#privtbt

❝  her favorite blanket is in the front patch.   it’s old,  yes,  but it’s her favorite  ---   so we don’t talk about it.  medicine is in the top pocket.  exactly 7 pm every night  ----  do not forget.  she won’t,  but she’ll pretend she does,  so you have to stay on her.   she’s allergic to shellfish  ---  you know what,  avoid fish restaurants entirely.  and  ----  ❞   head shakes,  but she has yet to take a full breath.    ❝  and she doesn’t like anything spicy  ----   seriously,  anything.  if it’s even the slightest bit tangy,  she’ll freak.  don’t do that to her.  ❞  she moves the back around,  hand sliding over it.    ❝  phone charger is here,  ❞   she says,  tapping the side pocket.  ❝  but no phone after dinner.  she doesn’t take it to bed with her.  that’s the rule,  she knows the rule  ----  but you have to enforce it.   you have to,  jacob.  i’ve packed clothes for warm weather,  cold weather,   and in between.  weather is unpredictable,  i don’t want her to panic.  pajamas are in the bottom.  ❞  finally,  she takes a breath,  moving the bag over to him.  ❝  and you’re picking her up from school at 3:30,  yes?  no later.  ❞  eyes peer up at him,  her head tilting to the side.  ❝  you’ll call me if something goes wrong?  ❞   if he doesn’t,  she’ll call him first.  ❝  this is a big deal for her.  she hasn’t stopped talking about it all week.  your whole weekend is dedicated to her,  right?  that’s what she’s expecting.   she needs that.  ❞   and beth needs to see how he does.  

she had done it millions of times before,  all on her own,  yet it was proving to be more difficult this time around  ----   hair littered with dirt and whatever else.  now that she had become more open to being more exposed,  she wasn’t wearing her headscarf as much,  nor was she trying to hide behind a hoods.  instead,  she was attempting to braid her hair,  not because of how it would look,  but because she wanted to find a new way to get her hair away from her face.  her eyes look up at her hesitantly,  instinct telling her to say no,  to not let anyone help her with anything,  but with her,  it was always different.  it was so hard to say no to her,  especially when whatever it was meant she was coming closer.   ❝  you don’t have to,  ❞   she insists first,  as if she must give her an out.  but with a deep breath,  she nods her head.  ❝  yeah.  okay.  ❞  there are only a few select people emori allows to get this close  ----  erin being one of them. if she wants to braid her hair,  or if she wants to do anything to it,  emori trusts her.

she knows it’s not.  because if she were to take credit for something that dean did wrong,  she would lose every bit of strength she had built up in herself since finding out what kind of man he really was  —-  and she refuses to lose any part of herself,  especially for him.  it’s not just about being cheated on,  it’s not just about being lied to or betrayed,  it’s not just about the way her family had been destroyed by this.  it’s about what was between them.

or rather,  what wasn’t.  

because it was more clear now than ever that her feelings for dean had been so heightened on the surface yet never dug deeper.  she wanted to believe she loved him,  because she was taught that was how her life was supposed to go  —-   marry the high school sweetheart with a clear path for his future,  one she could spend her life taking care of while she tended to his needs and waited as he brought home the bacon. but that was only how she was trained.  this isn’t who she wanted to be. she was good at being a housewife,  but she was better at being beth.

she wasn’t in love with him.  she pretended she was,  for far too long  —-  but with jake back in her life now,  the truth was clearer than ever.  the love she had feigned for dean doesn’t match up to the love she had for jake,  long before she ever knew she could have a future with dean.  she spent years convincing herself that jake wasn’t the right man for him because of what his future had in store  —-  but just because dean had his life set out for him didn’t make him better.  he didn’t have the passion jake had,  certainly not with her.  jake still does.

❝  don’t worry,  jacob.  i will not be taking credit for dean’s faults.  the man is a lot of things  —-  a coward,  certainly  —-  but he is no longer the man who gets any sort of power over me.  ❞  no one does anymore.    that’s why she’s working so hard to get complete control over her life again  —-  why she sought out jake.   

it also means she’s taking credit for what is her fault.

❝  but what i’ve done to you  ----  what i’ve kept from you  ----  that is my fault.  i can pretend it was his,  or my parents,  or anyone else’s,  but it’s not.  it wasn’t fair for me to keep such a big part of your life from you.  and it certainly wasn’t fair for me to pretend you weren’t part of our life,  too.  you are.  ❞    she hopes he knows that now,  that he was not just some guy of her past.  he’s her daughter’s father,  and he’s the boy she’s always been in love with  -----  the man she loved more than the man she was supposed to love.  ❝  you still are.  you’re always going to be.  ❞   and while dean will be too,  there’s a difference between the two  -----  because jake is the only one she wants around.   ❝  i like having you here.  it’s working for us.  ❞