Old Habits

by Tabatha Kiss

  As she enters the hallway, she reaches behind her and grips the zipper along the back of her dress.

  I hang the car keys on the hook by the door out of habit. I stand in the living room, listening closely to the shuffling of her feet in the bedroom. She rolls open a dresser drawer. Tosses her shoes into the closet. She sniffs quietly.

  I wander slowly, following the isolated sounds to the bedroom and lean against the door frame to look inside.

  Jovie sits on the edge of the bed with her eyes on the floor, wearing her jeans with the torn knees and an old, red sweater. Sneakers on her feet. Hair in a simple ponytail. Back to normal. No less breathtaking, though.

  Her voice cracks. “I was pregnant.”

  I stare at the top of her head. “When?” I ask.

  “When you broke up with me,” she says to the floor, “I was pregnant.”

  I shift as the pain starts in my gut. As if it were possible for me to feel any worse about that moment in time. I didn’t just call Jovie Ross a horrible, selfish child. I said it to the mother of my baby.

  “For how long?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Not long. A month, maybe. I found out just before Valentine’s.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you broke up with me.”

  “Jove…” I flex my jaw, “I think something like that transcends a breakup.”

  “I was going to tell you,” she says, talking slowly, “but then you spoke first.”

  “I spoke first? That’s your excuse?”

  She wipes another tear away and looks up. “I was caught off-guard by what you said to me and how you suddenly didn’t want to get married anymore and I just…” She catches her breath. “I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t feel anything. So, I went home, cried for hours, figured I’d talk to you once everything calmed down but then it happened.”

  My chest aches. “That night?”

  “Yes.”

  I step off the door frame. “You were alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did… did it hurt?”

  She hesitates as her lip trembles. “Yes.”

  “You should have told me, Jovie.” My voice rises on its own. “You didn’t have to go through that alone.”

  “Well, I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it hurt!” She rises off the bed. “It really hurt! Between losing our baby and my dad kicking me out again and Sara threatening me—”

  “Wait — Sara did what?”

  “I packed a bag and I left. I couldn’t face you again because I knew you wanted to be a father so badly but I couldn’t give that to you and that’s what hurt the most…”

  Her voice fades off and my heart breaks.

  Losing our baby. Like she just misplaced my keys. I start to think that if we retrace her steps, we’ll find it again. Sooner or later.

  But that’s not how that works at all.

  Jovie presses her lips together, her chest heaving with each quivering breath. Tears coat her cheeks, endlessly dripping down her throat but I stand still, numb all the way to the bone.

  After all this time, I finally know why Jovie Ross took off. I almost wish I didn’t. If I hadn’t have pushed her away that day, would it have happened at all? Pangs of guilt jab my chest. My lungs feel full of rocks. Is this how she’s felt for four years?

  I step forward and wrap my arms around her. “It wasn’t your fault, Jovie.”

  She sobs. “Yes, it was—”

  “No, it wasn’t.” I kiss her forehead while she shakes in my arms. “You couldn’t have stopped it. It’s okay.”

  “Will, I’m so sorry—”

  “It’s okay.”

  Jovie grips my suit jacket and buries her face in my chest. I feel her warm, wet tears bleeding through my shirt. She sways on trembling knees and I hold her tighter to keep her standing.

  “Hank came home and heard me crying in the bathroom,” she says, her voice weak. “I thought that maybe I should tell him and he would… I don’t know, show some fucking compassion for once.” She steps back to breathe. “So, I told him what was happening and he just started screaming at me and hitting the walls. I got so scared. I ran to my room, stuffed my backpack with anything I couldn’t live without, and I got in my car. I never told anyone else about it.” She lays a hand on her stomach. “God, I’m gonna be sick.”

  I lead her to the bed. “Sit down.”

  She lowers to the edge and leans forward, taking deep, gentle breaths with my hand on her back. After a few moments, I ease her closer and she rests her weak head on my shoulder. I feel her shaking in my arms, shivering as if it were freezing cold but her skin is fever warm.

  “Jovie, what did Sara do?” I ask.

  She raises her head and wipes her nose. “She ran into me at the gas station off the highway — the one I went to purposefully to avoid people who knew me — and she waltzed over just as I was grabbing a pregnancy test off the shelf.”

  I frown. “She knew about this?”

  “She knew what it could have been. That’s all she needed to tell me to leave town or else she’d drive to my dad’s and tell him everything she saw. Told me that she wasn’t going to let a whore like me ruin her brother’s life.”

  It’s almost unbelievable. My own sister. My best friend. But Sara’s hatred for Jovie was always there, boiling beneath the surface, constantly urging me to dump her and find someone better. She would have taken any excuse to drive Jovie out of town. And she succeeded.

  I swallow my rage. It can wait.

  “When I walked back outside,” Jovie continues, “I saw her slip a note under my windshield wiper before driving off. I went closer and saw it was a check for a thousand dollars with the words ‘get rid of it’ written on it.” She shakes her head. “I cashed it but I never spent a dime. I slipped it into the mailbox of some church out in St. Louis. Just… didn’t feel right to keep it.”

