Chapter 29: Friends

The days were sweeter than they had ever been because I spent them with Jo. We grew naïve in our passion.

A humid afternoon, I was sat on the living room floor with Holly and Judd. I'd begun to notice how parentless they were, or at least motherless. I wasn't sure what Katie did in her spare time, but she spent it as far away from the children as possible. Marty would check in throughout the day, but the only other sign he was home was his distant booming laughter when he was on a phone call. The kids seemed used to it, but sometimes they would look around the room hoping one of them was there. I tried my best to distract them.

We were playing with building blocks. Marty had just bought them a new set, with many different sizes and colors. Judd was trying to build a horse, while Holly was just putting random pieces together to make some sort of structure.

"A blue one," she commanded, pointing to the bag of blocks. "A big one."

Following her bossy command, I reached into the bag and took out a big blue one, handing it to her clumsy hands. She put the block on top of the structure she was making. Between her commands, I was making my own structure. It was supposed to look like a house.

"What's that?" she asked, pointing to what I was building.

"A house," I replied, putting a red block on top as a chimney. "What are you making?"

"I don't know!" she giggled sweetly as she accidentally hit her structure, causing half of it to tumble apart. A few of the blocks rolled over to Judd who was super concentrated on his horse.

"Hey!" he exclaimed when the block rolled under his horses legs, flicking it back over to Holly's pile. "Leave Lucky alone."

"That's not Lucky," Holly said with a sassy whip of her head. "Lucky is brown, idiot."

I covered my mouth to keep myself from laughing at how boldly she called Judd an idiot. It was true, because the real Lucky was brown and this horse was multi-colored.

"Shut up!" he yelled, his face getting a little red. "You don't even know what you're building."

"A house, idiot!"

"Stop calling me that!" He reached his leg across and kicked her foot, and Holly shuffled backwards and grabbed her foot, her face turning red as she started to cry.

"Judd," I reprimanded him, placing my arms around Holly when she turned to me and reached for me. "You didn't need to kick her."

"Yeah, she sure didn't shut up, did she?" he grumbled as he turned his focus back to his horse.

"Judd, you little twerp," Jo said as she walked into the room, holding a tray of lemonade. She had went to get some for us and the kids.

"She started it!" Judd exclaimed innocently, looking scared to see that Jo had seen what he did. "She threw a block at me."

"It was an accident," I gently corrected him.

"Here, Holly girl," Jo softly said, leaning down and handing one glass of lemonade to Holly who was sniffling in my arms, her arms clutched tightly around my neck. Holly looked at Jo and the lemonade, slowly letting go of me and crawling over to take the glass.

"Thank you," she softly said as she held the glass that was a little too big for her, taking a clumsy sip that left some of the lemonade spilling down her chin.

"Here's yours, you wild animal," Jo said, handing a glass down to Judd who glared at her but reached up for the glass, until Jo quickly moved it out of his reach. "Apologize for kicking her."

"Why?!" he exclaimed, but Jo was glaring down at him threateningly, and he folded under her stare, looking over at Holly who was rather deviously eyeing him from over her glass. "I'm sorry for kicking you," he grumbled, his face turning red again.

"Good boy. If you ever kick a girl again, I'm gonna kick you so hard you turn into one," Jo said as she handed him the glass, and he took it, smiling a little at her joke.

Jo came and sat down next to me on the floor, our knees bumping together as she crossed hers. She handed me a glass and took her own off the tray, putting the tray to the floor.

I looked at her for a moment as she sipped her lemonade and watched the kids. "You would make a good mom," I blurted, and she nearly choked on her lemonade.

She wiped her mouth and looked at me incredulously. "Did you not hear me threaten Judd's boyhood?"

I giggled and shook my head. "Besides that. You're really good at handling kids."

"Not as good as you. I couldn't imagine trying to teach these fuckers French."

Holly looked up suddenly, two blocks in her hands. "What's a fucker?"

Judd looked up at Jo with a surprised grin, and Jo slapped her hand over her mouth while my mouth dropped open. Holly looked between the three of us in confusion, at all of our shocked eyes and the way we tried not to laugh. She must have caught on because she started giggling, and it made Judd spit out his lemonade, which made her only giggle more.

Jo slowly turned her head to me and burst out laughing, falling against my shoulder and throwing her hand over mine. I couldn't help but start to laugh with them, holding Jo's hand as she giggled into my ear, leaving warmth on that side of my face.

"What is going on?!" a voice suddenly barked, and we all stopped laughing and looked up to see Katie entering the living room, adjusting a bracelet on her wrist. She looked around at the kids who were red-faced from laughing, and then she looked at Jo and I. Her eyes dropped to our hands held together.

Jo jumped away from me and snatched her hand away from mine, putting them both behind her back. My blood went cold. I hoped she didn't see it. I prayed she didn't see it.

But she did. Her eyes flickered between me and Jo, her face turning to stone. The kids looked at each other in silence, not knowing what was wrong but that something definitely was.

"Joanna," Katie slowly spoke, her voice low and dreadful. I looked over at Jo—her face was pale white, her eyes wide and frightened like a scared animal. "Come with me to run errands."

