Chapter Thirty-Five
Thirty-Five
Jen leads us down a less busy hallway, and then an even quieter one after that.
“Where are we going?”
Jen doesn’t answer, motioning for me to join her in an electrical closet. She closes the door behind her and clicks on a light. The room smells like warm plastic and buzzes like it’s alive. Lights twinkle at me from every direction and I realize I have a bad headache. “What’s up?”
“What happened to you out there?”
“I’m sorry.” My eyes find my knee-high boots. “I think the end of the tour just got to me.”
When I look up, she’s unimpressed. “You think I got to where I am in my career by falling for dumb shit like that?”
“Excuse me?”
“Clementine. You’re a smart girl, but let me give you some advice. Nothing is going to happen with you and Tom Halloran.”
Her words might as well be a punch to the throat. “What?”
“He’s one of the most successful musical artists alive right now .
To him you’re…just a tryst, I’m afraid.” She tucks a stray hair neatly behind her ear.
“And one of the most problematic. After Austin I was this close to taking you off the tour altogether. Do you know how many strings I had to pull to keep TMZ from posting the photos they snagged of you two?”
It’s cold ice down my back. I have no words.
“ A bloodied Halloran spotted fleeing Dime a Dozen with mysterious blonde. Can you imagine what that would do to him?”
Destroy him. His worst nightmare, I’m sure of it.
“And don’t get me started on Molly—”
“Molly?”
“You saw how she felt about the duet.”
“ You gave me that opportunity.”
“Well, I didn’t know you were fucking him, did I?”
I’m stunned into silence. We weren’t even seeing each other then. But…we had spent the night flirting in that Raleigh hotel. Did Molly know? It’s so hot, I can’t breathe right. My bra is digging into my lungs. “Our relationship is none of your business.”
“Relationship?” Jen laughs without humor. “Clementine, he and Cara are practically back together. You saw the show.”
“That was a performance. ”
“Don’t be na?ve. Those two have something nobody can replicate. They’ve been talking the entire time he’s been on tour. I’ve known Tommy since I signed him at twenty-five. All the women he’s dated since then are just Cara placeholders.”
None of this is adding up. Indy would have told me if Tom had been holding a candle for Cara. Someone would have told me. Tom would have told me. Right?
“He’s very private,” Jen says, as if reading my mind.
“I know that.”
“I don’t want to be harsh.” Jen sighs. “Someone has to tell you the truth before you upturn your life for some guy that would never do the same for you.”
Just like my mom. Just like she did for my dad—
“Why are you doing this?” My voice is a rasp.
“It’s my job to look out for Tom. Sometimes that means doing the dirty work needed to make sure he succeeds the way we both want him to. You think I liked taking the Rolling Stone piece from Grayson? Getting Tom the headliner spot at Dreamland? I do what I have to, to protect him.”
The spot at Dreamland…For an instant I imagine Jen making a call on a burner phone to have someone’s Achilles tendon sliced. “You gave that singer a family emergency?”
“Of course not.” She glares at me. “I’m not a Bond villain. I paid them off. My fee on Tom’s next album will be fifteen times that.”
“Tom isn’t doing another album.”
She folds her arms across her chest. “We’ll see.”
And she’s right. Who was I kidding? Tom Halloran’s not going to release another album?
Go on another tour? I’ve been deluding myself—slipping into a false version of me.
A version that was way too confident not only in us but in myself .
The way it felt to perform in all these shows, to revel in the only thing in life I know I’m good at…
The person I became on this tour is as unsustainable as the relationship I’d started to believe in.
I need to get out of this closet. “I appreciate your interest in my well-being,” I say stiffly. “I’ll be sure to tell Tom how thoughtfully you look after his bandmates.”
“Please do.”
“I will .”
“And what—I’m just asking—happens after that? After he assures you there’s nobody for him but you, and you ride off into the sunset together?”
I don’t have an answer ready on that one yet. In fact, I’d been waiting all day to ask Tom the same question. “We’re not sure yet.”
“You ask Tom Halloran to give up his career and move to Cherry Grove with you and your sick mother?”
“Leave my mom out of this.”
“You’re halfway there. You already got him to decline a new contract.”
