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Look, I’m doing this wrong again. I can’t keep distancing myself from reality… but then again, what happens after that last smile doesn't feel real.
When I wake up in that bed a few hours later, I’m alone. For a moment, as I lay there, I think I dreamed it, but the smell of your cologne is all over. As I breathe it in, I wonder where you are. It’s not even dawn yet and you’re already gone.
I find out that afternoon. You were spotted in the wee hours of the morning across town, sitting alone in a theater, watching a rehearsal for the stage debut of Serena Markson.
When you finally make it home that night, well after dark, the first thing you do is kiss me. But you taste like whiskey and you smell like a whore, and my chest is caving in on me because of it, so I push you off. Both hands pressed against your chest, I shove you so hard you slam into the wall. You look at me, and I can’t tell if you’re shocked, or hurt, or even confused, because you look numb. Your eyes are a void.
‘You’re overreacting,’ you say when I confront you. ‘It’s nothing.’ But it’s not ‘nothing,’ I know, because that was me once. Don’t you remember? I know what it’s like to be somebody’s lone captive audience. And maybe it would’ve been okay had you told me, had you not come home drunk, covered in perfume, when I worked all goddamn day to ensure you still had a home to come to. In three years, the only thing your dream seems to have paid for is coke.
I’m yelling, and the tears start falling, and you keep whispering, “I’m sorry,” over and over and over, and when I tell you ‘sorry’ doesn't cut it, you say, “I love you, more than anything, baby.”
And I believe you, because you’re good, Jonathan.
Something toxic grew between us. I thought the drugs were your Kryptonite, Superman, but I’m beginning to think it might be me. Am I destroying your dream? Are you free-falling because you’re being weighed down by me? If I weren’t here, would you be soaring?
We scream, and I cry, and you get high, over and over as the weeks carry on, a perpetual cycle fueled by all this stress. The tiniest things start triggering me, and it’s making me sick, so sick that I can’t get out of bed some mornings. And I just want to talk to you, really talk, and not argue. I miss you. I miss us. So I ask about the Breezeo movie, trying to bring us back to common ground, back to where we both still exist, and you say, “It’s not happening now.”
“They’re not making it?”
“Oh, they are,” you say. “I’m just not auditioning.”
Cliff talked you out of trying. I cry when you tell me that, and you lose your temper, telling me to ‘grow up’ because it’s ‘just a shitty comic,’ not realizing I’m upset because you promised, when you never promise, which means I don’t know how much I can trust your words anymore.
I think it was that moment that doomed us. It gets so ugly that we don’t speak for days. You sleep on the couch. The barrier of silence becomes an unclimbable mountain.
All I do is cry… cry… cry…
I’m at work when I realize what’s happening. I confirm it that night, but you’re already passed out on the couch. I’ll let you sleep. I’ll tell you in the morning. You’ll be sober. We’ll be all right. I stay up all night, not sure how to feel. When I hear you stirring in the morning, I hesitate. I’m scared.
I shouldn't ever be afraid to talk to you. What happened to us?
You’re sitting on the couch, putting on your shoes to leave. I stand in the bedroom doorway and ask, “Can we talk for a minute?”
“I have things to do,” you say, no affection in your voice. You sound like your father at that moment, but I’d never say those words to you.
“It’s important. I have something to tell you.”
You stand up, and you’re stone-cold sober, your blue eyes so clear, and I think maybe it’ll be okay, but then you stare me in the eyes and say, “Tell someone who fucking cares.”
And then you walk out.
You walk out on me.
And then I collapse.
My legs won’t hold me.
And you don’t know this, but that woman you don’t care about anymore? The one whose world you just shattered? She’s pregnant. She’s having your baby, Jonathan. And you don’t even know. You don’t even care.
Chapter 27
KENNEDY
It’s raining.
It doesn’t rain a lot here, no more than average, but it always seems to want to rain at the worst moments. It’s as if the sky has a direct line to my emotions. When things get all twisted up inside of me, the world starts cracking and the sky comes apart.
