It’s a Love Story

Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29

I T’S THREE O’CLOCK WHEN I SNEAK FROM OUR ROOM into the shower. I turn on the water and catch myself in the mirror. I am different. I am beautiful in a way I never thought possible, like all the way through. My hair is wild, and it looks like it was meant to be like that. I am the star of my very own love story, and the entire hair and makeup team has conspired to make me glow. I dress in jeans and a black top, sandals with a little heel to give me a boost. I rest my hands on the sink and lean in toward the mirror. I am having a moment; I feel happy. I push down the automatic fear that this will be pulled from me, that I’ll be happy and the world will take it back. I can see myself just under the surface, this whole version of Jane who can be strong and funny at the same time. This version who can be completely herself and still be called lovable. I remember what Dan said about his budding sense of self being like a lit match on the beach; mine feels precarious too, and I want to protect it.

I need to bring my strongest, best self if I’m going to ask Jack for a favor. This loose, open version feels like my best self. I smile at her in the mirror. “Nice sideburns, Elvis,” I practice. It actually feels good.

I text Clem: Okay this is it. Tonight we actually see Jack, pep talk?

Clem doesn’t reply.

Aidan and Paula drive us to the Owl Barn. Dan is holding my hand in the back seat, and I am trying to imagine the warmth of him coating my body like armor. I turn to him and he’s already watching me.

“You ready?” he asks.

“I guess. Last chance.” I give his hand a squeeze. I am absolutely not ready, but I am happy and raw and in love, I think. There has to be some power in that.

The parking lot is full when we arrive, so we park on a residential street and walk to the Owl Barn. People are milling around everywhere, lining up to get in and buying merch from guys with pushcarts. Finn’s left word with security, and we all get in through the side door. Dan and I stand just offstage with the half-baked plan that we will catch Jack as he comes in. Dan’s behind me with his arms around my chest as we listen to a band warm up. His head rests on my shoulder.

“I feel like I met a girl on vacation, but I get to take her home with me tomorrow,” he says.

I am dying to get from here to tomorrow. I don’t necessarily want to leave Long Island, but I do want to get to the other side of this Jack thing, one way or another. I want to move forward with everything, Dan especially, and stop looking back. Telling Dan about my dad has me feeling vulnerable, like someone pulled up the shades and you can see right into my wobbly heart. But there’s something about him that makes me think I can wander onto the high wire and be okay.

I turn around so I can see his face. There’s so much love there, like he’s happy he gets to look at me. “I’m glad this isn’t going to be long distance,” I say, playing along.

“We’d have to write letters.”

“And my mother would hide them.”

He laughs. “I have total faith that you’d go to the mailbox for me.”

“I would,” I say and wrap my arms around his neck. I think what I want to say is I’d do anything for you. I can picture him at my house with Clem and me. It’s not a daydream kind of scene. We’re not sipping champagne under the bougainvillea. We’re rinsing dishes in my tile-countered kitchen and laughing. I imagine him pulling sheets out of the dryer. I have never felt this way before, and I want to tell him, but I don’t know how. I’ve never read a script where the heroine tells the hero that she wants to do chores with him.

We stand offstage and watch as four bands come and go. I am relaxed in my body and feel oddly sure of who I am with Dan’s arms around me. We are quiet inside the din of the music. His hands on my hips, his lips brushing my cheek. So when the ground starts rumbling, I am surprised, but I immediately know what it is. Jack has bypassed us somehow and has walked onstage, where he is taking his time tuning his guitar. The crowd is frantic, and from where I stand, I can see the calm on his face, like he knows the world will wait any amount of time to hear him sing. This isn’t one of those times when you haven’t seen someone in twenty years and you’re surprised at how much they’ve changed. I see Jack all the time. Music videos, magazines, TMZ. That time I threw an orange soda at his car. In fact, I’ve seen his grown-up rock star face many more times than I ever saw him at sixteen, pre-whiskers, pre-anything. He turns his head, and I see that he’s shaved his sideburns. I’m entirely unarmed. Our half-baked plan is already half failed, and this is my last chance to try. I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans.

“He must have come in the other side,” Dan says. “Let’s stay here. Finn will stall him if he leaves that way.”

It’s hard to describe the screaming that erupts when Jack starts playing. It’s easier to describe the effects of it— the ground I’m standing on starts to shake, my head fills with the color red, and I can feel where the roots of my hair meet my scalp. I squeeze Dan’s hands.

