There’s something familiar about him now, but later, in the stark brightness of daylight and sobriety, Mel will marvel at her lack of recognition and mental acuity.
She had been properly warned, after all, Caitlyn taking her aside and doing that wringing of her delicate hands that serve as a tell for when she’s nervous about something. Mel thinks at first it's about the wedding planning.
“You need to stop worrying, Cait, and enjoy this time.” They’ve been harried, flitting from one boutique to another, checking the RSVP list, and commandeering the florists because neither Cait nor Mel are able to completely surrender control to the wedding planner.
“It’s not that, Mel.” She looks almost guilty, expression darkening and apprehension clear on the line of her brow. Mel’s brow raises as she watches Cait steel herself, preparing to say whatever torrid information she must share, despite the risk of Mel’s wrath (Mel could never be displeased with Caitlyn). “Jayce will be at the wedding,” Caitlyn says in one sharp exhale, blue eyes darting between Mel’s eyes, twisting her fingers together.
His name smarts like a wound. One she had buried, but never forgotten. Now, Mel feels like the wind has been knocked out of her at the mention of him. (She’d thought she would be over this by now. It’s been years. Years. ) “We received his RSVP this morning, and I do not want you to be blindsided when he shows up.” There’s a knot in her chest that feels stuck. Stuffy, strange and threatening to become all consuming, but Mel tamps down on the foreign emotion. She fixes her expression steadfastly, feigning nonchalance. Her emotional state is not what matters right now. It is about Caitlyn. Lovely, sweet Caitlyn who worries too much and wants this wedding to be perfect and everyone to have a good time despite the fact it is her day.
“Caitlyn, he’s your brother. Of course he should be here.” Mel reaches out to rub her hands over Caitlyn’s shoulders in reassurance. “It would have been disgraceful if he hadn’t. Already borderline scandalous that he waited this long to RSVP. Bad manners, in my opinion. The wedding is a month away!”
Caitlyn’s laugh reminds her of tinkling bells, light and airy. Her head thrown back, dark ponytail the color of night sky flowing over her shoulder, bright blue eyes filled with joy. Resilient, considering the share of sorrow she has experienced in her lifetime. The loss and pain that shines in her eyes. Her friend is brave, dauntless. But Mel knows the truth behind the way Caitlyn presents herself to the world. The effort behind her practiced composure. Grief paints her in even on her most carefree of days, and Caitlyn's loss is a mother shaped spectre made real.
Mel watches her as Caitlyn shakes her head, rereading the letter in her slender hands. Caitlyn deserves to have this, to be happy. And she is cautiously happy. Mel knows that she's only really just found stability, and Mel will do anything to protect it. To protect her.
Jayce Talis is the least of her concerns.
The day of the wedding is beautiful and bright.
Everything is draped in varying shades of blue and plumb, and painted in understated wealth. Fairy lights are draped everywhere beneath the large white tent on the green, the rolling hills and Kiramman country estate serving as a picturesque backdrop for the Kirraman-O’Connal nuptials. The wedding truly was to be the event of the season, with wealthy heirs, socialites, politicians, and merchants traveling from as distant as Ionia, to wish the happy couple well.
The wedding planner, Sky Young, a smart and detail-oriented woman out of Sapphilite Row, has more than proven her worth with how smoothly the wedding has come together. Mel idly makes note of her name as she squeezes in a few last touches on the pure white of Caitlyn’s sheer veil. They stand beside one another, as the rest of the wedding party walks up to the front. Caitlyn’s slender hand slips into Mel’s and Mel smiles at her, giving it a tight squeeze.
“It’s your day, darling,” she whispers into her ear. “Seize your future with Vi and take hold of the happiness it offers you.” Teary eyed behind her veil, Caitlyn gives her a watery smile that Mel finds herself returning. Mel squeezes her hand once more, before the music cues her walk down the aisle.
She hasn’t seen Jayce since he left seven years ago. And he remains seemingly unchanged. The sight of him is nearly too much, and her grip grows tighter around the stem of her flowers.
She sees faces she knows, mutual friends of Caitlyn and Vi. Two worlds colliding. And she sees Viktor’s face, placid and open, a glint in his eye as he watches her approach, knuckles white around the handle of his cane. Mel beams as she walks past him, to take her place at the altar, beside Isha, Jinx, Maddie, and Orianna. Across the altar, she and Vi exchange small smiles, even as Vi shifts impatiently in her white tuxedo. She seems just as nervous as Caitlyn does.
