CHAPTER157
Look where it got me, alone and broken and losing the only man I was ever capable of trusting, ever capable of loving.
He has a child on the way; maybe he will try again with Marissa now that I am no longer a thorn in his side, a constant distraction to ruin his day.
He called us toxic. Hearing that hurt the worst. It struck me like a knife to the gut. I am toxic to him.
What does that even mean? I slowly poisoned him in some way, until he couldn’t bear it anymore?
I finally drag myself to my bedroom and pull on some pj’s. I haven’t worn anything like this in so long, I am amazed I even still own a pair. I climb on the bed, moving aside the huge bear Jake won for me at a street carnival on one of our trips. It causes a new slash of pain across my chest, and I sob into the bear’s stomach, slumping across it pitifully.
I can’t take this. I should have said something to him; I should have at least tried to tell him how I felt. Maybe if I had then I wouldn’t be here now crying into a stuffed bear’s fluffy belly, the only thing I have of him that I can actually hold this way. As something dawns on me, I sit up and dry my eyes.
What would I have said to him? I love you, Jake? Why not, it’s true! What if he doesn’t feel the same way?
Who am I kidding? He sent me away. He doesn’t feel the same way about me.
I think back to every time he tried to get me to open up, every kiss, and having sex with me. I let myself wonder if it was all ever about the challenge, and it smarts.
Had I just been something to conquer?
No, I don’t think I had been. I learned to trust him, and saw more than just the Casanova playboy. I saw the real Jake, the caring, funny, and sometimes vulnerable Jake. He told me everything about his life. Our bond was real, our friendship. He’d been affectionate and attentive when no one else cared for me, and he looked after me the way he did. I refuse to believe that none of it was real.
I pick up my iPad and scroll through the monumental list of songs we sent one another over the past few months, the jokes, the apologies, the hidden meanings, trying to see the truth behind it all. I stop as my gaze falls on an unfamiliar song, and my inner anguish pauses as confusion fills my head.
“I Know You” by Skylar Grey.
I wonder when he sent this?
It’s not one I remember ever being gifted to me. I’ve no memory of it as I sift back through our time together, and I can’t recall him ever sending me this song. Sometimes he just added music to my iPad for me when we were bored or on a flight. He would sit and leave me songs as a joke, or just because he cared, because he knew I would listen to them. Was this one of them? I click play on the music file and lie back on my bed to listen to the lyrics intently.
The haunting melody drifts over me soothingly, but it’s the words that strike a chord deep inside. Each word is like a message from him, so accurate in every way, asking me to let him in, to give him a chance to love me, that he knows I put myself through so much pain because of my past, begging me to just stop pushing him away. The lyrics cause my soul to ache as a new flood of tears roll silently down my face. I’m longing to see this as a real form of him communicating with me.
Why hadn’t I listened to this before? Why now when it’s too late? What does this mean?
When the music fades away and my sobs silently subside, I sit up and take my iPad in my hands without hesitation. Sniffing, I scroll iTunes purposefully; there’s a song that I listened to a dozen times when we were apart. I need to send it to him now. It says more than I ever could: a girl telling a guy that she loves him, that despite her walls she cares, her memories of him and what he means to her, that she misses him and all his crazy ways. She will do anything to be with him.
Maybe it isn’t too late! After all, he put that song on there for me to find. Maybe he thought I already had and just never told him, that I ignored it.
Had that hurt him? Been part of the reason he has withdrawn?
Finding the one I’m looking for, I forward it to Jake’s email before doubt can creep in to stop me, before I can talk myself out of it with logic and sense, and fear.
“Wish You Were Here” by Avril Lavigne.
It says everything I want to say to him.
I sit frozen, staring at my mailbox, chewing my lip anxiously, waiting, watching, praying he opens it and listens to the song. Every lyric is equally able to pass on my message as his song just has for me. Tapping my foot nervously, I pray I’m not too late.
I’m aware of every noise of my room and the world outside as the minutes drag on endlessly. Like a weird countdown of torture in my airless cell, I’m holding my breath, and even my heart has stopped beating it seems.
The ping startling me so that I flinch and gasp, I finally get an email notice just as my page times out. I scramble with fumbling fingers to touch it on and bring it back to life. With wobbly hands and loss of coordination because I am so damned scared, I slide my screen cover aside, lighting it back up. Jake Carrero has gifted me a song! Even seeing his name appear at the top of my screen makes my chest constrict in painful suffering, my heart pounding through my chest, my breath halting. I’m shaking violently as I open the email to read the subject:
“Always an Avril fan.”
I inhale sharply as I scan the next line, the blood draining from my face as realization hits home. Crushing agony consumes me heart and soul. He couldn’t be any clearer.
“Let Me Go” by Avril Lavigne.
My world tips into darkness as pain overtakes me, and I collapse onto the stuffed bear again, the iPad sliding to the floor while I wail out in hellish anguish like someone dying horribly.
He doesn’t want to know. He’s gone, and I’m sure I’ll die."