“I had nothing to do with—”
“Or do you abandon mommy dearest and follow him back to Ireland until he gets sick of you? Until you stop inspiring him? Clementine, whether it’s Cara or not, someone else will come along eventually. Maybe you’ll last long enough to be his next muse. But”—Jen shrugs—“maybe not.”
Something is wailing inside of me, crumpled up in the fetal position, bleeding out into my organs.
The worst part about the assault is that I know she’s right.
Regardless of whether Tom wants to be with Cara again—I’ve known this since our first kiss: we have no future.
Nobody does, but us especially. He will continue to hop from love to love.
Jen has only stoked the flames of a bonfire I’ve been tending for weeks.
Perhaps she can tell from my silence that she’s delivered the death blow. Like a warrior paying respects to her kill, she takes my hand in hers. “I’m sorry, Clementine. It wasn’t my intention to hurt you. But this is one of those life lessons you’ll be glad to have learned young.”
I stand there, dumbfounded, her hand in mine. How had I been so stupid to think we had an actual shot?
“I took the liberty of having Lionel pack your bags and book you a flight to Austin tonight.” She squeezes my hand. “My treat.”
“What about the party?” My voice comes out small.
Jen’s pity is the tense kind. “I don’t think that makes a lot of sense. Do you?”
I shake my head. I just want to go home.
I miss my mom and my bed and Willow. I never want to see any of these people again.
I’m baffled at how thoroughly I’ve humiliated myself.
They’d likely all known, all along, that we were playing ourselves.
That I was falling for some heartbreak-addicted serial monogamist.
And that’s why they call it falling in love, right? Because while I’d had my stupid head in the clouds, romanticizing a halo of sunlight around Thomas Patrick Halloran, I had forgotten that flying always leads to free fall—to plummeting down through reality until you’re mere rubble and wreckage.
The walk back to the bus is a relief because I’m finally numb.
The heat’s died down outside, but I can’t feel the windchill.
My headache’s become a full-blown migraine and I debate sitting down on the curb to cry, but think better of it.
I just need to get home. My phone buzzes in my pocket and I ignore it.
There isn’t one person on earth I want to speak to right now.
I can just make out Salvatore tapping his fingers on the bus’s oversized wheel. I trek up to the stairs, intent on grabbing my bag and calling an Uber to the airport. But inside, like I’ve stepped back in time, is Tom.
“There you are.” He puts down his phone. “I called you about nine times.”
I could live a thousand years and never forget the horrible way his face changes when he gets a good look at me. He stands and crosses the front lounge in two long strides. His thumb is under my chin a second later. “What’s happened?”
Tears pool in my eyes. “I’m going home.”
He nods, a bit of relief smoothing his brow. He thinks I’m sad about the tour ending. I fucking wish.
Tom tucks me into his chest and I let myself cry. He smells like soap and rain and the manufactured fog from tonight’s show. My heart breaks, knowing I’ll never smell him again. I’ve become the kind of person who would ask for one of his shirts to remember him by. I don’t even recognize myself.
“Hey,” he says. “Shh.” He kisses the top of my head so gently the tears come harder. “Ending a tour is always hard. And you and I—”
“There is no you and I,” I say, peeling myself from his shirt. “This thing…it has to be done.”
Tom’s hands slip from my back. “What’s making you say that?”
And I have a moment here to reroute. To tell him Jen is a psychopath and doesn’t want us to be together and to drag him back into his suite and ask him to make love to me until morning. The thought is so tempting I have to clench my teeth against it.
Because psychopath or not, Jen was right—Tom and I have no future.
Even if he didn’t live in a different country, and he was a bartender, not a rock star…
all things come to an end. They did with Cara.
They did for my mom. They will with us. Love leads to heartbreak.
Jen was right, my mom was right, and I was right—all along.
I’d rather end it now on my own terms than tumble further down the rabbit hole and realize, too late, I have no way out of Wonderland.
“I cannot uproot my life to follow you around, Tom. On tour, to Ireland. I have to take care of my mom. You’ll get sick of me one day. We just…none of it makes sense.”
He’s thought about this, of course. That I might say this. “This is what you wanted to tell me? Earlier?”
