CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
JAX
WHEN MY SUNDAY night redeye landed in our hometown, I expected there would be bridges I would have to mend. The walls I’d torn down and destroyed with Aubrey were probably fucking resurrected the moment the media leaked coverage of my visit to the prison.
I called her again and again on my way back.
When I didn’t get an answer, I tried to call Jay.
He ignored the call and texted me.
Jay: It’s midnight. I don’t have time for your shit and don’t use me to get to her. That shit’s unhealthy and we both know it.
I pocketed my cell, deciding he could fuck off. He was just reinforcing her resurrected wall by not helping me get to her.
I needed to call Isabel to figure out how to spin the media with Aubrey in it. Yet, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel right calling her. The more I thought about our relationship, the more I realized she’d been a stand-in girlfriend for me along with a PR agent over the years.
Not that I had to answer to anyone about my relationships, but if I didn’t want Aubrey sleeping with her friends, I damn sure couldn’t be sleeping with mine.
I should have resorted to working on my app or trying to get the sleep I was sure wouldn’t come but the damn woman permeated my every thought. I could barely think of anything else.
I called her again, knowing it was too late.
When she didn’t answer, I told myself that she probably shouldn’t. It was for the best. Reaching her would be toxic and most likely end in both of our destruction.
I knew it then just like I’d known it when I’d left her that summer after high school.
So, I didn’t call or text her again but let the idea of her haunt me.
I changed into some shorts and put on my running shoes to go for a midnight jog.
When I hit the pavement, I tried to focus on exercise even though the thought of her consumed me.
Kissing her in her kitchen had taken me right back to the days of wanting to write about her, muse about her, yearn for her, and sing for her. She ignited those raw feelings of jealousy and hate and love within me. With her, my emotions ran wild and let me make my only real music.
I couldn’t let that happen now. I’d left the music industry for that reason. The emotion and intensity of it all nearly consumed me. I’d exposed myself, and the world looked at all my emotions with a kaleidoscope, dissecting each one, changing and distorting it.
There was a damn good reason musicians walked away from the industry or built fortresses around themselves to disappear. I’d done the same thing, sort of. I’d turned my attention to investments and apps. I still utilized my old music for it, but I didn’t have it in me to get lost in the emotions of my music all over again.
Getting lost in her and in writing the music surrounding those emotions without knowing whether I would have her again or if I wanted her again was like taking a bullet wound to the stomach. It penetrated my insides in a hot flash, the trauma acute enough to trick my mind into feeling no pain at first, just long enough to believe I might make it; then, as my brain adjusted to reality, I’d be left unable to ever forget the scorching, searing pain inflicted by my own reckless abandon.
For some damn reason, my body didn’t shy from the pain. I’d seen her in that kitchen with a man I knew was playing games with me and jumped at the chance to use it.
I pushed myself harder as I jogged, trying to burn off my frustration.
My mind knew indulging in her wasn’t the smart thing to do. I prided myself on making those types of deductions and calculating the most likely of the outcomes.
The end for her and me should have been when I walked out on her a long time ago. Unfortunately, both of us were tied to the man that had set our lives aflame. He’d held a trump card for so long, I couldn’t back away until I’d beaten him at his own game and taken every card he held, including the one he held over my head and hers.
I still couldn’t figure out if I was doing that for her or for myself.
So when I stopped in front of her apartment, out of breath from my run, I didn’t immediately knock on her door.
I didn’t have a good reason to keep seeing her or to run here in the middle of the night to bother her.
She would ask me why I visited her father and I wouldn’t give her an answer. Part of me wanted to knock on her door for that reason alone. So I could see her light up with anger and lose herself a little. She needed that. Without unraveling a little, she would wind herself up so tight, she’d continue to have panic attacks like she’d had at Jay’s premiere.
Immediately after I knocked, the door swung wide open and the bane of my existence stood there.