Hello, it is the 23rd March and I am back to upload and of course, this chapter is a present to my best friend, Shannon, whom I feel so lucky to share all these characters with :) I wrote this chapter in a bit of a rare moment for me these days in the early hours of the morning. And when I was done with it, I knew that it had to be this year's present for Shannon. We always say that we love drama in our creative world and between our characters! This is a bit of that. It's certainly angsty. We see James and Lynne have more than just a small disagreement. It gets pretty tragic! I hope you all enjoy but especially you, boo. Enjoy the drama of Jorginho and Lynne with poor James in the middle :P
A single moment can change everything. Well, to tell you the truth, in James' case, it was a lot of moments adding up, like a mountain building up to a great height that would eventually come crashing down because of its own weight.
When his heart first became captured by Lynne's own one, he couldn't help but look at her. As if she was a magnet luring him in and his gaze had always meant to find hers even if it had taken more than thirty years. He often couldn't help but simply stare.
His gaze homed in on her when she was doing something mundane like ironing one of her many dressed printed with the hues belonging to a garden. Or when she was doing something that made his heart skip a beat like feeding the creatures in the aquatic tank, talking to them.
Her eyes captured him as she did something for him and only him. As after more than just their lips had found each other, the gaze when she looked down at him while roaming one hand through his hair as the other slid down his chest was sometimes too much even to bare.
But still, he looked. And he looked with the depth of an ocean. So much feeling.
It wasn't like that anymore. It hadn't been like that for a long time, he tried to tell himself.
In the moment in which this tale takes place, it is true that she still allured him in like the ocean but instead of captivating him, he could easily become drowned in her eyes. Drowned in her presence. Suffocating. Drenched. Discouraged.
Once upon a time, James couldn't help but look at her. This was not one of those times.
From the moment that she breezed into the room on one particular day, seemingly not a care in the world, James knew that he couldn't look at her. Nor did he wish to look at her. And this realization within himself throttled him by the throat almost as much as the anger that arose when he thought about all that had occurred.
Lynne was thinking of no such thing. Certainly, no such upsetting thing at all.
As soon as she entered the room, she scurried her tiptoes towards her partner, her hands reaching out from him the moment that she broke the distance enough. She attempted to embrace him, pulling her close to him as she had often done.
However, although no troublesome thoughts were cascading through her mind, she was attuned with James from the second that he flinched upon feeling her embrace. And she too went on to be forced to deal with some not so nice things as he dodged her affection entirely, stepping out of the way of her arms as if she was suddenly a slithering creature and he was her prey.
Not that James could meet her eye, but they glossed over at him from the instant that he shuddered away from her.
"Haven't you got something you wish to tell me?" James thundered. It was, however, a storm that was brewing inside of him which wasn't all that turbulent at all. It was more like a crackle or a fizz. But even so, it spoke of what could be possible if he allowed things to head a certain way.
Blinking those large eyes of hers, out of habit and due to not having her loving partner to embrace, Lynne's arms momentarily wrapped around her own body, wondering what she could have possibly done in those few seconds to receive such a response from James.
Because she had barely been in the room with him a full minute, her mind scanning all the seconds didn't take long at all.
Lynne's empty arms plinked down to her sides. All she could do was act with instinct. And her instinct always had been to care for James.
"Is everything okay with you, Jim Dear?" she wondered, inwardly longing to take a step closer to her partner and trace the tips of her fingers along the lines of his continually hollowing jaw but she promptly figured that the first thing wouldn't be correct, let alone the second. "You seem very tense."
Tense was perhaps not the right word, and she knew it.
Her throat bobbing along with the rest of her, Lynne could see the way that his slim shoulders were edging closer to the earrings in his lobes more than normal and indeed, his ageing face had pertained the tautness of his younger years in the past few seconds.
Even so, she really wasn't sure whether tense was the right word. As he avoided looking straight at her as if she was an eclipse that should not be gazed upon even if it was marveled over, she couldn't help but think he appeared very angry.
A lump bobbed in her throat before tumbling down to the deep pits in her stomach. He looked how he once did when he was a younger man and had tried to soothe his inner demons by reaching for a bottle. She knew that that could not be the case these days. Well, she prayed.