Mel stands to what will be the left of the bride, teary eyes as Jinx shifts beside her. Light catches against the vivid blue of her hair, braided and styled elegantly, and littered with graphic pins like stars. She had been very calm this morning, almost thoughtful as Mel's fingers moved through her locks. Mel was pleasantly surprised when Jinx had come to her, bed head and all, and asked her to style her hair, despite a professional stylist having been secured for the occasion.
Mel, curious about it, had brought it up to Cait. “She's very picky about who she lets close,” her friend murmured, watching Jinx help Isha with her hair, “Vi says that if she lets you close, she trusts you.” Mel wonders what kind of life Jinx had, growing up in foster care before Vi got her out. Jinx, though something of a livewire, had been uncharacteristically still she observed the build up to the ceremony. Now, she stands beside Mel as a bridesmaid, one hand in Isha’s and the other hand holding Isha's flower girl basket.
And all too soon, there he is. Clean-shaven and sharp in the blue suit Caitlyn has chosen months ago, Jayce Talis walks Caitlyn down the aisle. Caitlyn is a vision beside him, and ohs and ahs float from those gathered, but all Mel can hear is the drumbeat of her pulse in her ears. She hasn’t seen Jayce since he left seven years ago. And he remains seemingly unchanged. The sight of him is nearly too much, and her grip grows tighter around the stem of her flowers. Mel struggles to school her features as her eyes rove over him. She feels his presence like a physical blow, his nearness like a drug, as he casts a blinding smile as he deposits Caitlyn’s hand in Vi’s outstretched one, with a kiss to his sister’s cheek, before slipping back to stand a little ways behind Mel.
Mel sees Jinx grin from the corner of her eye, as Jayce comes to stand behind them. Her spine straightens, limbs tighten and lock as she feels the warmth of him on her exposed back. Mel is here with Viktor. She doesn’t have the bandwidth to care about Jayce Talis and the ghost of what they had been.
He slipped into her life one day. Nothing loud, nothing grand. Unassuming. One day he wasn’t there, and then the next day, he was, popping up and carving a cozy, well worn space into her life as though it had always been there. Like her always would be. Naturally.
Realistically, Mel had no time for love. And she hadn’t thought of love when Caitlyn first introduced her to Jayce Talis. With her schedule, her mother's expectations, and her family's reputation, Mel had little time for herself, and even less time for another person. She did not exist as a person, outside of her family's name. And while much was expected of Rell and Kino, they had more room for failure. Ambessa had them on a loose leash. But everything was expected of Mel. Not only by Ambessa, but by Menelik too.
Jayce Talis, though, seemed made to prove her wrong in every way. He was unlike anyone Mel had ever known. Jayce was a breath of fresh air. He lent himself to loving and lived life with a carefree abandon that Mel could not help but envy him for. She hated him for it, at first. She'd been absent from her life for much of it, trapped behind the confines of her mother's expectations.
Jayce made her want to challenge everything Mel had ever known. He made her adventurous, impulsive in a way the confines of her life had never allowed. With him, she felt free.
There was a time Mel remembers, they all remember, when he meant more than anyone—and anything—in the entire world. Of all the stars in Mel’s life, Jayce Talis shone the brightest, with his unassuming charm. It started with a smile. Sheepish, and far too wide not to be genuine. It only took a smile to damn her heart, to leave the imprint of his name on its tender flesh, his laughter an echo that would haunt her for years.
Worst of all has been the wanting. Jayce Talis inspired a greed in Mel she had never known before. She wanted to live, she wanted to live in violent color and untempered emotion. Mel wanted sweat on her skin and stars in her hair and the taste of Jayce lips on hers. She desired his warmth beneath her fingertips and a smile air marked just for her. Mel wanted that more than she wanted her mother's approval.
Which is why she was certain that whatever she felt for Jayce Talis and his sunny smiles and generally endearing demeanor would have no choice but to die a quick death. Before whatever fledgling thing between them bloomed into something real. Into something Mel could neither rationalize nor hide any longer.
But the world, in the curious way it worked, chose to give Mel just what she wanted. He kissed her first, in the still of the library as they studied side by side. They were never more than best friends, yet their touches and the looks in their eyes betrayed them. And the softness in her voice when she told Rell about him over video call. Her sister's eyes had narrowed in that knowing way, and Mel had immediately told her not to breathe a word to Ambessa about him. That they were only friends.
But in her heart, she knew the truth. Jayce Talis was more than a friend, even if Mel refused to admit it.
Mel doesn’t care.
It’s what she tells herself over and over through the afternoon and into the night, actively doing her best to avoid him as she stands at Caitlyn’s side, a smile stretched too wide on her face that her cheeks ache with the stiffness of it. Mel feels like a mannequin. A doll on Viktor’s arm. Even as her eyes dart to every broad-shouldered shadow that even appears to resemble his form. One she'd know, even in the dark. Even on a night without stars.
