by Abby Jimenez
She made a whistle noise. “Wow. You really are on a self-improvement kick.” The baby giggled in the background. “Look, I’m glad you’re getting your shit together, Sloan. I really am. And if you think you need to end it when he leaves, do what you gotta do. But give the man a fucking drawer in the meantime. If you’re giving him your vagina you can give him a drawer.”
I snorted. “God. I’m a mess.”
“Yeah, but you’re the fun busted-piñata kind. That’s why this guy’s all over you. Look, I gotta go. Oliver’s being a handful. I just got fire-hosed. Call me later.”
When I heard the shower turn off, I knocked on the bathroom door to the sound of Jason’s electric razor. He called me in and I leaned back on the sink next to him, my beltless silk robe falling open. He gave the slit an appreciative glance.
He wasn’t mad at me.
The room was steamy and smelled like his cologne. He had a towel around his waist and he stood over the sink, trimming his beard.
Something about the casual routine stirred feelings in me. It felt so right to have him here. His presence didn’t even feel new. It felt familiar and normal and it gave me a preemptive sadness that I suspected would grow with every day that brought us closer to his departure date.
In a few weeks, he would be gone. The bathroom would be empty. Tucker would go with him. Jason wouldn’t come over anymore. And the clothes in the drawer he wanted would disappear.
Empty, again.
“Don’t worry.” He winked at me. “I’ll clean the sink. You won’t even know I was here.”
The irony.
I gave him a weak smile. God, I was a nutjob. In the last week I’d shown Jason enough crazy to scare off anyone. He’d seen me blackout drunk and washed barf out of my hair. He’d sat with me, surrounded by piles of my dead fiancé’s clothing, and watched TV. He’d held me while I had a panic attack and even offered to sell his motorcycle so it wouldn’t upset me. I was knee-jerk emotional responses, a minefield of bad days and walls to tear down, and they popped up at random, without warning.
And he didn’t care.
For some reason this gorgeous man who looked like he could be in a damn electric razor commercial was all in—even if we were about to be all out—and I wouldn’t even give him a fucking drawer.
I leaned there, watching him run the razor down his neck, and he glanced at me with those blue eyes and I missed him already.
“You’re a very patient man, aren’t you?”
He slid his eyes down my body and raised an eyebrow. “Well, it’s paid off so far.”
The breath that I blew through my lips was one of resolve. So it wouldn’t last. Okay. But I’d give it everything until it ended.
I held up a key.
Jason froze and his razor clicked off.
I pressed the key to his bare chest, over his heart. “Use whatever drawer you want,” I said. “Park your truck in the garage. No more ringing the doorbell when you come home. Okay?”
The smile on his face made my heart hurt. I don’t know that I’d ever seen him look this happy.
“Okay,” he whispered, putting his palm over the hand on his chest.
We’d have it all…right up until we wouldn’t.
Chapter 26
Jason
♪ Broken | Lund
I typed in my text and heard the ping from across the store.
Jason: You’re so fucked. One word: pleather.
Sloan: How do you feel about taxidermy?
Jason: How do you feel about the 70s?
A Talking Heads song played in the background, and I looked over the racks of the musty Santa Monica thrift store. Sloan glanced up at me from across the room and narrowed her eyes. I beamed back at her.
She’d had Zane drop me off at Goodwill so she could challenge me to a game on our date night. We each got fifteen dollars to buy something the other person had to wear for the rest of the evening. It was actually a pretty hilarious idea. But when I heard Sloan laugh all the way across the store, I knew it wasn’t going to end well for me.
“Your bravery is about to be tested,” she said outside ten minutes later. She was adorable.
“Nothing scares me.”
“Really? I think this might scare you,” she said, pulling out a long red cape with little tacos on it and holding it out by the corners.
I ran my hand through my hair and she laughed.
“Okay. It’s a cape. I can do a cape,” I said, a laugh in my throat. “I’m man enough.”
“I tend to agree with you on that.”
“Your turn.” I’d hit comedy gold in there. I pulled out a footie pajama with a unicorn head for a hood. It even had a tail. She blanched and I started cracking up.
“Do I have to wear the hood?” she asked.
“Absolutely. And the belt.” I produced a wrestling championship belt made of gold plastic.
She made a face. “Fine. But I’m not done with you,” she said. “Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that you’re this famous guy”—she made jazz hands—“and you can’t get photographed walking around the Santa Monica Pier in this. That it would be bad for your image and Pia would lecture you and blah blah blah. But I want you to know I’ve made arrangements for this because I’m a very thoughtful girlfriend.”
She turned away from me and put something on. When she turned back around, I howled with laughter. She wore flesh-colored plastic sunglasses that looked like hands over her eyes. There were gaps between the fingers to see through.
We both laughed so hard we were crying, and I grabbed her and pulled her into my chest.
I couldn’t live without this. I wanted her to come on tour with me.
I didn’t care what I had to do to make it happen—pay her bills, bribe Kristen for support. Beg her.
