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“Come on.” I roll my eyes at him. He wanted to get out of Payson the first chance he got.
“Why do you always have to call me on my bullshit?” Jack teases, giving me a playful push.
“That’s why we’re friends,” I knock back into him.
“Are we?” He cocks an eyebrow at me. Even after all we have been through, I have never not considered him a friend.
“You know we are,” I say in a low voice. “If you’d had a better childhood and you stayed in Payson, what do you think you would be doing right now?”
He stares out at the rim and I know he’s thinking about it, but he doesn’t answer. Some things are just too personal.
“I followed your career,” Jack says.
“What career?” I laugh, and turn away from him bashfully.
“You wrote a lot of songs,” he says seriously.
“For other people,” I point out.
“A lot of really great songs.” The longing in his voice causes my stomach to tighten. “Why didn’t you keep them for yourself?”
I move away from the guardrail and lean against the hood of the car. “It was easier,” I admit. “I could write songs, but it was too hard to make them real.” I shake my head thinking about it. “I just couldn’t be on stage by myself. Not like…”
“Me,” Jack finishes for me.
“You were always better at it than I was.” I look at him thoughtfully. I was never comfortable on stage. I didn’t like eyes on me or the judgment they held. Even worse, I couldn’t handle the praise.
“No,” Jack objects.
“Why do you think I always wanted to be in the audience?” I tell him. It was because I couldn’t take my eyes off him, because his mere presence on stage evoked feelings inside of me that I couldn’t deny. Because when people talk about stage presence, he is what comes to mind.
Jack shakes his head at me in disbelief.
“No one could take their eyes off you,” I sigh heavily. You are either born with stage presence or you’re not.
Jack was born with it.
I kick at the dirt with the toe of my boot. “It was one in a million to make it as a band, ya know, but to come back and make it on your own,” I say, “is really something.” I always admired that in Jack. We made it as a band against all odds and then when we broke up. No one had it in them to start over, except Jack. He rose from the rubble and carved out his own future. I was always proud of him for that.
“Why has it been this long?” Jack asks.
“After everything that happened,” I pause, “I just needed to…”
“Be apart from me,” Jack finishes my sentence.
“To see who I was without you,” I clarify. “We weren’t good for each other,” I repeat those words I told him the last time we were together.
“I’ve missed you.” He says as he moves towards me, and panic rises. I’m not ready for this.
“I need coffee,” I state and round the car to get away from him, opening the passenger side door to slide in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
You're an Easy Person to Love
I’VE NEVER BEEN to a hospice facility but I expected it to be like a hospital, not like someone’s home. The reception area is decorated with pictures on the wall, and beyond that, I can see a common area with comfortable furniture. The only things that resemble a hospital are the monitors and screens behind the reception desk.
I wait while Jack fills out the sign-in sheet and the woman hands him a couple of visitor badges. I can tell he is struggling to figure out what to do with them so I take pity on him and clip it to his shirt.
