-- present --
At around seven, we all seated into the dining room for dinner. Karen made salmon with white rice and bell peppers, and she said that dessert was a "surprise". Manny and Karen took the two seats that were the center, and Shawn, Daniel, and I took the seats to the left of Manny while Scott, Liam, and Jack took the seats to the left of Karen.
"Jasmine," Manny begins, "what is your aspiration in life?"
I smile, thinking of my favorite Beyoncé song before answering his question. "To be a journalist."
"Really?" Karen's eyes light up and I look her way.
"Yeah," I nod. "I've always had this big fascination with writing and news and traveling."
"I used to be a journalist," Karen tells me.
"Shawn mentioned it before. But he never really went in depth about it."
"That's because Shawn doesn't like mentioning his family to his girls," Jack says, biting into a piece of salmon.
"Just like you haven't mentioned to any of your girls about your almost-a-rape case," Shawn smiles. His brothers laugh, causing Jack to go silent.
"You're actually the first girl we've ever met." Manny tells me. "So my apologies if by boys act like...well, boys."
"It's understandable." I tell Manny. "I'm sure Jack here is only upset because I beat him in a game of Chicken."
"You got beat by her?" Manny asks Jack. "I don't mean it in a bad way, Jasmine. It's just that you're tiny."
"Non taken." I giggle.
"How did you manage to beat him?" He asks me.
"I have really fantastic balance," I explain. "I was in cheer and I used to be a flyer. So during practices, our coach would walk around with a broomstick and hit our arms, legs, torso, or anything that could throw off our balance."
"Call a rematch tomorrow, Jack," Manny tells him. "I want to see this."
After dinner, I helped Karen wash the dishes while the guys set up a little bonfire out in front of the lake.
"Shawn told me that you were a journalist - slash - therapist." I tell Karen. "How was that?"
She sighs, handing me a dish to dry and put away into the cabinet.
"Journalism was stressful. But I loved it. I got to go around the world. But when it came to being a therapist, it was just...terrifying." She explains.
"Can I ask how?"
Karen nods and continues washing a dish. "You had sit and listen to people, examine, almost. And you had to help them. In most cases, it was helpful. But there were some of those cases where it just wasn't. I would have to wake up in the middle of the night and go to my clients houses to talk them out of killing themselves or others."
"Was that scary for you?"
"Terrifying. There was this one patient..."
"Karen, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." I tell her.
"No, no. I should. I never got to talk about what happened that night. Anyways, there was this one patient who had a gun. Police were there, they were trying to get him to put the gun down. He had a son in the house, along with his wife. And he shot himself while his family watched."
"Karen, I..." I wrap my arms around her in an embrace. "I'm sorry that you had to experience that."
To my surprise, she hugs me back. "Thank you, Jasmine."
We pull apart and she smiles, her hands resting on my arms. "It's so good to get that out. I feel like this weight has been lifted off my chest." She closes her eye and slightly giggles.
"What's so funny?" I ask her. She lets go of my arms and I follow her out the kitchen and into the hallway by the closet.
"It reminds me of a a song Shawn wrote." Karen says, opening the closet door and reaching for a light blanket.
"Shawn wrote a song?" I ask her. This is something he hasn't mentioned.
"Honey," she looks at me, "Shawn sings."
"He what?"
"He sings. He used to keep us up at night but then we used to fall asleep to it. That's one of the things I like about him being home; I get to hear his voice." Karen smiles and closes the closet door. We exit the house and being the somewhat long walk to the lake behind their house.
"What song did it remind you of?" I ask her.
"I believe it was called A Weight? I don't know, something with the weight in it."
"What was it about?"
"The girl he liked. Stephanie, the one I told you about." He wrote a song about her? Who the hell... "Oh. Shh. You can't act like you know." The fire is in view and I see Liam back flipping off the dock and into the lake.
"You're gonna break you neck!" Karen shouts to Liam.
"Good," Scott replies. "Hopefully I can take his room!"
"How did you meet the second time?" Manny asks me as I sit down on a lawn chair.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"You've met him the first time," Manny clarifies. "He's told me."
"I really don't remember," I say. "I fell from a basket toss at a competition as suffered a minor concussion. I really don't remember a lot of things from two years ago."
"That's horrible," Karen says.
"I couldn't compete for the rest of the season." I tell her. "But on our first date, he mentioned that we've met before."
"He used to talk about you a lot." Manny tells me.
"Did he?" I ask him, my eyes looking over at Shawn as he pushes Daniel into the water, only to be pushed in by Scott.
Manny nods. "He did."
"He couldn't stop talking about you even after your date?" Karen adds.
My eyes go wide. I know that I can't remember much because of the small concussion I sustained, but I didn't know that we went on a date? "Shawn's never mentioned this to me before." I say.
"He probably didn't think it was something that should have been mentioned." Karen shrugs.
"Probably," I mutter to myself, keeping my eyes locked on Shawn's figure in the lake.
- - - - -
this was short, but the next chapter will be another flashback!