  I stand to pace the room, cursing the sparks in my feet. They urge me to act. They want to run and kick and destroy something — anything at all — that will make me feel better about this. I could have been there. I should have been there but I couldn’t act on something I didn’t know about.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, struggling to keep calm.

  “I thought you hated me.” She clears her cheeks. “Hell, you practically said as much.”

  “I was angry but I would have listened if you’d have just told me.”

  “Would you?” She tilts her head. “New Will would have listened but do you really think old Will would have been so rational?”

  I pause, struck cold.

  “You wanted to get married,” she says. “You would have wanted that baby even though we had no business being parents back then. I wasn’t ready. You weren’t ready but you loved this town, this culture—”

  “I loved you.”

  “But I didn’t fit. You must, at least, have the hindsight to see that much.”

  “You were different.” I shrug. “You still are. That didn’t matter to me.”

  “And yet… you dumped me for not instantly waving my hands and screaming yes after that proposal.”

  I fall silent again, my guts churning as the truth wrecks me. That entire night plays in my head. Valentine’s Day. The proposal. The immediate fight afterward.

  And the heart-to-heart with Sara the next morning.

  She’s the one who told me to leave Jovie.

  And I listened.

  “Ultimately,” Jovie says, “I left so you could have the life that I failed to give you.”

  We made a lot of mistakes. We should have done a million things differently back then. But I will not let her believe that she failed me. Not even for a moment.

  “You didn’t fail, Jovie,” I say, choking on the lump in my throat. “You can’t think of it like that.”

  She bites her cheek, fighting tears. “Stop.”

  “No.” I kneel in front of her, trying
to meet her eye-line but she looks away. “Jovie, it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Stop it,” she says again.

  I cup her face, forcing her to look my way but she clenches her eyes closed. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  She shoves my hands and rises off the bed. “Will, I love you so much but I can’t relive this again. I’m sorry.”

  I push onto my feet as she bolts for the hallway. “Jovie, wait.”

  She doesn’t stop. I take extra-long strides to cut her off in the living room.

  “Please. Jovie—”

  “I just need to be alone for a while,” she says, shielding her face from me.

  “For how long?”

  She grabs her car keys off the wall. “I don’t know.”

  I block the door. “How long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I stare at the top of her downturn head. Tears fall directly from her eyes to the floor. They make soft, gentle splashes that echo in my head.

  “Jovie…” I reach for her but she recoils an inch. “What can I do?”

  She wipes her eyes but it doesn’t help. “Open the door.”

  I lay a hand on the doorknob to buy a few more precious seconds. “Jovie, I don’t want you to be alone. Please, stay here. We don’t have to talk. You don’t have to say anything. Just, please, stay with me.”

  “I can’t even look at you, Will,” she says, sobbing. “How can you even look at me?”

  “Because I love you.” I jut forward, holding her face before she has a chance to resist it. “Look at me.” Her neck loosens and she allows me to turn her upward as I wipe a thumb along her tear-stained cheeks. “Jovie, I love you.”

  She takes a deep, quivering breath. “Then, let me go.”

  I stare her down as my own tears start to burn my eyes. “Will you come back?” I ask.

  Jovie takes the doorknob. She twists it slowly and pulls the door open, gently nudging me out of the way.

  “Jovie,” I whisper, letting my hands fall to my sides. “I love you.”

  She pauses with one foot out the door. “I love you, too,” she says.

  I look down, unable to watch as she leaves. The door latches closed. I hear the loud screeching of her car door as she climbs inside. The engine turns over. She drives away.

  I’ll be here when she comes back.

  Ignorance may have been bliss but truth is binding.

  She’s still my Jovie.

  Now more than ever.

  Chapter 35

  Jovie

  So, where does a girl go when the ghosts of her past rear their heads again? I’ve asked myself this hundreds of times over the last few years. There’s only one real answer for it but it’s the worst four-letter word of them all.

  Home.

  I sit in my car, staring out the window at the house I grew up in, trying to gather the courage to make a choice. Stay or leave. Laugh or cry. Live or die.

  I suppose I should be thankful. Some of us don’t get that choice.

  I push the door open slowly to keep the rusty squeak from echoing too loudly. The last thing I want is for Mrs. Clark to poke her little head out of the window and sneer at me, if she hasn’t done so already, of course.

  The house looks as dark and stale as always but the flicker of bluish light in the living room gives him away. I walk up the porch steps and pause with my hand rolled into a delicate fist. I remind myself again. It was all my idea to come back.

  I knock twice and twist my head around to take a cursory glance across the street again. Still no peeping old ladies.

  The door opens and my father stands there in jeans and a red flannel shirt. His way of dressing up for Valentine’s, I guess.

  “Hey, Dad,” I say.

  “Jovie.”

  “Can I… I need to ask you something.”

  He shifts on his feet. “All right.”

  I swallow. “What did I do?” I ask, my hands shaking. “What… what could I have done differently to make you care about me?”

  His stone-cold expression barely moves.

  “Why didn’t you ever care?”