He sings “Purple,” his newest release, and I can feel the beat of it in my chest, competing with the rabbit’s beat of my heart. I am not nervous in my mind the way I can be at meetings or before dates. I’m nervous at a cellular level, like every atom of my being is desperate for him to write us a song. He sings “By My Side” and then “Coconut Girl.” As the last song ends, the crowd roars, and two security guards escort him toward our side of the stage. He is walking directly toward me, and the breath leaves my lungs as if I’ve been kicked.

“This is it,” Dan says. “You can totally do this. You’re totally worth writing a song for.” Tears burn in my throat at this. It’s like he’s seen the hole in me and wants to fill it.

“Thank you,” I say. He puts a gentle hand on my back to push me ahead.

I take a step forward to block the exit and my mouth goes dry. I open it and close it twice before I say, “Jack.”

He looks me right in the eye. “Good night,” he says. Polite. Neutral. He has no idea who I am. He doesn’t even seem to remember that I was the same nut who chucked a soda at his car. His security guards place themselves between us before I can say anything else, and he walks out the door. I feel like I’ve just dropped my keys down a sewer grate—there’s no getting them back.

A guy who seems like the right age to be Jack’s uncle is following them out, and I have absolutely nothing to lose. “Lyle,” I say, and he stops. “I’m Jane Jackson, we spoke on the phone.” He shows no recognition at all. “Jack and I recorded ‘Jump-Start Love Song’ together when we were kids.

He smiles. “Pop Rocks?”

“Yes, we did the duet together.” I do not pause long enough for him to walk away. “And I’d really like to talk to him, like for five minutes about a movie I’m making. Can you help me out?”

“You were the one with the braces?”

“Yes! That was me! Great memory. We really had a great time with that song. Can you get me five minutes?”

“Hang on,” he says and walks outside. He leaves the side door open and there’s a limousine waiting. He taps on the window, it lowers, he says something and nods.

“This is good,” Dan says and takes my hand. “You’re sweating like crazy. This is going to be fine. A favor from an old friend.”

Lyle turns around and motions for me to come, and I walk outside without a word. My chest is in my throat. I am aware of my position here, the smaller person asking the bigger person for a favor. I take a second and try to imagine myself as a lit match on a totally still night.

Lyle opens the limousine door for me, and as I step in, I notice that I am in jeans and a black top, the same thing I wore the day I met Jack. This throws me off for a second. I want to explain that it’s a coincidence, though Jack would never remember that day the way I do. That quick thought is another gust of wind on my precariously lit match.

Jack is on the left side of the black bench seat with a tiny cup of espresso in his hands. I try to imagine performing for a huge crowd, indoors in August, and then hydrating on three sips of espresso. He hands his cup to Lyle and leans forward to give me an awkward, half-sitting hug. He smells of scotch, coffee, and mint gum, and the combination makes me even queasier than I already feel. “Janey Jakes! Of course I remember you!”

I read his face for a clue as to what color that memory is in his mind. You remember seeing a dolphin family surface during a beautiful sunset, and you also remember the noro- virus. There are a million shades in between. I’m sitting across from him with my knees pressed together, and my hands folded so that I can contain all of my energy in one place. Lyle is sitting next to him, and I sort of wish I had someone sitting next to me, a backup person.

“I know you must be dying to get out of here,” I say, though I think I might be talking about myself. “So I’ll just get to it. I’m a creative executive at Clearwater Studios now, and I’ve just acquired a really beautiful script, it’s a love story. And we—”

He interrupts me. “Remember we went to Studio City for like an hour and then you said you loved me?” He turns to Lyle. “I swear to God.”

Okay.

There it is.

I feel it in my chest, simmering. Lyle laughs, though I don’t know if he thinks this is funny or if it’s his job to laugh.

Lyle looks me up and down and says, “That tracks.”

“Beverly Hills,” I say after a quick intake of breath. “And yes, I did say that. I was fourteen.” Now that I’ve said it, I think the phrase “I was fourteen” should be a blanket explanation for every stupid thing everyone did that year. No one should be held responsible for the things fourteen is capable of. Jack and Lyle are both smiling. I roll my shoulders back and take another breath. “So we need something big to make this film commercial enough to be green- 1 it, and since you’re on the radio every single time I get in my car, I thought of you.” I toss my hands up in a theatrical ta-da and then backtrack and squeeze them together. “Just one Jack Quinlan song for the soundtrack and I can almost guarantee you an Oscar. That’s how good this script is.” They’re both looking at me, and Lyle has a smirk on his face that I want to rub off with my fist.

“I remember you now,” Lyle says. “From like a week ago. I called you back. You sounded a little desperate. It was cute, and it sounds like nothing’s changed.”

Jack shakes his head and smiles. “Love that.”

