FB: Even Heroes have the right to bleed

Jacob set me down and I felt another tap on my shoulder. I turned and there was Jason, Kayla clinging to his hand, a mile wide grin plastered on his face. I squealed loudly and jumped into his arms, and he dropped Kayla’s hand and squeezed me back, laughing. I was torn between laughing and crying. Both emotions eventually won out, and I found myself laughing through tears.

“I’m so happy!” I exclaimed as Jason dropped me back to the ground.

Drew gave Jason a head bob and Jason laughed and pulled him in for a hug too.

“Me too!” Jason replied. “It feels so good to be home.” He put one arm over me, and draped another around Kayla. Jacob came to my other side, and Drew walked in front of us. I felt Kayla wrap her arm around Jason’s waist, and I felt like she was trying to pull him away from me. I bit my lip, and instead of pulling him back closer to me, I snuggled in closer to Jacob.

We got back to the house, and Jacob and Jason went to go change into their civies.

“Ella, can you help me get the food out?” Drew asked.

I wanted to say no, and go wait with Kayla for the boys to come down. It was like we were two lost puppies whose owners had finally been found, and now we didn’t want to let them out of our sight for a second. It may have been my imagination, but I swear Kayla smirked at me as she headed up the stairs to go see Jason.

“You couldn’t do this by yourself?” I said, breezing into the kitchen.

“You need to watch it.” Drew told me, his voice lowered.

“What do you mean?” I said, grabbing a platter of cheese and crackers.

“Kayla gave you the evil eye when you were hugging Jason. I think she may be a little jealous.”

“Oh whatever. Jealous of what?” I said, rolling my eyes. “Jason picked her over me. And I think I’m about to get with Jacob.”

Drew sighed, and followed me into the room carrying a platter with fixings for a sub.

“You can just be a little over affectionate at times, Ella. She’s waited too. Just tone it down, OK?”

I rolled my eyes and set the platter down, ignoring his comment and heading back to the other room, where Jason and Jacob were waiting. Kayla was so close to Jason she might as well been on his lap. I tried not to look at them and instead walked over to Jacob and sat down next to him.

“How’s your Mom?” I asked as he reached for my hand.

“She’s good. She, uh, asked if you were going to come see her.”

Kayla looked up from Jason when she heard this. I eyed her, and she quickly looked away, but I knew she was still listening.

“Well. I was going back for Jason’s coming home party.” I thought I saw Kayla’s eyes narrow. Drew’s words had made me super paranoid. “I just didn’t know you wanted me to meet your mother.”

It made me a little nervous, that Jacob already wanted me to meet his mother. He had talked about not moving too quickly with him leaving for Iraq, but now I felt like we were going from zero to sixty in no time. I did want to meet his mother though, and I did want things to go in that direction, but I was a little confused to how we were going to take things slow and now… Wasn’t meeting someone’s Mom a big step?

“Well. I mean if you’re already going to be in town… I would like to spend some time with you, if possibly.” He looked at me shyly.

I smiled at him. It was beyond adorable to see Jacob act shy, especially considering how gorgeous he was. I was used to guys who were good looking to be full on themselves, which was a turn off. It was almost as if Jacob didn’t know how cute he was, and that just made him even more attractive.

“I’d like that.” I said, suddenly feeling a little shy myself.


Kayla and Jason mainly kept to themselves. Again, I might have been paranoid, Drew’s words were still ringing in my head, causing me to analyze every move they made. But, it seemed to me whenever Jason came within two feet of me, Kayla bee-lined near me too, and just hovered. Then again, she never really let Jason more than two feet from her anyway, and I can’t say that I blamed her for that. I felt a little bad for Drew, with Kayla constantly touching Jason and Jacob and I constantly touching each other, he was the odd man out. He didn’t seem to mind much, and seemed genuinely glad to be back in Jason’s company. I knew he had missed him, even though it wasn’t the manly thing to admit it.

Like before they left, we sat together, eating and drinking, and stories were being told. Only this time the stories weren’t necessarily good ones. The boys recounted their adventures in Iraq, and some were scary, some were hilarious, and some just made them get a blank, faraway look in their eyes, and I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad.

We continued drinking, which could have been a bad thing. I think I’ve mentioned before, I don’t tend to drink a lot. I come from a family of alcoholics, two of my uncle died from alcoholism (one had cirrhosis of the liver, the other died of alcohol poison which was later ruled a suicide.) But that night we all drank, and we all got a slow, warm, happy buzz. We ate at home, went to the cookout that the hotel threw, and came home and ate and drank some more. Somewhere along the line, Drew found a dusty old twister game and all of us decided that yes it was a GREAT idea to play.

