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But then what? Why should I stay on this bus, growing closer to a man who broke my heart a thousand times?
While I was in Baltimore, dealing with pretty shitty circumstances around our first artist leaving our record label, I resented the fact that I missed Jude and spent time staring at my phone, wondering if he’d use the number he stole from me—and that I let him keep.
I’d spent entirely too much of my life missing Jude. The feeling was so familiar, it made me angry.
And yet…
That pull I felt the second my eyes met his in the elevator all those years ago? It had lingered, and now that we were in close proximity, its force had quadrupled.
I didn’t like not knowing where my head was. My thoughts and emotions usually made up an ordered, linear pattern. These weeks of knowing Jude again had taken me all over the place, catapulting me to the past, thrusting me back into the present, and sometimes careening into the future.
What I knew for sure was I wanted to spend more time with him. Where that led? I didn’t know. I could only hope, if nothing else, it would provide an answer to questions that had lingered in the space between us.
Dressing quickly in my jeans and slouchy V-neck, I carried my boots and blazer out with me to the lounge and tossed them on the Formica table in the kitchenette. Jude’s head popped up from the notebook he’d been leaning over.
“I’m sorry I embarrassed you,” he said.
I took a seat next to him, turning sideways so I could face him. “You didn’t do anything wrong, but thank you. I was embarrassed, but not by you.”
“Then what?”
My chest lifted as I took a deep breath. “On the first day, you asked if it had been long enough for us to be in each other’s presence again. I guess you meant without any upheaval or turmoil. I answered yes, but it hasn’t. If I ran into you a hundred years from now, I’m not convinced seeing you again wouldn’t turn me upside down.That’swhy I’m embarrassed. Not that you heard me singing one of your songs, but that I’m not over everything that happened. That I haven’t let go of my heartbreak, or my anger…or the other stuff. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding on until I saw you again. And I know it’s been too long. Iknowthat.” I threw my hands up in defeat and met Jude’s steady gaze.
He bent his knee, twisting his body in my direction. “Stripes, me asking you that was no indication of my own personal feelings. At the time, I hoped to get your logic to kick in so you’d let me stay.” His eyes closed for a moment as he exhaled through his nose. When he opened them again, they were filled with assurance. “We’ve both grown, and I hope, at least for myself, changed for the better. But at the core, we’re still the same people we were back then. And you and me, we didn’t break up because we didn’t love each other. Wouldn’t you agree we were completely in love, even as I stood screaming at you on your porch?”
My nose tingled, and I had to bite my lip to stop tears from leaking from my eyes. I hated thinking about that night. For my sake, of course, but also for my parents, whose hearts had been broken for us both. I’d gone from zero to sixty—from never bringing home a boyfriend to my boyfriend attacking my dad at my home.
“I would agree.”
Jude pressed his hand to his chest. “That shit doesn’t go away, Tali. I don’t know what that means exactly, I just know I look at you and I remember.” He shook his head. “It’s not even a memory. It’s my core, who I am down to my marrow, knowing you still.”
My hand went to my forehead, fingers pressing against bone. This was too much. I’d started this conversation, but I hadn’t expected Jude to say anything remotely like this.
I should have. He’d always been up front with the way he felt for me. And the way he felt for me had always been intense and all-consuming.
But we were so young then. Adults in their thirties weren’t built for intense and all-consuming. That was better left for teenagers with stronger hearts and all the time in the world to be consumed by another person.
I let my hand drop, mouth quirking into a wry smile. “This is a big conversation to be having right before work. I didn’t even know you were still working in the music business less than a month ago. I don’t even know where you live or who you live with.”
It was funny when I thought about it. We’d spent a lot of time together lately, but it almost seemed like we’d steadfastly avoided discussing our lives at home. Jude could have a wife and kids for all I knew.
Jude huffed a laugh, shaking his head. “We’re talking about feelings, not facts. And I live in D.C. in a rented condo. I’ve been living there, alone, the last couple years. You? Still living in New York?”
My smile spread. This I could do. ThisIwantedto do. “I have a place in New York and a place in Baltimore. I’ve been spending more time in Baltimore lately, because of the record label, but I still go up to New York every couple weeks for meetings and to see the family.”
His eyebrows raised. “Baltimore, huh?”
“Baltimore. It’s where the band lives, so it makes sense.”
“You know, Baltimore’s less than an hour from D.C.”
“I did know that.”
He laid his arm on the back of the bench. “So, conceivably, purely hypothetically, it’d be pretty easy to maybe see each other once this tour ends.”
“Hypothetically, yes. It would be.”
Easy, distance-wise. But emotionally? Spiritually? Physically? Potentially ruinous.
I wanted it anyway. I couldn’t imagine going back to being strangers again after this.
“Well…” he drawled, tapping the top of the bench, “I better get to work. We good?”
I frowned, more tangled up than I was before. “We’re fine.”
He pulled me up from the bench, then kept pulling until I was against his chest and his arms were wrapped around me. He lowered his head to rest on mine, one of his hands stroking between my shoulder blades.
“Everything’s fine, Stripes.”
I nodded against his chest, inhaling his clean, earthy scent. I had no reply to that, but itdidfeel fine. When I stepped away from our second embrace in a decade…that was going to be an entirely different story. That was when I’d overthink absolutely everything. But for now, for the next ten seconds, I settled in, soaking up how simple it was to be in Jude’s arms.
