Hi everyone! Welcome to the official first chapter of Little Things! I had such trouble today uploading the new Growing Pains, so here's hoping that this goes a lot more smoothly. Thank you to everyone who has already read and favourited and followed! I appreciate that so much, I'm very excited to begin this journey with you!
Who is it that you're waiting for?
I'm right here.
Just glance this way once.
I'm right here.
Why are you silent, say whatever you need to.
Ask for as much love as your heart desires
You'll get all of it and more
Because I'm right here.
Life sucked and then you died. That seemed to be the general progression of things if Jenna's understanding was at all accurate, which she suspected it was. Life was an unpredictable, fickle thing. Here one second and gone the next. That had become glaringly apparent to her when she stood at her father's funeral, next to her dry-eyed mother. It had seemed like only days before when they'd been a happy family. That was no longer the case. Obviously.
If the fact that he was now dead wasn't evidence enough, her parents' impending divorce made it clear. The downside of being smarter than anyone gave you credit for was that their efforts to hide things from you weren't as efficient as they would've liked for them to be. She'd found the divorce papers so easily that they very well might not have been hidden at all. Logically, she knew that love was little more than a neurochemical con job, it plateaued as a partnership went on and was by no means magical, but it seemed counterintuitive that it could just be switched off. How could her mother have gone from being … what appeared to be in love with her father to standing here like a statue who couldn't wait to be far away from all of this. Perhaps that was just what relationships did, they took a good thing and squashed it. Maybe, humans weren't meant for monogamy? That also seemed counterintuitive, monogamy was necessary to facilitate adequate dual parental care. None of this made sense.
The only thing that did seem to make sense was that life was simply not as fantastic as many people made it out to be. It wasn't for her, apparently not for her mother - it was hard to tell with her stone-faced expression, and it certainly hadn't been for her father or else he probably wouldn't have killed himself. Then again, maybe he would have, who was she to say otherwise? There was no singular answer, no formula to apply to obtain a certain result. She hated it.
"He's in a better place," someone said, she couldn't make herself focus long enough to discern who, and patted her hand in what was likely meant to be a comforting gesture.
He was dead - how much better could that place be?
Jennifer Coleman was a lot of things. Comforted by platitudes was not one of them. The fact of the matter was that her father was dead. The underlying implication that went unspoken was that he was dead because he was so intensely unhappy with her and her mother that divorce wasn't enough to shake them. No, he had to take a much more drastic step. It would be so much easier if people would just acknowledge the truth here.
"I'm so sorry, Jen."
Arms folded around her, and Jenna recognized the familiar scent of her closest friend Julia Monkman. Vanilla and brown sugar. Was it the spray - or had she been baking? When Julie moved away and pressed a tin into her hands, she knew it was the latter.
"I'll be by later tonight." Julie squeezed her hand and continued down the line, and Jenna was sad to see her go. One of the few people she actually knew and cared about. She could count the interactions she'd had with the rest of this group on one hand.
"I'm sorry for your loss." She glanced up again to see Paul Lahote standing in front of her, his hands shoved into his pockets.
He looked uncomfortable, a sentiment Jenna couldn't agree with more. She appreciated that he didn't attempt to hug her, or grab her hand or pretend he knew exactly how much pain she must be in. He was dressed in his usual way. The leather jacket, the braid, and the single earring with the feather. Judging from the looks being thrown his way, Jenna surmised that this was not typical funeral attire. She couldn't have cared less. In an odd way, she appreciated Paul Lahote paying his respects as he was, rather than pretending to be something else.
"Thank you, Paul. I appreciate that."
He nodded, a quick, brief movement before he began to stride off. He paused again and glanced back at her. "This shit will never make sense, you know? Don't waste your time trying to piece it together."
Well, she definitely couldn't argue with that. She nodded, offering him a brief smile he returned with an incline of his head. The longest conversation she'd ever had with Paul Lahote and it had been in the receiving line of her father's funeral about how him dying would never make sense so it was pointless to think about it. He definitely had a way with words, if nothing else.
"What a strange boy," her mother mused, watching Paul stride away, seeming oblivious to the whispers that followed him everywhere he went.
"He's pretty cool," Jenna defended, feeling obligated to speak up on Paul's behalf after the odd moment they'd shared.
"I didn't say he wasn't a good boy, Jenny," her mother reminded her, sighing before she returned her attention to the approaching people. "Just a strange one."
Majority of the remainder of the procession blurred by, Jenna didn't pay much attention to it outside of the arrival of Kimberly Conweller, who also folded her into a tight hug and promised to join Julie in coming by later.
She was also forced to pay attention when it was his turn in the line. The devil.
"I'm sorry for your loss, Jenna, Laney." Billy Black extended his condolences to both her and her mother. Jenna offered the older man a pathetic smile, stupidly aware of his son standing behind his wheelchair.
