Jay-Jay's POV
The first thing that changed wasn't the pain.
It was the silence.
For days after the bridge, the flat sounded different. Not empty—never empty, not with Section E turning our living room into a permanent sleepover—but quieter inside my head. The thoughts that had once screamed jump, disappear, they'll be better off now came out as tired whispers that other voices could talk over.
The couch became command center. Keifer on one side, Serina on the other, everyone else rotating in shifts like emotional bodyguards. There were blankets in clashing patterns, mismatched mugs sweating with tea, Netflix asking "Are you still watching?" so often that Rakki threatened to fight the TV.
"Keep judging us and I'll unplug you," she muttered one night, hurling a pillow at the screen.
I actually snorted. It was small and rough, but it was a sound that wasn't crying. Every head snapped toward me like I'd fired a flare.
"Was that—" Percy leaned in. "Did she just laugh?"
"Shut up," I mumbled, dragging the blanket over my face. But my chest felt… lighter. Not fixed. Just a fraction less crushed.
Therapy started two days later. Real therapy this time. Not the school counselor who'd once told me "Everything happens for a reason." Serina had hunted this one down like a mission.
Grief specialist. Trauma-informed. No pastel "good vibes only" posters. Just a calm woman with kind eyes who didn't flinch when I said, "I tried to jump off a bridge last week."
"Thank you for telling me," she said. "That must have been terrifying—for you and for the people who love you."
No judgment. No shock theatrics. Just steady, grounding words.
Some sessions I talked. Some I stared at the carpet and said nothing. Some I sobbed until my head pounded. Every time, she said, "You came. That's enough for today."
At home, "safety plan" became a phrase we used without embarrassment.
Keys in a bowl near the door.
Medication locked and tracked.
No walks alone, no showers with the door fully closed if I was having a bad day.
Check-ins at random: "What number are you at right now?" out of ten, for both pain and danger.
It felt humiliating at first, like I'd regressed to being a child who couldn't be trusted to cross the street alone.
Until one evening, when Keifer handed me a cup of tea and said, "I made a plan with Angelo for me too, you know."
"You?" I frowned. "Why?"
"Because watching you on that bridge broke something in me," he admitted, staring into his mug. "And I don't trust myself not to throw all my own mental health out the window to take care of you. So I have rules now. Therapy. Time off. No pretending I'm fine when I'm not. Someone checks on me too."
The weight in my chest shifted. This wasn't just about me being weak. This was about all of us learning how to not drown alone.
Small things started to help.
Grace showed up with a plant she put on the coffee table. "You are not allowed to let this die," she said. "You don't have to thrive. Just… exist. Water it. That's all."
So, on days when brushing my own teeth felt like climbing a mountain, I poured water into that stupid pot and told myself, You did one thing that wasn't disappearing.
C-in sent voice notes that were 90% chaos, 10% serious.
"Jay, if you die, I have to haunt you," he said in one. "And I'm lazy. Don't make me do cardio in the afterlife."
Felix started texting me photos of the sky at random—sunsets, weird cloud shapes, a double rainbow over a petrol station.
"For when you can't look up yourself," the first one said.
Mica called and didn't ask "How are you?" which I appreciated, because I didn't know how to answer that. She asked, "Did you eat?" or "Want me to talk until you fall asleep?" Sometimes she just put the phone next to her while she did her own homework, and we breathed in each other's silence.
The pain stayed.
It still hurt to walk past baby clothes displays in shop windows. It still made my chest ache when I saw parents push prams along the river. Some days I woke up with the grief sitting on my ribs like a concrete block.
But there were cracks in it now.
Little fissures of light where air could get through.
One afternoon, weeks after the bridge, I found myself at the desk again. Not doom-scrolling. Not staring at nothing. Sitting. Pen in hand. Journal open.
The therapist had suggested writing to the baby. I'd resisted at first, the idea too raw. But my fingers moved anyway, almost on their own.
Hi, little one, I wrote.
I'm really mad you're not here.
I'm really mad at my body. But I'm trying not to be mad at you.
The tears came, but they were quieter this time. Not the overwhelming tidal wave from before. More like rain.
Keifer knocked on the open door, not stepping in until I nodded.
"What are you doing?" he asked softly.
