“Jada, I’d never treat you like that. I never would. I know we haven’t known each other long, but I don’t think we need more time to know the things we already know.”
“I know, and I know you would never treat me badly. It’s not in you to be like that. You’re inspiration and love in every sense, but there will be something. You’ll see something in me, and I can’t… I won’t be able to fix myself if something happened.”
I shook my head and placed my hands on her delicate shoulders. “Jada, you’re talking as if something’s already happened to us. Nothing’s happened. We’ve only grown stronger and stronger together, every day. I can tell you now that I don’t want to be with anybody else.” I thought that would help. I thought saying that would help.
However…it did not.
She looked more freaked out and shook her head at me. “You don’t know that. You can’t tell me that. You can’t assure me of such a thing because you don’t know what can happen tomorrow. Look at Bob and Cynthia. I don’t even know how I’m going to face them later. They started out great, then Cynthia realized something was wrong with Bob, and she abandoned him, and abandoned the sacredness that makes a marriage special. I doubt she knew that was going to happen when they first got together or got married.”
“Jada… they aren’t us. Neither of us would cheat, and we’ve all had different life experiences. I know what I know. Tell me, if you see yourself with someone else, then it’s cool. I’ll walk away now and leave you alone because it won’t be worth my time trying to make you be with me if you can’t see yourself with me. But tell me, you have to tell me. I deserve to know because I’ll always be left wondering if I could have done anything better.”
Fucking hell, the backs of my eyes stung. I didn’t cry for anything. The last time I did, I was at Catherine’s funeral.
This was tearing me up the same way I was torn that day.
“Tell me, Jada,” I prodded.
She started shaking, and her gaze intensified. It deepened, and more tears streamed down her cheeks. “Ivan, it’s not as simple as that.”
“It is,” I insisted, because it was.
“No… I don’t. I love you, but I don’t see myself with you.” As she spoke, my chest caved, and it took me a moment to let it sink in.
There was nothing to fight for, then.
Nothing to give up on.
My hands dropped from her shoulders and hung down by my side like I had fifty-ton weights attached to my fingers. The blood pumped to the tips, making them sting.
I blinked several times and refocused on her. I opened my mouth to talk, but there was nothing …
Nothing came, and there was nothing left to say.
So, I walked away.
* * *
There rest of the day was complete shit.
I felt like I should have gone to the far ends of the earth and hidden under a rock.
As I sat in the office with Jane and Peter, who were like a completely different couple to the people who’d walked on the show weeks ago, I was there in body but definitely not in spirit. Or mind. My mind was elsewhere, and I’d operated on autopilot for the whole day.
I avoided any contact with Jada, and she did the same with me. There was a point where I saw her as she was about to go onto the set for her office show with Bob and Cynthia and she saw me. I looked away first, not wanting to go back to the desolation I’d felt this morning.
By the time I got home, I reached for a bottle of Jack D and wine. I should have really called Patterson back to apologize for missing his calls, and I should have accepted his offer to come around in his messages.
I’d texted earlier to let him know I thought Jada and I broke up.
I didn’t even know why I put it like that.
I think…
We were broken. Maybe I could have been playmates in the very, very beginning. I could have joined the puppy pack and happily walked around on a leash, but shit got real at some point. A point where I wanted more from her.
I drank the whole bottle of wine and went upstairs with the Jack D.
It was six, so I could get wasted and be okay for work tomorrow. Besides, my job with Jane and Peter was done. Tomorrow, they’d be talking about their plans for children just for the audience’s benefit. All I needed to do was sit there and listen. Nod occasionally and comment when necessary.
I’d decided I was over this competition. Good luck to Jada. I was done with everything. I’d happily go back to my life with my clients and writing my column for L.A. Times.
I rested back against the headboard, and my gaze landed on the bookshelf. There was a time when that shelf was a mixture of Catherine’s books and mine. There was a picture of us on our wedding day on the dresser and another set of three pictures of us on the wall near the long French windows. We called it the three stages of us. One of us dating, one when we got engaged, then on our honeymoon to Brazil.
We didn’t pick a wedding photo to represent that stage of our life because we knew that the honeymoon picture represented us in the sense of what was to come.
We didn’t know that we weren’t going to be forever. I didn’t know that she was going to be taken away from me so soon. One year and a half later.
It was unfair. It was like life threw me another spanner to knock me off my feet.
That day I’d walked up to her and asked her out brought with it all kinds of magic I’d never forget. I’d always thought I was so lost in love that I never saw the first signs of her sickness coming back.
Life changed for us in one night. It all happened in one night. We were making dinner, and she started having a really bad headache.
I simply went upstairs to get some Tylenol when I heard her fall. I ran back down and found her on the ground unconscious. Those minutes before she collapsed were the last time I had her as her.
