Chapter 4 - Oak
four- Oak
I’d spent the day chasing Jordin’s ghost, trying to find out where she went and the night drowning out the fact that I couldn’t find her and the silence she left behind. The vodka in my gut helped dull the edge but couldn’t thaw the ice in my chest.
I wanted to cry; tears blurred my vision. I was drinking and driving.
I almost missed the driveway in front of my house.
My tires screamed as I jerked the wheel, the car lurching onto the pavement.
In my rearview, I could see I’d taken out the garbage cans.
They lay sprawled in the street, their contents bleeding across the asphalt.
Fuck it. I’d deal with it tomorrow. My hands were clumsy, stupid things, fumbling with the door handle before I finally made my way out of the car.
The half-empty bottle I’d been drinking from slipped from my grasp and shattered, the smell of cheap vodka drowning out the smell of darkness.
The porch light next door snapped on.
Mrs. Hawkins came outside, wrapped in an ugly floral robe, her arms crossed like a neighborhood watch sign. That old, snooty bitch who’d always looked at Jordin like she was a smudge on her perfect, white-picket world. I didn’t like her at all.
“Mr. Black!” her voice was a dry crack. “It’s after midnight! Do you have any idea how much noise you’re making?”
I stopped, swaying on my feet, and turned toward her.
The world tilted. “You want to see how much more noise I can make?” I slurred, pointing a shaky finger.
I raised my voice to a roar that tore at my throat.
“I can make enough to let the whole goddamn street know I never liked your miserable ass! Now go back inside and mind your fucking business!”
Her jaw unhinged. For a glorious second, she was just a horrified old woman. Then she vanished, slamming her door so hard it echoed. “That’s right! Goodnight, bitch!” I yelled at the empty space.
At the door, my key wouldn’t find the lock. It took three tries.
The house didn’t just feel empty; it felt dead when I stepped inside. A tomb I’d built with my own two hands.
“Jordin!” My voice echoed back at me, a hollow, pathetic sound. “Baby, I’m home. I know you’re here!” The plea cracked, revealing the boy underneath the bully. “Just… please.”
Silence. I knew she wouldn’t answer.
“Jordin. My baby, my everything.” I started to sing, a ragged, off-key fragment of a song she loved.
She used to smile and would press her face into my chest when I did that.
Now, the notes just died in the still air.
I staggered through the rooms, flipping on lights, each one illuminating another space she’d vacated. Nothing.
Back downstairs, my eyes landed on the photo on the mantle.
I grabbed it, holding it up in the lamplight. My hand trembled. It was us on the day I proposed to her. God, she was beautiful. Radiant. She was holding my hand, looking at me like I was her whole world.
I’d loved her from the first second I saw her in that high school hallway.
She walked in like she owned the place, and I, the arrogant little king, had to try and break her, mold her to fit me.
I pushed, I insulted, I bullied. But she stood her ground.
I gave in, took her how she was. I was glad she never crumbled under the weight I put on her.
But my insecurity festered when we got together. I felt like I was always playing catch-up. Jordin was everything I wasn’t. She was better. Better at life, better at love, just… better. Too good for me.
And that truth ate me alive. It gnawed at me day and night, this sick, gnawing fear that she’d finally see the hollow man I was.
And that—right there—is how I ended up in this mess.
Because I felt she didn’t need me, and I was terrified.
Terrified of being left, of being nothing, of watching her walk away.
She was gone all the time. Working with men better than me, younger than me.
I went in search of something to quiet that fear. A distraction. A hit of attention. Proof that I was still wanted, still a man. I went looking for validation in all the wrong places. Each time I crossed that line, it wasn’t about sex. It was about proving to myself I still mattered.
Maybe if she gave me a chance to explain why I did what I did, she’d understand I didn’t mean to hurt her.
I felt the tears coming again. The glass of the picture frame blurred. My breathing was ragged, tearing from my lungs.
“How could you?” I whispered, my voice shaking. “How could you leave me for one little mistake? We had everything. Everything.”
In that moment, I hated her for it. I hated her for being so perfect. For making me love her so much it felt like dying to lose her. For never loving me with the same desperate, clawing need. She couldn’t have, because if she did, she would have already forgiven me.
The picture frame left my hand before I could think. It flew across the room and exploded against the wall.
“Goddamn it, Jordin!” I roared.
The sound was a release that devolved. I kicked over a lamp, relishing the sound of shattering glass. I felt good. I upended the bookshelf, and I felt better. I became a storm of my own making, tearing through the home we’d built, reducing it to rubble.
When the destructive energy finally left me, I sank to the floor, my back against the kitchen cabinets. I was surrounded by the wreckage.
She wasn’t here.
And I knew, with a certainty that turned the vodka in my stomach to acid, that she wasn’t coming back.
I had no one to blame but the motherfucker sitting in the ruins. Me.