Even the Moon Has Scars (11 page)

And what she clearly wants, is Gabe.

“Gabe,” she says, her voice breathy. She pushes the door open further, takes two steps inside the apartment and wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him close to her tiny body. The place I just was. But not like that. Not like they’re holding each other. “I saw your mom leave. Let me guess, fundraiser?”

“What are you doing here, Jemma?” He pulls out of her embrace, but something in his eyes looks an awful lot like regret.

“I saw you come up,” she says, then turns to acknowledge me. “Hi, I’m Jemma.”

“Lena,” I say. I give her a small wave. What else am I supposed to do?

Jemma flicks her eyes at Gabe like she’s waiting for more of an explanation, but Gabe isn’t offering anything up.

“Can we talk?” she asks Gabe, but turns to look at me when she adds,  “Like, alone.”

“Jemma, we talked—”

“Not really, you only talked to me for like, two minutes earlier. You haven’t even given me the chance to explain things—”

Gabe reaches over and touches her hand.

It’s a simple touch, probably meant to calm her down, to smooth things over the best he can, because he’s kind—but I doubt Jemma sees it as that. I’ve only known Gabe a matter of hours, but even I know how his simple touches can feel like so much more.

His touch feels like the way I hold a paintbrush. Full of passion, even in the plainest of strokes.

I just haven’t figured out where that passion comes from yet. It certainly isn’t anything he inherited from his mother.

“You can’t keep following me, Jem.” He combs his hair back with his fingers. “You can’t call all day, it’s just…” he looks back at me.  “Now’s not the time, Jem. We can have a conversation sometime, but right now, Lena and I are on our way out.”

“It’s fine,” I say. It’s not, but I honestly feel bad for Jemma right now. For whatever reason, Gabe’s mom is threatening restraining orders against her. The least I can do is give them a minute before that happens.

“We’ve got a train to catch if you want to make it home tonight.”

“Back to Gloucester? You’ve got plenty of time to make it to the T,” Jemma says. “Five minutes, that’s all I ask. Please, Gabe. After everything, you can’t just give me five minutes?”

Gabe’s posture relaxes, and he blows out a long breath. He can’t say no. It’s not in him.

“I’m just—I saw a sign downstairs, says the rooftop is amazing. I think I’ll go check it out,” I say.

“Lena,” Gabe says, reaching for my arm as I pass him. I shrug away. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m good.” I won’t look at either one of them. This feels like a private moment I need to escape. “You guys have a lot to talk about.”

He stares back at me with pleading eyes, but I back up toward the door anyway.

“It was nice meeting you, Jemma,” I say, but she doesn’t reply. Instead, she keeps her eyes, full of want and hope and desperation, trained on Gabe.

I make my way back to the elevator and take it up to the roof. The elevator doors open to the night sky. I walk toward the railing even though I’m not a huge fan of heights, because it’s impossible not to look.

The city below is still full of lights, and the sound of people’s noisy chatter makes its way all the way up to the sky. Above me is the moon, its silver light illuminating the dark sky. I take in a long, deep breath. I’ll be home soon. I have to be.

It’s late, I don’t know how late because I don’t have a watch or my phone—Oh, god, my phone. I wonder how many missed calls I have. What if everyone knows I’m gone? What if they all think that I’m missing? I need to borrow Gabe’s phone when he comes back up to find me—whenever that’ll be— and leave a message for Kaydi. I need to get home. Or maybe not. Maybe they don’t know and calling will only make things worse.

I don’t know what the right thing to do is.

Beautiful view aside, this was all a stupid idea.

I grip onto the railing and try to hold back the tears that fill my eyes to the brim and swallow the burning lump in my throat. I just need to get home.

“Jemma,” I say, shaking my head. “What are you even doing? You can’t show up like this you know.”

I step back, away from her. “You know my mom is considering getting a court order to make you stay away?”

“Your mom is so full of shit,” Jemma laughs.

She’s probably right. If Mom had anything that would stick, she would have made sure Jemma couldn’t come around a long time ago.

“I just needed to see you,” she says, moving closer to me. “And don’t worry, I saw your mom take off before I came up.”

“You know that makes you sound—”

“Don’t say crazy,” she says. She holds a finger up and presses it to my mouth. “Besides, you used to like when I was a little crazy.”

I pull my head back. “I can’t do this right now.”

“I’ve been worried about you. You left without saying anything—”

Like I had a choice. Is her memory really that short?

“I got arrested, Jemma. I got punched in the face and arrested after you texted me and told me you were in trouble—”

“I was.”

“Jem, you know that’s not true—”

“I’m always in trouble without you. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. My dad and my uncle said they’ll forgive you for ratting them out to your mom—”

“I didn’t rat your family out,” I say, for the hundredth time.

“Okay, well, they’re willing to overlook the fact that the day after you saw those oyster shipments, the cops showed up with a fine—”

The details about the timeline are true, but I didn’t rat them out to anyone.

One day when I was hanging out at her uncle’s restaurant, I saw the shipments of oysters and fish come in. I saw the payment exchange for the fake tags. Seafood is serious business in New England. But I never said a word.

If I’m honest, I wouldn’t put it past Jemma to have turned in her own family just to watch shit fly. Because that’s what she does. And that’s exactly why we aren’t together now—and won’t be again. No matter how gorgeous she is. No matter how much she pouts in front of me. It used to work, but those days are over.

“Jemma,” I say. “I came to that protest because I was worried about you. Because I wanted to be there for you—but you didn’t need me then, and you don’t need me now.”

She steps in closer and wraps her hands around the back of my neck. Her curvy hips touch mine and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have any reaction to her anymore.

She pouts her lips as she strokes the back of my neck with her long fingernail.