She could not smell red oozing from his breath. But she also knew that he had liked to get a different kind of drunk that past summer.
"And you seem very at ease." James observed, snatching Lynne away from any of the thoughts that she had been having and causing her hand to twitch up her own body, landing over the middle of her ribcage to bring herself a touch of solace.
It didn't bring her anything. If anything, she felt worse as she felt her heart rate beginning to pick up inside her chest and against her palm.
Lynne's unease forced her to laugh unsurely. James thick eyelashes twitched together but still; he avoided looking at her properly.
"Well, I have no complaints." She watched the way that her partner's face became rigid with the appearance of a younger version that she knew only by photograph and tale but was unable to ignore the lack of eye contact and bloodshot gaze reminded her he was the age that he was. Or older. Shit, she hoped he had not been drinking. "I walked into the room and saw you." She told him. "How could I be anything other than at ease?"
Lynne's chin threatened to bubble as she couldn't deny herself how false these words were. She was growing on as edge as her partner was unusually portraying. She couldn't say that she felt scared of him. She had never felt that even once ever when around him because even on his darkest days those sad, sometimes helpless eyes of his had never possessed anything other than gentility. Broken gentility sometimes. But softness, nevertheless.
She felt on edge there though. She wasn't frightened of what he might do. She was frightened of what he might have done. What he was thinking even more so.
Lynne simply couldn't tell.
But nevertheless, taking a privately brave inhale to herself, she took that step forward to him all over again and tried to embrace him. Whatever it was, she could fix with her love, and they could solve it together, couldn't they? As the in love couple they always had been.
Nothing was impossible when they tackled it together.
James, on the other hand, felt that it was. Clearly.
All over again, Lynne had to deal with the fact that he not only dodged her affections once more but this time, his hand actively brushed against hers. What once would've sent every part of her tingling with electricity instead offered her pain as he was pushing her hand away from him with his own one.
There was a tiny, perverse part of her that almost wished he had done it with more intention, with more force. That weak, scarce brushing motion of his fingertips made her heart very frail before it shattered into many pieces.
She was losing him, wasn't she?
For someone who had been lost by all at one point or another, losing somebody else always took away any of the breath remaining in her lungs.
"You make me sick." James suddenly told Lynne. This was quite the moment that he chose to force his gaze to look onto the face of the woman that he was meant to love. And with irises flickering from left to right as well as the curtains on top of his eyelids grooving, he knew that he had achieved the impossible.
On his own.
Of course, this was no moment for celebration. And Lynne certainly felt any remaining life of hers leaving her body when these words echoed around the chambers of her mind. Her hands made their minds up of what they wished to do. One flew to her mouth, shaking like a leaf that knew that its time was coming.
It was funny how James had said these certain words but after they had been uttered, his shoulders were the pair that unclenched, and it was Lynne who experienced every meal that she had ever eaten was lurching from her stomach.
She may as well be empty.
"I… I make you…?" Lynne trailed off. She didn't even want to say the word that James had settled on. Couldn't. How could he say such a thing towards her when throughout everything, she had never dared dream of speaking this kind of phrase even once in her life?
Not even when he caused her to wonder if he were ever serious about her at all from the way he embraced his wife after only just professing the most tender words he could muster for her and her alone. When he numbed his mind with a clink of a bottle while already reeking of nicotine. When he was attached to so many people that she often wondered where loved ones to him but strangers to her left off and her Jim Dear began.
She had once been so enthralled by how needed he was by many and how many people he needed. Over time, him treating everybody with equity had caused its own problems. It made her wonder if she really was special to him at all or just a number. Just a distraction.
Just one piece of a heart that had countless other people making grabs for it.
To put it frankly, when Lynne heard these words, she was stunned and didn't believe that she deserved it. And, to tell you the truth, there was a part of James that knew that she didn't, that was clear from the way that he had stopped being able to look at her after they had escaped from him.
But that didn't make them any less true. That didn't mean that they hadn't come thanks to her own actions.
James finally got to the point that he had really trying to make with all his words up until that point and even more so, his actions. His distance.
