As I stand there at the foot of the bed in our hotel room, cold and more afraid than I've ever been in my life, I feel the hand of loneliness tap me on the shoulder one more time. The one thing I can always rely on coming back to me has caught me off guard yet again, and the only thought that seems to run through my mind is…
He's never once told me he loves me.
Twenty
31st October 2004
Two o’clock in the morning comes and goes, but sleep refuses to claim me, despite my desperate need for escape. My eyes are sore from all the silent tears I've shed since he walked away from me, unable to say those three little words I so badly needed to hear.
All I keep asking myself is how did we get here? How could I have been so blind not to see what had been staring me in the face this whole time? I've always liked to think that, when it's needed, I’m a strong woman, yet life seems determined to show me I'm nothing but weak. I can't make decisions; I can't hold onto those who matter. I can't seem to win, no matter what I do. And now, as I lay in bed, a married woman, with my back to my husband's, mirroring his pose, I can feel the self-pity taking over.
Before I know it, it's three o’clock, then four. Somewhere between the feelings of humiliation over what I've become and the clawing need to turn back the clock to just one month ago and make this right, my eyes start to feel heavy. My mind refuses to switch off, but the world around me remains black as I float somewhere between sleep and a weak state of awareness.
As time slips by and I struggle to find the elusive feelings of comfort in a strange bed and unfamiliar surroundings, I'm aware of movement close by - the odd rustling of sheets, the creak of a door, a gentle stream of water followed by the clicking of a light. If yesterday had gone how it should have, I would force myself awake and ask my husband if he was alright, but exhaustion has taken over and my eyelids may as well be made of lead.
More noise follows – the knocking of his body against the dressing table, his bare feet pacing back and forth on the carpet, the gentle, frustrated sounds of his troubled sigh filling the air around us both. Even though I'm not fully awake, the tension in the room still manages to make my stomach twist with unease. I feel so sick, the thought of opening my eyes to see what's going on seems like the absolute worst thing I can do. So I don't.
Turning further onto my side, I bury my hands under my pillow and release all the air I have in my lungs. As the room falls silent once again, I give in and let the dream world take me on a brief journey of escape, all because the real world is, once again, too much for me to bear.
*******
When my eyelashes eventually flutter open, the dopey smile that plays on my lips feels out of place. It takes a while for my brain to catch up with reality as I lay back and watch the dust particles play in the stream of light that's broken through the small crack in the curtains. I'm so focused on the fact the sun is shining at the end of a dreary October that I temporarily forget where I am. It doesn't last long. The second Jack's face comes into my memory, my body tenses and I sit bolt upright in bed.
My head is spinning around so fast I feel like the exorcist, but it doesn't take long for me to settle down and realise he isn't here. The room is deathly silent, apart from the jagged see-sawing of my desperate breaths.
Crawling off the bed, I tiptoe around the suite. I know he isn't here, but I can't seem to stop myself from whispering out his name. I guess a part of me just doesn't want to believe he has gone and left me in this state, even if he has just disappeared for coffee or breakfast.
“Jack?”
Of course there's no reply.
“Jack...”
Pushing open the bathroom door and flinching as it slams into the wall, I glance inside before dropping my chin to my chest and turning back to face the bedroom. That's when I see the envelope propped up on the vanity table that bears my name.
Nausea swirls in my stomach. One minute I'm stood in stunned silence, the next, I've torn the note open, fallen to the bed and allowed the tears to fall.
Isabella,
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
Have you ever wanted something so badly that the mere thought of it falling into your hands consumes you so much, you’re temporarily blinded to everything else?
Have you?
I never have before. Not until I saw you on that plane. The doe-eyed mystery blonde, whose mouth I couldn't tear my eyes from, whose hair I wanted to run my hands through, whose smile I wanted to be the cause of.
You ate away at me. You became an obsession, and somewhere along the way, you became a game. But when I won, the prize wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.
I should have stopped the ceremony the moment I felt the doubt. I should have walked away when I saw it in your eyes that I would always be second in your life, while your friend, the one who walked away and left you without so much as a goodbye, would always be first.
I refuse to live my life as second best to anybody.
Marrying you was a mistake. I let my attraction for you fool me into thinking you were all I wanted, but last night, I could barely even look at you without feeling like a fool. I’m nobody's fool – only my own.
So I’ll say my goodbyes and hope that, in time, you will forget about me the way I hope to forget about you. My lawyers will be in touch.
Fix yourself, Izzy. Fix yourself before it’s too late.
She isn’t coming back.
Neither am I.
Jack.
The letter eventually falls from my fingers and floats to the floor. Disbelief grips at my heart with an iron fist. My husband has just left me. He’s left me via a note - a cold, brutal, heartless note that has turned my blood cold and left my lungs breathless. All I can do is wait for a solid sensation to hit, any emotion despite the feeling of exhaustion, but all I'm capable of is stunned silence as a million words said and memories shared float through my mind.
I can’t be sure how long I sit in the hotel room, just staring into nothing, but at some point, one solid resolution comes and falls into place.
