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The group chat gets quieter and quieter with each passing week.
What had once been a hub of mutual support and understanding soon became a desolate wasteland of words no longer meant, no longer needed as life began anew. Like summer never happened, like that night never happened. Tapering off into oblivion as newsletters find fresher, more sensational tabloids to write increasingly tasteless fodder about. The phone calls for interviews stop. The looks stop, eventually. The incessant messages on her instagram stop, thank god.
The nightmares don’t, but she can live with that, she thinks.
Abi tries, in the beginning, to keep their connections alive, to send links of things she knows Ryan likes, or Dylan, or Emma. Talks about her day; talks shit on the school system while getting back into the groove of things, sends pictures of her campus and her dorm. Anything and everything she can think to share, to garner a reaction or even just an emoji, if only to keep them there. Tethered to her for just a little longer.
She knows the time has come when Kaitlyn leaves the group with a short apology and explanation.
You guys are just too much of a reminder.
And. Like a row of dominos, the others follow. Ryan and Dylan, probably off to spend their lives together. Nick follows soon after, their goodbye stiff and lacking any warmth that had been present for what felt like a millennia ago.
Being called terrible things and nearly torn to shreds tended to take the spark out of a budding relationship.
Even Emma, even after her soft and awkward urging, that they don’t have to let things end this way, that they’re friends. Best friends . They went through too much together for this to break them.
I’m sorry , is all the other woman can say, and it hurts so deeply it leaves her breathless, close to tears in her advanced anatomy class as her tiny bit of solace crumbles from her feet.
So much for that “friends for life” bullshit everyone had been spewing to her.
Life is–lonely. While the events of Hackett’s Quarry peter away in the media, her name had been plastered all over the nation during their trial, and it had left her with a new issue.
Infamy.
It makes her peers steer clear of her, taking wide berths around her person in the dining hall. In the showers, in her classes. Like there’s a great big sign on her forehead that screams I got away with murde r in bright, neon colors. It causes whispers wherever she walks, lingering stares scorching her neck but snapping away when she turns to meet them. Like she was a disaster they couldn’t help but gawk at, terrified of what her presence meant.
She’s in and out of varying types of therapy sessions, per her Dad’s urging, experimenting with medication to make breathing a little easier, to get the image of exploding flesh and sharp teeth out of her mind.
She tries to paint like she used to. With a reverence for the world, that hippy-dippy stuff, as Dylan had called it to get a rise out of her, that had gotten her accepted into Pratt in the first place. All the beauty of nature and inspiration from Monet, Van Gogh, desperate for the whimsy and love that had taken hold of her in her childhood.
Everything comes out too…muddy. Too twisted, eyes lurking in corners of her pieces that make her professors hum and haw, because they can’t outright say she freaks them out.
Life is so very, very lonely.
It’s why, when the group chat buzzes faintly against her covers for the first time in weeks, she bursts from her blanket cocoon in a flail of limbs and scattering of snack wrappers, fighting for agency of her arms and yelping as she collides with the merciless harshness of her dorm’s floor.
She pauses at the name that appears on her screen, faltering over the notification in something close to disappointment, but not quite as heavy as the real thing.
From Jacob Custos, thirty seconds ago,
Yo. Anyone still here?
She considers, if only for a moment, if she’s hallucinating.
While Jacob had been added to the group by Kaitlyn, he seldom spoke and was seldom spoken to. A silent and frigid acknowledgement that he was at fault after his admittance the morning of. That he had taken the part, just for an extra twelve hours, to give himself another chance to win Emma over, to spend one more night with all of them. His actions were the cause of their terror, a scarlet mark burned into his skin that signified betrayer, guilty .
The other’s had never let him catch a break. Barely tolerant of his input in conversations outside of single tone agreements and neutral responses to questions pertaining to the trial.
Shutting down his bubbles of support and paltry attempts at comradery.
After the trial he’d just…drifted away. Not a word spoken, not an emoji sent, and she’d almost believed he’d left well before everyone else had, moved on with his life to find company that didn’t view him with such scorn.
Abigail had felt…bad for him, during. Had wondered if it was really so necessary to give him such a brutal treatment when he had already faced the consequences tenfold, had experienced terror and violence just as much as the rest of them.
She’s typing before she realizes it, fingers halting and shaky against her screen.
Just you and me, everyone else peaced out. It hurts admitting it, peering at the collection of UI messages informing her of each departure, the stone cold silence that followed. There’d been several instances in her phases of anger that she debated deleting the damned thing just to rid herself of having to look at it.
