“Or, maybe, just maybe, you could’ve given me that pillow when you realized what she had done,” Jack said. “Maybe she was a shitty stewardess, but you saw what happened! You could’ve done the right thing for once in your life!”
“Why? I wanted the pillow, and I had the pillow. It didn’t have your name on it. Why should I give it to you?” Peter argued. “Or are you the only one allowed to take things?”
“I didn’t take anything!” Jack snapped. “I had one blanket and no pillows. What exactly was there for me to take?”
“I don’t know, Jack. What in the world could you have possibly taken that didn’t belong to you?”
Peter replied icily, and I could hear both of their heartbeats speed up. Jack had gone from being annoyed to feeling threatened and defensive, but unfortunately, I had never been able to get a read on Peter’s emotions.
“Will the pair of you knock it off?” Ezra grumbled. From the sounds of it, they were somewhere near the bottom of the steps, in the kitchen maybe, but Ezra was walking past, going to his room.
“People are sleeping here, and I am so sick of hearing about the damn pillow.”
“It’s not about the damn pillow!” Peter growled.
“Why don’t you tell me what this is really about?” Jack asked, but he knew exactly what it was about. I was getting a hint myself, and it was making me nervous. I thought that after everything that had happened, they would finally be done fighting over me, but apparently, that was never ending.
“I know you two are having some kind of … scuffle, but so help me, if either one of you wake up Mae or disturb her anyway, you’ll be sorry. Do I make myself clear?” Ezra warned them.
There was silence, then I heard Ezra walking down the hall to his room. Jack and Peter waited until they heard his bedroom door shut before speaking.
“You’re an asshole,” Jack hissed when Ezra was gone.
“You’re the asshole!” Peter whispered fiercely.
“I just wanted a pillow!”
“I just wanted you to leave her alone!” Peter said more passionately than he had meant to, I’m sure.
The silence felt too thick, and my heart was barely beating, which was good, because I didn’t want them to know I was listening. I thought that maybe I should interrupt and stop them from whatever they might do, but they had to hash this out eventually. They hadn’t really spoken through everything that had transpired, and they had to have a lot of things bottled up.
“But I didn’t. Now what do you want me to do about it?” Jack tried to keep his voice calm, but there was a definite edge to it. “Is stealing my pillow really making it even?”
“God dammit, Jack! Will you shut up about the fucking pillow?” Peter sounded exasperated.
“What do you want me to do? What’s done is done! Now what do you want me to do?” Jack started shouting, but then remembered Ezra’s warning and quieted down. “Seriously. I don’t know what you expect me to do at this point. I can’t change what’s happened, and frankly, I don’t want to. So… that’s what it is.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” Peter sighed, sounding defeated. “Just never mind. Next time I’ll make sure you get a damn pillow on the plane.”
I had expected them to continue talking for longer, but I was wrong. Peter turned to climb the stairs, his bag slung of his shoulder, and I didn’t have a chance to escape somewhere and hide.
When he saw me, his expression was mostly blank, but his green eyes were hard. I smiled sheepishly at him, but he just exhaled and started coming up the stairs.
“Good morning, Alice,” Peter said more loudly than he needed to, letting Jack know that I had been spying on them. “You should’ve come down and said hello.”
“I just woke up,” I muttered lamely.
“Mmm, yes, I’m sure you did.” Peter started opening his bedroom door, but I stopped him.
“Peter, I’m really sorry,” I said, trying to apologize for more than just eavesdropping.
“You’re not the one that needs to apologize.” He looked at me for a minute, his eyes looking uncharacteristically vulnerable, then he glanced down the steps. The French doors off the kitchen suddenly slammed shut, as Jack went outside with the dog. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get some rest. It was a very long flight.”
“It sounds like it,” I attempted to make a joke, but he wasn’t into it. He just turned and went into his room, closing his bedroom door quietly behind him.
I sighed and went downstairs. Jack’s irritation was no longer just directed at Peter. Somehow me apologizing to him was a slight against Jack. I hated the idea that they were two teams, and I always had to pick one side or I’d be deemed an enemy to the other.
Jack had opened the shades over the French doors to step outside, and bright sunlight streamed in through them. I hadn’t slept very much to begin with, and just the sight of the sun made me want to curl up in bed again. Outside, Jack was trying to ignore his own fatigue. He stood on the stone patio, his hands shoved in his pockets, and watched Matilda root around the lawn for some long gone animal. It was wonderfully cold when I stepped out, contrasting with the warm fall day depicted out the window. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and I was already plotting to get Jack back in the house with me, where we could talk without me fighting to keep my eyes open.
“So it was a long flight?” I asked, wrapping my arms around me as I walked up to him.
“Yeah, but I’m sure Peter feels much better now that you apologized to him,” Jack grumbled.
“He deserves an apology!” I bristled.
“How can you even say that?” Jack whirled on me, his face contorted with pain and confusion, but mostly intense jealousy. “After everything you’ve been through-”
“We both know what happened! You don’t need rehash it every time I mention Peter’s name!” A cool breeze picked up, blowing my hair across my face, and I pushed it back behind my ears.
“This is just so ridiculous!” Jack shook his head. “Shit happened, stuff that I can’t apparently talk about, but it happened. And still, you wanted to go off and risk your life to rescue him, and I said fine. For some stupid reason, I let you go.”
“You don’t ‘let’ me do anything, and you know it!” I glared at him.
“Whatever. I didn’t protest. You said wanted to go, for… God why, Alice? Why would you want to do that? Why are you always defending him? He does not deserve any apology! He doesn’t even deserve to be alive! And you just bring him back here like nothing ever happened? And for that, I am supposed to apologize to him?” Jack looked at me incredulously. “That is so fucked up! I love you! Why do I need to tell him I’m sorry for that when I’m not?”
“Because he loved me too, and I wasn’t yours!” I shouted, and he flinched. He looked away from, squinting up at the sun, and I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to say. Rubbing the back of his neck, he fell silent for a minute.
“I saw you first,” Jack mumbled.
“You cannot use that as an argument,” I rolled my eyes. “I’m not the last piece of pizza. I’m a person, and I chose you. You have me. He doesn’t. Peter has nothing, and he’s your brother. And I know before all this, you cared about him, too. So now he lost me and you. And I’m not sorry that I love you, but I am sorry that he had to get hurt in the process. You know?”
“I know you’re right,” Jack said thickly. “But I can’t forgive him. Fighting for you, I understand.
Trying to kill me, I totally get that. But when he tried to kill you… I can’t ever forgive him for that, and I shouldn’t have to.”
“Jack…” I touched his arm gently, and his blue eyes were swimming when he looked at me.
I chewed my lip, trying to decide whether or not I should tell him. For some reason, I felt like I was breaking Peter’s confidence, but if it could get the two of them to stop hating each other, then maybe it was worth it. “Peter never tried to kill me.”
“I was there!” Jack was incredulous and irritated. “You can’t tell me that didn’t happen.”
“No, it did, but not exactly the way you think it did. When Peter bit me, he knew that you were in the house and that you were more in tune to my heartbeat than any other sound in the world.
You had fought before when you thought he was going to hurt me. He knew that you’d sooner hurt yourself than let something happen to me,” I explained quietly, and I saw realization on Jack’s face. His jaw slacked and there was something painfully frantic in his eyes, and he didn’t want to believe anything I was saying. “He was counting on you to rush in and save me, and he thought that you’d be too angry to let him live. Peter wasn’t trying to kill me; he was trying to kill himself.”
“No…” Jack shook his head and face completely fell. “No. That’s not… Because if he did that, that would mean he…”