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I can remember the good times we had, the history we made together. For the first time, it doesn’t cause me pain to think of us. Wade got to go back to college. He got a do-over in life and now has a career that he loves. Jack went on to have a solo career that eclipsed what we accomplished with Mogo. Cash opened the record store, not because he had to, but because it gave him something that was just his. I started Dark Angel Publishing and became my own boss in a male-dominated industry.
If a picture can tell a thousand words, that one of you and Jack on stage is one fucking epic story, Peter said to me, and I can’t get those words out of my mind. I unfold the picture of Jack and me on stage that caused so much turmoil for everyone. I ripped it from the magazine and stuffed it in my bag because I wanted to carry that feeling with me always.
Cash was right, and I can see it so clearly in this picture of Jack and me. There is something between us that will never die, and no amount of space or time will ever sever the connection between us. As much as I loved Cash, the pull to Jack somehow eclipsed that.
I can’t run from my feelings any longer.
I want Jack.
I’ve always wanted him.
I pull the jeans from my bag and hold them to my chest before slipping one leg on and then the other. They fit as if no time has passed. I look at myself in the mirror and I’m transported back in time, a seventeen-year-old kid about to go on the adventure of a lifetime.
“I’m not running away from something. I’m running towards it.” I remember telling Cash all those years ago, standing in Wade’s driveway, begging to go to L.A. with Jack.
“I want to dare greatly, Jack,” I said to Jack. “If I stay here, my life would be average, it wouldn’t mean anything. You wrote in your journal quotes of great people, important people, people that did something with their lives.” The journal that started it all, the journal that was lost to the woods. “I believe in you,” I said to him. I believed in him then, just as I believe in him now.
So I turn away from the mirror, prepared to dare greatly again - with Jack.
MY HEART LEAPS into my throat as Jack pulls into the driveway. I’ve been sitting on the steps to his beach house waiting for him. Although I’ve gone through a range of emotions, from excitement to nervousness, there is no mistaking that Jack and I have always belonged together.
I watch him exit the car, and as soon as he looks up, our eyes meet. I can feel the invisible cord pull him to me as he makes his way to the bottom of the steps. He knows why I’m here.
“Mia?” He takes my hand in his. “What’s wrong?”
“He hates me, Jack.” I can feel the sob caught in my throat. “I ruined his life and he hates me.” I can’t help but feel guilty. The crux of the situation is that for one of us to be happy, another one has to suffer.
“Come inside.” Jack puts his arm around me and guides me into the house. I hear his keys clink as they hit the table, and the click of the door as he closes it behind us. When he flips on the light, I finally get a look at the inside of his house. But it’s inconsequential compared to being in his presence. The way he looks at me, I wonder how I could ever think that he wouldn’t want me.
“It’s okay,” he whispers close to my ear, wiping away tears from my cheek with the pad of his thumb. I lean into him closing my eyes, hating that I love his touch and crave his whispers.
“It’s okay,” he tells me again. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I whisper back to him as my body shakes. How can a heart that is torn in half, still beat? Because it does - for him. There is a thumping inside my chest like the thrumming of a drum. I turn into him, wanting to forget about everything and let the darkness swallow me whole. I can forget about reality and get lost in Jack, rediscovering him all over again.
My fingers slowly run through his hair as if they are memorizing each strand. Jack’s picture has been in magazines over the years, and I watched as new lines appeared on his face, or when he let his hair grow out, but there is nothing like being this close to him again. His presence is consuming, as if the world around us just disappears when we’re together.
It’s just him and I.
We are both littered with scars, and I see every one of them as if they are scattered across the sky. They are beautiful, because they are ours.
“What is it about you, Jack, that makes it so hard to hate you?” My hand shakes as I move my fingers across his jaw, feeling the stubble under my fingertips. I rise up on my toes to brush my lips against his, feeling the pull to him as if gravity is taking over.
I want to hate him for all of the times he caused me pain and broke my heart, but I just can’t find it in my heart to do so anymore. I can’t blame him any more than I can blame myself. Some things are just meant to be. Maybe there is something wrong with me, because I like the pain. It is when I feel most alive.
And I have never felt more alive than when I am with him.
I don’t have to ask for what I want, because he already knows. There’s been too much time lost and I’m not wasting one more fucking minute of it. The air between us is thick. His hands grip my waist and he lifts me onto the kitchen counter, trailing kisses down my neck. Each one is a promise that sinks deep under my skin and into my bones. Slowly and deliberately he unbuttons my shirt, as if he is savoring the delicious slow burn.
He hesitates as he pushes the material down my shoulder, revealing the lines of my tattoo - a broken wing with feathers scattered across my skin and down my back.
It’s as if he is rediscovering me as he traces the tattoo with his lips and tongue, causing heat to bloom in my core, like the opening of a flower. My skin is hot and sweat begins to pebble between my breasts.
I wrap my legs around him and he carries me into the bedroom, placing me gingerly on the bed. Under the heady weight of Jack’s stare, I lay back and dig my fingers into the sheets. His eyes are so blue I can see myself in them. I can’t help but feel vulnerable under his gaze because I’m no longer the same girl he knew years ago. So much time has passed. I’m older, my body softer and more pliable. There are things that I hold deep inside of me that he will never know, when once he knew everything about me.
He pulls on the button of my jeans and slowly unzips them. My stomach quivers as the back of his fingers deliberately brush against my skin. I lift my hips as he pulls the jeans down my legs. When he pulls my foot free, he grabs my ankle and kisses the sensitive spot in my arch, causing me to giggle, cutting the tension between us. He holds the jeans in his hands, noticing for the first time the faded sharpie writing. I watch as his expression turns from confusion to shock, and his fingers trace the familiar writing trying to decipher if they are real.
“Where did you get these?” he asks me. “How?” If I could create a map of our lives, everything of substance could be traced back to that moment in the car when Jack wrote the lyrics to Blood and Bone on my jeans. Here I am, giving him back that little piece of history that gutted us when we lost them.
