Attachment Issues // Jess Mariano

CHAPTER 20:

"One of the hardest things you will ever have to do, my dear, is to grieve the loss of a person who is still alive." - unknown

"Is that Jess?" Ty asks, arm in arm with his niece as they make their way through town together.

Sure enough, when she looks over, she finds Jess fast asleep in the back seat of his car. Tears well up in her eyes immediately, but she forces herself to ignore it, shoving the thoughts of missing him far away.

"Why would he come back?" She questions weakly. "I don't get it, why would he come back?"

"I don't know, kiddo."

"I'll, uh... I'll see you at home, Ty. I can't deal with this right now." She explains, rushing off back down the street.

---

"You should talk to him, Delilah." Ty says, offering her a cup of coffee the next morning.

"I can't. It's been a year. And he left me, you know. Not the other way around."

"You say that like you didn't go to California just to see him."

"I didn't, I went to see what I was missing." She insists.

"Go see him, Delilah. You need closure, and this is how you get it."

---

"I forgot something." Jess says simply, pausing as he sees both his mother and Luke in the diner, as well as his mother's new boyfriend TJ.

"Oh my god! This is freaky! It's like fate, Jess did not know we were here. I had no idea that Jess would come by, and now look at us, together. All the men in my life are drawn here to me. This is positive, this means something. Do you feel it?" Liz questions.

Unbeknownst to all of them, Delilah is pacing back and forth in front of the apartment, trying to decide if she should come in and talk to Luke.

After all, she hasn't since she punched him in the face nearly a year ago.

"I sure do." TJ says.

"Baby, this is my kid. This is Jess." Liz introduces her son to TJ, much to Jess's annoyance. "Jess, this is TJ."

"Guess what it stands for."

"No."

"Oh, you'll stay for dinner!" Liz insists, shoving Jess into a seat on the other side of the table.

"I gotta go check on my car."

"Come'on, we're makin' a ton of food. There's beer."

"My beer." Luke adds, speaking up for the first time as TJ tries to entice him into staying for dinner.

"I'm not hungry."

"Oh, please! Stay for a little while, I think you guys are really gonna get along great-."

Liz is interrupted by a loud knock on the door. Luke stands immediately, taking any excuse to get away from his sister and her boyfriend.

"Why is he here?" Delilah asks as soon as the door opens in front of her, startling Luke. He hasn't seen the girl in a while, though he has lunch with her uncle nearly every week. "Why would he come back here? Doesn't he get it?"

"Delilah-."

"Did you know he was coming here?"

"No, I didn't know." Luke says simply. "But you'd do best to stay away from him, you know that right?"

Jess snorts in the background, the stack of photos he'd come to get weighing heavily in his hand.

"Why is he here?" She asks, a sob nearly escaping her throat. She thought she'd gotten over it a few months back after going on a few dates, but apparently not.