Page 31 of Dirty Like Seth
“Yeah, I likedher.”
That Jessa liked me too, at some point, was beyond question. But how much and for how long, I really couldn’tsay.
“Always?” Elle asked me, her gray eyes searching myface.
“Not always,” I said. “After a while. And until she wanted out. Or sometime thereafter.” I shrugged. “I was young and more than a little dumb. It might’ve taken longer than it should’ve to get themessage.”
Elle’s eyebrows twisted together. “I’m not particularly young, Seth,” she said softly. “And I’m not dumb. But it took me a long, long time to get themessage.”
Jesse. She was talking aboutJesse.
I did not know what to say. But it definitely wasn’t lost on me that she’d just shared something incredibly personal withme.
“So… when did you get the message?” sheasked.
I thought about that. It wasn’t exactly clear to me, a specific moment in time, when I’d realized Jessa was done with me—and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. If it happened like that, I couldn’t recallit.
“The last time I saw her, maybe. At that party at Brody’s place. The break in the firsttour.”
“I remember that night,” Elle said. “Greatparty.”
Yeah. But not forme.
“Jessa and I had been at odds a while,” I said. “We’d stopped sleeping together.” I watched to see how she’d take that, but she showed no reaction. Her guard was still way up, her expression carefully neutral, but not neutral. I didn’t know what it was; I didn’t really know how to read Elle all that well. I probably never did. “I wanted to get back together with her but she told me she wouldn’t. Said she was in love withBrody.”
I’d been so hurt by her words, and so messed up by that point—and so fucked on coke—I’d called her a whore. I remembered that, vividly. I was so crushed over losing her, and I’d wanted to hurther.
I was beyond caring, at that point, about hurtingmyself.
But I didn’t mention any of that toElle.
There were some things I was still too ashamed of to share with most people, and calling Jessa Mayes a whore for breaking up with me and being in love with Brody definitelyqualified.
“Was that the worst it got?” Elle asked, her gaze on mesteadfast.
“No,” I admitted. “When she first broke things off with me, before that, it got pretty ugly. It was just before we wrote ‘Dirty Like Me.’ We weren’t really talking for a long time after that.” I hadn’t thought about that in a long time. Had almost forgotten. “I don’t think anyone knew about that, exactly. But Brody got into it with me onenight.”
“Got intoit?”
“With hisfists.”
“Oh.” Elle didn’t sound all that surprised. But then again, she’d been there when Brody hit me, back in February; when he accused me of raping Jessa, in front of the whole band. “You mean… that mysterious fractured eye socket and chipped tooth ofyours?”
“Right,” Isaid.
That was almost nine years ago now, but I remembered it. Brody had confronted me, asked me if I was sleeping with Jessa. And I’d been just delusional enough at the time to think maybe I could still win her over, that the two of them might give up on each other. Brody had been dating someone else anyway, on and off. I’d managed to convince myself, for a while, that maybe he was just gonna let me haveher.
That, and I was probably incredibly high to think that would everhappen.
“And what happened after that?” Ellepressed.
“I kept my distance from her for a while. But afterLove Struckcame out, I tried to get back together with her. The night of her high school grad thing, I showed up outside, wanted to drive her back to Brody’s for the party he was having. She said she wouldn’t go with me because I was wasted. That was the first time I remember her really having it out with me. She pretty much begged me to get clean, but I was nowhere near doing that. I couldn’t even understand what she was going on about. We argued about it. She slapped my face. I don’t even know what I said to push her to do that. But I tried to grab onto her when she walked away from me. I caught her shirt and the strap ripped. She cried. It was…awful.”
That moment between us was, actually, the worst moment I could remember, because it was the moment when it really got through to me—that I was bad for Jessa. That she deserved so much better than me. That I was just gonna drag herdown.
She was beautiful and talented and kind, and she’d just graduated high school. She was barely eighteen. And there I was, twenty-one, trying to drive her to a party while I was fucked up on a cocktail of drugs and booze, trying to talk her into coming back to me, when all she wanted me to do was get my shit together and, probably, leave her the fuckalone.
It was a low, lowmoment.
