A complement, rather than the definition, of me.
And Jack—Jack was another exciting, mysterious part of all of it.
Neil’s relocation was hard on Ray, of course. But the fact that he had a new support system built for himself with Kate and me was a balm for the loss that he felt. Where once he had depended so much on Neil, he was now able to look to other people in his life—there were people there to be his family and cause all sorts of noise and clutter in what was once a quiet existence. He’d been an orphaned bachelor for so long that he was almost overwhelmed by the sudden immersion he was given into all the chaos of both Kate’s family and mine. Everyone had adopted him, and everyone was counting the days until it was official.
In the meantime, Ray had finally told Neil the entire tale of my time at Casa Epstein. Initially, most of Neil’s anger had been over the fact that Ray had kept everything from him for so long. It wasn’t easy to explain all the non-logical logic behind everything, but once the story was aired out in its entirety, Neil’s indignation subsided. According to Ray, by the time they each hung up the phone at the end of the confessional call, Neil was already cracking jokes about it.
As relieved as I was to hear that Ray had come clean, I still didn’t feel as though Neil and I could ever have a self-sustaining friendship. It was amazing, really, all the twists and turns this entire thing had taken—how much all of our lives had changed in the past year.
Lip Service was a testament to all that change.
And a tribute.
It signified a leap of faith that I would have been too afraid to take without the encouragement and support of my friends and family. Thinking I had lost everything had helped me find the life I’d always dreamed of. The fact that I’d had to go through painful lessons served only to make me treasure that life all the more.
The store was successful beyond my wildest dreams. I hadn’t known what to expect, but I had hopes that it would continue. I had hopes that my little bit of bricks and lipstick would make a difference that would be rewarded with a thriving, loyal following for years to come, something to pass down to my children.
A family legacy. Now there was a possibility I’d never even entertained before, but it was actually within reach. Sort of.
I needed the husband and the children, first, of course, but still…I had the legacy part, right?
Who knew, maybe one day my name would be as big as Estée Lauder.
No one says a girl can’t dream.
Chapter 31
“Action or romantic comedy?” I asked, scanning the DVD’s on Jack’s bookcase for something to watch.
“I have a pretty good feeling which kind you’d rather watch, so let’s just go with that,” Jack called from the kitchen. He had the duty of putting our sandwiches on a plate, while I was tasked with finding tonight’s special feature.
“You mean you don’t mind not getting to watch stuff blow up?” I posed, reaching for When Harry Met Sally.
Fear not—Jack’s ownership of the movie was a direct consequence of his little sister trying to make him get in touch with his feminine side. The only reason he hadn’t banished it from his collection was because Billy Crystal was in it.
“Weeelll,” he replied contemplatively, drawing out the word to three syllables. “I guess I can give that up for you.”
“Does this mean you like me?” I popped the DVD in the player and began the great hunt for the remotes.
Jack had a terrible habit of putting the remotes in odd places, so anytime use of one was required, it took about fifteen minutes of scouring the living room. He really needed a homing device on those things.
“Little bit,” he replied, coming around the corner laden with plates and chips. “So what are we watching?”
“Right now, we’re watching Zoë’s Endless Search for the Remotes, but when I find them, I was thinking we could watch When Harry Met Sally. Does that work for you, or should I pick something else?”
I pulled up a couch cushion to reveal not only an odd assortment of loose change and a couple of orphaned socks, but the remote to the DVD player. Now if only I could find the TV remote.
“Sounds fine.” Jack slid the plates onto the coffee table with the bags of chips and straightened to level an earnest look at me. “I think, though, that there’s something we need to talk about before we get into a movie.”
His tone gave me pause. He sounded unusually serious, and I felt a lump of worry fall with a heavy thud in the pit of my stomach. I raised an inquisitive eyebrow at him.
Jack shook his head, flashing me a sheepish smile.
“Don’t worry, it’s not one of those ‘We Need to Talk’ talks.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He looked suddenly tired—his face was lined with worry, his shoulders drooped heavily.
“There’s just something I need to tell you that I should have told you a long time ago. It just never seemed like the right time.”
“Should I be sitting down for this? Are you going to tell me you’re married? You’ve got four wives in another state?” I teased, trying to dispel my anxiety.
I wanted to plead with him to stop, not to tell me whatever he was about to confess. I felt like I was trying to hold water in my hands, watching in helpless futility as it slipped through my fingers until there was nothing left. I swallowed thickly, feeling as though my mouth was filled with peanut butter.
“Zoë, please, sit down. You look so nervous, you’re making me nervous. And I’m already nervous enough,” Jack said after an interminable silence, and it was such a surprise that I jumped at the sound of his voice. “Would you like anything to drink? Water, tea…vodka and Zanax?”
“Ha ha,” I retorted. “I could use some water, actually.”
And a little more time to re-collect my composure.
