14 | Purgatory

JEN HAD NO CONFIDENCE that this whole revenge shopping strategy was going to effectively yield any results whatsoever. But she couldn't reject a hypothesis without running the experiment first, so she wore her new outfit to work on Monday. Feeling unusually bold, she even put on some dark red lipstick for good measure.

Was it excessive for work? Yes. Did she look a bit like a vampire now? It was definitely possible. But if nothing else, she was a more attractive than usual vampire.

Confusing thoughts about Robert and not knowing what she even wanted from him had kept her up late the night prior and she had to put more energy than usual into concealing the dark circles under her eyes this morning. Yet after waking up early and making the decision that staring at paperwork was better than letting her mind endlessly spin like a carousel, she'd arrived at St. Catherine's twenty minutes prior to when she actually needed to be there.

She was early enough to beat Jude, which was a rarity. He was as diligent with his work as he had once been with his academics (according to Celie, at least—Jen met him well after he was out of college) and could often be found in the library outside of the hours he was required to be there. She herself couldn't imagine sitting at her desk for much longer stretches of time than she already did, but she saw the appeal of wanting to stay in his library all day. Books were excellent company, and it was surely much more peaceful when the students weren't there.

Today, he was absentmindedly nibbling on some sort of pastry as he came through the front doors. She glanced up at him as he made himself at home in one of the spare lobby chairs and scooted it closer to her desk so that they could chat.

"Whatcha eating?" she asked.

"Pain au chocolat. At least, I think so, but sometimes Celie kinda just shoves food into my hands and I don't give it too much thought," he admitted.

She couldn't avoid smiling a little bit at that. No matter how often she was annoyed with her brother – or at least pretending to be – Celie could never help herself from taking care of him. Jen wondered with a flicker of amusement how often Jude would forget to eat three meals a day or fold his laundry or wash the dishes if his sister didn't keep him in line.

"I had sausage and toast." She figured coworkers were supposed to talk about mundane things such as the weather and what they had for breakfast and not the other coworker that one of them had a crush on.

An uneasy tension settled in her shoulders as she noticed that Jude suddenly looked very smug. "What?" she demanded.

He leaned forward in his seat slightly, lowering his voice so that only she would hear his God-awful pun. "Was it...Italian sausage?"

Jen's face and neck abruptly felt like they were even redder than her lipstick. "You can't say that here!" she hissed, equal parts alarmed and horrified.

"Are you saying I could say it anywhere else?" he asked diplomatically. She had never felt the urge to strangle him, but there was a first time for everything.

"No!"

"You never actually said you didn't-"

He was just trying to torture her now. She raised her chin slightly and spoke with an air of superiority, refusing to allow herself to be mortified any further. "I have not – nor will I ever – have Italian anything. I don't even know what Italy is."

"You sound like you're in denial."

"I am not in denial."

A new voice interrupted. "Denial about what?"

Jen and Jude both startled, which was rather awkward considering that the person who had just spoken was Elliot. Their vice principal appeared to be trying not to look at them like they had each grown a third eye, but he was falling short of his goal.

"–That the time has gone by so quickly!" Jude jumped in hastily before she even had time to think about conjuring up an explanation. "It feels like Jen just got here yesterday."

The performance seemed much too rushed and therefore highly unconvincing to her, but Elliot seemed satisfied enough with this response. He nodded a bit awkwardly. "The beginning of the semester does tend to fly by."

She and Jude nodded in unison—there really wasn't much else to do besides nod. Jen was trying to come up with an escape route to get out of this horrendously stiff conversation, but Elliot fortunately read the room and retreated to his office.

She relaxed slightly in her seat but resumed glaring daggers at Jude. "I'm not letting your sister tell you any of my secrets ever again."

He wasn't given a chance to defend himself since she had to shut up and compose herself rather quickly. Robert had just come through the front door.

It all started off as normal – him walking towards the hallway, not quite meeting her eye anymore – and for a moment, she thought he wasn't going to notice her at all. But then he paused as he was passing her, his eyebrows furrowing.

He didn't try to hide his confusion, either – or perhaps he was too thrown off by her appearance to realize how conspicuous he was being. Even so, his tone was frustratingly neutral. "You seem...different today."

Good different or bad different? she wanted to ask, but she obviously couldn't do so at school and most definitely not in front of Jude. She wasn't looking at him, but Jen had a feeling he was having to try incredibly hard to keep a straight face.

She chose to play clueless. "Oh, really?" she asked nonchalantly. "I trimmed my hair, maybe that's it."

Robert's mouth was open like he wanted to say something else, but no words came out. He exited just as inelegantly as Elliot had, leaving Jen wondering if he'd been aiming at subtlety or if he was genuinely so unobservant as to not realize what had changed with her.

