Ghost of You | JATP

Wake Up - Julie

I woke up to the sound of light sniffles next to me. I opened my eyes slightly to peek through them, only to see a puffy and red-faced Reggie. His reaction is so much better than I had expected.

"Rose could've shared... he could've lived." Reggie was muttering to himself while watching the credits roll.

I went to move so I could sit up and talk to him, but then I noticed an arm to my side and a hand holding my hand that didn't belong to me. Oh my god. I fell asleep on Luke. I did my best to look up to see if he was awake. He wasn't. I don't know if that makes it better or worse.

I stayed completely still. I didn't want to wake him up, but I also had absolutely no idea what to do with this. Do I like this? I think I do. Do I want to face the repercussions of Reggie looking over at us? Definitely not. But do I want this to stop? No, I don't think I do.

My attention was quickly drawn to Alex popping back into the garage. Great. Incredible timing, truly.

"I have..." He started, then stopped to take in the scene before him. Luke was sleeping, Reggie was crying, and I was still on Luke. "What the heck is going on here?"

"Jack should've lived!" Reggie cried.

"I... what? Okay? Anyway, can anyone answer my question coherently?" I wiggled my way out of Luke's arms and stood up. Luckily, he didn't wake up, but I quickly regretted my decision; it was so cold without Luke... and the blanket.

"Well, we were waiting for you to get home, so I made the boys watch Titanic... I guess Luke and I fell asleep, and we left Reggie to deal with the emotional damage of the movie." I said with a shrug. I hoped that if I made it sound normal, Alex wouldn't question it too much.

"Okay. So we'll talk about that," He said, gesturing between Luke and myself, "later. But you let Reggie watch a movie about a tragic event without supervision?"

"It started out supervised!" I said, defending myself. Then, I turned to look at Reggie. "What can we do to make you feel better?" As funny as it was, I do feel kind of guilty about the movie making him so upset.

"No, no. There is no we in this." Alex said, staring at me.

"Okay, fine, dad." I glared at Alex, "What can I do to make you feel better?"

"I need a hug, and I need an explanation as to why Rose let him go after promising she wouldn't." He is so adoringly innocent. I walked over to him and pulled him off the couch to give him the biggest hug I could.

"Reg, he was already dead. She said that to let him know she would never forget him." I said softly while rubbing his back.

"Well, why did he have to die?" Reggie pulled back and pouted.

"I have no idea. I just blame the writer."

"I'm going to do that too! Who's the writer? We should send them a stern letter about this poor decision." I laughed at his silliness which caused Reggie to smile.

"I'm sure they have gotten plenty of stern talking-to's about the decision to kill Jack," I said and looked back at Alex. He seemed satisfied with what I had done to make it better for Reggie. "Hey, did you find Willie?"

"That's what I came here to talk about before I was distracted by the pure weirdness of all of this. Anyway, I found him, and we talked for a while about a lot of things," He trailed off and started to smile.

"Oh, so we will also be talking about that," I sassed back at him, "later. Did he say anything about Caleb?"

"Uhh, yeah." He said while rubbing the back of his neck. Good, I made him just as awkward as he made me. "He hasn't seen or heard anything regarding Caleb since the Orpheum show. He's pretty worried about it. He said Caleb doesn't disappear unless he's planning something."