Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jackson
A lexander and I talk about work for the rest of the afternoon. He doesn't buy my claim Daphne's schoolmate needed her help with a test, but he doesn't call me on it.
After lunch and two too many gin and tonics, I tell him the truth.
I don't know if I can leave my family to go to New York City.
I love her. I do.
But maybe that isn't enough.
I was wrong before. Relationships are more than commitment and compromise. Relationships need more than duty.
But they need more than love too.
Sometimes, two people fall in love, they enjoy their time together, they part on good terms.
The end.
That doesn't erase or invalidate their love.
I can love her and let her go.
It's the only thing I can do if I really love her.
Two hours later, I climb into my sister's hybrid, rest my head against the passenger side door, and watch the mansions blur into the sandy hills.
The car hums with the miserable confessions of one of Cassie's favorite artists. Someone I've never heard of. Well. Someone Cassie has gushed about a hundred times, who most people have never heard of.
It sounds so easy for her to pour her heart out.
Is it that easy?
Is it easy for anyone?
My sister eyes me with concern, but she doesn't force me to talk. Not at first.
Not until the album finishes and another starts. A different miserable woman. With a lower voice and more jazz influence.
I don't know her name either.
Cassie waits for a quiet moment in the song. "Daphne told me what happened." She does the unthinkable. She turns the volume down. "With school." Hurt drips into her voice. "I'm going to miss her."
"Me too."
Cassie studies me for a long moment, looking for some clue on how to respond. She releases her gaze and turns to the road, studying the curves in the asphalt. "You've always had such an intense vision of your future."
"You too," I say.
She nods. "That's how I know. Because I'm the same. I saw the days with my notebook. The nights in dark venues. I imagined everything success would bring. Money, recognition, status. And it did. I won't lie. It feels good to do good work. It feels good to sell a lot of songs and make a lot of cash. It feels good to succeed at this thing I love."
"You've done well." I'm proud of her. For trying. For succeeding. For not listening to people who suggested she do something more practical. For being strong and tough. For not needing me anymore.
I resent it sometimes. I miss when we were kids, when Cassie always needed her older brother around to protect her. I miss the role.
I wore it well, even if Laurel and Zack rarely accepted help.
Cassie and I were always close. Then she got older. And she needed something else from me. Room to grow. Room to make her own mistakes.
She gives me a minute to collect my thoughts, then she continues. "I've been lucky," she says. "I'm grateful. Really. But I don't feel the way I expected either."
She doesn't? This is everything Cassie has ever wanted. She lives and breathes music.
She's working her dream job.
She's living her dream life.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"I love what I do. But I loved it more when I was a teenager, writing lyrics in my journal. I loved it more when I was focused on the work itself. When I didn't have to put art second. Or even third."
I don't completely understand—I don't have an artistic temperament—but I can almost imagine it.
"The work itself is the same," she says. "And I love it the same. It fills me the same. Not more. Not better. The same."
I look at her curiously.
"I thought success would fill me inside. But it doesn't. It can't. All the money in the world can't change the pain I feel when I get lonely. It can't erase the self-loathing thoughts in my head. Or ease the worry over my boyfriend's sobriety. It can't make me into a person without depression. It can get me help, and make my life easier, and solve all sorts of problems. But only problems caused by lack of money."
"What are you talking about, Cass?"
She continues without answering, "Love is like that too. It's this beautiful, amazing, agonizing thing. It fills me in so many ways. But it doesn't solve my problems. It doesn't make me into a different person."
What?
"Nothing can fill that hole inside me except me," she says.
"Cassie, I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about."
She laughs. "Am I being too esoteric?"
"Acting like one of your muses." What the hell is that guy's name? The one she was in love with in high school because of his wounded soul? Has she met him now? How did he meet that vision?
Oh God—
What if they fucked—
She wouldn't, would she?
I don't want to know.
"Okay, let me break it down," she says.
"We lawyers are literal."
"You are not," she says. "The law is the most abstract thing in the world! But okay, sure. We'll go with that. I'm happy with Damon. He makes me happy. Spending time with him makes me happy. But I can't spend all my time with him. And that happiness can't erase my other problems."
"I'm following."
"And work is the same. I find fulfillment in the act of writing itself. In the words themselves. I feel good when I'm listening to music or grooving to a song itself. When I have to give that away to someone else, well, sometimes it feels good. Sometimes it doesn't. It's not where I fill my well."
"This is the more literal explanation?" I ask.
She nods.
"Seriously, Cass, can you drop the Morpheus shit?" I know The Matrix is her favorite movie, but I don't remember her ever saying she loved the philosophical ramblings of the mentor figure.
She looks me in the eyes. "Are you happy?"
"What?"
"Will either thing make you happy? Staying here and making partner or moving to New York with Daphne?"
Won't they?
"Or does that happiness live inside you somewhere?"
"This is still Morpheus shit," I say.
"They need lawyers in New York," she says.
"I need you."
"And New York is three thousand miles from Zack," she says.
"And from you," I say.
"I'll visit," she says. "Mom and Dad and Laurel and Zack too."
"I couldn't follow her."
"Why not?"