"Are you going to tell me what you said to Jorginho?" he took that step towards Lynne that she had ventured but needless to say, it did not fill her with relief. James' hands began to stuff into his jeans pockets as if he would find solace there. "Because he told me." He may not have found solace, but he discovered words. Words that didn't stop. "But I figured I should give you a chance to explain before I get really angry."
If that was James holding back, then you did not wish to be on the receiving end of when he truly erupted!
Lynne could have protected herself by thinking of that instead. But truthfully, from the second that James began, she was mistaken when she believed that she could not feel any more lifeless. It was a feeling that she had experienced a handful of times over the years. But because it had been a long gap, it truly ran her blood cold.
She felt as though she was twitching, flickering, even if she was standing perfectly still. That wasn't the moment to reach out to James, to grip onto him and gave him reassure her that she was as warm as anybody else that he knew.
Even if she had somehow persuaded him to do this for her, surely, he would have gripped into her wrists and told her that she was colder than anybody he had met before. She might have deserved it after that he was accusing her of.
She felt that, unlike the first nauseating remark, she may have deserved that one. Because it was not merely an accusation.
Feeling like a flimsy piece of paper in the wind, Lynne wanted to rush to the nearest armchair and sit herself down to compose herself but that was on the other side of the room. She didn't think that she would make it.
Unlike usual, she couldn't reach out to James to steady herself either. She was alone. She was alone with her remark. And she was alone in karma. But other gestures were not so lonesome. You see, she was finally able to experience being unable to look at James either.
"Oh, but James, I didn't mean it. I…" The chance for Lynne to speak her mind was snatched away from her with the same force that it had taken her to even find words at all.
Even though her partner had been standing the entire time, he seemed taller, even about as looming as her husband as his face contorted with disgust so she decided that she may as well grant him an even bigger upper hand.
Like a child knowing that the naughty corner was their fate, she gripped her hand over her heart and trudged towards the distant armchair to sit herself down. Meanwhile, James was doing a full one hundred and eighty degrees. He could not stop homing his interrogative gaze onto hers.
He was probably hoping to see anything other than a woman who had just betrayed not only him but someone who also owned a fragment of his heart.
Which, by his standard, was far worse.
"Didn't mean it?" James echoed, his jaw contorting around these words as if he had decided to suckle on a gobstopper which had suddenly become an enemy, clamping his mouth firmly shut. Skilled, however, in pushing through great discomfort, the gobstopper was soon enough dislodged as his head began to swing side to side with emotion, visibly appalled. "You told him-"
He did finish that sentence. He repeated it and, despite it all, there was a part of him that prayed that it wasn't true. That for some reason, one of his simultaneously oldest and most recent of friends was lying for some reason or another.
Attention. A reaction. Love.
No, even his poisonously hopeful self couldn't tell himself that it was that, certainly not other things.
He knew Jorginho was no liar. He knew that his affection was not filled with venom. But still, one of them had to be true. And from the devastated expression of Jorginho when he had been told and the guilt-ridden face of Lynne from the second that he brought it up, it made it clear which side of the fence honesty laid.
Letting out a shuddered breath that was holding back a sob which could not fully come at the shock of being found out – or rather, remorse, but James didn't see it that way – Lynne's mind was cast back to earlier that day.
Once again, she didn't have to think back all that far. But remembering filled her with every kind of emotion under the sun. She felt as though she was faltering hard at that point. But with James gazing through her even if he was then able to look straight at her, she had no one to rely on other than herself.
And thanks to the person she had inadvertently become on that day, she did not know how she would possibly be able to.
Lynne's memory reminded her of the moment. And she loathed it far more in hindsight than while it actually occurred.
She and Jorginho had been going at it for quite some time, batting snarky remarks back and forth. Despite their opposing views and their opposing stances and their even more opposing feelings, one thing they were united in was their insistence on getting a reaction out of the other.
And furthermore, they both wanted James for themselves. Mostly because they knew that he was hardly likely to make a decision, so they had to take it into their own hands.
"I think you should stay away from James." Lynne had warned Jorginho, watching the way that he turned towards the window and lit up a cigarette, that flame of his inadvertently igniting even more determination that she had never discovered before inside of her.
