A. Jackson - When We Met

“I think I got five?”

“I got six,” she said as she began wrapping blankets around herself.

Dropping mine, I wrapped the ones she’d collected around her until she was completely covered. “You look like a burrito.”

Her soft laugh filled the space between us. “I can’t move my arms.”

“Doesn’t matter, you don’t need to. At least you’ll be warm.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt of that.” She smiled at me in the dark room before frowning. “But now I can’t make you look like a burrito.”

“I don’t want to be a burrito. I wouldn’t be able to move my arms.”

“What the hell, Kier?”

I laughed and grabbed the blankets I’d dropped. “You’ll get over it.”

After I covered myself, we huddled closer together and talked for an hour about classes, housemates, and why she had always been afraid to say anything to me since she never saw me talking to anyone. Like I’d known it would, that topic led to her asking again why she felt safe with me, and when I couldn’t give her an answer, she stayed quiet for a few minutes.

“I haven’t felt safe in a long time,” she finally admitted softly, and then shook her head. “I don’t mean I’ve felt like I was in danger or anything. I just—I’ve felt—it’s hard to explain. . . .”

I just waited.

“I’ve felt like I was on the verge of destroying myself for so long, and I just couldn’t stop. It made me feel like I was drowning, and even when I thought I had people helping me keep it together, they weren’t. And they never made me feel as at peace as you do just by being near me. This feeling is so different—such a nice change. Like I’ve said, I don’t know how to begin to explain it, but it’s just this feeling I have around you.”

And this was it. That tone. It was the same one she’d had yesterday when I tried to talk to her and she asked me to leave. And I knew at that moment that she was ready to know about all those Saturday nights I’d been taking care of her. I didn’t know how I knew; I just knew wherever this conversation was leading this time, it would lead there. She’d told me she’d felt safe before, but never like that. Everything was different this time.

She laughed awkwardly. “I don’t even know why I’m bringing this up. I know you won’t tell me why.”

“It’s because all I want to do is take care of you,” I said before I could stop myself, and risked a glance at her wide eyes.

“Wh-what? Take care of me?” She laughed. “Kier. You don’t even know me. I’m—I’m a mess. I’m apparently a slut—”

“Don’t. Don’t say that about yourself.”

“You don’t know—”

“Yeah, Indy, I do.” I held her gaze for a minute and watched as she bit down on her bottom lip, like she was trying to stop herself from saying something. “Destroying yourself . . . ,” I mumbled, echoing her words, and let that hang in the air for a few seconds. Taking a deep breath, I looked away as I said, “Indy, you always seem so surprised that you’re hearing me talk—or you say something about how I’m quiet. And yeah, I’ll admit I don’t talk to a lot of people—and last year, we didn’t talk at all. But we’ve talked a lot over the last three months, more than you realize. That’s not the only difference in this year, though. I saw you at the parties at our house last year, and you were never like how you are now. You’re wild; you’re out of control. You’re with multiple guys, and you never remember a thing.”

“How do you know that?” she asked, her voice shocked, but just barely above a whisper. “You’re never there.”

I kept speaking like she hadn’t said anything. “You say you feel like you’re on the verge of destroying yourself, and Saturday nights are the first thing that come to mind, Indy. Because, although no one can stop you from drinking, or doing whatever you want to do . . . I know you don’t like who you are when you drink.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Same reason I know which room is yours. Same reason you stumble into my room at some point during every party. It never fails, you end up in there, and we go through the whole thing all over. You trying to remember my name, me carrying you over here to your room, you figuring out I gave you the bread and wondering why.”

“Safe room,” she mumbled to herself, her mouth forming a perfect O when it hit her. “You leave the water and pills, too, don’t you?”

It hadn’t been a question, so I didn’t answer. I just sat there as her mind worked around the information she’d just been given, and everything she was trying to piece together.

“Are you the one who locks my bedroom door?” she asked after a couple of minutes.

I nodded. “People know you live next door. They see me carrying you out of my house and returning not even ten minutes later alone. I don’t trust someone not to take advantage of that.”

“But why—why would you do that for me? I don’t remember any of—” She cut off suddenly, her face blank for a split second. “And why don’t I ever remember it? I don’t get that drunk, Kier!”

“You’re right, you don’t get that drunk. You’re definitely drunk, but not to the point where you wouldn’t remember anything from the night before. The first couple times I thought you were doing it just to be . . . I don’t know, I thought you just wanted someone to take care of you. So I did. But then I realized you really had no clue. After the last three months of it, all I’ve been able to come up with is I think you block out these nights in your mind. Like there’s already something bad about them, so the rest of it you just decide to forget as well.”

Her face went blank, and she didn’t respond for a long time, but I knew I was right. “Dean . . . I drink to forget Dean.” She sighed raggedly. “He was—”

“I know who he was to you,” I said, clenching my jaw and cutting her off.

“You do?” she asked, shock coating her words.

Of course I did. Every time I saw him on campus, I wanted to punch the bastard. “There was a party a few weeks into the school year, and it was the second night you stumbled into my room. After I got you in bed, you started sobbing, saying you were disgusted with yourself. You’d slept with some guy and said, ‘It didn’t work—my heart still hurts,’ and told me all about Dean. When the next two weeks went by with similar results, I started buying you the bread. Partly because it would absorb some of the alcohol you were drinking, and also because the first three weeks before you fell asleep you kept complaining because you didn’t understand why the world was suddenly banning garlic bread, and all you wanted was to find some. Some weeks you eat it and stay away from guys. Some weeks you stumble into my room without it, and those are the nights you cry again.”

“That’s really . . . embarrassing. Oh my God,” she groaned. “And after all that, how could you sit there and tell me I’m not acting like a slut?”

I glared at her and resisted the urge to shake her. “Did you not hear me? I know you don’t like who you are when you’re like that. You tell me you disgust yourself. I see you when you’re sober, Indy, and I know you’re not that girl. You’re trying to forget someone, and you’re wasted whenever you do something.”

“Like that makes it okay?”

“No,” I answered honestly. “But you—the way you are, the way you honestly block all of this from your mind, I think that proves you’re not a slut. You said you feel like you’re drowning, and to be honest, that’s kind of a perfect word.”

“Did you fix my car, yes or no?”

“Yes,” I said hesitantly, and she laughed without humor.