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athingthatwantsvirginia · 4 years

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This Ernest Hemingway Thing

PART FORTY OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: major discussions of parent death/death in general, plentiful pop culture references

Word Count: 5.4K

Summary: Ella struggles in the wake of her father's death.

“If you don’t shut up about this bar...” Jess warned, shooting daggers at Chris over the top of his book.

It was a slow day, and the three of them sat in the common area of Truncheon. Jess read his Sylvia Plath novel as he sat atop the welcome table in the front of the store. Chris was on a rant about why they should buy up the vacant space down the road and open a bar, while Matthew rolled his eyes. Snow fell in thick blankets, the coldest of the winter so far. Jess had opted to drive to work, rather than trudge through the crunchy, icy layer caking the sidewalks. The storm had blown in the night before as a bit of a surprise, leaving the city little time to salt the roads. The lack of customers at the book press was no shock. The large, ornate clock ticked slowly over the door. Only a few more minutes, and it would be time to close up for the day. Jess was glad; he’d be home to Ella soon enough. No matter how much she insisted she was fine, he couldn’t help feeling antsy when he’d left her home alone in the morning. His bottom lip was beginning to feel chapped from how much he had been gnawing on it.

Chris sighed heavily, throwing his hands up in exasperation. He was wearing a maroon cardigan over a pullover sweater, and Jess wondered how he wasn’t suffocating underneath all the wool. Chris took another sip of his disgusting chai latte before he continued.

“But it wouldn’t be just any bar! It would be Cedar Bar Redux!” he exclaimed.

Matthew rolled his eyes, not bothering to look up from the inventory sheet he was reviewing. “Just saying the name over and over isn’t gonna convince us.”

“Listen, we’ve already got this Ernest Hemingway thing going here,” Chris said emphatically, gesturing to the room around them. “Now, we can have a Charlie Parker thing down the road. We’ll play only jazz music there, and only serve drinks with whiskey. It’ll be super classy. Super hip.”

“Please don’t ever say ‘hip’ again,” Jess deadpanned, his eyes back on his reading.

Chris grinned confidently. “One day you’ll stop and think, ‘Wow, Chris has been a genius all along. Why did I ever doubt him?’”

Jess scoffed doubtfully.

“Sure, man,” Matthew said with a mocking nod.

“Hey, you’ll see, guys. Just you wait,” Chris said, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting at their dismissal of his idea. “If Ella was here, she’d agree with me.”

Shaking his head a bit, Jess snorted a laugh. “No, she wouldn’t.”

“I think she’s just pretentious enough to get behind it,” Chris argued, shrugging flippantly.

“Actually, I think she’s just pretentious enough to call you out for being a poser,” Matthew countered, his voice dejected as ever as he continued scouring the inventory sheets for any mistakes he might have made on them earlier in the day.

Chris narrowed his eyes at Matthew, getting ready to rebut. However, Jess spoke up first. He rose from his seat, stuffing the Plath book in the back pocket of his jeans and going to grab his coat and scarf.

“Speaking of Eleanor,” he said, “I’m going home. It’s closing time, boys. Have fun with the marketing pitch, Matthew.”

“Thanks, Jess,” Matthew replied sarcastically, still not looking up. On inventory day, he was basically a robot, glued to his paperwork. Not like Jess could blame Matthew, though, considering Jess would have run the business into the ground during the first week had Matthew not been there to deal with the numbers.

“What do you mean ‘speaking of Ella’?” Chris asked, his interest piqued.

She hadn’t been around much recently, and he missed her, despite their occasional bickering. It had been over a month since her father died, and she had hardly let them know how she was doing once she got back. He could count on one hand the number of times they’d seen her. It wasn’t as though he didn’t understand; she could take as much time as he needed. But Jess wasn’t exactly helping to ease his (and Matthew’s) concern, offering little more than an assurance that she was fine and just needed time for herself. It was hard for Chris to imagine Ella coping by isolation, but he had never known her in tragedy.

Jess shrugged on his coat, and began tying his scarf around his neck. “She stayed home sick today. I wanna make sure she at least eats dinner,” he explained shortly. They were all familiar with Ella’s bad habit of skipping, or forgetting, meals when she was stressed or upset.

