October 18, 2023

Jamie isn't proud of this, but she's about to attempt some sneaking.

Showering did her good; she feels human again, no longer at risk of going hypothermic, and her thoughts are no more of a jumbled mess than they are in her natural state of being.

She's ready to return to her own room and talk to Nathan, smooth things over like they said they should. Go back to their comfortable status quo that's been keeping her going when life gets rough. She'd just like to avoid the Classic Stella Scolding before she does.

With some luck, her sister will be so engrossed in her novel she'll be able to slip away unnoticed. It's worth a try.

Jamie takes a deep breath, leaves the bathroom with her wet clothes in her arms, and slinks for the door like a mouse hoping to bypass the housecat.

It goes surprisingly well at first; not a peep from Stella. But, seconds before Jamie can grab the door handle, a book is slammed shut on the other side of the room.

Task failed successfully.

"Forgive me, but you're being so incredibly hard to take right now." Stella's tone freezes Jamie's blood all over again. "Sneaking off as if I'd be too stupid to notice... Sometimes I feel like I don't know who you are anymore. Is this your way of handling things these days? You drop in with all your chaos and then leave without ever bringing it up again?"

As if Stella hasn't been concealing what happened to the damn rent money for years. Jamie would throw that in her face if she had the energy for it, but she's too drained. "Kindly list everything you'd like me to apologize for today, Stel. Then I can get it over with and be on my way."

"I don't want your apologies. I just want you to talk." Stella discards her book, rising from her bed and approaching. "Because one minute you're assuring me I shouldn't be worried about you, the next you show up like... like this. You're switching between boundless enthusiasm and miserable recalcitrance so fast it's concerning. And as much as I'd like to be able to see inside your head and understand you somehow, I can't. So please stop being so obstinately cagey for one moment and tell me what happened today."

How is it Stella always picks the worst possible time to let loose?

"A canal happened. We've been over this."

"I'm going to need a little more than that." Stella crosses her arms. "Did something happen to Gino's boat on your date with Nathan? Is that it?"

Date? Jamie's first instinct is to raise her eyebrows in surprised confusion, but she prevents this movement in time. Gino's boat. So that's how Nathan convinced him to lend it. By claiming he'd take her out on a date.

It's a good ploy. A really good one. Jamie can admire that, even if some despicably selfish part of her wishes it wouldn't have been a lie.

But a lie it is. And it's better that way.

No uncertainty necessary.

"There wasn't any date." Telling Stella there was would be the easiest way out of their current predicament, but it would be a hassle in the long run.

Jamie's web of lies is already too intricate for comfort.

"...The jacket felt like a dead giveaway. You aren't lying to me, are you?"

This is getting so ridiculous. Jamie laughs. "A jacket is a jacket. Why the fuck would I be lying about a date?"

"Maybe because I was rather negative about Nathan when we talked on the ferry to Murano, so you're apprehensive telling me you guys went on a date?" Stella's foot taps an impatient rhythm on the floor. "But you don't have to hide it. I changed my mind. I gave him a chance like you asked me to, paid attention over the past few days, and I think he's good for you. Very good, even."

"Thanks for your support," Jamie says slowly. "There still wasn't any date."

Her sister's face falls as a sudden realisation dawns. She claps her hand over her mouth in horror. "Oh. I... Then I'm... so sorry for ruining the surprise. Can you maybe...  pretend you weren't expecting it when he asks you out?"

"He won't ask me out at all. And that's fine. It's better for both of us if we keep things platonic, anyway."

"Excuse me?" Stella frowns as if she didn't quite catch that. She must've thought Jamie was lying when they talked on the boat, when the latter told her sister nothing would be happening between her and Nathan.

Except Jamie was dead serious, and honest about at least that one thing.

"Did you catch that? I don't know how to state it more clearly for you, Stel."

"I caught it, all right." Stella narrows her eyes. "I'm just struggling to comprehend what I'm hearing."

"Why?"

"Because I hate to break it to you, Jamie, but your feelings for each other are about as subtle as a hand grenade. That guy would follow you to the ends of the Earth without question and you look at him like he's better than magic. So yes, maybe I am having a hard time seeing why you're standing here claiming you're, A, not into each other, and B, better off never being more than friends."

All Jamie's earlier irritation resurfaces with a vengeance. As if Nathan would want any sort of future with her. Even if he did, he shouldn't. "What's it to you? My love life is my business, not yours."

"I care about it because you two seem to understand each other in all the ways that matter. I care about it because I can see you make each other really happy, but you'd both be even happier if you took your relationship a step further. I want that happiness for you, but right now, I'm not sure you want yourself to be happy. And that frightens me."

Truth be told, it kind of frightens Jamie, too. She prefers to keep the frightening things, the truly frightening things, locked away in the darkest recesses of her soul. She'll dash off and deal with any monster, real or imaginary, to avoid facing these. The truly frightening things ought to remain buried six feet deep.