Damn. Last ones standing. What are you still doing here?
An excellent question. She doesn’t know.
Nowhere else to go, I think.
You and me both.
That makes her pause, reading over the letters with careful scrutiny. She doesn’t get a chance to know what he means, not when he begins asking her such mundane questions. Like, how’s school going? What is she up to? What has she painted lately? With each answer, the questions get deeper, until she is once again in her cocoon, watching the little bubble that indicates Jacob’s typing.
Do you think about it?
Constantly.
Do you dream of it?
More than she wants to.
Do you hate me for it?
No , she says to the last one, startling herself with how vehemently she feels it, how true it rings in her chest. It had been foolish, yes, stupid, just a little bit. But how could he have known what would meet them? No one could have predicted how the night unfolded, what lurked in the woods of what they’d called home for nearly three months.
They talk uninhibited for what feels like an eon and a millisecond, about the truth of their experiences, not the sanitized and fictionalized version given the jury.
Abi tells him about Nick, about the weight of a gun in her hands and the radial blast against her shoulder blades, each millisecond she prayed for a different outcome.
Jacob tells her about the Hacketts, about the cages and Nick’s hulking form panting against the metal. The bear trap ruining his ankle, screaming into the dark before he can stop himself.
About how empty they’d felt when the sun came out and didn’t wash away the madness–that creepy cop with too dark of a cloud and too knowing of a glare rounding them up and saying as far as they were concerned, none of what happened was real .
“You wanna go the rest of your lives free?” He’d demanded, Laura Kearney silent and stone faced at his left, her new eye settling goosebumps along Abi’s skin. “Then you’re gonna listen to what I’ve got to say down to the letter .”
What choice did they have? Who would believe them when they’d cry literal, physical wolf? The Hacketts were dead, Dylan was missing a hand and Kaitlynn held onto her shotgun like it was her lifeline.
They looked crazy. No one would have believed a word that would come out of their mouths.
The two talk until the bubbles become singular lines instead of whales of text, petering back down to normal conversation, how they were doing, feeling, how they were living each day the best they could.
It’s–she doesn’t know. It’s cathartic, to let it out. To tell someone the truth who understands, who while not there for her portion of it, had been facing their own battles in the darkness of the Quarry. To know she wasn’t crazy, having begun to doubt the edges of her memory and wonder if she had been imagining it all, if it really had just been bears.
But then it’s all there, sharp and over saturated against her memory. Nick’s sweating skin bursting into a rainfall of blood. Running until her lungs burned. Laura and her ice cold resolve to do what had to be done.
She needs to try and sleep. No matter the fact it’ll be interrupted–she still needs to. But she’s terrified of clicking out of the app, of waking to know it was all a dream and she is once again alone in this abyssal darkness that is her trauma.
Jacob must know, the way they keep talking without actually saying anything. Prolonging their farewell in fear of being left behind once again. Wonders if he needs this as much as she does.
Can I call you tomorrow ? He asks after what seems like hours of stalling, hastily adding in a second bubble, only if it’s okay.
Okay, sure , She responds, because she’s selfish and wants him to be real in the morning, wants to believe that perhaps, they’re yearning for the same thing in the aftermath of bloodshed.
Jacob calls her after classes end, and from then on it’s an expected thing.
Sometimes, they don’t even say anything, the ambient static of their connection filling the space of her errant sketching or the clacking of Jacob’s controller. Sitting in the other’s presence like a security blanket, perhaps a little creepy, listening to easy breaths and soft sounds of movement, proving another person is there.
Other times, it feels as if there isn’t enough breath in their lungs to say everything they want to say.
They talk about camp, the good times, the funny times. laughing themselves to tears and howling through their speakers at the memories. They talk about school, their parents, their lives before. Jacob tells her about his sisters, his mom and all she had done for him in life. Abi tells him about her dads, about growing up in Pennsylvania and her intense fear of geese.
Rarely, in the budding edges of something precious, they revisit it . Recalling the vividness of the wilderness, delving deeper into their thoughts, the desperation to make it end, how viciously they’d been ready to turn on one another.
“I–you know, sometimes, if a room’s too red, or, I look at myself in the mirror too long, I’m. I’m back there, and I’m like, ‘oh fuck, I’m gonna die here,’ and Ryan never comes, and all I can do is wait.”