Mel is in another man's arms but time slows, and it feels like she and Jayce are the only ones here. His gaze leaves her raw, vulnerable, exposed as whatever was between them rises up from the ashes of the past.
When the night slows syrupy, drowning in music, wine, and colorful lights, that is when her eyes find him again. What lives between them is magnetic, the way his gaze is already on her. His eyes are warm over the glass of whiskey he nurses across the large white wedding tent. It's a shock to Mel's system, like she’s been dunked under cold water, and his gaze sends a full body shiver down her spine. Jayce has always had trouble with staring. She'd always admonished him about it, warned him that others might take it as a threat, though when that gaze had been turned on her, it made her feel desired. Years later, it has the same effect.
Mel is in another man's arms but time slows, and it feels like she and Jayce are the only ones here. His gaze leaves her raw, vulnerable, exposed as whatever was between them rises up from the ashes of the past. Rebirth of the most pathetic parts of her, aspects of herself she's long left under lock and key so as never to experience that again. But his amber eyes undoes it all in her, leaves her head spinning, and her heart naked on the dancefloor.
She leaves the tangle of bodies to find the one person who, though he might not understand the tumult of her emotions, is capable of grounding her. The reception is still just as crowded as it has been hours earlier, when the sun still shone. Only the older guests, and those with children had retired early.
Her partner stands by the refreshments table, having lost his suit jacket and now sporting the oxford she'd watched him meticulously starch the night before, its sleeves rolled up at his elbows. Leaning on his cane, he inspects the fare and questions the server who shifts uncomfortably before him. A smile makes its way to her face as Mel crosses the distance between them, her dress swishing around her legs and heels in hand. She needs a drink.
He is her undoing, circumventing the very programming of her practice and divests her of logic.
The wind is still humid with summer heat, and the silk of her bridesmaid dress clings uncomfortably to her thighs as the sweat starts to cool on her skin.
She sidles up to Viktor and lays her head against his shoulder. Viktor turns to smile at her, made incredibly soft in the dimness of the fairy lights, before turning back to the hors d'oeuvres laid out before them. “And you say none of these use imitation crab?” Viktor asks somewhat incredulously, that thoughtful crease Mel finds very endearing in display between his brow. His hair falls into his eyes as he bends slightly forward, as if to better inspect the offending dish.
“I'm not sure,” the server says, their voice quivering with discomfort. “As I said, I'd have to ask my manager, or the chef.” Mel almost feels sorry for the server as she swipes a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. She lifts it to her lips, and glances around. Fruity. She preferred her champagne dry.
Viktor glances up, brow quirking incredulously. ‘Shouldn't a waitperson know the components of whatever is on the menu?” He inquires, seemingly oblivious to the server's discomfort. Mel is about to chide him, gently draw him away to grant the poor server some reprieve when he speaks.
“Viktor, still haven't broken out of the habit of casual interrogation, I see.” Mel knows his voice before she glances at him over her shoulder, and yet, she can't seem to stop herself.
Jayce Talis stands off the side, observing them with a look of faint amusement on his features. He wears a different outfit from the crisp dark blue suit and white oxford he’d worn in the ceremony. Now, he wears a deep green, shirt sleeved henley, paired with dark gray slacks and black loafers. Mel might argue that his outfit is too casual for a reception such as this one, but she sips her drink instead. His clothing wraps around his body like a glove, and Jayce makes it work. Damn him. She looks away.
“Jayce!” Viktor exclaims, fondness evident in his voice as he turns himself and Mel to face Jayce. “It is good to see you, old friend. I looked for you after the ceremony.” His accent is calming, as grounding as the slender arm curled possessively around her waist.
“Pardon my friend's inquiry, and thank you for your patience,” Jayce says to the server, throwing a charming grin their way as he walks closer to them. The air shifts, grows thick with tension, and goosebumps form along the exposed skin of Mel's arms and back.
Viktor doesn't notice. He continues his conversation with Jayce, attention diverted from the server in favor of releasing Mel to give Jayce a firm handshake in greeting. “How is Bel'zhun treating you? Well, I hope?” Viktor glances around the tent. Mel does not, her eyes fluttering up to Jayce. Moth to flame.
“And how is Camille? I don’t see her.”
“She’s good,” he says, but his eyes remain fixed on Mel. Heavy like a warning. She holds herself back, answering his persistent perusal with careful disinterest. “She had business, so she couldn’t join me for the festivities.”
“Shame,” Viktor murmurs, and Mel elbows him subtly, smiling. It's well known that Viktor and Camille have… little appreciation for one another’s company and even less patience.
