The Mighty Storm

Chapter Twenty-Seven




My heart is hurting deep inside my chest. I’m confused. My thoughts are all in a muddle.
And all I can see every time I close my eyes is the look on Jake’s face when I said to him that he was just exactly like his dad.
I didn’t mean it.
Of course I didn’t. I regretted the words the instant they left my mouth. But my pride wouldn’t let me take them back.
Jake could never be like Paul. He’s warm and loving … tender and so very kind.
He’s just lost at the moment, and he needs help.
But I’m not sure how to help him, or if I’m even the one who can.
Still, though, I walked out and left him at the point when he needs me most. What kind of person does that?
I know he said some shitty things, but so did I.
Honestly, my behaviour of late has left me questioning myself and my morals.
Not long ago I told Jake that I would never leave him, no matter what.
Last night I did just that. I broke my promise to him.
I kicked his ass about broken promises and then I go and do exactly the same.
Rolling over, I look at the clock for the hundredth time in the last hour.
It’s 5:30am and I’m laid in a cold, empty bed in a Best Western Hotel here in Boston.
I haven’t slept all night. I’ve just laid here in the dark, watching it through to light. Running things over and over in my mind, trying to figure out what to do for best.
After I left the Ritz, I walked around the city for hours.
Knowing I couldn’t go back to our hotel, and having nowhere else to go, and no phone to call anyone on, I checked into the next hotel I happened upon in my price range.
Once in the room, I took a shower, washing my hair with the hotel provided shampoo. Then I dried it using the hotel hairdryer. It was small, and smelt of singed hair, and it took me forever to dry my hair, but I did it because I need something to focus on. Something to keep me busy.
Then I watched mindless TV for hours until I could no longer stand it.
And now, for the last four or so hours, I’ve had nothing to keep my mind busy, so I’m forced to think about mine and Jake’s fight.
What am I going to do?
I was so angry with him last night. Angry that he’d let himself get back there. Angry he’d lied about using drugs, and that he’d kept it from me.
But I’m not angry anymore. Now I’m worried, and so very afraid. For him. For us.
If there is still an us left.
I just don’t know what to do, what's best for him?
I wish I could talk to my dad about this, get his advice. But I don’t want him to know what state Jake is in. And god, if I told my mum she’d fly out here and carry me home kicking and screaming, I know that for sure.
I don’t have Stuart’s number to call him. It was in my phone, the phone which Jake broke in his little fit of rage.
And I don’t want to call Simone and put all this on her. Not while she’s all loved up in Denny world. Also I don’t want to put her in a position where she has to lie to Denny about Jake’s drug taking, if he doesn’t already know himself.
I’m on my own in this one, and will have to figure it out for myself.
One thing I do know is I can’t stay here forever, hiding from Jake and his … our problem.
All my things are at the Ritz, and right now I’m still in yesterday’s clothes and panties. I need clean underwear if anything.
I know I have to go back, it’s just … my pride is digging its pretty little heels in at the moment.
No, come on, Tru. You’ve been gone all night. You’ve left him stewing for long enough; you’ve made your point.
He has the show to do tonight at TD Garden. Go now and talk to him. Spend today sorting through this. Jake is too important to leave hanging for any longer.
I climb out of bed. I’m already in my clothes, so I just make a quick trip to the bathroom and then grabbing my bag, I leave the room.
I drop my key card in at the reception, and step out onto the early morning Boston street.
There are no cabs to be seen.
Feeling frustrated, I start to walk in the direction of where I think the Ritz is.
As I walk, I see posters up for Jake’s show tonight. Funny how I didn’t notice them yesterday when I was still majorly pissed at him.
I stop and look up the huge bill board, with Jake, Tom and Denny on it, staring back down at me.
I can see it in Jake’s eyes. The lost look. The one no one else sees. The look that only I can take away for him.
Suddenly, I feel such an overwhelming sense of love for him that it compounds, and covets me.
He’s screwed up, but he’s my screwed up. And I can’t be without him, no matter what.