“She okay?” Chris asked.

Finally, Matthew looked up from his sheet, patiently awaiting an answer. Chis wasn’t the only one who had noticed Ella’s recent absence. She had quite a presence, after all. He and Mabel were beginning to worry. Leo, too.

Jess shrugged, evasive. “Yeah. She’s fine. Just a winter bug or something.”

Chris nodded skeptically. “Okay.”

“Tell her we hope she feels better,” Matthew cut in diplomatically, hoping Chris got the hint that he should let sleeping dogs lie.

“Just call me a carrier pigeon,” Jess quipped, smiling thinly, before he excited the shop into the frigid evening air.

. . .

Eyelids heavy, Ella focused on her breathing. The falling snow twinkled in the soft light of the cloudy evening, and she watched it. Flakes floated down haphazardly, sometimes tossed along the wind. Watching it made her feel mindless, but almost in a good way, as she laid on her side. The pain in her head had numbed, though an ache still throbbed dully in her skull. She was just too tired. The kind of fatigue which comes with a fever, though she knew she didn’t have one. She just needed to sleep. Sleep and sleep, she told herself, until the pain went away. After a good rest, she hoped, she would awake renewed and inspired. Her sketchbook sat closed on her nightstand, not used since the night before her father died, the night of Jess’s publishing party.

In her worst moments, that night came back to her in flashes. Not because it was bad, but because she had been just so happy. Tipsy and in love and hopeful. The naivety almost made her want to laugh out loud. How could she possibly have thought she would have the chance to patch things up with her father? Life didn’t work that way. It never did. She didn’t know when she had lost sight of her realist views, but she was reminded why they were important. Always planning for the worst meant no disappointments and no ugly surprises. She drifted in and out of vague dreams, almost unsure of when and if she was awake. She felt sweaty and stale beneath the blue quilt, but she still snuggled into it deeper. It made her feel safe in some innocent, childish way she wished she could hold onto. She knew when she got up again, she would feel cold. And she would have to continue on as normal with a new, unwelcome tightness in her chest.

At the sound of the doorknob to the bedroom turning, she shut her eyes completely. She pretended to be asleep, breathing deeply and making her expression go slack, as Jess came in. Better to have him believe she was actually resting, rather than staring off into the middle distance feeling sorry for herself. Ella didn’t know quite what time it was, but she thought he was early, judging by the light outside. She knew he was worried about her; she could see it, even if he never said it out loud. But she was just so tired. She simply lacked the energy to reassure him, or to reassure herself. She could hear him quietly take off his shoes, his watch.

Then, he exited the room again. She heard him put on an album by The Cure at a low volume. It made her want to smile, almost. The apartment felt better when he was in it. She felt less claustrophobic. Maybe since he was finally there, she would actually get some sleep. But sleep never came, and she knew why. She’d been lying in bed all day, in a zombie-like state. In the two weeks since returning to work, she’d come home every day exhausted. And, worse yet, angry. Not in a yelling and punching the walls kind of way, though. Instead, she would cry hot, frustrated tears at the smallest mistake in her work. She would feel the urge to go smoke or drink, though she hadn’t given in. She felt like she was crawling out of her skin, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She could only sit back and watch as she struggled tiredly through her lectures and bit her nails ragged.

But the worst part was not the anger. The worst part was the inability to truly feel it. She knew she was angry, and she knew why, but she couldn’t get it to sink it. She couldn’t work through it or make it better, she could only feel it in the moment. When it passed, she would go back to her sleepy, sluggish state. And the storm of emotion would sit dormant in her belly. She tried to think about her father, and tried to cry for him. She couldn’t. She could only wait for the random bursts of emotion at meaningless moments. When she thought of her father’s death, or even her mother’s, it was like she could feel the key turning in the lock on her heart, and the switch flipping off. Not since the night Jess had held her on the Gilmore porch had she been able to shed a tear about any of it.

Staying home had been both a necessity because of the migraine she’d woken up with, and an attempt to wake herself up. Maybe if she could sleep off the constant fatigue she had been feeling, she could sleep off the hazy fog in her brain as well. But, as the day began to come to a close, she could only lie in her bed feeling defeated. In a way which was familiar, but still so new. When her mother had died, it had been such a shock. It had been more cut and dry. She had loved her mother, and her mother died. But her father was a different story. And he had been her only parent left.