There’s something wet against his voice, and that just doesn’t do. Not for Jacob. Not for rambunctious, slightly obnoxious Jacob who got the most awkward of children to dance and laugh.
“I can’t help thinking all the time if I had just taken the L, let things end, none of this would have happened. Maybe then everyone wouldn’t…”
She closes her eyes against the burn of her tear ducts, trying desperately not to sniffle.
Jacob made a mistake, a terrible one. One that left people dead and others broken. And he knew it, knew he was in the wrong, but he didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve to be the villain of the story. Turned into a caricature of a vindictive party animal that wanted to scare his fellow counselors, mocked on the internet, hated by his peers.
I’m the reason we were stranded there, your honor . He’d admitted on the pew, hair combed and shoulders curved inwards by his shame, avoiding Emma’s fiery glare and the predatory click of cameras.
A part of her wants so badly to tell him how she knows the feeling. How she keeps herself up at night with how she’d charged into that lush greenery in her misguided upset, how Nick had come for her, and had paid a terrible price for it.
“I deserve this,” A rasp against his throat, a harsh, shaky sound that echoes in her ears. “I deserve to be alone.”
“You don’t deserve that,” Abigail tries, hesitant and soft. “And–and you’re not alone. Not anymore.”
Silence. Loaded and deafening.
“Maybe…this is just how things were supposed to go.”
It was a terrible thought to have, that she– they –were destined for the night of terror that had wrought her so thoroughly she needed medication to stay steady. That left her and several hearts too broken to look at each other in the sharp sun of daytime. She thinks of Nick again, bloodied and exhausted murmuring his apologies wrapped in a shock blanket, eyes sorrowful and avoidant.
Somehow, some way, that’s exactly what Jacob needs to hear, the way he laughs rough and raw into her ear and sends a warm cascade against her spine.
“Ain’t that a bitch?”
–
Abigail has never had a person she could talk to everyday outside of her pop. It had always felt like no one got her like he did, how her brain worked in its introspective, whimsical ways, gliding through childhood with his support, much to her dad’s chagrin. Lonely, lacking the skills to make good solid friends that she’d heard so much about, was told so passionately by her dad to get.
It’s why she had relented in taking the summer camp job instead of working at her Dad’s shop—to make friends, memories, put herself out there and stand in the limelight for once. Not that it had gone that well–her kids had liked her well enough, but Chris had always struggled with her name, and Nick, when her crush had been rampant and almost overwhelming, seemed to barely process that she existed.
It had been a stark reminder of where she stood, to many people.
Abigail had gotten used to being forgotten, drifting to the background of the narrative and being left behind. To protect herself from the hurt, from the insecurity, she forgot people right back. Jacob, though, refuses to let her feel forgotten, refuses to be forgotten.
He shares everything, a constant stream of text messages and videos that buzz against her leg; varying from something as mundane as his commute to school to the antics of his sisters, tormenting him with questions only a ten and twelve year old would ask, earning his hysterical cries for them to get out of his room!
She shares her paintings, the weird things she sees on campus, the care packages her parents send, laughter muffled against her hand as she listens to the girl's petulant dramatics.
On bad days, they say nothing but the same line to one another until they believe it, swallowing down the intrusive thoughts and the skirting paranoia.
It was real, but it’s over now. This is real. You are real. I am real.
They call for whatever reason they fancy; when they have breaks between classes, during the wee hours of night, to talk, or to just exist together in the muddled staticy silence of their connection.
Time slips from her rapidly that way–mind and heart consumed by Jacob Custos and all they give one another, the months melting away into fall and making the world a little gentler.
He burrows his way into her routine as seamlessly as her morning stretches, expected and welcomed. Like a bail of sunlight on a cloudy day, a salve against her wounded heart that leaves a warm glow behind.
Color returns, tentatively, to her paintings. Sweet and hopeful tones of pink and orange fade out the eyes from the darkness, leaving a streak of light meant to signify the hope of a new day, the future.
She’s…happy, she thinks. Or something close to it.
They’re on the phone one evening, exchanging stories related to any and all of their worst memories. Like her prom date spilling buffalo sauce all over his rented tux, helping him try to get the neon orange out of the white. Like Jacob screaming bloody murder his first time on a roller coaster while a child laughed. Nostalgic, embarrassing recollections of their lives.
That night comes up again, less tender of a spot to touch, able to tentatively run her fingers over its surface and look for some fucked up form of humor in it all, plucking out that god awful game of truth or dare Kaitlynn had instigated around the fire. How poorly it had gone, their group scattering at the first round.
