She reached for Stephanie. “Is this okay?” She kissed along her throat, toward her shoulders through the opening at the top of her silky shirt.
“Uh-huh.”
Jess’s lips were sure, and she wanted more. But she understood. Stephanie was right. Someday, she thought. Someday.
Chapter Fifty-Five
All the way home, she and Stephanie held hands. Driving past the stadium, Jess wasn’t afraid anymore. She now had a secret treasure that she didn’t have to share with anyone else. There was no more doubt. She sighed, curling up beside Stephanie as she drove. Everything was fuzzy and warm.
Saying goodbye wasn’t as hard tonight. Certain of the connection they shared, Jess kissed her, knowing it wouldn’t be the last time.
“Good night,” she said, climbing out of the car.
“Jess?”
She leaned down to the half-open window. “Yeah?”
“I love you.”
Jess beamed, blushing and waving her hand away. “You can’t say stuff like that to me.” She giggled nervously.
“You said it to me,” Stephanie replied. “It’s only fair.”
Jess had a smile for the ages as she made her way up to the front porch. She turned to wave at the headlights before they changed direction and faded into the night.
* * *
As soon as Jess came inside, giddy and filled with a joy she’d never known, she was greeted by the somber faces of her parents. Her dad immediately got up to turn off the TV, and her mother hugged her.
“What’s going on?” Jess asked, pulling back, a little frightened.
Both of them stood in the living room, glancing at each other first.
“It’s Alex,” her mother said. “He’s gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?” Jess was confused.
“He’s dead,” her father said.
Jess dropped to the couch, the blood rushing from her face, as they recounted what Danny had told them when he called from his friend Wade’s house earlier that night. He had witnessed everything. He’d been looking for Jess to give her a ride home when he overheard the tough-guy talk on the field and stopped to watch. It all began with a dare…
* * *
The opposing team quarterback, Rob Bennett, confronted Alex after the game.
“You think you’re hot shit, don’t you?” Rob snarled.
“Hey,” Alex smiled, still basking in his victory, “the scoreboard don’t lie.”
Alex’s teammates laughed, surrounding him.
“If you think you’re so great, let’s see you prove it.” The Howler quarterback wasn’t a very good loser. “At Cutter’s Ridge. I’ll race you.”
Jess could imagine how Alex’s face must have fallen. Always having something to prove, whether as a Thornbush or a quarterback, he couldn’t have turned him down in front of everyone. He couldn’t be seen as a wimp, not after tonight’s performance. But Cutter’s Ridge was a mountain that was known for its dangerous curves; it was not the kind of place you’d ever want to race, especially at night.
“You’re on,” Alex replied. And the crowd applauded.
Some members of The Green Machine team confronted the other quarterback. “You’re goin’ down, man,” they chanted.
As word spread, everyone headed for their cars, looking to get to Cutter’s Ridge in time to see the action. With a final look around for Jess, Danny had headed to the parking lot too. As he climbed into the pickup, he overheard Mike Austin asking his cheerleader girlfriend, that old friend of Jess’s, to come with him.
“I can’t,” she had said. “I have to take care of my mom. She’s not doin’ so well.”
“Aw, come on.” Mike held her tighter. “She’s a grown adult. She’ll be fine.”
Stephanie and Mike couldn’t be that close, Jess thought, if she hasn’t shared that part about her home life with him. As always, she was ravaged with guilt when thoughts of Stephanie superseded the one she was supposed to be thinking about, Alex…She’d never thought enough about him.
Danny had gotten to Cutter’s Ridge in time to grab a good vantage point for the race, an overlook from which the winding road was visible. There wasn’t a lot to see, just the headlights of the vehicles on the road, but that was enough for spectators to determine who was in the lead. Alex’s Porsche went out fastest, but Rob’s pickup had more horsepower, and he was able to navigate the steep hills faster, zipping in and out of lanes until he was so far ahead he was almost out of sight.
