A sex tape.
A god-damn sex tape.
My hands shook as I stared down at my phone for a few seconds longer before locking it so I no longer could see it, entire body giving a shudder. This couldn't possibly be happening to me. It wasn't the scene of me actually losing my virginity – no, that had been completely private, the door shut and locked as well as the curtains drawn. No one had been around to see that. This was just some steamy making out in the hot tub. Yet it was more than enough to tear apart my reputation and who I was. I was a nice person. Why would some record that?
Oh.
Meredith.
The same caterwauling scratched at the back of my throat but I held it down this time, squeezing my eyes shut and taking a deep breath. I couldn't lose it. For the next two weeks, I would be stuck at home with my sisters, which means I needed to present like everything in my life was fine. Even if they had already seen part of the reason that was far from the actual truth.
I wasn't a slut. I'd had sex one time with a man that I thought genuinely loved and cared for me, but it turned out that he had just deceived me, even if he had tried to apologize. I wanted to hate him for it but I couldn't. Instead, my heart was still just as soft and mushy as it had been, even if it was hurt. I still liked him. I still loved him. That didn't go away just because he had hurt me and it certainly didn't go away just because this recording was out – that wasn't his fault, that was all Meredith. It made it even weirder that he had gone to her room after and I could only wonder what they had talked about. But I knew him well enough, I thought, to know that this was something he had nothing to do with. He wouldn't have done this to me.
Nerves ate away at the pit of my stomach and I could feel a wave of nausea threatening me. There was no way that I could try to ignore this, not for two whole weeks, not knowing that it would only get drastically worse by the time that I actually got back to school and had to deal with seeing Jackson, Meredith, and everyone else. Allowing it to fester was going to make it worse. I needed help. Not the kind of help that Jackson or Lexie could have given me. I needed real hope. I needed my big sister.
Begrudgingly clutching my phone against my chest, I swung my legs off the bed and dragged my feet down the hallway toward her room which was no longer empty. There was music playing quietly. I lifted up my hand and knocked on the door, waiting for it to open. A few seconds passed before it did.
"Hi," I breathed out pitifully. "I need your help."
Libby stared at me for a long moment and I almost expected her to close the door on me again, waiting tersely before she stepped back and opened up her bedroom door wider to let me in. I stepped in and she shut the door behind me, immediately collapsing back onto her bed and staring at the ceiling. I knew I needed her help. But opening up about it was something else. I was going to have to tell her everything.
So I did.
Every painful detail of the story was recited out to Libby. I was unable to look at her as the truth spilled to of my lip in all of its brutal glory, glossy hazel hues staring at the ceiling even as the ceiling fan became a blur from the tears along my waterline instead of any actual movement from it. I didn't want to see the way that she was looking at me – with pity, probably. She had boyfriends before Matthew, she knew how to be around people and how to work with them, how to befriend them easily and naturally. I was the only Kepner that didn't have that natural charisma. Letting every part of it come out was a relief, in a way. It was no longer a shared secret between Jackson and I. Admitting it made it all that much more real.
Then I had to do the worst part of it, bringing up the ski trip. She had been to the same high school and dealt with the same things in a way, she knew exactly what it entailed. Unlocking my phone and handing it over to her so she could see the video, I finally removed my gaze from the ceiling and to my older sister's face so I could see her reaction to it.
"You made a sex tape and you're a virgin. Wow." Libby blurted out.
Okay, so I'd left out one detail.
"I don't know what I'm going to do about it." I exasperated, sitting up suddenly and folding my legs, hunched forward. "This is going to ruin my life. We're– we're not even together anymore and then this comes out. I know who did it and I know that it wasn't Jackson, but…" But I still had no clue how to go forward.
"We will get this taken down. I promise. I'll report and email Instagram right now. You're a minor. This has to break some kind of law." Libby said, keeping my phone in her hand as she grabbed her laptop.
"Thank you, Libby," I murmured sincerely as I looked over at her.
My older sister gave me a meaningful look as she took my hand and gave it a squeeze for a moment. I watched closely as she sent an email to Instagram that included my age and the fact that it had been both recorded and taken without my explicit consent or knowledge. I didn't know if that would make a difference, but it certainly should have. Otherwise, all I could really do was untag myself, as if that would really make any kind of difference in people seeing it. All it took was one or two popular people sharing it or liking it for everyone else to end up seeing it. That had already happened. Three days later, Instagram removed the video. But that didn't necessarily remove the damage that had already been done.
