Jackie and Tommy

"Any pain?"

"Nah."

He gets up and steps around me, sliding my bra straps off to poke at the worst of the scars. The skin on my shoulders flinches at the touch. "Nothing's hot to the touch. Do they all itch?"

"Yeah. I don't scratch though."

He goes to the counter, sighing and beginning to unload the basket. "Of course you don't." I suck my teeth and start redressing. Tommy keeps shuffling through the basket. "Hold on, let me put something on-"

"I'm good, Tommy," I begin, but I turn around to see his hands full of some thick oil.

He motions them towards the chair, egging me to sit back down. "You may like your scars, but Ma says you look like Frankenstein's monster. And that the scar tissue will limit your movement. Sit."

I hold back grumbles this time. Ms. Fetty is always so... well-meaning. Pushy. Just like her son. And it's weird that she'd ask him to do this anyway.

Or does he just insist on applying it himself?

I feel that fluttering take off in my stomach again and sternly tamp it down, reminding myself of the dry, impersonal touch the man has at all times. And how irritated I am at him still, anyway.

"I'm sorry about the school."

He says this quietly, rubbing the remaining oil between his hands and working down my left arm. His hands are very hot.

"Yeah?"

"It's my thing to.... not keep you in check, no. More to keep you out of danger. I know this fight wasn't your fault, but damn it, Jack, y'all had plenty of time to run to Jessie's room and lock yourselves in. There was a myriad of options for you to choose rather than getting sliced up."

He's got my other arm now. These are parts that I could surely reach with a bit of trouble, but I'm not complaining. He goes on.

"I call a lot of the stuff you do stupid... but in truth most of it is just daring. That, though? You shouldn't've ever gone head to head with that son of a bitch. The state even moved Jessie out because they couldn't promise her safety out here."

I cock my head. "I thought this was an apology?"

"I'm getting to it." He runs swift fingers over the ridge of scar tissue along my stomach, and I assume he's on autopilot so I just hold still. "I should never have doubted you in your classroom, or intervened like that when I know, at least there, you put your welfare and the welfare of your students first and foremost. So I am sorry."

He claps his hands together, done with his half-lecture, half-apology. I sit up.

"See normally I'd be contesting a lot of that, but I'm tired, Tommy. So just know you're wrong."

"Okay good. Sit at the table and shut up."

I narrow my eyes and stand, considering walking to the couch and plopping down as brattily as I can. But I swing my chair around and settle down silently, and the surprise on his face at the lack of response is better than the irritation I would've gotten with defiance.

Potatoes, broccoli, shrimp. I finish my plate and watch Tom inspect his, the skins of the potatoes neatly dissected and placed on the side.

"Nobody in town is seriously injured anymore. New residents arrive for the physician's clinic in a couple weeks. What you gonna do with your fresh free time?"

He glances up at me before rising and taking his and my plate to the sink. "What I did before."

I cock my head. "Spend it over here?"

"Jack, you act like I was over here every day."

Pretty much. I don't say it though, just sidle up beside him as he puts the washed dishes back in the basket.

"You know I can just start coming over again sometimes, if your momma wanna cook. And I can help her too."

"No."

"What? I wanna scalp some of her recipes. Like the brisket she never showed me."

"It gets dark too early right now for you to be over that late. You can wait a while."

Fucking bossy, audacious bastard. I step back from the counter, more words running a mile a minute in my head. When did our friendship devolve into him trying to dictate what I could and could not do? Did the fight knock a couple screws loose? I start wiping down the table the same way I used to do at Ms. Fetty's diner, feeling a slight pull in my arm and ignoring it. They'll heal too tight if I keep restricting. Matter of fact, I should do yoga, or something else tonight. I get lost in thought until the rag is slid out from under my hand and I look up at Thomas in stony silence.

"I'm doing too much. I know." He folds the dishcloth up and drops it over the divider in the sink. "I promise I'm not trying to commandeer your life. You were attacked. You're up within four weeks of it, and yes you're doing great, but..."

He grabs my arms and drags me closer to him like a sandbag. Dull pain spreads across my stomach, shoulders, and somehow even my back. I feel my eyes flash a little big but he sets me down before him.

"That hurt. Right?" He's smoothing his hands firmly and gently over my arms, which are now at my sides. At my silence, he continues.

