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Gina didn’t even jump when she heard the buzzer, because she was just that amazing. She groaned even though no one could hear her and trotted over to press the intercom button. “Who’s there?” she said, monotone.
“It’s Jake.” The old-ass apartment intercom made his voice sound muffled and slightly tinny, but Gina knew Jake well enough to recognise his Trying Not To Cry Because I’m In Public But Barely Holding It In voice. Gina didn’t miss a beat and buzzed him in.
“Thanks,” said Jake’s voice, strained and tired.
It always took Jake about thirty seconds to run up the stairs to Gina’s apartment on the fourth floor. She knew because they’d timed him. Timing themselves doing random things was a fun game to play when they had nothing to do, which was often. And Jake was physically incapable of going up stairs without running (“It’s just so fun to be speedy!” he’d say, smiling wide and bouncing a little), so Gina never had to wait long for him to reach her apartment even in casual, non-timed settings.
That day it took Jake forty-eight seconds to knock at her door, and Gina was glad her mom wasn't coming home from work until later because something was clearly wrong.
She opened the door. Jake stood in the doorway, jacketless and shivering in a short sleeve shirt in New York winter. His skinny arms were bruised and he looked like he was about to cry. Her stomach sank. Oh. “Hi,” he choked out.
“Damn, Jakey, come in!” she said, standing aside. He entered, tears falling the second she closed the door behind him. “Couch,” she instructed. It was one of those couches with the ninety degree angle, and Jake slotted himself into the corner, his favorite spot, and curled into a little ball, hiding his face in a cushion. His shoulders shook as he sobbed.
Gina plopped herself into the spot next to him, legs stretched out in front of her. “What happened?” she asked, even though she was pretty sure she already knew.
“My dad,” Jake hiccuped, and Gina grimaced, her suspicions confirmed. “He’s--he’s visiting me and my mom. I made him angry.”
Gina grabbed a blanket and threw it over to Jake, who was still shivering. He automatically wrapped it around himself. “Thanks,” he said.
“Doy,” she replied, which was the new way she was trying out of saying ‘you’re welcome.’ She glanced at Jake out of the corner of her eye. Those bruises looked painful. There was one on his left wrist that looked hand shaped, and the rest were mostly on his forearms, as if he’d used them as a shield. She would never admit it without there being brutal and drawn out torture involved, but she hated seeing him like this. Jake was usually upbeat and smiling; crying on her couch covered in bruises didn’t suit him.
This used to happen more often, the coming over injured and crying. Before Roger left. Jake had been really upset when that happened, and Gina had held him and let him cry, but secretly she was thinking good. I’m glad he’s gone. She’d been seven at the time, so she hadn’t fully understood the situation, but even then she’d known that Roger was capital B Bad. Jake, however, couldn’t seem to get that idea fully into his thick head. He’d seen the cheating and the lying and been the main target of the hitting, and yet he was still super excited whenever Roger showed up. Gina didn’t understand it.
Nowadays this only happened when Roger came to visit, which was thankfully very rare. Jake was always over the moon about it, until, well, this happened. Which it always fucking did.
“I’m okay,” Jake sniffed, muffled by the cushion that was still obscuring his face. He looked tiny. “No broken bones, just bruises. He only--It was just on my arms and torso, not my head or anything. So I’m not brain damaged. At least not any more than my stupid ass already was,” he said, and laughed wetly.
Gina rolled her eyes. “You may be a little bit stupid, but it’s in a charming, puppy-like sort of way.” She patted his knee.
“Thanks Gina,” said Jake.
“Wanna watch a movie?” Gina said, knowing full well what she was in for.
Jake snapped his head up from the pillow. “Die Hard?” he said, half a lopsided smile already sneaking its way onto his face.
“There’s the Jake I know and love!” she said, smiling back at him. “But no, you nerd, I am not letting you make me watch Die Hard for the infinity to the infinitieth power-th time. We are watching literally any other movie.”
“Die Hard 2?”
“A non Die Hard movie, please,” she drawled.
Jake thought for a second, before emphatically saying, “Robocop.”
“Fine, Robocop.” She rolled her eyes and got up to go search for the movie in their VHS shelf. Half of the movies there were Jake’s that he’d brought over at some point and not taken home. Robocop (and Die Hard) was one of those. Her movies were more focused on there being hot people in them than Jake’s silly action.
She put the VHS into the player and then went to her room to get a hoodie for Jake to cover his arms with while the VHS started up and rewinded. Jake was over so often that his stuff was kinda just lying around her room (Jake literally had a toothbrush and a set of pajamas in her home), and she grabbed the soft green hoodie he’d left on her desk chair. “My mom's coming back in a few hours,” she said as she handed it to him, and nothing else was needed to say. Jake pulled on the hoodie.
“Thanks, Gina,” Jake said quietly.
Gina looked at him, but he was looking at the screen. “Doy.”
Jake slept over at Gina’s apartment that night, hugging one of her stuffies. Gina didn’t do that thing they do in movies where they watch the other person sleep because that was dumb and corny and she always fell asleep first, but her last thought as she slipped off to sleep was, fuck you, Roger.