After a few minutes, the bedroom door creaked open again, and she heard Jess’s soft footfalls on the carpet. The other side of the bed dipped down as he sat, and placed a gentle hand on her back, beginning to rub circles there.

“Elle?” he asked. “Hey, honey, wake up.”

Ella took a deep breath in, feigning slight surprise as she opened her eyes and rolled over, away from the window to face Jess. He had a small smirk on his face, but it didn’t reach his eyes as he looked down at her. With a light touch, he brushed the stray strands of hair away from her forehead.

“Hey,” she said, her voice slightly hoarse and groggy.

“Hi,” he replied.

She was pale and exhausted. It was as though her face had drained of all color the moment her father had died, and it had yet to come back. He couldn’t make her blush like he used to. Some sort of elemental lightness had left her, one which he hadn’t noticed she had until it was gone. And he was more or less at a loss about what to do. She was going about her day, going through the motions, but she was still somewhere far off in her mind. Unable to deal with anything that didn’t lack all emotion. He was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to snap out of it, or if a part of her was missing that could never be replaced. But, he was trying for her. He was taking care of her in a way he had never gotten a chance to before. Not from sickness, but from sadness. She had always been the one to patch him up emotionally, when things fell through with his father or he had a panic attack or he couldn’t get the dark clouds to lift from above his head. She was not exactly a ray of sunshine, but she wasn’t one to wallow either. She was an expert at getting through, attacking life the way it attacked her, picking herself back up. This time, he thought, maybe she just needed a hand.

“How’s your head?” he asked quietly, his thumb caressing her skin.

In the morning, she’d barely been able to open her eyes, her migraine was so bad. He wasn’t surprised though. She hadn’t taken a day off since going back to work. Everything was bound to catch up with her eventually. She was trying to hold it all back again, but he didn’t know why. Maybe because she’d had a bit of time; she wasn’t in shock anymore. She had more control over her emotions, maybe too much.

She shrugged. “A little better.”

“Good,” he said, leaning down and pressing a long kiss on her forehead.

When he pulled away, Ella took in a deep breath through her nose. She let her muscles release tension she didn’t know they’d been holding. She was glad he was home, even if she was embarrassed at his seeing her lying around.

“I made some green tea. You wanna watch a Stephen King movie with dinner? Or do your eyes still hurt?” he asked.

She felt her stomach do a flip. She didn’t deserve him. And his tenderness made her feel squirmy, like at some point he would realize how lazy she was being, how pathetic. Even one day off of work was making her feel so useless. She cleared her throat, averting her eyes from him.

“I’m actually not that hungry,” she said sheepishly. She hadn’t eaten all day, but she just couldn’t bring herself to want anything.

Jess sighed. “Elle-”

“No, I know,” she cut him off. “I promise I’ll eat later, really. Just not right now.”

Biting at his lip, Jess seemed lost in thought for a moment before he finally nodded. “Okay.”

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye. “Did you finish that Sylvia Plath?”

“Not yet,” he said.

“You wanna come lay down and read me what you have left, James Dean?” she asked, tone lighter than it had been.

He let a smile ghost over his lips. “Always, Daria.”

Swallowing thickly, Ella muttered a thanks to him as he left the room again. She rolled over and stared at the ceiling, so blank and dull white. Like a canvas she wanted to paint. But just thinking of the empty pages in her sketchbook made dread rise up in her throat. She shook the thought away as Jess came back into the room with two mugs of tea and a book under his arm. As they drank their tea, he told her about his day, about Chris and Matthew, how slow it had been. She laughed at the right moments, nodded at the right moments, smiled when she should have. But her heart wasn’t in it. She didn’t add anything, she barely even looked at him. He wanted to ask her what was wrong, and he almost did. But she looked so tired. He decided to wait until at least the morning. She needed rest more than she needed an interrogation, he figured. When they were done, cups on nightstands, he laid down next to her, warm under the covers as the snow kept falling in sheets outside, the light of the streetlamps making the flakes sparkle. The approaching darkness was almost gloomy, though, and he wasn’t particularly sure why. She laid her head on his chest, as she often did when he read to her. She liked to hear the vibrations of his words against her ear.