"You have nerves, muscle tissue, a whole block party of stuff that your body's trying its best to repair. I... asked both classes, because I was teaching everyone together while you were out, to take your recovery in mind when you got back. That's all. For everything else, I promise I'll try to stop bossing you around. Lord knows you don't listen anyway."

He studies me after that, and the quiet presses in on my ears, making me hyper aware of the proximity of his face and the phantom memory of his fingers stroking my stomach. I'm still warm from his hands. I shake my arms to get them off, but he holds me firmly, pulling me a hair closer with obscenely dark eyes. I shrug violently again to dislodge him, startled and with a system gunning for action. His hands slide off my arms completely, but I don't step away. I stand before him wondering at the struggle on his face.

"Thomas?"

I shouldn't have spoken. It's gone now, slipped away back into his dystopian future of a brain. A little bit of roughness that I wish had the courage to introduce itself.

He starts to move away but I place a hand on his chest. It's a completely new stream of thought that had never occurred to me: touching Thomas' chest. Warm, solid, a slight give of skin. Have I ever seen it bare? The rest of the body goes still, and I imagine nervously what his face looks like now. Did the expression come back? I raise my second hand and put it exploratively next to the first bold one, and then I look up. If that look is still there, I don't mind helping him with what he needs. At all.

Not stony, but completely unreadable. I feel a little bit of a smile spark behind the corners of my mouth.

"I accept your apology."

He shifts again, not moving away but restless under my hands. "What?"

I blink, all innocence but pressing my hands a bit more firmly into his chest. "I accept your apology. I'll see you later?"

He sucks his teeth and the smile finally breaks out from behind my lips. "What? What I do?"

Thomas grabs my hands and lifts them off of his body, then moves to the other side of the table to finish packing up his mother's basket, huffing. "Don't play around with me, Jack."

"I was just picking up what you were putting down!" He shoots me a look, and I let my guilty hands drift down to the table. "Am I supposed to pretend you weren't putting down? Okay, I'll forget it. Never happened."

Thomas straightens up and stares at me, the handle of his wicker basket over one arm. "I wasn't.... Okay. Whatever. I'll see you later."

I try to reign myself in; we're supposed to be getting back to normal. "Hey, wait. Wanna hang out? I got my sister's HBO password yesterday."

"I didn't know you guys were doing that good."

I shrug. "We're trying. Lots of years to cover."

Thomas stands in the archway of the kitchen, somber and considering. "Tomorrow?"

...

"I'm not watching that."

"Then why are you over here, Tommy?" I sigh and let my head fall to the side to look at him.

"I'm over here to attain a net zero on my productivity for today, not actively harm myself by watching weaponized trash."

"The Suicide Squad had it's charming moments, even though it's..."

He shoots me the same look his mother does, eyebrows crowding toward his hairline, daring me to lie.

"I like watching trash movies. It's like fiber, it moves stuff along in the system. Makes room for the Oscar-nominated ones."

Thomas eyes the remote. "Pick a different fiber."

I shrug and scroll down to the thrillers. Thomas snorts, and I scroll past to the comedies. We don't do well with scary movies.

So of course we end up watching a murder mystery. I'd already seen Death on the Nile in theaters twice, but there's nothing stopping me from watching it again. Thomas falls asleep even before Gal Gadot almost dies the first time, and I settle in to his snores and a plot that makes no sense.

He wakes up before the end, and rubs his hands over his face. "No reason why he didn't get with the singer."

"It's the most irritating part about the movie."

"You know Agatha Christie hated writing Poirot's character after a while?"

I look over at him, his arm slung over the back of the couch. "No shit? Why?"

"She didn't like him. Too egocentric."

I nod and get up. "Kinda dude you wouldn't want to know in real life."

I hear Thomas get up behind me and follow me into the kitchen. I open the fridge door and stand inside the block of cold light, because it's just about time for a snack I don't need. "Did you finish chapter 8 with your class yet? Some of mine are already proficient in next semester's stuff and I was thinking we might get to add more to next year's syllabus."

He slings his coat over his shoulder but leans back against the counter. "Well yeah but this is the oldest group we've had in a while. They may just be an exception."

I shrug. "Maybe. It wouldn't hurt to make the courses more challenging though. It's not like we pass or fail anyone, it's a mandatory state-funded course for residents in our region."