Despite all the pain I feel in every fibre of my being right now, I will not shed a single tear over another person who wants to flee from my life at the first opportunity they get.
Not one of them.
No matter how much they hurt me.
*******
I don’t know how he manages it, but thirty days later our marriage is annulled. Deal done, all hands played, all cards torn up, game over.
Walking away from the hotel room, and from Jack on the whole, proves harder than I thought possible. Despite having only known him for a mere forty-two days, I’ve got used to having a man in my life and all the things he brought with it: a hand to hold, an ear to whisper into, a shoulder to lean on and a body to keep me warm at night. The first few weeks alone try to crush me both mentally and physically, but I dig deep and use every ounce of determination I can muster to get me through it all.
I’m running again, only this time, it’s by choice. The harder I can work my body, the less time my mind has to focus on anything negative. I’m pounding the streets by day and by night. My legs ache when I climb into bed in the evenings, and my muscles sing in quiet contentment when I wake each dawn. The moments when I’m not pushing myself like I’m going through the recruitment process of a Navy Seal, my head is down and I bleed my emotions out through stories and articles for local publications.
The day the decree absolute falls through my letter box is the one day I allow myself to fall into a quiet depression. I don’t change out of my pyjamas, I eat junk food and I shut out the world around me, but as I try to process all my emotions, it dawns on me that the heartache I feel in my chest isn’t actually from Jack. It can’t be. Despite being dragged along in his game of seduction, I always kept a little part of myself closed off to him - the part that really mattered. I never fully handed him my last shred of independence, and I definitely kept the last be
at of my heart hidden away for myself.
My sadness comes from his letter and the words he wrote so casually as though he was stating that the sky is blue and the grass is green. She isn’t coming back.
For the first time since she left me, over a year ago, I start to truly believe that she isn’t, and moving on from that is going to be a bigger test than I could ever hope to survive, but I know I have to try, otherwise, what’s the point in me being at all?
Dragging my tired, worn out feet to stand in front of a mirror before I retire for the night, I force myself to truly focus on what I see. My body twists and turns in silent examination while my hands run through my long, blonde hair, shaking it out until the ends fall down to the curves of my waist. I rub the smeared black from under my eyes and run a thumb over my lips while my free hand pinches at my cheeks. Then I stand back and I stare into the reflection of my own bright blue eyes and I wait…
And I wait…
And I wait...
And when I finally see it, my skin rises and prickles with relief because there’s a fight left in there somewhere; the small, hidden spark of fire in my eyes just told me so. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anybody try to stop me from living the life I know I truly deserve.
It’s time to fix myself, just like he said, and as I fall into bed with a heavy breath, I start to wonder if Jack Parker really did come in to my life for a reason - one that wasn’t just another test of my resilience.
Twenty-One
2004 - 2005
Music and words become my all and actually, it’s not as bad as I thought it might be. There’s a lot to be said for looking out for me and only me. My life becomes a routine of waking up, exercising, writing, then bed, with a few social gatherings of people I meet through the publishing world.
I have days out here and there for business lunches. I have nights out, too, on the odd occasion, with people I barely know, but I make a point of keeping myself at a comfortable distance from anyone who so much as hints at forming a bond. The memories of the pain I suffered from the loss of Dandy, Paris and Jack are enough to keep my head clear. It’s almost nice to have them niggling away at me to keep me reminded of the potential dangers of loving again.
My apartment becomes my haven. The south-facing position means the light pours into the small room for most of the day. The second Jack left, I threw all his things away, cleared out any clutter that I had in my home and bought a small table to position under the window. I don’t need an office, just a view of the vibrant city centre beneath me and the warmth of the rays against my face as I type. On days where I feel a little lost or alone, I open up my laptop and sit in front of it, my fingers moving furiously over the keyboard until every ounce of fear, desolation or hurt I feel gets poured into a character and all I am left with is calm. Writing not only becomes my occupation, it becomes my therapy and the tool I have at hand to enable myself to heal.
Paris is never far from my mind, no matter how much I try to convince myself that she is gone for good. With every month that passes by with no contact, I mark her absence with a small cross on my kitchen calendar. Every time I turn the page for a new beginning, I hope that I won’t be marking it with anything other than the celebration of her return, but time seems to pass by in the blink of an eye and before I know it, almost another full year has passed.
By the beginning of autumn, 2005, my life has become as selfish as it ever has been. In order to survive without mourning what I don’t have, I’ve started focusing on the things I do. Good health, a good occupation, money, my own property, my own space and freedom - so much freedom, I don’t know what the hell to do with it. On the days where the words don’t flow out onto paper the way they should, or the exercise just doesn’t cut through the pain of the loneliness that sometimes starts to creep in, I find myself stood in the middle of town, spending money on something other than the mortgage and bills.