Hearing how consistent I am about being desperate takes me back to that night where I was desperate for love but was told that I was too weird and gross to have it. Humiliated, I turned to the comfort of my parents’ love story, only to find out that Jack was right.

That little pink envelope, then the letter, the word “brutal” written so casually in that sloppy handwriting, a throwaway word. A throwaway girl. I was crazy to unearth these details today, and now they’re out, swimming inside me and opening the darkest door in my heart. It’s where I carry my essential not-enoughness. It’s where I know that my mom knows too, and that she’s lied to me my whole life to keep me from finding out that I’m not worth it. This old, old pain forms a lump in my throat.

“I’m not at all desperate,” I say, punctuating each word the way a desperate person might.

Jack slumps back in his seat and turns to Lyle. “She was kind of hot,” he says. Lyle nods, and I have this feeling that I am not here. That I’ve dissolved or that Jack thinks the world is a big limo and he can put up the partition anywhere he wants. “But then also kind of ridiculous? I don’t really remember. Perfect Janey Jakes.” He doesn’t laugh, but Lyle does.

“Yes, that was my job,” I say. I can feel myself shrinking. My hands are clasped so tight that I worry one of those tiny, tiny bones might snap. There’s a burning at the back of my nose that feels like betrayal. This pain has nothing to do with Jack, I realize. Jack is just tied up in that day, the way an old song can take you back to a kiss. Sharing the truth about my dad with Dan and then seeing pompous Jack has left me uncomfortably exposed for what I am. I don’t know how to lock that tiny door in my heart, but I do know that I finally have my audience with Jack Quinlan and I am probably going to start to cry.

“So you’re telling me now you want me to do a song for your movie?” Jack asks.

“Yes? But you can read it first? To decide?” I don’t know how to stop the question marks in my voice.

“I don’t have time for that, Janey. But seriously, it’s hilarious to see you again. Do do do do do do,” he finishes with the familiar riff.

Lyle takes that as his cue to get out of the limo and hold the door open for me.

“I could just send it to you and you could consider reading it?”

“Oh my God, Janey. Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.” The words feel like a slap. I can normally take a verbal slap—I work in Hollywood—but not today. I am too raw already.

“Yes,” I say. That’s what I need to do. Stop.

I move to get out of the limo, and Jack says, “Wait.” I pause for a second without turning around. My body is telling me to keep going, get out and run. My ambition to get this movie made tells me to turn around, so I do.

“Yeah?”

“It was shitty that they didn’t give us credit on that song.”

“Yes, it was,” I say and wait for more. I glance up at Lyle, who’s as interested in where this is going as I am, probably because he’s the one who agreed to it on Jack’s behalf.

“I mean, I understood about me, I wasn’t even on the show. But they could have let you sing it for real. I hate that they were so hung up on looks and charisma and whatever. We were kids.” He gives me the smile that a serial killer practices in the mirror to feign compassion.

I am at a loss for a response. I think he’s just told me that I was unattractive and uncharismatic, but that’s not possible. People don’t say things like that to each other. “It was fine,” I say finally, my favorite lie. “We got paid.”

“Yeah, I know. I just wanted to say I felt bad for you. It had to hurt.”

Lyle says, “It made sense to me, Hailey was so compelling.”

“Compelling?” My voice cracks.

“Oh, no, sorry,” Lyle says. “I don’t mean that as an insult. God, no. I just mean they knew Hailey was the sort of person an audience would keep coming back for, she’d hold their interest. It was a business decision and it worked out. They ate that song up.”

I have never heard a word resonate with so much clarity. Compelling is the exact thing I am not. It’s been a feeling I’ve had for decades, but I’ve never been able to name it before. Thank you to Lyle, the namer. I am uncompelling, unable to hold interest. You could be watching me and turn the channel. You could be my dad and decide not to be. This absolutely tracks.

I need to get out of this limo. “Yes, well, it all worked out. Thank you for the time.” Jack didn’t even connect that I was the one who threw a soda at his car—that’s how unmemorable I am. I keep my head down as I step out of the limo. I am dangerously close to tears, and I don’t want anyone looking at my face.

Dan is standing in the open stage door, waiting for me. Music is blaring behind him and he walks down the steps. “No? Your face is telling me it was no.”

“It was no.”

Dan takes me in his arms and I’m a little too numb to feel it. “Let’s get out of here,” he says into my hair.

We walk for a few silent minutes before he stops me and asks, “So what happened? Did you have a chance to pitch the movie or did he just shut you down?”

“He shut me down all right.”

“He remembered you though. He had to.”