"Yes, so why make it more complicated than it needs to be?"

I close the fridge. "An extra chapter or two on toxic and nontoxic fungi isn't gonna kill anyone, Tommy."

He flings his jacket over one of the chairs and reaches above me for the pack of Oreos I'd been hiding from myself. "You say that, but you probably have plans for a whole honors course." My hands tuck into my pockets. "Of course. Of course you do. I know you."

He does, way too well. I pour two glasses of milk and sit down across from him. "They're looking to appoint troopers for all northeastern districts, we could apply, do a few years, and get certified as instructors. Become an actual institution."

"The hell, Jackie? No."

"Why not?" I slide the tray out of the package, a row of cookies already missing. These are probably stale since I haven't seen them since before the whole knife fight thing, but we both could probably care less.

"What on earth makes you think..."

Something in my brain sours at the dropped trail of his sentence. "You don't have to be a part of it if you don't want to. Just an idea."

The Oreos sit untouched between us, forgotten for the sake of conflict. "No, it's a good idea, but you can't just... it's a dangerous job, Jack. You've never even done a ranger trip before."

...Neither has he. I choose to settle on a different point. "Well yeah, that's what a certification is for. We're out here teaching survival but broader experience would definitely help. Even if we... I... don't do a couple years as a trooper in an appointed territory, the certification would help the town a lot. I could even see if I could patrol out here instead."

"Jack, look, just... no. It's a bad idea."

"You just said it was a good one. And thank God I'm a grown-ass woman, or that no might've stopped me."

He blows out a breath, and I stand, too over this argument to say anything else about it. I dump my untouched glass into the sink.

"Go head and let yourself out when you're done. I'll see you later."

I'm walking out of the room when his chair clatters behind me. I turn, forgetting how done I am and ready to fight some more, but he's standing, looking almost scared. Anger immediately turns to concern.

"Yo, you good?"

He's a little red in the face and I walk back to him, peering up into his eyes. "Just forget it, Tommy, go home and get some rest. You need it."

He takes his hands out of his pockets and draws me into a snug embrace, and I don't question it, just hugging him back. Tommy never hugs anybody.

He pulls back after a moment, but doesn't draw away, and the pieces start to take shape in my mind. Before I can react, a soft set of lips is pressing across my own, and my intent to comfort my friend is completely overtaken.

One of his hands trails up my back to rest at the nape of my neck, maybe ensuring that I don't pull away, but I have no desire to, pressing up until he grunts and opens his mouth, letting hot wet air out of his mouth as his tongue accepts mine.

My stomach drops out as he grabs my waist and lifts me, and I follow his lead and wrap my legs around him. If I stop to think about what's happening, I know it'll end. Thomas seems to feel the same, his mouth never leaving mine as he stumbles over to the counter and places me onto it.

Heat swamps me at the thought of fucking him there, and I groan into another kiss as his hands travel under my shirt.

He draws his mouth back as his hands cruise over my skin, the both of us almost feverish now. I watch his face as he cups one of my breasts over my bra, and am wracked by a full shudder at the contentment that sweeps over me.

His expression changes, and his hands still over my body. I'd run into another knife if it meant he'd start moving again.

"I'm-" He searches my eyes, maybe for any sort of hesitation or inhibition, but he'd be hard-pressed to find any. His eyes are full of them though, and he steps back, leaving me wobbling on the countertop as he grabs his jacket. He stands at the table, no longer red-faced but looking incredibly conflicted.

I want him over me, yes, but not if he's this tormented about it. "Tommy, you good?"

"Yeah."

I slide carefully off of the counter and back across the room, do an about face, and turn back to see him still standing there. "You su-"

"Jack, go away."

"This is my house, Thomas."

His eyes flash up to mine and I stand firm in the doorway, trying to be as resolute as possible against someone with the countenance of an embarrassed middle school teacher.

"This is not a good time for..." he doesn't finish his sentence, just shakes his head clear of whatever he's thinking and starts striding to the door.

"Okay. Well... I'll see you-"

The door swings shut after him, and I have no idea what's going to happen after this.

...

I find Thomas once again after school, this time sitting at his desk bent over a tall stack of papers. I know he heard the footsteps coming up to the door, and I know he heard them stop at the threshold. So I wait for him to look up at me.

