The Marriage Pact (Viral Series)

by Mara White

  Ryan leaned in and kissed her cheek. Jackie closed her eyes and willed herself to remember the feel of his lips on her skin. When he stepped away, she yanked the creaky truck door open and climbed in. She turned the key and rolled down the window.

  “Bye, Ryan.”

  “Nope. Not goodbye. See you when you’re thirty.”

  He waved and she returned the gesture. Jackie steeled herself. She could see him putting on his best brave face and it killed her that she was hurting him—to the point she felt physically ill. She pulled out and watched Ryan stand without moving in her rearview until she was far enough away that he was just a speck.

  Chapter 14

  Ryan

  Had two years really passed since he’d seen her? The time flew by so fast and in other ways it creeped, painfully slow, like the minutes in junior high detention when he and Scotty had beat up a kid on the playground and stayed after in Mr. Renault’s science room and polished Bunsen burners for two weeks straight. His father was furious at them. “Violence is never the answer.” They’d watched the minutes tick by and dreaded even more when they were finished and their father would pick them up and lecture them both the entire way home. Those were what the minutes were like without Jackie, slow, excruciating, torturous. But in other ways, time passed swiftly. He was doing an internship at the hospital, getting hands-on experience with real patients. Ryan was learning so much, he harbored a ridiculous fear that his brain had reached capacity. He was hunkering down, an expression his mom liked to use. He didn’t go out like he used to, didn’t drink so much or pick up girls or party like he and Jackie had. He went to Starbucks alone and drank his Venti black with an ache in his chest that he’s sometimes tried to rub with his hands. Get over it, move on, let go, were all things he told himself regularly. Words his brothers had uttered, especially Scotty and Carlos. Even his friends coached him in that direction, his guidance counselor, his football coach, his frat brothers, the therapist he was seeing at the insistence of his mother.

  Funny thing about advice is that you could actually take it, apply it to your life and still not have it work. Even if your mind said one thing, your heart might say something else entirely. He listened to his rational mind, but his rogue heart took off in its own direction.

  In those two years, therapy became a huge part of his life, he’d started in part for grief, and in part for anger management. He’d done something he wasn’t proud of right after it happened, something so rash it risked his whole education, his scholarship, and even his future.

  A few weeks after Jackie left and the idea really settled in that she wasn’t coming back, Ryan went to Jenna’s every night with one sadistic mission. It looked nothing like the cruel game he and Jackie had played, but it did involve the same characters. But try as he might, Ryan could never let it go. She’d suffered enough in her private life that some asshole had zero right to come along and mess her up. He stalked the guy obsessively—much in the same way he thought about it.

  Ryan had no idea how the guy’s face locked so clearly in his memory, but he would clench and unclench his fists whenever he thought about him. So, one beer a night was all he would allow himself, while he staked out the bar and waited until he could accidently run into him. All he wanted was to give the guy a taste of his own medicine, let him know how it feels to be scared and at the mercy of someone twice as big as him. His opportunity came just after three weeks of pacing in the shadows. He watched him get drunk and live it up with his friends. Ryan nursed one beer, while the asshole drank four martinis. He still wore the same tweed jacket with elbow patches, but it didn’t matter, his smug face was burned into Ryan’s revenge receptors.

  Ryan left before he did and took cover beside a parked pick-up. Trailed the dude for three blocks before he broke off from his friends and headed alone toward his own place. Ryan’s adrenaline felt like a live creature as it snaked through his nervous system. He had it in him to kill the guy. Snap his neck, then kick his skull in. He had to breathe deep and remind himself he was giving the guy a lesson but it wasn’t up to him to give him his final one. God’s work, his father’s voice said to him.

  “Sorry,” he whispered and rolled his eyes up toward heaven, as he rolled up his sleeves.

  “Yo, fuckhead!” Ryan yelled when they turned a corner onto an empty block. Just the moon and dirty, melting snow and this tweed jacket wearing coward. The guy jerked his head around and immediately began to run.

  “Stop, you fucking coward!” Ryan took off after him and tackled him on the pavement. He straddled the asshole and held him still by the shoulders.