Katie stared at me for a few moments longer, her eyes piercing me across the room until she turned and stepped away.

Jo looked at me hesitantly. She was frightened about Katie seeing our hands, and she was also confused why she had asked her to go run errands with her. They never spent any time together other than forced time.

I didn't want her to go, but she carefully stood up, her legs shaking a little. She stepped over the blocks and followed after Katie, and a few minutes later I heard a car drive away from the house.

"Is Mommy mad?" Holly asked me, looking at me with innocent eyes. "Because of what I said?"

"No," I answered, feeling stuck on the floor. "No, she's not." My mouth was too dry to say anything else. Holly stared at me a minute before her attention was turned back to the blocks, and within minutes the kids had forgotten what had happened and were laughing and fighting again.

Katie and Jo didn't come back until dinnertime. Jo went straight to her room, and I sat at the dinner table, hardly eating because my stomach was turning in flips. Katie never looked at me or acknowledged me, and she left the table early. A few moments later, I excused myself. I needed to go see Jo. I needed to ask her what Katie said.

Rushing up from the table, I stormed upstairs. Somehow, I already knew Jo would be in my room instead of hers. Surely enough, I opened the door and found her on the bed.

"What did she say?" I asked breathlessly, closing the door shut and rushing to the bed, sitting down next to Jo.

She was staring at the floor, her eyes wide. "I... I think she knows."

My stomach dropped. Nausea swirled inside me, and my throat started to close. "What do you mean?"

She blinked. "She didn't say anything while we went to the store, or while we were in the store. Then, on the drive back, she pulled over on the street. I was so fucking scared, I can't remember everything she said. She said that our friendship is... inappropriate. That she doesn't approve of it. And then she threatened cutting me off."

My eyes widened as my throat went dry. "What... What do you mean?" was all I could say in a shaky whisper.

Jo jumped up from the bed suddenly, running her hands through her hair and pacing the room. "Becca, I can't be cut off. You don't understand. I would live on the streets."

I couldn't speak or breathe. I just watched her pace the room.

"She knows... She didn't say it, not exactly, but she knows..." She squeezed her eyes shut. "I can't be cut off. They'll throw me on the streets. I'll be homeless. I won't see my siblings again, or any of my family."

I stood up, my knees threatening to fold. "Jo, it's going to be okay—"

"We can't, Becca," she breathed, turning herself in a circle.

Then, my heart started to break. "What?"

"We can't do this anymore. What we do... We can't."

I blinked in disbelief. Only hours before, Jo was in love with me, and now she was ready to end it all because of her mother. I knew Jo hated her, but I saw something else now. She was afraid of Katie. She was horribly, helplessly terrified of her. She could act defiant and independent all she wanted, but deep down, she was a slave to that fear.

"Jo—"

"We can just be friends," she started to bargain, finally looking at me, but as soon as she did, her face dropped. She saw the tears welling in my eyes.

I stepped closer to her, biting back my tears as I reached up and took her face. Oh, how beautiful she was, even when she was making me cry.

"Jo," I began evenly, "Do you remember the deal?"

She looked at me confused until it washed over her face.

"You promised to never be friends. Not in a million years. No matter what."

Her eyes started to water.

I continued, "We can never be just friends." I felt bold saying that, but it was true. We both knew it.

Her olive eyes stared into mine. She was swelling with emotion, quivering with it, breathless with it. I could see it in her face, that face that hid nothing. She looked like she was in pain, like I was stabbing her in the chest. I even looked down, afraid that somehow I was. The air around us grew thin, and suddenly she grabbed my face.

"I love you," she hissed, as if she was angry about it. "I love you. I love you." She pushed her face against mine, our foreheads meeting, our nose bending against each others. It almost hurt how hard she pressed her head against mine, as if she was trying to push her brain right into my skull so that I could see how much she felt for me, because those three words just weren't enough.

"I love you, Becca. I love you. I loved you this whole summer." Her voice was a screeching whisper, tears starting to stream down her face.

"Jo—" I began, feeling like I was suffocating. Her emotions were pouring into me, into my ears as I listened to her words, into my eyes as I saw the tears on her cheeks, into my mouth as I tried to breathe.

"I don't want you to leave, ever," she proclaimed, and now her voice was a sob. "I don't want you to go. I want you to stay with me. I want to get an apartment together, away from here, away from her. Please, Becca." She was grabbing my face so hard that I could feel her fingers bruising my cheeks, and her forehead bruising mine. "Please Becca, don't go. Don't go. Don't go. I love you. Don't go."

"Okay," was all I could say, not because she was grabbing me so hard, or that she was saying it over and over, but because I would. I would do anything for her. I would do anything to stop the pain I could feel radiating from her. That grief, not of death, but of life. All I felt was Jo's grief in that moment. She was so full of it, it just came tumbling out of her. "I'll stay."

She squeezed my face. "Promise. Promise me. Promise me."

"I promise, Jo. I promise."

Finally, she let go of my face and hurdled into me, crushing my torso with her arms and diving her face into my neck. I held her. I didn't care that she was acting impulsive, or that she'd hurt my face on accident, or that she had demanded me to promise. I didn't care because I loved her so hard it hurt.