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She stayed where she was, lying on her back with her head on my bicep, staring at the ceiling, for a couple of silent minutes. "It's really, really hard to verbalize." A pause. "You're so wonderfully normal, Jax. I sometimes wonder how you can even hope to understand anything about me. I don't feel like I understand myself, some days. The older I get, the more fucked up I realize I am."

I covered my mouth to muffle a sputter of shocked laughter. “Pretty sure that’s the first time in history anyone has ever called a Badd normal."

"That's not what I’m trying to say," she said. "That's just lead-up."

"Okay."

The silence was long and deep and profound, and I realized she was summoning the courage to say something intensely significant.

It was difficult for me not to fill the silence, but I knew I just had to wait, so wait I did.

"Okay," she breathed. "Okay."

"There's not a single thing you could say that would change how I feel about you, Tea. Nothing. I'll care about you and accept you no matter what."

"Ohh god," she whimpered. "You can't be sweet, or I'll start crying."

"You're allowed to cry."

A shake of her head. "No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are." I did a bicep curl, and she rolled over and fell against my chest. I hooked my arm around her neck and brushed the hair out of her face; with my other hand, I explored the warm, bare wonder of her thigh, hip, and waist. "I won't tell anyone."

"I'm not allowed," she whispered. "You don't understand. Tiernans don't cry."

"Well, that's just fucking idiotic."

This got me a sniff of laughter. "Tell me how you really feel."

"Okay, I will." I tucked her hair behind the delicate shell of her tiny little ear. "You hold so much inside you all the time, Tea. You hold yourself to this impossible standard. Don’t cry. Be in control. Be perfect. Never mess up. Don't let anyone see you sweat. Never show weakness. Never need anyone. No one can sustain that indefinitely. We all need someone at some point, Tea. And I just want to be the person who's there when you need someone. I'm here. You need me, and I want to be needed, Tea. I'm sorry if it seems like I’m making this about myself; I just…" I sighed, swallowing hard. "I'll put it all out there first; how's about that?" I scrubbed my face with my free hand and then rested it on her hip again. "I have an amazing, incredible family. I know this. I do not take it for granted. Not when I've seen firsthand the deeply fucked up dysfunction some of my friends have dealt with. I have two parents who love me, siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles out the fuckin' wazoo. It's awesome. They're supportive as hell."

"There were thirty people in the waiting room," she said. "So yeah."

"You should see a game or recital or whatever. We take up entire sections. Dad being ex-military and thus anal about punctuality, our family is usually the one to get to an event early so we can stake out a few rows for our whole crew. It's wild." I sighed. "But there's still this part of me that's…" I halted, looking for the right way to put it.

"Seriously messed up from the whole thing with Emerson?" she suggested.

I nodded. "Yeah. That." I covered my face and sighed. "It's dumb, I know it is. It's a stupid, minor thing. It's not even a thing. There was a girl I liked who didn't like me back. So the fuck what? Who gives a shit? That's what I tell myself all the time. No one gives a shit, Jax. Just get over it. Move on. Stop the fucking whining."

"But you can't just dismiss or ignore your pain, Jax," Tea murmured. "It's not a competition."

"I know that too. It just feels silly to talk about my dumb shit when people have real problems." I sighed, snorted a laugh. "I just have a hard time trusting my feelings. There were girls I think I could have had something real with, but I was scared and held back. Anything that even smells like rejection can send me into a spiral. I think…I think some part of me assumed that Emerson never fell in love with me because of something wrong with me. I played football to get her attention. I started lifting to get her attention. The only thing I have that's uniquely me, and nothing I started for her, is computers. But even then, when I was young and dumb and pushing the envelope and thinking I was a rebel who was gonna change the world with a few keystrokes, I did some pretty risky hacks just to impress her. She doesn't know the first fucking thing about any of it, though, so it was all for nothing. Yet I did it anyway, because I was a pathetic dumbfuck."

"Stop, Jax. Stop with the pathetic and the stupid stuff. You're not. You weren't. You were a kid with feelings you didn’t ask for, didn’t understand, and couldn't control."

Another dense silence rolled and undulated between us.

"I…god, this is hard." She buried her face in my chest and took a few deep breaths, and then rolled away slightly and shifted around into a more comfortable position. "Deep, deep down, I don't feel worthy of love."

"Tea," I whispered, gut-punched.

"It's hard to say this and not defend my dad."

"I've got feelings on that score."

"I know, because I've only told you the bad stuff. I haven't told you about Saturday mornings when he'd make pancakes and bacon for Tania and me and take us flying. Or how he attended as many of our games and events as his career would let him. He missed a lot, sure, but also he made it to a lot more than some of our friends' dads did. I haven't told you how, when I got my first serious boyfriend the summer after Mom died, he made sure to have a surprisingly not cringey or awkward conversation about sex."

"Oh, those are fun."