  “When a girl says, no, you fucking listen. Got that, creep? This is for my friend, Jackie. You gave her a black eye back in January.”

  He held his lapel, wound up and punched him in the face. Ryan could hear bone break. The guy was whining and after the punch, he was blubbering. He squirmed like a kid trying to wriggle his way out from under him.

  “Oh, I remember her. Fucking slutty psychopath—”

  Ryan cut him off with a blow to his other cheek. That one was a reflex, he’d only planned on doing an eye for an eye, but the last one slipped out of him.

  “She fucking threw herself at me. Said she wanted to fuck. Practically started going down on me at the bar. Jesus. What was I supposed to do? I was having a beer with my friends and then she was all over me!”

  Ryan gritted his teeth so hard, they almost cracked. He didn’t want to hear this guy’s side of the story, he just wanted revenge for the unnecessary pain the guy had caused her.

  “No means no,” Ryan said coldly, released his grip and stood.

  “She was a fucking nut job, that whore. She told me she wanted it rough!”

  Ryan kicked him in the ribs. He heard another little crunch.

  Before he walked away, he helped the guy up.

  In silence, with his shoulders hung, he trudged back to his apartment. Sometimes he missed the dorms, the comfort of friends, the chatter, the impromptu parties.

  The adrenaline eased away as he walked, it slipped down his spine like a piece of silk and was gone. He felt drained, cold, but not relieved in the slightest.

  The fight was captured on campus closed circuit security cameras. Ryan was up for university probation. Tweed Coat was a tenure track, third year, philosophy professor. He pressed charges, broken nose and broken ribs, Ryan was charged with assault. But then they both got lawyers and everything changed. Once the reason for Ryan’s aggression came to light, the other camp wanted to settle out of court. Ryan was sacked with the guy’s medical bills and agreed to allow the documents to be sealed and put to sleep. But on the way out of the courthouse where they’d hashed out the details with the arbiters, he turned around, pantomimed a gun to his head and told Tweed Jacket: “I’ll be watching you.” His lawyer scolded him all the way to his car. Nothing more happened and Ryan let it go.

  Tweed wasn’t the only person Ryan stalked during that difficult time, twice that semester he took the long, barren drive out to Jackie’s farm. Always at night, always with the intention to go in and talk to her, hold her, do whatever he could to let her know how much he truly loved her. But each trip ended with him not turning up the unpaved driveway, idling on the side of the highway, staring at the warm, yellow windows of the old farm house. Their glow didn’t fool him, he knew he wasn’t invited or even particularly wanted. Instead he sat there, imagining Jackie inside with a tea kettle on the woodstove like he’d prepared for her while he was by her side. He imagined hugging her, taking some of the burden and bearing it to free her. He just wanted her to be free, even if he couldn’t ever be the one to have her.

  Ryan shuddered when he remembered the grief that swirled around those rickety rooms like a low pressure storm. He wanted to save her, to be her hero, but he just didn’t know how. And he wasn’t even equipped to deal with the feelings Jackie stirred in his being. Hence the therapy, the long chats with parents and eventually, throwing himself into his work like a la
st ditch swan dive off a bridge. He just hoped when he hit bottom, he would float and somehow rise back up to the top.

  Chapter 15

  Jackie

  All Jackie wanted to hear was Ryan at her door. To see his face one more time. When they said their goodbye, she died a little more, if that was even possible these days. She’d laid in tears in bed all the next day. Alone without him. There was no other way, though. He deserved a life full of happiness and all she could give him was sorrow. If she could bring herself to talk to him, she’d tell him to take her body. That she wanted to hear his voice. That she’d been barely living lately. She would tell him that she saw him in her dreams. She’d thank him for showing her how love felt. She’d let him know that she gave him her soul. That he was always on her mind, even if she couldn’t be in his life. She would tell him that there are people in life who, no matter how much you love them, you have to let go. But now, Jackie was out of breath. Out of time with him. She couldn’t sleep. She wanted Ryan with her to make her feel loved. Make her feel something.

