I should have thought of this even before the plan was hatched. And even if this plan doesn't work, like Cassie says, this part of the plan would have been something good.
"Hey, Jack," I say when he opens the door.
"Hey kiddo, where is Sam?" he says looking around.
"Ah, well, Cassie showed up, and things are a little crowded over there," I say. That part is a lie. I would have loved to have a sleep over with my… I don't know, sister, if things had gone differently.
Jack looks down at the bag in my hand. "You're missing out, avoiding Cassie."
"Look, if you don't want me to stay, its ok. I can get a hotel or go back to Sam's."
"You're always welcome," he says, moving aside so I can enter the room.
The living room is homely. It actually feels like the log cabin I heard he had in Minnesota.
He leads me down a hallway, and my heart stops. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. The guest room at Sam's house… that was meant for me. That was waiting for me all these years.
Jack's room isn't waiting… it's remembering. And it's not remembering me. This is the room of a ten year old boy. Even though I know that Charlie never actually lived in this house.
Airplanes on the bedspread, and hanging from the ceiling. Child drawings on the wall. Toys all around.
"I'm sorry," he says, watching me look around the room.
"I'm sorry," I tell him, "About Charlie."
He clears his throat, "You know it was my fault?"
"No," I start to protest.
He grabs lightly onto my arm, "I need you to know the truth. I left my gun out. Charlie played with it, because I never let him play with toy guns. And he shot himself, and he died. So it was my fault."
I stare into his eyes until he looks back into my eyes. It takes a lot longer than I thought it would.
"That, Jack, was not your fault."
He starts crying. I stand on my tip-toes to offer him a shoulder. I may be tall for a woman, very tall for a woman in fact. But I am still half a head shorter than my father.
He is stiff at first, but I pull him closer to me, and he lets go. The crying is brief, and when he is done, he pulls away awkwardly. We both pretend that nothing happened.
I wonder when the last time he let go in front of someone was.
-0-0-0-
I drop my bag off, but don't bother to unpack it. Then I head back to the living room.
He looks up when I come in. He's still a bit bashful from the waterworks, and he doesn't smile. But a light comes into his eyes when I enter the room. Geez, Matt doesn't even get that excited to see me. I was right that Jack REALLY needed me.
"You're too young to offer a beer to, but unfortunately there is nothing else to drink in this house besides water and beer."
"It's ok, I really like water, and I'm not even thirsty."
"I don't really know how to do this whole adult child thing," he admits, "I lost Charlie a long time before we got to this point."
"It's ok, I've never done the whole father/daughter thing," I say.
"You like the Simpsons?" he asks.
I laugh, "Yeah, my mom forbid me from watching them when I was a kid. She thought they would corrupt me. So, of course I watched them whenever I had a babysitter or went to a friend's house. And then when I first went to college I did it in lieu of studying for most of the first semester."
"Well, that's better than the things I did in lieu of studying my first semester of college," Jack says.
"Yeah, I don't believe that," I tell him.
He looks at me with a shocked face.
I point to his mantle, "That's a medal for academic excellence at the academy."
He smiles. "Yeah, that used to be hidden away, where it belonged. Then I made the mistake of suggesting that all of SG-1 help clean one another's closets and Carter found it. She demanded putting it up. You know your mother has one to match?"
"Yeah, but she doesn't have a mantle to hang it on."
"The living room wall does fine," he says.
The phone rings, and I find myself suddenly getting unbelievably nervous. It can't even be the phone call that I'm worried about, no way she realized I was missing so quickly.
He picks it up, and I realize it is this call. I can tell by the way that he's glaring at me. "Carter, take a breath, she's right here."
I hear a high pitched, but undecipherable sound on the other end of the phone.
"Carter, I promise she's fine. I can bring her over, but she asked to stay… Nope, I don't mind." He raises his eyebrows at me, and hands me the phone.
I take the phone. "Hi, Jane."
"Hi, mom," I say guiltily, hearing how worried her voice sounds.
"It's good that you went over to the Colonel's. He really needs that. In fact, I should have thought of it myself."
"Yeah," I agree, surprised that she could see that in him. I had been under the mistaken impression that they were as unaware of each other's emotions as their own. Apparently, I'd been wrong about that.
"I just hope you didn't feel like you needed to go over there. I mean, just because Cassie is here doesn't mean that you need to take off. I could have put her in my bed and stayed on the couch."
"Cassie and I could have shared the guest room," I tell her.
"Right, so it was just an excuse?" she says.
"Yeah," I confess.
"Ok, just know I'll miss you, and you're welcome back here anytime."
"Thanks, I'll miss you too."
I hang up the phone to see Jack glaring at me. "You didn't tell Carter you were coming to my house."
"She wasn't there when I made the decision."
"Ya couldn't leave a note?" he asks with raised eyebrows.
I shake my head.
He leans back, "You and Cassie have a fight?"
"No," I say.
"Did I mention I'm new at the whole adult child thing?"
I grin.
"So how about you go easy on the newbie, and tell me that nothing is up."
"Nothing is going on."
"Ah huh, sure," he says, "So, Simpsons?"
I nod. He flicks the TV on, and we watch in silence for a little bit.
"Why do you call her Carter?" I ask.