It was hardly a warning when it was issued with her tone of voice which was as gentle as a father touching down against the ocean. But this still was exactly what it was.
Yet regardless, Jorginho hardly heed her warning, instead the corner of his mouth moving closer to his earlobe as he lifted the paper to his lips and engulfed the first inhale of tobacco.
Lynne had to fight every urge inside her not to flush the warmth of her orange hair as she saw him exhale the smoke from his nostrils not just like a fire breathing creature.
It was the same way that James used to do it. Still probably did it around Jorginho.
He was a bad influence.
"You think I should stay away from James?" Jorginho repeated, pulling the cigarette away from a mouth that was surrounded by a closely trimmed beard but there was no point to this really. Soon enough, it was back in between his lips, and he was speaking through it. Yes, exactly like James. "I did stay away from him once. Regretted every minute of it." His words did not slur for a single second. "I won't be doing that no matter how much you suggest."
Suggest. That stung. That caused Lynne's cheeks to burn far more than when Jorginho tried to act like he was still a nice guy through it all as he took another exhale of his cigarette before offering it to Lynne.
Who did he think she was?
She was not some teenager who was so smitten by an older man that she would hang onto his pack of cigarettes as well as his word.
She had encouraged James to nearly ten years of sobriety before Jorginho had wrecked all of that by being his smoking buddy. She would never be half of a pair who shared a cigarette after being done inhaling each other for the night.
Lynne avoided Jorginho's offering like the plague which made his lip curl upwards only furthermore, his moustache appearing on his face like a cat who had licked the cream. In turn, fire ignited in Lynne's belly, and it caused her to prompt.
"You think that you know James better than me just because you go way back." As Lynne began, the cigarette was back in between Jorginho's lips seeing as it wasn't desired by her. In between a serpentine exhalation of smoke from the nostrils, Jorginho's large head tilted from side to side. He did not disagree. "But I don't think you realize how vulnerable he is." She fought for a better word. "Sensitive."
He had been so making the most out of his cigarette all those moments before but suddenly, upon hearing this word used to describe the man they both knew, he stubbed it out on the ash tray against the windowsill before, for some reason, tossing it out the open window.
Jorginho rubbed his hands together as if that ridded him of the nicotine cloud before those wide arms of his crossed over an even broader chest.
He disagreed this time.
"Sensitive?" he repeated. Lynne was quick to nod her head, finding no difficulty on locking those big eyes of hers onto Jorginho. Needless to say, he was not as hypnotized by them in the way in which her partner had been more frequently since he had tumbled back into his life. "You do him an injustice." Jorginho informed her. "He is a great many things. Don't dwindle him down to just the one word."
If she had had this pointed out to her before spring had turned into summer then she would have taken this remark on the chin, even agreeing with the picture that she was painting of her partner.
And truthfully, if anybody else had spoken this to her, she would have melted at the spot at the chance to try and dream up words that wholly captured her Jim Dear before satisfactorily realizing that he could not be pinned down to the one word.
How enigmatic of him.
However, it was Jorginho that she was up against, and it was Jorginho questioning her judgement. It might have been a tiny moment for this to take place, but this was the moment that she decided that she had had enough.
Despite their vastly different shapes, there really was not much height difference between them both. And Lynne coolly reminded herself of this as she decided to get right up in his face, hoping to reason with him with hues of the ocean staring into shades of the earth in which flowers blossomed.
She decided she had one last chance to get him to listen. One last chance to get her own way. It was for the best of everyone, after all.
"Point is, James has spent a great deal of time learning to live with the parts of himself that he once tried to shove down and he doesn't need you ruining his progress." Lynne told him. Already, Jorginho twitched at her getting in his face but couldn't feel threatened. "I mean," He may have flicked one of his eyebrows up. But these weren't the worst of the words. "Do you want him turning to substances to soothe himself like your little brother did because of you?"
Those were the words.
You could have taken any one of those words in that sentence and they could have inflicted no pain at all. You could have even jumbled a few of them together in a sentence and them be completely harmless. But when they were said in their entirety, they were brutal.
When they were said exactly like that – because they were – well, there was no coming down from that.
