Disclaimer: Anything you don't recognize from the show is mine… everything else… I wish!
I'd rather not know where I'll be than be alone
She didn't even realize that she had run all the way from the Cafe to the hotel she was staying in. She had already taken the key out of her pocket, stopped to pick up the rosary from which she forgot was in her pocket, and reached the door to her room and unlocked it all in one movement. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, breathing heavily in the cool air of the room. No heat, again.
The anxiety wore off so she sat down on the edge of the bed to collect her thoughts. That was a close one. She wondered what else could possibly go wrong. She couldn't get a hold of her father that morning, the day before she had finally worked up the courage to go see Jake at his house and he wasn't there. Now, all the courage she had was gone; drained from her and she felt like a child all over again.
She decided to try to call her father again. He had told her to make collect calls to him, but then her mother could track her by using his phone records. He couldn't call her for the same reason; he knew that she needed to stay hidden for as long as she could. They both decided the best method would be for her father to give her the phone number to his assistant's phone, and he would help her contact her father. This worked out most of the time because they were usually together, and even when they were in the field, she could talk to her father. But for some reason, when she really needed to talk to her father about the finances, she wasn't able to get in touch with him the day before. She really needed to talk to him now.
She dialed in for the collect call to her father's assistant. He picked up on the second ring. "Geoff Evans, how can I help you?" He always answered the phone like that, as to not tip off anyone else around. Geoff knew her for a long time and knowing the situation, was more than willing to help her and her father in any way that he could. The fact that he also detested her mother and what she was doing to her helped the cause.
"Its me, I really need to talk to Dad." He knew it was her before she spoke but he had to make sure nobody else knew.
"Does Alan know that you wish to speak to him about a purchase? I hope its something positive about the piece you bought."
"No, Darling, I wish to tell him of his brilliance and how I cannot live without another portrait of some Emperor's dog hanging in my parlor."
He tried hard not to snicker but couldn't help it. After these last few days, she had been trying to have fun with the situation. "Than I will let you speak to Mr. Summers right now." He handed the phone over to her father, who was standing over a table, looking at the prints along with a few clients.
"Alan Summers, may I ask who is calling?"
"Your wonderfully broke daughter in a fleabag motel." She could hear him excusing himself as he walked away. "Where are you today? Tibet? Singapore?"
"I'm still talking pictures of the Sweds. Rather dull people if you ask me. But that's enough about me, tell me how its going."
"Horribly, I'm having a bad day. And I really need more money. I hate to sound like a rotten spoiled daughter-"
"Say no more, because you are none of the above. I'm going to have Geoff wire money over to Charlotte. You'll have to take a bus, but its the only way that you can get the money safely." He paused. "You need to talk to him, Bean."
"I know, Dad. I have a million scenarios running through my head, and none of them are good."
"Just tell him the truth; he loves you more than life, and you know it. If you tell him the truth, he'll forgive you."
"I don't think its as easy as that."
"How much money do you have left?"
"About ten dollars."
"That'll get you to Charlotte in the morning. Are you eating alright?"
"I'm about to go get something out of the vending machines, you make that call."
"Tomorrow you'll go get the money, and then I want you to go talk to Jake in the afternoon. Promise me, Bean, that you'll talk to him?"
She hesitated. She hated making promises, but it was what her father was good at. He loved making promises to her and breaking them; that was what she joked, what the only part of her father that she could count on.
"I promise I will talk to him." She figured if she didn't actually talk to him tomorrow, that she would be doing the same that her father had done to her all her life.
"I love you, Bean. Kiss my granddaughter for me."
She hesitated yet again. "I love you, too." She slid the phone back on its cradle. He was trying, she had to remember; she needed to support that he was making an effort to help her and she needed to meet him half way on the father/daughter relationship part of the situation. But it occurred to her that the last time she remember hearing him say I love you was when he missed her fifteenth birthday, now over a year ago.
She had finished off the last of the Doritos that she got from the machine that she washed down with a soda. She was watching the discovery channel and laying on the bed, thinking about the bus ride she was going to have to endure to get to Charlotte. The first call she had made when she got off the phone with her father was to the bus station to find out the times for buses running in her direction. There was a bus going directly to Charlotte at eight in the morning. She could be back by two in the afternoon if she could find another bus going back near Tree Hill.
She decided, after the show ended, that it was time to get some rest, because she lacked anything better to do. She set the alarm that came with the room and swiped the crumbs from the comforter from her meal. She knelt next to the bed, without realizing what she was doing, and placed her hands together in prayer.
She had to do this everyday that she had been gone, and didn't even realize she was doing it out of habit. For some reason, the thought of her mother popped into her head, and she quickly jumped off of the floor.
"Never again." She said as she slipped under the covers and removed the pin out of her hair. She reached onto the table and took the notebook that she wrote in. She turned to the last blank page and removed the pen from the spiral. She had written so many letters, that the notebook was almost filled. With this last letter, the notebook would be filled; though this didn't seem much of an accomplishment. Writing letters to him didn't help like she thought it would, maybe it would only help if he could see all of them.
Jake "Tubby" Jagielski,
You don't know it, but the person here to visit you, is me. I didn't know you worked at the Cafe, and somehow, I lost all my courage to see you. Maybe I'm more afraid than I thought. They say time heals all wounds, but what if it is the time that creates those wounds?
Jenny, today, is eight months, one week, four days, and about 5 hours old. I bet you think that I after all this time, I wouldn't remember the exact moment she came into this world. Sometimes, I stop what I'm doing to look at the clock, and no matter, what time it is, I tell the time by how old she is.
I got the nerve to walk up to your house today. I didn't see the car in the driveway, but I thought that maybe you would be home anyways. But you were not there. Maybe out working or taking Jenny to the park or maybe you were just not answering the door because you saw me in the window and you no longer want to have talk to me. I can understand because if I were you, I wouldn't talk to me either. In every letter I write to you, I start to tell you about everything that is happening in my life, so that you can understand that I didn't want to leave you, but I end up always taking it out. I don't want you to feel sorry for me and sometimes I think that its better that you never know the real reason I wasn't there the next day like I said I would be.
Or maybe I don't want you to know because I'm scared, because I don't want to have to say it. I sometimes think that its better that Jenny doesn't know me because of who I am. We are all destined to turn into our parents and I don't want to hurt Jenny the way my mother hurt me. You could tell Jenny when she asks about me that I loved her and you could make it sound like I'm a good person. She doesn't have to know the truth, in fact, nobody needs to know the truth of what really happened to me, because its nothing good. I don't even want to have to think of it. All that I ever try to think about is you, and Jenny.
I just want you to know that if I never get the courage to see you and... something happens to me, I do love you. Me being gone, no doubt, has made you question this, but we have known each other our whole lives. You know me, and knowing me, you should know that I'd never stop loving you.
Always,
Beanie
They were childhood nicknames: Tubby and Beanie. Tubby because Jake had chubby cheeks and Jillian couldn't say "chubby" but called them "tubby". Jake always called her Beanie because he liked making fun of her father's nickname for her; Bean.
She place the notebook back on the table and turned out the lights. She curled into the usual position she slept in, thinking about the bus ride again. She would pick up a newspaper to read to keep her mind occupied. She didn't like the idle time, because when she let her mind wander, it always came back to the last few months and all that she endured, all the feelings she had, the wanting she had to die. It all escaped her now, and she prayed again. She prayed that she wouldn't dream of the horrible things they did to her. She didn't want to think about all the scars she was carrying with her.