“Viktor, behave,” she laughs, shaking her head. To Jayce, she says, with as much casual cordiality as she can muster: “You look well, Jayce.”
The weight of his gaze grows heavier at her acknowledgement of his presence. “It’s good to see you, Mel.” But she hears so much left unsaid in those words. His desire remains, unhidden within the amber depths of his eyes. She drinks it down, his steadfast attention. Mel knows she shouldn't, but she leans forward, out of Viktor's orbit and into Jayce, pressing a chaste kiss on his cheek.
“Glad you are back,” she says, inhaling a scent masculine, smoky, and distinctly him. It leaves her light headed and she returns to the safety of Viktor's embrace. Being near Jayce feels like playing with fire. “Caitlyn missed you terribly. She'd never have forgiven you if you hadn’t shown.” Mel glances at Viktor now, smiling conspiratorially at him as though she's sharing an inside joke between them. Viktor gives her an amused chuckle, nodding sagely.
Viktor grounds her, the movement of his thumb soothing against the exposed skin of her back, but Mel feels as wild as the flicker in Jayce's eyes. Untamed. “Vi would have found me, I'm sure. Hunted me down and dragged me back to grovel.” His voice is low, gravelly and incredibly intimate in her estimation. It threatens to roll down her spine, and Mel refuses to allow him yet another shiver, especially this close. Still, goosebumps ripple across her skin.
Something sensual stirs in his gaze, intense with longing. Mel wonders if her eyes hold the same. If her yearning can be seen just as clearly as she can see his on display. She has always been a master of repressing her desires, hiding them away from the eyes of others. She had learned young that to want something and to have it known was to betray yourself. To show yourself weak against the world. Desires could always be held against her.
With Jayce, all her prior practice has gone out the window. He is her undoing, circumventing the very programming of her practice and divests her of logic. Her connection to him had been nothing trivial. They were not friends. At one time in history, he had been her heart personified. He was the living, breathing cumulation of her wanting. Her deepest desires began and ended with him, and Mel saw those truths reflected in the golden pools of his eyes. She looks away, the knot in her throat growing thick. Threatening to choke. She swallows around it, clears her throat. And obvious retreat. She wonders if Viktor knows. If he can feel the oppressive weight of words left unsaid in the air between them.
She's fanned the flames of something that she was sure had mellowed and drawn into itself over time. But the fervent tension between them is once again drawn tight and poised to snap. Mel makes her retreat, wandering out from beneath the tent onto the green, leaving Viktor to chat with Jayce.
She feels those eyes follow her all the way.
When the accident happened, Jayce was first to get the call.
They’d been tangled in his sheets, curled about one another like a mythological creature, exhausted after a late night spent studying for their upcoming finals.
He almost slept through it (he could sleep through anything, this had been scientifically proven), but Mel, light sleeper that she was, had awoken on the first ring. It had been loud, the ringtone. Something jarring. Unholy. Like air horns. He used that ringtone for the people most important to him, he'd told her one day, as she had watched her assign it to her in his contacts. She'd tried not to smile and failed, beaming at the implication she was important to him. “Oh, so I’m important to you?” The thought had filled Mel with such euphoria; she was far above cloud ten with every kiss he placed on her lips.
“You know you are, friend,” he says, eyes lidded as his gaze flickered between her lips and her eyes. But the way he said friend… it sounded like so much more, and Mel loved it and feared it all at the same time.
It was not Mel calling him now. Caitlyn’s name flashed urgently on the screen on Jayce's nightstand. Mel squinted at the phone and its offending noise as her eyes adjusted. As her brain caught up. It was three in the morning on a Tuesday. Something was wrong.
Clambering over Jayce, her bones connected to the soft parts of him and he jolted awake as Mel answered the phone. Her thumb swiped upward and the moment the call connected, Mel placed it on speaker. Jayce, still half asleep, leaned into her as Mel said: “Caitlyn? Caitlyn, can you hear me? Are you alright?”
The static crackled maliciously at her, and Mel heard what she could only describe as dry heaving, before the phone was moved and she could hear more clearly. Deep sobs filled the room, and Mel stiffened, Jayce sitting up straighter behind her.
Vi’s voice over the phone: “Jayce, hello? Are you there?” Her voice, watery, sounded like an echo of herself. Something was desperately wrong. Panicked, Jayce grabbed the phone from Mel's hand. “I’m here. I'm here, what's wrong? Is Cait okay?”
The sobbing became wailing, and the hair on Mel's back rose.