“God,” Jacob grouses over the phone while she sketches out concepts for her senior exhibit, so far away yet so close, “I’m still pissed about that–especially now that I know you liked Nick, too. That was fucked up of her.”
“Yeah,” Abi agrees semi-numbly, making a face against the image of Emma gracefully placing herself in her crush’s lap, macking on him and killing her blossoming hope that he felt the same, that he liked her too, even just a little bit.
She regrets it, deeply. Storming off into the forest. Maybe if she hadn’t, Nick would have–
“That went both ways, though. It’s not like he was stopping her.”
A pause.
“You know, I wish you and I had been sitting a little closer, maybe we could have done the same right back at them.”
Blood rushes to her–everywhere, face burning with mortification even just at the image of it– an indignant and heated Jacob stomping over to her side of the fire, snatching her cheeks in his big, wide hands and kissing her like he was on a mission.
She tries to laugh it off, clenching her eyes at the high tinge her voice takes around the forced humor.
“Yeah, woulda shoulda coulda.”
Another pause, bigger. One that swallows her whole and leaves her heart thundering in her ears as she can do little more than stare at the empty white of her fresh page.
“Would you have let me?”
“What?”
“Kiss you. Would you have let me do it?”
She laughs again, doesn’t answer and asks him about something else to evade the tingling of her fingertips. Why were they having this conversation? What did it matter? Neither two of their former “loves” were in their lives anymore. There was no one to spite, no one to lay out payback to. It was just the two of them and the space within their phone calls, the lags in their conversations, each reaction to images shared. It’s not like it would have really changed anything.
From then on things are…weird. Not abnormal, at least not for their definition of friendship and comfort, but something has shifted she can't define. Jacob behaves the same but not quite–still a constant in her day that gives her mercy from skirting glances and loaded silences in her classes when she presents. But–instead of one steady stream of conversation, left unattended in favor of sleep to be picked up upon waking, Jacob starts greeting her, wishing her well, telling her when he’s sleeping or busy.
Good morning, how’d you sleep?
Night, hope you sleep good
Hey I’m helping Mom with groceries I’ll text back in a sec
I’m headed to bed, talk to you in the morning
It was so–it was normal, she thinks, but it wasn’t their normal. But she also…liked it. She liked knowing his disappearances weren’t waning interest, she liked the fresh wave of consistency and the little details into his day, the pictures of himself outside in the world or in the safety of his bedroom.
She liked a lot of things about him in general, she realized.
Abigail hated to admit it, but she was crushing on Jacob just a little, a tiny flutter of attraction that bloomed brighter during their phone calls. Each sigh and laugh digging her deeper into a hole she wasn’t even trying to climb out of.
She feels giddy. She feels stupid. And–and scared.
She tells her therapist, because she’s not sure what else to do with the feelings except blurb them out to him. Tell him where it started, the conversation about that stupid game, the new habit in texting and phone calls, how now each day she has begun to wonder what it would be like to kiss Jacob Custos.
Paul smiles, because of course he does. He always liked when she talked about more menial things instead of the nightmares and how hungry the medication makes her.
“I think what you’re describing is perfectly expected, Abigail. It sounds like you and Jacob have built a really good connection, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being attracted to him.”
“Well–I mean yeah, sure, on paper, but,”
“But?”
“But he’s… Jacob .” A blink, his square spectacles slipping down as he peers at her expectantly. “He’s, you know. He’s this jock that everyone knows and likes. He’s the kind of guy that gets invited to parties and gets asked out by, like, super models.” Girls like Emma. Not that there was anything wrong with that, Abigail had been raised with intense body positivity and respect for those who gave it. She had no anger, no resentment for who people were attracted to.
Still.
It didn’t stop her from feeling like a fool when she’d pine for people that would say she just wasn’t their type. People like Jacob.
“Really? Because the Jacob you’ve described to me through your visits sounds quite the opposite. He sounds like he feels as alone as you have in the last few months, and values your friendship deeply. Who’s to say he isn’t also attracted to you?”
“Because–because that just doesn’t happen.”
Because she couldn’t get her hopes up, didn’t want to ruin his trust and confidence in her, assuming his attentiveness and smattering of compliments was something far more romantic than just being a good, kind friend.
Hell, she doubted her own feelings, wondering if it was only because they were each other’s rock–the only person who knew the details of their truths, who took one another for each weird quirk they had and secret wishes of what could have been.
