28. Jack
28
JACK
A fter the past two days walking through work numb and in a daze, I was glad it was Friday evening. Nick informed me that Ashley had requested a few days’ sick leave. She hadn't even spoken to me about it in person, and I wasn't going to chase her down. She made her decision rushing out of my office. She probably went directly to Gooding's office and cozied up to him. Yes, I was cynical, but no one could blame me.
Dropping my jacket and lab coat by the door, I went straight to the kitchen to pour myself a drink. I skipped the beer and went for the heavy stuff. It wasn't my weekend on call and I felt like I'd been put through the wringer for long enough. Ashley would have insisted I take it easy and would likely have done other things to help me relax, but just the thought of her had my thoughts jumbled. I wanted to reach out to her and push her away in the same breath.
I downed the first drink without even thinking how it would affect me. I hadn’t eaten since a bite of a granola bar at breakfast. The whiskey would sink to an empty stomach and get into my blood faster than was responsible, but I didn't care. I took the next few swigs directly out of the bottle, then poured a few more fingers into my glass and carried both the glass and the bottle back into the living room.
Kicking off my shoes, I sat on the couch and put my feet up and turned on the television. My phone was off. My only plan was to drink until I passed out and hope I didn't have a horrible hangover in the morning. I didn't want to think or feel. And most importantly, I didn't want to be bothered.
For weeks, my anxiety had been through the roof, starting with the lawsuit and then surrounding anything and everything that had to do with Ashley. If she wasn't thrilling me and pushing my buttons, making my heart race and my cortisol spike from sneaking around behind Calvin's back, it was me fearing she was sneaking around behind my back. Whiskey probably wasn’t the best way to calm my adrenal glands, but the immediacy of my need for relief trumped my doctoral wisdom on that matter.
There was nothing interesting on TV, so I sat with the remote in my hand watching the TV guide channel as the alcohol kicked in. My head swam. My heart hammered. I decided to watch a horror movie, but when I selected the channel, I clicked the wrong station and landed on a sappy romance. The woman was confessing her love to a man who had zero interest in her, and I felt her pain.
I angrily shut the show off and clicked over to a boxing match, but that got my blood pumping as I pictured Sam Gooding’s face in front of me. I felt my chest and shoulders tighten every time the athlete took a swing. It wasn't good for my mood or my blood pressure so I switched it again and finally settled on an old Western with smoking guns and horseback riding. It was just the distraction I needed to keep my mind off the present and anywhere but my self-loathing obsession.
When the Western was over, I was seriously drunk and halfway through the bottle. Another old movie came on and I let it play out. My breathing was heavy. I knew I was overdoing it, but the ache in my chest was still there. I had slowed my drinking considerably but still clutched the bottle in my fist, having given up on even using the glass.
Ashley wasn't really sick. I knew she was avoiding me after I went off on her. I knew it wasn't how I should have handled it. She deserved so much better than that. Any human did. If I had been thinking rationally, I would have just ended things calmly and told her it wasn't working for me. My heart was too messed up after Barbra, and I couldn't have any relationship until I could stay calm.
I loved Ashley more than anything, but my own fears and insecurities made it impossible for me to function. When Linda asked me why I wasn't with someone, I should have been honest and just told them Barbra destroyed my ability to love and be loved and I was better off alone. I said I wasn’t able to because I had no time, and it had been a lie. I wanted nothing more than to have a close relationship where I felt safe. I just doubted it would ever happen for me.
The bottle fit in my hand so perfectly, even long after I stopped drinking, I kept holding it. I stared numbly into space as one show passed into the next. Just after nine p.m., someone knocked on my door, and I, being mostly drunk still, ignored it. I looked in that direction with hooded eyes and lacked motivation to stand and walk over there.
The knocking continued, three, then four times. My staring continued too until I heard Calvin's voice, and I knew the time for me to face what had happened had come.
"Jack, I know you're home. Open the door, please."
I braced myself for whatever might come next, but I didn't get up. Instead, I shouted, "It's open," and remained seated. I heard the door click open and saw Calvin's very put-together form walk right into my living room. He had his hands in his pockets and a stern expression on his face.
"Hmm, looks like you're nursing a wound.” His astute observation irritated me. He knew this was the way I responded when Barbra did what she did. I missed a week of work by going on a bender, and only when Ashley threw herself at me—at only nineteen years old—did I realize how pathetic I must have looked. Calvin had lectured me, and it made me sober up.
This time, I didn't even look him in the eye. I turned my gaze back downward to the bottle and felt sorry for myself. Two women, two relationships, same outcome. I was my own worst enemy. Somehow, I had failed both of them badly enough that they wanted someone other than me. I knew I was the common denominator in the situation because how could two different women act exactly the same when they'd never really known each other? Either that or I was just the unluckiest man alive.
