I spent the next week at the Mercer house. They went out every night and most days to talk to people and try to find out what had happened to their mom. Sometimes Bobby would tell Jack to stay at the house, which Jack took as a blow to his manhood, but I knew that it was just Bobby’s way of showing that he cared and didn’t want him to get hurt or get into trouble.

One of those nights, Jack and I were alone in the house. I sat looking through the small collection of movies under the television while he paced, speaking – to me or to himself I’m still not sure. “This isn’t fair. She was my mom, too. Fuck, I should have just ignored Bobby and gone anyway. This is stupid; I’m going.” He grabbed his coat from the side of the sofa and started toward the door.

I was on my feet quickly, “Jack, wait. Please.” He paused in a way that told me he was still set on walking out the door, and that I didn’t have much time before he did. “I know you don’t want to be left behind, but every time you all go, I’m stuck here all alone with nothing to do but worry and wonder. Bobby said it himself, nothing big is happening tonight; they’re just going to talk to people.” It was barely working, easily decernable due to the fact that his body was still angled toward the door.

“Beside,” I decided on a change of tactic, “I know the real reason you want to go.” He gave me a quizzical look, showing he didn’t know what I meant. “You know that if you stay, I’m going to try to get you to watch this horror movie that you promised me years ago you would watch, and you’re too scared to do it.” As if to prove myself, I held up the DVD case of a scary movie which had come out just before he had taken off.

“I’m not scared of some movie.”

“Prove it.” My words held the air of a childhood dare. A double dog dare. Jack did not like horror movies. Regardless, he put his coat back down and rested himself on the couch. Satisfied at my success, I put the video in the player and took up a seat beside him, turning off the last light in the room as I did.

Within twenty minutes, Jack was clinging to a pillow in front of him, eyes glued to the screen. A few times, I had felt the sofa shift as he jumped. I tried to pretend that he hadn’t moved closer to me, but after the last dissonant chord and kill in the movie, it was unmistakable how much closer he was. The skin of his arm was touching mine.

“Shit!” His jump made me laugh. He turned and looked at me, obviously unhappy with me, though playfully. “Funny, huh?” I shook my head, still chuckling. “Oh, you’re real convincing. Get over here.” Without warning, his arms were around me, and he was pulling me closer until I was completely up against him. He began rubbing his knuckle against my head, giving me a noogie. “Is it funny now?”

I wasn’t about to give up without a fight. Being undeniably skinny, I was able to slide myself out from his arms and grab a pillow, striking him with it. “No weapons!” He snatched the pillow from my hands and started hitting me back, all the while I tried to stop his arms.

We were both laughing as I ducked and he swung. With a final lunge, I grabbed the pillow, but knocked us too far off balance. Together, we fell from the couch, me landing on top of him. “Oh, Jack, I’m sorry! Are you okay? You didn’t hit your head, did you?” I leaned closer to him, trying to get a better look, which proved near impossible in the darkness. The television still provided our only light source. He was laughing – a beautiful sound – before letting his body relax. His hands came up and rested on my lower back.

Our eyes were locked, our faces inches apart. “Kellie.” My chest was flat against his, enough that I could feel his heart beating. I couldn’t breathe, but wondered if he could feel how my heart raced. Throughout the week, eight years of pent up emotions, feelings and yearnings had been coming back.

This is Jack.

I tried thinking logically. He didn’t want me in that way. Physically, he was everything a girl could want, and deep down he was sweet and soft-hearted. I was plain and ordinary. Not to mention that he had to be way more experienced with girls than I was with guys. There was no way he wanted me. But there he was, holding me while I was just inches from him. “Kellie, I…” An explosion on screen caused us both to jump, and effectively ended the moment. I never found out the end of that sentence.

Later that night, after his brothers returned with nothing too big to report, he and I climbed the stairs up to his room. He closed the door behind us as he always did. Reaching into the hamper, I pulled out a shirt and pair of shorts he had given me to wear. Though I had brought my own pajama gear, I must preferred wearing his.

As I turned around, I saw his back to me; he stood without a shirt and was slipping down his jeans. I had to force my eyes away from him before turning and pulling off my own clothes in favor of his. The shirt was long and fell a bit past my ass. If I were alone, it would be all I would wear since I hated having pants on while I slept. All the same, I pulled the shorts on.

Walking over to the bed, I pulled back the covers and crawled underneath, moving around to try to bring some warmth to the sheets. He followed soon after and, for the first time, got under the sheets as well. “Is it just me, or has it been extra cold in here the past couple nights?” He asked. I chuckled, trying to keep my thoughts on kittens and fluffy bunnies. “Do you mind?”

“Of course not, it’s your bed.” I was on my side with my back to him, trying to ignore the distance between us.