I was still waiting to hear back from Ernie on whether we could get Lola off the ticket before I talked to Sloan about it. But whichever way it went, I already had a plan to see her when I was on the road. If she couldn’t go with me or visit because of Lola, I’d come to her as much as possible. And there was the five-week break for the holidays. We’d talk on the phone and we’d Skype. We’d done the phone thing before. We were good on the phone. We could do it again.
We put on our outfits. Sloan’s needed some altering. We borrowed scissors from the thrift store and cut the feet off so she could wear her shoes. She said it was hot, so we cut the arms off too.
“There,” she said, unzipping the front and pushing her boobs up, the crooked horn on her hood bouncing. “Sexy unicorn.”
I looked at her through the plastic fingers of my new sunglasses. “Are you satisfied with yourself? Look what you’ve done to us.”
“I am satisfied, thank you.” She cocked her head at me triumphantly.
“You’re nuts, you know that, right?”
“You’re nuts too.” She slipped her hands around my waist and hugged me, looking up at me with her chin to my chest. “Oh! We have to take a picture and send it to your mom.”
We took a few funny selfies and shot them over. I loved that she and Mom had hit it off. I loved it so much.
We walked toward the palm-lined Third Street Promenade, holding hands as the sun went down. We elicited a lot fewer looks than we would have in Ely dressed like this. We almost went unnoticed, actually. I was grateful for the glasses. I’d brought a hat and some sunglasses so I wouldn’t get recognized. I was doing a lot of appearances now, and more often than not these days, someone somewhere would know who I was. Santa Monica was touristy. The last thing I wanted was to end up signing autographs while out with Sloan. But I think the cape and the finger glasses did a better job of concealing my identity than my original plan. Nobody expected a taco cape–wearing Jaxon Waters.
Sloan stood at a shop window looking at a mannequin and I came up behind her and wrapped my cape around her. “Hey. I want to talk to you about something.” I put a kiss on the side of her head and she smiled at me in the reflection
in the glass.
“I was wondering where you wanted to spend my five-week break. We can be here the whole time if you want, but I know Mom would like it if we came for Thanksgiving.”
I watched her smile melt.
She turned to face me. “Jason…”
Her voice was apologetic. My heart sank.
“Jason, I think we need to be realistic,” she said gently. “You’re going to be gone over a year. You’ll be on the road the whole time, in different time zones—”
“Wait…” I blinked at her, not believing what I was hearing. “You want to break up?”
Her eyes went soft. “I don’t want to break up. But I don’t see how it’s going to work either.”
I shook my head. “Sloan, we’ve done it before.”
“For two weeks. When you were opening. But you’ll be headlining. You’ll be so busy you won’t even have time to think about me, let alone call me. Sometimes even back then you couldn’t find time to call me.”
I took off my stupid finger glasses and took a step closer to her. “We’re not breaking up,” I said. “No.”
“Jason,” she said softly. “I don’t want what we have to be buried. I don’t want to struggle to remember good days like this one.”
I put my hands on her arms. “We won’t. We’ll have plenty of good days. We’ll Skype, and I’ll call you. I’ll come visit you whenever I can. It’ll be hard, but we just have to put in the effort.” I shook my head. “Sloan, what did you think we were doing here? Did you just think this was some fling for me?”
“Of course not. That’s not what it is for me either.” She licked her lips. “But your circumstances have changed and, Jason, I know what this looks like. My dad worked overseas when I was growing up. It destroyed my parents’ marriage. First we’ll go a day without talking. Then two. Then a week. Then you won’t even be able to remember the last time we spoke because not talking to each other is the new normal. And I know myself, Jason. I’ll be a mess the whole time. You won’t like who I’ll become. I’ll be paranoid because I won’t know what you’re doing and resentful that you’re not making time for me, and you’ll get frustrated that I want your attention when you’re spread so thin. We won’t know each other anymore, and we’ll both be lonely, even though we’re together.” She put her hands on my chest and looked up at me, her beautiful brown eyes sad. “Jason, I spent so much time being lonely and unhappy. And I just can’t do it again. I can’t go from this to that. I can’t. I won’t.”
The moment where I should have said, “Then come with me on tour” hung between us and then passed. Lola made it so I had no choice but to let it pass.
“Sloan, don’t do this,” I said, my eyes begging her. “Please.”
I studied her face. The determined set of her jaw, her steady eyes holding mine. Her mind was made up—and the worst part was I knew she was right.
It was one thing for me to want to stick it out. I wasn’t happy about the way things would be long distance either, but I’d do it because the alternative was knowing she was out there without me, dating other people. And it was my fault it was happening because it was my job separating us.
But it wasn’t fair to ask her to deal with this shitty situation. She’d been so miserable for so long I didn’t even want her to have to deal with it. I wanted her to be happy.
I’d just hoped that being with me would be the way for her to do that.
I swallowed down the knot in my throat. “If you need to do this for you, then do it. But I’m waiting for you, and when my tour is over, I’m coming back for you.” I took a step closer to her. “Tell me you’ll take me back. As long as you’re not with someb—” I had to stop for a moment to compose myself. I shut my eyes and let out a steadying breath before opening them again and looking down on her. “Please tell me when my tour ends that you’ll let me come back.”