As he began at the page where he stopped, she felt warmer. His voice and the feeling of his body against her made it easier to breathe, easier to get her mind to shut up for a moment. But it lasted not for long, as a quiet thought whispered in the back of her mind. Then, it was louder and louder, until it became a shout, a scream. Someday, she would end up like her father, like Fiona. Losing the person you loved most in the world destroyed you. Ella didn’t know why, but all of a sudden she felt certain she would lose Jess. He would die, and he would die suddenly. As soon as she let her guard down again, she would lose him. She would lose the person she belonged to, the person who belonged to her.

The love she felt for Jess was unlike what she had felt for anyone else before, and some part of her knew she would never feel that love for anyone else again. And she felt like she understood her father better than she ever had before. He’d lost her mother in the middle of the night; the person he belonged to. Ella had been able to move on, but she thought that maybe her father’s life had been over the moment her mother died. And it would happen to her, unless she did something about it. The thought was so jarring and terrifying, for a moment, she felt like her throat was closing up. But she tried to handle the pit in her stomach as it formed and sat coldly in her core.

Jess was so sweet to her, always had been. Even when he was an angry tenager who was lost and acted like he didn’t need anybody. When she’d thought she couldn’t love anyone. He was smart and thoughtful and he knew her better than anyone else ever had. She could smell his familiar scent of pine and must, which had never worn off even long after he moved out of Luke’s. She listened to his voice lilt over the words of a book she owned, which she’d given him in high school. He was rereading the copy which contained their notes to each other, back when they were still falling in love without knowing it. A glance up at his face, and tears stung her eyes. Jess with his kind brown eyes and the dark shadow on his jaw. Jess with the faded scar on his left palm, which she’d watched get stitched up. Jess with the strong arms that held her in the ocean in California. The person she’d been in love with since she was sixteen. He was beautiful, in every sense of the word. A deep, awful regret filled her. She’d let herself fall so completely in love with him. She never should have. What was she going to do when he was gone?

Before she could stop herself, she began to cry silently. Jess furrowed his brows, feeling her tears wet his t-shirt. It was Plath, after all. A pretty sad novel, but he’d never known her to cry at a book. Or at much of anything, for that matter. He stopped reading immediately, lowering the book and bringing one hand to touch her freckled arm gingerly.

“What’s wrong?”

She sniffed and cleared her throat, wiping beneath her eyes. “Nothing, Jess. Just keep reading.”

“Eleanor-”

“Jess, please just keep reading,” she said, voice shaking and broken.

His breath caught in his throat, the words dying before he spoke them. She sounded helpless. He couldn't ignore her pleas, no matter how much he wanted to. Not when she sounded like that. He kept reading.

. . .

Gnawing on her nails, Ella sat alone in the cold morning light. The world outside was sparkling with snow in the sunlight. But soon, the grime city would corrupt it. The soft mountains of white would grow dull and gray, caked on the side of the road. She could only think about the melty gray slush as she looked outside, at the beauty the storm the day before had left in its wake. Her hands were slightly shaky, her elbows on her knees. She couldn’t remember the last time she had woken up so early, unable to fight wakefulness anymore as she packed a bag in the early darkness. The day had since brightened, from a deep blue to a warm orange and then finally, a bright yellow. But Ella still couldn’t bring herself to wake Jess up.

Instead, she waited. And she didn’t have to wait as long as she thought she would have. Jess emerged from the bedroom in his pajamas, rubbing tiredly at his eyes, at around half past six. His brows were furrowed at her empty spot in bed before he even saw her in the living room, sitting on the couch fully dressed with a packed suitcase on the floor next to her.

“What’s going on? Are you okay?” he asked, stopping in his tracks in surprise.

Ella ran an anxious hand through her hair before she looked up to meet his eyes. “I think...I think we should take a break for a little while.”

“What?” he said incredulously.

She sighed through her nose, looking down into her lap. “Jess, I just don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be together right now.”