“Touch me, Gabe,” she coos. “I’ve missed you so much.”

I don’t know if it’s voluntary or not, but one of my hands finds her waist.

Her warm mouth is just under my ear. “Come on, touch me like you mean it. Like you want me as badly as I want you.”

“Jemma,” I croak out. “You—you broke up with me, remember?”

The words come out with a stutter worse than the one we all teased Luke Mayes for in fourth grade because she’s got her hand on my belt buckle and is tugging on the leather to loosen it.

“You have to stop,” I say. I push at her hands, but maybe not as firmly as I should.

“You don’t really want me to do that.”

“Lena—she’s upstairs. I have to go.”

“I just want to make things right with us.”

Enough.

I pull away, breathing heavily. “Enough. Stop.”

“You let your family think I was a bad guy, Jemma. You liked the thought of me being something that I’m not. And when I refused to do that anymore, you ended it.”
You fucked another guy the night we had that fight.
She always seems to forget that part, too.

“That was a mistake.”

“Which part?” I laugh, a cold, bitter laugh.

“I miss you.” She tilts her head to the side and presses her glossy lips together.

“You ended it, and then you let me believe you were in trouble. I went to jail, Jemma!”

“You went to a holding cell, Gabe, don’t act like you did hard time.”

“But it was because of you—”

“Hey, that’s not fair. I’m not the one who punched a cop.”

She’s right, but I did it to protect her. I didn’t know he was a cop. As usual, I was blind to everything but saving Jemma. Well, not anymore.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “You’re not getting it. I was only at Harvard that day because of you. I got kicked out of my house—hell, I got kicked out of the
city
after what went down that day and all the days before, because of you.”

It wasn’t always like this with Jemma. Or maybe I’m just telling myself that because I don’t want to believe that I could fall in love with someone so phony, so toxic. Or maybe that’s exactly the type of person I should be with, and I’m just fighting what should be.

Maybe I’ve been wrong about what love is at all. Maybe I was wrong when I told Lena that love doesn’t go to the most deserving. Maybe the
real
stuff does.

Still, I know that there was more to my relationship with Jemma than just mediocre sex and blowjobs to easily end any argument.

She was the first person who I called when I found out that Gramps had died. I stood outside the diner, not knowing how to put one foot in front of the other. She came to my rescue that day. She brought me home and faced my mother to make sure that I was okay.

She drove me out to Babci’s and bought me a tie because I couldn’t find my plain black one. She held my hand during the funeral and rubbed the back of my neck when I shook with grief, but wouldn’t allow myself to cry. She told me it was okay to cry.

So I did.

And she let me.

And that felt like the closest thing to real love I’d ever known.

But then stuff went down with her family, and she didn’t defend me. Not only that, but she egged it on, made it worse. She let her uncle show up at my house, looking for me, wanting to threaten me.

And Jemma turning her back like that felt like another loss. Except she was still around. Wanting more from me.

After my dad left, I shut down even more. And she got bored of the grief, so she started playing the games. She started calling at all hours with all sorts of problems to see how quickly and how high I would jump to be with her. And the day I didn’t jump fast enough, she broke it off. She told me things that mirrored what my own mother had said about me.

And after stomping on my heart, Jemma slept with Adam Jennings that same night.

Still, I was the moron who showed up for her. I went to Harvard that day and tried to rescue her from her made-up terror.

But that was it. I couldn’t chase her anymore. I
literally
had some sense knocked into me.

“I just want things to go back to the way they were.”

I slip out of her reach and lean against the back of the sofa. “We both know that’s not going to happen, Jem.”

Jemma reaches back and ties her long hair back into a knot on top of her head. I remember falling asleep with that hair on my arm, on my chest. Breathing in the citrus scent and loving the way her warm body fit against mine. But now I look at her and see nothing but regret. I see someone who has held me back and beat me down in her own way. And I just can’t do it anymore.

“Because of her? Upstairs?”

I shake my head. “No. Because of me, Jemma.”

***

“You doing okay?”

Lena is pressed up against the balcony railing with her back to me and she jumps a little when I ask.

“Oh, hey. Yeah, I’m fine,” she says. Not even trying to change her tone to cover the lie. “Is everything okay with you? Is she—”

“Jemma’s gone,” I say. I pull my coat on and zip it up. It’s getting colder.

“Is
she
alright?” she asks. “She seemed pretty worked up.” I think she honestly cares. Not necessarily about Jemma in particular, but about other people in general.

I blow out a long breath. “Honestly, she’s...she’s a mess.”

“That’s no way to talk about someone who you’ve loved.”

I lean into the bar next to her. The view is spectacular up here. The old buildings tucked behind skyscrapers are revealed in the moonlight. I love that this city doesn’t tear down every brownstone or historic building in sight and, instead, builds around them. I love that they care about preserving something that’s beautiful in its own way, and not just try to replace it with something newer and shinier.

“That may be. But it’s the way you can talk about someone who broke your heart,” I say.

Lena’s eyebrows squish together and she frowns.

“But she’s been chasing you—it doesn’t add up—” Lena says, trying to fit together the pieces of a puzzle that will never make sense.

Because Jemma and I are two different puzzles entirely, and we could never make the pieces go together, no matter how hard either one of us tried. I see that now. I hope she finally does, too.

“Never mind,” Lena says. “I guess it doesn’t have to. It’s not my business.”

The cold wind of the night is starting to kick up.

“But, just—you’re okay, right? Because you seem...like maybe you’re not,” she says.

“Eh, I guess we all have our dark corners.” Except just as I say it, I know it’s probably not true. Lena doesn’t have any darkness to her.

I rub my hands together to try to warm them up, and even in the dark, I can see the red tip of Lena’s nose.