"Can I sit?" he asked, but he didn’t wait for me to answer. He parked himself in the recliner opposite me and reached for the remote, long since on the table. He shut the TV off and sighed. "Ashley came to visit me, Jack."
The comment roused some curiosity, but the alcohol deadened my desire to say anything. Of course Ashley would go visit him. She was his daughter.
"She needed you to be there for her as a boss the way she was there for you when investigating what happened." I heard the chastising edge in Calvin's tone and remembered my promise to him, to look out for her. I had royally screwed that up.
"Yeah, I think she's off the hook." My words were slurred so obviously, I knew I was drunk. There was no way it got past Calvin. "Talked to Nick earlier."
"Yes, well there is certainly a lot of gossip around this subject." Calvin pressed his fingertips together in front of himself, and I knew it was coming. He was about to unleash in his very fatherly, calm way, and it was going to make me hate myself all over again when I just started to tamp that down.
"That's not all we talked about, Jack."
I slowly raised my chin to meet his gaze, and I knew she had told him about us. I wondered what details she gave. If she mentioned how we had sex on his boat or how I had confessed to loving her. None of it mattered. It was over now. But it might have made him feel differently about me, especially considering I had been lying to him.
"Yeah?" My hand unconsciously brought the bottle of whiskey to my lips and I sipped. I knew better than to gulp. My body was suffering too much already.
"Yes, and she told me she's been having an affair with you."
I hated how his eyes burned holes through me. I felt guilty and dirty, ashamed and embarrassed. I was fifteen years older than her. I knew what that kind of age gap looked like to other people who didn’t know how special our connection was. To Calvin, it probably seemed abusive or manipulative. She was his little girl and I had seduced her into something she wasn’t emotionally ready for.
"Look, Cal, I?—"
"No, I am speaking right now." Calvin stood up and sighed heavily. "I'm upset, Jack. You and I have known each other a long time. I realize that Ashley is old enough to make her own choices in life and that sometimes, she will make choices I don't agree with, but you gave me your word that you would protect her, and then this happened."
His even keel unnerved me. I wanted him to be like me, to go off and shout, to berate me and belittle me. It was what I deserved. It was what I knew I needed—punishment. If he punished me hard enough, I wouldn’t punish myself anymore. I would be able to put down this bottle and hate myself into working again.
"Calvin, I got carried away. She was?—"
"I'm not finished." The way he cut me off felt healing. Certainly, now he would lash out and be angry. But his tone calmed again and I almost whimpered. "Men of our generation are meant to be leaders, make examples of our lives for the younger generation to know what the right thing is. I'm not angry you were dating her without my knowledge, though I am disappointed you felt you couldn’t come to me."
"What?" I asked, confused. I looked up at him and saw the anger in his eyes. He was definitely angry. "What is going on? I see you're angry. You can't say you're not."
"You didn't let me finish." His eyebrows rose and he licked his lips. "Men like us were taught to do the right thing, Jack. If you get a woman pregnant, you don't leave her high and dry. You take care of business. I'll be waiting to see if you are that man." He scowled at me, which was the worst punishment this gentle man could ever dish out to me in my state, and then strutted to the door and walked out, slamming it behind himself.
I was drunk. I was angry, feeling confused and depressed and overwhelmed. But his words didn't escape me. They took a few minutes to register, but when they did, my heart exploded with fear and more rage.
Ashley was pregnant? With my baby? And she hadn’t told me? It was paralyzing and at the same time was the only thing that made me get up off my couch all evening. I shot to my feet with the bottle in hand and took another big swig. I wanted to go to her apartment and confront her, find out why she'd never told me or if she ever planned to tell me.
For all I knew, it could be Sam Gooding's baby too, if she wasn't too prideful to admit she'd cheated. My head spun. My temper raged, and I paced. Even when the bottle was gone and I was carrying the empty thing in my hand, I couldn’t sit still. I was a caged lion, waiting for my prey to make a move so I could pounce on it, but my body had had enough. I was dizzy from drink and fatigue. I stumbled toward the couch thinking I would sit down and stubbed my toe.
Too angry to do much of anything else, I swung the empty bottle at the lamp on the end table and smashed them both. Then I collapsed on the sofa and let my heart break open. None of this was supposed to be happening. I was supposed to have gotten out of that lawsuit and moved on with my career. I didn't plan to fall in love. I never planned for Ashley to become so important to me, or that she would hurt me so badly.
I cried because I wanted her and because she hurt me too badly to ever have her. And then I cried because I was an idiot and pushed her away when she was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I was the reason she ran to Sam. And now she was gone. It was over.
I made a promise to myself that if I woke up after that much alcohol, I'd go talk to her. If what Calvin said was true, he was right. I had a responsibility, and I had to do right by her, even if it meant seeing her with Sam.