Throwing myself up, I caught Jay by his shirt and ripped him backwards. The suddenness of my tug and where he stood caused him to fall over the other side of the couch - landing on his back, right on top legs. Jay didn't move or make a sound for that seemingly eternal moment, until he began to laugh out of nowhere. It was like he found it genuinely funny, even if it wasn't all that funny. To begin with, it was just a small bit of payback for saying I looked good on my back, nothing more or less.
Even so, that genuine smile and laughter that I ever so rarely saw from him made it obvious why girls waited in line for him. The reason Jay had his choosing of girls were those eyes and that smile. His hair and the way he dressed were always spot on, too. There was only one answer, he was just one of those guys. Jay had mastered the complexities and shamanistic intricacies of the female libido, it was that simple.
The fact of the matter was simple. I was blindly in love with Grace, and I knew she was my future within any route I took in my life, but Jay was just enough to make me question that idea. It hadn't been just those looks for me, it was something else I couldn't quite pinpoint. What made me question that idea was something that lied beneath those looks and behind those eyes, but the words I was trying to search for just weren't coming.
"I called Ana." Jay lied on my legs with no apparent intention of moving.
I was shocked, to be honest, but it was pretty much like had Jay said. I was glued to Grace, in every way. If she woke up and I was with someone else, I would have left them for her. No questions asked. Obviously, I wouldn't have ever said that out loud. It made me look and sound like a horrible person, but it was truly how I felt. It didn't matter if that person was Jay Ward or some regular John or Jane Doe, Grace was an insurmountable wall for them. She was an insurmountable wall for me, too, but I was on the other side of it alone with her. That was what I wanted to believe, at least.
"H-How did that go?" I asked, actually kind of curious.
"She hung up on me the first time." he muttered, directing both his head and eyes at me. "I called again, and she told me that I have thirty seconds to say what I needed to say. So, I'm sending a plane ticket. . .Well, my manager is."
I held back a laugh. It was idiotic, yet somehow completely ingenious. He couldn't have said everything he needed or wanted in that time, so he used the only resources he could while he was in here. His manager and his money. I mean, maybe I was a few cards short of a full deck, but who would actually think like that in that amount of time? Most would just bumble and hope the other side was forgiving enough to listen to more. Jay knew she wouldn't be and thought on his feet.
"You think she's going to come?" I eyed his painted-on jeans, still unsure of why a guy wore clothes that tight.
"Probably." Jay smirked. "What girl says no to me, the great Jay ward?"
"Her, by the sound of it." I tried to pull the jeans away from his skin with little luck. "She knew Jay Ward before he became Jay Ward. She knows your best and worst, your lightest and darkest. She knows what she loves and hates about you, and if what she loves outweighs what she hates. All those other girls can't say the same."
"Well, duh. I mean, you make it sound like your girl and you have a lot of history behind you." Jay looked at the roof. "Isn't it the same for you two?"
It was hard to say. Whenever Grace had been around, it wasn't a stretch to say that I changed in places. I always smiled, even when I had rarely felt like actually doing it. I put on more makeup and probably overdid my hair, when I felt like being lazy and just letting her see me as myself. I dressed a little more provocatively, when I would have to chosen to throw on something bigger and looser-fitting. In some ways, I physically changed myself for her. I exercised a lot for her, when I would have much rather been spending time with her and being lazy for a little while.
Did Grace really know me, or did she know the me I wanted to her to see? I had only lied to her once as long as we knew each other, which was our whole cognitive lives. Nothing I ever said or did was a lie, and every feeling I ever had was true, but was what I showed her true to me and who I was? Probably not. She was my life and my world, yet I lied to her about who I was. How would she have looked at me if she knew the real me back then? How would she look at me if she saw and knew the real me now?
Would she regret everything? Would she regret all of the time wasted on someone that wasn't true to her?
I did lie to her once, and maybe it had been a big one, but it wasn't something I wanted to drag her down with. She asked me if I would've told her if something was wrong, and I said I would have. That was an utter lie. I never would have told her if something was wrong with me because I didn't want to bother her with my own problems. She was too beautiful to be tarnished by my darkness. That was something I would never let happen, even if it meant lying to her.