Jorginho might have hurriedly pulled further away from Lynne, backing himself up against a window in the process and shuddering in a way in which he had not trembled for years. But it was no use doing anything. It was no use saying anything.
What was done had been done and what had said had been said.
Lynne didn't like to think what she had done but she was forced to when James had asked her if it was true. And she didn't like to remember Jorginho's worded response either, but she was made to when he inadvertently echoed it again for her, showing almost the exact same facial expressions as his oldest friend.
She wanted to heave all over again upon acknowledging this. But she had only herself to blame, didn't she?
"How dare you even speak of Jorginho's family in such a way." James' face was crumpling with hurt for Jorginho, but it was shedding away with pain for himself and not simply because he was deeply connected to Sammy, so these words wounded them both in the same way.
If she felt that way about the two of them, then how did Lynne feel about him? Why did she decide to have a family with him, a life with him, when she was aware of the moments in his life that he wasn't exactly proud of but had at least learned to make some semblance of peace regarding?
How could she even say such a thing?
Even if it were about a stranger he would have been equally as appalled. That was not the woman that he had fallen in love with. This idea quickly dawned on him, and it made him sick to the stomach in a different way as when he had been battling with rage.
A droplet in his eye, James swallowed and looked down as he knew that not only his relationship had become something it had never been before, but it was the same way with the woman who he still loved.
And he couldn't even blame himself at that point. No carefree summer spent with Jorginho making up for lost time warranted the venom she had chosen to spit.
Lynne suddenly feared losing James more than worrying that at one point he had decided to get drunk on something other than the giddiness of a bond rediscovered. She broke the distance with him all over again, not even caring that he may reject her touch because she at least had to try.
Her hands tried to hold onto the sides of his neck for more than just forgiveness. She was feeling unstable very, very quickly and when she caught sight of herself in the mirror, her presence was infrequent.
"I didn't mean to say it, James, it just slipped out. I-" Lynne tried to tell him, reaching out to his neck to hold onto the place that she used to nestle against during the darkest of nights and find peace against the most inviting of skin.
But her words did more than just brush him the wrong way. As she tried to hold him, her thumb brushed over the wrong part of him, tracing his Adam's apple and where he contained most of his secrets and where his own stability was located.
James turned away from her even if he didn't push her away, his eyes closing for half a shuddered heartbeat even if they soon enough opened once more, interrogating her in a far feebler way than before.
"You didn't mean to say it?" he repeated. He may as well have mimicked from the water that puddled Lynne's usually dazzling oceanic orbs that were then a pitiful swamp. "It just slipped out?" he repeated for the last time. Soon was turn for words of his own. "You just decided to use someone's greatest wound against them because you were jealous?" his tongue wrapped around this word, and he knew he had hit gold. "Insecure."
Lynne could have chosen to be in denial, but she copied her partner's gesture of briefly down to the pairs of feet that were pointing right at each other but couldn't have been on more opposite sides of the road if they tried. She didn't bother to hold back the simultaneous shrug and nod that said everything without needing to say anything at all.
But as a chill ran up her spine which caused her eyes to flicker open and tell her of the other kind of flickering that was occurring even if James was oblivious to it, she realized that she needed to say proper words.
Otherwise, it would be too late.
How come she had never-ending time but always seemed to be running out of it?
"Let's talk about this, Jim Dear." She tried to encourage, swallowing as if she was forcing down a mouthful of piping hot tea before taking a bigger risk as her hands moved to his shoulders, trying to use his gesture to encourage him to look at her with clarity. "Let's talk about this." She was beginning to beg as her touch twitched against the round balls of his shoulders. "We can sort this before it's too late."
All James heard was Lynne's desperation to make things right for the sake of it. Make things right so they could just pretend to be happy together. So they could pretend that she still loved him for him and not some fictious version she had soothed herself with over the years. So he could pretend that she had not shown him true colors and a spectrum that made his skin feel very grey indeed.
All James heard was desperation. And he wanted no such part in it. She had had the entire summer to be part of what had been created between him and Jorginho once again, to be happy for them and revel in the joy that pieces that had fallen apart had fallen back together again.
She had always wanted all the pieces of his scattered heart to herself even if she had to pretend that this wasn't the case because she had come along second or third. That was clear.
