There was a moment of silence, his face aghast, nothing but shock registering as I heard the passenger door of his truck open with a clunk.
A soft female voice began talking. The words were unimportant; his reaction said everything.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he repeated, his own voice empty. ‘Take care of yourself.’
I stared, stunned, as the phone moved for a moment before disconnecting – a flash of long, blonde hair and the side profile of a pretty face.
In the silence that followed, still staring at the black screen, I knew.
Chrissy. His ex.
The next couple of hours became a blur. I moved from anger to indifference, from bone-shaking grief to a terrifying stillness that blocked everything out, that told me to get back into bed and never move again.
Buried deep in my gut was the urge to get back on a plane, to follow Jesse to Livingston Peak – five hours north of Jackson, in Montana, as a Google Maps search revealed – and put myself right between him and the fucking bull.Underthe fucking bull, if it stopped him.
He could be with Chrissy if he wanted, if the idea of us was dead to him. But he couldn’t get on that damn bull in a state that might fucking kill him.
This was my mess. My fault.
I ordered takeaway to my room. With my brain picking up speed as my first meal in two days hit, I grabbed my phone and started searching for flights.
Objection after objection, problem after problem bombarded my mind, ways this could all fuck up. But this was something I needed to be there for, in person.
After twenty minutes of working my way through flights to Denver, Salt Lake City and even Chicago, other than prohibitively expensive first-class seats, I couldn’t find any that would get me there for Sunday evening. It needed to be a flight tonight, or at the latest, tomorrow morning.
There was nothing.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get there in time.
Numb, about to put my phone down, I jolted as it buzzed.
It was the cleaning company, letting me know they’d finished up at the studio. I blew out a breath, willing myself into sense, knowing that staying in this room wasn’t a plan.
I would shower, dress and walk over. Nothing more, nothing less.
If Jesse and I were . . . done, then the studio was what I had left. That was the thing I could rebuild.
So I did, for once talking to myself as gently as I would a child, feeling myself come back to life gradually with clean hair, painting a semblance of myself onto my face with make-up. Occasionally I failed, caught off guard with a thought of Jesse, knowing he was in his truck right now with her – moving on, just like he thought I had.
That’s when I had to stop, to lean over the bathroom countertop and hold myself in. The visceral effects of this fuck-up, I realized as I finally left the hotel some time later, were more than I’d ever known before. The scale of loss was like nothing I’d felt before.
The tainted city air was a welcome change, waking me up as I strode through the streets towards the studio, one foot in front of the other until –
Cal was leaning against the wall near the studio door, barely recognizable in clothes.
I came to an abrupt stop, eyeing him carefully.
‘I’m not here to cause problems,’ he said, holding up a hand. ‘I swear. I just – I didn’t want to leave things like that between us.’
‘Give me fucking strength,’ I hissed under my breath, walking round him as I got to the door, opening it with my key. ‘How did you know I would be here?’
He shrugged.
‘The cleaner replied to the studio email address. I figured you’d be here to check on it. You always did look for the details.’
I glared back at him for a moment, waiting for him to look away first before stepping inside.
The chaos was gone. There was no hint of the cesspit Cal and his dickhead, waster friends had created. But as I walked through the space, vast patches on the walls now scrubbed almost down to the plaster to remove the graffiti, it felt different. As though something of our history had been cleansed along with the mess.