"Homework," I said, holding up the notebook with a wobble. My voice surprised me. It sounded like me again, just hoarse.
His eyes softened, something like relief flickering through. "Can I sit?"
I nodded again. He lowered himself onto the floor beside my chair instead of taking the other seat, resting his head lightly against my thigh, hand finding my ankle like he needed to feel I was solid.
"We're doing better than that night," he said quietly, not looking at me, gaze on the carpet.
"Define better," I replied.
"You're here," he said. "You're talking. You're writing. You're letting me in. That's better."
I traced small circles on his shoulder absentmindedly.
"You cried in front of me," I murmured. "On the bridge."
"Yeah," he said, huffing a breath that was almost a laugh. "Didn't really have a choice. That dam exploded."
"I've never seen you like that."
"Get used to it," he said. "I'm done pretending I'm a robot. I'm a husband who almost lost his wife to a river. I get to break down too."
The word hit again—wife. It still surprised me sometimes. It also tethered me, a reminder that I'd chosen something, someone, and been chosen in return.
"Do you still…" I hesitated. The bridge flashed behind my eyes. "Are you scared I'll try again?"
He didn't answer immediately. When he did, his voice was honest and gentle.
"Yes," he said. "I am. I'd be lying if I said no."
I opened my mouth to apologize. He cut me off.
"But I'm also hopeful," he added. "Because you told me. You let me be there. You didn't push us away today when we talked about therapy. You've let us lock the meds and bug you about pills and shower doors. You're fighting. Maybe not with swords and drama. But with really boring, really brave choices."
"Like watering the plant," I said.
He nodded toward the living room. "You kept that thing alive three weeks. Honestly, that's more impressive than fighting Kaizer."
A tiny, startled laugh escaped my throat. "Don't let him hear you say that."
Keifer smiled, the small, tired version of his usual grin, but real. "He's not here. We are. That's what matters."
For a moment, the weight in my chest eased, just a fraction. Enough for one full breath that didn't hurt all the way through.
It wasn't joy. That felt too big, too far.
But it was something.
A crack in the concrete.
A soft place where hope might someday grow.
"Will it always feel like this?" I asked. "Heavy and… punctured?"
"I don't know," he said honestly. "But I know this: it doesn't have to feel like this alone."
He tilted his head back to look up at me.
"And the fact that you're asking that question instead of standing on a railing?" he added. "That's not nothing, Jay. That's the weight lifting a little."
My eyes burned, but there was less panic in it this time. More release.
"I'm not promising I won't crash again," I said quietly.
"I'm not asking you to," he replied. "Just promise me this: when it gets that dark again, you tell someone. Me. Serina. Rakki. Therapist. You don't go to the bridge alone."
I thought about the circle of bodies on cold pavement, about Felix's big hands on my shoulders, about Serina's shaking voice, about how all of them had looked at me like I was something worth fighting traffic and fear and history for.
"Okay," I said.
The word felt small, but it landed solid.
"Okay?" he repeated, to be sure.
"Okay," I said again, this time a little stronger. "No bridges alone."
He exhaled, a long careful breath, and rested his forehead against my knee.
"Thank you," he whispered.
Later that night, I wandered into the living room and found Section E mid-argument over which movie to put on.
"Nothing with dead parents!" Percy yelled.
"No hospitals," Denzel added.
"No babies," Rakki and Felix said in unison.
Grace spotted me first. "Jay. Tie-breaker. Dumb comedy or dumb action?"
I hesitated in the doorway, fingers twitching. Old instincts screamed to retreat to the bedroom, back to the familiar nest of heavy blankets and soft darkness. But something quieter nudged me forward.
"Dumb comedy," I said. "I need to make fun of something."
"YES," C-in crowed, fist-pumping. "Character development!"
They shuffled to make space. Keifer patted the spot beside him. I sank down, knees touching his, the plant visible on the table in my peripheral vision, leaves glossy under lamplight.
As the opening credits rolled and someone made a joke about the terrible CGI, I felt it again—that tiny lift. Not the disappearance of grief. Just the reminder that my heart, somehow, was still capable of expanding around it.
Maybe the weight would never fully go away.
But tonight, surrounded by the people who had dragged me back from the edge and were now content to sit with me through a bad movie, it felt… a fraction lighter.
And for now, that was enough.