I nod, holding my breath. I can’t lie to him—he’s too clever and already knows me far too well.
“I could never grow sick of you, Clem. Every minute I spend with you, I’m happier for it. And the distance won’t matter now that I’m done touring.”
“And what? You going to leave County Kerry and move to a town in Texas with six thousand people? You’re not going to leave your family, Tom. Your friends. Conry. I don’t want to take you from everything you love.”
“You aren’t. You—” He opens his mouth, then must think better of it, because he closes it again. But his urgency is mounting. “Don’t do this. Don’t make this about miles between us. I know you’re scared, but—”
“That’s not it.”
“Isn’t it, though? You’re scared nothing this good can last. That eventually I’ll abandon you or need you too much or not enough. That one way or another you’ll end up hurt, so you’re cuttin’ free now. You’re just scared, Clementine.”
It hits me in the solar plexus, the truth in his words. He’s looking into my psyche, stripping me bare and marveling at my fears. Understanding me in a way I’ve worked hard to make sure nobody ever can. It’s a primal thing, being known like this. It’s a miracle and I want to set fire to it.
“I’m just being rational, Tom. The tour is over…This was always how it was going to go.”
His eyes are wet. Harrowing green and bloodshot red, like a forest ravaged by wildfire. “I can’t promise you a life free of sorrow. Nobody can. But I can swear to shelter the heart of ye with all I have.”
“I don’t care.”
“You do.” A tear slips down his cheek and he wipes it away. “I know that you do.”
“There’s nothing you can say to change my mind.”
He’s really crying now. “Clementine.” He sniffs once, shaking his head with a weak laugh. “Clem, you’re breaking my heart.”
We stand under the faint buzz of light in the front lounge. I realize at some point Salvatore’s abandoned us and we are alone. Tom runs a hand down his beard and more tears slip over his fingers.
I can’t watch this man who I love so fiercely suffer in this way. I wasn’t built for it, or I don’t have the constitution, I don’t know. But whatever feebleness it is, I stand on my toes and wrap myself around his neck.
“Jesus,” he says, one hand leaving my back to wipe his eyes. “I’m not even doin’ another record. I’m taking time off. None of this matters to me as much as you. I’d give all of it up. You can—”
“Tom,” I say, pressing my face into his neck. “Can you just hold me?”
And he does. We stand there in the dim front lounge for longer than my feet can stay pointed. I let the tears flow and I wonder if years of stored sorrow are using this moment as their exit strategy. Tom lets me cry, brushing a hand over my head.
I think of every single thing I wish I could say to him.
That he shouldn’t stop making music even if it means a relationship could be simpler—with me or anyone else.
That I’m as scared to leave my mom and Cherry Grove behind to follow someone else’s dreams as I am for him to follow me.
That I wish he’d just told me the truth about him and Cara, even if it would’ve reinforced everything I’ve always known, instead of being so guarded about his past.
When I let him go and grab my bag, there’s only one thing I know I’ll regret never saying. “Tom?”
He nods, wiping his eyes once more and stuffing his hands into his pockets.
“You opened my eyes to a lot these past two months. I think I was watching the world pass me by in black and white before I met you. But one thing you showed me”—I take a quick breath—“is that allowing myself to fall for someone takes even more courage than hiding behind walls of cynicism in hopes of never getting hurt.” Inside my chest something is breaking, but I push onward.
I’ve come this far. “So I need to tell you that I lied to you back in New York.”
He doesn’t respond and I wonder if he knows he won’t be able to speak without crying. The thought guts me clean through the center.
“I said I wasn’t going to fall in love with you.” A sad smile cuts my face as the tears drip down. My voice breaks as I tell him, “But I did.”
He nods, though he’s welling up again. “I love you, Clementine.” He wipes at his eyes. “So fuckin’ much, it’s killing me.”
And that’s the last of the courage I had stored up. I was someone else these past eight weeks. A braver, bolder, happier Clementine. One filled with new dreams, and confidence, and hope for the future, and a real, tremendous love. But I can’t live in a fantasy anymore.
I leave Tom there on that tour bus with the last bits of her. And I don’t look back.