  I choke on a sob as my legs twitch and my heart aches but I wait for an answer. It doesn’t matter if he’s even truthful about it. I just want one word, one solitary reason to cling to as some kind of closure.

  Hank’s eyes fall to my ankles and he nods. He steps back and walks into the house, leaving the door wide open for me.

  I slink forward, broken and defeated, and close it behind me to lock out the world. I don’t want to linger in this house. It’s not what I came here for. I stay by the front door with my hands in my jean pockets and this is where I’ll stay until he gives me a damn answer.

  Hank returns from the kitchen with a can of beer in each hand. He pauses and extends one to me.

  I shake my head. “No, thanks.”

  “Take it,” he says. “You’ll need it.”

  I let out a scoff and snatch it from his hand but I keep it held down at my side. He wanders over to his chair and flicks his can open as he sits down. Foam rises from the opening but he drinks it down before it can spill over.

  “Well?” I ask, growing impatient.

  He takes his time, picking up the television remote and tapping the volume down to a quiet hum. Then, he bends over and reaches into the small drawer in the bottom of his end table. When I was a kid, this thing was usually stuffed full of cigarettes and chewing tobacco.

  I pause as he pulls out a stack of postcards about an inch tall, wrapped together with an old rubber band. The edges are worn and slightly crinkled and not from your standard post office abuse either.

  “I was so proud of you, Jovie,” he says.

  I struggle to take in a breath. “What?” I ask.

  “I used to look forward to getting the mail every day, just in case you sent me another one of these.” He taps the stack against his leg. “It meant that you weren’t here. You were out there… seeing things I never saw, doing things I never did. Living the life I never had. ‘Where are you going next, Jovie?’ I’d ask myself and I’d hope to God that the answer wasn’t Clover, Kansas.”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  He takes another sip from his can. “Because I didn’t want you to slip into a mold and get stuck here like I did or how,” he pauses, “or how she did. Joanne hated it here but she stayed because of me and because we had you. I didn’t want the same thing to happen to you, so… I did the only thing I knew how to do and I pushed you away. I didn’t want you to get too attached to this place but then you started dating that damn kid.”

  My lips twitch. “Will?”

  He nods. “You fell so hard for him. Before that, you used to talk about traveling the world and getting out of this place after graduation but you stuck around because of him. Then, things happened the way they did and you took off. For that, I was proud of you.” He looks up at me. “Does that answer your question?”

  A tear escapes down my cheek but I wipe it away before it reaches my jawline. I feel the ice cold drink in my other hand and I walk over to the couch to plop down.

  “Yeah, I think so,” I say as I pull the tab.

  Hank tosses me the stack of postcards. They land just off my lap, still bound tightly together as they bounce onto the cushion beside me. I pick them up and turn them over in my palm to read the back of the last one I sent him. Greetings from Denver.

  “Where are you going next, Jovie?” he asks me.

  I close my eyes, willing my head into a blank slate. I could repeat history all over again, just like they all expect me to. It’s a tempting thought. There’s still so much of the world I haven’t seen yet but there’s no guarantee I’d ever find somewhere else to call home, as much as I’d hate to admit it. I don’t imagine mountains or city skylines or oceans along that slate. I imagine Will’s face instead.

  “I love him,” I finally say.

  “And he loves you.” He nods. “But is that enough?”

  I stare at the stac
k in my hand for several moments before exhaling hard. “Well, you were right,” I say, raising my beer. “I did need this.”

  He chuckles. “If there’s one thing I’m well-educated in, it’s when to get shit-faced.”

  I laugh. “It’s a far more useful skill than anything I’ve got.”

  His head tilts. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  I smile, ready to blow off the sentiment, but something about it clings to the back of my head like a word you need but can’t quite remember.

  I look at my father again and he nods.

  Chapter 36

  Will

  We go through so much to become who we are.

  Every series of events, every moment and thought is just one piece of a fine-tuned engine that makes up ourselves. Parts degrade and get replaced over time but the layout and basic function remain the same. We can generally predict what our reactions will be to just about any situation. Fight or flight. Laugh or cry. Trust or suspect.

  Losing Jovie the first time inspired a heavy upgrade. I ditched the attitude. I started buying clothes that fit me. I went to school and got a job to be more independent and responsible. I kept the leather jacket and the bike as a reminder, but mostly because that look will never not be cool, even on the uptight streets of Middle of Nowhere, Kansas.

  But still, even through all that change, I’ve always expected the worst from Jovie Ross.

  I found out the truth and my first thought was that of suspicion. As if to say her most probable reaction to our breakup was to enact some form of revenge on my desire for a family. I know her better than that. She’d never do something like that to me, not in a million years, and yet, my fine-tuned, newly-upgraded engine of independence and responsibility latched onto the worst case scenario first because that’s just what I’ve always done.

  You can’t upgrade or replace everything. Some things you’re just stuck with. Old habits.

  Jovie’s gone through her own set of upgrades. She’s more patient. A kinder, gentler Jovie. No less sardonic but I’ve always considered that to be her strongest asset. But if she can grow and change just as I have then it’s not outside the realm of possibility that there are pieces of her deep inside that remain untouched.