Coming around the sharpest curve of the mountain, Alex had found himself stuck behind a sluggish Winnebago that was clearly lost. With no visibility on a double-lane, foggy road, Alex apparently decided to take his chances. There was rarely any traffic at this time on the mountain, so he pulled out. With his windows down, it was doubtful that he could hear anything but the noisy engine of the old Winnebago. As he rounded the corner, the last thing he saw must have been the headlights of the oil tanker descending the ridge. The last sound was probably the smash of metal before everything went black.
Chapter Fifty-Six
It was a dreary winter morning when Dan read passages from the Bible, hoping to give comfort to everyone gathered around Alex’s flower-draped coffin. The whole town was in mourning. School had been canceled until after the memorial service and burial to allow everyone to grieve, and signs on its front door and on the front of almost every business paid tribute to the local hero.
“Lord, deliver your son Alex to his final resting place,” he said, as drizzle fell upon the mourners. Jess barely heard her father’s words as she stood and stared at the coffin, imagining the mangled body inside. When she looked up, she met Stephanie’s eyes watching her carefully, and the guilt tightened around her neck like a noose until she felt like she couldn’t breathe.
She put her head down again, and suddenly she pictured Alex being lifted up by his teammates the last night she saw him alive. He was a superstar with a brilliant smile…
Abilene, Alex’s grandmother, dabbed at her eyes behind a black veil. As the crowd broke up, Jess overheard her talking to one of her friends. “You never outlive your own grandson. It just ain’t right!” she sobbed.
Jess couldn’t listen to the sounds of grief and death anymore. She rushed away from the cemetery, all too aware of the endless blanket of gray overhead and wondering if it was a sign from Alex, and if he would ever forgive her. Like the never-ending sky, there was no comfort, no answers—only the ruthless November wind, slapping against her face and chilling her to the bone.
“Jess!” Stephanie ran to her and took both of her hands in her own black gloved hands. It reminded Jess of the way she’d taken her hands a few nights ago, their last night together. She looked solemnly at Jess and held her for as long as Jess would let her.
“You know what the last thing he said to me was?” Jess asked, pulling away. “He said, ‘I love you.’ I couldn’t say it back.”
“Don’t,” Stephanie said. She hadn’t seen Jess since that night. When she heard the news from one of her cheerleader friends, getting the call almost as soon as she returned home, she’d tried to call Jess, but her mother said she was too distraught to come to the phone. And she’d skipped church the next day too.
Tears ran down inside Jess’s mouth. Stephanie shook her head and pulled her close. “It isn’t your fault,” she told her. “It isn’t your fault.”
“Isn’t it?” Jess regarded Stephanie in a chilling new way. Gone was the awakened young woman who was finally letting herself be free. “If I’d said I’d go up there with him, he never would have taken the dare. He never would’ve been in that stupid race!”
“You can’t do that to yourself.”
Jess started to walk away, then turned back around. “We sinned, and now God’s punishing us.”
“You don’t believe that! You can’t!” Stephanie began to cry.
“I have to live with this for the rest of my life!” Jess explained. “It seems like a punishment to me. You
can say you don’t believe in God, but he sure is there all the time to punish me!” Inside she begged for another explanation, but all she could hear, playing in her head like a broken record, were her father’s admonitions over the years about “unnatural relations or desires.”
Stephanie could see everything unraveling in front of her. Jess, believing that she deserved some kind of life sentence for what she’d done, was preparing to give up the person she loved most.
“Don’t do this.” Stephanie’s voice fluttered with emotion. “Don’t do this.”
This was a defining moment, Jess knew. There was no turning back. What they had had, what they had dreamed of having, had been ripped away before they’d even had time to enjoy it.
“Go away!” Jess’s voice was so loud her parents heard and saw what was happening. They probably assumed that the girls’ tears were for Alex.
“I will never,” Stephanie managed, “ever regret that night.”
Jess winced at her words, glancing away. “I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.” With that, she walked away.
