“All of it.”
“Does it matter?” Jolene felt weary. “The fact is, I don’t see Chance on my doorstep trying to make this right. So what am I supposed to conclude? That he temporarily lost his mind the other night when he delivered an all-or-nothing ultimatum about us and that he does want to be back together with me?”
“Didn’t you walk out? You can’t act like he broke up with you. Maybe he’s waiting for you to reach out to him.”
“Well, that’s just dumb,” she said flatly. “If I broke up with him, why would I go crawling back?”
“Because you love him.”
“Sometimes that’s not nearly enough. I can love him, but I can’t change him.”
“Maybe he’s not the one who needs to change.”
Elle’s words were like a slap in the face. Jolene was profoundly hurt. “I can’t believe you said that.”
Her sister gave her a hard look. “Just get some sleep and give it some thought. Love is a two-way street, you know that.”
“I’m pretty certain ours is a dead end, with a cliff drop for good measure.” Jolene unbuttoned her jeans and let out an exhalation. “That’s better. I’m so damn sick of being squeezed.”
That didn’t stop her from heading right to the freezer for a pint of ice cream. Some nights you just had to eat the ice cream. Tonight was one of them.
—
“Hey, Buddy, how are you?” Chance asked, biting his fingernail, adjusting his phone on his ear as he talked to his grandfather. He was on his front porch, though he’d never bothered to get chairs, so he was sitting on the steps, feeling anxious and frustrated. He desperately wanted a drink, but how much he wanted one scared him into not going to the store for a fresh bottle. He needed to handle his emotions without liquor, especially considering liquor had gotten him into this mess in the first place. Jolene wouldn’t have broken up with him if he had remembered his tryst with Tennyson.
Or maybe she would have. Who knew? But he did know that alcohol was no answer, and despite the fact that conversations with his immediate family were always a bit uncomfortable, he was going to bully through this.
“Hey, pipsqueak. I’m good, can’t complain. What’s going on with you besides you’re banging the Hart girl again?”
Charming. “I’m not banging anybody. Jolene and I had a relationship, which is now over again, thanks to me being a dumb-ass.”
“What did you do? Cheat on her? Women are overly sensitive about that. They act like it means something.”
Chance stiffened. It did mean something. It meant a whole hell of a fucking lot of something. “It wasn’t cheating.” He explained what had happened.
“And she’s upset about that? Lord, son, run for your life. You have a stage-five clinger. Plain and simple. There is no reason that woman should be upset over something that happened while you all were broken up. She’ll be up your ass constantly if you let her.”
His grandfather had a way of confirming for him everything that he had already known, though never in the way Buddy intended. Buddy’s words made Chance physically ill. They made him see in stark clarity that if he didn’t go to Jolene, didn’t apologize, didn’t hash this out, that he was no better, no more respectful, than his father and grandfather. It was a mistake, and while he had owned it to Jolene, he had owned it defensively. He had wanted instantly to sweep it under the rug, move on, finish the album, and that wasn’t fair of him.
He owed Jolene true emotion. Not what he’d done his whole life, which was to stand behind an emotional wall while expecting others to be fully open and honest. He had to meet her halfway, if not more. He realized he’d fallen into that old pattern. Hearing about Tennyson from Jolene had made him feel ashamed, and that made him want to lash out. He couldn’t do that. Not if he wanted any sort of adult relationship with the woman he loved.
“That’s an interesting perspective, Buddy.” He rubbed his jaw. “How’s your liver, by the way?”
“My liver’s fine. Cirrhosis is for quitters.”
Sensitive and politically correct as always, that was his grandfather. Chance wasn’t sure where to go from there in the conversation. The safest bet for him and his family was to talk music. “So you’re not sick or anything?”
“Nope. Fit as a fiddle.”
“Good, glad to hear it. So let me tell you about the album I’m working on.”
When Chance got off the phone ten minutes later, he called Jolene.
She had blocked him.
He called her house. It rang and rang.
He called the front gate of her neighborhood and was told he was no longer on the approved list.
He texted Elle, who didn’t respond.
He called Ginny, who said that if Jolene did the tour with Wayne Rush, she would dump Jolene as a client for going behind her back, which sounded harsh but not surprising.
He called Shane, who claimed to have no idea where his sister was.
He called everyone there was to call and got nowhere.
So he stood up, went into the house, locked the front door, and went to bed to keep himself from making love to a bottle of whiskey.