Jessica's Fate

Chapter 39

2 months later...

All I can say is that I survived the last two months.

Luke was right about making the bread dough the day Zack dumped me. There was something rather therapeutic about pounding out the dough when it was time to knead it. And we did get cinnamon rolls out of it not pretzels.

I managed a really good speech for graduation. All my extra brothers were there to support me along with Mom, Sang and Uncle. I'd be lying if I said that it didn't sting a little to not see Zack there with them. The day after graduation, after my all-night party kept me up far too late, Uncle held a lunch for me at the diner. It was a good time, lunch was great, I didn't have to make any part of it. I received several gifts for my future pastry endeavors and I barely contained my excitement about how I was going to be able to use them.

The one funny moment that came about that day was the fact that Sang and North were late to the party. I cornered her later and she told me about how North had simply "not wanted to get out of bed". She refused to say more even when I called her out on the air quotes that she managed to put around that phrase.

Uncle and Luke were kind enough to let me wallow in my unhappiness for about 3 weeks after graduation. I say kind enough because I didn't give them a chance to say no because I just told Luke I was completely exhausted with the end of school and everything and he didn't press it and I knew he'd stepped up to the plate and sorted things out with Uncle. I'm sure he didn't want a crying mess in his kitchen and I wasn't entirely sure that being at the diner wouldn't drive me to that, even if I was hiding out in the kitchen and not daring to look into the dining room in case Zack had actually shown up for some reason. Luke never told me if he called in an order or showed up and I just didn't even ask.

I refused to see or speak to Kota and Nathan. If they came over to the house, I hid upstairs and didn't come out of my room. They tried to ambush me when Mom was at work so it worked to my favor. I could outlast them if I hid in the bathroom with the shower on and my music cranked. I just couldn't rule them out as being a factor in my break up with Zack. I wasn't even mad at Zack for dumping me because I was focusing my anger and frustration on them.

Somewhere in there, North took it upon himself to stage an intervention of sorts. In retrospect, he totally saved me from myself. Oh, it was small things. Like, showing up midafternoon with snacks and just sitting next to me on the couch for a while as he poked food at me, grunting if I refused it and glaring at me until I ate it. When he was satisfied that I'd eaten enough, he would rummage through the movies until he found a movie he knew I liked and that he could deem free of 'all that girly shit and stuff' so that he wouldn't have to trade in his man card because he watched it with me.

Which meant there was an awful lot of Mulan, Brave and Hunger Games movies watched. And there may have been a solid week of a self-imposed Harry Potter Marathon.

Luke had always been my favorite extra brother. I was never quite sure half the time if North actually liked anyone. Until Sang came along. But the two weeks he spent watching movies with me made me realize that I was firmly on his list of people that mattered and that he did actually care enough about me to like me enough to suffer through movies he didn't watch and to not complain about what I was eating. (That dawned on me about the third day he was coming over. Luke had very much had a hand in preparing the bag of food North brought over because there was usually always some chocolate chip something in there.)

The last day he came by was my last day before I'd have to report to work again at the diner on Monday. I had 2 weekend days to get my shit together before I had to be seen in public. It's been about 5 weeks since that day but the conversation we had after we finished the last Harry Potter movie stuck with me and was on a constant replay in my brain.