I’m so desperate to see him in this moment. I just need to get to him and right things between us.
We can get through his problem together. I can be strong enough for the both of us.
Catching sight of a cab with its light on heading toward me, I run out into the street and flag it down.
Jumping in the back, I pant breathless, “The Ritz-Carlton.”
The cab pulls away and I fall back against the seat, filled with nervous anxiety at seeing Jake.
When the cab pulls up outside the Ritz, I pay the fare, and climb out onto seriously wobbly legs.
I’m so nervous about facing him after what we said to each other.
No, this is Jake. I can do this.
Kicking my shaky legs into action, I make my way through the empty early morning lobby, and straight into the waiting lift to take me up to Jake.
He’ll probably be still sleeping, so I’ll have to wake him because I don’t want to wait any longer for us to talk this through.
I put the key card in and press the button for the twelfth floor, to take me up to the Presidential Suite where we’re staying.
The lift starts to ascend, and I stand here hands knotted in front of me, stomach turning over, as I jig my leg on the spot. And I’m reminded of the time I was riding the lift going to do his interview, those few short months ago.
So much has happened since then.
The lift stops and the doors ping open.
I instantly know something is wrong the second I step out onto the landing.
There are bottles of alcohol laid discarded on the floor, cigarette butts trodden into the carpet, and what looks to be a woman’s top there too.
Going over to it, I bend down and pick it up. It’s red with the word ’Hussy’ wrote in the black on the front.
My stomach drops hollow.
I don’t want to go in there. I don’t want to see what’s behind the door.
But I have to, I know.
Taking a deep breath in through my nose, I carefully push my key card in. I hear the little beep and the click of the lock opening, and very quietly, I push the door open.
The place is a mess.
Littered with bottles of booze, sleeping bodies, some clothed, some not.
The whole place absolutely reeks of sweat, booze and cigarettes.
Jake had a party.
We had a fight. I spent the whole night worrying over him. And he had a party.
The knowledge makes me feel sick.
Obviously me leaving him meant nothing to him at all.
Maybe he’s been waiting for me to go all along. Maybe this is what he’s wanted for a while now.
I guess this was the wake for the funeral of our relationship. Or celebration, depending on which way you look at it.
This is Jake. He’s a rock star who parties, takes drugs and sleeps with groupies.
He’s not a relationship kind of guy. I was just foolish enough to make myself believe for a little while he was because I wanted him so badly.
Irrespective, I still need to talk to him. If not to just get my stuff and get the hell out of here.
My heart is pumping hard, as I dance quiet steps around the male and female sleeping bodies, no one so far that I recognise, as I look for Jake.
But he’s nowhere to be seen in this huge mass of space called a living room.
I knew he wouldn’t be. I was just delaying the inevitable.
He’ll be in the bedroom. I’m just afraid of what I’m going to find when I go in there.
As I pass by the marble coffee table, I see the remnants of white powder on it, and rolled up notes.
Anger flexes through me. That’s a sure sign, as if the party wasn’t enough, that Jake doesn’t give a shit about me anymore.
I thought his love for me was just buried. But now I’m starting to think maybe it was never there in the first place.
Walking slowly to the bedroom, my heart beats a steady pain in my chest.
The bedroom door is closed.
Reaching out my trembling hand, I lace my fingers over the handle, and take a deep breath in.
Please let him be alone in there. Please. I can just about forgive the partying and the drugs. But anything else, no.
I push down on the handle and slowly open the door.
My heart bangs hard, once, against my chest, then sinks down into my stomach.
And I look on feeling like my world has comes crashing down all around me, as I stare at the sight of Jake in bed with another woman.
He’s faced away from me, but I know it’s him, I’d know that tattooed body anywhere.
For a moment, I literally don’t know what to do.
I’m paralysed.
The the life I envisaged with Jake flashes before my eyes, then very slowly, and very painfully slides from out of my vision.
My bag slips off my shoulder and drops to the floor with a thud.
The girl stirs, opening her heavily made up eyes, rubbing them to panda, she focus in on me standing here in the doorway.