He flicks the TV off, and turns to me. "You're way too old to be playing parent trap."
I smile, "I wouldn't be trying if you weren't so obviously in love with her."
"Listen, you're barking up the wrong tree with this one. Three years ago, something at work… kind of made us talk about our emotions. Then Sam asked if we could leave it in the room. She didn't want to ruin her career. I can't ask her to ruin her career."
"Well, Cassie is working on Sam right now," I say.
"Of course she is," Jack says with a smile.
"But, you could have changed your career as easily as she could have."
He doesn't say anything.
"Right?" I prompt.
He nods.
"Ok, so why didn't you?"
"She asked me to leave it in the room, and just…" He looks up at me, looking vulnerable again. Twice in one day? What was I, magic? "What if she didn't really want it?"
I laugh, I actually laugh.
"What?" he asks nervously.
"Have you ever actually looked at her looking at you?"
He looks away from me for a second.
"You know, you do deserve happiness. Even if you've convinced yourself to the contrary."
His eyes focus on mine, "Nothing could ever happen between us while we were on the same team."
"I know, that's what Jacob said," I remind him.
"I need to be there to protect her. We… we do some crazy stuff on SG-1. I couldn't deal with the worry if I wasn't there to protect her. Daniel, he's great, but he's not a military genius. And Teal'c and Sam, they are amazing. I trust them with my life. But… I couldn't let her go through the gate all the time if I wasn't there to protect her."
"Well, that's a pretty good reason," I mutter.
"Sorry, kiddo."
"So you're just going to ignore the fact that you're in love with her forever?"
"Not forever," he says, "Someday, this war is going to be over. Someday we'll run out of enemies. And then we can have a happily ever after."
"That could be a long time," I offer.
"Well, you never know. My knee could go out tomorrow, and then I'd be retired, and then…"
"She deserves to be chosen, Jack."
"So do I," he mutters as he flips the Simpsons back on.
"D'oh," I offer, which wins me a sad grin.
-0-0-0-
A text message on my phone wakes me up a few hours later. Cassie was supposed to have given me a progress update a few hours ago. I can understand it, though. After a Simpson's marathon, Jack and I went out for ice cream before talking about absolutely nothing of importance for several hours. I can see how girl talk with Sam might have got her a little carried away.
"Sam loves SG-1."
"And Jack?" I respond.
"SG-1 more."
"Jack wants to protect her."
"Idiots."
"You said it." There is a pause. "I thought Sam would rush over here when she found out I was gone."
"If there is one person she trusts, it's Jack."
"Night," I say.
I lay in bed trying to think up a way to get them together. It's too bad that they didn't end up finding out about me when I was younger. Back when I really needed them. If I needed them, they would turn their lifestyles upside down for me.
That is the answer.
I send a quick text to Matt. "I'm going to tell my parents you broke up with me."
"Why?"
"I think they will get together."
"'Kay, just don't forget I love you."
I slip the ring off, and put it in a small packet in my luggage.
-0-0-0-
"I made my famous omelets," Jack proclaims.
"It smells like that ingredient is beer," I reply in my most depressing voice.
He looks up at me with panic in his face, "What's wrong?"
"Matt… broke up with me," I say, breaking into tears. That's right, four years of drama in a high school, and it was totally not a waste!
"Oh, sweetie," he says, pulling me into a tight hug.
When the hug is over, he gets even more awkward than he was last night when I was offering him comfort.
"Listen, I don't really know… the right thing to say in this. You mind if I call in your mother as reinforcement?"
I shake my head. In fact, my whole plan hinged on it.
He excuses himself to go into the other room to make a phone call I can't here. I flip the omelets onto plates to stop them from burning.
"She's brining Cass," he says, stirring more eggs into pans. "So do you want to tell me what happened?"
"Not really," I say, and that is mostly because, I didn't actually come up with a back story for the breakup.
"You want ice cream for breakfast?" he asks.
I'm pretty sure that if Jack had raised me, I never would have grown up to be a health food addict.
-0-0-0-
"Honey," Sam says, pulling me into a hug.
"That jerk!" Cassie exclaims. Yeah, I should have sent her a warning e-mail. Otherwise, my new sister might do the 'fixing' instead of my parents.
I pull the phone out, and type the message underneath the table. Her phone beeps, and she takes a glance at it. Then she glares at me.
"So why did he break it off?"
Well, maybe I can make them say the things that they refuse to think, "He thinks I'm going to get in the way of his work."
"What does he do?" she asks.
"Well, school right now. But eventually he wants to be a doctor."
"So, most doctors are married," Jack protests.
"Well, most people are married. That doesn't mean that individual people can't decide that their jobs are incompatible with family."
Jack narrows his eyes at me. He knows what I'm doing. Or at least, he's figured out part of it. I doubt he's actually guessed I faked the breaking off of my engagement just to make this point.
"Sweet, he would be an idiot to trade the happiness that he could have with you for anything else."
My phone beeps, and I know who the message is from, and what it says even before I take a peek. I was correct on both accounts. Cassie wrote me, "I told you - idiots."
I can't help but giggle. I look up to see the room staring at me. "Sorry," I mutter.
"Glad to see you laugh," Jack says suspiciously.
Right, I've got to be sadder. So they feel like I really need them. I burst into tears.