It was hard to know how many people had already seen it. There had been just over a hundred likes on the photo itself and I was obsessive enough to scroll through them and make sure that Jackson wasn't one of them. It was mostly Meredith and her friends, people trying to suck up to become one of her friends. I didn't know if that was better or worse.
"You're not off the hook yet, Ducky." Libby turned toward me with raised eyebrows.
"I'm sorry, Libby." What else was there to say? "I wish I'd told you sooner. I didn't mean to ignore you but I knew that I couldn't lie to you because I was already lying to everyone else and it was… it was making me completely crazy."
"It's okay." Her arm wrapped around me, rubbing my opposite arm gently. "I'm glad you told me. But never do something like this again, okay? You're better than that." I hoped that I was.
"Okay." I agreed softly.
"Are you guys friends again?" Alice's quiet voice peeped up and we both looked over, seeing her and Kimmie standing in the doorway, Kimmie's hand stacked on top of Alice's so they could both look through the slit that they had opened up without us noticing earlier. I wondered how long they had been there. Hopefully, they hadn't heard the parts that would have been inappropriate for their ages.
"We're always going to be friends, Alice," Libby answered and she motioned them both in the room. Kimmie and Alice jumped on either side of us on the bed. Alice was on my side, snuggling up against me as I wrapped my arm around her. "That's what sisters are. Friends for life."
"You guys are all my best friends." Kimmie chimed in.
"Mine too!" Alice yelled.
I let out a soft laugh. "You are all the most important people to me."
"Are you gonna be mad if we tell you a secret?" Kimmie asked, leaning forward around Libby to look at me.
"No," I answered.
"Well… we may have sent those letters." Kimmie said, pouting at me.
I stared at her for a long moment as the words replayed in my head. We may have sent those letters. They were eleven and seven. How did they even know how to send letters? My head jerked around to stare at Alice sitting next to me, who was now looking up at me with wide eyes. Oh god.
"You did what?" I blinked in surprise as I tried to process it.
"Well I saw them sitting out and I was curious so I started reading them." Oh god. Alice's words made my head spin and I shook my head as I stood up away from them. "I thought it'd be like those romance books that you always talk about! You'd get to be the girl! The pretty one who all of them boys love!" Oh. The innocent words were just enough to tug my heart in a different direction, away from any anger. Of course, the two of them meant well. There was no way that they could have realized the impact that it would have had. "And we kinda wanted Matthew to stay around." She added, poking Libby's thigh.
"But we like Jackson even more!" Kimmie added as if she were trying to suck up to me.
"I can't believe you guys did that…" I said with a sigh following, shaking my head.
Libby stood up, grabbing one of my hands. "But you guys had the right intention in mind. You know that, and God knows that, and April and I know that. Right, April?" She looked at me pointedly, her eyebrows raising up.
"Of course I know that." I forced a smile. "You guys are sweethearts." Messy sweethearts.
"We love you, April!" Alice stood up and wrapped her arms around my waist. I patted her head and Kimmie quickly got up to do the exact same. I smiled down at both of them and ruffled their hair. I knew that they meant well. They always did. They were just a little too young to realize the full consequences of what they had done.
Christmas felt a little different around the house. Kimmie and Alice had both gotten attached to Jackson in the same way that they had to Matthew when he and Libby had been dating. But he doesn't make an effort to come around again, not now that he knew Libby was home. I was grateful for that. I could use a break from the messy boys in my life with everything else going on, and I certainly didn't want to hear whatever shaming comments he would have had about the video. I was sure that he had seen it given I was almost positive that everyone else in our high school had. There would have been too much judgment coming from him.
Even if it felt different for me, though, by outside appearances it was pretty much all the same. There was constant baking whether it was cookies or something a little more fun, always a fun movie playing on the television with all of us out of school for a little while, and well, Dad was still working his butt off. He always did to make sure that he could provide everything possible financially for us. It meant that Libby and I did a little more parenting than most girls our age did.
But the holiday break from school doesn't last forever even if it would have been nice. With snow on the ground and ice on the streets, I'm in no condition to be driving to school, let alone with both of my little sisters in the car. Fortunately, Libby's break between the semesters at university happened to be just a little longer than our breaks in high school. She was off for an entire month compared to the measly two weeks that we got. I'd never minded going back to school in the years past, I liked the routine and I liked learning, so dreading it? That was a new feeling. Finally, I understand how my sisters and pretty much every other student in my school felt this time of year. My life was an utter mess and it was the most normal I had ever been.
The school was rather empty on the outside given how cold it was outside and that no one wanted to be there. I knew before getting out of the car and waving goodbye to my older sister that the hallway would be bustling with people. Opening the door to get out of the freezing cold only confirmed exactly that.