Internally, she sighed. Boys.

Jude proceeded to leave her alone without being asked, so she imagined she must have looked grumpy. She certainly felt like hitting her head against her desk repeatedly. Since when did she do things like this? She always said that men weren't worth her time, and yet here she was trying to get one's attention with her outfit.

She enjoyed how she felt in these clothes, so she didn't necessarily regret that part. But what was she even aiming to achieve? He'd already said outright that he didn't think it was a good idea for them to be together. She was supposed to respect that. She hadn't moped over a boy so much since Dean Holloway in college, and that was in a much different, more innocent time. She was a grown-up now; she was supposed to be mature. The last mature thing she did was set boundaries with Robert, and she'd been regretting it ever since.

She was perfectly aware that Celie constructed this whole "revenge shopping" idea as a way to show him what he'd missed out on and how great she was doing without him—not to win him back...as if she'd even had him in the first place. And yet no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't help herself from wanting what they already had and infinitely more.

She sank a little further into her chair and sighed. If she was so desperate to have a man, surely she could just acquire one somewhere else. They weren't particularly hard to find—they made their presence known wherever they went. But Jen apparently didn't want a man; she wanted that one. She wanted insightful letters and gentle conversations over coffee and the soft brushing of hands against one another. She wanted trips to the museum, hugs on front steps. She wanted lips against lips; to feel seen; to feel known.

Maybe it really was a weird psychological thing. She could chalk it up to rarely receiving affection or to her messed up understanding of intimacy. Maybe the same mistakes truly did run through families. Jen had watched her mother find comfort in the arms of a man who she was absolutely not supposed to be with and now, only a few years later, she was fighting the temptation to do the same.

The fight felt like it was already lost.

The next day was disconcertingly cold. The sky was a pallid gray, the sun so well-concealed behind the veil of clouds that it felt as though she were walking through a world that had no sun at all. Brittle grass crunched like crackling ice beneath her footsteps and the wind whistled between the endless rows of skyscrapers like a sharp laugh. It was far from pleasant out, and Jen could only hope that things would finally start to warm up next week once it was March.

Jude – bless him – had found hot chocolate mix in the teacher's lounge and made them each a cup. She very gratefully accepted hers as she sat down at her desk, watching the steam rise from the rim of the styrofoam like fog over water.

Her desk phone rang, yanking her attention away from the drink. The number didn't appear to be from within the school building, but she answered anyway – it could have been a parent or a teacher's home phone – and forced herself to sound much more chipper than she felt as she greeted the caller with, "Good morning, you've reached the front office at St. Catherine's Catholic School. How can I help you?"'

"Hey, Jen."

She wasn't prepared for it to be Robert, or to hear his voice sounding remarkably tired and raw like he hadn't slept at all. Her heart started up a steady thudding in her chest as she quietly answered with, "Yes?"

"I need to call out sick, I'm sorry. I have a fever."

Oh. She resisted the urge to put her head in her hands and sigh—why would she ever think he'd call her on her work phone to talk about anything personal?

"Oh, I'm, um, sorry to hear that," she told him awkwardly. "I'll call in a sub for you—I hope you feel better."

"Thanks," he said a bit weakly, but she could hear the underlying appreciation nonetheless.

To her dismay, Jude overheard the entire exchange. Once the phone was back on its receiver, he leaned forward and said, in a hushed but amused voice, "Maybe Celie was onto something after all—you seem to have stricken him down with your good looks."

There was perhaps a compliment buried in there, but Jen rolled her eyes. "My outfit didn't give him a fever, Jude."

The timing was admittedly a bit ironic, but she couldn't bring herself to find any humor in him being sick. On the contrary, as she called in a substitute for him and went about the rest of her morning, she found herself unable not to be concerned for him.

She knew that this worrying was completely absurd—he was an adult and could clearly handle a few days of sickness just fine. But apparently a little bit of hand-holding and a singular kiss was all it took to give her this stupid, unexplainable urge to take care of him. Maybe it was just because she knew that he didn't have any family in town, or because he always seemed to go out of his way to make sure she was okay, like offering her hugs and medicine and a hand to hold...

You could bring him soup or something, she thought, and then– No you can't, you idiot. You don't even have his address.

She faltered.

...or do you?

Jen was making a mistake.

She'd had a lot of unintelligent ideas throughout her life, but this one was pretty high up on the list. She nearly went to Jude to get him to talk her out of it, but a few things hindered her.