  “Quit it.” She shoved Kratch away from her. “You’re wasted.”

  “Come on, you love me,” he slurred. Jackie shoved him one last time-hard. He hit the barn wall and slid down it. She didn’t care if he was dead or not, she was sick of his antics. She’d been using him for the last six months as an escape. She didn’t go out. She didn’t drink anymore and she hadn’t had sex in forever. And there Kirby Kratch had been, just waiting for her to use him. He was like an old sweater. Comfortable and familiar. They’d fallen into bed together after a particularly nasty fight with her father, after she’d come back from dropping out of college. She’d needed the escape. He had always wanted her. But now it was getting old. She wasn’t serious about him. She wasn’t serious about anyone. Her therapist said that was natural. That she was self-protecting. Blah blah blah.

  Jackie didn’t really listen to much of what her therapist said. She didn’t want to let go or move on from her sisters. She hadn’t touched a damn thing in their rooms. She hadn’t washed their leftover laundry. She knew it wasn’t healthy but if she pretended hard enough, sometimes she could still hear their voices in the hallway or around the dinner table. If she cracked one of their bedroom doors, she could catch a whiff of their creams or lotions. She didn’t want to lose that.

  “Kirby. I said quit it,” Jackie reiterated. “I’m done with your stupid ass.”

  She had to be. Every time they slept together, it meant nothing to her. And every time it happened, she had to picture Ryan’s face to get off. Her therapist would tell her how a lot of that was unhealthy but Jackie didn’t care. Unhealthy was the least of the insults her therapist would throw at her.

  She would sacrifice her mental health to keep Ryan’s life moving in the right direction. She was a waste of a heart. She cried every night. She lost her temper too many times a day. She had a father to take care of and a rundown house to upkeep. Most of all, she was filled with a despair and sorrow so vast, that she didn’t know how to properly love anyone, or anything, let alone herself.

  “Holy shit, Jackie Bowen? Is that you?” The grocery store was packed. She should have known better. Thanksgiving week was not the time to go. It’s not like her dad and she were cooking a proper dinner. Jackie turned around and nearly fell into her cart.

  “Hey, Rose,” she said.

  Before her mother passed away, Rose Griffin had been Jackie’s best friend. They had been inseparable. She’d tried so hard to remain friends with Rose after losing her mom but she simply hadn’t been capable of maintaining any relationships outside her family. How ironic. She snorted.

  “I heard about your sisters. I’m so sorry.” Rose rubbed a hand over her belly. Her very swollen belly as she made a pained face.

  Jackie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “You doin’ okay?”

  “Sure,” Jackie said.

  “I mean it,” Rose deadpanned.

  Jackie shrugged. “Pops is worse than me.”

  Rose nodded her head. Everyone in town knew her father and what he was and wasn’t.

  “Wanna come over for dinner sometime?”

  “I don’t know Rose, I’m not great company.”

  “I figured. I mean, not to be a bitch but you seem like you need a friend, despite not being great company.”

  Jackie stood stunned in the aisle. She hadn’t seen Rose for years. After high school, she’d gone to college and hadn’t come back that she knew of and now here she was asking to hang out. “I—congrats,” Jackie said and looked at her protruding stomach.

  “Oh please, don’t do that. I’m not awesome company either. I’m home because my fiancée knocked me up, which should have been joyful but was hampered by the fact that the asshat was cheating on me and guess what?” Jackie widened her eyes. “His mistress is fucking preggo, too. Now listen, I can’t drink my way through this but you can. So, will you please come over for dinner some time? I’m sick of being alone.”

  For the first time in what felt like years, Jackie laughed. A real, true belly laugh. Rose joined in. Jackie thought it was funny that two girls, who’d been friends once, but estranged for nearly a decade, were suddenly standing together laughing in the grocery store over the fact that both their lives were terrible. The world was a strange place.

  “So will you?”

  Jackie looked at Rose and smiled. “Yeah. I think that’d be good.”