After a moment, the bed shuffled as he moved, rolling towards me. Lightly, he rested his hand on my side; the warmth of his fingers soaked through the cotton of my shirt. My brain was at a frantic cross-road. Turn and face him? Pretend to be sleeping? Wait to see if he does anything else? Turning only my head toward him, I smiled slightly. “If you’re trying to steal my warmth, you’re going to be terribly disappointed.”

He chuckled, and his deep rumble caused the bed to vibrate under me. “I very much doubt that you could disappoint me,” What did that mean? “but I actually figured you might be cold.” It wasn’t that hard to figure; I was always cold. His hand slid forward, following the line of my arm to where my hand rested in front of me. “Freezing,” he commented. My heart was racing. It took everything I had to keep my breathing steady despite the fact that my skin was on fire where he touched me.

He slid the tiniest bit closer to me, but was near enough that I could feel traces of his breath on my neck. “Roll over.” His voice was soft and undemanding. I rolled toward him.

Taking my cold hands in his, he rubbed them before bringing them to his lips and exhaling warm air between his palms. My eyes moved from our hands to his eyes, back and forth. “Any better?” He asked between bursts of warm air.

With a pleased smile, I nodded. “It feels good.” He stopped breathing on my hands, but continued to clutch them. My stomach was doing flips, and it took every ounce of self-control I had to keep my breathing steady. There were goosebumps all over my body.

“Can I, uh… Can I ask you a question, Kellie?”

His voice was timid in a way that I wasn’t used to hearing it. I tried to ignore the concern it automatically sent through me. “Of course, Jack. You can ask me anything; you know that.”

Though he smiled slightly at my words, the bit of worry in his eyes did not lessen. “How many guys have you been with?”

Whatever I may have been expecting, that was not it. “What?”

He moved as if about to turn away from me. “I’m sorry. It’s stupid; I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Wait, no. I-I just… I’m not sure what you mean. I’ve never had a boyfriend.”

“But you’re not a virgin.” I knew his tone well enough to know that this wasn’t a question, nor was it a bitter accusation.

Shaking my head, I met his eyes. “No, I’m not.”

“How many?”

“Six.” Most of the girls in the neighborhood would have numbers much higher than that, but I still felt ashamed at my own. If I had had my way, it would only be one, but the one I wanted was the one I would never have.

Jack was shaking his head slightly. “It was six when I left.” Sex had fallen under the “tell each other everything” category of our friendship growing up. He knew the second I had sex for the first time. He knew how scared and reluctant I had been. He knew how much the guy pushed and pressured even though I barely knew him. He knew that halfway through I decided I didn’t want to anymore, and he knew that the guy finished anyway. He did not, however, know anything when it came to that same guy showing up at school with a broken nose and bruised ribs.

“And I haven’t since you left.”

“Haven’t with anyone new?”

“Haven’t at all.” His brow furrowed, as if he were trying to understand exactly what I was saying. The last time I had had sex was a week before he left. In truth, I had only done it in the first place to try to get my mind off of him. With him gone, that was the only place my mind ever went, wondering where and how he was. “Jack, you beat the shit out of the first guy I ever slept with and…”

“That guy was an ass hole.”

“…and roughed up all the other ones, too.”

“Bobby got to the third one.” Although this was true, I still gave him a look. “You were too good for any of them.”

“Then why do you look so disappointed?”

Now he looked shocked and very thrown off. “Disappointed? Why would I be disappointed? I just figured with me out of the way, guys would be seizing the opportunity to go out with you without the threat of… you know… me or one of my brothers…”

“No guy has ever ‘gone out’ with me, Jack. They only ever wanted to hook up. Like I said, I’ve never had a boyfriend.”

“That’s not right. You deserved a guy who would take you out and… I don’t know… dance with you and care about you and who would look at you like you are the only girl in the world. It’s not right that you never got that. You really should have, Kells.” His voice was soft and apologetic.

“Jack, it’s fine. I never would have wanted to date any of those guys anyway. I was much better off without one of them as a boyfriend.”

“I’ve never had a girlfriend.”

“Bullshit!”

“Seriously. And I know what you’re going to say. That one, what’s her face, from a few years before I left, but you know damn well that girl was a crazy stalker.” I wanted to point out that he’d slept with her anyway, but I knew that he had his reasons for that. “I’ve had sex with a lot of girls, Kellie. A lot. I’m not very proud of that. It’s disgusting, really, to think of how many girls I’ve… but I needed some amount of control in my life. It gave me control. Moments of attachment with no illusion of permanence. No heartbreak. No vulnerability. It was…”

“I know, Jack. You don’t have to explain it.” His eyes softened with the smallest trace of a ‘thank you’. His father stealing his childhood for so many years before he was put into foster care was not a subject we delved into unless necessary.