For starters, she was too embarrassed to tell him that she'd considered this plan at all. Her own sudden disregard for the rules discomforted her—wasn't she a rule follower? Wasn't that what created all this drama with Robert in the first place? She had an inkling that her moral compass was beginning to point towards him constantly, rules or no rules, and the thought scared her a bit, so she didn't want to have to admit to it out loud. And then there was the other issue:

She didn't want to be talked out of it.

So here she was, a woman on a mission. Jen skirted around other pedestrians as she walked down the crowded sidewalks, clutching the paper bag of hot food in her hand. Stuffed in her jacket pocket was the sticky note on which she'd scrawled down his address after finding it in his onboarding file, which she very certainly wasn't supposed to be going through. All of the teachers' standard paperwork was locked in a cabinet in the corner of her workspace since she was the closest thing the school had to an HR department, but she barely ever touched it—she'd maybe opened it once or twice to find some people's phone numbers.

Jen knew from the get-go that there was absolutely no way she was going to cook for him considering that she had neither the time nor skill to do that, but she'd remembered what he ordered from that little sandwich shop they went to last month. The game plan was to leave it on his doorstep, knock on the door, and then make her escape before he had time to answer it. That way she didn't have to explain herself.

Anyone would appreciate some good food when they were sick, right? She convinced herself that it was a fair exchange – since he had already been inside her apartment, it wouldn't be the end of the world for her to see the outside of his – but it all sounded a bit (or a lot) stalkerish in her head.

The wind was unceasing, and as it grew sharper, she began to regret her decision more and more. But she was almost there now and had spent perfectly good money on this food, so she wasn't about to let it go to waste.

She turned onto a less busy street and slowed in front of a building that looked much like hers. Stepping to the edge of the sidewalk as to avoid getting yelled at or plowed over by foot traffic, she pulled the crumpled paper out of her pocket to double-check that she had the right place. Once that was done, she sucked in a deep breath of the cold air and scurried up the front steps, praying that he didn't happen to be looking out of one of the front windows right now.

The food was possibly cold by now, but it was the thought that counted, right? After she found his door, she carefully set the bag on the doormat, quickly rapped on the door a couple of times, and then bolted like her life depended on it.

For five, maybe ten seconds, she thought the victory was won. She'd made it back down the steps and a short ways down the sidewalk and had nearly gotten to the street corner when she heard, "Jen?!"

He must have been able to answer the door faster than she hoped. She kept her head down and refused to look back, trying to blend into the city like a shadow.

It didn't work. Robert's voice was getting hoarser as he continued calling her name, but he was unrelenting, and a hand suddenly reached out and grabbed her arm before she could make it to the crosswalk. He whirled her around to face him and then abruptly yanked his hand away as if the contact with her had burned him.

"Jen," he breathed, his voice so low it was almost a hiss. His eyes were dark, cheeks flushed red with fever. Heat seemed to radiate off of him in waves from beneath the jacket that was hastily thrown on, not quite zipped up all the way. "What are you doing?"

Were her cheeks not already as scarlet as could be from the temperature outside, he would have noticed her begin to blush. "What are you doing running out here in the cold? You're gonna make yourself sicker-"

He irritably ran his hand through his hair and took a small step back, looking like he wanted to snap at her but was trying to restrain himself. "You know what I'm talking about. You think you can just show up after telling me to leave you alone-"

"Are you mad at me?" she asked simply.

Now that they were face to face, she didn't regret coming to him. She could handle it if he were angry—at least she'd be able to see his emotions. The constant skirting around each other at work and not knowing what the other was feeling was starting to become infuriating in its own right.

"I don't understand you," he said tersely.

She tried with all her might to push back against the sting she felt as those words came off of his lips with seemingly little effort. She told herself that he was just confused, that this sickness was just making him annoyed. But a sliver of pain still made it through her walls and prodded at her heart; for she'd believed him to understand her quite well, and it was what she appreciated about him above all else.

Reading his letters had brought to her mind a quote from Wuthering Heights – one of her favorite quotes despite the actual context of it being rather problematic. 'Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.'

She was quite aware that it was rather dramatic to connect such a saying to a man she'd only recently met, but Jen couldn't stop herself from coming back to it. For all her efforts to pin down what precisely it was about Robert that drew her towards him so intensely, all she came up with was, He just gets me.

She raised her chin slightly, refusing to look too hurt. "Well, it's quite simple. I...I was worried about you."

His eyebrows knitted in confusion. "Worried?" he echoed.

"Yes, are you going to make me repeat myself?!" she flared in embarrassment. "It was clearly foolish of me, but I can assure you it won't be happening again."

He was silent aside from the tense, unsteady sound of each breath that left his lungs. He was looking at Jen in a way that she could not decipher. His gaze was guarded, dark as the bottom of the sea and unreachable as all the secrets of heaven and hell. Yet it was also the most honest, the most vulnerable she'd seen him since he'd pulled back from her lips and uttered her name.

