Chapter X: Where something ends

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After three days of awkwardness and avoidance, of shifting eyes and trivial half words, he was the one who found her.

Melissa was relieved; the weird disquiet between them, the oppressive space where things were left unsaid was starting to get to her nerves. She didn't know how to act around him anymore. Every word (and there weren't many) that was exchanged between them, however ordinary, was loaded with the unspoken. Things were weird between her and Jackson, had been ever since that night, when he had told everyone that he dreamed of Taylor and she had said to him I'm done with you. After that Melissa didn't know what to say to him, how to talk to him. It seemed that he didn't know what to say to her either, for he had hardly talked to her since.

She didn't know, if they were still friends. She would have liked to believe that she didn't care, but she knew herself better than that. So Melissa was relieved (and apprehensive and afraid and sad and angry), when on the third day he sought her out, when she was alone and walking on the beach.

"It's getting a little chilly. It might rain later." He came to stand several yards away from her, looking at the sea.

"Maybe." She really couldn't care less if it rained or not.

"I think so. Look at those clouds there, they look pretty dark." He looked at her, fleetingly, before turning back to the ocean.

Melissa was getting annoyed. So they were going to talk about weather now? Continue the avoidance? Or did he expect her to start the real conversation? But she felt uncharitable, frighteningly bitter, and so she let the silence fill the space between them once again. After all, he knew just what to say to a girl.

("Who starred in your latest wet dream?"

"You.")

"Melissa – I want to…what happened at the game was…" Jackson paused, helpless. He cleared his throat, then tried again, "Are you alright? Everything that happened – you were so upset."

"You mean I had a nervous breakdown."

"Well…yeah. A freak out. But all of us have had those, so I guess it was your turn now." He flashed a smile that she caught with the corner of her eye. "So it's cool – been there, done that."

"Okay." Melissa knew she sounded cold, but she couldn't dwell on her breakdown, couldn't explain, for she was terrified that she couldn't control her emotions, that those thoughts would spill out, that she would burst into tears in front of him. She didn't want to make more confessions. There was too much of her already out there in the open.

"It's okay you know, if you ever want to talk…"

"No – I already talked with Nathan." Her abrupt words made him stare at his sneakers, defeated, and she flinched. She had wanted to solve this thing between them, hadn't she? "I'm better now anyway,…but I'll keep that in mind."

Jackson raised his eyes to meet hers. She tried to hold his gaze, but couldn't.

"Mel…" He sighed. "I feel that I screwed up so royally. I didn't think, I just – said it. I shouldn't have. It was –" He looked ill and sounded like he was genuinely sorry, and Melissa's heart went out to him (her stupid bleeding heart), but it couldn't be that easy.

"I got caught up in the moment, in the game. I forgot…that it wasn't really a game."

Melissa gathered up her courage; if they were going to talk to each other frankly, then she needed to know if he had – "But it was true? What you said to Taylor – it was true?"

Jackson bit his lip. He seemed to falter for a moment, debating between silence and answering, but then a resolute look came upon him. "Yeah. But Mel – it doesn't mean anything. We…men dream about anyone. It's just, it's something that – it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Once, I once saw a dream – I dreamed about my neighbor and she's at least fifty. So…"

"It doesn't mean anything. Got it." There couldn't have been a more awkward topic. They were both blushing, avoiding eye contact, and she really didn't want to talk about his wet dreams.

"So when I said it, I –"

"Okay, that's – you don't have to explain. I got it."

"I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm sorry."

Melissa wanted to say that he hadn't hurt her at all, but there was a lump in her throat, familiar and suffocating, and she fought to swallow it down.

"Mel…I – I don't know what else to say." He sounded lost, insecure in a way he had never been before. She remembered that he wasn't the only one, who had said something they regretted later.

"I'm sorry too. I was jut so – I had a freak out, just like you said. I said some things I shouldn't have."

"But those were the truth too." The tone of his voice wasn't accusatory, but a matter-of-fact.

"I guess. In a way." Melissa had had a lot of time to think about the words she had said that night, when all of her self-control had broken down. The words had been said in a heat of the moment, but it didn't change the fact that at that moment she had truly, passionately meant them. "But I was unnecessarily cruel and I apologized to Eric and Taylor. And I'm sorry that I was so harsh to you."

("Don't you tell me to do anything, you don't have the right.

And why don't you make your fucking mind already? I'm tired of trying to read your mind. Although - don't bother on my sake. I'm so done with you!")

"Well, I kind of deserved it." He cracked a small smile.

She didn't contradict him.

"So, you're done with me?"

"I don't know." It was hard to meet his eyes, but Melissa managed it.

"Fair enough." He turned his gaze back at the sea. "It's going to rain. I'm going to go gather up our stuff inside the shelter."

He started to leave, and the sight of his forlorn form receding away from her seized Melissa's heart. She suddenly wanted to shout at him to came back, wanted to say that she hadn't meant any of it, that she wasn't done with him, would never be. But the words wouldn't come.

Jackson turned abruptly to face her, his expression determined. "We're still friends right?"

At least this, she had no trouble saying, "Yeah, we're friends."

He nodded, but didn't say anything else. She watched him as he walked back to the camp.

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Finis

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A/N: It's finished! Thank you all so much for reading and reviewing this story, and for being so patient with me while I have been struggling to finish it. I hope that this last chapter didn't disappoint you. I know that I labeled this story as a drama but also a romance, and I had every intention when I started writing to get Jackson and Melissa more or less together. However, the more I wrote, the more I veered of that path, and I realized that this story wasn't the story where they confess their feelings. If I let you down on that regard, I'm sorry. I have to admit though, that I like this story as it is, a little bleak and the ending left open.