“It's Cassandra and Tobias. They're dead. Car accident earlier this morning on the way back from the gala.” The silence that followed was soaked with shock and disbelief, but soon the grief began to trickle in. Jayce began to hiccup, a deep groan sounding in his chest as he staggered from the bed. He scratched at the bare skin of his chest, right above his heart, running his hand through his hair. Mel could only watch as he paced the length of his small dorm room, unmoored. inconsolable, began to chant the most broken litany of “No, that can't be. Say it isn't true. You're lying. No no no no no” into the phone, frantically looking for his keys. Mel took the phone from him then, taking Vi off speaker.
“Which hospital?” She asked, calm. Almost clinical. Cold.
“Oh, Mel, you're there. Good,” and Vi sounded so, so tired. Tired in a way only seeing your loved one in pain, a pain you were powerless to soothe, could be. Mel knew that brand of tiredness well.
“Goldway Memorial. Drive safely, yeah?” And then, she was gone.
Mel dressed them and drove them to the hospital, blinking back her own tears. Jayce sobs the entire way, his head bowed between his legs. He was overcome, nonverbal and hardly responsive but for the soul deep groans that echoed through his entire being. Mel glanced worriedly at him from the corner of her eye, itching to comfort him. To touch him.
After his mother had died leaving Jayce orphaned at eight years old, his godparents, Cassandra and Tobias Kiramman had adopted him, rather than sending Jayce to foster care. Jayce had grown up loved, cherished in this second family. And now, once again, he was experiencing the loss of his parents. Mel had lost her father once, when she was young. She could not imagine losing two sets of parents. How it must have broken Jayce. It was no better when they arrived at the hospital. Jayce hurried into the white belly of the hospital, leaving Mel behind in the darkness. She inhaled, steeling herself and locking the car door with shaking hands. Then, she followed him in.
The hospital was like all the hospitals she's ever visited. Clinical, so white it blinded. Lights too bright to be soft, the air thick with disinfectant and memories. She ignored those, stuffing them down as she followed Jayce through the halls until they found Caitlyn withered in Vi’s arms. Her hair hung limp, damp against the sunken hollow of her cheeks. A distant echo of the girl Mel knew. The siblings fell into each other's embrace the moment they saw each other, the hallway ringing anew with sobs that broke Mel's heart. Mel made a note to look up therapists after this. Both of them would need it. Mel and Vi could only do so much. Though each of them had experienced grief in fate’s cruel way, they were not equipped to help others through their own grief.
Still, Mel never left Jayce’s side. She did what she could. Held him through the worst of it, rocking him gently as grief wracked his body. The same way Kino had rocked her, all those years before. Jayce quaked in her arms, holding Caitlyn close. She had finally stopped sobbing enough for them to get water into her, but she now was pale, red-eyed, and listless in Jayce's embrace. She heard bits and pieces. Drunk driver. Fatalities. First degree. Explosion. Charred bodies.
Mel's heart trembled with her chest. Something was broken here, in the lives of people she held dear. She could only hope that time healed the wound that death inflicted. (Mel still hadn't healed from her wound. The gaping absence of her father, gone ten years past)
Right now, the music is pumping, the drinks are flowing, and she’s surrounded by bodies on what must be the most ethereal night she’s ever experienced. The summer night is a stunning canopy above the wedding party, stars gleaming like dims amidst the lanterns lighting the Kirraman country estate. It makes sense that the universe gives Caitlyn and Vi the clearest and most beautiful night. It owes it to them.
She’s lost Viktor to the crowd long ago, her partner more intent on debating the validity of certain proposals that had been made in the Council this week than watching Mel dance. He remains beneath the trench, surrounded by fairy lights and admirers of his intelligence, holding audience like a king on his throne.
There’s a stranger at her back, the heat of him permating and the line of his body hard along her. Instinctively, she knows who he is. She unravels beneath the roughed pads of his fingertips, the familiar weight of his hands on her hips. She feels alive in his hands, static sparking against her skin where he makes contact, and though they are in the midst of a throne of people, for all Mel can feel, it is only them on the dancefloor. At this wedding. Beneath the unending night sky.
And no one is paying attention to them. No one knows who they are, not really. And most importantly, no one knows what they were to each other. And even better, everyone is drunk. If they do know, they'll forget in the morning. Emboldened by this thought, Mel grinds back into him, turning around beneath his palms to throws her arms over his broad shoulders. He bends his neck to rest his head against hers. She's Caitlyn's maid of honor, and he's Caitlyn's prodigal brother returned from overseas, and no one cares what they could have been.
They dance three songs together, in sync. It's easy like this, when she's breathing his air, to forget something happened between them. To pretend that they never stopped. That he never left. That her heart hadn't been broken. It's easy to feel that they are the only ones in the world. That time stops for them and only them. That they only exist with each other, for each other, until they are one.