“I just want you to know that none of those girls meant anything to me, if they did I never would have slept with them after only knowing them for a few days… or hours. Maybe I wouldn’t have slept with them at all, because I was just using them anyway. If I cared I would have stuck around afterward. Meaningless sex is easy, but attachment and commitment, having sex with someone because I care, the thought is terrifying. I’d really have to love someone, and I have yet to do that. Have meaningful sex, I mean. It was like… the lights always had to be off…”

His words made my head spin. “Jack, why exactly are we talking about this?”

For a moment he didn’t say anything, just stared past me. Then our eyes met. “I’ve been bored.”

“So you ask me about my sex life?”

A sly smile played across his lips, and almost sent shivers down my spine. How could any smile be so amazing. “Just wanted to make sure I’m caught up on my beat downs. This didn’t quite fit, but he sounded content, and I didn’t want to break him from that.

My fingers were still cradled between the palms of his hands, and this realization filled me with warmth. “Thank you, Jack.”

He caught where I was looking and gave a smirk. “Hands feeling better?”

“A bit, yes, but I meant thank you for beating the shit out of Danny Westler. You were right; I wasn’t ready and he all but stole my first time from me. It shouldn’t have been with him.”

The words caught in his throat as he began to speak, but stopped just before anything could reach his tongue. With a deep breath, he began to trace his fingers against the back of my hand. “Who should it have been?”

Answering with the full truth was not an option. I wouldn’t allow myself to ruin his closeness with honesty. This was friendly conversation, and I was about to make it personal. He should have been my first. First and only. I settled on the response of, “someone I love.”

“Was any time?” The tone in his voice was close to concern.

“Was any time with someone I loved? No. I wouldn’t even say any time was with someone I really cared about, to be honest.”

“You never really seemed happy when you’d tell me about all the times before, that’s probably why I got a bit over zealous with finding the guys you were with.” I tried not to show my disappointment that it wasn’t because of jealousy. “So… chaste for two years? What’s up with that?”

“Guess I just realized I never really seemed happy when I’d tell you about all the times before.” He looked content and frustrated at the same time. “Like you said, the lights always had to be off. I’ve had sex with six different guys without any of them seeing me naked. Pants below the knees, bent over whatever stable object was closest, all with minimal skin-to-skin contact.

“I could have been anyone, and they could have been anyone. Just once I’d like for it to be personal. Moaning a guy’s name, looking him in the eyes, hearing him moan my name as if he actually cares what it is. I want to hear a guy tell me he loves me and actually believe him, you know?”

The next part came out without the permission of my rational mind. “Plus, I realized that I was looking for something… well someone… in those guys, and I was never going to find him in them.”

“So you’re hands are warm now, what about your arms. It’s freezing in here, isn’t it?” The subject change was quick and jarring, but I let it happen. He wouldn’t have done it unless he truly needed to, and I tried – for the sake of my sanity – to not think about why he needed to.

His hands slid up and down my arms, warming me up a bit, though all the blood seemed to be flowing up toward my cheeks. “You’re always so cold, Kells. I don’t know how you stand it. Come here.” With minimal effort, he pulled me closer to him until I was snuggled against his chest.

Every inch of his body was warm, and it was one fact I had always loved about him. His fingers traced down my spine, giving me goosebumps. “I thought you said you were cold. Isn’t that why you’re under the covers?”

“Oh,” he pulled away from me the tiniest bit. “If it makes you uncomfortable I can…”

“As long as you’re doing everything in your power to warm me up, you can sleep where ever you want.” Pressing my nose against the base of his neck, right above the collar of his t-shirt, I felt the cold instantly disappear. It was all enough to cause me to ease closer to sleep quickly. “God, you’re so warm, Jack. I love it. You’re so amazing.” My words were barely comprehensible between my tired slur and my face being pressed against him.

An awkward chuckle shook his chest. There was a small silence before his hand slipped downward across my spine until he reached the hem of my shirt. Slowly, he curled his fingers underneath it and moved upward, finally resting his hand on my lower back. I gasped lightly before letting out a small sigh of approval. The warmth was indescribable. It seemed to shock my whole body, moving downward until moisture forming beneath the shorts he’d let me borrow.

Kittens and fluffy bunnies. Kittens and fluffy bunnies. Cute things. Brotherly love. He pulled me a bit closer. “Goodnight, Kellie.” He whispered, his breath tickling my ear as his fingers tickled my back.

“’Night, Jack.”

Again, as with the first night, I lay there falling deeper into sleep and almost reached it before he leaned closer to me, his lips close to my ear. “Seventy-four.” He whispered. He was answering the question he had asked me. It was a lot, an unbelievably high number, but far from an unfamiliar one.

It was seventy-four when he left.

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