Jack walked off toward the kitchen and was back almost instantaneously. I felt like telling him to go back into the kitchen so I could have even one more second to steel myself for whatever was coming.
“Thanks,” I said as I reached for the tall glass of water he was holding out to me.
“No problem,” he replied. “Please, sit,” he urged again, indicating the couch.
We sat, Jack at one end and me at the other, turned at enough of an angle to be mostly facing one another. I stared down at the full glass in my hands, not sure what to do with it. I wasn’t thirsty, but I also didn’t want to put it down. I felt safer having something to do with my hands, as though the simple act of putting it on the table would make me more vulnerable somehow.
“Zoë—” he began, his voice sounding hollow and far off. “Zoë, there’s something you need to know.” He stopped.
Breathe in, breathe out.
I felt my stomach lurching like I’d been reading in the backseat of a hot car on a winding road.
“You look a little sick, Zoë. Are you sure you’re alright?” By this point, the concern in Jack’s voice was mirrored in his face.
“No,” I said, taking another deep breath and feeling the unwelcome sting of tears in my eyes.
A sickening bubble of fear was manifesting itself in a crying jag, and I didn’t seem to be able to stop it. Really, I didn’t have any reason to be so upset. Not yet, anyway. He hadn’t told me anything.
But something in me was sure that whatever Jack was about to say would change everything between us, could jeopardize our relationship. I’d already lost someone I had loved, and while I didn’t know yet if I loved Jack, I did know that no longer having him in my life was not a possibility I wanted to have to face.
“Please, Jack, just tell me whatever you have to tell me,” I said hurriedly, squeezing my eyes shut so tightly I could see little pinpricks of black and grey floating across my eyelids.
There was silence. Nothing but silence.
I opened my eyes to see Jack staring at me, his face softened in what I could only describe as knowing. There was an inexplicable look of understanding and compassion, mixed with apprehension as
his eyes held and searched mine.
And then he got to his feet, crossed the room, and disappeared down the hall.
It left me so surprised that a response was still unformed by the time he’d reappeared.
“I already knew who you were, Zoë, the first time I met you,” he said, standing in front of the couch. “All of it.” His voice was hushed and raw with emotion.
I felt my eyes and nose burning with fresh tears. I’d never been good at seeing men get emotional, never been one to sit unaffected when I saw the sheen of tears in a man’s eyes. I wasn’t sure whether I was afraid or relieved or…both, maybe. What I did know was that I was extremely confused, not to mention that I needed to know how he knew.
“How?” I whispered, not trusting my voice above that.
“Because I found this,” Jack replied. And then I saw what he’d been holding in his hands, something I’d been too preoccupied to see.
A journal.
My journal.
The journal I’d written in every day until Ray confessed the whole charade, making me realize I was merely propagating my own delusions. I had stopped writing in it, so when I’d packed up to leave Neil’s house, the fact that it was not among my possessions escaped my notice.
And now, Jack was holding it in his hands.
I felt my eyes grow wide.
He was holding my journal. Which meant that he’d read my journal. He’d read every word I’d written, every feeling I’d penned on every page.
I felt naked.
“I found it under my bed, when I was looking for the remote.” He paused. “I got a TV for my room, by the way. It’s nice to have some noise to fall asleep to.”
Jack came closer and sat down on the couch, placing my journal gingerly on the coffee table.
I stared at it mutely, feeling hollow and exposed. He’d read everything.
“I didn’t know what it was or who it belonged to. So I read it,” he said slowly.
My gaze flickered across his face, looking for something even though I didn’t know what.
“I have to say, I started reading it out of simple curiosity. But the more I read, the more I understood.” Jack grew quiet, and there was no sound in the room aside from our breathing.
He understood?
I didn’t know whether to be glad or outraged or ashamed. He’d read my journal. What did he think gave him the right? Why had he continued to read it, once he knew what it was and who it belonged to?
And just what was it he thought he understood?
Most importantly, how could he have kept something like this from me?
I stared at him, stunned into silence and feeling the heat of tears lick the back of my throat. I looked down quickly, knowing it would be safer to stare at the water glass I still held, clenched in a white-knuckled grip.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked finally, with a calm that surprised me. It was at odds with the inner turmoil I was experiencing, but I was holding on so tightly that my eerie calm was simply an outward manifestation of my death grip.
“Zoë, when I read your journal, it made me want to know you. To find out more about the woman who had all those feelings and wrote all of those words. I didn’t think you would trust me with that woman, with you, if you had known that I’d found it and read it. And then, when you rang my doorbell, I really didn’t know what to do.” Jack sounded tortured.
Part of me wanted to grant him reprieve, to tell him that it was fine. But I wasn’t sure that it was. There was an element of relief in the entire situation, because there was finally nothing left in my hand—all of my cards were out on the table for him to see. There was also now the question of trust that hung so heavily in the air between us.
How did I know I could trust him?
More to the point, why should I trust him? He knew everything about me now, and I knew only the things he wanted me to know.