She’s wearing only a bra, and I’m hoping, panties under the sheets.
I feel physically sick. Sicker than I have ever felt before in my whole life.
She frowns at me, and I feel like an intruder.
Then I see what I think is a flicker of recognition in her eyes, almost like she knows me.
But I for sure as hell don’t know her.
“What are you doing in here?” she asks in a not-so-nice-voice.
I open my mouth, ready to ask her the very same f*cking question, but nothing happens. I’m like a goddamn gold fish. The one time I need my mouth to work and it fails on me.
Giving me a dark look, she reaches her hand over and shakes Jake.
He groans. Rolling over onto his back, he reaches his hand out and mumbles, “Tru.”
I open my mouth again but it still won’t work.
I know I should be screaming, shouting, doing something, but I just can’t seem to get my brain and body to function. I haven’t even blinked yet.
Jake’s eyes open slowly, garnering focus.
He sees the girl first. I see confusion gather on his face, then his head turns, almost as if in slow motion, and he sees me standing here in the doorway.
His expression freezes. Then he jumps up out of bed.
I don’t why, but I feel relief that he’s still wearing his boxer shorts. Like that somehow makes it better, even though I’ve just found him in bed with another woman.
“Oh no! Nononono!” He holds his hands up, advancing around the bed, coming toward me.
The very bed we made love in two nights ago. The bed he told me he loved me in. The bed that he’s just slept in, with her. Done … whatever, with her.
“No, Tru! This is not what you think!” He stops a few feet away from me.
I stare blankly across at him. I can’t do anything else.
And right here and now, I know exactly how Will felt when I told him about Jake and me. At least I saved him from the actual burning image of it in his mind, like this is now chagrined into mine.
“What the f*ck are you doing in here?!” Jake roars at the girl, turning in her direction.
She visibly flinches. Then she scurries up out of bed, retrieving her dress from the floor, pulling it on quickly, and putting her feet her tacky black heels.
“Tru…” Jake takes a step forward, moving closer to me.
I step back, bumping with the open door.
“I didn’t have sex with her. I swear to you – tell her!” he turns on the girl again. “Tell her I didn’t have sex with you!”
She looks at me defiant. And in this moment, I see how young she actually is. Nineteen – twenty, max.
Walking toward us, passing between Jake and me, she simply smiles sweetly at me, shrugs and walks through the open doorway.
“NO!” Jake roars. “Tru, she’s lying! I didn’t have sex with her! TELL THE F*ckIN’ TRUTH! TELL HER I NEVER TOUCHED YOU!”
But the girl is well out of the room, moving quickly out of the suite, avoiding Jake’s wrath.
The whole place is waking from Jake’s anger and I see the place start to empty of people, leaving just me and him.
But they don’t matter to me. The girl doesn’t matter to me. Nothing matters anymore. Because I’ve just lost the one thing that did truly ever matter.
Everything now is inconsequential.
Jake’s hands are in his hair, he’s pacing the floor. He looks like he’s in physical pain.
“I didn’t even know she was in here. I swear.” I’m not sure if he’s talking to me, or himself right now.
I still can’t seem to feel anything. It’s as if the agony of seeing him in bed with her was so severe, the instant it hit my vision, my body instinctively shut down.
“I didn’t sleep with her, Tru.” He’s standing before me again. “I swear to you. On everything I love, I swear I did not sleep with her. You have to believe me.” His voice is desperate.
I drag my eyes to his, my mind still frozen, suspended in this horrific time zone he’s trapped me in.
“Say something, please.” His voice begs me.
My eyes move from him, over to the messed up sheets on the bed.
I feel a tear trickle out of the corner of my eye.
“No, Tru, no! You have to listen to me – I didn’t have sex with her. I swear to you. After we fought and you left, I was so angry, but then I calmed down, and I missed you so much, and I wanted to tell you how sorry I was – that I love you – that I would do whatever you wanted me to – I’d go to rehab if it meant keeping you in my life. But I didn’t know where you were – no one did, and I couldn’t call you on your cell because I was a dumb f*ck and I broke it. So I took the car and drove around the city for hours, looking everywhere trying to find you – but you were nowhere – and I was getting so worried, so I came back here to the hotel, and I sat in the bar facing the lobby, waiting for you to come back.”