* * *
In the days that followed, Jess mourned the loss of Alex and tortured herself with guilt.
One night Ivy knocked on her bedroom door. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” Jess was spinning her ball fast on her fingertip. She kept swiping at it to make it go faster.
Her sister sat on the edge of the bed. “You okay?”
“What do you think?” Jess threw the ball across the room. Seeing her sister’s serious expression, she said, “I did everything I was supposed to. You should be happy.”
“I’m not happy to see you like this.” Ivy sighed, looking around the room. “I’m so sorry about Alex.”
Jess crossed her arms, regarding her sister with bitter irony. “I never felt for him what he did for me.”
“You’re feelin’ guilty?”
Jess didn’t answer. She thought it was obvious.
“Hey, I’m trying to help here.” Ivy was cautious, concerned. “I used to know how to protect you, you know, tell you which teachers were the worst, what to do when you got to high school. But with that girl, the things you told me…I don’t know how to help you.”
“Don’t worry,” Jess said, the edge still in her voice. “You don’t have to.” She sat up against her pillow. She yearned to confide in her, but she couldn’t stand the silent judgment that would surely follow. “I do feel real guilty. I can’t tell you why.”
“I know why.”
“No,” Jess corrected. “You don’t know the whole story.” She swallowed, glancing around the room to keep her tears in check. “The night he died, he asked me to go to Cutter’s Ridge with him. But I wouldn’t. That night…Steph and I…kissed and….” She didn’t dare look at her sister.
“Oh.”
Jess groaned and covered her face, falling back down on the bed. When she said it aloud, it sounded even worse to her. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.” She took a deep breath and patted Jess’s leg. “I promise.”
Before her sister left…“I might as well have killed him myself.”
Ivy paused. “Whatever happened, it’s not your fault. No one told him to get in that car. Everybody knows a race up there is suicide.”
Strangely, Ivy’s words made her feel a little better. But she kept going over his last words to her that night and how she couldn’t give him the only thing he really wanted—to say “I love you” back.
At dinner, Carolyn reached out to touch Jess’s hand. “How are you?”
Jess shrugged. Everybody was being careful with her, as if suddenly she were made of glass. Strangely, she felt that way, that a look or one wrong word would make her crack or, at the very worst, shatter. Conversation in the Aimes’ house had become a disaster area of dangerous topics better left avoided.
“Abilene wanted me to tell you she was thinking of you,” her mother said. “We all know how much he meant to you.”
Hearing the lie made her stomach turn.
Ivy’s eyes darted nervously from Jess to their parents. In that moment, Jess wished she hadn’t confided in her.
“Can I be excused?” Jess asked.
Her mother noticed that she hadn’t taken a bite, but…“Sure.”
Even Danny had the sense to know this was a sensitive time. So there was a temporary respite from the sibling teasing and bickering that usually accompanied most family meals.
“It’s gonna take some time,” her father added. “You need to give yourself time to heal.”
Jess nodded and went upstairs.
Later that night, her father knocked on Jess’s door.
“Come in.” She was holding her basketball, facing the window away from the door.
“Jess. May I?”
He went ahead and took a seat on the edge of her bed.
“How you holding up?” he asked. “And don’t say ‘fine.’”
“Okay. Not fine.”
When she turned to face him, he seemed more frustrated with her than concerned for her. She had come to realize that he thought everything his family did reflected on him, and he wanted his family to be some example of Christian perfection—a beacon of hope for his flock. He hadn’t seemed pleased when she refused to go to church the Sunday after Alex’s death, but her mother had pleaded her case and they’d allowed her to stay home. Danny and Ivy had had to go, of course. Ivy said he’d spent a lot of time dealing with the morbid curiosity of various congregation members about what exactly had happened and asking “how his poor, devastated daughter” was doing.
“How ’bout you tell me what’s troubling you the most?” he asked.
