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Her face went pale. “Where is this coming from?” she asked.
“You can be in Zoë’s life, if that is what you want, but that does not mean my life.”
Jade took a step closer. I moved back and she reached out, took my arm.
“Will.”
Her voice was soft, and she looked up at me with her slanty blue-green eyes. In spite of myself, I felt something tug at my heart. But I resisted. I knew this was a game, one that she played well.
“What do you want, exactly, Jade?” I pushed her hand away.
“I was thinking we could try to be together.”
“Like, a family?” I said, sarcastically.
“Yeah, why not?”
I walked away from her.
“No,” I said. There was so much I wanted to say and could have said. “Let it go.”
“I won’t. I want to make this work; I have never wanted anything so much in my life.” She walked up quickly to me and before I knew what was happening, she had put her arms around my neck and was kissing me. Her mouth was cold and wet, reptilian almost.
I pushed her away, harder than I’d meant to.
“No!” I yelled. “What are you doing?”
There were tears in her eyes now. “I want to be with you and with Zoë. I want to try.”
I felt anger stirring inside of me.
“This isn’t cooking or dancing or some hobby you can have a go at and if it doesn’t work you walk away! You make it work because you have to!”
“Then I will make it work!”
“I don’t want to,” I said flatly. “I don’t love you.”
“You did once; you could again.”
“That wasn’t love,” I told her. “That was loneliness and fear and lust, but it wasn’t love. I know what love is now that I have Nikki. It’s people who really care about each other.”
“I care about you,” she said, quickly.
I gave a harsh laugh. “I don’t believe that.”
Jade blinked a few times, seemed to take a hold of herself. “I was in rehab twice, Will. The first time, in the UK, cost so much money and it took weeks. I came out of there and the world looked like a different place. I could see colors, smell things again. I hadn’t realized how I was cutting myself off from everything and everyone, how little joy I was feeling.”
She said she went back to her life in London, to a gallery where she was working and for a while, she managed to stay sober. But when things got tough, she fell off the wagon. The boyfriend she had, dumped her, and kicked her out of their apartment. She had nowhere to stay.
The story went on and on, how she was alone and had no friends. How she started drinking again, lost her job and called Mac who said he’d help pay for rehab. Her parents had cut her off by this stage, wanted nothing more to do with her. She came back to the States to start over and she wanted to make things right. She’d found a job and she had been completely sober for months now. It was all about her, her, her. She didn’t think about Zoë or about me, what she had put us through.
Zoë came out to watch television and Jade went to say goodbye to her.
I watched them together, noticed the similarities, but also the difference.
Jade was damaged and you could see it.
But Zoë was a happy, healthy little girl.