She collapsed and slipped right into a coma, and nothing worked.
Months later, I found myself signing an agreement to switch off her life support.
I got up and walked over to the shelf. Reaching for the little box I kept some keepsakes in, I pulled out a letter she’d written me.
She’d written this letter and gave it to her father to give me. Jake said she gave it to him as a just in case after she went to the doctors for a checkup and was told there were some signs that the cancer had returned.
It was an appointment no one had told me about with results I didn’t know about. Catherine had done her best to hide away everything and anything that would worry me. It wasn’t until after she ended up in hospital that all was disclosed to me.
I pulled out the letter and looked down at it in my hands. I usually read it every year on the anniversary of her death. I’d go to the cemetery and read it and talk to her. Tonight, I felt like I needed to read it. I just needed to hear the familiar voice of someone who’d inspired me to do great things.
So, I sat on the edge of the bed and read the words that would be forever sealed to my heart.
Dear Ivan,
If you’re reading this, I’m so sorry. I’m so truly sorry. It’s not a good letter, like the ones my mother and father wrote to each other.
This letter would have found its way to you because something bad happened to me. I felt that you’d appreciate it more coming from my dad because I knew he always made some impression on you.
I have a few things I wanted to tell you because I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. The doctors said that the cancer has returned, and in a very aggressive way. It will be worse than last time because of the surgery I had before.
That surgery was meant to prolong my life for a little longer. No one could foresee the miracle of me living for another eight years. From six months to eight years.
I can’t complain because I had something that I never expected to have.
I had you, and I will always, always love you.
Back then, I knew I could beat this, and the same way I knew that then, I know now that I don
’t think I’ll make it back. That’s why I’m writing this. I’m sorry for keeping everything from you, but I wanted to preserve that normal with you. Us as we are, us together. I wanted to remember the way you loved me.
The same way I made you promise me to have an open mind, is the same way I’m going to ask you to do the same thing again.
Not with me though. With someone else. I don’t want you to be alone. I see so much in you. I see you being a great husband and a fantastic father. I see you teaching your children to have that faith in yourself. After all, that is what having an open mind is. It’s believing in something that you want and doing all you can to make it happen.
You did it before, and you can do it again to move forward in whatever way you need to.
We all know that we can place different meanings on different things.
Don’t forget me, don’t forget who you are, and next time when you fall in love, it will be different.
That is one thing I can assure you because it always is.
Different is always special in the way it needs to be.
It’s the same way I found you.
Goodbye, my love.
Love always,
Catherine.
My hands shook…
My hands shook as I read that last part again and again. I’d read this letter so many times that I thought I had the whole thing rehearsed. I couldn’t believe I never remembered her saying that.
Different…
Yes, that was what had happened with Jada. I fell in love with her in a different way. But what did it mean for me if she didn’t see herself with me?
Throughout this whole time with her, I’d always maintained that I felt different with her, and it was true. I’d embraced the fact that I could fall for someone else again.
What was the point, though, if she couldn’t see herself with me?
What was the point of any of it?
Love…
Right now, it felt the same as pain.
Maybe that was it, and this was the one time I should leave it alone and not run to the finish line. After all, what’s a goal when it means nothing?
Chapter 30
Jada
* * *
It was Thursday, the night before the end.
I was getting ready in the dressing room, and Olivia was with me. She’d been with me for most of the week, practically dropping everything to be here for me.
I was starting to think I didn’t deserve her either, and since I was pretty certain that she did more for me than I did for her, there might come a day when we parted ways too.
She’d come straight away. After I called her in a flood of tears, telling her how I’d broken up with Ivan and how I’d lied to him.
Most people were guilty of masking their true selves. I was guilty of masking the truth of what I wanted with lies.
In the moment when he asked me if I saw myself with him, I knew exactly what to say to finish this. To finish us.
I was in full-blown coward mode, and I was the worst kind of coward. I was the kind who had assurance that things would be fine, that it would work out, but I still ran away. I still couldn’t take that leap of faith even when I knew I wouldn’t fall.
The fear in me still held on to the possibility that I could get hurt.
In my mind at the time was a combo of looking at him, wanting to trust him, and remembering that last horrible, horrible night with Brian.
That night, when he beat me and picked me up and threw me down the stairs, was my what-if situation because the chances of that happening when I’d first met him were so slim, they were minute, miniscule. Something I never contemplated.
The cowardice in me chose to hang on to that as I spoke to Ivan.
While my whole being wanted to scream and tell him yes and that all I saw when I looked to the future was myself with him, I said no. I said no because saying that would stop him in his tracks, and he’d do the very thing I knew he would do and give up on me. It made sense. You give up when there’s nothing to fight for.
You keep fighting when you know there’s a chance you could win, no matter how big or how small.
