"Way to go," says an eggplant-shaped wooden doll painted with Nessie's face. "Way to go, way to go, way to go!"
"Hey," says Nessie. "I didn't mean it. Leave me alone!"
"Way to go, way to—" Nessie slaps the wooden face and it splits along its equator. There is a smaller face just inside, and it is also hers.
"Smooth move," says the new face. "Smooth move, smooth—"
Smack. "Shut up!" commands Nessie.
"You broke Jake! You broke Jake!" chirps the third face in this unholy matryoshka doll.
"I know that!" screams Nessie, striking out at the thing. "Don't you think I know that?"
"Can't undo, can't undo, can't—"
"I didn't mean it," pleads Nessie. "I don't know what I was thinking, I just...oh god..."
"He'll never forget this, he'll never forget this," chants the fifth face.
"Every time he sees you, he'll remember that you used him in a Franciscan mission," says the sixth doll."
"He'll always know he can't trust you," says the seventh. "Forever and ever and ever."
"You were only thinking of yourself," remarks the eighth. "You knew what he wanted from you, and it was never this."
"You still have a boyfriend," says the ninth. "You've just fucked up two relationships for the price of one."
"That's gotta be some kind of record," gloats the tenth.
"I hate you," sobs Nessie. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you."
"D'uh," says the eleventh doll. It's lips are Nessie's lips. Its eyes are Nessie's eyes. "Tell me something I don't know."
Nessie wakes with the sun. She's only had a few hours of sleep, but with waking comes remembrance, and shame. Not for the first time, she wishes that real magic could be real, the cool Harry Potter kind, not this bullshit vampire touch-vision-thoughts-shield kind. What she wouldn't give for a time-turner, or a memory charm. Failing that, the correct application of a large brick should effectively induce amnesia.
But she doesn't have those things, so she climbs out of bed and into the shower. She scrubs herself clean, scrapes the mascara from her eyelashes and the salt-tracks from her cheeks. When she gets out, she dresses in her most somber clothes, a grey shift dress and black stockings. She's in mourning for the simple relationship she and Jake used to have, right up until she squatted over it last night. She goes to the breakfast room and picks at a bowl of fruit, then returns to her room and passes out on top of her covers.
"Rise and shine, Nessie!" Charlie's upbeat voice rings through the door. Nessie looks at the clock. It's almost eleven. Her hair dried funny because she napped on it while it was still wet, and she has dark circles under her eyes and colorless lips. She considers leaving her appearance alone, but Sue would ask questions. Charlie would assume she's been up to some variety of no good. So she opens a brand-new tube of concealer Alice bought her—unopened till now, she's never needed it before—and tries to fix her sleepless face.
Charlie and Sue are both in annoyingly good moods. Jake, who is slumped at the table alongside them, is clearly not. He has dark circles too. And he doesn't appear to have brushed his hair. Nessie debates whether she should act like everything's normal or try to show him how deeply she is sorry by being penitent. She settles for a compromise.
"Morning," she says to everyone.
"Morning!" says Charlie.
"Morning!" says Sue.
"Mnghng," says Jake. Nessie stands behind his chair and begins to tentatively comb her fingers through his hair. She can see how tensely he's holding himself, like he's steeling himself for another shameless attack, so she backs off quickly. He probably needs space.
"How'd you sleep?" asks Charlie.
"Eh," says Nessie.
"Mnghng," says Jake.
"That good, huh?" says Sue. "What do you guys want to do today? We could go visit some museums...or there's hiking...but first things first, I want to check out the Santa Barbara Mission while we're here, they call it the Queen of the Missions—"
"Hiking!" shouts Nessie.
"Museums!" shouts Jake at the same time.
Charlie and Sue look at each other. "Whatever," says Charlie.
"It's just," says Nessie desperately, "we already saw the mission in Monterey, and honestly, how different can two missions really be? It's all just papism when you get down to brass tacks, am I right?"
"I said 'whatever'," says Charlie. "Good lord. I didn't realize you two hated Catholics so much."
"Mm," agrees Jake. "Yep. Hate 'em."
"You people are weird," mutters Charlie. "Sue and I are going to go visit that evil outpost of papal power. We'll go look at some frickin' art after lunch or something."
"Sounds good!" says Nessie, watching them leave. "Welp," she says, standing and making a show of stretching, "I think I'll take a little nap now—"
"Nessie," says Jake, looking at her. Good god, he looks exhausted. Did he sleep at all?
"Yeah?" she says.
"We need to talk."
"We're talking," she says defensively. "Just look at us go!"
"Stop being so damn fake-cheerful," he says. "Lie to yourself all you want, but don't lie to me. Please."
