I take a swig from the bottle of water in my hand. “Jet, fuck off back to your own room. My answer’s the same as it is every other fucking time you start with this shit. Now fuck off and leave me in peace.” He takes another step closer. “Just a chance, Reed, just one chance? I know we could be so good together. I just want a chance.”
“No,” I shout, “No, my answer’s no now, and it’ll always be no. I’ll walk away, Jet. If you keep this up, I’ll walk away from it all, you, the band, all of it. I’m not working with this hanging over us. You either get your head around the fact that it’s never gonna happen or I’m fucking off for good and I mean it this time. My life’s fucked up enough. I don’t need your shit adding to it.” His shoulders slump as he stands in front of me. I feel bad, but I’m still pissed off and I mean what I’ve said. I’m thirty-three-years-old and I’m so sick of this life that I’m leading. I love the band and the music, but everything outside of that is seriously fucked. The sex, the women, the parties, all of it means nothing. It’s all superficial bullshit and I hate it, and the people that are part of it. I just want to go home to my family and step away from all of it and the last thing I need is Jet and his ‘let’s have a relationship’ drama going on while I’m at home. I don’t need his phone calls and texts, begging me to just let us try. I want to sleep and I want to dream, and right now, I just need him to go.
“One day, one day you’ll understand,” he says through gritted teeth. “You’ll love someone so fucking much that it’s painful and then you’ll get it.”
“No, no I won’t. Not again, I won’t. See, I’ve been there. I know what a lying, spiteful, deceitful little cunt love is and I won’t ever go there again. So you just need to make up your mind, you either stop with all this bollocks and we come back in September or we leave tomorrow and announce the end of the band, ‘cause I’m done this time. I’m seriously done.”
“But I love you, I fucking love you, Reed.”
I’m done, I can’t do this anymore. “Get out! Get out of my room and stay out of my life. I’ll sort out a separate flight back to London tomorrow. I don’t want you to call, text or email me. I want no contact with you, whatsoever. I’m done Jet, I just want some peace. Now, get out of my room and stay out of my fucking life.”
He looks at me for a few seconds and I have no idea what the look in his eyes means. He starts to nod his head. “Your call Reed, just remember that this was your call.” He turns and leaves the room without looking back. I screw the cap on the water bottle and launch it at the door as he shuts it behind him. Fucking drama queen. I love him, but he does my fucking head in sometimes. I lock the bedroom door, pick up my bottle of water and climb into bed. I turn on the telly with the remote control and flick through the channels. Notting Hill is playing on one of the film channels and that’s all it takes for my mind to drift to her.
We went to see this film together. I moaned, but she reminded me that I’d promised to go with her and she would come with me to see the Green Mile. I didn’t end up hating Notting Hill quite as much as I thought I would, but we never did get to watch the Green Mile together when it came out the following year. I leave the film on, I don’t usually, any other night it’d be off… gone. I go out of my way to avoid anything, music, films, places, anything and anywhere that might remind me of her, or take me back to that night. But after everything else that’s happened tonight so far, it seems a bit pointless.