It was during that time that I felt like I was in a particularly dark place. I felt like I was on my own, in a vacant dimension that showed nothing but the external world around me. Disassociated and behind a pane of hazed glass, I watched as people talked to me and smiled while they laughed to their hearts content, yet I couldn't feel any of what they did. My eyes and heart were stuck behind a screen, forced to watch something they could never be as they rotted away. It ate at me, not being able to feel such simple things. It ate at me, not being able to feel normal.
Behind a pair of happy eyes and the mask of normalcy, I was drowning. Behind every smile, there was another tear held back until I got home, where I would lock myself away in my room and release everything I could. Crying had soon stopped being enough as I continued to fall deeper and deeper into my own messed up thoughts. I never asked for it, I never wanted to fake a smile. It wasn't right, I wasn't right. Nothing about me was right.
Using that box cutter hadn't been the first time I willingly pierced my skin for relief. That crying in my room turned into a razor meeting my wrist. The darkness came in waves every time, and I was pulled under, leaving me with a new scar and tears that never seemed to stop running down my face. I started to hate what and who I was, I started to hate my body and my mind, because they were the reason I was the way I was. I only ever wanted to feel what everyone else felt. The only difference between those cold nights with a razor and that night with the box cutter was that I was going across the street instead of down the road.
Being raped changed that. It changed everything.
I went from wanting to feel something to wanting to feel nothing. The very things I never wanted were the very things I decided to chase. Devin had broken me open like an eggshell and ripped out the feelings I had so desperately wanted, only to shove them down my throat and force me to choke on every last one of them until I took my last breath, until I gave him the pleasure of dying alone and destroyed.
". . .I don't know anymore." I was given a small surprise when he took my hand. "I don't know if what I am now is what she wants. So much has changed since she jumped, and I just don't know if what we had will be the same."
"Eat your words, girl." Jay lifted himself up, letting go of my hand. "She knows the best and worst parts of you, she knows what's real and what isn't. At least give her that much."
"Easy for you to say." I lightly pressed my knuckles into his thin arm. "Ana can walk and talk on her own. I'm stuck here hoping Grace wakes up someday."
"Easy? Far from it." Jay's hair fell over his eyes. "It's faith. If you have faith that something will work out, then it just might, but you'll never know unless you try."
Jay was my age, yet he felt so much further away, so much more wise in every way. He was heralded as a musical genius, innovative and the most pure, original musician this century has seen. Maybe it was just me and how little I had known him, but he was so much more than just a great musician. He was so much more than just good looks and a talented diaphragm with a unique sound. Jay Ward wasn't just a musician to me, he was Jay Ward.
As I leaned forward, my forehead landed on his bicep, a gaunt bicep that was a whole lot softer than it looked. I don't know why I always ended up around these special people. Damaged or not, Grace and Jay were those of a special breed that didn't play by the rules society laid out, deciding to only go by their own. Unlike most who attempted the same, they were successful with everything they attempted. They were limitless. People like Grace and Jay didn't have a bottom or a top, they just went as far as they wanted.
"I didn't have shit growing up. Not these guitars or even Ana, just myself and my junkie mom." Jay's voice pulsed through his body while he spoke to me. "As much as I thought about it, I haven't given up and blown my brains out. I fought my way from nothing because I knew I was something better than what I was given. What was that something? No fuckin' idea, but here I am giving the world my damn middle finger, and I will be until the day I drop dead. Fuck everything that doesn't like it, you know?"
"What if I don't want to fight anymore?" my hand gripped onto his leg. "I'm so tired of it. I'm sick and tired of all the fighting and the crying. I just want. . .I just want her back."
Jay was right. The way he grew up wasn't exactly known by any fan of his, but there was a lot that they couldn't find or things that were buried so deep they would never be found by anyone except Jay himself. There was no information on his mother being an addict or overdosing on heroin, nor could anyone find anything about this girl named Ana. Though, he hinted a few times that there was someone in his interviews.
He fought past what he was given, which was a nice, heaping pile of nothing. It hadn't mattered where he was or where he would end up afterwards, he just knew that he would find something better than what he had. Jay, even at that age, knew that scratching and clawing his way past every obstacle would lead somewhere better - much better. After all of that fighting, he did. He found a girl he loved and he found an art that he couldn't live without. In his eyes, it was as though those two things entirely overshadowed what he grew up with.
If only I could find that strength.
"I just want her back in my life. . ."
ns 15.158.61.8da2
