Page 35 of What If It Was Us
I walked up and down the block for a while before finally feeling like I could go back inside. Jackson never came to find me, and I was glad. I needed to clear my head and put it back on straight.
When I got back to the house, Jackson wasn’t on the couch or in the kitchen. I walked down the hallway, and the bathroom door was still closed. I could hear music coming from his phone, and I opened the door without knocking. He apparently didn’t care to knock, so why should I?
I regretted not knocking immediately, because Jackson was standing in the tub, cleaning the tiles . . . without a shirt on. His backmuscles flexed as he cleaned a spot above his head. Every inch of skin was glistening with sweat. “I Can See You” by Taylor Swift was playing on his phone, and man did I want to strangle him—and straddle him at the same time.
I cleared my throat, and he turned around. I let myself look at his body, because, well, it was my house and I could do what I wanted! His tanned skin was so toned, just like it had been in high school from playing the drums. Except he was such a man now; bulkier, and with more deeply carved muscles. My eyes wandered to his left collarbone, where I knew I’d find a freckle. It had been so long since I had seen it. Since I had touched it.
No touching!
“Can you put your shirt back on?” I said with as much annoyance as I could muster.
“Can you knock before you open the door?” Jackson said as he threw his shirt back over his head.
“I will when you learn how to,” I shot back.
Jackson held up a hand and nodded. “Fair. I’ll stop doing that.”
“Thank you.” I cleared my throat again. “I think we should call it a day. This bathroom doesn’t have a window, so you should probably head out before the chemicals start messing with you.”
I wanted to take a break anyways, and start reading one of the books I bought. Anything to not think about the free view I just got of him, or how there was once a time when that view had been above me.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yep, the bathroom looks great. I’m gonna clean the floor and be done. I’m not going to redo anything.”
He let the brush fall into the bucket on the floor. “I think we should do the kitchen next. It’ll be easy since it’s small. I’ll bring some boxes.”
“Sounds good. Thanks for the help today.”
Jackson dragged a hand through his hair before grabbing his phone off the counter. “See you later.”
I didn’t walk him to the door this time.
Chapter 17
BEFORE
August, Twelve Years Ago
The summer before our junior year, Julie got into Stanford and moved to California. She left a week after we celebrated Jackson’s seventeenth birthday. The weeks building up to her departure, I was filled with an uncomfortable sense of dread. It reminded me of when Mom left—like I didn’t know for sure if Julie would come back.
An underlying patch of anxiety sat beneath my chest for weeks until the day she left. Julie and I both cried as I helped her pack her bags. She was closer than a friend; she was like my sister now. I couldn’t imagine being at the restaurant without her. Would Jackson and I still sing happily without her? It didn’t seem possible. We were a trio. Jackson and I hardly spent any time alone together outside the restaurant or school these days, and he’d stopped looking at me like he wanted to touch me, too.
When it was time for Marie and Phil to take Julie to the airport, Jackson and I sat in the backseat of the car with her, Julie in the middle seat between us. After we said our goodbyes, the three of us stayedconnected in a group hug for a good ten minutes. Other cars started honking at Marie’s SUV to get a move on, but it did nothing to break us apart. Julie promised she’d be back for Christmas, and I tried to believe her.
She wasn’t my mom. She would come back for us.
I noticed a drastic shift in Jackson after she left. The typical rap songs we used to listen to while closing the restaurant transitioned into heavy, sad songs. We started listening to things like “I’m Not Okay” by My Chemical Romance, and the glasses of wine we used to drink behind the bar turned into stolen bottles.
A few weeks later, we were sitting against the wall in the dining room, a new routine we had started after Julie left. Jackson and I would close by ourselves, clock out, then drink.
“It’s so weird that Julie’s gone,” I said with a sigh.
Jackson took a long pull from the bottle. “I’m like an only child now. It’s so weird. Is this what it feels like for you at home?”
I shrugged. “I guess so. Peter’s left me alone since last summer. I think even he knows he was acting insane. At least you have your parents.”
He let out a groan. “They’ve been so far up my ass. My grades have been shit these past two years. If I don’t raise them, there’s no way I’ll be able to get into a good college. The last thing I want to do is get stuck with this restaurant.”