“Jason, don’t ask me to promise that. And you shouldn’t promise to stay single either.”
“Why?”
“Because then we’re both just waiting for each other.”
I shook my head. “Then let’s wait. Better yet, let’s not break up.”
“I’ve given this a lot of thought.” She paused for a long moment. “I can’t replace the shrine I had for Brandon with a new shrine for you.”
The words lingered between us and she held my gaze. “Let’s just enjoy the time we have left and end it in a good place. And you’re right. Maybe after your tour we’ll find each other again. It won’t be goodbye. It’ll just be goodbye for now. Okay?”
It was amazing how much this hurt. The pain was almost breathtaking. I felt like I’d just been told I had two weeks left to live.
But could I expect anything different? Who the fuck was I anyway? Some guy she’d known less than a month?
Sloan was always two steps behind where I was in our relationship. I knew that. But if she could bear losing me, then maybe this really was one-sided. Because if she felt for me even half as much as I felt for her, she could never stomach letting me go.
And she was letting me go.
This wasn’t the same reclusive, grieving woman I’d met on the phone. This woman would meet someone at the gym or at an art gallery opening, and by the time I came back around, she’d be lost to me. I was losing her already.
And there was nothing I could fucking do about it.
We ate dinner at an Italian place and then walked through the promenade toward the pier, dropping into some of the more interesting shops. The trees were lit with twinkle lights now that the sun had gone down. We threw pennies in the fountain and looked at the sculpted hedges. We got ice cream and watched a street performer sing and we dropped fifty bucks in his guitar case. Sloan bought Mom a tea party cookbook.
I tried to enjoy it. I laughed in all the right places and smiled so that it reached my eyes. But all I saw now was the ending.
We stood at a crosswalk on our way to the pier. Sloan hugged me from the side, pressing her cheek into my chest, and I looked down on her horned hoodie and suddenly I wanted to tell her I loved her for the first time, right there, on that busy intersection.
It was nothing like what they show in the movies. No romantic setting, no soft music playing. We had a homeless guy in a muscle shirt holding a Super Big Gulp a foot away from us. Some teenagers took selfies while a guy in a sauce-stained pizzeria apron impatiently pressed the crosswalk button. We weren’t walking on the beach or sitting at the top of a Ferris wheel. She just wrapped her arms around my waist, wearing that stupid fucking outfit, and all I could think was that I loved her.
But now we were breaking up. What was the point in telling her how I felt? To make her feel guilty? Or like she had to say something back that she wasn’t ready to say, or possibly didn’t even feel?
The light turned green, we crossed, and the moment passed, and she probably had no idea it had even happened. But it had happened. And it was going to keep on happening. Every time I looked at her it would happen.
It would happen even when I couldn’t look at her at all.
Chapter 27
Jason
♪ Blood in the Cut | K.Flay
Lola roared up on her Harley in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and the cameras fired up hungrily. She loved to make an entrance, and she always did it late. Fucking annoying.
“Forty-five minutes,” I grumbled to Pia, looking at my watch. It was 6:47 p.m. God, I hated her.
Ernie was off the red carpet, on the phone with a finger in his ear. We’d been waiting for Lola to show for almost a damn hour. I was contractually obligated to promote the movie however the studio saw fit, and Lola and I had collaborated on the soundtrack, so unfortunately we were a package deal at the moment. They wanted red carpet pictures of me with her, so I’d been forced to stand around outside in the blazing Hollywood heat until she got here. It was eighty-five in the shade. Sweat trickled down my back. I slid my fingers into my collar and tugged at the neck of my tie irritably.
> I’d had to tell Sloan I couldn’t get a ticket for her so late—which was true. The seating arrangements had already been made. But I could have booted Ernie. Instead, I’d had to leave Sloan at home because Lola was going to be here, all over me, and I didn’t know what kind of shit show it was going to be.
It had been three days since Sloan told me she wanted to break up when I left. We had thirteen days until my tour and every minute counted now. I didn’t want to be here without her, wearing this monkey suit, waiting for Lola. I wanted to be in my underwear, tucked in bed with my girlfriend, watching TV. The fact that Sloan couldn’t be here with me and the knowledge that Lola was to blame for that infuriated me. Not to mention this was a whole day away from Sloan when our time together was almost up—and that was Lola’s fault too.
I wasn’t doing well.
I hadn’t been doing well since Sloan preemptively broke up with me. I couldn’t fucking sleep, and I didn’t feel like eating.
All of my wildest dreams were coming true. I was standing on a red carpet with superstars, promoting a major motion picture set to my music. I was about to leave on a massive worldwide tour. I was achieving all my career goals, and somehow I was about to end up losing the one thing that suddenly mattered the most to me. I actually resented my success now, wished I could just fucking walk away from it or take less of it in exchange for her.
I didn’t care what Sloan said about not wanting me to wait for her—I wasn’t dating other people during our split. I couldn’t. The fact that she maybe could fucking killed me. I was trying not to think about it. And now I was here, wasting the precious time I had left with her dealing with Lola.