Fix Me, Fix You: A Jesse Pinkman Story

Chapter Twenty-Three

The aquamarine color of the water reflected onto Jolie's face as she laid on her back in the middle of the aquarium tunnel. The crystal clear glass surrounded her as it ran through the large tank of fish and sharks and stingrays and coral. It was her quiet place, her place to think, but her mind was loud and her thoughts were scattered.

"How is this possible?" She whispered to herself as she stared into the blue abyss above her.

After she walked away from Jesse early that morning, confused and frightened to her core, she quickly got the girls off to their winter camp so they could play with their friends over winter break, then fled to the aquarium to think. Only she couldn't straighten out her thoughts.

She didn't know what to do. Should she tell her parents? Should she warn the social worker in case she runs a background check? Was he dangerous? Was her family in danger due to association? Was he doing drugs in addition to making and selling them? She figured it was best to talk to him, to get the full story and all the answers to her questions, but she didn't want to be near him.

She felt like she didn't even know him.

And she realized that she didn't. She never did.

Sure, she knew who he was on the inside – she knew who his soul was, and maybe that was all that mattered – but she didn't know anything about his life. How had she not questioned his past before? She never even noticed how he didn't talk about his family or where he grew up. And how had she never questioned the many times she found him erratically scared or sad or crying or shaking? She just assumed he had been through a lot and moved to get away from it. But she never, not even for a second, thought he was capable of any kind of criminal activity.

She felt stupid. She felt played. And she felt naïve. She had fallen in love with a drug dealer. She allowed a drug dealer to play house with her and the girls. It was all too surreal. It felt like a dream.

No. It felt like a nightmare.

Back at the shop, Jesse was busy sanding a long plank of beech wood for a bookshelf he was making with Coop, but his mind was elsewhere. His chest tightened more and more with each breath he took, scared and upset over his encounter with Jolie that morning.

He had accepted his consequential fate, understanding that he deserved whatever happened from there – even if he lost his job, his home, and his new family.

But he couldn't breathe. He needed to talk to her. He told her about his past, but he never got the chance to give his side of the story. He never got the chance to explain what really happened or defend himself or show her that he's changed. Even if she didn't want anything to do with him ever again, he just wanted the chance to prove himself to be different now.

His stomach was in knots and a lump grew in his throat. He wanted to scream.

"Ah jeez, kid. You look like you're about to be sick," Coop noted as he glanced over at his employee. "Don't hurl on the beech wood."

"I'm fine," Jesse insisted. "I won't."

"Jesse, do you know where Jolie is?" Linda asked as she entered the shop suddenly.

Jesse glanced up at the sound of her name. He had been so out of it that he hadn't even heard Linda walk up.

"She didn't come home after dropping the girls off this morning," she explained. "But she didn't say she was going anywhere else. And she's not answering her phone."

For a moment, he wondered why she was worried about her grown daughter not coming home immediately, but he was reminded of the trauma she endured when she lost her son and daughter-in-law in a car accident. The color drained from his face at the thought of her worrying about Jolie being in a car accident.