"Me and your mom are cooking tonight. Come pick me up."

I don't wait for a response, or even the slight scrunching of his eyebrows I know began after he processed my words. I go home and wait for him to text me that he's outside, because if there's one person he listens to, it's his mother. When he does arrive, I hop into the car and am met with apprehensive silence. I'd start my normal chatter up but I feel good in the quiet. I let him stew for the whole ride, and sit with him as he parks outside of his mom's, unmoving.

"Are you doing this because I-"

"No. I was talking to her over the weekend at the supermarket. I haven't made it around to see your mom since the fight, and I figured it was about time to come see her again. She's been sending me dinner for a month straight, the least I could do is pay her a visit."

He nods, and we lapse into more silence.

"Thomas."

"What."

"Are you gonna be weird about this forever?"

"Well since it keeps replaying in my head, probably."

"Wh-"

"Not like that. I don't want it to. It just does, whenever I close my eyes. I'm not making this any better, I just keep talking. Let's go inside," he finishes, throwing himself out of the car.

Following him up the path, I acknowledge that my nerves are jumping too, but I find a bit of humor in the situation. I punch him in the shoulder as I catch up to walk beside him. "You use up all your braincells during the day, huh?"

It snaps him out of it enough to start muttering at me while we're walking through the door.

"Hey Ma!" I shout, the smell of onions and turmeric meeting me at the door. "You started without me?"

Ms. Fetty pops her head out of the kitchen. "Just the boring stuff, baby girl. Wash your hands and come on. Thomas, I need more whole milk, what we had went bad. Can you-"

"Yeah." The door swoops shut and he's off. I turn around to see his mother's reaction and her eyebrows are up in her bangs, a smile on her face.

"Been working on his nerves, Jackie?"

I grin and take my coat off, draping it over the hook by the door. "It's good for his health."

We make short work of the vegetables Ms. Fetty hasn't gotten through yet, and I'm instantly transported back to dinner prep at the diner. All that's missing is the chatter of customers and Thomas' cracking teenage voice up front.

"You taking care of yourself?" I hear from back by the stovetop as Ms. Fetty dumps halved mushrooms into a cast iron skillet.

I shrug over pie dough. "As much as your son lets me, yes. Been a challenge."

She comes to sit across from me, watching me carefully roll the dough to what, as far as I can tell, is a quarter inch thick.

"I'll bet."

It takes me a minute to realize that this silence might be loaded. I look up at her, and her eyes are calm and questioning on mine.

"Oh. Oh, nah, Ms, Fetty, if something were to happen between me and Tommy it would've happened years ago, don't worry." I'd convinced myself as much over the past few days.

"Is that right?"

Can she see through me or something? Did Thomas tell her what happened? No. He doesn't tell her anything these days. I decide to play it incredibly cool. And to snitch.

"What HAS been happening, Ma, is that he's been treating me like an invalid and getting other people in on it too. You'd think I lost both arms."

"What, like asking your students to string their own bows?"

I pause, my next accusatory sentence dying on my tongue.

"Or asking Kaycee at the shop to help you bring your bags to the car when you have more than you can carry?"

I blink at her.

"He moved out, Jackie, yes, but he still tells me these things. I thought it was a good idea too, although he should've told you."

I don't know whether I should sulk or let it drop, and she laughs at my indecisive face. I sigh and sling the crust into the heavy-ass pie dish she's had for as long as I can remember.

"I was going to start doing strongman competitions just to spite him, but since you agree, Ma, I'll oblige."

She pats my head, reminding me exactly where her son got it from. "At least until you're all patched up."

I refrain from aggravating Thomas for the rest of the evening, and we leave his mom's house full and jovial. The atmosphere on the way home isn't nearly as tense as it was when we arrived.

Thomas pulls up outside of my house and stares peacefully out into space over the steering wheel.

"Alright, I'mma see you later, Tommy."

He breaks his trance. "Uh, Jackie."

Aw shit, something's on his mind. "Yeah."

"Not for a while." He registers the confusion on my face. "I won't be coming over all the time like I have been, at least not..."

He starts over. "I'm cool when we're at the school or hanging out outside, like with my mother, but I just need-" The words stick in his throat again, but I nod.