  Rose clapped her hands together. “Okay. Wednesday night. I’m renting the old Birch place by the elementary school. Now, can you please reach that box of lasagna for me? I can’t stretch that much without peeing a little.” Jackie laughed again and grabbed the box of pasta for Rose. As Rose tossed the box in her cart, it crossed her mind that Ryan would love Rose. Jackie let the pang of heartbreak sit with her for a moment before pushing it away.

  “Listen, I gotta get back to Pops. See if I can keep him eating. He’s stubborn and grief stricken and if I don’t force feed him, he’d let himself starve to death.” Jackie wondered when Pops grief would subside. She couldn’t continue to force feed him much longer.

  Rose nodded. “Okay. But seriously, I know where you live, if you stand me up Wednesday, I’ll hunt you down.”

  Jackie pressed her lips together to suppress a grin. “I promise. I will come over.”

  Rose waddled up to her and in a motion far too quick for someone her current size, wrapped Jackie in a hug. For a moment Jackie didn’t know what to do. It’d been so long since someone had genuinely shown her affection. Finally, she lifted her arms and squeezed back. “Don’t fuck with a pregnant chick,” Rose whispered in her ear before they parted ways. Jackie grinned. Rose might be exactly what she needed.

  Chapter 16

  Ryan

  Then the one and only time he’d seen her, was when she came back to campus to get her things and attempted to escape without even talking to him. He guessed, for most people, that should have been a hint. But Ryan fully believed that Jackie was running from love, a full out, hell-bent sprint to escape her feelings for him. He got desperate and he’d cornered her. Got down on one knee and he watched in pain while her face turned crimson with embarrassment. It’s true that the pact was an ultimatum, and true, too, that he used it as a very last resort. Ryan felt like he knew Jackie better than he knew anyone. He realized that the grief would make her fear love like a curse, she’d rather end up forever alone, than give anyone the power to break her heart. Maybe it was his faith or the way he was raised, but Ryan felt he could intuit Jackie’s needs, even when she unable to express them. The harder she pushed, the more he knew she was hurting. So, Ryan offered her the only balm he could muster. Time. Time could save her, heal her wounds, let her recover. She needed time and space and he loved her enough to back off and make that promise to her.

  When he sunk to one knee and she blushed, he realized she must have believed him to be proposing.

  “Get up,” was the first thing s
he said. He ignored her. “Argh!” Jackie balled her fists when he ignored her.

  But instead of marriage, all he wanted was a promise. He didn’t really expect to hold her to the deal, it had just been a way to stay in one another’s lives and to make sure they never lost touch.

  But when Jackie acquiesced and he actually heard her say, “Okay” his heart leaped in his chest and color spread across his face. So did a smile that stretched from ear to ear. He’d wanted to jump up and down, yell to the whole world what it meant to him.

  “What was that?” he asked, sure that he’d heard her wrong.

  “Ryan, I said, Okay.”

  He told her he wasn’t joking. If after ten years they weren’t married, weren’t in love with someone else, they’d marry one another. She’d said yes pretty quickly, then pushed him away.

  “Now move! I need to get on the road!” But Ryan was already glowing. Jackie rarely said things that she didn’t actually mean. A marriage pact. How juvenile, how desperate, how absolutely brilliant.

  He leaned in and gave her a swift kiss on the cheek. He memorized her scent and the temperature of her skin, the smell of her shampoo and the weight of her sadness.

  The hint of a smile played on her lips as she fastened her seatbelt and gunned the engine on the old rumbly farm truck. Ryan stood with his hands in his pockets and watched her back up.

  “See you when you’re twenty-eight!” he hollered as he waved.

  Ryan knew he could search the world and never find anyone quite like her ever again. He felt like he was dangling on the edge of a cliff and had decided, like an idiot, to flex both of his hands.

  That night, Ryan studied at an old diner. He wore his flannel and his cap pulled down, wool socks and snow boots.

  “What can I get for you, Sugar?” the waitress asked him. Her eyes were kind and she held a full coffee pot in one hand like a magic wand. Ryan looked up, smiled slowly and rubbed his hand over his face. He was in a Jackie stupor, still dumbstruck that she had agreed to his last ditch, harebrained solution.