One of the things that Jesse liked about Elise was that she wore her expressions as boldly as her hair and graphic tees. Her emotions read like words projecting from her big blue eyes and every note hit fast and genuine. When Jesse talked to her, he could tell what she was experiencing in each beat. She didn't just listen to him, she reacted to what he said. Jesse couldn't hear her thoughts, but he could almost always tell what she felt.
If only figuring out why she reacted the ways that she did was that easy. Jesse had managed to save it when he could see her mind start going to a darker place than he'd intended, but then when she was starting to look sad, she’d given him that look, almost skeptical but mostly pointed, and then something had made her displeasure flare up again.
Jesse and Elise came from very different backgrounds and he hadn't known her very long. They were coming from different places and Jesse didn't always understand her. But even when he didn't, Jesse wanted to. Jesse liked her. He wanted to know what she thought about things, and as bad as things were between them, she didn't seem to mind that too much. She was someone he wanted to learn and keep learning. Jesse hadn't missed the town, but he'd missed talking to her.
He was a little bit lost in his own past, thinking about his childhood before his mother's death and how, while it had it's flaws, it could have been a lot darker. When Jesse looked into a mirror, most of the time he saw the kind of monster who'd rip into a girl's neck with his teeth and let her bleed out, but twenty years ago, he'd been innocent. Jesse didn't know if he'd ever been a child, but he had been innocent once.
Once, he'd also had a family.
“Gabe was the one who I used to talk with about that stuff.” It wasn't just that Jesse had given Gabe's love life a lot of thought. They used to go on double dates. They used to talk about the girls they were seeing. The girls they were interested in.
“That’s probably why he called me.” All the way down. Jesse looked down, before he looked back at her and shrugged. “Old habits.”
Jesse didn't know that he'd say he was closer to any one of his siblings. When he'd been alive connecting with each of them had been important to him. Each relationship was very different and had it's unique highs and lows. He would say that Gabe was the only sibling Jesse could really talk to about his love life. Shanna definitely wasn't. Toby was too young. Jesse could have talked with Gideon, and sometimes he had, but in the best case scenario, Giddy was uninterested.
But it didn't really matter anymore. Now the best case scenario with any one of his siblings was for them to leave before someone got hurt. He had three siblings and one parent left. If his brother and sister were here, how long until the other two showed up?
“More...trouble.” there were a lot of words Jesse could have used. Jesse didn't want Elise to have to deal with his and Shanna's issues. That Elise hadn't answered his questions was a bad sign. Jesse just hoped Elise hadn't given Shanna a reason to look into her more.