Midnight Blues // Jake Kiszka

sixteen

tw: mental illness, eating disorders. 

Chapter playlist (if you want the full effect of this chapter):

🍓 Places We Won't Walk by Bruno Major

🍓 To Let A Good Thing Die by Bruno Major 

🍓 Great Companion (acoustic) by Landon Pigg 

🍓 Arms by The Paper Kites 

🍓 The 1 by Taylor Swift 

🍓Thick & Thin by LANY

// 

I sighed and took my hair out of the ponytail it had been pulled back into all day. I ran my fingers through the tufts, massaging out any stress it had experienced. I still had about an hour or so before I had to meet Jake, and my stomach was swirling with uncertainty. He certainly didn't owe me an explanation. I would rather be ignorant, because I knew the truth would hurt me more than being in the dark would. I leaned onto the sink to observe myself closely in the mirror. I stared at the reflection looking back at me as clumps of tears started racing down my face. 

Don't cry, don't cry. 

I had preferred to always be the girl who would let her mental health get the best of her and have her face sink in. You've gotten so skinny, they'd say. While I tried to show my shock, on the inside I'd be congratulating myself. Instead, I was the girl whose face looked like someone had scribbled outside of the lines of a coloring book--skin spilling over at every seam. Like stitches that had come undone. I was an ugly patchwork quilt that you were gifted and accepted with a tight lipped smile, forced. I would be discarded or forgotten about in the closet until it was time for the next round of donations. I didn't want Jake to know I was falling apart, I couldn't let him know. I left my razor in its place in the drawer and ran a bath instead. The hot water ran into the tub, the steam swirling overhead and drawing the oxygen out of the air. I slipped my work clothes off and allowed myself to sink into the water. My skin sighed in relief as the heat cascaded around my sore muscles, undoing the knots they had twisted into. 

**

I stood outside the double glass doors of the bookstore and took it in. There was no amount of breath in my lungs I could gather that wouldn't be taken away the minute I saw Jake. He was ethereal. His presence was truly otherworldly, and he was just floating on this plane. I finally mustered up the courage to enter and text him as to where he was. When my phone sounded with a text from him saying he was almost there, I decided to calm my nerves with hot chocolate. I hadn't been to this bookstore in such a long time, since I was a kid. There was a wrenching feeling in my heart that came with this territory. The territory of revisiting a place from childhood, as if it were a past life. My adult body came with scars and I was weathered and reduced to a shell of my cheerful former self. I scoured the tables in the front lined with fiction, young adult, science, everything you could imagine. It was its own wonderland of sorts. The bell on the door jingled, signaling someone entering. I kept my back to Jake, but I felt his presence. I could always feel his presence. I felt a tap on my shoulder and I turned to face him. 

"Hi." He greeted. 

"Hi." 

"Should we sit somewhere?" 

I nodded, following him up the stairs to a reading room. Being some of the few people in a bookstore on a Friday night, we found a free one easily. I could barely look at him without crying. I wasn't in control of my emotions right now, but I didn't need him to know that. 

"Look, Freya, I've practiced what I was going to say to you when I saw you next about a million times. Looking at you now though, I can't remember a thing. All I know is that I haven't stopped thinking about you since you left. You didn't just leave me, but you left all of us." 

"You can't make me feel bad about that, Jake. You weren't talking to me because what we did was wrong. I hurt Josh, who was so kind to me. Who treated me nothing less than a friend from the minute we met. I couldn't let the whole band take the fall. Your careers are important to me too ya know." 

"What we did was wrong, but we didn't do it for the wrong reasons. I care about you so much, Freya. You mean the world to me." 

"It's been 8 months, Jake. I haven't heard from you in 8 months? I didn't even know you were still in contact with Jita, I didn't know you were in town. You haven't talked to me and you say you care about me?" 

"I thought you wanted space, I wanted to do what I could for you." 

"8 months worth of it?" I asked, irritation coating my words. 

There was silence lingering between us which was no unfamiliar territory. 

"What do you want, Jake?" I asked, breaking the silence. 

"You." 

"It didn't seem like you cared, you didn't even call or text to see where I was, to check if I was okay. It didn't seem like you thought I was worth the trouble at all." 

"I just wasn't sure what to do. I never know what to do when it comes to you being down." 

"I don't know what to tell you, Jake. You could have at least called." 

"I'm sorry," he sighed, running his hands through his hair "I feel so useless right now." 

"Why?" 

"I just don't feel like I'm any help. I don't know how to help." 

"I don't need you to help me, Jake. I don't need you to constantly be there for me. It's one thing to say you care and it's another to show that you care. You've said so many times to me that you care, but when I really need you, you're not there. I'm not asking you to put your life on hold for me, all I'm asking is for you to love me for me. For every part of me. I want nothing more than to build a life with you, but I don't want to build a life where I need to worry about what parts of me to show you because I think it'll make you uncomfortable. I get that you don't know how to help, but I don't know how you can either. Sometimes literally a hug can make all the difference. I can't keep up with you when you act like you're doing me a favor by being with me. I thought it was mutual, and I wasn't ready to be in my mind all the time wondering what I did wrong. I was always begging for your forgiveness, but I didn't do anything wrong." 

"I'm sorry." He said, simply. 

The silence laced the air again. We sat in it for a while, neither of us making eye contact. 

"Is there anything else?" I asked. 

When he didn't respond, I knew that this was helpless. I got up and left the room. 

That was over a year ago, and I'm still waiting for his call.