Jo isn't sure if she wants Sam to argue or not. If she wants to fold the idea into words and sharpen them into knives that can be thrown through the air. (If it would feel better.) The kind she couldn't use with Jack. That Jack wouldn't understand. Because Jack wasn't there. Because as much as he's here, and he is what he is, they're all aware he's a kid, too. Maybe she's looking for the scalding shout her mother would have given at those few words.
There's a razor haze to it, and Jo knows a good portion of that is momentum. Keeping herself in movement from the second she got done with Jack as though slowing might let too much catch up to the back of her heels. To make her think. (Make her feel; more than just her skin; more than what she can't anymore.) She's going to cut her teeth on whatever Sam says, and she knows it.
But he doesn't answer at first. He holds up his hands, and Jo can't tell if that pause, that silence accessing her—what she just said, what she meant by all that it didn't say—is worse. If something in the way Sam nods like he's coming half a minute later to those same conclusions doesn't make it suddenly a war not to let her eyes prickle. Some ache she can't name, a weight that had been above her shoulders, slamming down like clamps. Being right, it's not always a gift.
(Or easy. Fair. Right.
Any of those little words. She is not going to tear up.
That's not who she is. It's not in her resolve. And the point of it is that she isn't even wrong.
So she can't stop.)
Jo grits her teeth, pulling a too steady breath in her nose and pushing it right back out. The body can't panic while being forced to regulate. She glanced to the side first, her shoulders broadening a little. A shrug that maybe admits she hasn't gotten to what words, maybe still wasn't (chased by a need to get into the same space, to be able to see his face).
"That he's an idiot?" Except that's hyperbolic, and it's not even jokingly strident. Just sound.
She doesn't excuse it, but she doesn't stop, even as she slides into the actual answer, when she looks back at Sam finally. "That I know he would never have done it by choice."
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There's a razor haze to it, and Jo knows a good portion of that is momentum. Keeping herself in movement from the second she got done with Jack as though slowing might let too much catch up to the back of her heels. To make her think. (Make her feel; more than just her skin; more than what she can't anymore.) She's going to cut her teeth on whatever Sam says, and she knows it.
But he doesn't answer at first. He holds up his hands, and Jo can't tell if that pause, that silence accessing her—what she just said, what she meant by all that it didn't say—is worse. If something in the way Sam nods like he's coming half a minute later to those same conclusions doesn't make it suddenly a war not to let her eyes prickle. Some ache she can't name, a weight that had been above her shoulders, slamming down like clamps. Being right, it's not always a gift.
(Or easy. Fair. Right.
Any of those little words.
She is not going to tear up.
That's not who she is. It's not in her resolve.
And the point of it is that she isn't even wrong.
So she can't stop.)
Jo grits her teeth, pulling a too steady breath in her nose and pushing it right back out. The body can't panic while being forced to regulate. She glanced to the side first, her shoulders broadening a little. A shrug that maybe admits she hasn't gotten to what words, maybe still wasn't (chased by a need to get into the same space, to be able to see his face).
"That he's an idiot?" Except that's hyperbolic,
and it's not even jokingly strident. Just sound.
She doesn't excuse it, but she doesn't stop, even as she slides into the actual answer, when she looks back at Sam finally. "That I know he would never have done it by choice."