In My Dreams I Hold a Knife(4)

I almost snorted my wine. “Courtney? If she’s even one iota less a mean girl, I will consider that immense personal growth.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “I said it was my hope, not my expectation, Miss Literally-Could-Not-Care-Less.”

“Ha.”

“You know, I always felt bad for her. Underneath the designer clothes and bitchiness, Courtney seemed like an insecure little girl, desperate to be liked.” He gasped, lifting a hand to his chest. “Will you look at that… I cursed. Soak it in, ’cause it’s not happening again. The Baptist guilt hangover is already setting in.”

I shook my head, trying to keep the smile on my face, but inside my heart was breaking.

“Jess.” Jack laid his hand over mine. “I really do want you to have fun. For both of us.”

Fun. I was going back for so much more than that. I cleared my throat. “After I give you my report on everyone, my reward is that I finally get to meet Will.”

Jack withdrew his hand. “Maybe. You know I like to keep things…separate.”

Jack had never introduced me to his boyfriend. Not once in the years since we’d been friends again, which was itself a strange story. When Jack was accused of murdering Heather our senior year, in the few months before he left campus for good, the other students crossed the street wherever he walked, sure down to their bones they were looking at a killer. If he entered a room, everyone stiffened and fled.

But not me. My limbs had remained relaxed, limber, fluid around him—no escalating heartbeat, no tremor in the hands—despite the police’s nearly airtight case.

It wasn’t a logical reaction. Jack was Heather’s boyfriend, the person most likely to kill her, according to statistics. The scissors crusted with Heather’s blood—used to stab her, over and over—were found in his dorm room. Witnesses saw Jack and Heather screaming at each other hours before her body was found. The evidence was damning.

But in the end, the police weren’t able to convict Jack. In some ways, it didn’t matter. He was a murderer in everyone’s eyes.

Everyone except for me.

Slowly, inch by inch, my body’s knowing filtered into my brain. One night, a year or so after I moved to New York City, I woke in a cold sweat, sitting up rigid as a board in my tiny rented bedroom, filled to the brim with a single conviction: Jack was innocent.

It took me another three months to reach out to him. He was also living in the city, trying to disappear. I’d told him I thought he was innocent, and from that day forward, I’d been one of his few friends. I was his only friend from college, where, until Heather died, he’d been popular. Student body president. Phi Delt treasurer. Duquette University Volunteer of the Year.

To this day, I hadn’t told anyone I still saw Jack. He was my secret. One of them, at least.

Looking at him now, radiating kindness, filled me with anger. Jack was undeniably good, so easy to read. The fact that so many believed he was capable of brutal violence was baffling. I’d met dangerous people—truly dangerous people—and seen the violence in their eyes, heard it brimming in their voices. Jack wasn’t like that.

So I understood why he wanted to shield the new people in his life from his past, the horror of the accusation that remained unresolved, despite the dropped charges. It’s not like he could ever truly hide it from someone, not with the internet, or the fact that his whole life, he was doomed to menial jobs that wouldn’t fire him after a startling Google search. Or the fact that he barely spoke to his family anymore. Though, to be fair, that was because of more than Heather, because of their southernness, their Baptistness, their rigidness…

I understood why Jack would want to draw a solid, impenetrable line between now and then. But still, it was hard to wrap my mind around, because the past was still so much with me. I lived with the constant unfolding of memories, past scenes still rolling, still playing out. I heard my friends’ voices in my head, kept our conversations alive, even if for years now it had just been me talking, one-sided, saying, Just you wait.

A thrill lifted the small hairs on my arms. Tomorrow, there’d be no more waiting.

Jack sighed. “Thanks for coming to see me before you left. You know, I’m glad you never changed. Seriously. Ten years, and same old Jess.”

I nearly dropped my glass. “What are you talking about?” I waved at myself. “This dress is Rodarte. Look at this hair, these nails. I’ve been in Page Six. I’ve been to Europe, like, eight times. I’m totally different now.”

Jack laughed as if I was joking and rose from his seat, leaning forward to kiss my forehead. “Never stop being a sweetheart, okay? You’re one of the good ones.”

I didn’t want to be a sweetheart. How uninteresting, how pathetic. But I did want to be one of the good ones, which sounded like an exclusive club. I didn’t know how to respond. At least Jack had given me what I’d come here looking for, besides the penance: his blessing. Now I could go to Duquette guilt-free. For that, I held my tongue as he tugged his coat over his shoulders.

He stepped away from the table, then turned back, and there was something in his eyes—worry? Fear? I couldn’t quite pin it. “One more thing. I’ve been getting these letters—”

“Please don’t tell me it’s the Jesus freaks again, saying you’re going to burn in hell for all eternity.”