Yes, I’d told him about Paul and the plan Ray had so carefully constructed and executed. That wasn’t the same, though. Reading my journal was like reaching into my soul. There were things in there I would never have told anyone, never had the courage to say out loud.
I felt like we were on completely unequal footing, and he had the upper hand. I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t face those eyes.
“I didn’t tell you because I was afraid I’d lose you.” Jack’s voice had grown husky with emotion, and I knew that if I looked up, I would probably see it in his face. I kept my head down, knowing it would be safer to stare at the water glass I was still holding in a death-grip.
“You didn’t even give me a chance to decide what I wanted. Not really. You had my playbook, you knew everything about me before you’d even laid eyes on me, before I even knew you existed. How the hell am I supposed to trust that anything in our relationship has been real? That you haven’t been lying to me this whole time?” My voice was rising as I launched into my argument. “You could have manipulated the situation, and I would have never known.”
I felt like the room was starting to spin around me. What was I supposed to do with this? And what made him think I would be able to pass this off so simply and be so forgiving?
“I know. And I know I really don’t deserve anything from you, including your trust. But I’m hoping that the woman in there,” he said, nodding toward the journal that sat on the coffee table, “that the woman I was so intrigued by, will find mercy and forgive me.”
His hand reached out, catching me gently under the chin to tilt my face up. Our eyes locked, his staring unwaveringly into mine.
“Please,” he said.
He knew my secrets, thoughts I’d shared with no one besides the blank pages of a notebook, and all the history that gave rise to those thoughts. The simple act of reading those pages had given him insight into my character, and the woman who’d invaded someone else’s home became a broken soul who was seeking repair. To be honest, I was surprised that he’d had the patience to read everything I’d written between the lines of the pink spiral-bound journal. Most men would have read a few pages at best, casting it aside as the overworked drivel of a pitiful woman.
But Jack had seen more.
That alone was, in many ways, a great tribute to his own character. He could have thought me pathetic and judged me for what was, in all actuality, probably illegal and therefore actionable. He could have even accused me of being untrustworthy and deceitful myself, judged me for everything, harmless as it all may have been. He could have done any number of things that all would have been understandable under these circumstances.
But he hadn’t.
There was a chaotic jumble of emotions running through me, and I was caught somewhere between relief and humiliation.
Jack knew everything now. Everything.
I realized, as I sat there on the couch feeling empty and deflated, that the current situation was an undeniable parallel to my deception of Neil, unwitting as it might have been. I had been in his home, privy to information about his life that he had never given me permission to know. I had known intimate details of him before he had any knowledge of me, and I had somehow convinced myself that we would fall into an easy relationship. I had never once considered the possibility that he might have felt the way I was feeling at this moment, exposed and violated and wondering how I could ever trust this person who was now asking.
“Things happen, Zoë, things that are beyond our control. People come into our lives at different times for different reasons. Neil came into your life for this—” he held out his arms to gesture at the room, “for this house to be your sanctuary, at a time when you needed it most.” His voice had grown soft and there was a warm glow in his green eyes that was more than sympathy. “I was just waiting for you to show me that you really were the woman I thought I knew from the words in that journal. I was waiting for you to come to me and tell me about all of this, about everything. I wanted you to be able to tell me your story in your time, not feel like I was comparing what you said to what
you wrote. And you did. All those hours we spent together, all those talks we had—you showed me that the woman in here,” he tapped the cover of the notebook, “really and truly existed out here.”
The tenderness Jack was showing me in all of this was so unexpected, so needed, that I couldn’t seem to control the tears that were streaming from my eyes. But I still felt so stripped, so betrayed, so raw.
“Jack, I—” What could I say? I closed my eyes, suddenly realizing how exhausted I was. “I don’t think I can do this,” I murmured. “How can I do this? I feel like you know me, like you know all of me, and I don’t know anything about you anymore. I don’t know how to trust who you are—or who you’ve pretended to be.” I felt so very empty, a feeling I had hoped I’d never have again. But here it was. “You’re a stranger.”
The words sounded cold and final, and they sat heavily on the couch between us.
“Then I guess there’s only one thing left to do.” Jack’s eyes were sad, as he looked at me, and I could see in them the hope for mercy that would have reduced anyone to tears. It was all there, his own vulnerability in all of this, and I felt my defenses weaken. After all, did he not deserve the same compassion I would have wanted, to be shown the simple mercy of a second chance?
He rose to his feet in front of me and extended his hand.
“Hi. I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Jack,” he said.
It was an olive branch, a plea for forgiveness and an attempt to start over. Completely over, on equal footing as two people who knew nothing about each other. Who had infinite possibilities and thousands of discoveries stretching out before them.
I looked at Jack’s hand for a long moment, knowing how important this moment was. It would mean the difference between giving up a man I had come to depend on, to feel something for, and giving him a chance. Giving us a chance.
Coming Home to You Page 25