Chapter 21 Hestia #2
Continuing to tidy myself up, I waited as it rang and rang, my eyes darting down as it went through to the answerphone.
Narrowing my eyes, I tapped call again.
‘Pick up, pick up,’ I hissed, almost growling as it cut off again.
One of three things was true. He was unable to pick up, or he hadn’t seen it, or he was ignoring it. I knew his phone connected automatically to the Bluetooth in his truck, I’d seen it enough times. There’s no way he wouldn’t see it – mounted right on the dash in front of him.
‘Stubborn motherfucker,’ I breathed, now stabbing his name to redial. ‘You can fucking hate me if you want, but I will talk to you,’ I hissed, now brushing through my hair with unnecessary force.
For the next five minutes, I kept going. Cutting off time after time, until, after the fourteenth attempt, I came back into the bedroom and yanked open the curtains, the midday sun half blinding me.
Perching on the edge of the bed, instead I typed a message.
I know you’re ignoring me. I need to speak to you, Jesse. Please. If there’s only more thing you do for me, please just pick up.
I waited for it to go through, watching as the message delivered, then the read ticks appeared.
Please. For what we had.
I took a breath, waiting for that to go through too, blinking back the emotion it brought with it.
Waiting another minute, I pulled up his name again, my finger hovering over the button. But before I could tap it, he called me.
Heart in my mouth, I picked up. As the screen changed, I realized it was FaceTime again, not just a call.
Utterly bare-faced, the weight of the past three days under my eyes, I’d never felt more exposed.
‘I haven’t got time for this,’ he said, barely looking at the screen as he stared straight ahead. In his truck, clearly parked up, he sighed. ‘What is it?’
Momentarily stunned by his coldness, I could only gape for a moment, rearranging my thoughts into something that made sense.
‘Please don’t go,’ I said, the words coming out with far less force than I’d intended.
He glanced at me then, his eyes guarded, so filled with pain and confusion that I almost choked.
‘Don’t go to the rodeo,’ I blurted. ‘Please don’t ride feeling like this—’
‘You can’t just . . .’ he started, real anger blazing in his eyes.
‘You don’t get to ask shit of me like that.
What I am supposed to do, Hestia? You don’t want me, you don’t want us.
You’ve made that real fucking clear. You’ve got right back to your old life, so I’m doing the same. Isn’t that what you wanted?’
His words were like a slap, my eyes stinging as I struggled for breath.
‘That’s not . . . no, I mean . . .’ My throat closed as my eyes did, my hand over my mouth as my head swam. I realized it, in the darkness: this was rock bottom. I’d been descending for so long that I barely noticed the feeling as I bumped down onto the lowest point.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, his tone softened. ‘It’s a long drive.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ I blurted, nothing left to lose, no further to go. ‘How can you do this? Even if you don’t give a fuck about me, what about your mum? Your sisters? Lottie, Cole, Bailey, Lil?’
My voice was rising, trying to fill the depths of the pit I lay in, as though all sound was pulled into a vacuum.
‘Do what? Ride?’ he asked, his tone responding in turn. ‘What does it matter? It’s just what we do—’
‘Not like this,’ I shouted, opening my eyes, almost shaking the phone in frustration. ‘Not when you don’t give a fuck what happens. Don’t you fucking DARE ride in that state. I can’t just stand by and let it happen!’
His eyes flicked up from the screen, following something outside of the truck.
‘You’ve got no right to be angry with me,’ he snarled, every angle of his face taut. ‘Don’t act like you care now—’
‘I do care,’ I yelled, standing up, almost punching the wall in frustration.
‘It’s all I fucking feel, Jesse! Why do you think I walked away and came home?
Have you thought about that at all? That maybe I was trying to fucking spare you all of this?
’ I started to sob, my whole chest feeling as though it would disintegrate.
‘Nothing happened with Cal – he was deliberately trying to sabotage this, he set the whole thing up. I know I’m fucked up, I know I don’t fucking deserve you.
But I love you, Jesse. I’m selfish and I can’t fucking help it.
I love you so much that I can’t feel anything else. ’
There was a moment of silence, his face aghast, nothing but shock registering as I heard the passenger door of his truck open with a clunk.
A soft female voice began talking. The words were unimportant; his reaction said everything.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he repeated, his own voice empty. ‘Take care of yourself.’
I stared, stunned, as the phone moved for a moment before disconnecting – a flash of long, blonde hair and the side profile of a pretty face.
In the silence that followed, still staring at the black screen, I knew.
Chrissy. His ex.
The next couple of hours became a blur. I moved from anger to indifference, from bone-shaking grief to a terrifying stillness that blocked everything out, that told me to get back into bed and never move again.
Buried deep in my gut was the urge to get back on a plane, to follow Jesse to Livingston Peak – five hours north of Jackson, in Montana, as a Google Maps search revealed – and put myself right between him and the fucking bull. Under the fucking bull, if it stopped him.
He could be with Chrissy if he wanted, if the idea of us was dead to him. But he couldn’t get on that damn bull in a state that might fucking kill him.
This was my mess. My fault.