Funnily enough, what was actually occurring wasn't clear at all.
Instead, James decided to touch Lynne on her own shoulders as he pushed her away from him for good, finding his own words.
"I don't ever want to see you again. Let alone talk to you." He told her, running the risk of blinding himself as he chose to look right into her heart and soul during those moments and during those words.
But you see, rather than blinding himself, he actually clouded more parts of him than just his vision. He should have noticed how cold she had felt as she pressed her hands down onto him. Should have felt how restless she was when he briefly nudged against her to rid himself of her.
Lynne let out a shuddered yelp once James had said these words to her and it was not merely heartache.
How could a heart break if it was no longer there?
In that second, Lynne's time on earth for the time being was up. They should have known. Should have noticed. But they didn't.
Sure enough, James did notice when he stopped seeing through his partner merely because of just hurt and instead because she had disappeared from the room with him. As he often did, his stomach lurched, and his hands got down to business regardless of all the emotions that he had felt before.
Eyes practically popping out of his skull, he tried to grab the empty air which had before been his partner before she had been snatched from him. Or rather, he had driven away, he would later antagonize himself over.
He should have noticed the signs. Should have noticed the flickering. Should have heard her cry. She was desperate for a reason. Who knows when they would see each other again.
In an instant, all the anger and all the dire need to win the battle had dissipated. In that moment, James didn't know how he was going to tell his children that it was all his fault. And it was this that caused him to whimper out loudly than he expected as the empty dress left floating against his feet became acknowledged and he brushed it against his cheek like a fallen soldier.
"Fuck…" he had tried to whisper and although he hadn't yelled, the length of the four-letter word as he sounded it paired with the low rumble of a different storm brewing inside of him made it not merely a murmur either.
And like how it often was with children, they were as in tune with their parents as they were with naughty words that should not have been spoken. However, rather than hearing it and longing to repeat it, one child on that day heard it and knew something had happened.
Scurrying into the living room from being in the annex that her mother shared with Jordan and blissfully unaware of everything else that had been going on, Jorgie did not hesitate to hold a hand to her chest when she saw her father cowering there with his back to her.
"Daddy?" Was all she questioned, her bare feet lightly thwapping against the carpet and then, because her beloved father was hunched and she could not see a single ounce of his expression, she darted forward and in front of him to discover for herself what was wrong. "Did something happen?"
Her dress that had been matching with her mother billowing around her ankles as she slowed down to a stop, she was quick to register her father's expression as feeling distraught. And because she was far more in tune with more than just this, her own stomach lurched, and her own chest gasped when she saw him clutching the dress that was a twin of her own made from material of curtains thanks to Katie practicing her skills.
Jorgie had hoped that she would not see that sight for a very long time. It had been quite a few moons.
While James' stomach felt as open and empty as that inhabitable celestial body, he heard the way that his daughter had gasped and didn't hesitate to make a grab for her, realizing there was little use on clutching to Lynne's dress because she was not there.
But Jorgie was there. His piece of heaven was still there. And she needed him.
He was no use to her all drowning in emotion.
"Oh baby, I think mommy had to go where she is needed." He told her, drawing his daughter closer to the same chest that she had nuzzled against since she had taken some of her first few breaths. He felt her small frame stiffening but could not shroud her from everything. "Jordan probably has too."
Jorgie began to cry when she heard this. She knew that if she had known that Jordan would have headed off for a nap and not returned to her then she would have clung to his mountainous bicep a lot more. And as for her mother, she would have sat still a little longer when she had brushed her hair this morning. Not rushed off to chase Johnny Jinn before his mop had been attempted to be tamed too.
The nine-year-old girl had briefly pulled away from her father's chest to hear the second part of his words so because of this, he had had to witness her expression crumpling like a forgotten piece of paper and a single tear trickle down from her eyelid, just like how he expressed emotion that could not be portrayed with words.
James' heart sank. But it was not yet entirely broken. And once Jorgie's shoulders shaking and her grief had grown about as calm as it possibly could be thanks to the way that her father tenderly stroked her cheek and offered her words of consolation that seemed effortless for him to summon, she couldn't help but notice that she was alone in her tears.
