much effort to keep going, I don’t know if I want to exist anymore.
In the interest of self-protection, he turns tail and runs like a coward.
He goes to his car and doesn’t eat. He doesn’t deserve to eat, after being mean to Janine, who only wants to help, but the idea that he needs help, well—
Perish the thought.
He wipes harshly at his face, and grimaces in disgust when his hand comes away wet.
Maybe this is his new lunchtime routine. Running off and crying like a kid.
(If any of the kids he teaches were acting like he’s acting, he would be very worried.
Then again, maybe he wouldn’t notice. He can be oblivious sometimes.
Maybe everyone feels like this all the time, this or worse, and he’s just the one who can’t take it.)
He sits on the floor of his car, folding himself between the back seat and the front even though he’s a grown-up and way too tall for it.
He’s a grown-up; he doesn’t have time for childish things like crying alone at lunchtime and being sad and wanting to die.
So dramatic. He lets out a watery little laugh. He’s so dramatic. A born performer. His kindergarten report card read:
A joy to have in class. A born performer. Should give the other children a chance to speak.
He has to apologize to Janine. As far as he can remember, he’s never spoken to her like that.
But he knows she’d ask him why he was such a jerk, and he’s still afraid he’d tell her the truth, and he’s afraid of what she’d say.
That’s not funny, Jacob. Some people have real problems. You are literally surrounded by people with real problems. Why do you always want attention? Can’t you just be yourself again, but preferably better?
Jacob is perfectly aware, deep down, that Janine wouldn’t say any of that, and probably wouldn’t think it either.
Instead, she would worry. She would panic, even. She’d insist that he needs help and she’d want to assist him in getting it, and the only thing more overwhelming than the idea of being in this hole for the rest of his life is the thought of climbing out of it.
+
He avoids Janine for a grand total of three days, shaken by his own bad behavior and unwilling to face it even though he has to apologize, but worst case scenarios keep running through his mind (he says too much—she doesn’t forgive him—he’s ruined one of the best things that’s happened to him in years because his brain is broken) and it’s easier to just hide in his car and skip lunch, which is great because he’s not hungry anyway and he doesn’t want anyone asking why he’s not eating. Not that they’d notice or care. He needs to stop assuming that people notice or care about him, because usually the idea is soothing, whether or not it’s true, but now it’s stressful.
Then Melissa corners him as he’s trying to go to his car, standing in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest. She gives him an unimpressed look as he stares at her with wide eyes. “Look, far be it from me to get into your business, but this disappearing act you’re pulling—Janine’s getting real weird about it. The hell kinda fight did you two have?”
Jacob swallows and then clears his throat, shifting uncomfortably. He’s too quietly exhausted, at least, to bristle. Instead, with an effort roughly equivalent to that of a man paddling a boat through molasses, he manages to say, “We didn’t really. I just…I said something and…I don’t think she likes me anymore.” The words are weak and childish. They make him wince.
Melissa softens. “Not true, kid. She’s just worried.”
“There’s nothing to worry about!” Jacob says, relieved when the words come out mild, closer to “perky” than “desperately defensive.” Score one for Jacob Hill in this exhausting interaction.
(This is why he hasn’t seen his outside-of-work-friends in ages. The amount of social interaction he’s still forced to do is approaching the intolerable, and so all he does is find excuses when Zach wants to go out.)
“Okay, okay, I believe you,” Melissa says easily. “So just apologize to Janine and start hanging out with her again, all right?”
Jacob swallows. He knows Melissa is only making this request so that he can get Janine to stop annoying her, and the fact that he’s apparently made enough of an impression on Janine that her reaction to their very one-sided argument has been enough to annoy the others makes him feel quietly, unfairly touched, which is another thing that makes him suspect he might be a jerk now.
He takes a deep breath and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, I’ll talk to her.”
His head is pounding as he pulls Janine aside, trying to maintain some level of eye contact even though the concern and hurt on her expressive face makes him want to run away again. “I’m sorry, Janine. That was—” He sighs, running his fingers through his hair, which is sticky with gel. He feels gross. The only reason he took a shower two days ago was because Zach forced him to. He says he’s working too much. Getting obsessive. Not lovingly over-passionate, obsessive. Jacob thinks Zach might be losing his patience with him, and he’s running out of excuses. There’s only so many times he can blame everything on work. “It was mean, and I didn’t handle any of it like an adult.”
“Okay but Jacob, why did you react like that?” Janine asks.
Thankfully, Jacob has an answer locked and loaded at this point.
He’s not a great liar, but he is a pretty good actor, and he’s too achy and tired to fidget or tense much as he tells the weak story he’s cooked up. He could do better, but this is what he’s got. “I’d had a fight with Zach and I took it out on you and that was so inappropriate, Janine, and I’m really sorry.”
To his credit, he means every word, except for the part that’s a lie.
“Oh,” Janine says, frowning. “Are…are you guys okay now?”
“We’re great. I’m great. Everything is great,” he reassures in response. It’s very the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much of him.
(Everything’s a mess. I’m trying so hard not to tip people off that I can barely pay attention to anyone but myself. Things are really bad. I’m scared.)
Janine is giving him a look like she’s not sure whether to believe him or not. There were a lot of plot holes in the story Jacob just gave her.
In an attempt to placate her, Jacob smiles.
Janine does too, automatically, and Jacob likes to think he’s soothed her.
“Can you forgive me?” he asks, and the shy hope in his voice is as genuine as the big smile Janine gives him as she briefly squeezes his hand. (Which is, for the record, “very.”)
“Of course,” she says.
Jacob lets out a quick sigh of relief. “Thanks.”
Janine is already beaming at him, but now she brightens even more. “I have so many things to tell you now that I know you’ll answer my texts again…”
Jacob schools his expression into a parody of interest as Janine continues to speak. He tries to pay attention, but most of the words she says go in one ear and out the other, which isn’t fair to Janine, but he can’t find the drive to be better.
This is not getting better.