If things had been different–if Jacob hadn’t messed with the van, if they’d left with only their memories and tokens from their kids, would he be in her life?
Was all of this just because of circumstance?
Paul smiles, aged face sweet and full of laugh lines as he crosses his legs.
“You never know unless you ask.”
She doesn’t, because she’s always been bad at confrontation and merely continues on with her delusions, now struggling to sleep for other reasons outside of nightmares unfettered by melatonin and sleepy time tea.
It grows cooler, graying and beginning to threaten New York with its infamous snow as the school season begins to taper. Finals come like a crashing wave against the beach, slamming her into work mode and leaving little room for anything else except acrylic against her canvas and protein shakes with too much sugar.
Jacob is quiet too, minus their occasional and mutual belly aching about how tight the next two weeks feel, full of restlessness and exhaustion in both hands, Abigail half insane from color theory and having to paint over too many works to start over, Jacob drowning in research papers and peer reviews.
The finish line is in her sight–one more piece to complete and submit the hulking mass of works to her professors before she takes a couple days to regroup, pack up what she thinks she can take to her parents and bask in her winter break with her Pop’s cookies and homemade apple cider.
Her phone buzzes against her desk, reaching upwards from her place on the floor to peer at the message, assuming it would be another selfie of Jacob heavy lidded and hunched against a beanbag at his school’s library surrounded by research material.
What she sees is much worse.
Can I come see you?
Abi nearly chokes on her own tongue when she reads the message, then reads it again, and again, until the words are branded behind her eyelids.
She should say no, because it’s technically against the rules to have a gathering during finals, because she still needs to wrap all her pieces, because she hasn’t cleaned her place in weeks, because she’s scared shitless.
Sure.
Jacob’s school is in Montclair, which gives her about an hour to hurry around her dorm like a madwoman and clean, tossing away old food containers and forgotten laundry, run to the communal bathroom to freshen her hair and brush her teeth. Try not to overthink, try not to jump to conclusions as she puts on something that isn’t the same sweatpants she’d been wearing three days straight–is it too late to take a shower? Does she smell bad? Does her room smell bad?
What the fuck is she doing ?
Time moves like a snail and like a rocket, spending the last bit of her hour pacing the rug covered concrete of her dorm in tight circles, jumping a mile in the air when her phone buzzes.
Here .
Jacob is waiting outside her dorm building, shoulders hunched against the cold and head covered by a dark green beanie that makes his eyes a deep chocolate when he points them at her, his smile tight and bittersweet at the edges..
“Hey.” He greets her, and his voice is different without the distortion of their phone call. Deeper and richer, his gaze too soft and too much.
“Hey,”
They stand there for what feels like an eternity, Abigail watching in horror as the other’s carefully composed mask crumples, tears overtaking sweet brown until they spill past, and every stupid, selfish assumption she had about his intentions burst in flames.
“Oh, Jake–”
She’s in his embrace before she knows it, his jacket cold against her skin and breath hot in her hair, hold merciless and full bodied.
She digs her fingers into the nylon of his jacket, buries her face into his neck and lets him sob. Ugly, deep cries that come from his chest, make him cough and soak the upper most part of her head, not that she cares. Only clenches her eyes against her own compulsion to join him and uses shaky vocal cords to soothe to the best of her ability.
The tears stop eventually, traded for muted sniffles.
“Sorry,” Jacob croaks, head bowed as if he has decided her shoulder is the best place to hide from the world. “I–I know you’re busy, and fuck, I am too but…I just–”
“You don’t need to apologize, Jake.” Abi had somehow worked her way into the confines of his coat, the softness of his hoodie warm against the December chill, protecting her exposed arms. He smells like peppermint and eucalyptus; clean. Refreshing. “Let’s get you inside.”
Jacob unsurprisingly begins to examine her room the moment they step inside, Abigail choosing to ignore the stuttering of her insides so as to not hover and over explain every piece of clutter in her space, opting instead to watch the awkward gate of his steps.
He walks with a limp now; a purposeful action of keeping his ankle straight when he descends to accommodate the broken and weakened tendons, pivoting his hip just so to limit the pressure his right leg takes as a whole.
“No roommate?” He questions, removing the beanie from his head. His hair is longer, curling around his ears and pulled back in barely managed waves. It makes her self conscious of her long grown out colored tips, tied into a messy bun when she’d been unable to manage it into something she’d deemed fetching.
