Throwing his head back, Jesse laughs a little. “Yes, your cute little limes. I’m not high, I swear. It just reminds me of the times that we used to stick whole slices in our mouths to see who would pull the more ridiculous face. I always did though,” he said, lighting his joint and bringing it to his lips. “Plenty more of these where they came from, but we’ve got an entire night to waste on these.” The simple truth is that even though he doesn’t mind indulging himself on a joint or two, it’s hardly ever anything more. Jesse can’t help but think that if things were more different, he wouldn’t have much of a problem with taking what he wanted, but of course, even when trying to relax and get on the drug high, all he can think of are his parents. Their memory haunts his mind, even now, but he simply pushes it to the back and ignores whatever kind of welling up of emotions that he feels. Hearing Kennedy mention Jake makes him shift a bit uncomfortably, blinking.
“Haven’t seen that guy for a while, actually, so I can’t tell how badly he’s doing. Between us, it’s been me dropping off a weekly bundle someplace and he picks it up whenever. Been that way for a while. It isn’t that easy to deal with people like that by just saying no, and I can hardly spend my time running around trying to take care of everyone. I’ll see what I can do, but let’s not talk about this, alright?” he says, trying to change the topic. Jesse makes that mental note in his head, feeling that weight on his shoulders suddenly get heavier, but he’d rather not think about it, or not at the moment at least. It was bad enough that there was one person in town wandering with a bad drug addiction, and now someone else who he should be concerned about? Moments like that made him want to just throw everything down and quit. But things really were never that easy.
Staring down at the people that were almost nothing more than insignificant dots underneath them, Jesse can’t help but stare at the lights strung around the club, swishing cocktail dresses and immaculately tailored suits. And then his mouth twitches into an amused smile, just thinking about how those were the same people that could hardly even give him a second glance. Not that it mattered when, at the moment, he was so far above them all that it didn’t matter at all. “Has it really been that long?” he asks, turning his head in surprise. “Everything has just been kind of blurring together lately. Time doesn’t seem to be a thing that actually exists anymore. Must be that summer air,” Jesse says. “What else has been going on that I don’t know about?”
The subtle hint to his discovery of how Kennedy was getting by is in his words, but Jesse can’t bring himself to say anything out loud. Selling at the strip club wasn’t any more or less different than any other job that he had to do. He’d been selling his merchandise there were about a year or so. Jesse never had any interest in the dancers or any of the club’s ongoings. But there was something about the dancer on the stage that one night that he had stepped in that made him stop for a second. Something about the familiar colored hair that flashed in the light and something about the silhouette made him stop for a second. And when they locked eyes, Jesse knew.
Jesse hadn’t talked about it with Kennedy upfront since then. It was a fact in his mind that simply needed no explanation. Like his own drug dealing, if stripping was the way that Kennedy had to get by, then so be it. He was hardly one to defend any of his own reasoning for what he did, but it just pained Jesse to know just what Kennedy was doing during certain hours of the night. And he didn’t really want to say anything about it either. Saying anything else, he felt, was also just another mention of the lives that they lived, which he tried to avoid when he could. Except Kade seemed to hate that fact about him, but he wasn’t going to think about that either.
Taking the bottle from Kennedy, he just simply tips it a bit in her direction. “To the ghouls – who should probably do something soon to secure that title of theirs,” he says, grinning. Jesse licks some salt off his fingers before taking his joint out of his mouth and taking a tentative sip, and then a single satisfying gulp. He sets it down on the ground and pops the slice of lime into his mouth, sucking on it before biting the inside of his cheek a bit at the taste. Leaning back and sighing contentedly, lazily balancing the joint between his fingers, Jesse quietly listens to Kennedy’s hushed voice closing his eyes and letting the haunting tune fill his ears. The lyrics hit him hard when she gets to the part of the song that he can’t help but think speak to him. And I don’t want the world to see me, 'cause I don't think that they'd understand… Listening to her voice, Jesse can drift off a bit and close his eyes, and hearing her perfect singing makes Jesse remember just what about her he had once found so fascinating when they were younger. Oh, what a childhood crush that had been. Too bad it had all gone away, faded into the past when he had to focus his time on figuring out how to get food on the table.
Too much had changed since then. Too much. When Kennedy finishes, Jesse can’t help but smile softly. “You always did have a nice voice.”