Suddenly, overwhelmed with the proximity of his lips to hers, overwhelmed by the heat of him, by the weight of what lay between them, Mel staggers backwards as though she's been dealt a physical blow. Ungracefully, but no matter. The look on his face is a knife to her heart, the shadows still dancing where they had stopped. Jayce wears his confusion, his longing out in the open, and still, years later, Mel reads him with a single glance. His hands, no longer on her hips, clench and unclench at his sides, as though he wants to reach for her.
Some siren song calls her to him, to comfort him. But Mel knows she needs to get away from him. She needs to remember the pain. She needs to remember why she should say no in the first place.
He came into her life one day, unassuming. And as unassuming as he came in, Jayce left. The fall out for his departure, however, was brutal.
On a day like any other, Mel face timed him. The results for her finals were posted, and she wanted Jayce on the phone while she checked. She didn't know when it had become a habit to call him before anyone else.
In the months following his parents death, Jayce was a shadow of himself, disappearing into his grief and allowing it to eclipse everything Mel loved about him. He was angry, bitter, and sullen.
Jayce refused her company, her help, content to wallow on his loss with Caitlyn at his side. And that was alright. Mel understood, even if the knowledge hurt. Still, Mel stood beside him at the funeral. She did not touch him, or seek his hand, but she was there. She only hoped it was enough. The way he looked at her now was so different from how he had looked at her before. Grief changed people, Mel knew this. But she wouldn't allow Jayce to lose himself to it. So she talked Caitlyn into therapy. Vi would drive her, as Caitlyn couldn't get behind a wheel. Not after the nature of her parents' passing.
During the moments Jayce was alone in his apartment, Mel visited him. He spent his time in bed, gazing at the wall. He wasn't taking care of himself; the beginnings of a beard shadowed his jaw, and his apartment was filled with weeks old takeout boxes. Jayce had forgotten to be human.
Mel talked to him when she was there, or sometimes she would play music. Soothing songs, to help him sleep. Caitlyn told her he hardly ever slept these days, unless she was near him. Unless he knew she was safe, as though he was afraid of losing her too. And when he did sleep, nightmares plagued him.
Mel cleaned up after him, tossing out the trash building up in his apartment and scrubbing things down. If her family could see her now, they would scoff. A Medarda heiress on her hands and knees, cleaning a toilet. And for free. Ambessa would curse at the very notion of it. Mel was determined though, to do what she could. So every week, though the remainder of the semester, she found herself at Jayce's apartment cleaning up after him. Restocking his food and meal prepping for him. Waiting for him to talk to her. Longing for him in the space between.
Sometimes, Mel grew so tired from cleaning and doing laundry at the coin laundry she knew Jayce frequented (she’d had to Google what sorting wa, after having found she could not mix colors with whites), that she fell asleep on the couch, curled up in one of his freshly laundered blankets.
She'd learned to take care of him, and in caring for him, to care for herself. Mel cooked her own meals, nothing gourmet, but tasty enough that she wanted to learn more. She wanted to win a smile from Jayce. She ironed his clothing, and folded his laundry. She wrote letters to the University on Jayce's behalf, so that his grades would not suffer like he suffered. So that there was one less thing for him to worry about.
Then, one day, Mel woke to Jayce standing over her, looking no less worse for wear. At first, Mel was afraid. Confused. Where was she? But as her brain cleared, slowly, she sat up, eyes fixed on him. Steady movements, so as not to startle him. Truly, he looked ready to dart back to his room and lock her out. The skin beneath his eyes was bruised with insomnia, and his skin looked shallow, devoid of its usual ruddiness. He had not left the apartment since the funeral. He hadn't left the room since the funeral.
She waited for him to speak. He didn't, not for a while. Jayce simply stared at her, eyes roving her face, as if he was looking for an answer to a question. When finally opened his mouth to speak, he asked for the number for Caitlyn's therapist. Mel gave it to him, her eyes never leaving him. She would've given him anything he asked for.
After that, there was slow but marked improvement in his temperament. Jayce washed his hair and trimmed his beard. He allowed her to drag him from his apartment and to the farmer's market. They made an adventure of doing laundry together. He helped her in the kitchen, and though he never laughed (she wasn't sure she'd ever see him laugh again) at her mishaps, she saw the smallest of smiles, and that was enough.
Jayce allowed her to stay over too, in his bed. She curled up around him as he curled into himself. Listened to his breathing until it evened out. And when the nightmares came for him–as they inevitably did–and he woke in tears, on the edge of another panic attack, she was there. She placed his hand on her heart, and her and on his, leaning their foreheads together and told him to breathe with her. And he would. It calmed him. Grounded him to have her there, he said. I love you, he whispered as he buried his face into her neck. And for the first time in her life, as she smiled serenely against his hair, Mel felt needed.