“But you didn’t come. And I sat there for hours drinking, and watching the door, waiting, and I was going out of my mind over you, and then before I knew it I was drunk, and these people had joined me in the bar. And I was hurting because you’d left, so I drank more and more, and then I took some coke, and the next thing I know they’re all back up here drinking and partying, and you still weren’t back Tru … and I took more coke … and,” he rubs his swollen, glassy eyes. “I just remember coming in here, and then I must have passed out. But I wasn’t with any girl – I promise you. I would never do that to you. She-she must have come in here after I’d passed out and–”
“Why?” My voice comes out broken, so I try again. “Why would she come in here?”
“I don’t know!” His hands go to his head. “I don’t understand any of it, but I’m telling you I didn’t have sex with her.”
I hear his words, but I don’t believe them. I don’t believe him.
It’s over.
Everything I envisaged with him, our life together, gone.
Tears start to trickle down my cheeks in quick succession, one after the other. I feel like I can’t breathe, like someone is compressing down hard on my chest, taking the life right out of me.
Then Jake’s grabbing hold of me, pulling me to him, crushing me to his chest, his arms tight around me, his face buried into my hair.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so, so sorry,” he repeats, his voice broken, as I sob silently into his chest, my tears slick against his skin. “I love you so much. I’ll make this right, I promise you. I’m so sorry.”
His heat is all over me. I breathe in through my nose. He smells of Jake, everything Jake.
Everything I love.
There’s no trace of perfume on him, or any womanly scent of any kind, but then what does that account for anyway. I saw it clear with my own two eyes.
Jake in bed with her.
And then that’s all I can see. I can see his hands on her, just like they were that redhead’s in Paris. Touching her, kissing her, being with her like he is with me. Saying the things to her which were once reserved only for me.
And that’s when the real pain hits in all its excruciating glory.
I never knew a pain like this existed. All consuming, and it’s crushing me to nothing.
I need him to stop touching me. I need him to stop talking. I just want him away from me. Far, far away from me. I can’t have his tainted body anywhere near me.
He’s wrecked everything, forever.
I start to move in his arms, trying to free myself, but he keeps his hold tight on me.
“NO!” I push myself free from him, staggering backwards.
He looks pained and afraid.
“Tru … please…” He holds his hand out to me.
And standing here, looking at him, disgusted by him, by what he’s done to me – to us, I know what I have to do.
I can’t live this life with him, no matter what I may have thought earlier.
I could have handled the drugs.
But not cheating.
Maybe it makes me a hypocrite, I don’t really care. But I just know I can’t live a life tainted with his betrayal, and the perpetual fear that would always be in the back of my mind that he’s going to do this to me again one day soon.
And without another word, I turn from him, and go to get my suitcase from the walk-in closet.
I lay it out open on the floor.
“What are you doing?” He’s behind me.
“What does it look like?” I reply bitterly, as I start to pull my clothes off their hangers, dropping them into my case.
“You’re leaving me? You’re not even going to talk to me about this – you’re just going to walk away? Throw us away?”
I round on him, one of my skirts still in my hand. “I’m not the one who threw us away! We had a fight – about your goddamn drug taking! I go out to clear my head, I stay in a crappy hotel for the night, thinking things through – what the best thing to do for you is – for us, and then I come back here to talk things through with you, and I find you in bed with a ... F*ckING GIRL! SO YES JAKE – I’M LEAVING YOU!”
“I didn’t touch her, Tru – I swear I didn’t touch her!”
“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU!” I scream.
He steps back, looking like I’ve just slapped him.
I wish I had.
“You have to believe me,” he says quieter, his voice breaking. “Please, Tru. You have to.”
I’m panting for breath so hard I feel like my lungs are going to explode. I clutch my hand to it, the one still holding the skirt, trying to steady my breathing.