“Besides my boyfriend bein’ dead?” Her tone was sharp. She had no patience for anyone, especially him. Then she set the ball aside and stared up at the ceiling. “I think I’m goin’ to hell.” She hadn’t planned to say anything, but the feeling had been so close to the surface for so long.
Her father patted her shoulder. “No, you’re not, hon.”
“You don’t know that!” Save the all-knowing crap for your congregation. It was a good thing he couldn’t read her mind.
“You don’t know,” she repeated.
“Know what?”
“I’m a bad person. So I’m goin’ to hell.”
“You didn’t kill him,” he said.
“Oh yeah?”
He looked confused. “From what I know about that night, you were nowhere near the accident. So where’s all this coming from?”
He was so literal, so…She knew she couldn’t tell him anything—not anything real, at least.
“You feel somehow responsible for his death?” he asked.
Jess sat up. “What if…you know you’re a bad person or that…you can’t ever live up to what the Bible says? What’re you supposed to do?”
He exhaled. “Well,” he said calmly. “All of us are sinners. So we try to live each day as best we can and hope the good Lord will forgive us. In your prayers, you ask for forgiveness?”
She nodded.
“Well,” he said. “There you go. That’s all you can do.” He wiped a stray tear off her cheek. “Why don’t you get some rest, okay?”
Yes, rest always takes care of everything, she thought bitterly. It didn’t help her when she was vomiting all over the house as a child. It didn’t help her when she lost her best friend in the world…and it didn’t help now with Alex’s death. What was rest going to do?
As her dad left, Jess wondered if she’d ever be truly forgiven. If there really was a heaven, Alex must be looking down on her with such contempt, especially since now he knew the whole truth.
She leaned down to open her nightstand drawer, hoping to find a stray tissue. The first thing she felt was the carefully preserved bundle of Stephanie’s letters. She pushed them farther back so they wouldn’t be seen and pulled stacks of basketball cards up to the front. No matter what had happened, she wouldn’t, couldn’t, throw away those letters
. Or the Bible Stephanie had given her. When she’d read those outdated passages in Leviticus, Jess had almost believed that it was okay to feel what she was feeling. What some called unnatural desires felt natural to her, and maybe it shouldn’t have been taboo, like eating shrimp or bacon. Nobody got stoned to death coming out of a Red Lobster.
Of course, as soon as she got closer to Stephanie that night, Alex ended up dead. That was too bizarre to be a coincidence. It felt somehow as though God was trying to send a message that maybe, just maybe, that one part of Leviticus was the one that everyone should be paying attention to.
If only Alex hadn’t died…She tossed and turned in her bed that night. If he hadn’t died, she might have felt good about her life finally. Realizing that she was getting angry at him for dying, she looked for an alternative, a way to give meaning to his death. Like believing that it had saved her from becoming a chronic sinner. As those thoughts burrowed their way in, another voice argued with her…she wasn’t a killer. She never stole anything. Or bore false witness. Except for pretending to be his girlfriend. She wasn’t sure what adultery included, but wearing someone’s letter jacket couldn’t be as bad.
Coveting, though…she had coveted someone else’s girlfriend, even though she really wasn’t his girlfriend. No matter what she’d done, yes, she was going to stop this thing with Stephanie, whatever it was.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
“God has a plan for each of us,” Dan shouted from the pulpit. “Even though we may not always know what that plan is.” He looked at his daughter, very obviously attempting to heal the wounds he thought she felt.
It was a solemn service, frequently interrupted by Abilene’s crying. Her favorite grandson was gone. Jess couldn’t comprehend the pain she must be feeling. She kept silent about the role she thought she played in his death but carried it like a huge weight on her shoulders. She slumped in her seat, unable to look at the Thornbush family. Her mother reached for her hand. She pulled it away, feeling that she didn’t deserve any comfort or consoling. Those bound for hell didn’t deserve kindness. As an unseasonably warm November breeze made its way through half-open windows, she decided she’d better get used to heat. After all, she was going to be burning for eternity. She might as well prepare herself.
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