In her efforts to rehabilitate Jayce and return him to a semblance of who he had been, Mel found her own life slipping from her hands. She had no time for anyone outside of Jayce, and less time for studies that she had anticipated. She certainly had no time for her family. But Mel was happy, within the bubble she created with Jayce. No one outside it mattered, and time stopped for them.
The semester did not. Mel took hit after hit in her exams, exhaustion making it difficult for her to study after long days where she slowly reintroduced Jayce to the good things in the world. It was hard to keep track of things. She could not control everything, but she could control this. The safety and sacredness of their bubble. And so she did. She drove Jayce places he needed to go, places she thought he might enjoy, to sketch while she painted, until he was nearly himself again.
And then, like a trick of light, he was gone. Vanished from her life, from the university, from their city, like he'd never been there in the first place. Mel cried for weeks after that, wondering again if she was so expendable, so naive that she couldn't see she was going to left behind. Abandoned, yet again.
He finds her, of course (he always finds her, no matter how she tries to hide from him) on the balcony attached to the sitting room in the south wing. From here, the tent glows white, and the dancefloor still writhes with sprites. Mel's lips curl around her cigarette, inhaling deeply, before her chest sinks into a long exhale. She's still in her bridesmaid dress, and the silk does nothing to keep out the chill that lurks in the shadow of the mansion.
“I can't give him my heart when it already belongs to someone else... when it belongs to you."
“You smoke now.” Not a question, but a statement. An observation. She casts a glance over her shoulder to find Jayce watching her, leaning heavily against the jam of the French doors. He looks completely at peace here, Henley unbuttoned even further, glasses frame perched on his face, and barefoot on the marble floor. Ironic, seeing as he’s just rid Mel of her peace.
Still, she nods, turning to look back out on the green. Viktor is down there, somewhere. He's ever the night owl. “I do,” she replies, “for the stress.” He's silent, as if he's considered this, but Mel, though not as drunk as before, still has enough alcohol in her system to render her mostly carefree. For the first time since she met him, she can say she truly does not give a damn what he thinks.
“I suppose congratulations are in order,” he says, and Mel's hackles rise. She does not like the tone of his voice. It feels accusatory. Still, she reviews to look at him. To take the bait. Jayce continues. “Viktor told me he proposed to you. He told me you said yes.”
Mel takes a deep drag if her cigarette, inhales until it burns. Better that than to feel like Jayce's words combust her from the inside out. “I’m not going to talk about this with you, Jayce. I'm too drunk for this.”
“You aren't, I've watched you all night. I know you've sobered up.”
“Admitting to watching me now, are you? You were never good at holding back, Talis.”
“Mel-” She can hardly bear to hear her name on his lips. The wary tenderness in his voice. Approaching her like she's a shy animal he's afraid might take flight with one wrong move.
The truth is this: Mel’s growing tired now. Tired of beating whatever this is. These years between them. “What do you want, Jayce?”
“To talk.”
“We are talking.”
“No, you're icing me out, Mel. You won't even look at me.”
Mel crushes the butt of her cigarette and watches its embers die beneath her heel. She rubs the bridge of her nose in frustration. “I don't know why you think I owe you a conversation, when you never spared me that courtesy.” Bitterness rings true in her voice, and there it is. There is that ugly, gaping wound in display between them. She wonders if Jayce can see its uncanny resemblance to him.
“I can explain,” he says, but she still refuses to look at him. Mel doesn't want his flimsy explanations. She wants fire and brimstone.
“You left, Jayce! What did you expect? You left! Without a word.”
“You never loved me.” And he's angry now. She can hear it in his voice. She turns, to face him, shock like ice water in her veins.
“What?” She lifts her hands in disbelief. “How could you say that?”
“You only kept me around because I showed you a good time, but you never told me. Never once did you say it when we were together.”
Mel's throat stings with unshed tears. “I was afraid of commitment, Jayce. You knew this.” She's pacing now, her emotions too much for her to handle. Her set of problems back then are not the same problems she has now. All those problems started and ended with Jayce; he'd made sure of that. “But I did everything. Everything for you. After you lost yourself, I did everything I could to bring you back. You were the one thing I wanted most. I may never have said the words, but I was there. I never left.”
He grunts, incredulous. “But you're with Viktor now. You don't seem to have a problem there.” He always knew how to cut her. But in cutting her, he reveals a wound of his own. How deeply he still cares.