“Eleanor, what are you talking about?” he continued, as though he simply couldn’t get her words to make sense in his head.

Again, she sighed in frustration. Without thinking about it, she rose and began to pace. Jess watched her with a worried gaze. She wasn’t behaving like herself at all, and just looking at her suitcase packed and ready to go made him feel sick to his stomach.

“Look, Jess, I just...I think we need to take a step back from each other for a while. Get to know ourselves when we’re not with each other, you know?” she said, her excuse flimsy and her voice uncertain. But she told herself this would be the hard part. Rip the bandaid off and leave, to get rid of the constant dread inside her. Without Jess, without anyone, it would simply be safer. More practical. And hadn’t being practical always worked out for her in the end?

Jess shook his head slowly, trying to get a handle on his thoughts. “That’s bullshit. We’ve already been apart from each other, and you and I both know that doesn’t work. What’s this actually about?”

“I just need a break, okay? I’ll call in sick again today. Fiona said last time I called that she needs me to clean out my room before she puts the house on the market. I’ll get back to town on Sunday,” Ella said, speaking quickly, flatly, wanting to get the words out and get them over with.

“And on Sunday?” Jess asked, eyebrows raised askance.

After a moment of tense silence, Ella could only shrug. “I don’t know. On Sunday...we regroup. Think about things.”

Jess ran a hand over his mouth. “You can’t be serious, Eleanor.”

“I am,” she replied simply.

“You honestly wanna break up? After everything?” he asked, sounding as though he still hadn’t quite been able to process what was going on. He’d known something was wrong, of course. Especially after she’d wept her way through his reading of Sylvia Plath, eventually falling asleep with her face still pressed against his t-shirt, her cheeks damp.

“Not break up!” Ella said immediately, raising her voice. “Not...forever.”

Again, Jess shook his head, voice matching her volume when he spoke again. “This isn’t like you, Eleanor. You don’t just run away like this. That’s my move, and it’s a fucking bad one. What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing. I told you, Jess, I just-”

“Need a break?” Jess interrupted finishing for her, with hints of both anger and fear in his tone.

For a moment, she couldn’t speak. He looked so crestfallen, so quickly. She wanted to throw her arms around him, cry into his shoulder, let out the tears she hadn’t been able to release. To tell him what she’d been feeling, the constant pain rivaled only by the strange, unexplainable numbness. But she bit at the inside of her cheek, hard, to snap herself out of it. She had made her choice. And she had to stick to it.

“Yes.”

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, taking a deep breath, choosing his words carefully. “Please. Just tell me what’s going on. Whatever it is, we can figure it out.”

“Nothing’s going on,” she repeated, finding it hard to keep her voice from cracking.

“Is this about your dad?” he asked. They’d been dancing around the conversation for weeks, as he watched her retreat within herself. Finally, he couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t tell himself she needed space, couldn’t just tell himself she was grieving the way she needed to. The truth was, she wasn’t grieving. Not really.

She heaved a sigh. “Jesus, Jess. It’s not about my dad, okay? Can’t I just need a break from us? From all this?” she asked as she gestured around them to the apartment, to the life they had started to build together. She sounded angry. But anger was better than nothing. Jess kept going.

“No, not when you started crying last night and wouldn’t tell me why, not when you keep forgetting to eat, not when you’re tired all day, even after like twelve hours of sleep, not when you don’t even want to draw anymore,” he said, in vehement disagreement. “I can talk to my therapist and see if she knows someone who’s covered by the University insurance. I bet she knows a lot of grief counselors.”

“Jess, stop,” she said, refusing to make eye contact with him as she crossed her arms over her chest.

“Trust me, Eleanor,” he continued, almost pleading. “You’ll feel so much better if you talk to someone about all this. About your dad, your mom, your brothers, Fiona. I’m sure you could think of a few choice words to say about me too.”

She shook her head at his attempt to joke. She wasn’t having it. More tears stung her eyes, and they only made her angrier. She was so sick of needing to cry and not being able to, of dealing with her family’s bullshit, of everything. Of being afraid of everything.