I ordered takeaway to my room. With my brain picking up speed as my first meal in two days hit, I grabbed my phone and started searching for flights.
Objection after objection, problem after problem bombarded my mind, ways this could all fuck up. But this was something I needed to be there for, in person.
After twenty minutes of working my way through flights to Denver, Salt Lake City and even Chicago, other than prohibitively expensive first-class seats, I couldn’t find any that would get me there for Sunday evening. It needed to be a flight tonight, or at the latest, tomorrow morning.
There was nothing.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get there in time.
Numb, about to put my phone down, I jolted as it buzzed.
It was the cleaning company, letting me know they’d finished up at the studio. I blew out a breath, willing myself into sense, knowing that staying in this room wasn’t a plan.
I would shower, dress and walk over. Nothing more, nothing less.
If Jesse and I were . . . done, then the studio was what I had left. That was the thing I could rebuild.
So I did, for once talking to myself as gently as I would a child, feeling myself come back to life gradually with clean hair, painting a semblance of myself onto my face with make-up.
Occasionally I failed, caught off guard with a thought of Jesse, knowing he was in his truck right now with her – moving on, just like he thought I had.
That’s when I had to stop, to lean over the bathroom countertop and hold myself in. The visceral effects of this fuck-up, I realized as I finally left the hotel some time later, were more than I’d ever known before. The scale of loss was like nothing I’d felt before.
The tainted city air was a welcome change, waking me up as I strode through the streets towards the studio, one foot in front of the other until –
Cal was leaning against the wall near the studio door, barely recognizable in clothes.
I came to an abrupt stop, eyeing him carefully.
‘I’m not here to cause problems,’ he said, holding up a hand. ‘I swear. I just – I didn’t want to leave things like that between us.’
‘Give me fucking strength,’ I hissed under my breath, walking round him as I got to the door, opening it with my key. ‘How did you know I would be here?’
He shrugged.
‘The cleaner replied to the studio email address. I figured you’d be here to check on it. You always did look for the details.’
I glared back at him for a moment, waiting for him to look away first before stepping inside.
The chaos was gone. There was no hint of the cesspit Cal and his dickhead, waster friends had created.
But as I walked through the space, vast patches on the walls now scrubbed almost down to the plaster to remove the graffiti, it felt different.
As though something of our history had been cleansed along with the mess.
My cherry blossom mural had almost gone, dozens of happy hours at the beginning of this adventure with Cal now erased.
‘Hestia, I’m sorry,’ Cal said, stepping into the room behind me, careful to keep his distance.
‘I don’t have the strength for this,’ I admitted, turning to him.
‘I did fake it,’ he blurted, grimacing as I frowned. ‘I didn’t end up in hospital because I overdosed. I mean, I did get fucked up and go there for a few hours, but it was only long enough for Mum to visit before they made me leave.’
I stared at him, trying, failing to make sense of it.
‘It was the only way I could think of to get you home,’ he said, running his hands through his hair. ‘Becca was . . . she was just a distraction, nothing important,’ he dismissed. ‘The timing of you coming back was fucked up, though. I never would’ve—’
‘Stop, Cal,’ I murmured, shaking my head. ‘Just stop. Why did you think it would change anything? We ended months ago.’
‘I know, I just thought . . . you were so fucking good to me when I was in hospital before, for real. Those weeks afterwards were some of the best of the past couple of years between us, weren’t they?
I guess I wanted to try . . .’ He sighed.
‘But, yeah. I don’t know. I hadn’t counted on you having changed so much since you’d been gone. ’
I stopped, the build-up of disbelief and anger dissolving.
‘Changed? What do you mean?’
He gestured at me, shrugging.
‘You’re . . . different. Something’s changed in here,’ he said, motioning to his temple. ‘Whatever you think about me, Hes, I do know you. Did know you.’
We held each other’s gaze then, registering an acute sadness at the distinction.
‘And while I’m putting the truth out there,’ he added, looking away for a moment, glancing at the scrubbed mural, ‘it wasn’t just a bender we were on in here. This was anger . . . revenge, I guess.’
Wide-eyed, I shook my head.
‘Because I went on holiday?’ I asked, not quite believing it, not even of him.
‘No,’ he replied, exhaling. ‘Not because of you. Because the fucking landlord is selling this place. He used the break clause in our lease and gave us notice a couple of weeks ago. This place is being knocked down in a couple of months to make way for luxury flats.’
My jaw dropped open.
‘We’re out? Just like that?’
He nodded.
‘Three or four weeks left on the lease. Years of work, establishing this place and . . . gone. Almost overnight. Story of this whole area, though, right? It was bound to happen sooner or later.’
And as I looked around the room – the memories faded to nothing, just the scrubbed, sterile remains left behind – the one connection holding me to London, to Cal and our old life, simply . . . disintegrated.
Gone.
‘We need to sell the flat, Cal,’ I said, a strange sense of calm pervading. ‘We’re both going to need the money to start again.’
He nodded.
‘You’re not staying here, though, are you?’ he asked, scuffing at the floor with his shoes.
I shook my head gently, taking one last look around the space where I’d spent most of my adult life.
‘No, I don’t think I am.’