It started out fine. Drew offered to spin, and Jacob offered to judge. I never knew twister needed a judge, but both Jacob and Drew adamantly agreed that a judge was not only a good thing to have, be necessary to proper twister playing. They both kept going on and on about proper foot placement that eventually we were all amazed that we had never played twister without a judge before.

It was easy, as it always is, at first. But, it quickly went downhill, probably a lot faster than normal because of the amount that we had drank. One second Jason and I were right next to each other, and the next he was bridged over me. I didn’t think anything of it, Jason and I had certainly been closer, but the next spin, Jason slipped or something, and collapsed on top of me. I felt my ankle twist in an unnatural way under me, and a loud pop echoed in my ears.

And then, pain. Sharp, throbbing pain.

“Get OFF me!” I cried, pushing him away.

He looked back, the smile still on his face, but a confused look in his eye.
“What happened?” Drew said, dropping the spinner and kneeling next to me.

“I think Kayla pushed him and he fell on Ella.” Jacob said, coming up beside Drew. He gingerly took my ankle into his hand, but I pushed him away too. Any movement seemed to make my ankle throb more, even breathing or blinking.

“I didn’t push Jason!” Kayla said defensively. “Why would I do that?”

“Cuz you wanted to win?” Jason countered.

Kayla just shook her head and crossed her arms across her chest. I wasn’t sure she pushed Jason either. The whole night she seemed to want to keep him away from me, why would she push him when he was overtop of me? She had to have known that he would have fallen on me, and I know I wouldn’t want my boyfriend laying on top of some girl, even if it were for only a few seconds. Jason must have just lost his balance.

“Ella, you have to let someone look at it.” Drew said calmly. It seemed as if the accident had sobered most of us up.

“You can look all you want, I just don’t want you to touch!” I replied.

“Well, hon, I hate to tell you this, but you’re going to have to pull off your sock in order for us to see it.”

I cringed. I knew he was right but I really didn’t want him to be. As gingerly as possible, I peeled my sock off. It wasn’t easy, my ankle and foot were already swollen, making my sock tight. It probably would have been easier to just cut it off.

Drew cringed himself at the sight of it, and looked over at Jacob.

“Call a cab, I think she should go to the hospital.”


Drew and Jacob went to the hospital with me. Jason wanted to go as well, but Kayla argued that they weren’t going to let everyone back in the room with me, and there was no point sitting in a hospital waiting room all night. I agreed with her, but in the back of my mind, wondered again if she was really just trying to keep Jason away from me.

Kayla and I hadn’t really hung out a lot over the years, the camping trip was really the only quality time we had had together. She hadn’t been so possessive then, but Jason hadn’t left yet either. On the one hand, I couldn’t blame her for wanting to keep Jason to herself. They had just started dating when he left, and now he was home, but only for a short period of time. If I were in her shoes, I’d probably be hogging him to myself as well. But, on the other hand, Drew had said she had seemed jealous, and Jacob had said she had pushed Jason. What if that shove was really meant for me? To try to get me out of the game so it would have just been the two of them?

I shook my head. Kayla seemed sweet, she wouldn’t have done something like that. And, maybe I was feeling a little possessive of Jason myself. I was used to having him all to myself, being the center of his world. Maybe I would just have to get used to sharing him with someone else, and I would also have to get used to having another girl in our group. Things were changing, and I didn’t really like it, but what could I do? The only thing that ever remains constant is change. I would just had to adapt and move out, and get these “Kayla is a jealous bitch” thoughts out of my head.

The hospital was pretty busy, and we had to wait a long time to even be taken back to the triage area, and even longer for a doctor to come back. He breezed in and out, we waited over two hours for him to tell me what I could have told him when we got here, that I would need an x-ray. Surprisingly though, we didn’t have to wait too long for an x-ray, but waiting for the doctor to come back and give us the results was another hour. The nurse took pity on us, and snuck us in some snacks.

“I’m sorry your coming home turned into such a crappy night.” I said quietly to Jacob. Drew was in the corner, snoozing in a chair.

“It’s OK, I’d rather be here with you then anywhere else without you.” Was Jacob’s answer.

The pain didn’t seem too horrible after a comment like that. The doctor, however, looked a little more than confused when he came back to tell me that my ankle was in fact broken, and I still couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.