Scanning the hallway, the only face that I wanted to see was Lexie. No one was paying enough attention to me to notice that I was there and I found the brunette quickly, rushing up to her so I wasn't vulnerable for long.
"You made a sex tape." Lexie blurted out. "I love it."
"Oh, no. No. Don't even." I shook my head as I wrapped my arm around hers. "I can't think about it."
"Well, New Years Eve party shenanigans very quickly went viral and knocked you away from the hot spot. Most people have probably already forgotten about it." Lexie shrugged.
"I hope you're right," I murmured.
We moved through the hallway together to get to our lockers. Things only seemed to get more progressively more crowded and it took me a moment to realize that they were gathered around my locker in particular. I took a deep breath, pausing slightly before Lexie tugged me along.
Pushing through the crowd to see what everyone was staring at, there was a piece of paper taped onto my locker. Blown up from a screenshot on someone's phone was a picture of Jackson and me in the hot tub, with a handwritten note attached to the bottom of it.
NOT SO INNOCENT KEPNER.
I felt like I was going to vomit.
Lexie stepped forward to grab it and tear it off of the locker, yelling something at the people gathered around it, something to tell them to go away or to shut up. I couldn't focus enough on my surroundings to actually here exactly what she was saying as I spun around on my heel and tried to get as far away from my locker and everyone else as quickly as I could. Without paying any attention to my surroundings, I nearly ran face first into the chest of the exact person that I was trying to avoid.
"Hey, April–" Jackson started. "Whoa, slow down."
"You didn't even say that it wasn't true?" I blurted out, shoving angrily at his chest despite the tears burning in my eyes. "You just let everyone think that we had sex in that hot tub when you knew that wasn't the truth?" My voice was too loud. "You must be happy the video leaked."
I didn't give him a chance to speak before I turned on my heel to keep walking, feeling a tear slip down my face. I can hear Lexie say something to him this time but I don't stop to try and stop her.
"Hey, everyone, listen up!" Jackson shouted and commandeered the attention of everyone in the hallway, including those who were still lingering around my graffitied locker. Even I stopped for a moment, looking over my shoulder to see what he would do. "Not that it's anyone's damn business, but nothing happened in the hot tub. So if I here anyone else talking April or that video, I'm going to kick all of your asses. Do you understand?"
A sigh passed through my lips as I started walking again. Jackson ran to catch up with me.
"Look, April, I'm so sorry about everything. If I knew who did this–" I cut him off there.
"Even I know who did it. You should." I pointed out harshly.
"Let me talk to her, okay? Please. Let me handle it." Jackson asked.
"No. No, don't. I'll handle it myself." I couldn't trust him to, really. Not anymore.
Given that Meredith wasn't in the hallway to see the handy work herself, that left only a few other places. The cafeteria showed no sign of her which meant it was time to check the bathrooms. When I finally find her in one fixing her mascara or eyeliner or something, I stormed up to her without any hesitation, fire in my veins fueling a moment of confidence.
"I know you posted that video," I announced fiercely.
"Nope, wasn't me," Meredith stated it as if it was completely oblivious, smacking her lips against each other and straightening up. She reached over to grab a paper towel from the dispenser without even looking at me. "But just so you know if you're gonna have sex in a public place, you've got to deal with a consequence." She shrugged as if the statement was absolute fact.
"You know, it's bad enough that a guy would do it, but the fact that a girl did it? That's despicable!" My voice raised louder than I expected it to. "I mean, I guess it's clear to see that you don't care about feminism or other women besides yourself." So that was a stretch.
"Like I said. I didn't do it." She shrugged her shoulders and tossed out the paper towel before she finally turned to look at me, her arms folding confidently in front of her ribs. "But I'm glad someone did though because finally everyone sees who you really are."
Evil. She was evil. "What are you talking about?" I questioned.
"People are never what they pretend to be. You are not as innocent as you pretend to be. It seemed as if she were happy to attack me from whatever perspective that she could manage to take. My eyebrows raised up in my eyebrow questioning her silently for a moment, trying to figure out what it was that she was going for. "You kissed a boy that I liked!" She whined.
"You guys were broken up." I pointed out the obvious.
"No, before." She shook her head. "You knew that I liked him and you kissed him anyway."
No way. "In middle school? It was Spin the Bottle, you psycho!"
"It wasn't nothing to me!" Meredith shouted before turning around and heading out of the bathroom.
