Track 18 I’ve Had Enough #2
He nodded, almost to himself. “But I can’t follow you down a road that’s killing you.”
I chewed on my lip as I tried to control my breathing, my tears. My fucking heart.
He took another step away from me… and then—the sound of a lock clicking sent our heads toward the door in a sudden jerk.
In the next second, the doorknob turned—and Jake walked in. Holding a bouquet of peonies. My favorite.
My eyes locked on Jake’s widened, confused glare as it bounced between me and E and back again.
He closed the door behind him slowly as he stepped into the room, guarded and unsure.
The silence that filled the space was heavy and sullen. A thick smoke was clinging around us, settling in our lungs, making it harder to speak the longer we stood there. Thankfully, I found my voice.
“Jake, this is—”
“Hey, man, I’m E.”
E interrupted my introduction as he stepped toward Jake and held out a hand. Jake’s eyes snapped to E’s hand and back up to meet his eyes before he reached out and took it, silent recognition sweeping across his face.
“Jake,” he said firmly as he let go. His eyes landed on me next, and the questions in them were everything I feared, mangled into one moment, crashing down on us in an intense wave of turmoil and distress.
“I’ll, uh… I’ll catch up with you later,” E said, barely looking at me. “It was nice to meet you, man.” He looked at Jake once more before making his way to the door.
Jake moved to the side as E passed, both their gazes downcast and away.
“Yeah, you too.”
Jake’s eyes followed E as he closed the door behind him. Then he turned to me in what could only be described as a look of complete and utter betrayal.
He waited for me to speak first, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. His thumb grazed his nose before he shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Want to tell me what that was about?” His voice was firm and burdened, like he already knew the answer to his question but wanted me to say it anyway.
I knew the time to deliver the truth had come, whether I was ready for it or not.
But instead of feeling bold enough to admit my horrible betrayals, I felt weak and frail.
Jake’s unexpected presence had shaken me out of my courage to come clean.
My body ached from the bitter weight of the confession that suddenly felt stolen from me.
“He was just in town.” It was as if the truth had been locked in my throat, the key tossed into the darkest depths of the ocean.
I tried to sound confident in my ridiculous answer, but my voice was shaky.
Worn down from the wound my heart had just endured with E, petrified of the agony it would now face with Jake.
“Yeah. On your birthday? That’s a coincidence.” He paused for a moment; his eyes painfully fixed on mine.
“He’s just a friend…” My belly twisted with my lie. I wanted to be honest. I wanted to tell him everything—but I wasn’t ready to hurl myself off the cliff and into the sea of truth.
He nodded.
“Looked like a little more than that. Friends are happy to see each other, Sydney.” He gestured between me and the door. “You two looked like far more than that.” He paused and waited for me to explain. When I didn’t, he came out and asked the question.
“What the hell is going on, Sydney?”
I didn’t answer. We were quiet for a moment, he searching for words, I searching for rescue. But there would be no rescue. There’d be no running. This time, I’d have to face the music. And I was frozen with fear over it.
“How did he know where we live?”
It was a simple question. One I hadn’t considered.
Something that slipped my mind completely.
In all these years, I’d only ever mentioned E’s name once.
I never told Jake we stayed in touch or that I saw him on occasion.
As far as Jake knew, I no longer had a friend named E and certainly wasn’t close enough with him for him to know where I lived in Austin.
“Has he been here before?”
Panic boiled inside me. I could feel the tight restriction in my chest, the collapsing of my lungs as the impending doom blanketed me in the hurt that soaked his words.
But it wasn’t impending. It was here. And it was real.
I nodded, and I closed my eyes.
“Holy shit.” He rubbed his face with his hands, and I saw the millions of questions run through his head as he scrambled to grasp one. “How long has this been going on?”
“It’s not like that—”
“Is this why you always came home so depressed? Because of him? Because you’d be with him and have to come back to me and be all screwed up over it?!” He pointed at the door, and more questions came, too fast for him to settle on one.
“Has he… Are you…” He fumbled through his words, and my heart imploded as my stomach did somersaults.
Sweat pooled at every crease on my body.
I wanted to explain. I felt the truth ripping its way through my body, up my throat, only to fall dead on my tongue.