“I don’t have to do a goddamn thing,” I say low, wiping the still running tears from my face with the palm of my hand.
“I can’t lose you, Tru. Please.”
He reaches for me again, but I step out of his reach.
“Get away from me!” I cry. “I don’t want you near me ever again! And you don’t want to lose me? Well you should have thought of that before you went on your bender with your tramp!”
I drop the skirt in the case. Then I go to the drawers and get my underwear out.
“But you said you’d move to LA. We’re supposed to be living together. You promised me you would never leave me.”
I laugh bitterly, finally bringing myself to look at him. And when my eyes meet with him, all I feel is anger and pain lance straight through me.
“Yeah well things change,” I say calmly, using his own words from last night against him. “You changed everything forever the second you let her into our bed.” It hurts so very badly to say the words out loud.
“I didn’t–”
“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU!” I scream at him again.
Pausing for a moment, with my hands on either side of the open drawer, I cling to it for support.
Then after a few silent seconds, I carry on packing my things into my case.
Jake stands here, his hands in his hair, eyes fixed on my every movement.
I just wish he’d go. I don’t want him anywhere near me.
When I’ve got most of my clothes and can no longer stand to have him here watching me, I drag my suitcase past him and into to the bedroom.
Jake follows me.
I leave my suitcase on the bedroom floor and go into the bathroom. I quickly gather my toiletries up and come back into the bedroom to find Jake standing beside my case.
Ignoring him, I dump my things in and zip it up. I don’t think I’ve ever packed so quickly in my life.
I stand my case upright, ready to leave.
Jake moves before me. I drag my tear stained eyes up to his.
He’s crying.
I watch as he rubs his tears roughly from his face with his hand. I’ve never seen Jake cry before. It hurts my heart so much.
“Please don’t go. Just stay, talk to me, we can work this out. I know we can. I would never cheat on you – I swear to you. Just believe me, please. I love you so much. You’re the only person I’ve ever loved. And I know I’ve screwed up with the drugs, but I would never cheat on you. You’re my best friend. You’re my everything.” His voice is broken, just like my heart.
For a tiny moment, I feel a wobble.
I could stay, we could work this out. Maybe this pain will stop, if I stay with him. Maybe he can fix this.
No. He’s had sex with another woman. It’s too late.
Wordlessly, I walk away from him and go back into the closet, to get my passport from the safe.
Jake is in front of my case, blocking it when I get back.
He sees the passport in my hand, and his face breaks.
“Please don’t leave me,” he begs.
“Move Jake.”
“No.”
“MOVE!” I try to push him out of the way, but he won’t budge, it’s like trying to move a wall.
He grabs hold of my arms trying to stop me, to keep me with him.
Fighting against him, I push him away from me, hitting him in the chest as I do.
“Fine. I don’t need my stuff – keep it.” I walk to the bedroom door, picking up my bag off the floor, I shove my passport in it.
“Tru please!” Jake comes after me, grabbing my arm, pulling me back to him.
“Don’t go. I can fix this – just give me a chance to make it right.” His voice is desperate, broken, just like his expression.
In this moment, all I can do is stare at him. There are so many words streaming through my mind, but I can’t seem to grab hold of a single one to say to him.
He drops to his knees before me, holding my hands like his life depends on it.
“I’m begging you.” He’s crying again. “Please don’t leave me. I can’t live without you.”
I weaken again, then I look up and see the bed, the messed up sheets.
Jake asked that girl to tell me the truth – to tell me that they hadn’t had sex.
She had nothing to lose by telling me they hadn’t, and she said nothing, but alluded to a lot.
And irrespective of her, I don’t believe him. I know who and what Jake is. I’ve always known, I just wanted to see something else for a time.
Now, I believe what my eyes saw.
My trust in him is broken – gone forever – and without that, we have nothing.
I look down at his beautiful face for a long moment, taking him in one last time.
Then I let him go.
“We started on a mistake Jake, so it makes sense that we end on one.”
I yank my hands free from his, leaving him knelt on the floor, I turn away and walk out of the room.
And out of his life.