Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 97053 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97053 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
He’ll never know now.
Pain burrows deep into my stomach and I sit, trying to pretend I can’t feel it.
“Just some stuff,” I reply.
After dinner, I’ll work through some financial projections. It’ll distract me. It’s nothing that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, but what else am I going to do? Stare at my phone, hoping that Jack will call and tell me he’s made a huge mistake and he’s on his way to Colorado? Even though I don’t want him to do that. It will just stretch out the torture of being with him, knowing it’s going to end. It’s better like this. Now I can start to get on with life.
Whatever that means.
“Jack not around? Not seen him for a few days.”
It’s been twelve days since he left town, but naively, I always assumed he’d come back. I knew when we started, we’d end. I just wasn’t expecting the end to come so soon and I didn’t expect it to hurt like this. Like someone carved a hole in my chest and ripped out my heart.
I feel hollow. Empty. And what’s worse is that I know deep inside, this is it. Things aren’t going to get better. They just won’t. They can’t.
Life will go back to how it was before Jack. Frankly, it already has, but things will be so much worse now. I’ve seen what life can be like. I’ve seen the possibility. It’s like being with Jack showed me what color is, and I’ll have to go back to a world in black and white. I think I’d rather not have known. At least I wouldn’t feel the loss so deeply.
“Iris?” my dad asks from the couch, where he’s watching football. “Bray asked you where Jack was.”
“He’s in New York.”
“Why’s he in New York? And when’s he coming back?”
“His father had a stroke. And he’s not coming back.”
I stand, scoop up my laptop and head back upstairs. I don’t care about our rules for dinnertime. I want to be alone. I just want to stop thinking about all the times we had together in Star Falls. They’re rattling around my brain like they’re trying to haunt me.
I close my bedroom door and close the drapes. I want to block everything out. All my thoughts. All my senses. I take a seat on my bed, propping myself up on my cushions and open my laptop. I just need to stay busy until this pain inside me lessens. I just need to feel better—to know that this ache inside me won’t last forever.
His voice was so tender. So concerned. For me. When it’s his father who’s in the hospital.
Maybe it would have been better if he’d cheated on me or ghosted me or turned out to be a gigantic asshole. But he’s staying in New York to look after his father and the family business. He hasn’t drawn this out—let me come to my own conclusions. He’s done everything right. That’s who Jack is—honorable. Trustworthy. The best man I’ve ever known.
And now he’s gone.
There’s a knock on the door, and I want to scream at whoever’s on the other side to go away and leave me alone. Unless they can make this feeling of loss and hopelessness chasing through my veins go away, then I just want them to disappear.
Even though I don’t answer, my dad opens the door. I keep my eyes fixed on the screen. I’m tap, tap, tapping away, creating a chart to make things more efficient.
Dad clears his throat. “I’m sorry about Jack,” he says, his voice stilted. He never was any good at the emotional stuff. Since Mom died, the hugs disappeared. I know my dad loves me. But I also know he doesn’t show it through physical touch and sharing our feelings. Right now, I need my mom. I want to crawl into her lap and cry and rail that the world isn’t fair. I want her to pull me into her arms and rock me until I have no more tears left.
But I can’t have her back.
Just like I can’t have Jack back.
“Your mom was always better at this stuff than me,” Dad says.
“It’s fine,” I say. “It’ll be fine,” I correct myself. Because it has to be, doesn’t it? If I can get over the death of my mother, I can get over a man I’ve only known a few months.
I have to be able to survive this.
“Heartbreak is a horrible thing,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “But you’re doing the right thing by keeping busy.”
I can’t look at him. I just can’t. I know he’s never asked me to stay, but I’m here for him. And Bray.
I’ve given up so much.
Most of the time, I’d make the same choice over and over. But today? With the breakup with Jack so raw? I don’t want to be in this house with my brother and dad. I’ll probably still be here, living in my childhood bedroom, in twenty years. Hopefully any thoughts of the life I might have had outside this farm will have ebbed away. The memories of ballet and Jack will have faded into nothing.