Revival

8. The Lieutenant and the Law

~~The Lieutenant and the Law~~

Stella slept in fitful intervals, disrupted by a terrible crash loud in her ears from her subconscious that jolted her out of sleep. She would dream of blood and magic and her parents; her suicide father, and runaway mother, and her real parents, Yemi and David.

Despite her protests, she let Jesse take her back to her bedroom—the room she'd woken up in—and hold her as she sobbed, coming to terms with a new tragedy she had to carry under her belt for the rest of her life. As far as she knew before, her life began when Yemi found her swaddled in hospital gear outside the restaurant she cheffed at, almost eighteen years ago one wintry evening in Southampton. It was the tragedy she came to terms with, but she now had to learn that she didn't have a single idea of how bad her circumstances really were until last night.

Alex didn't provide any night clothes for her to sleep in, so Jesse gave her one of his T-shirts. She changed in the bathroom, but he was still respectful enough to turn around when she returned and climbed into bed, under the covers.

She sniffed as she snapped her hairband off her wrist to tie her braids up before she laid down.

"I know you're the type that probably wears a bonnet to bed," Jesse said, turning around. An amused smile lifted the corner of his mouth in a slightly crooked smile. She liked the way he smiled, Stella thought, the way one corner lifts first before the other. It was a little awkward, but she supposed it was reassuring that not all of his actions and gestures were perfect or practiced, "This must be killing you."

Stella didn't want to admit he was right, so when she was content with the knot, she tied her braids in, laid down, and pulled her comforter over her shoulder. She lay on her side and stared up at him with her hands pillowed under her cheek. "I'm sorry I cried so much, and for being kind of a bitch," she added on a second thought, "I'm usually kind of bitchy, but I don't cry all that often."

His gaze softened, and he came forward, sitting on the edge of her bed, dipping his side of the mattress slightly. "I could tell. You hated that you were," he dropped his voice to match her seriousness, "But sometimes it's good to cry," he had said, "It keeps you human, well as human as we can get. When people feel pain, their instinct is to push it away, Demiwitches especially. Our pain can be crippling but feeling it and crying gives us a connection to our humanity that we need to survive."

Stella remembered what he had said about trauma, "I know a little something about trauma." She knew that he was adopted, but that's about all she really knew about him. She wanted to ask, but she bit her tongue, reminding herself that she didn't know him, and her curiosity about Jesse wasn't appropriate. And she didn't want him to see her this way, something so fragile and broken that needed to be treated as a box with the FRAGILE stamp on its side.

The next morning, Jesse stopped by her room again to wake her up. She'd already been lying awake for a while when he did, waiting for the appropriate time to start getting ready. When she did, she came downstairs into the kitchen on her own this time, in a fresh pair of sweatpants and a fitted top that Jesse dropped off for her declaring that they were Alex's. She was only a little confused about finding her way around the apartment this time.

The Luna-Jefferson's were oddly picturesque in their chaos this early in the morning. She had it in her head that her family was just weird and that the rest of the world believed that the normal time to wake up was any time after eleven in the morning. She was slowly coming to the saddening conclusion that maybe she was the weird one.

Paula was dressed elegantly in a long black chiffon skirt that drifted around her ankles strapped in sandals and a blouse. Her long dreadlocks were tied up in a silk-patterned headscarf, Stella was tempted to ask about. She was stirring what looked like fluffy porridge in a pot at the stove. She complained about Drew being in her way as he rummaged through the cupboards above his mother's head. Alex sat on the chair Stella was in yesterday, in a silk purple robe and a huge matching bonnet, fiercely tapping away on her laptop open on a Word document. Though Stella noticed her eyes were red-rimmed, and she wondered if she'd been crying.