He released a deep breath as he tried to collect himself, his hands interlocked on top of his head.
My body trembled with the anxious waves that came over me.
“How long?” he asked, but again I remained silent. I was unable to speak. Unable to answer if I tried—how could I define a time for something that never ended though it never truly began? For something that always was, even when it wasn’t?
He grabbed a stool at the island and collapsed into it, dumbfounded, lost, and completely heartbroken. Betrayed. My stomach rolled in nauseous waves as I watched him endure the agony I had inflicted on him.
“I’m so sorry,” I finally let out. “I’ve made terrible mistakes. Ones I can never come back from. I…” I sobbed. “I’m so, so sorry.”
He took a deep jagged breath. “I don’t even know what you're apologizing for. I don’t know that I want to know.”
My lungs quaked, begging for air, but I held my breath to quiet my cries.
“Jake—“
“Are you leaving me?”
“No,” I choked out. My voice was raspy, and my eyes burned, swollen from tears.
“I don’t… I just… I didn’t mean for all this…
” I looked around for an escape from my convoluted mind, but there was nothing.
No door or window I could run through. No shield I could hide behind.
I sank my head into my hands and cried. “I’m sorry. ”
A dense silence fell on us. And then he asked the hardest question of all. The one I’d spent years avoiding. The one I tried with all my might to undo.
“Do you love him?” He looked at me with the ache of a man who had lost his life’s dream and was looking at the remains. His everything scattered on the floor as if it had never stood to begin with.
“I love you,” I cried.
A tear fell from his eye, and he wiped it away with the heel of his hand as he stood.
“Yeah,” he croaked. He placed his hands wide before him, pushing against the counter as he bent forward. His head hung low between his shoulders, defeated.
“I took a different flight to be here.” He sniffed. “I changed my flight to one that had a layover in Austin, just so I could be here for a few hours on your birthday.”
My heart sank at the pain I’d caused the perfect man who loved me so much, whom I loved, and could have loved better, if I were ever whole to begin with. I stood frozen, tongue-tied, and tortured. I did my best to stifle my cries as he sorted out his racing thoughts.
“I think I’m gonna go,” he said abruptly. He looked up, but not at me.
“Jake,” I sobbed as I closed the distance between us.
He pushed himself off the counter to face me, but he didn’t meet my eyes.
My voice trembled, my eyes swollen and red.
I looked anything but beautiful, but I wanted him to see me.
To see that I loved him. To see that I was sorry and that it would never be enough.
“Look at me,” I begged, but he wouldn’t. “Please?”
The moment he did will live like a scar on my heart forever. The pain in his welling eyes, his furrowed brow knitted together in complete anguish and distrust—it was a bullet through my chest. And I deserved it.
“I love you,” I said. I cried. I pleaded. Because it was true. I did love him. The part of my heart that he had would always be his.
He wrapped his arms around me tightly and held me as I cried into his chest. I wanted to keep him.
I wanted to hold him there forever. I wanted to go back to before I ruined everything—before I traveled home, before I shared that first kiss, before I opened my heart to anyone other than the wholesome man before me.
But I couldn’t keep him there.
Because he let me go.
He sniffed and cleared his throat before he held me by the shoulders. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“I’m gonna go.”
“Please stay,” I whispered.
He kissed my forehead.
“I think…” he said, taking a deep breath. “I think you have a lot to sort out. And I shouldn’t be here while you do.”
He cradled the back of my head and closed his eyes tightly as he kissed my forehead again. My heart was a pool of sorrow and loss. I hated how much I had hurt someone I loved. The man who loved me. Who cared for me, even through his pain. Even when I didn’t deserve it. I called out after him.
“How can you be worried about what I need right now?”
He turned to me from the door and, with the slightest, quickest ghost of a pained grin, he said, “Because I love you.” And I knew it was true.
My soul cracked, shattered there on the floor between us. He looked at me once more, and then he walked out the door. And I had no idea when I’d see him again.
I fell to my knees, completely submitting to the weight of my sunken world.
I had lost Jake. I had lost E. I had ruined everything and everyone. And I deserved every bit of pain I felt.