“Yep,” I say. “He remembered me exactly right.” I have never been described so precisely. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I start walking. I wonder if a nervous breakdown feels like having every thought you’ve ever had all at once. I am thinking about that night and the cold feeling in my heart reading the words “I do love you, Terry, but fatherhood is brutal.” I think of the next time my mom told me their story and repeated the Notebook thing that stupid, believing, younger me had come up with, and how alone I felt seeing the lie on her face. I think of Hailey making it and Jack making it and even Will selling real estate for a camera. I can feel it bubbling under my skin, a smattering of rage cross-pollinating and growing. I knew this already. I am not compelling enough for love. I am not worth sticking around for. And all of this has to stop. Jack is a total douchebag, but he was right about that.

“I don’t know why you brought me here,” I say. And I mean to Long Island and into his bed and into this place where I have big feelings and a bracelet and believe in unicorns. Of course this isn’t going to end as a big happy thing.

“Well, you asked me to,” he says and takes my hand.

I stop and take my hand back. “I didn’t have that much of a choice.”

Dan looks completely calm. “This is going to be fine, we’ll find another way to get this made.”

I look up at his impossibly handsome face and the way he’s looking at me like he loves me. It’s so cruel to look at me that way. It’s just because he’s only known me a week. He’ll understand soon enough. This might actually be our fourth date. A sadness washes over me, a fresh cut on an old wound, and then the rage starts to surface.

“Maybe you’re going to be fine, Dan. With your big perfect family and your weird quiet projects. But I’m not fine.” It hurts a little coming out, but it’s the truth so I say it again. “I’m not fine.” I start walking again, so he does too. “I don’t know what happened here, or even what we were trying to do. But this is so stupid, it’s just a story. It’s bullshit.”

“What’s bullshit?” he asks. He takes my hand and stops me. “What are we talking about? Don’t say us.”

“All of it. You want a list? This script. Me finally making a movie. Me and you together. Standing with you in the rain. Some shitty watercolor. It’s just too fucking humid here, that’s all.”

He pulls me into his arms and holds me tight. I listen to his beating heart. I smell his quiet smell. I know this is the last time, so I just take a second, like a fading dream. I am awake now.

“Okay, that’s enough,” I say, pulling away. “Sorry for the little meltdown and sorry for all of it. Let’s get back to your parents’ house and just put this behind us.” I start walking, maybe rudely fast, and he’s walking alongside of me.

“Jane. Talk to me. You’re really upset. This isn’t another thing you can gloss over.” He grabs my arm.

“Another thing?” The words shoot out of my mouth like a bullet. “I don’t gloss over things.”

“You do. Like with your mom. She’s been lying to you this whole time, but you’re lying right back.”

Literally how dare he. I stand there and look at his wide Batman eyes, and I feel a hot burning in my chest. “So I’m a liar now? And you’re an expert on my relationship with my mom? Just want to be super clear here.”

“No, of course not. I just want to know what happened with Jack so we can talk about it. Like, let’s face it and move on.”

“Face it and move on” enrages me. It’s an oversimplification of the dumpster fire of my feelings. Of my dad leaving and my mom not wanting me to know I was never enough.

He takes my hand. “I know you’re angry right now— can we just go back to when I was telling you why you’re lovable?” He reaches to touch my clenched jaw and I step back.

“Oh, stop. Quit trying to turn everything into a love story. Everything isn’t always about love. We’re just people on a trip. It’s called a fling, Dan. Look it up.”

He stops walking and I turn to see him, recoiled like he’s been slapped. “Those are some pretty broad strokes, Jane,” he says.

We are at a standoff here under the old-fashioned street- lamps on this stretch of road unimaginatively named Main Street. I could reach out to him now and apologize—it’s clear that I’ve hurt him. I’ve taken something that felt specific and once-in-a-lifetime, and I’ve turned it into a weekend at Club Med with a guy named Bruno. I should take his hand and tell him that he is it for me, that I want to go back to LA and turn him into forever. But I am too small for big declarations right now. The part of me that can get up and be brave has retreated through the gaping hole in my heart.

So I say, “Right?” It means nothing. It’s too light, and the nothingness of this comment feels mean.

“What’s happening right now? Don’t you dare take this back,” he says.

“Good one,” I say. It’s my post office voice—that’s how small and mean I am. I feel like I’ve let someone convince me there are unicorns, only to find out they were kidding. I am in free fall here, but I know one thing: there are no unicorns, especially not for me.

I start to walk again, through town and toward the house. The streets are quiet because the festival is still going on and I can hear his footsteps maybe ten feet behind me. He’s giving me space, which I appreciate, but he really has no idea how much space I’m capable of giving him.