Taking a bewildered breath that sound more like a hiccup, she copied the tracing motion of fingertips against James' cheek that was never like a razor towards her, only as soft as a pillow welcoming you to bed at the end of the day.
Like she always did, she verbalized her observation.
"You're not crying." She whispered before leaning forward and resting her forehead against his. As soon as she spoke these words, she decided that she understood the reason.
Sometimes things happened too intensely and too quickly. One minute, someone was there. The other minute, they were not. Sometimes the mind needed a moment to catch up, let alone the body.
Even if Jorgie knew exactly what to say, James didn't as he momentarily fluttered his eyes shut and tried to focus on the closeness with his daughter that he still possessed. However, he would not have to find the words for a little while longer.
You see, if Lynne had been watching the world beneath her already then her previously sallow skin surely would have tingled with heat all over again with the realization that somebody else was so in tune with her partner that he sensed distress without hearing words verbalizing it at all.
Or maybe it was Jorgie that he was in tune with. That wouldn't have made things better.
Jorginho had let himself back in the Morgan Household with a cut key of his own, having only just headed off on a walk to cool himself down, when he stepped onto the front door mat and sensed something had happened. Something even worse.
Dropping his set of keys down to the floor with a clatter, the first room he headed towards was the living room and he found both Jorgie and James cowering and yet embracing there. The truth was it had been so long since one of Lynne's disappearances that he hadn't experienced one while he had been reunited with James. But somehow, he knew.
Whether he sensed the absence in their hearts or saw the way that the armchair dipped as if someone was sat there but they were not. Jorginho was quick to realize the person that had purposely inflicted such a wound on him was missing.
And he was even quicker to realize that he did not wish her the wound of being away from her loved ones despite it all.
"Has something happened?" he questioned although it was perfectly clear, and his brow moistened as if he had gotten himself into a sweat during his walk, but it could not have been brisk. He avoided exercise unless it was combat or passion. And October was then amongst everybody.
James immediately searched for the worldly gaze of Jorginho for more than just comfort. But it was Jorgie to actively seek this from him and she did so after kissing her father on the brow with lips salty from the tears which had trickled down.
She desperately wanted her mother but the ursine arms of Jorginho could definitely soothe her heart rate down by a handful of beats.
"Mommy had to go away." She told him forlornly, pressing herself up against his chest in the same way that she had done to his father. And even though it was noticeably bulkier, they were both the same to her.
They were both some place to rest. Through times of happiness. And times of grief. They were a sanctuary. She could only hope her father could feel the same safety in order to process the continual loss they would all be stuck in for the rest of their lives even if Lynne returned soon enough.
Jorginho had gone down onto his knees from the second that Jorgie rushed towards him and while he had figured this from the beginning, he took a moment or two to process this, feeling the child straighten to wordlessly rest her cheek against his shoulder instead.
In the duration of him roaming his fingers through her locks, he figured what he wanted to say, and it wasn't a lot. But it was also a great deal given everything that had happened before.
He couldn't falsify the way that his naturally muddy eyes appeared like they had been caught in a forest rainstorm, more exposed than usual seeing as he wasn't wearing his thick rimmed glasses.
"I'm so sorry." He offered and in the second after he had spoken this aloud, he had scuffed against the carpet on his knees and Jorgie had walked backwards with him, so they were both nearing her father. Jorginho was embracing the two of them by the time that he spoke these words. "I'm so sorry, baby."
This time, it was James to allow himself to be pulled into the strong arms of Jorginho and he heard the shadow of his words like a breath whispered against his ear because of the three of their closeness, his own arms possessing strength of their own as they latched in return.
Jorgie would have normally liked to remain sandwiched between the two of them for as long as possible but for some reason she discovered herself pulling away. The reason for her own actions was to voice one more observation.
She didn't think twice about speaking it, glancing over at Jorginho as if he was the one with the answers more than James.
"Daddy feels more shocked in his heart rather than sadness right now so that's escaping from him rather than tears." Jorgie said. Jorgie told. Despite this, James did seem misty-eyed when Jorginho pulled away from him after an extra squeeze in order to listen to the young girl and offer her comfort in the best way that he knew how.