“Van Gogh must have had hundreds of hours of therapy in his life, and you’ve seen his paintings. I really think it’s all gonna be okay if-”

“Stop it, Jess!” she shouted, reaching for a necklace she hadn’t worn in years. An old tic Jess hadn’t seen since high school. Seeing her fingers go instinctively to grab at a small key pendant made his heart ache in such a deep way, so fundamentally, he almost wanted to cry. “Stop being so fucking nice to me! Stop trying to take care of me! Every time I tell you that, you never fucking listen!”

“Elle, what-” he began, eyes widening at her outburst. But she was on a roll, and hardly noticed when he spoke.

“I mean, it’s like you can’t even hear me sometimes,” she continued, pacing furiously and gesturing around again with her hands. For a moment, she was worried the neighbors would complain about her yelling at such an early hour. But she forgot about them as the emotions bubbled up in her throat, words spilling from her mouth. “You just keep doing whatever the fuck you want! Reminding me to eat, and reading to me, and kissing me, telling me you love me, and I just can’t fucking do it anymore, Jess! Not when you’re just gonna be gone someday!”

“Eleanor, I’m not-”

“Yes, you are!” she interrupted, finally facing him again. A fire burned in her eyes, cold and green and devastated. “Whether you like it or not, you’re gonna have a heart attack or crash your shitty fucking car or get struck by lightning! And I can’t keep doing this when one day it’s all just gonna be gone! It hurts bad enough calling it quits right now!”

Taken aback, Jess sighed. His face softened. He wanted to take a step forward, to go to her, but he fought the urge. Instead, he spoke in a calm, soothing voice. “Honey-”

She let out an infuriated scoff at the affectionate nickname.

“I know you’re scared,” he began, but she cut him off again.

“No, you don’t!” she countered, voice more venomous by the second. “You don’t know! Jess, I know your parents aren’t exactly perfect, but guess what? They’re alive. You didn’t wake up one day and figure out they were fucking dead! You can still talk to them whenever you want. You didn’t have to watch-”

She paused as her voice broke, clearing her throat before she went on. “You didn’t have to watch your dad fucking destroy himself because he missed your mom so much. And you don’t have to watch your stepmom go through the same thing!”

“Eleanor-”

“Don’t ‘Eleanor’ me, Jess! Please don’t. I...I love you. But I just...I just wish I didn’t.”

She was crying now, big, childish tears rolling down her skin as she spoke. Jess felt his heart drop into his stomach. Of course, he’d known she was in pain. Her father had died, after all. But he didn’t know she was scared. He didn’t know she was absolutely terrified. Not when she’d always seemed fearless. Before he could stop himself, he went over and embraced her. His hug was tight and warm, one arm encircling around her waist and one hand in her hair, cradling her head. And for a second, she relaxed into him. She let his touch soothe her and heal her. But then she snapped out of it again. Back to reality. She remembered how badly it hurt when she lost good things. She disentangled herself from his hold.

“No,” she said. “Please...don’t touch me right now.”

Her words sounded so defeated and final that for the first time it occurred to Jess she might actually be serious about leaving, about breaking up. The thought was so heartbreaking, a lump instantly formed in his throat.

“Just wait a second, Elle. Can we...can we talk about this more? Please?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper. His own eyes began to grow shiny.

She shook her head, grabbing her suitcase and making for the coat rack. “I have to go, Jess.”

“But you don’t! You can stay and we can figure this out!” Jess said, following her to the doorway.

Her face was stoic and guarded again as she donned her coat, hat, and scarf. “I need...I just need to be alone. I’ll be back on Sunday.”

He ran a hand over his mouth again. “Do you promise you’ll be back on Sunday?”

“Yes,” she said after a moment, opening the door. She stood there awkwardly for a moment, unsure whether to say goodbye, if it was a goodbye at all.

Jess sighed heavily, relenting to her leaving, as begrudgingly as possible. “Just…please be safe driving up there.”

“I will.”

“I love you,” he said, not being able to help himself.

A tiny, sad smile passed over her lips. “Right back at ya.”

On any other morning, he would have laughed at her response, a joke at the expense of his own shyness. But instead he stood motionless as she went out the door and shut it softly behind her. He was unsure if she would ever truly come back, if she was already gone, if she had been for weeks. Jess was crying before she made it out the front door of the building.

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