I had always assumed that no one ever paid attention to me. I always thought no one was paying attention to what I was doing and that the only drama in my life was in my head, maybe in my house. It turned out I wasn't as invisible as I thought. Maybe I never had been. With brows furrowed, I carry myself through the day and try to keep my chin up as much as I can. Jackson's words did pay off. People seemed almost scared to look at me or notice that I wasn't in the room. It wasn't the exact effect that I wanted, but it was better than the alternative.
There was something else that I had to do. I had given explanations to my sisters, mostly. Deluca and Jackson both knew the truth about the letters that they had received. It was about time that Matthew got the truth, too. I needed fewer lies in my life, not more.
"So Libby's gone now?" Of course, I couldn't talk to Matthew with her home.
"Yeah, on Saturday," I answered with a nod. "Listen, I owe you an explanation for everything."
"I think that's fair," Matthew said.
"See… it's like me driving, you know? I can imagine myself doing it and it's fine, but then once I get behind the wheel, I completely freeze. I don't know what to do." It's a bad comparison and I can see it with the confusion in his face.
"Huh?" He questioned.
"Let me try again." I took a deep breath. No simile this time, just the truth. "You were the first boy that I ever liked. Everyone else was pretty much just a fantasy off of some short interaction, you know? But you… I knew you. I didn't know how I felt about you until you became Libby's boyfriend. But it was a child's crush, I think. That feeling faded away and it wasn't really true love." I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I looked up to him.
A part of him looked offended. "Why didn't you tell me that before?"
"I didn't really know until Jackson. Until I had something to compare it to." I confessed.
"Right, Jackson…" Matthew's eyes rolled when I brought him up.
"I'm sorry. What I felt for him was real and– I'm sorry." I didn't know what else to say. He looked annoyed but I wanted to be honest with him. I couldn't keep up the lies going forward. Maybe it was something that he would be able to appreciate when he was a little bit older and more mature.
"You don't need to apologize. I know where you're coming from," he spoke again. "It's kind of how it was with Libby and me." I had no idea what that meant, but I wasn't ready to question that. I had another one.
"Did you stop loving Libby when she broke up with you?" I asked.
Matthew shook his head. "Not at first, but it changed, eventually. The longer that she was gone, the more that I started to understood why." Maybe he would understand why I had done what I did one day, too. He just needed a little more time. He stared at me for a long moment. "Do you feel the same way about Jackson?"
"I know you don't like him," I half-smiled, half-grimaced. "But thanks for understanding."
"If you miss him, why don't you just tell him?" He asked.
"Because… if it wasn't real, then I didn't lose anyone. But if I say that it was real and he still doesn't want me…" I didn't know what to do if that was the case.
"Then at least you'll know the truth. You have to tell people how you feel when you feel it. You can't just sit up in your room and write love letters you're never gonna send. Look what a mess you made out of things this time." It's a double-edged sword, what he was saying. It sounded like he was trying to be genuine but there was just something in his tone that I didn't like.
"I know what I have to do."
Bottling everything up had ultimate been the source of all of my problems, hadn't it? If I had come clean about the way I had felt at the beginning, instead of letting things fester and get out of control in my head with fantasies and make believe, then none of these problems would have happened in the first place. But on the flip side, the way I felt for Jackson never really would have happened, either.
It was hard to regret the things that we had shared together. Even if it had been fake on a surface level, the things that shared between us, the conversations and the laughs and even some of the hand-holding… that had all been real. We had been together plenty of times without the views of other classmates or our families, and all of those moments had been real. I couldn't regret that. He had made my heart warm too many times for me to throw all of it out. We had both made mistakes. But they weren't mistakes that had to be permanent. This was something that could be fixed. I just had to be willing to go and do something about it instead of hiding away and write my feelings down.
Grabbing the keys to my car, I took a deep breath and headed out to it. Sticking the keys into the ignition and turning it on, the engine hummed. I took a deep breath, checking the mirrors, feeling my heart pound. But I put the car into reverse and back out of the driveway, making my way to the school. I knew where he would be at this time of day. Finishing up football practice.
Parking crookedly in a spot, I marched around the school and toward the back of the football field. I was a little later than I would have liked but there were still plenty of guys on the field, meandering after practice and putting up some of the equipment.
"Hey!" I shouted and waved my hand above my head to get his attention.
"Hey," Jackson replied simply.
"I have to tell you something," I announced, taking a deep breath.
"Okay." His eyebrows raised up.
Oh no. There went all of my confidence, evaporating entirely. "I drove here," I said instead.
"Really? Wow. That's uh, that's great. Congrats." He didn't look annoyed, surprised, more than anything else. He had a smile on his face, soft and relaxed as if there was nothing in the world to worry about. It was enough to make me relax for just a moment, to forget everything else in the world. He had a dazzling effect on me.