But goddamn it if Stella didn't bring a shovel to this conversation.

That's the scariest part.

"You're a pathologist, Stel, not a shrink. Remember that?" Jamie releases a mildly derisive, nervous laugh. Just leave me be let me go when can I get out of here? Do you really care Stella because the rent money what happened to the fucking rent money–

"For the love of God, stop joking when I'm trying to discuss serious matters with you. I'm trying to get through to you, but I swear the walls are more responsive than you!"

"I'm still here talking, aren't I?"

"More like deflecting. You're not saying anything of substance."

Stella wants substance? Fine. She can have substance. Maybe then she'll fuck off.

"You're making this much more complicated than it is. I'm trying to be sensible for once in my life, that's all. Not dating Nathan is me being sensible. And you've been praying for years that I'd grow some common sense one day, so I'm failing to see why the hell it's suddenly a problem to you."

It's Stella's turn to laugh. In utter disbelief. "You and I have fundamentally different notions of 'sensible'. Yours is my definition of moronic. Don't you see that whatever logic you're employing is so twisted it's ludicrous?"

This is a nightmare, a disaster, a calamity of epic proportions, and all that for a goddamn shower. Jamie grits her teeth again, tense to the core. She's been trying to do something right, damn it, but every time she does, it goes like this—attack after attack after attack.

And it's getting old. It's getting terribly old.

Jamie is too exhausted for further self-defense. She can't keep her thoughts together, can't keep them coherent and in one place. Everything gets too overwhelming. People's grating voices drift upwards from the square outside and her comfy clothes have gotten scratchy and Stella is pissed at her, Stella is angry and probably so disappointed and something evil killed Raffaele Mezzanotte and Nathan could have died today (he doesn't love you like that he can't he shouldn't he can't–) and there's a crack in the ceiling of this run-down hotel and has the sun dared to get brighter just now?

"Just tell me what has you so afraid you're ready to sabotage your own happiness." Jamie flinches the moment her sister's words strike again like missiles in wartime. "Those tools you dated in the past? Don't let those bad experiences hold you back. It's obvious Nathan is nothing like them."

"I know. I know he's not."

"Then what's the issue?"

Somebody really ought to fix that crack in the ceiling. It's distracting and shoddy and not the sort of thing any respectable hotel should allow on its premises. It might even get dangerous someday. Imagine being an innocent guest going about your business and then the ceiling just up and collapses on you–

"Jamie, answer me and look at me while I'm talking to you."

"I ruin everything, Stella!" Jamie snaps, turning her gaze on her sister without quite seeing her. "There's not a single damn day goes by where I'm not frantically cleaning up some mess I made, not even when I've been trying my best, and I know that's exhausting and insufferable and obnoxious for everyone around me and I should just pull myself together and be normal instead of this dysfunctional human trainwreck, but I just. Can't. Get it right.

"And if I were to get any closer to Nathan than I am now, all I'd do is just, I'd find some way to fuck it up so completely he'll see exactly how much of a pathetic disappointment I really am, and then he'll get out of my life forever and I'll be alone on a street again and I guess that's nothing new, it's what I get for all my bullshit, but he'd just be gone and we wouldn't even be friends anymore, and it's stupid but I think losing him could be what finally breaks me. So all I need to do is get my ridiculous feelings under control, because what we have now is good, and I don't want to destroy that one good thing I still have left!"

When she's done, she's all flushed and out of breath and trembling like she's still freezing cold. The outburst consumed every last dreg of energy she'd only just managed to regain.

Stella still stands in front of her, eyes wide open. It's the stunned look of someone who got more than she bargained for. But she wanted substance, didn't she? This is all Jamie had to give.

"Is that enough of an answer for you, Stella?" Her voice is hoarse. "I, I, I didn't mean... to explode like that... Sorry."

"Do you genuinely," Stella asks in quiet shock, "believe all of that?"

Jamie tried not to. Fought it for a good long while. But a lifetime of feeling like she's constantly falling short in one way or another has taken its toll. She got rich and she got famous and somehow it didn't make her less of a fucking mess.

She's too much or too little. Every single time. Never just enough.

Jamie is so done with this day.

"I'm just gonna... I should go." Her words won't come out louder than a whisper. She turns to open the door, to escape this room's claustrophobia, go to any place that isn't here. Tajikistan, think about Tajikistan. But even that isn't helping like it should.

She flinches once more when Stella stops her with a hand on her shoulder, grip both gentle and unyielding. Jamie refuses to turn around and face her sister, but she halts, not bothering to shake the limb off.

"I'm still processing what you just told me, but listen. Please. You can spend the rest of your life ignoring everything I say if you only listen to me now." Stella's voice has lost its sharper edges—all that's left is soft and pleading. "You don't ruin everything. Whoever told you that was lying."

You did, all of you, a thousand fucking times.

"And there's no guarantee at all you won't be able to make a relationship with Nathan work. But I do guarantee you that your attempt to not get hurt or hurt him is misguided. It's going to make you both miserable in the long run. All you'll do is break your own heart."