“Can’t keep one. The night terrors–” make her hard to live with, according to her preassigned roommate, disturbed by her harsh breathing and muttered warnings to an enemy only she can see.
It was fine, though–she’d grown to appreciate it. Brought the two beds together to make her own full bed covered in colorful blankets and a controlled collection of squishmallows, string lights strewn across the ceiling, brick walls covered in band and old movie posters. She’d made it hers, able to use her supplies without fear of it being a hindrance to another person.
“Right.”
The silence is stifling, Jacob’s shoulders bowed and heavy with whatever had caused such a reaction, eyes unable to meet her questing gaze as she tells him to make himself comfortable.
It’s sadly, not how she envisioned their first in person interaction since the summer. All silly little romantic fantasies aside, she’d wanted it to be jovial, pleasant, maybe a little awkward as they adapt to being in one another’s company.
But this isn't about her. Not right now.
She orders them chinese from the closest spot that delivers to the dorms, refusing Jacob’s venmo and making him choose something with the longest run time.
They stay like that for a while, picking at their greasy takeout boxes and watching The Office with little enthusiasm and no words exchanged. She doesn’t take his silence to heart, can tell it’s helping, the way Jacob sinks into her pile of squishmallows and crosses his legs at the ankles, spread across her bed and eyes hooded in what she hopes is a sense of calm.
They’re at the Christmas party episode when he speaks, low and tired, as if everything had caught up to him all at once and left him nothing to work with.
“Kaitlyn called me.”
Abi hates the way her ears perk at the name, peering from her curled up position on her biggest plush, takeout boxes abandoned on her night stand and barely winning the fight against sleep.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. She…she called to apologize. For treating me the way she did during the trials. And after.”
To be honest, she’s not sure how to respond to that. On one hand, it’s a good thing. It was no secret the two of them had been friends for a long time, well before summer camp. Had grown up together and had often shared inside jokes and embarrassing facts of one another.
But she had also voiced she’d actively told him not to do it, had been one of the first to point a finger in his direction after his soft admittance in the air of their tentative morning.
Abi couldn’t lie to herself, how sick to her stomach she’d felt watching the pure devastation cross his features.
She, not for the first time, wishes she had come to his defense. She decides, at the very least she can stay quiet, curling tighter around the massive platypus squish and allow him to let it all out.
“It’s–I should forgive her, right? I should’ve told her it was okay, and I understood, and just be happy she came around. I should forgive all of them, whether they apologize or not. But I just…can’t.” The worlds seem to choke him, audibly swallowing around the admittance as if it’s the final blow to a long standing battle. “I know I fucked up, and. And I thought I was okay with them hating me for however long they wanted to, but it’s not fair. Not really.”
“What did you say to her?”
“I told her I was glad she was okay, and I hope school’s going good, but that I can’t…I wasn’t ready to talk yet.”
She can imagine it so clearly, Jacob sitting in his designated spot in his school library, the one with the good bean bag he threatens to steal listening to his friend’s apology and possible request to talk again. Was he stunned? Did he shake with repressed emotions when he hung up? Is that why he was here, with her?
It didn’t matter, not when Jacob looked so defeated, so exhausted. Unrelated to their constant stream of classwork, or late night talking. This was a bone deep, soul crushing, heart breaking sort of exhaustion that ages him in front of her very eyes.
“It’s okay not to forgive them,” She murmurs, slow and careful in the way she brushes her fingers against the back of his hand. Pausing when he flinches, only slightly, before relaxing under the gentle stroking. “It’s okay if you don’t know what to feel. They’re– we’re –all figuring it out, you know? They don’t exactly write books about this stuff.”
There’s no self help books on the subject of losing your friends due to the fact you all almost got eaten by who, you’d discover later, was your boss and his children.
His eyes make her so sad, deep pools of brown reddened by tears that don’t want to come, peering down at their hands. Slowly, almost achingly so, he turns his wrist until the tips of her fingers brush against his palm, closing his fist so his hand encapsulates hers.
“Yeah…you’re right.”
Abigail will claim she doesn’t know how, but a part of her knows and keeps it greedily close to her chest. Jacob ends up curled against her stomach, her nails scratching at his soft brown hair and his arms wound tightly around her legs, melting into the monotone and muted delivery of their chosen sitcom.
She wakes with a jerk to her phone alarm, the netflix screen paused asking if they were still watching and Jacob snoring quietly, arms still wound around her and cheek pressed to her hip.
She can’t recall any nightmares.