“Things are easy with Viktor. He doesn't ask me for anything.” Mel takes care to master her composure. Her tone is flippant, irreverent and nonchalant. As though he's the one overreacting in this perfectly civil, and normal conversation. “We're partners, yes but being with him is simple, no strings or commitment. Easy. Because he doesn't ask for things I know I cannot give.” She fixes him with a cool look, jaw set against the burning behind her eyes.
“And what can't you give him, Mel? Hmmm? Because it seems you've given him everything you refused me,” Jayce hisses, hurt evident in his features. And here, at least, Mel feels like she has the upper hand. Like she's not laid out her heart before him to fight a losing battle. Because he's jealous, and he has exposed everything. All his cards are on the table. Jayce had wanted everything Mel would give him. Jayce, like Mel, had wanted a lifetime.
But this conversation isn't a battlefield. It isn't something Mel has to win. She just needs closure so she can move on. So, Mel tells him the truth. Her truth.
“I cannot give him my heart, Jayce.”
But he doesn't understand, and Mel wonders if he ever truly did understand. “Ah, so yet another man you've strung along.”
Again, anger overwhelms her. “Don't you dare say that. You don't get to say that, Jayce. You do not disrespect me. Believe what you'd like, but never spout such cruel falsehoods about me.” She's seething, poking his chest and blowing fire and ashes into his face. And from her anger springs tears. Truly, only he makes her feel anything to such a magnitude that she cannot her emotions.
Her mouth won’t stop moving, and the tears refuse to halt in their downpour, but Mel could never stop herself when it came to Jayce. He was her undoing then, he remains her ruination now. “I can't give him my heart when it already belongs to someone else, when it belongs to you. But you never wanted it.”
She hiccups around a pitiful laugh, having laid her heart out on a platter once again. This time, she waits for him to shatter it. Craves it, even. Perhaps this time, she will learn her lesson for good.
He's silent for a heartbeat, before taking her hand. Still, she does not look at him. “You've ruined me for everyone else.” He croaks, his large hand curling gently around her wrist. This is his truth, and he lays it before her as a tribute. An offering. He is repentant, reverent in the way he presses his lips to the inside of her wrist, and Mel’s body sags into him as she releases a breathy sigh.
She falls into him like a memory, everything muscle memory. Familiar sensations and emotions welling up from deep within her, things Mel hasn't felt this vividly with anyone since he left. Tenderly, she removes his glasses from his face, laying them on the nearby table.
Lust. Desire. Love. They combine, and in the dark shadow of the manor, beneath the glittering night sky, Mel kisses Jayce. Kissing him again feels simultaneously like she is alive. Like she just might die. He kisses her like a man starved of air, and Mel meets his fervency, hands wandering irreverently and body grinding against him. He bites on the plump of her bottom lip, his hands hot in the exposed skin of her back, and Mel feels lightening lick down her spine.
She pushes away from him for the second time that night, chest heaving as she fights for breath. His hair has fallen into his eyes, and his gaze looks darker. More hungry than she's ever seen.
“I have a fiancé,” she tells him, even as he advances, feet quiet against the stone. Jayce smiles at her, humming contentedly as he bends over her. His lip latch onto her neck, placing tender kisses along her jaw, fingers slipping up the back of her dress to lightly trace beneath the drapery. Mel's legs nearly fail her.
“Jayce, you have a girlfriend,” Mel says, urgency leaking into her tone. “Camille, remember?”
Jayce hums against her skin, right beneath her ear, his voice sending the most delightful tremor through her skull. Mel bites her lip, her hands coming up to tangle in his hair. “We were never together. Or we were, but not in that way. Called it off when I knew I was going to see you again.” He bites, sucks, and Mel shivers, holding back a moan. “Knew I couldn't stay away from you.”
It's growing difficult for Mel to think, for her to remember why they should not be doing this. Why they should not be together. Why she has to stop this. How could it be wrong if it feels so right?
Viktor's face flashes through her mind, and reality douses her with a coldness that smothers the fire in her bones and affords her enough clarity to step back and away from Jayce.
Mel folds her arms around her torso, rubbing her forearms beneath the heat of his gaze. Static sparks beneath her skin, and Mel can feel his phantom touches on her body. Jayce does not say anything, but then again, he's never had to. Mel can read him like a book. She swallows.
“We can't, Jayce. I have a fiancé.” Mel says it with a finality she doesn't feel, backing towards the darkness bracketed by the open french doors.
“I'll wait for you to come back to me,” Jayce says, a certainty in his voice that Mel cannot feel. He speaks as if they are inevitable. She only feels cold, shaken, unmoored. Alive. “I'll hold your heart safe until then.”
Mel doesn't look back when she walks into the darkness, leaving Jayce alone on the balcony beneath a star studded sky.
