Still Holding Out For You
Chapter 1
I still run, I still swing open the
door
I still think you'll be there like before
Doesn't everybody out there know to never come around
Some things a heart won’t listen to
I'm still holding out for you
"Brenda, are you sure
you're all right?" Lois asked her as they sat in Kelly's restaurant one
afternoon having lunch. For a week now,
Lois had been noticing that her best friend was pale and thin. In fact, it looked like she had lost even
more weight in the last couple days, if it was possible.
Brenda forced a small smile to
her face. "I'm fine, Lois. Really." She went back to picking at the sandwich on the plate in front of
her. She loved Lois, she really
did. But this once a week lunch that
Lois wanted to have was already getting tiring. She knew her friend was only trying to keep tabs on her and make
sure she was making it through. Truth
be told, this lunch was the only time she had really left the house for any
long period of time. Otherwise, it was
a quick trip to the grocery store or a fast errand to run and she was home
again.
"If you say so,
Bren. Listen, I had a question for you
and I'm not quite sure how you'll react.
I want you to promise me you'll think it over before you answer right
away."
"What is it?"
"Promise me,
Bren." She gave her a pointed
look.
Brenda sighed and pushed back
her long, brown hair from her face. She
really should get a haircut, she thought.
Not today, though, she was too tired today. "All right, I promise I'll think about it before I answer
you."
"Okay, good. What do you think about coming back to
work? I mean, I can sure use the help
since Miguel's delayed tour is going to start soon. Not to mention I've finally talked Ned into going to a few gigs
in the next couple weeks."
"No," she answered
when Lois stopped talking.
"Come on, Brenda. You promised you would think about it!"
"I don't need to think
about it. I'm not coming back to
work. Not yet. It's way too soon."
“I can understand how you
might think that, but try to see it from my point of view,” she said
gently. "It might help take your
mind off of…” she didn’t finish the
sentence, but she knew Brenda knew where it was headed. “I know you miss him terribly, but you can't
shut down your life because Jax is gone.
It's not good for you and you know it.
Coming back to work would be the first step in getting your life back."
"I don't want my life
back. I can never have my life back,
Lois. Don't you get that? Jax is gone and I don't want a life without him
in it." She pushed back her chair
roughly, grabbed her purse, and rushed out of the restaurant.
She was walking along the
docks, aimlessly headed for home. Jax
had been gone for a week and a half now.
It had only been that long, but sometimes it felt like forever. They’d been apart for longer when he’d been
on business trips, but she’d always known he was coming home then. He wasn’t coming home this time.
"Brenda?" a voice
said from behind her suddenly.
She turned to find her
sister-in-law, Bobbie, standing on the steps leading down to the pier. She forced a smile and said, "Hi,
Bobbie."
"I'm surprised to see you
down here," she said as she came down the steps and went over to give
Brenda a hug.
"Yeah, well, I just
decided to go for a walk when I left Kelly's." She was giving the false impression that she was all right, but
she could tell from the look on Bobbie's face that her act wasn't convincing
enough for the nurse.
Bobbie had married Jerry,
Jax’s brother, two years before. They
lived in her brownstone with her son, Lucas, which was only three streets away
from Brenda’s house. Jerry was by
nearly every day to check on her and how she was doing. Bobbie was taking in the pale face, the dark
circles, and the way Brenda’s outfit seemed to just hang on her tiny body. Jerry had told her that Brenda wasn't coping
well with Jax's death, but she hadn't imagined it was this bad. "Brenda, are you feeling
okay?" She wanted to put her hand
to her forehead and see if she had a fever or something that might explain why
she looked like she did.
Automatically, Brenda nodded
her head. "I'm fine,
Bobbie." She glanced at her watch
and pretended to look surprised by the time.
"But I really do have to go.
I'm sorry, I'll see you later."
Without waiting for a response, she turned and went back up the steps to
the street. She stopped a cab and got
in so it could take her home again.
The house was, of course,
empty when Brenda returned to it half an hour later. As she looked around, she noticed the dust gathering since she
hadn't cleaned in awhile now. There was
very little clutter in the rooms, but as she looked at them, she wanted to
organize and make it look better. So
she set about doing it with an energy she hadn't known she felt.
She continued to work on
cleaning the house for over three hours.
She was getting into the really particular things like cleaning the
grout in the bathrooms and shining the glass windows to the cabinets in the
kitchen. Unaware of time passing, she
continued to clean.
Sometime later, Brenda heard
the front door open and close behind someone.
It was either Lois or Jerry, she assumed. They were the only other two people with keys to her house.
"Brenda? Are you here?" a male voice called to
her.
For an instant, it was Jax's
voice she heard. The familiar accent,
the lilting tone, it was all the same.
But all too soon, she realized it was Jerry and not Jax who was calling
out to her. Her shoulders sagged at the
quick realization and she walked slowly towards the sound of voice in the front
hallway.
"I'm here, Jerry,"
she said wearily as she saw him.