"I'm sorry, Mrs Coleman."
A pause.
"I'm sorry, Jennifer. If there's anything I can do - happy to."
Jacob Black and his stupid voice saying her stupid name. This was her father's funeral, his timing could not be worse. He didn't look like he was trying to goad her into anything, his face was open, sad even. She was used to anger or derision from him - this was new. He'd kept his hair back in a braid, and was gnawing on the corner of his lip. Jenna had a feeling he was uncomfortable with the entire situation. At 5'7, he was already half a foot taller than her, but his lankiness meant she could probably take advantage of his lower centre of gravity and bowl him over.
"Thank you, Jacob," her mother spoke when it became apparent Jenna wasn't going to. "We appreciate that. Don't we, Jenna?"
"Yeah, sorry," she hedged. "Got lost there for a second. I appreciate that."
Jacob watched her for a long moment and, refusing to be cowed, Jenna stared right back. She wasn't sure how long that went on, but it was with a sick pride that she noted that he looked away first.
"I'm sorry - again. Really, anything at all."
He didn't wait for an acknowledgement this time, just left her standing there looking like an idiot. Genuine?! He had been genuine? How was she supposed to have known that? Terrible boy. Just a few weeks before this, he'd been taking great joy in humming the Oompa Loompa theme song whenever they crossed paths, and now she was meant to think he would leave their lifetime-old rivalry aside to offer genuine condolences… as any normal person would. How was she meant to know that he was a normal person? He didn't act like one.
Jenna realized with a lurch that she had lost focus entirely again, that stupid loop in her head of Jennifer in his voice making her want to scream. She was at her father's funeral and focusing on how her name sounded in Jacob Black's voice. That was great, that was fabulous - it wasn't twisted and fucked up in the slightest, no.
"If you're tuckered out," her mother began, stroking her hair fondly, "you can head off. Take Julia and Kim and be a kid. You don't need to be here any longer than you want to."
"I can't just leave him like that, can I?" She hadn't meant for it to come out as a question. It was meant to be a fact that she couldn't skip out of her father's funeral because she didn't fucking like it here.
Her mother swallowed hard as if holding back a comment she'd regret saying. "He wouldn't want you to stand here for formality, Jenny. He'd want you to remember him in the way that feels good for you."
She supposed her mother had a point. Mourning rituals were subjective, so different in different places - could an arbitrary standard really be applied? It was the excuse she'd needed, and she took it with pleasure, eager to escape the grey pallor of the funeral. Jenna rushed outside, taking a deep breath of the cold air, enjoying the burn in her lungs as she pushed them to their peak capacity. Her hands were shaking, she curled them into fists, shoving them into the pockets of her coat.
"Jennifer!"
She froze, hearing the sound of jogging footsteps before Jacob Black was suddenly in her line of sight, standing in front of her. Jenna was silent, waiting for him to speak, wondering what on earth could have possibly prompted this. He, for some reason outside of her understanding, was also silent.
"Jacob?" She finally spoke, swallowing around the lump in her throat.
"Yeah - uh," he hesitated, running a hand through his hair, that he'd removed from its earlier braid entirely. Jenna was distracted by the movement, wondering what the strands felt like.
"I just wanted to say that I meant what I said in there," he finally continued, and Jenna gaped at him.
"I know we haven't always gotten along - don't get along," he amended when she raised an incredulous brow at him, "but I mean it, if I can do anything at all, please let me know."
She tore her gaze away from him with great difficulty. He looked so stupidly sincere that it made her heart feel floppy. Idiot. The idiot who was being nice so she couldn't, in good conscience, be cruel in return.
"Thank you, Jacob," Jenna said, at last, forcing herself to look up at him again. "That's nice of you."
He gave her an odd smile, that looked to be more like half a grimace as if he, too, was entirely unsure of what he was doing. Finally, they were on the same page on something. She returned it with one of her own that she was sure was equally malformed. He moved aside then, holding out an arm to gesture that she could walk first. They froze for another awkward moment before she thanked him again in a hoarse croak and began speed walking down the street.
Jenna stopped at the corner, chancing a glance behind her, surprised to see he was still standing there, watching her walk away. Horrified to have made eye contact with him again, she whipped back around and scurried around the corner, taking the first few steps at a run to put some distance between her and the strange boy behind her.
Later, even when she'd reached home and gotten more comfortable with her friends, with her father's favourite Beatles songs playing in the background, she found herself thinking back to the sight of Jacob Black, 5'7 lanky devil boy Jacob Black, standing on the street watching her walk away from him. It was an odd imagining, one that brought up many conflicting emotions that she'd prefer never to think about again if she had her way.
And yet, she couldn't stop wondering how long he'd stood there after she'd left. She couldn't stop imagining him standing there, just watching her - and worst of all, she liked it.
Fucking hell.