"Yeah, alright," she says contritely. "Sorry." A group of patrons bustle loudly into the breakfast room. Jake looks over at them and back at Nessie.
"Okay," he says, "do you wanna talk in your room or mine?"
"Um," says Nessie. "Mine's a mess."
"Okay then. Come on." Jake takes Nessie by the hand and leads her—if not forcibly then firmly—to his room, which is no neater and no messier than hers.
"Jake," she says.
"Hang on," says Jake. "I just need to get this out. Kissing last night was...was apparently not great for you, and I am sorry for that. And I know you're beating yourself up over it, but you don't need to. Friends get drunk and make out all the time. And if it's not mutually awesome, then they just forget about it and go back to normal."
"But we weren't drunk—"
"Doesn't matter," he says. "It was late, we were performing minor vandalism on a Catholic church, let's just say the stars were aligned. You know what? It happens. I feel like such an asshole. I wish to god I'd just like, counted to ten or thought about Mark Hamill or something, but I didn't. I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," says Nessie.
"Why does it have to be anyone's fault?" says Jake. "You obviously feel uncomfortable with what happened, and I could pretty much strangle myself for doing that to you. I want you to always feel like you can trust me. And you can be mad at me. Hell, you should be mad at me, I acted like a fucking adolescent turdweed. Just...don't be mad at yourself, okay? You didn't do anything wrong. I was the one who kissed you."
"No, we both started it," says Nessie, "but I escalated things." She blushes, remembering how she was rubbing herself against him without even a by-your-leave. "I shouldn't have done that. You know what? If you promise not to beat yourself up over it, I promise I won't either."
"Good," says Jake.
"So, we're okay?" says Nessie tentatively.
"Of course we are," says Jake, smiling. "Just chalk it up to one of those things normal people do. Nothing's changed. You're still my Nesslie. I'm still your Jake."
"Nothing's changed?" she asks. "I didn't ruin everything?"
"I promise," he says. "Nothing's changed. Nothing will change."
Jake sounds about as certain as Nessie feels. Which is to say, not at all.
Nessie misses Jake. Sure, she's still spending most of the trip with him. But she never realized before how physical their friendship was. They were touching all the damn time. And now they barely touch at all. She wants desperately to just wrap herself up in him, and she knows she can't. If she ever wants to undo the damage of that night, she has to start by giving him a chance to get back to his baseline Jakeness. Maybe when enough time has passed, the kiss won't be hanging in the air between them and they'll be able to pal around like always. But for now, caution is best.
There is one hiccup to this plan: Jake is sexy. Jake is sexy in the same way that the ocean is wet—which, incidentally, is also the way that she is wet all the time now. Having seen him as Jake-the-Fuckable, she can't unsee it. There were lots of gaps in her understanding of him before which are now filling in with red-blooded sexuality. She relives every conversation they've ever had about sex—which is a lot, she now realizes—and grows warm when she thinks about all the things he said that meant nothing to her then and everything to her now. It's easy to blame all of this on the kiss, but in retrospect Nessie can see that things have been ramping up for a long time; she merely lacked the wits to notice it.
But she is noticing everything now, and with a vengeance. She finds herself staring at his body covetously, her eyes lingering on the narrow curve of his wrists, the tender skin of his neck, his lean hips. She wants to lick the bridge of his long nose. She wants to feel his sharp white teeth nipping at her flesh, wants to feel his naked chest pressed to her bare back, wants to know what it would feel like to have his—oh, lord. This isn't helping. Still, her eyes follow him like magnets, and she has a tight feeling in her chest that puts her on edge every moment he's out of her sight. She thinks about their kiss constantly, and every time she does she drifts away from her surroundings. As a result, she is unusually spacey and Charlie starts worrying. And Jake worries, of course, because he's Jake.
From the corners of her eyes she can tell that Jake is watching her as much as she is watching him. Waiting, probably, for another uncalled-for assault. She'll just have to prove to him that, kiss notwithstanding, she can still stand by her promise not to destroy their easy friendship.
Still and all, she does call Will to say goodbye; he doesn't seem surprised. They haven't talked since she left BC, and they pretty much both agree that trying to stay together would be futile. Nessie tells herself that she's just breaking up with Will because she'd planned to anyway, so she can be free to date guys in college. But she doesn't believe herself. Having kissed Jake, having learned to see him in this blood-thumping new light, she can't really see the point of wasting her time with anyone else. She wants to waste it with Jake or not at all.
Side note: Charlie is my favorite in this chapter. He is slightly based on my own pa...and slightly on Mustache Daddy in the films.