It’s a surprisingly warm day at the beginning of October, and I’m trying to decide whether or not I should waste all of last month’s salary on things I don’t particularly need, while stood in the middle of the Arndale centre. I already have a million and one pairs of converse. I don’t know how to shop for clothes that aren’t jeans, t-shirts and hooded jumpers, which I definitely do not need any more of. Make-up is something I wear rarely, and I don’t need anything that smells of coconuts, mangos, apricots or strawberries, either. The only things I can never get enough of are books and stationery.
As I walk through the shopping centre feeling a little lost, I make a quick decision to get out of here as quickly as I can and go seek refuge in the old bookshop around the corner - the one in the opposite direction to where I am currently heading. Turning quickly on my heels, I spin around in the middle of the crowded aisle, not really thinking what could be behind me as I disrupt the flow of human traffic by going the wrong way.
Tucking my chin down to avoid seeing any disgruntled faces only proves to be a bigger mistake than I could have ever imagined as my body crashes straight into that of another, and I feel their hands immediately grab the tops of my arms to steady the both of us on our feet. My hair falls over my face as I try to step to the side, muttering a feeble apology under my breath while the blush rises on my cheeks.
“Whoa there.” He chuckles as he grips me tighter.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I was born with two left feet.”
“I remember,” he says through an obvious smile.
The second those two little words fall from his lips, I know exactly who I’m stood in the hands of. A small ripple of excitement runs up the length of my spine, raising the hairs on the back of my neck… right before reality slaps me in the face and reminds me of what he did to me.
Lifting my chin slowly, I can almost feel the colour drain from my face as our eyes lock and all the memories of the moments we shared come flooding back.
“Matt,” I whisper in shock.
“Hey.” He grins brightly as though he has nothing to be ashamed of or couldn’t be any happier to see me.
Yanking my arms out of his grip and moving myself away from him as swiftly as I can, I take a few steps back, tuck the hair behind my ears and try to sidestep him again. The second he blocks my path, I move in the other direction, only to find myself frowning hard when he does the same thing that way, forcing me to an absolute standstill.
“I said hey, Moffy. I don’t get a hello back?” He’s ducking his head left and right to try and catch my gaze, and even though I so badly want to run away and flee from this god-awful situation, I suddenly remember all the things I’ve been trying so hard to become over the last year - confident and unashamed being two of the most important things. The old me would leave, but I refuse to be her anymore.
Taking an agonisingly slow, deep breath, I blink away my uncertainty, tilt my head to one side and look up at him as brightly as I can, which, granted, isn’t very fucking bright at all. My smile is flat and sarcastic while I just stare back at him like I really couldn’t give a damn about anything he has to say, pleasant or otherwise. It takes everything I have to force the words out of my mouth.
“Hello back,” I eventually mutter, huffing out an impatient breath while he looks at me and tries to weigh me up. Weigh this up, dickweed, I think to myself as I flash him the middle finger in my mind.
“I see someone excelled in sarcasm at university while they were away.” He laughs.
“Amongst other things…” I excelled in A.B.H thanks to your wife, gets swallowed down as soon as I feel the words on the tip of my tongue.
“Your smart mouth always was one of the things I liked most about you.”
I’m not a rude or ignorant person by nature, but I can’t help the roll of my eyes at his cheesy line. It’s obvious that he sees it, too. The lines on his forehead crease together for just a moment before he quickly schools his expression, shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks on his feet.
“It’s… It’s been a while. How ha
ve you been?”
I really do not want to talk to this guy any more than I want to have my arm chopped off with a rusty saw. The pain and humiliation over what he did to me still lingers somewhere deep inside and looking at him now only serves to remind me of what a fool I was. I’m so over being a fool. I don’t want to stand in front of him and act bitter, even though it would be the most natural thing in the world for me to do. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of looking upset or out of control. I don’t want him to think he even registers on my bothered meter.
“I’ve been great, Matt.” I smile, trying to unlock the tension in my jaw and pull it together. “And you?”
“Good. I’ve been good. Really-”
“Good,” I finish for him. “Great. Me, too.” I shuffle, looking all around me just to avoid having to look at his face. I might be pissed, but I can still appreciate the fact that he’s grown into a more than handsome man and, under different circumstances, I would probably be drooling at his feet by now. “Listen, I have somewhere I need to be, so…”
“Oh, sure, sure.” His smile is awkward as he steps to the side, allowing me a new path of freedom between him and the rest of the shoppers in this over-crowded building.
“Take care.”
“You, too, Moffy and say hello to Paris for me, as well. The last time I saw her in town with that guy she’s with, she looked straight through me.”
I’m just about to walk away from him for good, having not really being paying much attention to anything he’s been saying anyway. But that one name - those five little letters pressed together to form a single word - they have the ability to blare in my head like a siren and cause me to drop every other thought that previously resided there. Matt has turned to the side whilst I’m facing forward, but somehow, our heads have fallen level as I turn my cheek to look back at him. I’m not sure what eventually falls from my parted lips when I speak, but from the way his face scrunches in confusion, I can tell I've paled.
Izzy Moffit's Road to Wonderland (Road to Wonderland Series Book 1) Page 15