Her breath hitched in her chest and in a moment of weakness, she lifted her hand to gently cup his cheek. She caught herself just in time, placing the back of her palm on his forehead instead, though the gesture was still more tender than she should have allowed. His skin was blazing with the warmth of fever and he stiffened nearly imperceptibly under her touch.

It occurred to her then, as his lips parted as if to say something to her, that he wasn't in a state to be thinking entirely straight.

"Your food's going to get cold if you don't get back to it," she said quickly, before he could speak any words he might regret later.

"You're going to get cold running around outside like this." With that, he sighed, and Jen saw some of the tension leave his shoulders. His frustration appeared to be burning away as he mumbled, "Come on, let's get you warmed up for a minute."

He turned and left without another word, and she was completely still for the few seconds it took her to realize that he was telling her to follow him inside. This is a bad idea, she thought, and yet she ran after him anyway.

He didn't fumble with his keys while opening the door like she would if the situation were reversed. Even while sick, his movements were more graceful than her own, like an ethereal figure from one of those many paintings they'd seen together. The next thing she observed was that he hadn't been lying when he said that his apartment was the same layout as her own. His was more cluttered than hers, though she didn't perceive it as being messy; it felt well-loved, like a home and not just a place where someone lived.

Jen hovered reluctantly right inside the door, acutely aware of the fact that she was an outsider in a place where she didn't belong.

Robert glanced towards her and saw her hesitancy. "The couch doesn't bite," he noted. "Nor do the chairs, in case you were wondering."

"Thank you for the clarification." Jen drifted towards the kitchen table; for some reason, it felt like more neutral territory than the couch. "I was very concerned for a second."

He cracked a little smile, and for that moment, all was well between them.

There were a couple of used mugs on the table, which he sheepishly whisked away. "Sorry it's a little messy, I wasn't expecting any guests."

Considering that he was ill enough to call out of work, that much seemed obvious. Jen, feeling intrusive despite being invited inside, carefully took the cups from a perplexed Robert and carried them to the sink.

"Luckily for you," she said as she rinsed them and then set them aside. "I don't mind tidying up. Besides, I wouldn't judge someone by the state of their home when they're sick."

She would have offered to help him more if she thought he would even consider allowing her to do so, but knowing that he wouldn't, she settled into one of the kitchen chairs. He already looked perplexed enough about her moving the dirty dishes.

"Do you, ah, want some coffee or something?" he offered politely.

Jen was on the cusp of rejecting, but the words died on her lips as she realized that she'd be sitting at his table with nothing to occupy her hands with.

"That depends," she said, remembering one of the very first things he told her about himself. "Is it as good as the cheap gas station kind?"

Jen found the coffee to be substantially better than the kind one might procure late at night from the side of the interstate, which she only ever drank in moments of true desperation when driving home from Woods Crossing and needing to stay alert. She looked at Robert through the sheen of fine vapor that wafted off her cup and softened his features, waiting for him to say more yet also enjoying the silence.

She thought about doing anything besides what they were doing now. About reaching across the table for his hand, about moving to the couch so that he might lay his head on her shoulder and rest, about kissing him and letting the fevered frenzy take over and dealing with the consequences afterward. But no, she knew he would push her away the second she tried to do any of those things.

After a period of peacefully sipping coffee and not knowing what to make of each other, he quietly admitted, "I didn't think you wanted much to do with me anymore."

Oh, you idiot, she thought, her hand tightening on the handle of the mug she was now holding. I want everything to do with you.

"I'm sorry-" she stood up a bit too hastily. "Thank you for the coffee, but we both know I shouldn't be here."

With much effort – though hopefully it didn't appear that way – she tore her eyes off of him and started towards the door.

"Jen?"

Her name had fallen off his lips several times today, but this was the first time it sounded hopeful. It was enough to make her hesitate. Slowly, she turned and lifted her eyes back up to his.

Finally – finally – she saw a longing that mirrored her own.

"Do you regret it?" he asked softly, like he was afraid to hear the answer.

Oh, if only this were easier. If only she could say yes and be telling the truth.

"I wish I did," she said sadly, trying to muster a small goodbye smile. "But no, I can't."

Jen was out the door in a flurry of long hair, scarf, and woolen coat before he could get in another word. It wasn't until she was already gone, until she was already crossing the street, that she realized she should have asked him the same question. He might have been looking for a chance to tell her his answer.

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A/N:

ah, the angst.

also, i'm sending myself to jail for that sausage pun, so the rest of the chapters of this book will be published from prison. i hope the wifi's good there.

please comment and vote on this chapter if you enjoyed it!