He walked over and gave her a
quick kiss on the cheek, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and guiding her
into the living room to sit with him.
He had come at the request of his wife after she got home. Bobbie had been really worried about Brenda
after seeing her on the pier and she wanted her husband to check on her. "What have you been doing?" he
asked, noticing the cleaning rag in her hand.
"Oh, I've just been
cleaning up a little around here. It
was kind of dusty and I had some time."
She tried to sound blasé about it and like it was something she did
every day.
"You've been
cleaning?" Jerry repeated. He took
in her outfit of a silk pants suit and heels and raised his eyes to look at her
again questioningly. "In that outfit? Didn’t you want to change, Brenda?" he
asked gently.
“Lois made me wear it for
lunch today,” she said by way of explanation, but it didn’t sound like she was
directing it at anyone in particular.
She turned to him and smiled slightly, staying silent for a few minutes. Tentatively, she reached a hand up to his
face and touched his jaw line. Then she
ran her fingers up to touch his dark, straight hair. She dropped her hand back to her lap, still smiling a little. "You never did look much like him, did
you?" she said, her voice soft and sad.
Jerry took her hand in his and
held it in his lap. "No, we never
did look alike. Our mum used to tell us
that she was sure I'd been switched at birth.
I didn't fit in with any of them.
The oddball of the lot, you know."
He smiled. "But Jax,"
he said quietly. "He looked just
like the both of them, didn't he? There
was no mistaking who his parents were."
"No," she
agreed. Her lips quivered as she fought
back tears and tried to keep the conversation going. She liked talking about Jax and Jerry was the only one who would
really talk to her about him. Everyone
else seemed to try to avoid the subject with her. Even Lois hadn’t been able to say it when she’d been trying to
convince her to come back to work.
He noticed the tears and put
his hand under her chin, raising her face to look at him. He wiped tenderly at the moisture gathering
in the corners of her eyes. "It's
okay, Brenda." He pulled her close
to him and felt her lean against his chest.
He felt her hands shaking and tried to comfort her.
"I miss him so much,
Jerry," she whispered so softly he had to strain to hear her.
"I know, luv, I
know," he sighed. "So do I…so
do I." He held her for quite some
time until she finally sat up straight.
"Well," she said,
trying to sound a little more cheerful, "I should probably go change,
shouldn't I? Would you like to stay for
dinner?" she offered, knowing he wouldn't accept the offer.
As she thought, he shook his
head gently. "Not tonight. Bobbie has plans for dinner with Lucas and
me tonight. Maybe tomorrow, though,
how's that?"
"Maybe," she
responded noncommittally. "Okay,
then I'm going to go change. You can
hang around a little while longer or you can go, either way." She smiled a small smile.
"I'll let myself
out," he responded.
She went up the steps and the house
was empty again. Slowly, she changed
from her pants suit into a pair of sweat pants and one of Jax’s t-shirts. When she was dressed again, she lay in the
middle of their bed, clutching his pillow to her chest. Sometimes if she concentrated hard enough,
she could pretend she was curled up against him, listening to him breathe and
trying to match her heartbeat to his.
His scent still remained on the pillow, so she closed her eyes and tried
to pretend she could hear him breathing again.
As she lay there, she started
thinking about what Lois had said to her about returning to work. She didn’t want to. She knew she didn’t have the concentration
it would take to read contracts and have meetings with potential artists. But she did need something to help her feel
normal again. She tried weighing the
pros and cons of going back to work, but found that for every pro she came up
with, the con was always the same. She
didn’t want to go back to work. She
didn’t want to leave their house for long periods of time when this was the
only place she really felt close to him.
She couldn’t go to a place in
a cemetery because there was no gravesite.
There had been no body. It had
been a simple service in the same church they’d been married in. She had no particular place in Port Charles
that she could go to that she felt close to him. They had long since moved out of the penthouse at the Port
Charles Hotel. After living in her
cottage in the woods for a year and planning their wedding there, Jax had
surprised her by buying her the dream house she had always wanted. So when they had gotten married, they’d come
back from their month-long honeymoon to live in this house. It had been the symbol of their new start a
year and a half ago. The house was
their special place.
The light had faded from
outside while she lay on the bed. She
closed her eyes in the darkening room and replayed their wedding in her mind as
she finally fell into an exhausted sleep.
I can hear you smile in the dark
I can even hear you breathing
But daylight chases the ghosts
I see your coat and I fall apart
To those hints of you I'm clinging
Now's when I need them most
I should get up dry my eyes and move ahead
And least that's what you would have said
He woke with a start, sitting
up quickly. Immediately he cried out
against the pain in his ribs. He lay
back down slowly as he tried to remember his dream. He had the feeling he’d had the dream before, but he couldn’t
remember it, just like the previous times.
He couldn’t remember anything that had happened to him.
~*~ Song Credit - "Still Holding Out for You" by
SheDaisy on the album The Whole SheBang