"Thanks." I'm too stunned to go on with what I wanted to say. The words are still there in the pit of my stomach, itchy and crawling their way up my throat, but I bite my tongue and don't let them out. I don't have the nerve while I'm staring out them. "Uh, bye." I blurted out suddenly, turning on my heel away from him and trying to bolt out of there as quickly as I could. I couldn't do it. He was way out of my league and I was crazy to think otherwise.
"Whoa, wait a minute. What's up?" Jackson questioned, stopping me in my path. I took a deep breath.
Turning around on my heel, I tried to face him. "Uh, nothing." I lied.
Jackson stared at me for a long moment and it was incredibly obvious that he didn't believe a word that was coming out of my mouth. Why would he? It was far from the truth and the both of us knew it. I wasn't capable of being subtle and I certainly was no less subtle. He was good at seeing through me. I didn't know if it had been there at the beginning or if it was something that had developed in the course of our relationship. Either way, it didn't matter. He knew that there was something much more than that on my mind.
So I had to speak the truth.
"I need you to know that I like you, Jackson Avery." The words were out there and there was officially no taking it back. I took another deep breath to try and calm my heart rate, practically capable of feeling it fluttering inside of my chest with the strength that it shook me. "And not in a fake way." I couldn't tell if that part was bigger or not. "That's all I needed to say."
At least I had been able to say it instead of burying it inside of me like I had so many other things or writing it in a letter to try and express and then forget about completely. This was the truth and it was public. Satisfied with my ability to finally open up with the truth, I put a small smile on my face for just a brief moment before turning around to try and walk away again now that the actual truth was out again. I had done it. This was perhaps the bravest thing that I had ever managed to do.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa… Don't I get to say something?" Jackson spoke up. I turned around, giving a slight nod of my head and looking up at him with wide eyes. "The reason that I went to Meredith's room that night was to tell her that it's over. Because… I'm in love with you, April Kepner. Only you."
It was as if my heart skipped a beat. I had always read that line in romance novels and always found it to be silly – how could someone's heart physically skip a beat just because of something like that? People's heart rates picked up, but that just seemed extreme. Yet I felt it now. That crazy little skip inside of my chest. That squeeze that made me want more, no matter how strange or weird it might have felt at first thought. A smile broke wide across my cheeks as I looked up at him, able to feel my cheeks lift up to my eyes completely. A huff of a laugh, half disbelief, and half amazement, breathed through my lips. It takes a moment to really process what he had said.
He was in love with me.
"You're what?" And I was in love with him, too. Wow. "Wait… How do we do this?" I blinked a few times as I stared up at him.
"What do you mean?" Jackson's head tilted curiously to the side as he looked down at me.
"What do you put into a contract for a real relationship?" I questioned, chewing at my lower lip.
"Nothing." A small huff of laughter escaped him and he smiled down at me so easily, beautiful seafoam eyes sparkling with absolute ease. "You gotta trust." Trust. Something that we both needed to work on, I was sure. I had jumped to my own conclusions foolishly and childishly, so scared of getting hurt. He had given me some reason, of course. But now that I knew the truth, that things were completely over between him and Meredith… That changed everything. "You gonna break my heart, April?" It was a teasing little question as he leaned down, kissing me softly on the lips.
"Not a chance," I whispered before kissing him back hard.
I'd always fantasized about falling in love with a field. But I just never thought it'd be the kind where you play football. Life never turned out the way that I had planned it to. Somehow, it just ended up better.
Like this. The summer between Jackson and I both graduated college at John Hopkins University with a BS in Biology, honors and all, and before we attended Harvard Medical school, we do get married. I don't walk down the aisle a virgin like my family would have expected, but my father hands me off to him with absolute joy and pride gleaming in my eyes, and Libby howls with absolute amusement and laughter when she catches the bouquet at my wedding. One part of my dreams and fantasies stays the same, though: it's still to the man that I love more than anything else in the world. Jackson looked perfect in a tuxedo with his beautiful, gleaming eyes as he smiled at me. When we kiss, the applause is wild and thunderous.
One part of my dream does come true. Two beautiful baby boys and a little baby sister for the both of them to look up out for. All three of them with their father's wonderful eyes and curly hair, even if their faces look a bit more like me. Getting pregnant during medical school isn't the plan, nor the second boy that comes during residency, but by the time that our daughter comes around, the two of us are complete pros at managing our busy careers and our family. Love is enough for us to make do.
Love was everything. It still is.