That was him. It was all there in the stories he’d told me, of how he started walking again and everything. That was him. That was the man I loved, and I’d let him go because I was so afraid to lose him, I thought it would be better to lose him on my own terms.
What sort of madness had suddenly overcome me?
I was a mess and ready for this show to be over. All of it and everything. I didn’t care anymore.
“Do you want anything to eat? You haven’t eaten properly in days,” Olivia asked. “You didn’t even have the pretzels from Jake’s, and I was sure you’d eat that.”
“No. I’ll think about food when I get home.” I nodded. Home was about five hours away.
“That’s a long time. Jada, I’m gonna go get you some plain cheese sandwiches and maybe a smoothie. I don’t want you fainting on set. You’ll need your strength for those people.” She stood up, lowered her head to give me a kiss on my forehead, and left.
I probably did need strength for those people—Bob and Cynthia—because their situation was getting uglier by the day. Worse and worse with no hope, and while the viewings for the show were through the roof, it was all down to the drama.
People loved drama. It was the reason why all the talk shows were so successful. The votes too were crazy because while my couple were obviously going to break up, the votes were all in favor of me.
Since Cynthia dropped that bomb about sleeping with Bob’s best friend, my votes had skyrocketed.
People were so strange, and it just showed that sometimes when you looked beyond the reeds or wiped the smoke from the screen, you saw that there was more to what was going on than what it looked like.
I was getting votes I didn’t deserve. Just because it looked like I was doing well, it didn’t mean I was. It was the same as my book. Just because it did so well didn’t mean what I preached was the right thing or I was the be all and end all of relationship advice.
It was all a damn mess, and my vision had shifted in a way where I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.
I got up deciding I’d go grab some water from the cooler outside; it was colder than the one in the room. I needed something cold to soothe me, and I still had a lump in my throat.
Ivan must have turned the corner at the same time as me because we nearly bumped into each other. It was him who jumped back to stop it from happening, but I still stumbled over my feet.
He caught me and stopped me from making a further fool of myself in front of him.
“Thank you. I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going.” I was happy I could talk.
He on the other hand… He just looked at me and moved his hands from my shoulders when he seemed to notice he was still holding me after I’d caught my balance.
“You okay?” he asked.
I looked up at him and wondered how I should answer that question. With more lies by saying I was fine?
“I’m here.” That was the best thing to say.
“Good, well, that’s a good thing.” There was a quiver in his voice. “Congratulations on the votes. It’s great. Looks like you’re gonna win.”
I shook my head. “It should be you. You’ve done amazing work with your couple.”
He shrugged and looked uneasy. “It’s okay. Has to be, right? Sometimes it just is what it is and… yeah. Enjoy the filming.”
Before I could say anything, he walked away. He walked away just like he had the other day.
I watched him go down the corridor, then turn the corner to the exit. I knew from the schedule that he was supposed to start filming in half an hour.
I hoped he wouldn’t leave or something like that.
I turned to go back to my dressing room and stopped short when I saw Cynthia in front of me.
She brought her hands together and gave me a cautious look. I’d never really seen her
on this side of the studio before, and it looked like she was here to see me.
“Hi.” I thought I should say something because she was just staring at me.
“Hi, I was… I needed to walk. I didn’t mean to look like I was listening in or watching you guys,” she answered.
That never even crossed my mind. I’d actually experienced the same thing I always felt when I saw Cynthia. At first, it was uncertainty, then disgust. When that disgust came, I tried to be professional and hide what I felt and my opinion, but a person could always tell. I was sure of that.
“It’s okay. You’re allowed to walk around. That we happened to be here is just an occurrence.” I offered then bit the inside of my lip and gave her a curt nod to signal my departure.
“Wait…” She moved closer as I backed away to go.
“Yes?” While there were no specific rules of etiquette on me talking to her without Bob, I didn’t really entertain that sort of thing, unless I specifically suggested seeing a couple on an individual basis.
My first meeting with a couple was actually like that. I spoke to them apart first, then together. To me, it was important to be able to voice opinions in the presence of each other.
“I’m stepping over the line, but since I’m already in hell, in for a pound, in for penny. I noticed you haven’t been yourself over the last few days.” She pointed out.
“Why would you say that?” I wasn’t about to break down the wall of professionalism and unleash my business.
When Ivan and I first started dating, it was all over the papers. As far as everyone was concerned, we still were, and I wouldn’t be taking any updates to the media.
“You always… I know this sounds silly for me to say, but you always smile when you start the consultation. It’s how I know it’s time to start. Even when things are bad and you know we have no hope, you still smile. I know the first time we saw you after I revealed that I’d had an affair with Johnny, there was nothing to smile about, but it’s not like that was the only terrible thing I revealed.”
The Love Doctors Page 22