Five years and never a word about the rent money.

"His heart, too. Because he does love you, mark my words on that. You may think you've thought this through, but you haven't. Not probably. So I'm begging you to just sit down, try again, and figure out what it is you truly want."

Jamie wants to have her cake and eat it, too. Which is impossible.

Everything about her has always been too impossible.

"...Lodge a complaint about the crack in your ceiling, Stella. It's jarring."

If those parting words left Stella full of additional questions, Jamie doesn't hear them. She leaves the room, shuts the door behind her, and sighs in what isn't quite managing to be relief. Walks a few steps down the corridor, unsure where she's heading. It would be nice to be absolutely nowhere for a short while.

She drops the wet clothes she took off before her shower. Sits down next to them with her back against a wall.

This probably isn't what Stella meant. But sometimes you just have to sit on the floor and hug your knees to your chest and wonder when you allowed your life to spiral so out of control.

Jamie stays there for a while, motionless, staring blankly until the static in her head has quietened down and she feels like she can think again. Think like Stella said she should. Her sister ought to visit Poveglia—see the island for herself and understand how her words are just as haunting.

Stella said a lot of things—too many things—but one phrase in particular won't leave Jamie alone.

He does love you, mark my words on that.

Stella may be half a liar, but she has always been observant, and she said this with such conviction and sincerity Jamie has to at least entertain the possibility of it being true. Even if it feels like it can't be, like it's ridiculous to imagine someone as level-headed and careful and collected as Nathan falling for the likes of her. He's been working so hard to build himself a normal life after all the shit he went through, and Jamie is still an exhausting, unhinged catastrophe on her best days.

All she's been doing is dragging him into her insane chaos, and that's unlikely to change in the near future. Normal isn't something Jamie will ever figure out. How could Nathan possibly love that?

Though maybe stranger things have happened.

Jamie remembers what took place on the boat this morning—feels like it happened in another lifetime rather than a few hours ago. What Nathan did, going into that house by himself... That was the furthest thing from level-headed, miles in the opposite direction of careful. And he did it, he said, because he cares about her, because he believes her too important to lose, and oh. Oh.

He might as well have been yelling I love you into her face. Jamie might as well have been shouting it right back.

Santa Muerte help her. Jamie is the most oblivious human being on God's green Earth.

But it felt easier, safer, to instantly annihilate any tentative thought Nathan might ever want to be more than friends. And there is often so much going on in Jamie's life—she hardly took a moment to slow down and dwell on his potential feelings for her, despite having so many trains of thought her mind might as well be Grand Central Station. Jamie is always on the move, places to go people to see content to create, and there's been this whole mess surrounding her channel's cancellation, Poveglia, her family, the unholy amalgamation of it all.

She has just been busy.

Too busy with everything. So busy waging war on her own feelings she failed to sit and take a deep breath and consider Nathan's, because Jamie is a colossal idiot who can't for the life of her think things through. In pointing that out, Stella was right.

(There should be a law prohibiting older sisters from raising uncomfortably good points.)

So the situation may indeed require a change of perspective. Jamie loves Nathan—there's not a single shred of doubt about this. Nathan loves her—this, it turns out, is also established fact. Then everything should be easy, except for the fact it still isn't. Nathan can love her all he wants; it doesn't mean she's good for him. It doesn't mean they'll work out.

But it might not be up to Jamie to be the judge of that. It's up to him. If Jamie rejected taking their relationship to a new level out of fear for the unknown, if she decided unilaterally he shouldn't pursue anything with her for his own good, she'd be the biggest hypocrite in town.

She'd be doing the exact thing she berated Nathan for on the boat. Making his choices for him.

She shouldn't do that. Not even if it's coming from a place of caring.

Maybe what Stella dubbed her twisted logic isn't all that different from what she called Nathan out for. If that's true, she can't cling to it. It might just cause more pain and suffering than any upcoming change in the future could bring. Maybe it is time to stop resisting, to simply embrace whatever is headed their way. Jamie's mind drifts to tarot cards—major arcana, every last one. They've been lurking and clawing at the edges of her psyche for days now.

Gino put it nicely. Sometimes Death just means new beginnings.

Jamie will sleep on it, let everything sink in, ponder her options a little longer. But no matter how terrifying it is, something will need to change. She can't keep running from it.

There may only be pain without change.

Not far from her, a door opens. Her own. Nathan steps out of their room, clean and refreshed. The wound on his arm, bandaged up, disappears in the sleeve of a spare jacket he's slipping into. It doesn't take long for him to spot her sitting there—his eyebrows shoot up in surprised confusion. "Hey, so... What are you doing on the floor?"

There's no judgment in the question. Only concern.

He does love you, mark my words on that.

"Not much, really." Jamie stands up and collects the discarded clothes with a sigh. "Can I help you tidy up Gino's boat?"