Jack grabs Lia's head and pulls it to his chest, waiting for the tears to come. When they do, he pulls her head to his face, ensuring they see eye to eye. No matter how many times she cries, it always pains him to see the two black streaks that roll down the outer edges of her face.
To her, it seems as if she is shedding enough mascaramixed tears to turn the world black.
Her world black.
She tries to hide that. She tries to look away, yet Jack's hands do not budge. They tighten around her cheeks, clenching her jaw. When she finds she cannot move her head, she rolls her eyes away.
"Stop fighting and look at me."
Lia complies, and Jack lowers his hand from her face and extends both arms, waiting for a hug. She latches on to him like a breastfeeding, newborn child to its mother. After moments pass, he slides his hand underneath her knees, picks her body up, and slides her onto his lap to rock his baby to sleep. She buries her face deep into his chest, and with two fistfuls of fabric, shakes violently.
He rests his chin on her head, feeling her beautiful hair soft with comfort. He wraps his hands around her, hoping that if he squeezes tight enough, just maybe all the problems will go away. Rocking her back and forth, moving his arm up and down her back, he attempts to soothe her, and as his eyes peer at the man-made sun, a single tear crawls from his left eye down to his cheek.
"We're in this together and whatever you're thinking, whatever you're scared of, it won't happen," he whispers, hoping he can get through her shaken frame. He closes his eyes as the two of them continue rocking back and forth, back and forth, hoping she can hear him, hoping she acknowledges her value to him. Many minutes pass and eventually her body stills. Her hands fall to her side, and she does not speak for a long time.
Her hands clench his shirt. "I'm scared, Jack." Her voice is barely audible, muffled by her sobs. "I'm fucking scared. I have no clothes and no money. I don't have nothing no more. I just want to go home."
"That's not true, baby. We have a home, and we have us, and that's all we need in this world. You look down to that city. That isn't a home, that's a prison. Right now, we have the world to call our home. Right now, we can go anywhere you want to live. Right now, we have more freedom than anyone in the world, and if you call that nothing, then all I need is nothing, because as far as I'm concerned, nothing needs us."
Like a little groundhog, she raises her head with a little smile. "What if we get lost?" she asks, her teary voice like that of a frog.
Jack returns her smile. When he was younger, his father and he would take trips to the major cities in the States, always heading to the next big NFL game. Every time they left, Jack would always ask that same question, and his father always gave the same reply: "Well, Lia, if we get lost, we'll ask directions!"
He remembers his father's smile, the one he will never see again, yet he will always cherish those memories.
He wonders how his dad must feel right now, Jack—his only son—throwing away all the NCAA scholarships sitting at his door, ignoring all the Canadian universities screaming his name. Disappearing into the night, never to be seen again— all for a damn girl. The city that once screamed his name doesn't even blink as they fall from its existence.
Is this what it's like to die?
Forgotten?
Does anything even matter after death?
The world keeps moving, almost as if nothing has changed.
Almost.
"I miss my mother, Jack. I know she is worried sick and my fa—" Looking up at her lover, Lia's eyes grow cold and her jaw comes down on her tongue. She winces at the sharp pain. She can taste blood. She sees how the mention of her father triggers his beautiful green irises to turn red. She doesn't mean to mention him. Honest. She loves Jack. But at one point in her life, she loved her father too. Could she ever tell Jack that?
"I'm sor—"
"I don't want to hear about your father."
"I know, I'm sorry."
And that is when she witnesses for the first time the flash of a hand followed by a sharp pain in her left cheek. Leaning back, stunned by the pulsating skin beneath her left eye, she apologizes once more.
He looks at her then drops his hand as quickly as possible. Still wielding that thought for an eternal love, they both sit in shock. Does he hate her father that much that he, an emotional rock, just hit his girlfriend? Holding back the tears, he manages to call out a pathetic "I'm sorry."
Lia reaches forward through the pain and grips him, looking in his eyes. "No, no. It's my fault. I understand. I understand why you did it." She nods. "I know why you did it, and I understand. Yes, oh yes I do!" Her face swells with tears. "I do," she continues to nod like a bobble-head, as if nodding at a quick speed will soften the fall of pain. "I know you love me and care so much about me. I know you do, I know it's so."
He wishes she didn't accept what he did. Barely thirty seconds have passed, yet she's forgiven him. In defense, he didn't see it coming. But sometimes, actions are quicker than thought. Sometimes, you just do things and ask yourself why. To be fair, it's not every day you're running away from the world.
He didn't wake up to help murder a man, to run away with his daughter. He feels crazy. He feels like a coward. Yet Jack rides his shame and instead takes the approach of anger. He grabs Lia by her shoulders and pushes her off his lap, forcing her to sit beside him.
"Your dad said he was sorry, didn't he? But was he sorry? No, he fucking wasn't!"
She can feel his anger. What she doesn't know is that it wasn't anger towards her, but anger towards himself. She wishes she hadn't said anything about her father. Every time she thinks of him, she wants to cry. She wants to break down. She can only imagine what he must be feeling, how he must feel to hear about something that had been done to her over and over—yet he couldn't stop it. He was powerless to help.
She wants to kill him...
Yet, he's already dead.
"Your dad was a dirty man. He hurt you, pressed himself on you. He beat you. He punished you. Don't you forget him. Don't you forget that office. Did you forget about that time he forced you to stand in the center of his office with nothing on but a book above your head, the time he sat there and wrote down every single detail about your...?"
Jack clenches his fist. He feels his heart slowly being ripped from his chest. Tears fall from his eyes, and he shakes his head side to side frantically, wishing none of the above had occurred. He indeed felt powerless, and nothing is worse than a man having no power over those he loves.
A man's value is built upon the power he holds on others.
"I just wish I could have stopped all this. I just want to live a normal life and I just want to—"
She reaches out and hugs him despite his refusal. Men are supposed to be tough, war-hardened. He was a football player, a damn good one too. Nothing is expected to get to him. Emotions of a rock.
Yet, she a woman, the weakest of the two species, finds the shakes return as she is unable to answer. She can't answer. Instead, she does what she knows all too well: run to her mother for comfort and cry and cry until her mother tells her it will be all right. Yet, Lia has grown to know long after she cries herself to sleep in her mother's arms that her mother would follow the same path.
Where is my mother? Where is my brother?
Why do you run away without me, Mom?
Do you love me?
On instinct, she buries her face inside Jack's shirt. She feels the urge to vomit, the urge to kill the already dead man. She wants to hate her father so badly for what he put her through. But after tonight, she doesn't know what to think or who to love.
Even I, as I sit here in the stars, can't wrap my head around the word. That word. Even as I sit here hearing the sobs as a witness to love, I understand this story will not be one without tears; it will be one of many, many tears and heartbreaks. Of many betrayals, of many twists and turns. Yet, no matter the path, the ending is just the same.