Glancing down at her, he thought of words that he could pluck in order to console her. But he quickly realized that she was the one with the brains and she was the one with the heart so he might as well speak of everything that he wanted to say with actions rather than words.
That had always been his way. Sometimes it had been his downfall. But it had to be enough. On that day, it had to be enough.
Noticing the way that Jorgie and James shared a poignant look even though they did not speak their own words either, Jorginho figured that it would be okay, so he made a grab for Jorgie properly and held her, so she was on his hip, her legs around his waist and hugging onto him.
It was as if she was the tiny baby that he had missed out on. It was as if she was a childless mother.
For the next few months, she would be. But she would always be Jorgie. And Jorgie would always cling into those who nurtured her.
It was funny how this gesture of pulling her close was meant to speak things towards Jorgie, but they spoke things to James almost as immediately too. Certainly, the glance between James and Jorginho remained as spoken as it was unspoken while Lynne had tried to sperate them, but it was her daughter who, there and then, had united them.
Things stopped being so wordless from James' point of view. He knew what to say regarding Jorgie's point. And he knew how to answer her prior observation of the lack of tears that had flowed from his eyes.
The words were natural once Jorginho had stopped brushing his hand soothingly underneath the chin of Jorgie and extended this gesture to James just the once, but his touch lingered there.
Word formulated from the second that the touch left. And James surprised his daughter by showing the twitch of a smile – even if it was wan – rather than puddles of tears.
"Some losses are so big that it takes the body lots of time to figure out what it wants to say, let alone the heart." James began, and he watched the way that his daughter with those eyes of his that he had given her turned to look towards Jorginho for confirmation. She unclenched as much as her young body was able to from the second that he touched his nose against hers and her father found more words that had been hidden away. "Some losses are big. Bigger than the whole sky that your mother is now a part of."
Jorgie drew breath in using her slim chest upon hearing her mother being honored by her father. Even though she was further than beyond there, she looked up at the ceiling and knew that she would be looked down upon even if she would have preferred to be looked on from across the room.
Beggars couldn't be choosers. And, after all, someone else was receiving a glance across so maybe there wasn't room for one more.
Jorgie pointed her head towards the sky upon hearing words that included her mother. But as James spoke of them, he did not look for Lynne. He looked at Jorginho who shared a glance back and it was a moment that they managed to hold onto, even if they hadn't managed to hold onto much else.
And in the same way that many of the greatest tales never get past the first page let alone chapter, that was their lot. To some, it might not have been a lot. But for them, it was everything. They would always be each other's summer of memories before their path diverged to where it truly needed to be.
But even so, in the moments that they felt like they needed each other, that certainly felt like a whole lot in and of itself. As big as the whole sky. The whole sky which had planned everything meant for them from the moment that they first met.
You see, as much as you try, you cannot go against what those twinkling mysteries wish for. Just look at Lynne. People always wish on shooting stars but perhaps they wish on us equally as much. Wish that we are happy with our lot. Because we should be. It makes room for an awful lot more.
That's something that James and Jorginho learned. And maybe Lynne would learn not to intercept something that was meant to be. After all, there were bigger forces than her at play. And they could handle it.
Call it karma. Call it destiny. Whatever it was, it made things how they were meant to be. Whatever it was, things ended up a lot happier.
But there always must be the trickery first, mustn't there!
The End.
There you go, thanks so much for reading but especially you, Shay! :) I love all of the tension in this I have to admit. And I especially am fascinated by how this was written long before I began work behind the scenes on the dynamic that Jorginho and Jorgie will go on to have as she gets older and he is married to Daisy, but re-reading this makes me feel like the ending scene was almost setting up all of that even if I didn't intend it. Jorginho may marry Daisy but as you can see here, he is causing all sorts of drama! But is he? Lynne was awful for saying what she said to him. Even if she was appalled by it herself and probably loathes that she went "up there" before she could apologise, it was definitely a bad move on her part. Ah, the drama! We love it. I hope you liked it, Shannon. And of course, I hope you have a very happy birthday and know how lucky I feel to be able to write our world for you :) Thanks again and I will be back on the 28th to update Letters That Changed Everything so see you then!
Amy signing out :)