Note: there are romantic feelings between a young adult and a teen (about a 2 year age difference) that are never acted upon
Summary: Wayne Unser can't remember a time when he wasn't asking her the same question, and she was giving the same answer.
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What have I become? My sweetest friend Everyone I know Goes away in the end
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"How could you do it, Gemma?"
The boy was close to her in age and a million miles away from her in how to be normal. He went home to normal parents, a normal house, normal expectations.
Gemma never knew what she'd find when she went home from Charming High. The middle class (or upper-middle, as her mother would say) fell apart differently from families in cheap apartments and used trailers. Her mother might be on a manic cleaning binge, or ordering more figurines from one of a dozen catalogues scattered over the table.
Almost certainly there'd be no real dinner…her mother would have a martini glass near at hand, although she lectured Gemma about under-age drinking every chance she got (or about smoking pot, or being with boys). Her father would be hiding in his study, pretending to be a workaholic but really just staying out of Rose's way.
Gemma had become a very good cook by the time she was thirteen. It got her out of the crosshairs of her mother's glare and sometimes it made her father smile.
That wasn't enough anymore. She didn't tell Wayne, but she'd started thinking about offing herself, just going somewhere in her mother's car (in her dark imagining it was always her mother's car, never her dad's) and driving as fast as she could into something big and solid.
Some days were worse than others. Those days she ditched school and went to wander in the tall pine groves on the edge of town, smoking a little pot and watching the pines tower over her, swaying with random gusts of wind. The years of heaped-up pine needles at the bases of the trees made them look like columns copied from stalagmites, natural and ancient. It was a church to her soul, a refuge, a virgin nun's sanctuary and cell.
It was worth ditching school for that kind of peace.
"Wayne, you don't understand. I had to." But she kissed his cheek anyway, for being worried and not being a handsy asshole as soon as they were alone. He was the only boy she ever brought to her spot in the pine forest. Two years older (in years, anyway…his soul was younger that hers, she thought), he was her buddy, her excuse, her alibi. He was straight-arrow, got good grades, met expectations.
She never understood how they could be friends.
"How could you do it, Gemma?"
The young Marine home on leave asked the tall pines, the carpet of needles, the stray wildflowers that found enough filtered sunlight to grow, leggy and scant.
He'd finished basic and would be deployed soon, and even though Gemma was only sixteen, she had his heart. Maybe she always had, since he first saw the pain in her eyes turn glittering and hard. The first time he laid eyes on her she was in the middle of a brawl with a girl a foot taller than her. He'd broken up the fight, and she'd cussed him for his trouble. It was later that she began sharing some of her life with him, over ice-cold Cokes from the drug store on Main.
He brushed off plenty of remarks before he went into the service, when he was still free to walk the halls of his high school, proud of his status as an honor student and a senior. Some were about his "shadow" and wondered if the sophomore rebel he hung out with cut into his action with girls in his class.
Other remarks…well, those he didn't dignify with a response, other than a couple of parking lot fights after the school day was well over. He'd heard the rumors of what Gemma did with other boys. They didn't know her like he did. She was different, but she was still a good person.
Good enough for the promise ring he'd bought with his first pay envelope. He'd take her to the Autumn Harvest dance, talk to her about the future, about how they'd wait for each other.
And he'd seal it with a gold ring in the shape of a heart, a minuscule diamond set in the middle. He'd only told one of his buddies, and he'd gotten such a ragging for mooning after a kid he never told anyone else. There were plenty of women, full-grown women ready to show a new Marine a good time. Why was he spending time and money on someone he couldn't even screw?
He'd tried to explain how he could love someone in a better way than what they were used to, in a purer way. It hadn't worked.
His creases were sharp as knife blades when he showed up on her parents' doorstep, his tie adjusted just so, his brass buckles and buttons shining like gold.
Her mother was colder than he remembered. Her lips barely moved as she told him her daughter had run off, left town, dropped out, and had completely Ruined Her Life…he could hear her capitalization of the words in her voice.
He apologized for bothering them and left, driving more or less blindly to the edge of town, where he could walk to her favorite spot. He told himself he wasn't looking for a sign or a note…but he still scanned the area anyway. The small white flowers had been yanked up by the roots and tossed up against a tree trunk.
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"How could you do it, Gemma?"
He'd said it too low for her biker husband and his buddies to hear. He'd come over to issue a citation to the scruffy leader of the pack and there she was, riding on the back of the leader's bike, easily six months pregnant. A death's head ring was on her left hand.
It's different with him, with them, she'd said. She'd pulled him into a quick hug and pecked his cheek. Still love you, though. You know that. The bearded bikers laughed, the sound raucous and grating. He'd put his citation pad back in his cruiser.
That night he took off the chain he wore under his tan uniform shirt and his badge, the one that still held a thin ring with a minuscule diamond next to his heart.
She'd made her choice, and he needed to move on. That new teacher at the high school, the one who worked with troubled kids, the dark-skinned beauty with light eyes and natural hair…she'd asked him twice now to speak to her classes. He wondered if she liked Chinese, if she liked to go dancing, if she liked white guys who were cops.
He guessed he'd be finding out.
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Her head rested on his legs. He wished he hadn't let himself waste away so much, wished his hand didn't shake as he patted her hair.
He'd lost count of how many times he said the same thing to Gemma Madock Teller Morrow in their years of knowing each other.
The night he answered a call in their neighborhood, worried because JT was out of the country, and saw her and Clay in her bedroom window.
The night JT's brakes failed.
The day she married Clay, he said it silently, shaking his hand and then hers, then Jax's.
The time he found her broken and bleeding on a concrete floor, and the words were tinged with wonder at her strength.
When he heard rumors about crank-filled syringes.
When he saw the broken noses Gemma seemed to make like other Charming women made apple pies.
When he heard the charges Stahl was going to bring.
"How could you do it, Gemma?"
It was the song of them. A song they'd never hum or sing or dance to, but their song, nevertheless.
He couldn't bring himself to say it after she almost killed those boys.
He couldn't bring himself to say it after she took up with the pimp.
He could say he loved her, that he'd been in love with her. He could tell her terrible truths about herself.
"How could you do it, Gemma?" would never come out of his mouth again.
He'd seen the photos of the crime scene. There was no question he could ask that was worthy, that would be good enough. What she'd done was past questioning. Might as well ask a crazed, chained fighter-dog how they could go for another dog's throat.
There weren't any real answers for his question. As the clock ticked away the minutes towards the final reckoning, he realized she would always give the same answer, up until the instant she died.
"How could you do it, Gemma?"
"I had to."
The silent words, their own personal call and response, circled and tore at each other's flesh as he sat and waited, stroking her hair.