A Broken Promise

Chapter 5 - The Promise

 Chapter 5

 I did not realize that the minutes I needed to ‘sort-out ’ my life, would turn out into hours, because the next thing I know, Jason is knocking on the door asking me to come out for lunch. I realized that I had spent the majority of my time staring at the ceiling trying to answer the question that would change the direction of my life.

 “Can I go back to school and act like nothing’s happened?”

Before I could come to any conclusion, I heard the door opening, and saw Jason poke his head through the door.

“Well lunch is ready,” he announced again.

“You already told me that J”, I pointed out, vainly trying to put on a smile.

“I know.  So why don’t you come and eat so that I don’t have to remind you a third time,” he said.

I gave up and got up from my bed and headed towards the table where I saw plates of pasta, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, fried chicken and pizza.

“What did you do Jason?” I asked in horror looking at the food in front of me.

“Well,  I didn’t know what you wanted to eat.  And when I searched for comfort foods on the net, these topped the lists!”, he said sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his head.

I just shook my head and took my seat.  He served me a little of everything and made a plate for himself too.  Even then we had a lot of food on the table.

“Guess we’re going to be eating a lot of leftovers for quite sometime. Right Jane.” he said trying to make conversation after a few awkward moments of silence.

“Guess we are”. I replied not offering anything else.

After that he didn’t try to make conversation.  And after we finished eating he just cleared the plated, washed them and packed the leftovers into containers.  I just watched him do all this and moved to the couch.  After a few moments I felt him sit next to me and wrapped his arms around me.

“Hey J?”

“Yeah”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure”

“Before I went into my room this morning I heard you mutter ‘not again’.  What did you mean?”

I heard a sharp intake of breath and realized that I was not supposed to have heard that comment.

“Don’t try to lie.” I warned.

“I’m not going to lie Jane. It’s just that  I know this…this…. thing you’re doing.”,  he said waving his hand towards me.

“What thing?”

“You know, what thing Jane!  It’s where you pull away from anything.  You go into that little bubble of yours and think that you can handle everything on your own.  I’ve seen this before.  When we had that situation with mom, you acted the same way.  Not letting anyone in and bearing the load all by yourself.  What I meant by ‘not again’ is that I did not want you to go into that stage where you withdraw from the world little by little and finally all there is left of you is a shell, a responsive shell.  And I see the signs Jane.”

“What signs?”

“The signs that tell me, you’re withdrawing.  For example, the pasta had too much salt but you didn’t notice, you ate it anyway.  And when I asked you if the pasta was okay, you just nodded and continued eating.  And you’re calling me J, you have never called me J,  I call u J! You hate it!” he emphasized.